Bert Wilson at Panama Part 8

"But have you got any money to take you there?"

"No. You glot money. Me play back," and he beamed on them blandly.

The boys looked helplessly at each other.

"How nice," murmured Tom.

"Well, of all the nerve," exclaimed d.i.c.k.

"Me glo with you," reiterated the Chinaman, kindly but firmly; and the benevolence of his smile was beautiful to see.

The bewilderment in Bert's face was too much for the others, and they burst into a roar of laughter.

"No use, Bert," said d.i.c.k, as soon as he could speak. "He's got the Indian sign on us, and we might as well give in."

"No," echoed Tom, "there's no getting away from that smile. If I had it, I could borrow money from the Bank of England."

"I throw up my hands," responded Bert. "He's adopted us, and that's all there is about it. We'll take him along as handy man, till he gets to his 'flends in Panama.'"

They put him to work at once, getting ready the baggage, and when this was completed, they sought out Melton to say good-bye. They wrung his hand until he laughingly protested that they wanted to cripple him.

"We'll never forget you, never," they declared with fervent sincerity.

"Same here," he replied with equal warmth, "and some day I hope to see you on my ranch. I'd like to show you what is meant by a Western welcome."

"Will we? You bet. Just watch us," came in chorus, and then they reluctantly tore themselves away from the great hearted specimen of Nature's n.o.blemen, whose place in their hearts was secure for all time.

"Panama, after all," exulted d.i.c.k, as they stood on the station platform.

"Yes," chimed in Tom, "they couldn't cheat us out of it."

"The quickest route to the coast for us," added Bert, "and then the rest of the way by boat. I'm wild to set my feet once more beneath the Stars and Stripes."

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT Ca.n.a.l

On a glorious afternoon, a few days later, the boys sat on the upper deck of the liner, as it drew near the city of Colon, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama. With the quick rebound of youth, they had wholly recovered from the strain of the preceding days, and were looking forward with the keenest zest, to the opening of the great ca.n.a.l, now only two weeks distant. They gazed with interest at the Toro lighthouse, as the steamer left the gleaming waters of the Caribbean Sea, and threaded its way up the Bay of Limon to Cristobal, the port of Colon.

"And to think," d.i.c.k was saying, "that it's four hundred years almost to a day, since the isthmus was discovered, and in all that time they never cut it through. To cover that distance of forty-nine miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific, s.h.i.+ps have sailed ten thousand, five hundred miles. It almost seems like a reflection on the intelligence of the world, doesn't it?"

"It surely does," a.s.serted Bert, "and yet it wasn't altogether a matter of intelligence, but of ways and means. In every century since then, lots of people have seen the advantages of a ca.n.a.l, but they've been staggered, when they came to count the cost. It's easy enough to talk of cutting through mountains and building giant dams and changing the course of rivers. But it's a long jump from theory to performance, and they've all wilted until your Uncle Samuel took up the job. Even France, the most scientific nation in Europe, gave it up after she'd spent two hundred million dollars."

"It's a big feather in our cap," said Tom--"the very biggest thing that has happened in the way of engineering, since this old earth began. It's the eighth wonder of the world. The building of the pyramids was child's play, compared to the problems our people have had to meet. But we've met them--health problems, labor problems, political problems, mechanical problems--met and solved them all. The American Eagle has certainly got a right to scream."

And their enthusiasm for the American Eagle grew with every hour that pa.s.sed, after they drew up to the docks and went ash.o.r.e. Everywhere there were evidences of thrift and progress and law and order, to be seen nowhere else in Central or South America. After the slovenly towns and cities of Mexico, it was refres.h.i.+ng to note the contrast. For five miles on either side of the ca.n.a.l--the Ca.n.a.l Zone--it was United States Territory. From being the abode of fever and pestilence, it had been transformed into one of the healthiest places in the world. Mosquitoes had been exterminated and the dreaded scourge of "Yellow Jack" wiped out completely. It was a cosmopolitan district, where all the nations of the world met together and all cla.s.ses were to be found, from the highest to the lowest. But over this mixed and often turbulent population, the civil and military arms of the United States, ruled with such strength and wisdom, as to make it a model for the world's imitation. The city was bright, clean, animated, abounding in amus.e.m.e.nts and diversions; but lawlessness and disorder were unsparingly repressed. The boys were delighted at the novelty of what they saw and heard, and it was late when they went to their rooms, with an eager antic.i.p.ation of all that awaited them on their trip across the isthmus.

For this trip from end to end of the ca.n.a.l was one of the most cherished features of their general plan. They wanted to study it at their leisure--the dams, the locks, the gates, the lakes, the feeders, the spillways, the attractions--the thousand and one things that made it the marvel of the twentieth century. And they vowed to themselves that what their eyes did not take in would not be worth seeing.

Colon, itself, held them for two more days, and during that time they lost one of their party. Wah Lee--for that they had discovered to be their Chinaman's name--had justified his statement that he had "flends in Panama." They had rather suspected that these alleged friends resembled the mythical Mrs. Harris, whose chief claim to fame was that "there wasn't no such person." They were agreeably surprised, therefore, when, before they had been twenty-four hours in the city, he told them that, through one of his "flends," he had found employment in the household of a wealthy j.a.panese residing in the suburbs. He would have gladly stayed with the boys, to whom he had become greatly attached. But although they were fond of him, and got a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt from his quaint ways, they had really no need of him, and he was a clog on their freedom of movement. They wanted to be footloose--to go where they pleased and when they pleased--and they were glad to learn that he was so well provided for.

