o sniff the prey. Now it was a Greek confectioner on
Avenida Central who admitted that the fugitive had called on him during
the night, now a Panamanian pesquisa whose stool-pigeon had seen him
out in the bush, then the information that he had stopped to shave and
otherwise alter his appearance in some shack half-way across the Zone
and afterward struck off for Panama by an unused route. The clues were
pendulum-like. They took me a half-dozen times at least out the winding
highway to Corozal, on to Miraflores and even further. The rainy season
and the reign of umbrellas had come. It had been formally opened on
that memorable Sunday afternoon. There was still sunshine at times, but
always a wet season heaviness to the atmosphere; and the rains were
already giving the rolling jungle hills a tinge of new green. There was
nothing to be gained by hurrying. The fugitive was as likely to crawl
forth from one place as another along the rambling road. Here I paused
to kill a lizard or to watch the clumsy march of one of the huge purple
and many-colored land-crabs, there to gaze away across a jungled valley
soft and fuzzy in the humid air like some Corot painting.

I even sailed for San Francisco in the quest. For of course each
outgoing ship must be searched. One day I had word that a "windjammer"
was about to sail; and racing out to Balboa I was soon set aboard the
fore and aft schooner Meteor far out in the bay. When I plunged down
into the cabin the peeled-headed German captain was seated at a table
before a heap of "Spig" dollars, paying off his black shore hands. He
solemnly asserted he had no Greek aboard, and still more solemnly swore
that if he found one stowed away he would turn him over to the police
in San Francisco--which was kind of him but would not have helped
matters. There are several men running gaily about San Francisco
streets who would be very welcome in certain quarters on the Zone and
sure of lodging and food for a long time to come.

By this time the tug Bolivar had us in tow, the captain went racing
over his ship like any of his crew, tugging at the ropes, and we were
gliding out across Panama bay, past the little greening islands, the
curving panorama of the city and Ancon hill growing smaller and smaller
behind--bound for 'Frisco. What ho! the merry "windjammer" with her
stowed sails and smell of tar awakened within me old memories, hungry
and grimy for the most part. But this was no independent,
self