THE COLLISION
Judging by Mr. Alcando’s manner no one would have thought he had said
anything out of the ordinary. But both Blake and Joe had heard his
low-voiced words, and both stared aghast at him.
“What’s that you said?” asked Blake, wondering whether he had caught
the words aright.
“Dynamite!” exclaimed Joe, and then Blake knew he had made no mistake.
Somewhat to the surprise of himself and his chum the Spaniard smiled.
“I was speaking in the abstract, of course,” he said. “I have a habit
of speaking aloud when I think. I merely remarked that a charge of
dynamite, here in Culebra Cut, or at Gatun Dam, would so damage the
Canal that it might be out of business for years.”
“You don’t mean to say that you know of anyone who would do such
a thing!” cried Blake, holding the box of unexposed film that the
Spaniard had given him.
“Of course not, my dear fellow. I was speaking in the abstract, I tell
you. It occurred to me how easy it would be for some enemy to so place
a charge of explosive. I don’t see why the Canal is not better guarded.
You Americans are too trusting!”
“What’s that?” asked Captain Watson, coming up at this juncture.
“I was merely speaking to the boys about how easy it would be to put
a charge of dynamite here in the cut, or at the dam, and damage the
Canal,” explained Mr. Alcando. “I believe they thought I meant to do
it,” he added with a laugh, as he glanced at the serious faces of the
two moving picture boys.
“Well,--I--er,--I--,” stammered Blake. Somewhat to his own surprise he
did find himself harboring new suspicions against Mr. Alcando, but they
had never before taken this form. As for Joe, he blushed to recall that
he had, in the past, also been somewhat suspicious of the Spaniard. But
now the man’s frank manner of speaking had disarmed all that.
“Dynamite, eh!” exclaimed the captain. “I’d just like to see anyone try
it. This canal is better guarded than you think, my friend,” and he
looked meaningly at the other.
“Oh, I have no doubt that is so,” was the quick response. “But it seems
such a simple matter for one to do a great damage to it. Possibly the
indifference to guarding it is but seeming only.”
“That’s what it is!” went on Captain Watson. “Dynamite! Huh! I’d like
to see someone try it!” He meant, of course, that he would _not_ like
to see this done, but that was his sarcastic manner of speaking.
“What do you think of him, anyhow?” asked Joe of Blake a little later
when they were putting away their cameras, having taken all the views
they wanted.
“I don’t know what to say, Joe,” was the slow answer. “I did think
there was something queer about Alcando, but I guess I was wrong. It
gave me a shock, though, to hear him speak so about the Canal.”
“The same here. But he’s a nice chap just the same, and he certainly
shows an interest in moving pictures.”
“That’s right. We’re getting some good ones, too.”
The work in Culebra Cut, though nearly finished, was still in such a
state of progress that many interesting films could be made of it, and
this the boys proposed to do, arranging to stay a week or more at
the place which, more than any other, had made trouble for the canal
builders.
“Well, it surely is a great piece of work!” exclaimed Blake, as he and
Joe, with Mr. Alcando and Captain Watson, went to the top of Gold Hill
one day. They were on the highest point of the small mountain through
which the cut had to be dug.
“It is a wonderful piece of work,” the captain said, as Blake and Joe
packed up the cameras they had been using. “Think of it--a cut nine
miles long, with an average depth of one hundred and twenty feet, and
in some places the sides are five hundred feet above the bottom, which
is, at no point, less than three hundred feet in width. A big pile of
dirt had to be taken out of here, boys.”
“Yes, and more dirt will have to be,” said Mr. Alcando.
“What do you mean?” asked the tug commander quickly, and rather sharply.
“I mean that more slides are likely to occur; are they not?”
“Yes, worse luck!” growled the captain. “There have been two or three
small ones in the past few weeks, and the worst of it is that they
generally herald larger ones.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” the Spaniard went on.
“And it’s what we heard,” spoke Blake. “We expect to get some moving
pictures of a big slide if one occurs.”
