g picture boys.

"Well,--I--er,--I--," stammered Blake. Somewhat to his own
surprise he did find himself harboring new suspicions against Mr.
Alcando, but they had never before taken this form. As for Joe, he
blushed to recall that he had, in the past, also been somewhat
suspicious of the Spaniard. But now the man's frank manner of
speaking had disarmed all that.

"Dynamite, eh!" exclaimed the captain. "I'd just like to see any
one try it. This canal is better guarded than you think, my
friend," and he looked meaningly at the other.

"Oh, I have no doubt that is so," was the quick response. "But it
seems such a simple matter for one to do a great damage to it.
Possibly the indifference to guarding it is but seeming only."

"That's what it is!" went on Captain Watson. "Dynamite! Huh! I'd
like to see someone try it!" He meant, of course, that he would
not like to see this done, but that was his sarcastic manner of
speaking.

"What do you think of him, anyhow?" asked Joe of Blake a little
later when they were putting away their cameras, having taken all
the views they wanted.

"I don't know what to say, Joe," was the slow answer. "I did think
there was something queer about Alcando, but I guess I was wrong.
It gave me a shock, though, to hear him speak so about the Canal."

"The same here. But he's a nice chap just the same, and he
certainly shows an interest in moving pictures."

"That's right. We're getting some good ones, too."

The work in Culebra Cut, though nearly finished, was still in such
a state of progress that many interesting films could be made of
it, and this the boys proposed to do, arranging to stay a week or
more at the place which, more than any other, had made trouble for
the canal builders.

"Well, it surely is a great piece of work!" exclaimed Blake, as he
and Joe, with Mr. Alcando and Captain Watson, went to the top of
Gold Hill one day. They were on the highest point of the small
mountain through which the cut had to be dug.

"It is a wonderful piece of work," the captain said, as Blake and
Joe packed up the cameras they had been using. "Think of it--a cut
nine miles long, with an average depth of one hundred and twenty
feet, and in some places the sides are five hundred feet above the
bottom, which is, at no point, less than three hundred feet in
width. A big pile of dirt had to be taken out of here, boys."

"Yes, and more dirt will have to be," said Mr. Alcando.

"What do you mea