The groggy man didn’t quite understand what it was Dash was telling him, but he pieced together enough of the message to know he had to get to high ground in a hurry.
Dash ran along the major waterway that passed Mother’s and reached a place where the culverts above had broken through. He leaped and grabbed the jagged edge of a heavy hard-clay pipe that protruded out of the wall above his head. He pulled himself up and stood on it, working his way along to a break in the wall, barely large enough to permit him entrance. He risked getting stuck as he wiggled through the break to a place where a large hole appeared above his head. He pulled himself up and stood outside in the bed of the northern watercourse. He looked around in the predawn grey and saw no one in sight. He ran toward the east.
As he reached the end of the aqueduct, he saw Gustaf and his men standing before the large wooden gate. Two men were already slamming axes into the supports on either side of the jammed gate.
Dash said, “How goes it?”
Gustaf smiled ruefully. “If those supports don’t give way before we want them to and drown us all, this might work.”
“How much oil did you find?”
“Several casks. I’ve got some of the lads pouring it into clay jugs like you said.”
Dash hurried over to the place Gustaf indicated, where two men were pouring sticky, foul-smelling naphthalene from small casks into large clay jugs. “Only about a third of the way,” said Dash. “And leave the stoppers off. We want the air to get to it.”
The men nodded. As Dash started to return to Gustaf, he said, “And you want to be as far away from fire as you can get until you wash that stuff off. Use lots of soap. Remember, it burns underwater.”
The two men who were swinging the axes jumped back as one when a loud crack sounded, accompanied by a flexing of the wooden gate. Small jets of water spurted through cracks in the wood, and a bit of dirt and gravel washed down the bank.
“Looks like it’s going to go under the weight of the water,” said Gustaf.
“Eventually, but we can’t wait until the next big rain. Did you bring the rags?”
“Over there,” said Gustaf, pointing to a man standing over a box up on the bank.
“Good,” said Dash, hurrying over to inspect the damage. To one of the men with an ax he said, “Crack this beam here some more.”
The beam was a huge one, a foot on each side, that had been stuck between foundation stones and held the right side of the sluice gate. The man set to with his huge ax, smashing into the wood, almost as hard as rock with age. Yet each time he struck, chips flew and the wood splintered more.
Dash waved his men out of the way and indicated that the rags and what was left of the naphthalene in the casks should be brought over and the jars should be taken to the top of the bank. The men hurried up the stone bank of the aqueduct. Dash motioned the ax-wielder aside and said, “Get up there.” He set two casks down on the stones and picked up the third. Carefully, he laid out a long run of the rags, tied it into a knotted cord, and dribbled naphthalene on it. He then tucked one end of the rags into a cask and set a third atop the two on the bottom, forming a little pyramid right below where the beam had been chopped by the ax.
Dash hurried to the far end of the rag and pulled a piece of flint from his pocket. Using his knife blade, he struck sparks until one caught on the naphthalene—soaked rag.
Dash wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. He had heard stories from his grandfather, but had only seen the results of the use of this oil distillation mixed with powdered limestone and sulfur.
With a whoosh the flame sprang up the rag. Dash ran.
He reached the bank of the aqueduct as the flame burned quickly along the rag. He stood next to Gustaf and said, “If it burns as hot as it’s reputed to burn, it should eat through the rest of that wood quickly. The water pressure should shove over the—”
The flame reached the casks. They exploded.
The force of the blast was far more man Dash had expected, thinking he was going to get more of a large fire. Instead, men were thrown to the ground and two were struck by wood splinters.
Gustaf picked himself up off the ground, saying, “Gods! What was that?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dash. “My grandfather told me something about too much air on the stuff, and I guess that’s what he meant.”
“Look!” said one of the constables.
The blast had cut through most of the large beam, which now was being bent back by the gate under the pressure of millions of gallons of river water trapped behind it. With a loud groan the entire sluice gate began to move as water started to pour through several gaps in the wood. As the force of the water increased, the wood started to move more rapidly. Creaking and groaning sounds were replaced by a crack, the beam sheared in two, and suddenly the entire gate was swept away before a wall of water.