Then suddenly a flood of Greeks broke upon us, growing deeper with every moment.  Above the pandemonium my companions were howling hoarsely and imploringly for the interpreter, while clutching their trembling victim by the slack of his labor-stained shirt lest he escape un-enrolled.  The interpreter, in accordance with a well-known law of physics and the limitations of human nature, could not be in sixteen places at once.  I crowded close, caught his words, memorized the few questions, and there was I with my “Poomaynes?” “Poseeton?” and “Padremaynos?” enrolling Greeks unassisted, not only that but haughtily acting as interpreter for my fellows—­not only without having studied the tongue of Achilles but never even having graced a Greek letter fraternity.

Quick tropical twilight descended, and still the labor-smeared line wound away out of sight into the darkness, still workmen of every shade and tongue jingled their brass-checks timidly on the edge of the pay-window, from behind which came roaring noises that the Americans within fancied Spaniards, or Greeks, or Roumanians must understand because they were not English noises; still we pounced upon the paid as upon a tackling-dummy in the early days of spring practice.

The colossal wonder of it all was how these deep-chested, muscle-knotted fellows endured us, how they refrained from taking us up between a thumb and forefinger and dropping us over the veranda railing.  For our attack lacked somewhat in gentle courtesy, notably so that of “the Rowdy.”  He was a chestless youth of the type that has grown so painfully prevalent in our land since the soft-hearted abolishment of the beech-rod of revered memory; of that all too familiar type whose proofs of manhood are cigarettes and impudence and discordant noise, and whose national superiority is demonstrated by the maltreating of all other races.  But the enrolled were all, black, white, or mixed, far more gentlemen than we.  Some, of brief Zone experience, were sheepish with fear and the wonder as to what new mandate this incomprehensible U. S. was perpetrating to match its strange sanitary laws that forbade a man even to be uncleanly in his habits, after the good old sacred right of his ancestors to remotest ages.  Then, too, there was a Zone policeman in dressy, new-starched khaki treading with dangling club and the icy-eye of public appearance, waiting all too eagerly for some one to “start something.”  But the great percentage of the maltreated multitude were “Old Timers,” men of four or five years of digging who had learned to know this strange creature, the American, and the world, too; who smiled indulgently down upon our yelping and yanking like a St. Bernard above the snapping puppy he well knows cannot seriously bite him.