thousand faces stared down at them they gestured and called up. All
that Charley could understand were the words: "Go ahead!" They held up
their fingers, opening them and closing them to indicate twenty,
evidently. But the passengers could do nothing, although some of them
almost jumped overboard in their excitement.
Now the ship's boat with the second mate in it hove alongside. The
mate clambered up, by the rope ladder which was lowered for him and
closely guarded. He made himself heard the best he could and the word
speedily traveled fore and aft, on all the decks, that the canoe would
take ashore twenty people, at once.
"And he says we've just time, if we start to-day, to catch the
_California_ at Panama," was reported.
What a hubbub resulted! Of course, every party aboard ship tried to
place in the canoe their man who would engage a canoe, ashore, for the
river trip. The tussle looked and sounded like a free-for-all
fist-fight. Down the rope-ladder swarmed the picked men, each trying
to out-elbow the others, and dropped recklessly into the dug-out. Two
men jumped for the dug-out from the lower deck, and fell sprawling.
Another sprang overboard, and climbed in, dripping. But Charley was
relieved to see, among the lucky ones worming down the rope-ladder, his
father. Hurrah for dad!
Mr. Adams was none too early. The boatmen were jabbering and dodging
and shouting. Already the dugout was loaded with its twenty, but the
rope-ladder was as full as ever. Out from the ship's side shoved the
big canoe, its captain shaking his head vigorously at the passengers
above and yelling: "No! No!" while his men began to ply their paddles.
Now there was a splash in the water, and a chorus of cries and
laughter. A passenger who was bound not to be left had dived
overboard, after the canoe. Up he rose, to the surface, and struck
out. He was the long-nosed man, Mr. Jacobs!
"Wait! Wait! Man overboard!" rang the excited shouts to the dug-out;
and Mr. Jacobs himself, swimming as high as he could, waved an arm and
shouted.
But the crew of the dug-out only looked back and laughed; their
captain, steering, shook his head and motioned no; and faster and
faster traveled the canoe. The long-nosed man swam hard for a little
way, when, giving up, he turned and came back to the ship.
The passengers gave him a round of applause mixed with laughter, as he
clambered aboard; but leaning over to watch, Charley saw him pause at
the rail and shake his fist after the retreating dug-out. He was not a
good loser.
"Well, _he's_ left, anyhow," greeted Mr. Grigsby, when Charley hastened
back to find him and tell him. Mr. Grigsby was so tall, that he had
seen as well as Charley, who was little and could squeeze about under
people's arms. "It's a wonder. That kind of person usually swipes the
best seat."
"I'm glad, aren't you?" answered Charley. "Maybe we won't have any
more trouble with him."
"Humph! Can't count on that yet," asserted Mr. Grigsby.
"My father didn't get left. He's in the boat, all right," said
Charley, proudly.
"Yes. I knew he'd make it. Now as soon as we can get ashore we'll
start up-river."
But nothing was done aboard the _Georgia_, toward landing the
passengers, until another hour. Then suddenly the word spread: "Get
your baggage. Everybody ashore," and the sailors began to lower the
boats.
By the fight for place, that again occurred, anybody would have thought
that the ship was sinking and that only those people who got into the
boats at once would be saved! The parties who had no men ashore were
the most determined to be first.
"Pshaw! Let 'em go," spoke Mr. Grigsby, as the shoving crowd jostled
him and Charley hither and thither. "We can wait. I'm not specially
anxious to be capsized and lose all our stuff."
Boat after boat, loaded to the water's edge, pulled away from the ship
for the shore, canoes hastened to help, and still the passengers
clamored and fought. In the confusion Charley lost all track of the
long-nosed man and his partners. The main thought now was, when could
he and Mr. Grigsby get ashore and find his father?
When the boats returned for their second loads there was another
hurly-burly, but the decks were thinning out, and pushing to the
nearest ladder Charley and the Frémonter managed to climb down,
lowering their baggage, into the boat there. The boat was loaded full
almost instantly, and away it pulled, for the shore again.
Standing up, because there wasn't space to sit down, Charley eagerly
gazed ahead. Slowly the shore enlarged; and turning the high point on
which was the Castle of San Lorenzo the boat entered the mouth of the
river. A little bay unfolded, its shore high on the left, low and
marshy on the right. On the left, at the foot of the thickly wooded
bluffs, among bananas and plantains, appeared a little group of
peak-roofed huts, all the muddy bank in front of them alive with the
_Georgia's_ passengers. Was that the town of Chagres? Well, who would
want to live _here_!
