So we descended into Panama by the train-
guard short-cut and across the bridge that humps its back over the
P. R. R. like a cat in unsocial mood, and on through Caledonia out
along the beach sands past the old iron hulls about which
Panamanian laborers are always tinkering under the impression that
they are working. This time we walked. I don't recall now whether
it was quarter-cracks, or the Lieutenant hadn't slept well--no, it
couldn't have been that, for the Lieutenant never let his personal
mishaps trample on his good nature--or whether "Bish" had decided
to try to reduce weight. At any rate we were afoot, and thereby
hangs the tale--or as much of a tale as there is to tell.
We tramped resolutely on along the hard curving beach past the
disheveled bath-houses before which ladies from the Zone gather in
some force of a Sunday afternoon. For this time we were really out
for a swim rather than to display our figures. On past the light-
brown bathers, and the chocolate-colored bathers, and the jet
black bathers who seemed to consider that color covering enough,
till we came to the big silent saw-mill at the edge of the
cocoanut grove that we had been invited long since to make a Z. P.
dressing-room.
Before us spread the reposing, powerful, sun-shimmering Pacific.
Across the bay, clear as an etching, lay Panama backed by Ancon
hill.
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