It might have been said that there he was only protecting his own.

From the first he had been admitted to live in the intimacy of the family of the hotel-keeper who was a countryman of his.

Old Giorgio Viola, a Genoese with a shaggy white leonine head--often called simply "the Garibaldino" (as Mohammedans are called after their prophet)--was, to use Captain Mitchell's own words, the "respectable married friend" by whose advice Nostromo had left his ship to try for a run of shore luck in Costaguana.
The old man, full of scorn for the populace, as your austere republican so often is, had disregarded the preliminary sounds of trouble.

He went on that day as usual pottering about the "casa" in his slippers, muttering angrily to himself his contempt of the non-political nature of the riot, and shrugging his shoulders.

In the end he was taken unawares by the out-rush of the rabble.