o live. They had driven a sword
through the backbone of the continent and had built a canal through
which great liners could climb up and down stairs from one ocean to
another.

The dream of the centuries had become a reality through the skill and
resolution with which the sons of Uncle Sam had tackled the big ditch.

It may be guessed how anxious all of us were to get ashore. There was
little sleep aboard the _Argos_ that night. It was long past midnight
before any of us left the deck.

The truth is that the yacht had become a prison to us just as it had to
Bothwell. The thought of a few days on land, where we need not watch
every moment to keep our throats from being slit, was an enormous
relief.

But Blythe was taking no chances with the vessel. It had been decided
among us that either he, Yeager, or I should remain in charge of the
_Argos_ every minute of our stay.

I had volunteered for the first day and Yeager was to relieve me on the
second.

All three of us were firmly resolved, though we had not yet broached the
subject to Evelyn, that the ladies should remain in the canal zone while
we continued down the coast to lift the treasure.

Before Bothwell was taken ashore he had the effrontery to ask for a talk
with his cousin. Blythe did not even submit his request to her. Fleming
and he were removed from the vessel while the ladies were eating
breakfast with Yeager, so that they did not even know until afterward
that the men had been turned over to the authorities.

None of the reconstructed mutineers asked for shore leave. Each of them
knew that if he left the ship he would be liable to arrest for a capital
offense and preferred to take his chance of any punishment the captain
might inflict.

The day was an endless one, but it wore away at last. The cattleman was
to relieve me at breakfast time. I was up with the summer sun and had
bathed, shaved, and eaten long before the city showed any sign of
activity around the harbor.

"You'll like Panama," Yeager assured me after he had clambered aboard.
"It's a city of madmen, plumb daffy about the big ditch. The men can't
talk anything but cuts, dams, cubic feet, steam plows, and earth slides.
But, by Moses, when I see what they've done it makes me glad I'm an
American. Everything is the biggest in the world--the dam, the locks,
the cuts, the lake, the machinery, the whole blessed works. They've set
a new mark for the rest of the earth."

"What is Sam doing