once the boy brought
down with his honda, or slung-shot, one of the bats that circled
uncannily above our heads. In dank corners were mounds of worthless
powder; the bakery that once fed the miserable dungeon dwellers had
crumbled in upon itself. Outside great trees straddled and split the
massive stone walls that once commanded the entrance to the Chagres,
jungle waved in undisputed possession in its earth-filled moat, even
the old cannon and heaped up cannon-balls lay rust-eaten and dejected,
like decrepit old men who have long since given up the struggle.

We came out on the nose of the fort bluff and had before and below us
and underfoot all the old famous scene, for centuries the beginning of
all trans-Isthmian travel,--the scalloped surf-washed shore with its
dwindling palm groves curving away into the west, the Chagres pushing
off into the jungled land. We descended to the beach of the outer bay
and swam in the salt sea, and the policeman, scorning the launch party,
squatted a long hour in the shade of a tree above in tropical patience.
Then with "sour" oranges for thirst and nothing for hunger--for Lorenzo
has no restaurant--we turned to paddle our way homeward up the Chagres,
that bears the salt taste of the sea clear to the Spillway. Whence one
verse only of a stanza by the late bard of the Isthmus struck a false
note on our ears;

Then go away if you have to,
Then go away if you will!
To again return you will always yearn
While the lamp is burning still.
You've drunk the Chagres water
And the mango eaten free,
And, strange though it seems,
It will haunt your dreams
This Land of the Cocoanut Tree.

No catastrophe had befallen during my absence. The same peaceful sunny
Sunday reigned in Gatun; new-laundered laborers were still lolling in
the shade of the camps, West Indians were still batting at interminable
balls with their elongated paddles in the faint hope of deciding the
national game before darkness settled down. Then twilight fell and I
set off through the rambling town already boisterous with church
services. Before the little sub-station a swarm of negroes was pounding
tamborines and bawling lustily:

Oh, yo mus' be a lover of de Lard
Or yo cahn't go t' Heaven when yo di-ie.

Further on a lady who would have made ebony seem light-gray bowed over
an organ, while a burly Jamaican blacker than the night outside stood
in the vestments of the Church of