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+Project Gutenberg’s Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, by Joseph Conrad
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #2021]
+Last Updated: September 10, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOSTROMO: A TALE OF THE SEABOARD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+NOSTROMO
+
+A TALE OF THE SEABOARD
+
+
+By Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+
+“So foul a sky clears not without a storm.” --SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR’S NOTE
+
+
+“_Nostromo_” is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels which
+belong to the period following upon the publication of the “Typhoon”
+ volume of short stories.
+
+I don’t mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change
+in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing
+life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious,
+extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a
+subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I
+can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some
+concern was that after finishing the last story of the “Typhoon” volume
+it seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write
+about.
+
+This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little
+time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for
+“Nostromo” came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely
+destitute of valuable details.
+
+As a matter of fact in 1875 or ‘6, when very young, in the West Indies
+or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short,
+few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to
+have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on
+the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution.
+
+On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no details,
+and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to
+keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven
+years afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked
+up outside a second-hand book-shop. It was the life story of an American
+seaman written by himself with the assistance of a journalist. In the
+course of his wanderings that American sailor worked for some months on
+board a schooner, the master and owner of which was the thief of whom I
+had heard in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there
+could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the same
+part of the world and both connected with a South American revolution.
+
+The fellow had actually managed to steal a lighter with silver, and
+this, it seems, only because he was implicitly trusted by his employers,
+who must have been singularly poor judges of character. In the sailor’s
+story he is represented as an unmitigated rascal, a small cheat,
+stupidly ferocious, morose, of mean appearance, and altogether unworthy
+of the greatness this opportunity had thrust upon him. What was
+interesting was that he would boast of it openly.
+
+He used to say: “People think I make a lot of money in this schooner of
+mine. But that is nothing. I don’t care for that. Now and then I go
+away quietly and lift a bar of silver. I must get rich slowly--you
+understand.”
+
+There was also another curious point about the man. Once in the course
+of some quarrel the sailor threatened him: “What’s to prevent me
+reporting ashore what you have told me about that silver?”
+
+The cynical ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He actually laughed.
+“You fool, if you dare talk like that on shore about me you will get a
+knife stuck in your back. Every man, woman, and child in that port is
+my friend. And who’s to prove the lighter wasn’t sunk? I didn’t show you
+where the silver is hidden. Did I? So you know nothing. And suppose I
+lied? Eh?”
+
+Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid meanness of that
+impenitent thief, deserted from the schooner. The whole episode takes
+about three pages of his autobiography. Nothing to speak of; but as I
+looked them over, the curious confirmation of the few casual words
+heard in my early youth evoked the memories of that distant time when
+everything was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting;
+bits of strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the
+sunshine, men’s passions in the dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown
+dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world something to
+write about. Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A
+rascal steals a large parcel of a valuable commodity--so people say.
+It’s either true or untrue; and in any case it has no value in itself.
+To invent a circumstantial account of the robbery did not appeal to me,
+because my talents not running that way I did not think that the game
+was worth the candle. It was only when it dawned upon me that the
+purloiner of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue,
+that he could be even a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim
+in the changing scenes of a revolution, it was only then that I had the
+first vision of a twilight country which was to become the province
+of Sulaco, with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty Campo for mute
+witnesses of events flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in
+good and evil.
+
+Such are in very truth the obscure origins of “Nostromo”--the book. From
+that moment, I suppose, it had to be. Yet even then I hesitated, as if
+warned by the instinct of self-preservation from venturing on a distant
+and toilsome journey into a land full of intrigues and revolutions. But
+it had to be done.
+
+It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with many intervals
+of renewed hesitation, lest I should lose myself in the ever-enlarging
+vistas opening before me as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the
+country. Often, also, when I had thought myself to a standstill over the
+tangled-up affairs of the Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack
+my bag, rush away from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages
+of the “Mirror of the Sea.” But generally, as I’ve said before, my
+sojourn on the Continent of Latin America, famed for its hospitality,
+lasted for about two years. On my return I found (speaking somewhat in
+the style of Captain Gulliver) my family all well, my wife heartily
+glad to learn that the fuss was all over, and our small boy considerably
+grown during my absence.
+
+My principal authority for the history of Costaguana is, of course, my
+venerated friend, the late Don Jose Avellanos, Minister to the Courts of
+England and Spain, etc., etc., in his impartial and eloquent “History of
+Fifty Years of Misrule.” That work was never published--the reader will
+discover why--and I am in fact the only person in the world possessed
+of its contents. I have mastered them in not a few hours of earnest
+meditation, and I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In justice to
+myself, and to allay the fears of prospective readers, I beg to point
+out that the few historical allusions are never dragged in for the
+sake of parading my unique erudition, but that each of them is closely
+related to actuality; either throwing a light on the nature of current
+events or affecting directly the fortunes of the people of whom I speak.
+
+As to their own histories I have tried to set them down, Aristocracy
+and People, men and women, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, bandit and politician,
+with as cool a hand as was possible in the heat and clash of my own
+conflicting emotions. And after all this is also the story of their
+conflicts. It is for the reader to say how far they are deserving of
+interest in their actions and in the secret purposes of their hearts
+revealed in the bitter necessities of the time. I confess that, for me,
+that time is the time of firm friendships and unforgotten hospitalities.
+And in my gratitude I must mention here Mrs. Gould, “the first lady
+of Sulaco,” whom we may safely leave to the secret devotion of Dr.
+Monygham, and Charles Gould, the Idealist-creator of Material Interests
+whom we must leave to his Mine--from which there is no escape in this
+world.
+
+About Nostromo, the second of the two racially and socially contrasted
+men, both captured by the silver of the San Tome Mine, I feel bound to
+say something more.
+
+I did not hesitate to make that central figure an Italian. First of
+all the thing is perfectly credible: Italians were swarming into the
+Occidental Province at the time, as anybody who will read further can
+see; and secondly, there was no one who could stand so well by the side
+of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist of the old, humanitarian
+revolutions. For myself I needed there a Man of the People as free as
+possible from his class-conventions and all settled modes of thinking.
+This is not a side snarl at conventions. My reasons were not moral but
+artistic. Had he been an Anglo-Saxon he would have tried to get into
+local politics. But Nostromo does not aspire to be a leader in a
+personal game. He does not want to raise himself above the mass. He is
+content to feel himself a power--within the People.
+
+But mainly Nostromo is what he is because I received the inspiration for
+him in my early days from a Mediterranean sailor. Those who have read
+certain pages of mine will see at once what I mean when I say that
+Dominic, the padrone of the Tremolino, might under given circumstances
+have been a Nostromo. At any rate Dominic would have understood the
+younger man perfectly--if scornfully. He and I were engaged together in
+a rather absurd adventure, but the absurdity does not matter. It is a
+real satisfaction to think that in my very young days there must, after
+all, have been something in me worthy to command that man’s half-bitter
+fidelity, his half-ironic devotion. Many of Nostromo’s speeches I have
+heard first in Dominic’s voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless
+eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his
+face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: “_Vous
+autres gentilhommes!_” in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like
+Nostromo! “You _hombres finos!_” Very much like Nostromo. But Dominic the
+Corsican nursed a certain pride of ancestry from which my Nostromo is
+free; for Nostromo’s lineage had to be more ancient still. He is a man
+with the weight of countless generations behind him and no parentage to
+boast of. . . . Like the People.
+
+In his firm grip on the earth he inherits, in his improvidence and
+generosity, in his lavishness with his gifts, in his manly vanity, in
+the obscure sense of his greatness and in his faithful devotion with
+something despairing as well as desperate in its impulses, he is a Man
+of the People, their very own unenvious force, disdaining to lead but
+ruling from within. Years afterwards, grown older as the famous Captain
+Fidanza, with a stake in the country, going about his many affairs
+followed by respectful glances in the modernized streets of Sulaco,
+calling on the widow of the cargador, attending the Lodge, listening in
+unmoved silence to anarchist speeches at the meeting, the enigmatical
+patron of the new revolutionary agitation, the trusted, the wealthy
+comrade Fidanza with the knowledge of his moral ruin locked up in his
+breast, he remains essentially a Man of the People. In his mingled
+love and scorn of life and in the bewildered conviction of having been
+betrayed, of dying betrayed he hardly knows by what or by whom, he is
+still of the People, their undoubted Great Man--with a private history
+of his own.
+
+One more figure of those stirring times I would like to mention: and
+that is Antonia Avellanos--the “beautiful Antonia.” Whether she is a
+possible variation of Latin-American girlhood I wouldn’t dare to affirm.
+But, for me, she is. Always a little in the background by the side of
+her father (my venerated friend) I hope she has yet relief enough to
+make intelligible what I am going to say. Of all the people who had seen
+with me the birth of the Occidental Republic, she is the only one
+who has kept in my memory the aspect of continued life. Antonia the
+Aristocrat and Nostromo the Man of the People are the artisans of the
+New Era, the true creators of the New State; he by his legendary and
+daring feat, she, like a woman, simply by the force of what she is:
+the only being capable of inspiring a sincere passion in the heart of a
+trifler.
+
+If anything could induce me to revisit Sulaco (I should hate to see all
+these changes) it would be Antonia. And the true reason for that--why
+not be frank about it?--the true reason is that I have modelled her on
+my first love. How we, a band of tallish schoolboys, the chums of
+her two brothers, how we used to look up to that girl just out of the
+schoolroom herself, as the standard-bearer of a faith to which we all
+were born but which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching
+hope! She had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than
+Antonia, but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no
+taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only
+one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing
+criticism of my levities--very much like poor Decoud--or stand the
+brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite
+understand--but never mind. That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking
+yet defiant sinner, to say the final good-bye I received a hand-squeeze
+that made my heart leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was
+softened at the last as though she had suddenly perceived (we were such
+children still!) that I was really going away for good, going very far
+away--even as far as Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes in the
+darkness of the Placid Gulf.
+
+That’s why I long sometimes for another glimpse of the “beautiful
+Antonia” (or can it be the Other?) moving in the dimness of the great
+cathedral, saying a short prayer at the tomb of the first and last
+Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco, standing absorbed in filial devotion
+before the monument of Don Jose Avellanos, and, with a lingering,
+tender, faithful glance at the medallion-memorial to Martin Decoud,
+going out serenely into the sunshine of the Plaza with her upright
+carriage and her white head; a relic of the past disregarded by men
+awaiting impatiently the Dawns of other New Eras, the coming of more
+Revolutions.
+
+But this is the idlest of dreams; for I did understand perfectly well
+at the time that the moment the breath left the body of the Magnificent
+Capataz, the Man of the People, freed at last from the toils of love and
+wealth, there was nothing more for me to do in Sulaco.
+
+
+J. C.
+
+October, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART FIRST   THE SILVER OF THE MINE
+
+PART SECOND  THE ISABELS
+
+PART THIRD   THE LIGHTHOUSE
+
+
+
+
+NOSTROMO
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST THE SILVER OF THE MINE
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of
+Sulaco--the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its
+antiquity--had never been commercially anything more important than a
+coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo.
+The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk
+gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on
+clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been
+barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some
+harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery
+of sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an
+inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in
+the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous
+semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of
+lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.
+
+On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard of the Republic
+of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an insignificant
+cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of
+the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill
+at the back can be made out faintly like a shadow on the sky.
+
+On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist
+floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula
+of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by
+vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone
+stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of
+sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the
+rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil
+enough--it is said--to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were
+blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of
+consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is
+deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the
+neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains,
+tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a
+basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of
+shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony
+levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time
+had perished in the search. The story goes also that within men’s memory
+two wandering sailors--Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for
+certain--talked over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three
+stole a donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin,
+and provisions enough to last a few days. Thus accompanied, and with
+revolvers at their belts, they had started to chop their way with
+machetes through the thorny scrub on the neck of the peninsula.
+
+On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it could only have
+been from their camp-fire) was seen for the first time within memory of
+man standing up faintly upon the sky above a razor-backed ridge on the
+stony head. The crew of a coasting schooner, lying becalmed three miles
+off the shore, stared at it with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman,
+living in a lonely hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and
+was on the lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the
+sun was about to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy,
+incredulity, and awe.
+
+The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the Indian,
+and the stolen burro were never seen again. As to the mozo, a Sulaco
+man--his wife paid for some masses, and the poor four-footed beast,
+being without sin, had been probably permitted to die; but the two
+gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to be dwelling to this day
+amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell of their success. Their souls
+cannot tear themselves away from their bodies mounting guard over the
+discovered treasure. They are now rich and hungry and thirsty--a strange
+theory of tenacious gringo ghosts suffering in their starved and parched
+flesh of defiant heretics, where a Christian would have renounced and
+been released.
+
+These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera guarding its
+forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the sky on one side with the round
+patch of blue haze blurring the bright skirt of the horizon on the
+other, mark the two outermost points of the bend which bears the name of
+Golfo Placido, because never a strong wind had been known to blow upon
+its waters.
+
+On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta Mala to Azuera the
+ships from Europe bound to Sulaco lose at once the strong breezes of the
+ocean. They become the prey of capricious airs that play with them for
+thirty hours at a stretch sometimes. Before them the head of the calm
+gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless
+and opaque clouds. On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast
+upon the sweep of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering
+and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks
+rearing their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the
+very edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises
+majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks sprinkle
+with tiny black dots the smooth dome of snow.
+
+Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf the shadow of the
+mountains, the clouds begin to roll out of the lower valleys. They
+swathe in sombre tatters the naked crags of precipices above the wooded
+slopes, hide the peaks, smoke in stormy trails across the snows of
+Higuerota. The Cordillera is gone from you as if it had dissolved itself
+into great piles of grey and black vapours that travel out slowly to
+seaward and vanish into thin air all along the front before the blazing
+heat of the day. The wasting edge of the cloud-bank always strives for,
+but seldom wins, the middle of the gulf. The sun--as the sailors say--is
+eating it up. Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away from
+the main body to career all over the gulf till it escapes into the
+offing beyond Azuera, where it bursts suddenly into flame and crashes
+like a sinster pirate-ship of the air, hove-to above the horizon,
+engaging the sea.
+
+At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the sky smothers the
+whole quiet gulf below with an impenetrable darkness, in which the sound
+of the falling showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly--now
+here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the
+seamen along the whole west coast of a great continent. Sky, land, and
+sea disappear together out of the world when the Placido--as the saying
+is--goes to sleep under its black poncho. The few stars left below the
+seaward frown of the vault shine feebly as into the mouth of a black
+cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her
+sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself--they
+add with grim profanity--could not find out what work a man’s hand is
+doing in there; and you would be free to call the devil to your aid with
+impunity if even his malice were not defeated by such a blind darkness.
+
+The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three uninhabited islets
+basking in the sunshine just outside the cloud veil, and opposite the
+entrance to the harbour of Sulaco, bear the name of “The Isabels.”
+
+There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, which is round; and
+Hermosa, which is the smallest.
+
+That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven paces across,
+a mere flat top of a grey rock which smokes like a hot cinder after
+a shower, and where no man would care to venture a naked sole before
+sunset. On the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick bulging
+trunk rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles a
+dismal bunch of dead leaves above the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has
+a spring of fresh water issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine.
+Resembling an emerald green wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat
+upon the sea, it bears two forest trees standing close together, with
+a wide spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine
+extending the whole length of the island is full of bushes; and
+presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high side spreads itself out on
+the other into a shallow depression abutting on a small strip of sandy
+shore.
+
+From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an opening
+two miles away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out of the regular
+sweep of the coast, right into the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong,
+lake-like piece of water. On one side the short wooded spurs and valleys
+of the Cordillera come down at right angles to the very strand; on
+the other the open view of the great Sulaco plain passes into the opal
+mystery of great distances overhung by dry haze. The town of Sulaco
+itself--tops of walls, a great cupola, gleams of white miradors in a
+vast grove of orange trees--lies between the mountains and the plain,
+at some little distance from its harbour and out of the direct line of
+sight from the sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+The only sign of commercial activity within the harbour, visible from
+the beach of the Great Isabel, is the square blunt end of the wooden
+jetty which the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (the O.S.N. of familiar
+speech) had thrown over the shallow part of the bay soon after they had
+resolved to make of Sulaco one of their ports of call for the Republic
+of Costaguana. The State possesses several harbours on its long
+seaboard, but except Cayta, an important place, all are either small
+and inconvenient inlets in an iron-bound coast--like Esmeralda, for
+instance, sixty miles to the south--or else mere open roadsteads exposed
+to the winds and fretted by the surf.
+
+Perhaps the very atmospheric conditions which had kept away the
+merchant fleets of bygone ages induced the O.S.N. Company to violate the
+sanctuary of peace sheltering the calm existence of Sulaco. The variable
+airs sporting lightly with the vast semicircle of waters within the head
+of Azuera could not baffle the steam power of their excellent fleet.
+Year after year the black hulls of their ships had gone up and down
+the coast, in and out, past Azuera, past the Isabels, past Punta
+Mala--disregarding everything but the tyranny of time. Their names, the
+names of all mythology, became the household words of a coast that had
+never been ruled by the gods of Olympus. The Juno was known only for
+her comfortable cabins amidships, the Saturn for the geniality of her
+captain and the painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas
+the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for cattle transport, and to be
+avoided by coastwise passengers. The humblest Indian in the obscurest
+village on the coast was familiar with the Cerberus, a little black
+puffer without charm or living accommodation to speak of, whose mission
+was to creep inshore along the wooded beaches close to mighty ugly
+rocks, stopping obligingly before every cluster of huts to collect
+produce, down to three-pound parcels of indiarubber bound in a wrapper
+of dry grass.
+
+And as they seldom failed to account for the smallest package, rarely
+lost a bullock, and had never drowned a single passenger, the name of
+the O.S.N. stood very high for trustworthiness. People declared that
+under the Company’s care their lives and property were safer on the
+water than in their own houses on shore.
+
+The O.S.N.’s superintendent in Sulaco for the whole Costaguana section
+of the service was very proud of his Company’s standing. He resumed it
+in a saying which was very often on his lips, “We never make mistakes.”
+ To the Company’s officers it took the form of a severe injunction, “We
+must make no mistakes. I’ll have no mistakes here, no matter what Smith
+may do at his end.”
+
+Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was the other
+superintendent of the service, quartered some fifteen hundred miles away
+from Sulaco. “Don’t talk to me of your Smith.”
+
+Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the subject with studied
+negligence.
+
+“Smith knows no more of this continent than a baby.”
+
+“Our excellent Senor Mitchell” for the business and official world of
+Sulaco; “Fussy Joe” for the commanders of the Company’s ships, Captain
+Joseph Mitchell prided himself on his profound knowledge of men and
+things in the country--cosas de Costaguana. Amongst these last he
+accounted as most unfavourable to the orderly working of his Company
+the frequent changes of government brought about by revolutions of the
+military type.
+
+The political atmosphere of the Republic was generally stormy in these
+days. The fugitive patriots of the defeated party had the knack of
+turning up again on the coast with half a steamer’s load of small arms
+and ammunition. Such resourcefulness Captain Mitchell considered as
+perfectly wonderful in view of their utter destitution at the time of
+flight. He had observed that “they never seemed to have enough change
+about them to pay for their passage ticket out of the country.” And
+he could speak with knowledge; for on a memorable occasion he had been
+called upon to save the life of a dictator, together with the lives of a
+few Sulaco officials--the political chief, the director of the customs,
+and the head of police--belonging to an overturned government. Poor
+Senor Ribiera (such was the dictator’s name) had come pelting eighty
+miles over mountain tracks after the lost battle of Socorro, in the hope
+of out-distancing the fatal news--which, of course, he could not manage
+to do on a lame mule. The animal, moreover, expired under him at the end
+of the Alameda, where the military band plays sometimes in the evenings
+between the revolutions. “Sir,” Captain Mitchell would pursue with
+portentous gravity, “the ill-timed end of that mule attracted attention
+to the unfortunate rider. His features were recognized by several
+deserters from the Dictatorial army amongst the rascally mob already
+engaged in smashing the windows of the Intendencia.”
+
+Early on the morning of that day the local authorities of Sulaco had
+fled for refuge to the O.S.N. Company’s offices, a strong building
+near the shore end of the jetty, leaving the town to the mercies of a
+revolutionary rabble; and as the Dictator was execrated by the populace
+on account of the severe recruitment law his necessities had compelled
+him to enforce during the struggle, he stood a good chance of being
+torn to pieces. Providentially, Nostromo--invaluable fellow--with some
+Italian workmen, imported to work upon the National Central Railway,
+was at hand, and managed to snatch him away--for the time at least.
+Ultimately, Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in his
+own gig to one of the Company’s steamers--it was the Minerva--just then,
+as luck would have it, entering the harbour.
+
+He had to lower these gentlemen at the end of a rope out of a hole in
+the wall at the back, while the mob which, pouring out of the town, had
+spread itself all along the shore, howled and foamed at the foot of the
+building in front. He had to hurry them then the whole length of the
+jetty; it had been a desperate dash, neck or nothing--and again it was
+Nostromo, a fellow in a thousand, who, at the head, this time, of the
+Company’s body of lightermen, held the jetty against the rushes of the
+rabble, thus giving the fugitives time to reach the gig lying ready
+for them at the other end with the Company’s flag at the stern. Sticks,
+stones, shots flew; knives, too, were thrown. Captain Mitchell exhibited
+willingly the long cicatrice of a cut over his left ear and temple, made
+by a razor-blade fastened to a stick--a weapon, he explained, very much
+in favour with the “worst kind of nigger out here.”
+
+Captain Mitchell was a thick, elderly man, wearing high, pointed collars
+and short side-whiskers, partial to white waistcoats, and really very
+communicative under his air of pompous reserve.
+
+“These gentlemen,” he would say, staring with great solemnity, “had
+to run like rabbits, sir. I ran like a rabbit myself. Certain forms of
+death are--er--distasteful to a--a--er--respectable man. They would have
+pounded me to death, too. A crazy mob, sir, does not discriminate. Under
+providence we owed our preservation to my Capataz de Cargadores, as they
+called him in the town, a man who, when I discovered his value, sir, was
+just the bos’n of an Italian ship, a big Genoese ship, one of the few
+European ships that ever came to Sulaco with a general cargo before the
+building of the National Central. He left her on account of some very
+respectable friends he made here, his own countrymen, but also, I
+suppose, to better himself. Sir, I am a pretty good judge of character.
+I engaged him to be the foreman of our lightermen, and caretaker of our
+jetty. That’s all that he was. But without him Senor Ribiera would have
+been a dead man. This Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above reproach,
+became the terror of all the thieves in the town. We were infested,
+infested, overrun, sir, here at that time by ladrones and matreros,
+thieves and murderers from the whole province. On this occasion they
+had been flocking into Sulaco for a week past. They had scented the end,
+sir. Fifty per cent. of that murdering mob were professional bandits
+from the Campo, sir, but there wasn’t one that hadn’t heard of Nostromo.
+As to the town leperos, sir, the sight of his black whiskers and white
+teeth was enough for them. They quailed before him, sir. That’s what the
+force of character will do for you.”
+
+It could very well be said that it was Nostromo alone who saved the
+lives of these gentlemen. Captain Mitchell, on his part, never left them
+till he had seen them collapse, panting, terrified, and exasperated,
+but safe, on the luxuriant velvet sofas in the first-class saloon of the
+Minerva. To the very last he had been careful to address the ex-Dictator
+as “Your Excellency.”
+
+“Sir, I could do no other. The man was down--ghastly, livid, one mass of
+scratches.”
+
+The Minerva never let go her anchor that call. The superintendent
+ordered her out of the harbour at once. No cargo could be landed, of
+course, and the passengers for Sulaco naturally refused to go ashore.
+They could hear the firing and see plainly the fight going on at the
+edge of the water. The repulsed mob devoted its energies to an attack
+upon the Custom House, a dreary, unfinished-looking structure with many
+windows two hundred yards away from the O.S.N. Offices, and the only
+other building near the harbour. Captain Mitchell, after directing the
+commander of the Minerva to land “these gentlemen” in the first port of
+call outside Costaguana, went back in his gig to see what could be done
+for the protection of the Company’s property. That and the property
+of the railway were preserved by the European residents; that is, by
+Captain Mitchell himself and the staff of engineers building the road,
+aided by the Italian and Basque workmen who rallied faithfully round
+their English chiefs. The Company’s lightermen, too, natives of the
+Republic, behaved very well under their Capataz. An outcast lot of
+very mixed blood, mainly negroes, everlastingly at feud with the other
+customers of low grog shops in the town, they embraced with delight
+this opportunity to settle their personal scores under such favourable
+auspices. There was not one of them that had not, at some time or other,
+looked with terror at Nostromo’s revolver poked very close at his face,
+or been otherwise daunted by Nostromo’s resolution. He was “much of a
+man,” their Capataz was, they said, too scornful in his temper ever to
+utter abuse, a tireless taskmaster, and the more to be feared because
+of his aloofness. And behold! there he was that day, at their head,
+condescending to make jocular remarks to this man or the other.
+
+Such leadership was inspiriting, and in truth all the harm the
+mob managed to achieve was to set fire to one--only one--stack of
+railway-sleepers, which, being creosoted, burned well. The main attack
+on the railway yards, on the O.S.N. Offices, and especially on the
+Custom House, whose strong room, it was well known, contained a large
+treasure in silver ingots, failed completely. Even the little hotel kept
+by old Giorgio, standing alone halfway between the harbour and the town,
+escaped looting and destruction, not by a miracle, but because with the
+safes in view they had neglected it at first, and afterwards found no
+leisure to stop. Nostromo, with his Cargadores, was pressing them too
+hard then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+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. It was too late then to remove his
+family, and, indeed, where could he have run to with the portly Signora
+Teresa and two little girls on that great plain? So, barricading every
+opening, the old man sat down sternly in the middle of the darkened cafe
+with an old shot-gun on his knees. His wife sat on another chair by his
+side, muttering pious invocations to all the saints of the calendar.
+
+The old republican did not believe in saints, or in prayers, or in
+what he called “priest’s religion.” Liberty and Garibaldi were his
+divinities; but he tolerated “superstition” in women, preserving in
+these matters a lofty and silent attitude.
+
+His two girls, the eldest fourteen, and the other two years younger,
+crouched on the sanded floor, on each side of the Signora Teresa, with
+their heads on their mother’s lap, both scared, but each in her own
+way, the dark-haired Linda indignant and angry, the fair Giselle, the
+younger, bewildered and resigned. The Patrona removed her arms, which
+embraced her daughters, for a moment to cross herself and wring her
+hands hurriedly. She moaned a little louder.
+
+“Oh! Gian’ Battista, why art thou not here? Oh! why art thou not here?”
+
+She was not then invoking the saint himself, but calling upon Nostromo,
+whose patron he was. And Giorgio, motionless on the chair by her side,
+would be provoked by these reproachful and distracted appeals.
+
+“Peace, woman! Where’s the sense of it? There’s his duty,” he murmured
+in the dark; and she would retort, panting--
+
+“Eh! I have no patience. Duty! What of the woman who has been like a
+mother to him? I bent my knee to him this morning; don’t you go out,
+Gian’ Battista--stop in the house, Battistino--look at those two little
+innocent children!”
+
+Mrs. Viola was an Italian, too, a native of Spezzia, and though
+considerably younger than her husband, already middle-aged. She had a
+handsome face, whose complexion had turned yellow because the climate
+of Sulaco did not suit her at all. Her voice was a rich contralto. When,
+with her arms folded tight under her ample bosom, she scolded the squat,
+thick-legged China girls handling linen, plucking fowls, pounding corn
+in wooden mortars amongst the mud outbuildings at the back of the house,
+she could bring out such an impassioned, vibrating, sepulchral note that
+the chained watch-dog bolted into his kennel with a great rattle. Luis,
+a cinnamon-coloured mulatto with a sprouting moustache and thick, dark
+lips, would stop sweeping the cafe with a broom of palm-leaves to let
+a gentle shudder run down his spine. His languishing almond eyes would
+remain closed for a long time.
+
+This was the staff of the Casa Viola, but all these people had fled
+early that morning at the first sounds of the riot, preferring to hide
+on the plain rather than trust themselves in the house; a preference for
+which they were in no way to blame, since, whether true or not, it
+was generally believed in the town that the Garibaldino had some money
+buried under the clay floor of the kitchen. The dog, an irritable,
+shaggy brute, barked violently and whined plaintively in turns at the
+back, running in and out of his kennel as rage or fear prompted him.
+
+Bursts of great shouting rose and died away, like wild gusts of wind on
+the plain round the barricaded house; the fitful popping of shots
+grew louder above the yelling. Sometimes there were intervals of
+unaccountable stillness outside, and nothing could have been more gaily
+peaceful than the narrow bright lines of sunlight from the cracks in the
+shutters, ruled straight across the cafe over the disarranged chairs
+and tables to the wall opposite. Old Giorgio had chosen that bare,
+whitewashed room for a retreat. It had only one window, and its only
+door swung out upon the track of thick dust fenced by aloe hedges
+between the harbour and the town, where clumsy carts used to creak along
+behind slow yokes of oxen guided by boys on horseback.
+
+In a pause of stillness Giorgio cocked his gun. The ominous sound wrung
+a low moan from the rigid figure of the woman sitting by his side. A
+sudden outbreak of defiant yelling quite near the house sank all at once
+to a confused murmur of growls. Somebody ran along; the loud catching of
+his breath was heard for an instant passing the door; there were hoarse
+mutters and footsteps near the wall; a shoulder rubbed against the
+shutter, effacing the bright lines of sunshine pencilled across the
+whole breadth of the room. Signora Teresa’s arms thrown about the
+kneeling forms of her daughters embraced them closer with a convulsive
+pressure.
+
+The mob, driven away from the Custom House, had broken up into several
+bands, retreating across the plain in the direction of the town. The
+subdued crash of irregular volleys fired in the distance was answered by
+faint yells far away. In the intervals the single shots rang feebly, and
+the low, long, white building blinded in every window seemed to be
+the centre of a turmoil widening in a great circle about its closed-up
+silence. But the cautious movements and whispers of a routed party
+seeking a momentary shelter behind the wall made the darkness of the
+room, striped by threads of quiet sunlight, alight with evil, stealthy
+sounds. The Violas had them in their ears as though invisible ghosts
+hovering about their chairs had consulted in mutters as to the
+advisability of setting fire to this foreigner’s casa.
+
+It was trying to the nerves. Old Viola had risen slowly, gun in hand,
+irresolute, for he did not see how he could prevent them. Already voices
+could be heard talking at the back. Signora Teresa was beside herself
+with terror.
+
+“Ah! the traitor! the traitor!” she mumbled, almost inaudibly. “Now we
+are going to be burnt; and I bent my knee to him. No! he must run at the
+heels of his English.”
+
+She seemed to think that Nostromo’s mere presence in the house would
+have made it perfectly safe. So far, she, too, was under the spell of
+that reputation the Capataz de Cargadores had made for himself by
+the waterside, along the railway line, with the English and with the
+populace of Sulaco. To his face, and even against her husband, she
+invariably affected to laugh it to scorn, sometimes good-naturedly,
+more often with a curious bitterness. But then women are unreasonable in
+their opinions, as Giorgio used to remark calmly on fitting occasions.
+On this occasion, with his gun held at ready before him, he stooped down
+to his wife’s head, and, keeping his eyes steadfastly on the barricaded
+door, he breathed out into her ear that Nostromo would have been
+powerless to help. What could two men shut up in a house do against
+twenty or more bent upon setting fire to the roof? Gian’ Battista was
+thinking of the casa all the time, he was sure.
+
+“He think of the casa! He!” gasped Signora Viola, crazily. She struck
+her breast with her open hands. “I know him. He thinks of nobody but
+himself.”
+
+A discharge of firearms near by made her throw her head back and close
+her eyes. Old Giorgio set his teeth hard under his white moustache, and
+his eyes began to roll fiercely. Several bullets struck the end of the
+wall together; pieces of plaster could be heard falling outside; a voice
+screamed “Here they come!” and after a moment of uneasy silence there
+was a rush of running feet along the front.
+
+Then the tension of old Giorgio’s attitude relaxed, and a smile of
+contemptuous relief came upon his lips of an old fighter with a leonine
+face. These were not a people striving for justice, but thieves. Even to
+defend his life against them was a sort of degradation for a man who had
+been one of Garibaldi’s immortal thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He
+had an immense scorn for this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, who
+did not know the meaning of the word “liberty.”
+
+He grounded his old gun, and, turning his head, glanced at the coloured
+lithograph of Garibaldi in a black frame on the white wall; a thread
+of strong sunshine cut it perpendicularly. His eyes, accustomed to the
+luminous twilight, made out the high colouring of the face, the red of
+the shirt, the outlines of the square shoulders, the black patch of the
+Bersagliere hat with cock’s feathers curling over the crown. An immortal
+hero! This was your liberty; it gave you not only life, but immortality
+as well!
+
+For that one man his fanaticism had suffered no diminution. In the
+moment of relief from the apprehension of the greatest danger, perhaps,
+his family had been exposed to in all their wanderings, he had turned to
+the picture of his old chief, first and only, then laid his hand on his
+wife’s shoulder.
+
+The children kneeling on the floor had not moved. Signora Teresa opened
+her eyes a little, as though he had awakened her from a very deep and
+dreamless slumber. Before he had time in his deliberate way to say a
+reassuring word she jumped up, with the children clinging to her, one on
+each side, gasped for breath, and let out a hoarse shriek.
+
+It was simultaneous with the bang of a violent blow struck on the
+outside of the shutter. They could hear suddenly the snorting of a
+horse, the restive tramping of hoofs on the narrow, hard path in front
+of the house; the toe of a boot struck at the shutter again; a spur
+jingled at every blow, and an excited voice shouted, “Hola! hola, in
+there!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+All the morning Nostromo had kept his eye from afar on the Casa Viola,
+even in the thick of the hottest scrimmage near the Custom House. “If
+I see smoke rising over there,” he thought to himself, “they are lost.”
+ Directly the mob had broken he pressed with a small band of Italian
+workmen in that direction, which, indeed, was the shortest line towards
+the town. That part of the rabble he was pursuing seemed to think of
+making a stand under the house; a volley fired by his followers from
+behind an aloe hedge made the rascals fly. In a gap chopped out for
+the rails of the harbour branch line Nostromo appeared, mounted on
+his silver-grey mare. He shouted, sent after them one shot from his
+revolver, and galloped up to the cafe window. He had an idea that old
+Giorgio would choose that part of the house for a refuge.
+
+His voice had penetrated to them, sounding breathlessly hurried: “Hola!
+Vecchio! O, Vecchio! Is it all well with you in there?”
+
+“You see--” murmured old Viola to his wife. Signora Teresa was silent
+now. Outside Nostromo laughed.
+
+“I can hear the padrona is not dead.”
+
+“You have done your best to kill me with fear,” cried Signora Teresa.
+She wanted to say something more, but her voice failed her.
+
+Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but old Giorgio shouted
+apologetically--
+
+“She is a little upset.”
+
+Outside Nostromo shouted back with another laugh--
+
+“She cannot upset me.”
+
+Signora Teresa found her voice.
+
+“It is what I say. You have no heart--and you have no conscience, Gian’
+Battista--”
+
+They heard him wheel his horse away from the shutters. The party he led
+were babbling excitedly in Italian and Spanish, inciting each other to
+the pursuit. He put himself at their head, crying, “Avanti!”
+
+“He has not stopped very long with us. There is no praise from strangers
+to be got here,” Signora Teresa said tragically. “Avanti! Yes! That is
+all he cares for. To be first somewhere--somehow--to be first with these
+English. They will be showing him to everybody. ‘This is our Nostromo!’”
+ She laughed ominously. “What a name! What is that? Nostromo? He would
+take a name that is properly no word from them.”
+
+Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had been unfastening the
+door; the flood of light fell on Signora Teresa, with her two girls
+gathered to her side, a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal
+exaltation. Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white, and the crude
+colours of the Garibaldi lithograph paled in the sunshine.
+
+Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if referring all his
+quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture of his old chief on the wall.
+Even when he was cooking for the “Signori Inglesi”--the engineers (he
+was a famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark place)--he was, as
+it were, under the eye of the great man who had led him in a glorious
+struggle where, under the walls of Gaeta, tyranny would have expired
+for ever had it not been for that accursed Piedmontese race of kings
+and ministers. When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate
+operation with some shredded onions, and the old man was seen backing
+out of the doorway, swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud
+of smoke, the name of Cavour--the arch intriguer sold to kings and
+tyrants--could be heard involved in imprecations against the China
+girls, cooking in general, and the brute of a country where he was
+reduced to live for the love of liberty that traitor had strangled.
+
+Then Signora Teresa, all in black, issuing from another door, advanced,
+portly and anxious, inclining her fine, black-browed head, opening her
+arms, and crying in a profound tone--
+
+“Giorgio! thou passionate man! Misericordia Divina! In the sun like
+this! He will make himself ill.”
+
+At her feet the hens made off in all directions, with immense strides;
+if there were any engineers from up the line staying in Sulaco, a young
+English face or two would appear at the billiard-room occupying one end
+of the house; but at the other end, in the cafe, Luis, the mulatto, took
+good care not to show himself. The Indian girls, with hair like flowing
+black manes, and dressed only in a shift and short petticoat, stared
+dully from under the square-cut fringes on their foreheads; the noisy
+frizzling of fat had stopped, the fumes floated upwards in sunshine,
+a strong smell of burnt onions hung in the drowsy heat, enveloping the
+house; and the eye lost itself in a vast flat expanse of grass to the
+west, as if the plain between the Sierra overtopping Sulaco and the
+coast range away there towards Esmeralda had been as big as half the
+world.
+
+Signora Teresa, after an impressive pause, remonstrated--
+
+“Eh, Giorgio! Leave Cavour alone and take care of yourself now we are
+lost in this country all alone with the two children, because you cannot
+live under a king.”
+
+And while she looked at him she would sometimes put her hand hastily
+to her side with a short twitch of her fine lips and a knitting of
+her black, straight eyebrows like a flicker of angry pain or an angry
+thought on her handsome, regular features.
+
+It was pain; she suppressed the twinge. It had come to her first a few
+years after they had left Italy to emigrate to America and settle at
+last in Sulaco after wandering from town to town, trying shopkeeping
+in a small way here and there; and once an organized enterprise of
+fishing--in Maldonado--for Giorgio, like the great Garibaldi, had been a
+sailor in his time.
+
+Sometimes she had no patience with pain. For years its gnawing had been
+part of the landscape embracing the glitter of the harbour under
+the wooded spurs of the range; and the sunshine itself was heavy and
+dull--heavy with pain--not like the sunshine of her girlhood, in which
+middle-aged Giorgio had wooed her gravely and passionately on the shores
+of the gulf of Spezzia.
+
+“You go in at once, Giorgio,” she directed. “One would think you do not
+wish to have any pity on me--with four Signori Inglesi staying in the
+house.” “_Va bene, va bene_,” Giorgio would mutter. He obeyed. The Signori
+Inglesi would require their midday meal presently. He had been one
+of the immortal and invincible band of liberators who had made the
+mercenaries of tyranny fly like chaff before a hurricane, “_un uragano
+terribile_.” But that was before he was married and had children; and
+before tyranny had reared its head again amongst the traitors who had
+imprisoned Garibaldi, his hero.
+
+There were three doors in the front of the house, and each afternoon the
+Garibaldino could be seen at one or another of them with his big bush of
+white hair, his arms folded, his legs crossed, leaning back his leonine
+head against the side, and looking up the wooded slopes of the foothills
+at the snowy dome of Higuerota. The front of his house threw off a black
+long rectangle of shade, broadening slowly over the soft ox-cart track.
+Through the gaps, chopped out in the oleander hedges, the harbour branch
+railway, laid out temporarily on the level of the plain, curved away its
+shining parallel ribbons on a belt of scorched and withered grass within
+sixty yards of the end of the house. In the evening the empty material
+trains of flat cars circled round the dark green grove of Sulaco,
+and ran, undulating slightly with white jets of steam, over the plain
+towards the Casa Viola, on their way to the railway yards by the
+harbour. The Italian drivers saluted him from the foot-plate with raised
+hand, while the negro brakesmen sat carelessly on the brakes, looking
+straight forward, with the rims of their big hats flapping in the wind.
+In return Giorgio would give a slight sideways jerk of the head, without
+unfolding his arms.
+
+On this memorable day of the riot his arms were not folded on his chest.
+His hand grasped the barrel of the gun grounded on the threshold; he
+did not look up once at the white dome of Higuerota, whose cool purity
+seemed to hold itself aloof from a hot earth. His eyes examined the
+plain curiously. Tall trails of dust subsided here and there. In
+a speckless sky the sun hung clear and blinding. Knots of men ran
+headlong; others made a stand; and the irregular rattle of firearms came
+rippling to his ears in the fiery, still air. Single figures on foot
+raced desperately. Horsemen galloped towards each other, wheeled round
+together, separated at speed. Giorgio saw one fall, rider and horse
+disappearing as if they had galloped into a chasm, and the movements of
+the animated scene were like the passages of a violent game played upon
+the plain by dwarfs mounted and on foot, yelling with tiny throats,
+under the mountain that seemed a colossal embodiment of silence. Never
+before had Giorgio seen this bit of plain so full of active life; his
+gaze could not take in all its details at once; he shaded his eyes with
+his hand, till suddenly the thundering of many hoofs near by startled
+him.
+
+A troop of horses had broken out of the fenced paddock of the Railway
+Company. They came on like a whirlwind, and dashed over the line
+snorting, kicking, squealing in a compact, piebald, tossing mob of bay,
+brown, grey backs, eyes staring, necks extended, nostrils red, long
+tails streaming. As soon as they had leaped upon the road the thick dust
+flew upwards from under their hoofs, and within six yards of Giorgio
+only a brown cloud with vague forms of necks and cruppers rolled by,
+making the soil tremble on its passage.
+
+Viola coughed, turning his face away from the dust, and shaking his head
+slightly.
+
+“There will be some horse-catching to be done before to-night,” he
+muttered.
+
+In the square of sunlight falling through the door Signora Teresa,
+kneeling before the chair, had bowed her head, heavy with a twisted
+mass of ebony hair streaked with silver, into the palm of her hands.
+The black lace shawl she used to drape about her face had dropped to
+the ground by her side. The two girls had got up, hand-in-hand, in short
+skirts, their loose hair falling in disorder. The younger had thrown
+her arm across her eyes, as if afraid to face the light. Linda, with
+her hand on the other’s shoulder, stared fearlessly. Viola looked at his
+children. The sun brought out the deep lines on his face, and, energetic
+in expression, it had the immobility of a carving. It was impossible to
+discover what he thought. Bushy grey eyebrows shaded his dark glance.
+
+“Well! And do you not pray like your mother?”
+
+Linda pouted, advancing her red lips, which were almost too red; but she
+had admirable eyes, brown, with a sparkle of gold in the irises, full of
+intelligence and meaning, and so clear that they seemed to throw a glow
+upon her thin, colourless face. There were bronze glints in the sombre
+clusters of her hair, and the eyelashes, long and coal black, made her
+complexion appear still more pale.
+
+“Mother is going to offer up a lot of candles in the church. She always
+does when Nostromo has been away fighting. I shall have some to carry up
+to the Chapel of the Madonna in the Cathedral.”
+
+She said all this quickly, with great assurance, in an animated,
+penetrating voice. Then, giving her sister’s shoulder a slight shake,
+she added--
+
+“And she will be made to carry one, too!”
+
+“Why made?” inquired Giorgio, gravely. “Does she not want to?”
+
+“She is timid,” said Linda, with a little burst of laughter. “People
+notice her fair hair as she goes along with us. They call out after
+her, ‘Look at the Rubia! Look at the Rubiacita!’ They call out in the
+streets. She is timid.”
+
+“And you? You are not timid--eh?” the father pronounced, slowly.
+
+She tossed back all her dark hair.
+
+“Nobody calls out after me.”
+
+Old Giorgio contemplated his children thoughtfully. There was two years
+difference between them. They had been born to him late, years after
+the boy had died. Had he lived he would have been nearly as old as Gian’
+Battista--he whom the English called Nostromo; but as to his daughters,
+the severity of his temper, his advancing age, his absorption in his
+memories, had prevented his taking much notice of them. He loved his
+children, but girls belong more to the mother, and much of his affection
+had been expended in the worship and service of liberty.
+
+When quite a youth he had deserted from a ship trading to La Plata, to
+enlist in the navy of Montevideo, then under the command of Garibaldi.
+Afterwards, in the Italian legion of the Republic struggling against the
+encroaching tyranny of Rosas, he had taken part, on great plains, on the
+banks of immense rivers, in the fiercest fighting perhaps the world had
+ever known. He had lived amongst men who had declaimed about liberty,
+suffered for liberty, died for liberty, with a desperate exaltation, and
+with their eyes turned towards an oppressed Italy. His own enthusiasm
+had been fed on scenes of carnage, on the examples of lofty devotion, on
+the din of armed struggle, on the inflamed language of proclamations.
+He had never parted from the chief of his choice--the fiery apostle of
+independence--keeping by his side in America and in Italy till after
+the fatal day of Aspromonte, when the treachery of kings, emperors,
+and ministers had been revealed to the world in the wounding and
+imprisonment of his hero--a catastrophe that had instilled into him
+a gloomy doubt of ever being able to understand the ways of Divine
+justice.
+
+He did not deny it, however. It required patience, he would say. Though
+he disliked priests, and would not put his foot inside a church for
+anything, he believed in God. Were not the proclamations against tyrants
+addressed to the peoples in the name of God and liberty? “God for
+men--religions for women,” he muttered sometimes. In Sicily, an
+Englishman who had turned up in Palermo after its evacuation by the army
+of the king, had given him a Bible in Italian--the publication of the
+British and Foreign Bible Society, bound in a dark leather cover.
+In periods of political adversity, in the pauses of silence when the
+revolutionists issued no proclamations, Giorgio earned his living with
+the first work that came to hand--as sailor, as dock labourer on the
+quays of Genoa, once as a hand on a farm in the hills above Spezzia--and
+in his spare time he studied the thick volume. He carried it with
+him into battles. Now it was his only reading, and in order not to be
+deprived of it (the print was small) he had consented to accept the
+present of a pair of silver-mounted spectacles from Senora Emilia Gould,
+the wife of the Englishman who managed the silver mine in the mountains
+three leagues from the town. She was the only Englishwoman in Sulaco.
+
+Giorgio Viola had a great consideration for the English. This feeling,
+born on the battlefields of Uruguay, was forty years old at the very
+least. Several of them had poured their blood for the cause of freedom
+in America, and the first he had ever known he remembered by the name of
+Samuel; he commanded a negro company under Garibaldi, during the famous
+siege of Montevideo, and died heroically with his negroes at the fording
+of the Boyana. He, Giorgio, had reached the rank of ensign-alferez-and
+cooked for the general. Later, in Italy, he, with the rank of
+lieutenant, rode with the staff and still cooked for the general. He had
+cooked for him in Lombardy through the whole campaign; on the march to
+Rome he had lassoed his beef in the Campagna after the American manner;
+he had been wounded in the defence of the Roman Republic; he was one of
+the four fugitives who, with the general, carried out of the woods the
+inanimate body of the general’s wife into the farmhouse where she died,
+exhausted by the hardships of that terrible retreat. He had survived
+that disastrous time to attend his general in Palermo when the
+Neapolitan shells from the castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked
+for him on the field of Volturno after fighting all day. And everywhere
+he had seen Englishmen in the front rank of the army of freedom.
+He respected their nation because they loved Garibaldi. Their very
+countesses and princesses had kissed the general’s hands in London, it
+was said. He could well believe it; for the nation was noble, and the
+man was a saint. It was enough to look once at his face to see the
+divine force of faith in him and his great pity for all that was poor,
+suffering, and oppressed in this world.
+
+The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to a vast
+humanitarian idea which inspired the thought and stress of that
+revolutionary time, had left its mark upon Giorgio in a sort of austere
+contempt for all personal advantage. This man, whom the lowest class in
+Sulaco suspected of having a buried hoard in his kitchen, had all his
+life despised money. The leaders of his youth had lived poor, had died
+poor. It had been a habit of his mind to disregard to-morrow. It was
+engendered partly by an existence of excitement, adventure, and wild
+warfare. But mostly it was a matter of principle. It did not resemble
+the carelessness of a condottiere, it was a puritanism of conduct, born
+of stern enthusiasm like the puritanism of religion.
+
+This stern devotion to a cause had cast a gloom upon Giorgio’s old
+age. It cast a gloom because the cause seemed lost. Too many kings and
+emperors flourished yet in the world which God had meant for the people.
+He was sad because of his simplicity. Though always ready to help his
+countrymen, and greatly respected by the Italian emigrants wherever he
+lived (in his exile he called it), he could not conceal from himself
+that they cared nothing for the wrongs of down-trodden nations. They
+listened to his tales of war readily, but seemed to ask themselves what
+he had got out of it after all. There was nothing that they could see.
+“We wanted nothing, we suffered for the love of all humanity!” he cried
+out furiously sometimes, and the powerful voice, the blazing eyes, the
+shaking of the white mane, the brown, sinewy hand pointing upwards as
+if to call heaven to witness, impressed his hearers. After the old man
+had broken off abruptly with a jerk of the head and a movement of the
+arm, meaning clearly, “But what’s the good of talking to you?” they
+nudged each other. There was in old Giorgio an energy of feeling, a
+personal quality of conviction, something they called “terribilita”--“an
+old lion,” they used to say of him. Some slight incident, a chance
+word would set him off talking on the beach to the Italian fishermen of
+Maldonado, in the little shop he kept afterwards (in Valparaiso) to his
+countrymen customers; of an evening, suddenly, in the cafe at one end of
+the Casa Viola (the other was reserved for the English engineers) to the
+select clientele of engine-drivers and foremen of the railway shops.
+
+With their handsome, bronzed, lean faces, shiny black ringlets,
+glistening eyes, broad-chested, bearded, sometimes a tiny gold ring in
+the lobe of the ear, the aristocracy of the railway works listened
+to him, turning away from their cards or dominoes. Here and there a
+fair-haired Basque studied his hand meantime, waiting without protest.
+No native of Costaguana intruded there. This was the Italian stronghold.
+Even the Sulaco policemen on a night patrol let their horses pace softly
+by, bending low in the saddle to glance through the window at the heads
+in a fog of smoke; and the drone of old Giorgio’s declamatory narrative
+seemed to sink behind them into the plain. Only now and then the
+assistant of the chief of police, some broad-faced, brown little
+gentleman, with a great deal of Indian in him, would put in an
+appearance. Leaving his man outside with the horses he advanced with a
+confident, sly smile, and without a word up to the long trestle table.
+He pointed to one of the bottles on the shelf; Giorgio, thrusting his
+pipe into his mouth abruptly, served him in person. Nothing would be
+heard but the slight jingle of the spurs. His glass emptied, he would
+take a leisurely, scrutinizing look all round the room, go out, and ride
+away slowly, circling towards the town.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+In this way only was the power of the local authorities vindicated
+amongst the great body of strong-limbed foreigners who dug the earth,
+blasted the rocks, drove the engines for the “progressive and
+patriotic undertaking.” In these very words eighteen months before the
+Excellentissimo Senor don Vincente Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana,
+had described the National Central Railway in his great speech at the
+turning of the first sod.
+
+He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a one-o’clock
+dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N. Company on board the Juno
+after the function on shore. Captain Mitchell had himself steered the
+cargo lighter, all draped with flags, which, in tow of the Juno’s steam
+launch, took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the ship. Everybody
+of note in Sulaco had been invited--the one or two foreign merchants,
+all the representatives of the old Spanish families then in town, the
+great owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple men,
+caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and feet, conservative,
+hospitable, and kind. The Occidental Province was their stronghold;
+their Blanco party had triumphed now; it was their President-Dictator,
+a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat smiling urbanely between the
+representatives of two friendly foreign powers. They had come with him
+from Sta. Marta to countenance by their presence the enterprise in
+which the capital of their countries was engaged. The only lady of that
+company was Mrs. Gould, the wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the
+San Tome silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced enough to
+take part in the public life to that extent. They had come out strongly
+at the great ball at the Intendencia the evening before, but Mrs. Gould
+alone had appeared, a bright spot in the group of black coats behind the
+President-Dictator, on the crimson cloth-covered stage erected under a
+shady tree on the shore of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning
+the first sod had taken place. She had come off in the cargo lighter,
+full of notabilities, sitting under the flutter of gay flags, in the
+place of honour by the side of Captain Mitchell, who steered, and her
+clear dress gave the only truly festive note to the sombre gathering in
+the long, gorgeous saloon of the Juno.
+
+The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London), handsome
+and pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped beard, hovered near
+her shoulder attentive, smiling, and fatigued. The journey from London
+to Sta. Marta in mail boats and the special carriages of the Sta.
+Marta coast-line (the only railway so far) had been tolerable--even
+pleasant--quite tolerable. But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was
+another sort of experience, in an old diligencia over impassable roads
+skirting awful precipices.
+
+“We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of very deep ravines,”
+ he was telling Mrs. Gould in an undertone. “And when we arrived here
+at last I don’t know what we should have done without your hospitality.
+What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco is!--and for a harbour, too!
+Astonishing!”
+
+“Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be historically important.
+The highest ecclesiastical court for two viceroyalties, sat here in the
+olden time,” she instructed him with animation.
+
+“I am impressed. I didn’t mean to be disparaging. You seem very
+patriotic.”
+
+“The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you don’t know
+what an old resident I am.”
+
+“How old, I wonder,” he murmured, looking at her with a slight smile.
+Mrs. Gould’s appearance was made youthful by the mobile intelligence of
+her face. “We can’t give you your ecclesiastical court back again; but
+you shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable--a future
+in the great world which is worth infinitely more than any amount
+of ecclesiastical past. You shall be brought in touch with something
+greater than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on
+a sea-coast could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a
+thousand miles inland now--most remarkable! Has anything ever happened
+here for a hundred years before to-day?”
+
+While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept her little smile.
+Agreeing ironically, she assured him that certainly not--nothing ever
+happened in Sulaco. Even the revolutions, of which there had been two in
+her time, had respected the repose of the place. Their course ran in the
+more populous southern parts of the Republic, and the great valley of
+Sta. Marta, which was like one great battlefield of the parties, with
+the possession of the capital for a prize and an outlet to another
+ocean. They were more advanced over there. Here in Sulaco they heard
+only the echoes of these great questions, and, of course, their official
+world changed each time, coming to them over their rampart of mountains
+which he himself had traversed in an old diligencia, with such a risk to
+life and limb.
+
+The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitality for
+several days, and he was really grateful for it. It was only since he
+had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly lost touch with the feeling
+of European life on the background of his exotic surroundings. In the
+capital he had been the guest of the Legation, and had been kept busy
+negotiating with the members of Don Vincente’s Government--cultured men,
+men to whom the conditions of civilized business were not unknown.
+
+What concerned him most at the time was the acquisition of land for the
+railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where there was already one line in
+existence, the people were tractable, and it was only a matter of price.
+A commission had been nominated to fix the values, and the difficulty
+resolved itself into the judicious influencing of the Commissioners.
+But in Sulaco--the Occidental Province for whose very development the
+railway was intended--there had been trouble. It had been lying for ages
+ensconced behind its natural barriers, repelling modern enterprise by
+the precipices of its mountain range, by its shallow harbour opening
+into the everlasting calms of a gulf full of clouds, by the benighted
+state of mind of the owners of its fertile territory--all these
+aristocratic old Spanish families, all those Don Ambrosios this and Don
+Fernandos that, who seemed actually to dislike and distrust the coming
+of the railway over their lands. It had happened that some of the
+surveying parties scattered all over the province had been warned off
+with threats of violence. In other cases outrageous pretensions as to
+price had been raised. But the man of railways prided himself on being
+equal to every emergency. Since he was met by the inimical sentiment of
+blind conservatism in Sulaco he would meet it by sentiment, too, before
+taking his stand on his right alone. The Government was bound to carry
+out its part of the contract with the board of the new railway company,
+even if it had to use force for the purpose. But he desired nothing less
+than an armed disturbance in the smooth working of his plans. They
+were much too vast and far-reaching, and too promising to leave a stone
+unturned; and so he imagined to get the President-Dictator over there
+on a tour of ceremonies and speeches, culminating in a great function
+at the turning of the first sod by the harbour shore. After all he was
+their own creature--that Don Vincente. He was the embodied triumph of
+the best elements in the State. These were facts, and, unless facts
+meant nothing, Sir John argued to himself, such a man’s influence must
+be real, and his personal action would produce the conciliatory effect
+he required. He had succeeded in arranging the trip with the help of a
+very clever advocate, who was known in Sta. Marta as the agent of the
+Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in Sulaco, and even in the whole
+Republic. It was indeed a fabulously rich mine. Its so-called agent,
+evidently a man of culture and ability, seemed, without official
+position, to possess an extraordinary influence in the highest
+Government spheres. He was able to assure Sir John that the
+President-Dictator would make the journey. He regretted, however, in
+the course of the same conversation, that General Montero insisted upon
+going, too.
+
+General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle had found an obscure
+army captain employed on the wild eastern frontier of the State, had
+thrown in his lot with the Ribiera party at a moment when special
+circumstances had given that small adhesion a fortuitous importance.
+The fortunes of war served him marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco
+(after a day of desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the
+end he emerged General, Minister of War, and the military head of the
+Blanco party, although there was nothing aristocratic in his descent.
+Indeed, it was said that he and his brother, orphans, had been brought
+up by the munificence of a famous European traveller, in whose service
+their father had lost his life. Another story was that their father
+had been nothing but a charcoal burner in the woods, and their mother a
+baptised Indian woman from the far interior.
+
+However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in the habit of styling
+Montero’s forest march from his commandancia to join the Blanco forces
+at the beginning of the troubles, the “most heroic military exploit of
+modern times.” About the same time, too, his brother had turned up from
+Europe, where he had gone apparently as secretary to a consul. Having,
+however, collected a small band of outlaws, he showed some talent as
+guerilla chief and had been rewarded at the pacification by the post of
+Military Commandant of the capital.
+
+The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator. The board of the
+O.S.N. Company, working hand-in-hand with the railway people for the
+good of the Republic, had on this important occasion instructed Captain
+Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at the disposal of the distinguished
+party. Don Vincente, journeying south from Sta. Marta, had embarked at
+Cayta, the principal port of Costaguana, and came to Sulaco by sea.
+But the chairman of the railway company had courageously crossed the
+mountains in a ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting
+his engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the road.
+
+For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature, whose hostility
+can always be overcome by the resources of finance, he could not help
+being impressed by his surroundings during his halt at the surveying
+camp established at the highest point his railway was to reach. He spent
+the night there, arriving just too late to see the last dying glow of
+sunlight upon the snowy flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black
+basalt framed like an open portal a portion of the white field lying
+aslant against the west. In the transparent air of the high altitudes
+everything seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an
+imponderable liquid; and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of
+the expected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the door of a hut of
+rough stones, had contemplated the changing hues on the enormous side
+of the mountain, thinking that in this sight, as in a piece of inspired
+music, there could be found together the utmost delicacy of shaded
+expression and a stupendous magnificence of effect.
+
+Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and inaudible strain
+sung by the sunset amongst the high peaks of the Sierra. It had sung
+itself out into the breathless pause of deep dusk before, climbing down
+the fore wheel of the diligencia with stiff limbs, he shook hands with
+the engineer.
+
+They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical boulder, with no
+door or windows in its two openings; a bright fire of sticks (brought
+on muleback from the first valley below) burning outside, sent in a
+wavering glare; and two candles in tin candlesticks--lighted, it was
+explained to him, in his honour--stood on a sort of rough camp table, at
+which he sat on the right hand of the chief. He knew how to be amiable;
+and the young men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of
+the railway track had the glamour of the first steps on the path of
+life, sat there, too, listening modestly, with their smooth faces tanned
+by the weather, and very pleased to witness so much affability in so
+great a man.
+
+Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside, he had a long talk
+with his chief engineer. He knew him well of old. This was not the first
+undertaking in which their gifts, as elementally different as fire
+and water, had worked in conjunction. From the contact of these two
+personalities, who had not the same vision of the world, there was
+generated a power for the world’s service--a subtle force that could
+set in motion mighty machines, men’s muscles, and awaken also in human
+breasts an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the young fellows at the
+table, to whom the survey of the track was like the tracing of the path
+of life, more than one would be called to meet death before the work was
+done. But the work would be done: the force would be almost as strong
+as a faith. Not quite, however. In the silence of the sleeping camp upon
+the moonlit plateau forming the top of the pass like the floor of a
+vast arena surrounded by the basalt walls of precipices, two strolling
+figures in thick ulsters stood still, and the voice of the engineer
+pronounced distinctly the words--
+
+“We can’t move mountains!”
+
+Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing gesture, felt the full
+force of the words. The white Higuerota soared out of the shadows of
+rock and earth like a frozen bubble under the moon. All was still, till
+near by, behind the wall of a corral for the camp animals, built
+roughly of loose stones in the form of a circle, a pack mule stamped his
+forefoot and blew heavily twice.
+
+The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer to the chairman’s
+tentative suggestion that the tracing of the line could, perhaps, be
+altered in deference to the prejudices of the Sulaco landowners.
+The chief engineer believed that the obstinacy of men was the lesser
+obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had the great influence of
+Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under Higuerota would have been a
+colossal undertaking.
+
+“Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?”
+
+Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta. Marta, and wanted to
+know more. The engineer-in-chief assured him that the administrator of
+the San Tome silver mine had an immense influence over all these Spanish
+Dons. He had also one of the best houses in Sulaco, and the Gould
+hospitality was beyond all praise.
+
+“They received me as if they had known me for years,” he said. “The
+little lady is kindness personified. I stayed with them for a month. He
+helped me to organize the surveying parties. His practical ownership of
+the San Tome silver mine gives him a special position. He seems to have
+the ear of every provincial authority apparently, and, as I said, he can
+wind all the hidalgos of the province round his little finger. If you
+follow his advice the difficulties will fall away, because he wants the
+railway. Of course, you must be careful in what you say. He’s English,
+and besides he must be immensely wealthy. The Holroyd house is in with
+him in that mine, so you may imagine--”
+
+He interrupted himself as, from before one of the little fires burning
+outside the low wall of the corral, arose the figure of a man wrapped in
+a poncho up to the neck. The saddle which he had been using for a pillow
+made a dark patch on the ground against the red glow of embers.
+
+“I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through the States,” said
+Sir John. “I’ve ascertained that he, too, wants the railway.”
+
+The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity of the voices, had
+arisen from the ground, struck a match to light a cigarette. The flame
+showed a bronzed, black-whiskered face, a pair of eyes gazing straight;
+then, rearranging his wrappings, he sank full length and laid his head
+again on the saddle.
+
+“That’s our camp-master, whom I must send back to Sulaco now we
+are going to carry our survey into the Sta. Marta Valley,” said the
+engineer. “A most useful fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell of the
+O.S.N. Company. It was very good of Mitchell. Charles Gould told me I
+couldn’t do better than take advantage of the offer. He seems to know
+how to rule all these muleteers and peons. We had not the slightest
+trouble with our people. He shall escort your diligencia right into
+Sulaco with some of our railway peons. The road is bad. To have him at
+hand may save you an upset or two. He promised me to take care of your
+person all the way down as if you were his father.”
+
+This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in
+Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell’s mispronunciation, were in the
+habit of calling Nostromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take
+excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the road, as Sir John
+himself acknowledged to Mrs. Gould afterwards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+At that time Nostromo had been already long enough in the country
+to raise to the highest pitch Captain Mitchell’s opinion of the
+extraordinary value of his discovery. Clearly he was one of those
+invaluable subordinates whom to possess is a legitimate cause of
+boasting. Captain Mitchell plumed himself upon his eye for men--but
+he was not selfish--and in the innocence of his pride was already
+developing that mania for “lending you my Capataz de Cargadores” which
+was to bring Nostromo into personal contact, sooner or later, with
+every European in Sulaco, as a sort of universal factotum--a prodigy of
+efficiency in his own sphere of life.
+
+“The fellow is devoted to me, body and soul!” Captain Mitchell was
+given to affirm; and though nobody, perhaps, could have explained why it
+should be so, it was impossible on a survey of their relation to throw
+doubt on that statement, unless, indeed, one were a bitter, eccentric
+character like Dr. Monygham--for instance--whose short, hopeless laugh
+expressed somehow an immense mistrust of mankind. Not that Dr. Monygham
+was a prodigal either of laughter or of words. He was bitterly taciturn
+when at his best. At his worst people feared the open scornfulness of
+his tongue. Only Mrs. Gould could keep his unbelief in men’s motives
+within due bounds; but even to her (on an occasion not connected with
+Nostromo, and in a tone which for him was gentle), even to her, he had
+said once, “Really, it is most unreasonable to demand that a man
+should think of other people so much better than he is able to think of
+himself.”
+
+And Mrs. Gould had hastened to drop the subject. There were strange
+rumours of the English doctor. Years ago, in the time of Guzman Bento,
+he had been mixed up, it was whispered, in a conspiracy which was
+betrayed and, as people expressed it, drowned in blood. His hair had
+turned grey, his hairless, seamed face was of a brick-dust colour; the
+large check pattern of his flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat
+were an established defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco. Had
+it not been for the immaculate cleanliness of his apparel he might have
+been taken for one of those shiftless Europeans that are a moral eyesore
+to the respectability of a foreign colony in almost every exotic part of
+the world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorning with clusters of pretty
+faces the balconies along the Street of the Constitution, when they saw
+him pass, with his limping gait and bowed head, a short linen jacket
+drawn on carelessly over the flannel check shirt, would remark to each
+other, “Here is the Senor doctor going to call on Dona Emilia. He has
+got his little coat on.” The inference was true. Its deeper meaning was
+hidden from their simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no
+store of thought on the doctor. He was old, ugly, learned--and a little
+“loco”--mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected
+him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a concession
+to Mrs. Gould’s humanizing influence. The doctor, with his habit of
+sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his profound
+respect for the character of the woman who was known in the country as
+the English Senora. He presented this tribute very seriously indeed;
+it was no trifle for a man of his habits. Mrs. Gould felt that, too,
+perfectly. She would never have thought of imposing upon him this marked
+show of deference.
+
+She kept her old Spanish house (one of the finest specimens in Sulaco)
+open for the dispensation of the small graces of existence. She
+dispensed them with simplicity and charm because she was guided by an
+alert perception of values. She was highly gifted in the art of human
+intercourse which consists in delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and
+in the suggestion of universal comprehension. Charles Gould (the Gould
+family, established in Costaguana for three generations, always went to
+England for their education and for their wives) imagined that he had
+fallen in love with a girl’s sound common sense like any other man,
+but these were not exactly the reasons why, for instance, the whole
+surveying camp, from the youngest of the young men to their mature
+chief, should have found occasion to allude to Mrs. Gould’s house
+so frequently amongst the high peaks of the Sierra. She would have
+protested that she had done nothing for them, with a low laugh and
+a surprised widening of her grey eyes, had anybody told her how
+convincingly she was remembered on the edge of the snow-line above
+Sulaco. But directly, with a little capable air of setting her wits to
+work, she would have found an explanation. “Of course, it was such a
+surprise for these boys to find any sort of welcome here. And I suppose
+they are homesick. I suppose everybody must be always just a little
+homesick.”
+
+She was always sorry for homesick people.
+
+Born in the country, as his father before him, spare and tall, with
+a flaming moustache, a neat chin, clear blue eyes, auburn hair, and a
+thin, fresh, red face, Charles Gould looked like a new arrival from over
+the sea. His grandfather had fought in the cause of independence under
+Bolivar, in that famous English legion which on the battlefield of
+Carabobo had been saluted by the great Liberator as Saviours of his
+country. One of Charles Gould’s uncles had been the elected President
+of that very province of Sulaco (then called a State) in the days of
+Federation, and afterwards had been put up against the wall of a church
+and shot by the order of the barbarous Unionist general, Guzman Bento.
+It was the same Guzman Bento who, becoming later Perpetual President,
+famed for his ruthless and cruel tyranny, readied his apotheosis in the
+popular legend of a sanguinary land-haunting spectre whose body had been
+carried off by the devil in person from the brick mausoleum in the nave
+of the Church of Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests
+explained its disappearance to the barefooted multitude that streamed
+in, awestruck, to gaze at the hole in the side of the ugly box of bricks
+before the great altar.
+
+Guzman Bento of cruel memory had put to death great numbers of people
+besides Charles Gould’s uncle; but with a relative martyred in the cause
+of aristocracy, the Sulaco Oligarchs (this was the phraseology of Guzman
+Bento’s time; now they were called Blancos, and had given up the federal
+idea), which meant the families of pure Spanish descent, considered
+Charles as one of themselves. With such a family record, no one could
+be more of a Costaguanero than Don Carlos Gould; but his aspect was
+so characteristic that in the talk of common people he was just the
+Inglez--the Englishman of Sulaco. He looked more English than a casual
+tourist, a sort of heretic pilgrim, however, quite unknown in Sulaco.
+He looked more English than the last arrived batch of young railway
+engineers, than anybody out of the hunting-field pictures in the numbers
+of Punch reaching his wife’s drawing-room two months or so after date.
+It astonished you to hear him talk Spanish (Castillan, as the natives
+say) or the Indian dialect of the country-people so naturally. His
+accent had never been English; but there was something so indelible
+in all these ancestral Goulds--liberators, explorers, coffee
+planters, merchants, revolutionists--of Costaguana, that he, the only
+representative of the third generation in a continent possessing its
+own style of horsemanship, went on looking thoroughly English even
+on horseback. This is not said of him in the mocking spirit of the
+Llaneros--men of the great plains--who think that no one in the world
+knows how to sit a horse but themselves. Charles Gould, to use the
+suitably lofty phrase, rode like a centaur. Riding for him was not a
+special form of exercise; it was a natural faculty, as walking straight
+is to all men sound of mind and limb; but, all the same, when cantering
+beside the rutty ox-cart track to the mine he looked in his English
+clothes and with his imported saddlery as though he had come this moment
+to Costaguana at his easy swift pasotrote, straight out of some green
+meadow at the other side of the world.
+
+His way would lie along the old Spanish road--the Camino Real of popular
+speech--the only remaining vestige of a fact and name left by that
+royalty old Giorgio Viola hated, and whose very shadow had departed from
+the land; for the big equestrian statue of Charles IV. at the entrance
+of the Alameda, towering white against the trees, was only known to the
+folk from the country and to the beggars of the town that slept on the
+steps around the pedestal, as the Horse of Stone. The other Carlos,
+turning off to the left with a rapid clatter of hoofs on the disjointed
+pavement--Don Carlos Gould, in his English clothes, looked as
+incongruous, but much more at home than the kingly cavalier reining in
+his steed on the pedestal above the sleeping leperos, with his marble
+arm raised towards the marble rim of a plumed hat.
+
+The weather-stained effigy of the mounted king, with its vague
+suggestion of a saluting gesture, seemed to present an inscrutable
+breast to the political changes which had robbed it of its very name;
+but neither did the other horseman, well known to the people, keen and
+alive on his well-shaped, slate-coloured beast with a white eye, wear
+his heart on the sleeve of his English coat. His mind preserved its
+steady poise as if sheltered in the passionless stability of private
+and public decencies at home in Europe. He accepted with a like calm the
+shocking manner in which the Sulaco ladies smothered their faces with
+pearl powder till they looked like white plaster casts with beautiful
+living eyes, the peculiar gossip of the town, and the continuous
+political changes, the constant “saving of the country,” which to his
+wife seemed a puerile and bloodthirsty game of murder and rapine played
+with terrible earnestness by depraved children. In the early days of
+her Costaguana life, the little lady used to clench her hands with
+exasperation at not being able to take the public affairs of the country
+as seriously as the incidental atrocity of methods deserved. She saw in
+them a comedy of naive pretences, but hardly anything genuine except
+her own appalled indignation. Charles, very quiet and twisting his long
+moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all. Once, however, he
+observed to her gently--
+
+“My dear, you seem to forget that I was born here.” These few words made
+her pause as if they had been a sudden revelation. Perhaps the mere
+fact of being born in the country did make a difference. She had a great
+confidence in her husband; it had always been very great. He had struck
+her imagination from the first by his unsentimentalism, by that very
+quietude of mind which she had erected in her thought for a sign of
+perfect competency in the business of living. Don Jose Avellanos, their
+neighbour across the street, a statesman, a poet, a man of culture, who
+had represented his country at several European Courts (and had suffered
+untold indignities as a state prisoner in the time of the tyrant Guzman
+Bento), used to declare in Dona Emilia’s drawing-room that Carlos had
+all the English qualities of character with a truly patriotic heart.
+
+Mrs. Gould, raising her eyes to her husband’s thin, red and tan face,
+could not detect the slightest quiver of a feature at what he must have
+heard said of his patriotism. Perhaps he had just dismounted on his
+return from the mine; he was English enough to disregard the hottest
+hours of the day. Basilio, in a livery of white linen and a red sash,
+had squatted for a moment behind his heels to unstrap the heavy, blunt
+spurs in the patio; and then the Senor Administrator would go up the
+staircase into the gallery. Rows of plants in pots, ranged on the
+balustrade between the pilasters of the arches, screened the corredor
+with their leaves and flowers from the quadrangle below, whose paved
+space is the true hearthstone of a South American house, where the quiet
+hours of domestic life are marked by the shifting of light and shadow on
+the flagstones.
+
+Senor Avellanos was in the habit of crossing the patio at five o’clock
+almost every day. Don Jose chose to come over at tea-time because the
+English rite at Dona Emilia’s house reminded him of the time he lived in
+London as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He did
+not like tea; and, usually, rocking his American chair, his neat little
+shiny boots crossed on the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a
+sort of complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he
+held the cup in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was
+perfectly white; his eyes coalblack.
+
+On seeing Charles Gould step into the sala he would nod provisionally
+and go on to the end of the oratorial period. Only then he would say--
+
+“Carlos, my friend, you have ridden from San Tome in the heat of the
+day. Always the true English activity. No? What?”
+
+He drank up all the tea at once in one draught. This performance
+was invariably followed by a slight shudder and a low, involuntary
+“br-r-r-r,” which was not covered by the hasty exclamation, “Excellent!”
+
+Then giving up the empty cup into his young friend’s hand, extended with
+a smile, he continued to expatiate upon the patriotic nature of the San
+Tome mine for the simple pleasure of talking fluently, it seemed, while
+his reclining body jerked backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair of
+the sort exported from the United States. The ceiling of the largest
+drawing-room of the Casa Gould extended its white level far above
+his head. The loftiness dwarfed the mixture of heavy, straight-backed
+Spanish chairs of brown wood with leathern seats, and European
+furniture, low, and cushioned all over, like squat little monsters
+gorged to bursting with steel springs and horsehair. There were
+knick-knacks on little tables, mirrors let into the wall above marble
+consoles, square spaces of carpet under the two groups of armchairs,
+each presided over by a deep sofa; smaller rugs scattered all over the
+floor of red tiles; three windows from the ceiling down to the ground,
+opening on a balcony, and flanked by the perpendicular folds of the
+dark hangings. The stateliness of ancient days lingered between the four
+high, smooth walls, tinted a delicate primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould,
+with her little head and shining coils of hair, sitting in a cloud of
+muslin and lace before a slender mahogany table, resembled a fairy posed
+lightly before dainty philtres dispensed out of vessels of silver and
+porcelain.
+
+Mrs. Gould knew the history of the San Tome mine. Worked in the early
+days mostly by means of lashes on the backs of slaves, its yield had
+been paid for in its own weight of human bones. Whole tribes of Indians
+had perished in the exploitation; and then the mine was abandoned, since
+with this primitive method it had ceased to make a profitable return,
+no matter how many corpses were thrown into its maw. Then it became
+forgotten. It was rediscovered after the War of Independence. An English
+company obtained the right to work it, and found so rich a vein that
+neither the exactions of successive governments, nor the periodical
+raids of recruiting officers upon the population of paid miners they had
+created, could discourage their perseverance. But in the end, during the
+long turmoil of pronunciamentos that followed the death of the famous
+Guzman Bento, the native miners, incited to revolt by the emissaries
+sent out from the capital, had risen upon their English chiefs and
+murdered them to a man. The decree of confiscation which appeared
+immediately afterwards in the Diario Official, published in Sta. Marta,
+began with the words: “Justly incensed at the grinding oppression of
+foreigners, actuated by sordid motives of gain rather than by love for a
+country where they come impoverished to seek their fortunes, the mining
+population of San Tome, etc. . . .” and ended with the declaration: “The
+chief of the State has resolved to exercise to the full his power
+of clemency. The mine, which by every law, international, human, and
+divine, reverts now to the Government as national property, shall remain
+closed till the sword drawn for the sacred defence of liberal principles
+has accomplished its mission of securing the happiness of our beloved
+country.”
+
+And for many years this was the last of the San Tome mine. What
+advantage that Government had expected from the spoliation, it is
+impossible to tell now. Costaguana was made with difficulty to pay a
+beggarly money compensation to the families of the victims, and then
+the matter dropped out of diplomatic despatches. But afterwards another
+Government bethought itself of that valuable asset. It was an ordinary
+Costaguana Government--the fourth in six years--but it judged of its
+opportunities sanely. It remembered the San Tome mine with a secret
+conviction of its worthlessness in their own hands, but with an
+ingenious insight into the various uses a silver mine can be put to,
+apart from the sordid process of extracting the metal from under the
+ground. The father of Charles Gould, for a long time one of the most
+wealthy merchants of Costaguana, had already lost a considerable part of
+his fortune in forced loans to the successive Governments. He was a man
+of calm judgment, who never dreamed of pressing his claims; and when,
+suddenly, the perpetual concession of the San Tome mine was offered to
+him in full settlement, his alarm became extreme. He was versed in the
+ways of Governments. Indeed, the intention of this affair, though no
+doubt deeply meditated in the closet, lay open on the surface of the
+document presented urgently for his signature. The third and most
+important clause stipulated that the concession-holder should pay at
+once to the Government five years’ royalties on the estimated output of
+the mine.
+
+Mr. Gould, senior, defended himself from this fatal favour with many
+arguments and entreaties, but without success. He knew nothing of
+mining; he had no means to put his concession on the European market;
+the mine as a working concern did not exist. The buildings had been
+burnt down, the mining plant had been destroyed, the mining population
+had disappeared from the neighbourhood years and years ago; the very
+road had vanished under a flood of tropical vegetation as effectually
+as if swallowed by the sea; and the main gallery had fallen in within a
+hundred yards from the entrance. It was no longer an abandoned mine; it
+was a wild, inaccessible, and rocky gorge of the Sierra, where vestiges
+of charred timber, some heaps of smashed bricks, and a few shapeless
+pieces of rusty iron could have been found under the matted mass of
+thorny creepers covering the ground. Mr. Gould, senior, did not desire
+the perpetual possession of that desolate locality; in fact, the mere
+vision of it arising before his mind in the still watches of the night
+had the power to exasperate him into hours of hot and agitated insomnia.
+
+It so happened, however, that the Finance Minister of the time was a
+man to whom, in years gone by, Mr. Gould had, unfortunately, declined to
+grant some small pecuniary assistance, basing his refusal on the ground
+that the applicant was a notorious gambler and cheat, besides being more
+than half suspected of a robbery with violence on a wealthy ranchero in
+a remote country district, where he was actually exercising the function
+of a judge. Now, after reaching his exalted position, that politician
+had proclaimed his intention to repay evil with good to Senor
+Gould--the poor man. He affirmed and reaffirmed this resolution in the
+drawing-rooms of Sta. Marta, in a soft and implacable voice, and
+with such malicious glances that Mr. Gould’s best friends advised him
+earnestly to attempt no bribery to get the matter dropped. It would have
+been useless. Indeed, it would not have been a very safe proceeding.
+Such was also the opinion of a stout, loud-voiced lady of French
+extraction, the daughter, she said, of an officer of high rank (_officier
+superieur de l’armee_), who was accommodated with lodgings within the
+walls of a secularized convent next door to the Ministry of Finance.
+That florid person, when approached on behalf of Mr. Gould in a proper
+manner, and with a suitable present, shook her head despondently. She
+was good-natured, and her despondency was genuine. She imagined she
+could not take money in consideration of something she could not
+accomplish. The friend of Mr. Gould, charged with the delicate mission,
+used to say afterwards that she was the only honest person closely or
+remotely connected with the Government he had ever met. “No go,” she
+had said with a cavalier, husky intonation which was natural to her, and
+using turns of expression more suitable to a child of parents unknown
+than to the orphaned daughter of a general officer. “No; it’s no go. _Pas
+moyen, mon garcon. C’est dommage, tout de meme. Ah! zut! Je ne vole
+pas mon monde. Je ne suis pas ministre--moi! Vous pouvez emporter votre
+petit sac_.”
+
+For a moment, biting her carmine lip, she deplored inwardly the tyranny
+of the rigid principles governing the sale of her influence in high
+places. Then, significantly, and with a touch of impatience, “_Allez_,”
+ she added, “_et dites bien a votre bonhomme--entendez-vous?--qu’il faut
+avaler la pilule_.”
+
+After such a warning there was nothing for it but to sign and pay.
+Mr. Gould had swallowed the pill, and it was as though it had been
+compounded of some subtle poison that acted directly on his brain. He
+became at once mine-ridden, and as he was well read in light literature
+it took to his mind the form of the Old Man of the Sea fastened upon his
+shoulders. He also began to dream of vampires. Mr. Gould exaggerated
+to himself the disadvantages of his new position, because he viewed it
+emotionally. His position in Costaguana was no worse than before. But
+man is a desperately conservative creature, and the extravagant novelty
+of this outrage upon his purse distressed his sensibilities. Everybody
+around him was being robbed by the grotesque and murderous bands that
+played their game of governments and revolutions after the death of
+Guzman Bento. His experience had taught him that, however short
+the plunder might fall of their legitimate expectations, no gang in
+possession of the Presidential Palace would be so incompetent as to
+suffer itself to be baffled by the want of a pretext. The first casual
+colonel of the barefooted army of scarecrows that came along was able to
+expose with force and precision to any mere civilian his titles to a sum
+of 10,000 dollars; the while his hope would be immutably fixed upon a
+gratuity, at any rate, of no less than a thousand. Mr. Gould knew that
+very well, and, armed with resignation, had waited for better times. But
+to be robbed under the forms of legality and business was intolerable to
+his imagination. Mr. Gould, the father, had one fault in his sagacious
+and honourable character: he attached too much importance to form. It is
+a failing common to mankind, whose views are tinged by prejudices. There
+was for him in that affair a malignancy of perverted justice which, by
+means of a moral shock, attacked his vigorous physique. “It will end
+by killing me,” he used to affirm many times a day. And, in fact, since
+that time he began to suffer from fever, from liver pains, and mostly
+from a worrying inability to think of anything else. The Finance
+Minister could have formed no conception of the profound subtlety of his
+revenge. Even Mr. Gould’s letters to his fourteen-year-old boy Charles,
+then away in England for his education, came at last to talk of
+practically nothing but the mine. He groaned over the injustice, the
+persecution, the outrage of that mine; he occupied whole pages in the
+exposition of the fatal consequences attaching to the possession of that
+mine from every point of view, with every dismal inference, with words
+of horror at the apparently eternal character of that curse. For the
+Concession had been granted to him and his descendants for ever. He
+implored his son never to return to Costaguana, never to claim any
+part of his inheritance there, because it was tainted by the infamous
+Concession; never to touch it, never to approach it, to forget that
+America existed, and pursue a mercantile career in Europe. And each
+letter ended with bitter self-reproaches for having stayed too long in
+that cavern of thieves, intriguers, and brigands.
+
+To be told repeatedly that one’s future is blighted because of the
+possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a matter
+of prime importance as to its main statement; but in its form it is
+calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and attention. In course
+of time the boy, at first only puzzled by the angry jeremiads, but
+rather sorry for his dad, began to turn the matter over in his mind in
+such moments as he could spare from play and study. In about a year he
+had evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite conviction
+that there was a silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of
+Costaguana, where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great
+many years before. There was also connected closely with that mine a
+thing called the “iniquitous Gould Concession,” apparently written on
+a paper which his father desired ardently to “tear and fling into the
+faces” of presidents, members of judicature, and ministers of State.
+And this desire persisted, though the names of these people, he noticed,
+seldom remained the same for a whole year together. This desire (since
+the thing was iniquitous) seemed quite natural to the boy, though why
+the affair was iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards, with advancing
+wisdom, he managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the
+fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, and ghouls,
+which had lent to his father’s correspondence the flavour of a gruesome
+Arabian Nights tale. In the end, the growing youth attained to as
+close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the old man who wrote these
+plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the sea. He had been
+made several times already to pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the
+mine, he reported, besides other sums extracted from him on account
+of future royalties, on the ground that a man with such a valuable
+concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial assistance to
+the Government of the Republic. The last of his fortune was passing away
+from him against worthless receipts, he wrote, in a rage, whilst he was
+being pointed out as an individual who had known how to secure enormous
+advantages from the necessities of his country. And the young man in
+Europe grew more and more interested in that thing which could provoke
+such a tumult of words and passion.
+
+He thought of it every day; but he thought of it without bitterness. It
+might have been an unfortunate affair for his poor dad, and the
+whole story threw a queer light upon the social and political life of
+Costaguana. The view he took of it was sympathetic to his father, yet
+calm and reflective. His personal feelings had not been outraged, and it
+is difficult to resent with proper and durable indignation the physical
+or mental anguish of another organism, even if that other organism is
+one’s own father. By the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his
+turn, fallen under the spell of the San Tome mine. But it was another
+form of enchantment, more suitable to his youth, into whose magic
+formula there entered hope, vigour, and self-confidence, instead of
+weary indignation and despair. Left after he was twenty to his own
+guidance (except for the severe injunction not to return to Costaguana),
+he had pursued his studies in Belgium and France with the idea of
+qualifying for a mining engineer. But this scientific aspect of his
+labours remained vague and imperfect in his mind. Mines had acquired for
+him a dramatic interest. He studied their peculiarities from a personal
+point of view, too, as one would study the varied characters of men. He
+visited them as one goes with curiosity to call upon remarkable persons.
+He visited mines in Germany, in Spain, in Cornwall. Abandoned workings
+had for him strong fascination. Their desolation appealed to him like
+the sight of human misery, whose causes are varied and profound. They
+might have been worthless, but also they might have been misunderstood.
+His future wife was the first, and perhaps the only person to detect
+this secret mood which governed the profoundly sensible, almost
+voiceless attitude of this man towards the world of material things. And
+at once her delight in him, lingering with half-open wings like those
+birds that cannot rise easily from a flat level, found a pinnacle from
+which to soar up into the skies.
+
+They had become acquainted in Italy, where the future Mrs. Gould was
+staying with an old and pale aunt who, years before, had married a
+middle-aged, impoverished Italian marquis. She now mourned that man, who
+had known how to give up his life to the independence and unity of his
+country, who had known how to be as enthusiastic in his generosity as
+the youngest of those who fell for that very cause of which old Giorgio
+Viola was a drifting relic, as a broken spar is suffered to float away
+disregarded after a naval victory. The Marchesa led a still, whispering
+existence, nun-like in her black robes and a white band over the
+forehead, in a corner of the first floor of an ancient and ruinous
+palace, whose big, empty halls downstairs sheltered under their painted
+ceilings the harvests, the fowls, and even the cattle, together with the
+whole family of the tenant farmer.
+
+The two young people had met in Lucca. After that meeting Charles Gould
+visited no mines, though they went together in a carriage, once, to see
+some marble quarries, where the work resembled mining in so far that
+it also was the tearing of the raw material of treasure from the earth.
+Charles Gould did not open his heart to her in any set speeches. He
+simply went on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true method
+of sincerity. One of his frequent remarks was, “I think sometimes that
+poor father takes a wrong view of that San Tome business.” And they
+discussed that opinion long and earnestly, as if they could influence a
+mind across half the globe; but in reality they discussed it because the
+sentiment of love can enter into any subject and live ardently in remote
+phrases. For this natural reason these discussions were precious to Mrs.
+Gould in her engaged state. Charles feared that Mr. Gould, senior, was
+wasting his strength and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid
+of the Concession. “I fancy that this is not the kind of handling it
+requires,” he mused aloud, as if to himself. And when she wondered
+frankly that a man of character should devote his energies to plotting
+and intrigues, Charles would remark, with a gentle concern that
+understood her wonder, “You must not forget that he was born there.”
+
+She would set her quick mind to work upon that, and then make the
+inconsequent retort, which he accepted as perfectly sagacious, because,
+in fact, it was so--
+
+“Well, and you? You were born there, too.”
+
+He knew his answer.
+
+“That’s different. I’ve been away ten years. Dad never had such a long
+spell; and it was more than thirty years ago.”
+
+She was the first person to whom he opened his lips after receiving the
+news of his father’s death.
+
+“It has killed him!” he said.
+
+He had walked straight out of town with the news, straight out before
+him in the noonday sun on the white road, and his feet had brought
+him face to face with her in the hall of the ruined palazzo, a room
+magnificent and naked, with here and there a long strip of damask, black
+with damp and age, hanging down on a bare panel of the wall. It was
+furnished with exactly one gilt armchair, with a broken back, and an
+octagon columnar stand bearing a heavy marble vase ornamented with
+sculptured masks and garlands of flowers, and cracked from top to
+bottom. Charles Gould was dusty with the white dust of the road lying
+on his boots, on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks. Water dripped
+from under it all over his face, and he grasped a thick oaken cudgel in
+his bare right hand.
+
+She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat, gloved,
+swinging a clear sunshade, caught just as she was going out to meet him
+at the bottom of the hill, where three poplars stand near the wall of a
+vineyard.
+
+“It has killed him!” he repeated. “He ought to have had many years yet.
+We are a long-lived family.”
+
+She was too startled to say anything; he was contemplating with a
+penetrating and motionless stare the cracked marble urn as though he
+had resolved to fix its shape for ever in his memory. It was only when,
+turning suddenly to her, he blurted out twice, “I’ve come to you--I’ve
+come straight to you--,” without being able to finish his phrase, that
+the great pitifulness of that lonely and tormented death in Costaguana
+came to her with the full force of its misery. He caught hold of her
+hand, raised it to his lips, and at that she dropped her parasol to pat
+him on the cheek, murmured “Poor boy,” and began to dry her eyes under
+the downward curve of her hat-brim, very small in her simple, white
+frock, almost like a lost child crying in the degraded grandeur of the
+noble hall, while he stood by her, again perfectly motionless in the
+contemplation of the marble urn.
+
+Afterwards they went out for a long walk, which was silent till he
+exclaimed suddenly--
+
+“Yes. But if he had only grappled with it in a proper way!”
+
+And then they stopped. Everywhere there were long shadows lying on the
+hills, on the roads, on the enclosed fields of olive trees; the shadows
+of poplars, of wide chestnuts, of farm buildings, of stone walls; and
+in mid-air the sound of a bell, thin and alert, was like the throbbing
+pulse of the sunset glow. Her lips were slightly parted as though in
+surprise that he should not be looking at her with his usual expression.
+His usual expression was unconditionally approving and attentive. He was
+in his talks with her the most anxious and deferential of dictators,
+an attitude that pleased her immensely. It affirmed her power without
+detracting from his dignity. That slight girl, with her little feet,
+little hands, little face attractively overweighted by great coils of
+hair; with a rather large mouth, whose mere parting seemed to breathe
+upon you the fragrance of frankness and generosity, had the fastidious
+soul of an experienced woman. She was, before all things and all
+flatteries, careful of her pride in the object of her choice. But now he
+was actually not looking at her at all; and his expression was tense and
+irrational, as is natural in a man who elects to stare at nothing past a
+young girl’s head.
+
+“Well, yes. It was iniquitous. They corrupted him thoroughly, the poor
+old boy. Oh! why wouldn’t he let me go back to him? But now I shall know
+how to grapple with this.”
+
+After pronouncing these words with immense assurance, he glanced down at
+her, and at once fell a prey to distress, incertitude, and fear.
+
+The only thing he wanted to know now, he said, was whether she did love
+him enough--whether she would have the courage to go with him so far
+away? He put these questions to her in a voice that trembled with
+anxiety--for he was a determined man.
+
+She did. She would. And immediately the future hostess of all the
+Europeans in Sulaco had the physical experience of the earth falling
+away from under her. It vanished completely, even to the very sound of
+the bell. When her feet touched the ground again, the bell was still
+ringing in the valley; she put her hands up to her hair, breathing
+quickly, and glanced up and down the stony lane. It was reassuringly
+empty. Meantime, Charles, stepping with one foot into a dry and dusty
+ditch, picked up the open parasol, which had bounded away from them
+with a martial sound of drum taps. He handed it to her soberly, a little
+crestfallen.
+
+They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand on his arm, the
+first words he pronounced were--
+
+“It’s lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast town. You’ve
+heard its name. It is Sulaco. I am so glad poor father did get that
+house. He bought a big house there years ago, in order that there should
+always be a Casa Gould in the principal town of what used to be called
+the Occidental Province. I lived there once, as a small boy, with my
+dear mother, for a whole year, while poor father was away in the United
+States on business. You shall be the new mistress of the Casa Gould.”
+
+And later, in the inhabited corner of the Palazzo above the vineyards,
+the marble hills, the pines and olives of Lucca, he also said--
+
+“The name of Gould has been always highly respected in Sulaco. My uncle
+Harry was chief of the State for some time, and has left a great name
+amongst the first families. By this I mean the pure Creole families, who
+take no part in the miserable farce of governments. Uncle Harry was no
+adventurer. In Costaguana we Goulds are no adventurers. He was of the
+country, and he loved it, but he remained essentially an Englishman
+in his ideas. He made use of the political cry of his time. It was
+Federation. But he was no politician. He simply stood up for social
+order out of pure love for rational liberty and from his hate of
+oppression. There was no nonsense about him. He went to work in his
+own way because it seemed right, just as I feel I must lay hold of that
+mine.”
+
+In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full of the
+country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that girl, and his
+mind of the San Tome Concession. He added that he would have to leave
+her for a few days to find an American, a man from San Francisco, who
+was still somewhere in Europe. A few months before he had made his
+acquaintance in an old historic German town, situated in a mining
+district. The American had his womankind with him, but seemed lonely
+while they were sketching all day long the old doorways and the
+turreted corners of the mediaeval houses. Charles Gould had with him the
+inseparable companionship of the mine. The other man was interested in
+mining enterprises, knew something of Costaguana, and was no stranger to
+the name of Gould. They had talked together with some intimacy which
+was made possible by the difference of their ages. Charles wanted now
+to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible character. His
+father’s fortune in Costaguana, which he had supposed to be still
+considerable, seemed to have melted in the rascally crucible of
+revolutions. Apart from some ten thousand pounds deposited in England,
+there appeared to be nothing left except the house in Sulaco, a vague
+right of forest exploitation in a remote and savage district, and the
+San Tome Concession, which had attended his poor father to the very
+brink of the grave.
+
+He explained those things. It was late when they parted. She had never
+before given him such a fascinating vision of herself. All the eagerness
+of youth for a strange life, for great distances, for a future in which
+there was an air of adventure, of combat--a subtle thought of redress
+and conquest, had filled her with an intense excitement, which she
+returned to the giver with a more open and exquisite display of
+tenderness.
+
+He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he found himself alone
+he became sober. That irreparable change a death makes in the course
+of our daily thoughts can be felt in a vague and poignant discomfort
+of mind. It hurt Charles Gould to feel that never more, by no effort of
+will, would he be able to think of his father in the same way he used
+to think of him when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was
+no longer in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his own
+identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action.
+In this his instinct was unerring. Action is consolatory. It is the
+enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the
+conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.
+For his action, the mine was obviously the only field. It was imperative
+sometimes to know how to disobey the solemn wishes of the dead.
+He resolved firmly to make his disobedience as thorough (by way of
+atonement) as it well could be. The mine had been the cause of an absurd
+moral disaster; its working must be made a serious and moral success.
+He owed it to the dead man’s memory. Such were the--properly
+speaking--emotions of Charles Gould. His thoughts ran upon the means
+of raising a large amount of capital in San Francisco or elsewhere; and
+incidentally there occurred to him also the general reflection that the
+counsel of the departed must be an unsound guide. Not one of them
+could be aware beforehand what enormous changes the death of any given
+individual may produce in the very aspect of the world.
+
+The latest phase in the history of the mine Mrs. Gould knew from
+personal experience. It was in essence the history of her married life.
+The mantle of the Goulds’ hereditary position in Sulaco had descended
+amply upon her little person; but she would not allow the peculiarities
+of the strange garment to weigh down the vivacity of her character,
+which was the sign of no mere mechanical sprightliness, but of an
+eager intelligence. It must not be supposed that Mrs. Gould’s mind was
+masculine. A woman with a masculine mind is not a being of
+superior efficiency; she is simply a phenomenon of imperfect
+differentiation--interestingly barren and without importance. Dona
+Emilia’s intelligence being feminine led her to achieve the conquest of
+Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her unselfishness and sympathy.
+She could converse charmingly, but she was not talkative. The wisdom of
+the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition of theories
+any more than with the defence of prejudices, has no random words at its
+command. The words it pronounces have the value of acts of integrity,
+tolerance, and compassion. A woman’s true tenderness, like the true
+virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind. The ladies
+of Sulaco adored Mrs. Gould. “They still look upon me as something of a
+monster,” Mrs. Gould had said pleasantly to one of the three gentlemen
+from San Francisco she had to entertain in her new Sulaco house just
+about a year after her marriage.
+
+They were her first visitors from abroad, and they had come to look at
+the San Tome mine. She jested most agreeably, they thought; and Charles
+Gould, besides knowing thoroughly what he was about, had shown himself
+a real hustler. These facts caused them to be well disposed towards his
+wife. An unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by a slight flavour of irony,
+made her talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and
+provoked them to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good
+deal of deference. Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by
+an idealistic view of success they would have been amazed at the state
+of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had been amazed at the
+tireless activity of her body. She would--in her own words--have
+been for them “something of a monster.” However, the Goulds were in
+essentials a reticent couple, and their guests departed without the
+suspicion of any other purpose but simple profit in the working of a
+silver mine. Mrs. Gould had out her own carriage, with two white mules,
+to drive them down to the harbour, whence the Ceres was to carry them
+off into the Olympus of plutocrats. Captain Mitchell had snatched at the
+occasion of leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, confidential
+mutter, “This marks an epoch.”
+
+Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broad flight of stone
+steps was overlooked silently from a niche in the wall by a Madonna in
+blue robes with the crowned child sitting on her arm. Subdued voices
+ascended in the early mornings from the paved well of the quadrangle,
+with the stamping of horses and mules led out in pairs to drink at the
+cistern. A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow, blade-like
+leaves over the square pool of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled
+up on the edge, holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand.
+Barefooted servants passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways
+below; two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker with
+the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda--her own camerista--bearing
+high up, swung from her hand raised above her raven black head, a bunch
+of starched under-skirts dazzlingly white in the slant of sunshine. Then
+the old porter would hobble in, sweeping the flagstones, and the
+house was ready for the day. All the lofty rooms on three sides of
+the quadrangle opened into each other and into the corredor, with its
+wrought-iron railings and a border of flowers, whence, like the lady of
+the mediaeval castle, she could witness from above all the departures
+and arrivals of the Casa, to which the sonorous arched gateway lent an
+air of stately importance.
+
+She had watched her carriage roll away with the three guests from the
+north. She smiled. Their three arms went up simultaneously to their
+three hats. Captain Mitchell, the fourth, in attendance, had already
+begun a pompous discourse. Then she lingered. She lingered, approaching
+her face to the clusters of flowers here and there as if to give time
+to her thoughts to catch up with her slow footsteps along the straight
+vista of the corredor.
+
+A fringed Indian hammock from Aroa, gay with coloured featherwork, had
+been swung judiciously in a corner that caught the early sun; for the
+mornings are cool in Sulaco. The cluster of _flor de noche buena_ blazed
+in great masses before the open glass doors of the reception rooms. A
+big green parrot, brilliant like an emerald in a cage that flashed like
+gold, screamed out ferociously, “_Viva Costaguana!_” then called twice
+mellifluously, “Leonarda! Leonarda!” in imitation of Mrs. Gould’s voice,
+and suddenly took refuge in immobility and silence. Mrs. Gould reached
+the end of the gallery and put her head through the door of her
+husband’s room.
+
+Charles Gould, with one foot on a low wooden stool, was already
+strapping his spurs. He wanted to hurry back to the mine. Mrs. Gould,
+without coming in, glanced about the room. One tall, broad bookcase,
+with glass doors, was full of books; but in the other, without shelves,
+and lined with red baize, were arranged firearms: Winchester carbines,
+revolvers, a couple of shot-guns, and even two pairs of double-barrelled
+holster pistols. Between them, by itself, upon a strip of scarlet
+velvet, hung an old cavalry sabre, once the property of Don Enrique
+Gould, the hero of the Occidental Province, presented by Don Jose
+Avellanos, the hereditary friend of the family.
+
+Otherwise, the plastered white walls were completely bare, except for
+a water-colour sketch of the San Tome mountain--the work of Dona Emilia
+herself. In the middle of the red-tiled floor stood two long tables
+littered with plans and papers, a few chairs, and a glass show-case
+containing specimens of ore from the mine. Mrs. Gould, looking at all
+these things in turn, wondered aloud why the talk of these wealthy and
+enterprising men discussing the prospects, the working, and the safety
+of the mine rendered her so impatient and uneasy, whereas she could talk
+of the mine by the hour with her husband with unwearied interest and
+satisfaction. And dropping her eyelids expressively, she added--
+
+“What do you feel about it, Charley?”
+
+Then, surprised at her husband’s silence, she raised her eyes, opened
+wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He had done with the spurs, and,
+twisting his moustache with both hands, horizontally, he contemplated
+her from the height of his long legs with a visible appreciation of her
+appearance. The consciousness of being thus contemplated pleased Mrs.
+Gould.
+
+“They are considerable men,” he said.
+
+“I know. But have you listened to their conversation? They don’t seem to
+have understood anything they have seen here.”
+
+“They have seen the mine. They have understood that to some purpose,”
+ Charles Gould interjected, in defence of the visitors; and then his
+wife mentioned the name of the most considerable of the three. He was
+considerable in finance and in industry. His name was familiar to many
+millions of people. He was so considerable that he would never have
+travelled so far away from the centre of his activity if the doctors had
+not insisted, with veiled menaces, on his taking a long holiday.
+
+“Mr. Holroyd’s sense of religion,” Mrs. Gould pursued, “was shocked
+and disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-up saints in the
+cathedral--the worship, he called it, of wood and tinsel. But it seemed
+to me that he looked upon his own God as a sort of influential partner,
+who gets his share of profits in the endowment of churches. That’s a
+sort of idolatry. He told me he endowed churches every year, Charley.”
+
+“No end of them,” said Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at the mobility
+of her physiognomy. “All over the country. He’s famous for that sort of
+munificence.” “Oh, he didn’t boast,” Mrs. Gould declared, scrupulously.
+“I believe he’s really a good man, but so stupid! A poor Chulo who
+offers a little silver arm or leg to thank his god for a cure is as
+rational and more touching.”
+
+“He’s at the head of immense silver and iron interests,” Charles Gould
+observed.
+
+“Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He’s a very civil man, though
+he looked awfully solemn when he first saw the Madonna on the staircase,
+who’s only wood and paint; but he said nothing to me. My dear Charley,
+I heard those men talk among themselves. Can it be that they really wish
+to become, for an immense consideration, drawers of water and hewers of
+wood to all the countries and nations of the earth?”
+
+“A man must work to some end,” Charles Gould said, vaguely.
+
+Mrs. Gould, frowning, surveyed him from head to foot. With his riding
+breeches, leather leggings (an article of apparel never before seen in
+Costaguana), a Norfolk coat of grey flannel, and those great flaming
+moustaches, he suggested an officer of cavalry turned gentleman farmer.
+This combination was gratifying to Mrs. Gould’s tastes. “How thin the
+poor boy is!” she thought. “He overworks himself.” But there was no
+denying that his fine-drawn, keen red face, and his whole, long-limbed,
+lank person had an air of breeding and distinction. And Mrs. Gould
+relented.
+
+“I only wondered what you felt,” she murmured, gently.
+
+During the last few days, as it happened, Charles Gould had been kept
+too busy thinking twice before he spoke to have paid much attention to
+the state of his feelings. But theirs was a successful match, and he had
+no difficulty in finding his answer.
+
+“The best of my feelings are in your keeping, my dear,” he said,
+lightly; and there was so much truth in that obscure phrase that he
+experienced towards her at the moment a great increase of gratitude and
+tenderness.
+
+Mrs. Gould, however, did not seem to find this answer in the least
+obscure. She brightened up delicately; already he had changed his tone.
+
+“But there are facts. The worth of the mine--as a mine--is beyond doubt.
+It shall make us very wealthy. The mere working of it is a matter of
+technical knowledge, which I have--which ten thousand other men in the
+world have. But its safety, its continued existence as an enterprise,
+giving a return to men--to strangers, comparative strangers--who invest
+money in it, is left altogether in my hands. I have inspired confidence
+in a man of wealth and position. You seem to think this perfectly
+natural--do you? Well, I don’t know. I don’t know why I have; but it is
+a fact. This fact makes everything possible, because without it I would
+never have thought of disregarding my father’s wishes. I would never
+have disposed of the Concession as a speculator disposes of a valuable
+right to a company--for cash and shares, to grow rich eventually if
+possible, but at any rate to put some money at once in his pocket. No.
+Even if it had been feasible--which I doubt--I would not have done so.
+Poor father did not understand. He was afraid I would hang on to the
+ruinous thing, waiting for just some such chance, and waste my life
+miserably. That was the true sense of his prohibition, which we have
+deliberately set aside.”
+
+They were walking up and down the corredor. Her head just reached to his
+shoulder. His arm, extended downwards, was about her waist. His spurs
+jingled slightly.
+
+“He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know me. He parted from me
+for my sake, and he would never let me come back. He was always talking
+in his letters of leaving Costaguana, of abandoning everything and
+making his escape. But he was too valuable a prey. They would have
+thrown him into one of their prisons at the first suspicion.”
+
+His spurred feet clinked slowly. He was bending over his wife as they
+walked. The big parrot, turning its head askew, followed their pacing
+figures with a round, unblinking eye.
+
+“He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years old he used to talk to
+me as if I had been grown up. When I was in Europe he wrote to me every
+month. Ten, twelve pages every month of my life for ten years. And,
+after all, he did not know me! Just think of it--ten whole years away;
+the years I was growing up into a man. He could not know me. Do you
+think he could?”
+
+Mrs. Gould shook her head negatively; which was just what her husband
+had expected from the strength of the argument. But she shook her
+head negatively only because she thought that no one could know her
+Charles--really know him for what he was but herself. The thing was
+obvious. It could be felt. It required no argument. And poor Mr. Gould,
+senior, who had died too soon to ever hear of their engagement, remained
+too shadowy a figure for her to be credited with knowledge of any sort
+whatever.
+
+“No, he did not understand. In my view this mine could never have been
+a thing to sell. Never! After all his misery I simply could not have
+touched it for money alone,” Charles Gould pursued: and she pressed her
+head to his shoulder approvingly.
+
+These two young people remembered the life which had ended wretchedly
+just when their own lives had come together in that splendour of hopeful
+love, which to the most sensible minds appears like a triumph of good
+over all the evils of the earth. A vague idea of rehabilitation had
+entered the plan of their life. That it was so vague as to elude the
+support of argument made it only the stronger. It had presented itself
+to them at the instant when the woman’s instinct of devotion and the
+man’s instinct of activity receive from the strongest of illusions their
+most powerful impulse. The very prohibition imposed the necessity of
+success. It was as if they had been morally bound to make good their
+vigorous view of life against the unnatural error of weariness and
+despair. If the idea of wealth was present to them it was only in so
+far as it was bound with that other success. Mrs. Gould, an orphan from
+early childhood and without fortune, brought up in an atmosphere of
+intellectual interests, had never considered the aspects of great
+wealth. They were too remote, and she had not learned that they were
+desirable. On the other hand, she had not known anything of absolute
+want. Even the very poverty of her aunt, the Marchesa, had nothing
+intolerable to a refined mind; it seemed in accord with a great grief:
+it had the austerity of a sacrifice offered to a noble ideal. Thus even
+the most legitimate touch of materialism was wanting in Mrs. Gould’s
+character. The dead man of whom she thought with tenderness (because
+he was Charley’s father) and with some impatience (because he had been
+weak), must be put completely in the wrong. Nothing else would do
+to keep their prosperity without a stain on its only real, on its
+immaterial side!
+
+Charles Gould, on his part, had been obliged to keep the idea of wealth
+well to the fore; but he brought it forward as a means, not as an end.
+Unless the mine was good business it could not be touched. He had to
+insist on that aspect of the enterprise. It was his lever to move
+men who had capital. And Charles Gould believed in the mine. He
+knew everything that could be known of it. His faith in the mine was
+contagious, though it was not served by a great eloquence; but business
+men are frequently as sanguine and imaginative as lovers. They are
+affected by a personality much oftener than people would suppose; and
+Charles Gould, in his unshaken assurance, was absolutely convincing.
+Besides, it was a matter of common knowledge to the men to whom he
+addressed himself that mining in Costaguana was a game that could be
+made considerably more than worth the candle. The men of affairs knew that
+very well. The real difficulty in touching it was elsewhere. Against
+that there was an implication of calm and implacable resolution in
+Charles Gould’s very voice. Men of affairs venture sometimes on acts
+that the common judgment of the world would pronounce absurd; they make
+their decisions on apparently impulsive and human grounds. “Very well,”
+ had said the considerable personage to whom Charles Gould on his way
+out through San Francisco had lucidly exposed his point of view. “Let us
+suppose that the mining affairs of Sulaco are taken in hand. There would
+then be in it: first, the house of Holroyd, which is all right; then,
+Mr. Charles Gould, a citizen of Costaguana, who is also all right; and,
+lastly, the Government of the Republic. So far this resembles the first
+start of the Atacama nitrate fields, where there was a financing house,
+a gentleman of the name of Edwards, and--a Government; or, rather, two
+Governments--two South American Governments. And you know what came of
+it. War came of it; devastating and prolonged war came of it, Mr. Gould.
+However, here we possess the advantage of having only one South
+American Government hanging around for plunder out of the deal. It is an
+advantage; but then there are degrees of badness, and that Government is
+the Costaguana Government.”
+
+Thus spoke the considerable personage, the millionaire endower of
+churches on a scale befitting the greatness of his native land--the same
+to whom the doctors used the language of horrid and veiled menaces. He
+was a big-limbed, deliberate man, whose quiet burliness lent to an ample
+silk-faced frock-coat a superfine dignity. His hair was iron grey, his
+eyebrows were still black, and his massive profile was the profile of
+a Caesar’s head on an old Roman coin. But his parentage was German and
+Scotch and English, with remote strains of Danish and French blood,
+giving him the temperament of a Puritan and an insatiable imagination
+of conquest. He was completely unbending to his visitor, because of the
+warm introduction the visitor had brought from Europe, and because of
+an irrational liking for earnestness and determination wherever met, to
+whatever end directed.
+
+“The Costaguana Government shall play its hand for all it’s worth--and
+don’t you forget it, Mr. Gould. Now, what is Costaguana? It is the
+bottomless pit of 10 per cent. loans and other fool investments.
+European capital has been flung into it with both hands for years. Not
+ours, though. We in this country know just about enough to keep indoors
+when it rains. We can sit and watch. Of course, some day we shall step
+in. We are bound to. But there’s no hurry. Time itself has got to wait
+on the greatest country in the whole of God’s Universe. We shall be
+giving the word for everything: industry, trade, law, journalism, art,
+politics, and religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith’s Sound,
+and beyond, too, if anything worth taking hold of turns up at the North
+Pole. And then we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying
+islands and continents of the earth. We shall run the world’s business
+whether the world likes it or not. The world can’t help it--and neither
+can we, I guess.”
