Although there was still a half-hour to wait, he sat down beside his radio and felt for the cranks of the generator. He put on the earphones and took them off, adjusted the microphone before his mouth and then moved it a half inch further away. Then it was time to look at his watch again, the watch that he felt sure must be running down.
“Wonder where Dick is now,” he said to himself.
Dick was almost as nervous as Tony. He sat behind a huge boulder above the northwest road where it was cut into the side of the hill. He had laid his charge just where Slade showed him, and hooked up the fuses and wire. Now he sat waiting beside the plunger box for five-thirty to come.
“I hope everything’s still okay at the dam,” he muttered to himself.
Except for nervousness again, everything was all right there. Max and Slade and Vince sat on the side of the hill, looking at their watches, laughing about the sentries who still stood on the dam wall, looking at their watches again.
“Scotti must be kind of lonesome,” Vince said.
Lieutenant Scotti was very lonesome. The night had been particularly long for him, with nothing whatever to do, without any way of knowing how the affair at the dam had gone. He looked at his watch.
“Pretty soon I’ll hear it,” he said to himself. “Then I’ll know the answer. And Tony will flash word to headquarters at once.”
At that moment Tony was beginning to turn the crank on the generator. He got it going at a steady pace and kept it going easily. Then he turned a switch, looked at his watch. Any minute now—
He jumped, when it finally did come, after all those hours of waiting. A great roar to the east. He saw a flash, saw black smoke against the sky that was beginning to be gray, felt the earth tremble a little, and then heard the booming roar go echoing through the hills.