Chapter 3

III

"YES, my friends," he used to say to his guests, "what would you have?
A youth of seventeen summers, without worldly experience, and owing my
rank only to the glorious patriotism of my father, may God rest his
soul, I suffered immense humiliation, not so much from the
disobedience of That subordinate, who, alter all, was responsible for
those prisoners; but I suffered because, like the boy I was, I myself
dreaded going to the adjutant for the key. I had felt, before, his
rough and cutting tongue. Being quite a common fellow, with no merit
except his savage valour, he made me feel his contempt and dislike
from the first day I joined my battalion in garrison at the fort. It
was only a fortnight before! I would have confronted him sword in
hand, but I shrank from the mocking brutality of his sneers.

"I don't remember having been so miserable in my life before or since.
The torment of my sensibility was so great that I wished the sergeant
to fall dead at my feet, and the stupid soldiers who stared at me to
turn into corpses; and even those wretches for whom my entreaties had
procured a reprieve I wished dead also, because I could not face them
without shame. A mephitic heat like a whiff of air from hell came out
of that dark place in which they were confined. Those at the window
who heard what was going on jeered at me in very desperation; one of
these fellows, gone mad no doubt, kept on urging me volubly to order
the soldiers to fire through the window. His insane loquacity made my
heart turn faint. And my feet were like lead. There was no higher
officer to whom I could appeal. I had not even the firmness of spirit
to simply go away.

"Benumbed by my remorse, I stood with my back to the window. You must
not suppose that all this lasted a long time. How long could it have
been? A minute? If you measured by mental suffering it was like a
hundred years; a longer time than all my life has been since. No,
certainly, it was not so much as a minute. The hoarse screaming of
those miserable wretches died out in their dry throats, and then
suddenly a voice spoke, a deep voice muttering calmly. It called upon
me to turn round.

"That voice, senores, proceeded from the head of Gaspar Ruiz. Of his
body I could see nothing. Some of his fellow-captives had clambered
upon his back. He was holding them up. His eyes blinked without
looking at me. That and the moving of his lips was all he seemed able
to manage in his overloaded state. And when I turned round, this head,
that seemed more than human size resting on its chin under a multitude
of other heads, asked me whether I really desired to quench the thirst
of the captives.

"I said, 'Yes, yes!' eagerly,