The Young Engineers on the Gulf.
by H. Irving Hanc.o.c.k.
CHAPTER I
THE MYSTERY OF A BLACK NIGHT
"I wish I had brought my electric flash out here with me," muttered Harry Hazelton uneasily.
"I told you that you"d better do it," chuckled Tom Reade.
"But how could I know that the night would be pitch dark?" Harry demanded.
"I don"t know this gulf weather yet, and fifteen minutes ago the stars were out in full force. Now look at them!"
"How can I look at them?" demanded Tom, halting. "My flashlight won"t pierce the clouds."
Reade halted on his dark, dangerous footway, and Harry, just behind him, uttered a sigh of relief and halted also.
"I never was in such a place as this before."
"You"ve been in many a worse place, though," rejoined Tom. "I never heard you make half as much fuss, either."
"I think something must be wrong with my head," ventured Harry.
"Undoubtedly," Tom Reade agreed cheerily.
"Hear that water," Harry went on, in a voice scarcely less disconsolate than before.
"Of course," nodded Tom. "But the water can hardly be termed a surprise.
We both knew that the Gulf of Mexico is here. We saw it several times to-day."
The two young men stood on a narrow ledge of stone that jutted out of the water. This wall of stone was the first, outer or retaining wall of masonry---the first work of constructing a great breakwater. At high tide, this ledge was just fourteen inches above the level surface of the Gulf of Mexico, and at the time of the above conversation it was within twenty minutes of high tide. The top of this wall of masonry was thirty inches wide, which made but a narrow footway for the two youths who, on a pitch black night, were more than half a mile out from sh.o.r.e.
On a pleasant night, for a young man with a steady head, the top of this breakwater wall did not offer a troublesome footpath. In broad daylight hundreds of laborers and masons swarmed over it, working side by side, or on scows and dredges alongside.
"Wait, and I"ll show a light," volunteered Tom raising his foot-long flashlight.
Some seventy-five yards behind them a crawling snake-like figure flattened itself out on the top of the rock wall.
"Don"t show the light just yet," pleaded Harry. "It might only make me more dizzy."
The flattened figure behind them wriggled noiselessly along.
"Just listen to the water," continued Hazelton. "Tom, I"m half-inclined to think that the water is roughening."
"I believe it is," agreed Tom.
"Fine time we"ll have getting back, if a gale springs up from the southward," muttered Harry.
"See here, old fellow," interposed Tom vigorously, "you"re not up to concert pitch to-night. Now, I"ll tell you what I"ll do---first of all, what _you"ll_ do. You sit right down flat on the top of the wall. Then I"ll move on up forward and see what has been happening out there that should boom sh.o.r.eward with such a racket. You stay right here, and I"ll be back as soon as I"ve looked into the face of the mystery."
"What do you take me for?" Harry asked almost fiercely. "A baby? Or a cold-foot?"
"Nothing like it," answered Tom Reade with rea.s.suring positiveness.
"You"re out of sorts, to-night. Your head, or your nerves, or some thing, has gone back on you, and you walk through this blackness with half a notion that you"re going to walk over a precipice, or drop head-first into some danger. With such a feeling it would be cruelty to let you go forward, chum, and I"m not going to do it. I"ll go alone."
The crouching figure to the rear of the young engineers quivered as though this separation of the two engineers on this black night was a thing devoutly to be desired.
"You"re not going to do anything of the sort," retorted Harry Hazelton.
"I"m going forward with you. I"m going to stick to you. All I wanted was a minute in which to brace myself. I"ve had that minute. Now get forward with you. I"m on your heels!"
Tom Reade shrugged his shoulders slightly. However, he did not object or argue, for he realized that his chum was sensitive over any circ.u.mstance that seemed to point to sudden failure of his courage.
"Come along, then," urged Tom. "Wait just a second, though. I"ll flash the light ahead along the wall, to show you that it"s all there, and just where it lies."
A narrow beam of light shot ahead as Tom pressed the spring of his pocket flash lamp.
A weird enough scene the night betrayed. In perspective the wall ahead narrowed, until the two sides seemed to come to a point. Back of all was the thick curtain of black that had settled down over the gulf. A little farther out, too, the water seemed rougher. There would seem to be hardly a doubt that a gale was brewing.
"Shut that light off!" Hazelton commanded, fighting to repress a shudder.
"I can do better in the darkness. Now, go ahead, and I"ll follow."
Tom started, but he went slowly now, feeling that this pace was more suited to the condition of his chum"s nerves. Harry followed resolutely, though none but himself knew how much effort it took for him to keep on in the face of such a nameless yet terrible dread as now a.s.sailed him.
To the rear a bulky, hulking figure rose and stood erect. With the softest of steps this apparition of the night followed after them, until it stole along, ghost-like, just behind Hazelton. Then a huge arm was raised, threateningly, over Harry"s head.
At that particular moment, as though insensibly warned, Hazelton stopped, half-wheeling. In the next second Harry bounded back just out of reach of the descending arm, the hand of which held something. But in that backward spring Harry, in order to save himself from pitching into the water, was oblige to turn toward Reade.
"Tom!" exploded the young engineer. "Flash the light here quickly!"
In the instant, however, that Harry had sprung backward the figure had slipped noiselessly into the water to the left. As Reade wheeled about, throwing on the light, he let the ray fall in the water to the right of the wall. But no sign of the intruder appeared; the water had closed noiselessly over the now vanished figure.
"What"s the matter?" asked Reade, as he stood looking, then finally flashed his light over to the other side of the wall.
"I saw---" began Hazelton. Then changed to: "I thought---er---I saw---oh, nonsense! You"ll josh the life out of me!"
"Not I," Tom affirmed gravely, as a thrill of pity, for what he deemed his friend"s unfortunate "nervous condition," shook him. "Tell me what you saw, Harry."
"Why, I thought I saw a big fellow---a black man, too---right behind me, arm upraised, just ready to strike me."
"Well, where is he?" Tom demanded blankly, flashing the light on either side of the narrow wall-top. "See him anywhere now, chum?"
Harry didn"t. In fact, he hardly more than pretended to look. The thing that had been so real a moment before was now utterly invisible. Hazelton began to share his chum"s suspicion as to the utter breakdown of his nerves and powers of vision.
"It was nothing, of course," said Harry, shamefacedly, but Tom vigorously took the other side of the question.
"See here, Harry, it must have been something," insisted Reade. "You"re not dreaming, and you"re not crazy. It would take either one of those conditions to make you see something that didn"t really exist. No mere nervous tremor is going to make you see something as tall as a man, standing right over you, when no such thing exists."