Page 260 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

dismantled houses acquired by the Company for their town
station on one side of the Plaza, and Nostromo, whose Car-
gadores were sleeping under the arcades along the front of
Anzani’s shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the Inten-
dencia saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the Plaza, in a
high flame swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. The
dead body of a man was lying on the steps of the pedestal,
his arms thrown wide open, and his sombrero covering his
face—the attention of some friend, perhaps. The light of the
flames touched the foliage of the first trees on the Alameda,
and played on the end of a side street near by, blocked up by
a jumble of ox-carts and dead bullocks. Sitting on one of the
carcasses, a lepero, muffled up, smoked a cigarette. It was a
truce, you understand. The only other living being on the
Plaza besides ourselves was a Cargador walking to and fro,
with a long, bare knife in his hand, like a sentry before the
Arcades, where his friends were sleeping. And the only oth-
er spot of light in the dark town were the lighted windows
of the club, at the corner of the Calle.’
After having written so far, Don Martin Decoud, the ex-
otic dandy of the Parisian boulevard, got up and walked
across the sanded floor of the cafe at one end of the Albergo
of United Italy, kept by Giorgio Viola, the old companion
of Garibaldi. The highly coloured lithograph of the Faith-
ful Hero seemed to look dimly, in the light of one candle, at
the man with no faith in anything except the truth of his
own sensations. Looking out of the window, Decoud was
met by a darkness so impenetrable that he could see neither
the mountains nor the town, nor yet the buildings near the