"the Rowdy." He was a chestless youth of the type that has
grown so painfully prevalent in our land since the soft-hearted
abolishment of the beech-rod of revered memory; of that all too
familiar type whose proofs of manhood are cigarettes and impudence and
discordant noise, and whose national superiority is demonstrated by the
maltreating of all other races. But the enrolled were all, black,
white, or mixed, far more gentlemen than we. Some, of brief Zone
experience, were sheepish with fear and the wonder as to what new
mandate this incomprehensible U. S. was perpetrating to match its
strange sanitary laws that forbade a man even to be uncleanly in his
habits, after the good old sacred right of his ancestors to remotest
ages. Then, too, there was a Zone policeman in dressy, new-starched
khaki treading with dangling club and the icy-eye of public appearance,
waiting all too eagerly for some one to "start something." But the
great percentage of the maltreated multitude were "Old Timers," men of
four or five years of digging who had learned to know this strange
creature, the American, and the world, too; who smiled indulgently down
upon our yelping and yanking like a St. Bernard above the snapping
puppy he well knows cannot seriously bite him.

Dense black night had fallen. Here and there lanterns were hung, under
one of which we dragged each captive. The last passenger back to Empire
roared away into the jungle night; still we scribbled on, "backed" a
yellow card and dived again into the muscular whirlpool to emerge
dragging forth by the collar a Greek, a Pole, or a West Indian. It was
like business competition, in which I had an unfair advantage, being
able to understand any jargon in evidence. When at last the pay-windows
came down with a bang and an American curse, and the serpentining tail
squirmed for a time in distress and died away, as a snake's tail dies
after sundown, I turned in more than a hundred cards. To-morrow the
tail would revive to form the nucleus of a new serpent, and we should
return by the afternoon train to the lock city, and so on for several
days to come.

It was after nine of a black pay-day night. We were hungry. "The
Rowdy," familiar with the lay of the land, volunteered to lead the
foraging expedition. We stumbled down the hill and away along the
railroad. A faint rumbling that grew to a confused roar fell on our
ears. We climbed a bank into a wild conglomeration of wood and tin
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