CHAPTER X.A DELEGATION OF BOY SCOUTS.
The three men who entered the subterranean chamber where Ned and Jimmie were hidden did not go to work at the forge, neither did they illuminate the place with such poor means as were at hand. Instead, they settled down in sullen silence by the dying fire in the forge. What little talk there was could not be understood by the lads for the reason that it was conducted in Spanish.
Ned was waiting in the hope that they would soon take their departure, but they seemed to be in no hurry to do so. Finally it was disclosed, in a few words of broken English, that they were waiting for some persons of importance to appear.
“If they don’t get a move on pretty soon,” Jimmie whispered, “we’ll have to make a break of some kind. If we don’t get out directly there won’t be any newspaper building in the Shaw family, and Uncle Sam won’t have any more Gatun dam than a robin.”
“We must wait until the last moment,” Ned replied. “The guards out there would shootus down before we could reach the head of the stairs. We can’t rush them from below.”
It was a long and anxious wait there in the underground room, especially as so much depended on the boys getting out. They had no idea what had happened to the boys left at the cottage, or what was taking place in New York. The only thing in their favor was that the workmen did not light the torches which lay about. Such an act would have led to their discovery and precipitated a struggle at once.
“See if you can’t reach one of them bombs,” Jimmie giggled, nudging Ned in the ribs. “I want to eat it.”
“I have about reached that stage myself,” Ned replied. “I never was so empty in my life. We’ll have to do something before long.”
“Suppose I start an’ run?” suggested Jimmie.
“You’ll get a breakfast of lead if you do,” Ned replied. “Sit still.”
Again the boys sat back in their corner to wait, huddled together for the sake of companionship, and wondering what had become of their chums at the cottage.
“They ought to be here by this time,” Jimmie complained, in a whisper. “I left plenty of instructions regarding the route.”
The little fellow did not, of course, know that the boys were at that moment in the ancient house near the Culebra cut, nor that an automobile was speeding over a hill to the north of the old structure—watched by his friends with anxious interest.
“Something may have happened to them,” Ned said. “It seems to me that this case is set on automatic springs. The slightest move on our part brings out a bang from the other side. Our opponents are industrious chaps, and that’s no fabrication. They keep going every minute of the time.”
“And they’ve won every trick so far,” grumbled Jimmie.
“Yes, but the game is not out yet,” Ned replied, hopefully.
“I should think these gazabos would get tired of waitin’ an’ go away,” Jimmie said, after another long silence.
“They are taking turns sleeping,” Ned replied. “I heard one of them snoring a few minutes ago.”
Jimmie settled back again, rubbing his stomach dolefully, and the place seemed to grow darker before his eyes. When he awoke againNed was pulling at his arm, and there was a great shouting and pounding at the door.
“Wake up and get your gun out,” Ned said. “There’s going to be something started here in a minute.”
“What is it?” demanded the boy, sleepily.
“The others have come,” Ned replied, “and there’ll be lights in here directly.”
“I’m so wasted away with hunger,” Jimmie said, “that they’ll have to shoot pretty straight to hit me.”
One of the men by the forge now began stirring the embers preparatory to lighting a torch, and the others made for the door.
It looked as if there would be open battle in a moment, but in that moment a shot came from the outside, followed by a faint cheer.
The three men who had waited in the chamber drew together, close to the sullen light of the forge, the torches unlighted in their hands. They seemed to be whispering together, and the boys saw them turn their faces toward a corner not far from the forge.
Two more shots came from outside, and then a voice cried, in English:
“Open the door, you chumps.”
“That’s Jack Bosworth,” cried Jimmie, bounding toward the entrance.
Ned followed the boy’s movement for an instant, and then faced back toward the forge, where the three workmen had stood. The last one was just disappearing through an opening in the wall, and, with a bound the boy was after him. A heavy plank door snapped shut in his face.
Then the front door was thrust open, and Frank, and Jack, and Harry, and Glen, and Peter dashed through, shouting at the top of their voices. Jack even lifted up his chin and howled “In the prison cell I sit.”
“Prison nothin’,” Jimmie exclaimed, indignantly. “We was just goin’ out to find you fellers.”
“That’s what the guard at the door said,” cried Jack. “He told us that you were expected out any minute.”
The lads danced about like mad creatures for a moment, and then settled down to meet the situation in which they found themselves.
“Where are the guards?” asked Ned.
“If they are still going at the pace they set out in,” laughed Frank, “they must be prettynear up to San Francisco by this time. I never saw such running in my life.”
“Why didn’t you capture them?” asked Jimmie.
“For the same reason you did not capture the men who were inside,” laughed Frank.
“But we did capture ’em,” insisted Jimmie. “We’ve got ’em locked up in a chamber that opens from that corner.”
“Is that true?” asked Frank.
“Yes,” replied Ned. “It is true that they went into a chamber over there, but the door is locked on the other side.”
“We’ll soon remedy that,” Jack observed, and in a short time the boys were pounding away at the plank door with a heavy sledge which had evidently been used in cutting up the gas-pipe.
