But after all it was
the little songful mosquito that drove them in disgrace back
across the Atlantic.
Still further on toward the hotel and a midnight lunch there was
one house that was usually worth lingering before, though good
music is rare on the Zone. Then there was the naughty poker game
in bachelor quarters number--well, never mind that detail--to keep
an ear on in case the pot grew large enough to make a worth-while
violation of the law that would warrant the summoning of the
mounted patrolman.
Meanwhile "cases" stacked up about me. Now one took me out the
hard U. S. highway that, once out of sight of the last negro
shanty, rambles erratically off like the reminiscences of an old
man through the half-cleared, mostly uninhabited wilderness,
rampant green with rooted life and almost noisy with the songs of
birds. Eventually within a couple of hours it crossed Fox River
with its little settlement and descended to Mt. Hope police
station, where there is a 'phone with which to "get in touch"
again and then a Mission rocker on the screened veranda where the
breezes of the near-by Atlantic will have you well cooled off
before you can catch the shuttle-train back to Gatun.
Or another led out across the lake by the old abandoned line that
was the main line when first I saw Gatun.
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