A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! Read Free

asked.
    “Sand.” One-eyed Conro spat a globe of tobacco into the darkness. “Still sand, sand. Loose at the top so Mr. Washington has dropped the pressure so she won’t blow, so now there’s plenty of water at the bottom and all the pumps are working.”
    “‘Tis the air pressure you see,” Fighting Jack explained to Drigg as though the messenger were inter-ested, which he was not. “We’re out under’t’ocean here with ten, twenty fathoms of water over our heads and that water trying to push down through the sand and get’t‘us all the time, you see. So we raise the air pressure to keep it out. But seeing as how this tunnel is thirty feet high there is a difference in the pressure from top to bottom and that’s a problem. When we raise the pressure to keep things all nice at’t’top, why then the water seeps in at’t‘bottom where the pressure is lower and we’re like’t’swim. But, mind you, if we was to raise the pressure so the water is kept out at’t‘bottom why then there is too much pressure at’t’top and there is a possibility of blowing a hole right through to the ocean bottom and letting all the wa-ters of the world down upon our heads. But don’t you worry about it.”
    Drigg could do nothing else. He found, that for some inexplicable reason his hands were shaking so that he had to grip the chain about his wrist tightly so it did not rattle. All too soon the train began to slow and the end of the tunnel appeared clearly ahead. A hulking metal shield that sealed off the workers from the virgin earth outside and enabled them to attack it through door-like openings that pierced the steel. Drills were at work above, whining and grumbling, while mechanical shovels below dug at the displaced muck and loaded it into the waiting wagons. The scene appeared dis-organized and frenzied, but even to Drigg’s untutored eye it was quickly apparent that work was going for-ward in an orderly and efficient manner. Fighting Jack climbed down and Drigg followed him, over to the shield and up a flight of metal stairs to one of the openings.
    “Stay here,” the ganger ordered. “I’ll bring him out.”
    Drigg had not the slightest desire to go a step farther and wondered at his loyalty to the company that had brought him this far. Close feet away from him was the bare face of the soil through which the tunnel was being driven.
    Gray sand and hard clay. The shovels ripped into it and dropped it down to the waiting machines below. There was something sinister and frightening about the entire oper-ation and Drigg tore his gaze away to follow Fighting Jack who was talk-ing to a tall man in khaki wearing high-laced engineer’s boots. Only when he turned and Drigg saw that classical nose in profile did he recog-nize Captain Augustine Washington.
    He had seen him before only in the offices and at Board meetings and had not associated that well-dressed gentleman with this burly engineer. But of course, no toppers here…
    It was something between a shout and a scream and everyone looked in the same direction at the same in-stant. One of the navvies was pointing at the face of dark sand before him that was puckering away from the shield.
    “Blowout!” someone shouted and Drigg had no idea what it meant ex-cept he knew something terrible was happening. The scene was rapid, confused, with men doing things and all the time the sand was moving away until suddenly a hole a good two feet wide appeared with a great sound like an immense whistle. A wind pulled at Drigg and his ears hurt and to his horror he felt himself being drawn towards that gaping mouth.
    He clung to the metal in pet-rified terror as he watched strong boards being lifted from the shield by that wind and being sucked for-ward, to splinter and break and van-ish into oblivion.
    A navvy stumbled forward, lean-ing back against the suction, holding a bale of straw up high in his strong arms. It was Fighting Jack, strug-gling against the thing that had