When the door was down a narrow passage was revealed. This, followed by the boys, led to an opening at the bottom of the knoll on which the temple had been built. The men who had operated the bomb factory had escaped, every one of them, and Ned turned away in disgust at the luck which seemed to pursue him.
“Every man of them got away,” he grumbled.
“What you kicking about?” demanded Jack, pulling away at the pile of pipe which was evidently the makings of a supply of bombs. “You captured their artillery.”
“They can make more,” Ned replied.
“And the maps he found,” Jimmie cried. “Maps showing how to blow up a Gatun dam and a New York newspaper office. All marked out. Just like lessons on blowing things up from a correspondence school.”
Frank was all attention immediately. He had heard something like that before that day, and asked a score of questions in a breath.
When the story of the drawings was told the boys gathered about Ned while he pointed out the lines drawn in what purported to be a sketch of the basement of theDaily Planetbuilding. Frank declared that the dots made in the drawing were located exactly at steel and concrete foundation points. The plan of destruction had evidently been prepared by some one familiar with the structure.
“It strikes me,” Frank said, after a moment’s inspection of the drawings, “that we’d better get out of here and reach a cable office. One of the plotters was kind enough to tell me what they were about to do, and this looks likethey mean to keep their word, for once in their lives, at least.”
“We’d better be getting out of this, anyway,” Jack put in, “for those chaps are sure to come back and bring a gang with them. Suppose we go back to the cottage and see what has been doing there?”
“I thought you came from the cottage here,” Ned said.
“No,” was the reply. “We left the road leading from Gatun at the point where you two left it last night.”
“I’ll bet you saw my signs in twigs,” Jimmie said.
“We sure did,” was the reply, “and we found your signs in stone out there on the stone pavement, and Jack bunted one of the guards in the head with the third rock.”
“But I don’t understand this,” Ned said. “Where have you boys been this morning?”
“This morning,” declared Frank. “It is most night now.”
“I’ll tell you,” grinned Jack, “they went and got taken prisoners by a martinet of a fellow and a dwarf, and I had to go and get them out. Say! But you wait a second, and I’ll produce my modest assistant.”
He stepped to the edge of the jungle and whistled shrilly, and the next moment a slender boy of perhaps fifteen stood by his side, gazing at the group, now on the pavement of what had at one time been the court of the temple, with something of fear in his dark eyes. He was dressed in clothes which were much too large for him, and his manner indicated that he was not at ease in the company of the well-dressed Boy Scouts.
“This is Gastong,” Jack explained. “He’s capable of doing a running stunt that would make an express train look like it was hitched to the scenery. Gastong,” he added, turning the boy around so that he faced the others, “this is the company of bold, bad men you’ve enlisted in. What patrol did you say you belonged to?”
“The Owl, Philadelphia,” was the reply.
“Gee,” cried Jimmie. “Looks to me like he was a piece of the Isthmus.”
“This,” explained Jack, with the voice and manner of one standing on a box before a tent and touting for a curiosity, “is Gastong, the boy tramp of the Isthmus. If he had a place to sleep he would run away from it before night. If he went to bed with a dime in his pocket he’d dream it was there and get up and spend it.If he was set to digging in a mine he’d chop his way through and come out on the other side and run away. If he was—”
Frank clapped a hand over the speaker’s mouth and marched him away.
“We’ve got no time for stump speeches,” he said. “The gazabos we drove off when we arrived will come back with reinforcements, and—and there you are.”
“I’m dying to know what has been happening,” Ned said, with a laugh. “It looks to me as if you boys had been in something of a mess yourselves.”
“Time enough for that when we get back to the cottage,” Jack said. “Come on, Gastong, and we’ll lead the bunch to the festive board. I hope the cook will be there. Say, but why don’t you fellows compliment me on me fine appearance in this menial rig?”
“You haven’t given us time to say a word,” laughed Jimmie. “You look like the cook, indeed, you do; and you make me hungry.”
“That is another story for the cottage,” Jack said, and the boys hastened off toward the camp which had proved such a source of danger to them.
When they came in sight of the place they were astonished at seeing Lieutenant Gordon and the cook sitting side by side on the screened porch. The cook was still dressed in Jack’s clothes, and the lieutenant, who had evidently just arrived, was speaking rapidly, as if laboring under great excitement.
CHAPTER XI.JACK AND HIS FRIEND GASTONG.
Lieutenant Gordon sprang to his feet when he saw the boys emerging from the jungle, and stood waiting, his hand on the porch door, while they entered.
“You’ve given me a good scare,” he said.
“There’s been a scare comin’ to everybody to-day,” grinned Jimmie, “even to the dagoes in the bomb chamber.”
“The bomb chamber,” repeated the lieutenant. “What have you youngsters been up to? Where did you find a bomb room?”
“Back here in the cellar of a ruined temple,” Jimmie started to explain, but the lieutenant stopped him.
“Suppose we begin at the beginning,” he suggested.
“That is the beginning,” Ned replied, “the beginning of the story after we left the cottage in the night.”