+
+By this he meant to express his faith in destiny in words suitable to
+his intelligence, which was unskilled in the presentation of general
+ideas. His intelligence was nourished on facts; and Charles Gould, whose
+imagination had been permanently affected by the one great fact of a
+silver mine, had no objection to this theory of the world’s future.
+If it had seemed distasteful for a moment it was because the sudden
+statement of such vast eventualities dwarfed almost to nothingness the
+actual matter in hand. He and his plans and all the mineral wealth of
+the Occidental Province appeared suddenly robbed of every vestige of
+magnitude. The sensation was disagreeable; but Charles Gould was not
+dull. Already he felt that he was producing a favourable impression; the
+consciousness of that flattering fact helped him to a vague smile, which
+his big interlocutor took for a smile of discreet and admiring assent.
+He smiled quietly, too; and immediately Charles Gould, with that mental
+agility mankind will display in defence of a cherished hope, reflected
+that the very apparent insignificance of his aim would help him to
+success. His personality and his mine would be taken up because it was
+a matter of no great consequence, one way or another, to a man who
+referred his action to such a prodigious destiny. And Charles Gould was
+not humiliated by this consideration, because the thing remained as
+big as ever for him. Nobody else’s vast conceptions of destiny could
+diminish the aspect of his desire for the redemption of the San Tome
+mine. In comparison to the correctness of his aim, definite in space and
+absolutely attainable within a limited time, the other man appeared for
+an instant as a dreamy idealist of no importance.
+
+The great man, massive and benignant, had been looking at him
+thoughtfully; when he broke the short silence it was to remark that
+concessions flew about thick in the air of Costaguana. Any simple soul
+that just yearned to be taken in could bring down a concession at the
+first shot.
+
+“Our consuls get their mouths stopped with them,” he continued, with a
+twinkle of genial scorn in his eyes. But in a moment he became grave.
+“A conscientious, upright man, that cares nothing for boodle, and keeps
+clear of their intrigues, conspiracies, and factions, soon gets his
+passports. See that, Mr. Gould? Persona non grata. That’s the reason our
+Government is never properly informed. On the other hand, Europe must be
+kept out of this continent, and for proper interference on our part the
+time is not yet ripe, I dare say. But we here--we are not this country’s
+Government, neither are we simple souls. Your affair is all right. The
+main question for us is whether the second partner, and that’s you, is
+the right sort to hold his own against the third and unwelcome partner,
+which is one or another of the high and mighty robber gangs that run the
+Costaguana Government. What do you think, Mr. Gould, eh?”
+
+He bent forward to look steadily into the unflinching eyes of Charles
+Gould, who, remembering the large box full of his father’s letters, put
+the accumulated scorn and bitterness of many years into the tone of his
+answer--
+
+“As far as the knowledge of these men and their methods and their
+politics is concerned, I can answer for myself. I have been fed on
+that sort of knowledge since I was a boy. I am not likely to fall into
+mistakes from excess of optimism.”
+
+“Not likely, eh? That’s all right. Tact and a stiff upper lip is what
+you’ll want; and you could bluff a little on the strength of your
+backing. Not too much, though. We will go with you as long as the thing
+runs straight. But we won’t be drawn into any large trouble. This is the
+experiment which I am willing to make. There is some risk, and we will
+take it; but if you can’t keep up your end, we will stand our loss, of
+course, and then--we’ll let the thing go. This mine can wait; it has
+been shut up before, as you know. You must understand that under no
+circumstances will we consent to throw good money after bad.”
+
+Thus the great personage had spoken then, in his own private office, in
+a great city where other men (very considerable in the eyes of a vain
+populace) waited with alacrity upon a wave of his hand. And rather more
+than a year later, during his unexpected appearance in Sulaco, he had
+emphasized his uncompromising attitude with a freedom of sincerity
+permitted to his wealth and influence. He did this with the less
+reserve, perhaps, because the inspection of what had been done, and more
+still the way in which successive steps had been taken, had impressed
+him with the conviction that Charles Gould was perfectly capable of
+keeping up his end.
+
+“This young fellow,” he thought to himself, “may yet become a power in
+the land.”
+
+This thought flattered him, for hitherto the only account of this young
+man he could give to his intimates was--
+
+“My brother-in-law met him in one of these one-horse old German towns,
+near some mines, and sent him on to me with a letter. He’s one of the
+Costaguana Goulds, pure-bred Englishmen, but all born in the country.
+His uncle went into politics, was the last Provincial President of
+Sulaco, and got shot after a battle. His father was a prominent business
+man in Sta. Marta, tried to keep clear of their politics, and died
+ruined after a lot of revolutions. And that’s your Costaguana in a
+nutshell.”
+
+Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as to his motives,
+even by his intimates. The outside world was at liberty to wonder
+respectfully at the hidden meaning of his actions. He was so great a man
+that his lavish patronage of the “purer forms of Christianity” (which in
+its naive form of church-building amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by
+his fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble spirit.
+But in his own circles of the financial world the taking up of such a
+thing as the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather
+as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man’s caprice. In
+the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks
+of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation
+of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged
+humorous glances, which meant that they were not let into the secrets
+of the San Tome business. The Costaguana mail (it was never large--one
+fairly heavy envelope) was taken unopened straight into the great man’s
+room, and no instructions dealing with it had ever been issued thence.
+The office whispered that he answered personally--and not by dictation
+either, but actually writing in his own hand, with pen and ink, and, it
+was to be supposed, taking a copy in his own private press copy-book,
+inaccessible to profane eyes. Some scornful young men, insignificant
+pieces of minor machinery in that eleven-storey-high workshop of great
+affairs, expressed frankly their private opinion that the great chief
+had done at last something silly, and was ashamed of his folly; others,
+elderly and insignificant, but full of romantic reverence for the
+business that had devoured their best years, used to mutter darkly and
+knowingly that this was a portentous sign; that the Holroyd connection
+meant by-and-by to get hold of the whole Republic of Costaguana, lock,
+stock, and barrel. But, in fact, the hobby theory was the right one. It
+interested the great man to attend personally to the San Tome mine; it
+interested him so much that he allowed this hobby to give a direction to
+the first complete holiday he had taken for quite a startling number
+of years. He was not running a great enterprise there; no mere railway
+board or industrial corporation. He was running a man! A success would
+have pleased him very much on refreshingly novel grounds; but, on the
+other side of the same feeling, it was incumbent upon him to cast it
+off utterly at the first sign of failure. A man may be thrown off. The
+papers had unfortunately trumpeted all over the land his journey to
+Costaguana. If he was pleased at the way Charles Gould was going on, he
+infused an added grimness into his assurances of support. Even at the
+very last interview, half an hour or so before he rolled out of the
+patio, hat in hand, behind Mrs. Gould’s white mules, he had said in
+Charles’s room--
+
+“You go ahead in your own way, and I shall know how to help you as long
+as you hold your own. But you may rest assured that in a given case we
+shall know how to drop you in time.”
+
+To this Charles Gould’s only answer had been: “You may begin sending out
+the machinery as soon as you like.”
+
+And the great man had liked this imperturbable assurance. The secret
+of it was that to Charles Gould’s mind these uncompromising terms were
+agreeable. Like this the mine preserved its identity, with which he had
+endowed it as a boy; and it remained dependent on himself alone. It was
+a serious affair, and he, too, took it grimly.
+
+“Of course,” he said to his wife, alluding to this last conversation
+with the departed guest, while they walked slowly up and down the
+corredor, followed by the irritated eye of the parrot--“of course, a
+man of that sort can take up a thing or drop it when he likes. He will
+suffer from no sense of defeat. He may have to give in, or he may have
+to die to-morrow, but the great silver and iron interests will survive,
+and some day will get hold of Costaguana along with the rest of the
+world.”
+
+They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching the sound of a word
+belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere. Parrots are very
+human.
+
+“Viva Costaguana!” he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and,
+instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up
+somnolence behind the glittering wires.
+
+“And do you believe that, Charley?” Mrs. Gould asked. “This seems to me
+most awful materialism, and--”
+
+“My dear, it’s nothing to me,” interrupted her husband, in a reasonable
+tone. “I make use of what I see. What’s it to me whether his talk is the
+voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There’s a good
+deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The
+air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have
+you forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours here--?”
+
+“Oh, but that’s different,” protested Mrs. Gould, almost shocked. The
+allusion was not to the point. Don Jose was a dear good man, who talked
+very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San Tome
+mine. “How can you compare them, Charles?” she exclaimed, reproachfully.
+“He has suffered--and yet he hopes.”
+
+The working competence of men--which she never questioned--was very
+surprising to Mrs. Gould, because upon so many obvious issues they
+showed themselves strangely muddle-headed.
+
+Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which secured for him at once
+his wife’s anxious sympathy, assured her that he was not comparing. He
+was an American himself, after all, and perhaps he could understand both
+kinds of eloquence--“if it were worth while to try,” he added, grimly.
+But he had breathed the air of England longer than any of his people had
+done for three generations, and really he begged to be excused. His
+poor father could be eloquent, too. And he asked his wife whether she
+remembered a passage in one of his father’s last letters where Mr.
+Gould had expressed the conviction that “God looked wrathfully at these
+countries, or else He would let some ray of hope fall through a rift in
+the appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime that hung over
+the Queen of Continents.”
+
+Mrs. Gould had not forgotten. “You read it to me, Charley,” she
+murmured. “It was a striking pronouncement. How deeply your father must
+have felt its terrible sadness!”
+
+“He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him,” said Charles Gould.
+“But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here is law, good
+faith, order, security. Any one can declaim about these things, but I
+pin my faith to material interests. Only let the material interests once
+get a firm footing, and they are bound to impose the conditions on
+which alone they can continue to exist. That’s how your money-making is
+justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified
+because the security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed
+people. A better justice will come afterwards. That’s your ray of hope.”
+ His arm pressed her slight form closer to his side for a moment. “And
+who knows whether in that sense even the San Tome mine may not become
+that little rift in the darkness which poor father despaired of ever
+seeing?”
+
+She glanced up at him with admiration. He was competent; he had given a
+vast shape to the vagueness of her unselfish ambitions.
+
+“Charley,” she said, “you are splendidly disobedient.”
+
+He left her suddenly in the corredor to go and get his hat, a soft, grey
+sombrero, an article of national costume which combined unexpectedly
+well with his English get-up. He came back, a riding-whip under his arm,
+buttoning up a dogskin glove; his face reflected the resolute nature of
+his thoughts. His wife had waited for him at the head of the stairs, and
+before he gave her the parting kiss he finished the conversation--
+
+“What should be perfectly clear to us,” he said, “is the fact that there
+is no going back. Where could we begin life afresh? We are in now for
+all that there is in us.”
+
+He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully.
+Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould
+Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at
+once in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose
+its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment
+he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed
+him further than he meant to go; and with the roundabout logic of
+emotions, he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with
+success. There was no going back.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+Mrs. Gould was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that feeling.
+It made life exciting, and she was too much of a woman not to like
+excitement. But it frightened her, too, a little; and when Don Jose
+Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go so far as to say,
+“Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; even if some untoward event
+were yet to destroy your work--which God forbid!--you would have
+deserved well of your country,” Mrs. Gould would look up from the
+tea-table profoundly at her unmoved husband stirring the spoon in the
+cup as though he had not heard a word.
+
+Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort. He could not praise
+enough dear Carlos’s tact and courage. His English, rock-like quality
+of character was his best safeguard, Don Jose affirmed; and, turning to
+Mrs. Gould, “As to you, Emilia, my soul”--he would address her with the
+familiarity of his age and old friendship--“you are as true a patriot as
+though you had been born in our midst.”
+
+This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs. Gould,
+accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for labour,
+had seen the land with a deeper glance than a trueborn Costaguanera
+could have done. In her travel-worn riding habit, her face powdered
+white like a plaster cast, with a further protection of a small silk
+mask during the heat of the day, she rode on a well-shaped, light-footed
+pony in the centre of a little cavalcade. Two mozos de campo,
+picturesque in great hats, with spurred bare heels, in white embroidered
+calzoneras, leather jackets and striped ponchos, rode ahead with
+carbines across their shoulders, swaying in unison to the pace of the
+horses. A tropilla of pack mules brought up the rear in charge of a thin
+brown muleteer, sitting his long-eared beast very near the tail, legs
+thrust far forward, the wide brim of his hat set far back, making a sort
+of halo for his head. An old Costaguana officer, a retired senior major
+of humble origin, but patronized by the first families on account of
+his Blanco opinions, had been recommended by Don Jose for commissary and
+organizer of that expedition. The points of his grey moustache hung far
+below his chin, and, riding on Mrs. Gould’s left hand, he looked about
+with kindly eyes, pointing out the features of the country, telling the
+names of the little pueblos and of the estates, of the smooth-walled
+haciendas like long fortresses crowning the knolls above the level of
+the Sulaco Valley. It unrolled itself, with green young crops, plains,
+woodland, and gleams of water, park-like, from the blue vapour of the
+distant sierra to an immense quivering horizon of grass and sky, where
+big white clouds seemed to fall slowly into the darkness of their own
+shadows.
+
+Men ploughed with wooden ploughs and yoked oxen, small on a boundless
+expanse, as if attacking immensity itself. The mounted figures of
+vaqueros galloped in the distance, and the great herds fed with all
+their horned heads one way, in one single wavering line as far as eye
+could reach across the broad potreros. A spreading cotton-wool tree
+shaded a thatched ranche by the road; the trudging files of burdened
+Indians taking off their hats, would lift sad, mute eyes to the
+cavalcade raising the dust of the crumbling camino real made by the
+hands of their enslaved forefathers. And Mrs. Gould, with each day’s
+journey, seemed to come nearer to the soul of the land in the tremendous
+disclosure of this interior unaffected by the slight European veneer
+of the coast towns, a great land of plain and mountain and people,
+suffering and mute, waiting for the future in a pathetic immobility of
+patience.
+
+She knew its sights and its hospitality, dispensed with a sort of
+slumbrous dignity in those great houses presenting long, blind walls and
+heavy portals to the wind-swept pastures. She was given the head of the
+tables, where masters and dependants sat in a simple and patriarchal
+state. The ladies of the house would talk softly in the moonlight under
+the orange trees of the courtyards, impressing upon her the sweetness
+of their voices and the something mysterious in the quietude of their
+lives. In the morning the gentlemen, well mounted in braided sombreros
+and embroidered riding suits, with much silver on the trappings of
+their horses, would ride forth to escort the departing guests before
+committing them, with grave good-byes, to the care of God at the
+boundary pillars of their estates. In all these households she
+could hear stories of political outrage; friends, relatives, ruined,
+imprisoned, killed in the battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously
+executed in ferocious proscriptions, as though the government of the
+country had been a struggle of lust between bands of absurd devils let
+loose upon the land with sabres and uniforms and grandiloquent phrases.
+And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace, the dread of
+officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administration without law,
+without security, and without justice.
+
+She bore a whole two months of wandering very well; she had that power
+of resistance to fatigue which one discovers here and there in some
+quite frail-looking women with surprise--like a state of possession by
+a remarkably stubborn spirit. Don Pepe--the old Costaguana major--after
+much display of solicitude for the delicate lady, had ended by
+conferring upon her the name of the “Never-tired Senora.” Mrs. Gould
+was indeed becoming a Costaguanera. Having acquired in Southern Europe a
+knowledge of true peasantry, she was able to appreciate the great worth
+of the people. She saw the man under the silent, sad-eyed beast of
+burden. She saw them on the road carrying loads, lonely figures upon
+the plain, toiling under great straw hats, with their white clothing
+flapping about their limbs in the wind; she remembered the villages by
+some group of Indian women at the fountain impressed upon her memory,
+by the face of some young Indian girl with a melancholy and sensual
+profile, raising an earthenware vessel of cool water at the door of a
+dark hut with a wooden porch cumbered with great brown jars. The solid
+wooden wheels of an ox-cart, halted with its shafts in the dust, showed
+the strokes of the axe; and a party of charcoal carriers, with each
+man’s load resting above his head on the top of the low mud wall, slept
+stretched in a row within the strip of shade.
+
+The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left by the conquerors
+proclaimed the disregard of human labour, the tribute-labour of vanished
+nations. The power of king and church was gone, but at the sight of
+some heavy ruinous pile overtopping from a knoll the low mud walls of a
+village, Don Pepe would interrupt the tale of his campaigns to exclaim--
+
+“Poor Costaguana! Before, it was everything for the Padres, nothing for
+the people; and now it is everything for those great politicos in Sta.
+Marta, for negroes and thieves.”
+
+Charles talked with the alcaldes, with the fiscales, with the
+principal people in towns, and with the caballeros on the estates. The
+commandantes of the districts offered him escorts--for he could show an
+authorization from the Sulaco political chief of the day. How much the
+document had cost him in gold twenty-dollar pieces was a secret between
+himself, a great man in the United States (who condescended to answer
+the Sulaco mail with his own hand), and a great man of another sort,
+with a dark olive complexion and shifty eyes, inhabiting then the Palace
+of the Intendencia in Sulaco, and who piqued himself on his culture and
+Europeanism generally in a rather French style because he had lived in
+Europe for some years--in exile, he said. However, it was pretty well
+known that just before this exile he had incautiously gambled away all
+the cash in the Custom House of a small port where a friend in power had
+procured for him the post of subcollector. That youthful indiscretion
+had, amongst other inconveniences, obliged him to earn his living for a
+time as a cafe waiter in Madrid; but his talents must have been great,
+after all, since they had enabled him to retrieve his political
+fortunes so splendidly. Charles Gould, exposing his business with an
+imperturbable steadiness, called him Excellency.
+
+The provincial Excellency assumed a weary superiority, tilting his chair
+far back near an open window in the true Costaguana manner. The military
+band happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza just then,
+and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to listen
+to a favourite passage.
+
+“Exquisite, delicious!” he murmured; while Charles Gould waited,
+standing by with inscrutable patience. “Lucia, Lucia di Lammermoor! I am
+passionate for music. It transports me. Ha! the divine--ha!--Mozart. Si!
+divine . . . What is it you were saying?”
+
+Of course, rumours had reached him already of the newcomer’s intentions.
+Besides, he had received an official warning from Sta. Marta. His manner
+was intended simply to conceal his curiosity and impress his visitor.
+But after he had locked up something valuable in the drawer of a large
+writing-desk in a distant part of the room, he became very affable, and
+walked back to his chair smartly.
+
+“If you intend to build villages and assemble a population near the
+mine, you shall require a decree of the Minister of the Interior for
+that,” he suggested in a business-like manner.
+
+“I have already sent a memorial,” said Charles Gould, steadily, “and I
+reckon now confidently upon your Excellency’s favourable conclusions.”
+
+The Excellency was a man of many moods. With the receipt of the money
+a great mellowness had descended upon his simple soul. Unexpectedly he
+fetched a deep sigh.
+
+“Ah, Don Carlos! What we want is advanced men like you in the province.
+The lethargy--the lethargy of these aristocrats! The want of public
+spirit! The absence of all enterprise! I, with my profound studies in
+Europe, you understand--”
+
+With one hand thrust into his swelling bosom, he rose and fell on
+his toes, and for ten minutes, almost without drawing breath, went on
+hurling himself intellectually to the assault of Charles Gould’s polite
+silence; and when, stopping abruptly, he fell back into his chair,
+it was as though he had been beaten off from a fortress. To save his
+dignity he hastened to dismiss this silent man with a solemn
+inclination of the head and the words, pronounced with moody, fatigued
+condescension--
+
+“You may depend upon my enlightened goodwill as long as your conduct as
+a good citizen deserves it.”
+
+He took up a paper fan and began to cool himself with a consequential
+air, while Charles Gould bowed and withdrew. Then he dropped the fan
+at once, and stared with an appearance of wonder and perplexity at the
+closed door for quite a long time. At last he shrugged his shoulders as
+if to assure himself of his disdain. Cold, dull. No intellectuality. Red
+hair. A true Englishman. He despised him.
+
+His face darkened. What meant this unimpressed and frigid behaviour? He
+was the first of the successive politicians sent out from the capital
+to rule the Occidental Province whom the manner of Charles Gould in
+official intercourse was to strike as offensively independent.
+
+Charles Gould assumed that if the appearance of listening to deplorable
+balderdash must form part of the price he had to pay for being left
+unmolested, the obligation of uttering balderdash personally was by
+no means included in the bargain. He drew the line there. To these
+provincial autocrats, before whom the peaceable population of
+all classes had been accustomed to tremble, the reserve of that
+English-looking engineer caused an uneasiness which swung to and fro
+between cringing and truculence. Gradually all of them discovered that,
+no matter what party was in power, that man remained in most effective
+touch with the higher authorities in Sta. Marta.
+
+This was a fact, and it accounted perfectly for the Goulds being by
+no means so wealthy as the engineer-in-chief on the new railway could
+legitimately suppose. Following the advice of Don Jose Avellanos,
+who was a man of good counsel (though rendered timid by his horrible
+experiences of Guzman Bento’s time), Charles Gould had kept clear of the
+capital; but in the current gossip of the foreign residents there he
+was known (with a good deal of seriousness underlying the irony) by the
+nickname of “King of Sulaco.” An advocate of the Costaguana Bar, a
+man of reputed ability and good character, member of the distinguished
+Moraga family possessing extensive estates in the Sulaco Valley, was
+pointed out to strangers, with a shade of mystery and respect, as
+the agent of the San Tome mine--“political, you know.” He was tall,
+black-whiskered, and discreet. It was known that he had easy access to
+ministers, and that the numerous Costaguana generals were always anxious
+to dine at his house. Presidents granted him audience with facility. He
+corresponded actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose Avellanos;
+but his letters--unless those expressing formally his dutiful
+affection--were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post Office. There
+the envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the frankness of a
+brazen and childish impudence characteristic of some Spanish-American
+Governments. But it must be noted that at about the time of the
+re-opening of the San Tome mine the muleteer who had been employed by
+Charles Gould in his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small
+train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain
+passes between the Sta. Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco. There
+are no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very
+exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not visibly
+require additional transport facilities; but the man seemed to find his
+account in it. A few packages were always found for him whenever he
+took the road. Very brown and wooden, in goatskin breeches with the
+hair outside, he sat near the tail of his own smart mule, his great hat
+turned against the sun, an expression of blissful vacancy on his long
+face, humming day after day a love-song in a plaintive key, or, without
+a change of expression, letting out a yell at his small tropilla in
+front. A round little guitar hung high up on his back; and there was a
+place scooped out artistically in the wood of one of his pack-saddles
+where a tightly rolled piece of paper could be slipped in, the wooden
+plug replaced, and the coarse canvas nailed on again. When in Sulaco
+it was his practice to smoke and doze all day long (as though he had
+no care in the world) on a stone bench outside the doorway of the Casa
+Gould and facing the windows of the Avellanos house. Years and years
+ago his mother had been chief laundry-woman in that family--very
+accomplished in the matter of clear-starching. He himself had been
+born on one of their haciendas. His name was Bonifacio, and Don Jose,
+crossing the street about five o’clock to call on Dona Emilia, always
+acknowledged his humble salute by some movement of hand or head. The
+porters of both houses conversed lazily with him in tones of grave
+intimacy. His evenings he devoted to gambling and to calls in a spirit
+of generous festivity upon the peyne d’oro girls in the more remote
+side-streets of the town. But he, too, was a discreet man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+Those of us whom business or curiosity took to Sulaco in these years
+before the first advent of the railway can remember the steadying effect
+of the San Tome mine upon the life of that remote province. The outward
+appearances had not changed then as they have changed since, as I am
+told, with cable cars running along the streets of the Constitution, and
+carriage roads far into the country, to Rincon and other villages, where
+the foreign merchants and the Ricos generally have their modern villas,
+and a vast railway goods yard by the harbour, which has a quay-side, a
+long range of warehouses, and quite serious, organized labour troubles
+of its own.
+
+Nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of the
+port formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of scum, with
+a patron saint of their own. They went on strike regularly (every
+bull-fight day), a form of trouble that even Nostromo at the height of
+his prestige could never cope with efficiently; but the morning after
+each fiesta, before the Indian market-women had opened their mat
+parasols on the plaza, when the snows of Higuerota gleamed pale over
+the town on a yet black sky, the appearance of a phantom-like horseman
+mounted on a silver-grey mare solved the problem of labour without fail.
+His steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown enclosures
+within the old ramparts, between the black, lightless cluster of huts,
+like cow-byres, like dog-kennels. The horseman hammered with the butt of
+a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias, of obscene lean-to sheds
+sloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble wall, at the wooden
+sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound of snores and sleepy mutters
+within could be heard in the pauses of the thundering clatter of his
+blows. He called out men’s names menacingly from the saddle, once,
+twice. The drowsy answers--grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, or
+deprecating--came out into the silent darkness in which the horseman sat
+still, and presently a dark figure would flit out coughing in the still
+air. Sometimes a low-toned woman cried through the window-hole softly,
+“He’s coming directly, senor,” and the horseman waited silent on a
+motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a
+while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious
+scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first
+and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare,
+who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that
+work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from
+Nostromo’s revolver, reeling a little along the street and snarling low
+curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell, coming out anxiously in his night
+attire on to the wooden balcony running the whole length of the O.S.N.
+Company’s lonely building by the shore, would see the lighters already
+under way, figures moving busily about the cargo cranes, perhaps hear
+the invaluable Nostromo, now dismounted and in the checked shirt and red
+sash of a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders from the end of the jetty
+in a stentorian voice. A fellow in a thousand!
+
+The material apparatus of perfected civilization which obliterates the
+individuality of old towns under the stereotyped conveniences of modern
+life had not intruded as yet; but over the worn-out antiquity of Sulaco,
+so characteristic with its stuccoed houses and barred windows, with
+the great yellowy-white walls of abandoned convents behind the rows of
+sombre green cypresses, that fact--very modern in its spirit--the San
+Tome mine had already thrown its subtle influence. It had altered, too,
+the outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before
+the open portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos with a
+green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome miners. They had
+also adopted white hats with green cord and braid--articles of good
+quality, which could be obtained in the storehouse of the administration
+for very little money. A peaceable Cholo wearing these colours (unusual
+in Costaguana) was somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his
+life on a charge of disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much
+risk of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting party of
+lanceros--a method of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost legal
+in the Republic. Whole villages were known to have volunteered for the
+army in that way; but, as Don Pepe would say with a hopeless shrug to
+Mrs. Gould, “What would you! Poor people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But
+the State must have its soldiers.”
+
+Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with pendent
+moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a clean run of a cast-iron jaw,
+suggesting the type of a cattle-herd horseman from the great Llanos of
+the South. “If you will listen to an old officer of Paez, senores,” was
+the exordium of all his speeches in the Aristocratic Club of Sulaco,
+where he was admitted on account of his past services to the extinct
+cause of Federation. The club, dating from the days of the proclamation
+of Costaguana’s independence, boasted many names of liberators amongst
+its first founders. Suppressed arbitrarily innumerable times by
+various Governments, with memories of proscriptions and of at least one
+wholesale massacre of its members, sadly assembled for a banquet by the
+order of a zealous military commandante (their bodies were afterwards
+stripped naked and flung into the plaza out of the windows by the
+lowest scum of the populace), it was again flourishing, at that period,
+peacefully. It extended to strangers the large hospitality of the cool,
+big rooms of its historic quarters in the front part of a house, once
+the residence of a high official of the Holy Office. The two wings, shut
+up, crumbled behind the nailed doors, and what may be described as a
+grove of young orange trees grown in the unpaved patio concealed the
+utter ruin of the back part facing the gate. You turned in from the
+street, as if entering a secluded orchard, where you came upon the foot
+of a disjointed staircase, guarded by a moss-stained effigy of some
+saintly bishop, mitred and staffed, and bearing the indignity of a
+broken nose meekly, with his fine stone hands crossed on his breast. The
+chocolate-coloured faces of servants with mops of black hair peeped
+at you from above; the click of billiard balls came to your ears, and
+ascending the steps, you would perhaps see in the first sala, very stiff
+upon a straight-backed chair, in a good light, Don Pepe moving his long
+moustaches as he spelt his way, at arm’s length, through an old Sta.
+Marta newspaper. His horse--a stony-hearted but persevering black brute
+with a hammer head--you would have seen in the street dozing motionless
+under an immense saddle, with its nose almost touching the curbstone of
+the sidewalk.
+
+Don Pepe, when “down from the mountain,” as the phrase, often heard in
+Sulaco, went, could also be seen in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould.
+He sat with modest assurance at some distance from the tea-table.
+With his knees close together, and a kindly twinkle of drollery in his
+deep-set eyes, he would throw his small and ironic pleasantries into the
+current of conversation. There was in that man a sort of sane, humorous
+shrewdness, and a vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple
+old soldiers of proved courage who have seen much desperate service. Of
+course he knew nothing whatever of mining, but his employment was of a
+special kind. He was in charge of the whole population in the territory
+of the mine, which extended from the head of the gorge to where the cart
+track from the foot of the mountain enters the plain, crossing a stream
+over a little wooden bridge painted green--green, the colour of hope,
+being also the colour of the mine.
+
+It was reported in Sulaco that up there “at the mountain” Don Pepe
+walked about precipitous paths, girt with a great sword and in a shabby
+uniform with tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior major. Most miners
+being Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed him as Taita (father), as
+these barefooted people of Costaguana will address anybody who wears
+shoes; but it was Basilio, Mr. Gould’s own mozo and the head servant
+of the Casa, who, in all good faith and from a sense of propriety,
+announced him once in the solemn words, “El Senor Gobernador has
+arrived.”
+
+Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was delighted beyond
+measure at the aptness of the title, with which he greeted the old major
+banteringly as soon as the latter’s soldierly figure appeared in the
+doorway. Don Pepe only smiled in his long moustaches, as much as to say,
+“You might have found a worse name for an old soldier.”
+
+And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his small jokes upon
+his function and upon his domain, where he affirmed with humorous
+exaggeration to Mrs. Gould--
+
+“No two stones could come together anywhere without the Gobernador
+hearing the click, senora.”
+
+And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger knowingly. Even
+when the number of the miners alone rose to over six hundred he seemed
+to know each of them individually, all the innumerable Joses, Manuels,
+Ignacios, from the villages _primero--segundo--or tercero_ (there were
+three mining villages) under his government. He could distinguish them
+not only by their flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked
+all alike, as if run into the same ancestral mould of suffering and
+patience, but apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of
+reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the two
+shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps, mingled
+together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered picks, swinging
+lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet on the open plateau before
+the entrance of the main tunnel. It was a time of pause. The Indian
+boys leaned idly against the long line of little cradle wagons standing
+empty; the screeners and ore-breakers squatted on their heels smoking
+long cigars; the great wooden shoots slanting over the edge of the
+tunnel plateau were silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of
+water in the open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, with the
+splash and rumble of revolving turbine-wheels, and the thudding march
+of the stamps pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau below.
+The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals hanging on their bare
+breasts, marshalled their squads; and at last the mountain would swallow
+one-half of the silent crowd, while the other half would move off in
+long files down the zigzag paths leading to the bottom of the gorge.
+It was deep; and, far below, a thread of vegetation winding between the
+blazing rock faces resembled a slender green cord, in which three lumpy
+knots of banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees marked the
+Village One, Village Two, Village Three, housing the miners of the Gould
+Concession.
+
+Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in the
+Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had spread over
+the pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the waters of a high
+flood, into the nooks and crannies of the distant blue walls of the
+Sierras. Father first, in a pointed straw hat, then the mother with the
+bigger children, generally also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens,
+except the leader himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the
+family, stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of
+raven hair, a thick, haughty profile, and no load to carry but the small
+guitar of the country and a pair of soft leather sandals tied together
+on her back. At the sight of such parties strung out on the cross
+trails between the pastures, or camped by the side of the royal road,
+travellers on horseback would remark to each other--
+
+“More people going to the San Tome mine. We shall see others to-morrow.”
+
+And spurring on in the dusk they would discuss the great news of the
+province, the news of the San Tome mine. A rich Englishman was going
+to work it--and perhaps not an Englishman, Quien sabe! A foreigner with
+much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of men who had been to Sulaco
+with a herd of black bulls for the next corrida had reported that from
+the porch of the posada in Rincon, only a short league from the town,
+the lights on the mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees. And
+there was a woman seen riding a horse sideways, not in the chair seat,
+but upon a sort of saddle, and a man’s hat on her head. She walked
+about, too, on foot up the mountain paths. A woman engineer, it seemed
+she was.
+
+“What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!”
+
+“_Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte_.”
+
+“Ah, well! if your worship is informed. _Una Americana_; it need be
+something of that sort.”
+
+And they would laugh a little with astonishment and scorn, keeping a
+wary eye on the shadows of the road, for one is liable to meet bad men
+when travelling late on the Campo.
+
+And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well, but he seemed
+able, with one attentive, thoughtful glance, to classify each woman,
+girl, or growing youth of his domain. It was only the small fry that
+puzzled him sometimes. He and the padre could be seen frequently side by
+side, meditative and gazing across the street of a village at a lot
+of sedate brown children, trying to sort them out, as it were, in low,
+consulting tones, or else they would together put searching questions
+as to the parentage of some small, staid urchin met wandering, naked and
+grave, along the road with a cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his
+mother’s rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hanging in a
+loop of beads low down on his rotund little stomach. The spiritual and
+temporal pastors of the mine flock were very good friends. With Dr.
+Monygham, the medical pastor, who had accepted the charge from Mrs.
+Gould, and lived in the hospital building, they were on not so intimate
+terms. But no one could be on intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who,
+with his twisted shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long
+bitter glance, was mysterious and uncanny. The other two authorities
+worked in harmony. Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert, wrinkled,
+with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great snuff-taker, was an old
+campaigner, too; he had shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of
+the Republic, kneeling by the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in
+the gloom of the forests, to hear the last confession with the smell
+of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum
+and spatter of bullets in his ears. And where was the harm if, at the
+presbytery, they had a game with a pack of greasy cards in the early
+evening, before Don Pepe went his last rounds to see that all the
+watchmen of the mine--a body organized by himself--were at their posts?
+For that last duty before he slept Don Pepe did actually gird his old
+sword on the verandah of an unmistakable American white frame house,
+which Father Roman called the presbytery. Near by, a long, low, dark
+building, steeple-roofed, like a vast barn with a wooden cross over the
+gable, was the miners’ chapel. There Father Roman said Mass every day
+before a sombre altar-piece representing the Resurrection, the grey
+slab of the tombstone balanced on one corner, a figure soaring upwards,
+long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light, and a helmeted brown
+legionary smitten down, right across the bituminous foreground. “This
+picture, my children, _muy linda e maravillosa_,” Father Roman would say
+to some of his flock, “which you behold here through the munificence
+of the wife of our Senor Administrador, has been painted in Europe, a
+country of saints and miracles, and much greater than our Costaguana.”
+ And he would take a pinch of snuff with unction. But when once an
+inquisitive spirit desired to know in what direction this Europe was
+situated, whether up or down the coast, Father Roman, to conceal his
+perplexity, became very reserved and severe. “No doubt it is extremely
+far away. But ignorant sinners like you of the San Tome mine should
+think earnestly of everlasting punishment instead of inquiring into the
+magnitude of the earth, with its countries and populations altogether
+beyond your understanding.”
+
+With a “Good-night, Padre,” “Good-night, Don Pepe,” the Gobernador would
+go off, holding up his sabre against his side, his body bent forward,
+with a long, plodding stride in the dark. The jocularity proper to an
+innocent card game for a few cigars or a bundle of yerba was replaced
+at once by the stern duty mood of an officer setting out to visit the
+outposts of an encamped army. One loud blast of the whistle that
+hung from his neck provoked instantly a great shrilling of responding
+whistles, mingled with the barking of dogs, that would calm down slowly
+at last, away up at the head of the gorge; and in the stillness two
+serenos, on guard by the bridge, would appear walking noiselessly
+towards him. On one side of the road a long frame building--the
+store--would be closed and barricaded from end to end; facing it
+another white frame house, still longer, and with a verandah--the
+hospital--would have lights in the two windows of Dr. Monygham’s
+quarters. Even the delicate foliage of a clump of pepper trees did not
+stir, so breathless would be the darkness warmed by the radiation of the
+over-heated rocks. Don Pepe would stand still for a moment with the two
+motionless serenos before him, and, abruptly, high up on the sheer face
+of the mountain, dotted with single torches, like drops of fire fallen
+from the two great blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots
+would begin to rattle. The great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering
+speed and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge, and sent
+upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasadero in Rincon swore that
+on calm nights, by listening intently, he could catch the sound in his
+doorway as of a storm in the mountains.
+
+To Charles Gould’s fancy it seemed that the sound must reach the
+uttermost limits of the province. Riding at night towards the mine, it
+would meet him at the edge of a little wood just beyond Rincon. There
+was no mistaking the growling mutter of the mountain pouring its stream
+of treasure under the stamps; and it came to his heart with the
+peculiar force of a proclamation thundered forth over the land and the
+marvellousness of an accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious desire.
+He had heard this very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening
+when his wife and himself, after a tortuous ride through a strip of
+forest, had reined in their horses near the stream, and had gazed for
+the first time upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. The head of
+a palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round the corner of the
+San Tome mountain (which is square like a blockhouse) the thread of a
+slender waterfall flashed bright and glassy through the dark green of
+the heavy fronds of tree-ferns. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and,
+stretching his arm up the gorge, had declared with mock solemnity,
+“Behold the very paradise of snakes, senora.”
+
+And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back to sleep that
+night at Rincon. The alcalde--an old, skinny Moreno, a sergeant of
+Guzman Bento’s time--had cleared respectfully out of his house with his
+three pretty daughters, to make room for the foreign senora and their
+worships the Caballeros. All he asked Charles Gould (whom he took for a
+mysterious and official person) to do for him was to remind the supreme
+Government--El Gobierno supreme--of a pension (amounting to about a
+dollar a month) to which he believed himself entitled. It had been
+promised to him, he affirmed, straightening his bent back martially,
+“many years ago, for my valour in the wars with the wild Indios when a
+young man, senor.”
+
+The waterfall existed no longer. The tree-ferns that had luxuriated in
+its spray had died around the dried-up pool, and the high ravine was
+only a big trench half filled up with the refuse of excavations and
+tailings. The torrent, dammed up above, sent its water rushing along
+the open flumes of scooped tree trunks striding on trestle-legs to the
+turbines working the stamps on the lower plateau--the mesa grande of the
+San Tome mountain. Only the memory of the waterfall, with its amazing
+fernery, like a hanging garden above the rocks of the gorge, was
+preserved in Mrs. Gould’s water-colour sketch; she had made it hastily
+one day from a cleared patch in the bushes, sitting in the shade of
+a roof of straw erected for her on three rough poles under Don Pepe’s
+direction.
+
+Mrs. Gould had seen it all from the beginning: the clearing of the
+wilderness, the making of the road, the cutting of new paths up the
+cliff face of San Tome. For weeks together she had lived on the spot
+with her husband; and she was so little in Sulaco during that year that
+the appearance of the Gould carriage on the Alameda would cause a social
+excitement. From the heavy family coaches full of stately senoras and
+black-eyed senoritas rolling solemnly in the shaded alley white hands
+were waved towards her with animation in a flutter of greetings. Dona
+Emilia was “down from the mountain.”
+
+But not for long. Dona Emilia would be gone “up to the mountain” in a
+day or two, and her sleek carriage mules would have an easy time of
+it for another long spell. She had watched the erection of the first
+frame-house put up on the lower mesa for an office and Don Pepe’s
+quarters; she heard with a thrill of thankful emotion the first wagon
+load of ore rattle down the then only shoot; she had stood by her
+husband’s side perfectly silent, and gone cold all over with excitement
+at the instant when the first battery of only fifteen stamps was put
+in motion for the first time. On the occasion when the fires under the
+first set of retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did
+not retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet bare
+frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lump of silver yielded to
+the hazards of the world by the dark depths of the Gould Concession;
+she had laid her unmercenary hands, with an eagerness that made them
+tremble, upon the first silver ingot turned out still warm from the
+mould; and by her imaginative estimate of its power she endowed that
+lump of metal with a justificative conception, as though it were not
+a mere fact, but something far-reaching and impalpable, like the true
+expression of an emotion or the emergence of a principle.
+
+Don Pepe, extremely interested, too, looked over her shoulder with a
+smile that, making longitudinal folds on his face, caused it to resemble
+a leathern mask with a benignantly diabolic expression.
+
+“Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get hold of this
+insignificant object, that looks, por Dios, very much like a piece of
+tin?” he remarked, jocularly.
+
+Hernandez, the robber, had been an inoffensive, small ranchero,
+kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home during
+one of the civil wars, and forced to serve in the army. There his
+conduct as soldier was exemplary, till, watching his chance, he killed
+his colonel, and managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters,
+who chose him for their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and
+waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle
+and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his
+wonderful escapes from capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the
+villages and the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before
+him, with two revolvers in his belt, go straight to the shop or store,
+select what he wanted, and ride away unopposed because of the terror his
+exploits and his audacity inspired. Poor country people he usually left
+alone; the upper class were often stopped on the roads and robbed; but
+any unlucky official that fell into his hands was sure to get a severe
+flogging. The army officers did not like his name to be mentioned in
+their presence. His followers, mounted on stolen horses, laughed at the
+pursuit of the regular cavalry sent to hunt them down, and whom they
+took pleasure to ambush most scientifically in the broken ground of
+their own fastness. Expeditions had been fitted out; a price had been
+put upon his head; even attempts had been made, treacherously of course,
+to open negotiations with him, without in the slightest way affecting
+the even tenor of his career. At last, in true Costaguana fashion, the
+Fiscal of Tonoro, who was ambitious of the glory of having reduced the
+famous Hernandez, offered him a sum of money and a safe conduct out of
+the country for the betrayal of his band. But Hernandez evidently was
+not of the stuff of which the distinguished military politicians and
+conspirators of Costaguana are made. This clever but common device
+(which frequently works like a charm in putting down revolutions) failed
+with the chief of vulgar Salteadores. It promised well for the Fiscal at
+first, but ended very badly for the squadron of lanceros posted (by the
+Fiscal’s directions) in a fold of the ground into which Hernandez had
+promised to lead his unsuspecting followers They came, indeed, at the
+appointed time, but creeping on their hands and knees through the bush,
+and only let their presence be known by a general discharge of firearms,
+which emptied many saddles. The troopers who escaped came riding very
+hard into Tonoro. It is said that their commanding officer (who, being
+better mounted, rode far ahead of the rest) afterwards got into a state
+of despairing intoxication and beat the ambitious Fiscal severely with
+the flat of his sabre in the presence of his wife and daughters,
+for bringing this disgrace upon the National Army. The highest civil
+official of Tonoro, falling to the ground in a swoon, was further kicked
+all over the body and rowelled with sharp spurs about the neck and
+face because of the great sensitiveness of his military colleague.
+This gossip of the inland Campo, so characteristic of the rulers of the
+country with its story of oppression, inefficiency, fatuous methods,
+treachery, and savage brutality, was perfectly known to Mrs. Gould.
+That it should be accepted with no indignant comment by people of
+intelligence, refinement, and character as something inherent in the
+nature of things was one of the symptoms of degradation that had the
+power to exasperate her almost to the verge of despair. Still looking at
+the ingot of silver, she shook her head at Don Pepe’s remark--
+
+“If it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your Government, Don
+Pepe, many an outlaw now with Hernandez would be living peaceably and
+happy by the honest work of his hands.”
+
+“Senora,” cried Don Pepe, with enthusiasm, “it is true! It is as if God
+had given you the power to look into the very breasts of people. You
+have seen them working round you, Dona Emilia--meek as lambs, patient
+like their own burros, brave like lions. I have led them to the very
+muzzles of guns--I, who stand here before you, senora--in the time of
+Paez, who was full of generosity, and in courage only approached by the
+uncle of Don Carlos here, as far as I know. No wonder there are bandits
+in the Campo when there are none but thieves, swindlers, and sanguinary
+macaques to rule us in Sta. Marta. However, all the same, a bandit is a
+bandit, and we shall have a dozen good straight Winchesters to ride with
+the silver down to Sulaco.”
+
+Mrs. Gould’s ride with the first silver escort to Sulaco was the closing
+episode of what she called “my camp life” before she had settled in her
+town-house permanently, as was proper and even necessary for the wife of
+the administrator of such an important institution as the San Tome mine.
+For the San Tome mine was to become an institution, a rallying point
+for everything in the province that needed order and stability to live.
+Security seemed to flow upon this land from the mountain-gorge. The
+authorities of Sulaco had learned that the San Tome mine could make it
+worth their while to leave things and people alone. This was the nearest
+approach to the rule of common-sense and justice Charles Gould felt it
+possible to secure at first. In fact, the mine, with its organization,
+its population growing fiercely attached to their position of privileged
+safety, with its armoury, with its Don Pepe, with its armed body of
+serenos (where, it was said, many an outlaw and deserter--and even some
+members of Hernandez’s band--had found a place), the mine was a power in
+the land. As a certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had exclaimed with
+a hollow laugh, once, when discussing the line of action taken by the
+Sulaco authorities at a time of political crisis--
+
+“You call these men Government officials? They? Never! They are
+officials of the mine--officials of the Concession--I tell you.”
+
+The prominent man (who was then a person in power, with a lemon-coloured
+face and a very short and curly, not to say woolly, head of hair) went
+so far in his temporary discontent as to shake his yellow fist under the
+nose of his interlocutor, and shriek--
+
+“Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Gefe, the chief of
+the police, the chief of the customs, the general, all, all, are the
+officials of that Gould.”
+
+Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow on
+for a space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent man’s passion
+would end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders. After all, he seemed
+to say, what did it matter as long as the minister himself was not
+forgotten during his brief day of authority? But all the same, the
+unofficial agent of the San Tome mine, working for a good cause, had
+his moments of anxiety, which were reflected in his letters to Don Jose
+Avellanos, his maternal uncle.
+
+“No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set foot on that part of
+Costaguana which lies beyond the San Tome bridge,” Don Pepe used to
+assure Mrs. Gould. “Except, of course, as an honoured guest--for our
+Senor Administrador is a deep politico.” But to Charles Gould, in
+his own room, the old Major would remark with a grim and soldierly
+cheeriness, “We are all playing our heads at this game.”
+
+Don Jose Avellanos would mutter “Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my soul,”
+ with an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow, in a curious
+way, seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily discomfort. But that,
+perhaps, could only be visible to the initiated. And for the initiated
+it was a wonderful place, this drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its
+momentary glimpses of the master--El Senor Administrador--older, harder,
+mysteriously silent, with the lines deepened on his English, ruddy,
+out-of-doors complexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman’s legs across
+the doorways, either just “back from the mountain” or with jingling
+spurs and riding-whip under his arm, on the point of starting “for the
+mountain.” Then Don Pepe, modestly martial in his chair, the llanero who
+seemed somehow to have found his martial jocularity, his knowledge
+of the world, and his manner perfect for his station, in the midst of
+savage armed contests with his kind; Avellanos, polished and familiar,
+the diplomatist with his loquacity covering much caution and wisdom in
+delicate advice, with his manuscript of a historical work on Costaguana,
+entitled “Fifty Years of Misrule,” which, at present, he thought it was
+not prudent (even if it were possible) “to give to the world”;
+these three, and also Dona Emilia amongst them, gracious, small,
+and fairy-like, before the glittering tea-set, with one common
+master-thought in their heads, with one common feeling of a tense
+situation, with one ever-present aim to preserve the inviolable
+character of the mine at every cost. And there was also to be seen
+Captain Mitchell, a little apart, near one of the long windows, with an
+air of old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood about him, slightly pompous,
+in a white waistcoat, a little disregarded and unconscious of it;
+utterly in the dark, and imagining himself to be in the thick of things.
+The good man, having spent a clear thirty years of his life on the high
+seas before getting what he called a “shore billet,” was astonished at
+the importance of transactions (other than relating to shipping) which
+take place on dry land. Almost every event out of the usual daily
+course “marked an epoch” for him or else was “history”; unless with his
+pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of his rubicund, rather
+handsome face, set off by snow-white close hair and short whiskers, he
+would mutter--
+
+“Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake.”
+
+The reception of the first consignment of San Tome silver for shipment
+to San Francisco in one of the O.S.N. Co.’s mail-boats had, of course,
+“marked an epoch” for Captain Mitchell. The ingots packed in boxes of
+stiff ox-hide with plaited handles, small enough to be carried easily by
+two men, were brought down by the serenos of the mine walking in careful
+couples along the half-mile or so of steep, zigzag paths to the foot of
+the mountain. There they would be loaded into a string of two-wheeled
+carts, resembling roomy coffers with a door at the back, and harnessed
+tandem with two mules each, waiting under the guard of armed and mounted
+serenos. Don Pepe padlocked each door in succession, and at the signal
+of his whistle the string of carts would move off, closely surrounded by
+the clank of spur and carbine, with jolts and cracking of whips, with a
+sudden deep rumble over the boundary bridge (“into the land of thieves
+and sanguinary macaques,” Don Pepe defined that crossing); hats bobbing
+in the first light of the dawn, on the heads of cloaked figures;
+Winchesters on hip; bridle hands protruding lean and brown from under
+the falling folds of the ponchos. The convoy skirting a little wood,
+along the mine trail, between the mud huts and low walls of Rincon,
+increased its pace on the camino real, mules urged to speed, escort
+galloping, Don Carlos riding alone ahead of a dust storm affording a
+vague vision of long ears of mules, of fluttering little green and white
+flags stuck upon each cart; of raised arms in a mob of sombreros with
+the white gleam of ranging eyes; and Don Pepe, hardly visible in the
+rear of that rattling dust trail, with a stiff seat and impassive face,
+rising and falling rhythmically on an ewe-necked silver-bitted black
+brute with a hammer head.
+
+The sleepy people in the little clusters of huts, in the small ranches
+near the road, recognized by the headlong sound the charge of the San
+Tome silver escort towards the crumbling wall of the city on the Campo
+side. They came to the doors to see it dash by over ruts and stones,
+with a clatter and clank and cracking of whips, with the reckless rush
+and precise driving of a field battery hurrying into action, and the
+solitary English figure of the Senor Administrador riding far ahead in
+the lead.
+
+In the fenced roadside paddocks loose horses galloped wildly for a
+while; the heavy cattle stood up breast deep in the grass, lowing
+mutteringly at the flying noise; a meek Indian villager would glance
+back once and hasten to shove his loaded little donkey bodily against a
+wall, out of the way of the San Tome silver escort going to the sea; a
+small knot of chilly leperos under the Stone Horse of the Alameda would
+mutter: “Caramba!” on seeing it take a wide curve at a gallop and dart
+into the empty Street of the Constitution; for it was considered the
+correct thing, the only proper style by the mule-drivers of the San Tome
+mine to go through the waking town from end to end without a check in
+the speed as if chased by a devil.
+
+The early sunshine glowed on the delicate primrose, pale pink, pale
+blue fronts of the big houses with all their gates shut yet, and no face
+behind the iron bars of the windows. In the whole sunlit range of empty
+balconies along the street only one white figure would be visible
+high up above the clear pavement--the wife of the Senor
+Administrador--leaning over to see the escort go by to the harbour, a
+mass of heavy, fair hair twisted up negligently on her little head, and
+a lot of lace about the neck of her muslin wrapper. With a smile to her
+husband’s single, quick, upward glance, she would watch the whole thing
+stream past below her feet with an orderly uproar, till she answered
+by a friendly sign the salute of the galloping Don Pepe, the stiff,
+deferential inclination with a sweep of the hat below the knee.
+
+The string of padlocked carts lengthened, the size of the escort grew
+bigger as the years went on. Every three months an increasing stream of
+treasure swept through the streets of Sulaco on its way to the strong
+room in the O.S.N. Co.’s building by the harbour, there to await
+shipment for the North. Increasing in volume, and of immense value also;
+for, as Charles Gould told his wife once with some exultation, there had
+never been seen anything in the world to approach the vein of the
+Gould Concession. For them both, each passing of the escort under the
+balconies of the Casa Gould was like another victory gained in the
+conquest of peace for Sulaco.
+
+No doubt the initial action of Charles Gould had been helped at the
+beginning by a period of comparative peace which occurred just about
+that time; and also by the general softening of manners as compared with
+the epoch of civil wars whence had emerged the iron tyranny of Guzman
+Bento of fearful memory. In the contests that broke out at the end of
+his rule (which had kept peace in the country for a whole fifteen years)
+there was more fatuous imbecility, plenty of cruelty and suffering
+still, but much less of the old-time fierce and blindly ferocious
+political fanaticism. It was all more vile, more base, more
+contemptible, and infinitely more manageable in the very outspoken
+cynicism of motives. It was more clearly a brazen-faced scramble for a
+constantly diminishing quantity of booty; since all enterprise had been
+stupidly killed in the land. Thus it came to pass that the province of
+Sulaco, once the field of cruel party vengeances, had become in a way
+one of the considerable prizes of political career. The great of the
+earth (in Sta. Marta) reserved the posts in the old Occidental State
+to those nearest and dearest to them: nephews, brothers, husbands
+of favourite sisters, bosom friends, trusty supporters--or prominent
+supporters of whom perhaps they were afraid. It was the blessed province
+of great opportunities and of largest salaries; for the San Tome mine
+had its own unofficial pay list, whose items and amounts, fixed in
+consultation by Charles Gould and Senor Avellanos, were known to a
+prominent business man in the United States, who for twenty minutes or
+so in every month gave his undivided attention to Sulaco affairs. At
+the same time the material interests of all sorts, backed up by the
+influence of the San Tome mine, were quietly gathering substance in that
+part of the Republic. If, for instance, the Sulaco Collectorship was
+generally understood, in the political world of the capital, to open the
+way to the Ministry of Finance, and so on for every official post, then,
+on the other hand, the despondent business circles of the Republic had
+come to consider the Occidental Province as the promised land of safety,
+especially if a man managed to get on good terms with the administration
+of the mine. “Charles Gould; excellent fellow! Absolutely necessary to
+make sure of him before taking a single step. Get an introduction to
+him from Moraga if you can--the agent of the King of Sulaco, don’t you
+know.”
+
+No wonder, then, that Sir John, coming from Europe to smooth the path
+for his railway, had been meeting the name (and even the nickname) of
+Charles Gould at every turn in Costaguana. The agent of the San Tome
+Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished, well-informed gentleman, Sir
+John thought him) had certainly helped so greatly in bringing about the
+presidential tour that he began to think that there was something in
+the faint whispers hinting at the immense occult influence of the Gould
+Concession. What was currently whispered was this--that the San Tome
+Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last revolution,
+which had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don Vincente Ribiera, a
+man of culture and of unblemished character, invested with a mandate
+of reform by the best elements of the State. Serious, well-informed
+men seemed to believe the fact, to hope for better things, for the
+establishment of legality, of good faith and order in public life. So
+much the better, then, thought Sir John. He worked always on a great
+scale; there was a loan to the State, and a project for systematic
+colonization of the Occidental Province, involved in one vast scheme
+with the construction of the National Central Railway. Good faith,
+order, honesty, peace, were badly wanted for this great development of
+material interests. Anybody on the side of these things, and especially
+if able to help, had an importance in Sir John’s eyes. He had not been
+disappointed in the “King of Sulaco.” The local difficulties had fallen
+away, as the engineer-in-chief had foretold they would, before Charles
+Gould’s mediation. Sir John had been extremely feted in Sulaco, next
+to the President-Dictator, a fact which might have accounted for the
+evident ill-humour General Montero displayed at lunch given on board
+the Juno just before she was to sail, taking away from Sulaco the
+President-Dictator and the distinguished foreign guests in his train.
+
+The Excellentissimo (“the hope of honest men,” as Don Jose had addressed
+him in a public speech delivered in the name of the Provincial Assembly
+of Sulaco) sat at the head of the long table; Captain Mitchell,
+positively stony-eyed and purple in the face with the solemnity of
+this “historical event,” occupied the foot as the representative of the
+O.S.N. Company in Sulaco, the hosts of that informal function, with the
+captain of the ship and some minor officials from the shore around him.
+Those cheery, swarthy little gentlemen cast jovial side-glances at the
+bottles of champagne beginning to pop behind the guests’ backs in the
+hands of the ship’s stewards. The amber wine creamed up to the rims of
+the glasses.
+
+Charles Gould had his place next to a foreign envoy, who, in a listless
+undertone, had been talking to him fitfully of hunting and shooting.
+The well-nourished, pale face, with an eyeglass and drooping yellow
+moustache, made the Senor Administrador appear by contrast twice as
+sunbaked, more flaming red, a hundred times more intensely and silently
+alive. Don Jose Avellanos touched elbows with the other foreign
+diplomat, a dark man with a quiet, watchful, self-confident demeanour,
+and a touch of reserve. All etiquette being laid aside on the occasion,
+General Montero was the only one there in full uniform, so stiff with
+embroideries in front that his broad chest seemed protected by a cuirass
+of gold. Sir John at the beginning had got away from high places for the
+sake of sitting near Mrs. Gould.
+
+The great financier was trying to express to her his grateful sense
+of her hospitality and of his obligation to her husband’s “enormous
+influence in this part of the country,” when she interrupted him by a
+low “Hush!” The President was going to make an informal pronouncement.
+
+The Excellentissimo was on his legs. He said only a few words, evidently
+deeply felt, and meant perhaps mostly for Avellanos--his old friend--as
+to the necessity of unremitting effort to secure the lasting welfare of
+the country emerging after this last struggle, he hoped, into a period
+of peace and material prosperity.
+
+Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice, looking
+at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body, obese to the
+point of infirmity, thought that this man of delicate and melancholy
+mind, physically almost a cripple, coming out of his retirement into a
+dangerous strife at the call of his fellows, had the right to speak with
+the authority of his self-sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He
+was more pathetic than promising, this first civilian Chief of the
+State Costaguana had ever known, pronouncing, glass in hand, his simple
+watchwords of honesty, peace, respect for law, political good faith
+abroad and at home--the safeguards of national honour.
+
+He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices that
+followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy, drooping
+eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy dullness from face
+to face. The military backwoods hero of the party, though secretly
+impressed by the sudden novelties and splendours of his position (he
+had never been on board a ship before, and had hardly ever seen the sea
+except from a distance), understood by a sort of instinct the advantage
+his surly, unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all
+these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was looking
+at him? he wondered to himself angrily. He was able to spell out the
+print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed the “greatest
+military exploit of modern times.”
+
+“My husband wanted the railway,” Mrs. Gould said to Sir John in the
+general murmur of resumed conversations. “All this brings nearer the
+sort of future we desire for the country, which has waited for it in
+sorrow long enough, God knows. But I will confess that the other day,
+during my afternoon drive when I suddenly saw an Indian boy ride out
+of a wood with the red flag of a surveying party in his hand, I felt
+something of a shock. The future means change--an utter change. And yet
+even here there are simple and picturesque things that one would like to
+preserve.”
+
+Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now to hush Mrs. Gould.
+
+“General Montero is going to speak,” he whispered, and almost
+immediately added, in comic alarm, “Heavens! he’s going to propose my
+own health, I believe.”
+
+General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple
+of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared
+at his side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with
+his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black,
+dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised and sinister vaquero.
+The drone of his voice had a strangely rasping, soulless ring. He
+floundered, lowering, through a few vague sentences; then suddenly
+raising his big head and his voice together, burst out harshly--
+
+“The honour of the country is in the hands of the army. I assure you
+I shall be faithful to it.” He hesitated till his roaming eyes met Sir
+John’s face upon which he fixed a lurid, sleepy glance; and the figure
+of the lately negotiated loan came into his mind. He lifted his glass.
+“I drink to the health of the man who brings us a million and a half of
+pounds.”
+
+He tossed off his champagne, and sat down heavily with a half-surprised,
+half-bullying look all round the faces in the profound, as if appalled,
+silence which succeeded the felicitous toast. Sir John did not move.
+
+“I don’t think I am called upon to rise,” he murmured to Mrs. Gould.
+“That sort of thing speaks for itself.” But Don Jose Avellanos came
+to the rescue with a short oration, in which he alluded pointedly to
+England’s goodwill towards Costaguana--“a goodwill,” he continued,
+significantly, “of which I, having been in my time accredited to the
+Court of St. James, am able to speak with some knowledge.”
+
+Only then Sir John thought fit to respond, which he did gracefully in
+bad French, punctuated by bursts of applause and the “Hear! Hears!”
+ of Captain Mitchell, who was able to understand a word now and then.
+Directly he had done, the financier of railways turned to Mrs. Gould--
+
+“You were good enough to say that you intended to ask me for something,”
+ he reminded her, gallantly. “What is it? Be assured that any request
+from you would be considered in the light of a favour to myself.”
+
+She thanked him by a gracious smile. Everybody was rising from the
+table.
+
+“Let us go on deck,” she proposed, “where I’ll be able to point out to
+you the very object of my request.”
+
+An enormous national flag of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow, with
+two green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the mainmast head
+of the Juno. A multitude of fireworks being let off in their thousands
+at the water’s edge in honour of the President kept up a mysterious
+crepitating noise half round the harbour. Now and then a lot of rockets,
+swishing upwards invisibly, detonated overhead with only a puff of smoke
+in the bright sky. Crowds of people could be seen between the town gate
+and the harbour, under the bunches of multicoloured flags fluttering on
+tall poles. Faint bursts of military music would be heard suddenly, and
+the remote sound of shouting. A knot of ragged negroes at the end of the
+wharf kept on loading and firing a small iron cannon time after time. A
+greyish haze of dust hung thin and motionless against the sun.
+
+Don Vincente Ribiera made a few steps under the deck-awning, leaning on
+the arm of Senor Avellanos; a wide circle was formed round him, where
+the mirthless smile of his dark lips and the sightless glitter of his
+spectacles could be seen turning amiably from side to side. The
+informal function arranged on purpose on board the Juno to give the
+President-Dictator an opportunity to meet intimately some of his most
+notable adherents in Sulaco was drawing to an end. On one side, General
+Montero, his bald head covered now by a plumed cocked hat, remained
+motionless on a skylight seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded
+on the hilt of the sabre standing upright between his legs. The white
+plume, the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the
+moustaches under the curved beak, the mass of gold on sleeves and
+breast, the high shining boots with enormous spurs, the working
+nostrils, the imbecile and domineering stare of the glorious victor of
+Rio Seco had in them something ominous and incredible; the exaggeration
+of a cruel caricature, the fatuity of solemn masquerading, the atrocious
+grotesqueness of some military idol of Aztec conception and European
+bedecking, awaiting the homage of worshippers. Don Jose approached
+diplomatically this weird and inscrutable portent, and Mrs. Gould turned
+her fascinated eyes away at last.
+
+Charles, coming up to take leave of Sir John, heard him say, as he bent
+over his wife’s hand, “Certainly. Of course, my dear Mrs. Gould, for a
+protege of yours! Not the slightest difficulty. Consider it done.”
+
+Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don Jose Avellanos was
+very silent. Even in the Gould carriage he did not open his lips for
+a long time. The mules trotted slowly away from the wharf between the
+extended hands of the beggars, who for that day seemed to have abandoned
+in a body the portals of churches. Charles Gould sat on the back seat
+and looked away upon the plain. A multitude of booths made of green
+boughs, of rushes, of odd pieces of plank eked out with bits of canvas
+had been erected all over it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit,
+of cigars. Over little heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting
+on mats, cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water for the
+mate gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing voices to the country
+people. A racecourse had been staked out for the vaqueros; and away to
+the left, from where the crowd was massed thickly about a huge temporary
+erection, like a circus tent of wood with a conical grass roof, came the
+resonant twanging of harp strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the
+grave drumming throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily through the
+shrill choruses of the dancers.
+
+Charles Gould said presently--
+
+“All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Company. There will
+be no more popular feasts held here.”
+
+Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this opportunity to
+mention how she had just obtained from Sir John the promise that the
+house occupied by Giorgio Viola should not be interfered with. She
+declared she could never understand why the survey engineers ever talked
+of demolishing that old building. It was not in the way of the projected
+harbour branch of the line in the least.
+
+She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at once the old
+Genoese, who came out bare-headed and stood by the carriage step.
+She talked to him in Italian, of course, and he thanked her with calm
+dignity. An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from the bottom of his
+heart for keeping the roof over the heads of his wife and children. He
+was too old to wander any more.
+
+“And is it for ever, signora?” he asked.
+
+“For as long as you like.”
+
+“Bene. Then the place must be named, It was not worth while before.”
+
+He smiled ruggedly, with a running together of wrinkles at the corners
+of his eyes. “I shall set about the painting of the name to-morrow.”
+
+“And what is it going to be, Giorgio?”
+
+“Albergo d’Italia Una,” said the old Garibaldino, looking away for a
+moment. “More in memory of those who have died,” he added, “than for the
+country stolen from us soldiers of liberty by the craft of that accursed
+Piedmontese race of kings and ministers.”
+
+Mrs. Gould smiled slightly, and, bending over a little, began to inquire
+about his wife and children. He had sent them into town on that day. The
+padrona was better in health; many thanks to the signora for inquiring.
+
+People were passing in twos and threes, in whole parties of men and
+women attended by trotting children. A horseman mounted on a silver-grey
+mare drew rein quietly in the shade of the house after taking off his
+hat to the party in the carriage, who returned smiles and familiar
+nods. Old Viola, evidently very pleased with the news he had just heard,
+interrupted himself for a moment to tell him rapidly that the house was
+secured, by the kindness of the English signora, for as long as he liked
+to keep it. The other listened attentively, but made no response.
+
+When the carriage moved on he took off his hat again, a grey sombrero
+with a silver cord and tassels. The bright colours of a Mexican serape
+twisted on the cantle, the enormous silver buttons on the embroidered
+leather jacket, the row of tiny silver buttons down the seam of the
+trousers, the snowy linen, a silk sash with embroidered ends, the silver
+plates on headstall and saddle, proclaimed the unapproachable style of
+the famous Capataz de Cargadores--a Mediterranean sailor--got up with
+more finished splendour than any well-to-do young ranchero of the Campo
+had ever displayed on a high holiday.
+
+“It is a great thing for me,” murmured old Giorgio, still thinking of
+the house, for now he had grown weary of change. “The signora just said
+a word to the Englishman.”
+
+“The old Englishman who has enough money to pay for a railway? He is
+going off in an hour,” remarked Nostromo, carelessly. “_Buon viaggio_,
+then. I’ve guarded his bones all the way from the Entrada pass down to
+the plain and into Sulaco, as though he had been my own father.”
+
+Old Giorgio only moved his head sideways absently. Nostromo pointed
+after the Goulds’ carriage, nearing the grass-grown gate in the old town
+wall that was like a wall of matted jungle.
+
+“And I have sat alone at night with my revolver in the Company’s
+warehouse time and again by the side of that other Englishman’s heap of
+silver, guarding it as though it had been my own.”
+
+Viola seemed lost in thought. “It is a great thing for me,” he repeated
+again, as if to himself.
+
+“It is,” agreed the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, calmly. “Listen,
+Vecchio--go in and bring me, out a cigar, but don’t look for it in my
+room. There’s nothing there.”
+
+Viola stepped into the cafe and came out directly, still absorbed in his
+idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in his moustache,
+“Children growing up--and girls, too! Girls!” He sighed and fell silent.
+
+“What, only one?” remarked Nostromo, looking down with a sort of comic
+inquisitiveness at the unconscious old man. “No matter,” he added, with
+lofty negligence; “one is enough till another is wanted.”
+
+He lit it and let the match drop from his passive fingers. Giorgio Viola
+looked up, and said abruptly--
+
+“My son would have been just such a fine young man as you, Gian’
+Battista, if he had lived.”
+
+“What? Your son? But you are right, padrone. If he had been like me he
+would have been a man.”
+
+He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the booths, checking
+the mare almost to a standstill now and then for children, for the
+groups of people from the distant Campo, who stared after him with
+admiration. The Company’s lightermen saluted him from afar; and the
+greatly envied Capataz de Cargadores advanced, amongst murmurs of
+recognition and obsequious greetings, towards the huge circus-like
+erection. The throng thickened; the guitars tinkled louder; other
+horsemen sat motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the crowd; it
+eddied and pushed before the doors of the high-roofed building, whence
+issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance music
+vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by the
+tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The barbarous and
+imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a crowd, and that even
+Europeans cannot hear without a strange emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo
+on to its source, while a man, wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho,
+walked by his stirrup, and, buffeted right and left, begged “his
+worship” insistently for employment on the wharf. He whined, offering
+the Senor Capataz half his daily pay for the privilege of being admitted
+to the swaggering fraternity of Cargadores; the other half would
+be enough for him, he protested. But Captain Mitchell’s right-hand
+man--“invaluable for our work--a perfectly incorruptible fellow”--after
+looking down critically at the ragged mozo, shook his head without a
+word in the uproar going on around.
+
+The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had to pull up. From
+the doors of the dance hall men and women emerged tottering, streaming
+with sweat, trembling in every limb, to lean, panting, with staring eyes
+and parted lips, against the wall of the structure, where the harps
+and guitars played on with mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder.
+Hundreds of hands clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at
+once would sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with
+a dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in the
+crowd, struck the resplendent Capataz on the cheek.
+
+He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did not turn his
+head. When at last he condescended to look round, the throng near him
+had parted to make way for a pretty Morenita, her hair held up by a
+small golden comb, who was walking towards him in the open space.
+
+Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a snowy chemisette; the
+blue woollen skirt, with all the fullness gathered in front, scanty on
+the hips and tight across the back, disclosed the provoking action of
+her walk. She came straight on and laid her hand on the mare’s neck with
+a timid, coquettish look upwards out of the corner of her eyes.
+
+“_Querido_,” she murmured, caressingly, “why do you pretend not to see me
+when I pass?”
+
+“Because I don’t love thee any more,” said Nostromo, deliberately, after
+a moment of reflective silence.
+
+The hand on the mare’s neck trembled suddenly. She dropped her head
+before all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the generous, the
+terrible, the inconstant Capataz de Cargadores, and his Morenita.
+
+Nostromo, looking down, saw tears beginning to fall down her face.
+
+“Has it come, then, ever beloved of my heart?” she whispered. “Is it
+true?”
+
+“No,” said Nostromo, looking away carelessly. “It was a lie. I love thee
+as much as ever.”
+
+“Is that true?” she cooed, joyously, her cheeks still wet with tears.
+
+“It is true.”
+
+“True on the life?”
+
+“As true as that; but thou must not ask me to swear it on the Madonna
+that stands in thy room.” And the Capataz laughed a little in response
+to the grins of the crowd.
+
+She pouted--very pretty--a little uneasy.
+
+“No, I will not ask for that. I can see love in your eyes.” She laid
+her hand on his knee. “Why are you trembling like this? From love?” she
+continued, while the cavernous thundering of the gombo went on without a
+pause. “But if you love her as much as that, you must give your Paquita
+a gold-mounted rosary of beads for the neck of her Madonna.”
+
+“No,” said Nostromo, looking into her uplifted, begging eyes, which
+suddenly turned stony with surprise.
+
+“No? Then what else will your worship give me on the day of the fiesta?”
+ she asked, angrily; “so as not to shame me before all these people.”
+
+“There is no shame for thee in getting nothing from thy lover for once.”
+
+“True! The shame is your worship’s--my poor lover’s,” she flared up,
+sarcastically.
+
+Laughs were heard at her anger, at her retort. What an audacious
+spitfire she was! The people aware of this scene were calling out
+urgently to others in the crowd. The circle round the silver-grey mare
+narrowed slowly.
+
+The girl went off a pace or two, confronting the mocking curiosity of
+the eyes, then flung back to the stirrup, tiptoeing, her enraged face
+turned up to Nostromo with a pair of blazing eyes. He bent low to her in
+the saddle.
+
+“Juan,” she hissed, “I could stab thee to the heart!”
+
+The dreaded Capataz de Cargadores, magnificent and carelessly public
+in his amours, flung his arm round her neck and kissed her spluttering
+lips. A murmur went round.
+
+“A knife!” he demanded at large, holding her firmly by the shoulder.
+
+Twenty blades flashed out together in the circle. A young man in holiday
+attire, bounding in, thrust one in Nostromo’s hand and bounded back into
+the ranks, very proud of himself. Nostromo had not even looked at him.
+
+“Stand on my foot,” he commanded the girl, who, suddenly subdued, rose
+lightly, and when he had her up, encircling her waist, her face near to
+his, he pressed the knife into her little hand.
+
+“No, Morenita! You shall not put me to shame,” he said. “You shall have
+your present; and so that everyone should know who is your lover to-day,
+you may cut all the silver buttons off my coat.”
+
+There were shouts of laughter and applause at this witty freak, while
+the girl passed the keen blade, and the impassive rider jingled in his
+palm the increasing hoard of silver buttons. He eased her to the ground
+with both her hands full. After whispering for a while with a very
+strenuous face, she walked away, staring haughtily, and vanished into
+the crowd.
+
+The circle had broken up, and the lordly Capataz de Cargadores, the
+indispensable man, the tried and trusty Nostromo, the Mediterranean
+sailor come ashore casually to try his luck in Costaguana, rode slowly
+towards the harbour. The Juno was just then swinging round; and even
+as Nostromo reined up again to look on, a flag ran up on the improvised
+flagstaff erected in an ancient and dismantled little fort at the
+harbour entrance. Half a battery of field guns had been hurried over
+there from the Sulaco barracks for the purpose of firing the regulation
+salutes for the President-Dictator and the War Minister. As the
+mail-boat headed through the pass, the badly timed reports announced the
+end of Don Vincente Ribiera’s first official visit to Sulaco, and for
+Captain Mitchell the end of another “historic occasion.” Next time when
+the “Hope of honest men” was to come that way, a year and a half later,
+it was unofficially, over the mountain tracks, fleeing after a defeat on
+a lame mule, to be only just saved by Nostromo from an ignominious death
+at the hands of a mob. It was a very different event, of which Captain
+Mitchell used to say--
+
+“It was history--history, sir! And that fellow of mine, Nostromo, you
+know, was right in it. Absolutely making history, sir.”
+
+But this event, creditable to Nostromo, was to lead immediately to
+another, which could not be classed either as “history” or as “a
+mistake” in Captain Mitchell’s phraseology. He had another word for it.
+
+“Sir” he used to say afterwards, “that was no mistake. It was a
+fatality. A misfortune, pure and simple, sir. And that poor fellow of
+mine was right in it--right in the middle of it! A fatality, if ever
+there was one--and to my mind he has never been the same man since.”
+
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND THE ISABELS
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Through good and evil report in the varying fortune of that struggle
+which Don Jose had characterized in the phrase, “the fate of national
+honesty trembles in the balance,” the Gould Concession, “Imperium in
+Imperio,” had gone on working; the square mountain had gone on pouring
+its treasure down the wooden shoots to the unresting batteries of
+stamps; the lights of San Tome had twinkled night after night upon the
+great, limitless shadow of the Campo; every three months the silver
+escort had gone down to the sea as if neither the war nor its
+consequences could ever affect the ancient Occidental State secluded
+beyond its high barrier of the Cordillera. All the fighting took place
+on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated peaks lorded over by
+the white dome of Higuerota and as yet unbreached by the railway, of
+which only the first part, the easy Campo part from Sulaco to the Ivie
+Valley at the foot of the pass, had been laid. Neither did the telegraph
+line cross the mountains yet; its poles, like slender beacons on the
+plain, penetrated into the forest fringe of the foot-hills cut by
+the deep avenue of the track; and its wire ended abruptly in the
+construction camp at a white deal table supporting a Morse apparatus,
+in a long hut of planks with a corrugated iron roof overshadowed by
+gigantic cedar trees--the quarters of the engineer in charge of the
+advance section.
+
+The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in railway material, and
+with the movements of troops along the coast. The O.S.N. Company found
+much occupation for its fleet. Costaguana had no navy, and, apart from a
+few coastguard cutters, there were no national ships except a couple of
+old merchant steamers used as transports.
+
+Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick of history, found
+time for an hour or so during an afternoon in the drawing-room of the
+Casa Gould, where, with a strange ignorance of the real forces at work
+around him, he professed himself delighted to get away from the
+strain of affairs. He did not know what he would have done without his
+invaluable Nostromo, he declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics
+gave him more work--he confided to Mrs. Gould--than he had bargained
+for.
+
+Don Jose Avellanos had displayed in the service of the endangered
+Ribiera Government an organizing activity and an eloquence of which
+the echoes reached even Europe. For, after the new loan to the Ribiera
+Government, Europe had become interested in Costaguana. The Sala of the
+Provincial Assembly (in the Municipal Buildings of Sulaco), with its
+portraits of the Liberators on the walls and an old flag of Cortez
+preserved in a glass case above the President’s chair, had heard all
+these speeches--the early one containing the impassioned declaration
+“Militarism is the enemy,” the famous one of the “trembling balance”
+ delivered on the occasion of the vote for the raising of a second
+Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming Government; and when the
+provinces again displayed their old flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento’s
+time) there was another of those great orations, when Don Jose greeted
+these old emblems of the war of Independence, brought out again in the
+name of new Ideals. The old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For
+his part he did not wish to revive old political doctrines. They were
+perishable. They died. But the doctrine of political rectitude was
+immortal. The second Sulaco regiment, to whom he was presenting this
+flag, was going to show its valour in a contest for order, peace,
+progress; for the establishment of national self-respect without
+which--he declared with energy--“we are a reproach and a byword amongst
+the powers of the world.”
+
+Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly with
+his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later story of his
+captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known
+to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not been a victim of
+the ferocious and summary executions which marked the course of that
+tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of
+political fanaticism. The power of Supreme Government had become in his
+dull mind an object of strange worship, as if it were some sort of
+cruel deity. It was incarnated in himself, and his adversaries, the
+Federalists, were the supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and
+fear, as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For years he had
+carried about at the tail of the Army of Pacification, all over the
+country, a captive band of such atrocious criminals, who considered
+themselves most unfortunate at not having been summarily executed. It
+was a diminishing company of nearly naked skeletons, loaded with irons,
+covered with dirt, with vermin, with raw wounds, all men of position,
+of education, of wealth, who had learned to fight amongst themselves for
+scraps of rotten beef thrown to them by soldiers, or to beg a negro
+cook for a drink of muddy water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos,
+clanking his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in order to
+prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel torture a human
+body can stand without parting with the last spark of life. Sometimes
+interrogatories, backed by some primitive method of torture, were
+administered to them by a commission of officers hastily assembled in a
+hut of sticks and branches, and made pitiless by the fear for their own
+lives. A lucky one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would
+perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a file of soldiers.
+Always an army chaplain--some unshaven, dirty man, girt with a sword and
+with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on the left breast of
+a lieutenant’s uniform--would follow, cigarette in the corner of the
+mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the confession and give absolution;
+for the Citizen Saviour of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus
+officially in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational
+clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad would be heard,
+followed sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud
+of smoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Army of
+Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the forests,
+crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the haciendas of
+the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns in the fulfilment of
+its patriotic mission, and leaving behind a united land wherein the evil
+taint of Federalism could no longer be detected in the smoke of burning
+houses and the smell of spilt blood. Don Jose Avellanos had survived
+that time. Perhaps, when contemptuously signifying to him his release,
+the Citizen Saviour of the Country might have thought this benighted
+aristocrat too broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer
+dangerous. Or, perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman Bento,
+usually full of fanciful fears and brooding suspicions, had sudden
+accesses of unreasonable self-confidence when he perceived himself
+elevated on a pinnacle of power and safety beyond the reach of mere
+mortal plotters. At such times he would impulsively command the
+celebration of a solemn Mass of thanksgiving, which would be sung in
+great pomp in the cathedral of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient
+Archbishop of his creation. He heard it sitting in a gilt armchair
+placed before the high altar, surrounded by the civil and military heads
+of his Government. The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into
+the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of mark to stay
+away from these manifestations of presidential piety. Having thus
+acknowledged the only power he was at all disposed to recognize as
+above himself, he would scatter acts of political grace in a sardonic
+wantonness of clemency. There was no other way left now to enjoy his
+power but by seeing his crushed adversaries crawl impotently into the
+light of day out of the dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their
+harmlessness fed his insatiable vanity, and they could always be got
+hold of again. It was the rule for all the women of their families to
+present thanks afterwards in a special audience. The incarnation of that
+strange god, El Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked hat on
+head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter to show their gratitude
+by bringing up their children in fidelity to the democratic form of
+government, “which I have established for the happiness of our country.”
+ His front teeth having been knocked out in some accident of his former
+herdsman’s life, his utterance was spluttering and indistinct. He
+had been working for Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and
+opposition. Let it cease now lest he should become weary of forgiving!
+
+Don Jose Avellanos had known this forgiveness.
+
+He was broken in health and fortune deplorably enough to present a truly
+gratifying spectacle to the supreme chief of democratic institutions.
+He retired to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in that province, and she
+nursed him back to life out of the house of death and captivity. When
+she died, their daughter, an only child, was old enough to devote
+herself to “poor papa.”
+
+Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly in England, was a
+tall, grave girl, with a self-possessed manner, a wide, white forehead,
+a wealth of rich brown hair, and blue eyes.
+
+The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her character and
+accomplishments. She was reputed to be terribly learned and serious. As
+to pride, it was well known that all the Corbelans were proud, and her
+mother was a Corbelan. Don Jose Avellanos depended very much upon the
+devotion of his beloved Antonia. He accepted it in the benighted way of
+men, who, though made in God’s image, are like stone idols without sense
+before the smoke of certain burnt offerings. He was ruined in every
+way, but a man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life. Don Jose
+Avellanos desired passionately for his country: peace, prosperity,
+and (as the end of the preface to “Fifty Years of Misrule” has it)
+“an honourable place in the comity of civilized nations.” In this last
+phrase the Minister Plenipotentiary, cruelly humiliated by the bad faith
+of his Government towards the foreign bondholders, stands disclosed in
+the patriot.
+
+The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the tyranny of Guzman
+Bento seemed to bring his desire to the very door of opportunity. He
+was too old to descend personally into the centre of the arena at Sta.
+Marta. But the men who acted there sought his advice at every step. He
+himself thought that he could be most useful at a distance, in Sulaco.
+His name, his connections, his former position, his experience commanded
+the respect of his class. The discovery that this man, living in
+dignified poverty in the Corbelan town residence (opposite the Casa
+Gould), could dispose of material means towards the support of the cause
+increased his influence. It was his open letter of appeal that decided
+the candidature of Don Vincente Ribiera for the Presidency. Another of
+these informal State papers drawn up by Don Jose (this time in the
+shape of an address from the Province) induced that scrupulous
+constitutionalist to accept the extraordinary powers conferred upon him
+for five years by an overwhelming vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It
+was a specific mandate to establish the prosperity of the people on the
+basis of firm peace at home, and to redeem the national credit by the
+satisfaction of all just claims abroad.
+
+On the afternoon the news of that vote had reached Sulaco by the usual
+roundabout postal way through Cayta, and up the coast by steamer. Don
+Jose, who had been waiting for the mail in the Goulds’ drawing-room, got
+out of the rocking-chair, letting his hat fall off his knees. He rubbed
+his silvery, short hair with both hands, speechless with the excess of
+joy.
+
+“Emilia, my soul,” he had burst out, “let me embrace you! Let me--”
+
+Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an apt
+remark about the dawn of a new era; but if Don Jose thought something
+of the kind, his eloquence failed him on this occasion. The inspirer
+of that revival of the Blanco party tottered where he stood. Mrs. Gould
+moved forward quickly and, as she offered her cheek with a smile to her
+old friend, managed very cleverly to give him the support of her arm he
+really needed.
+
+Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a time he could do no
+more than murmur, “Oh, you two patriots! Oh, you two patriots!”--looking
+from one to the other. Vague plans of another historical work, wherein
+all the devotions to the regeneration of the country he loved would be
+enshrined for the reverent worship of posterity, flitted through his
+mind. The historian who had enough elevation of soul to write of Guzman
+Bento: “Yet this monster, imbrued in the blood of his countrymen, must
+not be held unreservedly to the execration of future years. It appears
+to be true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve years
+of peace; and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he was, he
+died poor. His worst fault, perhaps, was not his ferocity, but his
+ignorance;” the man who could write thus of a cruel persecutor (the
+passage occurs in his “History of Misrule”) felt at the foreshadowing of
+success an almost boundless affection for his two helpers, for these two
+young people from over the sea.
+
+Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practical necessity,
+stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn
+the sword, so now, the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung
+the silver of the San Tome into the fray. The Inglez of Sulaco, the
+“Costaguana Englishman” of the third generation, was as far from being
+a political intriguer as his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler.
+Springing from the instinctive uprightness of their natures their action
+was reasoned. They saw an opportunity and used the weapon to hand.
+
+Charles Gould’s position--a commanding position in the background of
+that attempt to retrieve the peace and the credit of the Republic--was
+very clear. At the beginning he had had to accommodate himself to
+existing circumstances of corruption so naively brazen as to disarm the
+hate of a man courageous enough not to be afraid of its irresponsible
+potency to ruin everything it touched. It seemed to him too contemptible
+for hot anger even. He made use of it with a cold, fearless scorn,
+manifested rather than concealed by the forms of stony courtesy which
+did away with much of the ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps,
+he suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly illusions, but
+he refused to discuss the ethical view with his wife. He trusted
+that, though a little disenchanted, she would be intelligent enough to
+understand that his character safeguarded the enterprise of their lives
+as much or more than his policy. The extraordinary development of the
+mine had put a great power into his hands. To feel that prosperity
+always at the mercy of unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him.
+To Mrs. Gould it was humiliating. At any rate, it was dangerous. In the
+confidential communications passing between Charles Gould, the King
+of Sulaco, and the head of the silver and steel interests far away in
+California, the conviction was growing that any attempt made by men of
+education and integrity ought to be discreetly supported. “You may tell
+your friend Avellanos that I think so,” Mr. Holroyd had written at the
+proper moment from his inviolable sanctuary within the eleven-storey
+high factory of great affairs. And shortly afterwards, with a credit
+opened by the Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to the
+Holroyd Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana took a practical
+shape under the eye of the administrator of the San Tome mine. And Don
+Jose, the hereditary friend of the Gould family, could say: “Perhaps, my
+dear Carlos, I shall not have believed in vain.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+After another armed struggle, decided by Montero’s victory of Rio Seco,
+had been added to the tale of civil wars, the “honest men,” as Don Jose
+called them, could breathe freely for the first time in half a century.
+The Five-Year-Mandate law became the basis of that regeneration,
+the passionate desire and hope for which had been like the elixir of
+everlasting youth for Don Jose Avellanos.
+
+And when it was suddenly--and not quite unexpectedly--endangered by that
+“brute Montero,” it was a passionate indignation that gave him a
+new lease of life, as it were. Already, at the time of the
+President-Dictator’s visit to Sulaco, Moraga had sounded a note of
+warning from Sta. Marta about the War Minister. Montero and his brother
+made the subject of an earnest talk between the Dictator-President
+and the Nestor-inspirer of the party. But Don Vincente, a doctor of
+philosophy from the Cordova University, seemed to have an exaggerated
+respect for military ability, whose mysteriousness--since it appeared
+to be altogether independent of intellect--imposed upon his imagination.
+The victor of Rio Seco was a popular hero. His services were so recent
+that the President-Dictator quailed before the obvious charge of
+political ingratitude. Great regenerating transactions were being
+initiated--the fresh loan, a new railway line, a vast colonization
+scheme. Anything that could unsettle the public opinion in the capital
+was to be avoided. Don Jose bowed to these arguments and tried to
+dismiss from his mind the gold-laced portent in boots, and with a sabre,
+made meaningless now at last, he hoped, in the new order of things.
+
+Less than six months after the President-Dictator’s visit, Sulaco
+learned with stupefaction of the military revolt in the name of national
+honour. The Minister of War, in a barrack-square allocution to the
+officers of the artillery regiment he had been inspecting, had declared
+the national honour sold to foreigners. The Dictator, by his weak
+compliance with the demands of the European powers--for the settlement
+of long outstanding money claims--had showed himself unfit to rule. A
+letter from Moraga explained afterwards that the initiative, and even
+the very text, of the incendiary allocution came, in reality, from
+the other Montero, the ex-guerillero, the _Commandante de Plaza_.
+The energetic treatment of Dr. Monygham, sent for in haste “to the
+mountain,” who came galloping three leagues in the dark, saved Don Jose
+from a dangerous attack of jaundice.
+
+After getting over the shock, Don Jose refused to let himself be
+prostrated. Indeed, better news succeeded at first. The revolt in the
+capital had been suppressed after a night of fighting in the streets.
+Unfortunately, both the Monteros had been able to make their escape
+south, to their native province of Entre-Montes. The hero of the
+forest march, the victor of Rio Seco, had been received with frenzied
+acclamations in Nicoya, the provincial capital. The troops in garrison
+there had gone to him in a body. The brothers were organizing an army,
+gathering malcontents, sending emissaries primed with patriotic lies to
+the people, and with promises of plunder to the wild llaneros. Even
+a Monterist press had come into existence, speaking oracularly of the
+secret promises of support given by “our great sister Republic of the
+North” against the sinister land-grabbing designs of European powers,
+cursing in every issue the “miserable Ribiera,” who had plotted
+to deliver his country, bound hand and foot, for a prey to foreign
+speculators.
+
+Sulaco, pastoral and sleepy, with its opulent Campo and the rich silver
+mine, heard the din of arms fitfully in its fortunate isolation. It was
+nevertheless in the very forefront of the defence with men and money;
+but the very rumours reached it circuitously--from abroad even, so
+much was it cut off from the rest of the Republic, not only by natural
+obstacles, but also by the vicissitudes of the war. The Monteristos were
+besieging Cayta, an important postal link. The overland couriers ceased
+to come across the mountains, and no muleteer would consent to risk the
+journey at last; even Bonifacio on one occasion failed to return from
+Sta. Marta, either not daring to start, or perhaps captured by the
+parties of the enemy raiding the country between the Cordillera and
+the capital. Monterist publications, however, found their way into the
+province, mysteriously enough; and also Monterist emissaries preaching
+death to aristocrats in the villages and towns of the Campo. Very early,
+at the beginning of the trouble, Hernandez, the bandit, had proposed
+(through the agency of an old priest of a village in the wilds) to
+deliver two of them to the Ribierist authorities in Tonoro. They had
+come to offer him a free pardon and the rank of colonel from General
+Montero in consideration of joining the rebel army with his mounted
+band. No notice was taken at the time of the proposal. It was joined, as
+an evidence of good faith, to a petition praying the Sulaco Assembly for
+permission to enlist, with all his followers, in the forces being
+then raised in Sulaco for the defence of the Five-Year Mandate of
+regeneration. The petition, like everything else, had found its way
+into Don Jose’s hands. He had showed to Mrs. Gould these pages of
+dirty-greyish rough paper (perhaps looted in some village store),
+covered with the crabbed, illiterate handwriting of the old padre,
+carried off from his hut by the side of a mud-walled church to be the
+secretary of the dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamplight
+of the Gould drawing-room over the document containing the fierce and
+yet humble appeal of the man against the blind and stupid barbarity
+turning an honest ranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest
+stated that, but for being deprived of his liberty for ten days, he had
+been treated with humanity and the respect due to his sacred calling. He
+had been, it appears, confessing and absolving the chief and most of the
+band, and he guaranteed the sincerity of their good disposition. He had
+distributed heavy penances, no doubt in the way of litanies and fasts;
+but he argued shrewdly that it would be difficult for them to make their
+peace with God durably till they had made peace with men.
+
+Never before, perhaps, had Hernandez’s head been in less jeopardy than
+when he petitioned humbly for permission to buy a pardon for himself
+and his gang of deserters by armed service. He could range afar from the
+waste lands protecting his fastness, unchecked, because there were no
+troops left in the whole province. The usual garrison of Sulaco had gone
+south to the war, with its brass band playing the Bolivar march on the
+bridge of one of the O.S.N. Company’s steamers. The great family coaches
+drawn up along the shore of the harbour were made to rock on the high
+leathern springs by the enthusiasm of the senoras and the senoritas
+standing up to wave their lace handkerchiefs, as lighter after lighter
+packed full of troops left the end of the jetty.
+
+Nostromo directed the embarkation, under the superintendendence
+of Captain Mitchell, red-faced in the sun, conspicuous in a white
+waistcoat, representing the allied and anxious goodwill of all the
+material interests of civilization. General Barrios, who commanded the
+troops, assured Don Jose on parting that in three weeks he would have
+Montero in a wooden cage drawn by three pair of oxen ready for a tour
+through all the towns of the Republic.
+
+“And then, senora,” he continued, baring his curly iron-grey head to
+Mrs. Gould in her landau--“and then, senora, we shall convert our swords
+into plough-shares and grow rich. Even I, myself, as soon as this little
+business is settled, shall open a fundacion on some land I have on the
+llanos and try to make a little money in peace and quietness. Senora,
+you know, all Costaguana knows--what do I say?--this whole South
+American continent knows, that Pablo Barrios has had his fill of
+military glory.”
+
+Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and patriotic send-off. It
+was not his part to see the soldiers embark. It was neither his part,
+nor his inclination, nor his policy. His part, his inclination, and
+his policy were united in one endeavour to keep unchecked the flow of
+treasure he had started single-handed from the re-opened scar in the
+flank of the mountain. As the mine developed he had trained for himself
+some native help. There were foremen, artificers and clerks, with Don
+Pepe for the gobernador of the mining population. For the rest his
+shoulders alone sustained the whole weight of the “Imperium in Imperio,”
+ the great Gould Concession whose mere shadow had been enough to crush
+the life out of his father.
+
+Mrs. Gould had no silver mine to look after. In the general life of the
+Gould Concession she was represented by her two lieutenants, the doctor
+and the priest, but she fed her woman’s love of excitement on events
+whose significance was purified to her by the fire of her imaginative
+purpose. On that day she had brought the Avellanos, father and daughter,
+down to the harbour with her.
+
+Amongst his other activities of that stirring time, Don Jose had become
+the chairman of a Patriotic Committee which had armed a great proportion
+of troops in the Sulaco command with an improved model of a military
+rifle. It had been just discarded for something still more deadly by
+one of the great European powers. How much of the market-price for
+second-hand weapons was covered by the voluntary contributions of the
+principal families, and how much came from those funds Don Jose was
+understood to command abroad, remained a secret which he alone could
+have disclosed; but the Ricos, as the populace called them, had
+contributed under the pressure of their Nestor’s eloquence. Some of the
+more enthusiastic ladies had been moved to bring offerings of jewels
+into the hands of the man who was the life and soul of the party.
+
+There were moments when both his life and his soul seemed overtaxed
+by so many years of undiscouraged belief in regeneration. He appeared
+almost inanimate, sitting rigidly by the side of Mrs. Gould in the
+landau, with his fine, old, clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as if
+modelled in yellow wax, shaded by a soft felt hat, the dark eyes looking
+out fixedly. Antonia, the beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avellanos was
+called in Sulaco, leaned back, facing them; and her full figure, the
+grave oval of her face with full red lips, made her look more mature
+than Mrs. Gould, with her mobile expression and small, erect person
+under a slightly swaying sunshade.
+
+Whenever possible Antonia attended her father; her recognized devotion
+weakened the shocking effect of her scorn for the rigid conventions
+regulating the life of Spanish-American girlhood. And, in truth, she was
+no longer girlish. It was said that she often wrote State papers from
+her father’s dictation, and was allowed to read all the books in
+his library. At the receptions--where the situation was saved by the
+presence of a very decrepit old lady (a relation of the Corbelans),
+quite deaf and motionless in an armchair--Antonia could hold her own in
+a discussion with two or three men at a time. Obviously she was not the
+girl to be content with peeping through a barred window at a cloaked
+figure of a lover ensconced in a doorway opposite--which is the correct
+form of Costaguana courtship. It was generally believed that with her
+foreign upbringing and foreign ideas the learned and proud Antonia would
+never marry--unless, indeed, she married a foreigner from Europe or
+North America, now that Sulaco seemed on the point of being invaded by
+all the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+When General Barrios stopped to address Mrs. Gould, Antonia raised
+negligently her hand holding an open fan, as if to shade from the sun
+her head, wrapped in a light lace shawl. The clear gleam of her blue
+eyes gliding behind the black fringe of eyelashes paused for a moment
+upon her father, then travelled further to the figure of a young man
+of thirty at most, of medium height, rather thick-set, wearing a light
+overcoat. Bearing down with the open palm of his hand upon the knob of
+a flexible cane, he had been looking on from a distance; but directly
+he saw himself noticed, he approached quietly and put his elbow over the
+door of the landau.
+
+The shirt collar, cut low in the neck, the big bow of his cravat,
+the style of his clothing, from the round hat to the varnished shoes,
+suggested an idea of French elegance; but otherwise he was the very type
+of a fair Spanish creole. The fluffy moustache and the short, curly,
+golden beard did not conceal his lips, rosy, fresh, almost pouting in
+expression. His full, round face was of that warm, healthy creole white
+which is never tanned by its native sunshine. Martin Decoud was seldom
+exposed to the Costaguana sun under which he was born. His people had
+been long settled in Paris, where he had studied law, had dabbled in
+literature, had hoped now and then in moments of exaltation to become a
+poet like that other foreigner of Spanish blood, Jose Maria Heredia. In
+other moments he had, to pass the time, condescended to write articles
+on European affairs for the Semenario, the principal newspaper in
+Sta. Marta, which printed them under the heading “From our special
+correspondent,” though the authorship was an open secret. Everybody in
+Costaguana, where the tale of compatriots in Europe is jealously kept,
+knew that it was “the son Decoud,” a talented young man, supposed to be
+moving in the higher spheres of Society. As a matter of fact, he was an
+idle boulevardier, in touch with some smart journalists, made free of a
+few newspaper offices, and welcomed in the pleasure haunts of pressmen.
+This life, whose dreary superficiality is covered by the glitter
+of universal blague, like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by the
+spangles of a motley costume, induced in him a Frenchified--but most
+un-French--cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren indifferentism
+posing as intellectual superiority. Of his own country he used to say to
+his French associates: “Imagine an atmosphere of opera-bouffe in which
+all the comic business of stage statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all
+their farcical stealing, intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead
+earnest. It is screamingly funny, the blood flows all the time, and the
+actors believe themselves to be influencing the fate of the universe.
+Of course, government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing
+of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind; but really we
+Spanish-Americans do overstep the bounds. No man of ordinary
+intelligence can take part in the intrigues of une farce macabre.
+However, these Ribierists, of whom we hear so much just now, are really
+trying in their own comical way to make the country habitable, and even
+to pay some of its debts. My friends, you had better write up Senor
+Ribiera all you can in kindness to your own bondholders. Really, if what
+I am told in my letters is true, there is some chance for them at last.”
+
+And he would explain with railing verve what Don Vincente Ribiera stood
+for--a mournful little man oppressed by his own good intentions, the
+significance of battles won, who Montero was (_un grotesque vaniteux
+et feroce_), and the manner of the new loan connected with railway
+development, and the colonization of vast tracts of land in one great
+financial scheme.
+
+And his French friends would remark that evidently this little fellow
+_Decoud connaissait la question a fond_. An important Parisian review
+asked him for an article on the situation. It was composed in a
+serious tone and in a spirit of levity. Afterwards he asked one of his
+intimates--
+
+“Have you read my thing about the regeneration of Costaguana--_une bonne
+blague, hein_?”
+
+He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his fingers. But far
+from being that he was in danger of remaining a sort of nondescript
+dilettante all his life. He had pushed the habit of universal raillery
+to a point where it blinded him to the genuine impulses of his own
+nature. To be suddenly selected for the executive member of the
+patriotic small-arms committee of Sulaco seemed to him the height of
+the unexpected, one of those fantastic moves of which only his “dear
+countrymen” were capable.
+
+“It’s like a tile falling on my head. I--I--executive member! It’s
+the first I hear of it! What do I know of military rifles? _C’est
+funambulesque!_” he had exclaimed to his favourite sister; for the Decoud
+family--except the old father and mother--used the French language
+amongst themselves. “And you should see the explanatory and confidential
+letter! Eight pages of it--no less!”
+
+This letter, in Antonia’s handwriting, was signed by Don Jose, who
+appealed to the “young and gifted Costaguanero” on public grounds, and
+privately opened his heart to his talented god-son, a man of wealth
+and leisure, with wide relations, and by his parentage and bringing-up
+worthy of all confidence.
+
+“Which means,” Martin commented, cynically, to his sister, “that I am
+not likely to misappropriate the funds, or go blabbing to our _Charge
+d’Affaires_ here.”
+
+The whole thing was being carried out behind the back of the War
+Minister, Montero, a mistrusted member of the Ribiera Government, but
+difficult to get rid of at once. He was not to know anything of it till
+the troops under Barrios’s command had the new rifle in their hands. The
+President-Dictator, whose position was very difficult, was alone in the
+secret.
+
+“How funny!” commented Martin’s sister and confidante; to which the
+brother, with an air of best Parisian blague, had retorted:
+
+“It’s immense! The idea of that Chief of the State engaged, with the
+help of private citizens, in digging a mine under his own indispensable
+War Minister. No! We are unapproachable!” And he laughed immoderately.
+
+Afterwards his sister was surprised at the earnestness and ability
+he displayed in carrying out his mission, which circumstances made
+delicate, and his want of special knowledge rendered difficult. She had
+never seen Martin take so much trouble about anything in his whole life.
+
+“It amuses me,” he had explained, briefly. “I am beset by a lot
+of swindlers trying to sell all sorts of gaspipe weapons. They are
+charming; they invite me to expensive luncheons; I keep up their hopes;
+it’s extremely entertaining. Meanwhile, the real affair is being carried
+through in quite another quarter.”
+
+When the business was concluded he declared suddenly his intention of
+seeing the precious consignment delivered safely in Sulaco. The whole
+burlesque business, he thought, was worth following up to the end. He
+mumbled his excuses, tugging at his golden beard, before the acute young
+lady who (after the first wide stare of astonishment) looked at him with
+narrowed eyes, and pronounced slowly--
+
+“I believe you want to see Antonia.”
+
+“What Antonia?” asked the Costaguana boulevardier, in a vexed and
+disdainful tone. He shrugged his shoulders, and spun round on his heel.
+His sister called out after him joyously--
+
+“The Antonia you used to know when she wore her hair in two plaits down
+her back.”
+
+He had known her some eight years since, shortly before the Avellanos
+had left Europe for good, as a tall girl of sixteen, youthfully
+austere, and of a character already so formed that she ventured to treat
+slightingly his pose of disabused wisdom. On one occasion, as though she
+had lost all patience, she flew out at him about the aimlessness of his
+life and the levity of his opinions. He was twenty then, an only son,
+spoiled by his adoring family. This attack disconcerted him so greatly
+that he had faltered in his affectation of amused superiority before
+that insignificant chit of a school-girl. But the impression left was so
+strong that ever since all the girl friends of his sisters recalled to
+him Antonia Avellanos by some faint resemblance, or by the great force
+of contrast. It was, he told himself, like a ridiculous fatality. And,
+of course, in the news the Decouds received regularly from Costaguana,
+the name of their friends, the Avellanos, cropped up frequently--the
+arrest and the abominable treatment of the ex-Minister, the dangers and
+hardships endured by the family, its withdrawal in poverty to Sulaco,
+the death of the mother.
+
+The Monterist pronunciamento had taken place before Martin Decoud
+reached Costaguana. He came out in a roundabout way, through Magellan’s
+Straits by the main line and the West Coast Service of the O.S.N.
+Company. His precious consignment arrived just in time to convert the
+first feelings of consternation into a mood of hope and resolution.
+Publicly he was made much of by the _familias principales_. Privately Don
+Jose, still shaken and weak, embraced him with tears in his eyes.
+
+“You have come out yourself! No less could be expected from a Decoud.
+Alas! our worst fears have been realized,” he moaned, affectionately.
+And again he hugged his god-son. This was indeed the time for men of
+intellect and conscience to rally round the endangered cause.
+
+It was then that Martin Decoud, the adopted child of Western Europe,
+felt the absolute change of atmosphere. He submitted to being embraced
+and talked to without a word. He was moved in spite of himself by that
+note of passion and sorrow unknown on the more refined stage of European
+politics. But when the tall Antonia, advancing with her light step in
+the dimness of the big bare Sala of the Avellanos house, offered him her
+hand (in her emancipated way), and murmured, “I am glad to see you here,
+Don Martin,” he felt how impossible it would be to tell these two people
+that he had intended to go away by the next month’s packet. Don Jose,
+meantime, continued his praises. Every accession added to public
+confidence, and, besides, what an example to the young men at home
+from the brilliant defender of the country’s regeneration, the worthy
+expounder of the party’s political faith before the world! Everybody had
+read the magnificent article in the famous Parisian Review. The world
+was now informed: and the author’s appearance at this moment was like
+a public act of faith. Young Decoud felt overcome by a feeling of
+impatient confusion. His plan had been to return by way of the United
+States through California, visit Yellowstone Park, see Chicago, Niagara,
+have a look at Canada, perhaps make a short stay in New York, a longer
+one in Newport, use his letters of introduction. The pressure of
+Antonia’s hand was so frank, the tone of her voice was so unexpectedly
+unchanged in its approving warmth, that all he found to say after his
+low bow was--
+
+“I am inexpressibly grateful for your welcome; but why need a man be
+thanked for returning to his native country? I am sure Dona Antonia does
+not think so.”
+
+“Certainly not, senor,” she said, with that perfectly calm openness of
+manner which characterized all her utterances. “But when he returns, as
+you return, one may be glad--for the sake of both.”
+
+Martin Decoud said nothing of his plans. He not only never breathed a
+word of them to any one, but only a fortnight later asked the mistress
+of the Casa Gould (where he had of course obtained admission at once),
+leaning forward in his chair with an air of well-bred familiarity,
+whether she could not detect in him that day a marked change--an air, he
+explained, of more excellent gravity. At this Mrs. Gould turned her face
+full towards him with the silent inquiry of slightly widened eyes and
+the merest ghost of a smile, an habitual movement with her, which
+was very fascinating to men by something subtly devoted, finely
+self-forgetful in its lively readiness of attention. Because, Decoud
+continued imperturbably, he felt no longer an idle cumberer of the
+earth. She was, he assured her, actually beholding at that moment the
+Journalist of Sulaco. At once Mrs. Gould glanced towards Antonia, posed
+upright in the corner of a high, straight-backed Spanish sofa, a large
+black fan waving slowly against the curves of her fine figure, the tips
+of crossed feet peeping from under the hem of the black skirt. Decoud’s
+eyes also remained fixed there, while in an undertone he added that Miss
+Avellanos was quite aware of his new and unexpected vocation, which in
+Costaguana was generally the speciality of half-educated negroes and
+wholly penniless lawyers. Then, confronting with a sort of urbane
+effrontery Mrs. Gould’s gaze, now turned sympathetically upon himself,
+he breathed out the words, “_Pro Patria!_”
+
+What had happened was that he had all at once yielded to Don Jose’s
+pressing entreaties to take the direction of a newspaper that would
+“voice the aspirations of the province.” It had been Don Jose’s old
+and cherished idea. The necessary plant (on a modest scale) and a large
+consignment of paper had been received from America some time before;
+the right man alone was wanted. Even Senor Moraga in Sta. Marta had not
+been able to find one, and the matter was now becoming pressing;
+some organ was absolutely needed to counteract the effect of the lies
+disseminated by the Monterist press: the atrocious calumnies, the
+appeals to the people calling upon them to rise with their knives in
+their hands and put an end once for all to the Blancos, to these Gothic
+remnants, to these sinister mummies, these impotent paraliticos, who
+plotted with foreigners for the surrender of the lands and the slavery
+of the people.
+
+The clamour of this Negro Liberalism frightened Senor Avellanos. A
+newspaper was the only remedy. And now that the right man had been found
+in Decoud, great black letters appeared painted between the windows
+above the arcaded ground floor of a house on the Plaza. It was next to
+Anzani’s great emporium of boots, silks, ironware, muslins, wooden toys,
+tiny silver arms, legs, heads, hearts (for ex-voto offerings), rosaries,
+champagne, women’s hats, patent medicines, even a few dusty books in
+paper covers and mostly in the French language. The big black letters
+formed the words, “Offices of the Porvenir.” From these offices a single
+folded sheet of Martin’s journalism issued three times a week; and
+the sleek yellow Anzani prowling in a suit of ample black and carpet
+slippers, before the many doors of his establishment, greeted by a deep,
+side-long inclination of his body the Journalist of Sulaco going to and
+fro on the business of his august calling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+Perhaps it was in the exercise of his calling that he had come to see
+the troops depart. The Porvenir of the day after next would no doubt
+relate the event, but its editor, leaning his side against the landau,
+seemed to look at nothing. The front rank of the company of infantry
+drawn up three deep across the shore end of the jetty when pressed too
+close would bring their bayonets to the charge ferociously, with an
+awful rattle; and then the crowd of spectators swayed back bodily,
+even under the noses of the big white mules. Notwithstanding the great
+multitude there was only a low, muttering noise; the dust hung in a
+brown haze, in which the horsemen, wedged in the throng here and there,
+towered from the hips upwards, gazing all one way over the heads. Almost
+every one of them had mounted a friend, who steadied himself with both
+hands grasping his shoulders from behind; and the rims of their hats
+touching, made like one disc sustaining the cones of two pointed crowns
+with a double face underneath. A hoarse mozo would bawl out something to
+an acquaintance in the ranks, or a woman would shriek suddenly the word
+Adios! followed by the Christian name of a man.
+
+General Barrios, in a shabby blue tunic and white peg-top trousers
+falling upon strange red boots, kept his head uncovered and stooped
+slightly, propping himself up with a thick stick. No! He had earned
+enough military glory to satiate any man, he insisted to Mrs. Gould,
+trying at the same time to put an air of gallantry into his attitude. A
+few jetty hairs hung sparsely from his upper lip, he had a salient nose,
+a thin, long jaw, and a black silk patch over one eye. His other eye,
+small and deep-set, twinkled erratically in all directions, aimlessly
+affable. The few European spectators, all men, who had naturally drifted
+into the neighbourhood of the Gould carriage, betrayed by the solemnity
+of their faces their impression that the general must have had too much
+punch (Swedish punch, imported in bottles by Anzani) at the Amarilla
+Club before he had started with his Staff on a furious ride to the
+harbour. But Mrs. Gould bent forward, self-possessed, and declared her
+conviction that still more glory awaited the general in the near future.
+
+“Senora!” he remonstrated, with great feeling, “in the name of God,
+reflect! How can there be any glory for a man like me in overcoming that
+bald-headed embustero with the dyed moustaches?”
+
+Pablo Ignacio Barrios, son of a village alcalde, general of division,
+commanding in chief the Occidental Military district, did not frequent
+the higher society of the town. He preferred the unceremonious
+gatherings of men where he could tell jaguar-hunt stories, boast of his
+powers with the lasso, with which he could perform extremely difficult
+feats of the sort “no married man should attempt,” as the saying
+goes amongst the llaneros; relate tales of extraordinary night rides,
+encounters with wild bulls, struggles with crocodiles, adventures in
+the great forests, crossings of swollen rivers. And it was not mere
+boastfulness that prompted the general’s reminiscences, but a genuine
+love of that wild life which he had led in his young days before he
+turned his back for ever on the thatched roof of the parental tolderia
+in the woods. Wandering away as far as Mexico he had fought against the
+French by the side (as he said) of Juarez, and was the only military
+man of Costaguana who had ever encountered European troops in the field.
+That fact shed a great lustre upon his name till it became eclipsed
+by the rising star of Montero. All his life he had been an inveterate
+gambler. He alluded himself quite openly to the current story how once,
+during some campaign (when in command of a brigade), he had gambled away
+his horses, pistols, and accoutrements, to the very epaulettes, playing
+monte with his colonels the night before the battle. Finally, he had
+sent under escort his sword (a presentation sword, with a gold hilt) to
+the town in the rear of his position to be immediately pledged for five
+hundred pesetas with a sleepy and frightened shop-keeper. By daybreak he
+had lost the last of that money, too, when his only remark, as he rose
+calmly, was, “Now let us go and fight to the death.” From that time he
+had become aware that a general could lead his troops into battle
+very well with a simple stick in his hand. “It has been my custom ever
+since,” he would say.
