We descended a story and I was soon in conference with a slender, sharp-faced young man of mobile features and penetrating eyes behind which a smile seemed always to be lurking.  On the Canal Zone, as in British colonies, one is frequently struck by the youthfulness of men in positions of importance.

“I’ll probably assign you to Empire district,” the slender young man was saying, “there’s everything up there and almost any language will sure be some help to us.  This time we are taking a thorough, complete census of all the Zone clear back to the Zone line.  Here’s a sample card and list of instructions.”

In other words kind Uncle Sam was about to give me authority to enter every dwelling in the most cosmopolitan and thickly populated district of his Canal Zone, and to put questions to every dweller therein, note-book and pencil in hand; authority to ramble around a month or more in sunshine and jungle—­and pay me for the privilege.  There are really two methods of seeing the Canal Zone; as an employee or as a guest at the Tivoli, both of them at about five dollars a day—­but at opposite ends of the thermometer.

There remained a week-end between that Friday morning and the last day of January, set for the beginning of the census.  Certainly I should not regret the arrival of the day when I should become an employee, with all the privileges and coupon-books thereunto appertained.  For the Zone is no easy dwelling-place for the non-employee.  Our worthy Uncle of the chin whiskers makes it quite plain that, while he may tolerate the mere visitor, he does not care to have him hanging around; makes it so plain, in fact, that a few weeks purely of sight-seeing on the Zone implies an adamantine financial backing.  In his screened and full-provided towns, where the employee lives in such well-furnished comfort, the tourist might beat his knuckles bare and shake yellow gold in the other hand, and be coldly refused even a lodging for the night; and while he may eat a meal in the employees’ hotels—­at near twice the employee’s price—­the very attitude in which he is received says openly that he is admitted only on suffrance—­ permitted to eat only because if he starved to death our Uncle would have the bother of burying him and his Zone Police the arduous toil of making out an accident report.

Meanwhile I must change my dwelling-place.  For the quartermaster of Corozal had need of all the rooms within his domain, need so imperative that seventeen bona fide and wrathy employees were even then bunking in the pool-room of Corozal hotel.  Work on the Zone was moving steadily Pacificward and the accommodations refused to come with it—­at least at the same degree of speed.

Nor was I especially averse to the transfer.  The room-mate with whom fate had cast me in House 81 was a pleasant enough fellow, a youth of unobjectionable personal manners even though his “eight-hour graft” was in the sooty seat of a steam-crane high above Miraflores locks.  But he had one slight idiosyncrasy that might in time have grown annoying.  On the night of our first acquaintance, after we had lain exchanging random experiences till the evening heat had begun a retreat before the gentle night breeze, I was awakened from the first doze by my companion sitting suddenly up in his cot across the room.