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The discussion of principles, the exposure of an adversary's weakness or inconsistencies, the weighty marshalling of uncounted words, were to him the breath of life; and with happy disregard of the need to back phrases with deeds, there now opened before him a career of argumentation, of logical deduction and exposition, constituting a condition of political and personal enjoyment which only the deskman can fully appreciate.
The instrument buzzed a moment and the deskman looked up to say: "'Andy' and a nigger just fell over into Pedro Miguel locks. They're sending in his body. The nigger lit on his head and hurt his leg." His body! How uncanny it sounded!
The Zone and Panama telephones were ringing in their two opposing dialects, the deskman was shouting his own peculiar brand of Spanish into one receiver and bawling English at the other, all hands were diving into old clothes, the most apathetic of the force were girding up their loins with the adventurous fire of the old Moro-hunting days in their eyes, and all, some ahorse, more afoot, were dashing one by one out into the night and the jungle.
Then suddenly he snatched up a sheet of I. C. C. stationery, dropped down at a typewriter, and wrote at express speed a letter in Spanish. Next he grasped a telephone and, in the words of the deskman, "spit Spig into the 'phone" for several minutes. That over he caught up an envelope, sealed the letter and addressed it. An instant later the station was in an uproar looking for a stamp.
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."
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