The Young Engineers on the Gulf | Page 3

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