Zone Policeman 88 Part 10

The result of all this sweating and sight-seeing was that some days later there was gathered in a young Barbadian who had been living for months in and about Gatun without any visible source of income whatever--not even a wife. The Turk and the camp janitor identified him as the culprit. But the primer lesson the police recruit learns is that it is one thing to believe a man guilty and quite another to convince a judge--the most skeptical being known to zoology--of that perfectly apparent fact. With the suspect behind bars, therefore, I continued my underground activities, with the result that when at length I took the train at New Gatun one morning for the court-room in Cristobal I loaded into a second-cla.s.s coach six witnesses aggregating five nationalities, ready to testify among other things to the interesting little point that the defendant had a long prison record in Barbados.

When the echo of the black policeman's "Oye! Oye!" had died away and the little white-haired judge had taken his "bench," I made the discovery that I was present not in one, but in four capacities,--as arresting officer, complainant, interpreter, and to a large extent prosecuting attorney. To swear a Turk who spoke only Turkish through another Turk, who mangled a little Spanish, for a judge who would not recognize a non-American word from the voice of a steam-shovel, with a solemn "So Help Me G.o.d!" to clinch and strengthen it when the witness was a follower of the prophet of Medina--or n.o.body--was not without its possibilities of humor. The trial proceeded; the witnesses witnessed in their various tongues, the perspiring arresting officer reduced their statements to the common denominator of the judge's single tongue, and the smirking bullet-headed defendant was hopelessly buried under the evidence. Wherefore, when the s.h.i.+ning black face of his lawyer, retained during the two minutes between the "Oye!" and the opening of the case, rose above the scene to purr:

"Your Honor, the prosecution has shown no case. I move the charge against my client be quashed."

I choked myself just in time to keep from gasping aloud, "Well, of all the nerve!" Never will I learn that the lawyer's profession admits lying on the same footing with truth in the defense of a culprit.

"Cause shown," mumbled the Judge without looking up from his writing, "defendant bound over for trial in the circuit court."

A week later, therefore, there was a similar scene a story higher in the same building. Here on Thursdays sits one of the three members of the Zone Supreme Court. Jury trial is rare on the Isthmus--which makes possibly for surer justice. This time there was all the machinery of court and I appeared only in my legal capacity. The judge, a man still young, with an astonis.h.i.+ngly mobile face that changed at least once a minute from a furrowy scowl with great pouting lips to a smile so broad it startled, sat in state in the middle of three judicial arm-chairs, and the case proceeded. Within an hour the defendant was standing up, the cheery grin still on his black countenance, to be sentenced to two years and eight months in the Zone penitentiary at Culebra. A deaf man would have fancied he was being awarded some prize. One of the never-ending surprises on the Zone is the apparent indifference of negro prisoners whether they get years or go free. Even if they testify in their own behalf it is in a listless, detached way, as if the matter were of no importance anyway. But the glance they throw the innocent arresting officer as they pa.s.s out on their way to the barb-wire enclosure on the outskirts of the Zone capital tells another story.

There are members of the Z. P. who sleep with a gun under their pillow because of that look or a muttered word. But even were I nervous I should have been little disturbed at the glare in this case, for it will probably be a long walk from Culebra penitentiary to where I am thirty-two months from that morning.

A holiday air brooded over all Gatun and the country-side. Workmen in freshly washed clothing lolled in the shade of labor-camps, black Britishers were gathering in flat meadows fitted for the national game of cricket, far and wide sounded the care-free laughter and chattering of negroes, while even within Gatun police station leisure and peace seemed almost in full possession.

The morning "touch" with headquarters over, therefore, I scrambled away across the silent yawning locks and the trainless and workless dam to the Spillway, over which already some overflow from the lake was escaping to the Caribbean. My friends "Dusty" and H---- had carried their canoe to the Chagres below, and before nine we were off down the river. It was a day that all the world north of the Tropic of Cancer could not equal; just the weather for a perfect "day off." A plain-clothes man, it is true, is not supposed to have days off. Some one might run away with the Administration Building on the edge of the Pacific and the telephone wires be buzzing for me--with the sad result that a few days later there would be posted in Zone police stations where all who turned the leaves might read:

Special Order No. ....

Having been found Guilty of charges of Neglect of Duty preferred against him by his commanding officer First-cla.s.s Policeman No. 88 is hereby fined $2.

