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

cho howled with conviction, was the only man equal to thepatriotic task. They assented to that, too.The morning was wearing on; there were already signsof disruption, currents and eddies in the crowd. Some wereseeking the shade of the walls and under the trees of theAlameda. Horsemen spurred through, shouting; groups ofsombreros set level on heads against the vertical sun weredrifting away into the streets, where the open doors of pulperiasrevealed an enticing gloom resounding with thegentle tinkling of guitars. The National Guards were thinkingof siesta, and the eloquence of Gamacho, their chief, wasexhausted. Later on, when, in the cooler hours of the afternoon,they tried to assemble again for further considerationof public affairs, detachments of Montero’s cavalry campedon the Alameda charged them without parley, at speed, withlong lances levelled at their flying backs as far as the ends ofthe streets. The National Guards of Sulaco were surprisedby this proceeding. But they were not indignant. No Costaguanerohad ever learned to question the eccentricities of amilitary force. They were part of the natural order of things.This must be, they concluded, some kind of administrativemeasure, no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their unaidedintelligence, and their chief and orator, Gamacho, Commandanteof the National Guard, was lying drunk and asleep inthe bosom of his family. His bare feet were upturned in theshadows repulsively, in the manner of a corpse. His eloquentmouth had dropped open. His youngest daughter, scratchingher head with one hand, with the other waved a greenbough over his scorched and peeling face.