Farnham Bishop

“ Down dropped her boats and away they pulled to take possession of the waiting prize.
But when the Hoboken had swung aside she kept on, out of the channel and straight across the shoal. Jonathan Gifford knew the bottom of Okra Sound as well as he did the surface. Though the Hoboken was of deeper draft than the Southern Belle she was a skimming-dish as compared with either of the two ocean steamers; the tide was at flood and a short-cut perfectly feasible. Placidly she waddled across the bows of the Plattsburg's cutters and docked herself alongside the motionless Gray Fox. ”

“ Often, when we cantered home through the swarming negro suburb of Calidonia, and up over the high-arched bridge across the tracks at the Panama Railroad station, I thought how for a hundred yards that road had been covered with dead and dying men, when a charging column of revolutionists was raked by a machine-gun placed on that bridge and operated by an American soldier of fortune in the Colombian service. ”

“ A rocket curved up out of the dark to starboard and burst with a glare that lit the Sound like day. There lay the Hoboken, about five hundred yards from the Southern Belle, boarding-nets rigged fore and aft and her guns already run in and being recharged for a second salvo. Captain Jonathan Gifford always shifted his moorings a couple of cable-lengths as soon as it was good and dark, leaving the buoyed lantern as a decoy for cutting-out parties and holding himself ready to blaze away at anything that came between him and the light. ”

“ To pass the time, the Yankees scratched their names on the ramparts of the sea-wall, and started two papers, the Star and the Herald, which, after a brief rivalry, combined in the present Panama Star and Herald, a daily, printed in both Spanish and English. Trade boomed, brigandage flourished, and there was more hiring of mules, renting of lodgings, raising of prices, and fleecing of strangers, than the Isthmus had seen since the roaring days of the Galleon Fair. ”

“ Then up from the bottom of Okra Sound sprang a mighty column of chocolate-colored water, directly in front of the Hoboken's bows and nine times as tall as the top of her funnel. Up it rose and down it came—souse—all over the holystoned, sanded deck, all over the shiny brass cutlas-hilts, the well-polished pivot-gun, the natty new uniforms and the astonished faces of the crew. The gun-captain instinctively pulled the lock-string, but the hammer fell on a soaked and dispirited paper cap. ”

“ Moreover, if yellow fever or any other dangerous disease were ever again allowed to break out there, after Panama has become one of the great highways of the world, the Canal might easily prove as great a curse to humanity as it promises to be a blessing, for then ships would carry the sickness all too swiftly to all parts of the earth. Few physicians have ever had laid upon them a heavier burden or a more sacred trust than that of the chief sanitary officer of the Canal Zone, and all the world knows how well General Gorgas has discharged it. ”

“ Though the soil is not rich, the heat and moisture cause plants to grow with incredible speed and rankness. Fence-posts sprout and become young trees. The stone-ballasted roadbed of the Panama Railroad has to be sprayed twice a month with crude oil to keep down the weeds. On either side of the track for the greater part of the way across the Isthmus stretches unbroken jungle, rising like a wall at the edge of the cuttings, or lying like a great, green sea below the embankments. It is a thoroughly satisfactory jungle, every bit as good as the pictures in the school geographies. ”

“ That's what I mean, Captain Gifford, by the legal blockade.”
“Oh, ye do, eh?” shrilled the indignant eighteen-twelver, his voice breaking into falsetto with age and wrath. “So you think you'll teach sea-law and sea-fighting to me, who taught you all you ever learned, and scandalous little it was! So you think I'm to be stationed in Okra Sound just to catch fishing-boats and oyster-sloops, and to lend a color of law to your gay and care-free privateering off Nassau! I'll bet my next six months' pay against yours that in that time the Hoboken makes more prize money than the Plattsburg.” ”

“ Some day humanity may become sufficiently civilized to establish universal peace. But until then, we must not forget that Panama has always been seized and held by the strong hand. The Isthmus to-day is a thousand times richer and more tempting a prize than it was in the time of Drake or Morgan, and though piracy has gone out of fashion, war has not. When we can turn the regular army into a police force, sell the navy for old iron, and take the big guns from Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate, we can leave the Panama Canal to be protected by the Zone Police,—but not before then. ”

“ He goes to the spot, sees what is needed, gives a plain, direct order, and gets results instead of excuses. Every morning in the week he goes out on the line, not as his French predecessor did, in a private car drawn by a locomotive, but in a swift automobile mounted on flanged wheels, that looks like a taxicab disguised as a switch-engine. This motor-car is painted the regulation light yellow of Panama Railroad passenger-coaches, and you can scare a shirker out of a wet-season's growth by yelling, "Here comes the Yellow Peril!" ”

“ THE skipper of the blockade-runner Gray Fox shook his head as he looked at the cruiser following astern.
She can't overhaul us or work up within range, but we can't shake her off. We haven't gained or lost the half of a knot between us since she sighted us at dawn. I thought we had the legs of anything in the Yankee Navy.”
“It's their crack war-steamer, the Plattsburg, and no error,” said the mate, standing beside the captain on the railed top of the port paddle-box. “If we can keep ahead of her we haven't much to fear from the rest of them.” ”

