Read "Papillon" by Henri Charrière online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Two hours later we arrived at Güiria, a big village with a port and the pretensions of a city. The chief of police turned us over personally to the district police commissioner. We weren't too badly treated at the police station, but we had to submit to an interrogation by a dim-witted official who wouldn't accept the fact that we had come from British Guiana and that we had been free men there. In addition, he asked us to explain why we had arrived in Venezuela in such a sorry condition after what had been really a very short trip. Then he accused us of trying to make a fool of him with our story of the typhoon.
"You tell me that two huge banana trees keeled over in that tornado, a freighter carrying bauxite went down with everyone on board, and you-in a fifteen-foot tub wide open to the elements-came through? Who'll believe you? Not even a senile old beggar in the marketplace would fall for that one. You're lying."