Produced by Jim Ludwig
The Young Engineers on the GulforThe Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater
By H. Irving Hancock
CONTENTS
CHAPTERS I. The Mystery of a Black Night II. The Call of One in Trouble III. Vanishing into Thin Air IV. Some One Calls Again V. Wanted---Daylight and Divers VI. Mr. Bascomb is Peevish VII. Tom Isn't as Easy as He Looks VIII. Mr. Prenter Investigates IX. Invited To Leave Camp X. The Night is Not Over XI. A Message from a Coward XII. An Engineer's Fighting Blood XIII. Wishing It on Mr. Sambo XIV. The Black Man's Turn XV. A David for a Goliath XVI. A Test of Real Nerve XVII. Tom Makes an Unexpected CaptureXVIII. The Army "On the Job" XIX. A New Mystery Peeps In XX. A Secret in Sight XXI. Evarts Hears a Noise XXII. Mr. Bascomb Hears Bad NewsXXIII. Ebony Says "Thumbs Up" XXIV. Conclusion
CHAPTER I
THE MYSTERY OF A BLACK NIGHT
"I wish I had brought my electric flash out here with me," muttered HarryHazelton uneasily.
"I told you that you'd better do it," chuckled Tom Reade.
"But how could I know that the night would be pitch dark?" Harry demanded."I don't know this gulf weather yet, and fifteen minutes ago the stars wereout in full force. Now look at them!"
"How can I look at them?" demanded Tom, halting. "My flashlight won'tpierce the clouds."
Reade halted on his dark, dangerous footway, and Harry, just behind him,uttered a sigh of relief and halted also.
"I never was in such a place as this before."
"You've been in many a worse place, though," rejoined Tom. "I never heardyou make half as much fuss, either."
"I think something must be wrong with my head," ventured Harry.
"Undoubtedly," Tom Reade agreed cheerily.
"Hear that water," Harry went on, in a voice scarcely less disconsolatethan before.
"Of course," nodded Tom. "But the water can hardly be termed a surprise.We both knew that the Gulf of Mexico is here. We saw it several timesto-day."
The two young men stood on a narrow ledge of stone that jutted out of thewater. This wall of stone was the first, outer or retaining wall ofmasonry---the first work of constructing a great breakwater. At high tide,this ledge was just fourteen inches above the level surface of the Gulf ofMexico, and at the time of the above conversation it was within twentyminutes of high tide. The top of this wall of masonry was thirty incheswide, which made but a narrow footway for the two youths who, on a pitchblack night, were more than half a mile out from shore.
On a pleasant night, for a young man with a steady head, the top of thisbreakwater wall did not offer a troublesome footpath. In broad daylighthundreds of laborers and masons swarmed over it, working side by side, oron scows and dredges alongside.
"Wait, and I'll show a light," volunteered Tom raising his foot-longflashlight.
Some seventy-five yards behind them a crawling snake-like figure flatteneditself out on the top of the rock wall.
"Don't show the light just yet," pleaded Harry. "It might only make memore dizzy."
The flattened figure behind them wriggled noiselessly along.
"Just listen to the water," continued Hazelton. "Tom, I'm half-inclined tothink that the water is roughening."
"I believe it is," agreed Tom.
"Fine time we'll have getting back, if a gale springs up from thesouthward," muttered Harry.
"See here, old fellow," interposed Tom vigorously, "you're not up toconcert pitch to-night. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do---first of all,what _you'll_ do. You sit right down flat on the top of the wall. ThenI'll move on up forward and see what has been happening out there thatshould boom shoreward with such a racket. You stay right here, and I'llbe back as soon as I've looked into the face of the mystery."
"What do you take me for?" Harry asked almost fiercely. "A baby? Or acold-foot?"
"Nothing like it," answered Tom Reade with reassuring positiveness."You're out of sorts, to-night. Your head, or your nerves, or some thing,has gone back on you, and you walk through this blackness with half anotion that you're going to walk over a precipice, or drop head-first intosome danger. With such a feeling it would be cruelty to let you goforward, chum, and I'm not going to do it. I'll go alone."
