In that
revolutionary moment I found myself prepared for all
extremes except the one: ready to do anything, or to go
anywhere, so long as I might save my money. At the
worst, there was flight, flight to some of those blest
countries where the serpent extradition has not yet
entered in.
On no condition is extradition
Allowed in Callao!
--the old lawless words haunted me; and I saw myself
hugging my gold in the company of such men as had once
made and sung them, in the rude and bloody wharfside
drinking-shops of Chili and Peru. The run of my ill-
luck, the breach of my old friendship, this bubble
fortune flaunted for a moment in my eyes and snatched
again, had made me desperate and (in the expressive
vulgarism) ugly. To drink vile spirits among vile
companions by the flare of a pine-torch; to go
burthened with my furtive treasure in a belt; to fight
for it knife in hand, rolling on a clay floor; to flee
perpetually in fresh ships and to be chased through the
sea from isle to isle, seemed, in my then frame of
mind, a welcome series of events.
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