You've drunk the Chagres water
And the mango eaten free,
And, strange though it seems,
It will haunt your dreams
This Land of the Cocoanut Tree.
No catastrophe had befallen during my absence. The same peaceful
sunny Sunday reigned in Gatun; new-laundered laborers were still
lolling in the shade of the camps, West Indians were still batting
at interminable balls with their elongated paddles in the faint
hope of deciding the national game before darkness settled down.
Then twilight fell and I set off through the rambling town already
boisterous with church services. Before the little sub-station a
swarm of negroes was pounding tamborines and bawling lustily:
Oh, yo mus' be a lover of de Lard
Or yo cahn't go t' Heaven when yo di-ie.
Further on a lady who would have made ebony seem light-gray bowed
over an organ, while a burly Jamaican blacker than the night
outside stood in the vestments of the Church of England, telling
his version of the case in a voice that echoed back from the town
across the gully, as if he would drown out all rival sects and
arguments by volume of sound. The meeting-house on the next corner
was thronged with a singing multitude, tamborines scattered among
them and all clapping hands to keep time, even to the pastor, who
let the momentum carry on and on into verse after verse as if he
had not the self-sacrifice to stop it, while outside in the warm
night another crowd was gathered at the edge of the shadows gazing
as at a vaudeville performance.
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