He had lost both his fights. First he flooded the highway, and in the end he had to open the wickets. Flooding the asparagus country was a nasty business; but at least it saved the city—like sacrificing a platoon to save a battalion. And somebody had to take the responsibility. The next few days might raise some excitement. But barring accident, the levees and by-passes would carry the runoff; the rivers would crest successively, and the storm was over.

Yet other storms would come; again the brown water would rise against the levees. In the end the levees would go down—a hundred years, a thousand years; but in the end they would go, and the men who built them.

Perhaps it was only that he had lost a night’s sleep; he felt old. He sensed a great weariness, of storms that came and went, of water that fell as rain and rushed through the rivers, only to return again as rain. He knew there was a quotation, not Bret Harte this time, something more ancient. What was it all about—this ceaseless, ineffective activity of storms, and of men? Then he found the quotation somewhere back in his mind: “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they also return again.” The cold northwest wind eddied about the General’s neck, and he shivered.

5

The Old Master was dead. A drenching, a chill—and he had never rallied.

“Gosh!” said Whitey. “It won’t be like the same place without him dropping in to see what the map looked like. As long as I remember, he was so old he never seemed to get older.”

The Chief and the J. M. bent together over the map. It looked much the same as it had during the weeks before the coming of Maria. The Pacific High, rearing like some sea-monster, thrust itself against the California coast and joined with a continental high over the Great Basin. Far to the north lay the storm-track. Over New York City was Little Maria; the new storm which had brought the chinook to the northern plains was moving across Manitoba; Victoria, magnificent in maturity, held the Gulf of Alaska.

But neither the Chief nor the J. M. was really thinking of the map.

“He was a good weather-man—for his day,” said the Chief. “You know, I can’t help liking the way he went—with his boots on. The barometer rose a little, and he forecast clearing; he left his umbrella in the rack, and went out on his own convictions.”

“Crazy,” said the J. M.