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

by G. Harvey Ralphson

The intruder appeared to be listening for some sound within. Now and then he bent his head forward toward the door, and once, when Jimmie snorted out in his sleep, he darted a hand toward his hip, as if reaching for a weapon.

“His Nobbs, or his substitute, has arrived,” thought Ned.

After a moment the man left the porch, closing the outer door carefully behind him. Ned was out of bed in an instant, following on after him. When he gained the porch, the intruder was turning the corner of the house.

Fearful of being seen, Ned crouched in a dark corner of the porch and waited. He could hear the fellow moving about, but could not see him, as he kept away from the front of the cottage.

The situation did not change for five minutes. The unwelcome visitor was still moving about outside and Ned was waiting for some decisive move to be made. The cottage did not rest on the knoll itself, but was set up on blocks a foot or more in height, and before long the boy heard sounds which indicated that the man he was watching was creeping in under the floor.

Waiting only long enough to make sure of this, Ned left the porch and hid himself in the jungle, which, on the south, came to within a few feet of the wall. The fellow was indeed under the house, as the boy knew by the sounds he made. It was perfectly dark under there, so his movements could not be observed.

In five minutes more the fellow backed out and arose to his feet. Then Ned saw that he held something in his right hand which looked like a fuse. It seemed that it was the man’s benevolent idea to deprive the jungle of the society of the boys by blowing up their cottage.

Ned’s first impulse was to shoot the fellow where he stood. He had no doubt that the fellow had put enough explosive under the floor to kill every person in it. That would be murder, and the boy’s impulse was to deal out to the ruffian the fate of a murderer.

But he did not fire, for the intruder had not yet lighted the fuse. He stood for a moment with the end in his hand and then moved toward that part of the jungle where Ned was concealed. The boy moved cautiously aside, but even then, as the man crouched down in the vines, he could have touched him with a hand by crawling a yard to the front.

Deliberately the fellow lighted a match and applied it to the fuse. The end of the cord brightened for an instant and then became black again.