Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 20 -- More Boys Club Serials
And as Nort and Dick glanced back they saw, in the gleam of the one lantern left alight, a white
mass of water bearing down on them, and, seemingly, filling the tunnel from wall to wall, as it
rushed foaming and murmuring onward.
It was as though a dam had suddenly burst, or some obstruction had been removed, allowing
the pent-up waters to rush along the accustomed channel. And if you have ever noticed a
dammed-up stream, say in some gutter, thus quickly released, you can imagine what happened
on a larger scale in the tunnel where the boys were.
Note the last sentence's plug for scientific curiosity, a Boys Club strong point.
For similar adventure, we can turn to Baker's
The Boy Ranchers, or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X (1921)
The Boy Ranchers on the Trail, or The Diamond X After Cattle Rustlers (1921)
The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians, or Trailing the Yaquis (1922)
The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek, or Fighting the Sheep Herders (1923)
The Boy Ranchers in the Desert, or Diamond X and the Lost Mine (1924)
The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River, or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers (1926)
The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley, or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery (1928)
The Boy Ranchers in Terror Canyon, or Diamond X Winning Out (1930)
John Blaine
The Rick Brant Science-Adventures were by John Blaine (pseudonym of Harold L. Goodwin), of
which we'll cite The Caves of Fear (1951), an atomic-age thriller.
Using infra-red goggles to explore the caverns beneath the Himalayas, Rick Brant, son of noted
scientist Hartson Brant, and Rick's buddy, WWII vet Scotty Scott, come across both the Black
Buddha and an underground lake of heavy water. The two must stop the bomb-making material
from falling into the wrong hands.
The rocky shore of the underground lake receded rapidly.
Rick stopped rowing and turned, switching the infrared light
toward the direction in which he was heading. He could see
the opposite shore now, but dimly. Knowing that the infrared
light was effective at eight hundred yards, he estimated the
lake to be about twelve hundred yards wide. That was over
three-fifths of a mile.
When he shot the light up and down the lake, he saw nothing
but the black water. That meant the lake was more than
sixteen hundred yards long. He turned the light upward and
surveyed the ceiling. It was irregular, varying in height from a
dozen feet to over two hundred. In one place, the ceiling
came down to within a few feet of the black water.
It was an eerie place. Rick's quick imagination turned him
into the mythical Charon, who ferried the dead across the
River Styx into Hades.
Then suddenly he realized it wasn't as dark as he had expected!
There was a faint luminous quality that outlined the shore of the lake.
He studied the line of demarcation, then guessed that the faint luminosity must come from
microscopic plant or animal life that clung to the rock underwater. Sea water had a
phosphorescence sometimes for the same reason.
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