CHAPTER X
“THE SWORD OF THE LORD”

On the afternoon of the following day a wharf at the eastern section of the city was thronged with people, chiefly black and brown. Scores of cabs were drawn up at both sides of the entrance to the wharf, and any number of porters were conveying trunks on their heads to the ship which lay anchored alongside of the pier. Steam was up; a donkey engine rattled and clattered as the sailors lowered some packages into the vessel’s hold; the captain stood on the bridge shouting out his commands with a fine sense of ultimate authority; the passengers streamed up the gangway, while their friends and relatives who had come to see them off stood on the pier and looked with envy and admiration at those who were about to brave the perils of the deep.

It was a scene characteristically West Indian. The long wooden pier crowded with a jabbering, multi-coloured throng, the mountains of coal from which fine particles of coal-dust came flying as the sea breeze swept over the wharf; the noise, the confusion, the total lack of all appearance of order—though order of a kind was certainly maintained—the dark faces, eager or tearful; the ragged porters who balanced on their heads packages weighing over a hundred pounds each as though they were feather pillows; the few white men moving perfectly at ease amongst the excited people; the brilliant sunlight, the great arch of dazzling sky, the gently-heaving green-tinted water, the crowds of boys, who, simply clad in a short pair of breeches, swam and dived like fishes in the sea, shaking their heads as they rose to the surface, and showing their strong white teeth as they laughed and shouted to the people on the ship—all this was typical of a British West Indian island on a day when a vessel leaves the port.

To Susan and Jones it was not strange, and the noise could not possibly confuse them. They pushed their way through the crowd, followed by Mr. Proudleigh, his wife, Miss Proudleigh, and Susan’s sisters; but at the gangway they were stopped by one of the Steamship Company’s officials, who firmly told them that only passengers were allowed to go on board. Here they separated. Susan kissed all her folk, Jones shook hands with them, and then the two climbed up the gangway, and Susan found herself at last on the deck of the steamer which was to take her to a strange and distant land.

For the first time doubts assailed her. For the first time she realized fully that she was leaving her home, perhaps for good; and as she looked from the deck down upon her people a lump gathered to her throat and she began to wonder if she were altogether wise. Yet she would not have given up her purpose for a moment. She was too deeply bitten by the prevailing desire to go somewhere.

She leaned against the vessel’s rail, now and then exchanging a word at the top of her voice with Catherine or her father. Jones was as gay as ever, and was loudly explaining to some of his friends on the pier that he would have travelled first-class had he not been taking a female with him. He was in the condition locally known as “merry” (this term indicating generally a half-way stage between soberness and intoxication), and seemed to entertain a cheerful expectation of being shot immediately after arrival in Colon; but Susan saw nothing exhilarating in such a prospect, and more than once suggested to him that he should stop talking nonsense.

She was to travel second-class; but for the present she remained standing amongst the deck-passengers. There were over a hundred of these, and the deck on which they were gathered was littered with boxes and trunks containing their clothes, and with the deck-chairs on which they would sit during the day and sleep at night. It seemed a strange scene to Susan’s wondering eyes. The beat of the engines stunned her, the smells nauseated her, she was conscious of a throbbing in her head. Suddenly it seemed to her as though the pier and the people on it were moving backwards. She heard a great shout of “Good-bye!” She saw a great waving of hands. They were going, going, and now she broke down and began to cry outright.

“Look after the shop good, Kate!” she called out to her sister; and “Good-bye, mammee—good-bye, papee! good-bye!”

Her mother waved in reply, two big tears stealing down her withered cheeks. Her father, though much comforted by the reflection that the shop had been left to the family as a source of revenue, yet felt sad. But he waved his hat and shouted, “Take care of you’self, Susan, an’ write to me!” and continued waving his hat long after there was any possibility of its being seen by her. Then, when the crowd on the pier had become an indistinct mass, Susan went to the second-class passengers’ deck and began to wonder once more what sort of life awaited her in Colon. . . .

Steadily Kingston dwindled into a collection of white houses nestling amidst a forest of trees and backed by a noble range of smoke-blue mountains. And as the ship steamed through the narrow channel that forms the entrance to the city’s harbour, the shrill voice of a woman rose in a quavering chant, and soon all the deckers were singing the words of some plaintive hymn.

It was their way of bidding farewell to Jamaica.

Thus singing, they left the land behind.

“Susan! get up! This is not a time to sleep.”

Susan, who had been sleeping but fitfully, awoke at once with a start. Jones was rapping loudly at her cabin door. Something in his voice startled her.

“What is it?” she asked, frightened.

“The comet! It’s the first time I see it.”

Susan dressed in a minute; she hurried out of the cabin and went to the well-deck with Jones.