The crouching figure to the rear of the young engineers quivered as thoughthis separation of the two engineers on this black night was a thingdevoutly to be desired.
"You're not going to do anything of the sort," retorted Harry Hazelton."I'm going forward with you. I'm going to stick to you. All I wanted wasa minute in which to brace myself. I've had that minute. Now get forwardwith you. I'm on your heels!"
Tom Reade shrugged his shoulders slightly. However, he did not object orargue, for he realized that his chum was sensitive over any circumstancethat seemed to point to sudden failure of his courage.
"Come along, then," urged Tom. "Wait just a second, though. I'll flashthe light ahead along the wall, to show you that it's all there, and justwhere it lies."
A narrow beam of light shot ahead as Tom pressed the spring of his pocketflash lamp.
A weird enough scene the night betrayed. In perspective the wall aheadnarrowed, until the two sides seemed to come to a point. Back of all wasthe thick curtain of black that had settled down over the gulf. A littlefarther out, too, the water seemed rougher. There would seem to be hardlya doubt that a gale was brewing.
"Shut that light off!" Hazelton commanded, fighting to repress a shudder."I can do better in the darkness. Now, go ahead, and I'll follow."
Tom started, but he went slowly now, feeling that this pace was more suitedto the condition of his chum's nerves. Harry followed resolutely, thoughnone but himself knew how much effort it took for him to keep on in theface of such a nameless yet terrible dread as now assailed him.
To the rear a bulky, hulking figure rose and stood erect. With the softestof steps this apparition of the night followed after them, until it stolealong, ghost-like, just behind Hazelton. Then a huge arm was raised,threateningly, over Harry's head.
At that particular moment, as though insensibly warned, Hazelton stopped,half-wheeling. In the next second Harry bounded back just out of reach ofthe descending arm, the hand of which held something. But in that backwardspring Harry, in order to save himself from pitching into the water, wasoblige to turn toward Reade.
"Tom!" exploded the young engineer. "Flash the light here quickly!"
In the instant, however, that Harry had sprung backward the figure hadslipped noiselessly into the water to the left. As Reade wheeled about,throwing on the light, he let the ray fall in the water to the right of thewall. But no sign of the intruder appeared; the water had closednoiselessly over the now vanished figure.
"What's the matter?" asked Reade, as he stood looking, then finally flashedhis light over to the other side of the wall.
"I saw---" began Hazelton. Then changed to: "I thought---er---Isaw---oh, nonsense! You'll josh the life out of me!"
"Not I," Tom affirmed gravely, as a thrill of pity, for what he deemed hisfriend's unfortunate "nervous condition," shook him. "Tell me what yousaw, Harry."
"Why, I thought I saw a big fellow---a black man, too---right behind me,arm upraised, just ready to strike me."
"Well, where is he?" Tom demanded blankly, flashing the light on eitherside of the narrow wall-top. "See him anywhere now, chum?"
Harry didn't. In fact, he hardly more than pretended to look. The thingthat had been so real a moment before was now utterly invisible. Hazeltonbegan to share his chum's suspicion as to the utter breakdown of his nervesand powers of vision.
"It was nothing, of course," said Harry, shamefaced
ly, but Tom vigorouslytook the other side of the question.
"See here, Harry, it must have been something," insisted Reade. "You'renot dreaming, and you're not crazy. It would take either one of thoseconditions to make you see something that didn't really exist. No merenervous tremor is going to make you see something as tall as a man,standing right over you, when no such thing exists."
"Well, then, where is the fellow?" Harry Hazelton demanded, helplessly, ashe stared about. "There isn't any human being but ourselves in sight,either on the wall or in the water. Your light shows that."
The light did not quite show that, and could not, since the huge prowlerwas now swimming gently under water, some seven or eight feet from thesurface.
"We'll have to solve the question before we leave here," declared Tom."We can't have folks following us up in a ticklish place like this.Besides, Harry, I'm willing to wager that your vision---whatever itwas---has some real connection with the mystery that we're going outyonder to investigate. So we'll solve the puzzle that's right here beforewe go forward to look at the bigger riddle that the dark now hides from usout yonder. Use your eyes, lad, an I'll do the same with mine!"
