sleep
in than Ancon. In a black starry night I set out along the invisible
railroad for the first station.

An hour later, everything settled to my satisfaction, I had discovered
a vacant bed in Corozal bachelor quarters and was pulling off my coat
preparatory to the shower-bath and a well-earned night's repose.
Suddenly I heard a peculiar noise in the adjoining room, much like that
of a seal coming to the surface after being long under water. My
curiosity awakened, I sauntered a few feet along the veranda. Beside
one of the cots stood a short, roly-poly little man, the lower third of
whom showed rosy pink below his bell-shaped white nightie. As he turned
his face toward the light to switch it off I swallowed the roof of my
mouth and clawed at the clap-boarding for support. It was "the Sloth!"
He had been transferred. I slipped hastily into my coat and, turning up
the collar, plunged out into the rain and the night and stumbled
blindly away on weary legs towards Panama.

CHAPTER IX

There were four of us that Sunday. "Bish" and I always went for an
afternoon swim unless police or mess duties forbade. Then there was
Bridgley, who had also once displayed his svelte form in a Z. P.
uniform to admiring tourists, but was now a pursuer of "soldiering"
Hindus on Naos Island. I wish I could describe Bridgley for you. But if
you never knew him ten pages would give you no clearer idea, and if you
ever did, the mere mention of the name Bridgley will be full and ample
description. Still, if you must have some sort of a lay figure to hang
your imaginings on, think of a man who always reminds you of a slender,
delicate porcelain vase of great antiquity that you know a strong wind
would smash to fragments,--yet when you accidentally swat it off the
mantelpiece to the floor it bobs up without a crack. Then you grow
bolder and more curious and jump on it with both feet in your
hob-nailed boots, and to your astonishment it not only does not break
but--

Well, Bridgley was one of us that Sunday afternoon; and then there was
"the Admiral," well-dressed as always, who turned up at the last
moment; for which we were glad, as any one would be to have "the
Admiral" along. 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
alwa