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“What do we need it up here for?” Moreira César points downhill. “Isn’t the fighting down there? When those who are still alive see our cavalrymen they’ll come pouring out in terror and we can finish them off. Let them charge immediately!”

“I request your permission to charge with the squadron,” Olímpio de Castro stammers.

“I need you here,” the colonel answers curtly.

The nearsighted journalist hears more bugle calls, and minutes later the cavalrymen, in troops of ten and fifteen, appear at the summit, with an officer at the head of the squadron; as they gallop past Moreira César they salute him with upraised sabers.

“Clear out the churches, drive the enemy north!” the colonel shouts to them.

The journalist is thinking that those tense young faces—white, dark-skinned, black, Indian—are about to enter the whirlwind, when he is convulsed by another fit of sneezing, worse than the one before. His glasses shoot off his nose, and he thinks in terror, as he feels asphyxia set in, his chest and temples explode, his nose itch, that they have been broken, that somebody may step on them, that his remaining days will be a perpetual fog. When the attack is over, he falls on his knees, gropes all about him in anguish till he comes across them. He discovers, to his joy, that they are intact. He cleans them, puts them back on, looks through them. The hundred or so cavalrymen have reached the bottom of the slope. How can they have descended so quickly? But something is happening to them down by the river. They cannot manage to get across it. Their mounts enter the water and then appear to rear, to rebel, despite the fury with which they are urged on with whips, spurs, saber blows. It is as if the river terrified them. They turn round in midstream, and some of them throw their riders.

“They must have set traps in the water,” one officer says.

“They’re being fired on from that dead angle,” another one murmurs.

“My mount!” Moreira César cries, and the nearsighted journalist sees him hand his field glasses to an orderly. As he mounts the horse, he adds in irritation: “The boys need to have an example set them. I’m leaving you in command, Olímpio.”

His heart beats faster as he sees the colonel unsheathe his saber, put the spurs to his mount, and begin to descend the slope at a fast gallop. But he has not gone fifty yards when he sees him slouch over in the saddle, leaning on the neck of his horse, which stops dead in its tracks. He sees the colonel turn it around—to come back up to the command post?—but as though it were receiving contradictory orders from its rider, the animal wheels round twice, three times. And now he sees why officers and escorts are uttering exclamations, shouting, running downhill with their revolvers unholstered. Moreira César rolls to the ground and almost at the same moment he is hidden from sight by the captain and the others, who have lifted him up and are carrying him up the hill toward him, as quickly as they can. There is a deafening uproar, voices shouting, shots, all sorts of noises.

He stands there stunned, unable to move, as he watches the group of men trotting up the mountainside, followed by the white horse, its reins dragging. He has been left all by himself. The terror that overcomes him drives him up the slope, slipping and falling, struggling to his feet, crawling on all fours. When he reaches the summit and bounds toward the tent, he vaguely notes that there are almost no soldiers in the area. Except for a group crowded around the entrance to the tent, the only ones in sight are a sentinel or two, looking in his direction with fear-stricken expressions. He hears the words “Can you help Dr. Souza Ferreiro?” and although the person speaking to him is Captain Olímpio de Castro, he does not recognize his voice and barely recognizes his face. He nods, and the captain pushes him forward with such force that he collides with a soldier. Inside the tent, he sees Dr. Souza Ferreiro’s back, bending over the camp cot and the colonel