"You are
tearing your hair from despair at my acuteness. Am I a child to believe
that a light in that brass box can show you where the harbour is? I am
an old soldier, I am. I can smell a traitor a league off. You wanted
that gleam to betray our approach to your friend the Englishman. A thing
like that show you the way! What a miserable lie! Que picardia! You
Sulaco people are all in the pay of those foreigners. You deserve to
be run through the body with my sword." Other officers, crowding round,
tried to calm his indignation, repeating persuasively, "No, no! This is
an appliance of the mariners, major. This is no treachery." The captain
of the transport flung himself face downwards on the bridge, and refused
to rise. "Put an end to me at once," he repeated in a stifled voice.
Sotillo had to interfere.
The uproar and confusion on the bridge became so great that the helmsman
fled from the wheel. He took refuge in the engine-room, and alarmed the
engineers, who, disregarding the threats of the soldiers set on guard
over them, stopped the engines, protesting that they would rather be
shot than run the risk of being drowned down below.
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