William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Coriolanus"

W. H. Hudson - "A Shepherd's Life"

George Barr McCutcheon - "Viola Gwyn"

G. A. Henty - "Colonel Thorndyke's Secret"

Zone Policeman 88

H >> Harry A. Franck >> Zone Policeman 88




A holiday air brooded over all Gatun and the country-side. Workmen
in freshly washed clothing lolled in the shade of labor-camps,
black Britishers were gathering in flat meadows fitted for the
national game of cricket, far and wide sounded the care-free
laughter and chattering of negroes, while even within Gatun police
station leisure and peace seemed almost in full possession.

The morning "touch" with headquarters over, therefore, I scrambled
away across the silent yawning locks and the trainless and
workless dam to the Spillway, over which already some overflow
from the lake was escaping to the Caribbean. My friends "Dusty"
and H---- had carried their canoe to the Chagres below, and before
nine we were off down the river. It was a day that all the world
north of the Tropic of Cancer could not equal; just the weather
for a perfect "day off." A plain-clothes man, it is true, is not
supposed to have days off. Some one might run away with the
Administration Building on the edge of the Pacific and the
telephone wires be buzzing for me--with the sad result that a few
days later there would be posted in Zone police stations where all
who turned the leaves might read:

Special Order No. ....
Having been found Guilty of charges of
Neglect of Duty
preferred against him by his commanding officer
First-class Policeman No. 88
is hereby fined $2.

Chief of Division.

But shades of John Aspinwall! Should even a detective work on such
a Sunday? Surely no criminal would--least of all a black one.
Moreover these forest-walled banks were also part of my beat.

The sun was hot, yet the air of that ozone-rich quality for which
Panama is famous. For headgear we had caps; and did not wear
those, though barely a few puffy, snow-white clouds ventured out
into the vast chartless sky all the brilliant day through. Then
the river; who could describe this lower reach of the Chagres as
it curves its seven deep and placid miles from where Uncle Sam
releases it from custody, to the ocean. Its jungled banks were
without a break, for the one or two clusters of thatch and reed
huts along the way are but a part of the living vegetation. Now
and then we had glimpses across the tree-tops of brilliant green
jungle hills further inland, everywhere were huge splendid trees,
the stack-shaped mango, the soldier-erect palm heavy, yet
unburdened, with cocoanuts. Some fish resembling the porpoise rose
here and there, back and forth above the shadows winged snow-white
cranes so slender one wondered the sea breeze did not wreck them.
Above all the quiet and peace and contentment of a perfect
tropical day enfolded the landscape in a silence only occasionally
disturbed by the cry of a passing bird. Once a gasoline launch
deep-laden with Sunday-starched Americans, snorted by, bound
likewise to Fort Lorenzo at the river's mouth; and we lay back in
our soft, rumpled khaki and drowsily smiled our sympathy after
them. When they had drawn on out of earshot life began to return
to the banks and nature again took possession of the scene.
Alligators abounded once on this lower Chagres, but they have
grown scarce now, or shy, and though we sat with H----'s automatic
rifle across our knees in turns we saw no more than a carcass or a
skeleton on the bank at the foot of the sheer wall of impenetrable
verdure.

Till at length the sea opened on our sight through the alley-way
of jungle, and a broad inviting cocoanut grove nodded and beckoned
on our left. Instead we paddled out across the sandbar to play
with the surf of the Atlantic, but found it safer to return and
glide across the little bay to the drowsy straw and tin village.
Here--for the mouth of the Chagres like its source lies in a
foreign land--a solitary Panamanian policeman in the familiar
Arctic uniform enticed us toward the little thatched office, and
house, and swinging hammock of the alcalde to register our names,
and our business had we had any. So deep-rooted was the serenity
of the place that even when "Dusty," in all Zone innocence,
addressed the white-haired little mulatto as "hombre" he lost
neither his dignity nor his temper.

The policeman and a brown boy of merry breed went with us up the
grassy rise to the old fort. In its musty vaulted dungeons were
still the massive, rust-corroded irons for feet, waist and neck of
prisoners of the old brutal days; blind owls stared upon us; once
the boy brought down with his honda, or slung-shot, one of the
bats that circled uncannily above our heads. In dank corners were
mounds of worthless powder; the bakery that once fed the miserable
dungeon dwellers had crumbled in upon itself. Outside great trees
straddled and split the massive stone walls that once commanded
the entrance to the Chagres, jungle waved in undisputed possession
in its earth-filled moat, even the old cannon and heaped up
cannon-balls lay rust-eaten and dejected, like decrepit old men
who have long since given up the struggle.

