CHAPTER XIV.THE KILL IN THE JUNGLE.
It was growing darker every minute in the jungle, for there were now fleecy clouds in the sky, and the moon was not always in sight. Following Jimmie’s statement that they were lost, the boys stood stock still in a dense thicket and tried once more to get their bearings.
“We’ve got something figured out wrong,” Peter said.
“I don’t see how we have,” Jimmie insisted. “See here! That is the moon up there? What?”
“Looks like it.”
“Then it’s got lost,” Jimmie continued. “Ever stand behind the scenes in a theatre and hold a moon up on a stick?”
“Never did.”
“Well, I did, on the Bowery, once, and I got so interested in what was goin’ on in front that the moon set in the east. That’s what’s the matter with this moon. Some—”
“There ain’t no supe holding up this moon on a stick.”
“Then they’ve moved the Panama canal,” insisted Jimmie. “If they hadn’t, we would havecome to the cut a long time ago. That moon is supposed to be in the south. It ought to be.”
“Perhaps a little west of south.”
“Well, we crossed over the ditch down here, didn’t we, and struck into the jungle from the west side of the Culebra cut?”
“Of course we did.”
“Then if we keep the moon in the south, on our right, we’ll come back to the cut?”
“Sure. Anyway, we ought to.”
“Well, Old Top, we’ve been walkin’ for the last two hours with the moon on our right, and we haven’t got anywhere, have we? You don’t see no lights ahead of us, do you?”
There were no signs of the big cut. The great lights which blazed over the workings were not to be seen. The noises of the digging, the dynamiting, the pounding of the steam shovels, the nervous tooting of the dirt trains, might have been a thousand miles away.
“You’ve got to show me,” Peter said, after studying over the matter for a moment. “That moon isn’t on no stick on a Bowery stage. It is there in the south, where it belongs, and if we continue to keep it on our right we’ll come to the canal in time. We are farther away than we thought for.”
They struggled on through the jungle for another half hour, and then stopped while Jimmie looked reproachfully at the moon.
“I’d like to know what kind of a country this is, anyway,” he grumbled. “I never saw the moon get off on a tear before.”
“Except when you had it on the end of a stick,” said Peter, with a noise which was intended for a laugh, but which sounded more like a sigh of disgust.
“Well, we’ve got to stay here until morning,” Jimmie said, presently, “and I’m so hungry that I could eat a boa constrictor right now.”
“Quit!” cried Peter. “Don’t talk about snakes, or you’ll bring them down on us.”
“That was coarse, wasn’t it?” observed Jimmie. “Well, I’ll withdraw the remark.”
“If we stay here until morning,” Peter said, dubiously, “how do we know the sun won’t rise in the west?”
“All right,” Jimmie replied. “Guy me if you want to, but you’ll find this is no joke before we get through with it.”
“I know that now,” Peter replied. “I never was so tired in my life, and I’d give a ten-dollar note for a drink of cold water.”
The boys sat down on dry tree knuckles, buttressed roots rising three feet from the soil, anddiscussed the situation gravely. After a short time Peter got up with a start and began prancing about the little free space where they were.
“I’ve got it!” he cried. “We’re both chumps.”
“They usually act that way when they’re dyin’ of hunger an’ thirst,” Jimmie said, dolefully. “Keep quiet, an’ you’ll feel better in a short time.”
“But I know which way to go now,” Peter insisted.
“Oh, yes, I know. You’re goin’ to tell which is north by the moss on the trees. Or you’re goin’ to tell which way is northeast by the way the breeze lays the bushes. Or you’re goin’ to make a compass out of the dial of your watch. I’ve read all about it. But we’re stuck, just the same, not knowin’ the constellations.”
“Stuck—nothing,” cried Peter. “Look here. Which way does the Panama canal run?”
“North and south, across the Isthmus, of course.”
“There’s where you’re wrong! From Gatun to Panama the line of the cut is more east and west than north and south. Now revise your opinion of the moon. At this time of night she would be in the southwest.”
“That would make a little difference,” admitted Jimmie.
“Well, there you are. Take a line running southeast and a couple of chumps going almost southeast by keeping a southwest object to the right, where will they land? That’s mixed, but I guess you know what it means. Where would a couple of chumps find the southeast line?”
“About next week at two o’clock,” cried Jimmie. “Come on. We’ll start right now, an’ get out of the jungle before daylight.”
In a few moments after taking a fresh start the boys came to a place where a small body of water made a clearing in the forest. The little lake, or swamp, for it was little more than a well-filled marsh, was of course walled about by trees and climbing vines, but there was a lane to the southwest which permitted the light of the moon to fall upon the water.
The surface of the pool was well covered with floating plants, and now and then, as the boys looked through the undergrowth, a squirming thing ducked under and out of sight. There was something beautiful about the spot, and yet it was uncanny, too.
“I wish that was all right for a drink,” Jimmie observed.
“It is all right for a drink—if you’re tired of living,” Peter said. “Say,” he added, pointing, “what do you think of that for a creeper, over there? I’m sure I saw it climbing down off that tree.”
Jimmie took one look and started away, drawing Peter with him.
“It’s a python!” he exclaimed. “Come on.”
“There are no pythons in this country,” Peter replied, pulling back and looking out over the water again.
“It is a boa, then,” Jimmie cried. “Come away. It is getting out of the tree!”
