FROM ANCON TO THE ISLAND 



B-r-r-r! B-r-r-r! The alarm clock was saying 

 over and over that it was half -past five of a cool, 

 dark January morning in Panama. Although it 

 is only a few hundred miles north of the equator, 

 we never found a night when we were not grate- 

 ful for our blankets. Ancon, built high on the 

 shoulder of a hill overlooking the city of Panama, 

 sometimes has a temperature of sixty-five degrees 

 at night, and that, in the tropics, makes one 

 shiver. Ancon, with its screened houses (Fig. 8), 

 ' its American supplies, and its American hospital, 

 was my headquarters. Already, in the few days I 

 had spent on the Isthmus, I had worked out a 

 schedule that took me from Ancon to Barro 

 Colorado in the shortest time. 



First came a cold shower bath in the big bath- 

 room that the United States government provides 

 in all the airy houses where Canal Zone workers 

 live. My toes touched something round and 

 smooth on the floor, and I found a crocodile egg 

 lying on the grating of the shower-bath drain. 

 Santiago had given me that egg the day before, 

 and at night when I turned out the electric light 

 it was lying on the table by my bed. Some 

 animal, perhaps a rat, but more likely a harmless 

 snake, had tried to carry it off down the drain in 



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