Chief of Division.

But shades of John Aspinwall! Should even a detective work on such a Sunday? Surely no criminal would--least of all a black one. Moreover these forest-walled banks were also part of my beat.

The sun was hot, yet the air of that ozone-rich quality for which Panama is famous. For headgear we had caps; and did not wear those, though barely a few puffy, snow-white clouds ventured out into the vast chartless sky all the brilliant day through. Then the river; who could describe this lower reach of the Chagres as it curves its seven deep and placid miles from where Uncle Sam releases it from custody, to the ocean. Its jungled banks were without a break, for the one or two cl.u.s.ters of thatch and reed huts along the way are but a part of the living vegetation. Now and then we had glimpses across the tree-tops of brilliant green jungle hills further inland, everywhere were huge splendid trees, the stack-shaped mango, the soldier-erect palm heavy, yet unburdened, with cocoanuts. Some fish resembling the porpoise rose here and there, back and forth above the shadows winged snow-white cranes so slender one wondered the sea breeze did not wreck them. Above all the quiet and peace and contentment of a perfect tropical day enfolded the landscape in a silence only occasionally disturbed by the cry of a pa.s.sing bird. Once a gasoline launch deep-laden with Sunday-starched Americans, snorted by, bound likewise to Fort Lorenzo at the river's mouth; and we lay back in our soft, rumpled khaki and drowsily smiled our sympathy after them. When they had drawn on out of earshot life began to return to the banks and nature again took possession of the scene. Alligators abounded once on this lower Chagres, but they have grown scarce now, or shy, and though we sat with H----'s automatic rifle across our knees in turns we saw no more than a carca.s.s or a skeleton on the bank at the foot of the sheer wall of impenetrable verdure.

Till at length the sea opened on our sight through the alley-way of jungle, and a broad inviting cocoanut grove nodded and beckoned on our left. Instead we paddled out across the sandbar to play with the surf of the Atlantic, but found it safer to return and glide across the little bay to the drowsy straw and tin village. Here--for the mouth of the Chagres like its source lies in a foreign land--a solitary Panamanian policeman in the familiar Arctic uniform enticed us toward the little thatched office, and house, and swinging hammock of the alcalde to register our names, and our business had we had any. So deep-rooted was the serenity of the place that even when "Dusty," in all Zone innocence, addressed the white-haired little mulatto as "hombre" he lost neither his dignity nor his temper.

The policeman and a brown boy of merry breed went with us up the gra.s.sy rise to the old fort. In its musty vaulted dungeons were still the ma.s.sive, rust-corroded irons for feet, waist and neck of prisoners of the old brutal days; blind owls stared upon us; once the boy brought down with his honda, or slung-shot, one of the bats that circled uncannily above our heads. In dank corners were mounds of worthless powder; the bakery that once fed the miserable dungeon dwellers had crumbled in upon itself. Outside great trees straddled and split the ma.s.sive stone walls that once commanded the entrance to the Chagres, jungle waved in undisputed possession in its earth-filled moat, even the old cannon and heaped up cannon-b.a.l.l.s lay rust-eaten and dejected, like decrepit old men who have long since given up the struggle.

We came out on the nose of the fort bluff and had before and below us and underfoot all the old famous scene, for centuries the beginning of all trans-Isthmian travel,--the scalloped surf-washed sh.o.r.e with its dwindling palm groves curving away into the west, the Chagres pus.h.i.+ng off into the jungled land. We descended to the beach of the outer bay and swam in the salt sea, and the policeman, scorning the launch party, squatted a long hour in the shade of a tree above in tropical patience.

Then with "sour" oranges for thirst and nothing for hunger--for Lorenzo has no restaurant--we turned to paddle our way homeward up the Chagres, that bears the salt taste of the sea clear to the Spillway. Whence one verse only of a stanza by the late bard of the Isthmus struck a false note on our ears;

Then go away if you have to, Then go away if you will!

To again return you will always yearn While the lamp is burning still.

You've drunk the Chagres water And the mango eaten free, And, strange though it seems, It will haunt your dreams This Land of the Cocoanut Tree.

