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By Root 2114 0

this morning at the entrance to the pass. In the first charge, the sergeant was behind the Third Company and saw how Second Lieutenant Sepúlveda’s chasseurs were mowed down by bursts of rifle fire whose source no one was able to pin down. In the second, the death toll was also so heavy that they were obliged to fall back. The third charge was made by two battalions of the Sixth Brigade, the Twenty-sixth and the Thirty-second, but Colonel Carlos Maria da Silva Telles ordered Captain Almeida’s company to carry out an enveloping movement. It was not successful, for after scaling the spurs of the mountainside they discovered that they were being slashed to ribbons by the thorny brush along the razorback crest. As he was coming back down, the sergeant felt a burning sensation in his left hand: a bullet had just blown off the tip of his little finger. It didn’t hurt him, and once back in the rear guard, as the battalion doctor was applying a disinfectant, he cracked jokes so as to raise the morale of the wounded being brought in by the stretcher-bearers. He took part in the fourth charge as a volunteer, arguing that he wanted to wreak his vengeance for that bit of finger he had lost and kill himself an Englishman. They had managed to get halfway up the slope, but with such heavy losses that once again they were forced to fall back. But in this last charge they had defeated the enemy all along the line: so why withdraw? Perhaps so that the Fifth Brigade could finish them off and thus allow Colonel Donaciano de Araújo Pantoja, General Savaget’s favorite subordinate, to reap all the glory? “That might be why,” Captain Almeida mutters.

At the foot of the slope, where there are infantrymen from companies trying to regroup, pushing and shoving each other about, troops trying to yoke the draft animals to cannons, carts, and ambulance wagons, contradictory bugle commands, wounded screaming, Sergeant Frutuoso Medrado discovers the reason for the sudden retreat: the column coming from Queimadas and Monte Santo has fallen into a trap, and the second column, instead of invading Canudos from the north, must now make a forced march and get them out of the trap they are caught in.

The sergeant, who entered the army at the age of fourteen, fought in the war against Paraguay, and in the campaigns to put down the uprisings that broke out in the South following the fall of the monarchy, does not blanch at the idea of withdrawing through unknown territory after having spent the entire day fighting. And what a battle! The bandits are courageous, he must admit. They have withstood several heavy cannonades without budging an inch, forcing the troops to rout them out with bayonets and fight it out in fierce hand-to-hand combat: the bastards are as tough as the Paraguayans. Unlike himself—he feels refreshed and ready for action again after a few swallows of water and a couple of pieces of hardtack—his men look exhausted. They are raw troops, recruited in Bagé in the last six months; this has been their baptism of fire. They have behaved well; he has not seen a single one panic. Can they be more afraid of him than of the English? He is a strict disciplinarian; at their first breach of conduct, his men have him personally to deal with. Instead of the regulation punishments—loss of leave, the stockade, floggings—the sergeant is partial to clouts on the head, ear-pulling, kicks in the behind, or a flying trip into a muddy pigpen. They are well trained, as they have proved today. All of them are safe and sound, with the exception of Private Coríntio, who has tripped over some rocks and is limping. A skinny little runt, he is walking bent over double beneath the weight of his knapsack. A good sort, Coríntio, timid, obliging, an early bird, and Frutuoso Medrado shows certain favoritism toward him because he is Florisa’s husband. The sergeant feels a sudden itch and laughs to himself. “What a hot bitch you are, Florisa—here I am, miles away in the middle of a war, and still you’ve made me get a hard-on,” he thinks. He feels like bursting out laughing at the