The Young Engineers on the Gulf
or
The 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 Capture
XVIII. 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 News
XXIII. 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 Harry
Hazelton 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 were
out in full force. Now look at them!"
"How can I look at them?" demanded Tom, halting. "My flashlight won't
pierce 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 heard
you 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 disconsolate
than 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 times
to-day."
The two young men stood on a narrow ledge of stone that jutted out of the
water. This wall of stone was the first, outer or retaining wall of
masonry---the first work of constructing a great breakwater. At high tide,
this ledge was just fourteen inches above the level surface of the Gulf of
Mexico, and at the time of the above conversation it was within twenty
minutes of high tide. The top of this wall of masonry was thirty inches
wide, which made but a narrow footway for the two youths who, on a pitch
black 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 this
breakwater wall did not offer a troublesome footpath. In broad daylight
hundreds of laborers and masons swarmed over it, working side by side, or
on scows and dredges alongside.
"Wait, and I'll show a light," volunteered Tom raising his foot-long
flashlight.
Some seventy-five yards behind them a crawling snake-like figure flattened
itself out on the top of the rock wall.
"Don't show the light just yet," pleaded Harry. "It might only make me
more dizzy."
The flattened figure behind them wriggled noiselessly along.
"Just listen to the water," continued Hazelton. "Tom, I'm half-inclined to
think that the water is roughening."
"I believe it is," agreed Tom.
"Fine time we'll have getting back, if a gale springs up from the
southward," muttered Harry.
"See here, old fellow," interposed Tom vigorously, "you're not up to
concert 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. Then
I'll move on up forward and see what has been happening out there that
should boom shoreward with such a racket. You stay right here, and I'll
be 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 a
cold-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 a
notion that you're going to walk over a precipice, or drop head-first into
some danger. With such a feeling it would be cruelty to let you go
forward, 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 though
this separation of the two engineers on this black night was a thing
devoutly 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 was
a minute in which to brace myself. I've had that minute. Now get forward
with you. I'm on your heels!"
Tom Reade shrugged his shoulders slightly. However, he did not object or
argue, for he realized that his chum was sensitive over any circumstance
that seemed to point to sudden failure of his courage.
"Come along, then," urged Tom. "Wait just a second, though. I'll flash
the light ahead along the wall, to show you that it's all there, and just
where it lies."
A narrow beam of light shot ahead as Tom pressed the spring of his pocket
flash lamp.
A weird enough scene the night betrayed. In perspective the wall ahead
narrowed, until the two sides seemed to come to a point. Back of all was
the thick curtain of black that had settled down over the gulf. A little
farther out, too, the water seemed rougher. There would seem to be hardly
a 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 suited
to the condition of his chum's nerves. Harry followed resolutely, though
none but himself knew how much effort it took for him to keep on in the
face of such a nameless yet terrible dread as now assailed him.
To the rear a bulky, hulking figure rose and stood erect. With the softest
of steps this apparition of the night followed after them, until it stole
along, 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 of
the descending arm, the hand of which held something. But in that backward
spring Harry, in order to save himself from pitching into the water, was
oblige 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 had
slipped 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 the
wall. But no sign of the intruder appeared; the water had closed
noiselessly over the now vanished figure.
"What's the matter?" asked Reade, as he stood looking, then finally flashed
his light over to the other side of the wall.
"I saw---" began Hazelton. Then changed to: "I thought---er---I
saw---oh, nonsense! You'll josh the life out of me!"
"Not I," Tom affirmed gravely, as a thrill of pity, for what he deemed his
friend's unfortunate "nervous condition," shook him. "Tell me what you
saw, 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 either
side of the narrow wall-top. "See him anywhere now, chum?"
Harry didn't. In fact, he hardly more than pretended to look. The thing
that had been so real a moment before was now utterly invisible. Hazelton
began to share his chum's suspicion as to the utter breakdown of his nerves
and powers of vision.
"It was nothing, of course," said Harry, shamefacedly, but Tom vigorously
took the other side of the question.
"See here, Harry, it must have been something," insisted Reade. "You're
not dreaming, and you're not crazy. It would take either one of those
conditions to make you see something that didn't really exist. No mere
nervous 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, as
he 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 prowler
was now swimming gently under water, some seven or eight feet from the
surface.
"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 it
was---has some real connection with the mystery that we're going out
yonder to investigate. So we'll solve the puzzle that's right here before
we go forward to look at the bigger riddle that the dark now hides from us
out 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 this
series, nor of the series that have preceded the present one.
Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, now engineers in charge of a big breakwater
job on the Alabama gulf coast, were first introduced to our readers in the
"_Grammar School Boys Series_." There we met them as members of that
immortal band of American schoolboys known as Dick & Co. Back in the old
school days Dick Prescott had been the leader of Dick & Co., though, as all
our readers know, Prescott was not the sole genius of Dick & Co. Greg
Holmes, Dave Darrin, Dan Dalzell and Tom and Harry had been the other
members of that famous sextette of schoolboy athletes.
After reading of the doings of Dick & Co. in the "_Grammar School Boys
Series_," our readers again followed them, through the events recorded in
the four volumes of the "_High School Boys Series_". Here their really
brilliant work Boys Series athletes was stirringly chronicled, as along
with scores of non-athletic adventures that befell them.