No catastrophe had befallen during my absence. The same peaceful sunny Sunday reigned in Gatun; new-laundered laborers were still lolling in the shade of the camps, West Indians were still batting at interminable b.a.l.l.s with their elongated paddles in the faint hope of deciding the national game before darkness settled down. Then twilight fell and I set off through the rambling town already boisterous with church services. Before the little sub-station a swarm of negroes was pounding tamborines and bawling l.u.s.tily:

Oh, yo mus' be a lover of de Lard Or yo cahn't go t' Heaven when yo di-ie.

Further on a lady who would have made ebony seem light-gray bowed over an organ, while a burly Jamaican blacker than the night outside stood in the vestments of the Church of England, telling his version of the case in a voice that echoed back from the town across the gully, as if he would drown out all rival sects and arguments by volume of sound.

The meeting-house on the next corner was thronged with a singing mult.i.tude, tamborines scattered among them and all clapping hands to keep time, even to the pastor, who let the momentum carry on and on into verse after verse as if he had not the self-sacrifice to stop it, while outside in the warm night another crowd was gathered at the edge of the shadows gazing as at a vaudeville performance. How well-fitted are the various brands of Christianity to the particular likings of their "flocks." The strongest outward manifestation of the religion of the West Indian black is this boisterous singing. All over town were dusky throngs exercising their strong untrained voices "in de Lard's sarvice"; though the West Indian is not noted as being musical. Here a preacher wanting suddenly to emphasize a point or clinch an argument swung an arm like a college cheer leader and the entire congregation roared forth with him some well-known hymn that settled the question for all time.

I strolled on into darker High street. Suddenly on a veranda above there broke out a wild unearthly screaming. Two negroes were engaged in savage, sanguinary combat. Around them in the dim light thrown by a cheap tenement lamp I could make out their murderous weapons--machetes or great bars of iron--slas.h.i.+ng wildly, while above the din rose screams and curses:

Yo ---- Badgyan, ah kill yo!

I sped stealthily yet swiftly up the long steps, drawing my No. 38 (for at last I had been issued one) as I ran and dashed into the heart of the turmoil swallowing my tendency to shout "Unhand him, villain!" and crying instead:

"Here, what the devil is going on here?"

Whereupon two negroes let fall at once two pine sticks and turned upon me their broad childish grins with:

"We only playin', sar. Playin' single-sticks which we larn to de army in Bahbaydos, sahgeant."

Thus I wandered on, in and out, till the night lost its youth and the last train from Colon had dumped its merry crowd at the station, then wound away along the still and deserted back road through the night-chirping jungle between the two surviving Gatuns. There was a spot behind the Division Engineer's hill that I rarely succeeded in pa.s.sing without pausing to drink in the scene, a scallop in the hills where several trees stood out singly and alone against the myriad starlit sky, below and beyond the indistinct valleys and ravines from which came up out of the night the chorus of the jungle. Further on, in American Gatun there was a seat on the steps before a bungalow that offered more than a good view in both directions. A broad, U. S.-tamed ravine sank away in front, across which the Atlantic breeze wafted the distance-softened thrum of guitar, the tones of fifes and happy negro voices, while overhead feathery gray clouds as concealing as a dancer's gossamer hurried leisurely by across the brilliant face of the moon; to the right in a free s.p.a.ce the Southern Cross, tilted a bit awry, gleamed as it has these untold centuries while ephemeral humans come and pa.s.s their brief way.

It was somewhere near here that Gatun's dry-season mosquito had his hiding-place. Rumor whispers of some such letter as the following received by the Colonel--not the blue-eyed czar at Culebra this time; for you must know there is another Colonel on the Zone every whit as indispensable in his sphere:

GATUN, ... 26, 1912.

Dear Colonel:--

I am writing to call your attention to a gross violation of Sanitary Ordinance No. 3621, to an apparent loop-hole in your otherwise excellent department. The circ.u.mstances are as follows;

On the evening of ... 24, as I was sitting at the roadside between Gatun and New Gatun (some 63 paces beyond house No. 226) there appeared a MOSQUITO, which buzzed openly and for some time about my ears. It was probably merely a male of the species, as it showed no tendency to bite; but a mosquito nevertheless. I trust you will take fitting measures to punish so bold and insolent a violation of the rules of your department.

I am, sir, very truly yours,

(Mrs.) HENRY PECK.

P. S. The mosquito may be easily recognized by a peculiarly triumphant, defiant note in his song,

I cannot personally vouch for the above, but if it was received any "Zoner" will a.s.sure you that prompt action was taken. It is well so.

