Page 398 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

drowning man catches at a straw. Father Corbelan was un-
expectedly offering them a refuge from Pedrito Montero
with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
with their armed rabble.
All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discus-
sion went on in the big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even
those members posted at the windows with rifles and car-
bines to guard the end of the street in case of an offensive
return of the populace shouted their opinions and argu-
ments over their shoulders. As dusk fell Don Juste Lopez,
inviting those caballeros who were of his way of thinking
to follow him, withdrew into the corredor, where at a little
table in the light of two candles he busied himself in com-
posing an address, or rather a solemn declaration to be
presented to Pedrito Montero by a deputation of such mem-
bers of Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea
was to propitiate him in order to save the form at least of
parliamentary institutions. Seated before a blank sheet of
paper, a goose-quill pen in his hand and surged upon from
all sides, he turned to the right and to the left, repeating
with solemn insistence—
‘Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of silence!
We ought to make it clear that we bow in all good faith to
the accomplished facts.’
The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a mel-
ancholy satisfaction. The hubbub of voices round him was
growing strained and hoarse. In the sudden pauses the ex-
cited grimacing of the faces would sink all at once into the
stillness of profound dejection.