We came out on the nose of the fort bluff and had before and below
us and underfoot all the old famous scene, for centuries the
beginning of all trans-Isthmian travel,--the scalloped surf-washed
shore with its dwindling palm groves curving away into the west,
the Chagres pushing off into the jungled land. We descended to the
beach of the outer bay and swam in the salt sea, and the
policeman, scorning the launch party, squatted a long hour in the
shade of a tree above in tropical patience. Then with "sour"
oranges for thirst and nothing for hunger--for Lorenzo has no
restaurant--we turned to paddle our way homeward up the Chagres,
that bears the salt taste of the sea clear to the Spillway. Whence
one verse only of a stanza by the late bard of the Isthmus struck
a false note on our ears;

Then go away if you have to,
Then go away if you will!
To again return you will always yearn
While the lamp is burning still.
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. How well-fitted are the various
brands of Christianity to the particular likings of their
"flocks." The strongest outward manifestation of the religion of
the West Indian black is this boisterous singing. All over town
were dusky throngs exercising their strong untrained voices "in de
Lard's sarvice"; though the West Indian is not noted as being
musical. Here a preacher wanting suddenly to emphasize a point or
clinch an argument swung an arm like a college cheer leader and
the entire congregation roared forth with him some well-known hymn
that settled the question for all time.

I strolled on into darker High street. Suddenly on a veranda above
there broke out a wild unearthly screaming. Two negroes were
engaged in savage, sanguinary combat. Around them in the dim light
thrown by a cheap tenement lamp I could make out their murderous
weapons--machetes or great bars of iron--slashing wildly, while
above the din rose screams and curses:

Yo----Badgyan, ah kill yo!

I sped stealthily yet swiftly up the long steps, drawing my No. 38
(for at last I had been issued one) as I ran and dashed into the
heart of the turmoil swallowing my tendency to shout "Unhand him,
villain!" and crying instead:

"Here, what the devil is going on here?"

Whereupon two negroes let fall at once two pine sticks and turned
upon me their broad childish grins with:

"We only playin', sar. Playin' single-sticks which we larn to de
army in Bahbaydos, sahgeant."

Thus I wandered on, in and out, till the night lost its youth and
the last train from Colon had dumped its merry crowd at the
station, then wound away along the still and deserted back road
through the night-chirping jungle between the two surviving
Gatuns. There was a spot behind the Division Engineer's hill that
I rarely succeeded in passing without pausing to drink in the
scene, a scallop in the hills where several trees stood out singly
and alone against the myriad starlit sky, below and beyond the
indistinct valleys and ravines from which came up out of the night
the chorus of the jungle. Further on, in American Gatun there was
a seat on the steps before a bungalow that offered more than a
good view in both directions. A broad, U. S.-tamed ravine sank
away in front, across which the Atlantic breeze wafted the
distance-softened thrum of guitar, the tones of fifes and happy
negro voices, while overhead feathery gray clouds as concealing as
a dancer's gossamer hurried leisurely by across the brilliant face
of the moon; to the right in a free space the Southern Cross,
tilted a bit awry, gleamed as it has these untold centuries while
ephemeral humans come and pass their brief way.

It was somewhere near here that Gatun's dry-season mosquito had
his hiding-place. Rumor whispers of some such letter as the
following received by the Colonel--not the blue-eyed czar at
Culebra this time; for you must know there is another Colonel on
the Zone every whit as indispensable in his sphere:

GATUN, ... 26, 1912.

Dear Colonel:--

I am writing to call your attention to a gross violation of
Sanitary Ordinance No. 3621, to an apparent loop-hole in your
otherwise excellent department. The circumstances are as follows;

On the evening of ... 24, as I was sitting at the roadside between
Gatun and New Gatun (some 63 paces beyond house No. 226) there
appeared a MOSQUITO, which buzzed openly and for some time about
my ears. It was probably merely a male of the species, as it
showed no tendency to bite; but a mosquito nevertheless. I trust
you will take fitting measures to punish so bold and insolent a
violation of the rules of your department.

I am, sir, very truly yours,

(Mrs.) HENRY PECK.

P. S. The mosquito may be easily recognized by a peculiarly
triumphant, defiant note in his song,

I cannot personally vouch for the above, but if it was received
any "Zoner" will assure you that prompt action was taken. It is
well so. The French failed to dig the canal because they could not
down the mosquito. Of course there was the champagne and the other
things that come with it--later in the night. 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. 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.