The French failed to dig the ca.n.a.l because they could not down the mosquito. Of course there was the champagne and the other things that come with it--later in the night. But after all it was the little songful mosquito that drove them in disgrace back across the Atlantic.

Still further on toward the hotel and a midnight lunch there was one house that was usually worth lingering before, though good music is rare on the Zone. Then there was the naughty poker game in bachelor quarters number--well, never mind that detail--to keep an ear on in case the pot grew large enough to make a worth-while violation of the law that would warrant the summoning of the mounted patrolman.

Meanwhile "cases" stacked up about me. Now one took me out the hard U.

S. highway that, once out of sight of the last negro shanty, rambles erratically off like the reminiscences of an old man through the half-cleared, mostly uninhabited wilderness, rampant green with rooted life and almost noisy with the songs of birds. Eventually within a couple of hours it crossed Fox River with its little settlement and descended to Mt. Hope police station, where there is a 'phone with which to "get in touch" again and then a Mission rocker on the screened veranda where the breezes of the near-by Atlantic will have you well cooled off before you can catch the shuttle-train back to Gatun.

Or another led out across the lake by the old abandoned line that was the main line when first I saw Gatun. It drops down beyond the station and charges across the lake by a causeway that steam-shovels were already devouring, toward forsaken Bohio. Picking its way across the rotting spiles of culverts, it pushed on through the unpeopled jungle, all the old railroad gone, rails, ties, the very spikes torn up and carried away, while already the parrots screamed again in derision as if it were they who had driven out the hated civilization and taken possession again of their own. A few short months and the devouring jungle will have swallowed up even the place where it has been.

If it was only the little typewritten slip reporting the disappearance of a half-dozen jacks from the dam, every case called for full investigation. For days to come I might fight my way through the encircling wilderness by tunnels of vegetation to every native hut for miles around to see if by any chance the lost property could have rolled thither. More than once such a hunt brought me out on the water-tank knoll at the far end of the dam, overlooking miles of impenetrable jungle behind and above chanting with invisible life, to the right the filling lake stretching across to low blue ranges dimly outlined against the horizon and crowned by fantastic trees, and all Gatun and its immense works and workers below and before me.

Times were when duty called me into the squalid red-lighted district of Colon and kept me there till the last train was gone. Then there was nothing left but to pick my way through the night out along the P.R.R.

tracks to shout in at the yard-master's window, "How soon y' got anything goin' up the line?" and, according to the answer, return to read an hour or two in Cristobal Y.M.C.A. or push on at once into the forest of box-cars to hunt out the lighted caboose. Night freights do not stop at Gatun, nor anywhere merely to let off a "gum-shoe." But just beyond New Gatun station is a grade that sets the negro fireman to sweating even at midnight and the big Mogul to straining every nerve and sinew, and I did not meet the engineer that could drag his long load by so swiftly but that one could easily swing off on the road that leads to the police station.

Even on the rare days when "cases" gave out there was generally something to while away the monotony. As, one morning an American widely known in Gatun was arrested on a warrant and, chatting merrily with his friend, Policeman ----, strolled over to the station. There his friend Corporal Macey subdued his broad Irish smile and ordered the deskman to "book him up." The latter was reaching for the keys to a cell when the American broke off his pleasant flow of conversation to remark;

"All right, Corporal, I'm going over to the house to get a few things and write a few letters. I'll be back inside of an hour."

Whereupon Corporal Macey, being a man of iron self-control, refrained from turning a double back sommersault and mildly called the prisoner's attention to a little point of Zone police rules he had overlooked.

If every other known form of amus.e.m.e.nt absolutely failed it was still the dry, or tourist season, and poured down from the States hordes of unconscious comedians, or investigators who rushed two whole days about the Isthmus, taking care not to get into any dirty places, and rushed home again to tell an eager public all about it. Sometimes the sight-seers came from the opposite end of the earth, a little band of South Americans in tongueless awe at the undreamed monster of work about them, yet struggling to keep their fancied despite of the "yanqui," to which the "yanqui" is so serenely indifferent. Priests from this southland were especially numerous. The week never pa.s.sed that a group of them might not be seen peering over the dizzy precipice of Gatun locks and crossing themselves ostentatiously as they turned away.