And "Mac"? Yes, I saw "Mac" too--or
at least the back of his head and shoulders through the screen of
the guard-house where Renson pointed him out to me as he was being
locked up again after a day of shoveling sand.
The first days in Gatun called for little else than patrol duty,
without fixed hours, interspersed with an occasional loaf on the
second-story veranda of the police-station overlooking the giant
locks; close at hand was the entrance to the canal, up which came
slowly barges loaded with crushed stone from Porto Bello quarry
twenty miles east along the coast or sand from Nombre de Dios,
twice as distant, while further still, spread Limon Bay from which
swept a never-ending breeze one could wipe dry on as on a towel.
So long as he has in his pocket no typewritten report with the
Inspector's scrawl across it, "For investigation and report," the
plain-clothes man is virtually his own commander, with few duties
beside trying to be in as many parts of his district at once as
possible and the ubiquitous duty of "keeping in touch with
headquarters." So I wandered and mingled with all the life of the
vicinity, exactly as I should have done had I not been paid a
salary to do so. By day one could watch the growth of the great
locks, the gradual drowning of little green, new-made islands
beneath the muddy still waters of Gatun Lake, tramp out along
jungle-flanked country roads, through the Mindi hills, or down
below the old railroad to where the cayucas that floated down the
Chagres laden with fruit came to land on the ever advancing edge
of the waters.
Pages:
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150