Later on, one of the soldiers had to go out and get a bucket of water to throw over Lopez, and although they did many things to him, they could not get him to speak, so they lost patience with him and they killed him.
When de Crespedes came out of the room he found his soldiers standing uneasily waiting for him. He looked down at Lopez and stirred him with his boot. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and yawned. “Did he talk?” he asked indifferently. He was thinking of the long tramp back to the barracks. When they shook their heads, he shrugged and put on his jacket. He was feeling devilishly tired. Listlessly he tightened the sword-belt round his thick middle and put on his cap. Then he went back and looked at Lopez again. “It is possible he knew nothing about guns,” he said half aloud, “they’ve made a lot of mistakes before.” He shrugged and turned to the door.
The soldiers picked up their rifles and moved after him. Outside, he paused. “The woman,” he said irritably, “I was forgetting the woman.” He looked at one of the soldiers. “Attend to her. Use your bayonet.”
While they waited in the blinding heat, he thought regretfully how much better it would have been if she had loved him. There was little satisfaction to be had from a weeping woman. Still, he felt better for it. Women were necessary to him.
When the soldier came out, they gave him time to clean his bayonet and then they all tramped across the uneven ground towards the barracks.
TWIST IN THE TALE
The first time I met George Hemingway was when I was after marlin off Key West. I ran into him in a casual sort of way in the Plaza Hotel. He was with a large crowd and I was on my own. It was my first experience of deep-sea fishing, and I rather wanted to experiment by myself. I had had a year of worry and hard work steering my firm through the depression, and now that things were looking pretty good again, I considered that I had earned a few weeks off. So down I went to Key West. I had heard a lot about the fishing there, and I thought it sounded just the right sport for my frame of mind.
I put myself in the hands of Joppy, one of the finest fishermen on the coast. He and I went out in a fast motor-boat nearly every day. He was a soft-spoken, patient sort of a guy, and I guess he wanted all his patience by the time I got through. We fished those waters for over a week without seeing anything remotely resembling marlin. I guess they thought I was too mean a guy to bother about, and even Joppy began looking at me thoughtfully towards the end of the week.
I remember sitting in the lounge bar of the ‘Plaza’ after a completely uneventful day, wondering what the hell deep-sea fishermen could see in such a slow sport, when about a dozen people drifted in, making enough row to scare all the marlin right out of the Mexican Bay. They crowded up to the bar, and because I was at a complete loose end I watched them with, what must have amounted to, almost rude curiosity.
The girls were the usual type of brittle beauty that infest the luxury hotels during the season. There were five of them, and they all were wearing beach trousers, sandals, and gay-coloured handkerchiefs that hid their firm, curved breasts. They were chattering and laughing as they always do, and as soon as they had settled their neat little bottoms on stools they began drinking pink gins at an astonishing rate.