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    The Young Engineers on the Gulf : Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater
    The Young Engineers on the Gulf : Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater
    The Young Engineers on the Gulf : Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater
    Ebook204 pages2 hours

    The Young Engineers on the Gulf : Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater

    By H. Irving Hancock

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    About this ebook

    HarrieIrving Hancock  was an American chemistand writer, mainly remembered as an author of children's literature andjuveniles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and as having written afictional depiction of a German invasion of the USA.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKrill Press
    Release dateFeb 14, 2016
    ISBN9781531205249
    The Young Engineers on the Gulf : Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater

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      Book preview

      The Young Engineers on the Gulf - H. Irving Hancock

      THE YOUNG ENGINEERS ON THE GULF : OR, THE DREAD MYSTERY OF THE MILLION DOLLAR BREAKWATER

      ..................

      H. Irving Hancock

      CLUE PUBLISHING

      Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.

      This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2016 by H. Irving Hancock

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      CHAPTER I

      CHAPTER II

      CHAPTER III

      CHAPTER IV

      CHAPTER V

      CHAPTER VI

      CHAPTER VII

      CHAPTER VIII

      CHAPTER IX

      CHAPTER X

      CHAPTER XI

      CHAPTER XII

      CHAPTER XIII

      CHAPTER XIV

      CHAPTER XV

      CHAPTER XVI

      CHAPTER XVII

      CHAPTER XVIII

      CHAPTER XIX

      CHAPTER XX

      CHAPTER XXI

      CHAPTER XXII

      CHAPTER XXIII

      CHAPTER XXIV

      The Young Engineers on the Gulf : Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater

      By

      H. Irving Hancock

      The Young Engineers on the Gulf : Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater

      Published by Clue Publishing

      New York City, NY

      First published circa 1922

      Copyright © Clue Publishing, 2015

      All rights reserved

      Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      About Clue Publishing

      Everyone loves a classic whodunit, and Clue Publishing is devoted to bringing them all to readers, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes stories to lesser known mysteries written by authors like Richard Marsh and Louis Tracy.

      CHAPTER I

      ..................

      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 shore.

      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 shoreward 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 reassuring 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 circumstance 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 assailed 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.

      Well, then, where is the fellow? Harry Hazelton demanded, helplessly, as he stared about. There isn’t any human being but ourselves in sight, either on the wall or in the water. Your light shows that.

      The light 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,

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