e there till the last train was gone. Then there was
nothing left but to pick my way through the night out along the P.R.R.
tracks to shout in at the yard-master's window, "How soon y' got
anything goin' up the line?" and, according to the answer, return to
read an hour or two in Cristobal Y.M.C.A. or push on at once into the
forest of box-cars to hunt out the lighted caboose. Night freights do
not stop at Gatun, nor anywhere merely to let off a "gum-shoe." But
just beyond New Gatun station is a grade that sets the negro fireman to
sweating even at midnight and the big Mogul to straining every nerve
and sinew, and I did not meet the engineer that could drag his long
load by so swiftly but that one could easily swing off on the road that
leads to the police station.

Even on the rare days when "cases" gave out there was generally
something to while away the monotony. As, one morning an American
widely known in Gatun was arrested on a warrant and, chatting merrily
with his friend, Policeman ----, strolled over to the station. There
his friend Corporal Macey subdued his broad Irish smile and ordered the
deskman to "book him up." The latter was reaching for the keys to a
cell when the American broke off his pleasant flow of conversation to
remark;

"All right, Corporal, I'm going over to the house to get a few things
and write a few letters. I'll be back inside of an hour."

Whereupon Corporal Macey, being a man of iron self-control, refrained
from turning a double back sommersault and mildly called the prisoner's
attention to a little point of Zone police rules he had overlooked.

If every other known form of amusement absolutely failed it was still
the dry, or tourist season, and poured down from the States hordes of
unconscious comedians, or investigators who rushed two whole days about
the Isthmus, taking care not to get into any dirty places, and rushed
home again to tell an eager public all about it. Sometimes the
sight-seers came from the opposite end of the earth, a little band of
South Americans in tongueless awe at the undreamed monster of work
about them, yet struggling to keep their fancied despite of the
"yanqui," to which the "yanqui" is so serenely indifferent. Priests
from this southland were especially numerous. The week never passed
that a group of them might not be seen peering over the dizzy precipice
of Gatun locks and crossing themselves ostentatiously as they turned
away.

One does not, at least