to me at my labor, hoarse, frenzied screams; sounding strangely
incongruous beneath the swaying palm-trees;

"Come on! Get down with his arm! Aaaaahrrr!"

But my time was well chosen. In the Spanish camps above the canal,
still and silent with Sunday, men at no other time to be run to
earth were entrapped in their bunks, under their dwelling-places
in the shade, shaving, exchanging hair-cuts, washing workaday
clothes, reminiscing over far-off homes and pre-migratory days, or
merely loafing. The same cheery, friendly, quick-witted fellows
they were as in their native land, even the few Italians and rare
Portuguese scattered among them inoculated with their
cheerfulness.

Came sudden changes to camps of Martiniques, a sort of wild,
untamed creature, who spoke a distressing imitation of French
which even he did not for a moment claim to be such, but frankly
dubbed patois. Restless-eyed black men who answered to their names
only at the question "Cummun t'appelle?" and give their age only
to those who open wide their mouths and cry, "Caje-vous?" Then on
again to the no less strange, sing-song "English" of Jamaica, the
whining tones of those whose island trees the conquesting
Spaniards found bearded--"barbados"--now and again a more or less
dark Costa Rican, Guatemalteco, Venezuelan, stray islanders from
St. Vincent, Trinidad, or Guadalupe, individuals defying
classification. But the chief reward for denying myself a holiday
were the "back-calls" in the town itself which I was able to check
out of my field-book. Many a long-sought negro I roused from his
holiday siesta, dashing past the tawdry calico curtains to pound