+
+He was always overwhelmed with debts; even during the periods of
+splendour in his varied fortunes of a Costaguana general, when he held
+high military commands, his gold-laced uniforms were almost always
+in pawn with some tradesman. And at last, to avoid the incessant
+difficulties of costume caused by the anxious lenders, he had assumed
+a disdain of military trappings, an eccentric fashion of shabby old
+tunics, which had become like a second nature. But the faction Barrios
+joined needed to fear no political betrayal. He was too much of a real
+soldier for the ignoble traffic of buying and selling victories. A
+member of the foreign diplomatic body in Sta. Marta had once passed a
+judgment upon him: “Barrios is a man of perfect honesty and even of
+some talent for war, _mais il manque de tenue_.” After the triumph of the
+Ribierists he had obtained the reputedly lucrative Occidental
+command, mainly through the exertions of his creditors (the Sta. Marta
+shopkeepers, all great politicians), who moved heaven and earth in his
+interest publicly, and privately besieged Senor Moraga, the influential
+agent of the San Tome mine, with the exaggerated lamentations that if
+the general were passed over, “We shall all be ruined.” An incidental
+but favourable mention of his name in Mr. Gould senior’s long
+correspondence with his son had something to do with his appointment,
+too; but most of all undoubtedly his established political honesty. No
+one questioned the personal bravery of the Tiger-killer, as the populace
+called him. He was, however, said to be unlucky in the field--but this
+was to be the beginning of an era of peace. The soldiers liked him
+for his humane temper, which was like a strange and precious flower
+unexpectedly blooming on the hotbed of corrupt revolutions; and when
+he rode slowly through the streets during some military display, the
+contemptuous good humour of his solitary eye roaming over the crowds
+extorted the acclamations of the populace. The women of that class
+especially seemed positively fascinated by the long drooping nose,
+the peaked chin, the heavy lower lip, the black silk eyepatch and band
+slanting rakishly over the forehead. His high rank always procured an
+audience of Caballeros for his sporting stories, which he detailed very
+well with a simple, grave enjoyment. As to the society of ladies, it was
+irksome by the restraints it imposed without any equivalent, as far as
+he could see. He had not, perhaps, spoken three times on the whole to
+Mrs. Gould since he had taken up his high command; but he had observed
+her frequently riding with the Senor Administrador, and had pronounced
+that there was more sense in her little bridle-hand than in all the
+female heads in Sulaco. His impulse had been to be very civil on parting
+to a woman who did not wobble in the saddle, and happened to be the wife
+of a personality very important to a man always short of money. He even
+pushed his attentions so far as to desire the aide-de-camp at his side
+(a thick-set, short captain with a Tartar physiognomy) to bring along a
+corporal with a file of men in front of the carriage, lest the crowd in
+its backward surges should “incommode the mules of the senora.” Then,
+turning to the small knot of silent Europeans looking on within earshot,
+he raised his voice protectingly--
+
+“Senores, have no apprehension. Go on quietly making your Ferro
+Carril--your railways, your telegraphs. Your--There’s enough wealth in
+Costaguana to pay for everything--or else you would not be here. Ha! ha!
+Don’t mind this little picardia of my friend Montero. In a little while
+you shall behold his dyed moustaches through the bars of a strong wooden
+cage. Si, senores! Fear nothing, develop the country, work, work!”
+
+The little group of engineers received this exhortation without a word,
+and after waving his hand at them loftily, he addressed himself again to
+Mrs. Gould--
+
+“That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enterprising! Work! Grow
+rich! To put Montero in a cage is my work; and when that insignificant
+piece of business is done, then, as Don Jose wishes us, we shall grow
+rich, one and all, like so many Englishmen, because it is money that
+saves a country, and--”
+
+But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying up from the
+direction of the jetty, interrupted his interpretation of Senor
+Avellanos’s ideals. The general made a movement of impatience; the other
+went on talking to him insistently, with an air of respect. The horses
+of the Staff had been embarked, the steamer’s gig was awaiting the
+general at the boat steps; and Barrios, after a fierce stare of his one
+eye, began to take leave. Don Jose roused himself for an appropriate
+phrase pronounced mechanically. The terrible strain of hope and fear was
+telling on him, and he seemed to husband the last sparks of his fire for
+those oratorical efforts of which even the distant Europe was to hear.
+Antonia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head behind the raised
+fan; and young Decoud, though he felt the girl’s eyes upon him, gazed
+away persistently, hooked on his elbow, with a scornful and complete
+detachment. Mrs. Gould heroically concealed her dismay at the appearance
+of men and events so remote from her racial conventions, dismay too deep
+to be uttered in words even to her husband. She understood his voiceless
+reserve better now. Their confidential intercourse fell, not in moments
+of privacy, but precisely in public, when the quick meeting of their
+glances would comment upon some fresh turn of events. She had gone to
+his school of uncompromising silence, the only one possible, since so
+much that seemed shocking, weird, and grotesque in the working out of
+their purposes had to be accepted as normal in this country. Decidedly,
+the stately Antonia looked more mature and infinitely calm; but she
+would never have known how to reconcile the sudden sinkings of her heart
+with an amiable mobility of expression.
+
+Mrs. Gould smiled a good-bye at Barrios, nodded round to the Europeans
+(who raised their hats simultaneously) with an engaging invitation, “I
+hope to see you all presently, at home”; then said nervously to Decoud,
+“Get in, Don Martin,” and heard him mutter to himself in French, as he
+opened the carriage door, “_Le sort en est jete_.” She heard him with a
+sort of exasperation. Nobody ought to have known better than himself
+that the first cast of dice had been already thrown long ago in a most
+desperate game. Distant acclamations, words of command yelled out, and a
+roll of drums on the jetty greeted the departing general. Something like
+a slight faintness came over her, and she looked blankly at Antonia’s
+still face, wondering what would happen to Charley if that absurd man
+failed. “A la casa, Ignacio,” she cried at the motionless broad back of
+the coachman, who gathered the reins without haste, mumbling to himself
+under his breath, “Si, la casa. Si, si nina.”
+
+The carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft track, the shadows fell
+long on the dusty little plain interspersed with dark bushes, mounds
+of turned-up earth, low wooden buildings with iron roofs of the Railway
+Company; the sparse row of telegraph poles strode obliquely clear of
+the town, bearing a single, almost invisible wire far into the great
+campo--like a slender, vibrating feeler of that progress waiting outside
+for a moment of peace to enter and twine itself about the weary heart of
+the land.
+
+The cafe window of the Albergo d’ltalia Una was full of sunburnt,
+whiskered faces of railway men. But at the other end of the house, the
+end of the Signori Inglesi, old Giorgio, at the door with one of his
+girls on each side, bared his bushy head, as white as the snows of
+Higuerota. Mrs. Gould stopped the carriage. She seldom failed to speak
+to her protege; moreover, the excitement, the heat, and the dust had
+made her thirsty. She asked for a glass of water. Giorgio sent the
+children indoors for it, and approached with pleasure expressed in his
+whole rugged countenance. It was not often that he had occasion to see
+his benefactress, who was also an Englishwoman--another title to his
+regard. He offered some excuses for his wife. It was a bad day with her;
+her oppressions--he tapped his own broad chest. She could not move from
+her chair that day.
+
+Decoud, ensconced in the corner of his seat, observed gloomily Mrs.
+Gould’s old revolutionist, then, offhand--
+
+“Well, and what do you think of it all, Garibaldino?”
+
+Old Giorgio, looking at him with some curiosity, said civilly that the
+troops had marched very well. One-eyed Barrios and his officers had done
+wonders with the recruits in a short time. Those Indios, only caught
+the other day, had gone swinging past in double quick time, like
+bersaglieri; they looked well fed, too, and had whole uniforms.
+“Uniforms!” he repeated with a half-smile of pity. A look of grim
+retrospect stole over his piercing, steady eyes. It had been otherwise
+in his time when men fought against tyranny, in the forests of Brazil,
+or on the plains of Uruguay, starving on half-raw beef without salt,
+half naked, with often only a knife tied to a stick for a weapon. “And
+yet we used to prevail against the oppressor,” he concluded, proudly.
+
+His animation fell; the slight gesture of his hand expressed
+discouragement; but he added that he had asked one of the sergeants to
+show him the new rifle. There was no such weapon in his fighting days;
+and if Barrios could not--
+
+“Yes, yes,” broke in Don Jose, almost trembling with eagerness. “We are
+safe. The good Senor Viola is a man of experience. Extremely deadly--is
+it not so? You have accomplished your mission admirably, my dear
+Martin.”
+
+Decoud, lolling back moodily, contemplated old Viola.
+
+“Ah! Yes. A man of experience. But who are you for, really, in your
+heart?”
+
+Mrs. Gould leaned over to the children. Linda had brought out a glass of
+water on a tray, with extreme care; Giselle presented her with a bunch
+of flowers gathered hastily.
+
+“For the people,” declared old Viola, sternly.
+
+“We are all for the people--in the end.”
+
+“Yes,” muttered old Viola, savagely. “And meantime they fight for you.
+Blind. Esclavos!”
+
+At that moment young Scarfe of the railway staff emerged from the
+door of the part reserved for the Signori Inglesi. He had come down to
+headquarters from somewhere up the line on a light engine, and had had
+just time to get a bath and change his clothes. He was a nice boy, and
+Mrs. Gould welcomed him.
+
+“It’s a delightful surprise to see you, Mrs. Gould. I’ve just come down.
+Usual luck. Missed everything, of course. This show is just over, and I
+hear there has been a great dance at Don Juste Lopez’s last night. Is it
+true?”
+
+“The young patricians,” Decoud began suddenly in his precise English,
+“have indeed been dancing before they started off to the war with the
+Great Pompey.”
+
+Young Scarfe stared, astounded. “You haven’t met before,” Mrs. Gould
+intervened. “Mr. Decoud--Mr. Scarfe.”
+
+“Ah! But we are not going to Pharsalia,” protested Don Jose, with
+nervous haste, also in English. “You should not jest like this, Martin.”
+
+Antonia’s breast rose and fell with a deeper breath. The young engineer
+was utterly in the dark. “Great what?” he muttered, vaguely.
+
+“Luckily, Montero is not a Caesar,” Decoud continued. “Not the two
+Monteros put together would make a decent parody of a Caesar.” He
+crossed his arms on his breast, looking at Senor Avellanos, who had
+returned to his immobility. “It is only you, Don Jose, who are a genuine
+old Roman--vir Romanus--eloquent and inflexible.”
+
+Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced, young Scarfe had been
+eager to express his simple feelings. In a loud and youthful tone he
+hoped that this Montero was going to be licked once for all and done
+with. There was no saying what would happen to the railway if the
+revolution got the upper hand. Perhaps it would have to be abandoned.
+It would not be the first railway gone to pot in Costaguana. “You know,
+it’s one of their so-called national things,” he ran on, wrinkling
+up his nose as if the word had a suspicious flavour to his profound
+experience of South American affairs. And, of course, he chatted with
+animation, it had been such an immense piece of luck for him at his
+age to get appointed on the staff “of a big thing like that--don’t you
+know.” It would give him the pull over a lot of chaps all through life,
+he asserted. “Therefore--down with Montero! Mrs. Gould.” His artless
+grin disappeared slowly before the unanimous gravity of the faces turned
+upon him from the carriage; only that “old chap,” Don Jose, presenting a
+motionless, waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not
+know the Avellanos very well. They did not give balls, and Antonia never
+appeared at a ground-floor window, as some other young ladies used to do
+attended by elder women, to chat with the caballeros on horseback in
+the Calle. The stares of these creoles did not matter much; but what on
+earth had come to Mrs. Gould? She said, “Go on, Ignacio,” and gave him
+a slow inclination of the head. He heard a short laugh from that
+round-faced, Frenchified fellow. He coloured up to the eyes, and stared
+at Giorgio Viola, who had fallen back with the children, hat in hand.
+
+“I shall want a horse presently,” he said with some asperity to the old
+man.
+
+“Si, senor. There are plenty of horses,” murmured the Garibaldino,
+smoothing absently, with his brown hands, the two heads, one dark with
+bronze glints, the other fair with a coppery ripple, of the two girls by
+his side. The returning stream of sightseers raised a great dust on the
+road. Horsemen noticed the group. “Go to your mother,” he said. “They
+are growing up as I am growing older, and there is nobody--”
+
+He looked at the young engineer and stopped, as if awakened from a
+dream; then, folding his arms on his breast, took up his usual position,
+leaning back in the doorway with an upward glance fastened on the white
+shoulder of Higuerota far away.
+
+In the carriage Martin Decoud, shifting his position as though he could
+not make himself comfortable, muttered as he swayed towards Antonia, “I
+suppose you hate me.” Then in a loud voice he began to congratulate Don
+Jose upon all the engineers being convinced Ribierists. The interest of
+all those foreigners was gratifying. “You have heard this one. He is an
+enlightened well-wisher. It is pleasant to think that the prosperity of
+Costaguana is of some use to the world.”
+
+“He is very young,” Mrs. Gould remarked, quietly.
+
+“And so very wise for his age,” retorted Decoud. “But here we have the
+naked truth from the mouth of that child. You are right, Don Jose. The
+natural treasures of Costaguana are of importance to the progressive
+Europe represented by this youth, just as three hundred years ago
+the wealth of our Spanish fathers was a serious object to the rest
+of Europe--as represented by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of
+futility upon our character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and
+materialism, high-sounding sentiments and a supine morality, violent
+efforts for an idea and a sullen acquiescence in every form of
+corruption. We convulsed a continent for our independence only to
+become the passive prey of a democratic parody, the helpless victims
+of scoundrels and cut-throats, our institutions a mockery, our laws a
+farce--a Guzman Bento our master! And we have sunk so low that when
+a man like you has awakened our conscience, a stupid barbarian of a
+Montero--Great Heavens! a Montero!--becomes a deadly danger, and an
+ignorant, boastful Indio, like Barrios, is our defender.”
+
+But Don Jose, disregarding the general indictment as though he had
+not heard a word of it, took up the defence of Barrios. The man was
+competent enough for his special task in the plan of campaign. It
+consisted in an offensive movement, with Cayta as base, upon the flank
+of the Revolutionist forces advancing from the south against Sta. Marta,
+which was covered by another army with the President-Dictator in its
+midst. Don Jose became quite animated with a great flow of speech,
+bending forward anxiously under the steady eyes of his daughter. Decoud,
+as if silenced by so much ardour, did not make a sound. The bells of the
+city were striking the hour of Oracion when the carriage rolled under
+the old gateway facing the harbour like a shapeless monument of leaves
+and stones. The rumble of wheels under the sonorous arch was traversed
+by a strange, piercing shriek, and Decoud, from his back seat, had a
+view of the people behind the carriage trudging along the road outside,
+all turning their heads, in sombreros and rebozos, to look at a
+locomotive which rolled quickly out of sight behind Giorgio Viola’s
+house, under a white trail of steam that seemed to vanish in the
+breathless, hysterically prolonged scream of warlike triumph. And it
+was all like a fleeting vision, the shrieking ghost of a railway engine
+fleeing across the frame of the archway, behind the startled movement
+of the people streaming back from a military spectacle with silent
+footsteps on the dust of the road. It was a material train returning
+from the Campo to the palisaded yards. The empty cars rolled lightly
+on the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor of the
+ground. The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with the salute
+of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before entering the yard;
+and when the ear-splitting screech of the steam-whistle for the brakes
+had stopped, a series of hard, battering shocks, mingled with the
+clanking of chain-couplings, made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters
+under the vault of the gate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+The Gould carriage was the first to return from the harbour to the empty
+town. On the ancient pavement, laid out in patterns, sunk into ruts and
+holes, the portly Ignacio, mindful of the springs of the Parisian-built
+landau, had pulled up to a walk, and Decoud in his corner contemplated
+moodily the inner aspect of the gate. The squat turreted sides held up
+between them a mass of masonry with bunches of grass growing at the top,
+and a grey, heavily scrolled, armorial shield of stone above the apex of
+the arch with the arms of Spain nearly smoothed out as if in readiness
+for some new device typical of the impending progress.
+
+The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to augment Decoud’s
+irritation. He muttered something to himself, then began to talk aloud
+in curt, angry phrases thrown at the silence of the two women. They did
+not look at him at all; while Don Jose, with his semi-translucent, waxy
+complexion, overshadowed by the soft grey hat, swayed a little to the
+jolts of the carriage by the side of Mrs. Gould.
+
+“This sound puts a new edge on a very old truth.”
+
+Decoud spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio on the box above him;
+the old coachman, with his broad back filling a short, silver-braided
+jacket, had a big pair of ears, whose thick rims stood well away from
+his cropped head.
+
+“Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the principle is old.”
+
+He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began afresh with a
+sidelong glance at Antonia--
+
+“No, but just imagine our forefathers in morions and corselets drawn
+up outside this gate, and a band of adventurers just landed from their
+ships in the harbour there. Thieves, of course. Speculators, too. Their
+expeditions, each one, were the speculations of grave and reverend
+persons in England. That is history, as that absurd sailor Mitchell is
+always saying.”
+
+“Mitchell’s arrangements for the embarkation of the troops were
+excellent!” exclaimed Don Jose.
+
+“That!--that! oh, that’s really the work of that Genoese seaman! But
+to return to my noises; there used to be in the old days the sound of
+trumpets outside that gate. War trumpets! I’m sure they were trumpets. I
+have read somewhere that Drake, who was the greatest of these men, used
+to dine alone in his cabin on board ship to the sound of trumpets. In
+those days this town was full of wealth. Those men came to take it.
+Now the whole land is like a treasure-house, and all these people are
+breaking into it, whilst we are cutting each other’s throats. The only
+thing that keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they’ll come to an
+agreement some day--and by the time we’ve settled our quarrels and
+become decent and honourable, there’ll be nothing left for us. It has
+always been the same. We are a wonderful people, but it has always
+been our fate to be”--he did not say “robbed,” but added, after a
+pause--“exploited!”
+
+Mrs. Gould said, “Oh, this is unjust!” And Antonia interjected, “Don’t
+answer him, Emilia. He is attacking me.”
+
+“You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos!” Decoud answered.
+
+And then the carriage stopped before the door of the Casa Gould. The
+young man offered his hand to the ladies. They went in first together;
+Don Jose walked by the side of Decoud, and the gouty old porter tottered
+after them with some light wraps on his arm.
+
+Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journalist of Sulaco.
+
+“The Porvenir must have a long and confident article upon Barrios and
+the irresistibleness of his army of Cayta! The moral effect should be
+kept up in the country. We must cable encouraging extracts to Europe and
+the United States to maintain a favourable impression abroad.”
+
+Decoud muttered, “Oh, yes, we must comfort our friends, the
+speculators.”
+
+The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen of plants in vases
+along the balustrade, holding out motionless blossoms, and all the glass
+doors of the reception-rooms thrown open. A jingle of spurs died out at
+the further end.
+
+Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft tone to
+the passing ladies, “The Senor Administrador is just back from the
+mountain.”
+
+In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish and modern
+European furniture making as if different centres under the high white
+spread of the ceiling, the silver and porcelain of the tea-service
+gleamed among a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady’s boudoir,
+putting in a note of feminine and intimate delicacy.
+
+Don Jose in his rocking-chair placed his hat on his lap, and Decoud
+walked up and down the whole length of the room, passing between tables
+loaded with knick-knacks and almost disappearing behind the high backs
+of leathern sofas. He was thinking of the angry face of Antonia; he was
+confident that he would make his peace with her. He had not stayed in
+Sulaco to quarrel with Antonia.
+
+Martin Decoud was angry with himself. All he saw and heard going
+on around him exasperated the preconceived views of his European
+civilization. To contemplate revolutions from the distance of the
+Parisian Boulevards was quite another matter. Here on the spot it was
+not possible to dismiss their tragic comedy with the expression, “_Quelle
+farce!_”
+
+The reality of the political action, such as it was, seemed closer, and
+acquired poignancy by Antonia’s belief in the cause. Its crudeness hurt
+his feelings. He was surprised at his own sensitiveness.
+
+“I suppose I am more of a Costaguanero than I would have believed
+possible,” he thought to himself.
+
+His disdain grew like a reaction of his scepticism against the action
+into which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia. He soothed
+himself by saying he was not a patriot, but a lover.
+
+The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank low before the little
+tea-table. Antonia took up her usual place at the reception hour--the
+corner of a leathern couch, with a rigid grace in her pose and a fan in
+her hand. Decoud, swerving from the straight line of his march, came to
+lean over the high back of her seat.
+
+For a long time he talked into her ear from behind, softly, with a half
+smile and an air of apologetic familiarity. Her fan lay half grasped on
+her knees. She never looked at him. His rapid utterance grew more and
+more insistent and caressing. At last he ventured a slight laugh.
+
+“No, really. You must forgive me. One must be serious sometimes.”
+ He paused. She turned her head a little; her blue eyes glided slowly
+towards him, slightly upwards, mollified and questioning.
+
+“You can’t think I am serious when I call Montero a gran’ bestia
+every second day in the Porvenir? That is not a serious occupation. No
+occupation is serious, not even when a bullet through the heart is the
+penalty of failure!”
+
+Her hand closed firmly on her fan.
+
+“Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense, may creep into
+thinking; some glimpse of truth. I mean some effective truth, for which
+there is no room in politics or journalism. I happen to have said what I
+thought. And you are angry! If you do me the kindness to think a little
+you will see that I spoke like a patriot.”
+
+She opened her red lips for the first time, not unkindly.
+
+“Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used as they are. I suppose
+nobody is really disinterested, unless, perhaps, you, Don Martin.”
+
+“God forbid! It’s the last thing I should like you to believe of me.” He
+spoke lightly, and paused.
+
+She began to fan herself with a slow movement without raising her hand.
+After a time he whispered passionately--
+
+“Antonia!”
+
+She smiled, and extended her hand after the English manner towards
+Charles Gould, who was bowing before her; while Decoud, with his
+elbows spread on the back of the sofa, dropped his eyes and murmured,
+“Bonjour.”
+
+The Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine bent over his wife for
+a moment. They exchanged a few words, of which only the phrase, “The
+greatest enthusiasm,” pronounced by Mrs. Gould, could be heard.
+
+“Yes,” Decoud began in a murmur. “Even he!”
+
+“This is sheer calumny,” said Antonia, not very severely.
+
+“You just ask him to throw his mine into the melting-pot for the great
+cause,” Decoud whispered.
+
+Don Jose had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands cheerily. The
+excellent aspect of the troops and the great quantity of new deadly
+rifles on the shoulders of those brave men seemed to fill him with an
+ecstatic confidence.
+
+Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair, listened, but
+nothing could be discovered in his face except a kind and deferential
+attention.
+
+Meantime, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the room, stood looking out
+of one of the three long windows giving on the street. Decoud followed
+her. The window was thrown open, and he leaned against the thickness of
+the wall. The long folds of the damask curtain, falling straight from
+the broad brass cornice, hid him partly from the room. He folded his
+arms on his breast, and looked steadily at Antonia’s profile.
+
+The people returning from the harbour filled the pavements; the shuffle
+of sandals and a low murmur of voices ascended to the window. Now and
+then a coach rolled slowly along the disjointed roadway of the Calle de
+la Constitucion. There were not many private carriages in Sulaco; at the
+most crowded hour on the Alameda they could be counted with one glance
+of the eye. The great family arks swayed on high leathern springs, full
+of pretty powdered faces in which the eyes looked intensely alive
+and black. And first Don Juste Lopez, the President of the Provincial
+Assembly, passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a black
+frock-coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a debate from a high
+tribune. Though they all raised their eyes, Antonia did not make the
+usual greeting gesture of a fluttered hand, and they affected not to
+see the two young people, Costaguaneros with European manners, whose
+eccentricities were discussed behind the barred windows of the first
+families in Sulaco. And then the widowed Senora Gavilaso de Valdes
+rolled by, handsome and dignified, in a great machine in which she used
+to travel to and from her country house, surrounded by an armed retinue
+in leather suits and big sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their
+saddles. She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud, rich, and
+kind-hearted. Her second son, Jaime, had just gone off on the Staff of
+Barrios. The eldest, a worthless fellow of a moody disposition, filled
+Sulaco with the noise of his dissipations, and gambled heavily at the
+club. The two youngest boys, with yellow Ribierist cockades in their
+caps, sat on the front seat. She, too, affected not to see the Senor
+Decoud talking publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention.
+And he not even her novio as far as the world knew! Though, even in that
+case, it would have been scandal enough. But the dignified old lady,
+respected and admired by the first families, would have been still more
+shocked if she could have heard the words they were exchanging.
+
+“Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only one aim in the world.”
+
+She made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head, still
+staring across the street at the Avellanos’s house, grey, marked with
+decay, and with iron bars like a prison.
+
+“And it would be so easy of attainment,” he continued, “this aim which,
+whether knowingly or not, I have always had in my heart--ever since the
+day when you snubbed me so horribly once in Paris, you remember.”
+
+A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip that was on his
+side.
+
+“You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of Charlotte Corday
+in a schoolgirl’s dress; a ferocious patriot. I suppose you would have
+stuck a knife into Guzman Bento?”
+
+She interrupted him. “You do me too much honour.”
+
+“At any rate,” he said, changing suddenly to a tone of bitter levity,
+“you would have sent me to stab him without compunction.”
+
+“_Ah, par exemple!_” she murmured in a shocked tone.
+
+“Well,” he argued, mockingly, “you do keep me here writing deadly
+nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already killed my self-respect. And you
+may imagine,” he continued, his tone passing into light banter, “that
+Montero, should he be successful, would get even with me in the only way
+such a brute can get even with a man of intelligence who condescends to
+call him a gran’ bestia three times a week. It’s a sort of intellectual
+death; but there is the other one in the background for a journalist of
+my ability.”
+
+“If he is successful!” said Antonia, thoughtfully.
+
+“You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread,” Decoud replied,
+with a broad smile. “And the other Montero, the ‘my trusted brother’ of
+the proclamations, the guerrillero--haven’t I written that he was taking
+the guests’ overcoats and changing plates in Paris at our Legation in
+the intervals of spying on our refugees there, in the time of Rojas? He
+will wash out that sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you look
+annoyed? This is simply a bit of the biography of one of our great men.
+What do you think he will do to me? There is a certain convent wall
+round the corner of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You
+know? Opposite the door with the inscription, _Intrada de la Sombra_.’
+Appropriate, perhaps! That’s where the uncle of our host gave up his
+Anglo-South-American soul. And, note, he might have run away. A man
+who has fought with weapons may run away. You might have let me go
+with Barrios if you had cared for me. I would have carried one of those
+rifles, in which Don Jose believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in
+the ranks of poor peons and Indios, that know nothing either of reason
+or politics. The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth
+would have been safer than that for which you made me stay here. When
+you make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your time in
+inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die.”
+
+His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she stood
+motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down from her
+interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then--
+
+“I shall go to the wall,” he said, with a sort of jocular desperation.
+
+Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her head remained
+still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avellanos, whose chipped
+pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden
+now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole figure her lips
+alone moved, forming the words--
+
+“Martin, you will make me cry.”
+
+He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a sort
+of awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still stiffened
+about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a
+sentence is in the personality which utters it, for nothing new can be
+said by man or woman; and those were the last words, it seemed to him,
+that could ever have been spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up
+with her so completely in all their intercourse of small encounters; but
+even before she had time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with
+a rigid grace, he had begun to plead--
+
+“My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is transported with
+joy. I won’t say anything of my mother! Our mothers were like sisters.
+There is the mail-boat for the south next week--let us go. That Moraga
+is a fool! A man like Montero is bribed. It’s the practice of the
+country. It’s tradition--it’s politics. Read ‘Fifty Years of Misrule.’”
+
+“Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes--”
+
+“I have the greatest tenderness for your father,” he began, hurriedly.
+“But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has miserably mismanaged this
+business. Perhaps your father did, too; I don’t know. Montero was
+bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of this famous loan
+for national development. Why didn’t the stupid Sta. Marta people give
+him a mission to Europe, or something? He would have taken five years’
+salary in advance, and gone on loafing in Paris, this stupid, ferocious
+Indio!”
+
+“The man,” she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before this outburst,
+“was intoxicated with vanity. We had all the information, not from
+Moraga only; from others, too. There was his brother intriguing, too.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” he said. “Of course you know. You know everything. You read
+all the correspondence, you write all the papers--all those State papers
+that are inspired here, in this room, in blind deference to a theory
+of political purity. Hadn’t you Charles Gould before your eyes? Rey de
+Sulaco! He and his mine are the practical demonstration of what could
+have been done. Do you think he succeeded by his fidelity to a theory of
+virtue? And all those railway people, with their honest work! Of course,
+their work is honest! But what if you cannot work honestly till the
+thieves are satisfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told this Sir
+John what’s-his-name that Montero had to be bought off--he and all his
+Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve? He ought to have
+been bought off with his own stupid weight of gold--his weight of gold,
+I tell you, boots, sabre, spurs, cocked hat, and all.”
+
+She shook her head slightly. “It was impossible,” she murmured.
+
+“He wanted the whole lot? What?”
+
+She was facing him now in the deep recess of the window, very close and
+motionless. Her lips moved rapidly. Decoud, leaning his back against the
+wall, listened with crossed arms and lowered eyelids. He drank the tones
+of her even voice, and watched the agitated life of her throat, as if
+waves of emotion had run from her heart to pass out into the air in her
+reasonable words. He also had his aspirations, he aspired to carry her
+away out of these deadly futilities of pronunciamientos and reforms. All
+this was wrong--utterly wrong; but she fascinated him, and sometimes
+the sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the charm, replace the
+fascination by a sudden unwilling thrill of interest. Some women
+hovered, as it were, on the threshold of genius, he reflected. They did
+not want to know, or think, or understand. Passion stood for all that,
+and he was ready to believe that some startlingly profound remark, some
+appreciation of character, or a judgment upon an event, bordered on the
+miraculous. In the mature Antonia he could see with an extraordinary
+vividness the austere schoolgirl of the earlier days. She seduced his
+attention; sometimes he could not restrain a murmur of assent; now and
+then he advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they began to
+argue; the curtain half hid them from the people in the sala.
+
+Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of shadow between the
+houses, lit up vaguely by the glimmer of street lamps, ascended the
+evening silence of Sulaco; the silence of a town with few carriages,
+of unshod horses, and a softly sandalled population. The windows of
+the Casa Gould flung their shining parallelograms upon the house of
+the Avellanos. Now and then a shuffle of feet passed below with the
+pulsating red glow of a cigarette at the foot of the walls; and the
+night air, as if cooled by the snows of Higuerota, refreshed their
+faces.
+
+“We Occidentals,” said Martin Decoud, using the usual term the
+provincials of Sulaco applied to themselves, “have been always distinct
+and separated. As long as we hold Cayta nothing can reach us. In all our
+troubles no army has marched over those mountains. A revolution in the
+central provinces isolates us at once. Look how complete it is now! The
+news of Barrios’ movement will be cabled to the United States, and
+only in that way will it reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other
+seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the
+purest blood in our great families, the most laborious population. The
+Occidental Province should stand alone. The early Federalism was not
+bad for us. Then came this union which Don Henrique Gould resisted.
+It opened the road to tyranny; and, ever since, the rest of Costaguana
+hangs like a millstone round our necks. The Occidental territory is
+large enough to make any man’s country. Look at the mountains! Nature
+itself seems to cry to us, ‘Separate!’”
+
+She made an energetic gesture of negation. A silence fell.
+
+“Oh, yes, I know it’s contrary to the doctrine laid down in the ‘History
+of Fifty Years’ Misrule.’ I am only trying to be sensible. But my sense
+seems always to give you cause for offence. Have I startled you very
+much with this perfectly reasonable aspiration?”
+
+She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but the idea shocked her
+early convictions. Her patriotism was larger. She had never considered
+that possibility.
+
+“It may yet be the means of saving some of your convictions,” he said,
+prophetically.
+
+She did not answer. She seemed tired. They leaned side by side on the
+rail of the little balcony, very friendly, having exhausted politics,
+giving themselves up to the silent feeling of their nearness, in one of
+those profound pauses that fall upon the rhythm of passion. Towards the
+plaza end of the street the glowing coals in the brazeros of the market
+women cooking their evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the
+pavement. A man appeared without a sound in the light of a street lamp,
+showing the coloured inverted triangle of his bordered poncho, square on
+his shoulders, hanging to a point below his knees. From the harbour
+end of the Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping mount, gleaming
+silver-grey abreast each lamp under the dark shape of the rider.
+
+“Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores,” said Decoud, gently,
+“coming in all his splendour after his work is done. The next great man
+of Sulaco after Don Carlos Gould. But he is good-natured, and let me
+make friends with him.”
+
+“Ah, indeed!” said Antonia. “How did you make friends?”
+
+“A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular pulse, and this
+man is one of the leaders of the populace. A journalist ought to know
+remarkable men--and this man is remarkable in his way.”
+
+“Ah, yes!” said Antonia, thoughtfully. “It is known that this Italian
+has a great influence.”
+
+The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam of dim light on the
+shining broad quarters of the grey mare, on a bright heavy stirrup, on a
+long silver spur; but the short flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was
+powerless against the muffled-up mysteriousness of the dark figure with
+an invisible face concealed by a great sombrero.
+
+Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the balcony, side by side,
+touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness of the
+street, and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs. This was a
+tete-a-tete of extreme impropriety; something of which in the whole
+extent of the Republic only the extraordinary Antonia could be
+capable--the poor, motherless girl, never accompanied, with a careless
+father, who had thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud himself
+seemed to feel that this was as much as he could expect of having her to
+himself till--till the revolution was over and he could carry her off
+to Europe, away from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed
+even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one Montero there would
+be another, the lawlessness of a populace of all colours and races,
+barbarism, irremediable tyranny. As the great Liberator Bolivar had said
+in the bitterness of his spirit, “America is ungovernable. Those who
+worked for her independence have ploughed the sea.” He did not care, he
+declared boldly; he seized every opportunity to tell her that though she
+had managed to make a Blanco journalist of him, he was no patriot. First
+of all, the word had no sense for cultured minds, to whom the narrowness
+of every belief is odious; and secondly, in connection with the
+everlasting troubles of this unhappy country it was hopelessly
+besmirched; it had been the cry of dark barbarism, the cloak of
+lawlessness, of crimes, of rapacity, of simple thieving.
+
+He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance. He had no need
+to drop his voice; it had been low all the time, a mere murmur in the
+silence of dark houses with their shutters closed early against the
+night air, as is the custom of Sulaco. Only the sala of the Casa Gould
+flung out defiantly the blaze of its four windows, the bright appeal of
+light in the whole dumb obscurity of the street. And the murmur on the
+little balcony went on after a short pause.
+
+“But we are labouring to change all that,” Antonia protested. “It is
+exactly what we desire. It is our object. It is the great cause. And
+the word you despise has stood also for sacrifice, for courage, for
+constancy, for suffering. Papa, who--”
+
+“Ploughing the sea,” interrupted Decoud, looking down.
+
+There was below the sound of hasty and ponderous footsteps.
+
+“Your uncle, the grand-vicar of the cathedral, has just turned under the
+gate,” observed Decoud. “He said Mass for the troops in the Plaza this
+morning. They had built for him an altar of drums, you know. And they
+brought outside all the painted blocks to take the air. All the wooden
+saints stood militarily in a row at the top of the great flight of
+steps. They looked like a gorgeous escort attending the Vicar-General. I
+saw the great function from the windows of the Porvenir. He is amazing,
+your uncle, the last of the Corbelans. He glittered exceedingly in his
+vestments with a great crimson velvet cross down his back. And all the
+time our saviour Barrios sat in the Amarilla Club drinking punch at
+an open window. Esprit fort--our Barrios. I expected every moment your
+uncle to launch an excommunication there and then at the black eye-patch
+in the window across the Plaza. But not at all. Ultimately the troops
+marched off. Later Barrios came down with some of the officers, and
+stood with his uniform all unbuttoned, discoursing at the edge of the
+pavement. Suddenly your uncle appeared, no longer glittering, but all
+black, at the cathedral door with that threatening aspect he has--you
+know, like a sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look, strides over
+straight at the group of uniforms, and leads away the general by the
+elbow. He walked him for a quarter of an hour in the shade of a
+wall. Never let go his elbow for a moment, talking all the time with
+exaltation, and gesticulating with a long black arm. It was a curious
+scene. The officers seemed struck with astonishment. Remarkable man,
+your missionary uncle. He hates an infidel much less than a heretic, and
+prefers a heathen many times to an infidel. He condescends graciously to
+call me a heathen, sometimes, you know.”
+
+Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade, opening and
+shutting the fan gently; and Decoud talked a little nervously, as if
+afraid that she would leave him at the first pause. Their comparative
+isolation, the precious sense of intimacy, the slight contact of their
+arms, affected him softly; for now and then a tender inflection crept
+into the flow of his ironic murmurs.
+
+“Any slight sign of favour from a relative of yours is welcome, Antonia.
+And perhaps he understands me, after all! But I know him, too, our Padre
+Corbelan. The idea of political honour, justice, and honesty for him
+consists in the restitution of the confiscated Church property. Nothing
+else could have drawn that fierce converter of savage Indians out of the
+wilds to work for the Ribierist cause! Nothing else but that wild hope!
+He would make a pronunciamiento himself for such an object against any
+Government if he could only get followers! What does Don Carlos Gould
+think of that? But, of course, with his English impenetrability, nobody
+can tell what he thinks. Probably he thinks of nothing apart from his
+mine; of his ‘Imperium in Imperio.’ As to Mrs. Gould, she thinks of
+her schools, of her hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of
+every sick old man in the three villages. If you were to turn your head
+now you would see her extracting a report from that sinister doctor in a
+check shirt--what’s his name? Monygham--or else catechising Don Pepe or
+perhaps listening to Padre Roman. They are all down here to-day--all
+her ministers of state. Well, she is a sensible woman, and perhaps Don
+Carlos is a sensible man. It’s a part of solid English sense not to
+think too much; to see only what may be of practical use at the moment.
+These people are not like ourselves. We have no political reason; we
+have political passions--sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular
+view of our personal advantage either practical or emotional. No one is
+a patriot for nothing. The word serves us well. But I am clear-sighted,
+and I shall not use that word to you, Antonia! I have no patriotic
+illusions. I have only the supreme illusion of a lover.”
+
+He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly, “That can lead one very far,
+though.”
+
+Behind their backs the political tide that once in every twenty-four
+hours set with a strong flood through the Gould drawing-room could
+be heard, rising higher in a hum of voices. Men had been dropping in
+singly, or in twos and threes: the higher officials of the province,
+engineers of the railway, sunburnt and in tweeds, with the frosted head
+of their chief smiling with slow, humorous indulgence amongst the young
+eager faces. Scarfe, the lover of fandangos, had already slipped out in
+search of some dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the town. Don
+Juste Lopez, after taking his daughters home, had entered solemnly, in a
+black creased coat buttoned up under his spreading brown beard. The
+few members of the Provincial Assembly present clustered at once around
+their President to discuss the news of the war and the last proclamation
+of the rebel Montero, the miserable Montero, calling in the name of “a
+justly incensed democracy” upon all the Provincial Assemblies of the
+Republic to suspend their sittings till his sword had made peace and the
+will of the people could be consulted. It was practically an invitation
+to dissolve: an unheard-of audacity of that evil madman.
+
+The indignation ran high in the knot of deputies behind Jose Avellanos.
+Don Jose, lifting up his voice, cried out to them over the high back
+of his chair, “Sulaco has answered by sending to-day an army upon his
+flank. If all the other provinces show only half as much patriotism as
+we Occidentals--”
+
+A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrating treble of the
+life and soul of the party. Yes! Yes! This was true! A great truth!
+Sulaco was in the forefront, as ever! It was a boastful tumult, the
+hopefulness inspired by the event of the day breaking out amongst those
+caballeros of the Campo thinking of their herds, of their lands, of
+the safety of their families. Everything was at stake. . . . No! It was
+impossible that Montero should succeed! This criminal, this shameless
+Indio! The clamour continued for some time, everybody else in the
+room looking towards the group where Don Juste had put on his air of
+impartial solemnity as if presiding at a sitting of the Provincial
+Assembly. Decoud had turned round at the noise, and, leaning his back
+on the balustrade, shouted into the room with all the strength of his
+lungs, “Gran’ bestia!”
+
+This unexpected cry had the effect of stilling the noise. All the eyes
+were directed to the window with an approving expectation; but Decoud
+had already turned his back upon the room, and was again leaning out
+over the quiet street.
+
+“This is the quintessence of my journalism; that is the supreme
+argument,” he said to Antonia. “I have invented this definition, this
+last word on a great question. But I am no patriot. I am no more of a
+patriot than the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this Genoese who has
+done such great things for this harbour--this active usher-in of the
+material implements for our progress. You have heard Captain Mitchell
+confess over and over again that till he got this man he could never
+tell how long it would take to unload a ship. That is bad for progress.
+You have seen him pass by after his labours on his famous horse to
+dazzle the girls in some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a
+fortunate fellow! His work is an exercise of personal powers; his
+leisure is spent in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation.
+And he likes it, too. Can anybody be more fortunate? To be feared and
+admired is--”
+
+“And are these your highest aspirations, Don Martin?” interrupted
+Antonia.
+
+“I was speaking of a man of that sort,” said Decoud, curtly. “The heroes
+of the world have been feared and admired. What more could he want?”
+
+Decoud had often felt his familiar habit of ironic thought fall
+shattered against Antonia’s gravity. She irritated him as if she, too,
+had suffered from that inexplicable feminine obtuseness which stands
+so often between a man and a woman of the more ordinary sort. But he
+overcame his vexation at once. He was very far from thinking Antonia
+ordinary, whatever verdict his scepticism might have pronounced upon
+himself. With a touch of penetrating tenderness in his voice he assured
+her that his only aspiration was to a felicity so high that it seemed
+almost unrealizable on this earth.
+
+She coloured invisibly, with a warmth against which the breeze from the
+sierra seemed to have lost its cooling power in the sudden melting of
+the snows. His whisper could not have carried so far, though there was
+enough ardour in his tone to melt a heart of ice. Antonia turned away
+abruptly, as if to carry his whispered assurance into the room behind,
+full of light, noisy with voices.
+
+The tide of political speculation was beating high within the four walls
+of the great sala, as if driven beyond the marks by a great gust of
+hope. Don Juste’s fan-shaped beard was still the centre of loud and
+animated discussions. There was a self-confident ring in all the
+voices. Even the few Europeans around Charles Gould--a Dane, a couple
+of Frenchmen, a discreet fat German, smiling, with down-cast eyes, the
+representatives of those material interests that had got a footing in
+Sulaco under the protecting might of the San Tome mine--had infused a
+lot of good humour into their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they
+were paying their court, was the visible sign of the stability that
+could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolutions. They felt
+hopeful about their various undertakings. One of the two Frenchmen,
+small, black, with glittering eyes lost in an immense growth of bushy
+beard, waved his tiny brown hands and delicate wrists. He had been
+travelling in the interior of the province for a syndicate of European
+capitalists. His forcible “_Monsieur l’Administrateur_” returning every
+minute shrilled above the steady hum of conversations. He was relating
+his discoveries. He was ecstatic. Charles Gould glanced down at him
+courteously.
+
+At a given moment of these necessary receptions it was Mrs. Gould’s
+habit to withdraw quietly into a little drawing-room, especially her
+own, next to the great sala. She had risen, and, waiting for Antonia,
+listened with a slightly worried graciousness to the engineer-in-chief
+of the railway, who stooped over her, relating slowly, without the
+slightest gesture, something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a
+humorous twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the room to join
+Mrs. Gould, turned her head over her shoulder towards Decoud, only for a
+moment.
+
+“Why should any one of us think his aspirations unrealizable?” she said,
+rapidly.
+
+“I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia,” he answered, through
+clenched teeth, then bowed very low, a little distantly.
+
+The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his amusing story.
+The humours of railway building in South America appealed to his keen
+appreciation of the absurd, and he told his instances of ignorant
+prejudice and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs. Gould gave him
+all her attention as he walked by her side escorting the ladies out of
+the room. Finally all three passed unnoticed through the glass doors in
+the gallery. Only a tall priest stalking silently in the noise of the
+sala checked himself to look after them. Father Corbelan, whom Decoud
+had seen from the balcony turning into the gateway of the Casa
+Gould, had addressed no one since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane
+accentuated the tallness of his stature; he carried his powerful torso
+thrown forward; and the straight, black bar of his joined eyebrows, the
+pugnacious outline of the bony face, the white spot of a scar on the
+bluish shaven cheeks (a testimonial to his apostolic zeal from a
+party of unconverted Indians), suggested something unlawful behind his
+priesthood, the idea of a chaplain of bandits.
+
+He separated his bony, knotted hands clasped behind his back, to shake
+his finger at Martin.
+
+Decoud had stepped into the room after Antonia. But he did not go far.
+He had remained just within, against the curtain, with an expression of
+not quite genuine gravity, like a grown-up person taking part in a game
+of children. He gazed quietly at the threatening finger.
+
+“I have watched your reverence converting General Barrios by a special
+sermon on the Plaza,” he said, without making the slightest movement.
+
+“What miserable nonsense!” Father Corbelan’s deep voice resounded all
+over the room, making all the heads turn on the shoulders. “The man is a
+drunkard. Senores, the God of your General is a bottle!”
+
+His contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy suspension of every
+sound, as if the self-confidence of the gathering had been staggered by
+a blow. But nobody took up Father Corbelan’s declaration.
+
+It was known that Father Corbelan had come out of the wilds to advocate
+the sacred rights of the Church with the same fanatical fearlessness
+with which he had gone preaching to bloodthirsty savages, devoid
+of human compassion or worship of any kind. Rumours of legendary
+proportions told of his successes as a missionary beyond the eye of
+Christian men. He had baptized whole nations of Indians, living with
+them like a savage himself. It was related that the padre used to ride
+with his Indians for days, half naked, carrying a bullock-hide shield,
+and, no doubt, a long lance, too--who knows? That he had wandered
+clothed in skins, seeking for proselytes somewhere near the snow line of
+the Cordillera. Of these exploits Padre Corbelan himself was never known
+to talk. But he made no secret of his opinion that the politicians of
+Sta. Marta had harder hearts and more corrupt minds than the heathen
+to whom he had carried the word of God. His injudicious zeal for the
+temporal welfare of the Church was damaging the Ribierist cause. It was
+common knowledge that he had refused to be made titular bishop of the
+Occidental diocese till justice was done to a despoiled Church. The
+political Gefe of Sulaco (the same dignitary whom Captain Mitchell saved
+from the mob afterwards) hinted with naive cynicism that doubtless their
+Excellencies the Ministers sent the padre over the mountains to Sulaco
+in the worst season of the year in the hope that he would be frozen
+to death by the icy blasts of the high paramos. Every year a few hardy
+muleteers--men inured to exposure--were known to perish in that way. But
+what would you have? Their Excellencies possibly had not realized what
+a tough priest he was. Meantime, the ignorant were beginning to murmur
+that the Ribierist reforms meant simply the taking away of the land
+from the people. Some of it was to be given to foreigners who made the
+railway; the greater part was to go to the padres.
+
+These were the results of the Grand Vicar’s zeal. Even from the short
+allocution to the troops on the Plaza (which only the first ranks
+could have heard) he had not been able to keep out his fixed idea of
+an outraged Church waiting for reparation from a penitent country. The
+political Gefe had been exasperated. But he could not very well throw
+the brother-in-law of Don Jose into the prison of the Cabildo. The chief
+magistrate, an easy-going and popular official, visited the Casa
+Gould, walking over after sunset from the Intendencia, unattended,
+acknowledging with dignified courtesy the salutations of high and low
+alike. That evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gould and had
+hissed out to him that he would have liked to deport the Grand Vicar
+out of Sulaco, anywhere, to some desert island, to the Isabels, for
+instance. “The one without water preferably--eh, Don Carlos?” he had
+added in a tone between jest and earnest. This uncontrollable priest,
+who had rejected his offer of the episcopal palace for a residence and
+preferred to hang his shabby hammock amongst the rubble and spiders of
+the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had taken into his head to advocate
+an unconditional pardon for Hernandez the Robber! And this was not
+enough; he seemed to have entered into communication with the most
+audacious criminal the country had known for years. The Sulaco police
+knew, of course, what was going on. Padre Corbelan had got hold of that
+reckless Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores, the only man fit for such
+an errand, and had sent a message through him. Father Corbelan had
+studied in Rome, and could speak Italian. The Capataz was known to visit
+the old Dominican Convent at night. An old woman who served the Grand
+Vicar had heard the name of Hernandez pronounced; and only last Saturday
+afternoon the Capataz had been observed galloping out of town. He did
+not return for two days. The police would have laid the Italian by the
+heels if it had not been for fear of the Cargadores, a turbulent body of
+men, quite apt to raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern
+Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the money in the
+pockets of the railway workmen. The populace was made restless by Father
+Corbelan’s discourses. And the first magistrate explained to Charles
+Gould that now the province was stripped of troops any outbreak of
+lawlessness would find the authorities with their boots off, as it were.
+
+Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair, smoking a long, thin
+cigar, not very far from Don Jose, with whom, bending over sideways, he
+exchanged a few words from time to time. He ignored the entrance of the
+priest, and whenever Father Corbelan’s voice was raised behind him, he
+shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
+
+Father Corbelan had remained quite motionless for a time with that
+something vengeful in his immobility which seemed to characterize all
+his attitudes. A lurid glow of strong convictions gave its peculiar
+aspect to the black figure. But its fierceness became softened as the
+padre, fixing his eyes upon Decoud, raised his long, black arm slowly,
+impressively--
+
+“And you--you are a perfect heathen,” he said, in a subdued, deep voice.
+
+He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the young man’s breast.
+Decoud, very calm, felt the wall behind the curtain with the back of his
+head. Then, with his chin tilted well up, he smiled.
+
+“Very well,” he agreed with the slightly weary nonchalance of a man well
+used to these passages. “But is it perhaps that you have not discovered
+yet what is the God of my worship? It was an easier task with our
+Barrios.”
+
+The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement. “You believe neither
+in stick nor stone,” he said.
+
+“Nor bottle,” added Decoud without stirring. “Neither does the other of
+your reverence’s confidants. I mean the Capataz of the Cargadores.
+He does not drink. Your reading of my character does honour to your
+perspicacity. But why call me a heathen?”
+
+“True,” retorted the priest. “You are ten times worse. A miracle could
+not convert you.”
+
+“I certainly do not believe in miracles,” said Decoud, quietly. Father
+Corbelan shrugged his high, broad shoulders doubtfully.
+
+“A sort of Frenchman--godless--a materialist,” he pronounced slowly, as
+if weighing the terms of a careful analysis. “Neither the son of his own
+country nor of any other,” he continued, thoughtfully.
+
+“Scarcely human, in fact,” Decoud commented under his breath, his head
+at rest against the wall, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling.
+
+“The victim of this faithless age,” Father Corbelan resumed in a deep
+but subdued voice.
+
+“But of some use as a journalist.” Decoud changed his pose and spoke
+in a more animated tone. “Has your worship neglected to read the last
+number of the Porvenir? I assure you it is just like the others. On
+the general policy it continues to call Montero a gran’ bestia, and
+stigmatize his brother, the guerrillero, for a combination of lackey
+and spy. What could be more effective? In local affairs it urges the
+Provincial Government to enlist bodily into the national army the band
+of Hernandez the Robber--who is apparently the protege of the Church--or
+at least of the Grand Vicar. Nothing could be more sound.”
+
+The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his square-toed shoes with
+big steel buckles. Again, with his hands clasped behind his back, he
+paced to and fro, planting his feet firmly. When he swung about, the
+skirt of his soutane was inflated slightly by the brusqueness of his
+movements.
+
+The great sala had been emptying itself slowly. When the Gefe Politico
+rose to go, most of those still remaining stood up suddenly in sign of
+respect, and Don Jose Avellanos stopped the rocking of his chair. But
+the good-natured First Official made a deprecatory gesture, waved his
+hand to Charles Gould, and went out discreetly.
+
+In the comparative peace of the room the screaming “Monsieur
+l’Administrateur” of the frail, hairy Frenchman seemed to acquire a
+preternatural shrillness. The explorer of the Capitalist syndicate was
+still enthusiastic. “Ten million dollars’ worth of copper practically in
+sight, Monsieur l’Administrateur. Ten millions in sight! And a railway
+coming--a railway! They will never believe my report. C’est trop beau.”
+ He fell a prey to a screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely nodding
+heads, before Charles Gould’s imperturbable calm.
+
+And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging round the skirt of
+his soutane at each end of his beat. Decoud murmured to him ironically:
+“Those gentlemen talk about their gods.”
+
+Father Corbelan stopped short, looked at the journalist of Sulaco
+fixedly for a moment, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and resumed his
+plodding walk of an obstinate traveller.
+
+And now the Europeans were dropping off from the group around Charles
+Gould till the Administrador of the Great Silver Mine could be seen in
+his whole lank length, from head to foot, left stranded by the
+ebbing tide of his guests on the great square of carpet, as it were a
+multi-coloured shoal of flowers and arabesques under his brown boots.
+Father Corbelan approached the rocking-chair of Don Jose Avellanos.
+
+“Come, brother,” he said, with kindly brusqueness and a touch of
+relieved impatience a man may feel at the end of a perfectly useless
+ceremony. “A la Casa! A la Casa! This has been all talk. Let us now go
+and think and pray for guidance from Heaven.”
+
+He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the frail
+diplomatist--the life and soul of the party--he seemed gigantic, with
+a gleam of fanaticism in the glance. But the voice of the party, or,
+rather, its mouthpiece, the “son Decoud” from Paris, turned journalist
+for the sake of Antonia’s eyes, knew very well that it was not so, that
+he was only a strenuous priest with one idea, feared by the women and
+execrated by the men of the people. Martin Decoud, the dilettante in
+life, imagined himself to derive an artistic pleasure from watching
+the picturesque extreme of wrongheadedness into which an honest,
+almost sacred, conviction may drive a man. “It is like madness. It must
+be--because it’s self-destructive,” Decoud had said to himself often.
+It seemed to him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective,
+turned into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to
+destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with the zest
+of a connoisseur in the art of his choice. Those two men got on well
+together, as if each had felt respectively that a masterful conviction,
+as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man very far on the by-paths of
+political action.
+
+Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. Decoud followed out the
+brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in the vast empty
+sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man,
+with a drooping moustache, a hide merchant from Esmeralda, who had come
+overland to Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range.
+He was very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose
+of seeing the Senor Administrador of San Tome in relation to some
+assistance he required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to
+enlarge it greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was
+going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a strange,
+anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language, which he pattered
+rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A plain man could carry
+on his little business now in the country, and even think of enlarging
+it--with safety. Was it not so? He seemed to beg Charles Gould for a
+confirmatory word, a grunt of assent, a simple nod even.
+
+He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he would
+dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he would branch
+off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his journey. The audacious
+Hernandez, leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the Campo of Sulaco,
+and was known to be lurking in the ravines of the coast range.
+Yesterday, when distant only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant
+and his servants had seen three men on the road arrested suspiciously,
+with their horses’ heads together. Two of these rode off at once and
+disappeared in a shallow quebrada to the left. “We stopped,” continued
+the man from Esmeralda, “and I tried to hide behind a small bush. But
+none of my mozos would go forward to find out what it meant, and the
+third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was no use. We
+had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling. He let us pass--a man on
+a grey horse with his hat down on his eyes--without a word of greeting;
+but by-and-by we heard him galloping after us. We faced about, but that
+did not seem to intimidate him. He rode up at speed, and touching
+my foot with the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a
+blood-curdling laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand
+back to reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his
+waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and as he
+did not offer to go on we dared not move. At last, blowing the smoke of
+my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said, ‘Senor, it would be
+perhaps better for you if I rode behind your party. You are not very far
+from Sulaco now. Go you with God.’ What would you? We went on. There
+was no resisting him. He might have been Hernandez himself; though my
+servant, who has been many times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he
+had recognized him very well for the Capataz of the Steamship Company’s
+Cargadores. Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the corner
+of the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup
+with her hand on the grey horse’s mane.”
+
+“I assure you, Senor Hirsch,” murmured Charles Gould, “that you ran no
+risk on this occasion.”
+
+“That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most fierce man--to look
+at. And what does it mean? A person employed by the Steamship Company
+talking with salteadores--no less, senor; the other horsemen were
+salteadores--in a lonely place, and behaving like a robber himself! A
+cigar is nothing, but what was there to prevent him asking me for my
+purse?”
+
+“No, no, Senor Hirsch,” Charles Gould murmured, letting his glance
+stray away a little vacantly from the round face, with its hooked beak
+upturned towards him in an almost childlike appeal. “If it was the
+Capataz de Cargadores you met--and there is no doubt, is there?--you
+were perfectly safe.”
+
+“Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-looking man, Don Carlos. He
+asked me for a cigar in a most familiar manner. What would have happened
+if I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What business had he to be
+talking with robbers in a lonely place?”
+
+But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave not a sign, made no
+sound. The impenetrability of the embodied Gould Concession had its
+surface shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction; but the King
+of Sulaco had words enough to give him all the mysterious weight of a
+taciturn force. His silences, backed by the power of speech, had as many
+shades of significance as uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt,
+of negation--even of simple comment. Some seemed to say plainly, “Think
+it over”; others meant clearly, “Go ahead”; a simple, low “I see,” with
+an affirmative nod, at the end of a patient listening half-hour was
+the equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned to trust
+implicitly, since behind it all there was the great San Tome mine, the
+head and front of the material interests, so strong that it depended
+on no man’s goodwill in the whole length and breadth of the Occidental
+Province--that is, on no goodwill which it could not buy ten times
+over. But to the little hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about
+the export of hides, the silence of Charles Gould portended a failure.
+Evidently this was no time for extending a modest man’s business. He
+enveloped in a swift mental malediction the whole country, with all
+its inhabitants, partisans of Ribiera and Montero alike; and there were
+incipient tears in his mute anger at the thought of the innumerable
+ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy expanse of the Campo, with its
+single palms rising like ships at sea within the perfect circle of the
+horizon, its clumps of heavy timber motionless like solid islands
+of leaves above the running waves of grass. There were hides there,
+rotting, with no profit to anybody--rotting where they had been dropped
+by men called away to attend the urgent necessities of political
+revolutions. The practical, mercantile soul of Senor Hirsch rebelled
+against all that foolishness, while he was taking a respectful but
+disconcerted leave of the might and majesty of the San Tome mine in the
+person of Charles Gould. He could not restrain a heart-broken murmur,
+wrung out of his very aching heart, as it were.
+
+“It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this. The price of
+hides in Hamburg is gone up--up. Of course the Ribierist Government will
+do away with all that--when it gets established firmly. Meantime--”
+
+He sighed.
+
+“Yes, meantime,” repeated Charles Gould, inscrutably.
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not ready to go yet. There
+was a little matter he would like to mention very much if permitted. It
+appeared he had some good friends in Hamburg (he murmured the name
+of the firm) who were very anxious to do business, in dynamite, he
+explained. A contract for dynamite with the San Tome mine, and then,
+perhaps, later on, other mines, which were sure to--The little man from
+Esmeralda was ready to enlarge, but Charles interrupted him. It seemed
+as though the patience of the Senor Administrador was giving way at
+last.
+
+“Senor Hirsch,” he said, “I have enough dynamite stored up at the
+mountain to send it down crashing into the valley”--his voice rose a
+little--“to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked.”
+
+Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of the dealer in hides,
+who was murmuring hastily, “Just so. Just so.” And now he was going.
+It was impossible to do business in explosives with an Administrador so
+well provided and so discouraging. He had suffered agonies in the saddle
+and had exposed himself to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for
+nothing at all. Neither hides nor dynamite--and the very shoulders of
+the enterprising Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low
+to the engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio
+he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an attitude of
+meditative astonishment.
+
+“What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?” he muttered. “And why
+does he talk like this to me?”
+
+The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala, whence
+the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant drop, nodded
+familiarly to the master of the house, standing motionless like a tall
+beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture.
+
+“Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs. The railway will know
+where to go for dynamite should we get short at any time. We have done
+cutting and chopping for a while now. We shall begin soon to blast our
+way through.”
+
+“Don’t come to me,” said Charles Gould, with perfect serenity. “I
+shan’t have an ounce to spare for anybody. Not an ounce. Not for my own
+brother, if I had a brother, and he were the engineer-in-chief of the
+most promising railway in the world.”
+
+“What’s that?” asked the engineer-in-chief, with equanimity.
+“Unkindness?”
+
+“No,” said Charles Gould, stolidly. “Policy.”
+
+“Radical, I should think,” the engineer-in-chief observed from the
+doorway.
+
+“Is that the right name?” Charles Gould said, from the middle of the
+room.
+
+“I mean, going to the roots, you know,” the engineer explained, with an
+air of enjoyment.
+
+“Why, yes,” Charles pronounced, slowly. “The Gould Concession has struck
+such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the
+mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it
+from there. It’s my choice. It’s my last card to play.”
+
+The engineer-in-chief whistled low. “A pretty game,” he said, with a
+shade of discretion. “And have you told Holroyd of that extraordinary
+trump card you hold in your hand?”
+
+“Card only when it’s played; when it falls at the end of the game. Till
+then you may call it a--a--”
+
+“Weapon,” suggested the railway man.
+
+“No. You may call it rather an argument,” corrected Charles Gould,
+gently. “And that’s how I’ve presented it to Mr. Holroyd.”
+
+“And what did he say to it?” asked the engineer, with undisguised
+interest.
+
+“He”--Charles Gould spoke after a slight pause--“he said something
+about holding on like grim death and putting our trust in God. I should
+imagine he must have been rather startled. But then”--pursued the
+Administrador of the San Tome mine--“but then, he is very far away, you
+know, and, as they say in this country, God is very high above.”
+
+The engineer’s appreciative laugh died away down the stairs, where the
+Madonna with the Child on her arm seemed to look after his shaking broad
+back from her shallow niche.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+A profound stillness reigned in the Casa Gould. The master of the house,
+walking along the corredor, opened the door of his room, and saw his
+wife sitting in a big armchair--his own smoking armchair--thoughtful,
+contemplating her little shoes. And she did not raise her eyes when he
+walked in.
+
+“Tired?” asked Charles Gould.
+
+“A little,” said Mrs. Gould. Still without looking up, she added with
+feeling, “There is an awful sense of unreality about all this.”
+
+Charles Gould, before the long table strewn with papers, on which lay a
+hunting crop and a pair of spurs, stood looking at his wife: “The heat
+and dust must have been awful this afternoon by the waterside,” he
+murmured, sympathetically. “The glare on the water must have been simply
+terrible.”
+
+“One could close one’s eyes to the glare,” said Mrs. Gould. “But, my
+dear Charley, it is impossible for me to close my eyes to our position;
+to this awful . . .”
+
+She raised her eyes and looked at her husband’s face, from which all
+sign of sympathy or any other feeling had disappeared. “Why don’t you
+tell me something?” she almost wailed.
+
+“I thought you had understood me perfectly from the first,” Charles
+Gould said, slowly. “I thought we had said all there was to say a long
+time ago. There is nothing to say now. There were things to be done. We
+have done them; we have gone on doing them. There is no going back now.
+I don’t suppose that, even from the first, there was really any possible
+way back. And, what’s more, we can’t even afford to stand still.”
+
+“Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go,” said his wife inwardly
+trembling, but in an almost playful tone.
+
+“Any distance, any length, of course,” was the answer, in a
+matter-of-fact tone, which caused Mrs. Gould to make another effort to
+repress a shudder.
+
+She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure seemed to be
+diminished still more by the heavy mass of her hair and the long train
+of her gown.
+
+“But always to success,” she said, persuasively.
+
+Charles Gould, enveloping her in the steely blue glance of his attentive
+eyes, answered without hesitation--
+
+“Oh, there is no alternative.”
+
+He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to the words, this was all
+that his conscience would allow him to say.
+
+Mrs. Gould’s smile remained a shade too long upon her lips. She
+murmured--
+
+“I will leave you; I’ve a slight headache. The heat, the dust, were
+indeed--I suppose you are going back to the mine before the morning?”
+
+“At midnight,” said Charles Gould. “We are bringing down the silver
+to-morrow. Then I shall take three whole days off in town with you.”
+
+“Ah, you are going to meet the escort. I shall be on the balcony at five
+o’clock to see you pass. Till then, good-bye.”
+
+Charles Gould walked rapidly round the table, and, seizing her hands,
+bent down, pressing them both to his lips. Before he straightened
+himself up again to his full height she had disengaged one to smooth his
+cheek with a light touch, as if he were a little boy.
+
+“Try to get some rest for a couple of hours,” she murmured, with a
+glance at a hammock stretched in a distant part of the room. Her long
+train swished softly after her on the red tiles. At the door she looked
+back.
+
+Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in a soft and abundant
+light the four white walls of the room, with a glass case of arms, the
+brass hilt of Henry Gould’s cavalry sabre on its square of velvet, and
+the water-colour sketch of the San Tome gorge. And Mrs. Gould, gazing at
+the last in its black wooden frame, sighed out--
+
+“Ah, if we had left it alone, Charley!”
+
+“No,” Charles Gould said, moodily; “it was impossible to leave it
+alone.”
+
+“Perhaps it was impossible,” Mrs. Gould admitted, slowly. Her lips
+quivered a little, but she smiled with an air of dainty bravado. “We
+have disturbed a good many snakes in that Paradise, Charley, haven’t
+we?”
+
+“Yes, I remember,” said Charles Gould, “it was Don Pepe who called the
+gorge the Paradise of snakes. No doubt we have disturbed a great many.
+But remember, my dear, that it is not now as it was when you made that
+sketch.” He waved his hand towards the small water-colour hanging alone
+upon the great bare wall. “It is no longer a Paradise of snakes. We have
+brought mankind into it, and we cannot turn our backs upon them to go
+and begin a new life elsewhere.”
+
+He confronted his wife with a firm, concentrated gaze, which Mrs. Gould
+returned with a brave assumption of fearlessness before she went out,
+closing the door gently after her.
+
+In contrast with the white glaring room the dimly lit corredor had a
+restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the stems and the
+leaves of the plants ranged along the balustrade of the open side.
+In the streaks of light falling through the open doors of the
+reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and pale lilac, came out
+vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine; and Mrs.
+Gould, passing on, had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear
+patches of sun that chequer the gloom of open glades in the woods. The
+stones in the rings upon her hand pressed to her forehead glittered in
+the lamplight abreast of the door of the sala.
+
+“Who’s there?” she asked, in a startled voice. “Is that you, Basilio?”
+ She looked in, and saw Martin Decoud walking about, with an air of
+having lost something, amongst the chairs and tables.
+
+“Antonia has forgotten her fan in here,” said Decoud, with a strange air
+of distraction; “so I entered to see.”
+
+But, even as he said this, he had obviously given up his search, and
+walked straight towards Mrs. Gould, who looked at him with doubtful
+surprise.
+
+“Senora,” he began, in a low voice.
+
+“What is it, Don Martin?” asked Mrs. Gould. And then she added, with a
+slight laugh, “I am so nervous to-day,” as if to explain the eagerness
+of the question.
+
+“Nothing immediately dangerous,” said Decoud, who now could not conceal
+his agitation. “Pray don’t distress yourself. No, really, you must not
+distress yourself.”
+
+Mrs. Gould, with her candid eyes very wide open, her lips composed into
+a smile, was steadying herself with a little bejewelled hand against the
+side of the door.
+
+“Perhaps you don’t know how alarming you are, appearing like this
+unexpectedly--”
+
+“I! Alarming!” he protested, sincerely vexed and surprised. “I assure
+you that I am not in the least alarmed myself. A fan is lost; well,
+it will be found again. But I don’t think it is here. It is a fan I am
+looking for. I cannot understand how Antonia could--Well! Have you found
+it, amigo?”
+
+“No, senor,” said behind Mrs. Gould the soft voice of Basilio, the head
+servant of the Casa. “I don’t think the senorita could have left it in
+this house at all.”
+
+“Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my friend; look for it
+on the steps, under the gate; examine every flagstone; search for it
+till I come down again. . . . That fellow”--he addressed himself in
+English to Mrs. Gould--“is always stealing up behind one’s back on his
+bare feet. I set him to look for that fan directly I came in to justify
+my reappearance, my sudden return.”
+
+He paused and Mrs. Gould said, amiably, “You are always welcome.” She
+paused for a second, too. “But I am waiting to learn the cause of your
+return.”
+
+Decoud affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance.
+
+“I can’t bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause? Yes, there is a cause;
+there is something else that is lost besides Antonia’s favourite fan. As
+I was walking home after seeing Don Jose and Antonia to their house, the
+Capataz de Cargadores, riding down the street, spoke to me.”
+
+“Has anything happened to the Violas?” inquired Mrs. Gould.
+
+“The Violas? You mean the old Garibaldino who keeps the hotel where
+the engineers live? Nothing happened there. The Capataz said nothing
+of them; he only told me that the telegraphist of the Cable Company was
+walking on the Plaza, bareheaded, looking out for me. There is news from
+the interior, Mrs. Gould. I should rather say rumours of news.”
+
+“Good news?” said Mrs. Gould in a low voice.
+
+“Worthless, I should think. But if I must define them, I would say bad.
+They are to the effect that a two days’ battle had been fought near Sta.
+Marta, and that the Ribierists are defeated. It must have happened a few
+days ago--perhaps a week. The rumour has just reached Cayta, and the
+man in charge of the cable station there has telegraphed the news to his
+colleague here. We might just as well have kept Barrios in Sulaco.”
+
+“What’s to be done now?” murmured Mrs. Gould.
+
+“Nothing. He’s at sea with the troops. He will get to Cayta in a couple
+of days’ time and learn the news there. What he will do then, who can
+say? Hold Cayta? Offer his submission to Montero? Disband his army--this
+last most likely, and go himself in one of the O.S.N. Company’s
+steamers, north or south--to Valparaiso or to San Francisco, no matter
+where. Our Barrios has a great practice in exiles and repatriations,
+which mark the points in the political game.”
+
+Decoud, exchanging a steady stare with Mrs. Gould, added, tentatively,
+as it were, “And yet, if we had could have been done.”
+
+“Montero victorious, completely victorious!” Mrs. Gould breathed out in
+a tone of unbelief.
+
+“A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched in great numbers in
+such times as these. And even if it were true? Well, let us put things
+at their worst, let us say it is true.”
+
+“Then everything is lost,” said Mrs. Gould, with the calmness of
+despair.
+
+Suddenly she seemed to divine, she seemed to see Decoud’s tremendous
+excitement under its cloak of studied carelessness. It was, indeed,
+becoming visible in his audacious and watchful stare, in the curve,
+half-reckless, half-contemptuous, of his lips. And a French phrase came
+upon them as if, for this Costaguanero of the Boulevard, that had been
+the only forcible language--
+
+“_Non, Madame. Rien n’est perdu_.”
+
+It electrified Mrs. Gould out of her benumbed attitude, and she said,
+vivaciously--
+
+“What would you think of doing?”
+
+But already there was something of mockery in Decoud’s suppressed
+excitement.
+
+“What would you expect a true Costaguanero to do? Another revolution, of
+course. On my word of honour, Mrs. Gould, I believe I am a true _hijo del
+pays_, a true son of the country, whatever Father Corbelan may say. And
+I’m not so much of an unbeliever as not to have faith in my own ideas,
+in my own remedies, in my own desires.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Gould, doubtfully.
+
+“You don’t seem convinced,” Decoud went on again in French. “Say, then,
+in my passions.”
+
+Mrs. Gould received this addition unflinchingly. To understand it
+thoroughly she did not require to hear his muttered assurance--
+
+“There is nothing I would not do for the sake of Antonia. There is
+nothing I am not prepared to undertake. There is no risk I am not ready
+to run.”
+
+Decoud seemed to find a fresh audacity in this voicing of his thoughts.
+“You would not believe me if I were to say that it is the love of the
+country which--”
+
+She made a sort of discouraged protest with her arm, as if to express
+that she had given up expecting that motive from any one.
+
+“A Sulaco revolution,” Decoud pursued in a forcible undertone. “The
+Great Cause may be served here, on the very spot of its inception, in
+the place of its birth, Mrs. Gould.”
+
+Frowning, and biting her lower lip thoughtfully, she made a step away
+from the door.
+
+“You are not going to speak to your husband?” Decoud arrested her
+anxiously.
+
+“But you will need his help?”
+
+“No doubt,” Decoud admitted without hesitation. “Everything turns upon
+the San Tome mine, but I would rather he didn’t know anything as yet of
+my--my hopes.”
+
+A puzzled look came upon Mrs. Gould’s face, and Decoud, approaching,
+explained confidentially--
+
+“Don’t you see, he’s such an idealist.”
+
+Mrs. Gould flushed pink, and her eyes grew darker at the same time.
+
+“Charley an idealist!” she said, as if to herself, wonderingly. “What on
+earth do you mean?”
+
+“Yes,” conceded Decoud, “it’s a wonderful thing to say with the sight
+of the San Tome mine, the greatest fact in the whole of South America,
+perhaps, before our very eyes. But look even at that, he has idealized
+this fact to a point--” He paused. “Mrs. Gould, are you aware to what
+point he has idealized the existence, the worth, the meaning of the San
+Tome mine? Are you aware of it?”
+
+He must have known what he was talking about.
+
+The effect he expected was produced. Mrs. Gould, ready to take fire,
+gave it up suddenly with a low little sound that resembled a moan.
+
+“What do you know?” she asked in a feeble voice.
+
+“Nothing,” answered Decoud, firmly. “But, then, don’t you see, he’s an
+Englishman?”
+
+“Well, what of that?” asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+“Simply that he cannot act or exist without idealizing every simple
+feeling, desire, or achievement. He could not believe his own motives if
+he did not make them first a part of some fairy tale. The earth is not
+quite good enough for him, I fear. Do you excuse my frankness? Besides,
+whether you excuse it or not, it is part of the truth of things which
+hurts the--what do you call them?--the Anglo-Saxon’s susceptibilities,
+and at the present moment I don’t feel as if I could treat seriously
+either his conception of things or--if you allow me to say so--or yet
+yours.”
+
+Mrs. Gould gave no sign of being offended. “I suppose Antonia
+understands you thoroughly?”
+
+“Understands? Well, yes. But I am not sure that she approves. That,
+however, makes no difference. I am honest enough to tell you that, Mrs.
+Gould.”
+
+“Your idea, of course, is separation,” she said.
+
+“Separation, of course,” declared Martin. “Yes; separation of the whole
+Occidental Province from the rest of the unquiet body. But my true idea,
+the only one I care for, is not to be separated from Antonia.”
+
+“And that is all?” asked Mrs. Gould, without severity.
+
+“Absolutely. I am not deceiving myself about my motives. She won’t leave
+Sulaco for my sake, therefore Sulaco must leave the rest of the Republic
+to its fate. Nothing could be clearer than that. I like a clearly
+defined situation. I cannot part with Antonia, therefore the one and
+indivisible Republic of Costaguana must be made to part with its western
+province. Fortunately it happens to be also a sound policy. The
+richest, the most fertile part of this land may be saved from anarchy.
+Personally, I care little, very little; but it’s a fact that the
+establishment of Montero in power would mean death to me. In all the
+proclamations of general pardon which I have seen, my name, with a few
+others, is specially excepted. The brothers hate me, as you know very
+well, Mrs. Gould; and behold, here is the rumour of them having won a
+battle. You say that supposing it is true, I have plenty of time to run
+away.”
+
+The slight, protesting murmur on the part of Mrs. Gould made him pause
+for a moment, while he looked at her with a sombre and resolute glance.
+
+“Ah, but I would, Mrs. Gould. I would run away if it served that which
+at present is my only desire. I am courageous enough to say that, and to
+do it, too. But women, even our women, are idealists. It is Antonia that
+won’t run away. A novel sort of vanity.”
+
+“You call it vanity,” said Mrs. Gould, in a shocked voice.
+
+“Say pride, then, which Father Corbelan would tell you, is a mortal
+sin. But I am not proud. I am simply too much in love to run away. At
+the same time I want to live. There is no love for a dead man. Therefore
+it is necessary that Sulaco should not recognize the victorious
+Montero.”
+
+“And you think my husband will give you his support?”
+
+“I think he can be drawn into it, like all idealists, when he once sees
+a sentimental basis for his action. But I wouldn’t talk to him. Mere
+clear facts won’t appeal to his sentiment. It is much better for him
+to convince himself in his own way. And, frankly, I could not, perhaps,
+just now pay sufficient respect to either his motives or even, perhaps,
+to yours, Mrs. Gould.”
+
+It was evident that Mrs. Gould was very determined not to be offended.
+She smiled vaguely, while she seemed to think the matter over. As far
+as she could judge from the girl’s half-confidences, Antonia understood
+that young man. Obviously there was promise of safety in his plan, or
+rather in his idea. Moreover, right or wrong, the idea could do no harm.
+And it was quite possible, also, that the rumour was false.
+
+“You have some sort of a plan,” she said.
+
+“Simplicity itself. Barrios has started, let him go on then; he will
+hold Cayta, which is the door of the sea route to Sulaco. They cannot
+send a sufficient force over the mountains. No; not even to cope with
+the band of Hernandez. Meantime we shall organize our resistance here.
+And for that, this very Hernandez will be useful. He has defeated troops
+as a bandit; he will no doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made
+a colonel or even a general. You know the country well enough not to
+be shocked by what I say, Mrs. Gould. I have heard you assert that this
+poor bandit was the living, breathing example of cruelty, injustice,
+stupidity, and oppression, that ruin men’s souls as well as their
+fortunes in this country. Well, there would be some poetical retribution
+in that man arising to crush the evils which had driven an honest
+ranchero into a life of crime. A fine idea of retribution in that, isn’t
+there?”
+
+Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he spoke with precision,
+very correctly, but with too many z sounds.
+
+“Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your ailing mothers
+and feeble old men, of all that population which you and your husband
+have brought into the rocky gorge of San Tome. Are you not responsible
+to your conscience for all these people? Is it not worth while to make
+another effort, which is not at all so desperate as it looks, rather
+than--”
+
+Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm, suggesting
+annihilation; and Mrs. Gould turned away her head with a look of horror.
+
+“Why don’t you say all this to my husband?” she asked, without looking
+at Decoud, who stood watching the effect of his words.
+
+“Ah! But Don Carlos is so English,” he began. Mrs. Gould interrupted--
+
+“Leave that alone, Don Martin. He’s as much a Costaguanero--No! He’s
+more of a Costaguanero than yourself.”
+
+“Sentimentalist, sentimentalist,” Decoud almost cooed, in a tone of
+gentle and soothing deference. “Sentimentalist, after the amazing manner
+of your people. I have been watching El Rey de Sulaco since I came here
+on a fool’s errand, and perhaps impelled by some treason of fate lurking
+behind the unaccountable turns of a man’s life. But I don’t matter, I am
+not a sentimentalist, I cannot endow my personal desires with a shining
+robe of silk and jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from
+the tradition of a pretty fairy tale. No, Mrs. Gould; I am practical. I
+am not afraid of my motives. But, pardon me, I have been rather carried
+away. What I wish to say is that I have been observing. I won’t tell you
+what I have discovered--”
+
+“No. That is unnecessary,” whispered Mrs. Gould, once more averting her
+head.
+
+“It is. Except one little fact, that your husband does not like me.
+It’s a small matter, which, in the circumstances, seems to acquire a
+perfectly ridiculous importance. Ridiculous and immense; for, clearly,
+money is required for my plan,” he reflected; then added, meaningly,
+“and we have two sentimentalists to deal with.”
+
+“I don’t know that I understand you, Don Martin,” said Mrs. Gould,
+coldly, preserving the low key of their conversation. “But, speaking as
+if I did, who is the other?”
+
+“The great Holroyd in San Francisco, of course,” Decoud whispered,
+lightly. “I think you understand me very well. Women are idealists; but
+then they are so perspicacious.”
+
+But whatever was the reason of that remark, disparaging and
+complimentary at the same time, Mrs. Gould seemed not to pay attention
+to it. The name of Holroyd had given a new tone to her anxiety.
+
+“The silver escort is coming down to the harbour tomorrow; a whole six
+months’ working, Don Martin!” she cried in dismay.
+
+“Let it come down, then,” breathed out Decoud, earnestly, almost into
+her ear.
+
+“But if the rumour should get about, and especially if it turned out
+true, troubles might break out in the town,” objected Mrs. Gould.
+
+Decoud admitted that it was possible. He knew well the town children
+of the Sulaco Campo: sullen, thievish, vindictive, and bloodthirsty,
+whatever great qualities their brothers of the plain might have had.
+But then there was that other sentimentalist, who attached a strangely
+idealistic meaning to concrete facts. This stream of silver must be kept
+flowing north to return in the form of financial backing from the great
+house of Holroyd. Up at the mountain in the strong room of the mine
+the silver bars were worth less for his purpose than so much lead, from
+which at least bullets may be run. Let it come down to the harbour,
+ready for shipment.
+
+The next north-going steamer would carry it off for the very salvation
+of the San Tome mine, which had produced so much treasure. And,
+moreover, the rumour was probably false, he remarked, with much
+conviction in his hurried tone.
+
+“Besides, senora,” concluded Decoud, “we may suppress it for many days.
+I have been talking with the telegraphist in the middle of the Plaza
+Mayor; thus I am certain that we could not have been overheard. There
+was not even a bird in the air near us. And also let me tell you
+something more. I have been making friends with this man called
+Nostromo, the Capataz. We had a conversation this very evening, I
+walking by the side of his horse as he rode slowly out of the town just
+now. He promised me that if a riot took place for any reason--even
+for the most political of reasons, you understand--his Cargadores, an
+important part of the populace, you will admit, should be found on the
+side of the Europeans.”
+
+“He has promised you that?” Mrs. Gould inquired, with interest. “What
+made him make that promise to you?”
+
+“Upon my word, I don’t know,” declared Decoud, in a slightly surprised
+tone. “He certainly promised me that, but now you ask me why, I could
+not tell you his reasons. He talked with his usual carelessness, which,
+if he had been anything else but a common sailor, I would call a pose or
+an affectation.”
+
+Decoud, interrupting himself, looked at Mrs. Gould curiously.
+
+“Upon the whole,” he continued, “I suppose he expects something to his
+advantage from it. You mustn’t forget that he does not exercise his
+extraordinary power over the lower classes without a certain amount of
+personal risk and without a great profusion in spending his money.
+One must pay in some way or other for such a solid thing as individual
+prestige. He told me after we made friends at a dance, in a Posada kept
+by a Mexican just outside the walls, that he had come here to make his
+fortune. I suppose he looks upon his prestige as a sort of investment.”
+
+“Perhaps he prizes it for its own sake,” Mrs. Gould said in a tone as
+if she were repelling an undeserved aspersion. “Viola, the Garibaldino,
+with whom he has lived for some years, calls him the Incorruptible.”
+
+“Ah! he belongs to the group of your proteges out there towards the
+harbour, Mrs. Gould. Muy bien. And Captain Mitchell calls him wonderful.
+I have heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his
+fidelity. No end of fine things. H’m! incorruptible! It is indeed a name
+of honour for the Capataz of the Cargadores of Sulaco. Incorruptible!
+Fine, but vague. However, I suppose he’s sensible, too. And I talked to
+him upon that sane and practical assumption.”
+
+“I prefer to think him disinterested, and therefore trustworthy,” Mrs.
+Gould said, with the nearest approach to curtness it was in her nature
+to assume.
+
+“Well, if so, then the silver will be still more safe. Let it come down,
+senora. Let it come down, so that it may go north and return to us in
+the shape of credit.”
+
+Mrs. Gould glanced along the corredor towards the door of her husband’s
+room. Decoud, watching her as if she had his fate in her hands, detected
+an almost imperceptible nod of assent. He bowed with a smile, and,
+putting his hand into the breast pocket of his coat, pulled out a fan of
+light feathers set upon painted leaves of sandal-wood. “I had it in my
+pocket,” he murmured, triumphantly, “for a plausible pretext.” He bowed
+again. “Good-night, senora.”
+
+Mrs. Gould continued along the corredor away from her husband’s room.
+The fate of the San Tome mine was lying heavy upon her heart. It was a
+long time now since she had begun to fear it. It had been an idea. She
+had watched it with misgivings turning into a fetish, and now the
+fetish had grown into a monstrous and crushing weight. It was as if the
+inspiration of their early years had left her heart to turn into a wall
+of silver-bricks, erected by the silent work of evil spirits, between
+her and her husband. He seemed to dwell alone within a circumvallation
+of precious metal, leaving her outside with her school, her hospital,
+the sick mothers and the feeble old men, mere insignificant vestiges of
+the initial inspiration. “Those poor people!” she murmured to herself.
+
+Below she heard the voice of Martin Decoud in the patio speaking loudly:
+
+“I have found Dona Antonia’s fan, Basilio. Look, here it is!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+It was part of what Decoud would have called his sane materialism that
+he did not believe in the possibility of friendship between man and
+woman.
+
+The one exception he allowed confirmed, he maintained, that absolute
+rule. Friendship was possible between brother and sister, meaning
+by friendship the frank unreserve, as before another human being, of
+thoughts and sensations; all the objectless and necessary sincerity of
+one’s innermost life trying to re-act upon the profound sympathies of
+another existence.
+
+His favourite sister, the handsome, slightly arbitrary and resolute
+angel, ruling the father and mother Decoud in the first-floor apartments
+of a very fine Parisian house, was the recipient of Martin Decoud’s
+confidences as to his thoughts, actions, purposes, doubts, and even
+failures. . . .
+
+“Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of another South
+American Republic. One more or less, what does it matter? They may come
+into the world like evil flowers on a hotbed of rotten institutions; but
+the seed of this one has germinated in your brother’s brain, and that
+will be enough for your devoted assent. I am writing this to you by the
+light of a single candle, in a sort of inn, near the harbour, kept by
+an Italian called Viola, a protege of Mrs. Gould. The whole building,
+which, for all I know, may have been contrived by a Conquistador farmer
+of the pearl fishery three hundred years ago, is perfectly silent. So is
+the plain between the town and the harbour; silent, but not so dark as
+the house, because the pickets of Italian workmen guarding the railway
+have lighted little fires all along the line. It was not so quiet around
+here yesterday. We had an awful riot--a sudden outbreak of the populace,
+which was not suppressed till late today. Its object, no doubt, was
+loot, and that was defeated, as you may have learned already from the
+cablegram sent via San Francisco and New York last night, when the
+cables were still open. You have read already there that the energetic
+action of the Europeans of the railway has saved the town from
+destruction, and you may believe that. I wrote out the cable myself. We
+have no Reuter’s agency man here. I have also fired at the mob from the
+windows of the club, in company with some other young men of position.
+Our object was to keep the Calle de la Constitucion clear for the exodus
+of the ladies and children, who have taken refuge on board a couple of
+cargo ships now in the harbour here. That was yesterday. You should also
+have learned from the cable that the missing President, Ribiera, who had
+disappeared after the battle of Sta. Marta, has turned up here in Sulaco
+by one of those strange coincidences that are almost incredible, riding
+on a lame mule into the very midst of the street fighting. It appears
+that he had fled, in company of a muleteer called Bonifacio, across the
+mountains from the threats of Montero into the arms of an enraged mob.
+
+“The Capataz of Cargadores, that Italian sailor of whom I have written
+to you before, has saved him from an ignoble death. That man seems
+to have a particular talent for being on the spot whenever there is
+something picturesque to be done.
+
+“He was with me at four o’clock in the morning at the offices of the
+Porvenir, where he had turned up so early in order to warn me of the
+coming trouble, and also to assure me that he would keep his Cargadores
+on the side of order. When the full daylight came we were looking
+together at the crowd on foot and on horseback, demonstrating on the
+Plaza and shying stones at the windows of the Intendencia. Nostromo
+(that is the name they call him by here) was pointing out to me his
+Cargadores interspersed in the mob.
+
+“The sun shines late upon Sulaco, for it has first to climb above the
+mountains. In that clear morning light, brighter than twilight, Nostromo
+saw right across the vast Plaza, at the end of the street beyond the
+cathedral, a mounted man apparently in difficulties with a yelling knot
+of leperos. At once he said to me, ‘That’s a stranger. What is it they
+are doing to him?’ Then he took out the silver whistle he is in the
+habit of using on the wharf (this man seems to disdain the use of any
+metal less precious than silver) and blew into it twice, evidently a
+preconcerted signal for his Cargadores. He ran out immediately, and they
+rallied round him. I ran out, too, but was too late to follow them and
+help in the rescue of the stranger, whose animal had fallen. I was set
+upon at once as a hated aristocrat, and was only too glad to get into
+the club, where Don Jaime Berges (you may remember him visiting at
+our house in Paris some three years ago) thrust a sporting gun into
+my hands. They were already firing from the windows. There were little
+heaps of cartridges lying about on the open card-tables. I remember a
+couple of overturned chairs, some bottles rolling on the floor amongst
+the packs of cards scattered suddenly as the caballeros rose from their
+game to open fire upon the mob. Most of the young men had spent the
+night at the club in the expectation of some such disturbance. In two of
+the candelabra, on the consoles, the candles were burning down in their
+sockets. A large iron nut, probably stolen from the railway workshops,
+flew in from the street as I entered, and broke one of the large mirrors
+set in the wall. I noticed also one of the club servants tied up hand
+and foot with the cords of the curtain and flung in a corner. I have a
+vague recollection of Don Jaime assuring me hastily that the fellow had
+been detected putting poison into the dishes at supper. But I remember
+distinctly he was shrieking for mercy, without stopping at all,
+continuously, and so absolutely disregarded that nobody even took the
+trouble to gag him. The noise he made was so disagreeable that I had
+half a mind to do it myself. But there was no time to waste on such
+trifles. I took my place at one of the windows and began firing.
+
+“I didn’t learn till later in the afternoon whom it was that Nostromo,
+with his Cargadores and some Italian workmen as well, had managed to
+save from those drunken rascals. That man has a peculiar talent when
+anything striking to the imagination has to be done. I made that remark
+to him afterwards when we met after some sort of order had been restored
+in the town, and the answer he made rather surprised me. He said quite
+moodily, ‘And how much do I get for that, senor?’ Then it dawned upon me
+that perhaps this man’s vanity has been satiated by the adulation of the
+common people and the confidence of his superiors!”
+
+Decoud paused to light a cigarette, then, with his head still over his
+writing, he blew a cloud of smoke, which seemed to rebound from the
+paper. He took up the pencil again.
+
+“That was yesterday evening on the Plaza, while he sat on the steps of
+the cathedral, his hands between his knees, holding the bridle of his
+famous silver-grey mare. He had led his body of Cargadores splendidly
+all day long. He looked fatigued. I don’t know how I looked. Very
+dirty, I suppose. But I suppose I also looked pleased. From the time the
+fugitive President had been got off to the S. S. Minerva, the tide
+of success had turned against the mob. They had been driven off the
+harbour, and out of the better streets of the town, into their own
+maze of ruins and tolderias. You must understand that this riot, whose
+primary object was undoubtedly the getting hold of the San Tome silver
+stored in the lower rooms of the Custom House (besides the general
+looting of the Ricos), had acquired a political colouring from the fact
+of two Deputies to the Provincial Assembly, Senores Gamacho and Fuentes,
+both from Bolson, putting themselves at the head of it--late in the
+afternoon, it is true, when the mob, disappointed in their hopes of
+loot, made a stand in the narrow streets to the cries of ‘Viva la
+Libertad! Down with Feudalism!’ (I wonder what they imagine feudalism to
+be?) ‘Down with the Goths and Paralytics.’ I suppose the Senores Gamacho
+and Fuentes knew what they were doing. They are prudent gentlemen.
+In the Assembly they called themselves Moderates, and opposed every
+energetic measure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the first rumours
+of Montero’s victory, they showed a subtle change of the pensive temper,
+and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopez in his Presidential tribune
+with an effrontery to which the poor man could only respond by a dazed
+smoothing of his beard and the ringing of the presidential bell. Then,
+when the downfall of the Ribierist cause became confirmed beyond the
+shadow of a doubt, they have blossomed into convinced Liberals, acting
+together as if they were Siamese twins, and ultimately taking charge, as
+it were, of the riot in the name of Monterist principles.
+
+“Their last move of eight o’clock last night was to organize themselves
+into a Monterist Committee which sits, as far as I know, in a posada
+kept by a retired Mexican bull-fighter, a great politician, too, whose
+name I have forgotten. Thence they have issued a communication to
+us, the Goths and Paralytics of the Amarilla Club (who have our own
+committee), inviting us to come to some provisional understanding for a
+truce, in order, they have the impudence to say, that the noble cause of
+Liberty ‘should not be stained by the criminal excesses of Conservative
+selfishness!’ As I came out to sit with Nostromo on the cathedral steps
+the club was busy considering a proper reply in the principal room,
+littered with exploded cartridges, with a lot of broken glass, blood
+smears, candlesticks, and all sorts of wreckage on the floor. But all
+this is nonsense. Nobody in the town has any real power except the
+railway engineers, whose men occupy the dismantled houses acquired
+by the Company for their town station on one side of the Plaza, and
+Nostromo, whose Cargadores were sleeping under the arcades along
+the front of Anzani’s shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the
+Intendencia saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the Plaza, in a high
+flame swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. The dead body of a
+man was lying on the steps of the pedestal, his arms thrown wide open,
+and his sombrero covering his face--the attention of some friend,
+perhaps. The light of the flames touched the foliage of the first trees
+on the Alameda, and played on the end of a side street near by, blocked
+up by a jumble of ox-carts and dead bullocks. Sitting on one of the
+carcasses, a lepero, muffled up, smoked a cigarette. It was a truce, you
+understand. The only other living being on the Plaza besides ourselves
+was a Cargador walking to and fro, with a long, bare knife in his hand,
+like a sentry before the Arcades, where his friends were sleeping. And
+the only other spot of light in the dark town were the lighted windows
+of the club, at the corner of the Calle.”
+
+After having written so far, Don Martin Decoud, the exotic dandy of the
+Parisian boulevard, got up and walked across the sanded floor of the
+cafe at one end of the Albergo of United Italy, kept by Giorgio Viola,
+the old companion of Garibaldi. The highly coloured lithograph of the
+Faithful Hero seemed to look dimly, in the light of one candle, at the
+man with no faith in anything except the truth of his own sensations.
+Looking out of the window, Decoud was met by a darkness so impenetrable
+that he could see neither the mountains nor the town, nor yet the
+buildings near the harbour; and there was not a sound, as if the
+tremendous obscurity of the Placid Gulf, spreading from the waters over
+the land, had made it dumb as well as blind. Presently Decoud felt a
+light tremor of the floor and a distant clank of iron. A bright white
+light appeared, deep in the darkness, growing bigger with a thundering
+noise. The rolling stock usually kept on the sidings in Rincon was being
+run back to the yards for safe keeping. Like a mysterious stirring of
+the darkness behind the headlight of the engine, the train passed in a
+gust of hollow uproar, by the end of the house, which seemed to vibrate
+all over in response. And nothing was clearly visible but, on the end
+of the last flat car, a negro, in white trousers and naked to the waist,
+swinging a blazing torch basket incessantly with a circular movement of
+his bare arm. Decoud did not stir.
+
+Behind him, on the back of the chair from which he had risen, hung his
+elegant Parisian overcoat, with a pearl-grey silk lining. But when he
+turned back to come to the table the candlelight fell upon a face that
+was grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat, the
+smoke of gun-powder. Dirt and rust tarnished the lustre of his short
+beard. His shirt collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie
+hung down his breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow.
+He had not taken off his clothing nor used water, except to snatch a
+hasty drink greedily, for some forty hours. An awful restlessness had
+made him its own, had marked him with all the signs of desperate strife,
+and put a dry, sleepless stare into his eyes. He murmured to himself
+in a hoarse voice, “I wonder if there’s any bread here,” looked vaguely
+about him, then dropped into the chair and took the pencil up again. He
+became aware he had not eaten anything for many hours.
+
+It occurred to him that no one could understand him so well as his
+sister. In the most sceptical heart there lurks at such moments, when
+the chances of existence are involved, a desire to leave a correct
+impression of the feelings, like a light by which the action may be seen
+when personality is gone, gone where no light of investigation can ever
+reach the truth which every death takes out of the world. Therefore,
+instead of looking for something to eat, or trying to snatch an hour or
+so of sleep, Decoud was filling the pages of a large pocket-book with a
+letter to his sister.
+
+In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his weariness,
+his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily sensations. He began
+again as if he were talking to her. With almost an illusion of her
+presence, he wrote the phrase, “I am very hungry.”
+
+“I have the feeling of a great solitude around me,” he continued. “Is
+it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea in his head,
+in the complete collapse of every resolve, intention, and hope about me?
+But the solitude is also very real. All the engineers are out, and have
+been for two days, looking after the property of the National Central
+Railway, of that great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money into
+the pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, and God knows
+who else. The silence about me is ominous. There is above the middle
+part of this house a sort of first floor, with narrow openings like
+loopholes for windows, probably used in old times for the better
+defence against the savages, when the persistent barbarism of our native
+continent did not wear the black coats of politicians, but went about
+yelling, half-naked, with bows and arrows in its hands. The woman of
+the house is dying up there, I believe, all alone with her old husband.
+There is a narrow staircase, the sort of staircase one man could easily
+defend against a mob, leading up there, and I have just heard, through
+the thickness of the wall, the old fellow going down into their kitchen
+for something or other. It was a sort of noise a mouse might make behind
+the plaster of a wall. All the servants they had ran away yesterday and
+have not returned yet, if ever they do. For the rest, there are only two
+children here, two girls. The father has sent them downstairs, and
+they have crept into this cafe, perhaps because I am here. They huddle
+together in a corner, in each other’s arms; I just noticed them a few
+minutes ago, and I feel more lonely than ever.”
+
+Decoud turned half round in his chair, and asked, “Is there any bread
+here?”
+
+Linda’s dark head was shaken negatively in response, above the fair head
+of her sister nestling on her breast.
+
+“You couldn’t get me some bread?” insisted Decoud. The child did not
+move; he saw her large eyes stare at him very dark from the corner.
+“You’re not afraid of me?” he said.
+
+“No,” said Linda, “we are not afraid of you. You came here with Gian’
+Battista.”
+
+“You mean Nostromo?” said Decoud.
+
+“The English call him so, but that is no name either for man or beast,”
+ said the girl, passing her hand gently over her sister’s hair.
+
+“But he lets people call him so,” remarked Decoud.
+
+“Not in this house,” retorted the child.
+
+“Ah! well, I shall call him the Capataz then.”
+
+Decoud gave up the point, and after writing steadily for a while turned
+round again.
+
+“When do you expect him back?” he asked.
+
+“After he brought you here he rode off to fetch the Senor Doctor from
+the town for mother. He will be back soon.”
+
+“He stands a good chance of getting shot somewhere on the road,” Decoud
+murmured to himself audibly; and Linda declared in her high-pitched
+voice--
+
+“Nobody would dare to fire a shot at Gian’ Battista.”
+
+“You believe that,” asked Decoud, “do you?”
+
+“I know it,” said the child, with conviction. “There is no one in this
+place brave enough to attack Gian’ Battista.”
+
+“It doesn’t require much bravery to pull a trigger behind a bush,”
+ muttered Decoud to himself. “Fortunately, the night is dark, or there
+would be but little chance of saving the silver of the mine.”
+
+He turned again to his pocket-book, glanced back through the pages, and
+again started his pencil.
+
+“That was the position yesterday, after the Minerva with the fugitive
+President had gone out of harbour, and the rioters had been driven back
+into the side lanes of the town. I sat on the steps of the cathedral
+with Nostromo, after sending out the cable message for the information
+of a more or less attentive world. Strangely enough, though the offices
+of the Cable Company are in the same building as the Porvenir, the mob,
+which has thrown my presses out of the window and scattered the type all
+over the Plaza, has been kept from interfering with the instruments
+on the other side of the courtyard. As I sat talking with Nostromo,
+Bernhardt, the telegraphist, came out from under the Arcades with a
+piece of paper in his hand. The little man had tied himself up to an
+enormous sword and was hung all over with revolvers. He is ridiculous,
+but the bravest German of his size that ever tapped the key of a Morse
+transmitter. He had received the message from Cayta reporting the
+transports with Barrios’s army just entering the port, and ending with
+the words, ‘The greatest enthusiasm prevails.’ I walked off to drink
+some water at the fountain, and I was shot at from the Alameda by
+somebody hiding behind a tree. But I drank, and didn’t care; with
+Barrios in Cayta and the great Cordillera between us and Montero’s
+victorious army I seemed, notwithstanding Messrs. Gamacho and Fuentes,
+to hold my new State in the hollow of my hand. I was ready to sleep, but
+when I got as far as the Casa Gould I found the patio full of wounded
+laid out on straw. Lights were burning, and in that enclosed courtyard
+on that hot night a faint odour of chloroform and blood hung about.
+At one end Doctor Monygham, the doctor of the mine, was dressing the
+wounds; at the other, near the stairs, Father Corbelan, kneeling,
+listened to the confession of a dying Cargador. Mrs. Gould was walking
+about through these shambles with a large bottle in one hand and a
+lot of cotton wool in the other. She just looked at me and never even
+winked. Her camerista was following her, also holding a bottle, and
+sobbing gently to herself.
+
+“I busied myself for some time in fetching water from the cistern for
+the wounded. Afterwards I wandered upstairs, meeting some of the first
+ladies of Sulaco, paler than I had ever seen them before, with bandages
+over their arms. Not all of them had fled to the ships. A good many had
+taken refuge for the day in the Casa Gould. On the landing a girl, with
+her hair half down, was kneeling against the wall under the niche where
+stands a Madonna in blue robes and a gilt crown on her head. I think
+it was the eldest Miss Lopez; I couldn’t see her face, but I remember
+looking at the high French heel of her little shoe. She did not make
+a sound, she did not stir, she was not sobbing; she remained there,
+perfectly still, all black against the white wall, a silent figure of
+passionate piety. I am sure she was no more frightened than the other
+white-faced ladies I met carrying bandages. One was sitting on the top
+step tearing a piece of linen hastily into strips--the young wife of an
+elderly man of fortune here. She interrupted herself to wave her hand to
+my bow, as though she were in her carriage on the Alameda. The women
+of our country are worth looking at during a revolution. The rouge and
+pearl powder fall off, together with that passive attitude towards the
+outer world which education, tradition, custom impose upon them from the
+earliest infancy. I thought of your face, which from your infancy had
+the stamp of intelligence instead of that patient and resigned cast
+which appears when some political commotion tears down the veil of
+cosmetics and usage.
+
+“In the great sala upstairs a sort of Junta of Notables was sitting,
+the remnant of the vanished Provincial Assembly. Don Juste Lopez had had
+half his beard singed off at the muzzle of a trabuco loaded with slugs,
+of which every one missed him, providentially. And as he turned his head
+from side to side it was exactly as if there had been two men inside his
+frock-coat, one nobly whiskered and solemn, the other untidy and scared.
+
+“They raised a cry of ‘Decoud! Don Martin!’ at my entrance. I asked
+them, ‘What are you deliberating upon, gentlemen?’ There did not seem
+to be any president, though Don Jose Avellanos sat at the head of the
+table. They all answered together, ‘On the preservation of life and
+property.’ ‘Till the new officials arrive,’ Don Juste explained to me,
+with the solemn side of his face offered to my view. It was as if a
+stream of water had been poured upon my glowing idea of a new State.
+There was a hissing sound in my ears, and the room grew dim, as if
+suddenly filled with vapour.
+
+“I walked up to the table blindly, as though I had been drunk. ‘You are
+deliberating upon surrender,’ I said. They all sat still, with their
+noses over the sheet of paper each had before him, God only knows why.
+Only Don Jose hid his face in his hands, muttering, ‘Never, never!’ But
+as I looked at him, it seemed to me that I could have blown him away
+with my breath, he looked so frail, so weak, so worn out. Whatever
+happens, he will not survive. The deception is too great for a man of
+his age; and hasn’t he seen the sheets of ‘Fifty Years of Misrule,’
+which we have begun printing on the presses of the Porvenir, littering
+the Plaza, floating in the gutters, fired out as wads for trabucos
+loaded with handfuls of type, blown in the wind, trampled in the mud? I
+have seen pages floating upon the very waters of the harbour. It would
+be unreasonable to expect him to survive. It would be cruel.
+
+“‘Do you know,’ I cried, ‘what surrender means to you, to your women, to
+your children, to your property?’
+
+“I declaimed for five minutes without drawing breath, it seems to me,
+harping on our best chances, on the ferocity of Montero, whom I made out
+to be as great a beast as I have no doubt he would like to be if he had
+intelligence enough to conceive a systematic reign of terror. And then
+for another five minutes or more I poured out an impassioned appeal
+to their courage and manliness, with all the passion of my love for
+Antonia. For if ever man spoke well, it would be from a personal
+feeling, denouncing an enemy, defending himself, or pleading for what
+really may be dearer than life. My dear girl, I absolutely thundered at
+them. It seemed as if my voice would burst the walls asunder, and when
+I stopped I saw all their scared eyes looking at me dubiously. And that
+was all the effect I had produced! Only Don Jose’s head had sunk lower
+and lower on his breast. I bent my ear to his withered lips, and made
+out his whisper, something like, ‘In God’s name, then, Martin, my son!’
+I don’t know exactly. There was the name of God in it, I am certain. It
+seems to me I have caught his last breath--the breath of his departing
+soul on his lips.
+
+“He lives yet, it is true. I have seen him since; but it was only a
+senile body, lying on its back, covered to the chin, with open eyes, and
+so still that you might have said it was breathing no longer. I left him
+thus, with Antonia kneeling by the side of the bed, just before I came
+to this Italian’s posada, where the ubiquitous death is also waiting.
+But I know that Don Jose has really died there, in the Casa Gould, with
+that whisper urging me to attempt what no doubt his soul, wrapped up in
+the sanctity of diplomatic treaties and solemn declarations, must
+have abhorred. I had exclaimed very loud, ‘There is never any God in a
+country where men will not help themselves.’
+
+“Meanwhile, Don Juste had begun a pondered oration whose solemn effect
+was spoiled by the ridiculous disaster to his beard. I did not wait
+to make it out. He seemed to argue that Montero’s (he called him The
+General) intentions were probably not evil, though, he went on, ‘that
+distinguished man’ (only a week ago we used to call him a gran’ bestia)
+‘was perhaps mistaken as to the true means.’ As you may imagine,
+I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I know the intentions of Montero’s
+brother, Pedrito, the guerrillero, whom I exposed in Paris, some years
+ago, in a cafe frequented by South American students, where he tried
+to pass himself off for a Secretary of Legation. He used to come in
+and talk for hours, twisting his felt hat in his hairy paws, and his
+ambition seemed to become a sort of Duc de Morny to a sort of Napoleon.
+Already, then, he used to talk of his brother in inflated terms. He
+seemed fairly safe from being found out, because the students, all of
+the Blanco families, did not, as you may imagine, frequent the Legation.
+It was only Decoud, a man without faith and principles, as they used to
+say, that went in there sometimes for the sake of the fun, as it were to
+an assembly of trained monkeys. I know his intentions. I have seen him
+change the plates at table. Whoever is allowed to live on in terror, I
+must die the death.
+
+“No, I didn’t stay to the end to hear Don Juste Lopez trying to persuade
+himself in a grave oration of the clemency and justice, and honesty, and
+purity of the brothers Montero. I went out abruptly to seek Antonia.
+I saw her in the gallery. As I opened the door, she extended to me her
+clasped hands.
+
+“‘What are they doing in there?’ she asked.
+
+“‘Talking,’ I said, with my eyes looking into hers.
+
+“‘Yes, yes, but--’
+
+“‘Empty speeches,’ I interrupted her. ‘Hiding their fears behind
+imbecile hopes. They are all great Parliamentarians there--on the
+English model, as you know.’ I was so furious that I could hardly speak.
+She made a gesture of despair.
+
+“Through the door I held a little ajar behind me, we heard Dun Juste’s
+measured mouthing monotone go on from phrase to phrase, like a sort of
+awful and solemn madness.
+
+“‘After all, the Democratic aspirations have, perhaps, their legitimacy.
+The ways of human progress are inscrutable, and if the fate of the
+country is in the hand of Montero, we ought--’
+
+“I crashed the door to on that; it was enough; it was too much. There
+was never a beautiful face expressing more horror and despair than the
+face of Antonia. I couldn’t bear it; I seized her wrists.
+
+“‘Have they killed my father in there?’ she asked.
+
+“Her eyes blazed with indignation, but as I looked on, fascinated, the
+light in them went out.
+
+“‘It is a surrender,’ I said. And I remember I was shaking her wrists I
+held apart in my hands. ‘But it’s more than talk. Your father told me to
+go on in God’s name.’
+
+“My dear girl, there is that in Antonia which would make me believe in
+the feasibility of anything. One look at her face is enough to set
+my brain on fire. And yet I love her as any other man would--with the
+heart, and with that alone. She is more to me than his Church to Father
+Corbelan (the Grand Vicar disappeared last night from the town; perhaps
+gone to join the band of Hernandez). She is more to me than his precious
+mine to that sentimental Englishman. I won’t speak of his wife. She may
+have been sentimental once. The San Tome mine stands now between those
+two people. ‘Your father himself, Antonia,’ I repeated; ‘your father, do
+you understand? has told me to go on.’
+
+“She averted her face, and in a pained voice--
+
+“‘He has?’ she cried. ‘Then, indeed, I fear he will never speak again.’
+
+“She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to cry in her
+handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather see her miserable
+than not see her at all, never any more; for whether I escaped or stayed
+to die, there was for us no coming together, no future. And that being
+so, I had no pity to waste upon the passing moments of her sorrow. I
+sent her off in tears to fetch Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their
+sentiment was necessary to the very life of my plan; the sentimentalism
+of the people that will never do anything for the sake of their
+passionate desire, unless it comes to them clothed in the fair robes of
+an idea.
+
+“Late at night we formed a small junta of four--the two women, Don
+Carlos, and myself--in Mrs. Gould’s blue-and-white boudoir.
+
+“El Rey de Sulaco thinks himself, no doubt, a very honest man. And so
+he is, if one could look behind his taciturnity. Perhaps he thinks
+that this alone makes his honesty unstained. Those Englishmen live on
+illusions which somehow or other help them to get a firm hold of the
+substance. When he speaks it is by a rare ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that seems as
+impersonal as the words of an oracle. But he could not impose on me by
+his dumb reserve. I knew what he had in his head; he has his mine in
+his head; and his wife had nothing in her head but his precious person,
+which he has bound up with the Gould Concession and tied up to that
+little woman’s neck. No matter. The thing was to make him present the
+affair to Holroyd (the Steel and Silver King) in such a manner as to
+secure his financial support. At that time last night, just twenty-four
+hours ago, we thought the silver of the mine safe in the Custom House
+vaults till the north-bound steamer came to take it away. And as long as
+the treasure flowed north, without a break, that utter sentimentalist,
+Holroyd, would not drop his idea of introducing, not only justice,
+industry, peace, to the benighted continents, but also that pet dream
+of his of a purer form of Christianity. Later on, the principal European
+really in Sulaco, the engineer-in-chief of the railway, came riding up
+the Calle, from the harbour, and was admitted to our conclave. Meantime,
+the Junta of the Notables in the great sala was still deliberating;
+only, one of them had run out in the corredor to ask the servant
+whether something to eat couldn’t be sent in. The first words the
+engineer-in-chief said as he came into the boudoir were, ‘What is
+your house, dear Mrs. Gould? A war hospital below, and apparently a
+restaurant above. I saw them carrying trays full of good things into the
+sala.’
+
+“‘And here, in this boudoir,’ I said, ‘you behold the inner cabinet of
+the Occidental Republic that is to be.’
+
+“He was so preoccupied that he didn’t smile at that, he didn’t even look
+surprised.
