Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

ing company of nearly naked skeletons, loaded with irons,covered with dirt, with vermin, with raw wounds, all menof position, of education, of wealth, who had learned tofight amongst themselves for scraps of rotten beef thrownto them by soldiers, or to beg a negro cook for a drink ofmuddy water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos, clankinghis chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist inorder to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, andcruel torture a human body can stand without parting withthe last spark of life. Sometimes interrogatories, backedby some primitive method of torture, were administeredto them by a commission of officers hastily assembled in ahut of sticks and branches, and made pitiless by the fear fortheir own lives. A lucky one or two of that spectral companyof prisoners would perhaps be led tottering behind a bushto be shot by a file of soldiers. Always an army chaplain—some unshaven, dirty man, girt with a sword and with atiny cross embroidered in white cotton on the left breast of alieutenant’s uniform—would follow, cigarette in the cornerof the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the confessionand give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour of the Country(Guzman Bento was called thus officially in petitions) wasnot averse from the exercise of rational clemency. The irregularreport of the firing squad would be heard, followedsometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud ofsmoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Armyof Pacification would move on over the savannas, throughthe forests, crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastatingthe haciendas of the horrid aristocrats, occupying the