Decoud followed out the
brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in the vast empty
sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man,
with a drooping moustache, a hide merchant from Esmeralda, who had come
overland to Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range.
He was very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose
of seeing the Senor Administrador of San Tome in relation to some
assistance he required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to
enlarge it greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was
going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a strange,
anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language, which he pattered
rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A plain man could carry
on his little business now in the country, and even think of enlarging
it--with safety. Was it not so? He seemed to beg Charles Gould for a
confirmatory word, a grunt of assent, a simple nod even.
He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he would
dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he would branch
off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his journey.
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