Chapter 15

It was into a badly-lighted tavern, with two or three rooms leading out
of one another, that his friend then conducted him. Men of the most
various social positions, many with a military look, and in
half-threadbare uniforms, filled the inner rooms; and in the outer one
he had seen upon entering a number of seafaring men, who looked like
Americans, and who nodded to him on the strength of his sailor's dress.
There were several women, more or less well dressed, moving about among
them, and others standing with eager faces over the gambling-table in
the inner room. All were drinking acachacas, and the whole place was
pervaded with a cloud of tobacco-smoke, out of which there came a
deafening clamour of talk.

Salvé had a seat found for him by his friend at a long table, amongst a
number of bronzed, bearded men, with large hats, leather breeches, and
spurs, whose company he by no means cared about. They looked like
mounted bullock-drivers, such as he had seen at Monte Video, or still
more, perhaps, like brigands, or banditti.

"They belong to Mendez's volunteer corps," whispered Federigo, as he
presented him then to the chief of the party, who sat at the top of the
table--a powerful fellow, with a weather-beaten complexion, heavy black
mustachios, and a pair of small active eyes, which, more than once
afterwards, when Salvé was not looking, were turned critically upon him.

Every now and then they clinked their glasses together to some party
toast; but otherwise they were quiet enough at first. People of the same
calibre sat round other tables in the immediate neighbourhood; and at
another were intermingled well-dressed persons from the town, who were
carrying on a whispered conversation, and who appeared anxious.

The shouting, and the noise, and the laughter kept increasing. There
were already drunken faces at the table, and in several directions
quarrelling and the sound of blows were beginning to be heard. Federigo,
who seemed to be known to many in the rooms, had mixed with the crowd,
and Salvé's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with
dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy
leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very
different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many
debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never
imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made
up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help.
He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from them with
a whole skin, and he felt in his breast-pocket to see that his knife was
there.

One of the North Americans who had nodded to him, in