The Young Engineers on the Gulf / Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater

Produced by Jim Ludwig

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.

CHAPTER II

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.

"Quien vive?" (who's there?) hailed another voice, between the two barracks buildings.

"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.

"Oh, bother! Never mind where he is," Tom rejoined. "We won't either of us be in for a little while yet. But you turn in now—-at once—-instanter!"

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.

"Now, see here, my man, if I didn't want you why on earth would I call you out in the middle of the night?"

"It's late," complained Evarts.

"I know it. That's why I want you to get behind yourself and push yourself," retorted the young chief engineer energetically. "Hustle!"

Twice, while he waited impatiently, Tom kicked the toe of one boot against the door to emphasize the need of haste. Other drowsy voices remonstrated.

"Hang a man who has to sleep all the time!" grunted Tom Reade.

After several minutes the door opened, and a lanky, loose-jointed, lantern-jawed man of some forty-odd years stepped out.

"Well, what's up, Mr. Reade?" questioned the foreman, hiding a yawn behind a bony, hairy hand.

"You are, at last, thank goodness!" Tom exclaimed. "Evarts, I want you to rout out four good men. Lift 'em to their feet and begin to throw the clothes on 'em!"

"It's pretty late to call men out of their beds, sir," mildly objected the foreman.

"No—-it's early, but it can't be helped," Tom Reade retorted. "Hustle 'em out!"

"Black or white?" sleepily inquired Evarts.

"White, and Americans at that," Tom retorted. "Put none but Americans on guard tonight, Evarts! What do you suppose has happened?"

"Can't guess."

"No! You're still too sleepy. Evarts, some scoundrels have blown out a good part of our wall yonder."

"Are you joking, Mr. Reade?"

"No, sir; I am not. Dynamite must have been used. Hazelton and I heard the noise of the blast, but of course we got out there too late to catch any miscreant at the job."

Evarts, at first, was inclined to regard the news with mild disbelief, but he soon realized that something must have happened very nearly as the young chief engineer had described.

"Well, what are you standing there for?" Tom demanded, impatiently. "Are you going to wait for daylight? Get the four men out—-all Americans, mind you. Hustle, man!"

Evarts started away; toward the camp over to the left of them. As he did so Tom darted in another direction. Two minutes later Tom was back, piloting by one arm a man who was still engaged in rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. This was Conlon, engineer of the motor boat, "Morton."

"Where's Evarts?" Reade queried, impatiently. "Oh, Evarts! Where are you, and what are you doing?"

"Trying to get four men awake," bawled back the voice of the foreman, from the distance. "As soon as I get one man on his feet the other three have sunk back to sleep."

"Wait until I get over there then!" called Tom, striding forward. "Come along, Conlon! Don't you lag on me."

"There! Do you fellows reckon you want Mr. Reade to bump in here and shake you out?" sounded the warning voice of Evarts.

As Tom and the motor boat's engine tender reached the little, box-like shack from which Evarts's tones proceeded, four men, seated on the floor, were seen to be lacing their shoes by the dim light of a lantern.

"A nice lot you are!" called Tom crisply. "How many hours does it take you to get awake when you're called in the middle of the night?"

"This overtime warn't in the agreement," sleepily retorted one of the men.

"You're wrong there," Reade informed him, vehemently. "Overtime is in the agreement for every man in this camp when it's wanted of him—-from the chief engineer all along the line. Now, you men oblige me by hustling. I don't want to wait more than sixty seconds for the last man of you."

"I've a good mind to crawl back into my bunk," growled another of the men.

"All right," retorted Tom Reade, with suspicious cheerfulness. "Try it and see what kind of fireworks I carry concealed on my person. Or, just lag a little bit on me, and you'll see the same thing. Men, do you realize that there's foul play afoot out on the retaining wall? We've got to go out there in time to stop anything more happening. Now, you've got your shoes on; grab the rest of your clothing and hustle it on as we make for the beach. Come along!"

Tom fairly got behind the men and pushed them outside. They would have liked to complain, but they didn't. Some of them were larger and heavier than the chief engineer, but they knew quite well that, at sign of any trifling mutiny to-night, Reade would thrash them all.

