The ocean breeze swept unhampered across the island; on its rocky shore sounded the dull rumble of waves, for the sea was rolling a bit now.  The swelling tide covered inch by inch a sandy ridge that connected us with another island, gradually drowning beneath its waters several rusty old hulls.  A little rocky wooded isle to the left cut off the future entrance to the canal.  Some miles away across the bay on the lower slope of a long hill drowsed the city of Panama in brilliant sunshine; and beyond, the hazy mountainous country stretched southwestward to be lost in the molten horizon.  On a distant hill some Indian was burning off a patch of jungle to plant his corn.

Meanwhile the Lieutenant and the Corporal had settled some Lombroso proposition and fallen to reciting poetry.  The former, who was evidently a lover of melancholy, mouth-filling verse, was declaiming “The Raven” to the open sea.  I listened in wonder.  Was this then police talk?  I had expected rough, untaught fellows whose conversation at best would be pornographic rather than poetic.  My astonishment swelled to the bursting point when the Colombian not only caught up the poem where the Lieutenant left off but topped it off with that peerless translation by Bonalde the Venezuelan, beginning: 

  Una fosca media noche, cuando en tristes reflexiones
  Sobre mas de un raro infolio de olvidados cronicones—­

And just then the quarantine launch swung around the neighboring island.  I tightened my horse belt and dragged the “Colt” around within easy reach; and a moment later the doctor and his bulking understudy stepped ashore—­alone.

“They didn’t come,” said the former; “they were not allowed to leave their own country.”

“Hell and damnation,” said the Lieutenant at length in a calm, conversational tone of voice, with the air of a small boy who has been wantonly robbed of a long-promised holiday but who is determined not to make a scene over it.  The Corporal seemed indifferent, and stood with the far-away look in his eyes as if he were already busy with some other plans or worries.  But then, the Corporal was married.  As for myself, I had somehow felt from the first that it was too good to be true.  Adventure has steadily dodged me all my days.

A half-hour later we were pitching across the bay toward Ancon hill, scaled bare on one end by the work of fortification like a Hindu hair-cut.  The water came spitting inboard now and then, and dejected silence reigned within the craft.  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.  In the second-story squad-room of the bungalow were eight beds.  But there were more than enough policemen to go round, and the legal occupant of the bunk I fell asleep in returned from duty at midnight and I transferred to the still warm nest of a man on the “grave-yard” shift.