It was about four o’clock in the morning, but there was as yet no sign of the coming day. A crescent moon was glowing above, but the light of it paled into insignificance before the radiant splendour of the morning star. There in the East hung Venus, like a great lamp illumining all heaven and earth, a diamond set against a magnificent background of millions and millions of stars. These indeed were strewn almost as thickly in the sky as sand in a desert; look where you would, you saw them, some faint, some bright, and some like silver dust scattered profusely about the lofty silent dome that overarched and covered the wide circle of the sea. The gleaming planet and scintillating sky were alone sufficient to impress those who beheld them that morning with a sense of wonder and of awe. Their serene and lofty beauty, immeasurable grandeur, and vast incalculable distance must have appealed even to the most indifferent care-blunted mind. But it was not upon these that hundreds of eyes were turned when Susan and her lover reached the starboard of the vessel, where a crowd of persons were already standing. All looked at but one object—a great band of light that streamed up from below the eastern horizon and swept across the sky to the south-west, where it dipped into the sea. Clear and distinct it shone, in spite of the radiance around it: a flaming portent, as it seemed, emerging suddenly out of the mysterious depths of space. Most of the travellers on the ship saw it for the first time that morning. They looked at it startled, and with palpitating hearts.

“The comet,” whispered Jones again, and—

“The sword of the Lord,” said calmly but distinctly an old man who stood amongst the deckers.

Almost every one talked in whispers. Something oppressed them—a vague, uncanny feeling. The women pressed their hands against their hearts.

They were alone on the sea. On land they would not have feared so much, for nearly all calamities, or imagined indications of calamity, the West Indian peasant can face with a calmness which springs from his deep-rooted fatalism. But here they were amidst surroundings strange to them; they were alone in a world which they regarded with apprehension—alone upon the sea with the sword of the Lord flaming in the heavens above them.

The sea ran swiftly, wave racing after wave, black and foam-crested. They dashed against the sides of the vessel, flinging high into the air a glistening shower of spray which fell back upon the bosom of the waters in sparks of liquid fire. The prow of the ship seemed to plunge into argent flame; in its wake writhed and twisted a long serpent of light. The phosphorescent gleams of the tropic sea flashed an answer to the brilliance of the tropic sky above, and fire seemed glancing and blazing everywhere.

The wind blew steadily from east to west, and the throbbing of the engines added to the roar of the leaping, hurrying waves. Now and again a murmuring sound was heard amongst the people on the deck—a sound as if they prayed.

Long and earnestly they gazed upon the comet; and then into Jones’s mind came the words of his friend Septimus, spoken so short a time before.

He bent down and whispered in Susan’s ear:

“You think it mean anything, Sue?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, almost inaudibly; “but it’s awful; an’ if it was to come close an’ we should all dead, where would we go to, Sam?”

As if in reply to her question, the old man amongst the deck passengers, who had called the comet “The Sword of the Lord,” again lifted up his voice, this time repeating some words from the Scriptures:

“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy that He cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.”

Susan heard and trembled; a woman in the crowd of watchers groaned out, “Yes, Lord!”

“Have mercy!” sobbed another.

Some one began repeating the hymn, “Jesus, Lover of my Soul.”

“Christ, have mercy,” prayed the shivering people.

“Sue,” whispered Jones, “I heard on Friday night that the comet won’t touch the world until Wednesday; so when we get to Colon to-morrow morning we better married. This sort of life is not one to face death in. I am not a coward, Sue, but, after all, it will be better to die right.”

An immense weight seemed lifted off Susan’s heart as she heard these words. Her present mode of life was called “living in sin” by the ministers and religious folk of her country; and so persistently had this view of it been inculcated that, in common with thousands of others, she had come to regard unsanctified connexions as the one offence really worth considering. True, she had never gone further than giving her intellectual assent to this proposition; but then she had never seen a great comet blazing in the sky before. She now agreed with it with all her soul.

“You right, Sam,” she whispered; “let us make our peace wid God, in case anything happen.” And as she spoke the thought flashed through her mind that, if nothing did happen, she would be Mrs. Jones, a prospect of social advancement which, even at that tremendous moment, gave her a thrill of delight.

Some of the deckers were audibly praying now. The old man, who in Kingston had been a well-known street-preacher, kept on repeating tags of Scripture and words of warning; but gradually, in spite of his efforts to terrify the passengers into hysterics and thus establish his spiritual supremacy, they grew more calm, and soon began to talk at their ordinary pitch of voice.

For the sky was lightening. Slowly the morning star dimmed her brightness, the other stars paled and flickered out, the comet shone but indistinctly, and the moon grew white. Before it was five o’clock “The Sword of the Lord” had disappeared. And as the sky changed from black to grey, and from grey to pink and pearl and loveliest azure, as the phosphorescent brilliance of the water died away and the sun came surging up out of the sea, a great palpitating globe of golden fire, the passengers busied themselves with their toilet, and laughed and chatted as though they had not, but an hour before, been thinking of imminent death.