"If any one is trying to blow up the wall, Mr. Reade, it's all your fault, anyway," ventured Evarts, as the little party started at a brisk walk for the beach. "When you've got a mixed crowd of men working for you, you shouldn't interfere too much with their amusements. Yet you would have the gamblers run out of camp just when our boys were getting ready to have some pleasant evenings."

"I'll run out any one else who attempts to bring disorderly doings into this camp," Tom retorted quietly.

"Then there'll be some more of your seawalls blown up," Evarts warned him gloomily.

"If such a thing happens again there'll be some men hurt, and some others breaking into prison," Tom answered with spirit. "Any evildoers that try to set themselves up in business around here will soon wish they had kept away—-that's all."

"It's a bad business," insisted Evarts, wagging his head. "When you have a mixed crowd of workmen—-"

"I think you've said that before," Tom broke in coolly. "To-night we're in too much of a hurry to listen to the same thing twice. Come on, men. You can go a little faster than a walk. Jog a bit—-I'll show you how."

"This is pretty hard on men in the middle of the night," hinted Evarts, after the jogging had gone on for a full minute. "It ain't right to——-"

"Stop it, Evarts!" Tom cut in crisply. "I don't mind a little grumbling at the right time, and I often do a bit myself, but not when I'm as rushed as I am to-night. There's the dock ahead, men—-a little faster spurt now!"

Tom urged his men along to the dock. With no loss of time they tumbled aboard the "Morton," a broad, somewhat shallow, forty-foot motor boat of open construction.

"Get up and take the wheel, Evarts," Tom. directed. "Get at work on your spark, Conlon, and I'll throw the drive-wheel over for you. Some of you men cast, off!"

In a very short time the "Morton" was going "put-put-put" away from the dock.

Tom, after seeing that everything was moving satisfactorily, turned around to look at the four men huddled astern.

"Don't any of you go to sleep," he urged. "A good part of our success depends on how well you all keep awake and use your eyes and ears."

That said, Tom Reade hastened forward, stationing himself close to Evarts, who had the steering wheel.

Some of the men astern began to talk.

"Silence, if you please," Tom called softly. "Don't talk except on matters of business. We want to be able to use our ears. Conlon, make your engine a little less noisy if you can."

Now Reade had leisure to wonder how matters had gone with Harry Hazelton.

"Of course that threatening figure Harry saw behind him was an imaginary one," Tom said to himself, but he felt uneasy nevertheless.

A few moments later Reade clutched at one of Evarts's arms.

"Did you hear that, man?" the young engineer demanded.

"Hear what?" Evarts wanted to know.

"It sounded like a yell out there yonder," Tom rejoined.

"Didn't hear it, Mr. Reade."

"There it goes again!" cried Tom, leaping up. "Some one is calling my name. It must be Harry Hazelton, and he must want help. Conlon, slam it to that engine of yours!"

CHAPTER III

VANISHING INTO THIN AIR

Left by himself Harry had stood, at first, motionless, or nearly so. He strained his hearing in trying to detect any unusual sound of the night, since it was so dark that vision would not aid him much.

There was nothing, however, but the mournful sighing of the wind and the lapping of the waves. It seemed to Hazelton that the wind was growing gradually more brisk and the waves larger, but he was not sure of that until the water commenced splashing across his shoes. The footway on the masonry became more slippery in consequence.

"With these rocks well wet down I wouldn't care much about having to run back to the land," muttered Harry, dryly. "However, I won't have to go back on my own feet. Tom will have the boat out here, and undoubtedly he will plan to have us both taken back to shore after we get through cruising around here. We should have brought the boat out in the first place."

A night bird screamed, then flapped its wings close to Harry's face in its flight past him. The young engineer saw the moving wings for an instant; then they vanished into the black beyond.

Farther out some other kind of bird screamed. The whole situation was a weird one, but Harry was no coward, though a less courageous youth would have found the situation hard on his nerves.

Still another night bird screamed, of some species with which Hazelton was wholly unacquainted. The cry was answered by some sort of strange call from the shore.

"It's a fine thing that I'm not superstitious," laughed the young engineer to himself, "or I'd surely feel cold chills chasing each other up and down my spine."