+
+“He told us that he was attending to the general dispositions for the
+defence of the railway property at the railway yards when he was
+sent for to go into the railway telegraph office. The engineer of the
+railhead, at the foot of the mountains, wanted to talk to him from his
+end of the wire. There was nobody in the office but himself and the
+operator of the railway telegraph, who read off the clicks aloud as the
+tape coiled its length upon the floor. And the purport of that talk,
+clicked nervously from a wooden shed in the depths of the forests,
+had informed the chief that President Ribiera had been, or was being,
+pursued. This was news, indeed, to all of us in Sulaco. Ribiera himself,
+when rescued, revived, and soothed by us, had been inclined to think
+that he had not been pursued.
+
+“Ribiera had yielded to the urgent solicitations of his friends, and had
+left the headquarters of his discomfited army alone, under the
+guidance of Bonifacio, the muleteer, who had been willing to take the
+responsibility with the risk. He had departed at daybreak of the third
+day. His remaining forces had melted away during the night. Bonifacio
+and he rode hard on horses towards the Cordillera; then they obtained
+mules, entered the passes, and crossed the Paramo of Ivie just before a
+freezing blast swept over that stony plateau, burying in a drift of
+snow the little shelter-hut of stones in which they had spent the night.
+Afterwards poor Ribiera had many adventures, got separated from his
+guide, lost his mount, struggled down to the Campo on foot, and if he
+had not thrown himself on the mercy of a ranchero would have perished a
+long way from Sulaco. That man, who, as a matter of fact, recognized
+him at once, let him have a fresh mule, which the fugitive, heavy and
+unskilful, had ridden to death. And it was true he had been pursued by
+a party commanded by no less a person than Pedro Montero, the brother of
+the general. The cold wind of the Paramo luckily caught the pursuers on
+the top of the pass. Some few men, and all the animals, perished in the
+icy blast. The stragglers died, but the main body kept on. They
+found poor Bonifacio lying half-dead at the foot of a snow slope, and
+bayoneted him promptly in the true Civil War style. They would have had
+Ribiera, too, if they had not, for some reason or other, turned off the
+track of the old Camino Real, only to lose their way in the forests
+at the foot of the lower slopes. And there they were at last, having
+stumbled in unexpectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer at
+the railhead told his chief by wire that he had Pedro Montero absolutely
+there, in the very office, listening to the clicks. He was going to
+take possession of Sulaco in the name of the Democracy. He was very
+overbearing. His men slaughtered some of the Railway Company’s cattle
+without asking leave, and went to work broiling the meat on the embers.
+Pedrito made many pointed inquiries as to the silver mine, and what
+had become of the product of the last six months’ working. He had said
+peremptorily, ‘Ask your chief up there by wire, he ought to know; tell
+him that Don Pedro Montero, Chief of the Campo and Minister of the
+Interior of the new Government, desires to be correctly informed.’
+
+“He had his feet wrapped up in blood-stained rags, a lean, haggard face,
+ragged beard and hair, and had walked in limping, with a crooked branch
+of a tree for a staff. His followers were perhaps in a worse plight, but
+apparently they had not thrown away their arms, and, at any rate, not
+all their ammunition. Their lean faces filled the door and the windows
+of the telegraph hut. As it was at the same time the bedroom of the
+engineer-in-charge there, Montero had thrown himself on his clean
+blankets and lay there shivering and dictating requisitions to be
+transmitted by wire to Sulaco. He demanded a train of cars to be sent
+down at once to transport his men up.
+
+“‘To this I answered from my end,’ the engineer-in-chief related to us,
+‘that I dared not risk the rolling-stock in the interior, as there had
+been attempts to wreck trains all along the line several times. I did
+that for your sake, Gould,’ said the chief engineer. ‘The answer to this
+was, in the words of my subordinate, “The filthy brute on my bed said,
+‘Suppose I were to have you shot?’” To which my subordinate, who, it
+appears, was himself operating, remarked that it would not bring the
+cars up. Upon that, the other, yawning, said, “Never mind, there is
+no lack of horses on the Campo.” And, turning over, went to sleep on
+Harris’s bed.’
+
+“This is why, my dear girl, I am a fugitive to-night. The last wire from
+railhead says that Pedro Montero and his men left at daybreak, after
+feeding on asado beef all night. They took all the horses; they will
+find more on the road; they’ll be here in less than thirty hours, and
+thus Sulaco is no place either for me or the great store of silver
+belonging to the Gould Concession.
+
+“But that is not the worst. The garrison of Esmeralda has gone over to
+the victorious party. We have heard this by means of the telegraphist of
+the Cable Company, who came to the Casa Gould in the early morning with
+the news. In fact, it was so early that the day had not yet quite broken
+over Sulaco. His colleague in Esmeralda had called him up to say
+that the garrison, after shooting some of their officers, had taken
+possession of a Government steamer laid up in the harbour. It is really
+a heavy blow for me. I thought I could depend on every man in this
+province. It was a mistake. It was a Monterist Revolution in Esmeralda,
+just such as was attempted in Sulaco, only that that one came off. The
+telegraphist was signalling to Bernhardt all the time, and his last
+transmitted words were, ‘They are bursting in the door, and taking
+possession of the cable office. You are cut off. Can do no more.’
+
+“But, as a matter of fact, he managed somehow to escape the vigilance
+of his captors, who had tried to stop the communication with the outer
+world. He did manage it. How it was done I don’t know, but a few
+hours afterwards he called up Sulaco again, and what he said was, ‘The
+insurgent army has taken possession of the Government transport in the
+bay and are filling her with troops, with the intention of going round
+the coast to Sulaco. Therefore look out for yourselves. They will be
+ready to start in a few hours, and may be upon you before daybreak.’
+
+“This is all he could say. They drove him away from his instrument this
+time for good, because Bernhardt has been calling up Esmeralda ever
+since without getting an answer.”
+
+After setting these words down in the pocket-book which he was filling
+up for the benefit of his sister, Decoud lifted his head to listen. But
+there were no sounds, neither in the room nor in the house, except the
+drip of the water from the filter into the vast earthenware jar under
+the wooden stand. And outside the house there was a great silence.
+Decoud lowered his head again over the pocket-book.
+
+“I am not running away, you understand,” he wrote on. “I am simply
+going away with that great treasure of silver which must be saved at
+all costs. Pedro Montero from the Campo and the revolted garrison of
+Esmeralda from the sea are converging upon it. That it is there lying
+ready for them is only an accident. The real objective is the San Tome
+mine itself, as you may well imagine; otherwise the Occidental Province
+would have been, no doubt, left alone for many weeks, to be gathered
+at leisure into the arms of the victorious party. Don Carlos Gould
+will have enough to do to save his mine, with its organization and its
+people; this ‘Imperium in Imperio,’ this wealth-producing thing, to
+which his sentimentalism attaches a strange idea of justice. He holds
+to it as some men hold to the idea of love or revenge. Unless I am much
+mistaken in the man, it must remain inviolate or perish by an act of
+his will alone. A passion has crept into his cold and idealistic life.
+A passion which I can only comprehend intellectually. A passion that
+is not like the passions we know, we men of another blood. But it is as
+dangerous as any of ours.
+
+“His wife has understood it, too. That is why she is such a good ally
+of mine. She seizes upon all my suggestions with a sure instinct that in
+the end they make for the safety of the Gould Concession. And he defers
+to her because he trusts her perhaps, but I fancy rather as if he wished
+to make up for some subtle wrong, for that sentimental unfaithfulness
+which surrenders her happiness, her life, to the seduction of an idea.
+The little woman has discovered that he lives for the mine rather
+than for her. But let them be. To each his fate, shaped by passion or
+sentiment. The principal thing is that she has backed up my advice to
+get the silver out of the town, out of the country, at once, at any
+cost, at any risk. Don Carlos’ mission is to preserve unstained the fair
+fame of his mine; Mrs. Gould’s mission is to save him from the effects
+of that cold and overmastering passion, which she dreads more than if it
+were an infatuation for another woman. Nostromo’s mission is to save
+the silver. The plan is to load it into the largest of the Company’s
+lighters, and send it across the gulf to a small port out of Costaguana
+territory just on the other side the Azuera, where the first northbound
+steamer will get orders to pick it up. The waters here are calm. We
+shall slip away into the darkness of the gulf before the Esmeralda
+rebels arrive; and by the time the day breaks over the ocean we shall be
+out of sight, invisible, hidden by Azuera, which itself looks from the
+Sulaco shore like a faint blue cloud on the horizon.
+
+“The incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores is the man for that work;
+and I, the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go with him to
+return--to play my part in the farce to the end, and, if successful, to
+receive my reward, which no one but Antonia can give me.
+
+“I shall not see her again now before I depart. I left her, as I have
+said, by Don Jose’s bedside. The street was dark, the houses shut up,
+and I walked out of the town in the night. Not a single street-lamp had
+been lit for two days, and the archway of the gate was only a mass of
+darkness in the vague form of a tower, in which I heard low, dismal
+groans, that seemed to answer the murmurs of a man’s voice.
+
+“I recognized something impassive and careless in its tone,
+characteristic of that Genoese sailor who, like me, has come casually
+here to be drawn into the events for which his scepticism as well as
+mine seems to entertain a sort of passive contempt. The only thing he
+seems to care for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well
+spoken of. An ambition fit for noble souls, but also a profitable one
+for an exceptionally intelligent scoundrel. Yes. His very words, ‘To
+be well spoken of. Si, senor.’ He does not seem to make any difference
+between speaking and thinking. Is it sheer naiveness or the practical
+point of view, I wonder? Exceptional individualities always interest me,
+because they are true to the general formula expressing the moral state
+of humanity.
+
+“He joined me on the harbour road after I had passed them under the dark
+archway without stopping. It was a woman in trouble he had been talking
+to. Through discretion I kept silent while he walked by my side. After
+a time he began to talk himself. It was not what I expected. It was
+only an old woman, an old lace-maker, in search of her son, one of the
+street-sweepers employed by the municipality. Friends had come the day
+before at daybreak to the door of their hovel calling him out. He had
+gone with them, and she had not seen him since; so she had left the food
+she had been preparing half-cooked on the extinct embers and had crawled
+out as far as the harbour, where she had heard that some town mozos had
+been killed on the morning of the riot. One of the Cargadores guarding
+the Custom House had brought out a lantern, and had helped her to look
+at the few dead left lying about there. Now she was creeping back,
+having failed in her search. So she sat down on the stone seat under the
+arch, moaning, because she was very tired. The Capataz had questioned
+her, and after hearing her broken and groaning tale had advised her to
+go and look amongst the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould. He had
+also given her a quarter dollar, he mentioned carelessly.”
+
+“‘Why did you do that?’ I asked. ‘Do you know her?’
+
+“‘No, senor. I don’t suppose I have ever seen her before. How should I?
+She has not probably been out in the streets for years. She is one
+of those old women that you find in this country at the back of huts,
+crouching over fireplaces, with a stick on the ground by their side, and
+almost too feeble to drive away the stray dogs from their cooking-pots.
+Caramba! I could tell by her voice that death had forgotten her. But,
+old or young, they like money, and will speak well of the man who gives
+it to them.’ He laughed a little. ‘Senor, you should have felt the
+clutch of her paw as I put the piece in her palm.’ He paused. ‘My last,
+too,’ he added.
+
+“I made no comment. He’s known for his liberality and his bad luck at
+the game of monte, which keeps him as poor as when he first came here.
+
+“‘I suppose, Don Martin,’ he began, in a thoughtful, speculative tone,
+‘that the Senor Administrador of San Tome will reward me some day if I
+save his silver?’
+
+“I said that it could not be otherwise, surely. He walked on, muttering
+to himself. ‘Si, si, without doubt, without doubt; and, look you, Senor
+Martin, what it is to be well spoken of! There is not another man that
+could have been even thought of for such a thing. I shall get something
+great for it some day. And let it come soon,’ he mumbled. ‘Time passes
+in this country as quick as anywhere else.’
+
+“This, _soeur cherie_, is my companion in the great escape for the sake
+of the great cause. He is more naive than shrewd, more masterful than
+crafty, more generous with his personality than the people who make use
+of him are with their money. At least, that is what he thinks himself
+with more pride than sentiment. I am glad I have made friends with him.
+As a companion he acquires more importance than he ever had as a sort of
+minor genius in his way--as an original Italian sailor whom I allowed
+to come in in the small hours and talk familiarly to the editor of the
+Porvenir while the paper was going through the press. And it is curious
+to have met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in
+personal prestige.
+
+“I am waiting for him here now. On arriving at the posada kept by Viola
+we found the children alone down below, and the old Genoese shouted to
+his countryman to go and fetch the doctor. Otherwise we would have gone
+on to the wharf, where it appears Captain Mitchell with some volunteer
+Europeans and a few picked Cargadores are loading the lighter with the
+silver that must be saved from Montero’s clutches in order to be used
+for Montero’s defeat. Nostromo galloped furiously back towards the town.
+He has been long gone already. This delay gives me time to talk to you.
+By the time this pocket-book reaches your hands much will have happened.
+But now it is a pause under the hovering wing of death in this silent
+house buried in the black night, with this dying woman, the two children
+crouching without a sound, and that old man whom I can hear through the
+thickness of the wall passing up and down with a light rubbing noise no
+louder than a mouse. And I, the only other with them, don’t really know
+whether to count myself with the living or with the dead. ‘Quien sabe?’
+as the people here are prone to say in answer to every question. But no!
+feeling for you is certainly not dead, and the whole thing, the house,
+the dark night, the silent children in this dim room, my very presence
+here--all this is life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream.”
+
+With the writing of the last line there came upon Decoud a moment of
+sudden and complete oblivion. He swayed over the table as if struck by
+a bullet. The next moment he sat up, confused, with the idea that he had
+heard his pencil roll on the floor. The low door of the cafe, wide open,
+was filled with the glare of a torch in which was visible half of a
+horse, switching its tail against the leg of a rider with a long iron
+spur strapped to the naked heel. The two girls were gone, and Nostromo,
+standing in the middle of the room, looked at him from under the round
+brim of the sombrero low down over his brow.
+
+“I have brought that sour-faced English doctor in Senora Gould’s
+carriage,” said Nostromo. “I doubt if, with all his wisdom, he can
+save the Padrona this time. They have sent for the children. A bad sign
+that.”
+
+He sat down on the end of a bench. “She wants to give them her blessing,
+I suppose.”
+
+Dazedly Decoud observed that he must have fallen sound asleep, and
+Nostromo said, with a vague smile, that he had looked in at the window
+and had seen him lying still across the table with his head on his arms.
+The English senora had also come in the carriage, and went upstairs at
+once with the doctor. She had told him not to wake up Don Martin yet;
+but when they sent for the children he had come into the cafe.
+
+The half of the horse with its half of the rider swung round outside the
+door; the torch of tow and resin in the iron basket which was carried on
+a stick at the saddle-bow flared right into the room for a moment, and
+Mrs. Gould entered hastily with a very white, tired face. The hood of
+her dark, blue cloak had fallen back. Both men rose.
+
+“Teresa wants to see you, Nostromo,” she said. The Capataz did not move.
+Decoud, with his back to the table, began to button up his coat.
+
+“The silver, Mrs. Gould, the silver,” he murmured in English. “Don’t
+forget that the Esmeralda garrison have got a steamer. They may appear
+at any moment at the harbour entrance.”
+
+“The doctor says there is no hope,” Mrs. Gould spoke rapidly, also in
+English. “I shall take you down to the wharf in my carriage and then
+come back to fetch away the girls.” She changed swiftly into Spanish to
+address Nostromo. “Why are you wasting time? Old Giorgio’s wife wishes
+to see you.”
+
+“I am going to her, senora,” muttered the Capataz. Dr. Monygham now
+showed himself, bringing back the children. To Mrs. Gould’s inquiring
+glance he only shook his head and went outside at once, followed by
+Nostromo.
+
+The horse of the torch-bearer, motionless, hung his head low, and the
+rider had dropped the reins to light a cigarette. The glare of the torch
+played on the front of the house crossed by the big black letters of its
+inscription in which only the word _Italia_ was lighted fully. The patch
+of wavering glare reached as far as Mrs. Gould’s carriage waiting on
+the road, with the yellow-faced, portly Ignacio apparently dozing on the
+box. By his side Basilio, dark and skinny, held a Winchester carbine in
+front of him, with both hands, and peered fearfully into the darkness.
+Nostromo touched lightly the doctor’s shoulder.
+
+“Is she really dying, senor doctor?”
+
+“Yes,” said the doctor, with a strange twitch of his scarred cheek. “And
+why she wants to see you I cannot imagine.”
+
+“She has been like that before,” suggested Nostromo, looking away.
+
+“Well, Capataz, I can assure you she will never be like that again,”
+ snarled Dr. Monygham. “You may go to her or stay away. There is very
+little to be got from talking to the dying. But she told Dona Emilia in
+my hearing that she has been like a mother to you ever since you first
+set foot ashore here.”
+
+“Si! And she never had a good word to say for me to anybody. It is more
+as if she could not forgive me for being alive, and such a man, too, as
+she would have liked her son to be.”
+
+“Maybe!” exclaimed a mournful deep voice near them. “Women have their
+own ways of tormenting themselves.” Giorgio Viola had come out of the
+house. He threw a heavy black shadow in the torchlight, and the glare
+fell on his big face, on the great bushy head of white hair. He motioned
+the Capataz indoors with his extended arm.
+
+Dr. Monygham, after busying himself with a little medicament box of
+polished wood on the seat of the landau, turned to old Giorgio and
+thrust into his big, trembling hand one of the glass-stoppered bottles
+out of the case.
+
+“Give her a spoonful of this now and then, in water,” he said. “It will
+make her easier.”
+
+“And there is nothing more for her?” asked the old man, patiently.
+
+“No. Not on earth,” said the doctor, with his back to him, clicking the
+lock of the medicine case.
+
+Nostromo slowly crossed the large kitchen, all dark but for the glow of
+a heap of charcoal under the heavy mantel of the cooking-range, where
+water was boiling in an iron pot with a loud bubbling sound. Between
+the two walls of a narrow staircase a bright light streamed from the
+sick-room above; and the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores stepping
+noiselessly in soft leather sandals, bushy whiskered, his muscular
+neck and bronzed chest bare in the open check shirt, resembled a
+Mediterranean sailor just come ashore from some wine or fruit-laden
+felucca. At the top he paused, broad shouldered, narrow hipped and
+supple, looking at the large bed, like a white couch of state, with a
+profusion of snowy linen, amongst which the Padrona sat unpropped and
+bowed, her handsome, black-browed face bent over her chest. A mass of
+raven hair with only a few white threads in it covered her shoulders;
+one thick strand fallen forward half veiled her cheek. Perfectly
+motionless in that pose, expressing physical anxiety and unrest, she
+turned her eyes alone towards Nostromo.
+
+The Capataz had a red sash wound many times round his waist, and a heavy
+silver ring on the forefinger of the hand he raised to give a twist to
+his moustache.
+
+“Their revolutions, their revolutions,” gasped Senora Teresa. “Look,
+Gian’ Battista, it has killed me at last!”
+
+Nostromo said nothing, and the sick woman with an upward glance
+insisted. “Look, this one has killed me, while you were away fighting
+for what did not concern you, foolish man.”
+
+“Why talk like this?” mumbled the Capataz between his teeth. “Will you
+never believe in my good sense? It concerns me to keep on being what I
+am: every day alike.”
+
+“You never change, indeed,” she said, bitterly. “Always thinking of
+yourself and taking your pay out in fine words from those who care
+nothing for you.”
+
+There was between them an intimacy of antagonism as close in its way as
+the intimacy of accord and affection. He had not walked along the way
+of Teresa’s expectations. It was she who had encouraged him to leave his
+ship, in the hope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. The
+wife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, and was haunted
+by the fear of her aged husband’s loneliness and the unprotected state
+of the children. She had wanted to annex that apparently quiet and
+steady young man, affectionate and pliable, an orphan from his tenderest
+age, as he had told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner
+and master of a felucca, from whose ill-usage he had run away before he
+was fourteen. He had seemed to her courageous, a hard worker, determined
+to make his way in the world. From gratitude and the ties of habit he
+would become like a son to herself and Giorgio; and then, who knows,
+when Linda had grown up. . . . Ten years’ difference between husband and
+wife was not so much. Her own great man was nearly twenty years older
+than herself. Gian’ Battista was an attractive young fellow, besides;
+attractive to men, women, and children, just by that profound quietness
+of personality which, like a serene twilight, rendered more seductive
+the promise of his vigorous form and the resolution of his conduct.
+
+Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife’s views and hopes, had a
+great regard for his young countryman. “A man ought not to be tame,” he
+used to tell her, quoting the Spanish proverb in defence of the splendid
+Capataz. She was growing jealous of his success. He was escaping from
+her, she feared. She was practical, and he seemed to her to be an absurd
+spendthrift of these qualities which made him so valuable. He got too
+little for them. He scattered them with both hands amongst too many
+people, she thought. He laid no money by. She railed at his poverty, his
+exploits, his adventures, his loves and his reputation; but in her heart
+she had never given him up, as though, indeed, he had been her son.
+
+Even now, ill as she was, ill enough to feel the chill, black breath of
+the approaching end, she had wished to see him. It was like putting out
+her benumbed hand to regain her hold. But she had presumed too much on
+her strength. She could not command her thoughts; they had become dim,
+like her vision. The words faltered on her lips, and only the paramount
+anxiety and desire of her life seemed to be too strong for death.
+
+The Capataz said, “I have heard these things many times. You are unjust,
+but it does not hurt me. Only now you do not seem to have much strength
+to talk, and I have but little time to listen. I am engaged in a work of
+very great moment.”
+
+She made an effort to ask him whether it was true that he had found time
+to go and fetch a doctor for her. Nostromo nodded affirmatively.
+
+She was pleased: it relieved her sufferings to know that the man had
+condescended to do so much for those who really wanted his help. It was
+a proof of his friendship. Her voice become stronger.
+
+“I want a priest more than a doctor,” she said, pathetically. She did
+not move her head; only her eyes ran into the corners to watch the
+Capataz standing by the side of her bed. “Would you go to fetch a priest
+for me now? Think! A dying woman asks you!”
+
+Nostromo shook his head resolutely. He did not believe in priests in
+their sacerdotal character. A doctor was an efficacious person; but a
+priest, as priest, was nothing, incapable of doing either good or harm.
+Nostromo did not even dislike the sight of them as old Giorgio did. The
+utter uselessness of the errand was what struck him most.
+
+“Padrona,” he said, “you have been like this before, and got better
+after a few days. I have given you already the very last moments I can
+spare. Ask Senora Gould to send you one.”
+
+He was feeling uneasy at the impiety of this refusal. The Padrona
+believed in priests, and confessed herself to them. But all women
+did that. It could not be of much consequence. And yet his heart felt
+oppressed for a moment--at the thought what absolution would mean to her
+if she believed in it only ever so little. No matter. It was quite true
+that he had given her already the very last moment he could spare.
+
+“You refuse to go?” she gasped. “Ah! you are always yourself, indeed.”
+
+“Listen to reason, Padrona,” he said. “I am needed to save the silver of
+the mine. Do you hear? A greater treasure than the one which they say
+is guarded by ghosts and devils on Azuera. It is true. I am resolved to
+make this the most desperate affair I was ever engaged on in my whole
+life.”
+
+She felt a despairing indignation. The supreme test had failed. Standing
+above her, Nostromo did not see the distorted features of her face,
+distorted by a paroxysm of pain and anger. Only she began to tremble all
+over. Her bowed head shook. The broad shoulders quivered.
+
+“Then God, perhaps, will have mercy upon me! But do you look to it, man,
+that you get something for yourself out of it, besides the remorse that
+shall overtake you some day.”
+
+She laughed feebly. “Get riches at least for once, you indispensable,
+admired Gian’ Battista, to whom the peace of a dying woman is less
+than the praise of people who have given you a silly name--and nothing
+besides--in exchange for your soul and body.”
+
+The Capataz de Cargadores swore to himself under his breath.
+
+“Leave my soul alone, Padrona, and I shall know how to take care of
+my body. Where is the harm of people having need of me? What are you
+envying me that I have robbed you and the children of? Those very people
+you are throwing in my teeth have done more for old Giorgio than they
+ever thought of doing for me.”
+
+He struck his breast with his open palm; his voice had remained low
+though he had spoken in a forcible tone. He twisted his moustaches one
+after another, and his eyes wandered a little about the room.
+
+“Is it my fault that I am the only man for their purposes? What angry
+nonsense are you talking, mother? Would you rather have me timid and
+foolish, selling water-melons on the market-place or rowing a boat for
+passengers along the harbour, like a soft Neapolitan without courage
+or reputation? Would you have a young man live like a monk? I do not
+believe it. Would you want a monk for your eldest girl? Let her grow.
+What are you afraid of? You have been angry with me for everything I did
+for years; ever since you first spoke to me, in secret from old Giorgio,
+about your Linda. Husband to one and brother to the other, did you say?
+Well, why not! I like the little ones, and a man must marry some time.
+But ever since that time you have been making little of me to everyone.
+Why? Did you think you could put a collar and chain on me as if I were
+one of the watch-dogs they keep over there in the railway yards? Look
+here, Padrona, I am the same man who came ashore one evening and sat
+down in the thatched ranche you lived in at that time on the other side
+of the town and told you all about himself. You were not unjust to me
+then. What has happened since? I am no longer an insignificant youth. A
+good name, Giorgio says, is a treasure, Padrona.”
+
+“They have turned your head with their praises,” gasped the sick woman.
+“They have been paying you with words. Your folly shall betray you into
+poverty, misery, starvation. The very leperos shall laugh at you--the
+great Capataz.”
+
+Nostromo stood for a time as if struck dumb. She never looked at him. A
+self-confident, mirthless smile passed quickly from his lips, and then
+he backed away. His disregarded figure sank down beyond the doorway.
+He descended the stairs backwards, with the usual sense of having been
+somehow baffled by this woman’s disparagement of this reputation he had
+obtained and desired to keep.
+
+Downstairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, surrounded by the
+shadows of the walls, of the ceiling, but no ruddy glare filled the open
+square of the outer door. The carriage with Mrs. Gould and Don Martin,
+preceded by the horseman bearing the torch, had gone on to the jetty.
+Dr. Monygham, who had remained, sat on the corner of a hard wood table
+near the candlestick, his seamed, shaven face inclined sideways, his
+arms crossed on his breast, his lips pursed up, and his prominent eyes
+glaring stonily upon the floor of black earth. Near the overhanging
+mantel of the fireplace, where the pot of water was still boiling
+violently, old Giorgio held his chin in his hand, one foot advanced, as
+if arrested by a sudden thought.
+
+“Adios, viejo,” said Nostromo, feeling the handle of his revolver in the
+belt and loosening his knife in its sheath. He picked up a blue poncho
+lined with red from the table, and put it over his head. “Adios, look
+after the things in my sleeping-room, and if you hear from me no more,
+give up the box to Paquita. There is not much of value there, except my
+new serape from Mexico, and a few silver buttons on my best jacket. No
+matter! The things will look well enough on the next lover she gets, and
+the man need not be afraid I shall linger on earth after I am dead, like
+those Gringos that haunt the Azuera.”
+
+Dr. Monygham twisted his lips into a bitter smile. After old Giorgio,
+with an almost imperceptible nod and without a word, had gone up the
+narrow stairs, he said--
+
+“Why, Capataz! I thought you could never fail in anything.”
+
+Nostromo, glancing contemptuously at the doctor, lingered in the doorway
+rolling a cigarette, then struck a match, and, after lighting it, held
+the burning piece of wood above his head till the flame nearly touched
+his fingers.
+
+“No wind!” he muttered to himself. “Look here, senor--do you know the
+nature of my undertaking?”
+
+Dr. Monygham nodded sourly.
+
+“It is as if I were taking up a curse upon me, senor doctor. A man with
+a treasure on this coast will have every knife raised against him in
+every place upon the shore. You see that, senor doctor? I shall float
+along with a spell upon my life till I meet somewhere the north-bound
+steamer of the Company, and then indeed they will talk about the Capataz
+of the Sulaco Cargadores from one end of America to another.”
+
+Dr. Monygham laughed his short, throaty laugh. Nostromo turned round in
+the doorway.
+
+“But if your worship can find any other man ready and fit for such
+business I will stand back. I am not exactly tired of my life, though I
+am so poor that I can carry all I have with myself on my horse’s back.”
+
+“You gamble too much, and never say ‘no’ to a pretty face, Capataz,”
+ said Dr. Monygham, with sly simplicity. “That’s not the way to make a
+fortune. But nobody that I know ever suspected you of being poor. I
+hope you have made a good bargain in case you come back safe from this
+adventure.”
+
+“What bargain would your worship have made?” asked Nostromo, blowing the
+smoke out of his lips through the doorway.
+
+Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a moment before he answered,
+with another of his short, abrupt laughs--
+
+“Illustrious Capataz, for taking the curse of death upon my back, as you
+call it, nothing else but the whole treasure would do.”
+
+Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of discontent at
+this jeering answer. Dr. Monygham heard him gallop away. Nostromo rode
+furiously in the dark. There were lights in the buildings of the
+O.S.N. Company near the wharf, but before he got there he met the Gould
+carriage. The horseman preceded it with the torch, whose light showed
+the white mules trotting, the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio with
+the carbine on the box. From the dark body of the landau Mrs. Gould’s
+voice cried, “They are waiting for you, Capataz!” She was returning,
+chilly and excited, with Decoud’s pocket-book still held in her hand. He
+had confided it to her to send to his sister. “Perhaps my last words to
+her,” he had said, pressing Mrs. Gould’s hand.
+
+The Capataz never checked his speed. At the head of the wharf vague
+figures with rifles leapt to the head of his horse; others closed upon
+him--cargadores of the company posted by Captain Mitchell on the watch.
+At a word from him they fell back with subservient murmurs, recognizing
+his voice. At the other end of the jetty, near a cargo crane, in a dark
+group with glowing cigars, his name was pronounced in a tone of relief.
+Most of the Europeans in Sulaco were there, rallied round Charles Gould,
+as if the silver of the mine had been the emblem of a common cause, the
+symbol of the supreme importance of material interests. They had loaded
+it into the lighter with their own hands. Nostromo recognized Don Carlos
+Gould, a thin, tall shape standing a little apart and silent, to whom
+another tall shape, the engineer-in-chief, said aloud, “If it must be
+lost, it is a million times better that it should go to the bottom of
+the sea.”
+
+Martin Decoud called out from the lighter, “_Au revoir_, messieurs, till
+we clasp hands again over the new-born Occidental Republic.” Only a
+subdued murmur responded to his clear, ringing tones; and then it seemed
+to him that the wharf was floating away into the night; but it was
+Nostromo, who was already pushing against a pile with one of the heavy
+sweeps. Decoud did not move; the effect was that of being launched
+into space. After a splash or two there was not a sound but the thud
+of Nostromo’s feet leaping about the boat. He hoisted the big sail; a
+breath of wind fanned Decoud’s cheek. Everything had vanished but the
+light of the lantern Captain Mitchell had hoisted upon the post at the
+end of the jetty to guide Nostromo out of the harbour.
+
+The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till the lighter,
+slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out between almost invisible
+headlands into the still deeper darkness of the gulf. For a time the
+lantern on the jetty shone after them. The wind failed, then fanned up
+again, but so faintly that the big, half-decked boat slipped along with
+no more noise than if she had been suspended in the air.
+
+“We are out in the gulf now,” said the calm voice of Nostromo. A moment
+after he added, “Senor Mitchell has lowered the light.”
+
+“Yes,” said Decoud; “nobody can find us now.”
+
+A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat. The sea in the
+gulf was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo, after striking a couple
+of matches to get a glimpse of the boat-compass he had with him in the
+lighter, steered by the feel of the wind on his cheek.
+
+It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysteriousness of the great
+waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been
+crushed by the weight of that dense night. The Placido was sleeping
+profoundly under its black poncho.
+
+The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and gain
+the middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were somewhere
+at hand. “On your left as you look forward, senor,” said Nostromo,
+suddenly. When his voice ceased, the enormous stillness, without light
+or sound, seemed to affect Decoud’s senses like a powerful drug. He
+didn’t even know at times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man
+lost in slumber, he heard nothing, he saw nothing. Even his hand
+held before his face did not exist for his eyes. The change from the
+agitation, the passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of
+the shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it
+not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal
+peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of
+earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty
+atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, shuddered a bit,
+though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had the strangest
+sensation of his soul having just returned into his body from the
+circumambient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the mountains, and the
+rocks were as if they had not been.
+
+Nostromo’s voice was speaking, though he, at the tiller, was also as
+if he were not. “Have you been asleep, Don Martin? Caramba! If it were
+possible I would think that I, too, have dozed off. I have a strange
+notion somehow of having dreamt that there was a sound of blubbering,
+a sound a sorrowing man could make, somewhere near this boat. Something
+between a sigh and a sob.”
+
+“Strange!” muttered Decoud, stretched upon the pile of treasure boxes
+covered by many tarpaulins. “Could it be that there is another boat near
+us in the gulf? We could not see it, you know.”
+
+Nostromo laughed a little at the absurdity of the idea. They dismissed
+it from their minds. The solitude could almost be felt. And when the
+breeze ceased, the blackness seemed to weigh upon Decoud like a stone.
+
+“This is overpowering,” he muttered. “Do we move at all, Capataz?”
+
+“Not so fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the grass,” answered
+Nostromo, and his voice seemed deadened by the thick veil of obscurity
+that felt warm and hopeless all about them. There were long periods
+when he made no sound, invisible and inaudible as if he had mysteriously
+stepped out of the lighter.
+
+In the featureless night Nostromo was not even certain which way the
+lighter headed after the wind had completely died out. He peered for the
+islands. There was not a hint of them to be seen, as if they had sunk to
+the bottom of the gulf. He threw himself down by the side of Decoud at
+last, and whispered into his ear that if daylight caught them near the
+Sulaco shore through want of wind, it would be possible to sweep the
+lighter behind the cliff at the high end of the Great Isabel, where
+she would lie concealed. Decoud was surprised at the grimness of his
+anxiety. To him the removal of the treasure was a political move. It was
+necessary for several reasons that it should not fall into the hands of
+Montero, but here was a man who took another view of this enterprise.
+The Caballeros over there did not seem to have the slightest idea of
+what they had given him to do. Nostromo, as if affected by the gloom
+around, seemed nervously resentful. Decoud was surprised. The Capataz,
+indifferent to those dangers that seemed obvious to his companion,
+allowed himself to become scornfully exasperated by the deadly nature
+of the trust put, as a matter of course, into his hands. It was more
+dangerous, Nostromo said, with a laugh and a curse, than sending a man
+to get the treasure that people said was guarded by devils and ghosts in
+the deep ravines of Azuera. “Senor,” he said, “we must catch the steamer
+at sea. We must keep out in the open looking for her till we have eaten
+and drunk all that has been put on board here. And if we miss her by
+some mischance, we must keep away from the land till we grow weak,
+and perhaps mad, and die, and drift dead, until one or another of the
+steamers of the Compania comes upon the boat with the two dead men who
+have saved the treasure. That, senor, is the only way to save it; for,
+don’t you see? for us to come to the land anywhere in a hundred miles
+along this coast with this silver in our possession is to run the naked
+breast against the point of a knife. This thing has been given to me
+like a deadly disease. If men discover it I am dead, and you, too,
+senor, since you would come with me. There is enough silver to make a
+whole province rich, let alone a seaboard pueblo inhabited by thieves
+and vagabonds. Senor, they would think that heaven itself sent these
+riches into their hands, and would cut our throats without hesitation.
+I would trust no fair words from the best man around the shores of this
+wild gulf. Reflect that, even by giving up the treasure at the first
+demand, we would not be able to save our lives. Do you understand this,
+or must I explain?”
+
+“No, you needn’t explain,” said Decoud, a little listlessly. “I can see
+it well enough myself, that the possession of this treasure is very
+much like a deadly disease for men situated as we are. But it had to be
+removed from Sulaco, and you were the man for the task.”
+
+“I was; but I cannot believe,” said Nostromo, “that its loss would have
+impoverished Don Carlos Gould very much. There is more wealth in the
+mountain. I have heard it rolling down the shoots on quiet nights when
+I used to ride to Rincon to see a certain girl, after my work at the
+harbour was done. For years the rich rocks have been pouring down with a
+noise like thunder, and the miners say that there is enough at the heart
+of the mountain to thunder on for years and years to come. And yet, the
+day before yesterday, we have been fighting to save it from the mob,
+and to-night I am sent out with it into this darkness, where there is no
+wind to get away with; as if it were the last lot of silver on earth to
+get bread for the hungry with. Ha! ha! Well, I am going to make it the
+most famous and desperate affair of my life--wind or no wind. It shall
+be talked about when the little children are grown up and the grown
+men are old. Aha! the Monterists must not get hold of it, I am told,
+whatever happens to Nostromo the Capataz; and they shall not have it, I
+tell you, since it has been tied for safety round Nostromo’s neck.”
+
+“I see it,” murmured Decoud. He saw, indeed, that his companion had his
+own peculiar view of this enterprise.
+
+Nostromo interrupted his reflections upon the way men’s qualities are
+made use of, without any fundamental knowledge of their nature, by the
+proposal they should slip the long oars out and sweep the lighter in
+the direction of the Isabels. It wouldn’t do for daylight to reveal
+the treasure floating within a mile or so of the harbour entrance. The
+denser the darkness generally, the smarter were the puffs of wind on
+which he had reckoned to make his way; but tonight the gulf, under its
+poncho of clouds, remained breathless, as if dead rather than asleep.
+
+Don Martin’s soft hands suffered cruelly, tugging at the thick handle of
+the enormous oar. He stuck to it manfully, setting his teeth. He, too,
+was in the toils of an imaginative existence, and that strange work of
+pulling a lighter seemed to belong naturally to the inception of a new
+state, acquired an ideal meaning from his love for Antonia. For all
+their efforts, the heavily laden lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could
+be heard swearing to himself between the regular splashes of the sweeps.
+“We are making a crooked path,” he muttered to himself. “I wish I could
+see the islands.”
+
+In his unskilfulness Don Martin over-exerted himself. Now and then a
+sort of muscular faintness would run from the tips of his aching fingers
+through every fibre of his body, and pass off in a flush of heat. He had
+fought, talked, suffered mentally and physically, exerting his mind and
+body for the last forty-eight hours without intermission. He had had no
+rest, very little food, no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his
+feelings. Even his love for Antonia, whence he drew his strength and
+his inspiration, had reached the point of tragic tension during their
+hurried interview by Don Jose’s bedside. And now, suddenly, he was
+thrown out of all this into a dark gulf, whose very gloom, silence, and
+breathless peace added a torment to the necessity for physical exertion.
+He imagined the lighter sinking to the bottom with an extraordinary
+shudder of delight. “I am on the verge of delirium,” he thought. He
+mastered the trembling of all his limbs, of his breast, the inward
+trembling of all his body exhausted of its nervous force.
+
+“Shall we rest, Capataz?” he proposed in a careless tone. “There are
+many hours of night yet before us.”
+
+“True. It is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your arms, senor, if that
+is what you mean. You will find no other sort of rest, I can promise
+you, since you let yourself be bound to this treasure whose loss would
+make no poor man poorer. No, senor; there is no rest till we find a
+north-bound steamer, or else some ship finds us drifting about stretched
+out dead upon the Englishman’s silver. Or rather--no; por Dios! I shall
+cut down the gunwale with the axe right to the water’s edge before
+thirst and hunger rob me of my strength. By all the saints and devils
+I shall let the sea have the treasure rather than give it up to any
+stranger. Since it was the good pleasure of the Caballeros to send me
+off on such an errand, they shall learn I am just the man they take me
+for.”
+
+Decoud lay on the silver boxes panting. All his active sensations and
+feelings from as far back as he could remember seemed to him the maddest
+of dreams. Even his passionate devotion to Antonia into which he had
+worked himself up out of the depths of his scepticism had lost all
+appearance of reality. For a moment he was the prey of an extremely
+languid but not unpleasant indifference.
+
+“I am sure they didn’t mean you to take such a desperate view of this
+affair,” he said.
+
+“What was it, then? A joke?” snarled the man, who on the pay-sheets of
+the O.S.N. Company’s establishment in Sulaco was described as “Foreman
+of the wharf” against the figure of his wages. “Was it for a joke they
+woke me up from my sleep after two days of street fighting to make me
+stake my life upon a bad card? Everybody knows, too, that I am not a
+lucky gambler.”
+
+“Yes, everybody knows of your good luck with women, Capataz,” Decoud
+propitiated his companion in a weary drawl.
+
+“Look here, senor,” Nostromo went on. “I never even remonstrated about
+this affair. Directly I heard what was wanted I saw what a desperate
+affair it must be, and I made up my mind to see it out. Every minute was
+of importance. I had to wait for you first. Then, when we arrived at
+the Italia Una, old Giorgio shouted to me to go for the English doctor.
+Later on, that poor dying woman wanted to see me, as you know. Senor,
+I was reluctant to go. I felt already this cursed silver growing heavy
+upon my back, and I was afraid that, knowing herself to be dying, she
+would ask me to ride off again for a priest. Father Corbelan, who is
+fearless, would have come at a word; but Father Corbelan is far away,
+safe with the band of Hernandez, and the populace, that would have liked
+to tear him to pieces, are much incensed against the priests. Not
+a single fat padre would have consented to put his head out of his
+hiding-place to-night to save a Christian soul, except, perhaps, under
+my protection. That was in her mind. I pretended I did not believe she
+was going to die. Senor, I refused to fetch a priest for a dying
+woman. . . .”
+
+Decoud was heard to stir.
+
+“You did, Capataz!” he exclaimed. His tone changed. “Well, you know--it
+was rather fine.”
+
+“You do not believe in priests, Don Martin? Neither do I. What was the
+use of wasting time? But she--she believes in them. The thing sticks in
+my throat. She may be dead already, and here we are floating helpless
+with no wind at all. Curse on all superstition. She died thinking I
+deprived her of Paradise, I suppose. It shall be the most desperate
+affair of my life.”
+
+Decoud remained lost in reflection. He tried to analyze the sensations
+awaked by what he had been told. The voice of the Capataz was heard
+again:
+
+“Now, Don Martin, let us take up the sweeps and try to find the Isabels.
+It is either that or sinking the lighter if the day overtakes us. We
+must not forget that the steamer from Esmeralda with the soldiers may be
+coming along. We will pull straight on now. I have discovered a bit of a
+candle here, and we must take the risk of a small light to make a course
+by the boat compass. There is not enough wind to blow it out--may the
+curse of Heaven fall upon this blind gulf!”
+
+A small flame appeared burning quite straight. It showed fragmentarily
+the stout ribs and planking in the hollow, empty part of the lighter.
+Decoud could see Nostromo standing up to pull. He saw him as high as the
+red sash on his waist, with a gleam of a white-handled revolver and the
+wooden haft of a long knife protruding on his left side. Decoud nerved
+himself for the effort of rowing. Certainly there was not enough wind to
+blow the candle out, but its flame swayed a little to the slow movement
+of the heavy boat. It was so big that with their utmost efforts
+they could not move it quicker than about a mile an hour. This was
+sufficient, however, to sweep them amongst the Isabels long before
+daylight came. There was a good six hours of darkness before them, and
+the distance from the harbour to the Great Isabel did not exceed two
+miles. Decoud put this heavy toil to the account of the Capataz’s
+impatience. Sometimes they paused, and then strained their ears to hear
+the boat from Esmeralda. In this perfect quietness a steamer moving
+would have been heard from far off. As to seeing anything it was out of
+the question. They could not see each other. Even the lighter’s sail,
+which remained set, was invisible. Very often they rested.
+
+“Caramba!” said Nostromo, suddenly, during one of those intervals when
+they lolled idly against the heavy handles of the sweeps. “What is it?
+Are you distressed, Don Martin?”
+
+Decoud assured him that he was not distressed in the least. Nostromo
+for a time kept perfectly still, and then in a whisper invited Martin to
+come aft.
+
+With his lips touching Decoud’s ear he declared his belief that there
+was somebody else besides themselves upon the lighter. Twice now he had
+heard the sound of stifled sobbing.
+
+“Senor,” he whispered with awed wonder, “I am certain that there is
+somebody weeping in this lighter.”
+
+Decoud had heard nothing. He expressed his incredulity. However, it was
+easy to ascertain the truth of the matter.
+
+“It is most amazing,” muttered Nostromo. “Could anybody have concealed
+himself on board while the lighter was lying alongside the wharf?”
+
+“And you say it was like sobbing?” asked Decoud, lowering his voice,
+too. “If he is weeping, whoever he is he cannot be very dangerous.”
+
+Clambering over the precious pile in the middle, they crouched low on
+the foreside of the mast and groped under the half-deck. Right forward,
+in the narrowest part, their hands came upon the limbs of a man, who
+remained as silent as death. Too startled themselves to make a sound,
+they dragged him aft by one arm and the collar of his coat. He was
+limp--lifeless.
+
+The light of the bit of candle fell upon a round, hook-nosed face with
+black moustaches and little side-whiskers. He was extremely dirty. A
+greasy growth of beard was sprouting on the shaven parts of the cheeks.
+The thick lips were slightly parted, but the eyes remained closed.
+Decoud, to his immense astonishment, recognized Senor Hirsch, the hide
+merchant from Esmeralda. Nostromo, too, had recognized him. And they
+gazed at each other across the body, lying with its naked feet higher
+than its head, in an absurd pretence of sleep, faintness, or death.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+For a moment, before this extraordinary find, they forgot their own
+concerns and sensations. Senor Hirsch’s sensations as he lay there must
+have been those of extreme terror. For a long time he refused to give
+a sign of life, till at last Decoud’s objurgations, and, perhaps more,
+Nostromo’s impatient suggestion that he should be thrown overboard, as
+he seemed to be dead, induced him to raise one eyelid first, and then
+the other.
+
+It appeared that he had never found a safe opportunity to leave Sulaco.
+He lodged with Anzani, the universal storekeeper, on the Plaza Mayor.
+But when the riot broke out he had made his escape from his host’s house
+before daylight, and in such a hurry that he had forgotten to put on his
+shoes. He had run out impulsively in his socks, and with his hat in his
+hand, into the garden of Anzani’s house. Fear gave him the necessary
+agility to climb over several low walls, and afterwards he blundered
+into the overgrown cloisters of the ruined Franciscan convent in one of
+the by-streets. He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes with
+the recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for his scratched
+body and his torn clothing. He lay hidden there all day, his tongue
+cleaving to the roof of his mouth with all the intensity of thirst
+engendered by heat and fear. Three times different bands of men invaded
+the place with shouts and imprecations, looking for Father Corbelan; but
+towards the evening, still lying on his face in the bushes, he thought
+he would die from the fear of silence. He was not very clear as to what
+had induced him to leave the place, but evidently he had got out
+and slunk successfully out of town along the deserted back lanes. He
+wandered in the darkness near the railway, so maddened by apprehension
+that he dared not even approach the fires of the pickets of Italian
+workmen guarding the line. He had a vague idea evidently of finding
+refuge in the railway yards, but the dogs rushed upon him, barking; men
+began to shout; a shot was fired at random. He fled away from the gates.
+By the merest accident, as it happened, he took the direction of the
+O.S.N. Company’s offices. Twice he stumbled upon the bodies of men
+killed during the day. But everything living frightened him much more.
+He crouched, crept, crawled, made dashes, guided by a sort of animal
+instinct, keeping away from every light and from every sound of voices.
+His idea was to throw himself at the feet of Captain Mitchell and
+beg for shelter in the Company’s offices. It was all dark there as
+he approached on his hands and knees, but suddenly someone on guard
+challenged loudly, “Quien vive?” There were more dead men lying about,
+and he flattened himself down at once by the side of a cold corpse. He
+heard a voice saying, “Here is one of those wounded rascals crawling
+about. Shall I go and finish him?” And another voice objected that it
+was not safe to go out without a lantern upon such an errand; perhaps it
+was only some negro Liberal looking for a chance to stick a knife into
+the stomach of an honest man. Hirsch didn’t stay to hear any more, but
+crawling away to the end of the wharf, hid himself amongst a lot of
+empty casks. After a while some people came along, talking, and with
+glowing cigarettes. He did not stop to ask himself whether they would be
+likely to do him any harm, but bolted incontinently along the jetty,
+saw a lighter lying moored at the end, and threw himself into it. In his
+desire to find cover he crept right forward under the half-deck, and he
+had remained there more dead than alive, suffering agonies of hunger
+and thirst, and almost fainting with terror, when he heard numerous
+footsteps and the voices of the Europeans who came in a body escorting
+the wagonload of treasure, pushed along the rails by a squad of
+Cargadores. He understood perfectly what was being done from the talk,
+but did not disclose his presence from the fear that he would not
+be allowed to remain. His only idea at the time, overpowering and
+masterful, was to get away from this terrible Sulaco. And now he
+regretted it very much. He had heard Nostromo talk to Decoud, and wished
+himself back on shore. He did not desire to be involved in any desperate
+affair--in a situation where one could not run away. The involuntary
+groans of his anguished spirit had betrayed him to the sharp ears of the
+Capataz.
+
+They had propped him up in a sitting posture against the side of the
+lighter, and he went on with the moaning account of his adventures till
+his voice broke, his head fell forward. “Water,” he whispered, with
+difficulty. Decoud held one of the cans to his lips. He revived after
+an extraordinarily short time, and scrambled up to his feet wildly.
+Nostromo, in an angry and threatening voice, ordered him forward. Hirsch
+was one of those men whom fear lashes like a whip, and he must have
+had an appalling idea of the Capataz’s ferocity. He displayed an
+extraordinary agility in disappearing forward into the darkness. They
+heard him getting over the tarpaulin; then there was the sound of a
+heavy fall, followed by a weary sigh. Afterwards all was still in
+the fore-part of the lighter, as though he had killed himself in his
+headlong tumble. Nostromo shouted in a menacing voice--
+
+“Lie still there! Do not move a limb. If I hear as much as a loud breath
+from you I shall come over there and put a bullet through your head.”
+
+The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of
+treachery into a dangerous situation. Nostromo’s nervous impatience
+passed into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as if
+speaking to himself, remarked that, after all, this bizarre event made
+no great difference. He could not conceive what harm the man could
+do. At most he would be in the way, like an inanimate and useless
+object--like a block of wood, for instance.
+
+“I would think twice before getting rid of a piece of wood,” said
+Nostromo, calmly. “Something may happen unexpectedly where you could
+make use of it. But in an affair like ours a man like this ought to be
+thrown overboard. Even if he were as brave as a lion we would not want
+him here. We are not running away for our lives. Senor, there is no harm
+in a brave man trying to save himself with ingenuity and courage; but
+you have heard his tale, Don Martin. His being here is a miracle of
+fear--” Nostromo paused. “There is no room for fear in this lighter,” he
+added through his teeth.
+
+Decoud had no answer to make. It was not a position for argument, for a
+display of scruples or feelings. There were a thousand ways in which
+a panic-stricken man could make himself dangerous. It was evident
+that Hirsch could not be spoken to, reasoned with, or persuaded into a
+rational line of conduct. The story of his own escape demonstrated that
+clearly enough. Decoud thought that it was a thousand pities the wretch
+had not died of fright. Nature, who had made him what he was, seemed to
+have calculated cruelly how much he could bear in the way of atrocious
+anguish without actually expiring. Some compassion was due to so much
+terror. Decoud, though imaginative enough for sympathy, resolved not
+to interfere with any action that Nostromo would take. But Nostromo did
+nothing. And the fate of Senor Hirsch remained suspended in the darkness
+of the gulf at the mercy of events which could not be foreseen.
+
+The Capataz, extending his hand, put out the candle suddenly. It was to
+Decoud as if his companion had destroyed, by a single touch, the world
+of affairs, of loves, of revolution, where his complacent superiority
+analyzed fearlessly all motives and all passions, including his own.
+
+He gasped a little. Decoud was affected by the novelty of his position.
+Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from being deprived of the
+only weapon he could use with effect. No intelligence could penetrate
+the darkness of the Placid Gulf. There remained only one thing he was
+certain of, and that was the overweening vanity of his companion. It was
+direct, uncomplicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been
+making use of him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He
+had discovered a complete singleness of motive behind the varied
+manifestations of a consistent character. This was why the man remained
+so astonishingly simple in the jealous greatness of his conceit. And now
+there was a complication. It was evident that he resented having been
+given a task in which there were so many chances of failure. “I wonder,”
+ thought Decoud, “how he would behave if I were not here.”
+
+He heard Nostromo mutter again, “No! there is no room for fear on this
+lighter. Courage itself does not seem good enough. I have a good eye and
+a steady hand; no man can say he ever saw me tired or uncertain what to
+do; but por Dios, Don Martin, I have been sent out into this black calm
+on a business where neither a good eye, nor a steady hand, nor judgment
+are any use. . . .” He swore a string of oaths in Spanish and Italian
+under his breath. “Nothing but sheer desperation will do for this
+affair.”
+
+These words were in strange contrast to the prevailing peace--to
+this almost solid stillness of the gulf. A shower fell with an abrupt
+whispering sound all round the boat, and Decoud took off his hat, and,
+letting his head get wet, felt greatly refreshed. Presently a steady
+little draught of air caressed his cheek. The lighter began to move,
+but the shower distanced it. The drops ceased to fall upon his head and
+hands, the whispering died out in the distance. Nostromo emitted a grunt
+of satisfaction, and grasping the tiller, chirruped softly, as sailors
+do, to encourage the wind. Never for the last three days had Decoud felt
+less the need for what the Capataz would call desperation.
+
+“I fancy I hear another shower on the water,” he observed in a tone of
+quiet content. “I hope it will catch us up.”
+
+Nostromo ceased chirruping at once. “You hear another shower?” he said,
+doubtfully. A sort of thinning of the darkness seemed to have taken
+place, and Decoud could see now the outline of his companion’s figure,
+and even the sail came out of the night like a square block of dense
+snow.
+
+The sound which Decoud had detected came along the water harshly.
+Nostromo recognized that noise partaking of a hiss and a rustle which
+spreads out on all sides of a steamer making her way through a smooth
+water on a quiet night. It could be nothing else but the captured
+transport with troops from Esmeralda. She carried no lights. The noise
+of her steaming, growing louder every minute, would stop at times
+altogether, and then begin again abruptly, and sound startlingly nearer;
+as if that invisible vessel, whose position could not be precisely
+guessed, were making straight for the lighter. Meantime, that last kept
+on sailing slowly and noiselessly before a breeze so faint that it was
+only by leaning over the side and feeling the water slip through his
+fingers that Decoud convinced himself they were moving at all. His
+drowsy feeling had departed. He was glad to know that the lighter
+was moving. After so much stillness the noise of the steamer seemed
+uproarious and distracting. There was a weirdness in not being able to
+see her. Suddenly all was still. She had stopped, but so close to them
+that the steam, blowing off, sent its rumbling vibration right over
+their heads.
+
+“They are trying to make out where they are,” said Decoud in a whisper.
+Again he leaned over and put his fingers into the water. “We are moving
+quite smartly,” he informed Nostromo.
+
+“We seem to be crossing her bows,” said the Capataz in a cautious tone.
+“But this is a blind game with death. Moving on is of no use. We mustn’t
+be seen or heard.”
+
+His whisper was hoarse with excitement. Of all his face there was
+nothing visible but a gleam of white eyeballs. His fingers gripped
+Decoud’s shoulder. “That is the only way to save this treasure from this
+steamer full of soldiers. Any other would have carried lights. But you
+observe there is not a gleam to show us where she is.”
+
+Decoud stood as if paralyzed; only his thoughts were wildly active. In
+the space of a second he remembered the desolate glance of Antonia as he
+left her at the bedside of her father in the gloomy house of Avellanos,
+with shuttered windows, but all the doors standing open, and deserted by
+all the servants except an old negro at the gate. He remembered the
+Casa Gould on his last visit, the arguments, the tones of his voice,
+the impenetrable attitude of Charles, Mrs. Gould’s face so blanched
+with anxiety and fatigue that her eyes seemed to have changed colour,
+appearing nearly black by contrast. Even whole sentences of the
+proclamation which he meant to make Barrios issue from his headquarters
+at Cayta as soon as he got there passed through his mind; the very germ
+of the new State, the Separationist proclamation which he had tried
+before he left to read hurriedly to Don Jose, stretched out on his
+bed under the fixed gaze of his daughter. God knows whether the
+old statesman had understood it; he was unable to speak, but he had
+certainly lifted his arm off the coverlet; his hand had moved as if
+to make the sign of the cross in the air, a gesture of blessing, of
+consent. Decoud had that very draft in his pocket, written in pencil
+on several loose sheets of paper, with the heavily-printed heading,
+“Administration of the San Tome Silver Mine. Sulaco. Republic of
+Costaguana.” He had written it furiously, snatching page after page
+on Charles Gould’s table. Mrs. Gould had looked several times over
+his shoulder as he wrote; but the Senor Administrador, standing
+straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was finished. He
+had waved it away firmly. It must have been scorn, and not caution,
+since he never made a remark about the use of the Administration’s paper
+for such a compromising document. And that showed his disdain, the true
+English disdain of common prudence, as if everything outside the range
+of their own thoughts and feelings were unworthy of serious recognition.
+Decoud had the time in a second or two to become furiously angry with
+Charles Gould, and even resentful against Mrs. Gould, in whose care,
+tacitly it is true, he had left the safety of Antonia. Better perish a
+thousand times than owe your preservation to such people, he exclaimed
+mentally. The grip of Nostromo’s fingers never removed from his
+shoulder, tightening fiercely, recalled him to himself.
+
+“The darkness is our friend,” the Capataz murmured into his ear. “I am
+going to lower the sail, and trust our escape to this black gulf. No
+eyes could make us out lying silent with a naked mast. I will do it
+now, before this steamer closes still more upon us. The faint creak of a
+block would betray us and the San Tome treasure into the hands of those
+thieves.”
+
+He moved about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard no sound; and it was
+only by the disappearance of the square blotch of darkness that he knew
+the yard had come down, lowered as carefully as if it had been made of
+glass. Next moment he heard Nostromo’s quiet breathing by his side.
+
+“You had better not move at all from where you are, Don Martin,” advised
+the Capataz, earnestly. “You might stumble or displace something which
+would make a noise. The sweeps and the punting poles are lying about.
+Move not for your life. Por Dios, Don Martin,” he went on in a keen but
+friendly whisper, “I am so desperate that if I didn’t know your worship
+to be a man of courage, capable of standing stock still whatever
+happens, I would drive my knife into your heart.”
+
+A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was difficult to
+believe that there was near a steamer full of men with many pairs of
+eyes peering from her bridge for some hint of land in the night. Her
+steam had ceased blowing off, and she remained stopped too far off
+apparently for any other sound to reach the lighter.
+
+“Perhaps you would, Capataz,” Decoud began in a whisper. “However, you
+need not trouble. There are other things than the fear of your knife
+to keep my heart steady. It shall not betray you. Only, have you
+forgotten--”
+
+“I spoke to you openly as to a man as desperate as myself,” explained
+the Capataz. “The silver must be saved from the Monterists. I told
+Captain Mitchell three times that I preferred to go alone. I told Don
+Carlos Gould, too. It was in the Casa Gould. They had sent for me. The
+ladies were there; and when I tried to explain why I did not wish to
+have you with me, they promised me, both of them, great rewards for your
+safety. A strange way to talk to a man you are sending out to an almost
+certain death. Those gentlefolk do not seem to have sense enough to
+understand what they are giving one to do. I told them I could do
+nothing for you. You would have been safer with the bandit Hernandez.
+It would have been possible to ride out of the town with no greater risk
+than a chance shot sent after you in the dark. But it was as if they had
+been deaf. I had to promise I would wait for you under the harbour gate.
+I did wait. And now because you are a brave man you are as safe as the
+silver. Neither more nor less.”
+
+At that moment, as if by way of comment upon Nostromo’s words, the
+invisible steamer went ahead at half speed only, as could be judged
+by the leisurely beat of her propeller. The sound shifted its place
+markedly, but without coming nearer. It even grew a little more distant
+right abeam of the lighter, and then ceased again.
+
+“They are trying for a sight of the Isabels,” muttered Nostromo, “in
+order to make for the harbour in a straight line and seize the Custom
+House with the treasure in it. Have you ever seen the Commandant of
+Esmeralda, Sotillo? A handsome fellow, with a soft voice. When I first
+came here I used to see him in the Calle talking to the senoritas at the
+windows of the houses, and showing his white teeth all the time. But
+one of my Cargadores, who had been a soldier, told me that he had once
+ordered a man to be flayed alive in the remote Campo, where he was sent
+recruiting amongst the people of the Estancias. It has never entered his
+head that the Compania had a man capable of baffling his game.”
+
+The murmuring loquacity of the Capataz disturbed Decoud like a hint
+of weakness. And yet, talkative resolution may be as genuine as grim
+silence.
+
+“Sotillo is not baffled so far,” he said. “Have you forgotten that crazy
+man forward?”
+
+Nostromo had not forgotten Senor Hirsch. He reproached himself bitterly
+for not having visited the lighter carefully before leaving the wharf.
+He reproached himself for not having stabbed and flung Hirsch overboard
+at the very moment of discovery without even looking at his face. That
+would have been consistent with the desperate character of the affair.
+Whatever happened, Sotillo was already baffled. Even if that wretch, now
+as silent as death, did anything to betray the nearness of the lighter,
+Sotillo--if Sotillo it was in command of the troops on board--would be
+still baffled of his plunder.
+
+“I have an axe in my hand,” Nostromo whispered, wrathfully, “that in
+three strokes would cut through the side down to the water’s edge.
+Moreover, each lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know exactly where
+it is. I feel it under the sole of my foot.”
+
+Decoud recognized the ring of genuine determination in the nervous
+murmurs, the vindictive excitement of the famous Capataz. Before the
+steamer, guided by a shriek or two (for there could be no more than
+that, Nostromo said, gnashing his teeth audibly), could find the lighter
+there would be plenty of time to sink this treasure tied up round his
+neck.
+
+The last words he hissed into Decoud’s ear. Decoud said nothing. He was
+perfectly convinced. The usual characteristic quietness of the man was
+gone. It was not equal to the situation as he conceived it. Something
+deeper, something unsuspected by everyone, had come to the surface.
+Decoud, with careful movements, slipped off his overcoat and divested
+himself of his boots; he did not consider himself bound in honour to
+sink with the treasure. His object was to get down to Barrios, in Cayta,
+as the Capataz knew very well; and he, too, meant, in his own way,
+to put into that attempt all the desperation of which he was capable.
+Nostromo muttered, “True, true! You are a politician, senor. Rejoin the
+army, and start another revolution.” He pointed out, however, that there
+was a little boat belonging to every lighter fit to carry two men, if
+not more. Theirs was towing behind.
+
+Of that Decoud had not been aware. Of course, it was too dark to see,
+and it was only when Nostromo put his hand upon its painter fastened to
+a cleat in the stern that he experienced a full measure of relief. The
+prospect of finding himself in the water and swimming, overwhelmed
+by ignorance and darkness, probably in a circle, till he sank from
+exhaustion, was revolting. The barren and cruel futility of such an end
+intimidated his affectation of careless pessimism. In comparison to it,
+the chance of being left floating in a boat, exposed to thirst, hunger,
+discovery, imprisonment, execution, presented itself with an aspect of
+amenity worth securing even at the cost of some self-contempt. He did
+not accept Nostromo’s proposal that he should get into the boat at
+once. “Something sudden may overwhelm us, senor,” the Capataz remarked
+promising faithfully, at the same time, to let go the painter at the
+moment when the necessity became manifest.
+
+But Decoud assured him lightly that he did not mean to take to the boat
+till the very last moment, and that then he meant the Capataz to come
+along, too. The darkness of the gulf was no longer for him the end of
+all things. It was part of a living world since, pervading it, failure
+and death could be felt at your elbow. And at the same time it was a
+shelter. He exulted in its impenetrable obscurity. “Like a wall, like a
+wall,” he muttered to himself.
+
+The only thing which checked his confidence was the thought of Senor
+Hirsch. Not to have bound and gagged him seemed to Decoud now the height
+of improvident folly. As long as the miserable creature had the power to
+raise a yell he was a constant danger. His abject terror was mute now,
+but there was no saying from what cause it might suddenly find vent in
+shrieks.
+
+This very madness of fear which both Decoud and Nostromo had seen in
+the wild and irrational glances, and in the continuous twitchings of
+his mouth, protected Senor Hirsch from the cruel necessities of this
+desperate affair. The moment of silencing him for ever had passed. As
+Nostromo remarked, in answer to Decoud’s regrets, it was too late! It
+could not be done without noise, especially in the ignorance of the
+man’s exact position. Wherever he had elected to crouch and tremble, it
+was too hazardous to go near him. He would begin probably to yell for
+mercy. It was much better to leave him quite alone since he was keeping
+so still. But to trust to his silence became every moment a greater
+strain upon Decoud’s composure.
+
+“I wish, Capataz, you had not let the right moment pass,” he murmured.
+
+“What! To silence him for ever? I thought it good to hear first how he
+came to be here. It was too strange. Who could imagine that it was
+all an accident? Afterwards, senor, when I saw you giving him water to
+drink, I could not do it. Not after I had seen you holding up the can to
+his lips as though he were your brother. Senor, that sort of necessity
+must not be thought of too long. And yet it would have been no cruelty
+to take away from him his wretched life. It is nothing but fear. Your
+compassion saved him then, Don Martin, and now it is too late. It
+couldn’t be done without noise.”
+
+In the steamer they were keeping a perfect silence, and the stillness
+was so profound that Decoud felt as if the slightest sound conceivable
+must travel unchecked and audible to the end of the world. What if
+Hirsch coughed or sneezed? To feel himself at the mercy of such an
+idiotic contingency was too exasperating to be looked upon with irony.
+Nostromo, too, seemed to be getting restless. Was it possible, he
+asked himself, that the steamer, finding the night too dark altogether,
+intended to remain stopped where she was till daylight? He began to
+think that this, after all, was the real danger. He was afraid that
+the darkness, which was his protection, would, in the end, cause his
+undoing.
+
+Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command on board the
+transport. The events of the last forty-eight hours in Sulaco were not
+known to him; neither was he aware that the telegraphist in Esmeralda
+had managed to warn his colleague in Sulaco. Like a good many officers
+of the troops garrisoning the province, Sotillo had been influenced
+in his adoption of the Ribierist cause by the belief that it had the
+enormous wealth of the Gould Concession on its side. He had been one
+of the frequenters of the Casa Gould, where he had aired his Blanco
+convictions and his ardour for reform before Don Jose Avellanos, casting
+frank, honest glances towards Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He was
+known to belong to a good family persecuted and impoverished during the
+tyranny of Guzman Bento. The opinions he expressed appeared eminently
+natural and proper in a man of his parentage and antecedents. And he
+was not a deceiver; it was perfectly natural for him to express elevated
+sentiments while his whole faculties were taken up with what seemed then
+a solid and practical notion--the notion that the husband of Antonia
+Avellanos would be, naturally, the intimate friend of the Gould
+Concession. He even pointed this out to Anzani once, when negotiating
+the sixth or seventh small loan in the gloomy, damp apartment with
+enormous iron bars, behind the principal shop in the whole row under the
+Arcades. He hinted to the universal shopkeeper at the excellent terms
+he was on with the emancipated senorita, who was like a sister to the
+Englishwoman. He would advance one leg and put his arms akimbo, posing
+for Anzani’s inspection, and fixing him with a haughty stare.
+
+“Look, miserable shopkeeper! How can a man like me fail with any woman,
+let alone an emancipated girl living in scandalous freedom?” he seemed
+to say.
+
+His manner in the Casa Gould was, of course, very different--devoid of
+all truculence, and even slightly mournful. Like most of his countrymen,
+he was carried away by the sound of fine words, especially if uttered
+by himself. He had no convictions of any sort upon anything except as to
+the irresistible power of his personal advantages. But that was so
+firm that even Decoud’s appearance in Sulaco, and his intimacy with
+the Goulds and the Avellanos, did not disquiet him. On the contrary,
+he tried to make friends with that rich Costaguanero from Europe in the
+hope of borrowing a large sum by-and-by. The only guiding motive of
+his life was to get money for the satisfaction of his expensive tastes,
+which he indulged recklessly, having no self-control. He imagined
+himself a master of intrigue, but his corruption was as simple as an
+animal instinct. At times, in solitude, he had his moments of ferocity,
+and also on such occasions as, for instance, when alone in a room with
+Anzani trying to get a loan.
+
+He had talked himself into the command of the Esmeralda garrison. That
+small seaport had its importance as the station of the main submarine
+cable connecting the Occidental Provinces with the outer world, and the
+junction with it of the Sulaco branch. Don Jose Avellanos proposed him,
+and Barrios, with a rude and jeering guffaw, had said, “Oh, let Sotillo
+go. He is a very good man to keep guard over the cable, and the ladies
+of Esmeralda ought to have their turn.” Barrios, an indubitably brave
+man, had no great opinion of Sotillo.
+
+It was through the Esmeralda cable alone that the San Tome mine could
+be kept in constant touch with the great financier, whose tacit approval
+made the strength of the Ribierist movement. This movement had its
+adversaries even there. Sotillo governed Esmeralda with repressive
+severity till the adverse course of events upon the distant theatre
+of civil war forced upon him the reflection that, after all, the great
+silver mine was fated to become the spoil of the victors. But caution
+was necessary. He began by assuming a dark and mysterious attitude
+towards the faithful Ribierist municipality of Esmeralda. Later on, the
+information that the commandant was holding assemblies of officers in
+the dead of night (which had leaked out somehow) caused those gentlemen
+to neglect their civil duties altogether, and remain shut up in their
+houses. Suddenly one day all the letters from Sulaco by the overland
+courier were carried off by a file of soldiers from the post office to
+the Commandancia, without disguise, concealment, or apology. Sotillo had
+heard through Cayta of the final defeat of Ribiera.
+
+This was the first open sign of the change in his convictions. Presently
+notorious democrats, who had been living till then in constant fear of
+arrest, leg irons, and even floggings, could be observed going in and
+out at the great door of the Commandancia, where the horses of the
+orderlies doze under their heavy saddles, while the men, in ragged
+uniforms and pointed straw hats, lounge on a bench, with their naked
+feet stuck out beyond the strip of shade; and a sentry, in a red baize
+coat with holes at the elbows, stands at the top of the steps glaring
+haughtily at the common people, who uncover their heads to him as they
+pass.
+
+Sotillo’s ideas did not soar above the care for his personal safety and
+the chance of plundering the town in his charge, but he feared that such
+a late adhesion would earn but scant gratitude from the victors. He had
+believed just a little too long in the power of the San Tome mine. The
+seized correspondence had confirmed his previous information of a
+large amount of silver ingots lying in the Sulaco Custom House. To gain
+possession of it would be a clear Monterist move; a sort of service that
+would have to be rewarded. With the silver in his hands he could make
+terms for himself and his soldiers. He was aware neither of the riots,
+nor of the President’s escape to Sulaco and the close pursuit led by
+Montero’s brother, the guerrillero. The game seemed in his own hands.
+The initial moves were the seizure of the cable telegraph office and the
+securing of the Government steamer lying in the narrow creek which is
+the harbour of Esmeralda. The last was effected without difficulty by
+a company of soldiers swarming with a rush over the gangways as she
+lay alongside the quay; but the lieutenant charged with the duty of
+arresting the telegraphist halted on the way before the only cafe in
+Esmeralda, where he distributed some brandy to his men, and refreshed
+himself at the expense of the owner, a known Ribierist. The whole party
+became intoxicated, and proceeded on their mission up the street yelling
+and firing random shots at the windows. This little festivity, which
+might have turned out dangerous to the telegraphist’s life, enabled him
+in the end to send his warning to Sulaco. The lieutenant, staggering
+upstairs with a drawn sabre, was before long kissing him on both
+cheeks in one of those swift changes of mood peculiar to a state of
+drunkenness. He clasped the telegraphist close round the neck, assuring
+him that all the officers of the Esmeralda garrison were going to be
+made colonels, while tears of happiness streamed down his sodden face.
+Thus it came about that the town major, coming along later, found the
+whole party sleeping on the stairs and in passages, and the telegraphist
+(who scorned this chance of escape) very busy clicking the key of the
+transmitter. The major led him away bareheaded, with his hands tied
+behind his back, but concealed the truth from Sotillo, who remained in
+ignorance of the warning despatched to Sulaco.
+
+The colonel was not the man to let any sort of darkness stand in the way
+of the planned surprise. It appeared to him a dead certainty; his heart
+was set upon his object with an ungovernable, childlike impatience. Ever
+since the steamer had rounded Punta Mala, to enter the deeper shadow
+of the gulf, he had remained on the bridge in a group of officers as
+excited as himself. Distracted between the coaxings and menaces of
+Sotillo and his Staff, the miserable commander of the steamer kept her
+moving with as much prudence as they would let him exercise. Some of
+them had been drinking heavily, no doubt; but the prospect of laying
+hands on so much wealth made them absurdly foolhardy, and, at the same
+time, extremely anxious. The old major of the battalion, a stupid,
+suspicious man, who had never been afloat in his life, distinguished
+himself by putting out suddenly the binnacle light, the only one allowed
+on board for the necessities of navigation. He could not understand of
+what use it could be for finding the way. To the vehement protestations
+of the ship’s captain, he stamped his foot and tapped the handle of
+his sword. “Aha! I have unmasked you,” he cried, triumphantly. “You are
+tearing your hair from despair at my acuteness. Am I a child to believe
+that a light in that brass box can show you where the harbour is? I am
+an old soldier, I am. I can smell a traitor a league off. You wanted
+that gleam to betray our approach to your friend the Englishman. A thing
+like that show you the way! What a miserable lie! Que picardia! You
+Sulaco people are all in the pay of those foreigners. You deserve to
+be run through the body with my sword.” Other officers, crowding round,
+tried to calm his indignation, repeating persuasively, “No, no! This is
+an appliance of the mariners, major. This is no treachery.” The captain
+of the transport flung himself face downwards on the bridge, and refused
+to rise. “Put an end to me at once,” he repeated in a stifled voice.
+Sotillo had to interfere.
+
+The uproar and confusion on the bridge became so great that the helmsman
+fled from the wheel. He took refuge in the engine-room, and alarmed the
+engineers, who, disregarding the threats of the soldiers set on guard
+over them, stopped the engines, protesting that they would rather be
+shot than run the risk of being drowned down below.
+
+This was the first time Nostromo and Decoud heard the steamer stop.
+After order had been restored, and the binnacle lamp relighted, she went
+ahead again, passing wide of the lighter in her search for the Isabels.
+The group could not be made out, and, at the pitiful entreaties of the
+captain, Sotillo allowed the engines to be stopped again to wait for one
+of those periodical lightenings of darkness caused by the shifting of
+the cloud canopy spread above the waters of the gulf.
+
+Sotillo, on the bridge, muttered from time to time angrily to the
+captain. The other, in an apologetic and cringing tone, begged su merced
+the colonel to take into consideration the limitations put upon human
+faculties by the darkness of the night. Sotillo swelled with rage and
+impatience. It was the chance of a lifetime.
+
+“If your eyes are of no more use to you than this, I shall have them put
+out,” he yelled.
+
+The captain of the steamer made no answer, for just then the mass of the
+Great Isabel loomed up darkly after a passing shower, then vanished, as
+if swept away by a wave of greater obscurity preceding another downpour.
+This was enough for him. In the voice of a man come back to life again,
+he informed Sotillo that in an hour he would be alongside the Sulaco
+wharf. The ship was put then full speed on the course, and a great
+bustle of preparation for landing arose among the soldiers on her deck.
+
+It was heard distinctly by Decoud and Nostromo. The Capataz understood
+its meaning. They had made out the Isabels, and were going on now in
+a straight line for Sulaco. He judged that they would pass close; but
+believed that lying still like this, with the sail lowered, the lighter
+could not be seen. “No, not even if they rubbed sides with us,” he
+muttered.
+
+The rain began to fall again; first like a wet mist, then with a heavier
+touch, thickening into a smart, perpendicular downpour; and the hiss and
+thump of the approaching steamer was coming extremely near. Decoud,
+with his eyes full of water, and lowered head, asked himself how long
+it would be before she drew past, when unexpectedly he felt a lurch.
+An inrush of foam broke swishing over the stern, simultaneously with
+a crack of timbers and a staggering shock. He had the impression of
+an angry hand laying hold of the lighter and dragging it along to
+destruction. The shock, of course, had knocked him down, and he found
+himself rolling in a lot of water at the bottom of the lighter. A
+violent churning went on alongside; a strange and amazed voice cried out
+something above him in the night. He heard a piercing shriek for help
+from Senor Hirsch. He kept his teeth hard set all the time. It was a
+collision!
+
+The steamer had struck the lighter obliquely, heeling her over till she
+was half swamped, starting some of her timbers, and swinging her head
+parallel to her own course with the force of the blow. The shock of
+it on board of her was hardly perceptible. All the violence of that
+collision was, as usual, felt only on board the smaller craft. Even
+Nostromo himself thought that this was perhaps the end of his desperate
+adventure. He, too, had been flung away from the long tiller, which
+took charge in the lurch. Next moment the steamer would have passed on,
+leaving the lighter to sink or swim after having shouldered her thus out
+of her way, and without even getting a glimpse of her form, had it not
+been that, being deeply laden with stores and the great number of people
+on board, her anchor was low enough to hook itself into one of the wire
+shrouds of the lighter’s mast. For the space of two or three gasping
+breaths that new rope held against the sudden strain. It was this that
+gave Decoud the sensation of the snatching pull, dragging the lighter
+away to destruction. The cause of it, of course, was inexplicable to
+him. The whole thing was so sudden that he had no time to think. But all
+his sensations were perfectly clear; he had kept complete possession of
+himself; in fact, he was even pleasantly aware of that calmness at the
+very moment of being pitched head first over the transom, to struggle
+on his back in a lot of water. Senor Hirsch’s shriek he had heard and
+recognized while he was regaining his feet, always with that mysterious
+sensation of being dragged headlong through the darkness. Not a word,
+not a cry escaped him; he had no time to see anything; and following
+upon the despairing screams for help, the dragging motion ceased so
+suddenly that he staggered forward with open arms and fell against the
+pile of the treasure boxes. He clung to them instinctively, in the
+vague apprehension of being flung about again; and immediately he heard
+another lot of shrieks for help, prolonged and despairing, not near
+him at all, but unaccountably in the distance, away from the lighter
+altogether, as if some spirit in the night were mocking at Senor
+Hirsch’s terror and despair.
+
+Then all was still--as still as when you wake up in your bed in a dark
+room from a bizarre and agitated dream. The lighter rocked slightly; the
+rain was still falling. Two groping hands took hold of his bruised sides
+from behind, and the Capataz’s voice whispered, in his ear, “Silence,
+for your life! Silence! The steamer has stopped.”
+
+Decoud listened. The gulf was dumb. He felt the water nearly up to his
+knees. “Are we sinking?” he asked in a faint breath.
+
+“I don’t know,” Nostromo breathed back to him. “Senor, make not the
+slightest sound.”
+
+Hirsch, when ordered forward by Nostromo, had not returned into his
+first hiding-place. He had fallen near the mast, and had no strength to
+rise; moreover, he feared to move. He had given himself up for dead,
+but not on any rational grounds. It was simply a cruel and terrifying
+feeling. Whenever he tried to think what would become of him his teeth
+would start chattering violently. He was too absorbed in the utter
+misery of his fear to take notice of anything.
+
+Though he was stifling under the lighter’s sail which Nostromo had
+unwittingly lowered on top of him, he did not even dare to put out his
+head till the very moment of the steamer striking. Then, indeed, he
+leaped right out, spurred on to new miracles of bodily vigour by this
+new shape of danger. The inrush of water when the lighter heeled over
+unsealed his lips. His shriek, “Save me!” was the first distinct warning
+of the collision for the people on board the steamer. Next moment the
+wire shroud parted, and the released anchor swept over the lighter’s
+forecastle. It came against the breast of Senor Hirsch, who simply
+seized hold of it, without in the least knowing what it was, but curling
+his arms and legs upon the part above the fluke with an invincible,
+unreasonable tenacity. The lighter yawed off wide, and the steamer,
+moving on, carried him away, clinging hard, and shouting for help. It
+was some time, however, after the steamer had stopped that his position
+was discovered. His sustained yelping for help seemed to come from
+somebody swimming in the water. At last a couple of men went over the
+bows and hauled him on board. He was carried straight off to Sotillo on
+the bridge. His examination confirmed the impression that some craft had
+been run over and sunk, but it was impracticable on such a dark night
+to look for the positive proof of floating wreckage. Sotillo was more
+anxious than ever now to enter the harbour without loss of time; the
+idea that he had destroyed the principal object of his expedition was
+too intolerable to be accepted. This feeling made the story he had heard
+appear the more incredible. Senor Hirsch, after being beaten a little
+for telling lies, was thrust into the chartroom. But he was beaten only
+a little. His tale had taken the heart out of Sotillo’s Staff, though
+they all repeated round their chief, “Impossible! impossible!” with the
+exception of the old major, who triumphed gloomily.
+
+“I told you; I told you,” he mumbled. “I could smell some treachery,
+some diableria a league off.”
+
+Meantime, the steamer had kept on her way towards Sulaco, where only the
+truth of that matter could be ascertained. Decoud and Nostromo heard the
+loud churning of her propeller diminish and die out; and then, with no
+useless words, busied themselves in making for the Isabels. The last
+shower had brought with it a gentle but steady breeze. The danger was
+not over yet, and there was no time for talk. The lighter was leaking
+like a sieve. They splashed in the water at every step. The Capataz put
+into Decoud’s hands the handle of the pump which was fitted at the side
+aft, and at once, without question or remark, Decoud began to pump in
+utter forgetfulness of every desire but that of keeping the treasure
+afloat. Nostromo hoisted the sail, flew back to the tiller, pulled at
+the sheet like mad. The short flare of a match (they had been kept
+dry in a tight tin box, though the man himself was completely wet),
+disclosed to the toiling Decoud the eagerness of his face, bent low over
+the box of the compass, and the attentive stare of his eyes. He knew
+now where he was, and he hoped to run the sinking lighter ashore in
+the shallow cove where the high, cliff-like end of the Great Isabel is
+divided in two equal parts by a deep and overgrown ravine.
+
+Decoud pumped without intermission. Nostromo steered without relaxing
+for a second the intense, peering effort of his stare. Each of them was
+as if utterly alone with his task. It did not occur to them to speak.
+There was nothing in common between them but the knowledge that the
+damaged lighter must be slowly but surely sinking. In that knowledge,
+which was like the crucial test of their desires, they seemed to have
+become completely estranged, as if they had discovered in the very shock
+of the collision that the loss of the lighter would not mean the same
+thing to them both. This common danger brought their differences in aim,
+in view, in character, and in position, into absolute prominence in the
+private vision of each. There was no bond of conviction, of common
+idea; they were merely two adventurers pursuing each his own adventure,
+involved in the same imminence of deadly peril. Therefore they had
+nothing to say to each other. But this peril, this only incontrovertible
+truth in which they shared, seemed to act as an inspiration to their
+mental and bodily powers.
+
+There was certainly something almost miraculous in the way the Capataz
+made the cove with nothing but the shadowy hint of the island’s shape
+and the vague gleam of a small sandy strip for a guide. Where the ravine
+opens between the cliffs, and a slender, shallow rivulet meanders out
+of the bushes to lose itself in the sea, the lighter was run ashore; and
+the two men, with a taciturn, undaunted energy, began to discharge her
+precious freight, carrying each ox-hide box up the bed of the rivulet
+beyond the bushes to a hollow place which the caving in of the soil had
+made below the roots of a large tree. Its big smooth trunk leaned like
+a falling column far over the trickle of water running amongst the loose
+stones.
+
+A couple of years before Nostromo had spent a whole Sunday, all alone,
+exploring the island. He explained this to Decoud after their task was
+done, and they sat, weary in every limb, with their legs hanging down
+the low bank, and their backs against the tree, like a pair of blind
+men aware of each other and their surroundings by some indefinable sixth
+sense.
+
+“Yes,” Nostromo repeated, “I never forget a place I have carefully
+looked at once.” He spoke slowly, almost lazily, as if there had been a
+whole leisurely life before him, instead of the scanty two hours before
+daylight. The existence of the treasure, barely concealed in this
+improbable spot, laid a burden of secrecy upon every contemplated step,
+upon every intention and plan of future conduct. He felt the partial
+failure of this desperate affair entrusted to the great reputation
+he had known how to make for himself. However, it was also a partial
+success. His vanity was half appeased. His nervous irritation had
+subsided.
+
+“You never know what may be of use,” he pursued with his usual quietness
+of tone and manner. “I spent a whole miserable Sunday in exploring this
+crumb of land.”
+
+“A misanthropic sort of occupation,” muttered Decoud, viciously. “You
+had no money, I suppose, to gamble with, and to fling about amongst the
+girls in your usual haunts, Capataz.”
+
+“_E vero!_” exclaimed the Capataz, surprised into the use of his native
+tongue by so much perspicacity. “I had not! Therefore I did not want
+to go amongst those beggarly people accustomed to my generosity. It is
+looked for from the Capataz of the Cargadores, who are the rich men,
+and, as it were, the Caballeros amongst the common people. I don’t care
+for cards but as a pastime; and as to those girls that boast of having
+opened their doors to my knock, you know I wouldn’t look at any one of
+them twice except for what the people would say. They are queer, the
+good people of Sulaco, and I have got much useful information simply by
+listening patiently to the talk of the women that everybody believed
+I was in love with. Poor Teresa could never understand that. On that
+particular Sunday, senor, she scolded so that I went out of the house
+swearing that I would never darken their door again unless to fetch
+away my hammock and my chest of clothes. Senor, there is nothing more
+exasperating than to hear a woman you respect rail against your good
+reputation when you have not a single brass coin in your pocket. I
+untied one of the small boats and pulled myself out of the harbour with
+nothing but three cigars in my pocket to help me spend the day on this
+island. But the water of this rivulet you hear under your feet is cool
+and sweet and good, senor, both before and after a smoke.” He was silent
+for a while, then added reflectively, “That was the first Sunday after
+I brought down the white-whiskered English rico all the way down the
+mountains from the Paramo on the top of the Entrada Pass--and in the
+coach, too! No coach had gone up or down that mountain road within the
+memory of man, senor, till I brought this one down in charge of fifty
+peons working like one man with ropes, pickaxes, and poles under my
+direction. That was the rich Englishman who, as people say, pays for the
+making of this railway. He was very pleased with me. But my wages were
+not due till the end of the month.”
+
+He slid down the bank suddenly. Decoud heard the splash of his feet in
+the brook and followed his footsteps down the ravine. His form was lost
+among the bushes till he had reached the strip of sand under the cliff.
+As often happens in the gulf when the showers during the first part
+of the night had been frequent and heavy, the darkness had thinned
+considerably towards the morning though there were no signs of daylight
+as yet.
+
+The cargo-lighter, relieved of its precious burden, rocked feebly,
+half-afloat, with her fore-foot on the sand. A long rope stretched
+away like a black cotton thread across the strip of white beach to
+the grapnel Nostromo had carried ashore and hooked to the stem of a
+tree-like shrub in the very opening of the ravine.
+
+There was nothing for Decoud but to remain on the island. He received
+from Nostromo’s hands whatever food the foresight of Captain Mitchell
+had put on board the lighter and deposited it temporarily in the little
+dinghy which on their arrival they had hauled up out of sight amongst
+the bushes. It was to be left with him. The island was to be a
+hiding-place, not a prison; he could pull out to a passing ship. The
+O.S.N. Company’s mail boats passed close to the islands when going into
+Sulaco from the north. But the Minerva, carrying off the ex-president,
+had taken the news up north of the disturbances in Sulaco. It was
+possible that the next steamer down would get instructions to miss the
+port altogether since the town, as far as the Minerva’s officers knew,
+was for the time being in the hands of the rabble. This would mean that
+there would be no steamer for a month, as far as the mail service went;
+but Decoud had to take his chance of that. The island was his only
+shelter from the proscription hanging over his head. The Capataz was,
+of course, going back. The unloaded lighter leaked much less, and he
+thought that she would keep afloat as far as the harbour.
+
+He passed to Decoud, standing knee-deep alongside, one of the two spades
+which belonged to the equipment of each lighter for use when ballasting
+ships. By working with it carefully as soon as there was daylight enough
+to see, Decoud could loosen a mass of earth and stones overhanging the
+cavity in which they had deposited the treasure, so that it would look
+as if it had fallen naturally. It would cover up not only the cavity,
+but even all traces of their work, the footsteps, the displaced stones,
+and even the broken bushes.
+
+“Besides, who would think of looking either for you or the treasure
+here?” Nostromo continued, as if he could not tear himself away from the
+spot. “Nobody is ever likely to come here. What could any man want
+with this piece of earth as long as there is room for his feet on the
+mainland! The people in this country are not curious. There are even
+no fishermen here to intrude upon your worship. All the fishing that
+is done in the gulf goes on near Zapiga, over there. Senor, if you are
+forced to leave this island before anything can be arranged for you, do
+not try to make for Zapiga. It is a settlement of thieves and matreros,
+where they would cut your throat promptly for the sake of your gold
+watch and chain. And, senor, think twice before confiding in any one
+whatever; even in the officers of the Company’s steamers, if you ever
+get on board one. Honesty alone is not enough for security. You must
+look to discretion and prudence in a man. And always remember, senor,
+before you open your lips for a confidence, that this treasure may be
+left safely here for hundreds of years. Time is on its side, senor. And
+silver is an incorruptible metal that can be trusted to keep its value
+for ever. . . . An incorruptible metal,” he repeated, as if the idea had
+given him a profound pleasure.
+
+“As some men are said to be,” Decoud pronounced, inscrutably, while
+the Capataz, who busied himself in baling out the lighter with a wooden
+bucket, went on throwing the water over the side with a regular splash.
+Decoud, incorrigible in his scepticism, reflected, not cynically, but
+with general satisfaction, that this man was made incorruptible by his
+enormous vanity, that finest form of egoism which can take on the aspect
+of every virtue.
+
+Nostromo ceased baling, and, as if struck with a sudden thought, dropped
+the bucket with a clatter into the lighter.
+
+“Have you any message?” he asked in a lowered voice. “Remember, I shall
+be asked questions.”
+
+“You must find the hopeful words that ought to be spoken to the people
+in town. I trust for that your intelligence and your experience,
+Capataz. You understand?”
+
+“Si, senor. . . . For the ladies.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Decoud, hastily. “Your wonderful reputation will make
+them attach great value to your words; therefore be careful what you
+say. I am looking forward,” he continued, feeling the fatal touch of
+contempt for himself to which his complex nature was subject, “I am
+looking forward to a glorious and successful ending to my mission. Do
+you hear, Capataz? Use the words glorious and successful when you
+speak to the senorita. Your own mission is accomplished gloriously and
+successfully. You have indubitably saved the silver of the mine. Not
+only this silver, but probably all the silver that shall ever come out
+of it.”
+
+Nostromo detected the ironic tone. “I dare say, Senor Don Martin,” he
+said, moodily. “There are very few things that I am not equal to.
+Ask the foreign signori. I, a man of the people, who cannot always
+understand what you mean. But as to this lot which I must leave here,
+let me tell you that I would believe it in greater safety if you had not
+been with me at all.”
+
+An exclamation escaped Decoud, and a short pause followed. “Shall I go
+back with you to Sulaco?” he asked in an angry tone.
+
+“Shall I strike you dead with my knife where you stand?” retorted
+Nostromo, contemptuously. “It would be the same thing as taking you to
+Sulaco. Come, senor. Your reputation is in your politics, and mine is
+bound up with the fate of this silver. Do you wonder I wish there
+had been no other man to share my knowledge? I wanted no one with me,
+senor.”
+
+“You could not have kept the lighter afloat without me,” Decoud almost
+shouted. “You would have gone to the bottom with her.”
+
+“Yes,” uttered Nostromo, slowly; “alone.”
+
+Here was a man, Decoud reflected, that seemed as though he would have
+preferred to die rather than deface the perfect form of his egoism. Such
+a man was safe. In silence he helped the Capataz to get the grapnel on
+board. Nostromo cleared the shelving shore with one push of the heavy
+oar, and Decoud found himself solitary on the beach like a man in a
+dream. A sudden desire to hear a human voice once more seized upon his
+heart. The lighter was hardly distinguishable from the black water upon
+which she floated.
+
+“What do you think has become of Hirsch?” he shouted.
+
+“Knocked overboard and drowned,” cried Nostromo’s voice confidently out
+of the black wastes of sky and sea around the islet. “Keep close in the
+ravine, senor. I shall try to come out to you in a night or two.”
+
+A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was setting the sail. It
+filled all at once with a sound as of a single loud drum-tap. Decoud
+went back to the ravine. Nostromo, at the tiller, looked back from time
+to time at the vanishing mass of the Great Isabel, which, little by
+little, merged into the uniform texture of the night. At last, when
+he turned his head again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, like a
+solid wall.
+
+Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude which had weighed
+heavily on Decoud after the lighter had slipped off the shore. But while
+the man on the island was oppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality
+affecting the very ground upon which he walked, the mind of the Capataz
+of the Cargadores turned alertly to the problem of future conduct.
+Nostromo’s faculties, working on parallel lines, enabled him to steer
+straight, to keep a look-out for Hermosa, near which he had to pass, and
+to try to imagine what would happen tomorrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or,
+as a matter of fact, to-day, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillo
+would find out in what way the treasure had gone. A gang of Cargadores
+had been employed in loading it into a railway truck from the Custom
+House store-rooms, and running the truck on to the wharf. There would
+be arrests made, and certainly before noon Sotillo would know in what
+manner the silver had left Sulaco, and who it was that took it out.
+
+Nostromo’s intention had been to sail right into the harbour; but at
+this thought by a sudden touch of the tiller he threw the lighter into
+the wind and checked her rapid way. His re-appearance with the very
+boat would raise suspicions, would cause surmises, would absolutely
+put Sotillo on the track. He himself would be arrested; and once in
+the Calabozo there was no saying what they would do to him to make
+him speak. He trusted himself, but he stood up to look round. Near by,
+Hermosa showed low its white surface as flat as a table, with the slight
+run of the sea raised by the breeze washing over its edges noisily. The
+lighter must be sunk at once.
+
+He allowed her to drift with her sail aback. There was already a good
+deal of water in her. He allowed her to drift towards the harbour
+entrance, and, letting the tiller swing about, squatted down and
+busied himself in loosening the plug. With that out she would fill very
+quickly, and every lighter carried a little iron ballast--enough to make
+her go down when full of water. When he stood up again the noisy wash
+about the Hermosa sounded far away, almost inaudible; and already he
+could make out the shape of land about the harbour entrance. This was a
+desperate affair, and he was a good swimmer. A mile was nothing to him,
+and he knew of an easy place for landing just below the earthworks of
+the old abandoned fort. It occurred to him with a peculiar fascination
+that this fort was a good place in which to sleep the day through after
+so many sleepless nights.
+
+With one blow of the tiller he unshipped for the purpose, he knocked the
+plug out, but did not take the trouble to lower the sail. He felt the
+water welling up heavily about his legs before he leaped on to the
+taffrail. There, upright and motionless, in his shirt and trousers only,
+he stood waiting. When he had felt her settle he sprang far away with a
+mighty splash.
+
+At once he turned his head. The gloomy, clouded dawn from behind the
+mountains showed him on the smooth waters the upper corner of the sail,
+a dark wet triangle of canvas waving slightly to and fro. He saw it
+vanish, as if jerked under, and then struck out for the shore.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD THE LIGHTHOUSE
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Directly the cargo boat had slipped away from the wharf and got lost
+in the darkness of the harbour the Europeans of Sulaco separated, to
+prepare for the coming of the Monterist regime, which was approaching
+Sulaco from the mountains, as well as from the sea.
+
+This bit of manual work in loading the silver was their last concerted
+action. It ended the three days of danger, during which, according to
+the newspaper press of Europe, their energy had preserved the town
+from the calamities of popular disorder. At the shore end of the jetty,
+Captain Mitchell said good-night and turned back. His intention was to
+walk the planks of the wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up.
+The engineers of the railway staff, collecting their Basque and Italian
+workmen, marched them away to the railway yards, leaving the Custom
+House, so well defended on the first day of the riot, standing open to
+the four winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves bravely
+and faithfully during the famous “three days” of Sulaco. In a great part
+this faithfulness and that courage had been exercised in self-defence
+rather than in the cause of those material interests to which Charles
+Gould had pinned his faith. Amongst the cries of the mob not the least
+loud had been the cry of death to foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky
+circumstance for Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen
+with the people of the country had been uniformly bad from the first.
+
+Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola’s kitchen, observed this
+retreat marking the end of the foreign interference, this withdrawal of
+the army of material progress from the field of Costaguana revolutions.
+
+Algarrobe torches carried on the outskirts of the moving body sent their
+penetrating aroma into his nostrils. Their light, sweeping along the
+front of the house, made the letters of the inscription, “Albergo
+d’ltalia Una,” leap out black from end to end of the long wall. His eyes
+blinked in the clear blaze. Several young men, mostly fair and tall,
+shepherding this mob of dark bronzed heads, surmounted by the glint of
+slanting rifle barrels, nodded to him familiarly as they went by. The
+doctor was a well-known character. Some of them wondered what he was
+doing there. Then, on the flank of their workmen they tramped on,
+following the line of rails.
+
+“Withdrawing your people from the harbour?” said the doctor, addressing
+himself to the chief engineer of the railway, who had accompanied
+Charles Gould so far on his way to the town, walking by the side of the
+horse, with his hand on the saddle-bow. They had stopped just outside
+the open door to let the workmen cross the road.
+
+“As quick as I can. We are not a political faction,” answered the
+engineer, meaningly. “And we are not going to give our new rulers a
+handle against the railway. You approve me, Gould?”
+
+“Absolutely,” said Charles Gould’s impassive voice, high up and outside
+the dim parallelogram of light falling on the road through the open
+door.
+
+With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro Montero from the other,
+the engineer-in-chief’s only anxiety now was to avoid a collision with
+either. Sulaco, for him, was a railway station, a terminus, workshops,
+a great accumulation of stores. As against the mob the railway defended
+its property, but politically the railway was neutral. He was a brave
+man; and in that spirit of neutrality he had carried proposals of truce
+to the self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the deputies Fuentes
+and Gamacho. Bullets were still flying about when he had crossed the
+Plaza on that mission, waving above his head a white napkin belonging to
+the table linen of the Amarilla Club.
+
+He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting that the doctor,
+busy all day with the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould, had
+not had time to hear the news, he began a succinct narrative. He had
+communicated to them the intelligence from the Construction Camp as to
+Pedro Montero. The brother of the victorious general, he had assured
+them, could be expected at Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he
+anticipated), when shouted out of the window by Senor Gamacho, induced
+a rush of the mob along the Campo Road towards Rincon. The two deputies
+also, after shaking hands with him effusively, mounted and galloped off
+to meet the great man. “I have misled them a little as to the time,” the
+chief engineer confessed. “However hard he rides, he can scarcely get
+here before the morning. But my object is attained. I’ve secured several
+hours’ peace for the losing party. But I did not tell them anything
+about Sotillo, for fear they would take it into their heads to try
+to get hold of the harbour again, either to oppose him or welcome
+him--there’s no saying which. There was Gould’s silver, on which rests
+the remnant of our hopes. Decoud’s retreat had to be thought of, too.
+I think the railway has done pretty well by its friends without
+compromising itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be left to
+themselves.”
+
+“Costaguana for the Costaguaneros,” interjected the doctor,
+sardonically. “It is a fine country, and they have raised a fine crop of
+hates, vengeance, murder, and rapine--those sons of the country.”
+
+“Well, I am one of them,” Charles Gould’s voice sounded, calmly, “and
+I must be going on to see to my own crop of trouble. My wife has driven
+straight on, doctor?”
+
+“Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has taken the two girls
+with her.”
+
+Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief followed the doctor
+indoors.
+
+“That man is calmness personified,” he said, appreciatively, dropping on
+a bench, and stretching his well-shaped legs in cycling stockings nearly
+across the doorway. “He must be extremely sure of himself.”
+
+“If that’s all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing,” said the
+doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table. He nursed
+his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other sustained the
+elbow. “It is the last thing a man ought to be sure of.” The candle,
+half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick, lighted up from below
+his inclined face, whose expression affected by the drawn-in cicatrices
+in the cheeks, had something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated
+remorseful bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of meditating upon
+sinister things. The engineer-in-chief gazed at him for a time before he
+protested.
+
+“I really don’t see that. For me there seems to be nothing else.
+However----”
+
+He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal his contempt for that
+sort of paradox; in fact. Dr. Monygham was not liked by the Europeans
+of Sulaco. His outward aspect of an outcast, which he preserved even in
+Mrs. Gould’s drawing-room, provoked unfavourable criticism. There could
+be no doubt of his intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty
+years in the country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be
+altogether ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence of their
+activities and hopes, his hearers put it to the account of some hidden
+imperfection in the man’s character. It was known that many years
+before, when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento chief medical
+officer of the army. Not one of the Europeans then in the service
+of Costaguana had been so much liked and trusted by the fierce old
+Dictator.
+
+Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself amongst the
+innumerable tales of conspiracies and plots against the tyrant as a
+stream is lost in an arid belt of sandy country before it emerges,
+diminished and troubled, perhaps, on the other side. The doctor made
+no secret of it that he had lived for years in the wildest parts of
+the Republic, wandering with almost unknown Indian tribes in the great
+forests of the far interior where the great rivers have their sources.
+But it was mere aimless wandering; he had written nothing, collected
+nothing, brought nothing for science out of the twilight of the forests,
+which seemed to cling to his battered personality limping about Sulaco,
+where it had drifted in casually, only to get stranded on the shores of
+the sea.
+
+It was also known that he had lived in a state of destitution till the
+arrival of the Goulds from Europe. Don Carlos and Dona Emilia had taken
+up the mad English doctor, when it became apparent that for all his
+savage independence he could be tamed by kindness. Perhaps it was
+only hunger that had tamed him. In years gone by he had certainly been
+acquainted with Charles Gould’s father in Sta. Marta; and now, no matter
+what were the dark passages of his history, as the medical officer of
+the San Tome mine he became a recognized personality. He was recognized,
+but not unreservedly accepted. So much defiant eccentricity and such
+an outspoken scorn for mankind seemed to point to mere recklessness of
+judgment, the bravado of guilt. Besides, since he had become again of
+some account, vague whispers had been heard that years ago, when fallen
+into disgrace and thrown into prison by Guzman Bento at the time of the
+so-called Great Conspiracy, he had betrayed some of his best friends
+amongst the conspirators. Nobody pretended to believe that whisper; the
+whole story of the Great Conspiracy was hopelessly involved and obscure;
+it is admitted in Costaguana that there never had been a conspiracy
+except in the diseased imagination of the Tyrant; and, therefore,
+nothing and no one to betray; though the most distinguished
+Costaguaneros had been imprisoned and executed upon that accusation. The
+procedure had dragged on for years, decimating the better class like
+a pestilence. The mere expression of sorrow for the fate of executed
+kinsmen had been punished with death. Don Jose Avellanos was perhaps the
+only one living who knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties.
+He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a shrug of the shoulders
+and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was wont to put away from him,
+as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever the reason, Dr. Monygham,
+a personage in the administration of the Gould Concession, treated with
+reverent awe by the miners, and indulged in his peculiarities by Mrs.
+Gould, remained somehow outside the pale.
+
+It was not from any liking for the doctor that the engineer-in-chief had
+lingered in the inn upon the plain. He liked old Viola much better. He
+had come to look upon the Albergo d’ltalia Una as a dependence of the
+railway. Many of his subordinates had their quarters there. Mrs. Gould’s
+interest in the family conferred upon it a sort of distinction. The
+engineer-in-chief, with an army of workers under his orders, appreciated
+the moral influence of the old Garibaldino upon his countrymen. His
+austere, old-world Republicanism had a severe, soldier-like standard of
+faithfulness and duty, as if the world were a battlefield where men had
+to fight for the sake of universal love and brotherhood, instead of a
+more or less large share of booty.
+
+“Poor old chap!” he said, after he had heard the doctor’s account of
+Teresa. “He’ll never be able to keep the place going by himself. I shall
+be sorry.”
+
+“He’s quite alone up there,” grunted Doctor Monygham, with a toss of his
+heavy head towards the narrow staircase. “Every living soul has cleared
+out, and Mrs. Gould took the girls away just now. It might not be
+over-safe for them out here before very long. Of course, as a doctor I
+can do nothing more here; but she has asked me to stay with old Viola,
+and as I have no horse to get back to the mine, where I ought to be, I
+made no difficulty to stay. They can do without me in the town.”
+
+“I have a good mind to remain with you, doctor, till we see
+whether anything happens to-night at the harbour,” declared the
+engineer-in-chief. “He must not be molested by Sotillo’s soldiery, who
+may push on as far as this at once. Sotillo used to be very cordial to
+me at the Goulds’ and at the club. How that man’ll ever dare to look any
+of his friends here in the face I can’t imagine.”
+
+“He’ll no doubt begin by shooting some of them to get over the first
+awkwardness,” said the doctor. “Nothing in this country serves better
+your military man who has changed sides than a few summary executions.”
+ He spoke with a gloomy positiveness that left no room for protest. The
+engineer-in-chief did not attempt any. He simply nodded several times
+regretfully, then said--
+
+“I think we shall be able to mount you in the morning, doctor. Our peons
+have recovered some of our stampeded horses. By riding hard and taking
+a wide circuit by Los Hatos and along the edge of the forest, clear of
+Rincon altogether, you may hope to reach the San Tome bridge without
+being interfered with. The mine is just now, to my mind, the safest
+place for anybody at all compromised. I only wish the railway was as
+difficult to touch.”
+
+“Am I compromised?” Doctor Monygham brought out slowly after a short
+silence.
+
+“The whole Gould Concession is compromised. It could not have remained
+for ever outside the political life of the country--if those convulsions
+may be called life. The thing is--can it be touched? The moment was
+bound to come when neutrality would become impossible, and Charles Gould
+understood this well. I believe he is prepared for every extremity. A
+man of his sort has never contemplated remaining indefinitely at the
+mercy of ignorance and corruption. It was like being a prisoner in a
+cavern of banditti with the price of your ransom in your pocket, and
+buying your life from day to day. Your mere safety, not your liberty,
+mind, doctor. I know what I am talking about. The image at which you
+shrug your shoulders is perfectly correct, especially if you conceive
+such a prisoner endowed with the power of replenishing his pocket by
+means as remote from the faculties of his captors as if they were magic.
+You must have understood that as well as I do, doctor. He was in the
+position of the goose with the golden eggs. I broached this matter to
+him as far back as Sir John’s visit here. The prisoner of stupid and
+greedy banditti is always at the mercy of the first imbecile ruffian,
+who may blow out his brains in a fit of temper or for some prospect of
+an immediate big haul. The tale of killing the goose with the golden
+eggs has not been evolved for nothing out of the wisdom of mankind. It
+is a story that will never grow old. That is why Charles Gould in his
+deep, dumb way has countenanced the Ribierist Mandate, the first public
+act that promised him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has
+failed, as everything merely rational fails in this country. But Gould
+remains logical in wishing to save this big lot of silver. Decoud’s plan
+of a counter-revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a
+chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my experience of this
+revolutionary continent, I can hardly yet look at their methods
+seriously. Decoud has been reading to us his draft of a proclamation,
+and talking very well for two hours about his plan of action. He had
+arguments which should have appeared solid enough if we, members of old,
+stable political and national organizations, were not startled by the
+mere idea of a new State evolved like this out of the head of a scoffing
+young man fleeing for his life, with a proclamation in his pocket, to a
+rough, jeering, half-bred swashbuckler, who in this part of the world is
+called a general. It sounds like a comic fairy tale--and behold, it may
+come off; because it is true to the very spirit of the country.”
+
+“Is the silver gone off, then?” asked the doctor, moodily.
+
+The chief engineer pulled out his watch. “By Captain Mitchell’s
+reckoning--and he ought to know--it has been gone long enough now to
+be some three or four miles outside the harbour; and, as Mitchell says,
+Nostromo is the sort of seaman to make the best of his opportunities.”
+ Here the doctor grunted so heavily that the other changed his tone.
+
+“You have a poor opinion of that move, doctor? But why? Charles Gould
+has got to play his game out, though he is not the man to formulate his
+conduct even to himself, perhaps, let alone to others. It may be that
+the game has been partly suggested to him by Holroyd; but it accords
+with his character, too; and that is why it has been so successful.
+Haven’t they come to calling him ‘El Rey de Sulaco’ in Sta. Marta? A
+nickname may be the best record of a success. That’s what I call putting
+the face of a joke upon the body of a truth. My dear sir, when I first
+arrived in Sta. Marta I was struck by the way all those journalists,
+demagogues, members of Congress, and all those generals and judges
+cringed before a sleepy-eyed advocate without practice simply because he
+was the plenipotentiary of the Gould Concession. Sir John when he came
+out was impressed, too.”
+
+“A new State, with that plump dandy, Decoud, for the first President,”
+ mused Dr. Monygham, nursing his cheek and swinging his legs all the
+time.
+
+“Upon my word, and why not?” the chief engineer retorted in an
+unexpectedly earnest and confidential voice. It was as if something
+subtle in the air of Costaguana had inoculated him with the local faith
+in “pronunciamientos.” All at once he began to talk, like an expert
+revolutionist, of the instrument ready to hand in the intact army at
+Cayta, which could be brought back in a few days to Sulaco if only
+Decoud managed to make his way at once down the coast. For the military
+chief there was Barrios, who had nothing but a bullet to expect from
+Montero, his former professional rival and bitter enemy. Barrios’s
+concurrence was assured. As to his army, it had nothing to expect from
+Montero either; not even a month’s pay. From that point of view the
+existence of the treasure was of enormous importance. The mere knowledge
+that it had been saved from the Monterists would be a strong inducement
+for the Cayta troops to embrace the cause of the new State.
+
+The doctor turned round and contemplated his companion for some time.
+
+“This Decoud, I see, is a persuasive young beggar,” he remarked at last.
+“And pray is it for this, then, that Charles Gould has let the whole lot
+of ingots go out to sea in charge of that Nostromo?”
+
+“Charles Gould,” said the engineer-in-chief, “has said no more about his
+motive than usual. You know, he doesn’t talk. But we all here know his
+motive, and he has only one--the safety of the San Tome mine with the
+preservation of the Gould Concession in the spirit of his compact with
+Holroyd. Holroyd is another uncommon man. They understand each other’s
+imaginative side. One is thirty, the other nearly sixty, and they have
+been made for each other. To be a millionaire, and such a millionaire
+as Holroyd, is like being eternally young. The audacity of youth
+reckons upon what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a
+millionaire has unlimited means in his hand--which is better. One’s time
+on earth is an uncertain quantity, but about the long reach of millions
+there is no doubt. The introduction of a pure form of Christianity into
+this continent is a dream for a youthful enthusiast, and I have been
+trying to explain to you why Holroyd at fifty-eight is like a man on the
+threshold of life, and better, too. He’s not a missionary, but the San
+Tome mine holds just that for him. I assure you, in sober truth, that he
+could not manage to keep this out of a strictly business conference upon
+the finances of Costaguana he had with Sir John a couple of years ago.
+Sir John mentioned it with amazement in a letter he wrote to me here,
+from San Francisco, when on his way home. Upon my word, doctor, things
+seem to be worth nothing by what they are in themselves. I begin to
+believe that the only solid thing about them is the spiritual value
+which everyone discovers in his own form of activity----”
+
+“Bah!” interrupted the doctor, without stopping for an instant the idle
+swinging movement of his legs. “Self-flattery. Food for that vanity
+which makes the world go round. Meantime, what do you think is going to
+happen to the treasure floating about the gulf with the great Capataz
+and the great politician?”
+
+“Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?”
+
+“I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put no spiritual value into
+my desires, or my opinions, or my actions. They have not enough
+vastness to give me room for self-flattery. Look, for instance, I should
+certainly have liked to ease the last moments of that poor woman. And
+I can’t. It’s impossible. Have you met the impossible face to face--or
+have you, the Napoleon of railways, no such word in your dictionary?”
+
+“Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?” asked the chief engineer,
+with humane concern.