The transformation was complete. The sun had restored their courage, and had banished for the moment all fear from their minds. As for Susan, she fell sick during the day, her stomach no longer being able to endure the rocking and vibration of the ship. So she did not talk much about anything, and did not even trouble to mention the marriage which she and Jones were to celebrate the next day in Colon, as a sort of spiritual insurance against the eternal fire with which the greater part of mankind might be threatened on the 18th and after.

CHAPTER I
THE LAND OF PROMISE

The comet was again visible on the ensuing night, but the horrors of sea-sickness were too acute, the misery of the passengers far too intense, for them to care greatly about the future of the world and of themselves. Word had been passed around the ship that the comet would not touch the earth for a few days yet, and that was a blessed respite. In the meantime there was no cessation of the strange agony caused by a rolling, pitching vessel which was traversing nearly six hundred miles of the roughest part of the Caribbean Sea. Some of the emigrants were secretly of the opinion that the comet could not be worse than the ship, and certainly was not just then interfering with their bodily comfort; they had also heard the sailors jesting at their fears, and that gave them a sort of courage, not unmixed with hope. Then the ex-street preacher, in the midst of one of his urgent appeals for the instant conversion of all sinners, had been suddenly taken with a desire to rush to the ship’s side. The people were too ill to laugh, but some of them smiled faintly at the unfortunate gentleman’s mishap. And smiles, coupled with sea-sickness, must inevitably reduce religious terrorism to the ridiculous.

So the second night wore on, and Jones in his cabin, and Susan in hers, slumbered fitfully, taking comfort as they remembered, when they started out of a doze, that the morning would bring an end to their present misery.

As it drew towards morning they found sleep impossible. It was as though they were in a steam bath, the awful, close, clammy heat was something they had never experienced before. They struggled out of their bunks, as did all the other second-class passengers, the perspiration streaming from their bodies. “This must be the beginning of hell,” Jones muttered impiously, though not without a certain sense of terror. He was still sea-sick, and this, and the terrific heat, inclined him to believe that he had now sounded the ultimate depths of human misery. “I wonder why I bother come to this infernal place?” he grumbled, as he struggled into his clothes with the intention of going on deck.

He peeped out of his porthole, trying to peer through the darkness. He heard outside the labourers jabbering as they moved about the ship; the swish of water as it poured from the upper deck into the sea warned him that they were swabbing down the decks, and he guessed that Colon could not now be far away. He hurried out of his stifling cabin and went to call up Susan; she was ready dressed, but pale and weak; she gladly came out, and together they went to the ship’s side, anxious for a first glimpse of the land.

The prospect was sufficiently depressing. The sky above was dark with heavy rain-clouds that hung low and the sea ran fiercely—one vast expanse of slate-coloured water. The rain was falling, not in a torrential shower, but steadily, pitilessly, unceasingly, and at quick intervals the pallid lightning flashed upon the scene, and the low rumble of thunder proclaimed the gathering storm.

“Colon!”

The cry came from one of the watchers on the emigrants’ deck, from one of the many men who had come to seek their fortune in this land of adventure of which the world had heard so much for some four hundred years. “Colon!” The word signified for them the land of promise, the land of their thoughts and dreams for many a long day. The cry was taken up and re-echoed from many lips. The sufferers forgot their sickness. The magic word had charmed it entirely away.

Jones and Susan bent forward quickly, electrified by the shout. In the distance they saw something like a huge bank of cloud on the horizon, and at once they thought it was their destination—Colon at last. By straining one’s eyes one could just perceive it; but it was not Colon, for that town lay fully fifteen miles away. Still, it was part of the Isthmus of Panama, and as the sunlight began to fight its way slowly and painfully through the clouds that hung over land and sea, you could perceive, stretching away for miles and miles, the low-lying inhospitable shores of the country which has one of the most romantic histories in the world.

There the mainland of Panama lay, dreary, ugly, uninviting. One could see the waves breaking listlessly against the shore, just as though the very energy of the water were affected by the terrible steaming heat. There was something unspeakably gloomy about the scene, something that subdued one to silence; and so it was in silence that almost every one on board watched the mangrove-covered banks slip by as the ship sped on her way.

The lightning flickered more frequently, the rumble of the thunder became louder, more insistent. The deckers, who had never undressed during the thirty-six hours of the passage, now began to make themselves presentable for going ashore, and Jones and Susan forced themselves to re-enter their cabins for the purpose of gathering together their possessions. It was daylight now, though the sun could not be seen. As they drew nearer to the town of Colon the rain slackened somewhat. The steamer slowed down, stopped, and lay idly rolling in the dark, oily water, waiting until the officials of the port should come on board.