As it was, Harry shivered slightly, though not from fear. With the increasing wind it was growing chilly out there for one who could not warm himself with exercise.

"It's a long time, or it seems so," muttered the young engineer presently.
"Yet I'll wager that Tom is hustling himself and others on the very jump."

Again the call of a night bird, and once more a sound from shore seemed to answer it.

"Real birds?" wondered Hazelton, with a start of sudden curiosity. "Or have I been listening to human signals? If so, the signals can't cover any good or honest purpose."

That train of thought set him to listening more acutely than before. Yet, as no more calls reached his ears the attention of the young engineer soon began to flag.

The monotonous lapping of the waves against the stone wall, the constant splashing of water over the rocks and the steady blowing of the wind all tended to make the watcher feel drowsy.

"What on earth can be keeping good old Tom?" Harry wondered, more than once.

It would have been well, indeed, had Harry kept his eyes turned oftener toward the shore end of the wall. In that case he might more speedily have detected the wriggling, snake-like movement of the big negro moving toward him.

With great caution the huge prowler came onward, raising his head a few inches every now and then and listening. The black man's nostrils moved feverishly. He was using them, as a dog would have done, to scent any signs of alarm on the part of the human quarry that he was after.

At last Harry Hazelton turned sharply, for his own ears were attuned to the stillnesses of the western forests and his hearing was unusually acute. He had just heard a sound on the wall, not far away. Instantly the young engineer was on the alert.

Then his eyes, piercing the darkness, made out the crawling, dark form, which did not appear to be more than fifty feet away from him.

For a second or two Harry stared. But he knew there could be no snake as broad as this crawling figure appeared to be.

"Who's there?" Hazelton called quickly.

The writhing mass became still, flattening itself against the bed of rock.
Hazelton was not to be deceived, however.

"Who's there?" Harry repeated. "You had better talk up, my man!"

Still no sound. Harry started forward to investigate. His foot touched against a good sized fragment of rock left there by one of the masons.

Without delay Harry reached down, picking up the rock, which was rather more than half as large as his head.

Holding this in his right hand Harry advanced with still more confidence, for he felt himself to be armed. Hazelton had been a clever pitcher in his high school days and knew that he could make this fragment of rock land pretty close to where he wanted it to go.

"Who are you?" demanded Hazelton, once more, as he stepped cautiously forward. "No use in your keeping silent, my man. I see you and know that you're there. Moreover, I'm going to drag the truth out of you as to what you're doing out here on the wall at this hour of the night—-and to-night of all nights."

Still no answer; Harry went steadily forward, until he was within a dozen feet of the head of the flattened brute in human guise. Hazelton could now see every line of his adversary plainly, though he could not make out the fellow's face.

"You'd better get up and talk," warned Harry, poising the rock fragment for a throw. "If you don't you'll cast all the more suspicion upon yourself. For the last time, my man, who are you and what are you doing here?"

The huge black figure might have been a log for all the answer that came forth.

"All right, then; it's your own fault," Harry Hazelton continued calmly. "As you won't speak I'm going to crack the nut for myself. Your head will be the nut, and this rock I have in my hand shall be the hammer. I'm going to slam this rock on your head with all the force I've got, and I'm a good, straight thrower."

Yet, though Hazelton spoke with such confidence, he was far from meaning all he said. In the first place, he had no legal right, under the circumstances, to go as close to murder as it might be for him to throw the rock at the rascal's head. Moreover, Harry would hardly have exercised such a legal right, had he possessed it, without the strongest provocation.

From the black prowler came a sudden, fierce snort. It sounded altogether like defiance.

"Ho—-ho! You're finding your voice, are you, my man?" Hazelton jeered.
"Then talk up in time to save yourself!"

Instead the huge black man began to writhe forward.

"Stop that!" ordered Harry dangerously. He did not retreat from the writhing human thing, but he took better aim, noting that the black man was hatless and that his head offered a fair mark. "You're going to get hurt in just about a second more," he added.

Uttering another snort the bulky black sprang to his feet with surprising agility in one of his great size.

Harry now let his right hand fall back quickly. He was poising for the throw in earnest, for there could no longer be any doubt that the stranger was planning a deadly assault.

