A dim watery moon, the portico of the cathedral, a woman
exaggerating her walk.... Pah!... immigrants fearful of the coming
snow.... A vigilante strutting like a colonel.... Mournful pampa
winds....

The theaters? Sugary Italian opera; a stark Spanish drama, too intense
for any but Latins, foreign; debauched vaudeville, incredibly vulgar; or
at the concert-hall, sentimental Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon songs, with an
audience of grave uncritical exiles--a little pathetic. No!

The clubs? Oh, damn the clubs! A blaze of light and raucous voices,
ships' masters, ships' chandlers, merchants, discussing the riddle of
local politics, and the simony of office; or the price of hides, and
freight charges; how a ship's master could turn a pretty penny in
bringing out shoddy clothes, or pianos--Jesus! they were crazy for
pianos here! Rattle of glasses and striking of matches. Bluff,
ceremonious salutations.

"Well, captain, what kind of a trip did you make out?"

"Pretty fair, captain."

"Will you have a little snifter, captain?"

"Well, captain, seeing that it's you--"

"Paddy, a little of what ails him for the captain--"

And after a while the whisky would dissolve the ceremony, and would come
nauseating intimacies.

"We shipped a stewardess in Hull--" or "There was an Irish girl in the
steerage, a raving beauty, and when I saw her, I said: Wait. So--"

They were all the same. Give them whisky and time and the talk would
come around to easy money and easy women. All were the same, bluff,
sentimental, animal, all but the one or two hawk-eyed, close-lipped men
who came and went silently, who drank little and drank by themselves.
These men made the really big money, but it wasn't easy; they took a
chance with their lives, smuggling slaves from Africa for the Argentine
plantations, or silver from Chile and Peru. But as for the rest, easy
money, easy women!

Well, what was Campbell fussing about? Wasn't he too making easy money,
bringing agricultural steel and cotton goods here and taking away his
tally of hides?

And as to easy women, wasn't there Hedda Hagen?

Section 4

A ship's master had introduced him to her at a band concert in one of
the public squares--a tall Amazonian woman with her hair white as corn,
and eyes the strange light blue of ice. Her head was uptilted--a
brave woman. The introduction had a smirking ceremony about it that
defined Froken Hagen's position as though in so many words. Her bow was
as