Dense black night had fallen. Here and there lanterns were hung,
under one of which we dragged each captive. The last passenger
back to Empire roared away into the jungle night; still we
scribbled on, "backed" a yellow card and dived again into the
muscular whirlpool to emerge dragging forth by the collar a Greek,
a Pole, or a West Indian. It was like business competition, in
which I had an unfair advantage, being able to understand any
jargon in evidence. When at last the pay-windows came down with a
bang and an American curse, and the serpentining tail squirmed for
a time in distress and died away, as a snake's tail dies after
sundown, I turned in more than a hundred cards. To-morrow the tail
would revive to form the nucleus of a new serpent, and we should
return by the afternoon train to the lock city, and so on for
several days to come.

It was after nine of a black pay-day night. We were hungry. "The
Rowdy," familiar with the lay of the land, volunteered to lead the
foraging expedition. We stumbled down the hill and away along the
railroad. A faint rumbling that grew to a confused roar fell on
our ears. We climbed a bank into a wild conglomeration of wood and
tin architecture, nationalities, colors, and noises, and across a
dark, bottomless gully from the high street we had reached lights
flashed amid a very ocean of uproar. "The Rowdy," as if to make
the campaign as real as possible, led us racing down into the
black abyss, whence we charged up the further slope and came
sweating and breathless into the rampant rough and tumble of pay-
day night in New Gatun, the time and place that is the vortex of
trouble on the Isthmus. Merely a short street of one of the half-
dozen Zone towns in which liquor licenses are granted, lined with
a few saloons and pool-rooms; but such a singing, howling,