Susan could now see before her the town of which she had heard so much. To her inquiring eyes it looked a small place: there was a cluster of ugly wooden piers jutting out into the sea and roofed with corrugated iron painted black; behind these was a street or road that ran along the seashore as far as she could follow it, and behind this street rose a line of frail-looking wooden buildings two or three storeys high. But farther away to the right, as one gazed landward from the deck of an incoming ship, could be seen bungalows of a description superior to the buildings near by; these bungalows stood amidst rows of cocoa-nut palms and light green shrubs evidently planted and tended by the hand of man. This touch of tropical scenery redeemed the town from the stigma of utter ugliness. Even so, and in spite of the well-known enchantment of distance, Colon stood confessed a mushroom town, a low, damp, rain-sodden bit of land which accident had made the terminus of a famous railway, and, after that, the site of the Atlantic entrance of the great Panama Canal.

Something like disappointment was expressed on Susan’s face and in her voice as she turned to Jones, saying:

“What you think of it, Sam?”

“Can’t say yet,” he replied dubiously; “howsoever, I am ready to go ashore.”

He started to stroll away, though he had no idea of where he was going to, when a swarthy little man unceremoniously sprang in front of him, caught him by the arm and waved him back. Jones had not observed the little man before. The latter had come on board at the same time as the doctor, and perhaps he thought that Jones wanted to disappear from view when it was necessary that he should be visible. Anyhow, he addressed Samuel in a perfectly unintelligible tongue, much to our young Jamaican’s astonishment, and wildly waved his arms. “What you mean?” indignantly demanded Jones, planting his feet firmly on the deck and refusing to move.

The little man appeared to be annoyed, and again poured forth a flood of Spanish. As Jones could not understand what he was saying, and could not possibly guess what he would be at, he concluded that the man was a fool, and said so loudly.

“You seem to be preposterously ignorant!” he exclaimed, addressing his excited aggressor. “You can’t even talk English! What you call you’self—Chinese or Cuban, or what?”

Now the man could not speak English, but he understood just enough of it to grasp the fact that Jones was insulting him. So he again addressed Mr. Jones in a violent manner, and gave him a backward push.

“Look here!” exclaimed Jones. “It’s about time you finish pushing me, you understand? I am not a Colon man, but an English gentleman, an’ if you touch me again I will box the head off you’ body!”

The little man was not daunted; indeed, he appeared to increase in pugnacity. But just then, fortunately, one of the petty officers of the ship, seeing that a serious quarrel was imminent, interfered.

“You’d better not argue with that man,” he said to Jones; “he’s the Captain of the Port.”

“But that is no reason why he should push me,” argued Jones, bent upon establishing at the outset his claim to deferential treatment at the hands of foreigners. “What he push me for?”

“Thought you were doing something you shouldn’t do, I suppose. They are rather funny, these people. There are all sorts of rules you have to obey down here.”

Jones fell back, not at all pleased with his first experience of Panamanian methods. But he waited quietly till the doctor, who was an American official, came up the second-class deck and assured himself that the passengers there had all been vaccinated at home and were suffering from no serious complaints. It took a longer time to examine the deckers: the doctor was very strict with these. But it was all over at last; the officials of the port boarded their respective launches and sped away (Jones following the launch of the Captain of the Port with eyes expressive of unmitigated contempt), and then the ship began to draw towards the dock. The gangways were shoved out, word was passed that the passengers were free to go ashore. Susan and Samuel prepared to land, the latter still fuming over his treatment by a little dark fiery man amongst whose serious offences was his utter inability to speak the English language.

On the pier they had to hunt for their luggage, which was mixed with that of other people whose frantic exertions to recover their belongings impeded themselves. But the baggage was assorted at last, and now came the inquisition of the Customs officers. These were quite young men, almost boys, and their slight, emaciated frames, sallow faces, and leisurely movements did not at all appeal to Jones’s sense of what was proper in Government officials. He watched them with amazement as they delved into his boxes and turned up everything, carelessly motioning him to re-arrange his things when they were through. “Sue,” he observed impressively, when the ordeal was over, “this is not a civilized country;” and, having thus announced his discovery, he accepted the offer of a truck-man, who wheeled their trunks to the gate of the wharf and then coolly demanded a dollar for the job.

As this bit of work would not have been worth more than a shilling in Jamaica, if as much, Jones and Susan were scandalized, and protested loudly against the imposition. But the man called a little policeman to arbitrate in the matter. This policeman spoke English of a kind, and the intention of his discourse was to assure Jones that, as he had made no previous bargain with the man, he must pay what the man asked. He said this with all gravity, but with a pronunciation so peculiar that Jones expressed his great anxiety to know at what school he had been educated. It was rather lucky for him that the “policia” did not grasp his meaning.