The boys did not move for a moment. They seemed to be fascinated by what they saw. It was a serpent at least ten yards in length—a serpent showing many bright colors, a thick, elongated head, a body at least ten inches in diameter, and a blunt tail. As it moved down the column of the tree it launched its head out level in the air as if anticipating a feast of Boy Scout. The shining head, the small, vicious eyes, drew nearer to the faces of the watchers, and it seemed as if the serpent was about to leap across the pool.
Directly, however, the reptile threw its head and the upper part of its body over a limb ona tree nearer to the boys and drew its whole squirming body across.
“It is coming over here, all right,” whispered Peter. “Can you hit it? A bullet landed in that flat head might help some.”
“Of course I can hit it.”
Jimmie would not have admitted fright, but his voice was a trifle shaky. It is no light thing for a boy reared on the pavements of New York to face a serpent in the midst of a tropical forest at night.
“You shoot, then,” Peter said. “I’ll hold my fire until we see what happens.”
Jimmie drew his revolver and waited for a moment, as the head of the snake was now in the shadow of the tree. When it came out again, still creeping nearer to the boys, swaying, reaching out for another tree which would have brought it within striking distance, the boy took careful aim and fired.
There was a puff of smoke, the smell of burning powder, a great switching in the branches of the tree. Peter seized Jimmie by the arm and drew him back.
“If you didn’t hit him he’ll jump,” the boy said.
When the smoke which had discolored the heavy air drifted away, they saw the serpent stillhanging from the limb, pushing his head out this way and that and flashing a scarlet tongue at its enemies.
“You hit him, all right,” Peter said. “Try again.”
After the third shot the body of the serpent hung down from the tree with only a stir of life. It was evident that at least one of the bullets had found the brain.
“It will hang there until it decays,” Peter said. “That tail will never let go. Come on away. It makes me sick.”
“There’s always two where there’s one,” Jimmie said, “and we must move cautiously, for there would be no release from the coils of a snake like that.”
“I thought I heard something moving in there a moment ago,” Peter said, pointing away from the pool. “I’ll go in and see.”
“Don’t you stir,” advised Jimmie. “There’s some one in there. I heard voices. We have been followed all this long way, and the shooting must have located us.”
This was a very natural conclusion, and the boys crept behind the bole of a tree and waited for what seemed to them a long time. Then footsteps were heard, soft, stealthy steps, likethose of a man walking in padded stockings. The great leaves of a huge plant with red blossoms moved, and a pair of fierce eyes looked out.
“That’s a panther,” whispered Jimmie.
“A South American jaguar,” Peter corrected. “They eat men when they get desperately hungry.”
The great cat moved out from behind the plant and stood in the shaft of moonlight. It was a graceful beast, an alert, handsome creature of the woods, but did not look in that way to the boys just then.
In size it was nearly the equal of the full grown tiger. The head was large, the body thick yet supple, the limbs robust. In color it was of a rich yellow, with black rings, in which stood black dots, marking the sides.
The beast is known as the South American tiger, and is by far the most powerful and dangerous of tropic beasts of prey. It is swift enough to capture horses on the open pampas and strong enough to drag them away after the kill. In some of the countries south of the Isthmus the jaguar is a menace to the inhabitants, and settlements have been deserted because of them. It is rarely that one is found as far north as the Isthmus.
While the boys watched the cat slipped out one soft paw after the other and looked about, as if awakened from sleep. Then it moved toward the tree behind which the boys were partly concealed.
“Now for it,” whispered Peter. “If we miss it is all off with one of us.”
“He may not come here,” Jimmie said, hopefully. “He was probably brought here by the smell of blood. Say! Don’t you hear something back of us? This cat’s mate may be there.”
And the cat’s mate was there. Not looking in their direction, but sitting up like a house cat, watching the swaying body of the serpent. Her nose was pushed out a trifle, as if scenting supper in the dangling horror.
“The mate is here, all right,” Peter said, in a whisper. “We’re between the two of them. What is the first one doing?”
“Coming on,” whispered Jimmie, “and I’ve got only three shots in my gun.”
“That’s all you will have time to use if you miss the first one,” Peter said.
“That’s right,” Jimmie returned.
“And we’ll have to shoot together,” Peter went on.
“Is your hand steady?” asked Jimmie.
“As a rock,” was the reply. “Good-bye to little old New York if it wasn’t. Funny notion that a jaguar should be trying to eat a Wolf and a Black Bear.”
“And a baby Wolf, too,” added Jimmie. “My beast is coming on, bound to investigate this tree. When he gets so close that he can spring I’ll give the word, and we’ll shoot together.”
The cat approached slowly. At first it did not seem to catch the scent of prey in the neighborhood of the tree. It came on with cautious steps, crouching low, as if ready to leap.
Then the female caught sight and scent of the boys and uttered a low cry of warning which the male appeared to understand, for in a second its ears were laid down on its neck and the belly touched the ground.
“When you shoot keep the lead going,” advised Jimmy. “Now!”
Again, in that splendid tropical scene, there was a puff of smoke, one, two, three, four. Again the odor of burned powder attacked the nostrils and clouded the heavy air. Again there was a great floundering in the thicket.
The boys stood waiting for the snarling impact, but none came.
CHAPTER XV.SIGNAL FIRES IN THE JUNGLE.
“I guess we got ’em,” Jimmie cried, as the smoke drifted away.
“I got mine.”