Times were when duty called me into the squalid red-lighted
district of Colon and kept me there till the last train was gone.
Then there was nothing left but to pick my way through the night
out along the P.R.R. tracks to shout in at the yard-master's
window, "How soon y' got anything goin' up the line?" and,
according to the answer, return to read an hour or two in
Cristobal Y.M.C.A. or push on at once into the forest of box-cars
to hunt out the lighted caboose. Night freights do not stop at
Gatun, nor anywhere merely to let off a "gum-shoe." But just
beyond New Gatun station is a grade that sets the negro fireman to
sweating even at midnight and the big Mogul to straining every
nerve and sinew, and I did not meet the engineer that could drag
his long load by so swiftly but that one could easily swing off on
the road that leads to the police station.

Even on the rare days when "cases" gave out there was generally
something to while away the monotony. As, one morning an American
widely known in Gatun was arrested on a warrant and, chatting
merrily with his friend, Policeman ----, strolled over to the
station. There his friend Corporal Macey subdued his broad Irish
smile and ordered the deskman to "book him up." The latter was
reaching for the keys to a cell when the American broke off his
pleasant flow of conversation to remark;

"All right, Corporal, I'm going over to the house to get a few
things and write a few letters. I'll be back inside of an hour."

Whereupon Corporal Macey, being a man of iron self-control,
refrained from turning a double back sommersault and mildly called
the prisoner's attention to a little point of Zone police rules he
had overlooked.

If every other known form of amusement absolutely failed it was
still the dry, or tourist season, and poured down from the States
hordes of unconscious comedians, or investigators who rushed two
whole days about the Isthmus, taking care not to get into any
dirty places, and rushed home again to tell an eager public all
about it. Sometimes the sight-seers came from the opposite end of
the earth, a little band of South Americans in tongueless awe at
the undreamed monster of work about them, yet struggling to keep
their fancied despite of the "yanqui," to which the "yanqui" is so
serenely indifferent. Priests from this southland were especially
numerous. The week never passed that a group of them might not be
seen peering over the dizzy precipice of Gatun locks and crossing
themselves ostentatiously as they turned away.

One does not, at least in a few months, feel the "sameness" of
climate at Panama and "long again to see spring grow out of
winter." Yet there is something, perhaps, in the popular belief
that even northern energy evaporates in this tropical land. It is
not exactly that; but certainly many a "Zoner" wakes up day by day
with ambitious plans, and just drifts the day through with the
fine weather. He fancies himself as strong and energetic as in the
north, yet when the time comes for doing he is apt to say, "Oh, I
guess I'll loaf here in the shade half an hour longer," and
before he knows it another whole day is charged up against his
meager credit column with Father Time.

There came the day early in April when the Inspector must go north
on his forty-two days' vacation. I bade him bon voyage on board
the 8:41 between the two Gatuns and soon afterward was throwing
together my belongings and leaving "Davie" to enjoy his room
alone. For Corporal Castillo was to be head of the subterranean
department ad interim, and how could the digging of the canal
continue with no detective in all the wilderness of morals between
the Pacific and Culebra? Thus it was that the afternoon train bore
me away to the southward. It was a tourist train. A New York
steamer had docked that morning, and the first-class cars were
packed with venturesome travelers in their stout campaign outfits
in which to rough it--in the Tivoli and the sight-seeing motors--
in their roof-like cork helmets and green veils for the terrible
Panama heat--which is sometimes as bad as in northern New York.

The P.R.R. is one of the few railroads whose passengers may drop
off for a stroll, let the train go on without them, and still take
it to their destination. They have only to descend, as I did, at
Gamboa cabin and wander down into the "cut," climb leisurely out
to Bas Obispo, and chat with their acquaintances among the Marines
lolling about the station until the trains puffs in from its
shuttle-back excursion to Gorgona. The Zone landscape had lost
much of its charm. For days past jungle fires had been sweeping
over it, doing the larger growths small harm but leaving little of
the greenness and rank clinging life of other seasons. Everywhere
were fires along the way, even in the towns. For quartermasters--
to the rage of Zone house-wives were sending up in clouds of smoke
the grass and bushes that quickly turn to breeding-places of
mosquitoes and disease with the first rains. Night closed down as
we emerged from Miraflores tunnel; soon we swung around toward the
houses, row upon row and all alight, climbed the lower slope of
Ancon hill, and at seven I descended in familiar, cab-crowded,
bawling Panama.





CHAPTER VII


It might be worth the ink to say a word about socialism on the
Canal Zone. To begin with, there isn't any of course. No man would
dream of looking for socialism in an undertaking set in motion by
the Republican party and kept on the move by the regular army. But
there are a number of little points in the management of this
private government strip of earth that savors more or less faintly
of the Socialist's program, and the Zone offers perhaps as good a
chance as we shall ever have to study some phases of those
theories in practice.