The passengers already landed were running about like ants, every one
acting as if his life again depended upon his getting away immediately.
The landing place was covered with baggage which had been dumped
ashore. A number of canoes were lying in the shoal water, and a number
of others had been hauled out while their owners repaired them. Amidst
the baggage, and over the canoes, swarmed the _Georgia's_ passengers,
in their flannel shirts or broadcloth or muddy white, shouting and
pleading and threatening, trying to hire the boatmen.
"There's your father," spoke Mr. Grigsby, suddenly, to Charley, as
their boat neared the busy landing.
Charley had been anxiously searching the shore, looking for his father;
and now he saw him, standing in a canoe drawn up out of the water, and
beckoning.
This looked promising; maybe that was their canoe! The moment that the
ship's boat grounded, its passengers tumbled out, helter-skelter, into
the mud, and raced for land, lugging their bed-rolls, to swell the bevy
already landed. Mr. Grigsby shouldered his own bedroll, gave Charley a
hand with the other, and together they joined in the scramble.
[Illustration: The route across the isthmus in 1849. About forty miles
by canoe from Chagres to Cruces; twenty miles by horse, mule, and
bullock from Cruces to Panama. Charley's party stopped at Gatun, Dos
Hermanos, Peña Blanca, and Cruces. Of course, to-day Gatun Lake covers
from Gatun to Gorgona, and people start from Limon Bay, not Chagres, by
canal]
"Hello!" greeted Mr. Adams. He was as breathless as they, for every
minute he was shoving away persons who tried to seize the canoe, and
was explaining that it was taken. A black boatman was busy thatching
the canopy top with dried palm leaves--and he, too, was obliged to keep
shaking his head and saying: "No. No. Go 'way."
"Well, here's our boat," continued Mr. Adams, briskly. "Here's one
boatman; his name's Maria. Francisco, the other, is up town buying
provisions. No," called Mr. Adams, to a _Georgia_ passenger who was
thrusting money fairly into the face of Maria, "you can't hire this
boat. It's taken."
"I've paid fifteen dollars apiece, for the three of us and our baggage
up to Cruces, forty miles. That's as high as boats go; there we'll
have to take mules across to Panama," continued Mr. Adams--the outsider
having gone off disappointed. "I think we've got a good boat; but I've
had a fight to keep it. If Maria hadn't have stayed, I'd have been
thrown out, long ago."
"When do we start?" asked Charley.
"Whenever Francisco comes back."
"Do you reckon we'll have time to eat?" queried Mr. Grigsby.
"Yes. And that might be a good plan, too."
"You and Charley go up and see what you can find, and I'll hold the
boat," directed Mr. Grigsby, climbing in.
"All right. Come along, Charley," and Mr. Adams alertly limped on up
the gentle slope, to the village.
The huts were square, made of cane and roofed with palm-leaf thatch, to
a peak. There were no window-panes or doors. The Chagres men and
women stood in the doorways, and gazed curiously out while they puffed
big black cigars and talked about the crazy Americanos.
This, then, was Chagres at the mouth of the Chagres River, the
beginning of the Isthmus trip to the Pacific. (But when the great
Panama Canal was built, it left the Chagres River, above the town, and
cutting across a neck of land struck the ocean at Limon Bay, eight
miles down the coast. The first Panama railroad also chose Limon Bay
as one terminus; so that the town of Chagres soon lost its business.)
Mr. Adams spoke Spanish, because he had been a soldier in Mexico; and
right speedily he bought bread and bananas and eggs and some dried
meat. There was a hut bearing a sign in English: "Crescent Hotel"; but
one look into it and at its mob of panting customers decided Charley
and his father to eat in their canoe.
"Good! There's Francisco!" exclaimed Mr. Adams, as they returned.
"Yes; and there's that Jacobs again!" cried Charley. "He's after our
canoe!"
"He won't get it," said his father. "We've paid for it, and we keep
it."
VII
A RACE UP THE RIVER
The river landing was still the same scene of wild bustle, with the
white people running up and down, darting hither-thither, all
determined to set out at once. The dark-skinned natives were the cool
ones amidst the flurry; and the boatmen were the coolest. Every canoe
was constantly being pounced upon by fresh seekers who were yet without
a craft, but the majority of the canoes seemed to have been engaged.
However, a few boatmen evidently were holding out for higher pay.
