The Moving Picture Boys at Panama: Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal

JOE’S PLIGHT

From outside the cabin of the tug came a confused series of sounds.  First there was the swish and pelt of the rain, varied as the wind blew the sheets of water across the deck.  But, above it all, was a deep, ominous note—­a grinding, crushing noise, as of giant rocks piling one on top of the other, smashing to powder between them the lighter stones.

“What will happen?” asked Mr. Alcando, as he watched Joe and Blake making ready.  They seemed to work mechanically—­slipping into rubber boots and rain coats, and, all the while, seeing that the cameras and films were in readiness.  They had brought some waterproof boxes to be used in case of rain—­some they had found of service during the flood on the Mississippi.

“No one knows what will happen,” said Blake grimly.  “But we’re going to get some pictures before too much happens.”

“Out there?” asked the Spaniard, with a motion of his hand toward the side of the big hill through which the Canal had been cut.

“Out there—­of course!” cried Joe.  “We can’t get moving pictures of the slide in here.”

He did not intend to speak shortly, but it sounded so in the stress of his hurry.

“Then I’m coming!” said Mr. Alcando quietly.  “If I’m to do this sort of work in the jungle, along our railroad, I’ll need to have my nerve stiffened.”

“This will stiffen it all right,” returned Blake, sternly, as a louder sound from without told of a larger mass of the earth sliding into the waters of the Canal, whence the drift had been excavated with so much labor.

It was a bad slide—­the worst in the history of the undertaking—­and the limit of it was not reached when Joe and Blake, with their cameras and spare boxes of film, went out on deck.

The brown-red earth, the great rocks and the little stones, masses of gravel, shale, schist, cobbles, fine sand—­all in one intermingled mass was slipping, sliding, rolling, tumbling, falling and fairly leaping down the side of Gold Hill.

“Come on!” cried Blake to Joe.

“I’m with you,” was the reply.

“And I, also,” said Mr. Alcando with set teeth.

Fortunately for them the tug was tied to a temporary dock on the side of the hill where the slide had started, so they did not have to take a boat across, but could at once start for the scene of the disaster.

“We may not be here when you come back!” called Captain Wiltsey after the boys.

“Why not?” asked Joe.

“I may have to go above or below.  I don’t want to take any chances of being caught by a blockade.”

“All right.  We’ll find you wherever you are,” said Blake.

As yet the mass of slipping and sliding earth was falling into the waters of the Canal some distance from the moored tug.  But there was no telling when the slide might take in a larger area, and extend both east and west.

Up a rude trail ran Blake and Joe, making their way toward where the movement of earth was most pronounced.  The light was not very good on account of the rain, but they slipped into the cameras the most sensitive film, to insure good pictures even when light conditions were most unsatisfactory.

The moving picture boys paused for only a glance behind them.  They had heard the emergency orders being given.  Soon they would be flashed along the whole length of the Canal, bringing to the scene the scows, the dredges, the centrifugal pumps—­the men and the machinery that would tear out the earth that had no right to be where it had slid.

Then, seeing that the work of remedying the accident was under way, almost as soon as the accident had occurred, Blake and Joe, followed by Mr. Alcando, hurried on through the rain, up to their ankles in red mud, for the rain was heavy.  It was this same rain that had so loosened the earth that the slide was caused.

“Here’s a good place!” cried Blake, as he came to a little eminence that gave a good view of the slipping, sliding earth and stones.

“I’ll go on a little farther,” said Joe.  “We’ll get views from two different places.”

“What can I do?” asked the Spaniard, anxious not only to help his friends, but to learn as much as he could of how moving pictures are taken under adverse circumstances.

“You stay with Blake,” suggested Joe.  “I’ve got the little camera and I can handle that, and my extra films, alone and with ease.  Stay with Blake.”

It was well the Spaniard did.

With a rush and roar, a grinding, crashing sound a large mass of earth, greater in extent than any that had preceded, slipped from the side of the hill.

“Oh, what a picture this will make!” cried Blake, enthusiastically.

He had his camera in place, and was grinding away at the crank, Mr. Alcando standing ready to assist when necessary.

“Take her a while,” suggested Blake, who was “winded” from his run, and carrying the heavy apparatus.

The big portion of the slide seemed to have subsided, at least momentarily.  Blake gave a look toward where Joe had gone.  At that moment, with a roar like a blast of dynamite a whole section of the hill seemed to slip away and then, with a grinding crash the slanting earth on which Joe stood, and where he had planted the tripod of his camera, went out from under him.

Joe and his camera disappeared from sight.