LOST IN THE JUNGLE AT NIGHT.
"Just look at it!"
The lieutenant, after many warnings against getting in the way, and
against getting lost in the jungle, had just left Peter and Jimmie, and
the boys stood at the verge of the great Culebra cut, taking in the wonder
and the force of the marvelous scene.
Night and day, under the great white lights, the work went forward,
cutting a way for the commerce of the world. Night and day the human ants
bored into the earth. Continuously the blasting and scraping, the puffing
and the roaring, went on. Always the great steam shovels were biting into
the soil and the rock.
"That doesn't look like the deep blue sea down there, does it?" Peter went
on, "yet the largest vessels in the world will be sailing over here in
four years, sailing through this cut, and over a forest beyond the rise
there. It looks big, doesn't it? And it sounds big, too."
From where the boys stood there seemed to be a hopeless confusion of men
and machines, but they knew that back of all the hurry, and bustle, and
noise, was a great machine, a wonderful system, born in a human brain and
reaching its lines out to the smallest detail.
"When you sit on a fire-escape balcony, or in a park," Jimmie said, his
mind going back to the New York lounging places he knew best, "and read
about how many tons of earth have been removed during the week, you don't
sense it, do you? You've got to come down here and catch Uncle Sam at his
job."
While the boys talked of the marvelous thing before them a stranger of
quiet mien stood watching them from an elevation a few yards away. He was
a man of middle age, with brilliant black eyes, long, like those of an
Oriental, and a figure almost boyish in its proportions. He was neatly
dressed in a dark suit of some soft, expensive material, his linen was
spotless, and a diamond of great value and brilliancy glimmered in his
pure white tie.
He stood watching the boys for a moment listening to their talk, and then
approached them, softly, deferentially, yet with an air of frankness.
"It is a wonderful sight," he said, as he came to the edge of the cut
where the lads stood. "In all the world's life there has never been
anything like it."
The boys turned and looked the man over modestly, yet with sharp eyes. It
is not to be wondered at, after their experiences there, that they were
suspicious of all strangers. They both at first rather liked the looks of
the man.
"It is worth coming a long way to see," Peter observed.
"Yes," was the reply, "it is wonderful, even to those who are small cogs
in the great machine, and so it must seem almost supernatural in its
showing of strength to those who look upon it for the first time."
"You belong on the works?" asked Jimmie, gazing at the man with a sort of
awe, as one might look at a man of mighty deeds.
"Yes, I have my part in the work," was the reply, "though it is only a
modest part. I am in the office of the engineer, and frequently come out
at night to note the progress of the big cut."
"It must make a man feel a mile high, to be part of a thing like this,"
Jimmie said, sweeping a hand over the scene. "It makes little old New York
look like thirty cents," he added, with a laugh.
"The work," the stranger said, in a pleasant tone, which gave no
indication of foreign birth "has progressed beyond the expectations of the
most enthusiastic advocate of the canal. When we came here we found about
seven miles of waterway bored into the side of the Isthmus, reaching,
well, about up to the rising slope of Gatun. Beyond this there were
scratches in the soil for about forty miles. There was a notch nicked in
the hills of Culebra--just a nick bearing no resemblance to what you see
before you at this time."
"That was over there where the hills rise up like men watching the lights
and listening to the noise?" asked Jimmie, his imagination thoroughly
stirred by the scene.
"Yes, over there. It would have taken the Frenchmen a century to dig down
to the level where those shovels are working, where those tracks lie. I'm
afraid it took the men they brought here most of the time to bury the
dead. But, after all, they never got in touch with the really big thing."
"I guess that was the Chagres river," Peter said; "I've read something
about that, about the trouble it makes."
"Yes, that was the river," the stranger went on, by this time pretty deep
in the confidence and admiration of the boys. "They found the Chagres
having everything its own way on the uplands, over to the north, there. It
ambled along like a perfect lady in spots, then it twisted its water into
whirling ropes which pulled at the banks and toppled cliffs into the
current."
"Freshets?" asked Jimmie.
"Exactly. When the engineers came they found something worth while. They
found a dismal, soggy-looking ditch which could do things in a single
night. They found crumbling and shaling cliffs which showed the bite of
the waters. Time and again they had to do their work all over again. Then
they decided to take the Chagres by the neck and choke it into
subjection."
"I'd like to see some one choke a river," Jimmie laughed. "You try to
choke a river and you'll find that the harder you clutch it the more
trouble it will make you."
"But they not only choked the Chagres," the stranger said, with a
captivating smile which went far toward giving him the complete confidence
of the boys, "they put it in chains. If you look on a detail map of the
Isthmus, you will see a white band stretching from Limon Bay to La Boca,
just below the hill of Ancon. That is the line of the canal. Then, across
this white band, you will see a crooked line, a turning and twisting line.
That is the river, which seems to change its mind about general direction
every few minutes. The engineers found this river in the habit of getting
up in the night and tearing their work in pieces."
"Why didn't they cut a straight channel for it?" asked Jimmie.
"That was tried, but finally the engineers decided to stop trying to make
the river behave itself, as a river, and turned their attention to
squelching it. They are going to turn it into a lake--the Lake of Gatun."
"I've heard something about that," Jimmie said. "Go on and tell us more
about it."
