The work was brutal, rhythmic, and relentless. The big timber drag-scoops, shod with four-inch iron cutting blades, bit deep into the yellow river silt with a wet, tearing sound, pulled by the straining muscles of the massive Clydesdales.
Eren Tal walked behind Team Four, his heavy boots sinking to the calves in the cold mud, his hands guiding the wooden handles of the scoop as the blade peeled away two-foot slabs of compacted clay. Behind the teams came the shovel gangs, sixty men working in timed together rows, tossing the loose mud into high spoil banks along the outer levee to reinforce the protective dikes.
By four in the afternoon, the teams had uncovered an extraordinary sight in Sector B. The original dressed granite floor of the basin, laid forty years ago by Hal Rook’s father. The massive four-foot square flat stone slabs, preserved beneath thirty years of oxygen-starved silt, were clean, level, and uncracked. Their mortar joints were tight and solid.
‘Look at that stone!’ Eren roared, wiping a mixture of sweat and river mud from his face with his sleeve. ‘Hal’s father built this floor to carry thirty-foot keelboats! The foundation is solid as the High Tor itself! Drive the teams harder, boys! We’re putting twenty feet of clean water on this granite before tomorrow night!’