Then Ned related the story of the finding of the ruined temple and what had taken place there.
“But how did you boys get to the temple?” asked the lieutenant, then. “The last I heard of you one of the plotters had you in tow, and Jack was running off after you in the cook’s clothing. Where did you boys connect with each other?”
“Hold on!” Jack broke in. “Where did the cook connect with you? I presume he is the boy that brought you here?”
“Sure,” said the cook. “I had no intention of remaining here. I knew about what would happen to you boys, and so started on a run for a ’phone, the idea being to reach the lieutenant. I was mistaken for Jack, and held up by a man who must have been left to spy about the cottage, but I got a chance to hand him one and got to a ’phone. Since then the lieutenant has melted a thousand miles of wire making inquiries for you.”
“I’m glad we all got out before the lieutenant got to us,” Jimmie cut in. “I guess this bunch of Boy Scouts don’t need any United States army to pry us out of our troubles. We almost got here first,” he added, with a provoking grin.
“When you get done congratulating yourselves,” laughed the lieutenant, “perhaps youwill tell me how you boys got to the ruined temple.”
“I cannot tell a lie,” cried Jack, “I did it. While I was chasing myself along through the dust kicked up by the choo-choo car the boys rolled away in, I came upon a youth who held me up in the middle of the road and asked how I’d like to continue my run against time in an airship. He was a cheeky looking chap, and I felt like giving him a poke in the breather, when he grinned and gave me the Boy Scout high sign.”
“You never found a Boy Scout out here in the jungle?” exclaimed Gordon.
“You bet I did,” Jack continued. “If you don’t believe it, go back there to the cookerie. He’s filling up on the beans I was expecting to get myself. Call him my dear Gastong, and he’ll come.”
“Cripes!” cried Jimmie, and he was away in a second, attacking the great dish of pork and beans which stood on the table in the cookroom.
“Gastong,” continued Jack, looking longingly into the cook room, “was born on the Isthmus, and knows all about conditions here, but he’s too aristocratic to mix with the inhabitants for any great length of time. He’s got thehighfaluting blood all right, but he is shy of the skads, so he protects his dignity and pride of race by bumming his way over the world, like an English milord with a ruined castle and an overdraft at the bank. He learned to talk United States in New York, and got to be a Boy Scout in Philadelphia.”
“Details of pedigree and biography later,” said Ned. “Did he have an airship?”
“He had the next best thing to it,” Jack replied. “He had a motor car which he was running for some gazabo over in Gatun. He was out for his health when he saw the boys shooting by in a car with a man he knew to be a crook, and was about to follow on and see what was doing when he saw me speeding up the right of way, looking as if I was obliged to catch the machine ahead.
“He left his car around the corner of the hill and met me on foot, with about a dozen Boy Scout signs on tap and a score of badges of honor hidden away in his ragged clothes. He told me what he thought of the man who was running the car ahead, and I told him how he would be patrol leader on the Golden Streets just because he was a Boy Scout and was there at that time,so we got into his machine and followed the crook in the lead.”
“What about the tramps?” laughed Frank.
“When we saw the boys go into that old house, we knew there was something crooked going on, and Gastong said to me that if I wouldn’t give him away he would put me wise to a bunch of hoboes that were camping out in the jungle, too lazy to work, and just about ripe for a scrap. So we rounded up the hoboes and made a break for the old house.”
“That’s all,” cried Frank.
“And got there just in time to see Frank and his friends going to the floor with a lot of has-been wrestlers the man in charge of the house had precipitated on them,” Jack went on.
“Where are the people who were in the house?” asked Ned.
“Up in the air,” cried Frank. “Say, they got out so fast that they melted a path all down the hill to the motor car. We ought to have fixed that so it wouldn’t run.”
“Where are the hoboes?” asked the lieutenant.
“Gone back to camp, wearied out with their exertions,” laughed Jack. “They came to the Isthmus to work on the canal, but found theclimate didn’t agree with them, so they are taking the rest cure. I was a find for them, all right. They’ve got money enough to live on for a month, and I’ve got to wire Dad for more soap.”
“It is a pleasure to bump into a nice, bright little boy like you,” grinned Jimmie, standing in the doorway with a great slice of bread in his hand. “Here you had an army big enough to surround that old ruin, an’ yet you went an’ let the fellers get away. An’ we’ve been blowed up, an’ locked up, an’ chased in motor cars, an’ gone without our eatin’s, an’ nothin’ doin’. Up to date we’re about as useless on the Isthmus as an elephant’s ear on an apple pie—big enough to be in the way, but not good enough to become part of the diversion.”
There was now a call from the cook, and there was no further talk of the situation for the next half hour. The lieutenant was fully as active at the table as the others, and the newcomer, Gastong, as Jack persisted in calling him, seemed to forget that he had invaded the kitchen half an hour before and paid his respects to a pan of baked beans. After the meal a council was called on the porch.
“You all understand,” Lieutenant Gordon said, “that you cannot remain here without being constantly on guard?”
“Of course,” Frank said.
