Martley picked his way along the trail. He went quickly, but his footwork was as neat as a lightweight boxer’s. It was not a healthy time or place for a slip. The wind came in great gusts, taking him off his balance. The rain was in spurts—now merely a spatter, now a deluge as if someone were throwing buckets of water. When rain and wind struck together the man had to brace himself against them, crouching, steadying himself with his right hand against the rocks on the upper side of the trail. A few feet to his left was the void of the canyon. The little rivulets, as he crossed them, hardly slopped his ankles, but if he should slip and fall their rush of water might be enough to carry him downward before he could catch himself.

As he neared the dam, he saw that the water was almost level with the top; the wind was upstream; even so, an occasional wave was slopping over. It was an old-fashioned dam, not well designed to spill; if it went at all, it went along the whole crest; that was why the L. D. always watched the sluice-gates. But this time, thought Martley, the L. D. for once had missed. The gates should have been opened twenty-four hours ago; now the water was coming in faster than the sluices could carry it off; but anyway no harm was likely to result.

He unpadlocked the little steel door just below the overhang of the dam, went in, closed it behind him, and snapped on the lights. He was in a cramped passageway inside the solid concrete of the dam. He went along it a few yards until it ended at a round hole just large enough for a man to descend. Far down the hole one electric light after another, far apart, glowed with a dull, wet gleam.

He lowered himself into the hole, found with his foot a steel rung projecting from the concrete wall, grasped an upper rung with his hands, and began to descend. The hole was so small that he brushed against the concrete with hips and shoulders. Everything was wet with the seepage of water through the dam. The farther he went the more water dripped upon him from above. He descended steadily without hurry, knowing that he had two hundred thirty feet to go.

Usually he made the descent with a companion, and now even his well-trained nerves felt the isolation and the almost physical inward pressure of the monolithic concrete. He was an ant crawling through some minute crevice of a great rock. Each light, yellow in the dripping atmosphere, seemed a friend as he drew near it.

As it receded he felt a touch of primitive panic. But still he descended steadily from rung to rung, taking care that neither hand not foot slipped on the wet rounds of steel.

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