“ Most important of all, the Indians there used no poisoned arrows.
At once Enciso and Balboa, with a hundred men-at-arms, crossed to the western shore, where five hundred warriors were drawn up to meet them. Kneeling devoutly on the beach, the Spaniards vowed that if victorious they would dedicate both the spoils and their first settlement to the shrine, much reverenced in Seville, of Santa Maria de la Antigua. Then, rising, they rushed like starving wolves on the Indians. There was no poison in their arrows, and those that were not cut down in the first charge fled at once. ”

“ Jonathan Gifford slipped his cable and started up the channel as fast as he could steam, hoping to intercept and cut off the fugitive before she reached the shelter of the fort's guns. But the Hoboken was no racer; sunrise found the Southern Belle safe above the mine-field and the fat ferry-boat waddling discontentedly back to her old cruising-ground. ”

“ Everywhere trim little concrete lighthouses, looking strange enough in the jungle, are being built, or, rather, cast in one piece, on wooded hilltops that will soon be islands.
Already the yellow water is rapidly backing up, as the dam and the spillway gates are being raised. You can mark the spread of the lake by the gray of the dying, drowned-out trees against the green of the living jungle. Only in the channel and the anchorage basin has Gatun Lake been cleared of timber, and the greater part of it will be a mass of stumps and snags. ”

“ She looked like a fat apple-woman chasing a predatory small boy, and with about as much chance of success. The Gray Fox was already half a mile ahead and drawing close to the shelter of the mine-field before the Hoboken's crew could clear away the rest of the wreckage and bring the pivot-gun to bear.
“Stand aside, boy,” commanded Captain Gifford. “I'll lay this gun myself.”
The ferry-boat was bobbing up and down in the steamer's wake, and the big smooth-bore was an awkward piece to aim. But the eighteen-twelver had learned his trade on far less stable decks, with far more primitive guns. ”

“ How it must have wrung the cruel old miser's heart to see the ship loads of silver and gold that came up from the mines of Peru, to be carried across the Isthmus on the way to Spain. For it was this treasure-trade with Peru that made the wealth and glory of Old Panama. ”

“ HALLETT pointed to the trim sloop-of-war Plattsburg, lying in the Potomac by with a red flag at her main, taking aboard her powder and shell from the lighter moored alongside. The fleetest cruiser in the whole United States Navy, she was worth commanding in those days when a richly laden blockade-runner brought a small fortune in prize-money to her captors. ”

“ When the Spaniards tried to drive them away by killing off the wild cattle, these fierce cowboys of the sea began to hunt the Spaniards. Paddling up astern of a becalmed galleon in their dug-out canoes, the bucaneers would put an ounce ball from one of their long, heavy muskets into every head that showed at a port-hole or over the rail; then, wedging the rudder fast, they would swarm on board with knife and cutlass. Soon they were capturing Spanish ships of war and cities, and they helped the British government under Cromwell turn the island of Jamaica from a Spanish into an English colony. ”

“ On the side of Ancon Hill, a small volcano, extinct since prehistoric times, between the port of Balboa and the city of Panama, is the American settlement of Ancon. It is a very beautiful town, that has no named or numbered streets, but is like a garden laid out in terraces with pretty little houses here and there, and a big red-tiled administration building for the Governor, and the Canal Commissioners. Here, too, is the Ancon Hospital, built by the French, and a large hotel, called the Tivoli, that is run by the United States Government through the War Department. ”

“ The cargoes of all these barges are snatched up by giant unloader-cranes and put into storehouses, out of which, like chicks from a brooder, run intelligent little electric cars that need no motormen, but climb of themselves up into the top story of the dusty mixing-house. Here, eight huge rotary mixers churn the three elements, cement, sand, and stone, into concrete, and drop it wetly into great skips or buckets, two of which sit on each car of a somewhat larger-sized system of electric trains, whose tracks run along one side of the lock-pits. ”

“ From the great storehouse at Mount Hope, every morning a long train of refrigerator-cars crosses the Isthmus, and brings fresh supplies to the hotels and local commissaries in all the camps and towns. A bachelor, quartered in a hotel, comes down from his comfortably furnished room that costs him nothing, to a meal that costs him thirty cents, and which he would be lucky to get in New York for less than a dollar. ”

“ Most formidable of all will be the gigantic sixteen-inch gun, now at Sandy Hook, that can throw a shell, capable of sinking the stoutest dreadnaught, for more than twenty miles. Without these forts to keep them at a respectful distance, a few blockading vessels would have our fleet at their mercy as it came down the narrow channel in single column, or they might bombard the locks at Miraflores or Gatun. ”

“ To make it worse, many houses were set on fire by revengeful negro and Indian slaves. By the time Morgan's men had stormed the batteries that defended the bridges, a strong sea breeze was sweeping the flames through the town. Both the bucaneers and the citizens tried to stop the fire, blowing up some of the houses in its path and tearing down others, but by the next morning, Old Panama was a heap of ashes. ”

“ He was more than seventy years old, and though he knew very little about technical engineering, his success at Suez and the praise of flatterers made him believe that he was the greatest engineer in the world. As he had dominated the Congress, so he ruled the Canal Company, absolutely and blindly. Ignoring the great differences between the level, rainless sands of one isthmus, and the rocky hills and flooded jungles of the other, de Lesseps declared that "the Panama Canal will be more easily begun, finished, and maintained than the Suez Canal." ”