Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 7. CHAPTER SEVEN (continued)

"They raised a cry of 'Decoud! Don Martin!' at my entrance. I
asked them, 'What are you deliberating upon, gentlemen?' There
did not seem to be any president, though Don Jose Avellanos sat
at the head of the table. They all answered together, 'On the
preservation of life and property.' 'Till the new officials
arrive,' Don Juste explained to me, with the solemn side of his
face offered to my view. It was as if a stream of water had been
poured upon my glowing idea of a new State. There was a hissing
sound in my ears, and the room grew dim, as if suddenly filled
with vapour.

"I walked up to the table blindly, as though I had been drunk.
'You are deliberating upon surrender,' I said. They all sat
still, with their noses over the sheet of paper each had before
him, God only knows why. Only Don Jose hid his face in his hands,
muttering, 'Never, never!' But as I looked at him, it seemed to
me that I could have blown him away with my breath, he looked so
frail, so weak, so worn out. Whatever happens, he will not
survive. The deception is too great for a man of his age; and
hasn't he seen the sheets of 'Fifty Years of Misrule,' which we
have begun printing on the presses of the Porvenir, littering the
Plaza, floating in the gutters, fired out as wads for trabucos
loaded with handfuls of type, blown in the wind, trampled in the
mud? I have seen pages floating upon the very waters of the
harbour. It would be unreasonable to expect him to survive. It
would be cruel.

"'Do you know,' I cried, 'what surrender means to you, to your
women, to your children, to your property?'