The stranger smiled pleasantly, but there was a sudden quickening of the
flame in his brilliant eyes which the boys did not notice.
"The upland portion of the Isthmus, the plateau, as it would be called in
Mexico, is fairly level from Gatun to the Culebra hills. It might, in
fact, be called a shallow basin, with hills shutting it in. Now do you see
what the Gatun dam is for?"
"Sure. To flood that basin and turn the Chagres into a lake," cried
Jimmie.
"That is just what will be done. The Panama canal will be a lake most of
the way. The locks will float the vessels up to the lake and down to the
canal again. The hills, and forests, and farms of the basin will be under
water."
"And the mines," Jimmie said, thinking of the talk he had had with Peter
concerning the emerald mines. "The lake will flood them, too."
"There are no mines there any more," the stranger said, lightly, but there
was a quality in his voice which almost asked a question instead of making
a statement of fact.
"I've been wondering if there wasn't mines down there," Jimmie added, in a
moment.
"What kind of mines?" asked the stranger.
Jimmie was about to say "Emerald mines," but Peter's anxious face warned
him to check the words on his lips.
"Oh, I've heard of all kinds of mines about there," he said, instead.
"The mines are farther south," said the stranger. "Are you boys with a
party?" he added, in a moment. "If not, I would like to have you spend the
night as my guests."
"We've got a camp back here," Peter said, "and the others will be
expecting us."
"I see," said the other. "You are the boys who are here in search of
specimens. I recall something Lieutenant Gordon said about you. But you
are a long way from the cottage in the jungle near Gatun."
"When did you see Lieutenant Gordon last?" asked Peter, suspiciously.
"I met him something over half an hour ago," was the reply, "on his way
back to the Tivoli at Ancon. You came here in his machine?"
"Yes," was the reply.
"Well, I'm going to Gatun to-night, and you may ride with me."
The stranger turned away, as if to get his motor car, and Peter nudged
Jimmie in the ribs with his elbow.
"Now we've done it," he whispered.
"Done what?"
"Got a man after us."
"Do you think he is one of the men we came here to look up?" asked Jimmie.
"I've been thinking he looks like a Jap. Perhaps he's one of the men at
the bottom of that bomb business. Well, we don't have to go with him."
"I'd like to see where he would take us," Peter whispered.
"Not for your uncle," Jimmie replied. "It is me for the jungle. This thing
is gettin' worse 'n' a Bowery drama. The villain comes on in every scene
here. Say! Suppose we take a run into the woods before he gets back?"
"I'm not in love with the jungle at night," Peter said. "Besides, I'd like
to know what this Jap has in mind."
The chug-chug of the stranger's motor was now heard, and, without waiting
for further discussion, the boys ducked away into the jungle, which
crowded close on the cut at this point.
They heard the car stop at the point where they had been standing, and
heard a low exclamation of impatience, indicative of disappointment, from
the lips of the driver, and then crept farther into the tangle of vines.
Finally Peter stopped and faced toward Gatun.
"We'd better be working toward home," he said. "This thicket is no place
for a civilized human being at night."
Although there was a moon, and the sky showed great constellations with
which the boys were unfamiliar, the jungle was dark and creepy. Keeping
the lights from the workings on their left, the boys pushed their way
through the undergrowth for some distance without resting, and then paused
in a little glade and listened.
"Gee," cried Jimmie, after standing at attention for a moment, "there's
some one following us. We'd better dig in a little deeper."
"It may be a wild animal," said Peter, who, while ready to face whatsoever
peril might come in the company of the man they were running away from,
was in mortal terror of the jungle.
"There are no man-eaters here," Jimmie replied, unwinding a snake-like
creeper from his neck and pushing on.
"I can feel snakes crawling up my legs now," complained Peter, with a
shiver.
The noise in the rear came on about as fast as they could move, and at
last Jimmie sat down on a fallen tree.
"He can hear us," he said. "We might as well be hiding with a brass
band."
"Then we'll keep quiet until he passes," Peter trembled out. "I'm afraid
to go plunging through here in the dark, anyway."
Making as little noise as possible, the boys crept into a particularly
dense thicket and crouched down. Almost as soon as they were at rest the
noise behind ceased. In five minutes it began again, but the sounds grew
fainter and fainter and finally died out.
"He was followin' us all right," Jimmie said. "Now we'll dig in a little
deeper, so as not to come out anywhere near him, and then go back to
camp."
They walked, or crept, rather, until they were tired out and then looked
about.
There were giant ceiba trees, with trunks as smooth as if they had been
polished by human hands, tremendous cotton-trees, their branches bowed
down with air plants, palms, to which clung clusters of wild nuts, thick,
bulbous trees, taller trees with buttressed roots, as if Nature knew the
strain that was to be placed upon them and braced them up accordingly,
trees with bark like mirrors, and trees with six-inch spike growing from
the bark.
And through this thicket of trees ran creepers resembling pythons, smaller
vines which tore at the boughs of the trees, and a mass of running things
on the ground which caught the foot and seemed to crawl up toward the
throat. By daylight it would have been weird and beautiful. At night it
was uncanny and fearsome.
"We ought to be in sight of the lights by this time," Peter said, after
they had crept on and rested again and again.
"Yes," said Jimmie, "but we ain't. We're lost in the jungle, if you want
to know."