Хэммонд Иннес - Nothing to Lose [= Campbell’s Kingdom]

Early next morning we started out toward the dam, but it was well after midday by the time we turned the base of the buttress and ground to a halt at the cable terminal. There wasn’t a soul there. Boy went down to the dam and disappeared down concrete steps into the bowels of it. The silence was uncanny. The dam was a flat-topped battlement of concrete flung across the cleft that divided the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. On the Thunder Valley side it sloped down like a great wall into the gloom of the cleft. On the other side the lake of the Kingdom swept to within a yard or so of the top. The wall of concrete seemed to be leaning into the lake, as though straining to hold the weight of the water in check.

Boy came up out of the smooth top of the dam and climbed toward us, a puzzled frown on his sun-tanned face. “Not a soul there,” he said. “And all the sluices are fully open.”

“Isn’t there a phone down in the control room?” Jean asked.

Boy nodded. “I tried it, but I couldn’t get any answer. It seemed dead.”

We stood there for a moment, talking softly, wondering what to do. At length Garry said, “Well, anyway, the cage is here. We’d better start loading the first truck.”

As Don moved toward the instrument truck there was a sudden splintering sound and then the noise of falling stone. It was followed by a faint shout, half drowned in a roar of water. Then a man came clambering up the side of the cleft. He was one of the engineers and he was followed by the guards and another engineer. They saw us and came running toward us. Their faces looked white and scared.

“What’s happened?” Garry called out.

“The dam!” shouted one of the engineers. “There’s a crack! It’s leaking! The whole thing will go any minute!” He was out of breath and his voice was pitched high with fright.

We stared at him, hardly able to comprehend what he was saying — convinced of the reality of it only by his obvious fear.

“Have you told thorn down below?” Steve Strachan asked him.

“I can’t. The phone was cut in that storm the night before last. It’s terrible. I don’t know what to do. There are nearly a hundred men working down on the slide where they’re going to build the powerhouse. What can I do?”

“What about the phone in the cable house?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, of course. But I don’t, think there’ll be anyone in the lower housing, not until six this evening.”

Everybody was talking at once now, and I watched the engineer as he ran stumbling to the cable terminal. If there was nobody at the bottom to get his warning. I looked at the lake. It was six miles or more across, and in the center it would be as deep as the dam was high — over two hundred Feet.

Jean’s hand gripped my arm, “What can we do?” Her voice trembled and I saw by her face that she, too, was picturing that effect of a breach. But the dam looked solid enough.

The others were already scrambling down to have a look at the damage. I followed. Johnny came slithering down with me. And from the top of the dam itself we looked down the smooth face of it to a great jet of water fifty feet long and two or three feel, across. It was coming from a jagged rent about halfway down the dam face, and all around the hole were great splintering cracks through which the water seeped.

“It’s that cement they used on the original dam!” Johnny had to shout in my ear to make himself heard above the din of the water. “It was old stuff and it’s cracking up! The fools!”

As we turned away from the appalling sight, the engineer who had gone to the hoist to try to telephone came slithering down to us. “There’s nobody there,” he shouted.

“Can’t you go down and warn them?” Johnny asked.

“There’s nobody down there, I tell you,” he almost screamed. “Nobody hears the telephone! There’s nobody to work the engine!”

I was looking up toward the hoist, remembering the night Jeff and I had examined the cradle together to see if there was a safety device to get the cage down if the engine packed up.

“How long before this dam goes?” I asked the engineer.

“I don’t know. It may go any minute. It may last till we have drained the lake.”

The American newspaper correspondent came along the top of the dam toward us. He had been out in the center with his photographer, who was taking pictures regardless of the danger. “Why don’t these guys do something — about the boys down below. I mean?”

“What can we do?” the engineer demanded petulantly. “We’ve no phone, no means of communicating.”

I called to Boy and together we climbed the side of the cleft to the hoist. Jean caught up with us just as I was climbing into the cage. “What, are you going to do?” I was already looking up at the cradle, seeing what I needed to knock the pins out that secured the driving cable to it. Her hand gripped my arm. “No! For heaven’s sake, darling! You can’t! They’ll be all right! They’ll have seen that flow of water coming down—”

“If they have, then I’ll stop the cage on the lip of the fault.” I gently disengaged her fingers. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

She stared at me, her face suddenly white. I think she knew as well as I did that the chances of the men working down there having noticed an increase in the How or water from the dam was remote. “Why you?” she whispered. “Why not one of the men who belong to the dam? It’s their responsibility.”

I turned away and climbed into the cage. I couldn’t explain to her why it was better for me logo. “Hand me that bit of timber, Boy.”

He passed it up and I knocked the pins out. As the last one fell to the floor I had my hand on the brake lever. The driving cable dropped free onto the rollers and the cage began to move. I hauled down on the lever and brought the bottom braking wheel into action, forcing the suspension cable up between the two traveling wheels.

I turned to find Joan clambering into the cage. “I’m coming with you, too,” Boy said, climbing in after her. His face was white under his Ian. I didn’t know it then, but he was scared of heights, other than from the air.

“So am I,” Jean said.

I stood there, looking at them, wondering how to get rid of them. It was crazy for more than one to go down. There was a rope on the end of the lever and a pulley in the floor. I slid the rope through the sheaves or the block. Then I called to Boy. “For heaven’s sake,” I said, “get Jean out of here! Pick her up and throw her out!”

He nodded. I was still holding the rope. “Please go, Jean!” I called to her. But she clung to the side and Boy picked her up, fighting her to get her hands clear, and then, leaning far out, he put her over the side. At that moment I let go the rope, caught him by the legs and lipped him over after her. As he fell, the cage began to move.

Looking back, I saw the two of them standing there, watching me. And away to the right, below them, was the great sweep of the dam, with the wall all starred with cracks and the brown water spouting from the huge rent. I stared at it wondering what it would he like up here, hanging in space, if the whole thing burst wide open, imagining the lake pouring through, thundering in a roaring mass only a few feet below my feet and then tumbling in a gigantic, fantastic fall over the lip of the fault.

Then the pylon on the top of the fault was coming toward me, and I hauled on the rope, slowing the cradle up to walking pace. Thunder Valley opened out in front of me. I crawled up to the pylon and stopped. I could see the steep, timbered slopes of the valley, the glint of Beaver Dam Lake, but the rocks on the Lip of the drop hid the slide. I inched past the pylori. The cradle tipped. I hauled on the rope. The rocks slid away below me and suddenly I was hanging in space, and there far below me was the slide with the pylon, and beyond it the concrete housing of the hoist. It was all very minute and unreal. I felt my knees beginning to shake. I don’t think I have ever been so frightened of anything in my life. For there below me the slide looked like an ant heap. Everywhere men were moving about, working on the foundations of the powerhouse. I was committed to go down there, and if the dam should burst— The pylon and the cable housing stood right in the path of the flood. They would be swept away and the cable would swing loose. I should be dashed to pieces against the face of the fault.