+
+Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above the heavy hard wood
+beams of the kitchen. Then down the narrow opening of the staircase made
+in the thickness of the wall, and narrow enough to be defended by one
+man against twenty enemies, came the murmur of two voices, one faint and
+broken, the other deep and gentle answering it, and in its graver tone
+covering the weaker sound.
+
+The two men remained still and silent till the murmurs ceased, then the
+doctor shrugged his shoulders and muttered--
+
+“Yes, she’s bound to. And I could do nothing if I went up now.”
+
+A long period of silence above and below ensued.
+
+“I fancy,” began the engineer, in a subdued voice, “that you mistrust
+Captain Mitchell’s Capataz.”
+
+“Mistrust him!” muttered the doctor through his teeth. “I believe him
+capable of anything--even of the most absurd fidelity. I am the last
+person he spoke to before he left the wharf, you know. The poor woman up
+there wanted to see him, and I let him go up to her. The dying must not
+be contradicted, you know. She seemed then fairly calm and resigned,
+but the scoundrel in those ten minutes or so has done or said something
+which seems to have driven her into despair. You know,” went on
+the doctor, hesitatingly, “women are so very unaccountable in every
+position, and at all times of life, that I thought sometimes she was in
+a way, don’t you see? in love with him--the Capataz. The rascal has his
+own charm indubitably, or he would not have made the conquest of all the
+populace of the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I may have given a wrong
+name to some strong sentiment for him on her part, to an unreasonable
+and simple attitude a woman is apt to take up emotionally towards a
+man. She used to abuse him to me frequently, which, of course, is not
+inconsistent with my idea. Not at all. It looked to me as if she were
+always thinking of him. He was something important in her life. You
+know, I have seen a lot of those people. Whenever I came down from
+the mine Mrs. Gould used to ask me to keep my eye on them. She likes
+Italians; she has lived a long time in Italy, I believe, and she took
+a special fancy to that old Garibaldino. A remarkable chap enough. A
+rugged and dreamy character, living in the republicanism of his
+young days as if in a cloud. He has encouraged much of the Capataz’s
+confounded nonsense--the high-strung, exalted old beggar!”
+
+“What sort of nonsense?” wondered the chief engineer. “I found the
+Capataz always a very shrewd and sensible fellow, absolutely fearless,
+and remarkably useful. A perfect handy man. Sir John was greatly
+impressed by his resourcefulness and attention when he made that
+overland journey from Sta. Marta. Later on, as you might have heard,
+he rendered us a service by disclosing to the then chief of police
+the presence in the town of some professional thieves, who came from
+a distance to wreck and rob our monthly pay train. He has certainly
+organized the lighterage service of the harbour for the O.S.N. Company
+with great ability. He knows how to make himself obeyed, foreigner
+though he is. It is true that the Cargadores are strangers here, too,
+for the most part--immigrants, Islenos.”
+
+“His prestige is his fortune,” muttered the doctor, sourly.
+
+“The man has proved his trustworthiness up to the hilt on innumerable
+occasions and in all sorts of ways,” argued the engineer. “When this
+question of the silver arose, Captain Mitchell naturally was very warmly
+of the opinion that his Capataz was the only man fit for the trust. As
+a sailor, of course, I suppose so. But as a man, don’t you know, Gould,
+Decoud, and myself judged that it didn’t matter in the least who went.
+Any boatman would have done just as well. Pray, what could a thief do
+with such a lot of ingots? If he ran off with them he would have in
+the end to land somewhere, and how could he conceal his cargo from the
+knowledge of the people ashore? We dismissed that consideration from our
+minds. Moreover, Decoud was going. There have been occasions when the
+Capataz has been more implicitly trusted.”
+
+“He took a slightly different view,” the doctor said. “I heard him
+declare in this very room that it would be the most desperate affair of
+his life. He made a sort of verbal will here in my hearing, appointing
+old Viola his executor; and, by Jove! do you know, he--he’s not grown
+rich by his fidelity to you good people of the railway and the harbour.
+I suppose he obtains some--how do you say that?--some spiritual value
+for his labours, or else I don’t know why the devil he should be
+faithful to you, Gould, Mitchell, or anybody else. He knows this country
+well. He knows, for instance, that Gamacho, the Deputy from Javira, has
+been nothing else but a ‘tramposo’ of the commonest sort, a petty pedlar
+of the Campo, till he managed to get enough goods on credit from Anzani
+to open a little store in the wilds, and got himself elected by the
+drunken mozos that hang about the Estancias and the poorest sort of
+rancheros who were in his debt. And Gamacho, who to-morrow will be
+probably one of our high officials, is a stranger, too--an Isleno.
+He might have been a Cargador on the O. S. N. wharf had he not (the
+posadero of Rincon is ready to swear it) murdered a pedlar in the woods
+and stolen his pack to begin life on. And do you think that Gamacho,
+then, would have ever become a hero with the democracy of this place,
+like our Capataz? Of course not. He isn’t half the man. No; decidedly, I
+think that Nostromo is a fool.”
+
+The doctor’s talk was distasteful to the builder of railways. “It is
+impossible to argue that point,” he said, philosophically. “Each man has
+his gifts. You should have heard Gamacho haranguing his friends in the
+street. He has a howling voice, and he shouted like mad, lifting his
+clenched fist right above his head, and throwing his body half out
+of the window. At every pause the rabble below yelled, ‘Down with the
+Oligarchs! Viva la Libertad!’ Fuentes inside looked extremely miserable.
+You know, he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of
+the Interior for six months or so, some few years back. Of course, he
+has no conscience; but he is a man of birth and education--at one time
+the director of the Customs of Cayta. That idiot-brute Gamacho fastened
+himself upon him with his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly
+fear of that ruffian was the most rejoicing sight imaginable.”
+
+He got up and went to the door to look out towards the harbour. “All
+quiet,” he said; “I wonder if Sotillo really means to turn up here?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+Captain Mitchell, pacing the wharf, was asking himself the same
+question. There was always the doubt whether the warning of the
+Esmeralda telegraphist--a fragmentary and interrupted message--had been
+properly understood. However, the good man had made up his mind not
+to go to bed till daylight, if even then. He imagined himself to have
+rendered an enormous service to Charles Gould. When he thought of the
+saved silver he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. In his
+simple way he was proud at being a party to this extremely clever
+expedient. It was he who had given it a practical shape by suggesting
+the possibility of intercepting at sea the north-bound steamer. And it
+was advantageous to his Company, too, which would have lost a valuable
+freight if the treasure had been left ashore to be confiscated.
+The pleasure of disappointing the Monterists was also very great.
+Authoritative by temperament and the long habit of command, Captain
+Mitchell was no democrat. He even went so far as to profess a contempt
+for parliamentarism itself. “His Excellency Don Vincente Ribiera,” he
+used to say, “whom I and that fellow of mine, Nostromo, had the honour,
+sir, and the pleasure of saving from a cruel death, deferred too much to
+his Congress. It was a mistake--a distinct mistake, sir.”
+
+The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N. service imagined that
+the last three days had exhausted every startling surprise the political
+life of Costaguana could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the
+events which followed surpassed his imagination. To begin with, Sulaco
+(because of the seizure of the cables and the disorganization of the
+steam service) remained for a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of
+the world like a besieged city.
+
+“One would not have believed it possible; but so it was, sir. A full
+fortnight.”
+
+The account of the extraordinary things that happened during that
+time, and the powerful emotions he experienced, acquired a comic
+impressiveness from the pompous manner of his personal narrative. He
+opened it always by assuring his hearer that he was “in the thick
+of things from first to last.” Then he would begin by describing the
+getting away of the silver, and his natural anxiety lest “his fellow” in
+charge of the lighter should make some mistake. Apart from the loss of
+so much precious metal, the life of Senor Martin Decoud, an agreeable,
+wealthy, and well-informed young gentleman, would have been jeopardized
+through his falling into the hands of his political enemies. Captain
+Mitchell also admitted that in his solitary vigil on the wharf he had
+felt a certain measure of concern for the future of the whole country.
+
+“A feeling, sir,” he explained, “perfectly comprehensible in a man
+properly grateful for the many kindnesses received from the best
+families of merchants and other native gentlemen of independent means,
+who, barely saved by us from the excesses of the mob, seemed, to my
+mind’s eye, destined to become the prey in person and fortune of the
+native soldiery, which, as is well known, behave with regrettable
+barbarity to the inhabitants during their civil commotions. And then,
+sir, there were the Goulds, for both of whom, man and wife, I could not
+but entertain the warmest feelings deserved by their hospitality and
+kindness. I felt, too, the dangers of the gentlemen of the Amarilla
+Club, who had made me honorary member, and had treated me with uniform
+regard and civility, both in my capacity of Consular Agent and as
+Superintendent of an important Steam Service. Miss Antonia Avellanos,
+the most beautiful and accomplished young lady whom it had ever been my
+privilege to speak to, was not a little in my mind, I confess. How the
+interests of my Company would be affected by the impending change of
+officials claimed a large share of my attention, too. In short, sir,
+I was extremely anxious and very tired, as you may suppose, by the
+exciting and memorable events in which I had taken my little part. The
+Company’s building containing my residence was within five minutes’
+walk, with the attraction of some supper and of my hammock (I always
+take my nightly rest in a hammock, as the most suitable to the climate);
+but somehow, sir, though evidently I could do nothing for any one by
+remaining about, I could not tear myself away from that wharf, where the
+fatigue made me stumble painfully at times. The night was excessively
+dark--the darkest I remember in my life; so that I began to think that
+the arrival of the transport from Esmeralda could not possibly take
+place before daylight, owing to the difficulty of navigating the gulf.
+The mosquitoes bit like fury. We have been infested here with mosquitoes
+before the late improvements; a peculiar harbour brand, sir, renowned
+for its ferocity. They were like a cloud about my head, and I shouldn’t
+wonder that but for their attacks I would have dozed off as I walked
+up and down, and got a heavy fall. I kept on smoking cigar after cigar,
+more to protect myself from being eaten up alive than from any real
+relish for the weed. Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time I
+was approaching my watch to the lighted end in order to see the time,
+and observing with surprise that it wanted yet ten minutes to midnight,
+I heard the splash of a ship’s propeller--an unmistakable sound to a
+sailor’s ear on such a calm night. It was faint indeed, because they
+were advancing with precaution and dead slow, both on account of the
+darkness and from their desire of not revealing too soon their presence:
+a very unnecessary care, because, I verily believe, in all the enormous
+extent of this harbour I was the only living soul about. Even the
+usual staff of watchmen and others had been absent from their posts for
+several nights owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still, after
+dropping and stamping out my cigar--a circumstance highly agreeable,
+I should think, to the mosquitoes, if I may judge from the state of my
+face next morning. But that was a trifling inconvenience in comparison
+with the brutal proceedings I became victim of on the part of Sotillo.
+Something utterly inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of
+a maniac than the action of a sane man, however lost to all sense
+of honour and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of his
+thievish scheme.”
+
+In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed infuriated.
+Captain Mitchell, however, had not been arrested at once; a vivid
+curiosity induced him to remain on the wharf (which is nearly four
+hundred feet long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of
+disembarkation. Concealed by the railway truck used for the silver,
+which had been run back afterwards to the shore end of the jetty,
+Captain Mitchell saw the small detachment thrown forward, pass by,
+taking different directions upon the plain. Meantime, the troops were
+being landed and formed into a column, whose head crept up gradually so
+close to him that he made it out, barring nearly the whole width of
+the wharf, only a very few yards from him. Then the low, shuffling,
+murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the whole mass remained for about
+an hour motionless and silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On
+land nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the mastiffs at
+the railway yards, answered by the faint barking of the curs infesting
+the outer limits of the town. A detached knot of dark shapes stood in
+front of the head of the column.
+
+Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to challenge in
+undertones single figures approaching from the plain. Those messengers
+sent back from the scouting parties flung to their comrades brief
+sentences and passed on rapidly, becoming lost in the great motionless
+mass, to make their report to the Staff. It occurred to Captain Mitchell
+that his position could become disagreeable and perhaps dangerous, when
+suddenly, at the head of the jetty, there was a shout of command, a
+bugle call, followed by a stir and a rattling of arms, and a murmuring
+noise that ran right up the column. Near by a loud voice directed
+hurriedly, “Push that railway car out of the way!” At the rush of bare
+feet to execute the order Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or two;
+the car, suddenly impelled by many hands, flew away from him along the
+rails, and before he knew what had happened he found himself surrounded
+and seized by his arms and the collar of his coat.
+
+“We have caught a man hiding here, mi teniente!” cried one of his
+captors.
+
+“Hold him on one side till the rearguard comes along,” answered the
+voice. The whole column streamed past Captain Mitchell at a run, the
+thundering noise of their feet dying away suddenly on the shore. His
+captors held him tightly, disregarding his declaration that he was
+an Englishman and his loud demands to be taken at once before their
+commanding officer. Finally he lapsed into dignified silence. With a
+hollow rumble of wheels on the planks a couple of field guns, dragged
+by hand, rolled by. Then, after a small body of men had marched past
+escorting four or five figures which walked in advance, with a jingle
+of steel scabbards, he felt a tug at his arms, and was ordered to come
+along. During the passage from the wharf to the Custom House it is to be
+feared that Captain Mitchell was subjected to certain indignities at
+the hands of the soldiers--such as jerks, thumps on the neck, forcible
+application of the butt of a rifle to the small of his back. Their ideas
+of speed were not in accord with his notion of his dignity. He became
+flustered, flushed, and helpless. It was as if the world were coming to
+an end.
+
+The long building was surrounded by troops, which were already piling
+arms by companies and preparing to pass the night lying on the ground in
+their ponchos with their sacks under their heads. Corporals moved with
+swinging lanterns posting sentries all round the walls wherever there
+was a door or an opening. Sotillo was taking his measures to protect his
+conquest as if it had indeed contained the treasure. His desire to
+make his fortune at one audacious stroke of genius had overmastered his
+reasoning faculties. He would not believe in the possibility of failure;
+the mere hint of such a thing made his brain reel with rage. Every
+circumstance pointing to it appeared incredible. The statement of
+Hirsch, which was so absolutely fatal to his hopes, could by no means
+be admitted. It is true, too, that Hirsch’s story had been told so
+incoherently, with such excessive signs of distraction, that it really
+looked improbable. It was extremely difficult, as the saying is, to make
+head or tail of it. On the bridge of the steamer, directly after his
+rescue, Sotillo and his officers, in their impatience and excitement,
+would not give the wretched man time to collect such few wits as
+remained to him. He ought to have been quieted, soothed, and reassured,
+whereas he had been roughly handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in
+menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get down on
+his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break away, as if he
+meant incontinently to jump overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings and
+cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then with
+a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of
+every great passion. His Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German
+that the better half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He
+tried to propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which
+in itself sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not to trifle he
+repeated his entreaties and protestations of loyalty and innocence again
+in German, obstinately, because he was not aware in what language he was
+speaking. His identity, of course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant
+of Esmeralda, but this made the matter no clearer. As he kept on
+forgetting Decoud’s name, mixing him up with several other people he had
+seen in the Casa Gould, it looked as if they all had been in the lighter
+together; and for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned every
+prominent Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw
+a doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a
+part--pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the moment to
+cover the truth. Sotillo’s rapacity, excited to the highest pitch by the
+prospect of an immense booty, could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew
+might have been very much frightened by the accident, but he knew where
+the silver was concealed, and had invented this story, with his Jewish
+cunning, to put him entirely off the track as to what had been done.
+
+Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor in a vast apartment
+with heavy black beams. But there was no ceiling, and the eye lost
+itself in the darkness under the high pitch of the roof. The thick
+shutters stood open. On a long table could be seen a large inkstand,
+some stumpy, inky quill pens, and two square wooden boxes, each holding
+half a hundred-weight of sand. Sheets of grey coarse official paper
+bestrewed the floor. It must have been a room occupied by some higher
+official of the Customs, because a large leathern armchair stood behind
+the table, with other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net hammock
+was swung under one of the beams--for the official’s afternoon siesta,
+no doubt. A couple of candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a
+dim reddish light. The colonel’s hat, sword, and revolver lay between
+them, and a couple of his more trusty officers lounged gloomily against
+the table. The colonel threw himself into the armchair, and a big negro
+with a sergeant’s stripes on his ragged sleeve, kneeling down, pulled
+off his boots. Sotillo’s ebony moustache contrasted violently with the
+livid colouring of his cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very
+far into his head. He seemed exhausted by his perplexities, languid with
+disappointment; but when the sentry on the landing thrust his head in to
+announce the arrival of a prisoner, he revived at once.
+
+“Let him be brought in,” he shouted, fiercely.
+
+The door flew open, and Captain Mitchell, bareheaded, his waistcoat
+open, the bow of his tie under his ear, was hustled into the room.
+
+Sotillo recognized him at once. He could not have hoped for a more
+precious capture; here was a man who could tell him, if he chose,
+everything he wished to know--and directly the problem of how best to
+make him talk to the point presented itself to his mind. The resentment
+of a foreign nation had no terrors for Sotillo. The might of the whole
+armed Europe would not have protected Captain Mitchell from insults and
+ill-usage, so well as the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an
+Englishman who would most likely turn obstinate under bad treatment, and
+become quite unmanageable. At all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl
+on his brow.
+
+“What! The excellent Senor Mitchell!” he cried, in affected dismay.
+The pretended anger of his swift advance and of his shout, “Release
+the caballero at once,” was so effective that the astounded soldiers
+positively sprang away from their prisoner. Thus suddenly deprived
+of forcible support, Captain Mitchell reeled as though about to fall.
+Sotillo took him familiarly under the arm, led him to a chair, waved his
+hand at the room. “Go out, all of you,” he commanded.
+
+When they had been left alone he stood looking down, irresolute and
+silent, watching till Captain Mitchell had recovered his power of
+speech.
+
+Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned in the removal of
+the silver. Sotillo’s temperament was of that sort that he experienced
+an ardent desire to beat him; just as formerly when negotiating with
+difficulty a loan from the cautious Anzani, his fingers always itched
+to take the shopkeeper by the throat. As to Captain Mitchell, the
+suddenness, unexpectedness, and general inconceivableness of this
+experience had confused his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out of
+breath.
+
+“I’ve been knocked down three times between this and the wharf,” he
+gasped out at last. “Somebody shall be made to pay for this.” He had
+certainly stumbled more than once, and had been dragged along for some
+distance before he could regain his stride. With his recovered breath
+his indignation seemed to madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his
+white hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook violently
+the flaps of his ruined waistcoat before the disconcerted Sotillo.
+“Look! Those uniformed thieves of yours downstairs have robbed me of my
+watch.”
+
+The old sailor’s aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw himself cut
+off from the table on which his sabre and revolver were lying.
+
+“I demand restitution and apologies,” Mitchell thundered at him, quite
+beside himself. “From you! Yes, from you!”
+
+For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a perfectly stony
+expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell flung out an arm towards
+the table as if to snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of
+alarm, bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming it after
+him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell’s fury. Behind the closed door
+Sotillo shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on
+the wooden staircase.
+
+“Disarm him! Bind him!” the colonel could be heard vociferating.
+
+Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the windows, with
+three perpendicular bars of iron each and some twenty feet from the
+ground, as he well knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him
+took place. In an incredibly short time he found himself bound with
+many turns of a hide rope to a high-backed chair, so that his head alone
+remained free. Not till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the
+doorway trembling visibly, venture again within. The soldiers, picking
+up from the floor the rifles they had dropped to grapple with the
+prisoner, filed out of the room. The officers remained leaning on their
+swords and looking on.
+
+“The watch! the watch!” raved the colonel, pacing to and fro like a
+tiger in a cage. “Give me that man’s watch.”
+
+It was true, that when searched for arms in the hall downstairs, before
+being taken into Sotillo’s presence, Captain Mitchell had been relieved
+of his watch and chain; but at the colonel’s clamour it was produced
+quickly enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried carefully in the
+palms of his joined hands. Sotillo snatched it, and pushed the clenched
+fist from which it dangled close to Captain Mitchell’s face.
+
+“Now then! You arrogant Englishman! You dare to call the soldiers of the
+army thieves! Behold your watch.”
+
+He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner’s nose.
+Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously at
+the sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer, presented to him years ago by
+a Committee of Underwriters for saving a ship from total loss by fire.
+Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable appearance. He became
+silent suddenly, stepped aside to the table, and began a careful
+examination in the light of the candles. He had never seen anything so
+fine. His officers closed in and craned their necks behind his back.
+
+He became so interested that for an instant he forgot his precious
+prisoner. There is always something childish in the rapacity of the
+passionate, clear-minded, Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism
+of the Northerners, who at the smallest encouragement dream of nothing
+less than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo was fond of jewels, gold
+trinkets, of personal adornment. After a moment he turned about, and
+with a commanding gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid down
+the watch on the table, then, negligently, pushed his hat over it.
+
+“Ha!” he began, going up very close to the chair. “You dare call my
+valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda regiment, thieves. You dare! What
+impudence! You foreigners come here to rob our country of its wealth.
+You never have enough! Your audacity knows no bounds.”
+
+He looked towards the officers, amongst whom there was an approving
+murmur. The older major was moved to declare--
+
+“Si, mi colonel. They are all traitors.”
+
+“I shall say nothing,” continued Sotillo, fixing the motionless and
+powerless Mitchell with an angry but uneasy stare. “I shall say nothing
+of your treacherous attempt to get possession of my revolver to shoot me
+while I was trying to treat you with consideration you did not deserve.
+You have forfeited your life. Your only hope is in my clemency.”
+
+He watched for the effect of his words, but there was no obvious sign of
+fear on Captain Mitchell’s face. His white hair was full of dust,
+which covered also the rest of his helpless person. As if he had heard
+nothing, he twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a bit of straw which hung
+amongst the hairs.
+
+Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo. “It is you, Mitchell,”
+ he said, emphatically, “who are the thief, not my soldiers!” He pointed
+at his prisoner a forefinger with a long, almond-shaped nail. “Where
+is the silver of the San Tome mine? I ask you, Mitchell, where is the
+silver that was deposited in this Custom House? Answer me that! You
+stole it. You were a party to stealing it. It was stolen from the
+Government. Aha! you think I do not know what I say; but I am up to your
+foreign tricks. It is gone, the silver! No? Gone in one of your lanchas,
+you miserable man! How dared you?”
+
+This time he produced his effect. “How on earth could Sotillo know
+that?” thought Mitchell. His head, the only part of his body that could
+move, betrayed his surprise by a sudden jerk.
+
+“Ha! you tremble,” Sotillo shouted, suddenly. “It is a conspiracy. It is
+a crime against the State. Did you not know that the silver belongs
+to the Republic till the Government claims are satisfied? Where is it?
+Where have you hidden it, you miserable thief?”
+
+At this question Captain Mitchell’s sinking spirits revived. In whatever
+incomprehensible manner Sotillo had already got his information about
+the lighter, he had not captured it. That was clear. In his outraged
+heart, Captain Mitchell had resolved that nothing would induce him to
+say a word while he remained so disgracefully bound, but his desire to
+help the escape of the silver made him depart from this resolution. His
+wits were very much at work. He detected in Sotillo a certain air of
+doubt, of irresolution.
+
+“That man,” he said to himself, “is not certain of what he advances.”
+ For all his pomposity in social intercourse, Captain Mitchell could meet
+the realities of life in a resolute and ready spirit. Now he had
+got over the first shock of the abominable treatment he was cool and
+collected enough. The immense contempt he felt for Sotillo steadied him,
+and he said oracularly, “No doubt it is well concealed by this time.”
+
+Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. “Muy bien, Mitchell,” he said in a
+cold and threatening manner. “But can you produce the Government receipt
+for the royalty and the Custom House permit of embarkation, hey? Can
+you? No. Then the silver has been removed illegally, and the guilty
+shall be made to suffer, unless it is produced within five days from
+this.” He gave orders for the prisoner to be unbound and locked up in
+one of the smaller rooms downstairs. He walked about the room, moody and
+silent, till Captain Mitchell, with each of his arms held by a couple of
+men, stood up, shook himself, and stamped his feet.
+
+“How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell?” he asked, derisively.
+
+“It is the most incredible, abominable use of power!” Captain Mitchell
+declared in a loud voice. “And whatever your purpose, you shall gain
+nothing from it, I can promise you.”
+
+The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and moustache,
+crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of the short, thick-set,
+red-faced prisoner with rumpled white hair.
+
+“That we shall see. You shall know my power a little better when I tie
+you up to a potalon outside in the sun for a whole day.” He drew himself
+up haughtily, and made a sign for Captain Mitchell to be led away.
+
+“What about my watch?” cried Captain Mitchell, hanging back from the
+efforts of the men pulling him towards the door.
+
+Sotillo turned to his officers. “No! But only listen to this picaro,
+caballeros,” he pronounced with affected scorn, and was answered by a
+chorus of derisive laughter. “He demands his watch!” . . . He ran up
+again to Captain Mitchell, for the desire to relieve his feelings by
+inflicting blows and pain upon this Englishman was very strong within
+him. “Your watch! You are a prisoner in war time, Mitchell! In war time!
+You have no rights and no property! Caramba! The very breath in your
+body belongs to me. Remember that.”
+
+“Bosh!” said Captain Mitchell, concealing a disagreeable impression.
+
+Down below, in a great hall, with the earthen floor and with a tall
+mound thrown up by white ants in a corner, the soldiers had kindled
+a small fire with broken chairs and tables near the arched gateway,
+through which the faint murmur of the harbour waters on the beach could
+be heard. While Captain Mitchell was being led down the staircase, an
+officer passed him, running up to report to Sotillo the capture of more
+prisoners. A lot of smoke hung about in the vast gloomy place, the
+fire crackled, and, as if through a haze, Captain Mitchell made out,
+surrounded by short soldiers with fixed bayonets, the heads of three
+tall prisoners--the doctor, the engineer-in-chief, and the white leonine
+mane of old Viola, who stood half-turned away from the others with his
+chin on his breast and his arms crossed. Mitchell’s astonishment knew no
+bounds. He cried out; the other two exclaimed also. But he hurried on,
+diagonally, across the big cavern-like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises,
+hints of caution, and so on, crowded his head to distraction.
+
+“Is he actually keeping you?” shouted the chief engineer, whose single
+eyeglass glittered in the firelight.
+
+An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting urgently, “Bring them
+all up--all three.”
+
+In the clamour of voices and the rattle of arms, Captain Mitchell made
+himself heard imperfectly: “By heavens! the fellow has stolen my watch.”
+
+The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the pressure long enough
+to shout, “What? What did you say?”
+
+“My chronometer!” Captain Mitchell yelled violently at the very moment
+of being thrust head foremost through a small door into a sort of cell,
+perfectly black, and so narrow that he fetched up against the opposite
+wall. The door had been instantly slammed. He knew where they had put
+him. This was the strong room of the Custom House, whence the silver
+had been removed only a few hours earlier. It was almost as narrow as
+a corridor, with a small square aperture, barred by a heavy grating, at
+the distant end. Captain Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat
+down on the earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, not even
+a gleam of light from anywhere, interfered with Captain Mitchell’s
+meditation. He did some hard but not very extensive thinking. It was
+not of a gloomy cast. The old sailor, with all his small weaknesses
+and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable of entertaining for
+any length of time a fear of his personal safety. It was not so much
+firmness of soul as the lack of a certain kind of imagination--the kind
+whose undue development caused intense suffering to Senor Hirsch; that
+sort of imagination which adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and
+of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone, strictly--to all
+the other apprehensions on which the sense of one’s existence is based.
+Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much penetration of any kind;
+characteristic, illuminating trifles of expression, action, or movement,
+escaped him completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of
+his own existence to observe that of others. For instance, he could
+not believe that Sotillo had been really afraid of him, and this simply
+because it would never have entered into his head to shoot any one
+except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Anybody could see he
+was not a murdering kind of man, he reflected quite gravely. Then
+why this preposterous and insulting charge? he asked himself. But his
+thoughts mainly clung around the astounding and unanswerable question:
+How the devil the fellow got to know that the silver had gone off in the
+lighter? It was obvious that he had not captured it. And, obviously, he
+could not have captured it! In this last conclusion Captain Mitchell
+was misled by the assumption drawn from his observation of the weather
+during his long vigil on the wharf. He thought that there had been much
+more wind than usual that night in the gulf; whereas, as a matter of
+fact, the reverse was the case.
+
+“How in the name of all that’s marvellous did that confounded fellow get
+wind of the affair?” was the first question he asked directly after the
+bang, clatter, and flash of the open door (which was closed again
+almost before he could lift his dropped head) informed him that he had a
+companion of captivity. Dr. Monygham’s voice stopped muttering curses in
+English and Spanish.
+
+“Is that you, Mitchell?” he made answer, surlily. “I struck my forehead
+against this confounded wall with enough force to fell an ox. Where are
+you?”
+
+Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could make out the doctor
+stretching out his hands blindly.
+
+“I am sitting here on the floor. Don’t fall over my legs,” Captain
+Mitchell’s voice announced with great dignity of tone. The doctor,
+entreated not to walk about in the dark, sank down to the ground, too.
+The two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads nearly touching, began to
+exchange confidences.
+
+“Yes,” the doctor related in a low tone to Captain Mitchell’s vehement
+curiosity, “we have been nabbed in old Viola’s place. It seems that one
+of their pickets, commanded by an officer, pushed as far as the town
+gate. They had orders not to enter, but to bring along every soul they
+could find on the plain. We had been talking in there with the door
+open, and no doubt they saw the glimmer of our light. They must have
+been making their approaches for some time. The engineer laid himself
+on a bench in a recess by the fire-place, and I went upstairs to have a
+look. I hadn’t heard any sound from there for a long time. Old Viola,
+as soon as he saw me come up, lifted his arm for silence. I stole in
+on tiptoe. By Jove, his wife was lying down and had gone to sleep. The
+woman had actually dropped off to sleep! ‘Senor Doctor,’ Viola whispers
+to me, ‘it looks as if her oppression was going to get better.’ ‘Yes,’
+I said, very much surprised; ‘your wife is a wonderful woman, Giorgio.’
+Just then a shot was fired in the kitchen, which made us jump and cower
+as if at a thunder-clap. It seems that the party of soldiers had stolen
+quite close up, and one of them had crept up to the door. He looked in,
+thought there was no one there, and, holding his rifle ready, entered
+quietly. The chief told me that he had just closed his eyes for a
+moment. When he opened them, he saw the man already in the middle of
+the room peering into the dark corners. The chief was so startled that,
+without thinking, he made one leap from the recess right out in front
+of the fireplace. The soldier, no less startled, up with his rifle
+and pulls the trigger, deafening and singeing the engineer, but in his
+flurry missing him completely. But, look what happens! At the noise of
+the report the sleeping woman sat up, as if moved by a spring, with a
+shriek, ‘The children, Gian’ Battista! Save the children!’ I have it in
+my ears now. It was the truest cry of distress I ever heard. I stood as
+if paralyzed, but the old husband ran across to the bedside, stretching
+out his hands. She clung to them! I could see her eyes go glazed; the
+old fellow lowered her down on the pillows and then looked round at me.
+She was dead! All this took less than five minutes, and then I ran down
+to see what was the matter. It was no use thinking of any resistance.
+Nothing we two could say availed with the officer, so I volunteered to
+go up with a couple of soldiers and fetch down old Viola. He was sitting
+at the foot of the bed, looking at his wife’s face, and did not seem to
+hear what I said; but after I had pulled the sheet over her head, he got
+up and followed us downstairs quietly, in a sort of thoughtful way.
+They marched us off along the road, leaving the door open and the candle
+burning. The chief engineer strode on without a word, but I looked back
+once or twice at the feeble gleam. After we had gone some considerable
+distance, the Garibaldino, who was walking by my side, suddenly said, ‘I
+have buried many men on battlefields on this continent. The priests talk
+of consecrated ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is holy; but
+the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests and tyrants, is
+the holiest of all. Doctor! I should like to bury her in the sea. No
+mummeries, candles, incense, no holy water mumbled over by priests. The
+spirit of liberty is upon the waters.’ . . . Amazing old man. He was
+saying all this in an undertone as if talking to himself.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” interrupted Captain Mitchell, impatiently. “Poor old chap!
+But have you any idea how that ruffian Sotillo obtained his information?
+He did not get hold of any of our Cargadores who helped with the truck,
+did he? But no, it is impossible! These were picked men we’ve had in
+our boats for these five years, and I paid them myself specially for the
+job, with instructions to keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at
+least. I saw them with my own eyes march on with the Italians to the
+railway yards. The chief promised to give them rations as long as they
+wanted to remain there.”
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, slowly, “I can tell you that you may
+say good-bye for ever to your best lighter, and to the Capataz of
+Cargadores.”
+
+At this, Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in the excess of
+his excitement. The doctor, without giving him time to exclaim, stated
+briefly the part played by Hirsch during the night.
+
+Captain Mitchell was overcome. “Drowned!” he muttered, in a bewildered
+and appalled whisper. “Drowned!” Afterwards he kept still, apparently
+listening, but too absorbed in the news of the catastrophe to follow the
+doctor’s narrative with attention.
+
+The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect ignorance, till at last
+Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story,
+which was got out of him again with the greatest difficulty, because
+every moment he would break out into lamentations. At last, Hirsch
+was led away, looking more dead than alive, and shut up in one of the
+upstairs rooms to be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his
+character of a man not admitted to the inner councils of the San Tome
+Administration, remarked that the story sounded incredible. Of course,
+he said, he couldn’t tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as
+he had been exclusively occupied with his own work in looking after the
+wounded, and also in attending Don Jose Avellanos. He had succeeded in
+assuming so well a tone of impartial indifference, that Sotillo seemed
+to be completely deceived. Till then a show of regular inquiry had
+been kept up; one of the officers sitting at the table wrote down the
+questions and the answers, the others, lounging about the room, listened
+attentively, puffing at their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the
+doctor. But at that point Sotillo ordered everybody out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+Directly they were alone, the colonel’s severe official manner changed.
+He rose and approached the doctor. His eyes shone with rapacity and
+hope; he became confidential. “The silver might have been indeed put on
+board the lighter, but it was not conceivable that it should have been
+taken out to sea.” The doctor, watching every word, nodded slightly,
+smoking with apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him
+as a sign of his friendly intentions. The doctor’s manner of cold
+detachment from the rest of the Europeans led Sotillo on, till, from
+conjecture to conjecture, he arrived at hinting that in his opinion this
+was a putup job on the part of Charles Gould, in order to get hold
+of that immense treasure all to himself. The doctor, observant and
+self-possessed, muttered, “He is very capable of that.”
+
+Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement, amusement, and
+indignation, “You said that of Charles Gould!” Disgust, and even some
+suspicion, crept into his tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans,
+there appeared to be something dubious about the doctor’s personality.
+
+“What on earth made you say that to this watch-stealing scoundrel?”
+ he asked. “What’s the object of an infernal lie of that sort? That
+confounded pick-pocket was quite capable of believing you.”
+
+He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent in the dark.
+
+“Yes, that is exactly what I did say,” he uttered at last, in a tone
+which would have made it clear enough to a third party that the pause
+was not of a reluctant but of a reflective character. Captain Mitchell
+thought that he had never heard anything so brazenly impudent in his
+life.
+
+“Well, well!” he muttered to himself, but he had not the heart to voice
+his thoughts. They were swept away by others full of astonishment and
+regret. A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed him: the loss of the
+silver, the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a blow to his
+sensibilities, because he had become attached to his Capataz as people
+get attached to their inferiors from love of ease and almost unconscious
+gratitude. And when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his
+sensibility was almost overcome by this miserable end. What a heavy
+blow for that poor young woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the
+species of crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young
+men paying attentions to young women. It seemed to him a natural and
+proper thing. Proper especially. As to sailors, it was different; it was
+not their place to marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as
+a matter of self-denial, for, he explained, life on board ship is not
+fit for a woman even at best, and if you leave her on shore, first of
+all it is not fair, and next she either suffers from it or doesn’t care
+a bit, which, in both cases, is bad. He couldn’t have told what upset
+him most--Charles Gould’s immense material loss, the death of Nostromo,
+which was a heavy loss to himself, or the idea of that beautiful and
+accomplished young woman being plunged into mourning.
+
+“Yes,” the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began again, “he
+believed me right enough. I thought he would have hugged me. ‘Si, si,’
+he said, ‘he will write to that partner of his, the rich Americano in
+San Francisco, that it is all lost. Why not? There is enough to share
+with many people.’”
+
+“But this is perfectly imbecile!” cried Captain Mitchell.
+
+The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and that his imbecility
+was ingenious enough to lead him completely astray. He had helped him
+only but a little way.
+
+“I mentioned,” the doctor said, “in a sort of casual way, that treasure
+is generally buried in the earth rather than set afloat upon the sea.
+At this my Sotillo slapped his forehead. ‘Por Dios, yes,’ he said; ‘they
+must have buried it on the shores of this harbour somewhere before they
+sailed out.’”
+
+“Heavens and earth!” muttered Captain Mitchell, “I should not have
+believed that anybody could be ass enough--” He paused, then went on
+mournfully: “But what’s the good of all this? It would have been a
+clever enough lie if the lighter had been still afloat. It would have
+kept that inconceivable idiot perhaps from sending out the steamer to
+cruise in the gulf. That was the danger that worried me no end.” Captain
+Mitchell sighed profoundly.
+
+“I had an object,” the doctor pronounced, slowly.
+
+“Had you?” muttered Captain Mitchell. “Well, that’s lucky, or else
+I would have thought that you went on fooling him for the fun of the
+thing. And perhaps that was your object. Well, I must say I personally
+wouldn’t condescend to that sort of thing. It is not to my taste. No,
+no. Blackening a friend’s character is not my idea of fun, if it were to
+fool the greatest blackguard on earth.”
+
+Had it not been for Captain Mitchell’s depression, caused by the fatal
+news, his disgust of Dr. Monygham would have taken a more outspoken
+shape; but he thought to himself that now it really did not matter what
+that man, whom he had never liked, would say and do.
+
+“I wonder,” he grumbled, “why they have shut us up together, or why
+Sotillo should have shut you up at all, since it seems to me you have
+been fairly chummy up there?”
+
+“Yes, I wonder,” said the doctor grimly.
+
+Captain Mitchell’s heart was so heavy that he would have preferred
+for the time being a complete solitude to the best of company. But
+any company would have been preferable to the doctor’s, at whom he had
+always looked askance as a sort of beachcomber of superior intelligence
+partly reclaimed from his abased state. That feeling led him to ask--
+
+“What has that ruffian done with the other two?”
+
+“The chief engineer he would have let go in any case,” said the doctor.
+“He wouldn’t like to have a quarrel with the railway upon his hands.
+Not just yet, at any rate. I don’t think, Captain Mitchell, that you
+understand exactly what Sotillo’s position is--”
+
+“I don’t see why I should bother my head about it,” snarled Captain
+Mitchell.
+
+“No,” assented the doctor, with the same grim composure. “I don’t see
+why you should. It wouldn’t help a single human being in the world if
+you thought ever so hard upon any subject whatever.”
+
+“No,” said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with evident depression. “A man
+locked up in a confounded dark hole is not much use to anybody.”
+
+“As to old Viola,” the doctor continued, as though he had not heard,
+“Sotillo released him for the same reason he is presently going to
+release you.”
+
+“Eh? What?” exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring like an owl in the
+darkness. “What is there in common between me and old Viola? More likely
+because the old chap has no watch and chain for the pickpocket to steal.
+And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham,” he went on with rising choler, “he
+will find it more difficult than he thinks to get rid of me. He will
+burn his fingers over that job yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I
+won’t go without my watch, and as to the rest--we shall see. I dare say
+it is no great matter for you to be locked up. But Joe Mitchell is a
+different kind of man, sir. I don’t mean to submit tamely to insult and
+robbery. I am a public character, sir.”
+
+And then Captain Mitchell became aware that the bars of the opening had
+become visible, a black grating upon a square of grey. The coming of the
+day silenced Captain Mitchell as if by the reflection that now in all
+the future days he would be deprived of the invaluable services of his
+Capataz. He leaned against the wall with his arms folded on his breast,
+and the doctor walked up and down the whole length of the place with his
+peculiar hobbling gait, as if slinking about on damaged feet. At the end
+furthest from the grating he would be lost altogether in the darkness.
+Only the slight limping shuffle could be heard. There was an air of
+moody detachment in that painful prowl kept up without a pause. When the
+door of the prison was suddenly flung open and his name shouted out he
+showed no surprise. He swerved sharply in his walk, and passed out
+at once, as though much depended upon his speed; but Captain Mitchell
+remained for some time with his shoulders against the wall, quite
+undecided in the bitterness of his spirit whether it wouldn’t be better
+to refuse to stir a limb in the way of protest. He had half a mind to
+get himself carried out, but after the officer at the door had
+shouted three or four times in tones of remonstrance and surprise he
+condescended to walk out.
+
+Sotillo’s manner had changed. The colonel’s off-hand civility was
+slightly irresolute, as though he were in doubt if civility were the
+proper course in this case. He observed Captain Mitchell attentively
+before he spoke from the big armchair behind the table in a
+condescending voice--
+
+“I have concluded not to detain you, Senor Mitchell. I am of a forgiving
+disposition. I make allowances. Let this be a lesson to you, however.”
+
+The peculiar dawn of Sulaco, which seems to break far away to the
+westward and creep back into the shade of the mountains, mingled with
+the reddish light of the candles. Captain Mitchell, in sign of contempt
+and indifference, let his eyes roam all over the room, and he gave a
+hard stare to the doctor, perched already on the casement of one of the
+windows, with his eyelids lowered, careless and thoughtful--or perhaps
+ashamed.
+
+Sotillo, ensconced in the vast armchair, remarked, “I should have
+thought that the feelings of a caballero would have dictated to you an
+appropriate reply.”
+
+He waited for it, but Captain Mitchell remaining mute, more from extreme
+resentment than from reasoned intention, Sotillo hesitated, glanced
+towards the doctor, who looked up and nodded, then went on with a slight
+effort--
+
+“Here, Senor Mitchell, is your watch. Learn how hasty and unjust has
+been your judgment of my patriotic soldiers.”
+
+Lying back in his seat, he extended his arm over the table and pushed
+the watch away slightly. Captain Mitchell walked up with undisguised
+eagerness, put it to his ear, then slipped it into his pocket coolly.
+
+Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance. Again he looked aside
+at the doctor, who stared at him unwinkingly.
+
+But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, without as much as a nod or a
+glance, he hastened to say--
+
+“You may go and wait downstairs for the senor doctor, whom I am going to
+liberate, too. You foreigners are insignificant, to my mind.”
+
+He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself, while Captain
+Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him with some interest.
+
+“The law shall take note later on of your transgressions,” Sotillo
+hurried on. “But as for me, you can live free, unguarded, unobserved.
+Do you hear, Senor Mitchell? You may depart to your affairs. You are
+beneath my notice. My attention is claimed by matters of the very
+highest importance.”
+
+Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an answer. It displeased
+him to be liberated insultingly; but want of sleep, prolonged anxieties,
+a profound disappointment with the fatal ending of the silver-saving
+business weighed upon his spirits. It was as much as he could do to
+conceal his uneasiness, not about himself perhaps, but about things
+in general. It occurred to him distinctly that something underhand was
+going on. As he went out he ignored the doctor pointedly.
+
+“A brute!” said Sotillo, as the door shut.
+
+Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and, thrusting his hands into
+the pockets of the long, grey dust coat he was wearing, made a few steps
+into the room.
+
+Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way, examined him from
+head to foot.
+
+“So your countrymen do not confide in you very much, senor doctor. They
+do not love you, eh? Why is that, I wonder?”
+
+The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, lifeless stare and the
+words, “Perhaps because I have lived too long in Costaguana.”
+
+Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black moustache.
+
+“Aha! But you love yourself,” he said, encouragingly.
+
+“If you leave them alone,” the doctor said, looking with the same
+lifeless stare at Sotillo’s handsome face, “they will betray themselves
+very soon. Meantime, I may try to make Don Carlos speak?”
+
+“Ah! senor doctor,” said Sotillo, wagging his head, “you are a man of
+quick intelligence. We were made to understand each other.” He turned
+away. He could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless stare,
+which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable emptiness like the black
+depth of an abyss.
+
+Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there remains an
+appreciation of rascality which, being conventional, is perfectly clear.
+Sotillo thought that Dr. Monygham, so different from all Europeans, was
+ready to sell his countrymen and Charles Gould, his employer, for some
+share of the San Tome silver. Sotillo did not despise him for that. The
+colonel’s want of moral sense was of a profound and innocent character.
+It bordered upon stupidity, moral stupidity. Nothing that served his
+ends could appear to him really reprehensible. Nevertheless, he despised
+Dr. Monygham. He had for him an immense and satisfactory contempt.
+He despised him with all his heart because he did not mean to let the
+doctor have any reward at all. He despised him, not as a man without
+faith and honour, but as a fool. Dr. Monygham’s insight into his
+character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore he thought the
+doctor a fool.
+
+Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel’s ideas had undergone some
+modification.
+
+He no longer wished for a political career in Montero’s administration.
+He had always doubted the safety of that course. Since he had learned
+from the chief engineer that at daylight most likely he would
+be confronted by Pedro Montero his misgivings on that point had
+considerably increased. The guerrillero brother of the general--the
+Pedrito of popular speech--had a reputation of his own. He wasn’t safe
+to deal with. Sotillo had vaguely planned seizing not only the treasure
+but the town itself, and then negotiating at leisure. But in the face of
+facts learned from the chief engineer (who had frankly disclosed to him
+the whole situation) his audacity, never of a very dashing kind, had
+been replaced by a most cautious hesitation.
+
+“An army--an army crossed the mountains under Pedrito already,” he had
+repeated, unable to hide his consternation. “If it had not been that I
+am given the news by a man of your position I would never have believed
+it. Astonishing!”
+
+“An armed force,” corrected the engineer, suavely. His aim was attained.
+It was to keep Sulaco clear of any armed occupation for a few hours
+longer, to let those whom fear impelled leave the town. In the general
+dismay there were families hopeful enough to fly upon the road towards
+Los Hatos, which was left open by the withdrawal of the armed rabble
+under Senores Fuentes and Gamacho, to Rincon, with their enthusiastic
+welcome for Pedro Montero. It was a hasty and risky exodus, and it was
+said that Hernandez, occupying with his band the woods about Los Hatos,
+was receiving the fugitives. That a good many people he knew were
+contemplating such a flight had been well known to the chief engineer.
+
+Father Corbelan’s efforts in the cause of that most pious robber had not
+been altogether fruitless. The political chief of Sulaco had yielded
+at the last moment to the urgent entreaties of the priest, had signed a
+provisional nomination appointing Hernandez a general, and calling upon
+him officially in this new capacity to preserve order in the town. The
+fact is that the political chief, seeing the situation desperate, did
+not care what he signed. It was the last official document he signed
+before he left the palace of the Intendencia for the refuge of the
+O.S.N. Company’s office. But even had he meant his act to be effective
+it was already too late. The riot which he feared and expected broke out
+in less than an hour after Father Corbelan had left him. Indeed, Father
+Corbelan, who had appointed a meeting with Nostromo in the Dominican
+Convent, where he had his residence in one of the cells, never managed
+to reach the place. From the Intendencia he had gone straight on to the
+Avellanos’s house to tell his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there
+no more than half an hour he had found himself cut off from his ascetic
+abode. Nostromo, after waiting there for some time, watching uneasily
+the increasing uproar in the street, had made his way to the offices of
+the Porvenir, and stayed there till daylight, as Decoud had mentioned
+in the letter to his sister. Thus the Capataz, instead of riding towards
+the Los Hatos woods as bearer of Hernandez’s nomination, had remained in
+town to save the life of the President Dictator, to assist in repressing
+the outbreak of the mob, and at last to sail out with the silver of the
+mine.
+
+But Father Corbelan, escaping to Hernandez, had the document in his
+pocket, a piece of official writing turning a bandit into a general in
+a memorable last official act of the Ribierist party, whose watchwords
+were honesty, peace, and progress. Probably neither the priest nor the
+bandit saw the irony of it. Father Corbelan must have found messengers
+to send into the town, for early on the second day of the disturbances
+there were rumours of Hernandez being on the road to Los Hatos ready
+to receive those who would put themselves under his protection. A
+strange-looking horseman, elderly and audacious, had appeared in the
+town, riding slowly while his eyes examined the fronts of the houses,
+as though he had never seen such high buildings before. Before the
+cathedral he had dismounted, and, kneeling in the middle of the Plaza,
+his bridle over his arm and his hat lying in front of him on the ground,
+had bowed his head, crossing himself and beating his breast for some
+little time. Remounting his horse, with a fearless but not unfriendly
+look round the little gathering formed about his public devotions, he
+had asked for the Casa Avellanos. A score of hands were extended in
+answer, with fingers pointing up the Calle de la Constitucion.
+
+The horseman had gone on with only a glance of casual curiosity upwards
+to the windows of the Amarilla Club at the corner. His stentorian voice
+shouted periodically in the empty street, “Which is the Casa Avellanos?”
+ till an answer came from the scared porter, and he disappeared under
+the gate. The letter he was bringing, written by Father Corbelan with
+a pencil by the camp-fire of Hernandez, was addressed to Don Jose, of
+whose critical state the priest was not aware. Antonia read it, and,
+after consulting Charles Gould, sent it on for the information of the
+gentlemen garrisoning the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made
+up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the last day--the last
+hours perhaps--of her father’s life to the keeping of the bandit, whose
+existence was a protest against the irresponsible tyranny of all parties
+alike, against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos
+woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band
+less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle’s obstinate
+defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief in the man whom
+she loved.
+
+In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his head for Hernandez’s
+fidelity. As to his power, he pointed out that he had remained unsubdued
+for so many years. In that letter Decoud’s idea of the new Occidental
+State (whose flourishing and stable condition is a matter of common
+knowledge now) was for the first time made public and used as an
+argument. Hernandez, ex-bandit and the last general of Ribierist
+creation, was confident of being able to hold the tract of country
+between the woods of Los Hatos and the coast range till that devoted
+patriot, Don Martin Decoud, could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco
+for the reconquest of the town.
+
+“Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side,” wrote Father
+Corbelan; there was no time to reflect upon or to controvert his
+statement; and if the discussion started upon the reading of that letter
+in the Amarilla Club was violent, it was also shortlived. In the
+general bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at the idea with joyful
+astonishment as upon the amazing discovery of a new hope. Others became
+fascinated by the prospect of immediate personal safety for their women
+and children. The majority caught at it as a drowning man catches at
+a straw. Father Corbelan was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from
+Pedrito Montero with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
+with their armed rabble.
+
+All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discussion went on in
+the big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even those members posted at the
+windows with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street in
+case of an offensive return of the populace shouted their opinions and
+arguments over their shoulders. As dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting
+those caballeros who were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew
+into the corredor, where at a little table in the light of two
+candles he busied himself in composing an address, or rather a solemn
+declaration to be presented to Pedrito Montero by a deputation of such
+members of Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea was
+to propitiate him in order to save the form at least of parliamentary
+institutions. Seated before a blank sheet of paper, a goose-quill pen in
+his hand and surged upon from all sides, he turned to the right and to
+the left, repeating with solemn insistence--
+
+“Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of silence! We ought to make
+it clear that we bow in all good faith to the accomplished facts.”
+
+The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a melancholy
+satisfaction. The hubbub of voices round him was growing strained and
+hoarse. In the sudden pauses the excited grimacing of the faces would
+sink all at once into the stillness of profound dejection.
+
+Meantime, the exodus had begun. Carretas full of ladies and children
+rolled swaying across the Plaza, with men walking or riding by their
+side; mounted parties followed on mules and horses; the poorest were
+setting out on foot, men and women carrying bundles, clasping babies in
+their arms, leading old people, dragging along the bigger children. When
+Charles Gould, after leaving the doctor and the engineer at the Casa
+Viola, entered the town by the harbour gate, all those that had meant to
+go were gone, and the others had barricaded themselves in their houses.
+In the whole dark street there was only one spot of flickering lights
+and moving figures, where the Senor Administrador recognized his wife’s
+carriage waiting at the door of the Avellanos’s house. He rode up,
+almost unnoticed, and looked on without a word while some of his own
+servants came out of the gate carrying Don Jose Avellanos, who, with
+closed eyes and motionless features, appeared perfectly lifeless. His
+wife and Antonia walked on each side of the improvised stretcher, which
+was put at once into the carriage. The two women embraced; while from
+the other side of the landau Father Corbelan’s emissary, with his ragged
+beard all streaked with grey, and high, bronzed cheek-bones, stared,
+sitting upright in the saddle. Then Antonia, dry-eyed, got in by the
+side of the stretcher, and, after making the sign of the cross rapidly,
+lowered a thick veil upon her face. The servants and the three or four
+neighbours who had come to assist, stood back, uncovering their heads.
+On the box, Ignacio, resigned now to driving all night (and to having
+perhaps his throat cut before daylight) looked back surlily over his
+shoulder.
+
+“Drive carefully,” cried Mrs. Gould in a tremulous voice.
+
+“Si, carefully; si nina,” he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round
+leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of the
+light.
+
+“I will see them as far as the ford,” said Charles Gould to his wife.
+She stood on the edge of the sidewalk with her hands clasped lightly,
+and nodded to him as he followed after the carriage. And now the windows
+of the Amarilla Club were dark. The last spark of resistance had died
+out. Turning his head at the corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing
+over to their own gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of
+their neighbours, a well-known merchant and landowner of the province,
+followed at her elbow, talking with great gestures. As she passed in all
+the lights went out in the street, which remained dark and empty from
+end to end.
+
+The houses of the vast Plaza were lost in the night. High up, like a
+star, there was a small gleam in one of the towers of the cathedral;
+and the equestrian statue gleamed pale against the black trees of the
+Alameda, like a ghost of royalty haunting the scenes of revolution. The
+rare prowlers they met ranged themselves against the wall. Beyond the
+last houses the carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust,
+and with a greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall from
+the foliage of the trees bordering the country road. The emissary from
+Hernandez’s camp pushed his horse close to Charles Gould.
+
+“Caballero,” he said in an interested voice, “you are he whom they call
+the King of Sulaco, the master of the mine? Is it not so?”
+
+“Yes, I am the master of the mine,” answered Charles Gould.
+
+The man cantered for a time in silence, then said, “I have a brother, a
+sereno in your service in the San Tome valley. You have proved yourself
+a just man. There has been no wrong done to any one since you called
+upon the people to work in the mountains. My brother says that no
+official of the Government, no oppressor of the Campo, has been seen on
+your side of the stream. Your own officials do not oppress the people
+in the gorge. Doubtless they are afraid of your severity. You are a just
+man and a powerful one,” he added.
+
+He spoke in an abrupt, independent tone, but evidently he was
+communicative with a purpose. He told Charles Gould that he had been
+a ranchero in one of the lower valleys, far south, a neighbour of
+Hernandez in the old days, and godfather to his eldest boy; one of those
+who joined him in his resistance to the recruiting raid which was the
+beginning of all their misfortunes. It was he that, when his compadre
+had been carried off, had buried his wife and children, murdered by the
+soldiers.
+
+“Si, senor,” he muttered, hoarsely, “I and two or three others, the
+lucky ones left at liberty, buried them all in one grave near the ashes
+of their ranch, under the tree that had shaded its roof.”
+
+It was to him, too, that Hernandez came after he had deserted, three
+years afterwards. He had still his uniform on with the sergeant’s
+stripes on the sleeve, and the blood of his colonel upon his hands and
+breast. Three troopers followed him, of those who had started in pursuit
+but had ridden on for liberty. And he told Charles Gould how he and
+a few friends, seeing those soldiers, lay in ambush behind some rocks
+ready to pull the trigger on them, when he recognized his compadre and
+jumped up from cover, shouting his name, because he knew that
+Hernandez could not have been coming back on an errand of injustice and
+oppression. Those three soldiers, together with the party who lay
+behind the rocks, had formed the nucleus of the famous band, and he, the
+narrator, had been the favourite lieutenant of Hernandez for many, many
+years. He mentioned proudly that the officials had put a price upon his
+head, too; but it did not prevent it getting sprinkled with grey upon
+his shoulders. And now he had lived long enough to see his compadre made
+a general.
+
+He had a burst of muffled laughter. “And now from robbers we have become
+soldiers. But look, Caballero, at those who made us soldiers and him a
+general! Look at these people!”
+
+Ignacio shouted. The light of the carriage lamps, running along the
+nopal hedges that crowned the bank on each side, flashed upon the scared
+faces of people standing aside in the road, sunk deep, like an English
+country lane, into the soft soil of the Campo. They cowered; their eyes
+glistened very big for a second; and then the light, running on, fell
+upon the half-denuded roots of a big tree, on another stretch of nopal
+hedge, caught up another bunch of faces glaring back apprehensively.
+Three women--of whom one was carrying a child--and a couple of men in
+civilian dress--one armed with a sabre and another with a gun--were
+grouped about a donkey carrying two bundles tied up in blankets. Further
+on Ignacio shouted again to pass a carreta, a long wooden box on two
+high wheels, with the door at the back swinging open. Some ladies in it
+must have recognized the white mules, because they screamed out, “Is it
+you, Dona Emilia?”
+
+At the turn of the road the glare of a big fire filled the short stretch
+vaulted over by the branches meeting overhead. Near the ford of a
+shallow stream a roadside rancho of woven rushes and a roof of grass had
+been set on fire by accident, and the flames, roaring viciously, lit
+up an open space blocked with horses, mules, and a distracted, shouting
+crowd of people. When Ignacio pulled up, several ladies on foot assailed
+the carriage, begging Antonia for a seat. To their clamour she answered
+by pointing silently to her father.
+
+“I must leave you here,” said Charles Gould, in the uproar. The flames
+leaped up sky-high, and in the recoil from the scorching heat across the
+road the stream of fugitives pressed against the carriage. A middle-aged
+lady dressed in black silk, but with a coarse manta over her head and a
+rough branch for a stick in her hand, staggered against the front wheel.
+Two young girls, frightened and silent, were clinging to her arms.
+Charles Gould knew her very well.
+
+“Misericordia! We are getting terribly bruised in this crowd!” she
+exclaimed, smiling up courageously to him. “We have started on foot. All
+our servants ran away yesterday to join the democrats. We are going to
+put ourselves under the protection of Father Corbelan, of your sainted
+uncle, Antonia. He has wrought a miracle in the heart of a most
+merciless robber. A miracle!”
+
+She raised her voice gradually up to a scream as she was borne along by
+the pressure of people getting out of the way of some carts coming up
+out of the ford at a gallop, with loud yells and cracking of whips.
+Great masses of sparks mingled with black smoke flew over the road;
+the bamboos of the walls detonated in the fire with the sound of an
+irregular fusillade. And then the bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving
+only a red dusk crowded with aimless dark shadows drifting in contrary
+directions; the noise of voices seemed to die away with the flame;
+and the tumult of heads, arms, quarrelling, and imprecations passed on
+fleeing into the darkness.
+
+“I must leave you now,” repeated Charles Gould to Antonia. She turned
+her head slowly and uncovered her face. The emissary and compadre of
+Hernandez spurred his horse close up.
+
+“Has not the master of the mine any message to send to Hernandez, the
+master of the Campo?”
+
+The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his
+determined purpose he held the mine, and the indomitable bandit held
+the Campo by the same precarious tenure. They were equals before the
+lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disentangle one’s activity
+from its debasing contacts. A close-meshed net of crime and corruption
+lay upon the whole country. An immense and weary discouragement sealed
+his lips for a time.
+
+“You are a just man,” urged the emissary of Hernandez. “Look at those
+people who made my compadre a general and have turned us all into
+soldiers. Look at those oligarchs fleeing for life, with only the
+clothes on their backs. My compadre does not think of that, but our
+followers may be wondering greatly, and I would speak for them to you.
+Listen, senor! For many months now the Campo has been our own. We
+need ask no man for anything; but soldiers must have their pay to live
+honestly when the wars are over. It is believed that your soul is so
+just that a prayer from you would cure the sickness of every beast, like
+the orison of the upright judge. Let me have some words from your lips
+that would act like a charm upon the doubts of our partida, where all
+are men.”
+
+“Do you hear what he says?” Charles Gould said in English to Antonia.
+
+“Forgive us our misery!” she exclaimed, hurriedly. “It is your character
+that is the inexhaustible treasure which may save us all yet; your
+character, Carlos, not your wealth. I entreat you to give this man your
+word that you will accept any arrangement my uncle may make with their
+chief. One word. He will want no more.”
+
+On the site of the roadside hut there remained nothing but an enormous
+heap of embers, throwing afar a darkening red glow, in which Antonia’s
+face appeared deeply flushed with excitement. Charles Gould, with only a
+short hesitation, pronounced the required pledge. He was like a man who
+had ventured on a precipitous path with no room to turn, where the only
+chance of safety is to press forward. At that moment he understood
+it thoroughly as he looked down at Don Jose stretched out, hardly
+breathing, by the side of the erect Antonia, vanquished in a lifelong
+struggle with the powers of moral darkness, whose stagnant depths breed
+monstrous crimes and monstrous illusions. In a few words the emissary
+from Hernandez expressed his complete satisfaction. Stoically Antonia
+lowered her veil, resisting the longing to inquire about Decoud’s
+escape. But Ignacio leered morosely over his shoulder.
+
+“Take a good look at the mules, mi amo,” he grumbled. “You shall never
+see them again!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+Charles Gould turned towards the town. Before him the jagged peaks
+of the Sierra came out all black in the clear dawn. Here and there a
+muffled lepero whisked round the corner of a grass-grown street before
+the ringing hoofs of his horse. Dogs barked behind the walls of the
+gardens; and with the colourless light the chill of the snows seemed to
+fall from the mountains upon the disjointed pavements and the shuttered
+houses with broken cornices and the plaster peeling in patches between
+the flat pilasters of the fronts. The daybreak struggled with the
+gloom under the arcades on the Plaza, with no signs of country people
+disposing their goods for the day’s market, piles of fruit, bundles of
+vegetables ornamented with flowers, on low benches under enormous mat
+umbrellas; with no cheery early morning bustle of villagers,
+women, children, and loaded donkeys. Only a few scattered knots of
+revolutionists stood in the vast space, all looking one way from under
+their slouched hats for some sign of news from Rincon. The largest of
+those groups turned about like one man as Charles Gould passed, and
+shouted, “Viva la libertad!” after him in a menacing tone.
+
+Charles Gould rode on, and turned into the archway of his house. In the
+patio littered with straw, a practicante, one of Dr. Monygham’s native
+assistants, sat on the ground with his back against the rim of the
+fountain, fingering a guitar discreetly, while two girls of the lower
+class, standing up before him, shuffled their feet a little and waved
+their arms, humming a popular dance tune.
+
+Most of the wounded during the two days of rioting had been taken away
+already by their friends and relations, but several figures could be
+seen sitting up balancing their bandaged heads in time to the music.
+Charles Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the bakery door
+took hold of the horse’s bridle; the practicante endeavoured to conceal
+his guitar hastily; the girls, unabashed, stepped back smiling; and
+Charles Gould, on his way to the staircase, glanced into a dark corner
+of the patio at another group, a mortally wounded Cargador with a woman
+kneeling by his side; she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the same
+time to force a piece of orange between the stiffening lips of the dying
+man.
+
+The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity and sufferings
+of that incorrigible people; the cruel futility of lives and of deaths
+thrown away in the vain endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the
+problem. Unlike Decoud, Charles Gould could not play lightly a part in
+a tragic farce. It was tragic enough for him in all conscience, but he
+could see no farcical element. He suffered too much under a conviction
+of irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and too idealistic
+to look upon its terrible humours with amusement, as Martin Decoud,
+the imaginative materialist, was able to do in the dry light of his
+scepticism. To him, as to all of us, the compromises with his conscience
+appeared uglier than ever in the light of failure. His taciturnity,
+assumed with a purpose, had prevented him from tampering openly with
+his thoughts; but the Gould Concession had insidiously corrupted his
+judgment. He might have known, he said to himself, leaning over the
+balustrade of the corredor, that Ribierism could never come to anything.
+The mine had corrupted his judgment by making him sick of bribing and
+intriguing merely to have his work left alone from day to day. Like
+his father, he did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him. He had
+persuaded himself that, apart from higher considerations, the backing up
+of Don Jose’s hopes of reform was good business. He had gone forth into
+the senseless fray as his poor uncle, whose sword hung on the wall of
+his study, had gone forth--in the defence of the commonest decencies
+of organized society. Only his weapon was the wealth of the mine, more
+far-reaching and subtle than an honest blade of steel fitted into a
+simple brass guard.
+
+More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of wealth, double-edged
+with the cupidity and misery of mankind, steeped in all the vices of
+self-indulgence as in a concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very
+cause for which it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly in the hand.
+There was nothing for it now but to go on using it. But he promised
+himself to see it shattered into small bits before he let it be wrenched
+from his grasp.
+
+After all, with his English parentage and English upbringing, he
+perceived that he was an adventurer in Costaguana, the descendant of
+adventurers enlisted in a foreign legion, of men who had sought fortune
+in a revolutionary war, who had planned revolutions, who had believed in
+revolutions. For all the uprightness of his character, he had something
+of an adventurer’s easy morality which takes count of personal risk in
+the ethical appraising of his action. He was prepared, if need be, to
+blow up the whole San Tome mountain sky high out of the territory of the
+Republic. This resolution expressed the tenacity of his character, the
+remorse of that subtle conjugal infidelity through which his wife was
+no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts, something of his father’s
+imaginative weakness, and something, too, of the spirit of a buccaneer
+throwing a lighted match into the magazine rather than surrender his
+ship.
+
+Down below in the patio the wounded Cargador had breathed his last. The
+woman cried out once, and her cry, unexpected and shrill, made all the
+wounded sit up. The practicante scrambled to his feet, and, guitar in
+hand, gazed steadily in her direction with elevated eyebrows. The two
+girls--sitting now one on each side of their wounded relative, with
+their knees drawn up and long cigars between their lips--nodded at each
+other significantly.
+
+Charles Gould, looking down over the balustrade, saw three men dressed
+ceremoniously in black frock-coats with white shirts, and wearing
+European round hats, enter the patio from the street. One of them, head
+and shoulders taller than the two others, advanced with marked gravity,
+leading the way. This was Don Juste Lopez, accompanied by two of his
+friends, members of Assembly, coming to call upon the Administrador of
+the San Tome mine at this early hour. They saw him, too, waved their
+hands to him urgently, walking up the stairs as if in procession.
+
+Don Juste, astonishingly changed by having shaved off altogether his
+damaged beard, had lost with it nine-tenths of his outward dignity. Even
+at that time of serious pre-occupation Charles Gould could not help
+noting the revealed ineptitude in the aspect of the man. His companions
+looked crestfallen and sleepy. One kept on passing the tip of his tongue
+over his parched lips; the other’s eyes strayed dully over the tiled
+floor of the corredor, while Don Juste, standing a little in advance,
+harangued the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. It was his firm
+opinion that forms had to be observed. A new governor is always visited
+by deputations from the Cabildo, which is the Municipal Council,
+from the Consulado, the commercial Board, and it was proper that the
+Provincial Assembly should send a deputation, too, if only to assert
+the existence of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste proposed that Don
+Carlos Gould, as the most prominent citizen of the province, should join
+the Assembly’s deputation. His position was exceptional, his personality
+known through the length and breadth of the whole Republic. Official
+courtesies must not be neglected, if they are gone through with a
+bleeding heart. The acceptance of accomplished facts may save yet the
+precious vestiges of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste’s eyes glowed
+dully; he believed in parliamentary institutions--and the convinced
+drone of his voice lost itself in the stillness of the house like the
+deep buzzing of some ponderous insect.
+
+Charles Gould had turned round to listen patiently, leaning his elbow on
+the balustrade. He shook his head a little, refusing, almost touched by
+the anxious gaze of the President of the Provincial Assembly. It was not
+Charles Gould’s policy to make the San Tome mine a party to any formal
+proceedings.
+
+“My advice, senores, is that you should wait for your fate in your
+houses. There is no necessity for you to give yourselves up formally
+into Montero’s hands. Submission to the inevitable, as Don Juste calls
+it, is all very well, but when the inevitable is called Pedrito
+Montero there is no need to exhibit pointedly the whole extent of your
+surrender. The fault of this country is the want of measure in
+political life. Flat acquiescence in illegality, followed by sanguinary
+reaction--that, senores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous
+future.”
+
+Charles Gould stopped before the sad bewilderment of the faces, the
+wondering, anxious glances of the eyes. The feeling of pity for those
+men, putting all their trust into words of some sort, while murder and
+rapine stalked over the land, had betrayed him into what seemed empty
+loquacity. Don Juste murmured--
+
+“You are abandoning us, Don Carlos. . . . And yet, parliamentary
+institutions--”
+
+He could not finish from grief. For a moment he put his hand over his
+eyes. Charles Gould, in his fear of empty loquacity, made no answer
+to the charge. He returned in silence their ceremonious bows. His
+taciturnity was his refuge. He understood that what they sought was to
+get the influence of the San Tome mine on their side. They wanted to
+go on a conciliating errand to the victor under the wing of the Gould
+Concession. Other public bodies--the Cabildo, the Consulado--would be
+coming, too, presently, seeking the support of the most stable, the most
+effective force they had ever known to exist in their province.
+
+The doctor, arriving with his sharp, jerky walk, found that the master
+had retired into his own room with orders not to be disturbed on any
+account. But Dr. Monygham was not anxious to see Charles Gould at once.
+He spent some time in a rapid examination of his wounded. He gazed down
+upon each in turn, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger;
+his steady stare met without expression their silently inquisitive look.
+All these cases were doing well; but when he came to the dead Cargador
+he stopped a little longer, surveying not the man who had ceased to
+suffer, but the woman kneeling in silent contemplation of the rigid
+face, with its pinched nostrils and a white gleam in the imperfectly
+closed eyes. She lifted her head slowly, and said in a dull voice--
+
+“It is not long since he had become a Cargador--only a few weeks. His
+worship the Capataz had accepted him after many entreaties.”
+
+“I am not responsible for the great Capataz,” muttered the doctor,
+moving off.
+
+Directing his course upstairs towards the door of Charles Gould’s room,
+the doctor at the last moment hesitated; then, turning away from the
+handle with a shrug of his uneven shoulders, slunk off hastily along the
+corredor in search of Mrs. Gould’s camerista.
+
+Leonarda told him that the senora had not risen yet. The senora had
+given into her charge the girls belonging to that Italian posadero. She,
+Leonarda, had put them to bed in her own room. The fair girl had cried
+herself to sleep, but the dark one--the bigger--had not closed her eyes
+yet. She sat up in bed clutching the sheets right up under her chin and
+staring before her like a little witch. Leonarda did not approve of the
+Viola children being admitted to the house. She made this feeling clear
+by the indifferent tone in which she inquired whether their mother was
+dead yet. As to the senora, she must be asleep. Ever since she had gone
+into her room after seeing the departure of Dona Antonia with her dying
+father, there had been no sound behind her door.
+
+The doctor, rousing himself out of profound reflection, told her
+abruptly to call her mistress at once. He hobbled off to wait for Mrs.
+Gould in the sala. He was very tired, but too excited to sit down. In
+this great drawing-room, now empty, in which his withered soul had been
+refreshed after many arid years and his outcast spirit had accepted
+silently the toleration of many side-glances, he wandered haphazard
+amongst the chairs and tables till Mrs. Gould, enveloped in a morning
+wrapper, came in rapidly.
+
+“You know that I never approved of the silver being sent away,” the
+doctor began at once, as a preliminary to the narrative of his night’s
+adventures in association with Captain Mitchell, the engineer-in-chief,
+and old Viola, at Sotillo’s headquarters. To the doctor, with his
+special conception of this political crisis, the removal of the silver
+had seemed an irrational and ill-omened measure. It was as if a general
+were sending the best part of his troops away on the eve of battle
+upon some recondite pretext. The whole lot of ingots might have been
+concealed somewhere where they could have been got at for the purpose
+of staving off the dangers which were menacing the security of the Gould
+Concession. The Administrador had acted as if the immense and powerful
+prosperity of the mine had been founded on methods of probity, on the
+sense of usefulness. And it was nothing of the kind. The method followed
+had been the only one possible. The Gould Concession had ransomed
+its way through all those years. It was a nauseous process. He quite
+understood that Charles Gould had got sick of it and had left the old
+path to back up that hopeless attempt at reform. The doctor did not
+believe in the reform of Costaguana. And now the mine was back again in
+its old path, with the disadvantage that henceforth it had to deal not
+only with the greed provoked by its wealth, but with the resentment
+awakened by the attempt to free itself from its bondage to moral
+corruption. That was the penalty of failure. What made him uneasy was
+that Charles Gould seemed to him to have weakened at the decisive moment
+when a frank return to the old methods was the only chance. Listening to
+Decoud’s wild scheme had been a weakness.
+
+The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, “Decoud! Decoud!” He hobbled
+about the room with slight, angry laughs. Many years ago both his ankles
+had been seriously damaged in the course of a certain investigation
+conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a commission composed of
+military men. Their nomination had been signified to them unexpectedly
+at the dead of night, with scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a
+tempestuous voice, by Guzman Bento. The old tyrant, maddened by one of
+his sudden accesses of suspicion, mingled spluttering appeals to their
+fidelity with imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and casements
+of the castle on the hill had been already filled with prisoners. The
+commission was charged now with the task of discovering the iniquitous
+conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour of his country.
+
+Their dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into a hasty
+ferocity of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was not accustomed to wait. A
+conspiracy had to be discovered. The courtyards of the castle resounded
+with the clanking of leg-irons, sounds of blows, yells of pain; and
+the commission of high officers laboured feverishly, concealing their
+distress and apprehensions from each other, and especially from their
+secretary, Father Beron, an army chaplain, at that time very much in
+the confidence of the Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big
+round-shouldered man, with an unclean-looking, overgrown tonsure on the
+top of his flat head, of a dingy, yellow complexion, softly fat, with
+greasy stains all down the front of his lieutenant’s uniform, and a
+small cross embroidered in white cotton on his left breast. He had a
+heavy nose and a pendant lip. Dr. Monygham remembered him still. He
+remembered him against all the force of his will striving its utmost to
+forget. Father Beron had been adjoined to the commission by Guzman Bento
+expressly for the purpose that his enlightened zeal should assist them
+in their labours. Dr. Monygham could by no manner of means forget the
+zeal of Father Beron, or his face, or the pitiless, monotonous voice in
+which he pronounced the words, “Will you confess now?”
+
+This memory did not make him shudder, but it had made of him what he was
+in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of common decencies,
+something between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor. But
+not all respectable people would have had the necessary delicacy of
+sentiment to understand with what trouble of mind and accuracy of vision
+Dr. Monygham, medical officer of the San Tome mine, remembered Father
+Beron, army chaplain, and once a secretary of a military commission.
+After all these years Dr. Monygham, in his rooms at the end of the
+hospital building in the San Tome gorge, remembered Father Beron as
+distinctly as ever. He remembered that priest at night, sometimes, in
+his sleep. On such nights the doctor waited for daylight with a candle
+lighted, and walking the whole length of his rooms to and fro, staring
+down at his bare feet, his arms hugging his sides tightly. He would
+dream of Father Beron sitting at the end of a long black table, behind
+which, in a row, appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes of the
+military members, nibbling the feather of a quill pen, and listening
+with weary and impatient scorn to the protestations of some prisoner
+calling heaven to witness of his innocence, till he burst out, “What’s
+the use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let me take
+him outside for a while.” And Father Beron would go outside after
+the clanking prisoner, led away between two soldiers. Such interludes
+happened on many days, many times, with many prisoners. When the
+prisoner returned he was ready to make a full confession, Father Beron
+would declare, leaning forward with that dull, surfeited look which can
+be seen in the eyes of gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.
+
+The priest’s inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from the want
+of classical apparatus of the Inquisition. At no time of the world’s
+history have men been at a loss how to inflict mental and bodily anguish
+upon their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to them in the
+growing complexity of their passions and the early refinement of their
+ingenuity. But it may safely be said that primeval man did not go to
+the trouble of inventing tortures. He was indolent and pure of heart.
+He brained his neighbour ferociously with a stone axe from necessity and
+without malice. The stupidest mind may invent a rankling phrase or brand
+the innocent with a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod; a
+few muskets in combination with a length of hide rope; or even a simple
+mallet of heavy, hard wood applied with a swing to human fingers or
+to the joints of a human body is enough for the infliction of the most
+exquisite torture. The doctor had been a very stubborn prisoner, and, as
+a natural consequence of that “bad disposition” (so Father Beron called
+it), his subjugation had been very crushing and very complete. That is
+why the limp in his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his
+cheeks were so pronounced. His confessions, when they came at last, were
+very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the floor,
+he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and rage, at the fertility
+of his imagination when stimulated by a sort of pain which makes truth,
+honour, selfrespect, and life itself matters of little moment.
+
+And he could not forget Father Beron with his monotonous phrase, “Will
+you confess now?” reaching him in an awful iteration and lucidity of
+meaning through the delirious incoherence of unbearable pain. He could
+not forget. But that was not the worst. Had he met Father Beron in the
+street after all these years Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed
+before him. This contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was
+dead; but the sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking
+anybody in the face.
+
+Dr. Monygham had become, in a manner, the slave of a ghost. It was
+obviously impossible to take his knowledge of Father Beron home to
+Europe. When making his extorted confessions to the Military Board,
+Dr. Monygham was not seeking to avoid death. He longed for it. Sitting
+half-naked for hours on the wet earth of his prison, and so motionless
+that the spiders, his companions, attached their webs to his matted
+hair, he consoled the misery of his soul with acute reasonings that he
+had confessed to crimes enough for a sentence of death--that they had
+gone too far with him to let him live to tell the tale.
+
+But, as if by a refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham was left for months
+to decay slowly in the darkness of his grave-like prison. It was no
+doubt hoped that it would finish him off without the trouble of an
+execution; but Dr. Monygham had an iron constitution. It was Guzman
+Bento who died, not by the knife thrust of a conspirator, but from a
+stroke of apoplexy, and Dr. Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters
+were struck off by the light of a candle, which, after months of gloom,
+hurt his eyes so much that he had to cover his face with his hands. He
+was raised up. His heart was beating violently with the fear of this
+liberty. When he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his feet
+made him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were thrust into his hands,
+and he was pushed out of the passage. It was dusk; candles glimmered
+already in the windows of the officers’ quarters round the courtyard;
+but the twilight sky dazed him by its enormous and overwhelming
+brilliance. A thin poncho hung over his naked, bony shoulders; the rags
+of his trousers came down no lower than his knees; an eighteen months’
+growth of hair fell in dirty grey locks on each side of his sharp
+cheek-bones. As he dragged himself past the guard-room door, one of the
+soldiers, lolling outside, moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward
+with a strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on his head. And
+Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, continued on his way. He advanced
+one stick, then one maimed foot, then the other stick; the other foot
+followed only a very short distance along the ground, toilfully, as
+though it were almost too heavy to be moved at all; and yet his legs
+under the hanging angles of the poncho appeared no thicker than the two
+sticks in his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated his bent body,
+all his wasted limbs, his bony head, the conical, ragged crown of the
+sombrero, whose ample flat rim rested on his shoulders.
+
+In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr. Monygham go forth to
+take possession of his liberty. And these conditions seemed to bind
+him indissolubly to the land of Costaguana like an awful procedure of
+naturalization, involving him deep in the national life, far deeper than
+any amount of success and honour could have done. They did away with his
+Europeanism; for Dr. Monygham had made himself an ideal conception
+of his disgrace. It was a conception eminently fit and proper for an
+officer and a gentleman. Dr. Monygham, before he went out to Costaguana,
+had been surgeon in one of Her Majesty’s regiments of foot. It was a
+conception which took no account of physiological facts or reasonable
+arguments; but it was not stupid for all that. It was simple. A rule of
+conduct resting mainly on severe rejections is necessarily simple. Dr.
+Monygham’s view of what it behoved him to do was severe; it was an ideal
+view, in so much that it was the imaginative exaggeration of a correct
+feeling. It was also, in its force, influence, and persistency, the view
+of an eminently loyal nature.
+
+There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham’s nature. He had
+settled it all on Mrs. Gould’s head. He believed her worthy of every
+devotion. At the bottom of his heart he felt an angry uneasiness before
+the prosperity of the San Tome mine, because its growth was robbing her
+of all peace of mind. Costaguana was no place for a woman of that kind.
+What could Charles Gould have been thinking of when he brought her
+out there! It was outrageous! And the doctor had watched the course
+of events with a grim and distant reserve which, he imagined, his
+lamentable history imposed upon him.
+
+Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out of account the
+safety of her husband. The doctor had contrived to be in town at the
+critical time because he mistrusted Charles Gould. He considered him
+hopelessly infected with the madness of revolutions. That is why he
+hobbled in distress in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould on that
+morning, exclaiming, “Decoud, Decoud!” in a tone of mournful irritation.
+
+Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening eyes, looked
+straight before her at the sudden enormity of that disaster. The
+finger-tips on one hand rested lightly on a low little table by her
+side, and the arm trembled right up to the shoulder. The sun, which
+looks late upon Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of its power high
+up on the sky from behind the dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had
+precipitated the delicate, smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which
+the town lies steeped during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of
+black shade and spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three long rectangles
+of sunshine fell through the windows of the sala; while just across the
+street the front of the Avellanos’s house appeared very sombre in its
+own shadow seen through the flood of light.
+
+A voice said at the door, “What of Decoud?”
+
+It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming along the corredor.
+His glance just glided over his wife and struck full at the doctor.
+
+“You have brought some news, doctor?”
+
+Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough. For some time
+after he had done, the Administrador of the San Tome mine remained
+looking at him without a word. Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her
+hands lying on her lap. A silence reigned between those three motionless
+persons. Then Charles Gould spoke--
+
+“You must want some breakfast.”
+
+He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up her husband’s
+hand and pressed it as she went out, raising her handkerchief to her
+eyes. The sight of her husband had brought Antonia’s position to her
+mind, and she could not contain her tears at the thought of the poor
+girl. When she rejoined the two men in the diningroom after having
+bathed her face, Charles Gould was saying to the doctor across the
+table--
+
+“No, there does not seem any room for doubt.”
+
+And the doctor assented.
+
+“No, I don’t see myself how we could question that wretched Hirsch’s
+tale. It’s only too true, I fear.”
+
+She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from one
+to the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their heads away,
+tried to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry;
+he seized his knife and fork, and began to eat with emphasis, as if on
+the stage. Charles Gould made no pretence of the sort; with his elbows
+raised squarely, he twisted both ends of his flaming moustaches--they
+were so long that his hands were quite away from his face.
+
+“I am not surprised,” he muttered, abandoning his moustaches and
+throwing one arm over the back of his chair. His face was calm with
+that immobility of expression which betrays the intensity of a mental
+struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a point all the
+consequences involved in his line of conduct, with its conscious
+and subconscious intentions. There must be an end now of this silent
+reserve, of that air of impenetrability behind which he had been
+safeguarding his dignity. It was the least ignoble form of dissembling
+forced upon him by that parody of civilized institutions which offended
+his intelligence, his uprightness, and his sense of right. He was like
+his father. He had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the absurdities
+that prevail in this world. They hurt him in his innate gravity. He
+felt that the miserable death of that poor Decoud took from him his
+inaccessible position of a force in the background. It committed him
+openly unless he wished to throw up the game--and that was impossible.
+The material interests required from him the sacrifice of his
+aloofness--perhaps his own safety too. And he reflected that Decoud’s
+separationist plan had not gone to the bottom with the lost silver.
+
+The only thing that was not changed was his position towards Mr.
+Holroyd. The head of silver and steel interests had entered into
+Costaguana affairs with a sort of passion. Costaguana had become
+necessary to his existence; in the San Tome mine he had found the
+imaginative satisfaction which other minds would get from drama, from
+art, or from a risky and fascinating sport. It was a special form of the
+great man’s extravagance, sanctioned by a moral intention, big enough to
+flatter his vanity. Even in this aberration of his genius he served the
+progress of the world. Charles Gould felt sure of being understood
+with precision and judged with the indulgence of their common passion.
+Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould
+imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words:
+“. . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the
+civil organization of the province is at an end for the present;
+the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, but in the
+characteristic manner of this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta,
+remains still available. I am forced to take up openly the plan of a
+provincial revolution as the only way of placing the enormous material
+interests involved in the prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position
+of permanent safety. . . .” That was clear. He saw these words as
+if written in letters of fire upon the wall at which he was gazing
+abstractedly.
+
+Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It was a domestic and
+frightful phenomenon that darkened and chilled the house for her like a
+thundercloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould’s fits of abstraction
+depicted the energetic concentration of a will haunted by a fixed idea.
+A man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if
+that idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the heaven down
+pitilessly upon a loved head? The eyes of Mrs. Gould, watching her
+husband’s profile, filled with tears again. And again she seemed to see
+the despair of the unfortunate Antonia.
+
+“What would I have done if Charley had been drowned while we were
+engaged?” she exclaimed, mentally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice,
+while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre
+consuming all her earthly affections. The tears burst out of her eyes.
+
+“Antonia will kill herself!” she cried out.
+
+This cry fell into the silence of the room with strangely little effect.
+Only the doctor, crumbling up a piece of bread, with his head inclined
+on one side, raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of his
+shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr. Monygham thought quite
+sincerely that Decoud was a singularly unworthy object for any woman’s
+affection. Then he lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip, and
+his heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.
+
+“She thinks of that girl,” he said to himself; “she thinks of the Viola
+children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners; she always
+thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if
+Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage those confounded
+Avellanos have drawn him into? No one seems to be thinking of her.”
+
+Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections subtly.
+
+“I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is big enough to take
+in hand the making of a new State. It’ll please him. It’ll reconcile him
+to the risk.”
+
+But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he was inaccessible.
+To send off a boat to Cayta was no longer possible, since Sotillo was
+master of the harbour, and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with
+all the democrats in the province up, and every Campo township in a
+state of disturbance, where could he find a man who would make his
+way successfully overland to Cayta with a message, a ten days’ ride
+at least; a man of courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or
+murder, and if arrested would faithfully eat the paper? The Capataz
+de Cargadores would have been just such a man. But the Capataz of the
+Cargadores was no more.
+
+And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the wall, said gently,
+“That Hirsch! What an extraordinary thing! Saved himself by clinging to
+the anchor, did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco. I thought
+he had gone back overland to Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came
+here once to talk to me about his hide business and some other things. I
+made it clear to him that nothing could be done.”
+
+“He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez being about,”
+ remarked the doctor.
+
+“And but for him we might not have known anything of what has happened,”
+ marvelled Charles Gould.
+
+Mrs. Gould cried out--
+
+“Antonia must not know! She must not be told. Not now.”
+
+“Nobody’s likely to carry the news,” remarked the doctor. “It’s no one’s
+interest. Moreover, the people here are afraid of Hernandez as if he
+were the devil.” He turned to Charles Gould. “It’s even awkward,
+because if you wanted to communicate with the refugees you could find no
+messenger. When Hernandez was ranging hundreds of miles away from here
+the Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales of him roasting his
+prisoners alive.”
+
+“Yes,” murmured Charles Gould; “Captain Mitchell’s Capataz was the
+only man in the town who had seen Hernandez eye to eye. Father Corbelan
+employed him. He opened the communications first. It is a pity that--”
+
+His voice was covered by the booming of the great bell of the cathedral.
+Three single strokes, one after another, burst out explosively, dying
+away in deep and mellow vibrations. And then all the bells in the
+tower of every church, convent, or chapel in town, even those that had
+remained shut up for years, pealed out together with a crash. In this
+furious flood of metallic uproar there was a power of suggesting images
+of strife and violence which blanched Mrs. Gould’s cheek. Basilio,
+who had been waiting at table, shrinking within himself, clung to the
+sideboard with chattering teeth. It was impossible to hear yourself
+speak.
+
+“Shut these windows!” Charles Gould yelled at him, angrily. All the
+other servants, terrified at what they took for the signal of a general
+massacre, had rushed upstairs, tumbling over each other, men and women,
+the obscure and generally invisible population of the ground floor on
+the four sides of the patio. The women, screaming “Misericordia!” ran
+right into the room, and, falling on their knees against the walls,
+began to cross themselves convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked
+the doorway in an instant--mozos from the stable, gardeners, nondescript
+helpers living on the crumbs of the munificent house--and Charles
+Gould beheld all the extent of his domestic establishment, even to the
+gatekeeper. This was a half-paralyzed old man, whose long white locks
+fell down to his shoulders: an heirloom taken up by Charles Gould’s
+familial piety. He could remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a
+Costaguanero of the second generation, chief of the Sulaco province;
+he had been his personal mozo years and years ago in peace and war; had
+been allowed to attend his master in prison; had, on the fatal morning,
+followed the firing squad; and, peeping from behind one of the cypresses
+growing along the wall of the Franciscan Convent, had seen, with his
+eyes starting out of his head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall
+with his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly the big
+patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the other servants. But
+he was surprised to see a shrivelled old hag or two, of whose existence
+within the walls of his house he had not been aware. They must have been
+the mothers, or even the grandmothers of some of his people. There were
+a few children, too, more or less naked, crying and clinging to the legs
+of their elders. He had never before noticed any sign of a child in his
+patio. Even Leonarda, the camerista, came in a fright, pushing through,
+with her spoiled, pouting face of a favourite maid, leading the Viola
+girls by the hand. The crockery rattled on table and sideboard, and the
+whole house seemed to sway in the deafening wave of sound.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+During the night the expectant populace had taken possession of all the
+belfries in the town in order to welcome Pedrito Montero, who was
+making his entry after having slept the night in Rincon. And first
+came straggling in through the land gate the armed mob of all colours,
+complexions, types, and states of raggedness, calling themselves the
+Sulaco National Guard, and commanded by Senor Gamacho. Through the
+middle of the street streamed, like a torrent of rubbish, a mass of
+straw hats, ponchos, gun-barrels, with an enormous green and yellow flag
+flapping in their midst, in a cloud of dust, to the furious beating of
+drums. The spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses shouting
+their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be seen the lances of the cavalry,
+the “army” of Pedro Montero. He advanced between Senores Fuentes and
+Gamacho at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the feat of
+crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in a snow-storm. They rode four
+abreast, mounted on confiscated Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous
+stock of roadside stores they had looted hurriedly in their rapid ride
+through the northern part of the province; for Pedro Montero had been in
+a great hurry to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely around
+their bare throats were glaringly new, and all the right sleeves of
+their cotton shirts had been cut off close to the shoulder for greater
+freedom in throwing the lazo. Emaciated greybeards rode by the side
+of lean dark youths, marked by all the hardships of campaigning, with
+strips of raw beef twined round the crowns of their hats, and huge iron
+spurs fastened to their naked heels. Those that in the passes of the
+mountain had lost their lances had provided themselves with the goads
+used by the Campo cattlemen: slender shafts of palm fully ten feet long,
+with a lot of loose rings jingling under the ironshod point. They were
+armed with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessness characterized
+the expression of all these sun-blacked countenances; they glared down
+haughtily with their scorched eyes at the crowd, or, blinking upwards
+insolently, pointed out to each other some particular head amongst the
+women at the windows. When they had ridden into the Plaza and caught
+sight of the equestrian statue of the King dazzlingly white in the
+sunshine, towering enormous and motionless above the surges of the
+crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting, a murmur of surprise ran
+through their ranks. “What is that saint in the big hat?” they asked
+each other.
+
+They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains with which Pedro
+Montero had helped so much the victorious career of his brother the
+general. The influence which that man, brought up in coast towns,
+acquired in a short time over the plainsmen of the Republic can be
+ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so effective a kind that it
+must have appeared to those violent men but little removed from a state
+of utter savagery, as the perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular
+lore of all nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, together with
+bodily strength, were looked upon, even more than courage, as heroic
+virtues by primitive mankind. To overcome your adversary was the
+great affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But the use of
+intelligence awakened wonder and respect. Stratagems, providing they did
+not fail, were honourable; the easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy
+evoked no feelings but those of gladness, pride, and admiration. Not
+perhaps that primitive men were more faithless than their descendants
+of to-day, but that they went straighter to their aim, and were
+more artless in their recognition of success as the only standard of
+morality.
+
+We have changed since. The use of intelligence awakens little wonder and
+less respect. But the ignorant and barbarous plainsmen engaging in civil
+strife followed willingly a leader who often managed to deliver their
+enemies bound, as it were, into their hands. Pedro Montero had a talent
+for lulling his adversaries into a sense of security. And as men learn
+wisdom with extreme slowness, and are always ready to believe promises
+that flatter their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful time after
+time. Whether only a servant or some inferior official in the Costaguana
+Legation in Paris, he had rushed back to his country directly he
+heard that his brother had emerged from the obscurity of his frontier
+commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his gift of plausibility
+the chiefs of the Ribierist movement in the capital, and even the acute
+agent of the San Tome mine had failed to understand him thoroughly. At
+once he had obtained an enormous influence over his brother. They were
+very much alike in appearance, both bald, with bunches of crisp hair
+above their ears, arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro
+was smaller than the general, more delicate altogether, with an
+ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward signs of refinement and
+distinction, and with a parrot-like talent for languages. Both brothers
+had received some elementary instruction by the munificence of a great
+European traveller, to whom their father had been a body-servant during
+his journeys in the interior of the country. In General Montero’s
+case it enabled him to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger,
+incorrigibly lazy and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from one coast
+town to another, hanging about counting-houses, attaching himself
+to strangers as a sort of valet-de-place, picking up an easy and
+disreputable living. His ability to read did nothing for him but fill
+his head with absurd visions. His actions were usually determined by
+motives so improbable in themselves as to escape the penetration of a
+rational person.
+
+Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession in Sta. Marta
+had credited him with the possession of sane views, and even with a
+restraining power over the general’s everlastingly discontented vanity.
+It could never have entered his head that Pedrito Montero, lackey or
+inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets of the various Parisian hotels
+where the Costaguana Legation used to shelter its diplomatic dignity,
+had been devouring the lighter sort of historical works in the French
+language, such, for instance as the books of Imbert de Saint Amand upon
+the Second Empire. But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a
+brilliant court, and had conceived the idea of an existence for himself
+where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the command of every
+pleasure with the conduct of political affairs and enjoy power supremely
+in every way. Nobody could have guessed that. And yet this was one of
+the immediate causes of the Monterist Revolution. This will appear less
+incredible by the reflection that the fundamental causes were the
+same as ever, rooted in the political immaturity of the people, in the
+indolence of the upper classes and the mental darkness of the lower.
+
+Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother the road wide
+open to his wildest imaginings. This was what made the Monterist
+pronunciamiento so unpreventable. The general himself probably could
+have been bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched on a
+diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who had egged him on
+from first to last. He wanted to become the most brilliant statesman
+of South America. He did not desire supreme power. He would have been
+afraid of its labour and risk, in fact. Before all, Pedrito Montero,
+taught by his European experience, meant to acquire a serious fortune
+for himself. With this object in view he obtained from his brother, on
+the very morrow of the successful battle, the permission to push on
+over the mountains and take possession of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land
+of future prosperity, the chosen land of material progress, the only
+province in the Republic of interest to European capitalists. Pedrito
+Montero, following the example of the Duc de Morny, meant to have his
+share of this prosperity. This is what he meant literally. Now his
+brother was master of the country, whether as President, Dictator, or
+even as Emperor--why not as an Emperor?--he meant to demand a share in
+every enterprise--in railways, in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton
+mills, in land companies, in each and every undertaking--as the price of
+his protection. The desire to be on the spot early was the real cause of
+the celebrated ride over the mountains with some two hundred llaneros,
+an enterprise of which the dangers had not appeared at first clearly to
+his impatience. Coming from a series of victories, it seemed to him
+that a Montero had only to appear to be master of the situation. This
+illusion had betrayed him into a rashness of which he was becoming
+aware. As he rode at the head of his llaneros he regretted that there
+were so few of them. The enthusiasm of the populace reassured him. They
+yelled “Viva Montero! Viva Pedrito!” In order to make them still more
+enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had in dissembling, he
+dropped the reins on his horse’s neck, and with a tremendous effect of
+familiarity and confidence slipped his hands under the arms of Senores
+Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture, with a ragged town mozo holding
+his horse by the bridle, he rode triumphantly across the Plaza to the
+door of the Intendencia. Its old gloomy walls seemed to shake in the
+acclamations that rent the air and covered the crashing peals of the
+cathedral bells.
+
+Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dismounted into a shouting
+and perspiring throng of enthusiasts whom the ragged Nationals were
+pushing back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he surveyed the large crowd
+gaping at him and the bullet-speckled walls of the houses opposite
+lightly veiled by a sunny haze of dust. The word “_Pourvenir_” in
+immense black capitals, alternating with broken windows, stared at
+him across the vast space; and he thought with delight of the hour of
+vengeance, because he was very sure of laying his hands upon Decoud.
+On his left hand, Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face,
+uncovered a set of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilarity. On his
+right, Senor Fuentes, small and lean, looked on with compressed lips.
+The crowd stared literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness, as
+though they had expected the great guerrillero, the famous Pedrito, to
+begin scattering at once some sort of visible largesse. What he began
+was a speech. He began it with the shouted word “Citizens!” which
+reached even those in the middle of the Plaza. Afterwards the greater
+part of the citizens remained fascinated by the orator’s action alone,
+his tip-toeing, the arms flung above his head with the fists clenched,
+a hand laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of rolling eyes,
+the sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, a hand laid familiarly
+on Gamacho’s shoulder; a hand waved formally towards the little
+black-coated person of Senor Fuentes, advocate and politician and a true
+friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the orator bursting
+out suddenly propagated themselves irregularly to the confines of the
+crowd, like flames running over dry grass, and expired in the opening of
+the streets. In the intervals, over the swarming Plaza brooded a heavy
+silence, in which the mouth of the orator went on opening and shutting,
+and detached phrases--“The happiness of the people,” “Sons of the
+country,” “The entire world, el mundo entiero”--reached even the packed
+steps of the cathedral with a feeble clear ring, thin as the buzzing
+of a mosquito. But the orator struck his breast; he seemed to prance
+between his two supporters. It was the supreme effort of his peroration.
+Then the two smaller figures disappeared from the public gaze and the
+enormous Gamacho, left alone, advanced, raising his hat high above his
+head. Then he covered himself proudly and yelled out, “Ciudadanos!” A
+dull roar greeted Senor Gamacho, ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of
+the National Guards.
+
+Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from one wrecked room of
+the Intendencia to another, snarling incessantly--
+
+“What stupidity! What destruction!”
+
+Senor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn disposition to
+murmur--
+
+“It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;” and then, inclining
+his head on his left shoulder, would press together his lips so firmly
+that a little hollow would appear at each corner. He had his nomination
+for Political Chief of the town in his pocket, and was all impatience to
+enter upon his functions.
+
+In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all starred by stones,
+the hangings torn down and the canopy over the platform at the upper end
+pulled to pieces, the vast, deep muttering of the crowd and the howling
+voice of Gamacho speaking just below reached them through the shutters
+as they stood idly in dimness and desolation.
+
+“The brute!” observed his Excellency Don Pedro Montero through clenched
+teeth. “We must contrive as quickly as possible to send him and his
+Nationals out there to fight Hernandez.”
+
+The new Gefe Politico only jerked his head sideways, and took a puff at
+his cigarette in sign of his agreement with this method for ridding the
+town of Gamacho and his inconvenient rabble.
+
+Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely bare floor, and
+at the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames running round the room, out
+of which the remnants of torn and slashed canvases fluttered like dingy
+rags.
+
+“We are not barbarians,” he said.
+
+This was what said his Excellency, the popular Pedrito, the guerrillero
+skilled in the art of laying ambushes, charged by his brother at his
+own demand with the organization of Sulaco on democratic principles. The
+night before, during the consultation with his partisans, who had
+come out to meet him in Rincon, he had opened his intentions to Senor
+Fuentes--
+
+“We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, confiding the destinies
+of our beloved country to the wisdom and valiance of my heroic brother,
+the invincible general. A plebiscite. Do you understand?”
+
+And Senor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks, had inclined his
+head slightly to the left, letting a thin, bluish jet of smoke escape
+through his pursed lips. He had understood.
+
+His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation. Not a single chair,
+table, sofa, etagere or console had been left in the state rooms of the
+Intendencia. His Excellency, though twitching all over with rage, was
+restrained from bursting into violence by a sense of his remoteness and
+isolation. His heroic brother was very far away. Meantime, how was he
+going to take his siesta? He had expected to find comfort and luxury
+in the Intendencia after a year of hard camp life, ending with the
+hardships and privations of the daring dash upon Sulaco--upon the
+province which was worth more in wealth and influence than all the rest
+of the Republic’s territory. He would get even with Gamacho by-and-by.
+And Senor Gamacho’s oration, delectable to popular ears, went on in the
+heat and glare of the Plaza like the uncouth howlings of an inferior
+sort of devil cast into a white-hot furnace. Every moment he had to wipe
+his streaming face with his bare fore-arm; he had flung off his coat,
+and had turned up the sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but
+he kept on his head the large cocked hat with white plumes. His
+ingenuousness cherished this sign of his rank as Commandante of the
+National Guards. Approving and grave murmurs greeted his periods. His
+opinion was that war should be declared at once against France, England,
+Germany, and the United States, who, by introducing railways, mining
+enterprises, colonization, and under such other shallow pretences, aimed
+at robbing poor people of their lands, and with the help of these Goths
+and paralytics, the aristocrats would convert them into toiling and
+miserable slaves. And the leperos, flinging about the corners of their
+dirty white mantas, yelled their approbation. General Montero, Gamacho
+howled with conviction, was the only man equal to the patriotic task.
+They assented to that, too.
+
+The morning was wearing on; there were already signs of disruption,
+currents and eddies in the crowd. Some were seeking the shade of the
+walls and under the trees of the Alameda. Horsemen spurred through,
+shouting; groups of sombreros set level on heads against the vertical
+sun were drifting away into the streets, where the open doors of
+pulperias revealed an enticing gloom resounding with the gentle tinkling
+of guitars. The National Guards were thinking of siesta, and the
+eloquence of Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on, when, in the
+cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried to assemble again for further
+consideration of public affairs, detachments of Montero’s cavalry camped
+on the Alameda charged them without parley, at speed, with long lances
+levelled at their flying backs as far as the ends of the streets. The
+National Guards of Sulaco were surprised by this proceeding. But they
+were not indignant. No Costaguanero had ever learned to question the
+eccentricities of a military force. They were part of the natural order
+of things. This must be, they concluded, some kind of administrative
+measure, no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their unaided
+intelligence, and their chief and orator, Gamacho, Commandante of the
+National Guard, was lying drunk and asleep in the bosom of his family.
+His bare feet were upturned in the shadows repulsively, in the manner
+of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had dropped open. His youngest daughter,
+scratching her head with one hand, with the other waved a green bough
+over his scorched and peeling face.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+The declining sun had shifted the shadows from west to east amongst the
+houses of the town. It had shifted them upon the whole extent of the
+immense Campo, with the white walls of its haciendas on the knolls
+dominating the green distances; with its grass-thatched ranches
+crouching in the folds of ground by the banks of streams; with the dark
+islands of clustered trees on a clear sea of grass, and the precipitous
+range of the Cordillera, immense and motionless, emerging from the
+billows of the lower forests like the barren coast of a land of giants.
+The sunset rays striking the snow-slope of Higuerota from afar gave it
+an air of rosy youth, while the serrated mass of distant peaks remained
+black, as if calcined in the fiery radiance. The undulating surface of
+the forests seemed powdered with pale gold dust; and away there, beyond
+Rincon, hidden from the town by two wooded spurs, the rocks of the
+San Tome gorge, with the flat wall of the mountain itself crowned by
+gigantic ferns, took on warm tones of brown and yellow, with red rusty
+streaks, and the dark green clumps of bushes rooted in crevices. From
+the plain the stamp sheds and the houses of the mine appeared dark and
+small, high up, like the nests of birds clustered on the ledges of a
+cliff. The zigzag paths resembled faint tracings scratched on the wall
+of a cyclopean blockhouse. To the two serenos of the mine on patrol
+duty, strolling, carbine in hand, and watchful eyes, in the shade of the
+trees lining the stream near the bridge, Don Pepe, descending the path
+from the upper plateau, appeared no bigger than a large beetle.
+
+With his air of aimless, insect-like going to and fro upon the face of
+the rock, Don Pepe’s figure kept on descending steadily, and, when near
+the bottom, sank at last behind the roofs of store-houses, forges, and
+workshops. For a time the pair of serenos strolled back and forth before
+the bridge, on which they had stopped a horseman holding a large white
+envelope in his hand. Then Don Pepe, emerging in the village street
+from amongst the houses, not a stone’s throw from the frontier bridge,
+approached, striding in wide dark trousers tucked into boots, a white
+linen jacket, sabre at his side, and revolver at his belt. In this
+disturbed time nothing could find the Senor Gobernador with his boots
+off, as the saying is.
+
+At a slight nod from one of the serenos, the man, a messenger from
+the town, dismounted, and crossed the bridge, leading his horse by the
+bridle.
+
+Don Pepe received the letter from his other hand, slapped his left
+side and his hips in succession, feeling for his spectacle case. After
+settling the heavy silvermounted affair astride his nose, and adjusting
+it carefully behind his ears, he opened the envelope, holding it up at
+about a foot in front of his eyes. The paper he pulled out contained
+some three lines of writing. He looked at them for a long time. His grey
+moustache moved slightly up and down, and the wrinkles, radiating at the
+corners of his eyes, ran together. He nodded serenely. “Bueno,” he said.
+“There is no answer.”
+
+Then, in his quiet, kindly way, he engaged in a cautious conversation
+with the man, who was willing to talk cheerily, as if something lucky
+had happened to him recently. He had seen from a distance Sotillo’s
+infantry camped along the shore of the harbour on each side of the
+Custom House. They had done no damage to the buildings. The foreigners
+of the railway remained shut up within the yards. They were no longer
+anxious to shoot poor people. He cursed the foreigners; then he reported
+Montero’s entry and the rumours of the town. The poor were going to be
+made rich now. That was very good. More he did not know, and, breaking
+into propitiatory smiles, he intimated that he was hungry and thirsty.
+The old major directed him to go to the alcalde of the first village.
+The man rode off, and Don Pepe, striding slowly in the direction of a
+little wooden belfry, looked over a hedge into a little garden, and saw
+Father Roman sitting in a white hammock slung between two orange trees
+in front of the presbytery.
+
+An enormous tamarind shaded with its dark foliage the whole white
+framehouse. A young Indian girl with long hair, big eyes, and small
+hands and feet, carried out a wooden chair, while a thin old woman,
+crabbed and vigilant, watched her all the time from the verandah.
+
+Don Pepe sat down in the chair and lighted a cigar; the priest drew
+in an immense quantity of snuff out of the hollow of his palm. On his
+reddish-brown face, worn, hollowed as if crumbled, the eyes, fresh and
+candid, sparkled like two black diamonds.
+
+Don Pepe, in a mild and humorous voice, informed Father Roman that
+Pedrito Montero, by the hand of Senor Fuentes, had asked him on what
+terms he would surrender the mine in proper working order to a legally
+constituted commission of patriotic citizens, escorted by a small
+military force. The priest cast his eyes up to heaven. However, Don Pepe
+continued, the mozo who brought the letter said that Don Carlos Gould
+was alive, and so far unmolested.
+
+Father Roman expressed in a few words his thankfulness at hearing of the
+Senor Administrador’s safety.
+
+The hour of oration had gone by in the silvery ringing of a bell in the
+little belfry. The belt of forest closing the entrance of the valley
+stood like a screen between the low sun and the street of the village.
+At the other end of the rocky gorge, between the walls of basalt and
+granite, a forest-clad mountain, hiding all the range from the San Tome
+dwellers, rose steeply, lighted up and leafy to the very top. Three
+small rosy clouds hung motionless overhead in the great depth of blue.
+Knots of people sat in the street between the wattled huts. Before the
+casa of the alcalde, the foremen of the night-shift, already assembled
+to lead their men, squatted on the ground in a circle of leather
+skull-caps, and, bowing their bronze backs, were passing round the gourd
+of mate. The mozo from the town, having fastened his horse to a wooden
+post before the door, was telling them the news of Sulaco as the
+blackened gourd of the decoction passed from hand to hand. The grave
+alcalde himself, in a white waistcloth and a flowered chintz gown with
+sleeves, open wide upon his naked stout person with an effect of a gaudy
+bathing robe, stood by, wearing a rough beaver hat at the back of his
+head, and grasping a tall staff with a silver knob in his hand.
+These insignia of his dignity had been conferred upon him by the
+Administration of the mine, the fountain of honour, of prosperity, and
+peace. He had been one of the first immigrants into this valley; his
+sons and sons-in-law worked within the mountain which seemed with its
+treasures to pour down the thundering ore shoots of the upper mesa, the
+gifts of well-being, security, and justice upon the toilers. He listened
+to the news from the town with curiosity and indifference, as if
+concerning another world than his own. And it was true that they
+appeared to him so. In a very few years the sense of belonging to a
+powerful organization had been developed in these harassed, half-wild
+Indians. They were proud of, and attached to, the mine. It had secured
+their confidence and belief. They invested it with a protecting and
+invincible virtue as though it were a fetish made by their own hands,
+for they were ignorant, and in other respects did not differ appreciably
+from the rest of mankind which puts infinite trust in its own creations.
+It never entered the alcalde’s head that the mine could fail in its
+protection and force. Politics were good enough for the people of the
+town and the Campo. His yellow, round face, with wide nostrils, and
+motionless in expression, resembled a fierce full moon. He listened to
+the excited vapourings of the mozo without misgivings, without surprise,
+without any active sentiment whatever.
+
+Padre Roman sat dejectedly balancing himself, his feet just touching
+the ground, his hands gripping the edge of the hammock. With less
+confidence, but as ignorant as his flock, he asked the major what did he
+think was going to happen now.
+
+Don Pepe, bolt upright in the chair, folded his hands peacefully on
+the hilt of his sword, standing perpendicular between his thighs, and
+answered that he did not know. The mine could be defended against any
+force likely to be sent to take possession. On the other hand, from the
+arid character of the valley, when the regular supplies from the Campo
+had been cut off, the population of the three villages could be starved
+into submission. Don Pepe exposed these contingencies with serenity
+to Father Roman, who, as an old campaigner, was able to understand the
+reasoning of a military man. They talked with simplicity and directness.
+Father Roman was saddened at the idea of his flock being scattered
+or else enslaved. He had no illusions as to their fate, not from
+penetration, but from long experience of political atrocities, which
+seemed to him fatal and unavoidable in the life of a State. The working
+of the usual public institutions presented itself to him most distinctly
+as a series of calamities overtaking private individuals and flowing
+logically from each other through hate, revenge, folly, and rapacity,
+as though they had been part of a divine dispensation. Father Roman’s
+clear-sightedness was served by an uninformed intelligence; but his
+heart, preserving its tenderness amongst scenes of carnage, spoliation,
+and violence, abhorred these calamities the more as his association with
+the victims was closer. He entertained towards the Indians of the valley
+feelings of paternal scorn. He had been marrying, baptizing, confessing,
+absolving, and burying the workers of the San Tome mine with dignity
+and unction for five years or more; and he believed in the sacredness of
+these ministrations, which made them his own in a spiritual sense. They
+were dear to his sacerdotal supremacy. Mrs. Gould’s earnest interest in
+the concerns of these people enhanced their importance in the priest’s
+eyes, because it really augmented his own. When talking over with her
+the innumerable Marias and Brigidas of the villages, he felt his own
+humanity expand. Padre Roman was incapable of fanaticism to an almost
+reprehensible degree. The English senora was evidently a heretic; but
+at the same time she seemed to him wonderful and angelic. Whenever that
+confused state of his feelings occurred to him, while strolling, for
+instance, his breviary under his arm, in the wide shade of the tamarind,
+he would stop short to inhale with a strong snuffling noise a large
+quantity of snuff, and shake his head profoundly. At the thought of
+what might befall the illustrious senora presently, he became gradually
+overcome with dismay. He voiced it in an agitated murmur. Even Don Pepe
+lost his serenity for a moment. He leaned forward stiffly.
