f society from gaping Spanish laborers to haughty
wives of dirt-train conductors, among whom it was not hard to
distinguish in a far corner the uniformed sergeant in command of Gatun
and the long lean corporal tied in a bow-line knot at the alleged wit
of the versatile but solitary clown who changed his tongue every other
moment from English to Spanish. But the end was already near;
excitement was rising to the finale of the performance, a wrestling
match between a circus man and "Andy" of Pedro Miguel locks. By the
time I had found a leaning-place it was on--and the circus man of
course was conquered, amid the gleeful howling of "rough-necks," who
collected considerable sums of money and went off shouting into the
black night, in quest of a place where it might be spent quickly. It
would be strange indeed if among all the thousands of men in the prime
of life who are digging the canal at least one could not be found who
could subjugate any champion a wandering circus could carry among its
properties. I took up again the random tramping in the dark unknown
night; till it was two o'clock of a Sunday morning when at last I
dropped my report-card in the train-guard box and climbed upstairs to
the cot opposite "Davie," sleeping the silent, untroubled sleep of a
babe.

I was barely settled in Gatun when the train-guard handed me one of
those frequent typewritten orders calling for the arrest of some
straggler or deserter from the marine camp of the Tenth Infantry. That
very morning I had seen "the boss" of census days off on his vacation
to the States--from which he might not return--and here I was coldly
and peremptorily called upon to go forth and arrest and deliver to Camp
Elliott on its hill "Mac," the pride of the census, with a promise of
$25 reward for the trouble. "Mac" desert? It was to laugh. But
naturally after six weeks of unceasing repetition of that pink set of
questions "Mac's" throat was a bit dry and he could scarcely be
expected to return at once to the humdrum life of camp without spending
a bit of that $5 a day in slaking a tropical thirst. Indeed I question
whether any but the prudish will loudly blame "Mac" even because he
spent it a bit too freely and brought up in Empire dispensary. Word of
his presence there soon drifted down to the wily plain-clothes man of
Empire district. But it was a hot noonday, the dispensary lies somewhat
up hill, and the uniformless officer of the Zone metropolis is rather
t