A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! Read Online Free PDF

assume this greater responsibility, I will be something close to his equal in all matters. He is not going to like it.”
    “The understatement of the cen-tury, my boy. He has been sounded out cautiously already with the pre-dictable results.” A light flashed on the desk and was accompanied by a soft beeping sound. “The Board has returned after their dinners and I must join them since no one is to know I have seen you. If you will be so kind as to wait in the library, you will be sent for. If matters go as we have planned, and they will since we have the votes, you will be sent a note outlining these proposals and then called before the Board. There is no other way.”
    The door opened at a touch of a button on the desk and Washington found himself back in the library.
    There was a soft leather armchair there that he sank into gratefully and when, a few minutes later, Drigg came to inquire if he needed anything he was deep in thought and roused up only long enough to shake his head in the negative. For this was without a doubt the pinnacle of his career—if only he could scale it. Yes, he could, he had no doubts about that, had been without doubts since he had left Mount Vernon for the last time, waving good-bye to his mother and sister at the gate of the simple cottage that was their ances-tral home. A cottage that had been built in the shadow of the ivy-grown ruins of that greater house burnt by the Tory mobs.
    He was already an engineer then, graduated first in his class from M.I.T. despite the dishonor attached to his name—or perhaps because of it. Just as he had fought many a dark and silent battle with his fists behind the dorms so had he fought that much harder contest in school to stay ahead, to be better, fighting with both his fists and his mind to restore honor to his family name. After graduation he had served his brief stint in the Territorial Engineers—without the R.O.T.C. grant he would never have finished college—and in doing so had enjoyed to its utmost his first taste of working in the field.
    There had been the usual troubles at the western frontier with the Spanish colonies so that the Colonial authorities in New York had decided that a military railroad was needed there. For one glorious year he had surveyed rights of way through the impassable Rocky Mountains and labored in the tunnels that were being driven through the intractable rock.
    The experience had changed his life and he had known just what he wanted from that time on. Along with the best minds from all the far-flung schools of the Empire he had sat for the prestigious George Ste-phenson scholarship at Edinburgh University and had triumphed.
    Ac-ceptance had meant automatic en-trance into the higher echelons of the great engineering firm of Brassey--Brunel and this, too, had come to pass.
    Edinburgh had been wonderful, despite the slightly curled lips of his English classmates towards his colo-nial background, or perhaps because of this. For the first time in his life he was among people who attached no onus to his name; they could not be expected to remember the details of every petty battle fought at the fringes of their Empire for the past four hundred years. Washington was just another colonial to be classified with Hindoos, Mohawks, Burmese, Aztecs and others and he reveled in this group anonymity.
    His rise had been brief and quick and now he was reaching the summit.
    Beware lest he fall when his reach exceeded his grasp. No! He knew that he could handle the engi-neering, drive the American end of the tunnel just as he was driving the British one. And though he was aware that he was no financier he also knew how to talk to the men with the money, to explain just what would be done with their funds and how well invested they would be. It would be Whig money he was after—though perhaps the Tories would permit greed to rise above intoler-ance and would climb on the band-wagon when they saw the others rid-ing merrily away towards