+
+“Listen, Padre. The very fact that those thieving macaques in Sulaco are
+trying to find out the price of my honour proves that Senor Don Carlos
+and all in the Casa Gould are safe. As to my honour, that also is safe,
+as every man, woman, and child knows. But the negro Liberals who have
+snatched the town by surprise do not know that. Bueno. Let them sit and
+wait. While they wait they can do no harm.”
+
+And he regained his composure. He regained it easily, because whatever
+happened his honour of an old officer of Paez was safe. He had promised
+Charles Gould that at the approach of an armed force he would defend the
+gorge just long enough to give himself time to destroy scientifically
+the whole plant, buildings, and workshops of the mine with heavy charges
+of dynamite; block with ruins the main tunnel, break down the pathways,
+blow up the dam of the water-power, shatter the famous Gould Concession
+into fragments, flying sky high out of a horrified world. The mine had
+got hold of Charles Gould with a grip as deadly as ever it had laid upon
+his father. But this extreme resolution had seemed to Don Pepe the most
+natural thing in the world. His measures had been taken with judgment.
+Everything was prepared with a careful completeness. And Don Pepe folded
+his hands pacifically on his sword hilt, and nodded at the priest. In
+his excitement, Father Roman had flung snuff in handfuls at his face,
+and, all besmeared with tobacco, round-eyed, and beside himself, had got
+out of the hammock to walk about, uttering exclamations.
+
+Don Pepe stroked his grey and pendant moustache, whose fine ends hung
+far below the clean-cut line of his jaw, and spoke with a conscious
+pride in his reputation.
+
+“So, Padre, I don’t know what will happen. But I know that as long as
+I am here Don Carlos can speak to that macaque, Pedrito Montero, and
+threaten the destruction of the mine with perfect assurance that he will
+be taken seriously. For people know me.”
+
+He began to turn the cigar in his lips a little nervously, and went on--
+
+“But that is talk--good for the politicos. I am a military man. I do not
+know what may happen. But I know what ought to be done--the mine should
+march upon the town with guns, axes, knives tied up to sticks--por Dios.
+That is what should be done. Only--”
+
+His folded hands twitched on the hilt. The cigar turned faster in the
+corner of his lips.
+
+“And who should lead but I? Unfortunately--observe--I have given my word
+of honour to Don Carlos not to let the mine fall into the hands of these
+thieves. In war--you know this, Padre--the fate of battles is uncertain,
+and whom could I leave here to act for me in case of defeat? The
+explosives are ready. But it would require a man of high honour,
+of intelligence, of judgment, of courage, to carry out the prepared
+destruction. Somebody I can trust with my honour as I can trust myself.
+Another old officer of Paez, for instance. Or--or--perhaps one of Paez’s
+old chaplains would do.”
+
+He got up, long, lank, upright, hard, with his martial moustache and
+the bony structure of his face, from which the glance of the sunken
+eyes seemed to transfix the priest, who stood still, an empty wooden
+snuff-box held upside down in his hand, and glared back, speechless, at
+the governor of the mine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+At about that time, in the Intendencia of Sulaco, Charles Gould was
+assuring Pedrito Montero, who had sent a request for his presence there,
+that he would never let the mine pass out of his hands for the profit of
+a Government who had robbed him of it. The Gould Concession could not
+be resumed. His father had not desired it. The son would never surrender
+it. He would never surrender it alive. And once dead, where was the
+power capable of resuscitating such an enterprise in all its vigour and
+wealth out of the ashes and ruin of destruction? There was no such power
+in the country. And where was the skill and capital abroad that would
+condescend to touch such an ill-omened corpse? Charles Gould talked in
+the impassive tone which had for many years served to conceal his anger
+and contempt. He suffered. He was disgusted with what he had to say. It
+was too much like heroics. In him the strictly practical instinct was in
+profound discord with the almost mystic view he took of his right. The
+Gould Concession was symbolic of abstract justice. Let the heavens
+fall. But since the San Tome mine had developed into world-wide fame
+his threat had enough force and effectiveness to reach the rudimentary
+intelligence of Pedro Montero, wrapped up as it was in the futilities
+of historical anecdotes. The Gould Concession was a serious asset in the
+country’s finance, and, what was more, in the private budgets of many
+officials as well. It was traditional. It was known. It was said. It
+was credible. Every Minister of Interior drew a salary from the San
+Tome mine. It was natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister of the
+Interior and President of the Council in his brother’s Government. The
+Duc de Morny had occupied those high posts during the Second French
+Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself.
+
+A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured for His
+Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered absolutely necessary
+by the labours and the pomps of his entry into Sulaco, had been getting
+hold of the administrative machine by making appointments, giving
+orders, and signing proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould in the
+audience room, His Excellency managed with his well-known skill to
+conceal his annoyance and consternation. He had begun at first to talk
+loftily of confiscation, but the want of all proper feeling and mobility
+in the Senor Administrador’s features ended by affecting adversely
+his power of masterful expression. Charles Gould had repeated: “The
+Government can certainly bring about the destruction of the San Tome
+mine if it likes; but without me it can do nothing else.” It was an
+alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to hurt the sensibilities of
+a politician whose mind is bent upon the spoils of victory. And Charles
+Gould said also that the destruction of the San Tome mine would cause
+the ruin of other undertakings, the withdrawal of European capital, the
+withholding, most probably, of the last instalment of the foreign loan.
+That stony fiend of a man said all these things (which were accessible
+to His Excellency’s intelligence) in a coldblooded manner which made one
+shudder.
+
+A long course of reading historical works, light and gossipy in tone,
+carried out in garrets of Parisian hotels, sprawling on an untidy bed,
+to the neglect of his duties, menial or otherwise, had affected the
+manners of Pedro Montero. Had he seen around him the splendour of the
+old Intendencia, the magnificent hangings, the gilt furniture ranged
+along the walls; had he stood upon a dais on a noble square of red
+carpet, he would have probably been very dangerous from a sense of
+success and elevation. But in this sacked and devastated residence, with
+the three pieces of common furniture huddled up in the middle of the
+vast apartment, Pedrito’s imagination was subdued by a feeling of
+insecurity and impermanence. That feeling and the firm attitude
+of Charles Gould who had not once, so far, pronounced the word
+“Excellency,” diminished him in his own eyes. He assumed the tone of an
+enlightened man of the world, and begged Charles Gould to dismiss from
+his mind every cause for alarm. He was now conversing, he reminded
+him, with the brother of the master of the country, charged with a
+reorganizing mission. The trusted brother of the master of the country,
+he repeated. Nothing was further from the thoughts of that wise and
+patriotic hero than ideas of destruction. “I entreat you, Don Carlos,
+not to give way to your anti-democratic prejudices,” he cried, in a
+burst of condescending effusion.
+
+Pedrito Montero surprised one at first sight by the vast development of
+his bald forehead, a shiny yellow expanse between the crinkly coal-black
+tufts of hair without any lustre, the engaging form of his mouth, and
+an unexpectedly cultivated voice. But his eyes, very glistening as if
+freshly painted on each side of his hooked nose, had a round, hopeless,
+birdlike stare when opened fully. Now, however, he narrowed them
+agreeably, throwing his square chin up and speaking with closed teeth
+slightly through the nose, with what he imagined to be the manner of a
+grand seigneur.
+
+In that attitude, he declared suddenly that the highest expression of
+democracy was Caesarism: the imperial rule based upon the direct popular
+vote. Caesarism was conservative. It was strong. It recognized the
+legitimate needs of democracy which requires orders, titles, and
+distinctions. They would be showered upon deserving men. Caesarism
+was peace. It was progressive. It secured the prosperity of a country.
+Pedrito Montero was carried away. Look at what the Second Empire had
+done for France. It was a regime which delighted to honour men of Don
+Carlos’s stamp. The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief
+was devoid of that military genius which had raised General Montero to
+the pinnacle of fame and glory. Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to
+help the idea of pinnacle, of fame. “We shall have many talks yet. We
+shall understand each other thoroughly, Don Carlos!” he cried in a tone
+of fellowship. Republicanism had done its work. Imperial democracy was
+the power of the future. Pedrito, the guerrillero, showing his hand,
+lowered his voice forcibly. A man singled out by his fellow-citizens for
+the honourable nickname of El Rey de Sulaco could not but receive a full
+recognition from an imperial democracy as a great captain of industry
+and a person of weighty counsel, whose popular designation would be soon
+replaced by a more solid title. “Eh, Don Carlos? No! What do you say?
+Conde de Sulaco--Eh?--or marquis . . .”
+
+He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a patrol of cavalry rode
+round and round without penetrating into the streets, which resounded
+with shouts and the strumming of guitars issuing from the open doors of
+pulperias. The orders were not to interfere with the enjoyments of the
+people. And above the roofs, next to the perpendicular lines of the
+cathedral towers the snowy curve of Higuerota blocked a large space of
+darkening blue sky before the windows of the Intendencia. After a time
+Pedrito Montero, thrusting his hand in the bosom of his coat, bowed his
+head with slow dignity. The audience was over.
+
+Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his forehead as if to
+disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose grotesque extravagance
+leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay. In
+the passages and on the staircases of the old palace Montero’s troopers
+lounged about insolently, smoking and making way for no one; the
+clanking of sabres and spurs resounded all over the building. Three
+silent groups of civilians in severe black waited in the main gallery,
+formal and helpless, a little huddled up, each keeping apart from the
+others, as if in the exercise of a public duty they had been overcome
+by a desire to shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations
+waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly, more
+restless and uneasy in its corporate expression, was overtopped by the
+big face of Don Juste Lopez, soft and white, with prominent eyelids and
+wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as if in a dense cloud. The President
+of the Provincial Assembly, coming bravely to save the last shred of
+parliamentary institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes
+from the Administrador of the San Tome mine as a dignified rebuke of his
+little faith in that only saving principle.
+
+The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect Charles Gould, but
+he was sensible to the glances of the others directed upon him without
+reproach, as if only to read their own fate upon his face. All of them
+had talked, shouted, and declaimed in the great sala of the Casa Gould.
+The feeling of compassion for those men, struck with a strange impotence
+in the toils of moral degradation, did not induce him to make a sign. He
+suffered from his fellowship in evil with them too much. He crossed the
+Plaza unmolested. The Amarilla Club was full of festive ragamuffins.
+Their frowsy heads protruded from every window, and from within came
+drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging of harps. Broken
+bottles strewed the pavement below. Charles Gould found the doctor still
+in his house.
+
+Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutter through which he
+had been watching the street.
+
+“Ah! You are back at last!” he said in a tone of relief. “I have been
+telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe, but I was not by any
+means certain that the fellow would have let you go.”
+
+“Neither was I,” confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat on the table.
+
+“You will have to take action.”
+
+The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that this was the only
+course. This was as far as Charles Gould was accustomed to go towards
+expressing his intentions.
+
+“I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean to do,” the doctor
+said, anxiously.
+
+“I tried to make him see that the existence of the mine was bound up
+with my personal safety,” continued Charles Gould, looking away from the
+doctor, and fixing his eyes upon the water-colour sketch upon the wall.
+
+“He believed you?” the doctor asked, eagerly.
+
+“God knows!” said Charles Gould. “I owed it to my wife to say that much.
+He is well enough informed. He knows that I have Don Pepe there. Fuentes
+must have told him. They know that the old major is perfectly capable of
+blowing up the San Tome mine without hesitation or compunction. Had it
+not been for that I don’t think I’d have left the Intendencia a free
+man. He would blow everything up from loyalty and from hate--from hate
+of these Liberals, as they call themselves. Liberals! The words one
+knows so well have a nightmarish meaning in this country. Liberty,
+democracy, patriotism, government--all of them have a flavour of folly
+and murder. Haven’t they, doctor? . . . I alone can restrain Don Pepe.
+If they were to--to do away with me, nothing could prevent him.”
+
+“They will try to tamper with him,” the doctor suggested, thoughtfully.
+
+“It is very possible,” Charles Gould said very low, as if speaking to
+himself, and still gazing at the sketch of the San Tome gorge upon the
+wall. “Yes, I expect they will try that.” Charles Gould looked for the
+first time at the doctor. “It would give me time,” he added.
+
+“Exactly,” said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his excitement. “Especially if
+Don Pepe behaves diplomatically. Why shouldn’t he give them some hope
+of success? Eh? Otherwise you wouldn’t gain so much time. Couldn’t he be
+instructed to--”
+
+Charles Gould, looking at the doctor steadily, shook his head, but the
+doctor continued with a certain amount of fire--
+
+“Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of the mine. It is a
+good notion. You would mature your plan. Of course, I don’t ask what it
+is. I don’t want to know. I would refuse to listen to you if you tried
+to tell me. I am not fit for confidences.”
+
+“What nonsense!” muttered Charles Gould, with displeasure.
+
+He disapproved of the doctor’s sensitiveness about that far-off
+episode of his life. So much memory shocked Charles Gould. It was like
+morbidness. And again he shook his head. He refused to tamper with the
+open rectitude of Don Pepe’s conduct, both from taste and from policy.
+Instructions would have to be either verbal or in writing. In either
+case they ran the risk of being intercepted. It was by no means certain
+that a messenger could reach the mine; and, besides, there was no one
+to send. It was on the tip of Charles’s tongue to say that only the
+late Capataz de Cargadores could have been employed with some chance
+of success and the certitude of discretion. But he did not say that. He
+pointed out to the doctor that it would have been bad policy.
+Directly Don Pepe let it be supposed that he could be bought over, the
+Administrador’s personal safety and the safety of his friends would
+become endangered. For there would be then no reason for moderation. The
+incorruptibility of Don Pepe was the essential and restraining fact. The
+doctor hung his head and admitted that in a way it was so.
+
+He couldn’t deny to himself that the reasoning was sound enough. Don
+Pepe’s usefulness consisted in his unstained character. As to his own
+usefulness, he reflected bitterly it was also his own character. He
+declared to Charles Gould that he had the means of keeping Sotillo from
+joining his forces with Montero, at least for the present.
+
+“If you had had all this silver here,” the doctor said, “or even if it
+had been known to be at the mine, you could have bribed Sotillo to throw
+off his recent Monterism. You could have induced him either to go away
+in his steamer or even to join you.”
+
+“Certainly not that last,” Charles Gould declared, firmly. “What could
+one do with a man like that, afterwards--tell me, doctor? The silver is
+gone, and I am glad of it. It would have been an immediate and
+strong temptation. The scramble for that visible plunder would have
+precipitated a disastrous ending. I would have had to defend it, too.
+I am glad we’ve removed it--even if it is lost. It would have been a
+danger and a curse.”
+
+“Perhaps he is right,” the doctor, an hour later, said hurriedly to Mrs.
+Gould, whom he met in the corridor. “The thing is done, and the shadow
+of the treasure may do just as well as the substance. Let me try to
+serve you to the whole extent of my evil reputation. I am off now to
+play my game of betrayal with Sotillo, and keep him off the town.”
+
+She put out both her hands impulsively. “Dr. Monygham, you are running a
+terrible risk,” she whispered, averting from his face her eyes, full of
+tears, for a short glance at the door of her husband’s room. She pressed
+both his hands, and the doctor stood as if rooted to the spot, looking
+down at her, and trying to twist his lips into a smile.
+
+“Oh, I know you will defend my memory,” he uttered at last, and ran
+tottering down the stairs across the patio, and out of the house. In the
+street he kept up a great pace with his smart hobbling walk, a case
+of instruments under his arm. He was known for being loco. Nobody
+interfered with him. From under the seaward gate, across the dusty, arid
+plain, interspersed with low bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the
+ugly enormity of the Custom House, and the two or three other buildings
+which at that time constituted the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to the
+south groves of palm trees edged the curve of the harbour shore. The
+distant peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of clearcut
+shapes in the steadily deepening blue of the eastern sky. The doctor
+walked briskly. A darkling shadow seemed to fall upon him from the
+zenith. The sun had set. For a time the snows of Higuerota continued
+to glow with the reflected glory of the west. The doctor, holding a
+straight course for the Custom House, appeared lonely, hopping amongst
+the dark bushes like a tall bird with a broken wing.
+
+Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the clear water
+of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight as a wall, with the
+grass-grown ruins of the fort making a sort of rounded green mound,
+plainly visible from the inner shore, closed its circuit; while beyond
+the Placid Gulf repeated those splendours of colouring on a greater
+scale and with a more sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloud
+filling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted
+folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained with blood.
+The three Isabels, overshadowed and clear cut in a great smoothness
+confounding the sea and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the
+air. The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks upon the
+sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along the horizon gave out a
+fiery red glow, as if fire and water had been mingled together in the
+vast bed of the ocean.
+
+At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced and still in a
+flaming contact upon the edge of the world, went out. The red sparks in
+the water vanished together with the stains of blood in the black mantle
+draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up
+and died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined
+earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours’ sleep,
+and arose full length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee
+deep amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the
+lost air of a man just born into the world. Handsome, robust, and
+supple, he threw back his head, flung his arms open, and stretched
+himself with a slow twist of the waist and a leisurely growling yawn of
+white teeth, as natural and free from evil in the moment of waking as a
+magnificent and unconscious wild beast. Then, in the suddenly steadied
+glance fixed upon nothing from under a thoughtful frown, appeared the
+man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+After landing from his swim Nostromo had scrambled up, all dripping,
+into the main quadrangle of the old fort; and there, amongst ruined bits
+of walls and rotting remnants of roofs and sheds, he had slept the day
+through. He had slept in the shadow of the mountains, in the white blaze
+of noon, in the stillness and solitude of that overgrown piece of land
+between the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle of the
+gulf. He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing like a tiny black speck
+in the blue, stooped, circling prudently with a stealthiness of flight
+startling in a bird of that great size. The shadow of his pearly-white
+body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no more silently than
+he alighted himself on a hillock of rubbish within three yards of that
+man, lying as still as a corpse. The bird stretched his bare neck,
+craned his bald head, loathsome in the brilliance of varied colouring,
+with an air of voracious anxiety towards the promising stillness of that
+prostrate body. Then, sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he
+settled himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nostromo’s eyes
+fell on waking was this patient watcher for the signs of death and
+corruption. When the man got up the vulture hopped away in great,
+side-long, fluttering jumps. He lingered for a while, morose and
+reluctant, before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister droop of
+beak and claws.
+
+Long after he had vanished, Nostromo, lifting his eyes up to the sky,
+muttered, “I am not dead yet.”
+
+The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores had lived in splendour and
+publicity up to the very moment, as it were, when he took charge of the
+lighter containing the treasure of silver ingots.
+
+The last act he had performed in Sulaco was in complete harmony with his
+vanity, and as such perfectly genuine. He had given his last dollar to
+an old woman moaning with the grief and fatigue of a dismal search
+under the arch of the ancient gate. Performed in obscurity and without
+witnesses, it had still the characteristics of splendour and publicity,
+and was in strict keeping with his reputation. But this awakening in
+solitude, except for the watchful vulture, amongst the ruins of the
+fort, had no such characteristics. His first confused feeling was
+exactly this--that it was not in keeping. It was more like the end of
+things. The necessity of living concealed somehow, for God knows how
+long, which assailed him on his return to consciousness, made everything
+that had gone before for years appear vain and foolish, like a
+flattering dream come suddenly to an end.
+
+He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and, putting aside the
+bushes, looked upon the harbour. He saw a couple of ships at anchor upon
+the sheet of water reflecting the last gleams of light, and Sotillo’s
+steamer moored to the jetty. And behind the pale long front of the
+Custom House, there appeared the extent of the town like a grove of
+thick timber on the plain with a gateway in front, and the cupolas,
+towers, and miradors rising above the trees, all dark, as if surrendered
+already to the night. The thought that it was no longer open to him to
+ride through the streets, recognized by everyone, great and little, as
+he used to do every evening on his way to play monte in the posada of
+the Mexican Domingo; or to sit in the place of honour, listening to
+songs and looking at dances, made it appear to him as a town that had no
+existence.
+
+For a long time he gazed on, then let the parted bushes spring back,
+and, crossing over to the other side of the fort, surveyed the vaster
+emptiness of the great gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the
+narrowing long band of red in the west, which gleamed low between their
+black shapes, and the Capataz thought of Decoud alone there with the
+treasure. That man was the only one who cared whether he fell into the
+hands of the Monterists or not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. And
+that merely would be an anxiety for his own sake. As to the rest, they
+neither knew nor cared. What he had heard Giorgio Viola say once was
+very true. Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept the
+people in poverty and subjection; they kept them as they kept dogs, to
+fight and hunt for their service.
+
+The darkness of the sky had descended to the line of the horizon,
+enveloping the whole gulf, the islets, and the lover of Antonia alone
+with the treasure on the Great Isabel. The Capataz, turning his back on
+these things invisible and existing, sat down and took his face between
+his fists. He felt the pinch of poverty for the first time in his life.
+To find himself without money after a run of bad luck at monte in the
+low, smoky room of Domingo’s posada, where the fraternity of Cargadores
+gambled, sang, and danced of an evening; to remain with empty pockets
+after a burst of public generosity to some peyne d’oro girl or other
+(for whom he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitution.
+He remained rich in glory and reputation. But since it was no longer
+possible for him to parade the streets of the town, and be hailed with
+respect in the usual haunts of his leisure, this sailor felt himself
+destitute indeed.
+
+His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and extremely anxious
+thinking, as it had never been dry before. It may be said that Nostromo
+tasted the dust and ashes of the fruit of life into which he had bitten
+deeply in his hunger for praise. Without removing his head from between
+his fists, he tried to spit before him--“Tfui”--and muttered a curse
+upon the selfishness of all the rich people.
+
+Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was the feeling of his
+waking), the idea of leaving the country altogether had presented itself
+to Nostromo. At that thought he had seen, like the beginning of another
+dream, a vision of steep and tideless shores, with dark pines on the
+heights and white houses low down near a very blue sea. He saw the quays
+of a big port, where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails
+outspread like motionless wings, enter gliding silently between the
+end of long moles of squared blocks that project angularly towards
+each other, hugging a cluster of shipping to the superb bosom of a hill
+covered with palaces. He remembered these sights not without some filial
+emotion, though he had been habitually and severely beaten as a boy
+on one of these feluccas by a short-necked, shaven Genoese, with a
+deliberate and distrustful manner, who (he firmly believed) had cheated
+him out of his orphan’s inheritance. But it is mercifully decreed that
+the evils of the past should appear but faintly in retrospect. Under
+the sense of loneliness, abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to
+these things appeared tolerable. But, what? Return? With bare feet
+and head, with one check shirt and a pair of cotton calzoneros for all
+worldly possessions?
+
+The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a fist dug into each
+cheek, laughed with self-derision, as he had spat with disgust, straight
+out before him into the night. The confused and intimate impressions
+of universal dissolution which beset a subjective nature at any strong
+check to its ruling passion had a bitterness approaching that of death
+itself. He was simple. He was as ready to become the prey of any belief,
+superstition, or desire as a child.
+
+The facts of his situation he could appreciate like a man with a
+distinct experience of the country. He saw them clearly. He was as if
+sobered after a long bout of intoxication. His fidelity had been taken
+advantage of. He had persuaded the body of Cargadores to side with the
+Blancos against the rest of the people; he had had interviews with Don
+Jose; he had been made use of by Father Corbelan for negotiating with
+Hernandez; it was known that Don Martin Decoud had admitted him to
+a sort of intimacy, so that he had been free of the offices of the
+Porvenir. All these things had flattered him in the usual way. What
+did he care about their politics? Nothing at all. And at the end of it
+all--Nostromo here and Nostromo there--where is Nostromo? Nostromo can
+do this and that--work all day and ride all night--behold! he found
+himself a marked Ribierist for any sort of vengeance Gamacho, for
+instance, would choose to take, now the Montero party, had, after all,
+mastered the town. The Europeans had given up; the Caballeros had given
+up. Don Martin had indeed explained it was only temporary--that he
+was going to bring Barrios to the rescue. Where was that now--with Don
+Martin (whose ironic manner of talk had always made the Capataz feel
+vaguely uneasy) stranded on the Great Isabel? Everybody had given up.
+Even Don Carlos had given up. The hurried removal of the treasure out
+to sea meant nothing else than that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a
+revulsion of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity, beheld all
+his world without faith and courage. He had been betrayed!
+
+With the boundless shadows of the sea behind him, out of his silence and
+immobility, facing the lofty shapes of the lower peaks crowded around
+the white, misty sheen of Higuerota, Nostromo laughed aloud again,
+sprang abruptly to his feet, and stood still. He must go. But where?
+
+“There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage us as if we were dogs
+born to fight and hunt for them. The vecchio is right,” he said, slowly
+and scathingly. He remembered old Giorgio taking his pipe out of his
+mouth to throw these words over his shoulder at the cafe, full of
+engine-drivers and fitters from the railway workshops. This image fixed
+his wavering purpose. He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God
+knows what might have happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped
+again and shook his head. To the left and right, in front and behind
+him, the scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.
+
+“Teresa was right, too,” he added in a low tone touched with awe. He
+wondered whether she was dead in her anger with him or still alive. As
+if in answer to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with
+a soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling cry:
+“Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo!--it is finished; it is finished”--announces
+calamity and death in the popular belief, drifted vaguely like a large
+dark ball across his path. In the downfall of all the realities that
+made his force, he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered
+slightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It could mean nothing
+else. The cry of the ill-omened bird, the first sound he was to hear on
+his return, was a fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The
+unseen powers which he had offended by refusing to bring a priest to a
+dying woman were lifting up their voice against him. She was dead. With
+admirable and human consistency he referred everything to himself. She
+had been a woman of good counsel always. And the bereaved old Giorgio
+remained stunned by his loss just as he was likely to require the advice
+of his sagacity. The blow would render the dreamy old man quite stupid
+for a time.
+
+As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner of trusted
+subordinates, considered him as a person fitted by education perhaps
+to sign papers in an office and to give orders, but otherwise of no use
+whatever, and something of a fool. The necessity of winding round his
+little finger, almost daily, the pompous and testy self-importance of
+the old seaman had grown irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had
+given him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of overcoming small
+obstacles becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality as much by
+the certitude of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted
+his superior’s proneness to fussy action. That old Englishman had no
+judgment, he said to himself. It was useless to suppose that, acquainted
+with the true state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He would
+talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo feared him as one
+would fear saddling one’s self with some persistent worry. He had no
+discretion. He would betray the treasure. And Nostromo had made up his
+mind that the treasure should not be betrayed.
+
+The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence. His
+imagination had seized upon the clear and simple notion of betrayal to
+account for the dazed feeling of enlightenment as to being done for, of
+having inadvertently gone out of his existence on an issue in which his
+personality had not been taken into account. A man betrayed is a man
+destroyed. Signora Teresa (may God have her soul!) had been right. He
+had never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her white form sitting
+up bowed in bed, the falling black hair, the wide-browed suffering
+face raised to him, the anger of her denunciations appeared to him now
+majestic with the awfulness of inspiration and of death. For it was not
+for nothing that the evil bird had uttered its lamentable shriek over
+his head. She was dead--may God have her soul!
+
+Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses, his mind used
+the pious formula from the superficial force of habit, but with a
+deep-seated sincerity. The popular mind is incapable of scepticism;
+and that incapacity delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of
+swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders inspired by visions
+of a high destiny. She was dead. But would God consent to receive her
+soul? She had died without confession or absolution, because he had
+not been willing to spare her another moment of his time. His scorn of
+priests as priests remained; but after all, it was impossible to know
+whether what they affirmed was not true. Power, punishment, pardon,
+are simple and credible notions. The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores,
+deprived of certain simple realities, such as the admiration of women,
+the adulation of men, the admired publicity of his life, was ready to
+feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt descend upon his shoulders.
+
+Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the lingering warmth of
+the fine sand under the soles of his feet. The narrow strand gleamed
+far ahead in a long curve, defining the outline of this wild side of the
+harbour. He flitted along the shore like a pursued shadow between the
+sombre palm-groves and the sheet of water lying as still as death on his
+right hand. He strode with headlong haste in the silence and solitude
+as though he had forgotten all prudence and caution. But he knew that on
+this side of the water he ran no risk of discovery. The only inhabitant
+was a lonely, silent, apathetic Indian in charge of the palmarias, who
+brought sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the town for sale. He lived
+without a woman in an open shed, with a perpetual fire of dry sticks
+smouldering near an old canoe lying bottom up on the beach. He could be
+easily avoided.
+
+The barking of the dogs about that man’s ranche was the first thing that
+checked his speed. He had forgotten the dogs. He swerved sharply, and
+plunged into the palm-grove, as into a wilderness of columns in an
+immense hall, whose dense obscurity seemed to whisper and rustle faintly
+high above his head. He traversed it, entered a ravine, and climbed to
+the top of a steep ridge free of trees and bushes.
+
+From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw the plain between
+the town and the harbour. In the woods above some night-bird made a
+strange drumming noise. Below beyond the palmaria on the beach, the
+Indian’s dogs continued to bark uproariously. He wondered what had upset
+them so much, and, peering down from his elevation, was surprised to
+detect unaccountable movements of the ground below, as if several oblong
+pieces of the plain had been in motion. Those dark, shifting patches,
+alternately catching and eluding the eye, altered their place always
+away from the harbour, with a suggestion of consecutive order and
+purpose. A light dawned upon him. It was a column of infantry on a night
+march towards the higher broken country at the foot of the hills. But he
+was too much in the dark about everything for wonder and speculation.
+
+The plain had resumed its shadowy immobility. He descended the ridge and
+found himself in the open solitude, between the harbour and the town.
+Its spaciousness, extended indefinitely by an effect of obscurity,
+rendered more sensible his profound isolation. His pace became slower.
+No one waited for him; no one thought of him; no one expected or wished
+his return. “Betrayed! Betrayed!” he muttered to himself. No one
+cared. He might have been drowned by this time. No one would have
+cared--unless, perhaps, the children, he thought to himself. But they
+were with the English signora, and not thinking of him at all.
+
+He wavered in his purpose of making straight for the Casa Viola. To what
+end? What could he expect there? His life seemed to fail him in all
+its details, even to the scornful reproaches of Teresa. He was
+aware painfully of his reluctance. Was it that remorse which she had
+prophesied with, what he saw now, was her last breath?
+
+Meantime, he had deviated from the straight course, inclining by a sort
+of instinct to the right, towards the jetty and the harbour, the scene
+of his daily labours. The great length of the Custom House loomed up all
+at once like the wall of a factory. Not a soul challenged his approach,
+and his curiosity became excited as he passed cautiously towards the
+front by the unexpected sight of two lighted windows.
+
+They had the fascination of a lonely vigil kept by some mysterious
+watcher up there, those two windows shining dimly upon the harbour in
+the whole vast extent of the abandoned building. The solitude could
+almost be felt. A strong smell of wood smoke hung about in a thin haze,
+which was faintly perceptible to his raised eyes against the glitter
+of the stars. As he advanced in the profound silence, the shrilling of
+innumerable cicalas in the dry grass seemed positively deafening to his
+strained ears. Slowly, step by step, he found himself in the great hall,
+sombre and full of acrid smoke.
+
+A fire built against the staircase had burnt down impotently to a low
+heap of embers. The hard wood had failed to catch; only a few steps at
+the bottom smouldered, with a creeping glow of sparks defining their
+charred edges. At the top he saw a streak of light from an open door. It
+fell upon the vast landing, all foggy with a slow drift of smoke. That
+was the room. He climbed the stairs, then checked himself, because he
+had seen within the shadow of a man cast upon one of the walls. It was
+a shapeless, high-shouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with
+lowered head, out of his line of sight. The Capataz, remembering that he
+was totally unarmed, stepped aside, and, effacing himself upright in a
+dark corner, waited with his eyes fixed on the door.
+
+The whole enormous ruined barrack of a place, unfinished, without
+ceilings under its lofty roof, was pervaded by the smoke swaying to and
+fro in the faint cross draughts playing in the obscurity of many lofty
+rooms and barnlike passages. Once one of the swinging shutters came
+against the wall with a single sharp crack, as if pushed by an impatient
+hand. A piece of paper scurried out from somewhere, rustling along the
+landing. The man, whoever he was, did not darken the lighted doorway.
+Twice the Capataz, advancing a couple of steps out of his corner,
+craned his neck in the hope of catching sight of what he could be at,
+so quietly, in there. But every time he saw only the distorted shadow
+of broad shoulders and bowed head. He was doing apparently nothing, and
+stirred not from the spot, as though he were meditating--or, perhaps,
+reading a paper. And not a sound issued from the room.
+
+Once more the Capataz stepped back. He wondered who it was--some
+Monterist? But he dreaded to show himself. To discover his presence
+on shore, unless after many days, would, he believed, endanger the
+treasure. With his own knowledge possessing his whole soul, it seemed
+impossible that anybody in Sulaco should fail to jump at the right
+surmise. After a couple of weeks or so it would be different. Who could
+tell he had not returned overland from some port beyond the limits of
+the Republic? The existence of the treasure confused his thoughts with
+a peculiar sort of anxiety, as though his life had become bound up with
+it. It rendered him timorous for a moment before that enigmatic, lighted
+door. Devil take the fellow! He did not want to see him. There would be
+nothing to learn from his face, known or unknown. He was a fool to waste
+his time there in waiting.
+
+Less than five minutes after entering the place the Capataz began his
+retreat. He got away down the stairs with perfect success, gave one
+upward look over his shoulder at the light on the landing, and ran
+stealthily across the hall. But at the very moment he was turning out of
+the great door, with his mind fixed upon escaping the notice of the man
+upstairs, somebody he had not heard coming briskly along the front ran
+full into him. Both muttered a stifled exclamation of surprise, and
+leaped back and stood still, each indistinct to the other. Nostromo was
+silent. The other man spoke first, in an amazed and deadened tone.
+
+“Who are you?”
+
+Already Nostromo had seemed to recognize Dr. Monygham. He had no doubt
+now. He hesitated the space of a second. The idea of bolting without a
+word presented itself to his mind. No use! An inexplicable repugnance
+to pronounce the name by which he was known kept him silent a little
+longer. At last he said in a low voice--
+
+“A Cargador.”
+
+He walked up to the other. Dr. Monygham had received a shock. He flung
+his arms up and cried out his wonder aloud, forgetting himself before
+the marvel of this meeting. Nostromo angrily warned him to moderate
+his voice. The Custom House was not so deserted as it looked. There was
+somebody in the lighted room above.
+
+There is no more evanescent quality in an accomplished fact than its
+wonderfulness. Solicited incessantly by the considerations affecting
+its fears and desires, the human mind turns naturally away from the
+marvellous side of events. And it was in the most natural way possible
+that the doctor asked this man whom only two minutes before he believed
+to have been drowned in the gulf--
+
+“You have seen somebody up there? Have you?”
+
+“No, I have not seen him.”
+
+“Then how do you know?”
+
+“I was running away from his shadow when we met.”
+
+“His shadow?”
+
+“Yes. His shadow in the lighted room,” said Nostromo, in a contemptuous
+tone. Leaning back with folded arms at the foot of the immense building,
+he dropped his head, biting his lips slightly, and not looking at the
+doctor. “Now,” he thought to himself, “he will begin asking me about the
+treasure.”
+
+But the doctor’s thoughts were concerned with an event not as marvellous
+as Nostromo’s appearance, but in itself much less clear. Why had Sotillo
+taken himself off with his whole command with this suddenness and
+secrecy? What did this move portend? However, it dawned upon the
+doctor that the man upstairs was one of the officers left behind by the
+disappointed colonel to communicate with him.
+
+“I believe he is waiting for me,” he said.
+
+“It is possible.”
+
+“I must see. Do not go away yet, Capataz.”
+
+“Go away where?” muttered Nostromo.
+
+Already the doctor had left him. He remained leaning against the wall,
+staring at the dark water of the harbour; the shrilling of cicalas
+filled his ears. An invincible vagueness coming over his thoughts took
+from them all power to determine his will.
+
+“Capataz! Capataz!” the doctor’s voice called urgently from above.
+
+The sense of betrayal and ruin floated upon his sombre indifference as
+upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he stepped out from under the wall,
+and, looking up, saw Dr. Monygham leaning out of a lighted window.
+
+“Come up and see what Sotillo has done. You need not fear the man up
+here.”
+
+He answered by a slight, bitter laugh. Fear a man! The Capataz of the
+Sulaco Cargadores fear a man! It angered him that anybody should suggest
+such a thing. It angered him to be disarmed and skulking and in danger
+because of the accursed treasure, which was of so little account to the
+people who had tied it round his neck. He could not shake off the worry
+of it. To Nostromo the doctor represented all these people. . . . And
+he had never even asked after it. Not a word of inquiry about the most
+desperate undertaking of his life.
+
+Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again through the cavernous
+hall, where the smoke was considerably thinned, and went up the stairs,
+not so warm to his feet now, towards the streak of light at the top. The
+doctor appeared in it for a moment, agitated and impatient.
+
+“Come up! Come up!”
+
+At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz experienced a shock of
+surprise. The man had not moved. He saw his shadow in the same place.
+He started, then stepped in with a feeling of being about to solve a
+mystery.
+
+It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second, against
+the light of two flaring and guttering candles, through a blue, pungent,
+thin haze which made his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he
+had imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an enormous and
+distorted shadow upon the wall. Swifter than a flash of lightning
+followed the impression of his constrained, toppling attitude--the
+shoulders projecting forward, the head sunk low upon the breast. Then
+he distinguished the arms behind his back, and wrenched so terribly that
+the two clenched fists, lashed together, had been forced up higher than
+the shoulder-blades. From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous
+glance the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over a heavy
+beam and down to a staple in the wall. He did not want to look at the
+rigid legs, at the feet hanging down nervelessly, with their bare toes
+some six inches above the floor, to know that the man had been given the
+estrapade till he had swooned. His first impulse was to dash forward and
+sever the rope at one blow. He felt for his knife. He had no knife--not
+even a knife. He stood quivering, and the doctor, perched on the edge of
+the table, facing thoughtfully the cruel and lamentable sight, his chin
+in his hand, uttered, without stirring--
+
+“Tortured--and shot dead through the breast--getting cold.”
+
+This information calmed the Capataz. One of the candles flickering in
+the socket went out. “Who did this?” he asked.
+
+“Sotillo, I tell you. Who else? Tortured--of course. But why shot?” The
+doctor looked fixedly at Nostromo, who shrugged his shoulders slightly.
+“And mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is evident. I wish I had his
+secret.”
+
+Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to look. “I seem to have
+seen that face somewhere,” he muttered. “Who is he?”
+
+The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. “I may yet come to envying
+his fate. What do you think of that, Capataz, eh?”
+
+But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing the remaining light,
+he thrust it under the drooping head. The doctor sat oblivious, with
+a lost gaze. Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of
+Nostromo’s hand, clattered on the floor.
+
+“Hullo!” exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a start. He could hear
+the Capataz stagger against the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction
+of the light within, the dead blackness sealing the window-frames became
+alive with stars to his sight.
+
+“Of course, of course,” the doctor muttered to himself in English.
+“Enough to make him jump out of his skin.”
+
+Nostromo’s heart seemed to force itself into his throat. His head swam.
+Hirsch! The man was Hirsch! He held on tight to the edge of the table.
+
+“But he was hiding in the lighter,” he almost shouted His voice fell.
+“In the lighter, and--and--”
+
+“And Sotillo brought him in,” said the doctor. “He is no more startling
+to you than you were to me. What I want to know is how he induced some
+compassionate soul to shoot him.”
+
+“So Sotillo knows--” began Nostromo, in a more equable voice.
+
+“Everything!” interrupted the doctor.
+
+The Capataz was heard striking the table with his fist. “Everything?
+What are you saying, there? Everything? Know everything? It is
+impossible! Everything?”
+
+“Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I tell you I have heard
+this Hirsch questioned last night, here, in this very room. He knew your
+name, Decoud’s name, and all about the loading of the silver. . . .
+The lighter was cut in two. He was grovelling in abject terror before
+Sotillo, but he remembered that much. What do you want more? He knew
+least about himself. They found him clinging to their anchor. He must
+have caught at it just as the lighter went to the bottom.”
+
+“Went to the bottom?” repeated Nostromo, slowly. “Sotillo believes that?
+Bueno!”
+
+The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to imagine what else could
+anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo believed that the lighter was sunk, and
+the Capataz de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud and perhaps one
+or two other political fugitives, had been drowned.
+
+“I told you well, senor doctor,” remarked Nostromo at that point, “that
+Sotillo did not know everything.”
+
+“Eh? What do you mean?”
+
+“He did not know I was not dead.”
+
+“Neither did we.”
+
+“And you did not care--none of you caballeros on the wharf--once you got
+off a man of flesh and blood like yourselves on a fool’s business that
+could not end well.”
+
+“You forget, Capataz, I was not on the wharf. And I did not think well
+of the business. So you need not taunt me. I tell you what, man, we had
+but little leisure to think of the dead. Death stands near behind us
+all. You were gone.”
+
+“I went, indeed!” broke in Nostromo. “And for the sake of what--tell
+me?”
+
+“Ah! that is your own affair,” the doctor said, roughly. “Do not ask
+me.”
+
+Their flowing murmurs paused in the dark. Perched on the edge of the
+table with slightly averted faces, they felt their shoulders touch, and
+their eyes remained directed towards an upright shape nearly lost in the
+obscurity of the inner part of the room, that with projecting head and
+shoulders, in ghastly immobility, seemed intent on catching every word.
+
+“Muy bien!” Nostromo muttered at last. “So be it. Teresa was right. It
+is my own affair.”
+
+“Teresa is dead,” remarked the doctor, absently, while his mind
+followed a new line of thought suggested by what might have been called
+Nostromo’s return to life. “She died, the poor woman.”
+
+“Without a priest?” the Capataz asked, anxiously.
+
+“What a question! Who could have got a priest for her last night?”
+
+“May God keep her soul!” ejaculated Nostromo, with a gloomy and hopeless
+fervour which had no time to surprise Dr. Monygham, before, reverting to
+their previous conversation, he continued in a sinister tone, “Si,
+senor doctor. As you were saying, it is my own affair. A very desperate
+affair.”
+
+“There are no two men in this part of the world that could have saved
+themselves by swimming as you have done,” the doctor said, admiringly.
+
+And again there was silence between those two men. They were both
+reflecting, and the diversity of their natures made their thoughts born
+from their meeting swing afar from each other. The doctor, impelled to
+risky action by his loyalty to the Goulds, wondered with thankfulness at
+the chain of accident which had brought that man back where he would be
+of the greatest use in the work of saving the San Tome mine. The doctor
+was loyal to the mine. It presented itself to his fifty-years’ old eyes
+in the shape of a little woman in a soft dress with a long train, with
+a head attractively overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and the
+delicate preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of a gem and
+a flower, revealed in every attitude of her person. As the dangers
+thickened round the San Tome mine this illusion acquired force,
+permanency, and authority. It claimed him at last! This claim, exalted
+by a spiritual detachment from the usual sanctions of hope and reward,
+made Dr. Monygham’s thinking, acting, individuality extremely dangerous
+to himself and to others, all his scruples vanishing in the proud
+feeling that his devotion was the only thing that stood between an
+admirable woman and a frightful disaster.
+
+It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly indifferent to
+Decoud’s fate, but left his wits perfectly clear for the appreciation
+of Decoud’s political idea. It was a good idea--and Barrios was the only
+instrument of its realization. The doctor’s soul, withered and shrunk by
+the shame of a moral disgrace, became implacable in the expansion of its
+tenderness. Nostromo’s return was providential. He did not think of him
+humanely, as of a fellow-creature just escaped from the jaws of death.
+The Capataz for him was the only possible messenger to Cayta. The very
+man. The doctor’s misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer because
+based on personal failure) did not lift him sufficiently above common
+weaknesses. He was under the spell of an established reputation.
+Trumpeted by Captain Mitchell, grown in repetition, and fixed in
+general assent, Nostromo’s faithfulness had never been questioned by Dr.
+Monygham as a fact. It was not likely to be questioned now he stood in
+desperate need of it himself. Dr. Monygham was human; he accepted the
+popular conception of the Capataz’s incorruptibility simply because no
+word or fact had ever contradicted a mere affirmation. It seemed to be
+a part of the man, like his whiskers or his teeth. It was impossible to
+conceive him otherwise. The question was whether he would consent to
+go on such a dangerous and desperate errand. The doctor was observant
+enough to have become aware from the first of something peculiar in the
+man’s temper. He was no doubt sore about the loss of the silver.
+
+“It will be necessary to take him into my fullest confidence,” he said
+to himself, with a certain acuteness of insight into the nature he had
+to deal with.
+
+On Nostromo’s side the silence had been full of black irresolution,
+anger, and mistrust. He was the first to break it, however.
+
+“The swimming was no great matter,” he said. “It is what went
+before--and what comes after that--”
+
+He did not quite finish what he meant to say, breaking off short, as
+though his thought had butted against a solid obstacle. The doctor’s
+mind pursued its own schemes with Machiavellian subtlety. He said as
+sympathetically as he was able--
+
+“It is unfortunate, Capataz. But no one would think of blaming you. Very
+unfortunate. To begin with, the treasure ought never to have left the
+mountain. But it was Decoud who--however, he is dead. There is no need
+to talk of him.”
+
+“No,” assented Nostromo, as the doctor paused, “there is no need to talk
+of dead men. But I am not dead yet.”
+
+“You are all right. Only a man of your intrepidity could have saved
+himself.”
+
+In this Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed highly the intrepidity of
+that man, whom he valued but little, being disillusioned as to mankind
+in general, because of the particular instance in which his own manhood
+had failed. Having had to encounter singlehanded during his period of
+eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous
+element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human
+littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural
+forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows. He was eminently fit
+to appreciate the mental image he made for himself of the Capataz, after
+hours of tension and anxiety, precipitated suddenly into an abyss of
+waters and darkness, without earth or sky, and confronting it not only
+with an undismayed mind, but with sensible success. Of course, the man
+was an incomparable swimmer, that was known, but the doctor judged that
+this instance testified to a still greater intrepidity of spirit. It was
+pleasing to him; he augured well from it for the success of the arduous
+mission with which he meant to entrust the Capataz so marvellously
+restored to usefulness. And in a tone vaguely gratified, he observed--
+
+“It must have been terribly dark!”
+
+“It was the worst darkness of the Golfo,” the Capataz assented, briefly.
+He was mollified by what seemed a sign of some faint interest in such
+things as had befallen him, and dropped a few descriptive phrases with
+an affected and curt nonchalance. At that moment he felt communicative.
+He expected the continuance of that interest which, whether accepted
+or rejected, would have restored to him his personality--the only thing
+lost in that desperate affair. But the doctor, engrossed by a desperate
+adventure of his own, was terrible in the pursuit of his idea. He let an
+exclamation of regret escape him.
+
+“I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a light.”
+
+This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz by its character of
+cold-blooded atrocity. It was as much as to say, “I wish you had shown
+yourself a coward; I wish you had had your throat cut for your pains.”
+ Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it related only to the
+silver, being uttered simply and with many mental reservations. Surprise
+and rage rendered him speechless, and the doctor pursued, practically
+unheard by Nostromo, whose stirred blood was beating violently in his
+ears.
+
+“For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the silver would have
+turned short round and made for some small port abroad. Economically it
+would have been wasteful, but still less wasteful than having it sunk.
+It was the next best thing to having it at hand in some safe place, and
+using part of it to buy up Sotillo. But I doubt whether Don Carlos would
+have ever made up his mind to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that
+is a fact, Capataz.”
+
+The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a tempest in his ears in
+time to hear the name of Don Carlos. He seemed to have come out of it a
+changed man--a man who spoke thoughtfully in a soft and even voice.
+
+“And would Don Carlos have been content if I had surrendered this
+treasure?”
+
+“I should not wonder if they were all of that way of thinking now,” the
+doctor said, grimly. “I was never consulted. Decoud had it his own way.
+Their eyes are opened by this time, I should think. I for one know that
+if that silver turned up this moment miraculously ashore I would give it
+to Sotillo. And, as things stand, I would be approved.”
+
+“Turned up miraculously,” repeated the Capataz very low; then raised
+his voice. “That, senor, would be a greater miracle than any saint could
+perform.”
+
+“I believe you, Capataz,” said the doctor, drily.
+
+He went on to develop his view of Sotillo’s dangerous influence upon the
+situation. And the Capataz, listening as if in a dream, felt himself of
+as little account as the indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man
+whom he saw upright under the beam, with his air of listening also,
+disregarded, forgotten, like a terrible example of neglect.
+
+“Was it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that they came to me,
+then?” he interrupted suddenly. “Had I not done enough for them to be
+of some account, por Dios? Is it that the hombres finos--the
+gentlemen--need not think as long as there is a man of the people ready
+to risk his body and soul? Or, perhaps, we have no souls--like dogs?”
+
+“There was Decoud, too, with his plan,” the doctor reminded him again.
+
+“Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had something to do with
+that treasure, too--what do I know? No! I have heard too many things. It
+seems to me that everything is permitted to the rich.”
+
+“I understand, Capataz,” the doctor began.
+
+“What Capataz?” broke in Nostromo, in a forcible but even voice. “The
+Capataz is undone, destroyed. There is no Capataz. Oh, no! You will find
+the Capataz no more.”
+
+“Come, this is childish!” remonstrated the doctor; and the other calmed
+down suddenly.
+
+“I have been indeed like a little child,” he muttered.
+
+And as his eyes met again the shape of the murdered man suspended in
+his awful immobility, which seemed the uncomplaining immobility of
+attention, he asked, wondering gently--
+
+“Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful wretch? Do you
+know? No torture could have been worse than his fear. Killing I can
+understand. His anguish was intolerable to behold. But why should he
+torment him like this? He could tell no more.”
+
+“No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man would have seen that. He
+had told him everything. But I tell you what it is, Capataz. Sotillo
+would not believe what he was told. Not everything.”
+
+“What is it he would not believe? I cannot understand.”
+
+“I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to believe that the
+treasure is lost.”
+
+“What?” the Capataz cried out in a discomposed tone.
+
+“That startles you--eh?”
+
+“Am I to understand, senor,” Nostromo went on in a deliberate and, as it
+were, watchful tone, “that Sotillo thinks the treasure has been saved by
+some means?”
+
+“No! no! That would be impossible,” said the doctor, with conviction;
+and Nostromo emitted a grunt in the dark. “That would be impossible. He
+thinks that the silver was no longer in the lighter when she was sunk.
+He has convinced himself that the whole show of getting it away to sea
+is a mere sham got up to deceive Gamacho and his Nationals, Pedrito
+Montero, Senor Fuentes, our new Gefe Politico, and himself, too. Only,
+he says, he is no such fool.”
+
+“But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest imbecile that ever called
+himself a colonel in this country of evil,” growled Nostromo.
+
+“He is no more unreasonable than many sensible men,” said the doctor.
+“He has convinced himself that the treasure can be found because he
+desires passionately to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid of
+his officers turning upon him and going over to Pedrito, whom he has not
+the courage either to fight or trust. Do you see that, Capataz? He need
+fear no desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous plunder
+turning up. I have made it my business to keep this very hope up.”
+
+“You have?” the Capataz de Cargadores repeated cautiously. “Well, that
+is wonderful. And how long do you think you are going to keep it up?”
+
+“As long as I can.”
+
+“What does that mean?”
+
+“I can tell you exactly. As long as I live,” the doctor retorted in
+a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, he described the story of his
+arrest and the circumstances of his release. “I was going back to that
+silly scoundrel when we met,” he concluded.
+
+Nostromo had listened with profound attention. “You have made up your
+mind, then, to a speedy death,” he muttered through his clenched teeth.
+
+“Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz,” the doctor said, testily. “You are
+not the only one here who can look an ugly death in the face.”
+
+“No doubt,” mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be overheard. “There may be
+even more than two fools in this place. Who knows?”
+
+“And that is my affair,” said the doctor, curtly.
+
+“As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my affair,” retorted
+Nostromo. “I see. Bueno! Each of us has his reasons. But you were the
+last man I conversed with before I started, and you talked to me as if I
+were a fool.”
+
+Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor’s sardonic treatment of his
+great reputation. Decoud’s faintly ironic recognition used to make him
+uneasy; but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was flattering,
+whereas the doctor was a nobody. He could remember him a penniless
+outcast, slinking about the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend
+or acquaintance, till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service of the
+mine.
+
+“You may be very wise,” he went on, thoughtfully, staring into the
+obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome enigma of the tortured
+and murdered Hirsch. “But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have
+learned one thing since, and that is that you are a dangerous man.”
+
+Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than exclaim--
+
+“What is it you say?”
+
+“If he could speak he would say the same thing,” pursued Nostromo, with
+a nod of his shadowy head silhouetted against the starlit window.
+
+“I do not understand you,” said Dr. Monygham, faintly.
+
+“No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in his madness, he would
+have been in no haste to give the estrapade to that miserable Hirsch.”
+
+The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion, absorbing all
+his sensibilities, had left his heart steeled against remorse and pity.
+Still, for complete relief, he felt the necessity of repelling it loudly
+and contemptuously.
+
+“Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like Sotillo. I confess I
+did not give a thought to Hirsch. If I had it would have been useless.
+Anybody can see that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment he
+caught hold of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell you! Just as I myself
+am doomed--most probably.”
+
+This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo’s remark, which was
+plausible enough to prick his conscience. He was not a callous man. But
+the necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task he had taken
+upon himself dwarfed all merely humane considerations. He had undertaken
+it in a fanatical spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to
+circumvent even the basest of mankind was odious to him. It was odious
+to him by training, instinct, and tradition. To do these things in the
+character of a traitor was abhorrent to his nature and terrible to his
+feelings. He had made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He had
+said to himself bitterly, “I am the only one fit for that dirty work.”
+ And he believed this. He was not subtle. His simplicity was such that,
+though he had no sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly
+enough, to which he exposed himself, had a sustaining and comforting
+effect. To that spiritual state the fate of Hirsch presented itself
+as part of the general atrocity of things. He considered that episode
+practically. What did it mean? Was it a sign of some dangerous change in
+Sotillo’s delusion? That the man should have been killed like this was
+what the doctor could not understand.
+
+“Yes. But why shot?” he murmured to himself.
+
+Nostromo kept very still.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+Distracted between doubts and hopes, dismayed by the sound of bells
+pealing out the arrival of Pedrito Montero, Sotillo had spent the
+morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was
+unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions.
+Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear made a tumult, in the colonel’s
+breast louder than the din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned
+had come to pass. Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the mine had fallen
+into his hands. He had performed no military exploit to secure his
+position, and had obtained no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito
+Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread. The sound of
+bells maddened him.
+
+Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, he had made his
+battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the
+length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his
+right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with
+a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in
+savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on
+the table. His officers, crowding the window giving the view of the town
+gate, disputed amongst themselves the use of his field-glass bought last
+year on long credit from Anzani. It passed from hand to hand, and the
+possessor for the time being was besieged by anxious inquiries.
+
+“There is nothing; there is nothing to see!” he would repeat
+impatiently.
+
+There was nothing. And when the picket in the bushes near the Casa
+Viola had been ordered to fall back upon the main body, no stir of life
+appeared on the stretch of dusty and arid land between the town and the
+waters of the port. But late in the afternoon a horseman issuing from
+the gate was made out riding up fearlessly. It was an emissary from
+Senor Fuentes. Being all alone he was allowed to come on. Dismounting at
+the great door he greeted the silent bystanders with cheery impudence,
+and begged to be taken up at once to the “muy valliente” colonel.
+
+Senor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Gefe Politico, had
+turned his diplomatic abilities to getting hold of the harbour as well
+as of the mine. The man he pitched upon to negotiate with Sotillo was a
+Notary Public, whom the revolution had found languishing in the common
+jail on a charge of forging documents. Liberated by the mob along with
+the other “victims of Blanco tyranny,” he had hastened to offer his
+services to the new Government.
+
+He set out determined to display much zeal and eloquence in trying to
+induce Sotillo to come into town alone for a conference with Pedrito
+Montero. Nothing was further from the colonel’s intentions. The mere
+fleeting idea of trusting himself into the famous Pedrito’s hands had
+made him feel unwell several times. It was out of the question--it was
+madness. And to put himself in open hostility was madness, too. It would
+render impossible a systematic search for that treasure, for that wealth
+of silver which he seemed to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere
+near.
+
+But where? Where? Heavens! Where? Oh! why had he allowed that doctor
+to go! Imbecile that he was. But no! It was the only right course, he
+reflected distractedly, while the messenger waited downstairs chatting
+agreeably to the officers. It was in that scoundrelly doctor’s true
+interest to return with positive information. But what if anything
+stopped him? A general prohibition to leave the town, for instance!
+There would be patrols!
+
+The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in his tracks as if
+struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration suggested to him an
+expedient not unknown to European statesmen when they wish to delay a
+difficult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled into the hammock
+with undignified haste. His handsome face had turned yellow with the
+strain of weighty cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp;
+the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. The velvety, caressing
+glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even decomposed; for these
+almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot
+with much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the surprised envoy
+of Senor Fuentes in a deadened, exhausted voice. It came pathetically
+feeble from under a pile of ponchos, which buried his elegant person
+right up to the black moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign of bodily
+prostration and mental incapacity. Fever, fever--a heavy fever
+had overtaken the “muy valliente” colonel. A wavering wildness of
+expression, caused by the passing spasms of a slight colic which had
+declared itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic, had
+a genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a cold fit. The colonel
+explained that he was unable to think, to listen, to speak. With an
+appearance of superhuman effort the colonel gasped out that he was
+not in a state to return a suitable reply or to execute any of his
+Excellency’s orders. But to-morrow! To-morrow! Ah! to-morrow! Let his
+Excellency Don Pedro be without uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda Regiment
+held the harbour, held--And closing his eyes, he rolled his aching head
+like a half-delirious invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy,
+who was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order to catch the
+painful and broken accents. Meantime, Colonel Sotillo trusted that his
+Excellency’s humanity would permit the doctor, the English doctor, to
+come out of town with his case of foreign remedies to attend upon him.
+He begged anxiously his worship the caballero now present for the grace
+of looking in as he passed the Casa Gould, and informing the English
+doctor, who was probably there, that his services were immediately
+required by Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of fever in the Custom House.
+Immediately. Most urgently required. Awaited with extreme impatience.
+A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and would not open
+them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, dumb, insensible, overcome,
+vanquished, crushed, annihilated by the fell disease.
+
+But as soon as the other had shut after him the door of the landing, the
+colonel leaped out with a fling of both feet in an avalanche of woollen
+coverings. His spurs having become entangled in a perfect welter of
+ponchos he nearly pitched on his head, and did not recover his balance
+till the middle of the room. Concealed behind the half-closed jalousies
+he listened to what went on below.
+
+The envoy had already mounted, and turning to the morose officers
+occupying the great doorway, took off his hat formally.
+
+“Caballeros,” he said, in a very loud tone, “allow me to recommend
+you to take great care of your colonel. It has done me much honour and
+gratification to have seen you all, a fine body of men exercising the
+soldierly virtue of patience in this exposed situation, where there
+is much sun, and no water to speak of, while a town full of wine and
+feminine charms is ready to embrace you for the brave men you are.
+Caballeros, I have the honour to salute you. There will be much dancing
+to-night in Sulaco. Good-bye!”
+
+But he reined in his horse and inclined his head sideways on seeing
+the old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a straight narrow
+coat coming down to his ankles as it were the casing of the regimental
+colours rolled round their staff.
+
+The intelligent old warrior, after enunciating in a dogmatic tone the
+general proposition that the “world was full of traitors,” went on
+pronouncing deliberately a panegyric upon Sotillo. He ascribed to him
+with leisurely emphasis every virtue under heaven, summing it all up in
+an absurd colloquialism current amongst the lower class of Occidentals
+(especially about Esmeralda). “And,” he concluded, with a sudden rise in
+the voice, “a man of many teeth--‘hombre de muchos dientes.’ Si, senor.
+As to us,” he pursued, portentous and impressive, “your worship is
+beholding the finest body of officers in the Republic, men unequalled
+for valour and sagacity, ‘y hombres de muchos dientes.’”
+
+“What? All of them?” inquired the disreputable envoy of Senor Fuentes,
+with a faint, derisive smile.
+
+“Todos. Si, senor,” the major affirmed, gravely, with conviction. “Men
+of many teeth.”
+
+The other wheeled his horse to face the portal resembling the high gate
+of a dismal barn. He raised himself in his stirrups, extended one arm.
+He was a facetious scoundrel, entertaining for these stupid Occidentals
+a feeling of great scorn natural in a native from the central provinces.
+The folly of Esmeraldians especially aroused his amused contempt. He
+began an oration upon Pedro Montero, keeping a solemn countenance. He
+flourished his hand as if introducing him to their notice. And when he
+saw every face set, all the eyes fixed upon his lips, he began to
+shout a sort of catalogue of perfections: “Generous, valorous, affable,
+profound”--(he snatched off his hat enthusiastically)--“a statesman, an
+invincible chief of partisans--” He dropped his voice startlingly to a
+deep, hollow note--“and a dentist.”
+
+He was off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid straddle of his legs,
+the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the rakish slant of the sombrero
+above the square, motionless set of the shoulders expressing an
+infinite, awe-inspiring impudence.
+
+Upstairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move for a long time.
+The audacity of the fellow appalled him. What were his officers saying
+below? They were saying nothing. Complete silence. He quaked. It was not
+thus that he had imagined himself at that stage of the expedition. He
+had seen himself triumphant, unquestioned, appeased, the idol of the
+soldiers, weighing in secret complacency the agreeable alternatives of
+power and wealth open to his choice. Alas! How different! Distracted,
+restless, supine, burning with fury, or frozen with terror, he felt
+a dread as fathomless as the sea creep upon him from every side. That
+rogue of a doctor had to come out with his information. That was clear.
+It would be of no use to him--alone. He could do nothing with it.
+Malediction! The doctor would never come out. He was probably under
+arrest already, shut up together with Don Carlos. He laughed aloud
+insanely. Ha! ha! ha! ha! It was Pedrito Montero who would get the
+information. Ha! ha! ha! ha!--and the silver. Ha!
+
+All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became motionless and silent
+as if turned into stone. He too, had a prisoner. A prisoner who must,
+must know the real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And
+Sotillo, who all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch, felt an
+inexplicable reluctance at the notion of proceeding to extremities.
+
+He felt a reluctance--part of that unfathomable dread that crept on all
+sides upon him. He remembered reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of the
+hide merchant, his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It
+was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility. The fact was that
+though Sotillo did never for a moment believe his story--he could not
+believe it; nobody could believe such nonsense--yet those accents of
+despairing truth impressed him disagreeably. They made him feel sick.
+And he suspected also that the man might have gone mad with fear. A
+lunatic is a hopeless subject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence.
+He would know how to deal with that.
+
+He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. His fine eyes
+squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a bare-footed orderly appeared
+noiselessly, a corporal, with his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a
+stick in his hand.
+
+The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable Hirsch, pushed
+in by several soldiers, found him frowning awfully in a broad armchair,
+hat on head, knees wide apart, arms akimbo, masterful, imposing,
+irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible.
+
+Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled violently
+into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he remained apparently
+forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full
+of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows,
+passive, sunk in hebetude. He listened to threats and admonitions, and
+afterwards made his usual answers to questions, with his chin sunk on
+his breast, his hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front of
+Sotillo, and never looking up. When he was forced to hold up his head,
+by means of a bayonet-point prodding him under the chin, his eyes had a
+vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were
+seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of his white face.
+Then they stopped suddenly.
+
+Sotillo looked at him in silence. “Will you depart from your obstinacy,
+you rogue?” he asked. Already a rope, whose one end was fastened to
+Senor Hirsch’s wrists, had been thrown over a beam, and three soldiers
+held the other end, waiting. He made no answer. His heavy lower lip hung
+stupidly. Sotillo made a sign. Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a
+yell of despair and agony burst out in the room, filled the passage of
+the great buildings, rent the air outside, caused every soldier of the
+camp along the shore to look up at the windows, started some of the
+officers in the hall babbling excitedly, with shining eyes; others,
+setting their lips, looked gloomily at the floor.
+
+Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room. The sentry on the
+landing presented arms. Hirsch went on screaming all alone behind the
+half-closed jalousies while the sunshine, reflected from the water of
+the harbour, made an ever-running ripple of light high up on the wall.
+He screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a wide-open mouth--incredibly
+wide, black, enormous, full of teeth--comical.
+
+In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he made the waves
+of his agony travel as far as the O. S. N. Company’s offices. Captain
+Mitchell on the balcony, trying to make out what went on generally, had
+heard him faintly but distinctly, and the feeble and appalling sound
+lingered in his ears after he had retreated indoors with blanched
+cheeks. He had been driven off the balcony several times during that
+afternoon.
+
+Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held consultations
+with his officers, gave contradictory orders in this shrill clamour
+pervading the whole empty edifice. Sometimes there would be long and
+awful silences. Several times he had entered the torture-chamber where
+his sword, horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass were lying on the table,
+to ask with forced calmness, “Will you speak the truth now? No? I can
+wait.” But he could not afford to wait much longer. That was just it.
+Every time he went in and came out with a slam of the door, the sentry
+on the landing presented arms, and got in return a black, venomous,
+unsteady glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being merely the
+reflection of the soul within--a soul of gloomy hatred, irresolution,
+avarice, and fury.
+
+The sun had set when he went in once more. A soldier carried in two
+lighted candles and slunk out, shutting the door without noise.
+
+“Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver! The silver, I say!
+Where is it? Where have you foreign rogues hidden it? Confess or--”
+
+A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked limbs, but the
+body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising business man from Esmeralda, hung
+under the heavy beam perpendicular and silent, facing the colonel
+awfully. The inflow of the night air, cooled by the snows of the Sierra,
+spread gradually a delicious freshness through the close heat of the
+room.
+
+“Speak--thief--scoundrel--picaro--or--”
+
+Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his arm lifted up.
+For a word, for one little word, he felt he would have knelt, cringed,
+grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed
+eyeballs starting out of the grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very
+still with its mouth closed askew. The colonel ground his teeth with
+rage and struck. The rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long
+string of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging motion was
+imparted to the body of Senor Hirsch, the well-known hide merchant on
+the coast. With a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a
+few inches, curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. Senor
+Hirsch’s head was flung back on his straining throat; his chin trembled.
+For a moment the rattle of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast,
+shadowy room, where the candles made a patch of light round the two
+flames burning side by side. And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand,
+waited for him to speak, with the sudden flash of a grin and a straining
+forward of the wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his face.
+
+The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with a low cry of
+dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom. Quick as thought he
+snatched up his revolver, and fired twice. The report and the concussion
+of the shots seemed to throw him at once from ungovernable rage into
+idiotic stupor. He stood with drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he
+done, Sangre de Dios! What had he done? He was basely appalled at his
+impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips from which so much was to
+be extorted. What could he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong
+flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind; even the craven and
+absurd notion of hiding under the table occurred to his cowardice.
+It was too late; his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great
+clatter of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and wonder. But
+since they did not immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his
+breast, the brazen side of his character asserted itself. Passing the
+sleeve of his uniform over his face he pulled himself together, His
+truculent glance turned slowly here and there, checked the noise where
+it fell; and the stiff body of the late Senor Hirsch, merchant, after
+swaying imperceptibly, made a half turn, and came to a rest in the midst
+of awed murmurs and uneasy shuffling.
+
+A voice remarked loudly, “Behold a man who will never speak again.” And
+another, from the back row of faces, timid and pressing, cried out--
+
+“Why did you kill him, mi colonel?”
+
+“Because he has confessed everything,” answered Sotillo, with the
+hardihood of desperation. He felt himself cornered. He brazened it out
+on the strength of his reputation with very fair success. His hearers
+thought him very capable of such an act. They were disposed to believe
+his flattering tale. There is no credulity so eager and blind as the
+credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the
+moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. Ah! he had
+confessed everything, this fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he
+was no longer wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior
+captain--a big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat
+cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged
+like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch,
+muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this there was
+no need to guard against any future treacheries of that scoundrel. The
+others stared, shifting from foot to foot, and whispering short remarks
+to each other.
+
+Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremptory orders to hasten
+the retirement decided upon in the afternoon. Sinister, impressive, his
+sombrero pulled right down upon his eyebrows, he marched first through
+the door in such disorder of mind that he forgot utterly to provide for
+Dr. Monygham’s possible return. As the officers trooped out after him,
+one or two looked back hastily at the late Senor Hirsch, merchant from
+Esmeralda, left swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the two burning
+candles. In the emptiness of the room the burly shadow of head and
+shoulders on the wall had an air of life.
+
+Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by companies without
+drum or trumpet. The old scarecrow major commanded the rearguard; but
+the party he left behind with orders to fire the Custom House (and “burn
+the carcass of the treacherous Jew where it hung”) failed somehow in
+their haste to set the staircase properly alight. The body of the
+late Senor Hirsch dwelt alone for a time in the dismal solitude of the
+unfinished building, resounding weirdly with sudden slams and clicks
+of doors and latches, with rustling scurries of torn papers, and the
+tremulous sighs that at each gust of wind passed under the high roof.
+The light of the two candles burning before the perpendicular and
+breathless immobility of the late Senor Hirsch threw a gleam afar over
+land and water, like a signal in the night. He remained to startle
+Nostromo by his presence, and to puzzle Dr. Monygham by the mystery of
+his atrocious end.
+
+“But why shot?” the doctor again asked himself, audibly. This time he
+was answered by a dry laugh from Nostromo.
+
+“You seem much concerned at a very natural thing, senor doctor. I wonder
+why? It is very likely that before long we shall all get shot one after
+another, if not by Sotillo, then by Pedrito, or Fuentes, or Gamacho.
+And we may even get the estrapade, too, or worse--quien sabe?--with your
+pretty tale of the silver you put into Sotillo’s head.”
+
+“It was in his head already,” the doctor protested. “I only--”
+
+“Yes. And you only nailed it there so that the devil himself--”
+
+“That is precisely what I meant to do,” caught up the doctor.
+
+“That is what you meant to do. Bueno. It is as I say. You are a
+dangerous man.”
+
+Their voices, which without rising had been growing quarrelsome, ceased
+suddenly. The late Senor Hirsch, erect and shadowy against the stars,
+seemed to be waiting attentive, in impartial silence.
+
+But Dr. Monygham had no mind to quarrel with Nostromo. At this supremely
+critical point of Sulaco’s fortunes it was borne upon him at last that
+this man was really indispensable, more indispensable than ever the
+infatuation of Captain Mitchell, his proud discoverer, could conceive;
+far beyond what Decoud’s best dry raillery about “my illustrious friend,
+the unique Capataz de Cargadores,” had ever intended. The fellow was
+unique. He was not “one in a thousand.” He was absolutely the only
+one. The doctor surrendered. There was something in the genius of that
+Genoese seaman which dominated the destinies of great enterprises and
+of many people, the fortunes of Charles Gould, the fate of an admirable
+woman. At this last thought the doctor had to clear his throat before he
+could speak.
+
+In a completely changed tone he pointed out to the Capataz that, to
+begin with, he personally ran no great risk. As far as everybody knew he
+was dead. It was an enormous advantage. He had only to keep out of sight
+in the Casa Viola, where the old Garibaldino was known to be alone--with
+his dead wife. The servants had all run away. No one would think of
+searching for him there, or anywhere else on earth, for that matter.
+
+“That would be very true,” Nostromo spoke up, bitterly, “if I had not
+met you.”
+
+For a time the doctor kept silent. “Do you mean to say that you think I
+may give you away?” he asked in an unsteady voice. “Why? Why should I do
+that?”
+
+“What do I know? Why not? To gain a day perhaps. It would take Sotillo a
+day to give me the estrapade, and try some other things perhaps, before
+he puts a bullet through my heart--as he did to that poor wretch here.
+Why not?”
+
+The doctor swallowed with difficulty. His throat had gone dry in a
+moment. It was not from indignation. The doctor, pathetically enough,
+believed that he had forfeited the right to be indignant with any
+one--for anything. It was simple dread. Had the fellow heard his story
+by some chance? If so, there was an end of his usefulness in that
+direction. The indispensable man escaped his influence, because of
+that indelible blot which made him fit for dirty work. A feeling as of
+sickness came upon the doctor. He would have given anything to know, but
+he dared not clear up the point. The fanaticism of his devotion, fed on
+the sense of his abasement, hardened his heart in sadness and scorn.
+
+“Why not, indeed?” he reechoed, sardonically. “Then the safe thing for
+you is to kill me on the spot. I would defend myself. But you may just
+as well know I am going about unarmed.”
+
+“Por Dios!” said the Capataz, passionately. “You fine people are all
+alike. All dangerous. All betrayers of the poor who are your dogs.”
+
+“You do not understand,” began the doctor, slowly.
+
+“I understand you all!” cried the other with a violent movement, as
+shadowy to the doctor’s eyes as the persistent immobility of the late
+Senor Hirsch. “A poor man amongst you has got to look after himself. I
+say that you do not care for those that serve you. Look at me! After all
+these years, suddenly, here I find myself like one of these curs that
+bark outside the walls--without a kennel or a dry bone for my teeth.
+_Caramba!_” But he relented with a contemptuous fairness. “Of course,” he
+went on, quietly, “I do not suppose that you would hasten to give me
+up to Sotillo, for example. It is not that. It is that I am nothing!
+Suddenly--” He swung his arm downwards. “Nothing to any one,” he
+repeated.
+
+The doctor breathed freely. “Listen, Capataz,” he said, stretching out
+his arm almost affectionately towards Nostromo’s shoulder. “I am going
+to tell you a very simple thing. You are safe because you are needed. I
+would not give you away for any conceivable reason, because I want you.”
+
+In the dark Nostromo bit his lip. He had heard enough of that. He knew
+what that meant. No more of that for him. But he had to look after
+himself now, he thought. And he thought, too, that it would not be
+prudent to part in anger from his companion. The doctor, admitted to be
+a great healer, had, amongst the populace of Sulaco, the reputation
+of being an evil sort of man. It was based solidly on his personal
+appearance, which was strange, and on his rough ironic manner--proofs
+visible, sensible, and incontrovertible of the doctor’s malevolent
+disposition. And Nostromo was of the people. So he only grunted
+incredulously.
+
+“You, to speak plainly, are the only man,” the doctor pursued. “It is
+in your power to save this town and . . . everybody from the destructive
+rapacity of men who--”
+
+“No, senor,” said Nostromo, sullenly. “It is not in my power to get the
+treasure back for you to give up to Sotillo, or Pedrito, or Gamacho.
+What do I know?”
+
+“Nobody expects the impossible,” was the answer.
+
+“You have said it yourself--nobody,” muttered Nostromo, in a gloomy,
+threatening tone.
+
+But Dr. Monygham, full of hope, disregarded the enigmatic words and the
+threatening tone. To their eyes, accustomed to obscurity, the late
+Senor Hirsch, growing more distinct, seemed to have come nearer. And
+the doctor lowered his voice in exposing his scheme as though afraid of
+being overheard.
+
+He was taking the indispensable man into his fullest confidence. Its
+implied flattery and suggestion of great risks came with a familiar
+sound to the Capataz. His mind, floating in irresolution and discontent,
+recognized it with bitterness. He understood well that the doctor was
+anxious to save the San Tome mine from annihilation. He would be nothing
+without it. It was his interest. Just as it had been the interest of
+Senor Decoud, of the Blancos, and of the Europeans to get his Cargadores
+on their side. His thought became arrested upon Decoud. What would
+happen to him?
+
+Nostromo’s prolonged silence made the doctor uneasy. He pointed out,
+quite unnecessarily, that though for the present he was safe, he could
+not live concealed for ever. The choice was between accepting the
+mission to Barrios, with all its dangers and difficulties, and leaving
+Sulaco by stealth, ingloriously, in poverty.
+
+“None of your friends could reward you and protect you just now,
+Capataz. Not even Don Carlos himself.”
+
+“I would have none of your protection and none of your rewards. I
+only wish I could trust your courage and your sense. When I return in
+triumph, as you say, with Barrios, I may find you all destroyed. You
+have the knife at your throat now.”
+
+It was the doctor’s turn to remain silent in the contemplation of
+horrible contingencies.
+
+“Well, we would trust your courage and your sense. And you, too, have a
+knife at your throat.”
+
+“Ah! And whom am I to thank for that? What are your politics and your
+mines to me--your silver and your constitutions--your Don Carlos this,
+and Don Jose that--”
+
+“I don’t know,” burst out the exasperated doctor. “There are innocent
+people in danger whose little finger is worth more than you or I and all
+the Ribierists together. I don’t know. You should have asked yourself
+before you allowed Decoud to lead you into all this. It was your place
+to think like a man; but if you did not think then, try to act like a
+man now. Did you imagine Decoud cared very much for what would happen to
+you?”
+
+“No more than you care for what will happen to me,” muttered the other.
+
+“No; I care for what will happen to you as little as I care for what
+will happen to myself.”
+
+“And all this because you are such a devoted Ribierist?” Nostromo said
+in an incredulous tone.
+
+“All this because I am such a devoted Ribierist,” repeated Dr. Monygham,
+grimly.
+
+Again Nostromo, gazing abstractedly at the body of the late Senor
+Hirsch, remained silent, thinking that the doctor was a dangerous person
+in more than one sense. It was impossible to trust him.
+
+“Do you speak in the name of Don Carlos?” he asked at last.
+
+“Yes. I do,” the doctor said, loudly, without hesitation. “He must come
+forward now. He must,” he added in a mutter, which Nostromo did not
+catch.
+
+“What did you say, senor?”
+
+The doctor started. “I say that you must be true to yourself, Capataz.
+It would be worse than folly to fail now.”
+
+“True to myself,” repeated Nostromo. “How do you know that I would
+not be true to myself if I told you to go to the devil with your
+propositions?”
+
+“I do not know. Maybe you would,” the doctor said, with a roughness of
+tone intended to hide the sinking of his heart and the faltering of his
+voice. “All I know is, that you had better get away from here. Some of
+Sotillo’s men may turn up here looking for me.”
+
+He slipped off the table, listening intently. The Capataz, too, stood
+up.
+
+“Suppose I went to Cayta, what would you do meantime?” he asked.
+
+“I would go to Sotillo directly you had left--in the way I am thinking
+of.”
+
+“A very good way--if only that engineer-in-chief consents. Remind him,
+senor, that I looked after the old rich Englishman who pays for the
+railway, and that I saved the lives of some of his people that time when
+a gang of thieves came from the south to wreck one of his pay-trains.
+It was I who discovered it all at the risk of my life, by pretending to
+enter into their plans. Just as you are doing with Sotillo.”
+
+“Yes. Yes, of course. But I can offer him better arguments,” the doctor
+said, hastily. “Leave it to me.”
+
+“Ah, yes! True. I am nothing.”
+
+“Not at all. You are everything.”
+
+They moved a few paces towards the door. Behind them the late Senor
+Hirsch preserved the immobility of a disregarded man.
+
+“That will be all right. I know what to say to the engineer,” pursued
+the doctor, in a low tone. “My difficulty will be with Sotillo.”
+
+And Dr. Monygham stopped short in the doorway as if intimidated by the
+difficulty. He had made the sacrifice of his life. He considered this
+a fitting opportunity. But he did not want to throw his life away too
+soon. In his quality of betrayer of Don Carlos’ confidence, he would
+have ultimately to indicate the hiding-place of the treasure. That would
+be the end of his deception, and the end of himself as well, at the
+hands of the infuriated colonel. He wanted to delay him to the very
+last moment; and he had been racking his brains to invent some place of
+concealment at once plausible and difficult of access.
+
+He imparted his trouble to Nostromo, and concluded--
+
+“Do you know what, Capataz? I think that when the time comes and some
+information must be given, I shall indicate the Great Isabel. That is
+the best place I can think of. What is the matter?”
+
+A low exclamation had escaped Nostromo. The doctor waited, surprised,
+and after a moment of profound silence, heard a thick voice stammer out,
+“Utter folly,” and stop with a gasp.
+
+“Why folly?”
+
+“Ah! You do not see it,” began Nostromo, scathingly, gathering scorn as
+he went on. “Three men in half an hour would see that no ground had been
+disturbed anywhere on that island. Do you think that such a treasure can
+be buried without leaving traces of the work--eh! senor doctor? Why! you
+would not gain half a day more before having your throat cut by Sotillo.
+The Isabel! What stupidity! What miserable invention! Ah! you are all
+alike, you fine men of intelligence. All you are fit for is to betray
+men of the people into undertaking deadly risks for objects that you are
+not even sure about. If it comes off you get the benefit. If not, then
+it does not matter. He is only a dog. Ah! Madre de Dios, I would--” He
+shook his fists above his head.
+
+The doctor was overwhelmed at first by this fierce, hissing vehemence.
+
+“Well! It seems to me on your own showing that the men of the people
+are no mean fools, too,” he said, sullenly. “No, but come. You are so
+clever. Have you a better place?”
+
+Nostromo had calmed down as quickly as he had flared up.
+
+“I am clever enough for that,” he said, quietly, almost with
+indifference. “You want to tell him of a hiding-place big enough to take
+days in ransacking--a place where a treasure of silver ingots can be
+buried without leaving a sign on the surface.”
+
+“And close at hand,” the doctor put in.
+
+“Just so, senor. Tell him it is sunk.”
+
+“This has the merit of being the truth,” the doctor said,
+contemptuously. “He will not believe it.”
+
+“You tell him that it is sunk where he may hope to lay his hands on it,
+and he will believe you quick enough. Tell him it has been sunk in the
+harbour in order to be recovered afterwards by divers. Tell him you
+found out that I had orders from Don Carlos Gould to lower the cases
+quietly overboard somewhere in a line between the end of the jetty and
+the entrance. The depth is not too great there. He has no divers, but he
+has a ship, boats, ropes, chains, sailors--of a sort. Let him fish for
+the silver. Let him set his fools to drag backwards and forwards and
+crossways while he sits and watches till his eyes drop out of his head.”
+
+“Really, this is an admirable idea,” muttered the doctor.
+
+“Si. You tell him that, and see whether he will not believe you! He will
+spend days in rage and torment--and still he will believe. He will have
+no thought for anything else. He will not give up till he is driven
+off--why, he may even forget to kill you. He will neither eat nor sleep.
+He--”
+
+“The very thing! The very thing!” the doctor repeated in an excited
+whisper. “Capataz, I begin to believe that you are a great genius in
+your way.”
+
+Nostromo had paused; then began again in a changed tone, sombre,
+speaking to himself as though he had forgotten the doctor’s existence.
+
+“There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a man’s mind. He
+will pray and blaspheme and still persevere, and will curse the day he
+ever heard of it, and will let his last hour come upon him unawares,
+still believing that he missed it only by a foot. He will see it every
+time he closes his eyes. He will never forget it till he is dead--and
+even then----Doctor, did you ever hear of the miserable gringos on
+Azuera, that cannot die? Ha! ha! Sailors like myself. There is no
+getting away from a treasure that once fastens upon your mind.”
+
+“You are a devil of a man, Capataz. It is the most plausible thing.”
+
+Nostromo pressed his arm.
+
+“It will be worse for him than thirst at sea or hunger in a town full of
+people. Do you know what that is? He shall suffer greater torments than
+he inflicted upon that terrified wretch who had no invention. None!
+none! Not like me. I could have told Sotillo a deadly tale for very
+little pain.”
+
+He laughed wildly and turned in the doorway towards the body of the late
+Senor Hirsch, an opaque long blotch in the semi-transparent obscurity
+of the room between the two tall parallelograms of the windows full of
+stars.
+
+“You man of fear!” he cried. “You shall be avenged by me--Nostromo. Out
+of my way, doctor! Stand aside--or, by the suffering soul of a woman
+dead without confession, I will strangle you with my two hands.”
+
+He bounded downwards into the black, smoky hall. With a grunt of
+astonishment, Dr. Monygham threw himself recklessly into the pursuit. At
+the bottom of the charred stairs he had a fall, pitching forward on his
+face with a force that would have stunned a spirit less intent upon a
+task of love and devotion. He was up in a moment, jarred, shaken, with a
+queer impression of the terrestrial globe having been flung at his head
+in the dark. But it wanted more than that to stop Dr. Monygham’s body,
+possessed by the exaltation of self-sacrifice; a reasonable exaltation,
+determined not to lose whatever advantage chance put into its way. He
+ran with headlong, tottering swiftness, his arms going like a windmill
+in his effort to keep his balance on his crippled feet. He lost his hat;
+the tails of his open gaberdine flew behind him. He had no mind to lose
+sight of the indispensable man. But it was a long time, and a long way
+from the Custom House, before he managed to seize his arm from behind,
+roughly, out of breath.
+
+“Stop! Are you mad?”
+
+Already Nostromo was walking slowly, his head dropping, as if checked in
+his pace by the weariness of irresolution.
+
+“What is that to you? Ah! I forgot you want me for something. Always.
+Siempre Nostromo.”
+
+“What do you mean by talking of strangling me?” panted the doctor.
+
+“What do I mean? I mean that the king of the devils himself has sent you
+out of this town of cowards and talkers to meet me to-night of all the
+nights of my life.”
+
+Under the starry sky the Albergo d’ltalia Una emerged, black and low,
+breaking the dark level of the plain. Nostromo stopped altogether.
+
+“The priests say he is a tempter, do they not?” he added, through his
+clenched teeth.
+
+“My good man, you drivel. The devil has nothing to do with this. Neither
+has the town, which you may call by what name you please. But Don Carlos
+Gould is neither a coward nor an empty talker. You will admit that?” He
+waited. “Well?”
+
+“Could I see Don Carlos?”
+
+“Great heavens! No! Why? What for?” exclaimed the doctor in agitation.
+“I tell you it is madness. I will not let you go into the town for
+anything.”
+
+“I must.”
+
+“You must not!” hissed the doctor, fiercely, almost beside himself with
+the fear of the man doing away with his usefulness for an imbecile whim
+of some sort. “I tell you you shall not. I would rather----”
+
+He stopped at loss for words, feeling fagged out, powerless, holding on
+to Nostromo’s sleeve, absolutely for support after his run.
+
+“I am betrayed!” muttered the Capataz to himself; and the doctor, who
+overheard the last word, made an effort to speak calmly.
+
+“That is exactly what would happen to you. You would be betrayed.”
+
+He thought with a sickening dread that the man was so well known that he
+could not escape recognition. The house of the Senor Administrador was
+beset by spies, no doubt. And even the very servants of the casa were
+not to be trusted. “Reflect, Capataz,” he said, impressively. . . .
+“What are you laughing at?”
+
+“I am laughing to think that if somebody that did not approve of
+my presence in town, for instance--you understand, senor doctor--if
+somebody were to give me up to Pedrito, it would not be beyond my power
+to make friends even with him. It is true. What do you think of that?”
+
+“You are a man of infinite resource, Capataz,” said Dr. Monygham,
+dismally. “I recognize that. But the town is full of talk about you; and
+those few Cargadores that are not in hiding with the railway people have
+been shouting ‘Viva Montero’ on the Plaza all day.”
+
+“My poor Cargadores!” muttered Nostromo. “Betrayed! Betrayed!”
+
+“I understand that on the wharf you were pretty free in laying about you
+with a stick amongst your poor Cargadores,” the doctor said in a grim
+tone, which showed that he was recovering from his exertions. “Make no
+mistake. Pedrito is furious at Senor Ribiera’s rescue, and at having
+lost the pleasure of shooting Decoud. Already there are rumours in the
+town of the treasure having been spirited away. To have missed that does
+not please Pedrito either; but let me tell you that if you had all that
+silver in your hand for ransom it would not save you.”
+
+Turning swiftly, and catching the doctor by the shoulders, Nostromo
+thrust his face close to his.
+
+“Maladetta! You follow me speaking of the treasure. You have sworn my
+ruin. You were the last man who looked upon me before I went out with
+it. And Sidoni the engine-driver says you have an evil eye.”
+
+“He ought to know. I saved his broken leg for him last year,” the doctor
+said, stoically. He felt on his shoulders the weight of these hands
+famed amongst the populace for snapping thick ropes and bending
+horseshoes. “And to you I offer the best means of saving yourself--let
+me go--and of retrieving your great reputation. You boasted of making
+the Capataz de Cargadores famous from one end of America to the other
+about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better opportunity--let me
+go, hombre!”
+
+Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor feared that the
+indispensable man would run off again. But he did not. He walked on
+slowly. The doctor hobbled by his side till, within a stone’s throw from
+the Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again.
+
+Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed to have changed
+its nature; his home appeared to repel him with an air of hopeless and
+inimical mystery. The doctor said--
+
+“You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz.”
+
+“How can I go in?” Nostromo seemed to ask himself in a low, inward tone.
+“She cannot unsay what she said, and I cannot undo what I have done.”
+
+“I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there. I looked in
+as I came out of the town. You will be perfectly safe in that house till
+you leave it to make your name famous on the Campo. I am going now to
+arrange for your departure with the engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring
+you news here long before daybreak.”
+
+Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to penetrate the meaning
+of Nostromo’s silence, clapped him lightly on the shoulder, and starting
+off with his smart, lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth
+hop in the direction of the railway track. Arrested between the two
+wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to, Nostromo did not
+move, as if he, too, had been planted solidly in the ground. At the end
+of half an hour he lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the
+railway yards, which had burst out suddenly, tumultuous and deadened as
+if coming from under the plain. That lame doctor with the evil eye had
+got there pretty fast.
+
+Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo d’Italia Una, which he had
+never known so lightless, so silent, before. The door, all black in the
+pale wall, stood open as he had left it twenty-four hours before,
+when he had nothing to hide from the world. He remained before it,
+irresolute, like a fugitive, like a man betrayed. Poverty, misery,
+starvation! Where had he heard these words? The anger of a dying woman
+had prophesied that fate for his folly. It looked as if it would come
+true very quickly. And the leperos would laugh--she had said. Yes, they
+would laugh if they knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at the mercy
+of the mad doctor whom they could remember, only a few years ago, buying
+cooked food from a stall on the Plaza for a copper coin--like one of
+themselves.
+
+At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mitchell passed through his
+mind. He glanced in the direction of the jetty and saw a small gleam of
+light in the O.S.N. Company’s building. The thought of lighted windows
+was not attractive. Two lighted windows had decoyed him into the empty
+Custom House, only to fall into the clutches of that doctor. No! He
+would not go near lighted windows again on that night. Captain Mitchell
+was there. And what could he be told? That doctor would worm it all out
+of him as if he were a child.
+
+On the threshold he called out “Giorgio!” in an undertone. Nobody
+answered. He stepped in. “Ola! viejo! Are you there? . . .” In the
+impenetrable darkness his head swam with the illusion that the obscurity
+of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, and that the floor dipped
+forward like a sinking lighter. “Ola! viejo!” he repeated, falteringly,
+swaying where he stood. His hand, extended to steady himself, fell
+upon the table. Moving a step forward, he shifted it, and felt a box
+of matches under his fingers. He fancied he had heard a quiet sigh. He
+listened for a moment, holding his breath; then, with trembling hands,
+tried to strike a light.
+
+The tiny piece of wood flamed up quite blindingly at the end of his
+fingers, raised above his blinking eyes. A concentrated glare fell
+upon the leonine white head of old Giorgio against the black
+fire-place--showed him leaning forward in a chair in staring immobility,
+surrounded, overhung, by great masses of shadow, his legs crossed, his
+cheek in his hand, an empty pipe in the corner of his mouth. It seemed
+hours before he attempted to turn his face; at the very moment the match
+went out, and he disappeared, overwhelmed by the shadows, as if the
+walls and roof of the desolate house had collapsed upon his white head
+in ghostly silence.
+
+Nostromo heard him stir and utter dispassionately the words--
+
+“It may have been a vision.”
+
+“No,” he said, softly. “It is no vision, old man.”
+
+A strong chest voice asked in the dark--
+
+“Is that you I hear, Giovann’ Battista?”
+
+“Si, viejo. Steady. Not so loud.”
+
+After his release by Sotillo, Giorgio Viola, attended to the very door
+by the good-natured engineer-in-chief, had reentered his house, which
+he had been made to leave almost at the very moment of his wife’s death.
+All was still. The lamp above was burning. He nearly called out to her
+by name; and the thought that no call from him would ever again evoke
+the answer of her voice, made him drop heavily into the chair with
+a loud groan, wrung out by the pain as of a keen blade piercing his
+breast.
+
+The rest of the night he made no sound. The darkness turned to grey, and
+on the colourless, clear, glassy dawn the jagged sierra stood out flat
+and opaque, as if cut out of paper.
+
+The enthusiastic and severe soul of Giorgio Viola, sailor, champion of
+oppressed humanity, enemy of kings, and, by the grace of Mrs. Gould,
+hotel-keeper of the Sulaco harbour, had descended into the open abyss of
+desolation amongst the shattered vestiges of his past. He remembered
+his wooing between two campaigns, a single short week in the season of
+gathering olives. Nothing approached the grave passion of that time but
+the deep, passionate sense of his bereavement. He discovered all the
+extent of his dependence upon the silenced voice of that woman. It
+was her voice that he missed. Abstracted, busy, lost in inward
+contemplation, he seldom looked at his wife in those later years. The
+thought of his girls was a matter of concern, not of consolation. It
+was her voice that he would miss. And he remembered the other child--the
+little boy who died at sea. Ah! a man would have been something to lean
+upon. And, alas! even Gian’ Battista--he of whom, and of Linda, his
+wife had spoken to him so anxiously before she dropped off into her last
+sleep on earth, he on whom she had called aloud to save the children,
+just before she died--even he was dead!
+
+And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, sat through the day
+in immobility and solitude. He never heard the brazen roar of the bells
+in town. When it ceased the earthenware filter in the corner of the
+kitchen kept on its swift musical drip, drip into the great porous jar
+below.
+
+Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements disappeared up the
+narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; and the rubbing of his shoulders
+made a small noise as of a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall.
+While he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave. Then,
+with the same faint rubbing noise, he descended. He had to catch at the
+chairs and tables to regain his seat. He seized his pipe off the
+high mantel of the fire-place--but made no attempt to reach the
+tobacco--thrust it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat down
+again in the same staring pose. The sun of Pedrito’s entry into Sulaco,
+the last sun of Senor Hirsch’s life, the first of Decoud’s solitude on
+the Great Isabel, passed over the Albergo d’ltalia Una on its way to
+the west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had ceased, the lamp
+upstairs had burnt itself out, and the night beset Giorgio Viola and his
+dead wife with its obscurity and silence that seemed invincible till the
+Capataz de Cargadores, returning from the dead, put them to flight with
+the splutter and flare of a match.
+
+“Si, viejo. It is me. Wait.”
+
+Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the shutters carefully,
+groped upon a shelf for a candle, and lit it.
+
+Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the dark the sounds
+made by Nostromo. The light disclosed him standing without support, as
+if the mere presence of that man who was loyal, brave, incorruptible,
+who was all his son would have been, were enough for the support of his
+decaying strength.
+
+He extended his hand grasping the briar-wood pipe, whose bowl was
+charred on the edge, and knitted his bushy eyebrows heavily at the
+light.
+
+“You have returned,” he said, with shaky dignity. “Ah! Very well! I----”
+
+He broke off. Nostromo, leaning back against the table, his arms folded
+on his breast, nodded at him slightly.
+
+“You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog of the rich, of the
+aristocrats, of these fine men who can only talk and betray the people,
+is not dead yet.”
+
+The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the sound of the
+well-known voice. His head moved slightly once as if in sign of
+approval; but Nostromo saw clearly that the old man understood nothing
+of the words. There was no one to understand; no one he could take into
+the confidence of Decoud’s fate, of his own, into the secret of the
+silver. That doctor was an enemy of the people--a tempter. . . .
+
+Old Giorgio’s heavy frame shook from head to foot with the effort
+to overcome his emotion at the sight of that man, who had shared the
+intimacies of his domestic life as though he had been a grown-up son.
+
+“She believed you would return,” he said, solemnly.
+
+Nostromo raised his head.
+
+“She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come back----?”
+
+He finished the thought mentally: “Since she has prophesied for me an
+end of poverty, misery, and starvation.” These words of Teresa’s anger,
+from the circumstances in which they had been uttered, like the cry of
+a soul prevented from making its peace with God, stirred the obscure
+superstition of personal fortune from which even the greatest genius
+amongst men of adventure and action is seldom free. They reigned over
+Nostromo’s mind with the force of a potent malediction. And what a curse
+it was that which her words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned
+so young that he could remember no other woman whom he called mother.
+Henceforth there would be no enterprise in which he would not fail. The
+spell was working already. Death itself would elude him now. . . . He
+said violently--
+
+“Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am hungry! Sangre de Dios! The
+emptiness of my belly makes me lightheaded.”
+
+With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast above his folded arms,
+barefooted, watching from under a gloomy brow the movements of old Viola
+foraging amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if indeed fallen under a
+curse--a ruined and sinister Capataz.
+
+Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a word, emptied upon
+the table out of his hollowed palms a few dry crusts of bread and half a
+raw onion.
+
+While the Capataz began to devour this beggar’s fare, taking up with
+stony-eyed voracity piece after piece lying by his side, the Garibaldino
+went off, and squatting down in another corner filled an earthenware mug
+with red wine out of a wicker-covered demijohn. With a familiar gesture,
+as when serving customers in the cafe, he had thrust his pipe between
+his teeth to have his hands free.
+
+The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened the bronze of his
+cheek. Before him, Viola, with a turn of his white and massive head
+towards the staircase, took his empty pipe out of his mouth, and
+pronounced slowly--
+
+“After the shot was fired down here, which killed her as surely as if
+the bullet had struck her oppressed heart, she called upon you to save
+the children. Upon you, Gian’ Battista.”
+
+The Capataz looked up.
+
+“Did she do that, Padrone? To save the children! They are with the
+English senora, their rich benefactress. Hey! old man of the people. Thy
+benefactress. . . .”
+
+“I am old,” muttered Giorgio Viola. “An Englishwoman was allowed to give
+a bed to Garibaldi lying wounded in prison. The greatest man that ever
+lived. A man of the people, too--a sailor. I may let another keep a
+roof over my head. Si . . . I am old. I may let her. Life lasts too long
+sometimes.”
+
+“And she herself may not have a roof over her head before many days are
+out, unless I . . . What do you say? Am I to keep a roof over her head?
+Am I to try--and save all the Blancos together with her?”
+
+“You shall do it,” said old Viola in a strong voice. “You shall do it as
+my son would have. . . .”
+
+“Thy son, viejo! .. .. There never has been a man like thy son. Ha, I
+must try. . . . But what if it were only a part of the curse to lure me
+on? . . . And so she called upon me to save--and then----?”
+
+“She spoke no more.” The heroic follower of Garibaldi, at the thought
+of the eternal stillness and silence fallen upon the shrouded form
+stretched out on the bed upstairs, averted his face and raised his hand
+to his furrowed brow. “She was dead before I could seize her hands,” he
+stammered out, pitifully.
+
+Before the wide eyes of the Capataz, staring at the doorway of the dark
+staircase, floated the shape of the Great Isabel, like a strange ship in
+distress, freighted with enormous wealth and the solitary life of a man.
+It was impossible for him to do anything. He could only hold his
+tongue, since there was no one to trust. The treasure would be lost,
+probably--unless Decoud. . . . And his thought came abruptly to an end.
+He perceived that he could not imagine in the least what Decoud was
+likely to do.
+
+Old Viola had not stirred. And the motionless Capataz dropped his
+long, soft eyelashes, which gave to the upper part of his fierce,
+black-whiskered face a touch of feminine ingenuousness. The silence had
+lasted for a long time.
+
+“God rest her soul!” he murmured, gloomily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+The next day was quiet in the morning, except for the faint sound of
+firing to the northward, in the direction of Los Hatos. Captain Mitchell
+had listened to it from his balcony anxiously. The phrase, “In
+my delicate position as the only consular agent then in the port,
+everything, sir, everything was a just cause for anxiety,” had its place
+in the more or less stereotyped relation of the “historical events”
+ which for the next few years was at the service of distinguished
+strangers visiting Sulaco. The mention of the dignity and neutrality of
+the flag, so difficult to preserve in his position, “right in the
+thick of these events between the lawlessness of that piratical villain
+Sotillo and the more regularly established but scarcely less atrocious
+tyranny of his Excellency Don Pedro Montero,” came next in order.
+Captain Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere dangers much. But
+he insisted that it was a memorable day. On that day, towards dusk,
+he had seen “that poor fellow of mine--Nostromo. The sailor whom I
+discovered, and, I may say, made, sir. The man of the famous ride to
+Cayta, sir. An historical event, sir!”
+
+Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and faithful servant, Captain
+Mitchell was allowed to attain the term of his usefulness in ease and
+dignity at the head of the enormously extended service. The augmentation
+of the establishment, with its crowds of clerks, an office in town, the
+old office in the harbour, the division into departments--passenger,
+cargo, lighterage, and so on--secured a greater leisure for his last
+years in the regenerated Sulaco, the capital of the Occidental Republic.
+Liked by the natives for his good nature and the formality of his
+manner, self-important and simple, known for years as a “friend of our
+country,” he felt himself a personality of mark in the town. Getting
+up early for a turn in the market-place while the gigantic shadow of
+Higuerota was still lying upon the fruit and flower stalls piled up
+with masses of gorgeous colouring, attending easily to current affairs,
+welcomed in houses, greeted by ladies on the Alameda, with his
+entry into all the clubs and a footing in the Casa Gould, he led his
+privileged old bachelor, man-about-town existence with great comfort and
+solemnity. But on mail-boat days he was down at the Harbour Office at an
+early hour, with his own gig, manned by a smart crew in white and
+blue, ready to dash off and board the ship directly she showed her bows
+between the harbour heads.
+
+It would be into the Harbour Office that he would lead some privileged
+passenger he had brought off in his own boat, and invite him to take a
+seat for a moment while he signed a few papers. And Captain Mitchell,
+seating himself at his desk, would keep on talking hospitably--
+
+“There isn’t much time if you are to see everything in a day. We shall
+be off in a moment. We’ll have lunch at the Amarilla Club--though I
+belong also to the Anglo-American--mining engineers and business men,
+don’t you know--and to the Mirliflores as well, a new club--English,
+French, Italians, all sorts--lively young fellows mostly, who wanted
+to pay a compliment to an old resident, sir. But we’ll lunch at the
+Amarilla. Interest you, I fancy. Real thing of the country. Men of the
+first families. The President of the Occidental Republic himself belongs
+to it, sir. Fine old bishop with a broken nose in the patio. Remarkable
+piece of statuary, I believe. Cavaliere Parrochetti--you know
+Parrochetti, the famous Italian sculptor--was working here for two
+years--thought very highly of our old bishop. . . . There! I am very
+much at your service now.”
+
+Proud of his experience, penetrated by the sense of historical
+importance of men, events, and buildings, he talked pompously in jerky
+periods, with slight sweeps of his short, thick arm, letting nothing
+“escape the attention” of his privileged captive.
+
+“Lot of building going on, as you observe. Before the Separation it
+was a plain of burnt grass smothered in clouds of dust, with an ox-cart
+track to our Jetty. Nothing more. This is the Harbour Gate. Picturesque,
+is it not? Formerly the town stopped short there. We enter now the Calle
+de la Constitucion. Observe the old Spanish houses. Great dignity. Eh? I
+suppose it’s just as it was in the time of the Viceroys, except for the
+pavement. Wood blocks now. Sulaco National Bank there, with the sentry
+boxes each side of the gate. Casa Avellanos this side, with all the
+ground-floor windows shuttered. A wonderful woman lives there--Miss
+Avellanos--the beautiful Antonia. A character, sir! A historical woman!
+Opposite--Casa Gould. Noble gateway. Yes, the Goulds of the original
+Gould Concession, that all the world knows of now. I hold seventeen of
+the thousand-dollar shares in the Consolidated San Tome mines. All the
+poor savings of my lifetime, sir, and it will be enough to keep me in
+comfort to the end of my days at home when I retire. I got in on the
+ground-floor, you see. Don Carlos, great friend of mine. Seventeen
+shares--quite a little fortune to leave behind one, too. I have a
+niece--married a parson--most worthy man, incumbent of a small parish in
+Sussex; no end of children. I was never married myself. A sailor should
+exercise self-denial. Standing under that very gateway, sir, with some
+young engineer-fellows, ready to defend that house where we had received
+so much kindness and hospitality, I saw the first and last charge of
+Pedrito’s horsemen upon Barrios’s troops, who had just taken the Harbour
+Gate. They could not stand the new rifles brought out by that poor
+Decoud. It was a murderous fire. In a moment the street became blocked
+with a mass of dead men and horses. They never came on again.”
+
+And all day Captain Mitchell would talk like this to his more or less
+willing victim--
+
+“The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area of Trafalgar Square.”
+
+From the very centre, in the blazing sunshine, he pointed out the
+buildings--
+
+“The Intendencia, now President’s Palace--Cabildo, where the Lower
+Chamber of Parliament sits. You notice the new houses on that side
+of the Plaza? Compania Anzani, a great general store, like those
+cooperative things at home. Old Anzani was murdered by the National
+Guards in front of his safe. It was even for that specific crime that
+the deputy Gamacho, commanding the Nationals, a bloodthirsty and
+savage brute, was executed publicly by garrotte upon the sentence of
+a court-martial ordered by Barrios. Anzani’s nephews converted the
+business into a company. All that side of the Plaza had been burnt; used
+to be colonnaded before. A terrible fire, by the light of which I saw
+the last of the fighting, the llaneros flying, the Nationals throwing
+their arms down, and the miners of San Tome, all Indians from the
+Sierra, rolling by like a torrent to the sound of pipes and cymbals,
+green flags flying, a wild mass of men in white ponchos and green hats,
+on foot, on mules, on donkeys. Such a sight, sir, will never be seen
+again. The miners, sir, had marched upon the town, Don Pepe leading on
+his black horse, and their very wives in the rear on burros, screaming
+encouragement, sir, and beating tambourines. I remember one of these
+women had a green parrot seated on her shoulder, as calm as a bird
+of stone. They had just saved their Senor Administrador; for Barrios,
+though he ordered the assault at once, at night, too, would have been
+too late. Pedrito Montero had Don Carlos led out to be shot--like his
+uncle many years ago--and then, as Barrios said afterwards, ‘Sulaco
+would not have been worth fighting for.’ Sulaco without the Concession
+was nothing; and there were tons and tons of dynamite distributed all
+over the mountain with detonators arranged, and an old priest, Father
+Roman, standing by to annihilate the San Tome mine at the first news of
+failure. Don Carlos had made up his mind not to leave it behind, and he
+had the right men to see to it, too.”
+
+Thus Captain Mitchell would talk in the middle of the Plaza, holding
+over his head a white umbrella with a green lining; but inside the
+cathedral, in the dim light, with a faint scent of incense floating in
+the cool atmosphere, and here and there a kneeling female figure, black
+or all white, with a veiled head, his lowered voice became solemn and
+impressive.
+
+“Here,” he would say, pointing to a niche in the wall of the dusky
+aisle, “you see the bust of Don Jose Avellanos, ‘Patriot and Statesman,’
+as the inscription says, ‘Minister to Courts of England and Spain, etc.,
+etc., died in the woods of Los Hatos worn out with his lifelong struggle
+for Right and Justice at the dawn of the New Era.’ A fair likeness.
+Parrochetti’s work from some old photographs and a pencil sketch by Mrs.
+Gould. I was well acquainted with that distinguished Spanish-American of
+the old school, a true Hidalgo, beloved by everybody who knew him.
+The marble medallion in the wall, in the antique style, representing
+a veiled woman seated with her hands clasped loosely over her knees,
+commemorates that unfortunate young gentleman who sailed out with
+Nostromo on that fatal night, sir. See, ‘To the memory of Martin Decoud,
+his betrothed Antonia Avellanos.’ Frank, simple, noble. There you have
+that lady, sir, as she is. An exceptional woman. Those who thought she
+would give way to despair were mistaken, sir. She has been blamed in
+many quarters for not having taken the veil. It was expected of her. But
+Dona Antonia is not the stuff they make nuns of. Bishop Corbelan, her
+uncle, lives with her in the Corbelan town house. He is a fierce sort of
+priest, everlastingly worrying the Government about the old Church lands
+and convents. I believe they think a lot of him in Rome. Now let us go
+to the Amarilla Club, just across the Plaza, to get some lunch.”
+
+Directly outside the cathedral on the very top of the noble flight
+of steps, his voice rose pompously, his arm found again its sweeping
+gesture.
+
+“Porvenir, over there on that first floor, above those French
+plate-glass shop-fronts; our biggest daily. Conservative, or, rather, I
+should say, Parliamentary. We have the Parliamentary party here of which
+the actual Chief of the State, Don Juste Lopez, is the head; a very
+sagacious man, I think. A first-rate intellect, sir. The Democratic
+party in opposition rests mostly, I am sorry to say, on these
+socialistic Italians, sir, with their secret societies, camorras, and
+such-like. There are lots of Italians settled here on the railway lands,
+dismissed navvies, mechanics, and so on, all along the trunk line. There
+are whole villages of Italians on the Campo. And the natives, too, are
+being drawn into these ways . . . American bar? Yes. And over there you
+can see another. New Yorkers mostly frequent that one----Here we are at
+the Amarilla. Observe the bishop at the foot of the stairs to the right
+as we go in.”
+
+And the lunch would begin and terminate its lavish and leisurely course
+at a little table in the gallery, Captain Mitchell nodding, bowing,
+getting up to speak for a moment to different officials in black
+clothes, merchants in jackets, officers in uniform, middle-aged
+caballeros from the Campo--sallow, little, nervous men, and fat, placid,
+swarthy men, and Europeans or North Americans of superior standing,
+whose faces looked very white amongst the majority of dark complexions
+and black, glistening eyes.
+
+Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting around looks of
+satisfaction, and tender over the table a case full of thick cigars.
+
+“Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The black coffee you get at
+the Amarilla, sir, you don’t meet anywhere in the world. We get the bean
+from a famous cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose owner sends three sacks
+every year as a present to his fellow members in remembrance of the
+fight against Gamacho’s Nationals, carried on from these very windows by
+the caballeros. He was in town at the time, and took part, sir, to the
+bitter end. It arrives on three mules--not in the common way, by rail;
+no fear!--right into the patio, escorted by mounted peons, in charge of
+the Mayoral of his estate, who walks upstairs, booted and spurred, and
+delivers it to our committee formally with the words, ‘For the sake of
+those fallen on the third of May.’ We call it Tres de Mayo coffee. Taste
+it.”
+
+Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making ready to hear a
+sermon in a church, would lift the tiny cup to his lips. And the nectar
+would be sipped to the bottom during a restful silence in a cloud of
+cigar smoke.
+
+“Look at this man in black just going out,” he would begin, leaning
+forward hastily. “This is the famous Hernandez, Minister of War. The
+Times’ special correspondent, who wrote that striking series of letters
+calling the Occidental Republic the ‘Treasure House of the World,’ gave
+a whole article to him and the force he has organized--the renowned
+Carabineers of the Campo.”
+
+Captain Mitchell’s guest, staring curiously, would see a figure in a
+long-tailed black coat walking gravely, with downcast eyelids in a long,
+composed face, a brow furrowed horizontally, a pointed head, whose grey
+hair, thin at the top, combed down carefully on all sides and rolled at
+the ends, fell low on the neck and shoulders. This, then, was the famous
+bandit of whom Europe had heard with interest. He put on a high-crowned
+sombrero with a wide flat brim; a rosary of wooden beads was twisted
+about his right wrist. And Captain Mitchell would proceed--
+
+“The protector of the Sulaco refugees from the rage of Pedrito. As
+general of cavalry with Barrios he distinguished himself at the storming
+of Tonoro, where Senor Fuentes was killed with the last remnant of the
+Monterists. He is the friend and humble servant of Bishop Corbelan.
+Hears three Masses every day. I bet you he will step into the cathedral
+to say a prayer or two on his way home to his siesta.”
