See an aged man, advancing toward us. His hair is white with years, and he is singing,
"I am a poor, wayfaring stranger
Wandering o'er this world of woe
And there's no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright land to which I go..."
Then, suddenly, shouting, "I come to lead you to the other shore, to the eternal dark, to fire and frost. And you approaching there, you living soul, keep well away from these - they are dead. There lies your Company's station."

I venture to hint that the Company is run for profit, and silence falls upon the woolly cheeks of our Charon. He responds simply by pointing at three barrack-like structures on a rocky slope. "I will send yer things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell."

Down past his hairy chin a length of beard descends, uncombed, and unclean. It didn't really matter: everybody was insured once possession o'the ticket had been assumed. Half a dozen passengers lent on the rail, amongst hobbled turkeys, and stared at the warehouse, the empty baked street complete with bonestrewn waste. A customs officer was watching angrily. As we landed he paced through parcels of foot-travelers, and men who called out to him, along with men dead where they'd fallen.

Soon the Doctor came scrambling down from behind the warehouse. He'd not seen to his person in weeks and he was filthy, disheveled. He tugged at the custom officer's trouserleg and pointed toward the fortifications on the hill from which the General was emerging.

"'Demagogue'!" mutters Dr. L. Roger Hubbleworth. "Our excellent Sprout Penitentiary Pseudo-Parliamentary leader... HIS shameless Attentions to... has the effrontery to speak of 'crushing this Demagogue' - well, well, aye, Demagogue... Milton thought it a 'Goblin word,' that might yet describe good Patriots, -"
The Doctor observes us all, one at a time, through the tinted lenses of spectacles (his own invention, to moderate the glare of the sun).

The oldest inhabitant of the village croaks, "Well, of all things... Can it be, really? No! Yes! Oh HI! Oh, my eye! My mind may be wandering, but I confess, I believe it is..."

See the General. He is pale and thin, but muscular. He wears a ragged linen shirt.
"The first steps at Manning Depot... included a medical exam and... Then to the stores to line up for a new uniform, from boots to wedge cap - no trial fitting, just size based on the opinion of one o'the clerks staffing the long table, and even including a brass-polishing kit for your buttons. (Well-polished brass gave the impression of long military service!) Then we heard that our corporal had been charged with an infraction and a sergeant (unknown to us) would be administering the test - panic! Guess who became breakfast waiters? We served three sittings of porridge, toast, ham and coffee... They thought this was quite a joke! Oh yes, and for a fee of 6 pence, you could get a hot bath in a tub at the old local mental asylum... Barracks were the standard one-storey shed for 35 men, with one community washroom nearby... All headed by a young officer, so inexperienced that he blushed when we saluted him..."

"It's good to hear English spoken," Doc says to no one in particular. "Now, you learnt yours in the States?"
The General agrees. He was feeling garrulous, wasn't he?
"Ah, what I wouldn't give," starts Doc, "to be there now."
Doc continues in a low and anxious voice to the customs officer, "You don't happen, do you, to have a drink in that case of yours? Some of you people back there - I've known one or two - a little for medical purposes."
"Only medicine," the officer replies, his bloodshot eyes look slyly out of their corners at the General.
"You are the Doctor?"
"You would call me perhaps a - quack? Patent medicines? Live and let live," Doc says. He puts his hand on his stomach, "You haven't got any medicine have you for - oh hell. I don't know what. It's just this bloody land. You can't cure me of that. No'ne can."
"You want to go home?"
"Home," the Doctor continues, "my home's here. It's too hot anyway. I think I must find somewhere to sit. Come up to my place for a moment. Don't worry about your post. The General is here, afterall."
The customs officer hesitates. "You will be receiving this trunk?"
"Of course. I've got a spare hammock," Doc says with a wink.
The customs officer stares at him. "I was expecting to meet someone... The name was Lopez."
"Oh, they shot him weeks ago," Doc explains nonchalantly.
"Dead?"
"You know how it is round here. Friend of yers?"
"No, no," the officer protests hurriedly.
"Well, that's how it is." He brings up his bile again and spits it out into the hard sunlight. "They say he used to help... Oh, the undesirables... Well, to get out... Oh god, I'd like a drink. Ora pro nobis."
"I have a little brandy," the officer offers.
Doc regards him sharply. "Where?" And seizes his wrist. "Careful," he says. "Not here..."
A sentry sat nearby on an empty crate, asleep.
"Come to my place," the Doctor entreats.

I follow at a distance, of course. There was still no paving, but the ground was hard under the feet, like stone. Ahead, I could see a little wooden hut, one storey high with a veranda where a hammock swung. At least he hadn't fabricated this detail. The hut was a little larger than the others in the narrow street which petered out 200 yards away in a semi-toxic dump. Doc leads the way inside the pungent and dim back reaches of his own apothecary, being sure to lock the door behind him. But I am already familiar with his place: a dining-room where two rocking-chairs stand on either side of a bare table, among bins of Godfrey's Cordial and Bateman's Drops, Hopper's Pills, and Smith's Medicinal Snuff. This room, where bargains are struck, strings of numbers and letters and alchemists' signs whisper'd (and some never written down) would be cobwebbed and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into disuse.

Once here, the Doctor could play upon the young officer as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? His victim was forever on the rack. He needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine; - and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with sudden fear? True, the officer eyes the Doctor with a doubtful, even fearful countenance, but he has his orders. The trunk must be delivered and signed for by a Dr. L. Roger Hubbleworth. Doc's gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, the slightest and most indifferent of his acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the custom officer's sight; a token, implicitly to be relied upon, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the Doctor...

"It's not so bad, is it," concedes the Doctor, "for this town. You can't imagine the difficulties... I'll get the glasses out, but first I'd like to show you - you're an educated..."
The operating-room looks out on a yard where a few turkeys move with shabby nervous pomp.
"The window," the officer says, "is very beautiful..."
Forceps stand in a cup, a broken spirit-lamp is pushed into a corner, and gags of cotton-wool lay on all the shelves.