Steadily the dam rose, and steadily the muddy water crept up with it.
Men toiled in the bed of the stream with the foaming, coffee-colored
water washing about their hips, seething as it climbed up to their
great, hairy, panting chests. With no thought of finishing the
breakfast which they had barely begun, they worked upon the banks
with sweaty, hot bodies and calm, cool minds. Stripped to their
waists, almost naked many of them, black with dirt and running sweat,
they strained and strove against the rising stream. The morning died,
noon came, and Conniston had a dozen men distribute sandwiches and hot
coffee. The afternoon wore on and brought with it the men whom Tommy
Garton had sent.
Then Conniston called to every man of the hundred who had toiled for
him since sunrise to drop his tools. In their places he put a hundred
new men. And again the work went on in great strides, and the strange
dam rose swiftly. The other men whom Garton had sent, Brayley with
them, he put to work to begin the restoration of the broken dam, that
the thing which the hapless Hapgood had torn down might be ready
against the time of need after the first of October. For he could find
no place for more than a hundred men working between the Jaws and upon
the banks above them.
* * * * *
Night had come down upon the mountain-slopes.
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