Dark dense thicket; water paving it. Deer, lions, tigers bounding through it. Centuries, perhaps, of such pure, free rule. Then some khaki-clad, red-faced and scrawny-necked whites deserted the Zone and brought saws to the roots of palmetto, spears to the bush cats and jaguars, lysol to the mosquitoes and flies and tar to the burning timber-swamp. A wild racing to meet the Chagres and explore the high reaches of the Panama jungle. After the torch, ashes and ghosts—bare, black stalks, pegless stumps, flakes of charred leaves and half-burnt tree trunks. Down by a stream watering a village of black French colonials, dredges began to work. More of the Zone pests, rubber-booted ones, tugged out huge iron pipes and safely laid them on the gutty bosom of the swamp. Congeries of them. Then one windy night the dredges began a moaning noise. It was the sea groaning and vomiting. Through the throat of the pipes it rattled, and spat stones—gold and emerald and amethyst. All sorts of juice the sea upheaved. It dug deep down, too, far into the recesses of its sprawling cosmos. Back to a pre-geologic age it delved, and brought up things.
Down by the mouth of a creole stream the dredges worked. Black in the golden mist, black on the lagoon.
With the aftermath there came a dazzling array of corals and jewels—jewels of the griping sea. Magically the sun hardened and whitened it. Sandwhite. Brown. Golden. Dross surged up; guava stumps, pine stumps, earth-burned sprats, river stakes. But the crab shell—sea crabs, pink and crimson—the sharks' teeth, blue, and black, and purple ones—the pearls, and glimmering stones—shone brightly.
Upon the lake of jeweled earth dusk swept a mantle of hazy blue.
II
"W'en yo' fadah wake up in de mawnin' time wid' 'im marinah stiff out in front o' him—"
"Mek fun," said Miss Buckner, rising regally, "an' be a dam set o' fools all yo' life." She buried the butt in a Mexican urn, and strode by Anesta sprawling half-robed on the matted floor. "Move, gal, an' le' me go out dey an' show dis black sow how we want 'ar fi' stew de gunga peas an' fowl."
"Oh, me don't wan' fi' go to no pahty," yawned Hyacinth, fingering the pages of a boudoir textbook left her one evening by an Italian sea captain, "me too tiad, sah."