unused route.  The clues were pendulum-like.  They took me a half-dozen times at least out the winding highway to Corozal, on to Miraflores and even further.  The rainy season and the reign of umbrellas had come.  It had been formally opened on that memorable Sunday afternoon.  There was still sunshine at times, but always a wet season heaviness to the atmosphere; and the rains were already giving the rolling jungle hills a tinge of new green.  There was nothing to be gained by hurrying.  The fugitive was as likely to crawl forth from one place as another along the rambling road.  Here I paused to kill a lizard or to watch the clumsy march of one of the huge purple and many-colored land-crabs, there to gaze away across a jungled valley soft and fuzzy in the humid air like some Corot painting.

I even sailed for San Francisco in the quest.  For of course each outgoing ship must be searched.  One day I had word that a “windjammer” was about to sail; and racing out to Balboa I was soon set aboard the fore and aft schooner Meteor far out in the bay.  When I plunged down into the cabin the peeled-headed German captain was seated at a table before a heap of “Spig” dollars, paying off his black shore hands.  He solemnly asserted he had no Greek aboard, and still more solemnly swore that if he found one stowed away he would turn him over to the police in San Francisco —­which was kind of him but would not have helped matters.  There are several men running gaily about San Francisco streets who would be very welcome in certain quarters on the Zone and sure of lodging and food for a long time to come.

By this time the tug Bolivar had us in tow, the captain went racing over his ship like any of his crew, tugging at the ropes, and we were gliding out across Panama bay, past the little greening islands, the curving panorama of the city and Ancon hill growing smaller and smaller behind—­bound for ’Frisco.  What ho! the merry “windjammer” with her stowed sails and smell of tar awakened within me old memories, hungry and grimy for the most part.  But this was no independent, self-respecting member of the Wind-wafted sisterhood.  Far out in the offing lay a steamer of the same line that was to tow the Meteor to the Golden Gate!  How is the breed of sailors fallen!  The few laborers aboard would take an occasional wheel, pick oakum, and yarn their unadventurous yarns.  As we drew near, a boat was lowered to set me aboard the steamer, to the rail-crowding surprise of her passengers, who fancied they had hours since seen the last of Zone and “Zoners.”  The captain asserted he had nothing aboard grown nearer Greece than three Irishmen, any one of whom—­facetiousness seemed to be one of the captain’s characteristics—­I might have and welcome.  A few moments later I was back aboard the tug waving farewell to steamer and “windjammer” as they pushed away into the twilight sea, and the Bolivar turned shoreward.