Our prisoner and crew were from "Bahbaydos"--only you can't
pronounce it as he did, nor make the "a" broad enough, nor show
the inside of your red throat clear back to the soft palate to
contrast with the glistening black skin of your carefree, grinning
face. Theoretically he was being punished for assault and battery.
But if this is punishment to be sentenced to cruise around on
Gatun Lake I wonder crime on the Zone is so rare and unusual. This
much I am sure, if I were in that particular "Badgyan's" shoes--
no, he had none; but his tracks, say--the day my time ran out I
should pick a quarrel with a Jamaican and leave his countenance in
such a condition that the judge could find no grounds for a
reasonable doubt in the matter.
We were mounting the river Trinidad. River, yes, but we followed
it only because it had kept back the jungle and left a way free of
tree-tops, not because there was not water enough anywhere, in any
direction, to float a boat of many times our draught. Turns so
sharp we rocked in our own wake; once we passed acres upon acres
of big, cod-like fish floating dead upon the water among the
branches and the forest rubbish. It seems the lake in rising
spread over some poisonous mineral in the soil. But life there was
none, except the rampant green dying plant life in every direction
to the horizon.
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