‘I suppose you meant to sail on the Pacifica,’ said the nun. ‘It leaves this evening, so you will miss her. But the California is expected here shortly, and if you are well, you can take her.’

‘Thank you,’ said Collis.

Without another word, the nun led the way out of the depot. Collis followed behind her, watched by the curious eyes of his fellow passengers. He looked around for Maria-Mamuska, but she seemed to have left the railroad station already. Andrew Hunt was there, although he stayed well away, and gave Collis nothing more than a resigned shrug, as if to say, ‘You put your neck in the noose, brother; don’t expect me to do the same.’

The nun spoke briefly in Spanish to the train’s conductor, instructing him to send Collis’s trunk up to the Hospital of the Sacred Heart. The conductor nodded, eyeing Collis suspiciously. Then he called, ‘Zambo!’ to a black who was squatting beside the locomotive smoking a broken clay pipe, and passed the instructions on. The nun led Collis out through the depot to the Avenida Central, a wide street of peeling whitewashed houses which led away up to the cathedral plaza. Under a dull, cloudy sky, carriages and mule carts bustled backwards and forwards, porters carried steamer trunks and bags on their backs, hurrying this way and that like worker ants, and the usual collection of beggars rattled their tin cups and displayed their diseased and mutilated limbs. Not far way from the depot entrance, a plain black-painted donkey trap was waiting, with a young Spanish boy seated on the box, and the nun led Collis towards it. Collis helped her to climb aboard, and then stepped up himself, and seated himself on the narrow wooden bench. The Spanish boy clicked his tongue, and the donkey plodded across the rough unpaved street. Collis smiled at the nun uneasily, but in return she simply lowered her eyes.

Unlike Aspinwall, which resembled a decaying American frontier town, Panama City was entirely Spanish in character. It had a cathedral, and several churches, and it was crowded with white houses with red-tiled roofs and arched verandas. The air was less fetid, although the roads were just as rutted and strewn with garbage, and most of the houses were cracked and flaking. Collis tried to look inside some of the open windows as he passed, but the interiors were too shadowy for him to make anything out. He had to cling to the brass rail around the donkey trap to keep himself from sliding about too much.

As they passed the Bóvedas, the old Spanish sea-wall, with its wide view of the misty bay, they saw a ghastly apparition. A handcart was being pushed along the promenade by a Jamaican in a tattered shirt. Sprawled across the boards of the cart was a naked dead man, half covered with a dirty sack. His ribs protruded and his skin was slack and yellow. Worst of all, his eye-sockets were empty, where his eyeballs had been picked out by buzzards. Collis had to turn away and hold his handkerchief to his mouth, and it wasn’t until a few minutes later, when they were out in the fresher air of the ocean, that he was able to suppress his nausea.