It was drizzling still, but very slightly. The clouds overhead, however, and the continuous flashes of lightning warned our friends that the downpour might come on at any moment. They hailed a cab (driven by a West Indian), and Jones told the man that he wanted to go to the Canal Commission’s Department of Labour and Quarters. He asked the cabman to drive slowly, so that they might see something of the town as they went on. With their luggage piled in front of and around them they began their ride through the principal street of Colon.

It was a busy thoroughfare. To their left, as they drove towards the Commission’s Department of Labour and Quarters, were the principal stores and shops and cafés of the town, wooden buildings all, painted pink, dull yellow, grey, or light blue, with pointed roofs, broad verandas running round the first and second floors, and a paved piazza running along the whole length of the ground floors. The projecting floors of the verandas above formed a shelter from sun and rain, and the piazzas were thronged with pedestrians. All sorts and conditions of human beings were represented in these crowds—West Indian labourers, East Indian pedlars, Chinese, Greeks; men from every country in Europe; natives of Panama and Colombia, ranging in colour from pure black to a sallow white; Americans—the men with their jackets thrown over their shoulders, energetic, masterful; the women, in cool white dresses and bareheaded, who walked along as unconcernedly as though they were taking a stroll in Broadway. Susan noticed that the Panamanian women were careful to have shawls thrown over their shoulders though their unstockinged feet were thrust into slippers down at heels. No one seemed to mind the rain. The shops were stocked with all sorts of showy goods; the cafés were crowded and business in them appeared to be brisk; the cabs were well patronized, and their drivers abused one another with a fluency of bad language that did not argue much for the vigilance or the good hearing of the Panama police. It was a busy town—that she could see at once. A peculiar town, too, from her point of view, for bordering the street were railway lines, and trains were passing or shunting up and down with a continuous tooting of shrill whistles; while immediately beyond the train lines was the ragged, sea-beaten shore of Colon, destitute of a seawall and ugly. She was not sure that she liked Colon at first sight, yet its bustle, its evident prosperity, appealed to her. Suddenly, and even while Susan was looking at the shops and houses, without turning out of the street the cab passed into that part of old Colon which is known as Christobal and which the Americans had taken over as part of their territory and converted into an American settlement.

Here she and Samuel found themselves in the midst of the bungalows and cocoa-nut trees they had sighted from the sea. There were no shops here, no noise, no bustle; there was absolute cleanliness and a sense of order that formed a sharp contrast to the careless life of the Panamanian town they had just left behind them. Gardens bloomed in front of many of the houses, the sanitation was perfect; the wire-screened doors and windows of the buildings gave them the quaint appearance of huge cages, and behind those wire-screens (a protection against the once-virulent mosquito of Colon) peered many a white face, the faces of American women and children who during the long warm days thought wistfully of their homes in the North. This, to Susan’s mind, looked an eminently respectable locality. “I would like to live here, Sam,” she remarked, “more than in the other part of the town.”

The cab stopped in front of a large building near the end of the street, and Jones jumped out, bidding Susan wait for him. He went into the office indicated by the cabman, where he found some other men waiting. He gave his name, and mentioned that he had been engaged in Jamaica by one of the Canal Commission’s agents, who had promised him quarters in the Canal Zone. “You must have been expecting me,” he observed, with an air of consequence.

“I kain’t say we have,” replied the tall American who attended to him, “but I guess it’s all right. I kain’t give you quarters to-day, anyhow; I’ve got to see what room we have for mechanics. You kin turn into work right here in Christobal to-morrow, an’ when you come I’ll see what we kin do about puttin’ you up.” With that he turned away abruptly to see what another man wanted, and Jones made his way back outside.

Where were they to go to now? It was the cabman who suggested a way out of the difficulty. He knew a place, he told them, where they could get a room for the night if they were willing to pay a dollar for the accommodation. Jones protested that the price was “ridiculous,” but agreed nevertheless to be taken to the place, Susan shrewdly suspecting that they were being victimized by the cabby, who knew that they were strangers. Back they drove into Colon, stopping for a minute at a shop to purchase some bread and cheese. Then the cabman took them to a house at the back of the town, charged them a dollar and a half for the work he had done, and drove away well satisfied with the innocence or ignorance of “dose Jamaica fools.” He was a Jamaican himself, but sophisticated.

The house, in which they secured a room for the night, was a long wooden barn divided into small apartments. Each room had a wooden shutter for a window, and the place had originally been built upon a swamp. The piles driven into the swamp still remained as the building’s foundation; the land behind the house had only lately been cleared by the American authorities and was not yet filled up. So the ground was covered with a sheet of fetid water, and a little behind this the mangrove bushes flourished, dark green and horrible, a sombre background suggesting fever and loathsome ailments even to the least observant mind.