Peter spoke proudly, just as if there had been no fear of the result a moment before.
“Mine’s lying down to rest,” Jimmie went on. “I’m goin’ up to feel his pulse.”
“If he gets a swipe at you, you’ll wish you hadn’t been so curious about his old pulse,” Peter observed.
But Jimmie did not at once go toward the wounded beast. The great cat lifted its head, gave a cry that echoed and re-echoed through the forest, and sprang for the tree. The boy’s revolver spoke again, and the long hours of practice with the weapon in the shooting galleries of New York told. The beast dropped to the ground with a bullet in the brain, sent in exactly between the eyes.
The female lifted her head at the cry and tried to regain her feet, but was not strong enough to do so. With a turn of her pretty head in the direction of her mate, she fell back dead.
“It’s almost a shame,” Peter said.
“You wouldn’t be so sorry for the cats if they had got a claw into you,” Jimmie observed. “Just one claw in the flesh and it would have been all off.”
Peter turned away from the dead animals.
“Come on,” he said, “it seems like a slaughter house here.”
“Wait,” Jimmie cried. “I want to swing the cats up so they won’t be devoured by their friends of the jungle. I want the skins for rugs. Guess they will look pretty poor in our patrol room. What?”
“I’ll come back with you in the daylight,” Peter said, “if you’ll come away now.”
Leaving the glade where they had encountered such dangers, the boys moved toward the canal line, keeping the moon, now well toward the horizon, at their back.
“If we had done this before,” Jimmie said, as they forced their way through clusters of clinging vines, “we would be at home in bed now.”
“But we wouldn’t have had the jaguar rugs coming to us,” answered Peter. “Glad I didn’t think of it before.”
Presently they came to the top of a little hill in the jungle and looked out over the countryahead. There were no canal lights in the distance. Afar off they could see a faint streak of dawn.
“I don’t believe we’re going right, after all,” Jimmie said.
“We must keep a little more to the left,” Peter replied. “The line of the canal runs almost southeast here, and we are going east. We’ll strike it quicker if we turn to the north.”
“This ain’t much like the Great White Way at daylight,” commented Jimmie, as a great creeper settled about his neck, having been pulled from a tree by his companion.
“I don’t see what we’re doing in here in the night, anyway,” Peter observed. “We didn’t come down here to get big game, but to prevent enemies of the government getting gay and blowing up the Gatun dam. Whew! They might have blowed it up while we’ve been shooting snakes and cats. Guess there’s one of the explosions now.”
A rumbling came toward them from the east. It was such a rumbling as one hears when great masses of fireworks are set off at once. Such a rumbling as one hears in war, when the rifles are speaking along a line of infantry and cannons are roaring out above their patter. The groundshook, and birds, frightened, fled from tree boughs with strange cries.
“Something has gone up,” Jimmie said. “I wish we could see over the tops of that next line of trees.”
“Sounds like the crack of doom,” Peter observed. “I wish we could get out of the tall timber and see what’s going on.”
“There’s a white light,” Jimmie cried, excitedly. “That must be the workings.”
“That’s a cloud, just touched with dawn,” Peter replied. “There’s no sight of the canal yet. If we could only get out to the cut we’d soon be home.”
“Home?” repeated Jimmie, in disgust, “we’re more’n fifty miles from camp, the way the roads run. If we can get a train at Culebra, we may be able to get home by dark. You must remember that we rode a long way with the lieutenant. Culebra is almost to the Pacific. The locks are there, or near there.”
“We can get a train, I guess,” Peter said, sleepily. “I wonder if any of the boys are sitting up for us?”
“You bet they’re out hunting for the two of us,” Jimmie said. “It takes one half of ourparty to keep the other half from getting killed,” he added.
There were still no signs of the canal line. The jungle was as dense as ever, and seemed more desolate and uncanny than ever under the growing light of day. As the sun arose and looked down into the green pools vapors arose, vapors unpleasant to the nostrils and bewildering to the sight.
Presently the boys came to a little knoll from which they could look a long way into the jungle stretching around them. Below were slimy thickets, tangles of creepers and vines which seemed to be sentient, but no signs of the work of man. It was now eight o’clock in the morning, and the boys were worn out and hungry.
“If they’re out lookin’ for us,” Jimmie said, “I’ll give ’em somethin’ to follow. Watch me.”
“But they won’t be anywhere around here,” Peter said, as Jimmie began gathering dry twigs and branches from the ground.
“They’ll begin where Lieutenant Gordon left us,” insisted the boy. “Now you see if I don’t wake some Boy Scout up. Here, you carry this bunch of wood over to that other knoll.”
“All right,” Peter said. “Perhaps another jaguar will see the signal and give us a call.”
In a short time the boys had gathered two great piles of dry leaves and branches lying some fifty feet apart. Then a quantity of green boughs were gathered and placed on top of the dry fuel. When matches were touched to the piles a dense smoke ascended far above the tops of the trees. There were two straight columns of it lifting into the sky above the jungle.
“There!” cried Jimmie wiping the sweat from his face, for the morning was hot and the work had been arduous, “if there is a Boy Scout within ten thousand miles he’ll know what those two columns of smoke mean.”
“Of course,” said Peter. “If he’s ever been out camping.”
In the Indian signs adopted by the Boy Scouts of America one column of smoke means:
“The camp is here.”
Two mean:
“Help! I am lost.”
Three mean:
“We have good news.”
