“We’ll be eaten alive out there in the jungle,” protested Jimmie.
“Besides, it would be more natural for us to go to Gatun for our supplies,” Peter Fenton said.
“There are reasons why he wants us to remain in the jungle near Gatun for a time,” Ned replied, and the boys separated, Jimmie strolling off in the wake of “His Nobbs,” “just to see if he couldn’t make him cough up something,” as he expressed it.
The mystery of the theft of the emerald necklace was still unsolved, the man whose picture Ned carried in his brain had not been found, Pedro had been among the missing ever since he had walked out of the Shaw residence on the morning after the robbery. When the boys landed at Colon the next morning the case upon which they were engaged was still new ground before them.
Frank Shaw continued to take the loss of his emeralds very seriously, and at no time during the trip to Colon had he failed to keep an eye out for Pedro, whom he suspected of having admitted the thief to the house.
“His name isn’t Pedro at all,” he said, as the train sped out of the network of tracks behind Colon, “but Pedrarias. That was the name of the robber who succeeded Balboa as governor of New Granada, the pirate who stood Balboa up against a wall and shot him. Pedro, as I call him for short, declares that he is a direct descendant of that old stiff. He says the Spanish blood in his veins is pure. Great Scott! if I had such a pirate for an ancestor, I’d keep mighty still about it.”
Peter Fenton was in his element now. As the train moved away from Colon he pointed out various points of interest, and supplied such information about them as he had gleaned from the maps and books he had consulted. The ruins of the old French workings were soon in sight, the locality where millions had been squandered in graft. And there was Mount Hope Cemetery, where thousands who had perished from fever had been buried.
“The doctors have cleaned out the fever now,” he said, “by cleaning out the mosquitoes – the poison kind with the long name,” he added. “The Canal Zone is about as healthy now as the city of New York.”
Then came thickets where the trees were tied together with vines and creepers, all in gorgeous bloom. The great trees lifting their heads out of the jungle reminded the boys of the electric towers of New York, the twists of vines resembling the mighty cables which convey light, heat and power to the inhabitants of Manhattan.
As if in rivalry of the wealth of blossoms, bright-plumaged birds darted about like butterflies of unnatural growth. Now and then they saw evil looking lizards, some of them a yard in length, scuttling off through the marshes or looking down from high limbs. There was a swampy atmosphere over all the landscape.
Then, as the Boy Scouts looked, thinking of the glory of a camp in the thicket – of a retired nook on some dry knoll – the jungle disappeared as if by magic, and the train was winding up grassy hills. Beyond, higher up, the scattered houses of a city of fair size came into view.
“That’s Gatun,” cried Fenton. “I’ve read half a dozen descriptions of it lately. Great town, that.”
“The houses look like boxes from here,” Jimmie observed.
“Of course,” Peter replied, “they are all two-story houses, square, with double balconies all screened in. Might be Philadelphia, eh?”
There were smooth roads in front of the houses, and there were yards where flowers were growing, and where neatly dressed children were playing. Jimmie turned from the homelike scene to Frank.
“I thought there would be something new down here,” he complained. “This is just like a town up the Hudson.”
“Jimmie expected to find people living in tents made out of animal skins,” laughed George. “He thinks the natives eat folks alive.”
“You wait until you get out of the country,” Frank said, “before you talk of cottages up the Hudson. There will be something stirring before we get off the Isthmus.”
“I hope so,” Jimmie replied. “There surely will be if we camp back there in the jungle, among the snakes and lizards.”
“Why not camp on the hills back there?” asked Jack.
“We may soon camp anywhere we like,” said Ned. “The Zone government understands that we are a lot of kids out after specimens.”
“Specimens of what?” asked Jimmie.
“Tall, slender men with black hair turning gray,” replied Frank.
“Quit your kiddin’,” grinned Jimmie.
The boys left the train at a modern depot, passed through the train-shed, crossed a level sward, and looked down into a mighty chasm.
“Great Scott!” cried Frank. “Is that the bottom of the world?”
He pointed below as he spoke.
“There seems to be a thin crust of rock between the bottom and the other side of the world,” laughed George. “See! There are tunnels and pits down there. The men are still digging. Look like ants, don’t they?”
It was a wonderful sight, and the Boy Scouts gazed long at the scene of activity before turning away toward the Gatun dam itself. This, Peter Fenton explained, was one of the big cuts of the canal, and ran from the marshy valley above down through the rocky ridge which held the rains in check and made a swamp of the upland.
Along the margins of the excavation ran shining steel rails upon which were mounted tapering structures of steel, from which cables crossed the gorge, carrying great buckets of concrete for the work below. Heavy walls were growing out of the depths.
“The ships will come up out of the sea through this cut,” Peter explained.
“Then they’ll climb the hill,” scorned Jimmie.
“They will stop down there,” said Peter, “and the lock gates will be closed, and the water will lift them to the level of the lake.”
“I don’t see no lake,” observed the skeptical Jimmie.
“The lake will lie where the low land is, over there,” replied Peter, pointing. “The Gatun dam will block the water and make a lake 85 feet above sea level, covering one hundred and sixty-four square miles of earth.”
“So the most of the canal will be lake?” asked the boy.
“Quite a lot of it,” was the reply.
“And if any one should blow up the dam, after it gets on its job, the ships would have to climb a ladder if they got over to Panama,” he exclaimed.
“Something like that,” Peter said.
“Where is the Gatun dam?” asked Jack.
“It is going up over there,” Peter replied, pointing out a low, broad ridge which appeared to link two hills together. “That is what will make the inland sea, and that is the lump of earth we came here to look after.”
“It is a busy place night and day,” Ned said. “See the electric towers and wires? Work never stops.”
“Something like His Nobbs,” grinned Jimmie. “I wonder if he has had any sleep since he struck our trail?”
“I haven’t seen him since we left the train,” Jack said. “Perhaps he has delivered us over to the Panama division of the Anti-Canal Benevolent Society. In that case, we shall see no more of him.”
After a time the boys strolled over to a neat little hotel on the principal street of the town, and there saw Lieutenant Gordon, who strolled up to Ned, just as any two Americans meeting there might have affiliated.
“Your