THE BIG DITCH
Darkness had fallen before we dropped anchor in the harbor of Panama. It
was such a night as only the tropics can produce, the stars burning
close and brilliant, the full moon rising out of a silent sea. In front
of us the lights of the city came twinkling out. Behind them lay the
mystery of conquest.
No spot in all the western hemisphere held so much of romance as this.
Drake and Pizarro had tarried here in their blustering careers, Morgan
had captured and burned the city.
Many times in the past centuries the Isthmus had been won and lost, but
never had such a victory been gained as that our countrymen had secured
in the past half dozen years.
They had overcome yellow fever and proved that the tropics might be made
a safe place for the Anglo-Saxon to live. They had driven a sword
through the backbone of the continent and had built a canal through
which great liners could climb up and down stairs from one ocean to
another.
The dream of the centuries had become a reality through the skill and
resolution with which the sons of Uncle Sam had tackled the big ditch.
It may be guessed how anxious all of us were to get ashore. There was
little sleep aboard the _Argos_ that night. It was long past midnight
before any of us left the deck.
The truth is that the yacht had become a prison to us just as it had to
Bothwell. The thought of a few days on land, where we need not watch
every moment to keep our throats from being slit, was an enormous
relief.
But Blythe was taking no chances with the vessel. It had been decided
among us that either he, Yeager, or I should remain in charge of the
_Argos_ every minute of our stay.
I had volunteered for the first day and Yeager was to relieve me on the
second.
All three of us were firmly resolved, though we had not yet broached the
subject to Evelyn, that the ladies should remain in the canal zone while
we continued down the coast to lift the treasure.
Before Bothwell was taken ashore he had the effrontery to ask for a talk
with his cousin. Blythe did not even submit his request to her. Fleming
and he were removed from the vessel while the ladies were eating
breakfast with Yeager, so that they did not even know until afterward
that the men had been turned over to the authorities.
None of the reconstructed mutineers asked for shore leave. Each of them
knew that if he left the ship he would be liable to arrest for a capital
offense and preferred to take his chance of any punishment the captain
might inflict.
The day was an endless one, but it wore away at last. The cattleman was
to relieve me at breakfast time. I was up with the summer sun and had
bathed, shaved, and eaten long before the city showed any sign of
activity around the harbor.
"You'll like Panama," Yeager assured me after he had clambered aboard.
"It's a city of madmen, plumb daffy about the big ditch. The men can't
talk anything but cuts, dams, cubic feet, steam plows, and earth slides.
But, by Moses, when I see what they've done it makes me glad I'm an
American. Everything is the biggest in the world--the dam, the locks,
the cuts, the lake, the machinery, the whole blessed works. They've set
a new mark for the rest of the earth."
"What is Sam doing about getting a crew in place of our precious
mutineers?" I asked.
"He's picked up several fellows already. A Yankee named Stubbs is chief
engineer. Sam is shipping Jamaica niggers for firemen."
No schoolboy out for a holiday could have been half so keen to be free
as I was. At the wharf I picked up a _coche_ and was driven to the
Tivoli, the hotel in the American quarter where our party was staying.
The mud and the mosquitoes of former years were gone, though the natives
were as indolent as ever. It is a town of color, due largely to the
assorted population. I was told by a young engineer from Gatun that
forty languages are spoken on the Isthmus at present, a condition due to
the number of Caribbean islanders employed by our government.
I found that the program for the day included a trip to Colon on the
Isthmus railroad. Miss Berry preferred to rest quietly at the hotel, so
her niece, Sam, and I set out to see the great canal.
As I look back on it now Panama means to me a series of panoramic
pictures. To give more than a cursory description of our impressions is
impossible. The fact is that one obliterated another so swiftly as to
leave a sense only of confusion.
Take Culebra Cut, for instance, where the monsters of man's invention
are biting into the mountain sides, ripping down with giant jaws loose
dirt, and hauling it away on a maze of tracks.
Great hoses, under tremendous pressure, are tearing at hills and
washing them down. All the time there is a deafening noise, the crash of
the continent's spine being rent by dynamite, the roar of trains, the
shrieks of dirt shovels blowing off steam, the stab and hammer of
drills.
Man is making war on nature with amazing energy on a titanic scale. The
disorder seemed hopeless, but one realized that these little figures
moving about it in the man-made canon were achieving the seemingly
impossible none the less.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Evelyn asked for the tenth time, as we looked down
on a machine which had just seized a section of track and hoisted it up,
rails and ties complete, to swing it over to another place.
I quoted to her Damon Runyon's verses:
We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent,
An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way we went;
We're a liftin' half-creation, and we're changin' it around,
Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground.
"You Americans take the cake," Blythe admitted. "You never tire of doing
big things."
His eyes had come back to a group of young engineers who had just
entered the car. The grimy sweat had dried on their sooty faces and
their hands were black and greasy. They wore no coats and their shirts,
wet from the perspiration drawn by the hot Panama sun, stuck to the
muscular shoulders.
They looked like tramps from their attire, but Olympians could not have
carried in their manner a blither confidence. These boys--I'll swear the
oldest could have been no more than twenty-five--had undertaken to cut
asunder what God has joined.
It did not matter to them in the least that they looked like coal
miners. The only thing of importance was the work, the big ditch. Yet I
knew that these were just such splendid fellows as our technical schools
are turning out by thousands.