A dank heavy smell of rotting vegetation permeated the air. The room was almost as stifling as the ship’s cabin had been that morning. No sooner had they taken their things inside when the thunder-storm, which had been threatening for hours, burst in full force upon Colon; the lightning writhed like maddened serpents through the blue-black sky, the crash of the thunder was deafening. Susan shuddered with fear. Even Jones looked lugubrious. This was a poor sort of welcome to the land of promise.

They set to and made the best of their circumstances. The room contained a cot, one wooden-seated chair, a table with a tin basin, a ewer of water and a glass, and another table, placed in the centre of the apartment and suggesting by its position that it was intended as a sort of ornament.

Jones, seated on the chair, placed the edibles he had procured on this centre table, and pulled a flask of rum out of his pocket. He offered some of the liquor to Susan, who refused it with a shake of her head. He helped himself liberally, then ate some of the bread and cheese, while she watched him sullenly. She felt downhearted, almost inclined to cry. But the rum had inspirited him, and already he was brighter. “What’s the matter? You sorry you come?” he asked her.

“Not exactly,” she replied; “but I don’t know a soul here; I feel lonely an’ miserable, and dis rain——” She could find no words to express her disappointment. “If I was to stay long in this room, I would dead,” she plaintively concluded.

“Don’t fret,” he cheerfully advised. “To-morrow we will get good quarters, an’ even here will soon be better. From all what I hear about the Americans, they are not the sort of people to procrastinate in improving conditions. As for you, you are all right now, Sue. I am goin’ to make a woman of you. I am more than a match for anything!” He suddenly remembered the comet. “That is, if we don’t dead,” he hastily added, “in which case we had better begin to prepare our soul.”

He relapsed into seriousness again, but not for long: the rum he had taken fought successfully against an access of melancholy brought on by the prospect of early death through the agency of ethereal bodies. He saw with genuine regret that Susan could eat nothing. The bread and cheese he did not like himself. But the rain soon began to fall less heavily, and the thunder became more and more distant. Susan not caring or not able to talk, he waited in silence until only a drizzle remained of the tremendous downpour. Then he and Susan put on their hats and went out into the streets of Colon once more.

CHAPTER II
JONES CHANGES HIS MIND

“The first thing we got to do is to find a place where we can get some good food,” said Jones, whose mind was just then centred upon practical matters.

There was an abundance of such places in the narrow streets in which they soon found themselves, but they were crowded with men and Susan hesitated about entering them. It seemed to both herself and Samuel that a very large portion of the house-space of Colon was devoted to bars, the doors of which stood wide open, thus allowing the passers-by to stare at will at those who sat inside industriously playing dominoes or cards, or drinking beer. Now that she was away from the house near the swamp, and amidst pedestrians whom she could hear talking English, Susan felt a little easier in mind. But she was painfully aware of her bodily weakness, caused by sea-sickness and lack of food. She was decidedly hungry.

In about ten minutes, in a narrow back street of not very prepossessing appearance, they came upon a building over the doors of whose lower storey was displayed this legend: “The Jamaican’s Heaven of Rest; Welcome all to Dine.” Heavens in which hot dinners were provided were particularly welcome to Susan and Samuel just then, and it was evident that this place was owned or looked after by some one from “home.” They gladly entered. The room was dark and not over-clean. Two long tables covered with greasy cloths, and a number of chairs, constituted all its furniture. At one end of it, to the right as you entered, was a small bar well stocked with liquors, of which Colon consumed an extraordinary quantity; at the other end was a door leading into a kitchen which could be plainly seen and smelt, and which appeared to be overcrowded with cooks and waitresses, all slatternly attired, and as greasy as they well could be. Seated around the tables, some eating, some waiting to be served, were a number of men. Susan was the only woman guest, so, of course, all the men in the room paused to have a good look at her as she and Samuel took their seats.

Lunch was quickly served, and Jones ordered some whisky, which he promptly drank. After a few minutes of rapid mastication, he looked about the room with an inquiring air, with the view of engaging in conversation with some communicative person. One man noticed his look, and saw that Samuel was a stranger. “Come this morning?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Jones quickly, “by the ship. This is a rainy place, eh? When you think the rain will stop?”

“About November,” the man answered.

“November! You makin’ fun! Why, man, this is only May!”

“Wait an’ see,” was the significant rejoinder. “When rain commence to come in dis country, it don’t know when to stop. How is Jamaica when you leave it?”

“Oh, pretty well,” replied Jones. “Dull as usual, an’ little cash. All that the people talkin’ about over there is the comet.”

As he mentioned the comet he remembered that he had undertaken to marry Susan before the dreaded 18th, when the earth would pass through the comet’s tail. He suddenly grew grave.

“This is a very serious time,” he observed. “In a few hours we may be all before our Maker.”