“And you know that the men who have been seen in connection with this plot will now disappear from the game and new men take their places?”
“That is the worst feature of the case,” Ned said, thoughtfully. “My theory worked first rate up to a certain point. I was put in communication with some of the underlings in the plot, just as I planned I should be, but they all got away. The men who are at the head of this conspiracy will not permit the fellows who have appeared in one of the roles to appear again. We haven’t gained a thing.”
“Except a more definite knowledge of the purposes of the plotters,” suggested the lieutenant. “We know now that it is the Gatun dam that is threatened, and that the newspaper building in New York will soon become a mass of ruins unless some action is taken at once.”
“Also we know where they made their bombs,” said Jack.
“But we don’t know where they will make them in future,” said Frank.
“Well, what about staying here?” asked the lieutenant.
“We are doubtless as safe here as anywhere,” Jack suggested.
“Of course I want to stay here,” the irrepressible Jimmie put in. “I haven’t got on speakin’ terms with the scenery yet.”
“There may be another bomb under the house this minute,” Frank said, starting up from his chair. “The place has been alone all day.”
The boys swarmed out of the porch like a colony of bees looking for a new home, and while some crawled under the floor of the cottage, others penetrated the jungle for some distance in every direction. There were no suspicious objects under the floor, and the jungle seemed to present a peaceful attitude.
“What about having the old temple and the deserted house watched for a time?” asked Jack, as all returned to the porch.
“What do you think of that, Ned?” asked the lieutenant.
“If they are watched at all,” was the reply, “it is my idea that the work should be done very secretly, and no arrests made there.”
“Say,” Glen Howard remarked, “there was a dwarf in the house named Jumbo. He didn’tseem to like the gang he was training with, and I thought we might be able to get him to keep an eye out for us.”
“I’ll go and see him,” Jimmie said.
“Yes, go walking right up to the front door and knock, and say you would like to sell the lady of the house a carpet sweeper, and you’ll get a piece of lead in your anatomy,” Jack said.
“All right,” Jimmie grinned, “when I go to call on Jumbo I’ll get an airship an’ drop down out of the blue into the chimney. Say, you fellers make me tired. Do you really want to get this Jumbo person into the game?”
“It might not be a bad idea,” Ned replied.
“All right, then,” grinned Jimmie, “I’ll have me private secretary look him up.”
“You might have him look up my emerald necklace, while he is about it,” laughed Frank. “I can’t afford to lose that.”
“As I have before remarked,” said the lieutenant, “find Pedro and you’ll find the necklace.”
“Unless he’s soaked it,” Frank put in.
About dark Lieutenant Gordon arose to go back to Ancon and Jimmie and Peter Fenton moved down the little path with him.
“Here,” the lieutenant said. “You boys mustn’t be seen with me. You are not supposedto be connected with the secret service in any way.”
“No, I suppose not,” chuckled Jimmie. “I suppose they come here an’ put bombs under our cottage, an’ lug us off to deserted houses, an’ all that, thinkin’ we’re down here in search of a new kind of butterfly. If anybody should ask you, the plotters know just as much about our arrangement as we do.”
Ned, who had been following along behind the others, broke into a laugh.
“The boy has the situation sized up correctly,” he said.
“Then come along,” growled the lieutenant. “Where are you going?”
“We’re going to have a look at the Culebra cut,” was the reply. “You said we might ramble about the Isthmus all we wanted to.”
“But why go with me, and at night?” asked the officer.
“We want to see the work going on under electricity,” Peter replied.
“Let them go,” advised Ned. “If they can’t take care of themselves it is time we found it out.”
The fact was that the boys had learned from the cook that the lieutenant had come to thevicinity of the cottage in an automobile, and they thought this a fine chance to secure a ride to the famous excavation. There was at least another member of the party who seemed to think just as they did, for when the machine purred out into the rough road leading from the path to Gatun the slight figure of Gastong vaulted into the back seat with the boys and motioned to them to remain quiet.
“What’s up?” whispered Jimmie.
“Perhaps he wouldn’t let me go,” suggested the other.
“You’ve ducked an’ dodged so long that you’re afraid of everybody,” returned Jimmie. “I guess any of our friends can go where we can.”
Gastong, however, had not given the true reason for wishing to keep his presence in the car a secret from the lieutenant. The boy had been so considerately treated by the Boy Scouts that he was infatuated with them, and wished to serve them in some important way.
Not having any steady occupation or place of residence, the boy had been driven about alike by the native authorities and the army officers until he was, as Jimmie declared, afraid of any one having authority. He had been treated as an equal by the boys, and was determined toserve them. He had heard the talk of enlisting the dwarf, Jumbo, in the cause represented by the secret service men, and was now resolved to return to the deserted house and look the little fellow up.
Therefore, when the machine drew near to the house which the lads had visited that day under such unfavorable circumstances he dropped out and was soon lost in the shadows of the jungle.
“What do you think of that?” Jimmie demanded.
“I think he can do a better job there than either of us could,” was the reply.
“Well, when we come back from the cut,” Jimmie said, “I’m goin’ to drop off here an’ see how the chump is gettin’ along.”
