England, telling his version of the
case in a voice that echoed back from the town across the gully, as if
he would drown out all rival sects and arguments by volume of sound.
The meeting-house on the next corner was thronged with a singing
multitude, tamborines scattered among them and all clapping hands to
keep time, even to the pastor, who let the momentum carry on and on
into verse after verse as if he had not the self-sacrifice to stop it,
while outside in the warm night another crowd was gathered at the edge
of the shadows gazing as at a vaudeville performance. How well-fitted
are the various brands of Christianity to the particular likings of
their "flocks." The strongest outward manifestation of the religion of
the West Indian black is this boisterous singing. All over town were
dusky throngs exercising their strong untrained voices "in de Lard's
sarvice"; though the West Indian is not noted as being musical. Here a
preacher wanting suddenly to emphasize a point or clinch an argument
swung an arm like a college cheer leader and the entire congregation
roared forth with him some well-known hymn that settled the question
for all time.

I strolled on into darker High street. Suddenly on a veranda above
there broke out a wild unearthly screaming. Two negroes were engaged in
savage, sanguinary combat. Around them in the dim light thrown by a
cheap tenement lamp I could make out their murderous weapons--machetes
or great bars of iron--slashing wildly, while above the din rose
screams and curses:

Yo ---- Badgyan, ah kill yo!

I sped stealthily yet swiftly up the long steps, drawing my No. 38 (for
at last I had been issued one) as I ran and dashed into the heart of
the turmoil swallowing my tendency to shout "Unhand him, villain!" and
crying instead:

"Here, what the devil is going on here?"

Whereupon two negroes let fall at once two pine sticks and turned upon
me their broad childish grins with:

"We only playin', sar. Playin' single-sticks which we larn to de army
in Bahbaydos, sahgeant."

Thus I wandered on, in and out, till the night lost its youth and the
last train from Colon had dumped its merry crowd at the station, then
wound away along the still and deserted back road through the
night-chirping jungle between the two surviving Gatuns. There was a
spot behind the Division Engineer's hill that I rarely succeeded in
passing without pausing to drink in the scene, a scallop in the hills
where severa