Newspaper Page Text
1
/
I
I
t
The Story That Amazed All
Europe—A Vivid Picture of
the Future, and a Novel of
Love, Adventure and Gigan
tic Enterprises—Begin It To
day and It Will Hold Your
Interest Until the End.
(Tram the German of Bernhird Keflermann—
German version. Copyrighted, 1913, by tt.
Fischer, Verlag, Berlin. English translation and
omnia la tion by Copyrighted, 1913, by International
Serriae)
R IVES went up to v the forward car of the train—the officers’ car
—and took a seat in a corner. On the opposite side four young
engineers were playing whist, in an extremely amateurish
fashion, judging from their frequent laughter.
Baermann, a young German-American, in charge of Main Sta
tion No. 4, just two hundred miles out under the bed of the Atlan
tic, came in and walked past him, pausing with a pleasant greet
ing as if only waiting for an encouraging sign to sit with his chief
during the two-hour trip to the end of the completed boring. But
Rives dismissed him with a curt, “Good evening, Baermann,” and
the subordinate passed on to the far end of the two-hundred-foot
car.
Rives wanted to be alone. He was in no mental condition for
conversation. He wanted to think. Baermann recognized his
desire for solitude and laid it to the worries of a man on whose
shoulders rested the responsibility for the welfare of Tunnel City
and the great American boring of MacKendree Allan’s sub-
. Jan tic tunnel to Europe.
Being a sincere and serious-minded
young engineer, he would have been
Immeasurably shocked If he had
known that the whirl In his chiefs
' kraln was due to a woman.
"Pardon me, Mr. Rives, but can you
tell me where Mr. Allan Is?”
Rives looked up with a start that
was almost guilty; Baermann has re-
, turned and was standing over him In
deferential attitude.
"Mr. Allan—oh—he Is In Montreal."
he replied, with something of a stam
mer.
“Can you tell me when he will be
here again?"
"I can’t say,” replied Rives shortly,
and sank down In his seat to Indi
cate that he wished to be alone.
Where Was Allan?
Where was Allan, indeed? he
thought, with bitterness. If Allan
had been where he belonged, at the
side of his wife, he, Rives, his best
friend, would not now be writhing in
the torment known only to the man
who had betrayed a eacred trust. As
the train dashed Into the endless cav
ern at. a speed of more than 100
mil©9 an hour his mind went around
and around In a deadly, wearying cir
cle over the events of the past few
years — events that had nearly
reached an inevitable climax that
night on the veranda of Mac Allan’R
home. Or, rather, Maud Allan’s
home, for the chief of the great tun-
y nel project was In the house ecarce-
! ly enough to learn his way about.
For months he had known that he
io ed Maud Allan. For months he
had seen her husband’s neglect—
forced though It was by ter terrific
demands on his time In a half-dozen
quarters of the world — killing the
love she had once borne him. There
had been no stain in his, Rives’, love.
He loved because he could not help it.
In the days before he had agreed to
help Allan drive the tunnel he had
been a dilettante, a man-about-town,
as well as a world-famous architect.
Handsome, rich and brilliant, he had
had many “affairs,” but he had never
loved. And he had his code. It had
never been put to the test before this
night, and he had failed to live up
to it.
There was, he reflected bitterly,
“no harm done.” But what would be
the end of it all? When he had se
cretly loved Maud Allan with a pure
and chivalrous love—that was differ
ent. Now she knew that he loved and
—the ends of his fingers crept to his
lips—he knew that she loved him or
was very near to it.
“It isn’t our loving each other that
makes it so bad,” he said to himself,
“it’s the fact, of our mutual knowl
edge.”
What could he do? For more than
an hour he grappled with the prob-
ji lem from every angle; he could not
leave without some very acceptable
excuse to Allan.
“I can’t go up to him.'’ he reflected
at last with a whimsical sense of
humor that driving two hundred and
sixty-five miles of tunnel under the
ocean had obliterated. “I can’t go up
to him and say, ‘Excuse me, Mac, 1
think I’d better chuck this Job and go
away because I’m in love with your
wife.’ And so far as I can see—and
I’m pretty level-headed ordinarily—
I can’t stay here and remain an
honest man. There’s Baermann. He’s
a German, and' the Germans have
made a specialty of dissecting thr
Immortal souls of human beings. It
Is an omen. I will go up and talk to
Baermann. and If he drops anything
that fits my case I will follow It.”
118 Miles an Hour.
Baermann was reading, and he
closed his book with a proud and
pleaded amile when Rives dropped
Into a seat beside him, for the master
of the works was loved by every man
who worked under him.
“We're pretty nearly there, Baer
mann,” observed P.lves with a smile,
as he glanced at his watch. "We’re
doing about 118 miles an hour now,
eh?"
“Not more than 112, I think, Mr.
