At the shore end of the jetty,
Captain Mitchell said good-night and turned back. His intention was to
walk the planks of the wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up.
The engineers of the railway staff, collecting their Basque and Italian
workmen, marched them away to the railway yards, leaving the Custom
House, so well defended on the first day of the riot, standing open to
the four winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves bravely
and faithfully during the famous "three days" of Sulaco. In a great part
this faithfulness and that courage had been exercised in self-defence
rather than in the cause of those material interests to which Charles
Gould had pinned his faith. Amongst the cries of the mob not the least
loud had been the cry of death to foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky
circumstance for Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen
with the people of the country had been uniformly bad from the first.
Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola's kitchen, observed this
retreat marking the end of the foreign interference, this withdrawal of
the army of material progress from the field of Costaguana revolutions.
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