"Ay mek von
yump--so!--and Ay gat him in de neck." He uttered a horrible sound,
suggestive of death by strangulation.

"Shut up!" hissed young McCrae fiercely. "_Keep_ him quiet, Tom!"

"Shut up, Oscar!" growled McHale. "Don't you savvy nothing? You and me
ain't in on this. Stand right still now, and don't breathe no harder
than you have to. Go to it, boys!"

If young McCrae had been a prowling animal before, he was now the ghost
of one. Casey Dunne, behind him, endeavoured to copy his noiseless
method of progress. Gradually they drew near the light.

They could discern the figure of the watchman beside it. He was sitting
on a stick of timber, smoking. McCrae drew from his pocket a long
canvas bag, of about the dimensions of a small bologna sausage, and
weighed it in his hand. They crept nearer and nearer. They were not
more than ten feet away. The guardian of the dam laid his pipe on the
timber, rose to his feet, and stretched his arms high above his head in
a huge, satisfying yawn.

At that instant McCrae sprang like a lynx on a fawn. The sandbag
whistled as it cut down between the upstretched arms, and the watchman
dropped as if hit by lightning.

"That was an awful crack, Sandy," said Casey reprovingly. He flashed
the lantern at the face, and slipped his fingers to the wrist. To his
relief, the pulse was strong.

"I had to get through his hat, hadn't I?" said McCrae. "I wasn't taking
any chances. He's got a head like a bull. Come on, let's fix him up."

The watchman came out of their hands trussed up like a fowl for
roasting, securely gagged, with a gunny sack drawn over his head and
tied at the waist. They lifted him between them and bore him away from
the dam to what they considered a safe distance.

"'Watchman, tell us of the night,'" chuckled Casey. "He's all right, by
the way he kicks, and nothing can hit him away out there. They'll see
him first thing in the morning. Hustle up Oscar, now. This is where he
gets action."

Oscar, when he came up, got to work at once. Because the planting of
shots by different men would have been both unsatisfactory and
dangerous he worked alone. The others lay flat in the gloom, watching
the lantern which he had appropriated flitting here and there along the
structure.

"Oscar's some powder man, you bet," McHale observed. "He don't look
like he had the savvy, but he'll cut them fuses so's the shots'll come
mighty near together. Blamed if I know why a Swede takes to