Looking back, they saw a light flare up in the house, and then die out!
CHAPTER XII.LOST IN THE JUNGLE AT NIGHT.
“Just look at it!”
The lieutenant, after many warnings against getting in the way, and against getting lost in the jungle, had just left Peter and Jimmie, and the boys stood at the verge of the great Culebra cut, taking in the wonder and the force of the marvelous scene.
Night and day, under the great white lights, the work went forward, cutting a way for the commerce of the world. Night and day the human ants bored into the earth. Continuously the blasting and scraping, the puffing and the roaring, went on. Always the great steam shovels were biting into the soil and the rock.
“That doesn’t look like the deep blue sea down there, does it?” Peter went on, “yet the largest vessels in the world will be sailing over here in four years, sailing through this cut, and over a forest beyond the rise there. It looks big, doesn’t it? And it sounds big, too.”
From where the boys stood there seemed to be a hopeless confusion of men and machines,but they knew that back of all the hurry, and bustle, and noise, was a great machine, a wonderful system, born in a human brain and reaching its lines out to the smallest detail.
“When you sit on a fire-escape balcony, or in a park,” Jimmie said, his mind going back to the New York lounging places he knew best, “and read about how many tons of earth have been removed during the week, you don’t sense it, do you? You’ve got to come down here and catch Uncle Sam at his job.”
While the boys talked of the marvelous thing before them a stranger of quiet mien stood watching them from an elevation a few yards away. He was a man of middle age, with brilliant black eyes, long, like those of an Oriental, and a figure almost boyish in its proportions. He was neatly dressed in a dark suit of some soft, expensive material, his linen was spotless, and a diamond of great value and brilliancy glimmered in his pure white tie.
He stood watching the boys for a moment listening to their talk, and then approached them, softly, deferentially, yet with an air of frankness.
“It is a wonderful sight,” he said, as he came to the edge of the cut where the lads stood.“In all the world’s life there has never been anything like it.”
The boys turned and looked the man over modestly, yet with sharp eyes. It is not to be wondered at, after their experiences there, that they were suspicious of all strangers. They both at first rather liked the looks of the man.
“It is worth coming a long way to see,” Peter observed.
“Yes,” was the reply, “it is wonderful, even to those who are small cogs in the great machine, and so it must seem almost supernatural in its showing of strength to those who look upon it for the first time.”
“You belong on the works?” asked Jimmie, gazing at the man with a sort of awe, as one might look at a man of mighty deeds.
“Yes, I have my part in the work,” was the reply, “though it is only a modest part. I am in the office of the engineer, and frequently come out at night to note the progress of the big cut.”
“It must make a man feel a mile high, to be part of a thing like this,” Jimmie said, sweeping a hand over the scene. “It makes little old New York look like thirty cents,” he added, with a laugh.
“The work,” the stranger said, in a pleasanttone, which gave no indication of foreign birth “has progressed beyond the expectations of the most enthusiastic advocate of the canal. When we came here we found about seven miles of waterway bored into the side of the Isthmus, reaching, well, about up to the rising slope of Gatun. Beyond this there were scratches in the soil for about forty miles. There was a notch nicked in the hills of Culebra—just a nick bearing no resemblance to what you see before you at this time.”
“That was over there where the hills rise up like men watching the lights and listening to the noise?” asked Jimmie, his imagination thoroughly stirred by the scene.
“Yes, over there. It would have taken the Frenchmen a century to dig down to the level where those shovels are working, where those tracks lie. I’m afraid it took the men they brought here most of the time to bury the dead. But, after all, they never got in touch with the really big thing.”
“I guess that was the Chagres river,” Peter said; “I’ve read something about that, about the trouble it makes.”
“Yes, that was the river,” the stranger went on, by this time pretty deep in the confidenceand admiration of the boys. “They found the Chagres having everything its own way on the uplands, over to the north, there. It ambled along like a perfect lady in spots, then it twisted its water into whirling ropes which pulled at the banks and toppled cliffs into the current.”
“Freshets?” asked Jimmie.
“Exactly. When the engineers came they found something worth while. They found a dismal, soggy-looking ditch which could do things in a single night. They found crumbling and shaling cliffs which showed the bite of the waters. Time and again they had to do their work all over again. Then they decided to take the Chagres by the neck and choke it into subjection.”
“I’d like to see some one choke a river,” Jimmie laughed. “You try to choke a river and you’ll find that the harder you clutch it the more trouble it will make you.”
“But they not only choked the Chagres,” the stranger said, with a captivating smile which went far toward giving him the complete confidence of the boys, “they put it in chains. If you look on a detail map of the Isthmus, you will see a white band stretching from Limon Bay to La Boca, just below the hill of Ancon. Thatis the line of the canal. Then, across this white band, you will see a crooked line, a turning and twisting line. That is the river, which seems to change its mind about general direction every few minutes. The engineers found this river in the habit of getting up in the night and tearing their work in pieces.”
“Why didn’t they cut a straight channel for it?” asked Jimmie.
