"Thank God, Iron Skull!" exclaimed Jim. "Go down and get that hombre and Apache out."
Iron Skull ran down into the excavation. The brown water began to seep over the edge of the pit. The men who were digging above the slide swore and threw down their shovels. Jim tossed his megaphone to the cement engineer and ran to meet the men.
"Get back there," he said quietly. The men looked at his face, then turned sheepishly back.
Jim picked up a shovel. Iron Skull already was digging like a madman.
One of the workmen, who never had ceased digging, snarled to another: "What does he want to let the whole dam go to hell for two nigger rough-necks for?"
"Bosses' rule," panted the other. "Up on the Makon we'd risk our lives to the limit and fight for the other fellows just as quick. How'd you like to be under there? Never know who's turn's next!"
The brown water rose steadily, running faster and faster over into the excavation. The water was touching the brown hand which now twitched and writhed, when Jim said:
"Now, boys, catch the cable hook to the boom and give the signal."
The derrick swung up into the air. Jim and a Makon man seized the Indian, Iron Skull and another man the hombre. Both of them were alive but helpless. The cement engineer shouted an order through the megaphone and just as a lifting brown wave showed its fearful head beyond the Elephant, the river bed was cleared of human beings.
Up around the cable tower foot was gathered a great crowd of workmen, women and children. Jim, greeted right and left as he relinquished his burden, looked about eagerly. Penelope must have heard of the flood and have come to see it. But surrounded by his friends, Jim missed the girlish figure that had hovered on the outskirts of the crowd and that, after he had reached the tower foot in safety, disappeared up the trail.