Rives,” the young man ventured to
correct him. Rives laughed. It was
characteristic of the German, and
boded well for his mission.
"What have you been reading?" he
asked with a glance at the book.
"One of Ibsen's plays,” replied the
young man, offering the volume for
his inspection.
Rives ran idly through the pages.
"Ibsen, eh?” There was a little
gleam In his eyes. “What Is your
real opinion of Ibsen, Baermann?"
The young man smiled a serious,
self-conscious smile. “Isn’t that rath
er like asking a man what la his
opinion of truth?" he Inquired.
"Are ‘Ibsen’ and ’truth’ Inter
changeable?"
"Well, hardly that,” conceded Baer
mann. “He Isn’t all of the truth, but
everything he wrote was truth."
“I see,” nodded Rives, still smiling,
"hut I don’t see how any of us can
pretend to so wide and exact a knowl
edge of workings of so many differ
ent minds."
“Do you thing there Is anything in
consistent in his characters?" asked
Baermann.
A Startling Remark.
“No,” conceded the other, with a
little hesitation.
“I was reading something of his life
and manner of working the other
day,” said the younger man. “Every
character he used, he developed prac
tically from infancy. Although they
fitted into his plays* only for a short
time of their lives he had worked
them out—their environment and
heredity, from the beginning—so that
they couldn’t do anything inconsis
tent. They had to do certain things
if they were true to themselves. It
was out of their hands. He made lh6
characters and let them work out
their own lives In their own ways.
They could only do what they did
do.”
Rives almost started and looked at
the young man curiously.
• * ‘ THE TUNNEL HAD EXPLODED. ’ ’
A Scene in the Great TransAtlantic Tunnel Following a Frightful Explosion, Which is Fully Described in the Accompanying Installment—A Vivid Word-Picture That Will Give You a
Glimpse Into the Future of Things as They Will Be.
“Then you think that all of us are
bound in our conduct in life by cer
tain Immutable lines of our charac
ters ?”
“Undoubtedly,” replied the young
man seriously. “To that extent I am
a fatalist.”
“Well,” said Rives, slowly, after a
little pause. “So am I. Good-by.
Baermann, and—thank you.”
The young man started after him,
wondering, as the tiain slowed to a
stop and his chief strode dow’n tha
car and out Into the uncertain dark
ness, where the electric lights flick
ered and winked and lit up the tem
porary terminus of the trans-Atlantic
railroad.
“It worked,” said Rives to himself,
as he swung himself up on to a car
of a construction that was groping
its way into the farther recesses of
the boring. “It worked. Baermann
is right. We are what we are, and the
answer is in the hands of the Higher
Powers. So be it I’ll go through
with my w'ork here and stick to what
I am given to think is right Just as
long as I can. There must be a w’ay
out.”
There was. The next few hours
solved all for all time, but in a man
ner far from his wildest imaginings.
The construction train passed out
of the mighty steel tube Into a great
arched gallery of rough stone w here
men were at work with shoring tim
bers strengthening weak places
against the permanent construction.
After nearly “fourteen miles of this,
the train slowed down to a walking
pace. A little more than a mile ahead
was the extreme end of the boring.
Paralleling and connected with It by
cross galleries used for switching
construction trairs was the duplicate
of the gallery through w'hich they had
Just passed.
Leaving the main station a far-
off roar grew Into a helliuh ear-spllt-
pling clamor that shrieked and echoed
up and down the galleries as if the de.
mons under the sea were screaming
a protest against the invasion of their
home. The air « filled with dust
and biting pung^.c odors and vapors
that made the eyelids prickle and
scraped the throat like a file. The
heat was terrific—118 degrees Fah
renheit.
In the Tunnel.
Dropping off the train. Rives
walked briskly ahead, picking his
way through the hurly-burly an<1
tumult of an inferno. In this last
mile and a quarter nearly three thou
sand men wero at work, and beyond
them was the monster drilling ma-
cine in the wake of which they
toiled frantically to keep from being
buried by the debris It wrenched out
of the solid earth. Bound warning
of the constant blasts were impossi
ble, and Rives, 'nlf a mile from the
ehd of his journey, passed a half-
naked, calm little Japanese, mount
ing guard over a searchlight battery
that threw a steady white glare up
the boring until the time for the
blast. Then it suddenly turned
green — the monster drill backed
away and the workers threw them
selves on their faces behind the dar.-
ger-zone until their muffled roar and
the white glare told them the danger
was over.
Rives made for the giant driller,
devised by Allan, and looking like a
monster steel devil-fUh. It flung long
tendons against the face of the slop
ing rock into which it burrowed, and
these, tipped with drill* of Allanite—
Allan’s “diamond steel”—sank into
came back each left a tiny deposit of
high explosive at the end of the hole
the flinty barrier like worms sinking
into soft loam. When the tendrils
It had made and a connecting fuse.
