Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone: or, The Plot Against Uncle Sam

“Where did you leave them?”

“I stopped at the old house,” began the other again, “and remained there only a few minutes. Then I went on toward the Culebra cut and came upon a friend who told me what had taken place.”

“Well! Well! Well!”

“The boys stopped at the cut, this side of the high point, and were there accosted by Gostel. Oh, you don’t know Gostel?”

“No, no,” was the impatient reply. “Who the dickens is Gostel?”

“He is a spy, a Jap who has been hanging about the Isthmus ever since the beginning of the work.”

Ned was thinking fast. This might mean something tangible. He had never heard of Gostel before.

“Well, what of Gostel?” he asked.

“He talked with the boys for a time and invited them to become his guests for the night. He referred them to Lieutenant Gordon. I got it from my friend who heard all their talk.”

“And they went away with him?”

Ned’s voice was harsh and high, and the boys in the cottage were heard moving about, as if awakened by his voice.

“No, they didn’t go away with him. They became suspicious of him, and when he went for his car they ran away into the jungle. A mad thing to do. A crazy thing for boys to do, for strangers. There is death in the jungle.”

“And why didn’t you go in after them?” asked Ned.

“What could I do alone?” asked the other, with a little shiver of apprehension.

“If you know the country – ”

Gastong interrupted with a gesture of impatience.

“Knowing the country couldn’t help me, not with Gostel and his men trailing into the jungle after the boys.”

There was a new fear creeping into Ned’s heart, and he was beginning to realize that there are perils more to be dreaded than the perils of the jungles.

“How many went in?” asked Ned, in a moment.

“Oh, half a dozen – I don’t know. Some one must go for help. Gostel will kill the boys. I should think that after the experiences of the afternoon – ”

“I am ready to go this minute,” Ned said.

“Oh, but you must have torches, and guns, and stand ready to fight against wild beasts as well as against men. There are jaguars in there, and boas – serpents ten yards in length. Natives have been killed by jaguars within the month.”

“Jaguars rarely come as far north as this,” Ned said, “and your serpents are not dangerous,” but the other insisted that there were both jaguars and boas in the jungle.

“This man Gostel may have gone to the rescue of the boys,” suggested Ned.

Gastong laughed weakly.

“You don’t know him,” he said. “I tell you he is a spy, a Japanese spy, watching every inch of the canal as it is excavated. He is in the pay of hostile interests, and will work you all a mischief. He knew before you arrived that you were coming.”

“How do you know that?” demanded Ned.

Gastong’s replies to the question were not satisfactory, and so Ned gave over questioning him. The sleeping boys were aroused and in ten minutes, just as a faint tint of day came into the east, they were away to the jungle – taking the way to Gatun at first, as the thicket they sought was far to the southeast of that city.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE KILL IN THE JUNGLE

It was growing darker every minute in the jungle, for there were now fleecy clouds in the sky, and the moon was not always in sight. Following Jimmie’s statement that they were lost, the boys stood stock still in a dense thicket and tried once more to get their bearings.

“We’ve got something figured out wrong,” Peter said.

“I don’t see how we have,” Jimmie insisted. “See here! That is the moon up there? What?”

“Looks like it.”

“Then it’s got lost,” Jimmie continued. “Ever stand behind the scenes in a theatre and hold a moon up on a stick?”

“Never did.”

“Well, I did, on the Bowery, once, and I got so interested in what was goin’ on in front that the moon set in the east. That’s what’s the matter with this moon. Some – ”

“There ain’t no supe holding up this moon on a stick.”

“Then they’ve moved the Panama canal,” insisted Jimmie. “If they hadn’t, we would have come to the cut a long time ago. That moon is supposed to be in the south. It ought to be.”

“Perhaps a little west of south.”

“Well, we crossed over the ditch down here, didn’t we, and struck into the jungle from the west side of the Culebra cut?”

“Of course we did.”

“Then if we keep the moon in the south, on our right, we’ll come back to the cut?”

“Sure. Anyway, we ought to.”

“Well, Old Top, we’ve been walkin’ for the last two hours with the moon on our right, and we haven’t got anywhere, have we? You don’t see no lights ahead of us, do you?”

There were no signs of the big cut. The great lights which blazed over the workings were not to be seen. The noises of the digging, the dynamiting, the pounding of the steam shovels, the nervous tooting of the dirt trains, might have been a thousand miles away.

“You’ve got to show me,” Peter said, after studying over the matter for a moment. “That moon isn’t on no stick on a Bowery stage. It is there in the south, where it belongs, and if we continue to keep it on our right we’ll come to the canal in time. We are farther away than we thought for.”

They struggled on through the jungle for another half hour, and then stopped while Jimmie looked reproachfully at the moon.

“I’d like to know what kind of a country this is, anyway,” he grumbled. “I never saw the moon get off on a tear before.”

“Except when you had it on the end of a stick,” said Peter, with a noise which was intended for a laugh, but which sounded more like a sigh of disgust.