+
+He took several puffs at his cigar in silence; then, in his most
+important manner, pronounced:
+
+“The Spanish race, sir, is prolific of remarkable characters in every
+rank of life. . . . I propose we go now into the billiard-room, which is
+cool, for a quiet chat. There’s never anybody there till after five.
+I could tell you episodes of the Separationist revolution that would
+astonish you. When the great heat’s over, we’ll take a turn on the
+Alameda.”
+
+The programme went on relentless, like a law of Nature. The turn on the
+Alameda was taken with slow steps and stately remarks.
+
+“All the great world of Sulaco here, sir.” Captain Mitchell bowed right
+and left with no end of formality; then with animation, “Dona Emilia,
+Mrs. Gould’s carriage. Look. Always white mules. The kindest, most
+gracious woman the sun ever shone upon. A great position, sir. A great
+position. First lady in Sulaco--far before the President’s wife. And
+worthy of it.” He took off his hat; then, with a studied change of tone,
+added, negligently, that the man in black by her side, with a high white
+collar and a scarred, snarly face, was Dr. Monygham, Inspector of State
+Hospitals, chief medical officer of the Consolidated San Tome mines. “A
+familiar of the house. Everlastingly there. No wonder. The Goulds made
+him. Very clever man and all that, but I never liked him. Nobody does. I
+can recollect him limping about the streets in a check shirt and native
+sandals with a watermelon under his arm--all he would get to eat for the
+day. A big-wig now, sir, and as nasty as ever. However . . . There’s no
+doubt he played his part fairly well at the time. He saved us all from
+the deadly incubus of Sotillo, where a more particular man might have
+failed----”
+
+His arm went up.
+
+“The equestrian statue that used to stand on the pedestal over there
+has been removed. It was an anachronism,” Captain Mitchell commented,
+obscurely. “There is some talk of replacing it by a marble shaft
+commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at the four corners,
+and bronze Justice holding an even balance, all gilt, on the top.
+Cavaliere Parrochetti was asked to make a design, which you can see
+framed under glass in the Municipal Sala. Names are to be engraved all
+round the base. Well! They could do no better than begin with the name
+of Nostromo. He has done for Separation as much as anybody else, and,”
+ added Captain Mitchell, “has got less than many others by it--when it
+comes to that.” He dropped on to a stone seat under a tree, and tapped
+invitingly at the place by his side. “He carried to Barrios the letters
+from Sulaco which decided the General to abandon Cayta for a time, and
+come back to our help here by sea. The transports were still in harbour
+fortunately. Sir, I did not even know that my Capataz de Cargadores was
+alive. I had no idea. It was Dr. Monygham who came upon him, by chance,
+in the Custom House, evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched
+Sotillo. I was never told; never given a hint, nothing--as if I were
+unworthy of confidence. Monygham arranged it all. He went to the railway
+yards, and got admission to the engineer-in-chief, who, for the sake of
+the Goulds as much as for anything else, consented to let an engine
+make a dash down the line, one hundred and eighty miles, with Nostromo
+aboard. It was the only way to get him off. In the Construction Camp
+at the railhead, he obtained a horse, arms, some clothing, and started
+alone on that marvellous ride--four hundred miles in six days, through
+a disturbed country, ending by the feat of passing through the Monterist
+lines outside Cayta. The history of that ride, sir, would make a
+most exciting book. He carried all our lives in his pocket. Devotion,
+courage, fidelity, intelligence were not enough. Of course, he was
+perfectly fearless and incorruptible. But a man was wanted that would
+know how to succeed. He was that man, sir. On the fifth of May, being
+practically a prisoner in the Harbour Office of my Company, I suddenly
+heard the whistle of an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of a mile
+away. I could not believe my ears. I made one jump on to the balcony,
+and beheld a locomotive under a great head of steam run out of the yard
+gates, screeching like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and then, just
+abreast of old Viola’s inn, check almost to a standstill. I made out,
+sir, a man--I couldn’t tell who--dash out of the Albergo d’ltalia Una,
+climb into the cab, and then, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap
+clear of the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. As you blow
+a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the foot-plate, sir,
+I can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the National Guards in
+Rincon and one other place. Fortunately the line had not been torn
+up. In four hours they reached the Construction Camp. Nostromo had his
+start. . . . The rest you know. You’ve got only to look round you. There
+are people on this Alameda that ride in their carriages, or even are
+alive at all to-day, because years ago I engaged a runaway Italian
+sailor for a foreman of our wharf simply on the strength of his looks.
+And that’s a fact. You can’t get over it, sir. On the seventeenth of
+May, just twelve days after I saw the man from the Casa Viola get on the
+engine, and wondered what it meant, Barrios’s transports were entering
+this harbour, and the ‘Treasure House of the World,’ as The Times man
+calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact for civilization--for a
+great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandez on the west, and the San Tome
+miners pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose the landing. He
+had been sending messages to Sotillo for a week to join him. Had Sotillo
+done so there would have been massacres and proscription that would have
+left no man or woman of position alive. But that’s where Dr. Monygham
+comes in. Sotillo, blind and deaf to everything, stuck on board his
+steamer watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to be sunk
+at the bottom of the harbour. They say that for the last three days he
+was out of his mind raving and foaming with disappointment at getting
+nothing, flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats with the
+drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly stamping his foot and crying
+out, ‘And yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!’
+
+“He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he had on board) at the end
+of the after-derrick, when the first of Barrios’s transports, one of our
+own ships at that, steamed right in, and ranging close alongside opened
+a small-arm fire without as much preliminaries as a hail. It was the
+completest surprise in the world, sir. They were too astounded at first
+to bolt below. Men were falling right and left like ninepins. It’s a
+miracle that Monygham, standing on the after-hatch with the rope already
+round his neck, escaped being riddled through and through like a sieve.
+He told me since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on
+yelling with all the strength of his lungs: ‘Hoist a white flag! Hoist
+a white flag!’ Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda regiment, standing
+by, unsheathed his sword with a shriek: ‘Die, perjured traitor!’ and ran
+Sotillo clean through the body, just before he fell himself shot through
+the head.”
+
+Captain Mitchell stopped for a while.
+
+“Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours. But it’s time we started
+off to Rincon. It would not do for you to pass through Sulaco and not
+see the lights of the San Tome mine, a whole mountain ablaze like a
+lighted palace above the dark Campo. It’s a fashionable drive. . . . But
+let me tell you one little anecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight
+or more later, when Barrios, declared Generalissimo, was gone in pursuit
+of Pedrito away south, when the Provisional Junta, with Don Juste Lopez
+at its head, had promulgated the new Constitution, and our Don Carlos
+Gould was packing up his trunks bound on a mission to San Francisco
+and Washington (the United States, sir, were the first great power to
+recognize the Occidental Republic)--a fortnight later, I say, when we
+were beginning to feel that our heads were safe on our shoulders, if
+I may express myself so, a prominent man, a large shipper by our line,
+came to see me on business, and, says he, the first thing: ‘I say,
+Captain Mitchell, is that fellow’ (meaning Nostromo) ‘still the Capataz
+of your Cargadores or not?’ ‘What’s the matter?’ says I. ‘Because, if
+he is, then I don’t mind; I send and receive a good lot of cargo by your
+ships; but I have observed him several days loafing about the wharf,
+and just now he stopped me as cool as you please, with a request for a
+cigar. Now, you know, my cigars are rather special, and I can’t get them
+so easily as all that.’ ‘I hope you stretched a point,’ I said,
+very gently. ‘Why, yes. But it’s a confounded nuisance. The fellow’s
+everlastingly cadging for smokes.’ Sir, I turned my eyes away, and then
+asked, ‘Weren’t you one of the prisoners in the Cabildo?’ ‘You know very
+well I was, and in chains, too,’ says he. ‘And under a fine of fifteen
+thousand dollars?’ He coloured, sir, because it got about that he
+fainted from fright when they came to arrest him, and then behaved
+before Fuentes in a manner to make the very policianos, who had dragged
+him there by the hair of his head, smile at his cringing. ‘Yes,’ he
+says, in a sort of shy way. ‘Why?’ ‘Oh, nothing. You stood to lose a
+tidy bit,’ says I, ‘even if you saved your life. . . . But what can I do
+for you?’ He never even saw the point. Not he. And that’s how the world
+wags, sir.”
+
+He rose a little stiffly, and the drive to Rincon would be taken with
+only one philosophical remark, uttered by the merciless cicerone, with
+his eyes fixed upon the lights of San Tome, that seemed suspended in the
+dark night between earth and heaven.
+
+“A great power, this, for good and evil, sir. A great power.”
+
+And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten, excellent as to
+cooking, and leaving upon the traveller’s mind an impression that there
+were in Sulaco many pleasant, able young men with salaries apparently
+too large for their discretion, and amongst them a few, mostly
+Anglo-Saxon, skilled in the art of, as the saying is, “taking a rise”
+ out of his kind host.
+
+With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a two-wheeled machine
+(which Captain Mitchell called a curricle) behind a fleet and scraggy
+mule beaten all the time by an obviously Neapolitan driver, the cycle
+would be nearly closed before the lighted-up offices of the O. S. N.
+Company, remaining open so late because of the steamer. Nearly--but not
+quite.
+
+“Ten o’clock. Your ship won’t be ready to leave till half-past twelve,
+if by then. Come in for a brandy-and-soda and one more cigar.”
+
+And in the superintendent’s private room the privileged passenger by the
+Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were annihilated mentally
+by a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated
+information imperfectly apprehended, would listen like a tired child
+to a fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its
+pompousness, tell him, as if from another world, how there was “in this
+very harbour” an international naval demonstration, which put an end to
+the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United States cruiser, Powhattan, was
+the first to salute the Occidental flag--white, with a wreath of green
+laurel in the middle encircling a yellow amarilla flower. Would hear how
+General Montero, in less than a month after proclaiming himself Emperor
+of Costaguana, was shot dead (during a solemn and public distribution
+of orders and crosses) by a young artillery officer, the brother of his
+then mistress.
+
+“The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country,” the voice would say.
+And it would continue: “A captain of one of our ships told me lately
+that he recognized Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in purple slippers
+and a velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel, keeping a disorderly house
+in one of the southern ports.”
+
+“Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?” would wonder the
+distinguished bird of passage hovering on the confines of waking and
+sleep with resolutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl upon his
+lips, from between which stuck out the eighteenth or twentieth cigar of
+that memorable day.
+
+“He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting ghost,
+sir”--Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo with true warmth of
+feeling and a touch of wistful pride. “You may imagine, sir, what an
+effect it produced on me. He had come round by sea with Barrios, of
+course. And the first thing he told me after I became fit to hear him
+was that he had picked up the lighter’s boat floating in the gulf!
+He seemed quite overcome by the circumstance. And a remarkable enough
+circumstance it was, when you remember that it was then sixteen days
+since the sinking of the silver. At once I could see he was another man.
+He stared at the wall, sir, as if there had been a spider or something
+running about there. The loss of the silver preyed on his mind. The
+first thing he asked me about was whether Dona Antonia had heard yet of
+Decoud’s death. His voice trembled. I had to tell him that Dona Antonia,
+as a matter of fact, was not back in town yet. Poor girl! And just as I
+was making ready to ask him a thousand questions, with a sudden, ‘Pardon
+me, senor,’ he cleared out of the office altogether. I did not see him
+again for three days. I was terribly busy, you know. It seems that he
+wandered about in and out of the town, and on two nights turned up
+to sleep in the baracoons of the railway people. He seemed absolutely
+indifferent to what went on. I asked him on the wharf, ‘When are you
+going to take hold again, Nostromo? There will be plenty of work for the
+Cargadores presently.’
+
+“‘Senor,’ says he, looking at me in a slow, inquisitive manner, ‘would
+it surprise you to hear that I am too tired to work just yet? And what
+work could I do now? How can I look my Cargadores in the face after
+losing a lighter?’
+
+“I begged him not to think any more about the silver, and he smiled. A
+smile that went to my heart, sir. ‘It was no mistake,’ I told him. ‘It
+was a fatality. A thing that could not be helped.’ ‘Si, si!” he said,
+and turned away. I thought it best to leave him alone for a bit to get
+over it. Sir, it took him years really, to get over it. I was present
+at his interview with Don Carlos. I must say that Gould is rather a cold
+man. He had to keep a tight hand on his feelings, dealing with thieves
+and rascals, in constant danger of ruin for himself and wife for so many
+years, that it had become a second nature. They looked at each other for
+a long time. Don Carlos asked what he could do for him, in his quiet,
+reserved way.
+
+“‘My name is known from one end of Sulaco to the other,’ he said, as
+quiet as the other. ‘What more can you do for me?’ That was all that
+passed on that occasion. Later, however, there was a very fine coasting
+schooner for sale, and Mrs. Gould and I put our heads together to get
+her bought and presented to him. It was done, but he paid all the price
+back within the next three years. Business was booming all along this
+seaboard, sir. Moreover, that man always succeeded in everything
+except in saving the silver. Poor Dona Antonia, fresh from her terrible
+experiences in the woods of Los Hatos, had an interview with him, too.
+Wanted to hear about Decoud: what they said, what they did, what they
+thought up to the last on that fatal night. Mrs. Gould told me his
+manner was perfect for quietness and sympathy. Miss Avellanos burst into
+tears only when he told her how Decoud had happened to say that his plan
+would be a glorious success. . . . And there’s no doubt, sir, that it
+is. It is a success.”
+
+The cycle was about to close at last. And while the privileged
+passenger, shivering with the pleasant anticipations of his berth,
+forgot to ask himself, “What on earth Decoud’s plan could be?” Captain
+Mitchell was saying, “Sorry we must part so soon. Your intelligent
+interest made this a pleasant day to me. I shall see you now on board.
+You had a glimpse of the ‘Treasure House of the World.’ A very good name
+that.” And the coxswain’s voice at the door, announcing that the gig was
+ready, closed the cycle.
+
+Nostromo had, indeed, found the lighter’s boat, which he had left on
+the Great Isabel with Decoud, floating empty far out in the gulf. He was
+then on the bridge of the first of Barrios’s transports, and within an
+hour’s steaming from Sulaco. Barrios, always delighted with a feat of
+daring and a good judge of courage, had taken a great liking to the
+Capataz. During the passage round the coast the General kept Nostromo
+near his person, addressing him frequently in that abrupt and boisterous
+manner which was the sign of his high favour.
+
+Nostromo’s eyes were the first to catch, broad on the bow, the tiny,
+elusive dark speck, which, alone with the forms of the Three Isabels
+right ahead, appeared on the flat, shimmering emptiness of the gulf.
+There are times when no fact should be neglected as insignificant;
+a small boat so far from the land might have had some meaning worth
+finding out. At a nod of consent from Barrios the transport swept out
+of her course, passing near enough to ascertain that no one manned the
+little cockle-shell. It was merely a common small boat gone adrift with
+her oars in her. But Nostromo, to whose mind Decoud had been insistently
+present for days, had long before recognized with excitement the dinghy
+of the lighter.
+
+There could be no question of stopping to pick up that thing. Every
+minute of time was momentous with the lives and futures of a whole town.
+The head of the leading ship, with the General on board, fell off to her
+course. Behind her, the fleet of transports, scattered haphazard over a
+mile or so in the offing, like the finish of an ocean race, pressed on,
+all black and smoking on the western sky.
+
+“Mi General,” Nostromo’s voice rang out loud, but quiet, from behind a
+group of officers, “I should like to save that little boat. Por Dios, I
+know her. She belongs to my Company.”
+
+“And, por Dios,” guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, good-humoured voice, “you
+belong to me. I am going to make you a captain of cavalry directly we
+get within sight of a horse again.”
+
+“I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General,” cried Nostromo,
+pushing through to the rail with a set stare in his eyes. “Let me----”
+
+“Let you? What a conceited fellow that is,” bantered the General,
+jovially, without even looking at him. “Let him go! Ha! ha! ha! He wants
+me to admit that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha! ha! ha! Would
+you like to swim off to her, my son?”
+
+A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other stopped his
+guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and his black head bobbed up far
+away already from the ship. The General muttered an appalled “Cielo!
+Sinner that I am!” in a thunderstruck tone. One anxious glance was
+enough to show him that Nostromo was swimming with perfect ease; and
+then he thundered terribly, “No! no! We shall not stop to pick up this
+impertinent fellow. Let him drown--that mad Capataz.”
+
+Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo from leaping
+overboard. That empty boat, coming out to meet him mysteriously, as if
+rowed by an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of some sign,
+of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling and enigmatic way the
+persistent thought of a treasure and of a man’s fate. He would have
+leaped if there had been death in that half-mile of water. It was as
+smooth as a pond, and for some reason sharks are unknown in the Placid
+Gulf, though on the other side of the Punta Mala the coastline swarms
+with them.
+
+The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with force. A queer, faint
+feeling had come over him while he swam. He had got rid of his boots and
+coat in the water. He hung on for a time, regaining his breath. In
+the distance the transports, more in a bunch now, held on straight for
+Sulaco, with their air of friendly contest, of nautical sport, of
+a regatta; and the united smoke of their funnels drove like a thin,
+sulphurous fogbank right over his head. It was his daring, his courage,
+his act that had set these ships in motion upon the sea, hurrying on
+to save the lives and fortunes of the Blancos, the taskmasters of the
+people; to save the San Tome mine; to save the children.
+
+With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over the stern. The
+very boat! No doubt of it; no doubt whatever. It was the dinghy of the
+lighter No. 3--the dinghy left with Martin Decoud on the Great Isabel so
+that he should have some means to help himself if nothing could be done
+for him from the shore. And here she had come out to meet him empty
+and inexplicable. What had become of Decoud? The Capataz made a minute
+examination. He looked for some scratch, for some mark, for some sign.
+All he discovered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the
+thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard with his finger. Then
+he sat down in the stern sheets, passive, with his knees close together
+and legs aslant.
+
+Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers hanging lank
+and dripping and a lustreless stare fixed upon the bottom boards, the
+Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores resembled a drowned corpse come up from
+the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a small boat. The excitement
+of his adventurous ride, the excitement of the return in time,
+of achievement, of success, all this excitement centred round the
+associated ideas of the great treasure and of the only other man who
+knew of its existence, had departed from him. To the very last moment
+he had been cudgelling his brains as to how he could manage to visit
+the Great Isabel without loss of time and undetected. For the idea of
+secrecy had come to be connected with the treasure so closely that even
+to Barrios himself he had refrained from mentioning the existence of
+Decoud and of the silver on the island. The letters he carried to the
+General, however, made brief mention of the loss of the lighter, as
+having its bearing upon the situation in Sulaco. In the circumstances,
+the one-eyed tiger-slayer, scenting battle from afar, had not wasted his
+time in making inquiries from the messenger. In fact, Barrios, talking
+with Nostromo, assumed that both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San
+Tome were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned directly, had kept
+silent, under the influence of some indefinable form of resentment and
+distrust. Let Don Martin speak of everything with his own lips--was what
+he told himself mentally.
+
+And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel thrown thus in his
+way at the earliest possible moment, his excitement had departed, as
+when the soul takes flight leaving the body inert upon an earth it knows
+no more. Nostromo did not seem to know the gulf. For a long time even
+his eyelids did not flutter once upon the glazed emptiness of his stare.
+Then slowly, without a limb having stirred, without a twitch of muscle
+or quiver of an eyelash, an expression, a living expression came upon
+the still features, deep thought crept into the empty stare--as if an
+outcast soul, a quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted body in
+its way, had come in stealthily to take possession.
+
+The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness of sea, islands, and
+coast, of cloud forms on the sky and trails of light upon the water, the
+knitting of that brow had the emphasis of a powerful gesture. Nothing
+else budged for a long time; then the Capataz shook his head and again
+surrendered himself to the universal repose of all visible things.
+Suddenly he seized the oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin
+round, head-on to the Great Isabel. But before he began to pull he bent
+once more over the brown stain on the gunwale.
+
+“I know that thing,” he muttered to himself, with a sagacious jerk of
+the head. “That’s blood.”
+
+His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady. Now and then he looked
+over his shoulder at the Great Isabel, presenting its low cliff to his
+anxious gaze like an impenetrable face. At last the stem touched the
+strand. He flung rather than dragged the boat up the little beach. At
+once, turning his back upon the sunset, he plunged with long strides
+into the ravine, making the water of the stream spurt and fly upwards at
+every step, as if spurning its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit with his
+feet. He wanted to save every moment of daylight.
+
+A mass of earth, grass, and smashed bushes had fallen down very
+naturally from above upon the cavity under the leaning tree. Decoud had
+attended to the concealment of the silver as instructed, using the spade
+with some intelligence. But Nostromo’s half-smile of approval changed
+into a scornful curl of the lip by the sight of the spade itself flung
+there in full view, as if in utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving
+away the whole thing. Ah! They were all alike in their folly, these
+hombres finos that invented laws and governments and barren tasks for
+the people.
+
+The Capataz picked up the spade, and with the feel of the handle in his
+palm the desire of having a look at the horse-hide boxes of treasure
+came upon him suddenly. In a very few strokes he uncovered the edges and
+corners of several; then, clearing away more earth, became aware that
+one of them had been slashed with a knife.
+
+He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and dropped on his
+knees with a look of irrational apprehension over one shoulder, then
+over the other. The stiff hide had closed, and he hesitated before he
+pushed his hand through the long slit and felt the ingots inside. There
+they were. One, two, three. Yes, four gone. Taken away. Four ingots.
+But who? Decoud? Nobody else. And why? For what purpose? For what cursed
+fancy? Let him explain. Four ingots carried off in a boat, and--blood!
+
+In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded, unaltered,
+plunged into the waters in a grave and untroubled mystery of
+self-immolation consummated far from all mortal eyes, with an infinite
+majesty of silence and peace. Four ingots short!--and blood!
+
+The Capataz got up slowly.
+
+“He might simply have cut his hand,” he muttered. “But, then----”
+
+He sat down on the soft earth, unresisting, as if he had been chained
+to the treasure, his drawn-up legs clasped in his hands with an air of
+hopeless submission, like a slave set on guard. Once only he lifted his
+head smartly: the rattle of hot musketry fire had reached his ears, like
+pouring from on high a stream of dry peas upon a drum. After listening
+for a while, he said, half aloud--
+
+“He will never come back to explain.”
+
+And he lowered his head again.
+
+“Impossible!” he muttered, gloomily.
+
+The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great conflagration in
+Sulaco flashed up red above the coast, played on the clouds at the head
+of the gulf, seemed to touch with a ruddy and sinister reflection the
+forms of the Three Isabels. He never saw it, though he raised his head.
+
+“But, then, I cannot know,” he pronounced, distinctly, and remained
+silent and staring for hours.
+
+He could not know. Nobody was to know. As might have been supposed, the
+end of Don Martin Decoud never became a subject of speculation for any
+one except Nostromo. Had the truth of the facts been known, there would
+always have remained the question. Why? Whereas the version of his death
+at the sinking of the lighter had no uncertainty of motive. The young
+apostle of Separation had died striving for his idea by an ever-lamented
+accident. But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known
+but to few on this earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to
+withstand. The brilliant Costaguanero of the boulevards had died from
+solitude and want of faith in himself and others.
+
+For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human comprehension, the
+sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels. The rocky head of Azuera is
+their haunt, whose stony levels and chasms resound with their wild
+and tumultuous clamour as if they were for ever quarrelling over the
+legendary treasure.
+
+At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, Decoud, turning in his
+lair of coarse grass, under the shade of a tree, said to himself--
+
+“I have not seen as much as one single bird all day.”
+
+And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that one now of his
+own muttering voice. It had been a day of absolute silence--the first
+he had known in his life. And he had not slept a wink. Not for all these
+wakeful nights and the days of fighting, planning, talking; not for all
+that last night of danger and hard physical toil upon the gulf, had he
+been able to close his eyes for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset
+he had been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on his
+face.
+
+He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended into the gully to
+spend the night by the side of the silver. If Nostromo returned--as he
+might have done at any moment--it was there that he would look first;
+and night would, of course, be the proper time for an attempt to
+communicate. He remembered with profound indifference that he had not
+eaten anything yet since he had been left alone on the island.
+
+He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day broke he ate something
+with the same indifference. The brilliant “Son Decoud,” the spoiled
+darling of the family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of Sulaco,
+was not fit to grapple with himself single-handed. Solitude from mere
+outward condition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in
+which the affectations of irony and scepticism have no place. It takes
+possession of the mind, and drives forth the thought into the exile of
+utter unbelief. After three days of waiting for the sight of some
+human face, Decoud caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own
+individuality. It had merged into the world of cloud and water, of
+natural forces and forms of nature. In our activity alone do we find
+the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the
+whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part. Decoud lost all
+belief in the reality of his action past and to come. On the fifth day
+an immense melancholy descended upon him palpably. He resolved not to
+give himself up to these people in Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and
+terrible, like jibbering and obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling
+feebly in their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an
+allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his weakness.
+
+Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared within
+the range of his vision; and, as if to escape from this solitude,
+he absorbed himself in his melancholy. The vague consciousness of a
+misdirected life given up to impulses whose memory left a bitter taste
+in his mouth was the first moral sentiment of his manhood. But at the
+same time he felt no remorse. What should he regret? He had recognized
+no other virtue than intelligence, and had erected passions into duties.
+Both his intelligence and his passion were swallowed up easily in this
+great unbroken solitude of waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had
+robbed his will of all energy, for he had not slept seven hours in the
+seven days. His sadness was the sadness of a sceptical mind. He beheld
+the universe as a succession of incomprehensible images. Nostromo was
+dead. Everything had failed ignominiously. He no longer dared to think
+of Antonia. She had not survived. But if she survived he could not face
+her. And all exertion seemed senseless.
+
+On the tenth day, after a night spent without even dozing off once (it
+had occurred to him that Antonia could not possibly have ever loved
+a being so impalpable as himself), the solitude appeared like a great
+void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he
+hung suspended by both hands, without fear, without surprise, without
+any sort of emotion whatever. Only towards the evening, in the
+comparative relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord would
+snap. He imagined it snapping with a report as of a pistol--a sharp,
+full crack. And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that
+eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless nights in
+which the silence, remaining unbroken in the shape of a cord to which he
+hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless phrases, always the same
+but utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and
+proclamations mingled into an ironical and senseless buzzing. In the
+daytime he could look at the silence like a still cord stretched to
+breaking-point, with his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a
+weight.
+
+“I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell,” he asked himself.
+
+The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt, dirty,
+white-faced, and looked at it with his red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed
+him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without tremor; and the effect
+of that physical condition gave to his movements an unhesitating,
+deliberate dignity. He acted as if accomplishing some sort of rite. He
+descended into the gully; for the fascination of all that silver, with
+its potential power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the
+belt with the revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his
+waist. The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let
+him fall and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was looking at
+the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea! His aspect was that
+of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on his knees slowly and went
+on grubbing with his fingers with industrious patience till he uncovered
+one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing some work done many
+times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his
+pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out
+of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish.
+
+It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the dinghy
+near the water with an idea of rowing away somewhere, but had desisted
+partly at the whisper of lingering hope that Nostromo would return,
+partly from conviction of utter uselessness of all effort. Now she
+wanted only a slight shove to be set afloat. He had eaten a little every
+day after the first, and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up
+the oars slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that
+stood behind him warm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life, bathed
+in a rich light from head to foot as if in a radiance of hope and joy.
+He pulled straight towards the setting sun. When the gulf had grown
+dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls in. The hollow clatter they
+made in falling was the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life. It
+was a revelation. It seemed to recall him from far away, Actually the
+thought, “Perhaps I may sleep to-night,” passed through his mind. But he
+did not believe it. He believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on
+the thwart.
+
+The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into his unwinking eyes.
+After a clear daybreak the sun appeared splendidly above the peaks of
+the range. The great gulf burst into a glitter all around the boat; and
+in this glory of merciless solitude the silence appeared again before
+him, stretched taut like a dark, thin string.
+
+His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted his seat from
+the thwart to the gunwale. They looked at it fixedly, while his hand,
+feeling about his waist, unbuttoned the flap of the leather case, drew
+the revolver, cocked it, brought it forward pointing at his breast,
+pulled the trigger, and, with convulsive force, sent the still-smoking
+weapon hurtling through the air. His eyes looked at it while he fell
+forward and hung with his breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his
+right hand hooked under the thwart. They looked----
+
+“It is done,” he stammered out, in a sudden flow of blood. His last
+thought was: “I wonder how that Capataz died.” The stiffness of the
+fingers relaxed, and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled overboard
+without having heard the cord of silence snap in the solitude of the
+Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface remained untroubled by the fall of
+his body.
+
+A victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the retribution meted
+out to intellectual audacity, the brilliant Don Martin Decoud, weighted
+by the bars of San Tome silver, disappeared without a trace, swallowed
+up in the immense indifference of things. His sleepless, crouching
+figure was gone from the side of the San Tome silver; and for a time the
+spirits of good and evil that hover near every concealed treasure of
+the earth might have thought that this one had been forgotten by all
+mankind. Then, after a few days, another form appeared striding away
+from the setting sun to sit motionless and awake in the narrow black
+gully all through the night, in nearly the same pose, in the same place
+in which had sat that other sleepless man who had gone away for ever so
+quietly in a small boat, about the time of sunset. And the spirits of
+good and evil that hover about a forbidden treasure understood well that
+the silver of San Tome was provided now with a faithful and lifelong
+slave.
+
+The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of the disenchanted vanity
+which is the reward of audacious action, sat in the weary pose of a
+hunted outcast through a night of sleeplessness as tormenting as any
+known to Decoud, his companion in the most desperate affair of his life.
+And he wondered how Decoud had died. But he knew the part he had
+played himself. First a woman, then a man, abandoned both in their last
+extremity, for the sake of this accursed treasure. It was paid for by
+a soul lost and by a vanished life. The blank stillness of awe was
+succeeded by a gust of immense pride. There was no one in the world but
+Gian’ Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptible and
+faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price.
+
+He had made up his mind that nothing should be allowed now to rob him of
+his bargain. Nothing. Decoud had died. But how? That he was dead he had
+not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . . What for? Did he mean to
+come for more--some other time?
+
+The treasure was putting forth its latent power. It troubled the clear
+mind of the man who had paid the price. He was sure that Decoud was
+dead. The island seemed full of that whisper. Dead! Gone! And he
+caught himself listening for the swish of bushes and the splash of the
+footfalls in the bed of the brook. Dead! The talker, the novio of Dona
+Antonia!
+
+“Ha!” he murmured, with his head on his knees, under the livid clouded
+dawn breaking over the liberated Sulaco and upon the gulf as gray as
+ashes. “It is to her that he will fly. To her that he will fly!”
+
+And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to cast a spell, like the
+angry woman who had prophesied remorse and failure, and yet had laid
+upon him the task of saving the children? Well, he had saved the
+children. He had defeated the spell of poverty and starvation. He had
+done it all alone--or perhaps helped by the devil. Who cared? He had
+done it, betrayed as he was, and saving by the same stroke the San Tome
+mine, which appeared to him hateful and immense, lording it by its vast
+wealth over the valour, the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and
+peace, over the labours of the town, the sea, and the Campo.
+
+The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cordillera. The Capataz
+looked down for a time upon the fall of loose earth, stones, and smashed
+bushes, concealing the hiding-place of the silver.
+
+“I must grow rich very slowly,” he meditated, aloud.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+Sulaco outstripped Nostromo’s prudence, growing rich swiftly on the
+hidden treasures of the earth, hovered over by the anxious spirits of
+good and evil, torn out by the labouring hands of the people. It was
+like a second youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest, of
+toil, scattering lavishly its wealth to the four corners of an excited
+world. Material changes swept along in the train of material interests.
+And other changes more subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds
+and hearts of the workers. Captain Mitchell had gone home to live on his
+savings invested in the San Tome mine; and Dr. Monygham had grown older,
+with his head steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his face,
+living on the inexhaustible treasure of his devotion drawn upon in the
+secret of his heart like a store of unlawful wealth.
+
+The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose maintenance is a charge
+upon the Gould Concession), Official Adviser on Sanitation to the
+Municipality, Chief Medical Officer of the San Tome Consolidated Mines
+(whose territory, containing gold, silver, copper, lead, cobalt,
+extends for miles along the foot-hills of the Cordillera), had felt
+poverty-stricken, miserable, and starved during the prolonged, second
+visit the Goulds paid to Europe and the United States of America.
+Intimate of the casa, proved friend, a bachelor without ties and without
+establishment (except of the professional sort), he had been asked to
+take up his quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months of their
+absence the familiar rooms, recalling at every glance the woman to
+whom he had given all his loyalty, had grown intolerable. As the day
+approached for the arrival of the mail boat Hermes (the latest addition
+to the O. S. N. Co.’s splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled about more
+vivaciously, snapped more sardonically at simple and gentle out of sheer
+nervousness.
+
+He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with fury, with enthusiasm,
+and saw it carried out past the old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould
+with delight, with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting
+alone in the great landau behind the white mules, a little sideways, his
+drawn-in face positively venomous with the effort of self-control, and
+holding a pair of new gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour.
+
+His heart dilated within him so, when he saw the Goulds on the deck of
+the Hermes, that his greetings were reduced to a casual mutter. Driving
+back to town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor, in a
+more natural manner, said--
+
+“I’ll leave you now to yourselves. I’ll call to-morrow if I may?”
+
+“Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come early,” said Mrs. Gould, in
+her travelling dress and her veil down, turning to look at him at the
+foot of the stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in blue
+robes and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome her with an aspect of
+pitying tenderness.
+
+“Don’t expect to find me at home,” Charles Gould warned him. “I’ll be
+off early to the mine.”
+
+After lunch, Dona Emilia and the senor doctor came slowly through
+the inner gateway of the patio. The large gardens of the Casa Gould,
+surrounded by high walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighbouring roofs,
+lay open before them, with masses of shade under the trees and level
+surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. A triple row of old orange trees
+surrounded the whole. Barefooted, brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts
+and wide calzoneras, dotted the grounds, squatting over flowerbeds,
+passing between the trees, dragging slender India-rubber tubes across
+the gravel of the paths; and the fine jets of water crossed each other
+in graceful curves, sparkling in the sunshine with a slight pattering
+noise upon the bushes, and an effect of showered diamonds upon the
+grass.
+
+Dona Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress, walked by the side
+of Dr. Monygham, in a longish black coat and severe black bow on
+an immaculate shirtfront. Under a shady clump of trees, where stood
+scattered little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs. Gould sat down in a
+low and ample seat.
+
+“Don’t go yet,” she said to Dr. Monygham, who was unable to tear himself
+away from the spot. His chin nestling within the points of his collar,
+he devoured her stealthily with his eyes, which, luckily, were round and
+hard like clouded marbles, and incapable of disclosing his sentiments.
+His pitying emotion at the marks of time upon the face of that woman,
+the air of frailty and weary fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and
+temples of the “Never-tired Senora” (as Don Pepe years ago used to call
+her with admiration), touched him almost to tears. “Don’t go yet.
+To-day is all my own,” Mrs. Gould urged, gently. “We are not back yet
+officially. No one will come. It’s only to-morrow that the windows of
+the Casa Gould are to be lit up for a reception.”
+
+The doctor dropped into a chair.
+
+“Giving a tertulia?” he said, with a detached air.
+
+“A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to come.”
+
+“And only to-morrow?”
+
+“Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the mine, and so I----It
+would be good to have him to myself for one evening on our return to
+this house I love. It has seen all my life.”
+
+“Ah, yes!” snarled the doctor, suddenly. “Women count time from the
+marriage feast. Didn’t you live a little before?”
+
+“Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no cares.”
+
+Mrs. Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long separation, will
+revert to the most agitated period of their lives, they began to talk of
+the Sulaco Revolution. It seemed strange to Mrs. Gould that people who
+had taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and its lesson.
+
+“And yet,” struck in the doctor, “we who played our part in it had our
+reward. Don Pepe, though superannuated, still can sit a horse. Barrios
+is drinking himself to death in jovial company away somewhere on his
+fundacion beyond the Bolson de Tonoro. And the heroic Father Roman--I
+imagine the old padre blowing up systematically the San Tome mine,
+uttering a pious exclamation at every bang, and taking handfuls of
+snuff between the explosions--the heroic Padre Roman says that he is not
+afraid of the harm Holroyd’s missionaries can do to his flock, as long
+as he is alive.”
+
+Mrs. Gould shuddered a little at the allusion to the destruction that
+had come so near to the San Tome mine.
+
+“Ah, but you, dear friend?”
+
+“I did the work I was fit for.”
+
+“You faced the most cruel dangers of all. Something more than death.”
+
+“No, Mrs. Gould! Only death--by hanging. And I am rewarded beyond my
+deserts.”
+
+Noticing Mrs. Gould’s gaze fixed upon him, he dropped his eyes.
+
+“I’ve made my career--as you see,” said the Inspector-General of State
+Hospitals, taking up lightly the lapels of his superfine black coat.
+The doctor’s self-respect marked inwardly by the almost complete
+disappearance from his dreams of Father Beron appeared visibly in what,
+by contrast with former carelessness, seemed an immoderate cult of
+personal appearance. Carried out within severe limits of form and
+colour, and in perpetual freshness, this change of apparel gave to Dr.
+Monygham an air at the same time professional and festive; while his
+gait and the unchanged crabbed character of his face acquired from it a
+startling force of incongruity.
+
+“Yes,” he went on. “We all had our rewards--the engineer-in-chief,
+Captain Mitchell----”
+
+“We saw him,” interrupted Mrs. Gould, in her charming voice. “The poor
+dear man came up from the country on purpose to call on us in our hotel
+in London. He comported himself with great dignity, but I fancy he
+regrets Sulaco. He rambled feebly about ‘historical events’ till I felt
+I could have a cry.”
+
+“H’m,” grunted the doctor; “getting old, I suppose. Even Nostromo is
+getting older--though he is not changed. And, speaking of that fellow, I
+wanted to tell you something----”
+
+For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of agitation. Suddenly
+the two gardeners, busy with rose trees at the side of the garden
+arch, fell upon their knees with bowed heads on the passage of Antonia
+Avellanos, who appeared walking beside her uncle.
+
+Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome, where he had
+been invited by the Propaganda, Father Corbelan, missionary to the
+wild Indians, conspirator, friend and patron of Hernandez the robber,
+advanced with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning forward, with his
+powerful hands clasped behind his back. The first Cardinal-Archbishop
+of Sulaco had preserved his fanatical and morose air; the aspect of a
+chaplain of bandits. It was believed that his unexpected elevation
+to the purple was a counter-move to the Protestant invasion of Sulaco
+organized by the Holroyd Missionary Fund. Antonia, the beauty of her
+face as if a little blurred, her figure slightly fuller, advanced with
+her light walk and her high serenity, smiling from a distance at Mrs.
+Gould. She had brought her uncle over to see dear Emilia, without
+ceremony, just for a moment before the siesta.
+
+When all were seated again, Dr. Monygham, who had come to dislike
+heartily everybody who approached Mrs. Gould with any intimacy, kept
+aside, pretending to be lost in profound meditation. A louder phrase of
+Antonia made him lift his head.
+
+“How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, those who have been
+our countrymen only a few years ago, who are our countrymen now?” Miss
+Avellanos was saying. “How can we remain blind, and deaf without pity to
+the cruel wrongs suffered by our brothers? There is a remedy.”
+
+“Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and prosperity of Sulaco,”
+ snapped the doctor. “There is no other remedy.”
+
+“I am convinced, senor doctor,” Antonia said, with the earnest calm
+of invincible resolution, “that this was from the first poor Martin’s
+intention.”
+
+“Yes, but the material interests will not let you jeopardize their
+development for a mere idea of pity and justice,” the doctor muttered
+grumpily. “And it is just as well perhaps.”
+
+The Cardinal-Archbishop straightened up his gaunt, bony frame.
+
+“We have worked for them; we have made them, these material interests
+of the foreigners,” the last of the Corbelans uttered in a deep,
+denunciatory tone.
+
+“And without them you are nothing,” cried the doctor from the distance.
+“They will not let you.”
+
+“Let them beware, then, lest the people, prevented from their
+aspirations, should rise and claim their share of the wealth and their
+share of the power,” the popular Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco declared,
+significantly, menacingly.
+
+A silence ensued, during which his Eminence stared, frowning at the
+ground, and Antonia, graceful and rigid in her chair, breathed calmly
+in the strength of her convictions. Then the conversation took a
+social turn, touching on the visit of the Goulds to Europe. The
+Cardinal-Archbishop, when in Rome, had suffered from neuralgia in the
+head all the time. It was the climate--the bad air.
+
+When uncle and niece had gone away, with the servants again falling
+on their knees, and the old porter, who had known Henry Gould, almost
+totally blind and impotent now, creeping up to kiss his Eminence’s
+extended hand, Dr. Monygham, looking after them, pronounced the one
+word--
+
+“Incorrigible!”
+
+Mrs. Gould, with a look upwards, dropped wearily on her lap her white
+hands flashing with the gold and stones of many rings.
+
+“Conspiring. Yes!” said the doctor. “The last of the Avellanos and the
+last of the Corbelans are conspiring with the refugees from Sta. Marta
+that flock here after every revolution. The Cafe Lambroso at the corner
+of the Plaza is full of them; you can hear their chatter across the
+street like the noise of a parrot-house. They are conspiring for the
+invasion of Costaguana. And do you know where they go for strength,
+for the necessary force? To the secret societies amongst immigrants and
+natives, where Nostromo--I should say Captain Fidanza--is the great man.
+What gives him that position? Who can say? Genius? He has genius. He is
+greater with the populace than ever he was before. It is as if he had
+some secret power; some mysterious means to keep up his influence. He
+holds conferences with the Archbishop, as in those old days which you
+and I remember. Barrios is useless. But for a military head they have
+the pious Hernandez. And they may raise the country with the new cry of
+the wealth for the people.”
+
+“Will there be never any peace? Will there be no rest?” Mrs. Gould
+whispered. “I thought that we----”
+
+“No!” interrupted the doctor. “There is no peace and no rest in the
+development of material interests. They have their law, and their
+justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without
+rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only
+in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time approaches when all that the
+Gould Concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as
+the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back.”
+
+“How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?” she cried out, as if hurt in the
+most sensitive place of her soul.
+
+“I can say what is true,” the doctor insisted, obstinately. “It’ll weigh
+as heavily, and provoke resentment, bloodshed, and vengeance, because
+the men have grown different. Do you think that now the mine would march
+upon the town to save their Senor Administrador? Do you think that?”
+
+She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her eyes and murmured
+hopelessly--
+
+“Is it this we have worked for, then?”
+
+The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her silent thought. Was it
+for this that her life had been robbed of all the intimate felicities of
+daily affection which her tenderness needed as the human body needs air
+to breathe? And the doctor, indignant with Charles Gould’s blindness,
+hastened to change the conversation.
+
+“It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you. Ah! that fellow has
+some continuity and force. Nothing will put an end to him. But never
+mind that. There’s something inexplicable going on--or perhaps only too
+easy to explain. You know, Linda is practically the lighthouse keeper of
+the Great Isabel light. The Garibaldino is too old now. His part is to
+clean the lamps and to cook in the house; but he can’t get up the stairs
+any longer. The black-eyed Linda sleeps all day and watches the light
+all night. Not all day, though. She is up towards five in the afternoon,
+when our Nostromo, whenever he is in harbour with his schooner, comes
+out on his courting visit, pulling in a small boat.”
+
+“Aren’t they married yet?” Mrs. Gould asked. “The mother wished it, as
+far as I can understand, while Linda was yet quite a child. When I had
+the girls with me for a year or so during the War of Separation, that
+extraordinary Linda used to declare quite simply that she was going to
+be Gian’ Battista’s wife.”
+
+“They are not married yet,” said the doctor, curtly. “I have looked
+after them a little.”
+
+“Thank you, dear Dr. Monygham,” said Mrs. Gould; and under the shade
+of the big trees her little, even teeth gleamed in a youthful smile of
+gentle malice. “People don’t know how really good you are. You will not
+let them know, as if on purpose to annoy me, who have put my faith in
+your good heart long ago.”
+
+The doctor, with a lifting up of his upper lip, as though he were
+longing to bite, bowed stiffly in his chair. With the utter absorption
+of a man to whom love comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions,
+but like an enlightening and priceless misfortune, the sight of that
+woman (of whom he had been deprived for nearly a year) suggested ideas
+of adoration, of kissing the hem of her robe. And this excess of feeling
+translated itself naturally into an augmented grimness of speech.
+
+“I am afraid of being overwhelmed by too much gratitude. However, these
+people interest me. I went out several times to the Great Isabel light
+to look after old Giorgio.”
+
+He did not tell Mrs. Gould that it was because he found there, in her
+absence, the relief of an atmosphere of congenial sentiment in
+old Giorgio’s austere admiration for the “English signora--the
+benefactress”; in black-eyed Linda’s voluble, torrential, passionate
+affection for “our Dona Emilia--that angel”; in the white-throated, fair
+Giselle’s adoring upward turn of the eyes, which then glided towards him
+with a sidelong, half-arch, half-candid glance, which made the doctor
+exclaim to himself mentally, “If I weren’t what I am, old and ugly, I
+would think the minx is making eyes at me. And perhaps she is. I dare
+say she would make eyes at anybody.” Dr. Monygham said nothing of this
+to Mrs. Gould, the providence of the Viola family, but reverted to what
+he called “our great Nostromo.”
+
+“What I wanted to tell you is this: Our great Nostromo did not take much
+notice of the old man and the children for some years. It’s true, too,
+that he was away on his coasting voyages certainly ten months out of the
+twelve. He was making his fortune, as he told Captain Mitchell once. He
+seems to have done uncommonly well. It was only to be expected. He is
+a man full of resource, full of confidence in himself, ready to take
+chances and risks of every sort. I remember being in Mitchell’s office
+one day, when he came in with that calm, grave air he always carries
+everywhere. He had been away trading in the Gulf of California, he said,
+looking straight past us at the wall, as his manner is, and was glad to
+see on his return that a lighthouse was being built on the cliff of the
+Great Isabel. Very glad, he repeated. Mitchell explained that it was
+the O. S. N. Co. who was building it, for the convenience of the mail
+service, on his own advice. Captain Fidanza was good enough to say that
+it was excellent advice. I remember him twisting up his moustaches and
+looking all round the cornice of the room before he proposed that old
+Giorgio should be made the keeper of that light.”
+
+“I heard of this. I was consulted at the time,” Mrs. Gould said. “I
+doubted whether it would be good for these girls to be shut up on that
+island as if in a prison.”
+
+“The proposal fell in with the old Garibaldino’s humour. As to Linda,
+any place was lovely and delightful enough for her as long as it was
+Nostromo’s suggestion. She could wait for her Gian’ Battista’s good
+pleasure there as well as anywhere else. My opinion is that she was
+always in love with that incorruptible Capataz. Moreover, both father
+and sister were anxious to get Giselle away from the attentions of a
+certain Ramirez.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mrs. Gould, interested. “Ramirez? What sort of man is that?”
+
+“Just a mozo of the town. His father was a Cargador. As a lanky boy he
+ran about the wharf in rags, till Nostromo took him up and made a man of
+him. When he got a little older, he put him into a lighter and very soon
+gave him charge of the No. 3 boat--the boat which took the silver away,
+Mrs. Gould. Nostromo selected that lighter for the work because she
+was the best sailing and the strongest boat of all the Company’s fleet.
+Young Ramirez was one of the five Cargadores entrusted with the removal
+of the treasure from the Custom House on that famous night. As the boat
+he had charge of was sunk, Nostromo, on leaving the Company’s service,
+recommended him to Captain Mitchell for his successor. He had trained
+him in the routine of work perfectly, and thus Mr. Ramirez, from a
+starving waif, becomes a man and the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores.”
+
+“Thanks to Nostromo,” said Mrs. Gould, with warm approval.
+
+“Thanks to Nostromo,” repeated Dr. Monygham. “Upon my word, the fellow’s
+power frightens me when I think of it. That our poor old Mitchell was
+only too glad to appoint somebody trained to the work, who saved him
+trouble, is not surprising. What is wonderful is the fact that the
+Sulaco Cargadores accepted Ramirez for their chief, simply because such
+was Nostromo’s good pleasure. Of course, he is not a second Nostromo,
+as he fondly imagined he would be; but still, the position was brilliant
+enough. It emboldened him to make up to Giselle Viola, who, you know, is
+the recognized beauty of the town. The old Garibaldino, however, took a
+violent dislike to him. I don’t know why. Perhaps because he was not
+a model of perfection like his Gian’ Battista, the incarnation of the
+courage, the fidelity, the honour of ‘the people.’ Signor Viola does
+not think much of Sulaco natives. Both of them, the old Spartan and that
+white-faced Linda, with her red mouth and coal-black eyes, were looking
+rather fiercely after the fair one. Ramirez was warned off. Father
+Viola, I am told, threatened him with his gun once.”
+
+“But what of Giselle herself?” asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+“She’s a bit of a flirt, I believe,” said the doctor. “I don’t think
+she cared much one way or another. Of course she likes men’s attentions.
+Ramirez was not the only one, let me tell you, Mrs. Gould. There was one
+engineer, at least, on the railway staff who got warned off with a gun,
+too. Old Viola does not allow any trifling with his honour. He has grown
+uneasy and suspicious since his wife died. He was very pleased to remove
+his youngest girl away from the town. But look what happens, Mrs. Gould.
+Ramirez, the honest, lovelorn swain, is forbidden the island. Very well.
+He respects the prohibition, but naturally turns his eyes frequently
+towards the Great Isabel. It seems as though he had been in the habit of
+gazing late at night upon the light. And during these sentimental vigils
+he discovers that Nostromo, Captain Fidanza that is, returns very late
+from his visits to the Violas. As late as midnight at times.”
+
+The doctor paused and stared meaningly at Mrs. Gould.
+
+“Yes. But I don’t understand,” she began, looking puzzled.
+
+“Now comes the strange part,” went on Dr. Monygham. “Viola, who is king
+on his island, will allow no visitor on it after dark. Even Captain
+Fidanza has got to leave after sunset, when Linda has gone up to
+tend the light. And Nostromo goes away obediently. But what happens
+afterwards? What does he do in the gulf between half-past six and
+midnight? He has been seen more than once at that late hour pulling
+quietly into the harbour. Ramirez is devoured by jealousy. He dared not
+approach old Viola; but he plucked up courage to rail at Linda about it
+on Sunday morning as she came on the mainland to hear mass and visit her
+mother’s grave. There was a scene on the wharf, which, as a matter of
+fact, I witnessed. It was early morning. He must have been waiting for
+her on purpose. I was there by the merest chance, having been called
+to an urgent consultation by the doctor of the German gunboat in the
+harbour. She poured wrath, scorn, and flame upon Ramirez, who seemed out
+of his mind. It was a strange sight, Mrs. Gould: the long jetty, with
+this raving Cargador in his crimson sash and the girl all in black, at
+the end; the early Sunday morning quiet of the harbour in the shade of
+the mountains; nothing but a canoe or two moving between the ships at
+anchor, and the German gunboat’s gig coming to take me off. Linda passed
+me within a foot. I noticed her wild eyes. I called out to her. She
+never heard me. She never saw me. But I looked at her face. It was awful
+in its anger and wretchedness.”
+
+Mrs. Gould sat up, opening her eyes very wide.
+
+“What do you mean, Dr. Monygham? Do you mean to say that you suspect the
+younger sister?”
+
+“Quien sabe! Who can tell?” said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders
+like a born Costaguanero. “Ramirez came up to me on the wharf. He
+reeled--he looked insane. He took his head into his hands. He had to
+talk to someone--simply had to. Of course for all his mad state he
+recognized me. People know me well here. I have lived too long amongst
+them to be anything else but the evil-eyed doctor, who can cure all the
+ills of the flesh, and bring bad luck by a glance. He came up to me. He
+tried to be calm. He tried to make it out that he wanted merely to
+warn me against Nostromo. It seems that Captain Fidanza at some secret
+meeting or other had mentioned me as the worst despiser of all the
+poor--of the people. It’s very possible. He honours me with his undying
+dislike. And a word from the great Fidanza may be quite enough to send
+some fool’s knife into my back. The Sanitary Commission I preside
+over is not in favour with the populace. ‘Beware of him, senor doctor.
+Destroy him, senor doctor,’ Ramirez hissed right into my face. And then
+he broke out. ‘That man,’ he spluttered, ‘has cast a spell upon both
+these girls.’ As to himself, he had said too much. He must run away
+now--run away and hide somewhere. He moaned tenderly about Giselle, and
+then called her names that cannot be repeated. If he thought she could
+be made to love him by any means, he would carry her off from the
+island. Off into the woods. But it was no good. . . . He strode away,
+flourishing his arms above his head. Then I noticed an old negro, who
+had been sitting behind a pile of cases, fishing from the wharf. He
+wound up his lines and slunk away at once. But he must have heard
+something, and must have talked, too, because some of the old
+Garibaldino’s railway friends, I suppose, warned him against Ramirez. At
+any rate, the father has been warned. But Ramirez has disappeared from
+the town.”
+
+“I feel I have a duty towards these girls,” said Mrs. Gould, uneasily.
+“Is Nostromo in Sulaco now?”
+
+“He is, since last Sunday.”
+
+“He ought to be spoken to--at once.”
+
+“Who will dare speak to him? Even the love-mad Ramirez runs away from
+the mere shadow of Captain Fidanza.”
+
+“I can. I will,” Mrs. Gould declared. “A word will be enough for a man
+like Nostromo.”
+
+The doctor smiled sourly.
+
+“He must end this situation which lends itself to----I can’t believe it
+of that child,” pursued Mrs. Gould.
+
+“He’s very attractive,” muttered the doctor, gloomily.
+
+“He’ll see it, I am sure. He must put an end to all this by marrying
+Linda at once,” pronounced the first lady of Sulaco with immense
+decision.
+
+Through the garden gate emerged Basilio, grown fat and sleek, with an
+elderly hairless face, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his
+jet-black, coarse hair plastered down smoothly. Stooping carefully
+behind an ornamental clump of bushes, he put down with precaution a
+small child he had been carrying on his shoulder--his own and Leonarda’s
+last born. The pouting, spoiled Camerista and the head mozo of the Casa
+Gould had been married for some years now.
+
+He remained squatting on his heels for a time, gazing fondly at his
+offspring, which returned his stare with imperturbable gravity; then,
+solemn and respectable, walked down the path.
+
+“What is it, Basilio?” asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+“A telephone came through from the office of the mine. The master
+remains to sleep at the mountain to-night.”
+
+Dr. Monygham had got up and stood looking away. A profound silence
+reigned for a time under the shade of the biggest trees in the lovely
+gardens of the Casa Gould.
+
+“Very well, Basilio,” said Mrs. Gould. She watched him walk away along
+the path, step aside behind the flowering bush, and reappear with the
+child seated on his shoulder. He passed through the gateway between the
+garden and the patio with measured steps, careful of his light burden.
+
+The doctor, with his back to Mrs. Gould, contemplated a flower-bed away
+in the sunshine. People believed him scornful and soured. The truth
+of his nature consisted in his capacity for passion and in the
+sensitiveness of his temperament. What he lacked was the polished
+callousness of men of the world, the callousness from which springs
+an easy tolerance for oneself and others; the tolerance wide as
+poles asunder from true sympathy and human compassion. This want of
+callousness accounted for his sardonic turn of mind and his biting
+speeches.
+
+In profound silence, and glaring viciously at the brilliant flower-bed,
+Dr. Monygham poured mental imprecations on Charles Gould’s head. Behind
+him the immobility of Mrs. Gould added to the grace of her seated
+figure the charm of art, of an attitude caught and interpreted for ever.
+Turning abruptly, the doctor took his leave.
+
+Mrs. Gould leaned back in the shade of the big trees planted in a
+circle. She leaned back with her eyes closed and her white hands lying
+idle on the arms of her seat. The half-light under the thick mass of
+leaves brought out the youthful prettiness of her face; made the clear,
+light fabrics and white lace of her dress appear luminous. Small and
+dainty, as if radiating a light of her own in the deep shade of the
+interlaced boughs, she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career
+of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of the uselessness of
+her labours, the powerlessness of her magic.
+
+Had anybody asked her of what she was thinking, alone in the garden
+of the Casa, with her husband at the mine and the house closed to the
+street like an empty dwelling, her frankness would have had to evade the
+question. It had come into her mind that for life to be large and full,
+it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing
+moment of the present. Our daily work must be done to the glory of the
+dead, and for the good of those who come after. She thought that, and
+sighed without opening her eyes--without moving at all. Mrs. Gould’s
+face became set and rigid for a second, as if to receive, without
+flinching, a great wave of loneliness that swept over her head. And it
+came into her mind, too, that no one would ever ask her with solicitude
+what she was thinking of. No one. No one, but perhaps the man who had
+just gone away. No; no one who could be answered with careless sincerity
+in the ideal perfection of confidence.
+
+The word “incorrigible”--a word lately pronounced by Dr.
+Monygham--floated into her still and sad immobility. Incorrigible in
+his devotion to the great silver mine was the Senor Administrador!
+Incorrigible in his hard, determined service of the material interests
+to which he had pinned his faith in the triumph of order and justice.
+Poor boy! She had a clear vision of the grey hairs on his temples.
+He was perfect--perfect. What more could she have expected? It was
+a colossal and lasting success; and love was only a short moment of
+forgetfulness, a short intoxication, whose delight one remembered with
+a sense of sadness, as if it had been a deep grief lived through. There
+was something inherent in the necessities of successful action which
+carried with it the moral degradation of the idea. She saw the San Tome
+mountain hanging over the Campo, over the whole land, feared, hated,
+wealthy; more soulless than any tyrant, more pitiless and autocratic
+than the worst Government; ready to crush innumerable lives in the
+expansion of its greatness. He did not see it. He could not see it. It
+was not his fault. He was perfect, perfect; but she would never have him
+to herself. Never; not for one short hour altogether to herself in
+this old Spanish house she loved so well! Incorrigible, the last of the
+Corbelans, the last of the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw
+clearly the San Tome mine possessing, consuming, burning up the life of
+the last of the Costaguana Goulds; mastering the energetic spirit of the
+son as it had mastered the lamentable weakness of the father. A terrible
+success for the last of the Goulds. The last! She had hoped for a long,
+long time, that perhaps----But no! There were to be no more. An immense
+desolation, the dread of her own continued life, descended upon the
+first lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself surviving
+alone the degradation of her young ideal of life, of love, of work--all
+alone in the Treasure House of the World. The profound, blind, suffering
+expression of a painful dream settled on her face with its closed eyes.
+In the indistinct voice of an unlucky sleeper lying passive in the grip
+of a merciless nightmare, she stammered out aimlessly the words--
+
+“Material interest.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+Nostromo had been growing rich very slowly. It was an effect of his
+prudence. He could command himself even when thrown off his balance.
+And to become the slave of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an
+occurrence rare and mentally disturbing. But it was also in a great part
+because of the difficulty of converting it into a form in which it
+could become available. The mere act of getting it away from the island
+piecemeal, little by little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the
+dangers of imminent detection. He had to visit the Great Isabel in
+secret, between his voyages along the coast, which were the ostensible
+source of his fortune. The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as
+if they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He did not dare stay
+too long in port. When his coaster was unloaded, he hurried away on
+another trip, for he feared arousing suspicion even by a day’s delay.
+Sometimes during a week’s stay, or more, he could only manage one visit
+to the treasure. And that was all. A couple of ingots. He suffered
+through his fears as much as through his prudence. To do things by
+stealth humiliated him. And he suffered most from the concentration of
+his thought upon the treasure.
+
+A transgression, a crime, entering a man’s existence, eats it up like a
+malignant growth, consumes it like a fever. Nostromo had lost his peace;
+the genuineness of all his qualities was destroyed. He felt it himself,
+and often cursed the silver of San Tome. His courage, his magnificence,
+his leisure, his work, everything was as before, only everything was a
+sham. But the treasure was real. He clung to it with a more tenacious,
+mental grip. But he hated the feel of the ingots. Sometimes, after
+putting away a couple of them in his cabin--the fruit of a secret night
+expedition to the Great Isabel--he would look fixedly at his fingers, as
+if surprised they had left no stain on his skin.
+
+He had found means of disposing of the silver bars in distant ports. The
+necessity to go far afield made his coasting voyages long, and caused
+his visits to the Viola household to be rare and far between. He was
+fated to have his wife from there. He had said so once to Giorgio
+himself. But the Garibaldino had put the subject aside with a majestic
+wave of his hand, clutching a smouldering black briar-root pipe. There
+was plenty of time; he was not the man to force his girls upon anybody.
+
+As time went on, Nostromo discovered his preference for the younger of
+the two. They had some profound similarities of nature, which must
+exist for complete confidence and understanding, no matter what
+outward differences of temperament there may be to exercise their own
+fascination of contrast. His wife would have to know his secret or else
+life would be impossible. He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid
+gaze and white throat, pliable, silent, fond of excitement under her
+quiet indolence; whereas Linda, with her intense, passionately pale
+face, energetic, all fire and words, touched with gloom and scorn, a
+chip of the old block, true daughter of the austere republican, but with
+Teresa’s voice, inspired him with a deep-seated mistrust. Moreover, the
+poor girl could not conceal her love for Gian’ Battista. He could see it
+would be violent, exacting, suspicious, uncompromising--like her soul.
+Giselle, by her fair but warm beauty, by the surface placidity of her
+nature holding a promise of submissiveness, by the charm of her girlish
+mysteriousness, excited his passion and allayed his fears as to the
+future.
+
+His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning from the longest of
+them, he made out lighters loaded with blocks of stone lying under
+the cliff of the Great Isabel; cranes and scaffolding above; workmen’s
+figures moving about, and a small lighthouse already rising from its
+foundations on the edge of the cliff.
+
+At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he thought himself
+lost irretrievably. What could save him from detection now? Nothing! He
+was struck with amazed dread at this turn of chance, that would kindle
+a far-reaching light upon the only secret spot of his life; that life
+whose very essence, value, reality, consisted in its reflection from the
+admiring eyes of men. All of it but that thing which was beyond common
+comprehension; which stood between him and the power that hears and
+gives effect to the evil intention of curses. It was dark. Not every man
+had such a darkness. And they were going to put a light there. A light!
+He saw it shining upon disgrace, poverty, contempt. Somebody was sure
+to. . . . Perhaps somebody had already. . . .
+
+The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared Captain
+Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a republican like
+old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), was
+on the point of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner.
+That man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide deliberately in
+the face. But he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought
+that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace,
+the shame going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine
+himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own
+existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to grasp the
+notion of finality. The earth goes on for ever.
+
+And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it was as good
+for his purposes as the other kind. He sailed close to the cliff of the
+Great Isabel, throwing a penetrating glance from the deck at the mouth
+of the ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth of bushes. He sailed
+close enough to exchange hails with the workmen, shading their eyes on
+the edge of the sheer drop of the cliff overhung by the jib-head of a
+powerful crane. He perceived that none of them had any occasion even to
+approach the ravine where the silver lay hidden; let alone to enter it.
+In the harbour he learned that no one slept on the island. The labouring
+gangs returned to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the empty
+lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the moment he had nothing to fear.
+
+But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper came to live in
+the cottage that was being built some hundred and fifty yards back from
+the low lighttower, and four hundred or so from the dark, shaded, jungly
+ravine, containing the secret of his safety, of his influence, of his
+magnificence, of his power over the future, of his defiance of ill-luck,
+of every possible betrayal from rich and poor alike--what then? He could
+never shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater than that of other
+men, had welded that vein of silver into his life. And the feeling
+of fearful and ardent subjection, the feeling of his slavery--so
+irremediable and profound that often, in his thoughts, he compared
+himself to the legendary Gringos, neither dead nor alive, bound down
+to their conquest of unlawful wealth on Azuera--weighed heavily on the
+independent Captain Fidanza, owner and master of a coasting schooner,
+whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well
+known along the western seaboard of a vast continent.
+
+Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in his walk, the
+vigour and symmetry of his powerful limbs lost in the vulgarity of a
+brown tweed suit, made by Jews in the slums of London, and sold by the
+clothing department of the Compania Anzani, Captain Fidanza was seen in
+the streets of Sulaco attending to his business, as usual, that trip.
+And, as usual, he allowed it to get about that he had made a great
+profit on his cargo. It was a cargo of salt fish, and Lent was
+approaching. He was seen in tramcars going to and fro between the town
+and the harbour; he talked with people in a cafe or two in his measured,
+steady voice. Captain Fidanza was seen. The generation that would know
+nothing of the famous ride to Cayta was not born yet.
+
+Nostromo, the miscalled Capataz de Cargadores, had made for himself,
+under his rightful name, another public existence, but modified by
+the new conditions, less picturesque, more difficult to keep up in the
+increased size and varied population of Sulaco, the progressive capital
+of the Occidental Republic.
+
+Captain Fidanza, unpicturesque, but always a little mysterious, was
+recognized quite sufficiently under the lofty glass and iron roof of the
+Sulaco railway station. He took a local train, and got out in Rincon,
+where he visited the widow of the Cargador who had died of his wounds
+(at the dawn of the New Era, like Don Jose Avellanos) in the patio
+of the Casa Gould. He consented to sit down and drink a glass of cool
+lemonade in the hut, while the woman, standing up, poured a perfect
+torrent of words to which he did not listen. He left some money with
+her, as usual. The orphaned children, growing up and well schooled,
+calling him uncle, clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too; and in
+the doorway paused for a moment to look at the flat face of the San Tome
+mountain with a faint frown. This slight contraction of his bronzed brow
+casting a marked tinge of severity upon his usual unbending expression,
+was observed at the Lodge which he attended--but went away before the
+banquet. He wore it at the meeting of some good comrades, Italians
+and Occidentals, assembled in his honour under the presidency of an
+indigent, sickly, somewhat hunchbacked little photographer, with a white
+face and a magnanimous soul dyed crimson by a bloodthirsty hate of
+all capitalists, oppressors of the two hemispheres. The heroic Giorgio
+Viola, old revolutionist, would have understood nothing of his opening
+speech; and Captain Fidanza, lavishly generous as usual to some poor
+comrades, made no speech at all. He had listened, frowning, with his
+mind far away, and walked off unapproachable, silent, like a man full of
+cares.
+
+His frown deepened as, in the early morning, he watched the stone-masons
+go off to the Great Isabel, in lighters loaded with squared blocks of
+stone, enough to add another course to the squat light-tower. That was
+the rate of the work. One course per day.
+
+And Captain Fidanza meditated. The presence of strangers on the island
+would cut him completely off the treasure. It had been difficult and
+dangerous enough before. He was afraid, and he was angry. He thought
+with the resolution of a master and the cunning of a cowed slave. Then
+he went ashore.
+
+He was a man of resource and ingenuity; and, as usual, the expedient he
+found at a critical moment was effective enough to alter the situation
+radically. He had the gift of evolving safety out of the very danger,
+this incomparable Nostromo, this “fellow in a thousand.” With Giorgio
+established on the Great Isabel, there would be no need for concealment.
+He would be able to go openly, in daylight, to see his daughters--one of
+his daughters--and stay late talking to the old Garibaldino. Then in the
+dark . . . Night after night . . . He would dare to grow rich quicker
+now. He yearned to clasp, embrace, absorb, subjugate in unquestioned
+possession this treasure, whose tyranny had weighed upon his mind, his
+actions, his very sleep.
+
+He went to see his friend Captain Mitchell--and the thing was done as
+Dr. Monygham had related to Mrs. Gould. When the project was mooted to
+the Garibaldino, something like the faint reflection, the dim ghost of a
+very ancient smile, stole under the white and enormous moustaches of the
+old hater of kings and ministers. His daughters were the object of his
+anxious care. The younger, especially. Linda, with her mother’s voice,
+had taken more her mother’s place. Her deep, vibrating “Eh, Padre?”
+ seemed, but for the change of the word, the very echo of the
+impassioned, remonstrating “Eh, Giorgio?” of poor Signora Teresa. It was
+his fixed opinion that the town was no proper place for his girls.
+The infatuated but guileless Ramirez was the object of his profound
+aversion, as resuming the sins of the country whose people were blind,
+vile esclavos.
+
+On his return from his next voyage, Captain Fidanza found the Violas
+settled in the light-keeper’s cottage. His knowledge of Giorgio’s
+idiosyncrasies had not played him false. The Garibaldino had refused
+to entertain the idea of any companion whatever, except his girls.
+And Captain Mitchell, anxious to please his poor Nostromo, with that
+felicity of inspiration which only true affection can give, had formally
+appointed Linda Viola as under-keeper of the Isabel’s Light.
+
+“The light is private property,” he used to explain. “It belongs to my
+Company. I’ve the power to nominate whom I like, and Viola it shall be.
+It’s about the only thing Nostromo--a man worth his weight in gold, mind
+you--has ever asked me to do for him.”
+
+Directly his schooner was anchored opposite the New Custom House, with
+its sham air of a Greek temple, flatroofed, with a colonnade, Captain
+Fidanza went pulling his small boat out of the harbour, bound for the
+Great Isabel, openly in the light of a declining day, before all men’s
+eyes, with a sense of having mastered the fates. He must establish a
+regular position. He would ask him for his daughter now. He thought of
+Giselle as he pulled. Linda loved him, perhaps, but the old man would be
+glad to keep the elder, who had his wife’s voice.
+
+He did not pull for the narrow strand where he had landed with Decoud,
+and afterwards alone on his first visit to the treasure. He made for the
+beach at the other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope of
+the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he saw from afar, sitting
+on a bench under the front wall of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly
+to his loud hail. He walked up. Neither of the girls appeared.
+
+“It is good here,” said the old man, in his austere, far-away manner.
+
+Nostromo nodded; then, after a short silence--
+
+“You saw my schooner pass in not two hours ago? Do you know why I am
+here before, so to speak, my anchor has fairly bitten into the ground of
+this port of Sulaco?”
+
+“You are welcome like a son,” the old man declared, quietly, staring
+away upon the sea.
+
+“Ah! thy son. I know. I am what thy son would have been. It is well,
+viejo. It is a very good welcome. Listen, I have come to ask you
+for----”
+
+A sudden dread came upon the fearless and incorruptible Nostromo. He
+dared not utter the name in his mind. The slight pause only imparted a
+marked weight and solemnity to the changed end of the phrase.
+
+“For my wife!” . . . His heart was beating fast. “It is time you----”
+
+The Garibaldino arrested him with an extended arm. “That was left for
+you to judge.”
+
+He got up slowly. His beard, unclipped since Teresa’s death, thick,
+snow-white, covered his powerful chest. He turned his head to the door,
+and called out in his strong voice--
+
+“Linda.”
+
+Her answer came sharp and faint from within; and the appalled Nostromo
+stood up, too, but remained mute, gazing at the door. He was afraid. He
+was not afraid of being refused the girl he loved--no mere refusal could
+stand between him and a woman he desired--but the shining spectre of
+the treasure rose before him, claiming his allegiance in a silence that
+could not be gainsaid. He was afraid, because, neither dead nor
+alive, like the Gringos on Azuera, he belonged body and soul to the
+unlawfulness of his audacity. He was afraid of being forbidden the
+island. He was afraid, and said nothing.
+
+Seeing the two men standing up side by side to await her, Linda stopped
+in the doorway. Nothing could alter the passionate dead whiteness of her
+face; but her black eyes seemed to catch and concentrate all the light
+of the low sun in a flaming spark within the black depths, covered at
+once by the slow descent of heavy eyelids.
+
+“Behold thy husband, master, and benefactor.” Old Viola’s voice
+resounded with a force that seemed to fill the whole gulf.
+
+She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a sleep-walker in
+a beatific dream.
+
+Nostromo made a superhuman effort. “It is time, Linda, we two were
+betrothed,” he said, steadily, in his level, careless, unbending tone.
+
+She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her head, dark with
+bronze glints, upon which her father’s hand rested for a moment.
+
+“And so the soul of the dead is satisfied.”
+
+This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking for a while of his
+dead wife; while the two, sitting side by side, never looked at each
+other. Then the old man ceased; and Linda, motionless, began to speak.
+
+“Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived for you alone,
+Gian’ Battista. And that you knew! You knew it . . . Battistino.”
+
+She pronounced the name exactly with her mother’s intonation. A gloom as
+of the grave covered Nostromo’s heart.
+
+“Yes. I knew,” he said.
+
+The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary head, his
+old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and violent, terrible
+and dreary--solitary on the earth full of men.
+
+And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, “I was yours ever since
+I can remember. I had only to think of you for the earth to become empty
+to my eyes. When you were there, I could see no one else. I was yours.
+Nothing is changed. The world belongs to you, and you let me live in
+it.” . . . She dropped her low, vibrating voice to a still lower note,
+and found other things to say--torturing for the man at her side. Her
+murmur ran on ardent and voluble. She did not seem to see her sister,
+who came out with an altar-cloth she was embroidering in her hands, and
+passed in front of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a
+faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of Nostromo.
+
+The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the edge of a purple
+ocean; and the white lighthouse, livid against the background of clouds
+filling the head of the gulf, bore the lantern red and glowing, like a
+live ember kindled by the fire of the sky. Giselle, indolent and demure,
+raised the altar-cloth from time to time to hide nervous yawns, as of a
+young panther.
+
+Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her head, covered her
+face with kisses. Nostromo’s brain reeled. When she left her, as if
+stunned by the violent caresses, with her hands lying in her lap, the
+slave of the treasure felt as if he could shoot that woman. Old Giorgio
+lifted his leonine head.
+
+“Where are you going, Linda?”
+
+“To the light, padre mio.”
+
+“Si, si--to your duty.”
+
+He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then, in a tone whose
+festive note seemed the echo of a mood lost in the night of ages--
+
+“I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The old man knows where to
+find a bottle of wine, too.”
+
+He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere tenderness.
+
+“And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests and slaves, but to
+the God of orphans, of the oppressed, of the poor, of little children,
+to give thee a man like this one for a husband.”
+
+His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo’s shoulder; then he
+went in. The hopeless slave of the San Tome silver felt at these words
+the venomous fangs of jealousy biting deep into his heart. He was
+appalled by the novelty of the experience, by its force, by its physical
+intimacy. A husband! A husband for her! And yet it was natural that
+Giselle should have a husband at some time or other. He had never
+realized that before. In discovering that her beauty could belong
+to another he felt as though he could kill this one of old Giorgio’s
+daughters also. He muttered moodily--
+
+“They say you love Ramirez.”
+
+She shook her head without looking at him. Coppery glints rippled to and
+fro on the wealth of her gold hair. Her smooth forehead had the soft,
+pure sheen of a priceless pearl in the splendour of the sunset, mingling
+the gloom of starry spaces, the purple of the sea, and the crimson of
+the sky in a magnificent stillness.
+
+“No,” she said, slowly. “I never loved him. I think I never . . . He
+loves me--perhaps.”
+
+The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air, and her raised eyes
+remained fixed on nothing, as if indifferent and without thought.
+
+“Ramirez told you he loved you?” asked Nostromo, restraining himself.
+
+“Ah! once--one evening . . .”
+
+“The miserable . . . Ha!”
+
+He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood before her mute
+with anger.
+
+“Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian’ Battista! Poor wretch that I am!”
+ she lamented in ingenuous tones. “I told Linda, and she scolded--she
+scolded. Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this world? And she told
+father, who took down his gun and cleaned it. Poor Ramirez! Then you
+came, and she told you.”
+
+He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of her white
+throat, which had the invincible charm of things young, palpitating,
+delicate, and alive. Was this the child he had known? Was it possible?
+It dawned upon him that in these last years he had really seen very
+little--nothing--of her. Nothing. She had come into the world like
+a thing unknown. She had come upon him unawares. She was a danger. A
+frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce determination that had
+never failed him before the perils of this life added its steady force
+to the violence of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the
+song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell, continued--
+
+“And between you three you have brought me here into this captivity to
+the sky and water. Nothing else. Sky and water. Oh, Sanctissima Madre.
+My hair shall turn grey on this tedious island. I could hate you, Gian’
+Battista!”
+
+He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a caress. She bemoaned
+her fate, spreading unconsciously, like a flower its perfume in the
+coolness of the evening, the indefinable seduction of her person. Was
+it her fault that nobody ever had admired Linda? Even when they were
+little, going out with their mother to Mass, she remembered that people
+took no notice of Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten
+her, who was timid, with their attention. It was her hair like gold, she
+supposed.
+
+He broke out--
+
+“Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips like the
+rose; your round arms, your white throat.” . . .
+
+Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply all
+over to the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was no more
+self-conscious than a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even
+a flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced down, and added,
+impetuously--
+
+“Your little feet!”
+
+Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she seemed to
+bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes
+glanced at her little feet.
+
+“And so you are going at last to marry our Linda. She is terrible. Ah!
+now she will understand better since you have told her you love her. She
+will not be so fierce.”
+
+“Chica!” said Nostromo, “I have not told her anything.”
+
+“Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and tell her, so that I may have
+some peace from her scolding and--perhaps--who knows . . .”
+
+“Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You . . .”
+
+“Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,” she said, unmoved. “Who
+is Ramirez . . . Ramirez . . . Who is he?” she repeated, dreamily, in
+the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a low red streak in the
+west like a hot bar of glowing iron laid across the entrance of a world
+sombre as a cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had
+hidden his conquests of love and wealth.
+
+“Listen, Giselle,” he said, in measured tones; “I will tell no word of
+love to your sister. Do you want to know why?”
+
+“Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father says you are not
+like other men; that no one had ever understood you properly; that the
+rich will be surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints in heaven! I am weary.”
+
+She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of her face, then
+let it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land side, but
+slanting away from the dark column of the lighthouse they could see the
+long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go out to strike the expiring
+glow in a horizon of purple and red.
+
+Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the house,
+her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white stockings and black
+slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil
+and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the promising
+mysteriousness of her indolence, went out into the night of the Placid
+Gulf like a fresh and intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the
+shadows, impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed
+her ambient seduction in the tumultuous heaving of his breast. Before
+leaving the harbour he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain
+Fidanza, for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He stood
+before her in the red sash and check shirt as he used to appear on the
+Company’s wharf--a Mediterranean sailor come ashore to try his luck in
+Costaguana. The dusk of purple and red enveloped him, too--close, soft,
+profound, as no more than fifty yards from that spot it had gathered
+evening after evening about the self-destructive passion of Don Martin
+Decoud’s utter scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.
+
+“You have got to hear,” he began at last, with perfect self-control. “I
+shall say no word of love to your sister, to whom I am betrothed from
+this evening, because it is you that I love. It is you!” . . .
+
+The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that came
+instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses, freeze hard in
+the drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not restrain himself any
+longer. While she shrank from his approach, her arms went out to him,
+abandoned and regal in the dignity of her languid surrender. He held her
+head in his two hands, and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face
+that gleamed in the purple dusk. Masterful and tender, he was entering
+slowly upon the fulness of his possession. And he perceived that she was
+crying. Then the incomparable Capataz, the man of careless loves, became
+gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a child. He murmured
+to her fondly. He sat down by her and nursed her fair head on his
+breast. He called her his star and his little flower.
+
+It had grown dark. From the living-room of the light-keeper’s cottage,
+where Giorgio, one of the Immortal Thousand, was bending his leonine and
+heroic head over a charcoal fire, there came the sound of sizzling and
+the aroma of an artistic frittura.
+
+In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a cataclysm, it
+was in her feminine head that some gleam of reason survived. He was lost
+to the world in their embraced stillness. But she said, whispering into
+his ear--
+
+“God of mercy! What will become of me--here--now--between this sky and
+this water I hate? Linda, Linda--I see her!” . . . She tried to get out
+of his arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of that name. But there was
+no one approaching their black shapes, enlaced and struggling on the
+white background of the wall. “Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die
+of fear before my poor sister Linda, betrothed to-day to Giovanni--my
+lover! Giovanni, you must have been mad! I cannot understand you! You
+are not like other men! I will not give you up--never--only to God
+himself! But why have you done this blind, mad, cruel, frightful thing?”
+
+Released, she hung her head, let fall her hands. The altar-cloth, as if
+tossed by a great wind, lay far away from them, gleaming white on the
+black ground.
+
+“From fear of losing my hope of you,” said Nostromo.
+
+“You knew that you had my soul! You know everything! It was made for
+you! But what could stand between you and me? What? Tell me!” she
+repeated, without impatience, in superb assurance.
+
+“Your dead mother,” he said, very low.
+
+“Ah! . . . Poor mother! She has always . . . She is a saint in heaven
+now, and I cannot give you up to her. No, Giovanni. Only to God alone.
+You were mad--but it is done. Oh! what have you done? Giovanni, my
+beloved, my life, my master, do not leave me here in this grave of
+clouds. You cannot leave me now. You must take me away--at once--this
+instant--in the little boat. Giovanni, carry me off to-night, from my
+fear of Linda’s eyes, before I have to look at her again.”
+
+She nestled close to him. The slave of the San Tome silver felt the
+weight as of chains upon his limbs, a pressure as of a cold hand upon
+his lips. He struggled against the spell.
+
+“I cannot,” he said. “Not yet. There is something that stands between us
+two and the freedom of the world.”
+
+She pressed her form closer to his side with a subtle and naive instinct
+of seduction.
+
+“You rave, Giovanni--my lover!” she whispered, engagingly. “What can
+there be? Carry me off--in thy very hands--to Dona Emilia--away from
+here. I am not very heavy.”
+
+It seemed as though she expected him to lift her up at once in his two
+palms. She had lost the notion of all impossibility. Anything could
+happen on this night of wonder. As he made no movement, she almost cried
+aloud--
+
+“I tell you I am afraid of Linda!” And still he did not move. She became
+quiet and wily. “What can there be?” she asked, coaxingly.
+
+He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the hollow of his
+arm. In the exulting consciousness of his strength, and the triumphant
+excitement of his mind, he struck out for his freedom.
+
+“A treasure,” he said. All was still. She did not understand. “A
+treasure. A treasure of silver to buy a gold crown for thy brow.”
+
+“A treasure?” she repeated in a faint voice, as if from the depths of a
+dream. “What is it you say?”
+
+She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked down at her, aware
+of her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimples on her cheeks--seeing
+the fascination of her person in the night of the gulf as if in the
+blaze of noonday. Her nonchalant and seductive voice trembled with the
+excitement of admiring awe and ungovernable curiosity.
+
+“A treasure of silver!” she stammered out. Then pressed on faster:
+“What? Where? How did you get it, Giovanni?”
+
+He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if striking a heroic
+blow that he burst out--
+
+“Like a thief!”
+
+The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to fall upon his head.
+He could not see her now. She had vanished into a long, obscure abysmal
+silence, whence her voice came back to him after a time with a faint
+glimmer, which was her face.
+
+“I love you! I love you!”
+
+These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom; they cast a spell
+stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure; they changed his weary
+subjection to that dead thing into an exulting conviction of his power.
+He would cherish her, he said, in a splendour as great as Dona Emilia’s.
+The rich lived on wealth stolen from the people, but he had taken from
+the rich nothing--nothing that was not lost to them already by their
+folly and their betrayal. For he had been betrayed--he said--deceived,
+tempted. She believed him. . . . He had kept the treasure for purposes
+of revenge; but now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her. He
+would put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned with olive trees--a
+white palace above a blue sea. He would keep her there like a jewel in
+a casket. He would get land for her--her own land fertile with vines and
+corn--to set her little feet upon. He kissed them. . . . He had already
+paid for it all with the soul of a woman and the life of a man. . . .
+The Capataz de Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his
+generosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her feet in
+the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the darkness defying--as men
+said--the knowledge of God and the wit of the devil. But she must let
+him grow rich first--he warned her.
+
+She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in his hair. He got
+up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as though he had flung his soul
+away.
+
+“Make haste, then,” she said. “Make haste, Giovanni, my lover, my
+master, for I will give thee up to no one but God. And I am afraid of
+Linda.”
+
+He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. He trusted the
+courage of her love. She promised to be brave in order to be loved
+always--far away in a white palace upon a hill above a blue sea. Then
+with a timid, tentative eagerness she murmured--
+
+“Where is it? Where? Tell me that, Giovanni.”
+
+He opened his mouth and remained silent--thunderstruck.
+
+“Not that! Not that!” he gasped out, appalled at the spell of secrecy
+that had kept him dumb before so many people falling upon his lips again
+with unimpaired force. Not even to her. Not even to her. It was too
+dangerous. “I forbid thee to ask,” he cried at her, deadening cautiously
+the anger of his voice.
+
+He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the unlawful treasure
+arose, standing by her side like a figure of silver, pitiless and
+secret, with a finger on its pale lips. His soul died within him at the
+vision of himself creeping in presently along the ravine, with the smell
+of earth, of damp foliage in his nostrils--creeping in, determined in
+a purpose that numbed his breast, and creeping out again loaded with
+silver, with his ears alert to every sound. It must be done on this very
+night--that work of a craven slave!
+
+He stooped low, pressed the hem of her skirt to his lips, with a
+muttered command--
+
+“Tell him I would not stay,” and was gone suddenly from her, silent,
+without as much as a footfall in the dark night.
+
+She sat still, her head resting indolently against the wall, and her
+little feet in white stockings and black slippers crossed over each
+other. Old Giorgio, coming out, did not seem to be surprised at the
+intelligence as much as she had vaguely feared. For she was full of
+inexplicable fear now--fear of everything and everybody except of her
+Giovanni and his treasure. But that was incredible.
+
+The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo’s abrupt departure with a
+sagacious indulgence. He remembered his own feelings, and exhibited a
+masculine penetration of the true state of the case.
+
+“Va bene. Let him go. Ha! ha! No matter how fair the woman, it galls a
+little. Liberty, liberty. There’s more than one kind! He has said
+the great word, and son Gian’ Battista is not tame.” He seemed to be
+instructing the motionless and scared Giselle. . . . “A man should not
+be tame,” he added, dogmatically out of the doorway. Her stillness and
+silence seemed to displease him. “Do not give way to the enviousness of
+your sister’s lot,” he admonished her, very grave, in his deep voice.
+
+Presently he had to come to the door again to call in his younger
+daughter. It was late. He shouted her name three times before she
+even moved her head. Left alone, she had become the helpless prey of
+astonishment. She walked into the bedroom she shared with Linda like
+a person profoundly asleep. That aspect was so marked that even old
+Giorgio, spectacled, raising his eyes from the Bible, shook his head as
+she shut the door behind her.
+
+She walked right across the room without looking at anything, and sat
+down at once by the open window. Linda, stealing down from the tower in
+the exuberance of her happiness, found her with a lighted candle at her
+back, facing the black night full of sighing gusts of wind and the sound
+of distant showers--a true night of the gulf, too dense for the eye of
+God and the wiles of the devil. She did not turn her head at the opening
+of the door.
+
+There was something in that immobility which reached Linda in the depths
+of her paradise. The elder sister guessed angrily: the child is
+thinking of that wretched Ramirez. Linda longed to talk. She said in
+her arbitrary voice, “Giselle!” and was not answered by the slightest
+movement.
+
+The girl that was going to live in a palace and walk on ground of her
+own was ready to die with terror. Not for anything in the world would
+she have turned her head to face her sister. Her heart was beating
+madly. She said with subdued haste--
+
+“Do not speak to me. I am praying.”
+
+Linda, disappointed, went out quietly; and Giselle sat on unbelieving,
+lost, dazed, patient, as if waiting for the confirmation of the
+incredible. The hopeless blackness of the clouds seemed part of a dream,
+too. She waited.
+
+She did not wait in vain. The man whose soul was dead within him,
+creeping out of the ravine, weighted with silver, had seen the gleam
+of the lighted window, and could not help retracing his steps from the
+beach.
+
+On that impenetrable background, obliterating the lofty mountains by
+the seaboard, she saw the slave of the San Tome silver, as if by
+an extraordinary power of a miracle. She accepted his return as if
+henceforth the world could hold no surprise for all eternity.
+
+She rose, compelled and rigid, and began to speak long before the light
+from within fell upon the face of the approaching man.
+
+“You have come back to carry me off. It is well! Open thy arms,
+Giovanni, my lover. I am coming.”
+
+His prudent footsteps stopped, and with his eyes glistening wildly, he
+spoke in a harsh voice:
+
+“Not yet. I must grow rich slowly.” . . . A threatening note came into
+his tone. “Do not forget that you have a thief for your lover.”
+
+“Yes! Yes!” she whispered, hastily. “Come nearer! Listen! Do not give me
+up, Giovanni! Never, never! . . . I will be patient! . . .”
+
+Her form drooped consolingly over the low casement towards the slave of
+the unlawful treasure. The light in the room went out, and weighted with
+silver, the magnificent Capataz clasped her round her white neck in the
+darkness of the gulf as a drowning man clutches at a straw.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+On the day Mrs. Gould was going, in Dr. Monygham’s words, to “give a
+tertulia,” Captain Fidanza went down the side of his schooner lying in
+Sulaco harbour, calm, unbending, deliberate in the way he sat down
+in his dinghy and took up his sculls. He was later than usual. The
+afternoon was well advanced before he landed on the beach of the Great
+Isabel, and with a steady pace climbed the slope of the island.
+
+From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair tilted back
+against the end of the house, under the window of the girl’s room. She
+had her embroidery in her hands, and held it well up to her eyes. The
+tranquillity of that girlish figure exasperated the feeling of perpetual
+struggle and strife he carried in his breast. He became angry. It seemed
+to him that she ought to hear the clanking of his fetters--his silver
+fetters, from afar. And while ashore that day, he had met the doctor
+with the evil eye, who had looked at him very hard.
+
+The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in their flower-like
+freshness straight upon his heart. Then she frowned. It was a warning to
+be cautious. He stopped some distance away, and in a loud, indifferent
+tone, said--
+
+“Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?”
+
+“Yes. She is in the big room with father.”
+
+He approached then, and, looking through the window into the bedroom
+for fear of being detected by Linda returning there for some reason, he
+said, moving only his lips--
+
+“You love me?”
+
+“More than my life.” She went on with her embroidery under his
+contemplating gaze and continued to speak, looking at her work, “Or I
+could not live. I could not, Giovanni. For this life is like death. Oh,
+Giovanni, I shall perish if you do not take me away.”
+
+He smiled carelessly. “I will come to the window when it’s dark,” he
+said.
+
+“No, don’t, Giovanni. Not-to-night. Linda and father have been talking
+together for a long time today.”
+
+“What about?”
+
+“Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I am afraid. I am always
+afraid. It is like dying a thousand times a day. Your love is to me like
+your treasure to you. It is there, but I can never get enough of it.”
+
+He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His desire had grown
+within him. He had two masters now. But she was incapable of sustained
+emotion. She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly at
+night. When she saw him she flamed up always. Then only an increased
+taciturnity marked the change in her. She was afraid of betraying
+herself. She was afraid of pain, of bodily harm, of sharp words, of
+facing anger, and witnessing violence. For her soul was light and tender
+with a pagan sincerity in its impulses. She murmured--
+
+“Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on the hills, for which
+we are starving our love.”
+
+She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner of the house.
+
+Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting, and was amazed at
+her sunken eyes, at her hollow cheeks, at the air of illness and anguish
+in her face.
+
+“Have you been ill?” he asked, trying to put some concern into this
+question.
+
+Her black eyes blazed at him. “Am I thinner?” she asked.
+
+“Yes--perhaps--a little.”
+
+“And older?”
+
+“Every day counts--for all of us.”
+
+“I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger,” she said,
+slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon him.
+
+She waited for what he would say, rolling down her turned-up sleeves.
+
+“No fear of that,” he said, absently.
+
+She turned away as if it had been something final, and busied herself
+with household cares while Nostromo talked with her father. Conversation
+with the old Garibaldino was not easy. Age had left his faculties
+unimpaired, only they seemed to have withdrawn somewhere deep within
+him. His answers were slow in coming, with an effect of august gravity.
+But that day he was more animated, quicker; there seemed to be more
+life in the old lion. He was uneasy for the integrity of his honour.
+He believed Sidoni’s warning as to Ramirez’s designs upon his younger
+daughter. And he did not trust her. She was flighty. He said nothing of
+his cares to “Son Gian’ Battista.” It was a touch of senile vanity. He
+wanted to show that he was equal yet to the task of guarding alone the
+honour of his house.
+
+Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had disappeared, walking towards
+the beach, Linda stepped over the threshold and, with a haggard smile,
+sat down by the side of her father.
+
+Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and desperate Ramirez had
+waited for her on the wharf, she had no doubts whatever. The jealous
+ravings of that man were no revelation. They had only fixed with
+precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that sense of unreality
+and deception which, instead of bliss and security, she had found in
+her intercourse with her promised husband. She had passed on, pouring
+indignation and scorn upon Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly died
+of wretchedness and shame, lying on the carved and lettered stone of
+Teresa’s grave, subscribed for by the engine-drivers and the fitters of
+the railway workshops, in sign of their respect for the hero of Italian
+Unity. Old Viola had not been able to carry out his desire of burying
+his wife in the sea; and Linda wept upon the stone.
+
+The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to break her
+heart--well and good. Everything was permitted to Gian’ Battista. But
+why trample upon the pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He
+could not break that. She dried her tears. And Giselle! Giselle! The
+little one that, ever since she could toddle, had always clung to
+her skirt for protection. What duplicity! But she could not help it
+probably. When there was a man in the case the poor featherheaded wretch
+could not help herself.
+
+Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She resolved to say
+nothing. But woman-like she put passion into her stoicism. Giselle’s
+short answers, prompted by fearful caution, drove her beside herself by
+their curtness that resembled disdain. One day she flung herself upon
+the chair in which her indolent sister was lying and impressed the mark
+of her teeth at the base of the whitest neck in Sulaco. Giselle cried
+out. But she had her share of the Viola heroism. Ready to faint with
+terror, she only said, in a lazy voice, “Madre de Dios! Are you going to
+eat me alive, Linda?” And this outburst passed off leaving no trace upon
+the situation. “She knows nothing. She cannot know any thing,” reflected
+Giselle. “Perhaps it is not true. It cannot be true,” Linda tried to
+persuade herself.
+
+But when she saw Captain Fidanza for the first time after her meeting
+with the distracted Ramirez, the certitude of her misfortune returned.
+She watched him from the doorway go away to his boat, asking herself
+stoically, “Will they meet to-night?” She made up her mind not to leave
+the tower for a second. When he had disappeared she came out and sat
+down by her father.
+
+The venerable Garibaldino felt, in his own words, “a young man yet.” In
+one way or another a good deal of talk about Ramirez had reached him
+of late; and his contempt and dislike of that man who obviously was
+not what his son would have been, had made him restless. He slept very
+little now; but for several nights past instead of reading--or only
+sitting, with Mrs. Gould’s silver spectacles on his nose, before the
+open Bible, he had been prowling actively all about the island with his
+old gun, on watch over his honour.
+
+Linda, laying her thin brown hand on his knee, tried to soothe his
+excitement. Ramirez was not in Sulaco. Nobody knew where he was. He was
+gone. His talk of what he would do meant nothing.
+
+“No,” the old man interrupted. “But son Gian’ Battista told me--quite
+of himself--that the cowardly esclavo was drinking and gambling with the
+rascals of Zapiga, over there on the north side of the gulf. He may get
+some of the worst scoundrels of that scoundrelly town of negroes to help
+him in his attempt upon the little one. . . . But I am not so old. No!”
+
+She argued earnestly against the probability of any attempt being made;
+and at last the old man fell silent, chewing his white moustache. Women
+had their obstinate notions which must be humoured--his poor wife was
+like that, and Linda resembled her mother. It was not seemly for a man
+to argue. “May be. May be,” he mumbled.
+
+She was by no means easy in her mind. She loved Nostromo. She turned
+her eyes upon Giselle, sitting at a distance, with something of maternal
+tenderness, and the jealous anguish of a rival outraged in her defeat.
+Then she rose and walked over to her.
+
+“Listen--you,” she said, roughly.
+
+The invincible candour of the gaze, raised up all violet and dew,
+excited her rage and admiration. She had beautiful eyes--the Chica--this
+vile thing of white flesh and black deception. She did not know whether
+she wanted to tear them out with shouts of vengeance or cover up their
+mysterious and shameless innocence with kisses of pity and love. And
+suddenly they became empty, gazing blankly at her, except for a little
+fear not quite buried deep enough with all the other emotions in
+Giselle’s heart.
+
+Linda said, “Ramirez is boasting in town that he will carry you off from
+the island.”
+
+“What folly!” answered the other, and in a perversity born of long
+restraint, she added: “He is not the man,” in a jesting tone with a
+trembling audacity.
+
+“No?” said Linda, through her clenched teeth. “Is he not? Well, then,
+look to it; because father has been walking about with a loaded gun at
+night.”
+
+“It is not good for him. You must tell him not to, Linda. He will not
+listen to me.”
+
+“I shall say nothing--never any more--to anybody,” cried Linda,
+passionately.
+
+This could not last, thought Giselle. Giovanni must take her away
+soon--the very next time he came. She would not suffer these terrors for
+ever so much silver. To speak with her sister made her ill. But she was
+not uneasy at her father’s watchfulness. She had begged Nostromo not
+to come to the window that night. He had promised to keep away for this
+once. And she did not know, could not guess or imagine, that he had
+another reason for coming on the island.
+
+Linda had gone straight to the tower. It was time to light up. She
+unlocked the little door, and went heavily up the spiral staircase,
+carrying her love for the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores like an
+ever-increasing load of shameful fetters. No; she could not throw it
+off. No; let Heaven dispose of these two. And moving about the lantern,
+filled with twilight and the sheen of the moon, with careful movements
+she lighted the lamp. Then her arms fell along her body.
+
+“And with our mother looking on,” she murmured. “My own sister--the
+Chica!”
+
+The whole refracting apparatus, with its brass fittings and rings of
+prisms, glittered and sparkled like a domeshaped shrine of diamonds,
+containing not a lamp, but some sacred flame, dominating the sea. And
+Linda, the keeper, in black, with a pale face, drooped low in a wooden
+chair, alone with her jealousy, far above the shames and passions of the
+earth. A strange, dragging pain as if somebody were pulling her about
+brutally by her dark hair with bronze glints, made her put her hands up
+to her temples. They would meet. They would meet. And she knew where,
+too. At the window. The sweat of torture fell in drops on her cheeks,
+while the moonlight in the offing closed as if with a colossal bar of
+silver the entrance of the Placid Gulf--the sombre cavern of clouds and
+stillness in the surf-fretted seaboard.
+
+Linda Viola stood up suddenly with a finger on her lip. He loved neither
+her nor her sister. The whole thing seemed so objectless as to frighten
+her, and also give her some hope. Why did he not carry her off? What
+prevented him? He was incomprehensible. What were they waiting for? For
+what end were these two lying and deceiving? Not for the ends of their
+love. There was no such thing. The hope of regaining him for herself
+made her break her vow of not leaving the tower that night. She must
+talk at once to her father, who was wise, and would understand. She ran
+down the spiral stairs. At the moment of opening the door at the bottom
+she heard the sound of the first shot ever fired on the Great Isabel.
+
+She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her breast. She ran on
+without pausing. The cottage was dark. She cried at the door, “Giselle!
+Giselle!” then dashed round the corner and screamed her sister’s name
+at the open window, without getting an answer; but as she was rushing,
+distracted, round the house, Giselle came out of the door, and darted
+past her, running silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring
+straight ahead. She seemed to skim along the grass as if on tiptoe, and
+vanished.
+
+Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out before her. All
+was still on the island; she did not know where she was going. The tree
+under which Martin Decoud spent his last days, beholding life like a
+succession of senseless images, threw a large blotch of black shade upon
+the grass. Suddenly she saw her father, standing quietly all alone in
+the moonlight.
+
+The Garibaldino--big, erect, with his snow-white hair and beard--had a
+monumental repose in his immobility, leaning upon a rifle. She put her
+hand upon his arm lightly. He never stirred.
+
+“What have you done?” she asked, in her ordinary voice.
+
+“I have shot Ramirez--infame!” he answered, with his eyes directed to
+where the shade was blackest. “Like a thief he came, and like a thief he
+fell. The child had to be protected.”
+
+He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single step. He stood
+there, rugged and unstirring, like a statue of an old man guarding the
+honour of his house. Linda removed her trembling hand from his arm,
+firm and steady like an arm of stone, and, without a word, entered the
+blackness of the shade. She saw a stir of formless shapes on the ground,
+and stopped short. A murmur of despair and tears grew louder to her
+strained hearing.
+
+“I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my Giovanni! And you
+promised. Oh! Why--why did you come, Giovanni?”
+
+It was her sister’s voice. It broke on a heartrending sob. And the voice
+of the resourceful Capataz de Cargadores, master and slave of the
+San Tome treasure, who had been caught unawares by old Giorgio while
+stealing across the open towards the ravine to get some more silver,
+answered careless and cool, but sounding startlingly weak from the
+ground.
+
+“It seemed as though I could not live through the night without seeing
+thee once more--my star, my little flower.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+The brilliant tertulia was just over, the last guests had departed, and
+the Senor Administrador had gone to his room already, when Dr. Monygham,
+who had been expected in the evening but had not turned up, arrived
+driving along the wood-block pavement under the electric-lamps of the
+deserted Calle de la Constitucion, and found the great gateway of the
+Casa still open.
+
+He limped in, stumped up the stairs, and found the fat and sleek Basilio
+on the point of turning off the lights in the sala. The prosperous
+majordomo remained open-mouthed at this late invasion.
+
+“Don’t put out the lights,” commanded the doctor. “I want to see the
+senora.”
+
+“The senora is in the Senor Adminstrador’s cancillaria,” said Basilio,
+in an unctuous voice. “The Senor Administrador starts for the mountain
+in an hour. There is some trouble with the workmen to be feared, it
+appears. A shameless people without reason and decency. And idle, senor.
+Idle.”
+
+“You are shamelessly lazy and imbecile yourself,” said the doctor,
+with that faculty for exasperation which made him so generally beloved.
+“Don’t put the lights out.”
+
+Basilio retired with dignity. Dr. Monygham, waiting in the brilliantly
+lighted sala, heard presently a door close at the further end of the
+house. A jingle of spurs died out. The Senor Administrador was off to
+the mountain.
+
+With a measured swish of her long train, flashing with jewels and the
+shimmer of silk, her delicate head bowed as if under the weight of a
+mass of fair hair, in which the silver threads were lost, the “first
+lady of Sulaco,” as Captain Mitchell used to describe her, moved along
+the lighted corredor, wealthy beyond great dreams of wealth, considered,
+loved, respected, honoured, and as solitary as any human being had ever
+been, perhaps, on this earth.
+
+The doctor’s “Mrs. Gould! One minute!” stopped her with a start at the
+door of the lighted and empty sala. From the similarity of mood and
+circumstance, the sight of the doctor, standing there all alone amongst
+the groups of furniture, recalled to her emotional memory her unexpected
+meeting with Martin Decoud; she seemed to hear in the silence the voice
+of that man, dead miserably so many years ago, pronounce the words,
+“Antonia left her fan here.” But it was the doctor’s voice that spoke, a
+little altered by his excitement. She remarked his shining eyes.
+
+“Mrs. Gould, you are wanted. Do you know what has happened? You remember
+what I told you yesterday about Nostromo. Well, it seems that a lancha,
+a decked boat, coming from Zapiga, with four negroes in her, passing
+close to the Great Isabel, was hailed from the cliff by a woman’s
+voice--Linda’s, as a matter of fact--commanding them (it’s a moonlight
+night) to go round to the beach and take up a wounded man to the town.
+The patron (from whom I’ve heard all this), of course, did so at once.
+He told me that when they got round to the low side of the Great Isabel,
+they found Linda Viola waiting for them. They followed her: she led them
+under a tree not far from the cottage. There they found Nostromo lying
+on the ground with his head in the younger girl’s lap, and father Viola
+standing some distance off leaning on his gun. Under Linda’s direction
+they got a table out of the cottage for a stretcher, after breaking off
+the legs. They are here, Mrs. Gould. I mean Nostromo and--and Giselle.
+The negroes brought him in to the first-aid hospital near the harbour.
+He made the attendant send for me. But it was not me he wanted to
+see--it was you, Mrs. Gould! It was you.”
+
+“Me?” whispered Mrs. Gould, shrinking a little.
+
+“Yes, you!” the doctor burst out. “He begged me--his enemy, as he
+thinks--to bring you to him at once. It seems he has something to say to
+you alone.”
+
+“Impossible!” murmured Mrs. Gould.
+
+“He said to me, ‘Remind her that I have done something to keep a roof
+over her head.’ . . . Mrs. Gould,” the doctor pursued, in the greatest
+excitement. “Do you remember the silver? The silver in the lighter--that
+was lost?”
+
+Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she hated the mere mention of
+that silver. Frankness personified, she remembered with an exaggerated
+horror that for the first and last time of her life she had concealed
+the truth from her husband about that very silver. She had been
+corrupted by her fears at that time, and she had never forgiven herself.
+Moreover, that silver, which would never have come down if her husband
+had been made acquainted with the news brought by Decoud, had been in
+a roundabout way nearly the cause of Dr. Monygham’s death. And these
+things appeared to her very dreadful.
+
+“Was it lost, though?” the doctor exclaimed. “I’ve always felt that
+there was a mystery about our Nostromo ever since. I do believe he wants
+now, at the point of death----”
+
+“The point of death?” repeated Mrs. Gould.
+
+“Yes. Yes. . . . He wants perhaps to tell you something concerning that
+silver which----”
+
+“Oh, no! No!” exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low voice. “Isn’t it lost and
+done with? Isn’t there enough treasure without it to make everybody in
+the world miserable?”
+
+The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed silence. At
+last he ventured, very low--
+
+“And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are we to do? It looks as
+though father and sister had----”
+
+Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to do her best for these
+girls.
+
+“I have a volante here,” the doctor said. “If you don’t mind getting
+into that----”
+
+He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reappeared, having thrown
+over her dress a grey cloak with a deep hood.
+
+It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded over her evening
+costume, this woman, full of endurance and compassion, stood by the side
+of the bed on which the splendid Capataz de Cargadores lay stretched
+out motionless on his back. The whiteness of sheets and pillows gave a
+sombre and energetic relief to his bronzed face, to the dark, nervous
+hands, so good on a tiller, upon a bridle and on a trigger, lying open
+and idle upon a white coverlet.
+
+“She is innocent,” the Capataz was saying in a deep and level voice, as
+though afraid that a louder word would break the slender hold his
+spirit still kept upon his body. “She is innocent. It is I alone. But no
+matter. For these things I would answer to no man or woman alive.”
+
+He paused. Mrs. Gould’s face, very white within the shadow of the hood,
+bent over him with an invincible and dreary sadness. And the low sobs
+of Giselle Viola, kneeling at the end of the bed, her gold hair with
+coppery gleams loose and scattered over the Capataz’s feet, hardly
+troubled the silence of the room.
+
+“Ha! Old Giorgio--the guardian of thine honour! Fancy the Vecchio coming
+upon me so light of foot, so steady of aim. I myself could have done no
+better. But the price of a charge of powder might have been saved. The
+honour was safe. . . . Senora, she would have followed to the end of
+the world Nostromo the thief. . . . I have said the word. The spell is
+broken!”
+
+A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes down.
+
+“I cannot see her. . . . No matter,” he went on, with the shadow of the
+old magnificent carelessness in his voice. “One kiss is enough, if
+there is no time for more. An airy soul, senora! Bright and warm, like
+sunshine--soon clouded, and soon serene. They would crush it there
+between them. Senora, cast on her the eye of your compassion, as famed
+from one end of the land to the other as the courage and daring of
+the man who speaks to you. She will console herself in time. And even
+Ramirez is not a bad fellow. I am not angry. No! It is not Ramirez
+who overcame the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores.” He paused, made an
+effort, and in louder voice, a little wildly, declared--
+
+“I die betrayed--betrayed by----”
+
+But he did not say by whom or by what he was dying betrayed.
+
+“She would not have betrayed me,” he began again, opening his eyes very
+wide. “She was faithful. We were going very far--very soon. I could have
+torn myself away from that accursed treasure for her. For that child I
+would have left boxes and boxes of it--full. And Decoud took four. Four
+ingots. Why? Picardia! To betray me? How could I give back the treasure
+with four ingots missing? They would have said I had purloined them. The
+doctor would have said that. Alas! it holds me yet!”
+
+Mrs. Gould bent low, fascinated--cold with apprehension.
+
+“What became of Don Martin on that night, Nostromo?”
+
+“Who knows? I wondered what would become of me. Now I know. Death was
+to come upon me unawares. He went away! He betrayed me. And you think
+I have killed him! You are all alike, you fine people. The silver has
+killed me. It has held me. It holds me yet. Nobody knows where it is.
+But you are the wife of Don Carlos, who put it into my hands and said,
+‘Save it on your life.’ And when I returned, and you all thought it
+was lost, what do I hear? ‘It was nothing of importance. Let it go. Up,
+Nostromo, the faithful, and ride away to save us, for dear life!’”
+
+“Nostromo!” Mrs. Gould whispered, bending very low. “I, too, have hated
+the idea of that silver from the bottom of my heart.”
+
+“Marvellous!--that one of you should hate the wealth that you know so
+well how to take from the hands of the poor. The world rests upon the
+poor, as old Giorgio says. You have been always good to the poor. But
+there is something accursed in wealth. Senora, shall I tell you where
+the treasure is? To you alone. . . . Shining! Incorruptible!”
+
+A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone, in his eyes,
+plain to the woman with the genius of sympathetic intuition. She averted
+her glance from the miserable subjection of the dying man, appalled,
+wishing to hear no more of the silver.
+
+“No, Capataz,” she said. “No one misses it now. Let it be lost for
+ever.”
+
+After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes, uttered no word,
+made no movement. Outside the door of the sick-room Dr. Monygham,
+excited to the highest pitch, his eyes shining with eagerness, came up
+to the two women.
+
+“Now, Mrs. Gould,” he said, almost brutally in his impatience, “tell me,
+was I right? There is a mystery. You have got the word of it, have you
+not? He told you----”
+
+“He told me nothing,” said Mrs. Gould, steadily.
+
+The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo went out of Dr.
+Monygham’s eyes. He stepped back submissively. He did not believe Mrs.
+Gould. But her word was law. He accepted her denial like an inexplicable
+fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo’s genius over his own. Even
+before that woman, whom he loved with secret devotion, he had been
+defeated by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, the man who had lived
+his own life on the assumption of unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and
+courage!
+
+“Pray send at once somebody for my carriage,” spoke Mrs. Gould from
+within her hood. Then, turning to Giselle Viola, “Come nearer me, child;
+come closer. We will wait here.”
+
+Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face veiled in her falling
+hair, crept up to her side. Mrs. Gould slipped her hand through the arm
+of the unworthy daughter of old Viola, the immaculate republican, the
+hero without a stain. Slowly, gradually, as a withered flower droops,
+the head of the girl, who would have followed a thief to the end of the
+world, rested on the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady of Sulaco,
+the wife of the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. And Mrs.
+Gould, feeling her suppressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the
+first and only moment of bitterness in her life. It was worthy of Dr.
+Monygham himself.
+
+“Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgotten you for his
+treasure.”
+
+“Senora, he loved me. He loved me,” Giselle whispered, despairingly. “He
+loved me as no one had ever been loved before.”
+
+“I have been loved, too,” Mrs. Gould said in a severe tone.
+
+Giselle clung to her convulsively. “Oh, senora, but you shall live
+adored to the end of your life,” she sobbed out.
+
+Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage arrived. She
+helped in the half-fainting girl. After the doctor had shut the door of
+the landau, she leaned over to him.
+
+“You can do nothing?” she whispered.
+
+“No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won’t let us touch him. It does not
+matter. I just had one look. . . . Useless.”
+
+But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl that very night. He
+could get the police-boat to take him off to the island. He remained
+in the street, looking after the landau rolling away slowly behind the
+white mules.
+
+The rumour of some accident--an accident to Captain Fidanza--had been
+spreading along the new quays with their rows of lamps and the dark
+shapes of towering cranes. A knot of night prowlers--the poorest of the
+poor--hung about the door of the first-aid hospital, whispering in the
+moonlight of the empty street.
+
+There was no one with the wounded man but the pale photographer, small,
+frail, bloodthirsty, the hater of capitalists, perched on a high stool
+near the head of the bed with his knees up and his chin in his hands. He
+had been fetched by a comrade who, working late on the wharf, had
+heard from a negro belonging to a lancha, that Captain Fidanza had been
+brought ashore mortally wounded.
