THE BIG SLIDE

For a short space there was a calm that seemed more thrilling than
the wildest confusion. It took a few seconds for the rush of water
to reach the _Bohio_, and when it did the tug began to sway and
tug at the mooring cables, for they had not yet been cast off to
enable it to be towed.

Blake rushed toward the lower cabin.

"Where are you going?" cried Joe.

"To get the cameras," replied his chum, not pausing. "This is a
chance we mustn't miss."

"But we must escape! We must look to ourselves!" shouted Mr.
Alcando. "This is not time for making moving pictures."

"We've got to make it this time!" Joe said, falling in with Blake.
"You'll find you've got to make moving pictures when you _can_,
not when you _want_ to!"

To do justice to Mr. Alcando he was not a coward, but this was
very unusual for him, to make pictures in the face of a great
danger--to stand calmly with a camera, turning the crank and
getting view after view on the strip of celluloid film, while a
flood of water rushed down on you. It was something he never
dreamed of.

But he was not a "quitter," which word, though objectionable as
slang, is most satisfactorily descriptive.

"I'll help!" the young Spaniard cried, as he followed Blake and
Joe down to where the cameras and films were kept.

On came the rush of water, released by the accidental opening of
the upper lock gates before the lower ones were closed. The waters
of Gatun Lake were rushing to regain the freedom denied them by
the building of the locks.

But they were not to have their own way for long. Even this
emergency, great as it was, unlikely as it was to happen, had been
foreseen by those who built the Canal.

"The dam! Swing over the emergency dam!" came the cry.

The _Bohio_ was now straining and pulling at her cables.
Fortunately they were long enough to enable her to rise on the
flood of the rushing water, or she might have been held down, and
so overwhelmed. But she rose like a cork, though she plunged and
swayed under the influence of the terrible current, which was like
a mill race.

"Use both cameras!" cried Blake, as he and Joe each came on deck
bearing one, while Mr. Alcando followed with spare reels of film.
"We'll both take pictures," Blake went on. "One set may be
spoiled!"

Then he and his chum, setting up their cameras on the tripods,
aimed the lenses at the advancing flood, at the swung-back gates
and at the men on top of the concrete wa