Sure enough, the long-nosed man and one of his partners were hotly
arguing with Maria at the bows, and offering him money; whereat Maria
only shook his head, under its wide-brimmed braided straw hat, and
scarcely paused in his work of thatching the canopy. Francisco stood
looking on and listening. He was a strapping big fellow, not very
black, wearing loose cotton pantaloons. In his ears were brass rings,
for earrings. Just as Charley and his father arrived, the long-nosed
man roughly seized Maria by the shoulder, as if to jerk him from his
work and force him to take the money. At that, Francisco sprang
forward like a panther, grabbed the long-nosed man by the collar, and
flung him head over heels, along the mud.
Well plastered, the long-nosed man picked himself up, and glared at
Francisco. By-standers laughed. Mr. Jacobs make a step forward, as if
to leap while Francisco waited, panting and ready. But Mr. Jacobs's
partner said, shortly: "Come along. We can't waste time here," and
with a parting scowl the long-nosed man turned away with him.
Neither of them seemed to have noticed whose boat it was. All they
wanted now was anybody's boat, of any kind. Charley was glad to see
them go.
Francisco grinned at Mr. Adams and Charley. From the stern where he
was sitting Mr. Grigsby approved, to Francisco, with a jocular sentence
in Spanish, at which Francisco grinned again. Maria spoke aside, and
Mr. Adams nodded, translating to Charley:
"Maria says we have paid for the boat and it is our boat. He and
Francisco want it understood that they are gentlemen and honest."
"As long as we treat them right they'll treat us right," put in Mr.
Grigsby. "We're lucky. I've seen some of these boats change hands
half a dozen times, already."
"Yes; when once you get to bribing there's no end to it," asserted Mr.
Adams. "I don't trust anybody I can bribe."
The baggage was in the boat; the small trunk toward the stern, and
bedding rolls arranged toward the bows. Francisco had dumped in a
boiled ham and a sack of rice; he took the other supplies from Charley
and his father, and stowed them also. A pair of broad-bladed paddles
lay along the gunwales, fore and aft.
"Go ahead," spoke Maria, stepping back from the canopy. He motioned
his passengers into the canoe.
"Good!" said Mr. Adams. "Get into the bows, Charley. You and I'll sit
amidships, Grigsby. How many canoes ahead of us?"
"About a dozen, I reckon."
"We ketch 'em," assured Maria, confidently.
He and Gonzales seized the gunwales and bent low, shoving. The dug-out
slipped down the slimy bank, through the ooze, into the water, and with
final shove Maria and Francisco vaulted aboard. Maria in the stern,
behind the trunk, Francisco kneeling at Charley's feet, between the
bedding rolls, they grasped their paddles, and swung the canoe
up-stream. With a few powerful strokes they left behind them the bank,
where the white horde, crazed by the sight of another boat making
start, shouted and gestured more frantically than ever.
Charley just glimpsed still another boat putting out from the landing,
when his canoe swept around a curve, and landing and crowd and village
all were blotted from view by a mass of foliage. Even the sounds of
bargaining ceased. The canoe might have been a thousand miles into the
wilderness, where nobody lived.
"All right," remarked Charley's father, settling himself comfortably.
"Now 'go ahead,' as they say. There are 300 people waiting at Panama
for the _California_, and I only hope we get there in time."
"Maria says we'll reach Cruces in three days, if we don't have
accidents," spoke Mr. Grigsby. "Might as well enjoy the scenery."
The dug-out was called a cayuca. It was about twenty feet long, but
very narrow, and was hollowed from a single trunk of mahogany--for
mahogany was as common down here as pine up North. Charley felt quite
luxurious, riding in a mahogany boat!
He never had dreamed of such scenery. The crooked river flowed between
a perfect mass of solid green blotched with blazes of flowers.
Bananas, plantains, cocoa and other palms, bread-fruit, gigantic teak
trees, dense leaved mangoes, acacias and mangroves on stilt roots like
crutches, sugar-cane, sapotes with sweet green fruit the size of one's
head, sapodillas with fruit looking like russet apples, mahogany,
rose-wood, and a thousand others which neither Mr. Grigsby nor
Charley's father recognized, grew wild, as thick as grass--and every
tree and shrub was wreathed with flowering vines trying to drag it
down. Monkeys and parrots and other odd beasts and birds screamed and
gamboled in the branches; and in the steeply rising jungle and in the
water strange noises were continually heard. There were violent
splashes and snorts from alligators--and Mr. Grigsby saw two wild
boars. Now and then sluggish savannahs or swamps opened on right or
left, filled with vegetation and animals.
