We were collected in two straggling bands on either side of
the roadway, and a few moments later the body of magnificent armed
men passed close to us, followed by a low rabble, who had been
brought to act as drivers for the sheriff.
After my weeks spent among primitive men this glimpse of the newer
types of humanity was not reassuring. Yet these mechanical police,
with the commonplace agents and sheriffs, and the rabble they had
hired, represented aptly enough the civilisation for which the homes
of the island were to be desecrated.
A stop was made at one of the first cottages in the village, and the
day's work began. Here, however, and at the next cottage, a
compromise was made, as some relatives came up at the last moment
and lent the money that was needed to gain a respite.
In another case a girl was ill in the house, so the doctor
interposed, and the people were allowed to remain after a merely
formal eviction. About midday, however, a house was reached where
there was no pretext for mercy, and no money could be procured. At a
sign from the sheriff the work of carrying out the beds and utensils
was begun in the middle of a crowd of natives who looked on in
absolute silence, broken only by the wild imprecations of the woman
of the house. She belonged to one of the most primitive families on
the island, and she shook with uncontrollable fury as she saw the
strange armed men who spoke a language she could not understand
driving her from the hearth she had brooded on for thirty years.
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