ys 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. In
regular cadence the ocean swept in with a hoarse, resistless roll on
the sands.

We dived in, keeping an eye out for the sharks we knew never come so
far in and probably wouldn't bite if they did. The sun blazed down
white hot from a cloudless sky. This time the Lieutenant and Sergeant
Jack had not been able to come, but we arranged the races and jumps on
the sand for all that, and went into them with a will and--

A rain-drop fell. Nor was it long lonesome. Before we had finished the
hundred-yard dash we were in the midst of ---- it was undeniably
raining. Half a moment later "bucketsful" would have been a weak
simile. All the pent up four months of an extra long rainy season
seemed to have been loosed without warning. The blanket of water
blotted out Panama and Ancon hill across the bay, blotted out the
distant American bathers, then the light-brown ones, then the
chocolate-tinted, then even the jet black ones close at hand.

We remained under water for a time to keep dry. But the rain whipped
our faces as with thousands of stinging lashes. We crawled out and
dashed blindly up the bank toward the saw-mill, the rain beating on our
all but bare skins, feeling as it might to stand naked in Miraflores
locks and let the sand pour down upon us from sixty feet above. When at
last we stumbled under cover and up the stairs to where our clothing