Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

Magwitch dove for the ground as his deputies scattered and dropt to their stomachs. Melchisedech Scadger pivoted and fired his pistol into a thick stand of trees, fired in the direction from which the bullet had come. In turning his body, he gave a shooter from the opposite blind the chance to put a bullet directly into his shoulder. The powerful projectile ripped through flesh and bone and knocked him backward into the grass.

More shots rang out. It was difficult to tell how many men comprised the ambuscade. Shots were pinging off the earthen dam now, as Joper slid down the side to remove himself from the hail of bullets.

Stryver did not. The blasting caps had now been attached, the fuses fixed. There was nothing left to do now but to light them — all eight of them.

Faulty aim from the Tiadaghton shooters.

Strong returning fire from his own men.

And luck.

Matthew Stryver counted on each of these three things to help him finish the job that he had been sent to do, even if there be insufficient time to remove himself wholly from the critical area of detonation. In that brief moment, one important fact had become clear to the father of Tattycoram: that he would be sacrificing his own life in the cause of saving Dingley Dell.

One. The first fuse hissed and sputtered as all around Stryver pebbles ricocheted right and left, little puffs of dust rising up where a bullet meant for the obstinate collier missed its mark. On the ground below, the deputies and their tipstaff fired from their improvised entrenchments in the stony field, shielding themselves as best as they could behind small piles of rocky detritus that had tumbled down from the dam over the years. They exchanged fire with the Project men from within gutters and hollows in the broken, uneven earth, giving shot-for-shot, though the more sophisticated Project guns dominated the exchange. Twenty seconds into the firefight, Magwitch’s own pistol found purchase; there came an anguished cry from behind a large tree and then an Outland agent revealed himself by falling stricken to the ground. Was it a lucky hit or were Magwitch and his men quickly learning how to use the Beyonders’ weapon with success? The tipstaff thought the latter. Proudly so.

Two. A second fuse lighted and popping and sparkling as the flame worked its slow, carefully calibrated way down to its blasting cap.

Three. Fewer bullets now searching out the hunkered Dinglians below, most of the guns now trained on the most important target of all: Stryver. For it had not taken long for the Outlanders to glean the reason for all of the activity upon the dam. And so the objective narrowed. Stryver would have to be stopped. For only in killing the collier, in halting the destruction of this dam, could the greater, more important objective of the Tiadaghton Project be achieved.

Four. This stick was very nearly lost, for Stryver’s foot kicked it and it rolled halfway down the incline. As Stryver slid down to retrieve it, a bullet grazed his knee. As he was climbing back up, cylinder in hand, a bullet ricocheted off his boot. As he was planting the stick, a bullet ripped a gaping hole in his right arm. It was difficult for him to steady his hand to light the fuse, to steady his nerve to keep going. Joper saw it. Joper knew what must be done and Joper sallied forth from his covert and scrambled up the side of the dam to relieve his partner.

Five. This one was Joper’s doing. And it took three lucifers to successfully engage the fuse as Stryver began to move himself toward safety. Seconds later, as Joper slid down to number six, Stryver’s chest was torn open by an Outland bullet, his life coming to sudden end.

Six. Joper taking a bullet in the stomach. Joper coughing blood upon the sixth fuse, lighting it with a weak and quivering hand. Joper cursing the unseen gunmen, cursing the Tiadaghton Project, cursing the Bashaws, cursing the God that never smiled upon himself or his family. Joper praying to that very same God for deliverance.

Seven. Lighted as Joper’s world fell away. As Joper descended into unconsciousness, his body sliding down the dam, his arms outstretched like our crucified Christ.

There was one final fuse to be lighted, one final cylinder of nitroglycerin that was to take out the bottom section of the dam. Would the first seven be sufficient to the purpose of reducing the level of the floodwaters? Ephraim wondered. But only for a moment. In that next instant the youngest of the six Scadger brothers was up and moving in a zigzag foot pattern toward the dam, dodging a swarm of bullets to take the box of lucifers from the most recently slain of the two colliers, and to light the last fuse that would give his valley home every chance for survival.

Just then an explosion. Not here. Not this dam. But the one farther upriver: the Tiadaghton Dam. A great blast was followed by a second and then a third, each explosion shaking the valley and ushering in the deluge — the great “Diluvian” that was to take Dingley Dell out of the present and put it forever into the past.

The flood had come.

agwitch signalled his men — those still alive — to follow him to what was left of Blackheath. The entrance to the mine was several hundred feet above the valley floor, overlooking the town. There was a good chance of survival at that height. Two men rose and quickly followed their leader as bullets continued to fly toward them — toward them and the Scadger brother who put flame to the final fuse.

And then he was dead. Ephraim Scadger was shot cleanly through the head. Mel was witness to it. Mel watched as his brother crumpled and then fell, as he rolled and tumbled to the bottom of the sloping dam. Mel wanted to go to him; he wanted to cradle his brother in his arms, to say goodbye to his youngest brother, just as he had said goodbye to Solomon, the oldest of the Scadgers. But he knew that it could not be. He knew, as well, that there was a man who lay near him who was alive and who very much needed his help. It was the deputy named Elwes. He had been shot in the leg, and though thankfully no place else, was unable to walk without assistance.

Mel crawled over to Elwes and helped him to his feet. They would try to make it out before the blasts began, and before the waters of the swollen Thames made their way to the southern portion of the valley. Mel put his arm round the grateful young man’s shoulders, as his own shoulder protested with jarring pain, and as he bid goodbye to his fallen brother with a tearful final glance, and as he nodded his respect to the fallen colliers.

In the distance, the rumble of the raging, rushing, roiling floodwaters could be heard. Yet here for just a moment more was silence, all the guns now stilled, the Outland gunmen having fled for their own lives, knowing what was coming. Together the two Dinglian men, one a fruit picker and fashioner of bows and fletcher of arrows, the other a novice deputy sheriff and former poulterer, began to hobble away. They had got no farther than a few hundred yards from the dam before great gashes were suddenly ripped out of its side, explosively torn from that manmade wall that had redirected a river to the far side of a valley, where its clean, powerful current was needed in the extraction and processing of iron and coal, where industry transformed Arcadia. Now the dam was nearly gone and now it was urging the wild waters of the Thames in its death throes to return. “ Come this way, this way again, I pray! Out through this opening. Out and away. ”