Amapala is a species of outdoor prison to which all travelers to or from Honduras on the Pacific side are sentenced for a term varying in length according to their luck, which is generally bad. Those who do not sleep in the park toss out their imprisonment on a bedstead of woven ropes in a truly Honduranean building that disguises itself under the name of "Hotel Morazán," the slatternly keeper of which treats her helpless inmates with the same consideration as any other prison warden devoid of humanity or oversight. The steamer I awaited was due before I arrived, but day after day I lay marooned on the blazing volcanic rock without a hint as to its whereabouts. Not even exercise was possible, unless one cared to race up and down the sharp jagged sides of the sea-girt volcano. The place ranks high as an incubator of malignant fevers and worse ailments, and to cap the climax the ice-machine was broken down. It always is, if the testimony of generations of castaways is to be given credence. Our only available pastime was to buy a soap-boxful of oysters, at the cost of a quarter, and sit in the narrow strip of shade before the "hotel" languidly opening them with the only available corkscrew, our weary gaze fixed on the blue arm of water framed by the shimmering hot hills of Salvador by which tradition had it ocean craft sometimes came to the rescue.
But all things have an end, even life imprisonment, and with the middle of January we awoke one morning to find a steamer anchored in the foreground of the picture that had seared itself into our memories. All day long half-naked natives' waded lazily back and forth from the beach to the clumsy tenders, exchanging the meager products of the country for ill-packed merchandise from my own. Night settled down over their unfinished task, the self-same moon came out and the woven-rope cots again creaked and groaned under unwilling guests. But by noon next day we had swung our hammocks under the awning of the forecastlehead and were off along the tropical blue Pacific for Panama.