CHAPTER XLIV
Debacle
SCREAMING to make himself heard above the roar of the deluge, Barcus yelled in Alan's, ear: "That devil! He's found the reservoir—opened the sluice-gates—turned it into that shaft! We're done for!"
Alan had no argument with which to gainsay him. Silently getting on his feet he groped for Rose and drew her away with him, up the incline that led back to the bulkhead.
The hour that followed lived ever in his memory as an hour in hell. To die there, in the darkness, like so many noxious animals trapped in a well. …
The water mounted rapidly. Within five minutes it drove them back to the elbow in the tunnel, within ten it lapped their ankles as they lingered there, doubting which was the greater peril, to advance or to stand fast.
Of a sudden the thought crossed Alan's mind that Marrophat had arranged the fuse and the keg of powder solely to keep them away from the bulkhead. Now that he thought of it, he felt certain that the 
AS SHE WAS DRAGGED BELOW JUDITH SNEERED AT HER SISTER.
Probably, then, the keg and fuse were but stage properties
At any rate he concluded that it were better to be extinguished in the space of a second, annihilated by an explosion, than to die thus lingeringly. On this consideration, he drew Rose with him back to the bulkhead. It was solid—a crackless barrier of stout oaken planks reinforced with straps of iron.
The water was stalking them even there like an insatiable enemy. The lisp of its advancing wavelets rang in his hearing like the purring of a man-killing tiger in the darkness of a night-bound jungle. When they had been some fifteen minutes beside the bulkhead the water mounted the head of a slight rise perhaps ten feet behind them and poured down in ever-deeper volume to back up against the barrier.
It was waist-deep there before they retreated to the head of the rise. Half an hour later it was waist-deep even there, the highest spot in the tunnel.
In fifteen minutes more it had reached their chins. Holding Rose close to him, Alan kissed her lips that were as cold as death.
Then fumbling under water, he found the hand of the man at his side. ... ••••••• In the tunnel that branched off from the main-shaft, beyond the bulkhead, some thirty minutes before this juncture, a candle had guttered in its stick, left carelessly thrust into the wall by Marrophat's lieutenant, and, guttering, had dropped a flaming wick into the little heap of bone-dry débris which blazed up against the timbering that upheld the walls of the tunnel. This timbering caught fire without delay, and in a space of time incredibly brief the flames were spreading right and left.
As Alan said a mute farewell to Rose and Barcus the fire spread out in the bottom of the shaft and invaded the powder-room. Alan had guessed aright at Marrophat's design: the keg of blasting-powder was less than an eighth full, its explosion could not possibly have effected the cave-in Alan had at first feared.
But what Marrophat had overlooked was the proximity to the keg of several sticks of dynamite, masked by a film of earth that had fallen from the crumbling walls. When the blazing fuse dropped sparks into the blasting-powder this last exploded right willingly, and the dynamite took its cue without the least delay.
The resultant detonation was terrific. The bulk-head was crushed in like an eggshell barrier, and the released flood streamed out and spread swiftly to the farthest recesses of the burning tunnel. Dense clouds of steam filled that place of terror as the fires were extinguished.
Swept with the stream Alan contrived to retain his hold round the waist of Rose. Barcus shot past him unseen in the darkness. It was not until Alan had contrived to stay himself and his almost witless burden beneath the mouth of the shaft that he discovered Barcus alive, if almost unrecognizable in his mask of mould and soot, battling back toward the shaft against the knee-deep tide.
Immediately before them dangled the hoisting bucket and rope.
Surrendering the care of Rose to Barcus, Alan climbed into the bucket and stared upward, examining the walls of the shaft for a way to the top. There was none other than the most difficult; the one feasible route was via the rope.
He lifted himself up on the rope, wound it round one leg, and began that heart-breaking climb. And somehow, by almost superhuman effort, it was eventually accomplished.
He arrived at the top of the shaft far too exhausted to show surprise when, falling in half-fainting condition within two feet of the brink, he saw Judith Trine running across the clearing.
Without her aid he would not within hours have been able to work the windlass and lift Rose and Barcus to the surface.