Running, as the car was, at top speed, the flood picked it
up and drove it forward even more swiftly for several rods.

"Shut her off! Shut her off!" yelled Frenchy excitedly.

But Torry was wiser than that. The water flattened out, and the whirling
wheels bit into the road again. They did not skid, and the car remained
upright. For the next half mile they ran through more than a foot of
water; but it was plain the danger was over.

Near the river bank the water flooded the first floors of the houses in
the suburbs of Seacove; but there was little other damage done at this
distance from the dam.

As the water subsided from about them, however, Torry turned the
machine around and headed up the road again.

"Yes, we'll go back," Whistler agreed. "Drive slowly, Torry. Maybe we
can help somebody. I'm afraid there were some people who did not get
away in time."

They found enough to do, it was true, all that night. After getting back
to the outskirts of Elmvale they could not drive the machine over the
slime and mud in the roadway. There were deep washouts, too; and in some
places the wreck of light buildings barred the way.

The Navy boys had done good service in warning the endangered people
along one side of the river. Mr. Santley had done much more in sending
the news of the broken dam broadcast by telephone. The girl at Central
had stuck to her post while the water rose to the second floor of the
telephone building, where the switchboard was situated.

Whistler and his three chums were carrying children to the high ground
where it was dry, and packing bedding and blankets up to the
"shipwrecked mess-mates," as Frenchy called them, until dawn.

When the sun crept up and showed the wreckage in the valley, and
particularly about Elmvale, it was enough to make one heartsick. The
lower floors of all mills, and of the munition factory, were wrecked.
Some of the buildings had fallen down.

Much machinery was destroyed. It would take months to repair the damage
done to property by the flood. And there was a death list of twelve.
That was the hardest to bear and the saddest result of the catastrophe.

Until the ruins around Elmvale were searched and the last body brought
to light, little was said about the cause of the disaster. But the
following evening Whistler and his chums were called to the office of
the sheriff of the county to tell what they knew about the stranger,
Blake, who had disappeared just before the d