A few years before their thoughts had been full of cotillions and girls
and the junior prom. The Isthmus had laid hold of them and hardened
their muscles and bronzed their faces and given them a toughness of
fiber that would last a lifetime.
They had taken on responsibility as if they had been born to it. A glow
of pride in them flushed me. I was proud of the country that could fling
out by hundreds of thousands such young fellows as these.
Empire, Gorgona, Gatun. From one to another we were hurried, passing
through jungles such as we of the North never dream exist. In that
humid climate vegetation is prodigal beyond belief, gorgeous with
spattered greens and yellows and crimsons bizarre enough to take the
breath.
We ate luncheon at Colon and were back across the Isthmus at Panama a
few hours later. After dinner we strolled around the city and saw the
Parque de la Catedral, the Plaza Santa Ana, and the old sea wall.
It did my heart good to see broad-shouldered, alert young Americans
walking with wholesome girls from home and making love to them in the
same fashion their friends were doing up in "God's country."
Bothwell and his bunch of pirates began to lose themselves in the
background of my mind. There was a dance at the hotel that evening.
Before I had waltzed twice with Evelyn her buccaneer cousin had
dissolved into a myth.
When Yeager came ashore next morning he brought a piece of news. Henry
Fleming had taken a boat during the night and escaped.
"If I run across him I'll curl his hair for him," Tom promised with a
look that made me think he would keep his word.
But I was not sorry Fleming had taken French leave. Neidlinger could be
trusted now, and neither Higgins nor Gallagher would go far astray
without a leader.
But both the engineers had known of Bothwell's plans from the first. If
I could have foreseen what effect the desertion of our second engineer
was to have upon the expedition I would not have taken his disappearance
so easily.
Our stay on the canal zone was a delightful one, though we were busy
every minute of the time enjoying ourselves or making preparations for
departure. With some difficulty Blythe picked up two engineers and a
couple of firemen from Barbados and Jamaica, the latter of whom were
natives. Philips was to stay at Panama until our return.
I had my share of duty aboard the _Argos_ to do, but every minute that
was my own I spent in the old city or on the works.
Evelyn surprised us by making no objection to our decree that she should
remain at Panama while we took the _Argos_ down to San Miguel Bay to
lift the doubloons. In spite of her courage she was a woman. She
confessed to me that she had seen bloodshed enough on the way down from
California to last her a lifetime. The thought of returning so soon to
the yacht had been a dreadful one to her.
On the afternoon of our last day at Panama, Evelyn and I went out to
the old sea wall for an hour together. The tide was in and from the
parapet we watched the waves beat against the foot of the wall.
Away to our right was Balboa, above which rested a smoke pall from tugs,
dredges, and tramp west coasters. Taboga we could just make out, and
closer in a group of smaller islands the names of which I have
forgotten. Beyond them all stretched the endless Pacific.
Evelyn was quieter than usual, but I had never seen her look so lovely.
The poise of my dear girl's burnished head, the untutored grace of her
delicate youth, the gleam of tears behind the tremulous smile, all made
mighty appeal to me.
"I'm afraid for you, Jack. That's the truth of it. We've just found each
other--after all these years. I don't want to run the risk of losing you
again." Ever so slightly her voice broke.
"You'll not lose me. Do you think anything could keep me away--with the
sweetest girl in the world waiting for me here?"
"I know," she smiled, a little drearily. "It sounds foolish, but I think
of that dreadful man."
We had been following the cement promenade on top of the wall. I led her
across it to the landward side, from which we could look down into the
yard of a prison. Under the eyes of an armed guard some prisoners were
crossing to their cells. Two of them were in stripes, the third was not.
"Look," I told her. "Bothwell is down there, locked up and guarded. He
can't escape."
The little group below came closer. I had noticed that the prisoner not
in uniform was a white man and not a native. He carried himself with a
distinction one could not miss. Even before he looked up both of us knew
the man was Boris Bothwell.
He stopped in his tracks, white-lipped, a devil of hatred and rage
burning out of his deep-set eyes. A dullard could not have missed his
thoughts. He was a prisoner in this vile hole, while I had brought the
woman he loved to mock at him. The girl and the treasure would both be
mine. Before him lay no hope.
I felt a sense of shame at being an unexpected witness of his
degradation. As I started to draw Evelyn back a guard prodded the Slav
with his bayonet point. Bothwell whirled like a tiger and sprang for the
throat of the fellow. They went down together. Other guards rushed to
the rescue of their companion.
We waited to see no more.
It must have been a minute before either of us spoke.
"Bad as he is, I can't help being sorry for him. It's as if a splendid
lion were being worried to death by a pack of coyotes," Evelyn said with
a shudder.
"Yes, there's something big even in his villainy. But you may take one
bit of comfort: He can't get free to interfere with us--and he deserves
all he'll get."
"I know. My reason tells me that all will be well now, but I have a
feeling as if the worst were not yet over."
I tried to joke her out of it.
"It hasn't begun. You're not married to Jack Sedgwick yet."
"No; but, dear, I can't get away from the thought that you are going
into danger again," she went on seriously.
"Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink," I quoted lightly.
"I dare say I'm a goose," she admitted.
"You are. My opinion is that you're in as much danger as we shall be."
"Is that why you are leaving me here?" she flashed back.
I laughed. In truth I did not quite believe what I had said. For I
could see no danger at all that lay in wait for her. But the events
proved that I had erred only in not putting the case strongly enough.
Before we returned to civilization she was to be in deadly peril.