Hamilton began to protest, but the big doctor only laughed in reply, without taking his eyes, however, from the procession of figures which one by one walked up to him and made the turn round the angle.

“If he’ll wait a minute or two more,” he said, “perhaps I’ll have a chance to do something, and save my reputation.”

There was a pause; then the doctor continued: 

“I think there’s something doing now; watch this man coming up.”

“He seems to limp just the merest trifle, that’s all I can see,” the boy replied.

“Bone disease of some kind, or maybe joint,” the doctor said, “tuberculous hip, like as not,” and as the man passed by he leaned forward and chalked a big “B” on the shoulder of his coat. “‘B’ for Bones,” the doctor explained to Hamilton.

“What will happen to him?” asked the boy of the immigration official.

“Because of that mark?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It simply means that he will be held for ‘special inquiry.’  He may be all right, but before he is passed, he will have to be examined physically—­a thorough physical examination, I mean.  Now here, you see, is another doctor.”

Eight or ten yards further on stood another man, all in white as the first had been, who took up the inspection where the judge of bone malformations had left off.  A sunken chest, he explained to Hamilton, a hectic flush, a pinched nostril, an evident difficulty in breathing, a certain carriage of the head, a blueness of the lips, certain types of pallor, all these and a number of little points which experience had shown to be symptoms of organic disease his trained eye could detect at a glance, and he, too, every few minutes, stooped forward and chalked upon the coat of the man or the blouse of the woman, as the case might be, a letter which told of a suspected disease.

“I suppose I ought not to say anything,” said Hamilton, “but that looks a little ‘hit-or-miss’ to me.  It’s hard on an immigrant to be detained on the basis of a medical examination that barely takes ten seconds.”

“If that were all,” said the official, smiling, “it surely would be a hardship.  But you don’t quite get the point.  All these passengers really are detained, and this arrangement is only a way to render the detention shorter by letting those go through unchecked who do not need further examination.  This is not to delay the suspects, but to cause less trouble to the others.  Here, however is where most of them get stopped.”

He pointed to another doctor, standing close to the last, who examined the eyes quickly and deftly (principally for a chronic and contagious disease called “trachoma"), scrupulously cleansing fingers and instrument between each immigrant.

Passing the eye doctors the immigrants came to an inspector who stood at a place where a large grating was built midway in the passage, dividing it into two parts.  All those who had been marked by any of the doctors, and, in the cases of families, all those in the party of any one so marked, passed up the right hand passage which led to the Special Inquiry; the others were guided to the left hand side of the grating, which led directly into the main primary inspection room.