“Doing all right,” said a voice beside him. He turned and found that it was one of the engineers.
“What extra depth have you given her?”
“Only a few feet, but she’ll do the rest herself. There’s been nothing the matter with this river except the silting of the outfall and the big bend below here. We’ve shortened her course now by getting on for three miles and driven a channel right out into the Wash beyond the mudbanks. She’ll make her own outfall now, if she’s left to herself. We’re expecting her to grind her channel lower by eight or ten feet — possibly more. It’ll make all the difference to the town. It’s a scandal, the way the thing’s been let go. Why, as it is, the tide scarcely gets up higher than Van Leyden’s Sluice. After this, it’ll probably run up as far as the Great Leam. The whole secret with these Fen rivers is to bring back all the water you can into its natural course. Where the old Dutchmen went wrong was in dispersing it into canals and letting it lie about all over the place. The smaller the fall of the land, the bigger weight of water you need to keep the outfall scoured. You’d think it was obvious, wouldn’t you? But it’s taken people hundreds of years to learn it.”
“Yes,” said Wimsey. “I suppose all this extra water will go up the Thirty-Foot?”
“That’s right. It’s practically a straight run now from the Old Bank Sluice to the New Cut Outfall — thirty-five miles — and this will carry off a lot of the High Level water from Leamholt and Lympsey. At present the Great Leam has to do more work than it should — they’ve always been afraid to let the Thirty-Foot take its fair proportion of the flood-water in winter, because you see, when it got down to this point it would have overflowed the old riverbed and drowned the town. But now the New Cut will carry it clean off, and that will relieve the Great Leam and obviate the floods round Frogglesham, Mere Wash and Lympsey Fen.”
“Oh!” said Wimsey. “I suppose the Thirty-Foot Dyke will stand the strain?”
“Oh, dear, yes,” said the engineer, cheerfully. “It was meant to from the beginning. In fact, at one time, it had to. It’s only within the last hundred years that the Wale has got so badly silted up. There’s been a good deal of shifting in the Wash — chiefly owing to tidal action, of course, and the Nene Outfall Cut, and that helped to cause the obstruction, don’t you see. But the Thirty-Foot worked all right in the old days.”
“In the Lord Protector’s time, I suppose,” said Wimsey. “And now you’ve cleared the Wale Outfall, no doubt the obstruction will go somewhere else.”
“Very likely,” replied the engineer, with unimpaired cheerfulness. “These mudbanks are always shifting about. But in time I daresay they’ll clear the whole thing — unless, of course, they really take it into their heads to drain the Wash and make a job of it.”
“Just so,” said Wimsey.
“But as far as it goes,” continued the engineer, “this looks pretty good. It’s to be hoped our dam over there will stand up to the strain. You’d be surprised at the scour you get with these quiet-looking rivers. Anyhow, this embankment is all right — I’ll take my oath of that. You watch the tide-mark. We’ve marked the old low level and the old high level — if you don’t see the one lowered and the other raised by three or four feet within the next few months, you can call me — a Dutchman. Excuse me a minute — I just want to see that they’re making that dam good over there.”
He hurried off to superintend the workmen who were completing the dam across the old course of the river.
“And how about my old sluice-gates?”
“Oh!” said Wimsey, looking round, “it’s you, is it?”
“Ah!” The sluice-keeper spat copiously into the rising water. “It’s me. That’s who it is. Look at all this money they been spending. Thousands. But as for them gates of mine, I reckon I can go and whistle for ’em.”
“No answer yet from Geneva?”
“Eh?” said the sluice-keeper. “Oh! Ah! Meaning what I said? Ah! that were a good ’un, weren’t it? Why don’t they refer it to the League of Nations? Ah! and why don’t they? Look at thisher great scour o’ water a-com’n’ up. Where’s that a-going to? It’s got to go somewhere, ain’t it?”
“No doubt,” said Wimsey. “I understand it’s to go up the Thirty-foot.”
“Ah!” said the sluice-keeper. “Always interfering with things, they are.”
“They’re not interfering with your gates, anyway.”
“No, they ain’t, and that’s just where it is. Once you starts interferin’ with things you got to go on. One thing leads to another. Let ’m bide, that’s what I say. Don’t go digging of ’em up and altering of ’em. Dig up one thing and you got to dig up another.”
“At that rate,” objected Wimsey, “the Fens would still be all under water.”
“Well, in a manner of speaking, so they would,” admitted the sluice-keeper. “That’s very true. So they would. But none the more for that, they didn’t ought to come a-drowning of us now. It’s all right for him to talk about letting the floods out at the Old Bank Sluice. Where’s it all a-going to? It comes up, and it’s got to go somewhere, and it comes down and it’s got to go somewhere, ain’t it?”
“At the moment I gather it drowns the Mere Wash and Frogglesham and all those places.”
“Well, it’s their water, ain’t it?” said the sluice-keeper. “They ain’t got no call to send it down here.”
“Quite,” said Wimsey, recognising the spirit that had hampered the Fen drainage for the last few hundred years, “but as you say yourself, it’s got to go somewhere.”
“It’s their water,” retorted the man obstinately, “let ’em keep it. It won’t do us no good.”
“Walbeach seems to want it.”
“Ah! them!” The sluice-keeper spat vehemently. “They don’t know what they want. They’re always a-wantin’ some nonsense or other. And there’s always some fool to give it ’em, what’s more. All I wants is a new set of gates, but I don’t look like getting of ’em. I’ve asked for ’em time and again. I asked that young feller there. ‘Mister,’ I says to him, ‘how about a new set o’ gates for my sluice?’ ‘That ain’t in our contract,’ he says. ‘No,’ I says, ‘and drowning half the parish ain’t in your contract neither, I suppose.’ But he couldn’t see it.”
“Well, cheer up,” said Wimsey. “Have a drink.”
He did, however, feel sufficient interest in the matter to speak to the engineer about it. when he saw him again.
“Oh, I think it’s all right,” said that gentleman. “We did, as a matter of fact, recommend that the gates should be repaired and strengthened, but you see, the damned thing’s all tied up in some kind of legal bother. The fact is, once you start on a job like this, you never know where it’s going to end. It’s all piecemeal work. Stop it up in one place and it breaks out in another. But I don’t think you need worry about this part of it. What does want seeing to is the Old Bank dyke — but that’s under a different authority altogether. Still, they’ve undertaken to make up their embankment and put in some fresh stonework. If they don’t, there’ll be trouble, but they can’t say we haven’t warned them.”