Page 187 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

rivers. And it was not mere boastfulness that prompted the
general’s reminiscences, but a genuine love of that wild life
which he had led in his young days before he turned his
back for ever on the thatched roof of the parental tolderia in
the woods. Wandering away as far as Mexico he had fought
against the French by the side (as he said) of Juarez, and was
the only military man of Costaguana who had ever encoun-
tered European troops in the field. That fact shed a great
lustre upon his name till it became eclipsed by the rising
star of Montero. All his life he had been an inveterate gam-
bler. He alluded himself quite openly to the current story
how once, during some campaign (when in command of a
brigade), he had gambled away his horses, pistols, and ac-
coutrements, to the very epaulettes, playing monte with his
colonels the night before the battle. Finally, he had sent un-
der escort his sword (a presentation sword, with a gold hilt)
to the town in the rear of his position to be immediately
pledged for five hundred pesetas with a sleepy and fright-
ened shop-keeper. By daybreak he had lost the last of that
money, too, when his only remark, as he rose calmly, was,
‘Now let us go and fight to the death.’ From that time he
had become aware that a general could lead his troops into
battle very well with a simple stick in his hand. ‘It has been
my custom ever since,’ he would say.
He was always overwhelmed with debts; even during
the periods of splendour in his varied fortunes of a Costa-
guana general, when he held high military commands, his
gold-laced uniforms were almost always in pawn with some
tradesman. And at last, to avoid the incessant difficulties of

1 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard