One, however,
carried away a small piece of his ear, and another a fragment of flesh
from his shoulder.
A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery
stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of his
glorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seen
the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of
killing and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish,
were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backs
of the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. Some of them
had fallen on their knees, others remained standing, a few averted their
heads from the levelled barrels of muskets. Gaspar Ruiz, upright, the
burliest of them all, hung his big shock head. The low sun dazzled him a
little, and he counted himself a dead man already.
He fell at the first discharge. He fell because he thought he was a dead
man. He struck the ground heavily. The jar of the fall surprised him.
"I am not dead apparently," he thought to himself, when he heard the
execution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command.
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