"Take it, then, since you want it!" snapped out Harry Hazelton. The fragment of rock left his hand, propelled with force and directed with accurate aim at the negro's face.

But the crafty black dodged just in time, at the same instant throwing up his hands.

Harry gasped as he saw his unknown assailant deftly catch the rock fragment as though it had been a base ball.

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" jeered the black, in a hoarse, rumbling voice.

He threw back his hand, gathering impetus for the cast. Hazelton could do nothing but throw himself on the defensive, planning to duplicate the black man's catch.

Then the stone came—-but it did not go high, instead, by a jerk of his wrist, the negro hurled it at Harry's right foot.

That granite-like fragment struck Hazelton's foot with full force.

"You—-you scoundrel!" groaned Harry, in an all but admiring gasp.

Like a flash he bent over, snatching up the fragment for his own use.

"Now, I'll slam you into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico!" cried the young engineer, vengefully, as he tried to straighten up.

A groan escaped him. His injured foot was paining him more than he had expected.

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" harshly jeered this mysterious, evil creature. The black man had halted as Harry prepared to throw, but he showed no sign of hesitation. Though he stood still, he thrust his repulsive, leering face forward, as though to offer that face as the best mark.

Harry found that he could not stand straight—-the pain in his injured foot was now too intense.

"Get back with you!" ordered Harry. "Get back if you don't want a heap worse than you gave me."

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" came the sneering laugh. Then the stranger reached out his hands as though to seize the youth.

"I guess I'll have to do it—-though not because I really want to hurt you!" muttered Harry ruefully.

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!"

There could be no question that the unknown was merely playing with him. Little as he liked to make the ugly throw Harry knew that he had to do it. When Hazelton had anything to do he believed in doing it well. So, putting all possible force into his throw, Harry let the rock fragment fly, and this time he was sure that his enemy would not be able to dodge in time.

Nor did the black man make any seeming effort to dodge.

Bump! Squarely in the black face the rock landed. Harry heard the sound and felt ill within himself. Yet the black man did not stagger. With a contemptuous snort he kicked the fragment of rock into the water as it landed at his feet.

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!"

For the first time Harry Hazelton felt positively dismayed. He saw the long, massive arms moving, looking like a powerful ape's arms. There could be no doubt that the unknown was ready for a spring.

Harry did not retreat. Where could he run to? Only a few yards could he go out towards the end of the wall. Then, if he wished to continue his flight he could only take to the water.

Only a glance was needed at the bulky, powerful frame of the unknown to make it appear certain that the latter could swim two rods to the young engineer's one.

Harry decided instantly to stand his ground and to make the most valiant fight possible on so slippery a footing as that presented by the top of the retaining wall.

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!"

It was as though the black unknown sought to terrify his intended victim with his repetitions of that harsh, discordant laugh. Harry braced himself and waited.

Then, off shoreward, came the sound of "put-put-put." The motor boat,
"Morton," was putting out at last.

"If I can keep this fellow busy for a few minutes, I can have all the help I want," flashed through Hazelton's mind. So he opened his mouth, raising his voice in a long, pent-up hail.

"R e—-e—-e a d e! To—-o—-o—-om R e a d e! Quick! Hazelton!"

"Ha, ha!" jeered the unknown black.

Then, suddenly, he leaped—-not unexpectedly, however, for Harry had been watching, cat-like.

The unknown threw out his arms, seeking to wrap them around Hazelton.

Not in vain had Harry been trained, season after season, on the athletic ground of one of the best high school elevens in the United States.

As the fellow leaped at him Harry crouched lower and went straight at his opponent.

Powerful as the stranger was he was no football player. Harry "tackled" him in the neatest possible way, then strove to rise with this great human being.

In the first instant it seemed to the young engineer as though he were trying to lift a mountain. His back felt as though it were snapping under a giant's task. Yet, but for one fact, Hazelton would have risen with his man, and would have hurled the mysterious one over into the waters of the gulf.

Just in the instant of victory Harry's injured right foot gave out under him. With a stifled groan he sank down just as he threw his opponent.

The black, instead of going into the water, landed hard on his back on the top of the wall. He was up again, however, before Hazelton could repress the pain in his foot and leap at the wretch.

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" came the tantalizing challenge.

