aracters now.

Mr. Alcando was rapidly becoming expert in handling a moving
picture camera, and often he went out alone to film some simple
scene.

"I wonder how our films are coming out?" asked Blake one day,
after a fresh supply Of reels had been received. "We haven't heard
whether Mr. Hadley likes our work or not?"

"Hard to tell," Joe responded. But they knew a few days later, for
a letter came praising most highly the work of the boys and,
incidentally, that of Mr. Alcando.

"You are doing fine!" Mr. Hadley wrote. "Keep it up. The pictures
will make a sensation. Don't forget to film the slide if one
occurs."

"Of course we'll get that," Joe said, as he looked up at the
frowning sides of Culebra Cut. "Only it doesn't seem as if one was
going to happen while we're here."

"I hope it never does," declared Captain Watson, solemnly.

As the boys wanted to make pictures along the whole length of the
Canal, they decided to go on through the Pedro Miguel and
Miraflores locks, to the Pacific Ocean, thus making a complete
trip and then come back to Culebra. Of course no one could tell
when a slide would occur, and they had to take chances of filming
it.

Their trip to Pedro Miguel was devoid of incident. At those locks,
instead of "going up stairs" they went down, the level gradually
falling so their boat came nearer to the surface of the Pacific. A
mile and a half farther on they would reach Miraflores.

The tug had approached the central pier, to which it was tied,
awaiting the services of the electrical locomotives, when back of
them came a steamer, one of the first foreign vessels to apply to
make the trip through the Isthmus.

"That fellow is coming a little too close to me for comfort,"
Captain Watson observed as he watched the approaching vessel.

Blake and Joe, who were standing near the commander at the pilot
house, saw Mr. Alcando come up the companionway and stand on deck,
staring at the big steamer. A little breeze, succeeding a dead
calm, ruffled a flag at the stern of the steamer, and the boys saw
the Brazilian colors flutter in the wind. At the same moment Mr.
Alcando waved his hand, seemingly to someone on the steamer's
deck.

"Look out where you're going!" suddenly yelled Captain Watson.
Hardly had he shouted than the steamer veered quickly to one side,
and then came a crash as the tug heeled over, grinding against the
concrete side of the central pier.

"We're being crushed!" yelled Blak