This chapter moves us from Costguana's geography to its culture. We start by meeting the relatively unimportant Captain Mitchell, beginning an ascent through the Costaguana power structure that will culminate with the Goulds and Holroyd. Nostromo, who as an allegory of the common People is both the least and most powerful figure, also appears here, as he will at the close of Part One.

In contrast to the first chapter, which took pains to precisely set its landmarks, this one immediately starts to befuddle us. We arrive in Sulaco in the middle of a dramatic riot scene whose causes we do not understand, related to us by a story-teller we don't know from some indeterminate point in the future. The narrative keeps us suspended between the two time periods, unsure whether we will settle on the riot in the past or Mitchell in the future; only at the very end does the chapter commit itself. In the process we receive information in a crossfire of detailed glimpses: there is a harbor, a town and a campo infested with thieves, there is a railway under construction with a European workforce while the harbor laborers are natives (but the natives answer to a Genoese leader), the harbor consists of a jetty and two buldings, in one of which there might be a treasure of silver. The effect is a very realistic facsimile of the experience of arriving in a new place, a vibrant locale which extends outward in time and space, and grips the senses while it eludes the mind.