his belly—“and here!”—he struck his loins. “The strength that comes from back of the sun.”
When Cipriano was roused, his eyes flashed, and it was as if dark feathers, like pinions, were starting out of him, out of his shoulders and back, as if these dark pinions clashed and flashed like a roused eagle. His men seemed to see him, as by second sight, with the demonish clashing and dashing of wings, like an old god. And they murmured, their eyes flashing:
“It is Cipriano! It is he! We are Ciprianistos, we are his children.”
“We are men! We are men!” cried Cipriano.
“But listen. There are two kinds of men. There are men with the second strength, and men without it.
“When the first gringos came, we lost our second strength. And the padres taught us: Submit! Submit!
“The gringos had got the second strength!
“How?
“Like cunning ones, they stole it on the sly. They kept very still, like a tarantula in his hole. Then when neither sun nor moon nor stars knew he was there, Biff!—the tarantula sprang across, and bit, and left the poison and sucked the secret.
“So they got the secrets of the air and the water, and they got the secrets out of the earth. So the metals were theirs, and they made guns and machines and ships, and they made trains and telegrams and radio.
“Why? Why did they make all these things? How could they do it?
“Because, by cunning, they had got the secret of