-respecting member of the Wind-wafted sisterhood. Far out in the
offing lay a steamer of the same line that was to TOW the Meteor to the
Golden Gate! How is the breed of sailors fallen! The few laborers
aboard would take an occasional wheel, pick oakum, and yarn their
unadventurous yarns. As we drew near, a boat was lowered to set me
aboard the steamer, to the rail-crowding surprise of her passengers,
who fancied they had hours since seen the last of Zone and "Zoners."
The captain asserted he had nothing aboard grown nearer Greece than
three Irishmen, any one of whom--facetiousness seemed to be one of the
captain's characteristics--I might have and welcome. A few moments
later I was back aboard the tug waving farewell to steamer and
"windjammer" as they pushed away into the twilight sea, and the Bolivar
turned shoreward.

I received a "straight tip" one evening that the fugitive Greek was
hiding in a hovel on the Cruces trail. What part of the Cruces trail,
the informant did not hint; but he described the hut in some detail. So
next morning as the thick gray dawn of this tropical land was melting
into day, I descended at Bas Obispo, through the canal to Gamboa and
struck off into the dense dripping jungle. The rainy season had greened
things up and gone--temporarily, of course, for in a day or two it
would be on us again in all tropical fury. In the few days since the
first rain the landscape had changed like a theater decoration, a green
not even to be imagined in the temperate zone.

It turned out that the ancient village of Cruces was a mere two-mile
stroll from the canal, a thatch-roofed native town of some thirty
dwellings on the rocky shore of an inner curve of the Chagres, where
travelers from Balboa to the last "Forty-niner" disembarked from their
thirty-six mile ride up the river and struck on along the ten-mile road
through the jungle to Panama--the famous Cruces trail. Except for its
associations the village was without interest--except some personal
Greek interest. Sour looks were chiefly my portion, for the villagers
have never taken kindly to Americans.

I soon sought out the trail, here a mere path undulating through rank,
wet-hot, locust singing jungle. Here in the tangled somber mystery of
the wilderness grew every tropical thing; countless giant ferns,
draping tangles of vines, the mango tree with its rounded dome of
leaves like the mosque of Omar done in greenery, the humble pineapple
with its unpr