"I haven't any. I am not a canal employee, so I suppose I can't go to a commission hotel."
"Naughton or Devlin will be here to see you again," said the surgeon. "Why not bunk with me for a few days? I am in bachelor quarters. You don't want to wait around in one of those Panama hotels. They are fierce."
Walter thought of the vengeful General Quesada and had no desire, in his disabled condition, to linger in the city of Panama, beyond the Canal Zone. He gratefully accepted the surgeon's invitation and added:
"I should like to go out this afternoon and see something of Ancon."
"Very well. It will brace you up to get outdoors. If you want the good salt wind, why don't you run over to Balboa docks? It is only a trifling journey by train. And you can see the Pacific end of the canal. It's a busy place."
The railroad station was no more than a few minutes' walk down the hill from the hospital, and Walter footed it slowly, feeling weak and listless. He enjoyed the brief trip to Balboa and his first glimpse of the shipping of the Pacific. The wharves were American, but the high-sided steamers crowded bow and stern were bound to strange, romantic ports, to Guayaquil and Valparaiso and around the Horn, to Mazatlan and Acapulco.
Picking his way among the jostling, noisy gangs of black laborers, Walter perched himself upon a bale of merchandise under the long cargo shed. The wharf was not large enough for its traffic. Freight of every description covered it. Tally clerks, checkers, and foremen were at their wits' ends to keep the streams of boxes, barrels, and crates moving with order and system.
At one berth a Pacific mail-boat from San Francisco was discharging supplies for the Canal Commission. Just beyond her, one of the Chilean Navigation Company's fleet was filling her holds for the long voyage down the west coast. Against her seaward side, as if waiting for room at the wharf, was moored a rusty little coastwise steamer flying the flag of the Panama Republic.
During a summer vacation from high-school, Walter had worked in the shipping-rooms of the Wolverton Mills. He knew something about this activity on the wharf. He thought himself capable of tallying freight and sorting consignments. Sharp-eyed and interested, he watched the hurly-burly of hard-driven industry. Presently he noticed something which awoke his curiosity. It seemed extremely odd.