‘What’s the matter with you society people? Don’t they give you a decent education? King Crease-ass, that’s who I’m taking about, and that’s who you and me could be like if we had the brains, and the backing. Look at this goddam Panama Railroad. How long does it take you to get to Panama? Six hours at the worst. And how much do the bastards charge for it? Twenty-five dollars in gold. By my reckoning, that’s better than four dollars an hour, per person, in gold. Think what the hell you could charge for a straight railroad ride across to California, or back again, without ever having to set foot on a steamer, or come anywhere near this goddam jungle.’

The barkeep set down their drinks. ‘I’ve already drunk half a bottle of wine,’ Collis said. ‘I don’t want to get paralytic.’

‘Drink it,’ said Andrew. ‘Bourbon is the best preventive for yellow fever there is, that and a little mustard. Barman, do you have some mustard? Mootard?’

The barkeep shook his head.

‘They’re all the damned same,’ complained Andrew. ‘They’d like to see you catch sick, and wind up with your legs sticking up in the air; that’s what they’d like. And they get the pleasure of it often enough. There’s consumption and smallpox and cholera and malaria and yellow jack around here, just about enough of it to wipe out half of Carolina, and a good piece of Virginia besides.’

‘Don’t they get sick themselves, living in this pesthole?’

‘Sure they do. But you only get the yellow fever once. Usually, you die. But if you don’t die, then you never get it again. Mind you, immunity to yellow fever don’t protect you from cholera, or anything else.’

Collis drank his bourbon as if it were medicine. It made him feel more lightheaded than he wanted to be, and nauseated, but anything was better than catching some fatal tropical disease.

‘They had so many labourers die when they were building this railroad, they didn’t know what to do with all the bodies,’ Andrew said cheerfully. ‘So what they did in the end was, they pickled the dead men in barrels, and they sold them to hospitals and medical schools, for doctors to cut up. I heard the railroad company made a real decent profit out of that.’

‘You’re making it up,’ said Collis.

‘You think so? You ask anyone around here.’

Collis looked around the room again. A raddled man in a soiled velvet suit raised his glass to him and gave a gappy, suggestive grin.

‘I think I’d rather go take a look at the train,’ he told Andrew.