It was the rainy season and the river was running full, about
seventy-five yards wide, with a strong current in the middle. Paddling
hard, Maria and Francisco zigzagged from side to side across the bends,
seeking the stiller water and the eddies. Trees bent over and almost
brushed the canoe--and suddenly Maria, in the stern, cried out and
pointed.
"Python!" he uttered. "Mira! (Look!)"
He and Francisco backed water and stared. So did their passengers, and
well it was that the canoe had been stopped. From the lower branches
of a large leafy tree jutting out into the very course of the canoe was
hanging a long, mottled object, swaying and weaving. Charley saw the
head--a snake's head! A boa constrictor, as large around as a barrel,
and with most of its body hidden in the tree!
"Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Grigsby, and raised his rifle. With single
movement the two boatmen swung the canoe broadside and held it. The
Frémonter sent eagle glance adown his leveled barrel--the rifle cracked
and puffed a little waft of smoke. "Spat!" sounded the bullet. The
huge snake began to writhe and twist, fairly shaking the tree; then
fold by fold it issued, in a horrid mazy line of yellow and black
(would it never end?), until with a plash the last of it fell into the
water and swirling the surface the monster disappeared.
"Bueno! Bueno! Mucho culebra (Good! Good! Big snake)" exclaimed
Maria; and chattering in Spanish he and Francisco hastily veered the
canoe further from the bank.
"They say the snake's mate is liable to be near and we'd better stand
out," explained Mr. Adams. "He was a big one, sure."
"Forty feet, I judge," answered Mr. Grigsby.
"Where'd you hit him?" asked Charley, eagerly.
"In the eye," asserted Mr. Grigsby. "You don't think a Frémont man
would shoot for any other mark, do you?"
Mile after mile steadily paddled Maria and Francisco, up the magic
river. Already their bronze bodies, sinewy and naked, were glistening
with perspiration, for in here, between the high wooded hills, it was
very hot and moist. Charley's neck was tired, from twisting his head
so that he could see everything at once; and on their seat amidships
his father and Mr. Grigsby were constantly craning right and left.
Abruptly Maria and Francisco ceased paddling, threw aside their plaited
hats, kicked off their cotton trousers, and crying together "Bano!
Bano!" plunged overboard. Charley gazed in alarm. What had happened?
Another boa threatening? But his father and Mr. Grigsby read his
alarmed face and laughed.
"Oh, they're just taking a swim, that's all," explained his father.
"They said 'bano,' which is Spanish for bath."
Nevertheless, this struck Charley as a dangerous thing to do, in a
river swarming with alligators and other reptiles; yet frisking about
and blowing and ducking Maria and Francisco seemed to be enjoying
themselves. They swam like seals.
"We might as well have a snack to eat, while we wait," quoth Mr.
Grigsby. He threw Charley some bananas, and cut off chunks of the
dried meat for the company. By the time they three had eaten a little
lunch, Maria and Francisco had climbed aboard, donned their trousers
and hats, and resuming their paddles were starting on again, evidently
much refreshed.
In the straightaways behind and before other canoes, hurrying up-river,
were sighted. One of the canoes behind crept closer and closer. Maria
and Francisco occasionally glanced over their wet shoulders at it, but
although they worked bravely, and Maria sang lustily:
Yankee doodle doodle doo,
Yankee doodle dandy;
Yankee doodle doodle doo,
Yankee doodle dandy.
Yankee doodle dandy,
Yankee doodle dandy,
Yankee doodle doodle doo,
Yankee doodle dandy!
the canoe behind was proving too much for them. Meanwhile Charley
wondered how Maria had invented his "American" song.
The canoe behind held seven persons; and of course it could overhaul
Charley's canoe, for four of the persons were paddlers. Charley,
facing backward in the bows, had the best view of it; and as on it
came, the four paddlers digging hard, he saw, as somehow he had
expected, that the three passengers were the long-nosed man and two
partners.
With its paddlers grunting in unison, the water spurting from the prow,
and the three passengers lolling back, it surged past. One of Mr.
Jacobs's cronies yelled, mockingly: "Want a tow?"--and the paddlers
grinned.
"No matter," panted Maria, to his own company. "We ketch 'em. Dey pay
big mooney; pay more 'fore dey get dere. You bet."
The river ran swifter, now, and Maria and Francisco worked their level
best to make way against the heavy, muddy current. The sun was almost
touching the high green ridge to the west, when Mr. Grigsby, who had
sharp eyes, said, with a nod of his head:
"That must be Gatun, where we stop for the night."