Four mean:
“Come to council.”
When the dry wood burned away the boys piled on more, keeping green leaves on top all the time, to make the smudge. After the fires hadburned for half an hour a signal came from the thicket—a long, shrill whistle to attract attention, and then a few bars of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
“That’s a Boy Scout, all right,” Jimmie exclaimed, “but it ain’t none of our bunch. They wouldn’t wait to whistle. They’d jump right in an’ tell us where to head in at. You bet they would.”
In a moment a human hand, a slender, boyish hand, appeared above a great squatty plant at the foot of the knoll. The thumb and first finger were extended opened out, the three remaining fingers closed over the palm of the hand.
“Whoop!” yelled Jimmie. “The sign of the Silver Wolf.”
“Come on up,” cried Peter. “The appetite is fine.”
Then a boyish figure arose from the shelter of the plant and moved up the hill to where the boys stood. He was apparently about fifteen years of age, was dressed as a lad of his age might appear on Broadway, and presented a fresh, cheerful face, now wrinkled into smiles, to the boys waiting with extended hands.
“I saw you signal,” he said.
“Where are you from?” asked Jimmie, shaking the extended hand warmly. “We’re from the Black Bear and Wolf Patrols, New York, and we don’t know any more about getting along in the woods than a Houston street mucker.”
“I’m from the Black Bear Patrol of Chicago,” the other replied, “and my name is Anthony Chester, Tony for short. What you doing in the Devil’s Hole?”
“Is this the Devil’s Hole?” asked Jimmie.
“That is what they call it.”
“The Devil seems to be having a good time of it,” Peter said. “He’s had us on the hip all night.”
“We were in camp, father and I, about half way to the cut,” Tony said, “and heard your shots a spell ago. What did you kill?”
Briefly the boys told the story of the night, and then Peter asked:
“Why didn’t you answer the shots?”
“We were stalking jaguars,” was the reply, “and did not want to lose our game. The woods are full of them, for some reason, this spring.”
“Did you get them?”
“No; I guess the ones you got were the ones we were after.”
“Then I’m glad we got them, for we’ll divide the skins with you.”
“Then, a little while ago, I saw your smoke signal and read it to Dad, and he told me to come out and bring you to camp for breakfast.”
“What?”
“Breakfast?”
“Is it far?”
“Is it cooked?”
The boys fairly danced about their new acquaintance as they asked questions and rubbed their stomachs significantly.
“All cooked and all ready, plenty of it,” was the reply.
“Where is the camp?” asked Peter, then.
“Oh, just a short distance from the Culebra cut,” was the reply. “Dad came out here some weeks ago with me and one servant, and we’re living in a tent all fixed up with screens and things. The jaguars aroused us early this morning, so we got up to shoot them.”
“Is your father workin’ for the Canal people?” asked Jimmie.
“Oh, no,” was the reply. “He takes a great interest in the Culebra cut, and spends a good deal of time out there, but he is not working forthe government. He’s just loafing, and I’m having the time of my life.”
“Does he go out there nights?” asked Jimmie.
“No; Sanee, the servant, is away nights, and Dad stays with me.”
“Never mind all that now,” Peter put in. “Let us go and see what they’ve got to eat. I could devour one of the cats we killed.”
Young Chester led the way toward the camp he had spoken of, the boys following, nearly exhausted from the exertions of the night. It had been arranged that they should return for the skins of the two jaguars they had slain.
As they straggled along through the jungle, Jimmie’s thoughts were busy over a problem which had come to his mind during the talk with the lad who had rescued them. Why was Mr. Chester, of Chicago, encamped in the jungle, at the edge, almost, of the Culebra cut, apparently without other motive than curiosity?
Why did he spend most of his time during daylight watching the work on the cut, and why was his servant invariably away from the camp at night? Were the men watching the work there for some sinister purpose of their own? Or was it merely a general interest in the big job that brought them there?
The man who had accosted them the previous evening had been watching the job, too. Were these men spies, or were they in the service of the government and watching for spies? It seemed odd to the boy that every adventure into which he stumbled had to do with the main object of the trip to the Canal Zone. Or, at least all the others had, and this meeting in the jungle might follow in the train of the others.
He was wondering, too, about the explosion they had heard early in the morning. At the time of his leaving the cottage with Lieutenant Gordon nothing had been decided on concerning the store of explosives which had been discovered in the underground chamber at the ruined temple. He did not believe that Ned would leave the deadly material there, to be used at will by the conspirators, so he was wondering now if the stuff had not been set off by his friends.
After a hard walk of a mile or more the three came out to a little clearing in the jungle and saw a tent with screened openings. Standing in front of the tent, his face turned toward the approaching boys, was a man Jimmie had last seen in the Shaw residence in New York City.
CHAPTER XVI.A MIGHTY JAR IN THE JUNGLE.
It was half-past two in the morning when Ned Nestor and his companions left the cottage in the jungle. A few fleecy clouds were now drifting over the sky, but, on the whole, the night was fairly clear. It was some distance to Gatun, where Ned hoped to secure a railroad motor for the Culebra trip, so the boys moved along at a swift pace.
However, the party was not destined to reach Gatun as speedily as was anticipated. When the boys came to the spot from which Ned and Jimmie had struck off into the jungle, or into the edge of it, rather, in pursuit of the man who had placed the bomb, Jack called Ned’s attention to two skulking figures moving up the swell of the hill which the two boys had climbed the night before.
“There are some of your friends—the bomb-makers,” Jack said.
“Yes,” Ned replied, “they have been in advance of us for some distance.”
“Watching the cottage, I presume,” Jack suggested.
“More likely watching to see if we remained at home or went abroad planning mischief for them,” Ned replied.
“Then they’re next to us,” Jimmie broke in. “I’d like to follow ’em up to the old temple an’ blow ’em up.”
“I have an idea that something of the sort may happen before morning,” Ned said. “I had the idea that the fellows would remain away from the bomb-room for a few days, believing that we were watching it, but it seems that they are back again. We mustn’t permit them to take the stuff away.”
“Goin’ to blow it up to-night?” demanded Jimmie, eagerly. “Gee, but that will make a blow-up for your whiskers. Say! I’d like to sell tickets of admission for this performance. That would be poor, wouldn’t it?”
“It may not be necessary to blow it up,” Ned observed. “If Lieutenant Gordon sent a couple of secret service men back there, as arranged, the fellows have not got into their bomb-chamber. If the secret service men did not arrive, it is likely that the plotters are moving the explosives away. We’ll go and see, anyway.”
“I’ll run on ahead and see what’s doin’,” Jimmie exclaimed, darting away.
Ned caught him by the collar and drew him back, whereat the boy appeared to be very angry.
“You little dunce,” Ned said, “you’ll get a bullet into your anatomy if you don’t be more careful. Now, you boys go on down the road toward Gatun,” he added, turning to the others, “and make all the noise you want to. I’ll go up to the old temple and see what is going on there. One of you would better go with me—not close up with me, but within seeing distance.”
“That’s me,” cried Jimmie. “I’ll stay near enough to see what becomes of you, and go back and tell the boys if they’re needed.”
This arrangement was finally decided on, and Ned and Jimmie dropped into the jungle while the others proceeded on the way to Gatun, making plenty of noise as they walked. As they disappeared the two men who had been seen just before made their appearance at a point half way up the hill.
They stood crouching in the moonlight for a moment, pointing and chattering words which reached the ears of the watchers only faintly, and then turned toward the old temple. They walked with less caution now, and it was plain to the watchers that they believed that all the boys had gone on to Gatun.
When Ned and Jimmie came within sight of the old temple half a dozen shadowy forms were seen moving about on the uneven pavements which had at one time formed the floor of a court. When the two Ned was following approached they advanced to meet them.
A conversation lasting perhaps five minutes followed the meeting, and then, leaving one man on guard, the others passed through the doorway under the vines and disappeared from view. The man who had remained outside was evidently the leader of the party, for the others had listened when he talked and had obeyed his orders, as indicated to Ned by gestures.
This man stood at the doorway behind the vines for a moment after the others had gone below and then seated himself on a crumbling wall not far away.
“Why don’t you geezle him?” whispered Jimmie, who was not staying back very far, much to Ned’s amusement.
“I was thinking of that,” Ned replied. “I shall have to circle around so as to get in on him from behind.”
“You wait a second,” whispered the boy, “and I’ll make him turn around so as to face the other way.”
Before Ned could offer any objections or restrain the boy’s hand, Jimmie launched a stone into the thicket on the other side. The watcher sprang to his feet instantly, moved away a few paces, and turned back.
“He’s goin’ to call the others,” Jimmie whispered.
The fellow approached the doorway as Jimmie spoke, which was exactly what Ned did not want. If the man would remain outside, alone, it might be possible to capture him with little risk. If he called his companions, there would be no hope of taking him prisoner.
Ned motioned to Jimmie and the lad threw another stone into the thicket, and again the watcher moved in that direction. This time he advanced to the edge of the thicket and bent over to peer under the overhanging branches of a tree.
Before he could regain an upright position, or give a cry of warning because of the quick steps he heard behind him, Ned was grappling with him, his fingers closing about the muscular throat. It was a desperate, although a silent, struggle for a minute, and Ned might have been disappointed in the result if Jimmie had not bounced in on the two and terminated the battleby sitting down on the head of the man Ned had already thrown to the ground. As an additional precaution against any noise calculated to alarm the others, Jimmie held his gun close to the captive’s nose.
“Nothin’ stirrin’ here,” he panted. “You lie still.”
“What does this mean?”
The words were English and the voice was certainly that of a man from one of the Eastern states of the North American republic.
Ned drew a noose around the prisoner’s wrists and tied his rather delicate hands together firmly behind his back. Then he searched him for weapons. A revolver was found in a hip pocket, also a package of papers in a breast pocket. The fellow cursed and swore like a pirate when the papers were taken.
“This is highway robbery,” he finally calmed down enough to say. “I am an official of the Zone, and you shall suffer for this.”
“Gee,” said Jimmie, with a chuckle, “you must have a contract to lift the canal an’ the Gatun dam into the blue sky.”
The prisoner snarled at the lad a moment and turned to Ned.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“What are your men doing down there?” Ned asked, ignoring the question.
“They are removing explosives, explosives to be used in the work at Gatun.”
“Why is it stored here?”
“For safety.”
“Were your men storing this bomb,” taking the clumsy exhibit from his pocket, “under my cottage for safety?” Ned demanded.
“I don’t know anything about that,” was the reply. “Return my papers.”
Instead of returning them, Ned took the packet from his pocket and made a quick examination so far as the light would permit, of the half dozen letters it held.
The captive writhed about and cursed fluently until Jimmie touched his forehead with the muzzle of his gun and warned him against “starting anything he couldn’t finish,” as the boy expressed it.
“Now,” Ned said to Jimmie, restoring the letters to his pocket, “you march this pirate off toward the cottage while I scare the others out of the bomb-room and blow it up.”
“Blow it up before they get out,” urged the boy.
“I am no executioner,” Ned replied. “Theydoubtless deserve to be put to death, but I’m not the one to do it.”
“Wait,” said the captive, as Jimmie motioned him away. “If you will give me a chance to tell my side of the story those letters reveal, I may be able to establish my innocence. I can make it worth your while to listen to me,” he added, significantly.
“Cripes, I smell money,” laughed Jimmie.
“Go on with the boy,” Ned replied. “If you want to talk with me you may do so later.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Turn you over to the Zone government.”
The captive would have argued until his friends came out and sized up the situation, and Ned knew it, so he motioned Jimmie to march the fellow away and set about the work he had in hand. He took out the bomb he had brought with him and estimated the length of time the fuse would burn. It was, as has been said, a very long fuse, and the boy was satisfied that he could escape from the danger zone after firing it.
Then, seeing that Jimmie was out of view with his prisoner, he brought out his gun and fired two shots into the air. The result showed that he had planned with judgment, for the men working below came bounding out of the doorwaybehind the vines and vanished in the jungle, going in a direction opposite to that taken by Jimmie.
The rapidity with which the workers in the bomb-room disappeared astonished Ned until he reflected that he might unconsciously have given a signal agreed upon between the men and the guard. At any rate, he finally concluded, the men were not there to fight in defense of the place if spied upon, but to seek cover at once, as is the habit of those caught in the commission of crime.
He had expected to drive them away by firing from the jungle, but had not anticipated a victory as easily won as this. When the workers had disappeared Ned made his way to the underground room. There he found torches burning, and a fire in the forge. The place was littered with gas-pipe cut into small lengths, and the covers had been removed from the tins of explosives.
It was clear that the bomb-makers had been at work there, and the boy wondered at their nerve. He could account for their returning to their employment there so soon after the place had been visited by hostile interests only on the ground that they believed the secretservice men and the boys were being held at bay by others of the conspirators.
Wondering whether the boys who had gone on toward Gatun were safe, he lighted the fuse of the bomb and hastened up the stairs and out into the jungle. A few yards from the broken wall of the temple he met Jimmie, red of face and laboring under great excitement. He turned the boy back with a significant gesture toward the temple, and the two worked their way through the thickets for some moments without finding time or breath for explanations.
When at last they stopped for breath they found themselves about at the point where they had parted from their chums. As they came into the cleared space a flash lighted up the sky, flames went flickering, seemingly, from horizon to horizon, and lifted to the zenith. Then came the awful thunder of the explosion. The ground shook so that Jimmie went tumbling on his face. After the first mighty explosion others came in quick succession.
“That’s the little ones,” Jimmie cried, rolling over in the knee-deep grass to clutch at Ned’s knee. “Talk about your fourth of July.”
As he spoke a slab of stone weighing at least twenty pounds came through the air with avicious whizz and struck a tree close to where the boy lay.
“If we don’t get out of here we’ll get our blocks knocked off,” Jimmie said.
“The shower is over,” Ned replied. “What were you running back for? If you had not met me, if I had gone out another way, you might have been right there when the explosion took place.”
“Then I’d ’a’ been sailin’ around the moon by now,” the boy grinned.
“Where is the captive?” demanded Ned.
“He went up in the air,” replied Jimmie. “I had me eagle eyes on him one second, and the next second he was gone. He didn’t shout, or shoot, or run, or do a consarned thing. He just leaked out. Where do you think he went?”
“I think,” Ned replied, “that you were looking back to see the explosion and he dodged into a thicket.”
“Well,” admitted Jimmie, “I did look back.”
Ned, rather disgusted at the carelessness of the boy, walked on in silence until the two came to the smooth slopes which led up to Gatun. There they found the boys, waiting for them, eager for the story of the explosion, and wondering at their long delay.
CHAPTER XVII.THE WATCHER IN THE THICKET.
Between Tabernilla and Gamboa, a distance of about fifteen miles, the restless Chagres river, in its old days of freedom, crossed the canal line no less than fifteen times. At Gamboa the river finds a break in the rough hills and winds off to the northeast, past Las Cruces and off into more hills and jungles.
Where the river turns the canal enters the nine-mile cut through the Cordilleras, which form the backbone of the continent. Here at the Culebra cut, the greatest amount of excavation for the waterway is being done. This cut ends at Pedro Miguel locks, which will ease the ships down into the Pacific ocean.
Where the river turns to the northeast, at Gamboa, a wild and hilly country forms both banks. The hillsides as well as the plateaux are overgrown with dense vegetation. As in all tropical lands, the fight for survival is fierce and merciless. Trees are destroyed by great creepers, great creepers are destroyed by smaller growths, and every form of life, vegetable as well as animal, has its enemy. Every living thing springs up from the dead body of another.
Sheltered and half concealed from view in this wild country between Gamboa and Las Cruces, on the day the Boy Scouts set out in their search for Jimmie and Peter, there stood a house of stone which seemed as old as the volcanic formation upon which it stood. It was said that the structure had been there, even then looking old and dismantled, when the French began their operations on the Isthmus.
This house faced the valley of the Chagres river, having its back against a hill, which was one of the steps leading up to the top of the Cordilleras. There was a great front entrance way, and many windows, but the latter seemed closed. Few signs of life were seen about the place at five o’clock that afternoon.
From a front room in the second story the sounds of voices came, and now and then a door opened and closed and a footstep was heard on the stairway. However, those who walked about the place seemed either going or coming, for the house gained no added population because of the men who climbed the slope at the front and, ignoring the main entrance, passed on to the second floor by a secret staircase in the wall, entrance to which seemed easy for them to find.
At the hour named three acquaintances ofthe reader occupied the front room on the second floor of the stone house. They were Col. Van Ellis, the military man Frank Shaw had talked with in the old house near the Culebra cut, Harvey Chester, the father of the boy Jimmie and Peter had encountered in the jungle, and Gostel, the man who had approached the two boys the night before on the lip of the great excavation.
In a rear apartment, a sort of lumber-room, devoted now to wornout and broken furniture and odds and ends of house furnishing goods, was still another acquaintance—Ned Nestor. The patrol leader had met the two lost boys at Culebra, in the company of Harvey Chester and his son, Tony, and had spent enough time with the party to learn that Pedro, the ex-servant of the Shaw home, had been seen at the Chester camp, and that he had fled at the approach of Jimmie and his chum.
The story of Gostel’s watching the cut at night, probably assisted by Pedro, and Harvey Chester standing guard, or seeming to do so, by day, had interested Ned greatly. The presence on the Isthmus of Pedro gave an extra kink to the problem. The attempt to capture the two boys, as previously told by Gastong, on theprevious night, and the unmistakable anxiety of Chester to remain in their company, had led Ned to believe that at last he was getting to some of the people “high up” in the conspiracy against the canal. Surely a man of the education and evident wealth of Harvey Chester was not loitering along the Culebra cut just for the excitement there was in it. It was plain that he was there for a purpose, and the arrival of a man Jimmie declared to be Gostel had convinced Ned that the heads of the plot were not far away.
Gostel had greeted the boys heartily, expressing relief at the knowledge that they had escaped in safety from the jungle, and Chester had urged them all to accept of his continued hospitality. Nothing had been said of Gostel’s pursuit of the two boys, and Ned had reached the conclusion that Gostel did not know that his movements had been observed.
Anxious to see what Gostel really was up to, Ned had instructed the boys to remain at a hotel at Culebra or visit the Chester camp, just as they saw fit, and had followed Gostel back to Gamboa and out to the stone house, where he had managed to hide himself in the room above described without his presence on the premises being suspected. One thing, however, Ned didnot know, and that was that Jimmie McGraw, full of life and curious to know what was going on, had trained on after him and was now watching the house from a thicket on the hillside.
Ned had heard a good deal of talk since hiding himself in the rear room, much of which was of no account. Men who had delivered notes and messages had come and gone. Col. Van Ellis seemed to be doing a general business there. Some of the men who came appeared to be canal workmen, and these left what seemed to be reports of some kind.
From a break in the wall Ned could hear all that was said and see a great deal of what went on in the front room. At five o’clock a tall, dark, slender man whose black hair was turning gray in places entered the front room by way of the secret stairway in the side wall. He handed some papers to Col. Van Ellis and seated himself without being asked to do so.
“What, as a whole, are the indications?” Van Ellis asked.
“Excellent,” was the short reply.
“And the latest prospect?” asked Chester.
“In the valley, near Bohio.”
“What have you found there?”
“Clay-slate, hornblende, emeralds.”
“In large quantities?” asked Chester, anxiously.
“There is a fortune underground there,” was the reply. “Green argillaceous rock means something.”
There was silence for some moments, during which Van Ellis pored over some drawings on his desk, Chester walked the floor excitedly, Gostel regarded the others with a sinister smile on his face, and Itto, the recent arrival, sat watching all the others as a cat watches a mouse.
“And this territory will be under the Lake of Gatun?” Chester asked, presently.
“Yes, very deep under the Lake of Gatun,” was Itto’s reply.
Again Van Ellis bent over the drawings, tracing on one with the point of a pencil.
“There are millions here,” he said. “We have only to stretch forth our hands and take them.”
“The wealth of a world,” Itto observed.
The men talked together in Spanish for a long time, and Ned tried hard to make something of the discussion, but failed. He was convinced, however, that Chester was being urged and argued with by the others and was not consenting to what they were proposing to him.
In half an hour a man who looked fully as Oriental in size, manner and dress as Itto stepped inside the door and beckoned to that gentleman. Asking permission to retire for a few moments, Itto passed out of the door with the newcomer. Instead of going on down the secret staircase, however, the two opened a door at the end of the little hall upon which the front room gave, and appeared in the apartment where Ned was hiding.
The boy, however, was not in view from the place where they stood, and they had no reason to suspect his presence there, so he remained quiet and listened with all his ears to the low-voiced conversation carried on between the two.
“And these are the latest?” Itto asked, referring to papers in his hand.
“Yes, they are the last.”
“And the showing—”
The newcomer shrugged his shoulders.
“You see for yourself,” he said.
“Well,” Itto said, directly, “it does not matter, does it?”
“Not in the least.”
“If the information does not leak out,” Itto went on, “there will be no change in our plans. We cannot afford to wait.”
“For our country’s sake there must be no delay.”
Ned was slowly piecing this talk with the one which he had heard from the front room, and the significance of it all was sending little shivers down his back. He thought he understood at last.
As the two men left the room Ned heard a paper rustle on the floor, and at once made search for it. It was a drawing, similar to the one discovered in the bomb-room at the old temple, and was a complete sketch of the Gatun dam, the spillway, the locks—everything was shown, with character of fills and suggestions regarding the foundations. Here and there on the drawing were little red spots.
The significance of the red marks brought a date to Ned’s mind. The drawings found in the bomb-room had borne a date, Saturday, April 15. If what he surmised was correct, he had only a little more than twenty-four hours in which to work. In the period of time thus given him he might, without doubt, succeed in averting the destruction of the big dam. But that was not the point.
His business there was not only to protect the Gatun dam but also to get to the core of theconspiracy and bring the plotters to punishment. The men who were plotting on the Isthmus were also plotting in New York. An inkling of the true state of affairs came to him, and he saw that in order to accomplish what he had set out to do his reach must be long enough to stretch across the Atlantic and there grapple with the subordinates in the treacherous plot.
Itto returned to the front room when the newcomer left and again the talk and the arguments went on, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. Mr. Chester seemed to be asking for more time. Presently the date Ned had found on the two drawings was mentioned.
“The time set was Saturday—to-morrow,” Itto said, grimly.
“That was decided upon a long time ago,” Van Ellis said.
“Before the New York complications arose,” Chester argued. “We did not know at that time what complications might result from the defection of one of our number. It is injudicious to go on now.”
“The date referred to was also set for action in New York,” Itto said.
“Yes, but the thing is inadvisable now, for Shaw has been warned.”
It was plain to Ned that he would have to get away from the old stone house and decide upon some effective means of meeting this emergency. He had work to do in New York as well as in Gatun. The drawing found in the bomb-chamber had told him that. Now this new information emphasized the demand for instant action.
There was no doubt in his mind that it was the purpose of the plotters to blow up the great dam on the next day, probably after nightfall. As has been said, he could thwart the plans of the traitors by communicating with the secret service men under Lieutenant Gordon, but that course would not be apt to bring about all the desired results. He wanted to arrest every man connected with the plot. Not only that; he wanted proof to convict every one of them.
There seemed to the boy only one way in which he could attain the results sought for. He must catch the plotters “with the goods on,” as the police say. He must catch them with explosives in their hands under the shadow of the dam! Ned knew that Harvey, Van Ellis, Gostel, and Itto were deep in the treacherous game, but he did not know how many others were taking part in it. He suspected that menhigh up in finance were back of the plot, and wanted to get the whole group.
He thought he knew why Harvey, Van Ellis and some of the others were in the plot. He was quite certain that he did. But he was not so certain of the motives of Itto, the Japanese. They might never be revealed unless the game was checked at the right moment.
There was an air of insincerity about the Japanese which Ned did not like. It seemed to the boy that he was leading the others on—or trying to lead them on—in a sinister way. The impression was in the lad’s mind from the moment of his meeting Gostel that the two men, Itto and Gostel, were in the plot for some purpose of their own, a purpose which was not the accumulation of money, and which did not match the motives of the others.
About six o’clock Chester arose to his feet.
“I must go back to camp,” he said.
“But there is a meeting to-night,” Van Ellis urged.
“An important one,” Gostel put in.
“And a midnight visit to the dam,” Itto said.
“I have a previous engagement at the camp,” Harvey insisted. “We have guests from New York, my son and myself.”
“The secret service lads,” exclaimed Gostel, scornfully. “Leave them to me to-night, and you can then keep your engagement with us.”
“I have my doubts about their being connected with the secret service,” Chester replied.
“We are positive,” Gostel said. “They were followed from New York. We know the plotting that has been going on between Gordon and Nestor.”
Much more concerning the boys was said, but Ned was too anxious to get away to pay full attention to it. Another burden was now on his mind. He must see that the boys were warned and came to no harm.
He had left them with the understanding that they might remain at the Culebra hotel or return with Tony Chester to the cottage where they had been taken when brought out of the jungle. If they had returned to the camp, they might already be in great danger.
Chester insisted on taking his departure, and the others accompanied him to the foot of the stairs in the wall, arguing with him every foot of the way. Ned stood at the door of the rear room when they returned, and while they were getting settled in the front apartment he slipped out and moved cautiously down the steps.
When he gained the grounds outside he dodged into a thicket not ten feet away from the exit and waited to make sure that no one was moving about on the outside. He was anxious to get away from the place without his presence there being known. A struggle, even if he succeeded in getting away, would put the plotters on their guard.
In a few moments he realized that the grounds were not so devoid of human life as he had believed. He heard voices on the side toward the hill, and a rustling in the thicket told him that some one was stealthily moving there.
Knowing that it would be dark in a short tune, Ned remained crouched low in the bushes, hoping to escape detection in that way, but footsteps came closer and closer to his hiding place, and he sprang up just in time to see a lithe figure hurtling toward him, the figure of a tall, slender man with an Oriental cast of countenance.
Glad that there was only one, Ned braced himself for the attack, which, however, did not come. When within a yard of its object, the lithe figure turned, staggered forward, uttered a low cry of anger and surprise, and lay swathed in a cluster of vines which had tripped and now held him to the ground.