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Read Ebook: The Young Engineers on the Gulf Or The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater by Hancock H Irving Harrie Irving
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Ebook has 1696 lines and 50878 words, and 34 pages
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 had his sudden warning of the hostile arm uplifted over his head.
"What could it have been?" demanded Tom in a low voice, as he continued to cast the light from his flash lamp out over the waters on either side of the wall.
"Then you're inclined, now, to believe that it was purely imagination?" pursued Tom.
Tom made some final casts with the light.
While they were conversing, well past the short radius of the flash lamp's glare, a massive black head bobbed up and down with the waves. Out there the huge negro who had swiftly vanished from the wall, and who had swum under water for a long distance, was indolently treading water. Wholly at home in the gulf, the man's black head blended with the darkness of the water and the blackness of the night.
"Oh, then," suggested Reade, "we may as well go along on our way. Plainly there's nothing human around here to look at but ourselves."
So they started slowly forward over the wall. Leisurely the black man swam to the wall, taking up the dogged trail again in the darkness behind the pair of young engineers.
Several minutes more of cautious walking brought Tom Reade to a startled halt.
"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 the top had been torn away. For all the young engineers could see, the foundations might have gone with the superstructure.
"Dynamite!" Tom muttered grimly. "So this is the way our newly-found enemies 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. "We didn'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 because we drove the gamblers out of the camp, and thus made enemies for ourselves on both sides of the camp lines."
"Anyway, the company's officers can't blame us for trying to maintain proper order in the camp," Hazelton insisted stoutly.
"Not if we can stop the outrages with this one explosion, perhaps," replied Tom thoughtfully. "Yet, if there are many more tricks like this one played on the wall you'll find that the company's officers will be blaming us all the way up to the skies and down again. Big corporations are all right on enforcing morality until it hits their dividends too hard. Then you'll find that the directors will be urging us to let gambling go on again if the laborers insist on having it."
"Well, we won't have gambling in the camp, anyway," Harry retorted stubbornly. "We're simply looking after the interests of the men themselves. 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, his jaws setting firmly together. "But, Harry, we're going to have a big row on our hands, and various attempts against the company's property will be made."
"If the company's officers order us to let up on the gambling," proposed Harry, "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-wall is the first proof. All right! If any one wants to fight us he shall find that we know how to fight back, and that we can hit hard. Harry, from this minute on we're after those crooks, and we'll make them realize that there's some sting to us!"
"Good enough!" cheered Hazelton. "I like that old-time fight talk! But are 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 one of the motor boats out here, with a foreman and four laborers. They can arm 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 in keeping a close eye over the wall."
"That ought to stop the nonsense," Harry nodded. "But I don't imagine that any further efforts to destroy the wall will be made tonight, anyway."
"Why should I mind?" Hazelton wanted to know.
"Don't laugh at me! I may have had a start, but you ought to be the first to know, Tom, that I haven't frozen feet."
"I do know it, Harry. You've been through too many perils to be suspected of cowardice. Well, then, I'll run back."
Tom Reade had really intended to leave the flash lamp with his chum, but he forgot to do so, and, as he jogged steadily along over the wall he threw the light ahead of him. As he got nearer shore Tom increased his jog to a brisk run.
Once, on the way, he passed the prowling negro without knowing it. That huge fellow, seeing the ray of light come steadily near him, hesitated for a few moments, then took to the water, swimming well out. After Reade had passed, 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 crawl forward.
"Boss Reade, he done gone in," muttered the prowler. "Boss Hazelton, Ah reckon he's mah poultry!"
Harry, keeping his lone vigil away out on the narrow retaining wall, was growing sleepy. He had nearly forgotten his scare. Indeed, he was inclined to look upon it as a trick of his own brain.
THE CALL OF ONE IN TROUBLE
Once Tom Reade reached the solid land he let his long legs out into a brisk run.
With his years of practice on the Gridley High School athletic team he was not one to lose his wind readily.
So he made his way at the same speed all the way up to the camp.
"Who dar?" called a negro watchman, as Tom raced up to the outskirts of the camp.
"Reade, chief engineer," Tom called, then wheeled and made off to the right, where the more substantial barracks of the foremen stood. Superintendent Renshaw lived in a two-story barrack still farther to the right, as the guest of the young engineers.
"So, Nicolas, you rascal, you haven't gone to bed?" demanded Tom, halting. "What did I tell you about earlier hours?"
Nicolas was the young Mexican servant whom Tom and Harry had brought back with them from Mexico. Readers of the previous volume know all about this faithful fellow.
"You and Senor Hazelton, you waire not in bed," replied Nicolas stolidly.
"You're not expected to stay up and watch over us as if we were babies, Nicolas," spoke Tom, in a gentler voice. "You'd better turn in now."
"Senor Hazelton, where is he?" insisted Nicolas, anxiously.
Then Tom bounded over to the little porch before the foremen's barracks, where he pounded lustily on the door.
"Who's there? What's wanted?" demanded a sleepy voice from the inside.
"Is that you, Evarts?" called Reade.
"Yes, sir."
"Get on your duds and turn out as quickly as you can."
"You want me?" yawned Evarts.
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