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Moreira César does not hear or does not deign to answer. “In the last analysis, the one thing man fears is death,” he says as he dries his hands and face. The words are spoken in a natural tone of voice, without grandiloquence, as in the conversations he has been heard to have at night with certain of his officers. “Hence it is the only effective punishment. Provided that it is justly administered. It edifies the civilian population and demoralizes the enemy. That sounds cruel, I know. But that is the way wars are won. You have had your baptism of fire today. You now know what to expect, gentlemen.”

He dismisses them with the swift, icy nod that they have learned to recognize as the incontrovertible sign that an interview has ended. He turns his back to them and enters the hut, in which they manage to glimpse uniforms bustling about, a map spread out, and a handful of aides clicking their heels. Troubled, deeply distressed, taken aback, they go back across the clearing to the mess tent, where at each rest halt they receive their rations, identical to those of the officers. But it is certain that none of them will eat a bite today.

The five of them are worn out from the swift pace at which the column advances. They have aching backsides, stiff legs, skin badly burned by the sun of this sandy desert, bristling with cactus and thorn-bush, that lies between Queimadas and Monte Santo. They wonder how those who march on foot, the vast majority of the regiment, can hold up. But many of them do not hold up: they have seen them collapse and be dumped onto the medics’ carts like so many sacks. They know now that these exhausted men, once they have come to, are severely reprimanded. “Is this what war is?” the nearsighted journalist thinks. For, before this execution, they have seen nothing resembling a war. Hence they do not understand why the commanding officer of the Seventh Regiment is driving his men on so heartlessly. Is this a race toward a mirage? There were admittedly all sorts of rumors about the violent deeds of the jagunços in the interior. But where are these rebels? They have come upon nothing but half-deserted villages, whose wretched inhabitants watch them pass with indifferent eyes and who, when questioned, always offer only evasive answers. The column has not been attacked; they have not once heard the sound of gunfire. Is it true that the cattle that have disappeared were stolen by the enemy, as Moreira César assures them? They do not find this intense little man a likable sort, but they are impressed by his self-assurance, his ability to go without eating or sleeping, his inexhaustible energy. As they wrap their blankets around themselves for a bad night’s sleep, they see him still up and about, his uniform not yet unbuttoned, the sleeves of it not yet rolled up, going up and down the ranks of soldiers, stopping to exchange a few words with the sentinels, or conversing with his staff officers. And at dawn, when the bugle sounds and they open their eyes, still drunk with sleep, he is there, washed and shaved, interrogating the messengers from the vanguard or inspecting the artillery pieces, as though he hadn’t gone to bed at all. Until the execution a moment ago war, for them, was this man. He was the only one to talk constantly of it, with such conviction that he managed to convince them, to make them see themselves surrounded by it, besieged by it. He has persuaded them that many of those undaunted, starving creatures—exactly like the two men executed—who come out of their huts to watch them pass by, are the enemy’s accomplices, and that behind those impassive eyes are intelligences that count, measure, calculate, register, and that this information, it too on its way to Canudos, always precedes the column. The nearsighted journalist recalls that the old man shouted “Long live the Counselor!” before dying and thinks: “Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps all of them are the enemy.”

This time, unlike previous halts, none of the correspondents stretches out to catch a few winks of sleep. Keeping each other company