At the close of the high school course Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes
secured appointments as cadets at the United States Military Academy at
West Point. All that befell them there is duly set forth in the "_West
Point Series_." Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell were fortunate enough to
secure appointments as midshipmen in the United States Naval Academy at
Annapolis, and their doings there are set forth in the "_Annapolis
Series_."
Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, on the other hand, had felt no call to
military glory. For their work in life they longed to become part of the
great constructive force wielded by modern civil engineers. During the
latter part of their high school work they had studied hard with ambition
to become surveyors and civil engineers. In their school vacations they
had sought training and experience in the offices of an engineering firm
in their home town of Gridley. After being graduated from the Gridley High
School, Tom and Harry had done more work in the same offices. Then, in a
sudden desire for advancement, and possessed by the longing for a wider
field of endeavor, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had secured positions as
"cub engineers" on the construction work that was being done to rush a new
railway, system over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The stern, hard work
that lay before them, the many adventures in a rough wilderness, and the
chain of circumstances that at last placed Tom Reade in charge of the
railroad building, with Harry as first assistant engineer, are all told in
the first volume of this present series, "_The Young Engineers In
Colorado_."
That great feat finished satisfactorily, the ambition of our young
engineers led them further afield, as told in "_The Young Engineers in
Arizona_." A great, man-killing quicksand had to be filled in and
effectively stopped from shifting. Reade & Hazelton undertook the task.
Incidentally Tom came into serious, dangerous conflict with gamblers and
other human birds-of-prey, who had heretofore fattened on the earnings of
the railway laborers. It was a tremendously exciting time that the young
engineers had in Arizona, but they at last got away with their lives and
were at the same time immensely successful in their undertaking.
In "_The Young Engineers In Nevada_" we found our young friends under
changed conditions. While at work in Colorado and in Arizona Tom and
Harry had studied the occurrence of precious ores, and also the methods
of assaying and extracting ores. Having their time wholly to themselves
after finishing in Arizona the dauntless young pair went to Nevada, there
to study mining at first hand. In time they located a mining claim, though
there were other claimants, and around this latter fact hung an extremely
exciting story. Both young engineers nearly lost their lives in Nevada,
and met with many strenuous situations. Their sole idea in pushing their
mine forward to success was that the money so earned would enable them to
further their greatest ambition; they longed to have their own engineering
offices. In the end, their mine, which the young engineers had named "The
Ambition," proved a success. Thereupon they left their mining partner, Jim
Ferrers, in charge and went east to open their offices.
We next found the young engineers engaged to the south of the United States
border. These adventures were fully set forth in the preceding volume in
this series, entitled "_The Young Engineers in Mexico_." Tom and Harry,
engaged to solve some problems in a great Mexican mine, found themselves
the 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 face
of threats of assured death, held out for an honest course. How they
struggled to save a syndicate of American investors from being swindled out
of 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 unlike
any they had hitherto undertaken. The owners of the Melliston Steamship
Line, with a fleet of twenty-two freight steamships engaged in the West
Indian and Central American trade, had looked in vain for suitable dock
accommodations for their vessels, worth a total of more than six million
dollars. In their efforts to improve their service the Melliston owners
had found at Blixton a harbor that would have suited them excellently, but
for one objection. The bay at Blixton was too open to shelter vessels from
the severity of some of the winter gales. Up to the present time Blixton
had not been used for harbor purposes. But the Melliston owners had
conceived the idea that a great breakwater could be so built as to shelter
the waters of the bay. They had quietly bought up most of the shore front
of the little town, which had railway connection. Then they had searched
about for engineers capable of building the needed breakwater. Reade &
Hazelton, hearing of the project, had applied for the work. As the young
men furnished most excellent recommendations from former employers they had
finally secured the opportunity.
By no means was the task an easy one, as will presently be shown. It was
a work that would have to be carried on in the very teeth of jealous
Nature. Tom and Harry were fully aware of the great difficulties that lay
before them. What they did not know was that they would presently have to
contend, also, with forces set loose by wicked human minds. What started
these untoward forces in operation, and how the forces worked out, will
soon be seen.
Captain of a queer crew was Tom Reade, and Harry was his lieutenant. Of
the 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 as
stationary engineers and in similar lines of work.
A touch of the old Arizona trouble had invaded the camp. There had
recently been a pay-day, and gamblers had descended upon the camp of tents
and shanties. Once more Reade had driven off the gamblers, though this
time with less trouble than in Arizona. At Blixton, Tom had merely sent
for the four peace officers in the town of Blixton, and had had the
gamblers warned out of camp. They had gone, but there had been wrathful
mutterings 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 mutinous
mutterings among some of the men, but so far there had been no open revolt.
Tom, however, who had had considerable experience in such matters, looked
for some form of trouble before the smouldering excitement quieted. So did
Harry.
On this dark night Tom had proposed that he and his chum take a stroll down
to the shore front to see whether all were well there. Soon after leaving
camp behind, the young engineers had started on a jog-trot. Just before
they reached the water's edge the wind had borne to their ears the faint
report 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 the
rascals that we drove out of camp have been trying to set back our work
with dynamite. If they have done so we'll teach 'em a lesson if we can
catch 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 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.
"It must have been my nervous imagination," admitted Harry. "Whew! But
it _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'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."
"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, if
we don't put a watch on to stop this wicked business. Harry, do you mind
remaining 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 that
imaginary something behind you."
"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.