either the Orient nor the farthest
tropics boasted another spot like Colon, or Aspinwall, as it had been
called, with its steaming, hip-deep streets and its brilliant flowering
graveyards. So hateful had it proved, in fact, that when seamen signed
articles binding themselves to work their ships into any corner of the
globe they inserted a clause exempting them from entering Aspinwall.

Now, however, the town was lively, for this was the dry season, when the
fever was at its lowest, and the resorts were filled with the flotsam
and jetsam of a tropic world. It was a polyglot town, moreover, set upon
a fever-ridden mangrove isle serving as one terminus of the world's
short cut, and in it had collected all the parasites that live upon the
moving herd.

The French work of digging had but served to augment the natural
population by a no less desperate set from overseas, and now from the
open doors of their cubbyholes women of every color greeted the
passer-by.

Inocencio, whose last exploit was already a thing of gossip, received
unusual attention, there being no color line in Colon town. White,
yellow, and black women fawned upon him and bade him tarry, but he
merely paused to listen or to fan their admiration by a word, then idled
onward, pleased at the notice he evoked.

Once fairly out of the pest-hole, he threaded his way through the swamp
toward the other shore of the island. Blue land-crabs scuttled among the
mangrove roots at his approach; the place was noisy with the hum of
insects; on every hand the heated mud gave forth a sound like the smack
of huge moist lips. But on the other side he came into a different
domain. Here the sea-breeze banished the hovering miasma, the shore was
of powdered coral sand, a litter of huts drowsed beneath a grove of
cocoa palms, while a fleet of _cayucas_ lay moored to stakes inside the
breakers or bleaching in the sun.

Captain Inocencio was a person of some importance here, for, besides his
occupation as a trader, he exacted toll from a score or more of lazy
blacks. They were a lawless crew, gathered from the remotest corners of
the Indies, composed of Jamaicans, 'Bajans, and Saint Lucians, all
reared to easy life and ripe for such an occasional crafty pilgrimage as
Inocencio might devise. They had gathered around him naturally, paying
him scant revenue, to be sure, yet offering a certain loyalty that had
its uses. Although the village was but a mile from the town itself,
Inoce