The phonograph men and our party did not believe in sharks; so we would venture out some distance, leaving the Englishmen and the Germans standing like sandpipers where the water was hardly up to their ankles, and keeping an anxious lookout for us and themselves. Had the sharks attempted to attack us from the land, they would have afforded excellent protection. When they all yelled at once and ran back up the beach into the bushes, we knew that they thought we had been in long enough, and we came out, and made as much noise as we could while doing so. But there would be invariably one man left behind—one man who had walked out farther than the others, and who, owing to the roar of the surf, could not hear our shrieks of terror. It was exciting to watch him from the beach diving and splashing happily by himself, and shaking the water out of his ears and hair, blissfully unconscious of the deserted waste of waters about him and of the sharp, black fin that shot like a torpedo from wave to wave. We would watch him as he turned to speak to the man who the moment before had been splashing and diving on his right, and, missing him, turn to the other side, and then whirl about and see us all dancing frantically up and down in a row along the beach, beckoning and screaming and waving our arms. We could observe even at that distance his damp hair rising on his head and his eyes starting out of their sockets as he dug his toes into the sand and pushed back the water with his arms, and worked his head and shoulders and every muscle in his whole body as though he were fighting his way through a mob of men. The water seemed very opaque at such times, and the current appeared to have turned seaward, and the distance from shore looked as though it were increasing at every step.
When night came to Corinto we would sit out on the wharf in front of the hotel and watch the fish darting through the phosphorescent waters and marking their passage with a trail of fire, or we would heave a log into it and see the sparks fly just as though we had thrown it upon a smouldering fire. One night one of the men was obliging enough to go into it for our benefit, and swam under water, sweeping great circles with his arms and legs. He was outlined as clearly in the inky depths below as though he wore a suit of spangles. Sometimes a shark or some other big fish drove a shoal of little fish towards the shore, and they would turn the whole surface of the water into half-circles of light as they took leap after leap for safety. Later in the evening we would go back to the veranda and listen to our friends the phonograph impresarios play duets on the banjo and guitar, and in return for the songs of the natives they had picked up in their wanderings we would sing to them those popular measures which had arisen into notice since they had left civilization.
This was our life at Corinto for ten idle days, until at last the steamer arrived, and the passengers came on shore to stretch their legs and buy souvenirs, and the ship’s steward bustled about in search of fresh vegetables, and the lighters plied heavily between the shore and the ship’s side, piled high with odorous sacks of coffee. And then Morse and Brackett started with their phonograph through Costa Rica, and we continued on to Panama, leaving the five foreign residents of Corinto to the uninterrupted enjoyment of their whist, and richer and happier through our coming in an inaccurate knowledge of the first verse and tune of “Tommy Atkins,” which they shouted at us defiantly as they pulled back from the steamer’s side to their quiet haven of exile.
MAP OF THE WORLD SHOWING CHANGE IN TRADE ROUTES AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE NICARAGUA CANAL
ON THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA
IF Ulysses in his wanderings had attempted to cross the Isthmus of Panama his account of the adventure would not have been filled with engineering reports or health statistics, nor would it have dwelt with horror on the irregularities of the canal company. He would have treated the isthmus in language full of imagination, and would have delivered his tale in the form of an allegory. He would have told how on such a voyage his ship came upon a strip of land joining two great continents and separating two great oceans; how he had found this isthmus guarded by a wicked dragon that exhaled poison with every breath, and that lay in wait, buried in its swamps and jungles, for sailors and travellers, who withered away and died as soon as they put foot upon the shore. But that he, warned in time by the sight of thousands of men’s bones whitening on the beach, hoisted all sail and stood out to sea.
It is quite as easy to believe a story like that as to believe the truth: that for the last century a narrow strip of swamp-land has blocked the progress of the world; that it has joined the peoples of two continents without permitting them to use it as a thoroughfare; that it has stopped the meeting of two great oceans and the shipping of the world, and that it has killed with its fever half of those who came to do battle against it. There is something almost uncanny in the manner in which this strip of mud and water has resisted the advance of man, as though there really were some evil genius of the place lurking in the morasses and brooding over the waters, throwing out its poison like a serpent, noiselessly and suddenly, meeting the last arrival at the very moment of his setting foot upon the wharf, arrogant in health and hope and ambition, and leaving him with clinched teeth and raving with madness before the sun sets.