"Put-put-put!" sounded over the water, coming nearer all the time.

"Re—-e—-e—-e a d e! T o m R e a d e! Help—-quick!" yelled Harry, lustily.

This, doubtless, was the first call that Tom, at the bow of the motor boat, thought he heard.

Uttering a snort, this time, instead of the laugh, the black sprang at his intended prey. Their heads met, with considerable force. Then, with a wild chuckle, the black wound his apelike arms around the young engineer.

"Reade! Tom Reade! Reade!" bellowed Hazelton lustily, as he tried desperately to free himself from the crushing embrace of the other.

* * * * *

Over the waters came the penetrating beam of a small search-light. The "Morton" was coming nearer all the time, but the ray did not yet reach with any great clearness the point where Harry Hazelton had been fighting for his life against his strange foe in the black night.

"Keep parallel with the wall, Evarts," Tom ordered, crisply. "Conlon, are you pushing the engines for all it's worth?"

"Yes, sir," came from the engine-tender. "This old craft isn't good for quite seven miles' an hour, anyway."

"There! Now I've picked up the part of the wall where there isn't any wall in sight just now," said Tom, wincing over his own bull. "Hazelton ought to be just this side of there."

"There's no one near the breach," replied Evarts.

"So I see," Reade admitted, in a tone of worriment. "Oh, well, Harry isn't such an infant as to be wiped out all in one moment."

"Where is Mr. Hazelton then?" inquired Evarts, as Tom swung the arc of the searchlight in broad curves.

"Great Scott! I wish I knew!" gasped Reade, his perplexity and his anxiety growing with every second. "There appears to be no one on top of the wall."

Evarts ran in within a few feet of the wall, on the shore-side of the breach.

"Shall I land you there, sir?" questioned the foreman.

"Presently," Tom nodded. "But now, back out a few feet and swing the boat's nose around so that I can make a search with this light." Evarts obeyed the order. Despite the smallness of the light, Reade was able to send the searching beam of light back nearly one-half of the way to shore. Nowhere was there any human being visible on the wall.

"Harry! Hazelton!" bawled Tom, with all the power in his lungs.

There was no answer.

"Jupiter! You'll have to land me, I reckon," quaked Tom Reade. "Drive her nose in—-gently. I'll be ready to jump."

"Be careful how you do jump," warned Evarts. "It's mighty slippery on that wall tonight."

Tom poised himself as the boat moved in close. Then he took a light leap, landing safely.

Here the young chief engineer again brought his pocket flash lamp into play. Closely he scanned the top of the wall all around where he knew he had left his chum.

But Harry was nowhere to be seen, nor, on the wet wall, could Tom find any signs of a scuffle, or any other sign that gave him a clue.

"Evarts, this is mighty mysterious!" groaned the young chief.

"Unless—-" hinted the foreman.

"Unless what?"

"Perhaps Mr. Hazelton ran along the walltop to the shore."

"He'd have hailed us, then, in passing, wouldn't he?" choked Tom Reade. "Besides, I had the light playing on this wall most of the way. If he had run back we would have seen him, even if he hadn't hailed. And he couldn't have run farther out to seaward. Evarts, I'm downright worried."

Tom Reade might indeed well be worried over the grewsome mysteries of this night of evil deeds.

CHAPTER IV

SOME ONE CALLS AGAIN

Half an hour later Tom Reade leaped ashore at the little pier.

"My orders, Mr. Reade."

"They're brief and concise," Tom rejoined. "You're to cruise the length of the wall, especially farther out from shore. Use your searchlight freely. Keep the wall so guarded that no rascal can slip out there, either over the wall or by boat, and do any damage. Mr. Evarts, the safety of the wall until daylight is your whole charge."

"Very good, sir. But I'm sure that nothing more will happen to the wall."

"If anything does it will be up to you, Mr. Evarts," Tom assured him grimly. "I'll hold you responsible."

"I won't let anything happen, Mr. Reade. And I hope you find Mr. Hazelton all right."

"He may be up at camp," Tom answered, though in his heart he did not believe it.

Had Harry escaped whatever danger had menaced him, Tom knew very well that his chum, after appealing for help, would by some means have signaled his subsequent safety.