The Derrick Disaster — Noli Me Tángere

The yellowish derrick builder, trained by Don Saturnino, erects an ornate scaffold that collapses during the school cornerstone ceremony. Elias had warned Ibarra in church; the youth survives while the worker dies crushed beneath timber meant to impress the crowd, and officials rejoice that the victim was only an Indian and urge the fiesta to continue as if blood were confetti on Capitan Tiago's lawn.

Ibarra secures the foreman's release while crowds call it a miracle of San Diego and Tasio mutters bad beginning. Before the accident the alcalde praises Spain and friars in a speech linking schools to civilization while Salvi trembles through the blessing and the yellowish laborer smiles at the windlass he alone knows is sabotaged.

The chapter exposes murder masked as accident, class contempt when native life ends, and Elias's role as witness who caught the criminal at the windlass. Rizal shows reform celebrated in public and attacked in timber while the town chooses spectacle over grief and calls survival proof of saintly favour instead of asking who cut the rope while the alcalde still speaks of progress and Spanish benevolence and the cornerstone waits like bait on a hook while children still weave crowns for a school that may never stand.