Bert Wilson at Panama Part 9

"Only a little matter of a hundred thousand miles," exclaimed Tom. "Gee, these figures are enough to make your head ache. Everything is in thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions."

"Yes," said Bert, "it's simply inconceivable. We mention figures, but we can't really grasp what they mean. It seems like the work of giants, rather than men."

"Right you are," a.s.sented d.i.c.k. "Why, even the blast holes drilled for the dynamite, if put together, would stretch from New York to Philadelphia."

At the great Culebra Cut, where at one point the depth was over four hundred feet, the wonder grew. Twenty million pounds of dynamite had been used in this cut and the cost of the excavation was over eighty millions of dollars. Yet with such care and skill had this been managed that very few men had lost their lives; not as many as are killed in the erection of an ordinary office building in New York.

And here, at Culebra, the problem had been harder to solve than anywhere else. There had been enormous landslides, that made it necessary to do the work over and over again. Twenty-one million cubic yards of earth had fallen from the mountain side, in many cases covering the engines and shovels engaged in the work of excavation. One slide involved sixty-three acres. At another place, forty-seven acres moved entirely across the Ca.n.a.l at the rate of fourteen feet a day, and rose at one point to a height of thirty feet. Over twenty times, these avalanches came down the sides of the cut. It seemed as though Nature were angered at the attempts of man to change what she had ordained, and were determined to drive him to despair. But the attempts were renewed with dogged persistence, and now the course of the Ca.n.a.l had been fully protected, and baffled Nature could rage in vain. It was heart-breaking work, but when Uncle Sam puts his hand to the plough, he doesn't turn back. Science and pluck, working hand in hand with splendid audacity, had come out triumphant.

Part of the excavation had been made by hydraulic action. Where the ground was soft, tremendous streams of water played upon the banks, was.h.i.+ng the dirt away. In other sections, there were enormous steam shovels, some of them weighing ninety-five tons, and scooping up the earth, a carload at a time.

"Nice little toys," remarked d.i.c.k, as he gazed into the maw of one of them.

"Right you are," responded Bert, "but they're toys that only giants can play with."

On the third day of their trip, they reached the Pedro Miguel Locks, forty miles from the Atlantic. In its general features, it was patterned after those at Gatun. Here, the vessel, which had been sailing along at a height of eighty-five feet above sea level after it left Gatun, would begin to drop toward the Pacific. It would descend thirty feet, then sail across an artificial lake for a mile and a half, until it reached the Miraflores Locks, the last place where it would be halted on its trip to the Western Ocean. Here there were two chambers, each lowering the s.h.i.+p twenty-seven and a half feet, making a drop of fifty-five feet in all. From there, for a distance of eight miles, it would pa.s.s through a channel, five hundred feet wide and forty-five deep, until at last it reached the sea.

And now the whole stupendous plan lay before them as clear as crystal.

As in a panorama, they saw the vessel, as it left the Atlantic and prepared to climb the backbone of the continent. It would come up the Bay of Limon to the entrance of the Ca.n.a.l, and there the sailing craft would fold its wings, the liner would shut off steam. On the wide expanse of Gatun Lake they would again proceed under their own power.

Through the Ca.n.a.l proper they would be drawn by electric traction engines, running upon the walls. At Gatun, they would climb, by three successive steps, to a point eighty-five feet above sea level. Crossing Gatun Lake, they would pa.s.s through the Culebra Cut to the Pedro Miguel Locks. A downward jump of thirty feet here, another of fifty-five feet at the Mirafiores Locks, a level sail for eight miles more, and they would emerge on the broad bosom of the Pacific. Then the sails would be broken out, the engines begin to throb, and away to the western coast or Manila, or Australia, or China and j.a.pan. The dream of four hundred years would have become a glorious reality.

In ten hours, the largest steams.h.i.+p could ride in safety from ocean to ocean. The distance from New York to San Francis...o...b.. sea would be shortened by over nine thousand miles. Liverpool would be brought seven thousand miles nearer the Pacific Slope. From New York to Manila, five thousand miles were saved. The commercial supremacy of the sea would be taken from the maritime nations of Europe and put in the hands of the United States. That s.h.i.+ning strip of water, fifty miles in length, would prove the "path of empire," and mark a peaceful revolution in the history of the world.

"And it's time that we came into our own again," declared Bert, as, their trip finished, they sat on the veranda of the hotel at Colon. "Eighty years ago, our flag was to be found on every sea. But we've been so busy with our internal development that we've let the control of the ocean pa.s.s into the hands of others, especially England. It's a burning shame that most of our commerce is carried in English s.h.i.+ps. I hope that, now the Ca.n.a.l is ready for use, there'll be a big upbuilding of our merchant marine, and that it'll be no longer true that 'Britannia rules the waves.'"

"I think that the British already see the handwriting on the wall,"

remarked d.i.c.k. "Perhaps that explains their unwillingness to take part in the San Francisco Exposition. They've made a big fuss because we don't make our coastwise vessels pay any tolls for going through the Ca.n.a.l. But I think the real reason lies deeper than that."

"Germany and Russia are none too cordial, either, I notice," said Tom.

"When you come to think of it, we haven't many friends in Europe, anyway."

"No," mused Bert. "About the only real friend that we have over there is France. As a rule, she's been on pretty good terms with us, ever since she helped us in our Revolutionary War. We had a little sc.r.a.p with her on the sea, once, and we had to warn her to get out of Mexico, when she tried to back up Maximilian there. But our republican form of government appeals to her, and, on the whole, she likes us.

