already moving on again before I had guessed that by this noise
they designated none other than the famous Pedro Miguel. The sun
rose suddenly as we swung sharply to the left and rumbled across a
girderless bridge. Barely had I time to discover that we were
crossing the great canal itself and to catch a brief glimpse of
the jagged gulf in either direction, before the train had left it
behind, as if the sight of the world-famous channel were not worth
a pause, and was roaring on through a hilly country of perpetual
summer. A peculiarly shaped reservoir sped past on the left, twice
or thrice more the green horizon rose and fell, and at 7:30 we
drew up at the base of Culebra, the Zone capital.

On the screened veranda of a somewhat sooty and dismal building
high up near the summit of the town, another and I were pacing
anxiously back and forth when, well on in the morning, an abrupt
and rather gloomy-faced American dashed into the building and one
of the rooms thereof, snapping over his shoulder as he
disappeared, "One of you!" The other had precedence. Then soon
from behind the wooden shutters came a growl of "Next!" and two
moments later I was standing in the reputed costume of Adam on the
scales within. At about ten-second intervals a monosyllable fell
from the lips of the morose American as he delved into my personal
make-up from crown to toe with all the instrumental circumspection
known to his secret-discovering profession. Then with a gruff
"Dress!" he sat down at a table to scratch a few fantastic marks
on the blank I had brought, and hand it to me as I caught up my
last garment and turned to the door. But, alas--tight sealed! and
all the day, though carrying the information in my pocket, I must
live in complete ignorance of whether I had been found lacking an
eye or a lung. For sooner would one have asked his future of the