CHAPTER XVI.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE CANAL.
“Suppose you tell us what you know about Panama and the canal?” remarked Tubby to Rob as the three boys perched in the bow of the Caribbean, three days out, watching the flying fish as the vessel’s prow sent them scattering like coveys of birds from big patches of yellow gulf weed.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” supplemented Merritt, “I guess we won’t get much time to study books down there. Mr. Mainwaring said this morning that, after he had given the work a preliminary look-over, he was going to hunt for the source of that tributary of the Chagres that he thinks is responsible for the big floods every rainy season.”
“Well, I don’t suppose I know much more about it than you two fellows do,” rejoined Rob modestly, “but I’ve been reading up on it.”
Here he looked at Tubby, who had done nothing much on the steamer but consume three huge meals a day, with “snacks” in between, and amuse himself. One of these amusements had been stuffing some of those odd-looking pills known as “Pharaoh’s Serpents” into the captain’s pipe. Almost every boy can guess what happened when the glowing tobacco reached the “Serpents” and big, wriggly, writhing things began to climb out of the pipe bowl.
“Ach himmel, der sea serpent,” yelled the skipper, who was a German.
“Oh-h-h-h-h-h!” screamed a lot of ladies to whom he happened to be talking.
It was just at this juncture that the captain had caught sight of Tubby doubled up with laughter behind a ventilator. He chased and captured the fat youth, who then and there received a spanking for which he got no sympathy, even from his fellow Scouts. Except for spilling “sneezing powder” in the main dining room at dinner time and burning an old gentleman’s bald head by sun rays concentrated in a magnifying glass, Tubby had done nothing out of the way since.
“Fire away. Unload your knowledge,” ordered Merritt, luxuriously stretching out under the awning.
“All right, here goes. To begin at the beginning, of course you know that Panama was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1502.”