The Steam-Shovel Man

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

The freight trundled out of the Pacific mail-boat was piled compactly between two narrow aisles or runways on the wharf, convenient for transfer to the freight-cars of the Panama Railroad. Walter noted the marks on the boxes, because most of the stuff was consigned to the "Dept. of Commissary and Subsistence," and he was thereby reminded of Major Glendinning.

Separated from this great heap of merchandise only by a runway was the freight that was being rushed into the outward-bound Chilean steamer. A negro halted his truck between the two piles and loaded it with cases marked for Major Glendinning's department. Then he went clattering at full speed to the gangway of the Chilean steamer.

Evidently the thick-witted laborer had made a blunder, thought Walter. He had loaded his truck at the wrong side of the runway. At the gangway of the South American vessel was stationed a "checker," one of the white employees of the Zone, whose business was to discover just such mistakes as this. Walter saw him halt the truck, glance at the marks on the boxes, and then shove the negro along into the ship instead of turning him back to the wharf.

Walter did some rapid thinking. He was enough of a shipping-clerk to surmise that something was wrong. It might have been carelessness, but he eyed the checker suspiciously. He was a long, stooping young man with rather pallid, sullen features, and he conveyed an impression of slouchiness and dissipation quite unlike the clean-cut type of the average American in the Zone.

Walter disliked him. Perhaps this was why he was unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The checker forsook the gangway, hurried into the runway where the truckmen were passing in procession and gave them an order, roughly, with a gesture which carried a meaning to the vigilant Walter. They were told to continue shoving the merchandise consigned to Major Glendinning's department into the Chilean steamer. They viewed any white man as a "boss" to be obeyed. Unable to read the marks, they did as they were ordered, without hesitation.

The checker ran back to the gangway, where he made pretence of examining each arriving truck-load and passing it as O.K. Walter was convinced that he had stumbled on a flagrantly crooked transaction. It looked barefaced and bold, but it was actually much less so than appeared. In the rush and confusion of the wharf, one dishonest checker could engineer the business with small risk of official detection. The merchandise would be missed later, but what proof was there that it had been slipped aboard the Chilean steamer?

"It was one chance in a hundred that I happened to see it," said Walter to himself. "I'm sure the checker is a rascal, but there must be others in it, or how can the stolen goods be received and disposed of at the other end of the voyage?"

He forsook his place of observation and moved cautiously nearer the Chilean steamer, screened from the observation of the checker by a huge crate of machinery. There he discovered, to his great surprise, that the trucks loaded with pilfered merchandise were being wheeled across the lower deck, through the open cargo port on the other side, and into the small Panamanian coaster tied up to the larger steamer.

This altered the circumstances. Very likely the Chilean officers and crew knew nothing about the shady business. The Panamanian craft might have been courteously permitted to take on part of her cargo by transferring it across the intervening deck.