"Me clome and slee you melly times," he a.s.sured them, benignantly.

"Sure thing, old boy," answered Tom. "We're always glad to see you."

"Me play you back," said Wab Lee.

"Pay back nothing," responded Bert. "You don't owe us anything. You've worked your pa.s.sage, all right."

"Me play you back," he repeated, as calmly as though they had not protested, and pattered off, after including them all in his irresistible smile.

"And he will," affirmed d.i.c.k, despairingly. "We're just clay in the hands of the potter, when we come up against that old heathen. If he says he'll pay you back, paid back you'll be, as surely as my name is d.i.c.k Trent."

Which proved to be true enough, although the payment was made in different coin and in an other fas.h.i.+on than they dreamed of at the moment.

Two days later, bright and early they took the train on the little railroad that runs from Colon to Panama. Their first stop was to be at the Gatun Dam and Locks, the mightiest structure of its kind in the world.

As they came in sight of it, the boys gasped in amazement and admiration.

What they had read about it in cold type, had utterly failed to give them an adequate idea of the reality. Here was a work that might have been hammered out by Thor. There were the mighty gates, weighing each, from three hundred to six hundred tons. The locks each had four gates, seven feet thick and from forty-seven to seventy-nine feet high. The gates were operated by electricity and open or shut in less than two minutes, and absolutely without noise.

In these locks were three chambers, lower, middle and upper. Each was a thousand feet Long, one hundred and ten feet wide and eighty-one feet deep. As the vessel enters the lower chamber, it finds there a depth of over forty feet. The gate is closed and the water pours in, lifting the vessel as it rises. In fifteen minutes, the water rises over twenty-eight feet. Now the s.h.i.+p has reached the middle chamber, and again the gates are closed and the process repeated. The upper chamber is the last stage, and then the vessel reaches the artificial lake of Gatum. It has climbed eighty-five feet in about ninety minutes.

"Just like climbing a flight of stairs," exclaimed d.i.c.k.

"Precisely," said Bert. "Where a train climbs a mountain by a steady grade, the vessel leaps up to the top in three jumps."

"Think of trying to lift one of those enormous vessels with a derrick or a crane," murmured Tom; "and yet how gently and easily the water does it by pus.h.i.+ng up from underneath."

"Look at the width of those concrete walls," pointed Bert. "Fifty-two feet thick!

"Well, twenty-five million dollars will do a lot, and I've read that it cost that much for these locks alone. And that's only a fraction of the entire work."

At every turn, they came across something that evoked their wonder and admiration. Most of the figures and statistics connected with the colossal work they were already familiar with, but the information thus gained was, in a certain sense, hazy and unreal. It was seen through the mirage of distance, and not until their eyes actually saw the work in course of construction, did the knowledge lying in their minds, take a sharp and clearly cut outline.

As they moved about the dam, they came in contact with many of the engineers connected with the work. These were picked men, Americans like themselves, and of the very highest cla.s.s of skilled engineers. They were glad to meet the young fellows from the States--"G.o.d's country," as they named it to themselves, in moments of homesickness--and the intelligent interest of the boys, in marked contrast to many of the "fool questions" put to them by the general run of tourists, made them eager to impart to them all they wanted to know. They grew "chummy" at once, and by the time the boys had spent a half a day in their inspection, they knew more about it than they would have gained in a month of reading.

Among other things, they learned that the locks were the greatest reinforced concrete structure in the world. They had been built in sections, thirty-six feet long, and these had been joined together so as to make one gigantic rock, thirty-five hundred feet long and three hundred and eighty-four feet wide. This reached down fifty feet under tide, and towered one hundred and fifteen feet above the level of the sea. The concrete necessary was brought in barges that if strung along in one tow would have stretched from Colon to the southern coast of the United States, a distance of fifteen hundred miles. Great ma.s.ses of steel were first erected, and then the concrete was poured into these by giant mixers.

The wall at the west wing held back the waters of the Chagres River.

This was allowed to spread out into a lake, covering nearly two hundred square miles, at a level of eighty-seven feet. From this the water was drawn to feed the locks, and even in the dryest season would prove sufficient for that purpose.

Then there was the great spillway, in the hill that forms part of Gatun Dam. Here one hundred and forty thousand cubic feet of water can be discharged every second. The waters made a magnificent picture as they poured through the gates. As d.i.c.k remarked, it was "an abridged edition of Niagara Falls." At the east of the spillway, was the power plant, where the water, dropping seventy-five feet, developed enough electric power and light to operate the ca.n.a.l from end to end.

At Bohio, the southern end of Gatun Lake, they came to the place where the ca.n.a.l enters the foothills of the mountain range. Up to this point, there had been but little digging, but here the real work of excavation had begun. The earth and rock that had to be removed here was equal to that involved in cutting a ditch across the United States, ten feet deep and fifty-five feet wide. The dirt would load a train that reached four times around the earth.