Then it backed lumbering away down
the temporary track, the fuse$ weT**
lit. the explosive wrenched off the
mce of the rock and the driller
rumbled down to work again.
The rock had just been blasted a!
Rives approached the driller. The
searchlight sent its chalk-white glare
up to the mountainous slope at the
end of the boring, up which half-
naked men were rushing to clear
away the shattered rock. Just back
from the di ? Rives paused for a
moment to t h*e the picture.
Then, sude F, the entire end of
the tunnel seamed to leap forward.
He saw two men vanish as if they
had been snuffed out. Half a dozen
threw up their arms and turned to
run. Then it seemed to him that a
mighty whip-cord • had suddenly been
drawn with deadly tightness about
his head, shutting off sound, breath
and all sensation same that of sight.
He struck with a violent jar against
the inner wall of the driller, though
he was vaguely conscious he had not
moved. At the same instant dozens
of distorted, whirling bodies of
naked men, ringed with fire and min
gled with stone and sand, shot past;
there was a sound in his head as if
a tightly-strung piano wire had sud
denly snapped—then a roar that shook
him to the heels, a sharp pain, a
blinding flash of red and—oblivion.
The tunnel had exploded!
The last blast had opened the w f av
into probably a chamber of highly
compressed gas of some explosive
nature. As the charge of a shell fol
lows the gun-barrel, so this explo-
slon launched its full force into the
tunnel and for fifteen n/'es it swept
everything before it. It nad picked
the great driller, which had scooped
Rives into its open door and hurled
it a quarter of a mile up the boring
like a tremendous ram, sweeping
1 phia*. girder* pillar*, ttie&l car*.
debris and human beings before It 4 n |
one horrible rack of ruin.
In an Instant it was all over. The
roar died down in the distance like a
great ball rolling away. There fol
lowed a terrible stillness. Ther*- *ias
one long-drawn scream of agony and
then a light leaped higher and
higher.
The tunnel was burning!
For fifty miles that devastating
roar carried terror through the works.
The laborers dropped everything
wnere they stood and leaped upon the
construction trains, empty, full or
half-filled, and the engineers turned
on the power for their lives and ran
for the entrance at an Insane speed,
with hundreds of men clinging to the
cars In clusters of living terror. Then
came a few on foot. And then—
nothing.
A Voice.
Rives first recovered the power of
signt. He seemed to be surrounded
by walls of fire, and then he was
conscious of a fearful heat. In the
leaping flames one opening appeared.
He craned himself to his feet and no
ticed with dull interest that a stream
of blood trickled from his left arm.
He staggered out through the flames
and discovered that he had been in
side the burning driller. A voice
was saying over and over again in
his ear:
"Oh, God! Oh. God! Oh, God!”
As his mind rallied more and mor**
he found out it was his own voice.
He put his hand to his head and it
touched a bare scalp. His hair was
gone. One of his trouser-legs was
still smoldering and mechanically
he batted out the sparks with his
bare hand, and the stooping pitched
him forward on his face. He got to
his hands and knees and was con
scious that a voice was calling his
name.
“Mr. Rives! Mr. Uivml Mr.
—agalp and again. He held to his
reeling consciousness like a swim-
clinging to a life-line and he
knew the voice was not his own. It
came from up the tunnel way from
the heart of the explosion, and lie
w'rs able to recognize this fact and
crawl slowly in that direction, pick
ing his w-ay on hands and knees, me
chanically, painfully and surely, over
broken timbers and Jagged rocks and
—other things unprintable. Nearly
three thousand men had b?en at work
in that mile $nd a half nearest the
explosion, and until he heard the
voice Rives supposed he was the only
one alive.
To Be Continued To-morrow.
TATESPRING
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
A high, cool, healthful re»ort, in
the heart of the Cumberland
Mountains of East Tennessee, an
unexcelled climate.
Modern hotel’—one thousand acre
park and grounds—eighteen hole golf
course—saddle horses—tine five-piece
orchestra for concerts and dancing
and that most famous of all American
Mineral Waters,
TATE SPRING NATURAL
MINERAL WATER
always a help, nearly always a cure in Indigestion,
nervousness and all ailments attributable to im
proper functions of the bowels, liver and kidneys.
Rev. Dr. E. E. Host, Bishop Methodist Church, Nashville, Tenn^
says:
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say that I regard Tate
Spring water as the best remedy for all disorders of the stomach,
bowels, liver and kidneys of which I have knowledge.”
Enjoy the healthful water at the spring or have it shipped to your
home. For sale by all druggists, in sterilized bottles, filled and sealed
at the spring.
Rend postal to-day for illustrated booklet, giving rates, location and
description of this ideal place for the summer outing. Address
TATE SPRING HOTEL CO.
S. B. ALLEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR,
TATE SPRING, TENN.
ATLANTA MINERAL WATER CO., LOCAL DISTRIBUTORS.