“That was tried, but finally the engineers decided to stop trying to make the river behave itself, as a river, and turned their attention to squelching it. They are going to turn it into a lake—the Lake of Gatun.”
“I’ve heard something about that,” Jimmie said. “Go on and tell us more about it.”
The stranger smiled pleasantly, but there was a sudden quickening of the flame in his brilliant eyes which the boys did not notice.
“The upland portion of the Isthmus, the plateau, as it would be called in Mexico, is fairly level from Gatun to the Culebra hills. It might, in fact, be called a shallow basin, with hills shutting it in. Now do you see what the Gatun dam is for?”
“Sure. To flood that basin and turn the Chagres into a lake,” cried Jimmie.
“That is just what will be done. The Panama canal will be a lake most of the way. The locks will float the vessels up to the lake and down to the canal again. The hills, and forests, and farms of the basin will be under water.”
“And the mines,” Jimmie said, thinking of the talk he had had with Peter concerning the emerald mines. “The lake will flood them, too.”
“There are no mines there any more,” the stranger said, lightly, but there was a quality in his voice which almost asked a question instead of making a statement of fact.
“I’ve been wondering if there wasn’t mines down there,” Jimmie added, in a moment.
“What kind of mines?” asked the stranger.
Jimmie was about to say “Emerald mines,” but Peter’s anxious face warned him to check the words on his lips.
“Oh, I’ve heard of all kinds of mines about there,” he said, instead.
“The mines are farther south,” said the stranger. “Are you boys with a party?” he added, in a moment. “If not, I would like to have you spend the night as my guests.”
“We’ve got a camp back here,” Peter said, “and the others will be expecting us.”
“I see,” said the other. “You are the boyswho are here in search of specimens. I recall something Lieutenant Gordon said about you. But you are a long way from the cottage in the jungle near Gatun.”
“When did you see Lieutenant Gordon last?” asked Peter, suspiciously.
“I met him something over half an hour ago,” was the reply, “on his way back to the Tivoli at Ancon. You came here in his machine?”
“Yes,” was the reply.
“Well, I’m going to Gatun to-night, and you may ride with me.”
The stranger turned away, as if to get his motor car, and Peter nudged Jimmie in the ribs with his elbow.
“Now we’ve done it,” he whispered.
“Done what?”
“Got a man after us.”
“Do you think he is one of the men we came here to look up?” asked Jimmie. “I’ve been thinking he looks like a Jap. Perhaps he’s one of the men at the bottom of that bomb business. Well, we don’t have to go with him.”
“I’d like to see where he would take us,” Peter whispered.
“Not for your uncle,” Jimmie replied. “It is me for the jungle. This thing is gettin’ worse ’n’ aBowery drama. The villain comes on in every scene here. Say! Suppose we take a run into the woods before he gets back?”
“I’m not in love with the jungle at night,” Peter said. “Besides, I’d like to know what this Jap has in mind.”
The chug-chug of the stranger’s motor was now heard, and, without waiting for further discussion, the boys ducked away into the jungle, which crowded close on the cut at this point.
They heard the car stop at the point where they had been standing, and heard a low exclamation of impatience, indicative of disappointment, from the lips of the driver, and then crept farther into the tangle of vines.
Finally Peter stopped and faced toward Gatun.
“We’d better be working toward home,” he said. “This thicket is no place for a civilized human being at night.”
Although there was a moon, and the sky showed great constellations with which the boys were unfamiliar, the jungle was dark and creepy. Keeping the lights from the workings on their left, the boys pushed their way through the undergrowth for some distance without resting, and then paused in a little glade and listened.
“Gee,” cried Jimmie, after standing at attention for a moment, “there’s some one following us. We’d better dig in a little deeper.”
“It may be a wild animal,” said Peter, who, while ready to face whatsoever peril might come in the company of the man they were running away from, was in mortal terror of the jungle.
“There are no man-eaters here,” Jimmie replied, unwinding a snake-like creeper from his neck and pushing on.
“I can feel snakes crawling up my legs now,” complained Peter, with a shiver.
The noise in the rear came on about as fast as they could move, and at last Jimmie sat down on a fallen tree.
“He can hear us,” he said. “We might as well be hiding with a brass band.”
“Then we’ll keep quiet until he passes,” Peter trembled out. “I’m afraid to go plunging through here in the dark, anyway.”
Making as little noise as possible, the boys crept into a particularly dense thicket and crouched down. Almost as soon as they were at rest the noise behind ceased. In five minutes it began again, but the sounds grew fainter and fainter and finally died out.
“He was followin’ us all right,” Jimmie said.“Now we’ll dig in a little deeper, so as not to come out anywhere near him, and then go back to camp.”
They walked, or crept, rather, until they were tired out and then looked about.
There were giant ceiba trees, with trunks as smooth as if they had been polished by human hands, tremendous cotton-trees, their branches bowed down with air plants, palms, to which clung clusters of wild nuts, thick, bulbous trees, taller trees with buttressed roots, as if Nature knew the strain that was to be placed upon them and braced them up accordingly, trees with bark like mirrors, and trees with six-inch spike growing from the bark.
