The Young Engineers on the Gulf | Page 5

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