“Not that we want it to,” explained Joe quickly.
“I understand,” the captain went on with a smile. “But if it _is_ going
to happen you want to be here.”
“Exactly,” Blake said. “We want to show the people what a slide in
Culebra looks like, and what it means, in hard work, to get rid of it.”
“Well, it’s hard work all right,” the captain admitted, “though now
that the water is in, and we can use scows and dredges, instead of
railroad cars, we can get rid of the dirt easier. You boys should have
been here when the cut was being dug, before the water was let in.”
“I wish we had been,” Blake said. “We could have gotten some dandy
pictures.”
“That’s what you could,” went on the captain. “It was like looking
at a lot of ants through a magnifying glass. Big mouthfuls of dirt
were being bitten out of the hill by steam shovels, loaded on to cars
and the trains of cars were pulled twelve miles away to the dumping
ground. There the earth was disposed of, and back came the trains for
more. And with thousands of men working, blasts being sent off every
minute or so, the puffing of engines, the tooting of whistles, the
creaking of derricks and steam shovels--why it was something worth
seeing!”
“Sorry we missed it,” Joe said. “But maybe we’ll get some pictures just
as good.”
“It won’t be anything like that--not even if there’s a big slide,” the
captain said, shaking his head doubtfully.
Though the Canal was practically finished, and open to some vessels,
there was much that yet remained to be done upon it, and this work
Blake and Joe, with Mr. Alcando to help them at the cameras, filmed
each day. Reel after reel of the sensitive celluloid was exposed,
packed in light-tight boxes and sent North for development and
printing. At times when they remained in Culebra Cut, which they did
for two weeks, instead of one, fresh unexposed films were received from
New York, being brought along the Canal by Government boats, for, as I
have explained, the boys were semi-official characters now.
Mr. Alcando was rapidly becoming expert in handling a moving picture
camera, and often he went out alone to film some simple scene.
“I wonder how our films are coming out?” asked Blake one day, after a
fresh supply of reels had been received. “We haven’t heard whether Mr.
Hadley likes our work or not.”
“Hard to tell,” Joe responded. But they knew a few days later,
for a letter came praising most highly the work of the boys and,
incidentally, that of Mr. Alcando.
“You are doing fine!” Mr. Hadley wrote. “Keep it up. The pictures will
make a sensation. Don’t forget to film the slide if one occurs.”
“Of course we’ll get that,” Joe said, as he looked up at the frowning
sides of Culebra Cut. “Only it doesn’t seem as if one was going to
happen while we’re here.”
“I hope it never does,” declared Captain Watson, solemnly.
As the boys wanted to make pictures along the whole length of the
Canal, they decided to go on through the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores
locks, to the Pacific Ocean, thus making a complete trip, and then come
back to Culebra. Of course no one could tell when a slide would occur,
and they had to take chances of filming it.
Their trip to Pedro Miguel was devoid of incident. At those locks,
instead of “going up stairs” they went down, the level gradually
falling so their boat came nearer to the surface of the Pacific. A
mile and a half farther on they would reach Miraflores.
The tug had approached the central pier, to which it was tied, awaiting
the services of the electrical locomotives, when back of them came a
steamer, one of the first foreign vessels to apply to make the trip
through the Isthmus.
“That fellow is coming a little too close to me for comfort,” Captain
Watson observed as he watched the approaching vessel.
Blake and Joe, who were standing near the commander at the pilot house,
saw Mr. Alcando come up the companionway and stand on deck, staring at
the big steamer. A little breeze, succeeding a dead calm, ruffled a
flag at the stern of the steamer, and the boys saw the Brazilian colors
flutter in the wind. At the same moment Mr. Alcando waved his hand,
seemingly to someone on the steamer’s deck.
“Look out where you’re going!” suddenly yelled Captain Watson. Hardly
had he shouted than the steamer veered quickly to one side, and then
came a crash as the tug heeled over, grinding against the concrete side
of the central pier.
“We’re being crushed!” yelled Blake.