This remark, apparently apropos of nothing, astonished those who heard it. In Panama they were not accustomed to discuss the hereafter at lunch. Some of the men laughed; the man who had addressed him asked:

“You are a evangelistic preacher?”

“No,” said Jones; “of course not. But don’t y’u know that the comet is going to destroy the world?”

The other man shook his head doubtingly. “Who say so?” he asked.

“The newspaper,” Samuel answered, mentioning the only source of information he knew of.

“It can’t be the latest paper, then,” observed the other; “for the Star and Herald to-day have a telegram that say there is no reason for anybody to frighten: the comet is not goin’ to come near us.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed Samuel in a voice of profound relief. “Then we are all right! Sue, you hear?”

“Yes,” replied Susan, “but which newspaper is right?”

“The latest, of course; every day a newspaper learn something new.”

“That may be so,” said the stranger; “but I don’t depend on newspaper to tell me about the end of de world. I are satisfied to think that this world was lasting from Adam was a boy; an’ if it don’t get destroy by a comet all this time, it not likely to destroy now.”

This way of looking at the matter, coupled with the latest statement in the Isthmian journal, convinced Jones that no danger to his existence was to be apprehended from the comet. He was so delighted to learn that the comet was innocuous that he did not pursue the conversation, but quickly finished his lunch, eager now to explore Colon and to begin that gay manner of living to which he had looked forward with such expectation for weeks. He paid the bill and he and Susan left the eating-house. They had not gone ten yards when Jones heard his name called by some one behind him.

He turned round, wondering to find himself known already in this strange town. He saw a black man, short, strongly built, with a genial face on which there was a smile of recognition. This man was over forty years of age, and his whole appearance indicated self-confidence and prosperity. Jones thought he remembered his face, but could not just then remember his name or where he had met him. Clearly, however, the stranger knew him, for he clapped him on the shoulder in a friendly way and asked him what he was doing in Colon.

“I come here to fill an occupation,” Jones replied; “but, to tell the truth, you have an advantage of me. What’s your name? I am Samuel Josiah Jones.”

“Oh, I know that well,” laughed the other; “you used to tell us so every day at de railway. You remember now? Mackenzie? Mac that was at the railway when you was learning trade?”

“Of course!” cried Samuel, now completely enlightened. “Sue, this is Mr. Mackenzie, who you always hear me talk about. Shake hands.”

Susan had never heard Mackenzie mentioned before, but did not say so. She shook hands as directed.

“When you come?” was Mackenzie’s next question.

“This morning, an’ it been raining ever since. Nasty place for rain. I was just goin’ home, Mac, when you accost me; but now we must go an’ take a drink together for luck. Where can we go?”

“But what about you’ sister?” asked Mackenzie, glancing at Susan and noticing that she did not seem to relish Jones’s proposal.

“She is my intended,” said Jones (Mackenzie had already guessed as much), “and she can go home in a ’bus. Sue, my dear,” he went on, turning to her, “Mr. Mac is a particular friend of mine, an’ I want to have a little confabulation with him. Take a ’bus an’ go home, like a good girl. I soon be there.”

If Mackenzie had not been a stranger, Susan would certainly have protested against being disposed of in so summary a fashion, especially as this was her first day in Colon. She was wild at being sent back to the miserable room while Jones was preparing to go about the town and enjoy himself. But she let him hail a passing cab, into which she got, and she left the two men standing on the side-walk without saying a single word to either of them.

It was seven o’clock before Jones went back to her. For hours she had remained in the wretched den, nursing her misery and her wrath. It had come on to rain again—a steady rain that held out no promise of stopping and which had not ceased when Samuel returned. He had been sufficiently thoughtful to bring with him some bread, a can of preserved meat, and a pint of whisky, for he judged that she had not been out to dinner. On these things he proposed that they should dine, and Susan watched him in silence while he placed them on the table and went outside to borrow some plates and a knife and fork. She made no effort to help him. He was not perfectly sober, yet he was sober enough to perceive that she was angry, and he had somewhere deep down in his heart an uneasy feeling that there was some justification for her anger. He became determinedly and manfully cheerful.

“To-morrow,” he remarked, as he began to eat, “we’ll be in better quarters and will settle down peaceful and regular; in the meantime we must eat an’ be happy.”

“Why you stay out so long?” Susan asked, speaking for the first time and showing no inclination either to eat or to be happy.

“Couldn’t help it,”, he replied. “Mac wanted to treat me good, an’ I wouldn’t have been a gentleman if I refused him.”

A sandwich in one hand, a glass of whisky in the other, he smiled jovially as if in approval of his own meritorious conduct. But he gave her no opportunity to comment on his ideas of gentlemanly behaviour.