And through this thicket of trees ran creepers resembling pythons, smaller vines which tore at the boughs of the trees, and a mass of running things on the ground which caught the foot and seemed to crawl up toward the throat. By daylight it would have been weird and beautiful. At night it was uncanny and fearsome.
“We ought to be in sight of the lights by this time,” Peter said, after they had crept on and rested again and again.
“Yes,” said Jimmie, “but we ain’t. We’re lost in the jungle, if you want to know.”
CHAPTER XIII.BOY SCOUTS TO THE RESCUE.
Ned Nestor and Frank Shaw sat on the porch, that night, for a long time after the other boys were asleep. It had been decided that Frank should stand guard until midnight, but Ned was far too anxious to attempt to sleep. The absence of Jimmie and Peter worried him, and he sat waiting for some sign of their approach until very late.
“Frank,” he said, after a long silence, “there has been some talk in this case about your father having an interest in an emerald mine down here. Have you any idea where that mine is?”
“Not the slightest,” was the reply. “All I know about it is that it is a paying proposition, and that foreigners are in the game with him.”
“You do not even know whether the mine is situated in the Province of Panama?”
“I rather think it is.”
“I have heard talk,” Ned went on, “about mines on the line of the canal. It may be that this one is.”
“I think it is not far from Colon,” was the reply.
“Do you know who these foreigners are?”
“Japanese, I think.”
Ned was silent for a time, as if studying some proposition over in his mind. The boys in the cottage were stirring in their sleep, and a shrill-voiced bird in the jungle was calling to its mate.
“What are you trying to get at?” Frank asked.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Ned replied, “that your father acted rather strangely on the night he was attacked in his house—the night your emerald necklace was stolen and the office building searched?”
“I have never thought of his attitude as remarkable,” replied Frank, “but, come to think the matter over from this distance, it does seem that he did act queerly when asked to reveal the nature of the information he had received. Lieutenant Gordon was angry with him.”
“Yes; the lieutenant believed that the papers would help him a lot if he could get hold of them. He still thinks so.”
“I understand that he still, in his mind, accuses father of disloyalty to his country,” said Frank.
“It seems to me,” Ned continued, “that one of two propositions is true. Either the papers would be useless in revealing the plot, or they deal with a situation which your father believes himself capable of handling alone.”
“I wonder what he will think when he gets the cable Lieutenant Gordon took up to Panama for me?” asked Frank.
“What did you say in the message?”
“I told him to keep an army of men in the basement of the newspaper building—to look out for bombs all over the structure.”
“I am glad you were able to warn him,” Ned said, “but I can’t help believing that he knew something of the peril he was in before we left New York. He was altogether too quiet that night when his house and his office were searched. He appeared to me to be planning a revenge both effective and secret.”
“And he never made a row about Pedro leaving him,” Frank said. “Why, he used to think Pedro was the whole works.”
“You say the fellow’s name is not Pedro at all, but Pedrarias?” asked Ned.
“Yes, that is what father says. I gave him the name of Pedro for short. He is an offshoot of the Spanish family that ruled the Isthmusafter Balboa was shot. He claims pure Castilian blood, and all that. How he ever consented to become a servant is more than I can make out.”
“Has it never occurred to you,” asked Ned, “that he might have had an object, besides that of salary, in acting the part of a menial?”
“I have thought, since the night of the robbery, that he might have scented the necklace from afar off and come there to get it.”
“Your father found him on the Isthmus?”
“Yes; on his latest trip.”
“He consulted with him, in a way, concerning conditions here?”
“Yes, I think he did. Pedro is a very intelligent man, and proud as the Son of the Morning. He gave me his pedigree about the first day of his service in the house.”
“Perhaps your father sought his advice regarding the emerald business.”
“Yes, I think he did, now and then.”
“And Pedro was always ready to advise?”
“Oh, of course.”
“And your father grew to put some confidence in his talk?”
“I presume so, for they talked together a good deal. But I don’t see what you are getting at.”
“Do you know whether the two discussed the location and opening up of new mines?”
“Oh, yes. Father is always after new mines.”
“Where is he looking for them?”
“On the Isthmus and all through the republic of Colombia, I think.”
“And especially on the Isthmus?”
“I believe so.”
“And Pedro was active in looking up possible workings?”
“Yes; he used to show father maps and plans, at night, in the study, and they used to pore over them for hours at a time. But what does that amount to? Father took him to New York, I have no doubt, because he thought he would be useful in that way. The fellow knows every inch of the Isthmus and South America. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you think he stole my emerald necklace?”
“No, frankly, I do not,” replied Ned.
“But you have a notion that he let the others into the house?”
“Well, he might have done so.”
“He showed guilt when he ran away.”
“Of course. The fact is that if he did let the thieves into the house he did not do so especiallyto give them a chance to steal the necklace. At least that is the way I look at it. And, again, if he did admit them, he permitted them to do a bungling job.”
“You mean that they didn’t get what they wanted?”
“Exactly.”
“The papers concerning the plot?”
“Probably.”
“Well, how could they get them if they weren’t in the house?”
“He should have located them before he turned his confederates loose.”
“Then you really think Pedro was at the bottom of all that?”
“I have not said so,” was the reply. “There is no knowing whether he was or not.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so secretive,” Frank said. “You have a straight out and out theory of that night’s work, and you won’t tell me what it is.”
“I never form theories,” was the reply.
“What would Pedro want of the papers?” Frank demanded. “Was he in the plot to blow up the dam, or was he just paid to get them?”
“I can tell you more about that in a few days. It is midnight, and I will relieve you. Go to bed.”
“I shall sleep sounder after I hear from father,” the boy said, passing into the cottage. “He may be having troubles of his own in New York,” he added, pausing at the door for a last word.
Ned sat for a long time on the screened porch with the splendor of the tropical night about him. The jungle came nearly to the walls of the house on all sides, save in front, where a little clearing had been made, and the noises, the creature and vine talk of the thickets, came to his ears like low music.
He listened constantly for the footsteps of the absent boys, but for a long time there was no break in the lilt of the forest. Then—it must have been two o’clock—he heard the quick beat of running feet, and directly Gastong, as Jack had fancifully named his new acquaintance, came spurting into the cleared space.
He stopped running when he reached the middle of the cutaway spot and, seeing Ned on the porch, beckoned to him.
Ned was off the porch in an instant, standing by the exhausted boy, who was now on the ground, supporting his swaying figure with one hand clutching the long grass.
“What is it,” asked Ned.
“Have you heard anything of the boys, the two who went away in the car?” asked the other. “Have they come back?”
“No,” replied Ned, filled with a sickening sense of helplessness, “they have not returned. Come inside the screen and speak low, so as not to wake the others.”
Gastong rose slowly to his feet and walked stumblingly to the porch. Once inside he dropped into a chair.
“I have run a long distance,” he said, by way of apology for his weakened condition. “I’m all in.”
“What is it about the boys?” Ned demanded, clutching the other by the arm.
“I stopped at the old house,” began Gastong, but Ned cut him short.
“About the boys,” he said, shaking him fiercely. “What about the boys?”
“They are either in the hands of your enemies or lost in the jungle.”
The words were spoken shrinkingly, as if the news conveyed might be of his own making.
“Where did you leave them?”
“I stopped at the old house,” began the other again, “and remained there only a few minutes. Then I went on toward the Culebra cut andcame upon a friend who told me what had taken place.”
“Well! Well! Well!”
“The boys stopped at the cut, this side of the high point, and were there accosted by Gostel. Oh, you don’t know Gostel?”
“No, no,” was the impatient reply. “Who the dickens is Gostel?”
“He is a spy, a Jap who has been hanging about the Isthmus ever since the beginning of the work.”
Ned was thinking fast. This might mean something tangible. He had never heard of Gostel before.
“Well, what of Gostel?” he asked.
“He talked with the boys for a time and invited them to become his guests for the night. He referred them to Lieutenant Gordon. I got it from my friend who heard all their talk.”
“And they went away with him?”
Ned’s voice was harsh and high, and the boys in the cottage were heard moving about, as if awakened by his voice.
“No, they didn’t go away with him. They became suspicious of him, and when he went for his car they ran away into the jungle. A madthing to do. A crazy thing for boys to do, for strangers. There is death in the jungle.”
“And why didn’t you go in after them?” asked Ned.
“What could I do alone?” asked the other, with a little shiver of apprehension.
“If you know the country—”
Gastong interrupted with a gesture of impatience.
“Knowing the country couldn’t help me, not with Gostel and his men trailing into the jungle after the boys.”
There was a new fear creeping into Ned’s heart, and he was beginning to realize that there are perils more to be dreaded than the perils of the jungles.
“How many went in?” asked Ned, in a moment.
“Oh, half a dozen—I don’t know. Some one must go for help. Gostel will kill the boys. I should think that after the experiences of the afternoon—”
“I am ready to go this minute,” Ned said.
“Oh, but you must have torches, and guns, and stand ready to fight against wild beasts as well as against men. There are jaguars in there, and boas—serpents ten yards in length.Natives have been killed by jaguars within the month.”
“Jaguars rarely come as far north as this,” Ned said, “and your serpents are not dangerous,” but the other insisted that there were both jaguars and boas in the jungle.
“This man Gostel may have gone to the rescue of the boys,” suggested Ned.
Gastong laughed weakly.
“You don’t know him,” he said. “I tell you he is a spy, a Japanese spy, watching every inch of the canal as it is excavated. He is in the pay of hostile interests, and will work you all a mischief. He knew before you arrived that you were coming.”
“How do you know that?” demanded Ned.
Gastong’s replies to the question were not satisfactory, and so Ned gave over questioning him. The sleeping boys were aroused and in ten minutes, just as a faint tint of day came into the east, they were away to the jungle—taking the way to Gatun at first, as the thicket they sought was far to the southeast of that city.