biceps. Behind marched Saint
Peter, an official with escort, carrying the keys to the city. Gibraltar
was now out of communication with the rest of the world; doors and gates
were closed. Thrust upon itself it turned to its devotions, finding in
religion an excellent pastime to precede supper and sleep. The Jews
lighted the lamps of their synagogues and sang to the glory of Jehovah;
the Catholics counted their rosaries in the Cathedral; from the
Protestant temple, built in the Moorish style as if it were a mosque,
rose, like a celestial whispering, the voices of the virgins accompanied
by the organ; the Mussulmen gathered in the house of their consul to
whine their interminable and monotonous salutation to Allah. In the
temperance restaurants, established by Protestant piety for the cure of
drunkenness, sober soldiers and sailors, drinking lemonade or tea, broke
forth into harmonious hymns to the glory of the Lord of Israel, who in
ancient times had guided the Jews through the desert and was now guiding
old England over the seas, that she might establish her morality and her
merchandise.

Religion filled the existence of these people, to the point of
suppressing nationality. Aguirre knew that in Gibraltar he was not a
Spaniard; he was a Catholic. And the others, for the most part English
subjects, scarcely recalled this status, designating themselves by the
name of their creed.

In his walks through Royal Street Aguirre had one stopping place: the
entrance to a Hindu bazaar ruled over by a Hindu from Madras named
Khiamull. During the first days of his stay he had bought from the
shopkeeper various gifts for his first cousins in Madrid, the daughters
of an old minister plenipotentiary who helped him in his career. Ever
since then Aguirre would stop for a chat with Khiamull, a shrivelled old
man, with a greenish tan complexion and mustache of jet black that
bristled from his lips like the whiskers of a seal. His gentle, watery
eyes--those of an antelope or of some humble, persecuted beast--seemed
to caress Aguirre with the softness of velvet. He spoke to the young man
in Spanish, mixing among his words, which were pronounced with an
Andalusian accent, a number of rare terms from distant tongues that he
had picked up in his travels. He had journeyed over half the world for
the company by whom he was now employed. He spoke of his life at the
Cape, at Durban, in the Philippines, at Malta, with a weary expression.
Sometime