CHAPTER FOUR
Perhaps it was in the exercise of his calling that he had come to see
the troops depart. The Porvenir of the day after next would no doubt
relate the event, but its editor, leaning his side against the landau,
seemed to look at nothing. The front rank of the company of infantry
drawn up three deep across the shore end of the jetty when pressed too
close would bring their bayonets to the charge ferociously, with an
awful rattle; and then the crowd of spectators swayed back bodily,
even under the noses of the big white mules. Notwithstanding the great
multitude there was only a low, muttering noise; the dust hung in a
brown haze, in which the horsemen, wedged in the throng here and there,
towered from the hips upwards, gazing all one way over the heads. Almost
every one of them had mounted a friend, who steadied himself with both
hands grasping his shoulders from behind; and the rims of their hats
touching, made like one disc sustaining the cones of two pointed crowns
with a double face underneath. A hoarse mozo would bawl out something to
an acquaintance in the ranks, or a woman would shriek suddenly the word
Adios! followed by the Christian name of a man.
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