Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone; Or, The Plot Against Uncle Sam

by G. Harvey Ralphson

THE SPOIL OF THE LOCKS.

At eleven o’clock that night the workmen employed at the locks, the spillway, and the barrier of the Gatun dam found that their lights were not working satisfactorily and sent word back to the electric department that something was amiss.

The electric department sent word back to the men in the excavations that the lights were all right so far as they were concerned, that they were doing their full duty efficiently, and that the men with the shovels, the dynamite and the dump cars might go chase themselves.

This expression of fact and permission did not make it any lighter at the workings, but the men kept on, in the intermittent showers of illumination, and grumbled while they excavated and piled in the concrete. At last, just before midnight, the incandescence did not come back to the globes, and the men gathered in groups to discuss the matter and express heated opinions of the efficiency of the men in charge of the lighting plant.

The workmen moved about here and there in the shadows and clambered like ants over the great bulk of the dam. No one looked to see that the men assembled in the workings all belonged there. At midnight four men who did not belong there entered the excavation which leads from the bottom of the lower lock to the sea-level channel into Limon Bay, which is a child of the Caribbean Sea.

These four men moved about as if accustomed to the situation, only now and then they halted and whispered together. Other men, workmen, were doing that, however, and so these four passed on up to the foot of the spillway without attracting attention.

Here they separated, one to the west, one to the east, where the locks are, and one to a position half way between the spillway and the west side of the locks. The fourth man remained near the foot of the spillway.

Due primarily to its size, Gatun dam has received, perhaps, more attention in the United States than is its due. There is nothing especially difficult or complicated about this dam, and many dams have been successfully built in this country to withstand much larger pressures and greater heads of water than the Gatun dam without being given one-quarter of the attention.

Gatun dam fills the opening between the hills at Gatun through which the Chagres river flows to the Caribbean Sea. It consists, if it may be regarded in the light of a finished production, of a water-tight center or core composed of sand and clay mixed in proper proportion and deposited hydraulically; that is by being pumped in.

On each side a wall of rock confines this core. The bulk of the dam rests on impermeable material of sufficient supporting power. The locks and spillway are considered a part of the dam.