of the windows and began firing.

"I didn't learn till later in the afternoon whom it was that Nostromo,
with his Cargadores and some Italian workmen as well, had managed to
save from those drunken rascals. That man has a peculiar talent when
anything striking to the imagination has to be done. I made that remark
to him afterwards when we met after some sort of order had been restored
in the town, and the answer he made rather surprised me. He said quite
moodily, 'And how much do I get for that, senor?' Then it dawned upon me
that perhaps this man's vanity has been satiated by the adulation of the
common people and the confidence of his superiors!"

Decoud paused to light a cigarette, then, with his head still over his
writing, he blew a cloud of smoke, which seemed to rebound from the
paper. He took up the pencil again.

"That was yesterday evening on the Plaza, while he sat on the steps of
the cathedral, his hands between his knees, holding the bridle of his
famous silver-grey mare. He had led his body of Cargadores splendidly
all day long. He looked fatigued. I don't know how I looked. Very
dirty, I suppose. But I suppose I also looked pleased. From the time the
fugitive President had been got off to the S. S. Minerva, the tide
of success had turned against the mob. They had been driven off the
harbour, and out of the better streets of the town, into their own
maze of ruins and tolderias. You must understand that this riot, whose
primary object was undoubtedly the getting hold of the San Tome silver
stored in the lower rooms of the Custom House (besides the general
looting of the Ricos), had acquired a political colouring from the fact
of two Deputies to the Provincial Assembly, Senores Gamacho and Fuentes,
both from Bolson, putting themselves at the head of it--late in the
afternoon, it is true, when the mob, disappointed in their hopes of
loot, made a stand in the narrow streets to the cries of 'Viva la
Libertad! Down with Feudalism!' (I wonder what they imagine feudalism to
be?) 'Down with the Goths and Paralytics.' I suppose the Senores Gamacho
and Fuentes knew what they were doing. They are prudent gentlemen.
In the Assembly they called themselves Moderates, and opposed every
energetic measure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the first rumours
of Montero's victory, they showed a subtle change of the pensive temper,
and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopez in his Presidential tribune
with an effrontery to which