'Stopped!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick involuntarily. 'That is queer. I thought they were at full-pressure, running night and day.'
What followed increased his perplexity.
He heard the steam whistle of Mitchell's shrill forth in palpitating, piercing call, not briefly, as if to give notice that work was over, not peremptorily, as signalling for a new batch of hands to replace such as were released; not insistingly, as calling out of sleep, but with a prolonged and growing intensity, with full force of steam, rising in volumes to the highest pitch, as though Mitchell's great bulk were uttering a shriek of infinite panic and acute pain.
And then, from the hillside, where stood another mill, called Poppleton's, howled a 'syren'—another contrivance invented by a perverse ingenuity to create the greatest possible noise of the worst possible quality.
'Surely there must be a fire,' said Jeremiah; 'only bless me! I see no flames anywhere.'
Then he heard a tramp, the tramp of a galloping horse, on the towpath, and he stood aside so as not to be ridden over. A parting in the clouds let down a soft gray light that made the surfaces of water into sheets of steel, and converted the canal into a polished silver skewer. Along, down the towpath, came the horse. Jeremiah could just distinguish a black travelling spot. He waited, and presently saw that a man was riding and controlling the horse, and this man drew rein somewhat as he saw Jeremiah, and hallooed, 'Get back! get back! Holroyd reservoir has burst.'
Then along the towpath he continued at accelerated speed, and disappeared in the darkness in the direction of the locks.
The alarm bell on the roof of 'Pennyquick's' began to jangle. The news had reached the night-watch, and he was rousing the operatives who lived in the mill-fold. Then the 'buzzer' of the yarn-spinning factory brayed, and the shoddy mill uttered a husky hoot. Lights started up, and voices were audible, shouting, crying.
What was to be done?
Jeremiah Pennycomequick considered for a moment. He knew what the bursting of the reservoir implied. He knew that he had not time to retrace the path he had taken to its junction with the road. He was at that point where the valley expanded to its fullest width, and where the greatest space intervened between him and the hillside. Here the level fields were all under water, and before he could cross them, wading, maybe to his knee, the descending wave would be upon him. He looked towards the locksman's cottage; that offered no security, even if he could reach it in time, for it lay low and would be immediately submerged. He turned, and ran down the path towards the locks, and as he ran he heard behind him—not the roar, for roar there was none, but the rumble of the descending flood, like the rumble and mutter of that vast crowd that swept along the road from Paris to Versailles on the memorable fifth of October. Then a wet blast sprang up suddenly and rushed down the valley, swaying the trees, and so chill that when it touched Jeremiah as he ran, it seemed to penetrate to his bones and curdle his blood. It was a blast that travelled with the advancing volume of water, a little forestalling it, as the lightning forestalls the thunder.