Few of us now deny the Socialist's main criticisms of existing
society; most of us question his remedies. Some of us go so far as
to feel a sneaking curiosity to see railroads and similar purely
public utilities government-owned, just to find how it would work.
Down on the Canal Zone they have a sort of modified socialism
where one can watch much of this under a Bell jar. There one
quickly discovers that a locomotive with the brief and sufficient
information "U.S." on her tender flanks--or more properly the
flanks of her tender--gives one a swelling of the chest no other
combination of letters could inspire. Thus far, too, theory seems
to work well. The service could hardly be better, and recalling
that under the old private system the fare for the forty-seven
miles across the Isthmus was $25 with a charge of ten cents for
every pound of baggage, the $2.40 of today does not seem
particularly exorbitant.

The official machinery of this private government strip also seems
to run like clockwork. To be sure the wheels even of a clock grind
a bit with friction at times, but the clock goes on keeping time
for all that. The Canal Zone is the best governed district in the
United States. It is worth any American's time and sea-sickness to
run down there, if only to assure himself that Americans really
can govern; until he does he will not have a very clear notion of
just what good American government means.

But before we go any further be it noted that the socialism of the
Canal Zone is under a benevolent despot, an Omnipotent,
Omniscient, Omnipresent ruler; which is perhaps the one way
socialism would work, at least in the present stage of human
progress. The three Omnis are combined in an inconspicuous, white-
haired American popularly known on the Zone as "the Colonel"--so
popularly in fact that an attempt to replace him would probably
"start something" among all classes and races of "Zoners." That he
is omnipotent--on the Zone--not many will deny; a few have
questioned--and landed in the States a week later much less joyous
but far wiser. Omniscient--well they have even Chinese secret-
service men on the Isthmus, and soldiers and marines not
infrequently go out in civilian clothes under sealed orders; to
say nothing of "the Colonel's private gum-shoe" and probably a lot
of other underground sources of information neither you nor I
shall ever hear of. But you must get used to spies under
socialism, you know, until we all wear one of Saint Peter's halos.
Look at the elaborate system of the Incas, even with their docile
and uninitiative subjects. In the matter of Omnipresence; it would
be pretty hard to find a hole on the Canal Zone where you could
pull off a stunt of any length or importance without the I.C.C.
having a weather-eye on you. When it comes to the no less
indispensable ingredient of benevolence one glimpse of those mild
blue eyes would probably reassure you in that point, even without
the pleasure of watching the despot sit in judgment on his
subjects in his castle office on Sunday mornings like old Saint
Louis under his oak--though with a tin of cigarettes beside him
that old Louis had to worry along without.

This all-powerful government insists on and enforces many of the
things which Americans as a whole stand for,--Sunday closing,
suppression of resorts, forbidding of gambling. But the Zone is no
test whether these laws could be genuinely enforced in a whole
nation. For down there Panama and Colon serve as a sort of safety-
valve, where a man can run down in an hour or so on mileage or
monthly pass and blow off steam; get rid of the bad internal
vapors that might cause explosion in a ventless society. This we
should not lose sight of when we boast that there are few crimes
and no real resorts on the Zone. "The Colonel" himself will tell
you there is no gambling. Yet it is curious how many of the weekly
prizes of the Panama lottery find their way into the pockets of
American canal builders, and in any Zone gathering of whatever
hour--or sex!--you are almost certain to hear flitting back and
forth mysterious whispers of "--have a 6 and a 4 this week."

The Zone system is work-coupons for all; much as the Socialist
would have it. Only the legitimate members of the community--the
workers--can live in it--long. You should see the nonchalant way a
clerk at the government's Tivoli hotel charges a tourist a quarter
for a cigar the government sells for six cents in its
commissaries. Mere money does not rank high in Zone society. It's
the labor-coupon that counts. They sell cigarettes at the
Y.M.C.A.; you are in that state where you would give your ticket
home for a smoke. Yet when you throw down good gold or silver,
black Sam behind the showcase looks up at you with that pitying
cold eye kept in stock for new-comers, and says wearily:

"Cahn't take no money heah, boss."

That surely is a sort of socialism where a slip of paper showing
merely that you have done your appointed task gets you the same
meal wherever you may drop in, a total stranger, yet without being
identified, without a word from any one, but merely thrusting your
coupon-book at the yellow West Indian at the door as you enter
that he may snatch out so many minutes of labor. Drop in anywhere
there is a vacant bed and you are perfectly at home. There is the
shower-bath, the ice-water, the veranda rocker--you knew exactly
what was coming to you, just what kind of bed, just what
vegetables you would be served at dinner. It reminds one of the
Inca system of providing a home for every citizen, and tambos
along the way if he must travel.

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