e
arm, meaning clearly, "But what's the good of talking to you?" they
nudged each other. There was in old Giorgio an energy of feeling, a
personal quality of conviction, something they called "terribilita"--"an
old lion," they used to say of him. Some slight incident, a chance
word would set him off talking on the beach to the Italian fishermen of
Maldonado, in the little shop he kept afterwards (in Valparaiso) to his
countrymen customers; of an evening, suddenly, in the cafe at one end of
the Casa Viola (the other was reserved for the English engineers) to the
select clientele of engine-drivers and foremen of the railway shops.

With their handsome, bronzed, lean faces, shiny black ringlets,
glistening eyes, broad-chested, bearded, sometimes a tiny gold ring in
the lobe of the ear, the aristocracy of the railway works listened
to him, turning away from their cards or dominoes. Here and there a
fair-haired Basque studied his hand meantime, waiting without protest.
No native of Costaguana intruded there. This was the Italian stronghold.
Even the Sulaco policemen on a night patrol let their horses pace softly
by, bending low in the saddle to glance through the window at the heads
in a fog of smoke; and the drone of old Giorgio's declamatory narrative
seemed to sink behind them into the plain. Only now and then the
assistant of the chief of police, some broad-faced, brown little
gentleman, with a great deal of Indian in him, would put in an
appearance. Leaving his man outside with the horses he advanced with a
confident, sly smile, and without a word up to the long trestle table.
He pointed to one of the bottles on the shelf; Giorgio, thrusting his
pipe into his mouth abruptly, served him in person. Nothing would be
heard but the slight jingle of the spurs. His glass emptied, he would
take a leisurely, scrutinizing look all round the room, go out, and ride
away slowly, circling towards the town.

CHAPTER FIVE

In this way only was the power of the local authorities vindicated
amongst the great body of strong-limbed foreigners who dug the earth,
blasted the rocks, drove the engines for the "progressive and
patriotic undertaking." In these very words eighteen months before the
Excellentissimo Senor don Vincente Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana,
had described the National Central Railway in his great speech at the
turning of the first sod.

He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a one-o'clock
dinner-party