"Why," he said, "it would take a gang of men a week to cut through this Causeway, besides building a coffer-dam." He looked at her curiously. "How did you expect to begin operations all alone?"
"I—I expected to dig."
He looked at her delicate little hands:
"You meant to dig your way through with pick and shovel?"
"Yes—if it took a year."
"And how did you expect to construct your coffer-dam?"
"I didn't know about a coffer-dam," she admitted, blushing. After a moment she lifted her pretty, distressed eyes to his: "I—I had no knowledge—only courage," she said.... "And I needed money."
A responsive flush of sympathy and pity passed over him; she was so plucky, so adorably helpless. Even now he knew she was unconscious of[297] the peril into which her confidence and folly had led her—a peril averted only by the mere accident of his own arrival.
He said lightly: "Shall we try to solve this thing now? Shall we take a chance, set our charges, and blow a hole in this Causeway big enough to drain that water off in an hour?"
"Could you do that?" she exclaimed, delighted.