n?" asked the tug commander quickly, and rather
sharply.

"I mean that more slides are likely to occur; are they not?"

"Yes, worse luck!" growled the captain. "There have been two or
three small ones in the past few weeks, and the worst of it is
that they generally herald larger ones."

"Yes, that's what I meant," the Spaniard went on.

"And it's what we heard," spoke Blake. "We expect to get some
moving pictures of a big slide if one occurs."

"Not that we want it to," explained Joe quickly.

"I understand," the captain went on with a smile. "But if it _is_
going to happen you want to be here."

"Exactly," Blake said. "We want to show the people what a slide in
Culebra looks like, and what it means, in hard work, to get rid of
it."

"Well, it's hard work all right," the captain admitted, "though
now that the water is in, and we can use scows and dredges,
instead of railroad cars, we can get rid of the dirt easier. You
boys should have been here when the cut was being dug, before the
water was let in."

"I wish we had been," Blake said. "We could have gotten some dandy
pictures."

"That's what you could," went on the captain. "It was like looking
at a lot of ants through a magnifying glass. Big mouthfuls of dirt
were being bitten out of the hill by steam shovels, loaded on to
cars and the trains of cars were pulled twelve miles away to the
dumping ground. There the earth was disposed of, and back came the
trains for more. And with thousands of men working, blasts being
sent off every minute or so, the puffing of engines, the tooting
of whistles, the creaking of derricks and steam shovels--why it
was something worth seeing!"

"Sorry we missed it," Joe said. "But maybe we'll get some pictures
just as good."

"It won't be anything like that--not even if there's a big slide,"
the captain said, shaking his head doubtfully.

Though the Canal was practically finished, and open to some
vessels, there was much that yet remained to be done upon it, and
this work Blake and Joe, with Mr. Alcando to help them at the
cameras, filmed each day. Reel after reel of the sensitive
celluloid was exposed, packed in light-tight boxes and sent North
for development and printing. At times when they remained in
Culebra Cut, which they did for two weeks, instead of one, fresh
unexposed films were received from New York, being brought along
the Canal by Government boats, for, as I have explained, the boys
were semi-official ch