United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I dashed wildly out through the station, across Panama's main street, down a rugged lane to the first steps descending to the track, and tumbled joyously onto a slowly moving train to discover that it was the Balboa labor-train and that the Colon passenger was already half-way to Diablo Hill.
But spirits gradually revived and before we could make out the details of the wharf the Corporal's hearty genuine laughter and the Lieutenant's rousing carcajada were again drifting across the water. At Balboa I unburdened myself of my shooting hardware and, catching the labor-train, was soon mounting the graveled walk to Ancon police station.
When they had descended again to the labor-train and been snatched away to their appointed tasks, I sat a short hour in one of the black "Mission" rocking-chairs on the screened veranda puzzling over a serious problem.
Whereupon I descended to the evening passenger and rode to Pedro Miguel for five minutes' conversation, and caught the labor-train Panamaward. At Corozal I stepped off for a word with the officer on the platform and the labor-train plunged on again, after the fashion of labor-trains, spilling the last half of its disembarking passengers along the way.
Then toward noon the labor-train screamed in, with two "gold" coaches and many open cattle-cars with long benches jammed with sweaty workmen, easily six hundred men in the six cars, who swept in upon the town like a flood through a suddenly opened sluiceway as the train barely paused and shrieked away again.
An odd half dozen more, perhaps, we found stretched out in the shade under the mess-hall and neighboring quarters before the imperative screech of the labor-train whistle ended a scene that must be several times repeated, and now left us silent and alone, to wander wet and weary to the nearest white bachelor quarters, there to lie on our backs an hour or more till the polyglot jumble of words in the back of our heads had each climbed again to its proper shelf.
A dream of earthquake, holocaust, and general destruction developed gradually into full consciousness at four-thirty. House 47 was in riotous uproar. No, neither conflagration nor foreign invasion was pending; it was merely the houseful of engineers in their customary daily struggle to catch the labor-train and be away to work by daylight.
The ticket-collector pointed out my man to me in the first passenger coach, the "ladies' car" he is a school-teacher and tobacco smoke distresses him and by the time we pulled into Panama I had the desired information. Dinner was not to be thought of; I had barely time to dash through the second-class gate and back along the track to Balboa labor-train.
Word Of The Day