“Great heavens!” cried Boscombe, who was present to sneer at these activities, “there must have been a cloud-burst in the mountains!”
He shouted for the foreman.
“Where are the tenders of the dam?” he cried. “Send them to lower those sluices, and let more water out.”
“Wait a moment,” said Constance Maturin, who had just come out of the main telephone building. “There can be no danger, Mr. Boscombe. You always said that dam was strong enough, when I protested it wasn’t.”
“So it is strong enough, but not——”
“Look!” she cried, pointing over the surface of the lake. “See that wave!”
“Suffering Noah and the Flood!” exclaimed Boscombe.
As he spoke, the wave burst against the dam, and now they had Niagara in reality. There was a crash, and what seemed to be a series of explosions, then the whole structure dissolved away, and before the appalled eyes of the sight-seers, the valley town crumpled up like a pack of cards, and even the tall mills themselves, that staggered at the impact of the flood, slowly settled down, and were engulfed in the seething turmoil of maddened waters.