“You know, Sue,” he observed, “I think you are a lucky girl? I am acquainted with about twenty other females, an’ them would kill themselves to be here to-night. But I am a man of emphatic decisiveness, an’ when I select a gurl I will stick to her—if she behave herself.” He paused, in order that she might mark the proviso well. Then he added, “But you will behave you’self.

“Tell you what!” he went on enthusiastically. “I am goin’ to raise cain as soon as I meet a few more Jamaica boys like Mac. No American man is goin’ to boss me. A Jamaican is more than a match for anybody; an’ if a man ever talk to me hard in this country, I kick him!”

“Y’u can’t kick anybody in this country,” said Susan quietly; “it’s not home.”

“Don’t matter. They got to think a lot of me in this low-down place. I won’t let a man interfere with you, either. I intend to stick to you.”

Susan, sitting on the cot, shifted her position a little. She had listened carefully to all that Samuel had said; she had noticed how persistently he dwelt upon his intention to stick to her—she had especially noticed that he expected her to behave herself. But to one matter, which had been in her mind ever since they landed, he had not once alluded. She intended that it should be discussed that night.

“See here, Sam,” she began, with simple directness, “you say on board the ship night before last that you was goin’ to marry me as soon as you get to Colon. But all day to-day y’u don’t say nothing about it. You goin’ to do it to-morrow?”

Samuel Josiah Jones paused in the act of conveying a glass of whisky to his lips and stared at Susan with a countenance expressive of profoundest astonishment. Susan’s question appeared to him a most unreasonable one. He was silent for some seconds, then in a tone of voice which was eloquent with reproach, and even with sorrow, he answered:

“You mean to say that y’u didn’t hear what that man tell us to-day in the cook-shop?”

“Yes,” said Susan, “I did hear what him say; but that don’t ’ave nothing to do with what you say on board the ship. Y’u promise to marry me because we wasn’t living quite correct, an’ if that was true yesterday morning, it must be true to-night.”

Susan’s rejoinder was so straightforward and clear that Jones could only reply indirectly.

“Well!” he exclaimed, apostrophizing the ceiling; “I never see people so unreasonable like Jamaica females. They have no logical perspecuity. They are so ambitious that I can’t understand them. Susan, you forget that when I talk to you about marriage an’ all that sort of foolishness we didn’t expect to live another week? You forget that? I don’t tell you that if the comet was really goin’ to kill us I wouldn’t get married. But now, seeing that we are safe, it would be the height of stupidness in me to pick up meself an’ enter in the bonds of matrimony, which, when you once get into it, y’u can’t get out of it at all. What you take me for? Specify!”

“Then you not goin’ to marry me again?” was Susan’s only reply to this long speech.

“Don’t I have signified to you?” he answered; and as she sat there looking at him darkly, he hastened to pacify her.

“But you are all right, Sue; you goin’ to live like a queen. After all, when we leave Jamaica we didn’t think about married. Besides, look what I do for you already!”

She did not see that he had done much for her at all, for she was not a woman easily satisfied. But Colon was not Kingston; she had no friends here; all the advantage would be on Jones’s side if she quarrelled with him now. She was well aware too that she could scarcely claim that he had brought her with him under false pretences. Nevertheless she felt bitterly disappointed, and Jones’s way of looking upon marriage with her as being only a sensible action when death appeared imminent, wounded her vanity. If he had not promised to marry her on the ship, she would not have mentioned the matter; but he had created hope in her, had awakened a dormant ambition, and she understood how advantageous it would be for her to have a legal right to his name in this new country. She now felt, therefore, that she had a grievance, and her resentment was increased by her sense of entire dependence upon Jones. It was true that she had boasted in Jamaica about going to Colon as an independent woman to earn her own living; but her few hours’ experience in that town had taught her that with girls like herself that was more easily said than done. Catherine had proved right after all. The young woman who did not know Panama well must have some one to assist her.

She did not propose to argue any more with Samuel. If her family were with her, she reflected, the situation might be very different, for together they would surely be able to earn a decent living, and then she would not feel so much obliged to tolerate anything like neglect from Samuel. Or again, if she had some money and knew Panama, she might be able to make her way about with ease. But she was not prepared to become a servant. She knew that women of a certain type flourished in Colon, but to their depths she would not and could never sink. Her mind ran upon Tom: she knew she had influence with him, and as a last resort she could always appeal to him for assistance; Truth to tell, however, she had felt Tom’s departure as a relief after he had left Jamaica: she had never cared for him. Samuel was wild, unstable, but was not intentionally unkind. . . . She liked him.

Sitting on the edge of the cot, one leg crooked over the other, her chin supported by her right hand, she thought the matter over. The sound of the rain and the thunder’s long roll came to her ears. In the next apartment a girl was singing—she knew the words, she had heard them in Jamaica: