Hammond Innes - Campbell's Kingdom

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 centre it would be as deep as the dam was high — over two hundred feet. I thought of the men working down there on the slide, directly in the path of that great sheet of water if the dam collapsed. It would come thundering through the cleft and then fall, millions of tons of it falling two thousand feet; all the water that had fallen on the mountains in twelve hours tumbling over in one great solid sheet. 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 great sweep of it swung smoothly and uninterruptedly across the cleft. It looked as though it could hold an ocean.

The others were already scrambling down to have a look at the damage. I followed. Johnnie 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 feet 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. Down below at the very foot of the dam the sluice gates added their rush of water.

‘It’s that cement they used on the original dam.’ Johnnie 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 goldarned fools!’

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

‘Can’t you go down and warn them?’ Johnnie 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 towards 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.’

‘It won’t do that. Look.’ Johnnie was peering over the edge, pointing to the great thundering jet of brownish water. It had increased in size appreciably in the last few minutes.

The American newspaper correspondent came along the top of the dam towards us. He had been out in the centre 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 God’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 flow of water from the dam were 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 to go. ‘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 on to 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 travelling wheels.

‘Okay, let’s go,’ Boy said.

I turned to find Jean clambering into the cage. ‘For God’s sake,’ I cried.

‘I’m corning with you,’ Boy said. His face was white under his tan. 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 of the block. Then I called to Boy. ‘For God’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 tipped him over after her. As he fell the cage began to move. I turned quickly and caught up the rope, applying the brake gently, holding the cradle to a steady run along the cable. 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 be 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 towards 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 pylon. 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. The only thing that was real was that ghastly, appalling drop and the fact that the only thing that prevented me crashing the full length of that snaking cable line was this crude brake. I felt my knees beginning to shake. I don’t think I ever have 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 power house. 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.

It was probably only a few seconds that I hesitated there, not finding the courage to commit myself irrevocably to that awful drop; but it seemed an age. Then at last I eased the tension slightly on the rope and the cage dropped down from the lip, seeming to plunge sickeningly on the steep drop down the cliff face. Nervously I strained at the rope till I was hardly moving. But as I gained confidence in the braking system I let it move faster so that soon I was past the steepest point and levelling out in a long glide towards the pylon on the slide up. Once I looked back, fearful that the dam was breaking up behind me and the pent-up waters of the lake thundering over the edge of the fault, but all I saw was a thin trickle, a slender veil of white wavering and falling, infinitely slowly, to beat in a white froth against the base of the cliff.