The canoe was turning in toward the right bank; and Charley, looking,
saw a cluster of thatched huts there. A number of other canoes were
tied at the bank, and their boatmen and passengers were loafing among
the huts. A loud dispute was going on between some boatmen and
passengers. As Charley's boat glided up, and Francisco leaped ashore
to hold it, the long-nosed man's angry tones sounded loud and familiar.
It was he and his two partners who were threatening their boatmen.
"We want to go on. Go on--understand? We paid you extra; big money.
No stop here; no stop. You savvy?"
But the boatmen shrugged their bare shoulders, and sauntered away,
leaving the three men furious.
"No use, pardner," called another gold seeker. "These niggers always
stop here for the night. You might as well swallow your cud."
"But we paid them one hundred dollars to take us straight through,"
rasped Mr. Jacobs.
"Yes, and stole another party's boat in the bargain, I understand,"
retorted the gold seeker. "Serves you right."
"Well, I'd like to have them up North for about ten minutes," growled
the man who had drawn knife on Mr. Grigsby aboard the _Georgia_. "I'd
tan their hides for 'em."
"Shucks! Such tall talk doesn't go down here," answered the other.
"They're as free as you are, and no crookeder."
He plainly enough was somebody not afraid to speak his mind; and since
they were getting the worst of the argument the three scallawags quit
complaining.
"We'll have to hustle to find lodging here," spoke Mr. Adams, rather
dubiously surveying the crowd and the huts.
And indeed the outlook was not promising. The village was small and
dirty, squatting here amidst bananas and palms and sugar-cane, its
people the same kind as at Chagres. (To-day the surface of the great
Gatun Lake, formed by the famous Gatun dam which has blocked the course
of the Chagres River in order to obtain water for the big canal, covers
old Gatun village--and other villages besides.)
There seemed to be enough gold seekers here, now, to fill every hut to
overflowing. But Maria (who appeared to have taken a fancy to his
party) came pattering back from an errand, and beckoned to Mr. Adams.
"It looks as though Maria had found something for us," said Charley's
father, as they followed Maria.
Maria led them beyond the village, and behind a screen of banana trees,
to a little hut crouched there cosily. The owner of the hut, and his
wife, stood in the doorway.
They wore a long, clean cotton shirt apiece. Half a dozen children who
wore nothing at all were peeping out from behind their parents' skirts.
The man and woman bowed grandly, and Maria spoke in Spanish.
"The house is ours, he says," informed Charley's father. "Good! Now
how about something to eat, I wonder?"
That was soon answered. When they filed through the doorway, to
inspect, here was a cane table set with supper--fried eggs, fried
bread-fruit, also real bread, baked bananas, sweet potatoes, beef dried
in strips, black coffee--and in the middle of the table a baked
something that looked exactly like a baked baby!
"Oh!" cried Charley, startled. "What's that?"
"A baked monkey, 'pon my word!" exclaimed his father. "Well, that's
more than I can go."
"I'm no cannibal, myself," quoth Mr. Grigsby. "Fact is, I'd rather eat
outside."
"No, I'll have them take it away," opposed Mr. Adams; and amidst
laughter the baked monkey was removed.
They sat on the earthen floor and ate. Things tasted mighty good. The
huts had no windows, and a dirt floor. A woven grass hammock swung
from the poles, and a number of cowhides were laid like a couch. Maria
said something about "muchacho" (which Charley knew was Spanish for
boy) and pointed to the hammock.
"That's yours," translated Charley's father, to Charley. "We men sleep
on those hides, I suppose."
While eating, Charley began to prickle, and shrugging his shoulders
politely scratched. His partners were doing the same, and Mr. Grigsby
laughed.
"Fleas!" he grunted. "That's all. Got to expect them. Otherwise
we're lucky."
Fleas? There were millions of them! They hopped even over the food;
but Charley was so hungry that he couldn't stop for that. He scratched
and ate.
Darkness descended early in the jungle. Maria and Francisco said that
they'd all start up-river again at daybreak, or five o'clock, so it
behooved the party to get to bed. Charley took one stroll, after
supper, into the village, sight-seeing. The village was a-riot with
noise. The natives were beginning a dance, to the light of torches, on
the grass, for the entertainment of the visitors. Tom-toms whanged,
flutes screeched, people cheered, and a number of the gold seekers were
acting like rowdies. It was a wild scene, amidst flaring torches; but
Charley thought best to beat a retreat to the safety of the hut.
With his clothes on he clambered into his hammock. His father and Mr.
Grigsby lay on the pile of hides. Where the family slept could not be
found out; Maria and Francisco slept in the boat, to guard the baggage.