Already, as he passed, he could see the bottom of the tank, dim and muddy below the fast vanishing level of the water. Around its edges Apache women were wailing and wringing their hands, some drawing water while any yet remained. Honanta and his braves had gathered and stood looking down at the tank in stolid perplexity, helpless, knowing not how or why this cruel thing was happening, nor what to do.
“Wake, Scotty! Quick! Our water’s all going from the tank! Help us, old man—hurry!” shouted Sid wildly, shaking him.
Scotty sat up, and immediately his eyes fell on water level, now far down in the lava basin, the pool itself shrunk to half its normal size.
“That explosion must have cracked a fissure open somewhere, last night,” said Sid. “Only look, Les!” he groaned.
Scotty pulled on his boots rapidly. “No use trying to stop it from below, Sid,” he declared with the sure knowledge of the engineer. “The water head would burst any dam we could build down there. We’ve got to find the crack in the bottom up here and stop it. All hands into the tank!” he cried energetically.
Sid waved his arm to Honanta and his bucks to jump in and join in the search for the leak, but they stood back, arms folded, eying him gloomily. Childlike, in many ways, is the Indian mind! Before anything whose cause they cannot reason out they stand helpless. Only Niltci followed Sid and Scotty into the water, and that from blind obedience.
“Hunt for a hole in the tank bottom, Niltci!—Hunt for all your worth!” ordered Sid, handing him a stick as they waded about the pool. Its water was now less than three feet deep, the bottom smooth and slippery with mud. Somewhere down there a crevice, maybe only an inch wide, was drawing down the water—but where! The bottom was smooth and hard as flint; nowhere did the searching sticks find any crack that had no bottom.
Scotty’s face grew more and more concerned as they reached the end of the tank away from the lava outflow. Here it grew deeper and the bottom was all ragged pot holes of scoriated lava. Here gases had forced their way out from below while yet the molten stuff was soft. His stick felt down into deep jagged holes and could tell him nothing as to whether a fissure existed at the bottom of them or not.
In spite of his forced air of cheerfulness the outlook grew more and more hopeless. Somewhere down here was the leak, but where? Finally he came to a deep jagged pot-hole which swallowed his stick and more—down to the limit of his armpits. He sent Niltci for a pole, his face drawn with anxiety, for failure as an engineer, utter and complete, was now staring him in the face. When it arrived it went down into that pot-hole its full depth, to touch only ragged scoriations of lava, at the bottoms of any one of which might be the fissure.
“Sid, we’re done!” cried Scotty, hopelessly, tears starting from his eyes. “Only concrete and lots of it can fix this! Oh, Sid, I’d give anything in the world to be able to help them!” wept Scotty, prodding futilely with his pole in a mechanical effort to relieve the stress in his mind. “They must all go! All this must die!”—waving his arm around at the green and flowering things that made the valley gracious. “You were right, Sid! This is the object lesson I needed—gorry, but I needed it in all my visionary pride! This is what I would have done to Honanta’s people, only in another way. The pity of it! I see it now—I don’t want their mine—at such a price!”