Neither Tom Reade nor Harry Hazelton are strangers to the readers of thisseries, nor of the series that have preceded the present one.
Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, now engineers in charge of a big breakwaterjob on the Alabama gulf coast, were first introduced to our readers in the"_Grammar School Boys Series_." There we met them as members of thatimmortal band of American schoolboys known as Dick & Co. Back in the oldschool days Dick Prescott had been the leader of Dick & Co., though, as allour readers know, Prescott was not the sole genius of Dick & Co. GregHolmes, Dave Darrin, Dan Dalzell and Tom and Harry had been the othermembers of that famous sextette of schoolboy athletes.
After reading of the doings of Dick & Co. in the "_Grammar School BoysSeries_," our readers again followed them, through the events recorded inthe four volumes of the "_High School Boys Series_". Here their reallybrilliant work Boys Series athletes was stirringly chronicled, as alongwith scores of non-athletic adventures that befell them.
At the close of the high school course Dick Prescott and Greg Holmessecured appointments as cadets at the United States Military Academy atWest Point. All that befell them there is duly set forth in the "_WestPoint Series_." Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell were fortunate enough tosecure appointments as midshipmen in the United States Naval Academy atAnnapolis, and their doings there are set forth in the "_AnnapolisSeries_."
Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, on the other hand, had felt no call tomilitary glory. For their work in life they longed to become part of thegreat constructive force wielded by modern civil engineers. During thelatter part of their high school work they had studied hard with ambitionto become surveyors and civil engineers. In their school vacations theyhad sought training and experience in the offices of an engineering firmin their home town of Gridley. After being graduated from the Gridley HighSchool, Tom and Harry had done more work in the same offices. Then, in asudden desire for advancement, and possessed by the longing for a widerfield of endeavor, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had secured positions as"cub engineers" on the construction work that was being done to rush a newrailway, system over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The stern, hard workthat lay before them, the many adventures in a rough wilderness, and thechain of circumstances that at last placed Tom Reade in charge of therailroad building, with Harry as first assistant engineer, are all told inthe first volume of this present series, "_The Young Engineers InColorado_."
That great feat finished satisfactorily, the ambition of our youngengineers led them further afield, as told in "_The Young Engineers inArizona_." A great, man-killing quicksand had to be filled in andeffectively stopped from shifting. Reade & Hazelton undertook the task.Incidentally Tom came into serious, dangerous conflict with gamblers andother human birds-of-prey, who had heretofore fattened on the earnings ofthe railway laborers. It was a tremendously exciting time that the youngengineers had in Arizona, but they at last got away with their lives andwere at the same time immensely successful in their undertaking.
In "_The Young Engineers In Nevada_" we found our young friends underchanged conditions. While at work in Colorado and in Arizona Tom andHarry had studied the occurrence of precious ores, and also the methodsof assaying and extracting ores. Having their time wholly to themselvesafter finishing in Arizona the dauntless young pair went to Nevada, thereto study mining at first hand. In time they located a mining claim, thoughthere were other claimants, and around this latter fact hung an extremelyexciting story. Both young engineers nearly lost their lives in Nevada,and met with many strenuous situations. Their sole idea in pushing theirmine forward to success was that the money so earned would enable them tofurther their greatest ambition; they longed to have their own engineeringoffices. In the end, their mine, which the young engineers had named "TheAmbition," proved a success. Thereupon they left their mining partner, JimFerrers, in charge and went east to open their offices.
We next found the young engineers engaged to the south of the United Statesborder. These adventures were fully set forth in the preceding volume inthis series, entitled "_The Young Engineers in Mexico_." Tom and Harry,engaged to solve some problems in a great Mexican mine, found themselvesthe intended tools of a pair of mine swindlers of wealth and influence.From their first realization of the swindle Tom and Harry, even in the faceof threats of assured death, held out for an honest course. How theystruggled to save a syndicate of American investors from being swindled outof millions of dollars was splendidly told in that fourth volume.
