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"Perhaps I ought not to have hit him so hard," and Walter looked solemn.

"You were a bit overzealous, but he deserved a drubbing. I just want to give you a bit of friendly advice. Don't let this General Quesada catch you up a dark alley. His vanity is mortally wounded, and he carries a deck-load of it. A Spanish-American might as well be dead as ridiculous. And it makes Quesada squirm to think how he will be laughed at if this story gets afloat in Panama. He doesn't love you, Goodwin."

"But the Canal Zone is part of the United States. He can't do anything to me," said Walter.

"Not in the Zone, but it is the easiest thing in the world to drift across the line into Colon or Panama before you know it. And the Spiggoty police, as they call 'em, like nothing better than an excuse to put a Yankee in jail."

Elated that Captain Bradshaw's attitude should be so friendly, and flattering himself that with so humble a weapon as a broomstick he had vanquished a real live general, Walter was inclined to make light of the warning. In fact, he forgot all about the humiliated warrior a day or so later when far ahead of the Saragossa a broken line of hills lifted blue and misty. Yonder was the Isthmus which Balboa had crossed to gaze upon the unknown Pacific, where Drake and Morgan had raided and plundered the Spanish treasure towns, and where in a later century thousands of brave Frenchmen had perished in their futile tragedy of an attempt to dig a canal between the two oceans.