It drops down beyond the
station and charges across the lake by a causeway that steam-
shovels were already devouring, toward forsaken Bohio. Picking its
way across the rotting spiles of culverts, it pushed on through
the unpeopled jungle, all the old railroad gone, rails, ties, the
very spikes torn up and carried away, while already the parrots
screamed again in derision as if it were they who had driven out
the hated civilization and taken possession again of their own. A
few short months and the devouring jungle will have swallowed up
even the place where it has been.
If it was only the little typewritten slip reporting the
disappearance of a half-dozen jacks from the dam, every case
called for full investigation. For days to come I might fight my
way through the encircling wilderness by tunnels of vegetation to
every native hut for miles around to see if by any chance the lost
property could have rolled thither. More than once such a hunt
brought me out on the water-tank knoll at the far end of the dam,
overlooking miles of impenetrable jungle behind and above chanting
with invisible life, to the right the filling lake stretching
across to low blue ranges dimly outlined against the horizon and
crowned by fantastic trees, and all Gatun and its immense works
and workers below and before me.
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