And now we find our young friends down at the gulf coast town of Blixton,Alabama. Here they are engaged in a kind of engineering work wholly unlikeany they had hitherto undertaken. The owners of the Melliston SteamshipLine, with a fleet of twenty-two freight steamships engaged in the WestIndian and Central American trade, had looked in vain for suitable dockaccommodations for their vessels, worth a total of more than six milliondollars. In their efforts to improve their service the Melliston ownershad found at Blixton a harbor that would have suited them excellently, butfor one objection. The bay at Blixton was too open to shelter vessels fromthe severity of some of the winter gales. Up to the present time Blixtonhad not been used for harbor purposes. But the Melliston owners hadconceived the idea that a great breakwater could be so built as to shelterthe waters of the bay. They had quietly bought up most of the shore frontof the little town, which had railway connection. Then they had searchedabout for engineers capable of building the needed breakwater. Reade &Hazelton, hearing of the project, had applied for the work. As the youngmen furnished most excellent recommendations from former employers they hadfinally secured the opportunity.
By no means was the task an easy one, as will presently be shown. It wasa work that would have to be carried on in the very teeth of jealousNature. Tom and Harry were fully aware of the great difficulties that laybefore them. What they did not know was that they would presently have tocontend, also, with forces set loose by wicked human minds. What startedthese untoward forces in operation, and how the forces worked out, willsoon be seen.
Captain of a queer crew was Tom Reade, and Harry was his lieutenant. Ofthe laborers, seven hundred in number, some four hundred were negroes;there were also two hundred Italians and about a hundred Portuguese. Many,of each race, were skilled masons; others were but unskilled laborers.There were six foremen, all Americans, and a superintendent, also American.There were a few more Americans and two or three Scotchmen, employed asstationary engineers and in similar lines of work.
A touch of the old Arizona trouble had invaded the camp. There hadrecently been a pay-day, and gamblers had descended upon the camp of tentsand shanties. Once more Reade had driven off the gamblers, though thistime with less trouble than in Arizona. At Blixton, Tom had merely sentfor the four peace officers in the town of Blixton, and had had thegamblers warned
out of camp. They had gone, but there had been wrathfulmutterings among many of the workmen.
The camp was a half mile back from the water's edge, on a low hillside.Here the men of the outfit were settled. There had been mutinousmutterings among some of the men, but so far there had been no open revolt.
Tom, however, who had had considerable experience in such matters, lookedfor some form of trouble before the smouldering excitement quieted. So didHarry.
On this dark night Tom had proposed that he and his chum take a stroll downto the shore front to see whether all were well there. Soon after leavingcamp behind, the young engineers had started on a jog-trot. Just beforethey reached the water's edge the wind had borne to their ears the faintreport of what must have been an explosion out over the waters of the gulf.
"Trouble!" Tom whispered in his chum's ear. "Most likely some of therascals that we drove out of camp have been trying to set back our workwith dynamite. If they have done so we'll teach 'em a lesson if we cancatch them!"
So the young engineers had started out over their narrow retaining wall.We have seen how they had walked most of the distance when Harry had hadhis sudden warning of the hostile arm uplifted over his head.
"What could it have been?" demanded Tom in a low voice, as he continued tocast the light from his flash lamp out over the waters on either side ofthe wall.
"It must have been my nervous imagination," admitted Harry. "Whew! Butit _did_ seem mighty real for the moment."
"Then you're inclined, now, to believe that it was purely imagination?"pursued Tom.
"Ye---e---es, it must have been," assented Harry reluctantly.
Tom made some final casts with the light.
While they were conversing, well past the short radius of the flash lamp'sglare, a massive black head bobbed up and down with the waves. Out therethe huge negro who had swiftly vanished from the wall, and who had swumunder water for a long distance, was indolently treading water. Wholly athome in the gulf, the man's black head blended with the darkness of thewater and the blackness of the night.
"Oh, then," suggested Reade, "we may as well go along on our way. Plainlythere's nothing human around here to look at but ourselves."
So they started slowly forward over the wall. Leisurely the black man swamto the wall, taking up the dogged trail again in the darkness behind thepair of young engineers.
Several minutes more of cautious walking brought Tom Reade to a startledhalt.
"Look there, Harry!" uttered Reade, stopping and throwing the light ahead.