"But Russia feels a little sore, because she thinks we sympathized with j.a.pan in her recent war. And Germany has always kicked like a steer about our Monroe Doctrine. If she felt strong enough, she'd knock that doctrine into a c.o.c.ked hat. She wants to expand, to establish colonies for her surplus population. She's especially keen on getting into Brazil. But wherever she turns, she finds the Monroe Doctrine blocking her way. She says it isn't fair: it isn't reasonable; it isn't based on international law."

"Well, isn't she right?" asked Tom. "It's always seemed rather nervy to me, for us to say that no other power shall acquire territory in North or South America. By what right do we say so?"

"By no right at all," admitted Bert. "We fall back on the law of self-preservation. We've simply figured out that we want to keep the ocean between us and the nations of Europe. Otherwise, we'd have to keep an enormous standing army. If they had territory near by, where they could drill and recruit and establish food and coal depots, so as to be ready to attack us suddenly, we'd be on edge all the time. As it is, we can go to sleep nights, without any fear of finding the enemy in our backyard the next morning when we look out of the window."

"Well," remarked a Californian, named Allison, whose acquaintance they had recently made, and who now drew his chair nearer and joined in the conversation; "we don't need to worry about Europe. The real enemy lies in another direction." And he pointed toward Asia.

"You mean j.a.pan?" queried Bert.

"Exactly," was the answer.

"Aren't you California people a little daffy on the j.a.panese question?"

chaffed d.i.c.k.

"Not a bit of it," replied Allison, with marked emphasis. "As sure as you're alive, there's going to be a tremendous fight between j.a.pan and the United States. Just when it's coming, I don't know. But that it is coming, I haven't the slightest shadow of a doubt. I'd stake my life upon it."

His deep earnestness impressed the boys in spite of themselves.

"But why?" asked Tom. "There doesn't seem any real reason for bad blood between us, as far as I can see."

"Then, too, we opened up j.a.pan to modern civilization in 1859, and brought her into the family of nations," added d.i.c.k. "She's always professed the greatest friends.h.i.+p for us."

"'Professed,' yes," answered Allison, "but, for some time past, those professions have sounded hollow. There's the immigration problem.

There's the Magdalena Bay concession. There's the California school question and the alien land bill. Have you read of the ma.s.s meetings at Tokio, and the pa.s.sionate harangues against America? Wasn't that pretty near an ultimatum that the Viscount Chenda put before the Was.h.i.+ngton Government a little while ago? I tell you, gentlemen, that many a nation has been plunged into b.l.o.o.d.y war for reasons less than these."

"But, after all," objected Tom, "if anything of the kind threatens, we'll have time enough to see it coming, and get ready to meet it."

"Will we?" cried Allison. "Did the Russians have any warning, before the j.a.panese smashed their fleet at Port Arthur? Do you know that for two years past, her a.r.s.enals have been working night and day? With what object? When j.a.pan is ready, she will strike as the lightning strikes.

She may be ready now. Perhaps at this very moment, her fleet may be on the way to San Francisco."

In his excitement, he half rose from his chair, and his voice rang out like a clarion.

CHAPTER IX

THE TREACHEROUS BOG

Two days after their trip over the course of the Ca.n.a.l the three chums decided to spend a long day on an exploring expedition after their own heart. They resolved to go off early some fine morning on "their own hook" and see and do what pleased them best. Accordingly, they made all their plans, and, the night before the eventful day, laid in provisions for a "bang up" lunch for three.

They procured an old alarm clock and set it to go off at four o'clock in the morning. This done, they finished discussing every detail of the trip, and as soon as their excitement would let them, fell into a sound sleep.

It seemed to them that they had hardly laid their heads on the pillows when they were awakened by the strident whirring of the little sleep-killer, and sat up in bed yawning and rubbing their eyes.

"Good-night!" exclaimed Bert. "It isn't possible that it's really time to get up. It seems to me that I haven't been asleep more than ten minutes."

"Same here," yawned d.i.c.k. "I guess there must be something sleepy in this air. No wonder the natives are lazy, if they feel every morning the way I do now."

"Oh, what's the matter with you two lemons, anyway?" laughed Tom. "My private opinion, publicly expressed, is that you're both just plumb lazy.

But there's nothing like that about me. Just see how lively I feel,"

and to prove his a.s.sertion he grasp ed a pillow in each hand and landed them with fatal aim on the respective heads of the other two.

"Gee," exclaimed d.i.c.k, as he and Bert rose in righteous wrath preliminary to smothering Tom under an avalanche of bedclothes, "it's a lucky thing you don't feel any better than you do. In that case you'd probably be landing us with a couple of pieces of furniture."

"I'd like to do that, anyway," came Tom's m.u.f.fled voice from beneath the pile of pillows and blankets. "For Heaven's sake, let me up and quit stepping on my head."

Thus adjured, Bert and d.i.c.k released their victim, and after what looked like a miniature earthquake among the pile of things on the floor Tom emerged, very red in the face.

"That's a swell way to start the day, isn't it?" he protested in an injured tone. "Two minutes more of that and I'd have smothered, sure.

If you want to murder me, why don't you do it in a less painful manner?"

"Hush, my son," said d.i.c.k. "Who started it? Never start anything you can't finish, my boy."