Out beyond them, not far from the end of the wall, some hundred feet of thetop had been torn away. For all the young engineers could see, thefoundations might have gone with the superstructure.
"Dynamite!" Tom muttered grimly. "So this is the way our newly-foundenemies will fight us?"
"It won't be such a big job to repair this gap," muttered Harry calmly.
"No; but it'll take a good many dollars to pay the bills," retorted Tom.
"Well, the expense can't be charged to us, anyway," maintained Harry. "Wedidn't do this vandal's work, and we didn't authorize its being done."
"No; but you know why it was done, Harry," Tom continued. "It was becausewe drove the gamblers out of the camp, and thus made enemies for ourselveson both sides of the camp lines."
"Anyway, the company's officers can't blame us for trying to maintainproper order in the camp," Hazelton insisted stoutly.
"Not if we can stop the outrages with this one explosion, perhaps," repliedTom thoughtfully. "Yet, if there are many more tricks like this one playedon the wall you'll find that the company's officers will be blaming us allthe way up to the skies and down again. Big corporations are all right onenforcing morality until it hits their dividends too hard. Then you'llfind that the directors will be urging us to let gambling go on again ifthe laborers insist on having it."
"Well, we won't have gambling in the camp, anyway," Harry retortedstubbornly. "We're simply looking after the interests of the menthemselves. I wonder why they can't see it, and act like men, not fools."
"We're going to stop the gambling, and keep it stopped," Tom went on, hisjaws setting firmly together. "But, Harry, we're going to have a big rowon our hands, and various attempts against the company's property will bemade."
"If the company's officers order us to let up on the gambling," proposedHarry, "we can resign and get out of this business altogether."
"We won't resign, and we won't knuckle down to any lot of swindlers either,Harry!" cried Tom. "Some one is fighting us, and this wreck of a sea-wallis the first proof. All right! If any one wants to fight us he shall findthat we know how to fight back, and that we can hit hard. Harry, from thisminute on we're after those crooks, and we'll make them realize thatthere's some sting to us!"
"Good enough!" cheered Hazelton. "I like that old-time fight talk! Butare you going to do anything to protect the wall to-night, Tom?"
"I am," announced the young chief engineer.
"What's the plan?"
"Let me think," urged Reade. "Now, I believe, I have it. We'll send oneof the motor boats out here, with a foreman and four laborers. They canarm themselves with clubs and patrol the water on both sides of the wall.The 'Thomas Morton' has a small search-light on her that will be of use inkeeping a close eye over the wall."
"That ought to stop the nonsense," Harry nodded. "But I don't imagine thatany further efforts to destroy the wall will be made tonight, anyway."
"We'll have the night patrol out _every_ night after this," Tom declared."But I'm not so sure either, that another effort won't be made to-night, ifwe don't put a watch on to stop this wicked business. Harry, do you mindremaining out here while I run back and get the boat out?"
"Why should I mind?" Hazelton wanted to know.
"Well, I didn't know whether you would, or not---after seeing thatimaginary something behind you."
"Don't laugh at me! I may have had a start, but you ought to be the firstto know, Tom, that I haven't frozen feet."
"I do know it, Harry. You've been through too many perils to be suspectedof cowardice. Well, then, I'll run back."
Tom Reade had really intended to leave the flash lamp with his chum, buthe forgot to do so, and, as he jogged steadily along over the wall he threwthe light ahead of him. As he got nearer shore Tom increased his jog to abrisk run.
Once, on the way, he passed the prowling negro without knowing it. Thathuge fellow, seeing the ray of light come steadily near him, hesitated fora few moments, then took to the water, swimming well out. After Reade hadpassed, the fellow swam in toward the wall.
Up on the wall climbed the negro. For a few minutes he crouched there,shaking the water from his garments. Then, cautiously, he began to crawlforward.
"Boss Reade, he done gone in," muttered the prowler. "Boss Hazelton, Ahreckon he's mah poultry!"
Harry, keeping his lone vigil away out on the narrow retaining wall, wasgrowing sleepy. He had nearly forgotten his scare. Indeed, he wasinclined to look upon it as a trick of his own brain.