+
+“Have you any dispositions to make, comrade?” he asked, anxiously. “Do
+not forget that we want money for our work. The rich must be fought with
+their own weapons.”
+
+Nostromo made no answer. The other did not insist, remaining huddled
+up on the stool, shock-headed, wildly hairy, like a hunchbacked monkey.
+Then, after a long silence--
+
+“Comrade Fidanza,” he began, solemnly, “you have refused all aid from
+that doctor. Is he really a dangerous enemy of the people?”
+
+In the dimly lit room Nostromo rolled his head slowly on the pillow and
+opened his eyes, directing at the weird figure perched by his bedside a
+glance of enigmatic and profound inquiry. Then his head rolled back, his
+eyelids fell, and the Capataz de Cargadores died without a word or moan
+after an hour of immobility, broken by short shudders testifying to the
+most atrocious sufferings.
+
+Dr. Monygham, going out in the police-galley to the islands, beheld the
+glitter of the moon upon the gulf and the high black shape of the Great
+Isabel sending a shaft of light afar, from under the canopy of clouds.
+
+“Pull easy,” he said, wondering what he would find there. He tried to
+imagine Linda and her father, and discovered a strange reluctance within
+himself. “Pull easy,” he repeated.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour, Giorgio Viola had
+not stirred from the spot. He stood, his old gun grounded, his hand
+grasping the barrel near the muzzle. After the lancha carrying off
+Nostromo for ever from her had left the shore, Linda, coming up, stopped
+before him. He did not seem to be aware of her presence, but when,
+losing her forced calmness, she cried out--
+
+“Do you know whom you have killed?” he answered--
+
+“Ramirez the vagabond.”
+
+White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda laughed in his face.
+After a time he joined her faintly in a deep-toned and distant echo of
+her peals. Then she stopped, and the old man spoke as if startled--
+
+“He cried out in son Gian’ Battista’s voice.”
+
+The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained extended for a
+moment as if still supported. Linda seized it roughly.
+
+“You are too old to understand. Come into the house.”
+
+He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled heavily, nearly coming
+to the ground together with his daughter. His excitement, his activity
+of the last few days, had been like the flare of a dying lamp. He caught
+at the back of his chair.
+
+“In son Gian’ Battista’s voice,” he repeated in a severe tone. “I heard
+him--Ramirez--the miserable----”
+
+Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, hissed into his ear--
+
+“You have killed Gian’ Battista.”
+
+The old man smiled under his thick moustache. Women had strange fancies.
+
+“Where is the child?” he asked, surprised at the penetrating chilliness
+of the air and the unwonted dimness of the lamp by which he used to sit
+up half the night with the open Bible before him.
+
+Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.
+
+“She is asleep,” she said. “We shall talk of her tomorrow.”
+
+She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and with an
+almost unbearable feeling of pity. She had observed the change that came
+over him. He would never understand what he had done; and even to her
+the whole thing remained incomprehensible. He said with difficulty--
+
+“Give me the book.”
+
+Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn leather cover, the
+Bible given him ages ago by an Englishman in Palermo.
+
+“The child had to be protected,” he said, in a strange, mournful voice.
+
+Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying without noise. Suddenly
+she started for the door. He heard her move.
+
+“Where are you going?” he asked.
+
+“To the light,” she answered, turning round to look at him balefully.
+
+“The light! Si--duty.”
+
+Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed quietness,
+he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the spectacles given him by
+Dona Emilia. He put them on. After a long period of immobility he opened
+the book, and from on high looked through the glasses at the small print
+in double columns. A rigid, stern expression settled upon his features
+with a slight frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought or
+unpleasant sensation. But he never detached his eyes from the book while
+he swayed forward, gently, gradually, till his snow-white head
+rested upon the open pages. A wooden clock ticked methodically on the
+white-washed wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay alone,
+rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by a treacherous gust of
+wind.
+
+The light of the Great Isabel burned unfailing above the lost treasure
+of the San Tome mine. Into the bluish sheen of a night without stars
+the lantern sent out a yellow beam towards the far horizon. Like a black
+speck upon the shining panes, Linda, crouching in the outer gallery,
+rested her head on the rail. The moon, drooping in the western board,
+looked at her radiantly.
+
+Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of oars from a
+passing boat ceased, and Dr. Monygham stood up in the stern sheets.
+
+“Linda!” he shouted, throwing back his head. “Linda!”
+
+Linda stood up. She had recognized the voice.
+
+“Is he dead?” she cried, bending over.
+
+“Yes, my poor girl. I am coming round,” the doctor answered from below.
+“Pull to the beach,” he said to the rowers.
+
+Linda’s black figure detached itself upright on the light of the lantern
+with her arms raised above her head as though she were going to throw
+herself over.
+
+“It is I who loved you,” she whispered, with a face as set and white
+as marble in the moonlight. “I! Only I! She will forget thee, killed
+miserably for her pretty face. I cannot understand. I cannot understand.
+But I shall never forget thee. Never!”
+
+She stood silent and still, collecting her strength to throw all her
+fidelity, her pain, bewilderment, and despair into one great cry.
+
+“Never! Gian’ Battista!”
+
+Dr. Monygham, pulling round in the police-galley, heard the name pass
+over his head. It was another of Nostromo’s triumphs, the greatest, the
+most enviable, the most sinister of all. In that true cry of undying
+passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to
+the bright line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining
+like a mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de
+Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure
+and love.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, by Joseph Conrad
+
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad
+    </title>
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, by Joseph Conrad
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #2021]
+Last Updated: September 10, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOSTROMO: A TALE OF THE SEABOARD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      NOSTROMO
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      A TALE OF THE SEABOARD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Joseph Conrad
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      &ldquo;So foul a sky clears not without a storm.&rdquo; &mdash;SHAKESPEARE
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      TO JOHN GALSWORTHY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <h2>
+        Contents
+      </h2>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>AUTHOR&rsquo;S NOTE</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <big><b>NOSTROMO</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART1"> <big><b>PART FIRST &nbsp;&nbsp;THE SILVER OF
+        THE MINE</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER ONE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER TWO </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER THREE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER FOUR </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER FIVE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER SIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER SEVEN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER EIGHT </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <big><b>PART SECOND &nbsp;&nbsp;THE ISABELS</b></big>
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER ONE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER TWO </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER THREE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER FOUR </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER FIVE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER SIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER SEVEN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER EIGHT </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART3"> <big><b>PART THIRD &nbsp;&nbsp;THE LIGHTHOUSE</b></big>
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER ONE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER TWO </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER THREE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER FOUR </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER FIVE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER SIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER SEVEN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER EIGHT </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER NINE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER TEN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER ELEVEN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER TWELVE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER THIRTEEN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a name="link2H_TOC" id="link2H_TOC">
+        <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      AUTHOR&rsquo;S NOTE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Nostromo</i>&rdquo; is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels
+      which belong to the period following upon the publication of the &ldquo;Typhoon&rdquo;
+       volume of short stories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change
+      in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing life.
+      And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious,
+      extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a
+      subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I
+      can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some
+      concern was that after finishing the last story of the &ldquo;Typhoon&rdquo; volume it
+      seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little time;
+      and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for &ldquo;Nostromo&rdquo;
+       came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely destitute of
+      valuable details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact in 1875 or &lsquo;6, when very young, in the West Indies or
+      rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few,
+      and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have
+      stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on the
+      Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no details,
+      and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to
+      keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven years
+      afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked up outside
+      a second-hand book-shop. It was the life story of an American seaman
+      written by himself with the assistance of a journalist. In the course of
+      his wanderings that American sailor worked for some months on board a
+      schooner, the master and owner of which was the thief of whom I had heard
+      in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there could hardly
+      have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the same part of the world
+      and both connected with a South American revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fellow had actually managed to steal a lighter with silver, and this,
+      it seems, only because he was implicitly trusted by his employers, who
+      must have been singularly poor judges of character. In the sailor&rsquo;s story
+      he is represented as an unmitigated rascal, a small cheat, stupidly
+      ferocious, morose, of mean appearance, and altogether unworthy of the
+      greatness this opportunity had thrust upon him. What was interesting was
+      that he would boast of it openly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He used to say: &ldquo;People think I make a lot of money in this schooner of
+      mine. But that is nothing. I don&rsquo;t care for that. Now and then I go away
+      quietly and lift a bar of silver. I must get rich slowly&mdash;you
+      understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was also another curious point about the man. Once in the course of
+      some quarrel the sailor threatened him: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s to prevent me reporting
+      ashore what you have told me about that silver?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cynical ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He actually laughed.
+      &ldquo;You fool, if you dare talk like that on shore about me you will get a
+      knife stuck in your back. Every man, woman, and child in that port is my
+      friend. And who&rsquo;s to prove the lighter wasn&rsquo;t sunk? I didn&rsquo;t show you
+      where the silver is hidden. Did I? So you know nothing. And suppose I
+      lied? Eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid meanness of that
+      impenitent thief, deserted from the schooner. The whole episode takes
+      about three pages of his autobiography. Nothing to speak of; but as I
+      looked them over, the curious confirmation of the few casual words heard
+      in my early youth evoked the memories of that distant time when everything
+      was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting; bits of
+      strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, men&rsquo;s
+      passions in the dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown dim. . . .
+      Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world something to write about.
+      Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A rascal steals a
+      large parcel of a valuable commodity&mdash;so people say. It&rsquo;s either true
+      or untrue; and in any case it has no value in itself. To invent a
+      circumstantial account of the robbery did not appeal to me, because my
+      talents not running that way I did not think that the game was worth the
+      candle. It was only when it dawned upon me that the purloiner of the
+      treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could be even
+      a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim in the changing scenes
+      of a revolution, it was only then that I had the first vision of a
+      twilight country which was to become the province of Sulaco, with its high
+      shadowy Sierra and its misty Campo for mute witnesses of events flowing
+      from the passions of men short-sighted in good and evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such are in very truth the obscure origins of &ldquo;Nostromo&rdquo;&mdash;the book.
+      From that moment, I suppose, it had to be. Yet even then I hesitated, as
+      if warned by the instinct of self-preservation from venturing on a distant
+      and toilsome journey into a land full of intrigues and revolutions. But it
+      had to be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with many intervals of
+      renewed hesitation, lest I should lose myself in the ever-enlarging vistas
+      opening before me as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the country.
+      Often, also, when I had thought myself to a standstill over the tangled-up
+      affairs of the Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack my bag, rush
+      away from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages of the &ldquo;Mirror
+      of the Sea.&rdquo; But generally, as I&rsquo;ve said before, my sojourn on the
+      Continent of Latin America, famed for its hospitality, lasted for about
+      two years. On my return I found (speaking somewhat in the style of Captain
+      Gulliver) my family all well, my wife heartily glad to learn that the fuss
+      was all over, and our small boy considerably grown during my absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My principal authority for the history of Costaguana is, of course, my
+      venerated friend, the late Don Jose Avellanos, Minister to the Courts of
+      England and Spain, etc., etc., in his impartial and eloquent &ldquo;History of
+      Fifty Years of Misrule.&rdquo; That work was never published&mdash;the reader
+      will discover why&mdash;and I am in fact the only person in the world
+      possessed of its contents. I have mastered them in not a few hours of
+      earnest meditation, and I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In
+      justice to myself, and to allay the fears of prospective readers, I beg to
+      point out that the few historical allusions are never dragged in for the
+      sake of parading my unique erudition, but that each of them is closely
+      related to actuality; either throwing a light on the nature of current
+      events or affecting directly the fortunes of the people of whom I speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to their own histories I have tried to set them down, Aristocracy and
+      People, men and women, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, bandit and politician, with
+      as cool a hand as was possible in the heat and clash of my own conflicting
+      emotions. And after all this is also the story of their conflicts. It is
+      for the reader to say how far they are deserving of interest in their
+      actions and in the secret purposes of their hearts revealed in the bitter
+      necessities of the time. I confess that, for me, that time is the time of
+      firm friendships and unforgotten hospitalities. And in my gratitude I must
+      mention here Mrs. Gould, &ldquo;the first lady of Sulaco,&rdquo; whom we may safely
+      leave to the secret devotion of Dr. Monygham, and Charles Gould, the
+      Idealist-creator of Material Interests whom we must leave to his Mine&mdash;from
+      which there is no escape in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About Nostromo, the second of the two racially and socially contrasted
+      men, both captured by the silver of the San Tome Mine, I feel bound to say
+      something more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not hesitate to make that central figure an Italian. First of all
+      the thing is perfectly credible: Italians were swarming into the
+      Occidental Province at the time, as anybody who will read further can see;
+      and secondly, there was no one who could stand so well by the side of
+      Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist of the old, humanitarian
+      revolutions. For myself I needed there a Man of the People as free as
+      possible from his class-conventions and all settled modes of thinking.
+      This is not a side snarl at conventions. My reasons were not moral but
+      artistic. Had he been an Anglo-Saxon he would have tried to get into local
+      politics. But Nostromo does not aspire to be a leader in a personal game.
+      He does not want to raise himself above the mass. He is content to feel
+      himself a power&mdash;within the People.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But mainly Nostromo is what he is because I received the inspiration for
+      him in my early days from a Mediterranean sailor. Those who have read
+      certain pages of mine will see at once what I mean when I say that
+      Dominic, the padrone of the Tremolino, might under given circumstances
+      have been a Nostromo. At any rate Dominic would have understood the
+      younger man perfectly&mdash;if scornfully. He and I were engaged together
+      in a rather absurd adventure, but the absurdity does not matter. It is a
+      real satisfaction to think that in my very young days there must, after
+      all, have been something in me worthy to command that man&rsquo;s half-bitter
+      fidelity, his half-ironic devotion. Many of Nostromo&rsquo;s speeches I have
+      heard first in Dominic&rsquo;s voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless
+      eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his face,
+      he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: &ldquo;<i>Vous
+      autres gentilhommes!</i>&rdquo; in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like
+      Nostromo! &ldquo;You <i>hombres finos!</i>&rdquo; Very much like Nostromo. But Dominic
+      the Corsican nursed a certain pride of ancestry from which my Nostromo is
+      free; for Nostromo&rsquo;s lineage had to be more ancient still. He is a man
+      with the weight of countless generations behind him and no parentage to
+      boast of. . . . Like the People.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his firm grip on the earth he inherits, in his improvidence and
+      generosity, in his lavishness with his gifts, in his manly vanity, in the
+      obscure sense of his greatness and in his faithful devotion with something
+      despairing as well as desperate in its impulses, he is a Man of the
+      People, their very own unenvious force, disdaining to lead but ruling from
+      within. Years afterwards, grown older as the famous Captain Fidanza, with
+      a stake in the country, going about his many affairs followed by
+      respectful glances in the modernized streets of Sulaco, calling on the
+      widow of the cargador, attending the Lodge, listening in unmoved silence
+      to anarchist speeches at the meeting, the enigmatical patron of the new
+      revolutionary agitation, the trusted, the wealthy comrade Fidanza with the
+      knowledge of his moral ruin locked up in his breast, he remains
+      essentially a Man of the People. In his mingled love and scorn of life and
+      in the bewildered conviction of having been betrayed, of dying betrayed he
+      hardly knows by what or by whom, he is still of the People, their
+      undoubted Great Man&mdash;with a private history of his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One more figure of those stirring times I would like to mention: and that
+      is Antonia Avellanos&mdash;the &ldquo;beautiful Antonia.&rdquo; Whether she is a
+      possible variation of Latin-American girlhood I wouldn&rsquo;t dare to affirm.
+      But, for me, she is. Always a little in the background by the side of her
+      father (my venerated friend) I hope she has yet relief enough to make
+      intelligible what I am going to say. Of all the people who had seen with
+      me the birth of the Occidental Republic, she is the only one who has kept
+      in my memory the aspect of continued life. Antonia the Aristocrat and
+      Nostromo the Man of the People are the artisans of the New Era, the true
+      creators of the New State; he by his legendary and daring feat, she, like
+      a woman, simply by the force of what she is: the only being capable of
+      inspiring a sincere passion in the heart of a trifler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If anything could induce me to revisit Sulaco (I should hate to see all
+      these changes) it would be Antonia. And the true reason for that&mdash;why
+      not be frank about it?&mdash;the true reason is that I have modelled her
+      on my first love. How we, a band of tallish schoolboys, the chums of her
+      two brothers, how we used to look up to that girl just out of the
+      schoolroom herself, as the standard-bearer of a faith to which we all were
+      born but which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching hope!
+      She had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia, but
+      she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the
+      slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with
+      her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing criticism of my
+      levities&mdash;very much like poor Decoud&mdash;or stand the brunt of her
+      austere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite understand&mdash;but
+      never mind. That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking yet defiant sinner,
+      to say the final good-bye I received a hand-squeeze that made my heart
+      leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was softened at the last
+      as though she had suddenly perceived (we were such children still!) that I
+      was really going away for good, going very far away&mdash;even as far as
+      Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes in the darkness of the Placid
+      Gulf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That&rsquo;s why I long sometimes for another glimpse of the &ldquo;beautiful Antonia&rdquo;
+       (or can it be the Other?) moving in the dimness of the great cathedral,
+      saying a short prayer at the tomb of the first and last
+      Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco, standing absorbed in filial devotion before
+      the monument of Don Jose Avellanos, and, with a lingering, tender,
+      faithful glance at the medallion-memorial to Martin Decoud, going out
+      serenely into the sunshine of the Plaza with her upright carriage and her
+      white head; a relic of the past disregarded by men awaiting impatiently
+      the Dawns of other New Eras, the coming of more Revolutions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is the idlest of dreams; for I did understand perfectly well at
+      the time that the moment the breath left the body of the Magnificent
+      Capataz, the Man of the People, freed at last from the toils of love and
+      wealth, there was nothing more for me to do in Sulaco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      J. C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October, 1917.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NOSTROMO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART FIRST THE SILVER OF THE MINE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER ONE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of
+      Sulaco&mdash;the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to
+      its antiquity&mdash;had never been commercially anything more important
+      than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and
+      indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a
+      brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship
+      built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had
+      been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some
+      harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery of
+      sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an
+      inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in the solemn
+      hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous semi-circular and
+      unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains hung
+      with the mourning draperies of cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard of the Republic
+      of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an insignificant
+      cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of
+      the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill at
+      the back can be made out faintly like a shadow on the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats
+      lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula of Azuera, a
+      wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines.
+      It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a
+      green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with
+      thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at
+      once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough&mdash;it is said&mdash;to
+      grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. The poor,
+      associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and
+      wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden
+      treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias,
+      vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with
+      a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are
+      well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep
+      precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many
+      adventurers of olden time had perished in the search. The story goes also
+      that within men&rsquo;s memory two wandering sailors&mdash;Americanos, perhaps,
+      but gringos of some sort for certain&mdash;talked over a gambling,
+      good-for-nothing mozo, and the three stole a donkey to carry for them a
+      bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin, and provisions enough to last a few
+      days. Thus accompanied, and with revolvers at their belts, they had
+      started to chop their way with machetes through the thorny scrub on the
+      neck of the peninsula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it could only have been
+      from their camp-fire) was seen for the first time within memory of man
+      standing up faintly upon the sky above a razor-backed ridge on the stony
+      head. The crew of a coasting schooner, lying becalmed three miles off the
+      shore, stared at it with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman, living in
+      a lonely hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the
+      lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the sun was about to
+      set. They had watched the strange portent with envy, incredulity, and awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the Indian, and
+      the stolen burro were never seen again. As to the mozo, a Sulaco man&mdash;his
+      wife paid for some masses, and the poor four-footed beast, being without
+      sin, had been probably permitted to die; but the two gringos, spectral and
+      alive, are believed to be dwelling to this day amongst the rocks, under
+      the fatal spell of their success. Their souls cannot tear themselves away
+      from their bodies mounting guard over the discovered treasure. They are
+      now rich and hungry and thirsty&mdash;a strange theory of tenacious gringo
+      ghosts suffering in their starved and parched flesh of defiant heretics,
+      where a Christian would have renounced and been released.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera guarding its
+      forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the sky on one side with the round
+      patch of blue haze blurring the bright skirt of the horizon on the other,
+      mark the two outermost points of the bend which bears the name of Golfo
+      Placido, because never a strong wind had been known to blow upon its
+      waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta Mala to Azuera the ships
+      from Europe bound to Sulaco lose at once the strong breezes of the ocean.
+      They become the prey of capricious airs that play with them for thirty
+      hours at a stretch sometimes. Before them the head of the calm gulf is
+      filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless and opaque
+      clouds. On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep
+      of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall of
+      the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their steep
+      slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very edge of the
+      shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises majestically upon
+      the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks sprinkle with tiny black dots
+      the smooth dome of snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf the shadow of the
+      mountains, the clouds begin to roll out of the lower valleys. They swathe
+      in sombre tatters the naked crags of precipices above the wooded slopes,
+      hide the peaks, smoke in stormy trails across the snows of Higuerota. The
+      Cordillera is gone from you as if it had dissolved itself into great piles
+      of grey and black vapours that travel out slowly to seaward and vanish
+      into thin air all along the front before the blazing heat of the day. The
+      wasting edge of the cloud-bank always strives for, but seldom wins, the
+      middle of the gulf. The sun&mdash;as the sailors say&mdash;is eating it
+      up. Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away from the main body
+      to career all over the gulf till it escapes into the offing beyond Azuera,
+      where it bursts suddenly into flame and crashes like a sinster pirate-ship
+      of the air, hove-to above the horizon, engaging the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the sky smothers the whole
+      quiet gulf below with an impenetrable darkness, in which the sound of the
+      falling showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly&mdash;now
+      here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the
+      seamen along the whole west coast of a great continent. Sky, land, and sea
+      disappear together out of the world when the Placido&mdash;as the saying
+      is&mdash;goes to sleep under its black poncho. The few stars left below
+      the seaward frown of the vault shine feebly as into the mouth of a black
+      cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her sails
+      flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself&mdash;they add
+      with grim profanity&mdash;could not find out what work a man&rsquo;s hand is
+      doing in there; and you would be free to call the devil to your aid with
+      impunity if even his malice were not defeated by such a blind darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three uninhabited islets
+      basking in the sunshine just outside the cloud veil, and opposite the
+      entrance to the harbour of Sulaco, bear the name of &ldquo;The Isabels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, which is round; and Hermosa,
+      which is the smallest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven paces across, a
+      mere flat top of a grey rock which smokes like a hot cinder after a
+      shower, and where no man would care to venture a naked sole before sunset.
+      On the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick bulging trunk rough
+      with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles a dismal bunch of
+      dead leaves above the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has a spring of fresh
+      water issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine. Resembling an emerald
+      green wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat upon the sea, it bears two
+      forest trees standing close together, with a wide spread of shade at the
+      foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine extending the whole length of the
+      island is full of bushes; and presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high
+      side spreads itself out on the other into a shallow depression abutting on
+      a small strip of sandy shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an opening
+      two miles away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out of the regular
+      sweep of the coast, right into the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong,
+      lake-like piece of water. On one side the short wooded spurs and valleys
+      of the Cordillera come down at right angles to the very strand; on the
+      other the open view of the great Sulaco plain passes into the opal mystery
+      of great distances overhung by dry haze. The town of Sulaco itself&mdash;tops
+      of walls, a great cupola, gleams of white miradors in a vast grove of
+      orange trees&mdash;lies between the mountains and the plain, at some
+      little distance from its harbour and out of the direct line of sight from
+      the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER TWO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The only sign of commercial activity within the harbour, visible from the
+      beach of the Great Isabel, is the square blunt end of the wooden jetty
+      which the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (the O.S.N. of familiar speech)
+      had thrown over the shallow part of the bay soon after they had resolved
+      to make of Sulaco one of their ports of call for the Republic of
+      Costaguana. The State possesses several harbours on its long seaboard, but
+      except Cayta, an important place, all are either small and inconvenient
+      inlets in an iron-bound coast&mdash;like Esmeralda, for instance, sixty
+      miles to the south&mdash;or else mere open roadsteads exposed to the winds
+      and fretted by the surf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the very atmospheric conditions which had kept away the merchant
+      fleets of bygone ages induced the O.S.N. Company to violate the sanctuary
+      of peace sheltering the calm existence of Sulaco. The variable airs
+      sporting lightly with the vast semicircle of waters within the head of
+      Azuera could not baffle the steam power of their excellent fleet. Year
+      after year the black hulls of their ships had gone up and down the coast,
+      in and out, past Azuera, past the Isabels, past Punta Mala&mdash;disregarding
+      everything but the tyranny of time. Their names, the names of all
+      mythology, became the household words of a coast that had never been ruled
+      by the gods of Olympus. The Juno was known only for her comfortable cabins
+      amidships, the Saturn for the geniality of her captain and the painted and
+      gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas the Ganymede was fitted out
+      mainly for cattle transport, and to be avoided by coastwise passengers.
+      The humblest Indian in the obscurest village on the coast was familiar
+      with the Cerberus, a little black puffer without charm or living
+      accommodation to speak of, whose mission was to creep inshore along the
+      wooded beaches close to mighty ugly rocks, stopping obligingly before
+      every cluster of huts to collect produce, down to three-pound parcels of
+      indiarubber bound in a wrapper of dry grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as they seldom failed to account for the smallest package, rarely lost
+      a bullock, and had never drowned a single passenger, the name of the
+      O.S.N. stood very high for trustworthiness. People declared that under the
+      Company&rsquo;s care their lives and property were safer on the water than in
+      their own houses on shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The O.S.N.&lsquo;s superintendent in Sulaco for the whole Costaguana section of
+      the service was very proud of his Company&rsquo;s standing. He resumed it in a
+      saying which was very often on his lips, &ldquo;We never make mistakes.&rdquo; To the
+      Company&rsquo;s officers it took the form of a severe injunction, &ldquo;We must make
+      no mistakes. I&rsquo;ll have no mistakes here, no matter what Smith may do at
+      his end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was the other
+      superintendent of the service, quartered some fifteen hundred miles away
+      from Sulaco. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk to me of your Smith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the subject with studied
+      negligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smith knows no more of this continent than a baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our excellent Senor Mitchell&rdquo; for the business and official world of
+      Sulaco; &ldquo;Fussy Joe&rdquo; for the commanders of the Company&rsquo;s ships, Captain
+      Joseph Mitchell prided himself on his profound knowledge of men and things
+      in the country&mdash;cosas de Costaguana. Amongst these last he accounted
+      as most unfavourable to the orderly working of his Company the frequent
+      changes of government brought about by revolutions of the military type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The political atmosphere of the Republic was generally stormy in these
+      days. The fugitive patriots of the defeated party had the knack of turning
+      up again on the coast with half a steamer&rsquo;s load of small arms and
+      ammunition. Such resourcefulness Captain Mitchell considered as perfectly
+      wonderful in view of their utter destitution at the time of flight. He had
+      observed that &ldquo;they never seemed to have enough change about them to pay
+      for their passage ticket out of the country.&rdquo; And he could speak with
+      knowledge; for on a memorable occasion he had been called upon to save the
+      life of a dictator, together with the lives of a few Sulaco officials&mdash;the
+      political chief, the director of the customs, and the head of police&mdash;belonging
+      to an overturned government. Poor Senor Ribiera (such was the dictator&rsquo;s
+      name) had come pelting eighty miles over mountain tracks after the lost
+      battle of Socorro, in the hope of out-distancing the fatal news&mdash;which,
+      of course, he could not manage to do on a lame mule. The animal, moreover,
+      expired under him at the end of the Alameda, where the military band plays
+      sometimes in the evenings between the revolutions. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; Captain Mitchell
+      would pursue with portentous gravity, &ldquo;the ill-timed end of that mule
+      attracted attention to the unfortunate rider. His features were recognized
+      by several deserters from the Dictatorial army amongst the rascally mob
+      already engaged in smashing the windows of the Intendencia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Early on the morning of that day the local authorities of Sulaco had fled
+      for refuge to the O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s offices, a strong building near the
+      shore end of the jetty, leaving the town to the mercies of a revolutionary
+      rabble; and as the Dictator was execrated by the populace on account of
+      the severe recruitment law his necessities had compelled him to enforce
+      during the struggle, he stood a good chance of being torn to pieces.
+      Providentially, Nostromo&mdash;invaluable fellow&mdash;with some Italian
+      workmen, imported to work upon the National Central Railway, was at hand,
+      and managed to snatch him away&mdash;for the time at least. Ultimately,
+      Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in his own gig to one
+      of the Company&rsquo;s steamers&mdash;it was the Minerva&mdash;just then, as
+      luck would have it, entering the harbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to lower these gentlemen at the end of a rope out of a hole in the
+      wall at the back, while the mob which, pouring out of the town, had spread
+      itself all along the shore, howled and foamed at the foot of the building
+      in front. He had to hurry them then the whole length of the jetty; it had
+      been a desperate dash, neck or nothing&mdash;and again it was Nostromo, a
+      fellow in a thousand, who, at the head, this time, of the Company&rsquo;s body
+      of lightermen, held the jetty against the rushes of the rabble, thus
+      giving the fugitives time to reach the gig lying ready for them at the
+      other end with the Company&rsquo;s flag at the stern. Sticks, stones, shots
+      flew; knives, too, were thrown. Captain Mitchell exhibited willingly the
+      long cicatrice of a cut over his left ear and temple, made by a
+      razor-blade fastened to a stick&mdash;a weapon, he explained, very much in
+      favour with the &ldquo;worst kind of nigger out here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell was a thick, elderly man, wearing high, pointed collars
+      and short side-whiskers, partial to white waistcoats, and really very
+      communicative under his air of pompous reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These gentlemen,&rdquo; he would say, staring with great solemnity, &ldquo;had to run
+      like rabbits, sir. I ran like a rabbit myself. Certain forms of death are&mdash;er&mdash;distasteful
+      to a&mdash;a&mdash;er&mdash;respectable man. They would have pounded me to
+      death, too. A crazy mob, sir, does not discriminate. Under providence we
+      owed our preservation to my Capataz de Cargadores, as they called him in
+      the town, a man who, when I discovered his value, sir, was just the bos&rsquo;n
+      of an Italian ship, a big Genoese ship, one of the few European ships that
+      ever came to Sulaco with a general cargo before the building of the
+      National Central. He left her on account of some very respectable friends
+      he made here, his own countrymen, but also, I suppose, to better himself.
+      Sir, I am a pretty good judge of character. I engaged him to be the
+      foreman of our lightermen, and caretaker of our jetty. That&rsquo;s all that he
+      was. But without him Senor Ribiera would have been a dead man. This
+      Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above reproach, became the terror of all
+      the thieves in the town. We were infested, infested, overrun, sir, here at
+      that time by ladrones and matreros, thieves and murderers from the whole
+      province. On this occasion they had been flocking into Sulaco for a week
+      past. They had scented the end, sir. Fifty per cent. of that murdering mob
+      were professional bandits from the Campo, sir, but there wasn&rsquo;t one that
+      hadn&rsquo;t heard of Nostromo. As to the town leperos, sir, the sight of his
+      black whiskers and white teeth was enough for them. They quailed before
+      him, sir. That&rsquo;s what the force of character will do for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It could very well be said that it was Nostromo alone who saved the lives
+      of these gentlemen. Captain Mitchell, on his part, never left them till he
+      had seen them collapse, panting, terrified, and exasperated, but safe, on
+      the luxuriant velvet sofas in the first-class saloon of the Minerva. To
+      the very last he had been careful to address the ex-Dictator as &ldquo;Your
+      Excellency.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, I could do no other. The man was down&mdash;ghastly, livid, one mass
+      of scratches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Minerva never let go her anchor that call. The superintendent ordered
+      her out of the harbour at once. No cargo could be landed, of course, and
+      the passengers for Sulaco naturally refused to go ashore. They could hear
+      the firing and see plainly the fight going on at the edge of the water.
+      The repulsed mob devoted its energies to an attack upon the Custom House,
+      a dreary, unfinished-looking structure with many windows two hundred yards
+      away from the O.S.N. Offices, and the only other building near the
+      harbour. Captain Mitchell, after directing the commander of the Minerva to
+      land &ldquo;these gentlemen&rdquo; in the first port of call outside Costaguana, went
+      back in his gig to see what could be done for the protection of the
+      Company&rsquo;s property. That and the property of the railway were preserved by
+      the European residents; that is, by Captain Mitchell himself and the staff
+      of engineers building the road, aided by the Italian and Basque workmen
+      who rallied faithfully round their English chiefs. The Company&rsquo;s
+      lightermen, too, natives of the Republic, behaved very well under their
+      Capataz. An outcast lot of very mixed blood, mainly negroes, everlastingly
+      at feud with the other customers of low grog shops in the town, they
+      embraced with delight this opportunity to settle their personal scores
+      under such favourable auspices. There was not one of them that had not, at
+      some time or other, looked with terror at Nostromo&rsquo;s revolver poked very
+      close at his face, or been otherwise daunted by Nostromo&rsquo;s resolution. He
+      was &ldquo;much of a man,&rdquo; their Capataz was, they said, too scornful in his
+      temper ever to utter abuse, a tireless taskmaster, and the more to be
+      feared because of his aloofness. And behold! there he was that day, at
+      their head, condescending to make jocular remarks to this man or the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such leadership was inspiriting, and in truth all the harm the mob managed
+      to achieve was to set fire to one&mdash;only one&mdash;stack of
+      railway-sleepers, which, being creosoted, burned well. The main attack on
+      the railway yards, on the O.S.N. Offices, and especially on the Custom
+      House, whose strong room, it was well known, contained a large treasure in
+      silver ingots, failed completely. Even the little hotel kept by old
+      Giorgio, standing alone halfway between the harbour and the town, escaped
+      looting and destruction, not by a miracle, but because with the safes in
+      view they had neglected it at first, and afterwards found no leisure to
+      stop. Nostromo, with his Cargadores, was pressing them too hard then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER THREE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;often called simply &ldquo;the
+      Garibaldino&rdquo; (as Mohammedans are called after their prophet)&mdash;was, to
+      use Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s own words, the &ldquo;respectable married friend&rdquo; by
+      whose advice Nostromo had left his ship to try for a run of shore luck in
+      Costaguana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;casa&rdquo; 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. It was too late then to remove his family, and,
+      indeed, where could he have run to with the portly Signora Teresa and two
+      little girls on that great plain? So, barricading every opening, the old
+      man sat down sternly in the middle of the darkened cafe with an old
+      shot-gun on his knees. His wife sat on another chair by his side,
+      muttering pious invocations to all the saints of the calendar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old republican did not believe in saints, or in prayers, or in what he
+      called &ldquo;priest&rsquo;s religion.&rdquo; Liberty and Garibaldi were his divinities; but
+      he tolerated &ldquo;superstition&rdquo; in women, preserving in these matters a lofty
+      and silent attitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His two girls, the eldest fourteen, and the other two years younger,
+      crouched on the sanded floor, on each side of the Signora Teresa, with
+      their heads on their mother&rsquo;s lap, both scared, but each in her own way,
+      the dark-haired Linda indignant and angry, the fair Giselle, the younger,
+      bewildered and resigned. The Patrona removed her arms, which embraced her
+      daughters, for a moment to cross herself and wring her hands hurriedly.
+      She moaned a little louder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Gian&rsquo; Battista, why art thou not here? Oh! why art thou not here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not then invoking the saint himself, but calling upon Nostromo,
+      whose patron he was. And Giorgio, motionless on the chair by her side,
+      would be provoked by these reproachful and distracted appeals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace, woman! Where&rsquo;s the sense of it? There&rsquo;s his duty,&rdquo; he murmured in
+      the dark; and she would retort, panting&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! I have no patience. Duty! What of the woman who has been like a
+      mother to him? I bent my knee to him this morning; don&rsquo;t you go out, Gian&rsquo;
+      Battista&mdash;stop in the house, Battistino&mdash;look at those two
+      little innocent children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Viola was an Italian, too, a native of Spezzia, and though
+      considerably younger than her husband, already middle-aged. She had a
+      handsome face, whose complexion had turned yellow because the climate of
+      Sulaco did not suit her at all. Her voice was a rich contralto. When, with
+      her arms folded tight under her ample bosom, she scolded the squat,
+      thick-legged China girls handling linen, plucking fowls, pounding corn in
+      wooden mortars amongst the mud outbuildings at the back of the house, she
+      could bring out such an impassioned, vibrating, sepulchral note that the
+      chained watch-dog bolted into his kennel with a great rattle. Luis, a
+      cinnamon-coloured mulatto with a sprouting moustache and thick, dark lips,
+      would stop sweeping the cafe with a broom of palm-leaves to let a gentle
+      shudder run down his spine. His languishing almond eyes would remain
+      closed for a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the staff of the Casa Viola, but all these people had fled early
+      that morning at the first sounds of the riot, preferring to hide on the
+      plain rather than trust themselves in the house; a preference for which
+      they were in no way to blame, since, whether true or not, it was generally
+      believed in the town that the Garibaldino had some money buried under the
+      clay floor of the kitchen. The dog, an irritable, shaggy brute, barked
+      violently and whined plaintively in turns at the back, running in and out
+      of his kennel as rage or fear prompted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bursts of great shouting rose and died away, like wild gusts of wind on
+      the plain round the barricaded house; the fitful popping of shots grew
+      louder above the yelling. Sometimes there were intervals of unaccountable
+      stillness outside, and nothing could have been more gaily peaceful than
+      the narrow bright lines of sunlight from the cracks in the shutters, ruled
+      straight across the cafe over the disarranged chairs and tables to the
+      wall opposite. Old Giorgio had chosen that bare, whitewashed room for a
+      retreat. It had only one window, and its only door swung out upon the
+      track of thick dust fenced by aloe hedges between the harbour and the
+      town, where clumsy carts used to creak along behind slow yokes of oxen
+      guided by boys on horseback.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a pause of stillness Giorgio cocked his gun. The ominous sound wrung a
+      low moan from the rigid figure of the woman sitting by his side. A sudden
+      outbreak of defiant yelling quite near the house sank all at once to a
+      confused murmur of growls. Somebody ran along; the loud catching of his
+      breath was heard for an instant passing the door; there were hoarse
+      mutters and footsteps near the wall; a shoulder rubbed against the
+      shutter, effacing the bright lines of sunshine pencilled across the whole
+      breadth of the room. Signora Teresa&rsquo;s arms thrown about the kneeling forms
+      of her daughters embraced them closer with a convulsive pressure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mob, driven away from the Custom House, had broken up into several
+      bands, retreating across the plain in the direction of the town. The
+      subdued crash of irregular volleys fired in the distance was answered by
+      faint yells far away. In the intervals the single shots rang feebly, and
+      the low, long, white building blinded in every window seemed to be the
+      centre of a turmoil widening in a great circle about its closed-up
+      silence. But the cautious movements and whispers of a routed party seeking
+      a momentary shelter behind the wall made the darkness of the room, striped
+      by threads of quiet sunlight, alight with evil, stealthy sounds. The
+      Violas had them in their ears as though invisible ghosts hovering about
+      their chairs had consulted in mutters as to the advisability of setting
+      fire to this foreigner&rsquo;s casa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was trying to the nerves. Old Viola had risen slowly, gun in hand,
+      irresolute, for he did not see how he could prevent them. Already voices
+      could be heard talking at the back. Signora Teresa was beside herself with
+      terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! the traitor! the traitor!&rdquo; she mumbled, almost inaudibly. &ldquo;Now we are
+      going to be burnt; and I bent my knee to him. No! he must run at the heels
+      of his English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed to think that Nostromo&rsquo;s mere presence in the house would have
+      made it perfectly safe. So far, she, too, was under the spell of that
+      reputation the Capataz de Cargadores had made for himself by the
+      waterside, along the railway line, with the English and with the populace
+      of Sulaco. To his face, and even against her husband, she invariably
+      affected to laugh it to scorn, sometimes good-naturedly, more often with a
+      curious bitterness. But then women are unreasonable in their opinions, as
+      Giorgio used to remark calmly on fitting occasions. On this occasion, with
+      his gun held at ready before him, he stooped down to his wife&rsquo;s head, and,
+      keeping his eyes steadfastly on the barricaded door, he breathed out into
+      her ear that Nostromo would have been powerless to help. What could two
+      men shut up in a house do against twenty or more bent upon setting fire to
+      the roof? Gian&rsquo; Battista was thinking of the casa all the time, he was
+      sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He think of the casa! He!&rdquo; gasped Signora Viola, crazily. She struck her
+      breast with her open hands. &ldquo;I know him. He thinks of nobody but himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A discharge of firearms near by made her throw her head back and close her
+      eyes. Old Giorgio set his teeth hard under his white moustache, and his
+      eyes began to roll fiercely. Several bullets struck the end of the wall
+      together; pieces of plaster could be heard falling outside; a voice
+      screamed &ldquo;Here they come!&rdquo; and after a moment of uneasy silence there was
+      a rush of running feet along the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the tension of old Giorgio&rsquo;s attitude relaxed, and a smile of
+      contemptuous relief came upon his lips of an old fighter with a leonine
+      face. These were not a people striving for justice, but thieves. Even to
+      defend his life against them was a sort of degradation for a man who had
+      been one of Garibaldi&rsquo;s immortal thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He
+      had an immense scorn for this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, who did
+      not know the meaning of the word &ldquo;liberty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grounded his old gun, and, turning his head, glanced at the coloured
+      lithograph of Garibaldi in a black frame on the white wall; a thread of
+      strong sunshine cut it perpendicularly. His eyes, accustomed to the
+      luminous twilight, made out the high colouring of the face, the red of the
+      shirt, the outlines of the square shoulders, the black patch of the
+      Bersagliere hat with cock&rsquo;s feathers curling over the crown. An immortal
+      hero! This was your liberty; it gave you not only life, but immortality as
+      well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For that one man his fanaticism had suffered no diminution. In the moment
+      of relief from the apprehension of the greatest danger, perhaps, his
+      family had been exposed to in all their wanderings, he had turned to the
+      picture of his old chief, first and only, then laid his hand on his wife&rsquo;s
+      shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children kneeling on the floor had not moved. Signora Teresa opened
+      her eyes a little, as though he had awakened her from a very deep and
+      dreamless slumber. Before he had time in his deliberate way to say a
+      reassuring word she jumped up, with the children clinging to her, one on
+      each side, gasped for breath, and let out a hoarse shriek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was simultaneous with the bang of a violent blow struck on the outside
+      of the shutter. They could hear suddenly the snorting of a horse, the
+      restive tramping of hoofs on the narrow, hard path in front of the house;
+      the toe of a boot struck at the shutter again; a spur jingled at every
+      blow, and an excited voice shouted, &ldquo;Hola! hola, in there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER FOUR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All the morning Nostromo had kept his eye from afar on the Casa Viola,
+      even in the thick of the hottest scrimmage near the Custom House. &ldquo;If I
+      see smoke rising over there,&rdquo; he thought to himself, &ldquo;they are lost.&rdquo;
+       Directly the mob had broken he pressed with a small band of Italian
+      workmen in that direction, which, indeed, was the shortest line towards
+      the town. That part of the rabble he was pursuing seemed to think of
+      making a stand under the house; a volley fired by his followers from
+      behind an aloe hedge made the rascals fly. In a gap chopped out for the
+      rails of the harbour branch line Nostromo appeared, mounted on his
+      silver-grey mare. He shouted, sent after them one shot from his revolver,
+      and galloped up to the cafe window. He had an idea that old Giorgio would
+      choose that part of the house for a refuge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice had penetrated to them, sounding breathlessly hurried: &ldquo;Hola!
+      Vecchio! O, Vecchio! Is it all well with you in there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see&mdash;&rdquo; murmured old Viola to his wife. Signora Teresa was silent
+      now. Outside Nostromo laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hear the padrona is not dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have done your best to kill me with fear,&rdquo; cried Signora Teresa. She
+      wanted to say something more, but her voice failed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but old Giorgio shouted
+      apologetically&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a little upset.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside Nostromo shouted back with another laugh&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She cannot upset me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Signora Teresa found her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is what I say. You have no heart&mdash;and you have no conscience,
+      Gian&rsquo; Battista&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard him wheel his horse away from the shutters. The party he led
+      were babbling excitedly in Italian and Spanish, inciting each other to the
+      pursuit. He put himself at their head, crying, &ldquo;Avanti!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has not stopped very long with us. There is no praise from strangers
+      to be got here,&rdquo; Signora Teresa said tragically. &ldquo;Avanti! Yes! That is all
+      he cares for. To be first somewhere&mdash;somehow&mdash;to be first with
+      these English. They will be showing him to everybody. &lsquo;This is our
+      Nostromo!&rsquo;&rdquo; She laughed ominously. &ldquo;What a name! What is that? Nostromo?
+      He would take a name that is properly no word from them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had been unfastening the door;
+      the flood of light fell on Signora Teresa, with her two girls gathered to
+      her side, a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal exaltation. Behind her
+      the wall was dazzlingly white, and the crude colours of the Garibaldi
+      lithograph paled in the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if referring all his
+      quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture of his old chief on the wall. Even
+      when he was cooking for the &ldquo;Signori Inglesi&rdquo;&mdash;the engineers (he was
+      a famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark place)&mdash;he was, as it
+      were, under the eye of the great man who had led him in a glorious
+      struggle where, under the walls of Gaeta, tyranny would have expired for
+      ever had it not been for that accursed Piedmontese race of kings and
+      ministers. When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate
+      operation with some shredded onions, and the old man was seen backing out
+      of the doorway, swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud of
+      smoke, the name of Cavour&mdash;the arch intriguer sold to kings and
+      tyrants&mdash;could be heard involved in imprecations against the China
+      girls, cooking in general, and the brute of a country where he was reduced
+      to live for the love of liberty that traitor had strangled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Signora Teresa, all in black, issuing from another door, advanced,
+      portly and anxious, inclining her fine, black-browed head, opening her
+      arms, and crying in a profound tone&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Giorgio! thou passionate man! Misericordia Divina! In the sun like this!
+      He will make himself ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At her feet the hens made off in all directions, with immense strides; if
+      there were any engineers from up the line staying in Sulaco, a young
+      English face or two would appear at the billiard-room occupying one end of
+      the house; but at the other end, in the cafe, Luis, the mulatto, took good
+      care not to show himself. The Indian girls, with hair like flowing black
+      manes, and dressed only in a shift and short petticoat, stared dully from
+      under the square-cut fringes on their foreheads; the noisy frizzling of
+      fat had stopped, the fumes floated upwards in sunshine, a strong smell of
+      burnt onions hung in the drowsy heat, enveloping the house; and the eye
+      lost itself in a vast flat expanse of grass to the west, as if the plain
+      between the Sierra overtopping Sulaco and the coast range away there
+      towards Esmeralda had been as big as half the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Signora Teresa, after an impressive pause, remonstrated&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, Giorgio! Leave Cavour alone and take care of yourself now we are lost
+      in this country all alone with the two children, because you cannot live
+      under a king.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And while she looked at him she would sometimes put her hand hastily to
+      her side with a short twitch of her fine lips and a knitting of her black,
+      straight eyebrows like a flicker of angry pain or an angry thought on her
+      handsome, regular features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was pain; she suppressed the twinge. It had come to her first a few
+      years after they had left Italy to emigrate to America and settle at last
+      in Sulaco after wandering from town to town, trying shopkeeping in a small
+      way here and there; and once an organized enterprise of fishing&mdash;in
+      Maldonado&mdash;for Giorgio, like the great Garibaldi, had been a sailor
+      in his time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes she had no patience with pain. For years its gnawing had been
+      part of the landscape embracing the glitter of the harbour under the
+      wooded spurs of the range; and the sunshine itself was heavy and dull&mdash;heavy
+      with pain&mdash;not like the sunshine of her girlhood, in which
+      middle-aged Giorgio had wooed her gravely and passionately on the shores
+      of the gulf of Spezzia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go in at once, Giorgio,&rdquo; she directed. &ldquo;One would think you do not
+      wish to have any pity on me&mdash;with four Signori Inglesi staying in the
+      house.&rdquo; &ldquo;<i>Va bene, va bene</i>,&rdquo; Giorgio would mutter. He obeyed. The
+      Signori Inglesi would require their midday meal presently. He had been one
+      of the immortal and invincible band of liberators who had made the
+      mercenaries of tyranny fly like chaff before a hurricane, &ldquo;<i>un uragano
+      terribile</i>.&rdquo; But that was before he was married and had children; and
+      before tyranny had reared its head again amongst the traitors who had
+      imprisoned Garibaldi, his hero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were three doors in the front of the house, and each afternoon the
+      Garibaldino could be seen at one or another of them with his big bush of
+      white hair, his arms folded, his legs crossed, leaning back his leonine
+      head against the side, and looking up the wooded slopes of the foothills
+      at the snowy dome of Higuerota. The front of his house threw off a black
+      long rectangle of shade, broadening slowly over the soft ox-cart track.
+      Through the gaps, chopped out in the oleander hedges, the harbour branch
+      railway, laid out temporarily on the level of the plain, curved away its
+      shining parallel ribbons on a belt of scorched and withered grass within
+      sixty yards of the end of the house. In the evening the empty material
+      trains of flat cars circled round the dark green grove of Sulaco, and ran,
+      undulating slightly with white jets of steam, over the plain towards the
+      Casa Viola, on their way to the railway yards by the harbour. The Italian
+      drivers saluted him from the foot-plate with raised hand, while the negro
+      brakesmen sat carelessly on the brakes, looking straight forward, with the
+      rims of their big hats flapping in the wind. In return Giorgio would give
+      a slight sideways jerk of the head, without unfolding his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this memorable day of the riot his arms were not folded on his chest.
+      His hand grasped the barrel of the gun grounded on the threshold; he did
+      not look up once at the white dome of Higuerota, whose cool purity seemed
+      to hold itself aloof from a hot earth. His eyes examined the plain
+      curiously. Tall trails of dust subsided here and there. In a speckless sky
+      the sun hung clear and blinding. Knots of men ran headlong; others made a
+      stand; and the irregular rattle of firearms came rippling to his ears in
+      the fiery, still air. Single figures on foot raced desperately. Horsemen
+      galloped towards each other, wheeled round together, separated at speed.
+      Giorgio saw one fall, rider and horse disappearing as if they had galloped
+      into a chasm, and the movements of the animated scene were like the
+      passages of a violent game played upon the plain by dwarfs mounted and on
+      foot, yelling with tiny throats, under the mountain that seemed a colossal
+      embodiment of silence. Never before had Giorgio seen this bit of plain so
+      full of active life; his gaze could not take in all its details at once;
+      he shaded his eyes with his hand, till suddenly the thundering of many
+      hoofs near by startled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A troop of horses had broken out of the fenced paddock of the Railway
+      Company. They came on like a whirlwind, and dashed over the line snorting,
+      kicking, squealing in a compact, piebald, tossing mob of bay, brown, grey
+      backs, eyes staring, necks extended, nostrils red, long tails streaming.
+      As soon as they had leaped upon the road the thick dust flew upwards from
+      under their hoofs, and within six yards of Giorgio only a brown cloud with
+      vague forms of necks and cruppers rolled by, making the soil tremble on
+      its passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola coughed, turning his face away from the dust, and shaking his head
+      slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be some horse-catching to be done before to-night,&rdquo; he
+      muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the square of sunlight falling through the door Signora Teresa,
+      kneeling before the chair, had bowed her head, heavy with a twisted mass
+      of ebony hair streaked with silver, into the palm of her hands. The black
+      lace shawl she used to drape about her face had dropped to the ground by
+      her side. The two girls had got up, hand-in-hand, in short skirts, their
+      loose hair falling in disorder. The younger had thrown her arm across her
+      eyes, as if afraid to face the light. Linda, with her hand on the other&rsquo;s
+      shoulder, stared fearlessly. Viola looked at his children. The sun brought
+      out the deep lines on his face, and, energetic in expression, it had the
+      immobility of a carving. It was impossible to discover what he thought.
+      Bushy grey eyebrows shaded his dark glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! And do you not pray like your mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda pouted, advancing her red lips, which were almost too red; but she
+      had admirable eyes, brown, with a sparkle of gold in the irises, full of
+      intelligence and meaning, and so clear that they seemed to throw a glow
+      upon her thin, colourless face. There were bronze glints in the sombre
+      clusters of her hair, and the eyelashes, long and coal black, made her
+      complexion appear still more pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother is going to offer up a lot of candles in the church. She always
+      does when Nostromo has been away fighting. I shall have some to carry up
+      to the Chapel of the Madonna in the Cathedral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said all this quickly, with great assurance, in an animated,
+      penetrating voice. Then, giving her sister&rsquo;s shoulder a slight shake, she
+      added&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she will be made to carry one, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why made?&rdquo; inquired Giorgio, gravely. &ldquo;Does she not want to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is timid,&rdquo; said Linda, with a little burst of laughter. &ldquo;People
+      notice her fair hair as she goes along with us. They call out after her,
+      &lsquo;Look at the Rubia! Look at the Rubiacita!&rsquo; They call out in the streets.
+      She is timid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you? You are not timid&mdash;eh?&rdquo; the father pronounced, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tossed back all her dark hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody calls out after me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Giorgio contemplated his children thoughtfully. There was two years
+      difference between them. They had been born to him late, years after the
+      boy had died. Had he lived he would have been nearly as old as Gian&rsquo;
+      Battista&mdash;he whom the English called Nostromo; but as to his
+      daughters, the severity of his temper, his advancing age, his absorption
+      in his memories, had prevented his taking much notice of them. He loved
+      his children, but girls belong more to the mother, and much of his
+      affection had been expended in the worship and service of liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When quite a youth he had deserted from a ship trading to La Plata, to
+      enlist in the navy of Montevideo, then under the command of Garibaldi.
+      Afterwards, in the Italian legion of the Republic struggling against the
+      encroaching tyranny of Rosas, he had taken part, on great plains, on the
+      banks of immense rivers, in the fiercest fighting perhaps the world had
+      ever known. He had lived amongst men who had declaimed about liberty,
+      suffered for liberty, died for liberty, with a desperate exaltation, and
+      with their eyes turned towards an oppressed Italy. His own enthusiasm had
+      been fed on scenes of carnage, on the examples of lofty devotion, on the
+      din of armed struggle, on the inflamed language of proclamations. He had
+      never parted from the chief of his choice&mdash;the fiery apostle of
+      independence&mdash;keeping by his side in America and in Italy till after
+      the fatal day of Aspromonte, when the treachery of kings, emperors, and
+      ministers had been revealed to the world in the wounding and imprisonment
+      of his hero&mdash;a catastrophe that had instilled into him a gloomy doubt
+      of ever being able to understand the ways of Divine justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not deny it, however. It required patience, he would say. Though he
+      disliked priests, and would not put his foot inside a church for anything,
+      he believed in God. Were not the proclamations against tyrants addressed
+      to the peoples in the name of God and liberty? &ldquo;God for men&mdash;religions
+      for women,&rdquo; he muttered sometimes. In Sicily, an Englishman who had turned
+      up in Palermo after its evacuation by the army of the king, had given him
+      a Bible in Italian&mdash;the publication of the British and Foreign Bible
+      Society, bound in a dark leather cover. In periods of political adversity,
+      in the pauses of silence when the revolutionists issued no proclamations,
+      Giorgio earned his living with the first work that came to hand&mdash;as
+      sailor, as dock labourer on the quays of Genoa, once as a hand on a farm
+      in the hills above Spezzia&mdash;and in his spare time he studied the
+      thick volume. He carried it with him into battles. Now it was his only
+      reading, and in order not to be deprived of it (the print was small) he
+      had consented to accept the present of a pair of silver-mounted spectacles
+      from Senora Emilia Gould, the wife of the Englishman who managed the
+      silver mine in the mountains three leagues from the town. She was the only
+      Englishwoman in Sulaco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giorgio Viola had a great consideration for the English. This feeling,
+      born on the battlefields of Uruguay, was forty years old at the very
+      least. Several of them had poured their blood for the cause of freedom in
+      America, and the first he had ever known he remembered by the name of
+      Samuel; he commanded a negro company under Garibaldi, during the famous
+      siege of Montevideo, and died heroically with his negroes at the fording
+      of the Boyana. He, Giorgio, had reached the rank of ensign-alferez-and
+      cooked for the general. Later, in Italy, he, with the rank of lieutenant,
+      rode with the staff and still cooked for the general. He had cooked for
+      him in Lombardy through the whole campaign; on the march to Rome he had
+      lassoed his beef in the Campagna after the American manner; he had been
+      wounded in the defence of the Roman Republic; he was one of the four
+      fugitives who, with the general, carried out of the woods the inanimate
+      body of the general&rsquo;s wife into the farmhouse where she died, exhausted by
+      the hardships of that terrible retreat. He had survived that disastrous
+      time to attend his general in Palermo when the Neapolitan shells from the
+      castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked for him on the field of
+      Volturno after fighting all day. And everywhere he had seen Englishmen in
+      the front rank of the army of freedom. He respected their nation because
+      they loved Garibaldi. Their very countesses and princesses had kissed the
+      general&rsquo;s hands in London, it was said. He could well believe it; for the
+      nation was noble, and the man was a saint. It was enough to look once at
+      his face to see the divine force of faith in him and his great pity for
+      all that was poor, suffering, and oppressed in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to a vast
+      humanitarian idea which inspired the thought and stress of that
+      revolutionary time, had left its mark upon Giorgio in a sort of austere
+      contempt for all personal advantage. This man, whom the lowest class in
+      Sulaco suspected of having a buried hoard in his kitchen, had all his life
+      despised money. The leaders of his youth had lived poor, had died poor. It
+      had been a habit of his mind to disregard to-morrow. It was engendered
+      partly by an existence of excitement, adventure, and wild warfare. But
+      mostly it was a matter of principle. It did not resemble the carelessness
+      of a condottiere, it was a puritanism of conduct, born of stern enthusiasm
+      like the puritanism of religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This stern devotion to a cause had cast a gloom upon Giorgio&rsquo;s old age. It
+      cast a gloom because the cause seemed lost. Too many kings and emperors
+      flourished yet in the world which God had meant for the people. He was sad
+      because of his simplicity. Though always ready to help his countrymen, and
+      greatly respected by the Italian emigrants wherever he lived (in his exile
+      he called it), he could not conceal from himself that they cared nothing
+      for the wrongs of down-trodden nations. They listened to his tales of war
+      readily, but seemed to ask themselves what he had got out of it after all.
+      There was nothing that they could see. &ldquo;We wanted nothing, we suffered for
+      the love of all humanity!&rdquo; he cried out furiously sometimes, and the
+      powerful voice, the blazing eyes, the shaking of the white mane, the
+      brown, sinewy hand pointing upwards as if to call heaven to witness,
+      impressed his hearers. After the old man had broken off abruptly with a
+      jerk of the head and a movement of the arm, meaning clearly, &ldquo;But what&rsquo;s
+      the good of talking to you?&rdquo; they nudged each other. There was in old
+      Giorgio an energy of feeling, a personal quality of conviction, something
+      they called &ldquo;terribilita&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;an old lion,&rdquo; they used to say of him.
+      Some slight incident, a chance word would set him off talking on the beach
+      to the Italian fishermen of Maldonado, in the little shop he kept
+      afterwards (in Valparaiso) to his countrymen customers; of an evening,
+      suddenly, in the cafe at one end of the Casa Viola (the other was reserved
+      for the English engineers) to the select clientele of engine-drivers and
+      foremen of the railway shops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With their handsome, bronzed, lean faces, shiny black ringlets, glistening
+      eyes, broad-chested, bearded, sometimes a tiny gold ring in the lobe of
+      the ear, the aristocracy of the railway works listened to him, turning
+      away from their cards or dominoes. Here and there a fair-haired Basque
+      studied his hand meantime, waiting without protest. No native of
+      Costaguana intruded there. This was the Italian stronghold. Even the
+      Sulaco policemen on a night patrol let their horses pace softly by,
+      bending low in the saddle to glance through the window at the heads in a
+      fog of smoke; and the drone of old Giorgio&rsquo;s declamatory narrative seemed
+      to sink behind them into the plain. Only now and then the assistant of the
+      chief of police, some broad-faced, brown little gentleman, with a great
+      deal of Indian in him, would put in an appearance. Leaving his man outside
+      with the horses he advanced with a confident, sly smile, and without a
+      word up to the long trestle table. He pointed to one of the bottles on the
+      shelf; Giorgio, thrusting his pipe into his mouth abruptly, served him in
+      person. Nothing would be heard but the slight jingle of the spurs. His
+      glass emptied, he would take a leisurely, scrutinizing look all round the
+      room, go out, and ride away slowly, circling towards the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER FIVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In this way only was the power of the local authorities vindicated amongst
+      the great body of strong-limbed foreigners who dug the earth, blasted the
+      rocks, drove the engines for the &ldquo;progressive and patriotic undertaking.&rdquo;
+       In these very words eighteen months before the Excellentissimo Senor don
+      Vincente Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana, had described the National
+      Central Railway in his great speech at the turning of the first sod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a one-o&rsquo;clock
+      dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N. Company on board the Juno
+      after the function on shore. Captain Mitchell had himself steered the
+      cargo lighter, all draped with flags, which, in tow of the Juno&rsquo;s steam
+      launch, took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the ship. Everybody of
+      note in Sulaco had been invited&mdash;the one or two foreign merchants,
+      all the representatives of the old Spanish families then in town, the
+      great owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple men,
+      caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and feet, conservative,
+      hospitable, and kind. The Occidental Province was their stronghold; their
+      Blanco party had triumphed now; it was their President-Dictator, a Blanco
+      of the Blancos, who sat smiling urbanely between the representatives of
+      two friendly foreign powers. They had come with him from Sta. Marta to
+      countenance by their presence the enterprise in which the capital of their
+      countries was engaged. The only lady of that company was Mrs. Gould, the
+      wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the San Tome silver mine. The
+      ladies of Sulaco were not advanced enough to take part in the public life
+      to that extent. They had come out strongly at the great ball at the
+      Intendencia the evening before, but Mrs. Gould alone had appeared, a
+      bright spot in the group of black coats behind the President-Dictator, on
+      the crimson cloth-covered stage erected under a shady tree on the shore of
+      the harbour, where the ceremony of turning the first sod had taken place.
+      She had come off in the cargo lighter, full of notabilities, sitting under
+      the flutter of gay flags, in the place of honour by the side of Captain
+      Mitchell, who steered, and her clear dress gave the only truly festive
+      note to the sombre gathering in the long, gorgeous saloon of the Juno.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London), handsome and
+      pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped beard, hovered near her
+      shoulder attentive, smiling, and fatigued. The journey from London to Sta.
+      Marta in mail boats and the special carriages of the Sta. Marta coast-line
+      (the only railway so far) had been tolerable&mdash;even pleasant&mdash;quite
+      tolerable. But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was another sort of
+      experience, in an old diligencia over impassable roads skirting awful
+      precipices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of very deep ravines,&rdquo;
+       he was telling Mrs. Gould in an undertone. &ldquo;And when we arrived here at
+      last I don&rsquo;t know what we should have done without your hospitality. What
+      an out-of-the-way place Sulaco is!&mdash;and for a harbour, too!
+      Astonishing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be historically important.
+      The highest ecclesiastical court for two viceroyalties, sat here in the
+      olden time,&rdquo; she instructed him with animation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am impressed. I didn&rsquo;t mean to be disparaging. You seem very
+      patriotic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you don&rsquo;t know
+      what an old resident I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old, I wonder,&rdquo; he murmured, looking at her with a slight smile. Mrs.
+      Gould&rsquo;s appearance was made youthful by the mobile intelligence of her
+      face. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t give you your ecclesiastical court back again; but you
+      shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable&mdash;a future in
+      the great world which is worth infinitely more than any amount of
+      ecclesiastical past. You shall be brought in touch with something greater
+      than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on a sea-coast
+      could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a thousand miles
+      inland now&mdash;most remarkable! Has anything ever happened here for a
+      hundred years before to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept her little smile.
+      Agreeing ironically, she assured him that certainly not&mdash;nothing ever
+      happened in Sulaco. Even the revolutions, of which there had been two in
+      her time, had respected the repose of the place. Their course ran in the
+      more populous southern parts of the Republic, and the great valley of Sta.
+      Marta, which was like one great battlefield of the parties, with the
+      possession of the capital for a prize and an outlet to another ocean. They
+      were more advanced over there. Here in Sulaco they heard only the echoes
+      of these great questions, and, of course, their official world changed
+      each time, coming to them over their rampart of mountains which he himself
+      had traversed in an old diligencia, with such a risk to life and limb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitality for several
+      days, and he was really grateful for it. It was only since he had left
+      Sta. Marta that he had utterly lost touch with the feeling of European
+      life on the background of his exotic surroundings. In the capital he had
+      been the guest of the Legation, and had been kept busy negotiating with
+      the members of Don Vincente&rsquo;s Government&mdash;cultured men, men to whom
+      the conditions of civilized business were not unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What concerned him most at the time was the acquisition of land for the
+      railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where there was already one line in
+      existence, the people were tractable, and it was only a matter of price. A
+      commission had been nominated to fix the values, and the difficulty
+      resolved itself into the judicious influencing of the Commissioners. But
+      in Sulaco&mdash;the Occidental Province for whose very development the
+      railway was intended&mdash;there had been trouble. It had been lying for
+      ages ensconced behind its natural barriers, repelling modern enterprise by
+      the precipices of its mountain range, by its shallow harbour opening into
+      the everlasting calms of a gulf full of clouds, by the benighted state of
+      mind of the owners of its fertile territory&mdash;all these aristocratic
+      old Spanish families, all those Don Ambrosios this and Don Fernandos that,
+      who seemed actually to dislike and distrust the coming of the railway over
+      their lands. It had happened that some of the surveying parties scattered
+      all over the province had been warned off with threats of violence. In
+      other cases outrageous pretensions as to price had been raised. But the
+      man of railways prided himself on being equal to every emergency. Since he
+      was met by the inimical sentiment of blind conservatism in Sulaco he would
+      meet it by sentiment, too, before taking his stand on his right alone. The
+      Government was bound to carry out its part of the contract with the board
+      of the new railway company, even if it had to use force for the purpose.
+      But he desired nothing less than an armed disturbance in the smooth
+      working of his plans. They were much too vast and far-reaching, and too
+      promising to leave a stone unturned; and so he imagined to get the
+      President-Dictator over there on a tour of ceremonies and speeches,
+      culminating in a great function at the turning of the first sod by the
+      harbour shore. After all he was their own creature&mdash;that Don
+      Vincente. He was the embodied triumph of the best elements in the State.
+      These were facts, and, unless facts meant nothing, Sir John argued to
+      himself, such a man&rsquo;s influence must be real, and his personal action
+      would produce the conciliatory effect he required. He had succeeded in
+      arranging the trip with the help of a very clever advocate, who was known
+      in Sta. Marta as the agent of the Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in
+      Sulaco, and even in the whole Republic. It was indeed a fabulously rich
+      mine. Its so-called agent, evidently a man of culture and ability, seemed,
+      without official position, to possess an extraordinary influence in the
+      highest Government spheres. He was able to assure Sir John that the
+      President-Dictator would make the journey. He regretted, however, in the
+      course of the same conversation, that General Montero insisted upon going,
+      too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle had found an obscure
+      army captain employed on the wild eastern frontier of the State, had
+      thrown in his lot with the Ribiera party at a moment when special
+      circumstances had given that small adhesion a fortuitous importance. The
+      fortunes of war served him marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco
+      (after a day of desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the end
+      he emerged General, Minister of War, and the military head of the Blanco
+      party, although there was nothing aristocratic in his descent. Indeed, it
+      was said that he and his brother, orphans, had been brought up by the
+      munificence of a famous European traveller, in whose service their father
+      had lost his life. Another story was that their father had been nothing
+      but a charcoal burner in the woods, and their mother a baptised Indian
+      woman from the far interior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in the habit of styling
+      Montero&rsquo;s forest march from his commandancia to join the Blanco forces at
+      the beginning of the troubles, the &ldquo;most heroic military exploit of modern
+      times.&rdquo; About the same time, too, his brother had turned up from Europe,
+      where he had gone apparently as secretary to a consul. Having, however,
+      collected a small band of outlaws, he showed some talent as guerilla chief
+      and had been rewarded at the pacification by the post of Military
+      Commandant of the capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator. The board of the
+      O.S.N. Company, working hand-in-hand with the railway people for the good
+      of the Republic, had on this important occasion instructed Captain
+      Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at the disposal of the distinguished
+      party. Don Vincente, journeying south from Sta. Marta, had embarked at
+      Cayta, the principal port of Costaguana, and came to Sulaco by sea. But
+      the chairman of the railway company had courageously crossed the mountains
+      in a ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting his
+      engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature, whose hostility
+      can always be overcome by the resources of finance, he could not help
+      being impressed by his surroundings during his halt at the surveying camp
+      established at the highest point his railway was to reach. He spent the
+      night there, arriving just too late to see the last dying glow of sunlight
+      upon the snowy flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt framed
+      like an open portal a portion of the white field lying aslant against the
+      west. In the transparent air of the high altitudes everything seemed very
+      near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable liquid; and with
+      his ear ready to catch the first sound of the expected diligencia the
+      engineer-in-chief, at the door of a hut of rough stones, had contemplated
+      the changing hues on the enormous side of the mountain, thinking that in
+      this sight, as in a piece of inspired music, there could be found together
+      the utmost delicacy of shaded expression and a stupendous magnificence of
+      effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and inaudible strain
+      sung by the sunset amongst the high peaks of the Sierra. It had sung
+      itself out into the breathless pause of deep dusk before, climbing down
+      the fore wheel of the diligencia with stiff limbs, he shook hands with the
+      engineer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical boulder, with no
+      door or windows in its two openings; a bright fire of sticks (brought on
+      muleback from the first valley below) burning outside, sent in a wavering
+      glare; and two candles in tin candlesticks&mdash;lighted, it was explained
+      to him, in his honour&mdash;stood on a sort of rough camp table, at which
+      he sat on the right hand of the chief. He knew how to be amiable; and the
+      young men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of the railway
+      track had the glamour of the first steps on the path of life, sat there,
+      too, listening modestly, with their smooth faces tanned by the weather,
+      and very pleased to witness so much affability in so great a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside, he had a long talk
+      with his chief engineer. He knew him well of old. This was not the first
+      undertaking in which their gifts, as elementally different as fire and
+      water, had worked in conjunction. From the contact of these two
+      personalities, who had not the same vision of the world, there was
+      generated a power for the world&rsquo;s service&mdash;a subtle force that could
+      set in motion mighty machines, men&rsquo;s muscles, and awaken also in human
+      breasts an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the young fellows at the
+      table, to whom the survey of the track was like the tracing of the path of
+      life, more than one would be called to meet death before the work was
+      done. But the work would be done: the force would be almost as strong as a
+      faith. Not quite, however. In the silence of the sleeping camp upon the
+      moonlit plateau forming the top of the pass like the floor of a vast arena
+      surrounded by the basalt walls of precipices, two strolling figures in
+      thick ulsters stood still, and the voice of the engineer pronounced
+      distinctly the words&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t move mountains!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing gesture, felt the full
+      force of the words. The white Higuerota soared out of the shadows of rock
+      and earth like a frozen bubble under the moon. All was still, till near
+      by, behind the wall of a corral for the camp animals, built roughly of
+      loose stones in the form of a circle, a pack mule stamped his forefoot and
+      blew heavily twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer to the chairman&rsquo;s
+      tentative suggestion that the tracing of the line could, perhaps, be
+      altered in deference to the prejudices of the Sulaco landowners. The chief
+      engineer believed that the obstinacy of men was the lesser obstacle.
+      Moreover, to combat that they had the great influence of Charles Gould,
+      whereas tunnelling under Higuerota would have been a colossal undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta. Marta, and wanted to know
+      more. The engineer-in-chief assured him that the administrator of the San
+      Tome silver mine had an immense influence over all these Spanish Dons. He
+      had also one of the best houses in Sulaco, and the Gould hospitality was
+      beyond all praise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They received me as if they had known me for years,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The little
+      lady is kindness personified. I stayed with them for a month. He helped me
+      to organize the surveying parties. His practical ownership of the San Tome
+      silver mine gives him a special position. He seems to have the ear of
+      every provincial authority apparently, and, as I said, he can wind all the
+      hidalgos of the province round his little finger. If you follow his advice
+      the difficulties will fall away, because he wants the railway. Of course,
+      you must be careful in what you say. He&rsquo;s English, and besides he must be
+      immensely wealthy. The Holroyd house is in with him in that mine, so you
+      may imagine&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He interrupted himself as, from before one of the little fires burning
+      outside the low wall of the corral, arose the figure of a man wrapped in a
+      poncho up to the neck. The saddle which he had been using for a pillow
+      made a dark patch on the ground against the red glow of embers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through the States,&rdquo; said Sir
+      John. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve ascertained that he, too, wants the railway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity of the voices, had arisen
+      from the ground, struck a match to light a cigarette. The flame showed a
+      bronzed, black-whiskered face, a pair of eyes gazing straight; then,
+      rearranging his wrappings, he sank full length and laid his head again on
+      the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s our camp-master, whom I must send back to Sulaco now we are going
+      to carry our survey into the Sta. Marta Valley,&rdquo; said the engineer. &ldquo;A
+      most useful fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell of the O.S.N. Company. It
+      was very good of Mitchell. Charles Gould told me I couldn&rsquo;t do better than
+      take advantage of the offer. He seems to know how to rule all these
+      muleteers and peons. We had not the slightest trouble with our people. He
+      shall escort your diligencia right into Sulaco with some of our railway
+      peons. The road is bad. To have him at hand may save you an upset or two.
+      He promised me to take care of your person all the way down as if you were
+      his father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in Sulaco,
+      following Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s mispronunciation, were in the habit of
+      calling Nostromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take excellent
+      care of his charge at the bad parts of the road, as Sir John himself
+      acknowledged to Mrs. Gould afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER SIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At that time Nostromo had been already long enough in the country to raise
+      to the highest pitch Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s opinion of the extraordinary value
+      of his discovery. Clearly he was one of those invaluable subordinates whom
+      to possess is a legitimate cause of boasting. Captain Mitchell plumed
+      himself upon his eye for men&mdash;but he was not selfish&mdash;and in the
+      innocence of his pride was already developing that mania for &ldquo;lending you
+      my Capataz de Cargadores&rdquo; which was to bring Nostromo into personal
+      contact, sooner or later, with every European in Sulaco, as a sort of
+      universal factotum&mdash;a prodigy of efficiency in his own sphere of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fellow is devoted to me, body and soul!&rdquo; Captain Mitchell was given
+      to affirm; and though nobody, perhaps, could have explained why it should
+      be so, it was impossible on a survey of their relation to throw doubt on
+      that statement, unless, indeed, one were a bitter, eccentric character
+      like Dr. Monygham&mdash;for instance&mdash;whose short, hopeless laugh
+      expressed somehow an immense mistrust of mankind. Not that Dr. Monygham
+      was a prodigal either of laughter or of words. He was bitterly taciturn
+      when at his best. At his worst people feared the open scornfulness of his
+      tongue. Only Mrs. Gould could keep his unbelief in men&rsquo;s motives within
+      due bounds; but even to her (on an occasion not connected with Nostromo,
+      and in a tone which for him was gentle), even to her, he had said once,
+      &ldquo;Really, it is most unreasonable to demand that a man should think of
+      other people so much better than he is able to think of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Gould had hastened to drop the subject. There were strange
+      rumours of the English doctor. Years ago, in the time of Guzman Bento, he
+      had been mixed up, it was whispered, in a conspiracy which was betrayed
+      and, as people expressed it, drowned in blood. His hair had turned grey,
+      his hairless, seamed face was of a brick-dust colour; the large check
+      pattern of his flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat were an
+      established defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco. Had it not been
+      for the immaculate cleanliness of his apparel he might have been taken for
+      one of those shiftless Europeans that are a moral eyesore to the
+      respectability of a foreign colony in almost every exotic part of the
+      world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorning with clusters of pretty faces
+      the balconies along the Street of the Constitution, when they saw him
+      pass, with his limping gait and bowed head, a short linen jacket drawn on
+      carelessly over the flannel check shirt, would remark to each other, &ldquo;Here
+      is the Senor doctor going to call on Dona Emilia. He has got his little
+      coat on.&rdquo; The inference was true. Its deeper meaning was hidden from their
+      simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no store of thought on the
+      doctor. He was old, ugly, learned&mdash;and a little &ldquo;loco&rdquo;&mdash;mad, if
+      not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected him of being. The
+      little white jacket was in reality a concession to Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s humanizing
+      influence. The doctor, with his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had no
+      other means of showing his profound respect for the character of the woman
+      who was known in the country as the English Senora. He presented this
+      tribute very seriously indeed; it was no trifle for a man of his habits.
+      Mrs. Gould felt that, too, perfectly. She would never have thought of
+      imposing upon him this marked show of deference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept her old Spanish house (one of the finest specimens in Sulaco)
+      open for the dispensation of the small graces of existence. She dispensed
+      them with simplicity and charm because she was guided by an alert
+      perception of values. She was highly gifted in the art of human
+      intercourse which consists in delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and in
+      the suggestion of universal comprehension. Charles Gould (the Gould
+      family, established in Costaguana for three generations, always went to
+      England for their education and for their wives) imagined that he had
+      fallen in love with a girl&rsquo;s sound common sense like any other man, but
+      these were not exactly the reasons why, for instance, the whole surveying
+      camp, from the youngest of the young men to their mature chief, should
+      have found occasion to allude to Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s house so frequently amongst
+      the high peaks of the Sierra. She would have protested that she had done
+      nothing for them, with a low laugh and a surprised widening of her grey
+      eyes, had anybody told her how convincingly she was remembered on the edge
+      of the snow-line above Sulaco. But directly, with a little capable air of
+      setting her wits to work, she would have found an explanation. &ldquo;Of course,
+      it was such a surprise for these boys to find any sort of welcome here.
+      And I suppose they are homesick. I suppose everybody must be always just a
+      little homesick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was always sorry for homesick people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Born in the country, as his father before him, spare and tall, with a
+      flaming moustache, a neat chin, clear blue eyes, auburn hair, and a thin,
+      fresh, red face, Charles Gould looked like a new arrival from over the
+      sea. His grandfather had fought in the cause of independence under
+      Bolivar, in that famous English legion which on the battlefield of
+      Carabobo had been saluted by the great Liberator as Saviours of his
+      country. One of Charles Gould&rsquo;s uncles had been the elected President of
+      that very province of Sulaco (then called a State) in the days of
+      Federation, and afterwards had been put up against the wall of a church
+      and shot by the order of the barbarous Unionist general, Guzman Bento. It
+      was the same Guzman Bento who, becoming later Perpetual President, famed
+      for his ruthless and cruel tyranny, readied his apotheosis in the popular
+      legend of a sanguinary land-haunting spectre whose body had been carried
+      off by the devil in person from the brick mausoleum in the nave of the
+      Church of Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests explained
+      its disappearance to the barefooted multitude that streamed in, awestruck,
+      to gaze at the hole in the side of the ugly box of bricks before the great
+      altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Guzman Bento of cruel memory had put to death great numbers of people
+      besides Charles Gould&rsquo;s uncle; but with a relative martyred in the cause
+      of aristocracy, the Sulaco Oligarchs (this was the phraseology of Guzman
+      Bento&rsquo;s time; now they were called Blancos, and had given up the federal
+      idea), which meant the families of pure Spanish descent, considered
+      Charles as one of themselves. With such a family record, no one could be
+      more of a Costaguanero than Don Carlos Gould; but his aspect was so
+      characteristic that in the talk of common people he was just the Inglez&mdash;the
+      Englishman of Sulaco. He looked more English than a casual tourist, a sort
+      of heretic pilgrim, however, quite unknown in Sulaco. He looked more
+      English than the last arrived batch of young railway engineers, than
+      anybody out of the hunting-field pictures in the numbers of Punch reaching
+      his wife&rsquo;s drawing-room two months or so after date. It astonished you to
+      hear him talk Spanish (Castillan, as the natives say) or the Indian
+      dialect of the country-people so naturally. His accent had never been
+      English; but there was something so indelible in all these ancestral
+      Goulds&mdash;liberators, explorers, coffee planters, merchants,
+      revolutionists&mdash;of Costaguana, that he, the only representative of
+      the third generation in a continent possessing its own style of
+      horsemanship, went on looking thoroughly English even on horseback. This
+      is not said of him in the mocking spirit of the Llaneros&mdash;men of the
+      great plains&mdash;who think that no one in the world knows how to sit a
+      horse but themselves. Charles Gould, to use the suitably lofty phrase,
+      rode like a centaur. Riding for him was not a special form of exercise; it
+      was a natural faculty, as walking straight is to all men sound of mind and
+      limb; but, all the same, when cantering beside the rutty ox-cart track to
+      the mine he looked in his English clothes and with his imported saddlery
+      as though he had come this moment to Costaguana at his easy swift
+      pasotrote, straight out of some green meadow at the other side of the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His way would lie along the old Spanish road&mdash;the Camino Real of
+      popular speech&mdash;the only remaining vestige of a fact and name left by
+      that royalty old Giorgio Viola hated, and whose very shadow had departed
+      from the land; for the big equestrian statue of Charles IV. at the
+      entrance of the Alameda, towering white against the trees, was only known
+      to the folk from the country and to the beggars of the town that slept on
+      the steps around the pedestal, as the Horse of Stone. The other Carlos,
+      turning off to the left with a rapid clatter of hoofs on the disjointed
+      pavement&mdash;Don Carlos Gould, in his English clothes, looked as
+      incongruous, but much more at home than the kingly cavalier reining in his
+      steed on the pedestal above the sleeping leperos, with his marble arm
+      raised towards the marble rim of a plumed hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weather-stained effigy of the mounted king, with its vague suggestion
+      of a saluting gesture, seemed to present an inscrutable breast to the
+      political changes which had robbed it of its very name; but neither did
+      the other horseman, well known to the people, keen and alive on his
+      well-shaped, slate-coloured beast with a white eye, wear his heart on the
+      sleeve of his English coat. His mind preserved its steady poise as if
+      sheltered in the passionless stability of private and public decencies at
+      home in Europe. He accepted with a like calm the shocking manner in which
+      the Sulaco ladies smothered their faces with pearl powder till they looked
+      like white plaster casts with beautiful living eyes, the peculiar gossip
+      of the town, and the continuous political changes, the constant &ldquo;saving of
+      the country,&rdquo; which to his wife seemed a puerile and bloodthirsty game of
+      murder and rapine played with terrible earnestness by depraved children.
+      In the early days of her Costaguana life, the little lady used to clench
+      her hands with exasperation at not being able to take the public affairs
+      of the country as seriously as the incidental atrocity of methods
+      deserved. She saw in them a comedy of naive pretences, but hardly anything
+      genuine except her own appalled indignation. Charles, very quiet and
+      twisting his long moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all. Once,
+      however, he observed to her gently&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, you seem to forget that I was born here.&rdquo; These few words made
+      her pause as if they had been a sudden revelation. Perhaps the mere fact
+      of being born in the country did make a difference. She had a great
+      confidence in her husband; it had always been very great. He had struck
+      her imagination from the first by his unsentimentalism, by that very
+      quietude of mind which she had erected in her thought for a sign of
+      perfect competency in the business of living. Don Jose Avellanos, their
+      neighbour across the street, a statesman, a poet, a man of culture, who
+      had represented his country at several European Courts (and had suffered
+      untold indignities as a state prisoner in the time of the tyrant Guzman
+      Bento), used to declare in Dona Emilia&rsquo;s drawing-room that Carlos had all
+      the English qualities of character with a truly patriotic heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould, raising her eyes to her husband&rsquo;s thin, red and tan face,
+      could not detect the slightest quiver of a feature at what he must have
+      heard said of his patriotism. Perhaps he had just dismounted on his return
+      from the mine; he was English enough to disregard the hottest hours of the
+      day. Basilio, in a livery of white linen and a red sash, had squatted for
+      a moment behind his heels to unstrap the heavy, blunt spurs in the patio;
+      and then the Senor Administrator would go up the staircase into the
+      gallery. Rows of plants in pots, ranged on the balustrade between the
+      pilasters of the arches, screened the corredor with their leaves and
+      flowers from the quadrangle below, whose paved space is the true
+      hearthstone of a South American house, where the quiet hours of domestic
+      life are marked by the shifting of light and shadow on the flagstones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Senor Avellanos was in the habit of crossing the patio at five o&rsquo;clock
+      almost every day. Don Jose chose to come over at tea-time because the
+      English rite at Dona Emilia&rsquo;s house reminded him of the time he lived in
+      London as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He did not
+      like tea; and, usually, rocking his American chair, his neat little shiny
+      boots crossed on the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a sort of
+      complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he held the cup
+      in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was perfectly white;
+      his eyes coalblack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On seeing Charles Gould step into the sala he would nod provisionally and
+      go on to the end of the oratorial period. Only then he would say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Carlos, my friend, you have ridden from San Tome in the heat of the day.
+      Always the true English activity. No? What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drank up all the tea at once in one draught. This performance was
+      invariably followed by a slight shudder and a low, involuntary &ldquo;br-r-r-r,&rdquo;
+       which was not covered by the hasty exclamation, &ldquo;Excellent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then giving up the empty cup into his young friend&rsquo;s hand, extended with a
+      smile, he continued to expatiate upon the patriotic nature of the San Tome
+      mine for the simple pleasure of talking fluently, it seemed, while his
+      reclining body jerked backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair of the
+      sort exported from the United States. The ceiling of the largest
+      drawing-room of the Casa Gould extended its white level far above his
+      head. The loftiness dwarfed the mixture of heavy, straight-backed Spanish
+      chairs of brown wood with leathern seats, and European furniture, low, and
+      cushioned all over, like squat little monsters gorged to bursting with
+      steel springs and horsehair. There were knick-knacks on little tables,
+      mirrors let into the wall above marble consoles, square spaces of carpet
+      under the two groups of armchairs, each presided over by a deep sofa;
+      smaller rugs scattered all over the floor of red tiles; three windows from
+      the ceiling down to the ground, opening on a balcony, and flanked by the
+      perpendicular folds of the dark hangings. The stateliness of ancient days
+      lingered between the four high, smooth walls, tinted a delicate
+      primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould, with her little head and shining coils of
+      hair, sitting in a cloud of muslin and lace before a slender mahogany
+      table, resembled a fairy posed lightly before dainty philtres dispensed
+      out of vessels of silver and porcelain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould knew the history of the San Tome mine. Worked in the early days
+      mostly by means of lashes on the backs of slaves, its yield had been paid
+      for in its own weight of human bones. Whole tribes of Indians had perished
+      in the exploitation; and then the mine was abandoned, since with this
+      primitive method it had ceased to make a profitable return, no matter how
+      many corpses were thrown into its maw. Then it became forgotten. It was
+      rediscovered after the War of Independence. An English company obtained
+      the right to work it, and found so rich a vein that neither the exactions
+      of successive governments, nor the periodical raids of recruiting officers
+      upon the population of paid miners they had created, could discourage
+      their perseverance. But in the end, during the long turmoil of
+      pronunciamentos that followed the death of the famous Guzman Bento, the
+      native miners, incited to revolt by the emissaries sent out from the
+      capital, had risen upon their English chiefs and murdered them to a man.
+      The decree of confiscation which appeared immediately afterwards in the
+      Diario Official, published in Sta. Marta, began with the words: &ldquo;Justly
+      incensed at the grinding oppression of foreigners, actuated by sordid
+      motives of gain rather than by love for a country where they come
+      impoverished to seek their fortunes, the mining population of San Tome,
+      etc. . . .&rdquo; and ended with the declaration: &ldquo;The chief of the State has
+      resolved to exercise to the full his power of clemency. The mine, which by
+      every law, international, human, and divine, reverts now to the Government
+      as national property, shall remain closed till the sword drawn for the
+      sacred defence of liberal principles has accomplished its mission of
+      securing the happiness of our beloved country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And for many years this was the last of the San Tome mine. What advantage
+      that Government had expected from the spoliation, it is impossible to tell
+      now. Costaguana was made with difficulty to pay a beggarly money
+      compensation to the families of the victims, and then the matter dropped
+      out of diplomatic despatches. But afterwards another Government bethought
+      itself of that valuable asset. It was an ordinary Costaguana Government&mdash;the
+      fourth in six years&mdash;but it judged of its opportunities sanely. It
+      remembered the San Tome mine with a secret conviction of its worthlessness
+      in their own hands, but with an ingenious insight into the various uses a
+      silver mine can be put to, apart from the sordid process of extracting the
+      metal from under the ground. The father of Charles Gould, for a long time
+      one of the most wealthy merchants of Costaguana, had already lost a
+      considerable part of his fortune in forced loans to the successive
+      Governments. He was a man of calm judgment, who never dreamed of pressing
+      his claims; and when, suddenly, the perpetual concession of the San Tome
+      mine was offered to him in full settlement, his alarm became extreme. He
+      was versed in the ways of Governments. Indeed, the intention of this
+      affair, though no doubt deeply meditated in the closet, lay open on the
+      surface of the document presented urgently for his signature. The third
+      and most important clause stipulated that the concession-holder should pay
+      at once to the Government five years&rsquo; royalties on the estimated output of
+      the mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Gould, senior, defended himself from this fatal favour with many
+      arguments and entreaties, but without success. He knew nothing of mining;
+      he had no means to put his concession on the European market; the mine as
+      a working concern did not exist. The buildings had been burnt down, the
+      mining plant had been destroyed, the mining population had disappeared
+      from the neighbourhood years and years ago; the very road had vanished
+      under a flood of tropical vegetation as effectually as if swallowed by the
+      sea; and the main gallery had fallen in within a hundred yards from the
+      entrance. It was no longer an abandoned mine; it was a wild, inaccessible,
+      and rocky gorge of the Sierra, where vestiges of charred timber, some
+      heaps of smashed bricks, and a few shapeless pieces of rusty iron could
+      have been found under the matted mass of thorny creepers covering the
+      ground. Mr. Gould, senior, did not desire the perpetual possession of that
+      desolate locality; in fact, the mere vision of it arising before his mind
+      in the still watches of the night had the power to exasperate him into
+      hours of hot and agitated insomnia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened, however, that the Finance Minister of the time was a man
+      to whom, in years gone by, Mr. Gould had, unfortunately, declined to grant
+      some small pecuniary assistance, basing his refusal on the ground that the
+      applicant was a notorious gambler and cheat, besides being more than half
+      suspected of a robbery with violence on a wealthy ranchero in a remote
+      country district, where he was actually exercising the function of a
+      judge. Now, after reaching his exalted position, that politician had
+      proclaimed his intention to repay evil with good to Senor Gould&mdash;the
+      poor man. He affirmed and reaffirmed this resolution in the drawing-rooms
+      of Sta. Marta, in a soft and implacable voice, and with such malicious
+      glances that Mr. Gould&rsquo;s best friends advised him earnestly to attempt no
+      bribery to get the matter dropped. It would have been useless. Indeed, it
+      would not have been a very safe proceeding. Such was also the opinion of a
+      stout, loud-voiced lady of French extraction, the daughter, she said, of
+      an officer of high rank (<i>officier superieur de l&rsquo;armee</i>), who was
+      accommodated with lodgings within the walls of a secularized convent next
+      door to the Ministry of Finance. That florid person, when approached on
+      behalf of Mr. Gould in a proper manner, and with a suitable present, shook
+      her head despondently. She was good-natured, and her despondency was
+      genuine. She imagined she could not take money in consideration of
+      something she could not accomplish. The friend of Mr. Gould, charged with
+      the delicate mission, used to say afterwards that she was the only honest
+      person closely or remotely connected with the Government he had ever met.
+      &ldquo;No go,&rdquo; she had said with a cavalier, husky intonation which was natural
+      to her, and using turns of expression more suitable to a child of parents
+      unknown than to the orphaned daughter of a general officer. &ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s no
+      go. <i>Pas moyen, mon garcon. C&rsquo;est dommage, tout de meme. Ah! zut! Je ne
+      vole pas mon monde. Je ne suis pas ministre&mdash;moi! Vous pouvez
+      emporter votre petit sac</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment, biting her carmine lip, she deplored inwardly the tyranny of
+      the rigid principles governing the sale of her influence in high places.
+      Then, significantly, and with a touch of impatience, &ldquo;<i>Allez</i>,&rdquo; she
+      added, &ldquo;<i>et dites bien a votre bonhomme&mdash;entendez-vous?&mdash;qu&rsquo;il
+      faut avaler la pilule</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After such a warning there was nothing for it but to sign and pay. Mr.
+      Gould had swallowed the pill, and it was as though it had been compounded
+      of some subtle poison that acted directly on his brain. He became at once
+      mine-ridden, and as he was well read in light literature it took to his
+      mind the form of the Old Man of the Sea fastened upon his shoulders. He
+      also began to dream of vampires. Mr. Gould exaggerated to himself the
+      disadvantages of his new position, because he viewed it emotionally. His
+      position in Costaguana was no worse than before. But man is a desperately
+      conservative creature, and the extravagant novelty of this outrage upon
+      his purse distressed his sensibilities. Everybody around him was being
+      robbed by the grotesque and murderous bands that played their game of
+      governments and revolutions after the death of Guzman Bento. His
+      experience had taught him that, however short the plunder might fall of
+      their legitimate expectations, no gang in possession of the Presidential
+      Palace would be so incompetent as to suffer itself to be baffled by the
+      want of a pretext. The first casual colonel of the barefooted army of
+      scarecrows that came along was able to expose with force and precision to
+      any mere civilian his titles to a sum of 10,000 dollars; the while his
+      hope would be immutably fixed upon a gratuity, at any rate, of no less
+      than a thousand. Mr. Gould knew that very well, and, armed with
+      resignation, had waited for better times. But to be robbed under the forms
+      of legality and business was intolerable to his imagination. Mr. Gould,
+      the father, had one fault in his sagacious and honourable character: he
+      attached too much importance to form. It is a failing common to mankind,
+      whose views are tinged by prejudices. There was for him in that affair a
+      malignancy of perverted justice which, by means of a moral shock, attacked
+      his vigorous physique. &ldquo;It will end by killing me,&rdquo; he used to affirm many
+      times a day. And, in fact, since that time he began to suffer from fever,
+      from liver pains, and mostly from a worrying inability to think of
+      anything else. The Finance Minister could have formed no conception of the
+      profound subtlety of his revenge. Even Mr. Gould&rsquo;s letters to his
+      fourteen-year-old boy Charles, then away in England for his education,
+      came at last to talk of practically nothing but the mine. He groaned over
+      the injustice, the persecution, the outrage of that mine; he occupied
+      whole pages in the exposition of the fatal consequences attaching to the
+      possession of that mine from every point of view, with every dismal
+      inference, with words of horror at the apparently eternal character of
+      that curse. For the Concession had been granted to him and his descendants
+      for ever. He implored his son never to return to Costaguana, never to
+      claim any part of his inheritance there, because it was tainted by the
+      infamous Concession; never to touch it, never to approach it, to forget
+      that America existed, and pursue a mercantile career in Europe. And each
+      letter ended with bitter self-reproaches for having stayed too long in
+      that cavern of thieves, intriguers, and brigands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be told repeatedly that one&rsquo;s future is blighted because of the
+      possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a matter of
+      prime importance as to its main statement; but in its form it is
+      calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and attention. In course
+      of time the boy, at first only puzzled by the angry jeremiads, but rather
+      sorry for his dad, began to turn the matter over in his mind in such
+      moments as he could spare from play and study. In about a year he had
+      evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite conviction that there
+      was a silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of Costaguana,
+      where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great many years
+      before. There was also connected closely with that mine a thing called the
+      &ldquo;iniquitous Gould Concession,&rdquo; apparently written on a paper which his
+      father desired ardently to &ldquo;tear and fling into the faces&rdquo; of presidents,
+      members of judicature, and ministers of State. And this desire persisted,
+      though the names of these people, he noticed, seldom remained the same for
+      a whole year together. This desire (since the thing was iniquitous) seemed
+      quite natural to the boy, though why the affair was iniquitous he did not
+      know. Afterwards, with advancing wisdom, he managed to clear the plain
+      truth of the business from the fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the
+      Sea, vampires, and ghouls, which had lent to his father&rsquo;s correspondence
+      the flavour of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale. In the end, the growing
+      youth attained to as close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the old
+      man who wrote these plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the
+      sea. He had been made several times already to pay heavy fines for
+      neglecting to work the mine, he reported, besides other sums extracted
+      from him on account of future royalties, on the ground that a man with
+      such a valuable concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial
+      assistance to the Government of the Republic. The last of his fortune was
+      passing away from him against worthless receipts, he wrote, in a rage,
+      whilst he was being pointed out as an individual who had known how to
+      secure enormous advantages from the necessities of his country. And the
+      young man in Europe grew more and more interested in that thing which
+      could provoke such a tumult of words and passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought of it every day; but he thought of it without bitterness. It
+      might have been an unfortunate affair for his poor dad, and the whole
+      story threw a queer light upon the social and political life of
+      Costaguana. The view he took of it was sympathetic to his father, yet calm
+      and reflective. His personal feelings had not been outraged, and it is
+      difficult to resent with proper and durable indignation the physical or
+      mental anguish of another organism, even if that other organism is one&rsquo;s
+      own father. By the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his turn,
+      fallen under the spell of the San Tome mine. But it was another form of
+      enchantment, more suitable to his youth, into whose magic formula there
+      entered hope, vigour, and self-confidence, instead of weary indignation
+      and despair. Left after he was twenty to his own guidance (except for the
+      severe injunction not to return to Costaguana), he had pursued his studies
+      in Belgium and France with the idea of qualifying for a mining engineer.
+      But this scientific aspect of his labours remained vague and imperfect in
+      his mind. Mines had acquired for him a dramatic interest. He studied their
+      peculiarities from a personal point of view, too, as one would study the
+      varied characters of men. He visited them as one goes with curiosity to
+      call upon remarkable persons. He visited mines in Germany, in Spain, in
+      Cornwall. Abandoned workings had for him strong fascination. Their
+      desolation appealed to him like the sight of human misery, whose causes
+      are varied and profound. They might have been worthless, but also they
+      might have been misunderstood. His future wife was the first, and perhaps
+      the only person to detect this secret mood which governed the profoundly
+      sensible, almost voiceless attitude of this man towards the world of
+      material things. And at once her delight in him, lingering with half-open
+      wings like those birds that cannot rise easily from a flat level, found a
+      pinnacle from which to soar up into the skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had become acquainted in Italy, where the future Mrs. Gould was
+      staying with an old and pale aunt who, years before, had married a
+      middle-aged, impoverished Italian marquis. She now mourned that man, who
+      had known how to give up his life to the independence and unity of his
+      country, who had known how to be as enthusiastic in his generosity as the
+      youngest of those who fell for that very cause of which old Giorgio Viola
+      was a drifting relic, as a broken spar is suffered to float away
+      disregarded after a naval victory. The Marchesa led a still, whispering
+      existence, nun-like in her black robes and a white band over the forehead,
+      in a corner of the first floor of an ancient and ruinous palace, whose
+      big, empty halls downstairs sheltered under their painted ceilings the
+      harvests, the fowls, and even the cattle, together with the whole family
+      of the tenant farmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two young people had met in Lucca. After that meeting Charles Gould
+      visited no mines, though they went together in a carriage, once, to see
+      some marble quarries, where the work resembled mining in so far that it
+      also was the tearing of the raw material of treasure from the earth.
+      Charles Gould did not open his heart to her in any set speeches. He simply
+      went on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true method of
+      sincerity. One of his frequent remarks was, &ldquo;I think sometimes that poor
+      father takes a wrong view of that San Tome business.&rdquo; And they discussed
+      that opinion long and earnestly, as if they could influence a mind across
+      half the globe; but in reality they discussed it because the sentiment of
+      love can enter into any subject and live ardently in remote phrases. For
+      this natural reason these discussions were precious to Mrs. Gould in her
+      engaged state. Charles feared that Mr. Gould, senior, was wasting his
+      strength and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid of the
+      Concession. &ldquo;I fancy that this is not the kind of handling it requires,&rdquo;
+       he mused aloud, as if to himself. And when she wondered frankly that a man
+      of character should devote his energies to plotting and intrigues, Charles
+      would remark, with a gentle concern that understood her wonder, &ldquo;You must
+      not forget that he was born there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She would set her quick mind to work upon that, and then make the
+      inconsequent retort, which he accepted as perfectly sagacious, because, in
+      fact, it was so&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and you? You were born there, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s different. I&rsquo;ve been away ten years. Dad never had such a long
+      spell; and it was more than thirty years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was the first person to whom he opened his lips after receiving the
+      news of his father&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has killed him!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had walked straight out of town with the news, straight out before him
+      in the noonday sun on the white road, and his feet had brought him face to
+      face with her in the hall of the ruined palazzo, a room magnificent and
+      naked, with here and there a long strip of damask, black with damp and
+      age, hanging down on a bare panel of the wall. It was furnished with
+      exactly one gilt armchair, with a broken back, and an octagon columnar
+      stand bearing a heavy marble vase ornamented with sculptured masks and
+      garlands of flowers, and cracked from top to bottom. Charles Gould was
+      dusty with the white dust of the road lying on his boots, on his
+      shoulders, on his cap with two peaks. Water dripped from under it all over
+      his face, and he grasped a thick oaken cudgel in his bare right hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat, gloved, swinging
+      a clear sunshade, caught just as she was going out to meet him at the
+      bottom of the hill, where three poplars stand near the wall of a vineyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has killed him!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;He ought to have had many years yet. We
+      are a long-lived family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was too startled to say anything; he was contemplating with a
+      penetrating and motionless stare the cracked marble urn as though he had
+      resolved to fix its shape for ever in his memory. It was only when,
+      turning suddenly to her, he blurted out twice, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come to you&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      come straight to you&mdash;,&rdquo; without being able to finish his phrase,
+      that the great pitifulness of that lonely and tormented death in
+      Costaguana came to her with the full force of its misery. He caught hold
+      of her hand, raised it to his lips, and at that she dropped her parasol to
+      pat him on the cheek, murmured &ldquo;Poor boy,&rdquo; and began to dry her eyes under
+      the downward curve of her hat-brim, very small in her simple, white frock,
+      almost like a lost child crying in the degraded grandeur of the noble
+      hall, while he stood by her, again perfectly motionless in the
+      contemplation of the marble urn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards they went out for a long walk, which was silent till he
+      exclaimed suddenly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But if he had only grappled with it in a proper way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then they stopped. Everywhere there were long shadows lying on the
+      hills, on the roads, on the enclosed fields of olive trees; the shadows of
+      poplars, of wide chestnuts, of farm buildings, of stone walls; and in
+      mid-air the sound of a bell, thin and alert, was like the throbbing pulse
+      of the sunset glow. Her lips were slightly parted as though in surprise
+      that he should not be looking at her with his usual expression. His usual
+      expression was unconditionally approving and attentive. He was in his
+      talks with her the most anxious and deferential of dictators, an attitude
+      that pleased her immensely. It affirmed her power without detracting from
+      his dignity. That slight girl, with her little feet, little hands, little
+      face attractively overweighted by great coils of hair; with a rather large
+      mouth, whose mere parting seemed to breathe upon you the fragrance of
+      frankness and generosity, had the fastidious soul of an experienced woman.
+      She was, before all things and all flatteries, careful of her pride in the
+      object of her choice. But now he was actually not looking at her at all;
+      and his expression was tense and irrational, as is natural in a man who
+      elects to stare at nothing past a young girl&rsquo;s head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes. It was iniquitous. They corrupted him thoroughly, the poor old
+      boy. Oh! why wouldn&rsquo;t he let me go back to him? But now I shall know how
+      to grapple with this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After pronouncing these words with immense assurance, he glanced down at
+      her, and at once fell a prey to distress, incertitude, and fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only thing he wanted to know now, he said, was whether she did love
+      him enough&mdash;whether she would have the courage to go with him so far
+      away? He put these questions to her in a voice that trembled with anxiety&mdash;for
+      he was a determined man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did. She would. And immediately the future hostess of all the
+      Europeans in Sulaco had the physical experience of the earth falling away
+      from under her. It vanished completely, even to the very sound of the
+      bell. When her feet touched the ground again, the bell was still ringing
+      in the valley; she put her hands up to her hair, breathing quickly, and
+      glanced up and down the stony lane. It was reassuringly empty. Meantime,
+      Charles, stepping with one foot into a dry and dusty ditch, picked up the
+      open parasol, which had bounded away from them with a martial sound of
+      drum taps. He handed it to her soberly, a little crestfallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand on his arm, the first
+      words he pronounced were&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast town. You&rsquo;ve heard
+      its name. It is Sulaco. I am so glad poor father did get that house. He
+      bought a big house there years ago, in order that there should always be a
+      Casa Gould in the principal town of what used to be called the Occidental
+      Province. I lived there once, as a small boy, with my dear mother, for a
+      whole year, while poor father was away in the United States on business.
+      You shall be the new mistress of the Casa Gould.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And later, in the inhabited corner of the Palazzo above the vineyards, the
+      marble hills, the pines and olives of Lucca, he also said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The name of Gould has been always highly respected in Sulaco. My uncle
+      Harry was chief of the State for some time, and has left a great name
+      amongst the first families. By this I mean the pure Creole families, who
+      take no part in the miserable farce of governments. Uncle Harry was no
+      adventurer. In Costaguana we Goulds are no adventurers. He was of the
+      country, and he loved it, but he remained essentially an Englishman in his
+      ideas. He made use of the political cry of his time. It was Federation.
+      But he was no politician. He simply stood up for social order out of pure
+      love for rational liberty and from his hate of oppression. There was no
+      nonsense about him. He went to work in his own way because it seemed
+      right, just as I feel I must lay hold of that mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full of the
+      country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that girl, and his
+      mind of the San Tome Concession. He added that he would have to leave her
+      for a few days to find an American, a man from San Francisco, who was
+      still somewhere in Europe. A few months before he had made his
+      acquaintance in an old historic German town, situated in a mining
+      district. The American had his womankind with him, but seemed lonely while
+      they were sketching all day long the old doorways and the turreted corners
+      of the mediaeval houses. Charles Gould had with him the inseparable
+      companionship of the mine. The other man was interested in mining
+      enterprises, knew something of Costaguana, and was no stranger to the name
+      of Gould. They had talked together with some intimacy which was made
+      possible by the difference of their ages. Charles wanted now to find that
+      capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible character. His father&rsquo;s fortune
+      in Costaguana, which he had supposed to be still considerable, seemed to
+      have melted in the rascally crucible of revolutions. Apart from some ten
+      thousand pounds deposited in England, there appeared to be nothing left
+      except the house in Sulaco, a vague right of forest exploitation in a
+      remote and savage district, and the San Tome Concession, which had
+      attended his poor father to the very brink of the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He explained those things. It was late when they parted. She had never
+      before given him such a fascinating vision of herself. All the eagerness
+      of youth for a strange life, for great distances, for a future in which
+      there was an air of adventure, of combat&mdash;a subtle thought of redress
+      and conquest, had filled her with an intense excitement, which she
+      returned to the giver with a more open and exquisite display of
+      tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he found himself alone he
+      became sober. That irreparable change a death makes in the course of our
+      daily thoughts can be felt in a vague and poignant discomfort of mind. It
+      hurt Charles Gould to feel that never more, by no effort of will, would he
+      be able to think of his father in the same way he used to think of him
+      when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was no longer in his
+      power. This consideration, closely affecting his own identity, filled his
+      breast with a mournful and angry desire for action. In this his instinct
+      was unerring. Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the
+      friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we
+      find the sense of mastery over the Fates. For his action, the mine was
+      obviously the only field. It was imperative sometimes to know how to
+      disobey the solemn wishes of the dead. He resolved firmly to make his
+      disobedience as thorough (by way of atonement) as it well could be. The
+      mine had been the cause of an absurd moral disaster; its working must be
+      made a serious and moral success. He owed it to the dead man&rsquo;s memory.
+      Such were the&mdash;properly speaking&mdash;emotions of Charles Gould. His
+      thoughts ran upon the means of raising a large amount of capital in San
+      Francisco or elsewhere; and incidentally there occurred to him also the
+      general reflection that the counsel of the departed must be an unsound
+      guide. Not one of them could be aware beforehand what enormous changes the
+      death of any given individual may produce in the very aspect of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latest phase in the history of the mine Mrs. Gould knew from personal
+      experience. It was in essence the history of her married life. The mantle
+      of the Goulds&rsquo; hereditary position in Sulaco had descended amply upon her
+      little person; but she would not allow the peculiarities of the strange
+      garment to weigh down the vivacity of her character, which was the sign of
+      no mere mechanical sprightliness, but of an eager intelligence. It must
+      not be supposed that Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s mind was masculine. A woman with a
+      masculine mind is not a being of superior efficiency; she is simply a
+      phenomenon of imperfect differentiation&mdash;interestingly barren and
+      without importance. Dona Emilia&rsquo;s intelligence being feminine led her to
+      achieve the conquest of Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her
+      unselfishness and sympathy. She could converse charmingly, but she was not
+      talkative. The wisdom of the heart having no concern with the erection or
+      demolition of theories any more than with the defence of prejudices, has
+      no random words at its command. The words it pronounces have the value of
+      acts of integrity, tolerance, and compassion. A woman&rsquo;s true tenderness,
+      like the true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering
+      kind. The ladies of Sulaco adored Mrs. Gould. &ldquo;They still look upon me as
+      something of a monster,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould had said pleasantly to one of the
+      three gentlemen from San Francisco she had to entertain in her new Sulaco
+      house just about a year after her marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were her first visitors from abroad, and they had come to look at the
+      San Tome mine. She jested most agreeably, they thought; and Charles Gould,
+      besides knowing thoroughly what he was about, had shown himself a real
+      hustler. These facts caused them to be well disposed towards his wife. An
+      unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by a slight flavour of irony, made her
+      talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and provoked them
+      to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good deal of deference.
+      Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by an idealistic view of
+      success they would have been amazed at the state of her mind as the
+      Spanish-American ladies had been amazed at the tireless activity of her
+      body. She would&mdash;in her own words&mdash;have been for them &ldquo;something
+      of a monster.&rdquo; However, the Goulds were in essentials a reticent couple,
+      and their guests departed without the suspicion of any other purpose but
+      simple profit in the working of a silver mine. Mrs. Gould had out her own
+      carriage, with two white mules, to drive them down to the harbour, whence
+      the Ceres was to carry them off into the Olympus of plutocrats. Captain
+      Mitchell had snatched at the occasion of leave-taking to remark to Mrs.
+      Gould, in a low, confidential mutter, &ldquo;This marks an epoch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broad flight of stone
+      steps was overlooked silently from a niche in the wall by a Madonna in
+      blue robes with the crowned child sitting on her arm. Subdued voices
+      ascended in the early mornings from the paved well of the quadrangle, with
+      the stamping of horses and mules led out in pairs to drink at the cistern.
+      A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow, blade-like leaves
+      over the square pool of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled up on the
+      edge, holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand. Barefooted servants
+      passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways below; two laundry
+      girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker with the tray of bread made
+      for the day; Leonarda&mdash;her own camerista&mdash;bearing high up, swung
+      from her hand raised above her raven black head, a bunch of starched
+      under-skirts dazzlingly white in the slant of sunshine. Then the old
+      porter would hobble in, sweeping the flagstones, and the house was ready
+      for the day. All the lofty rooms on three sides of the quadrangle opened
+      into each other and into the corredor, with its wrought-iron railings and
+      a border of flowers, whence, like the lady of the mediaeval castle, she
+      could witness from above all the departures and arrivals of the Casa, to
+      which the sonorous arched gateway lent an air of stately importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had watched her carriage roll away with the three guests from the
+      north. She smiled. Their three arms went up simultaneously to their three
+      hats. Captain Mitchell, the fourth, in attendance, had already begun a
+      pompous discourse. Then she lingered. She lingered, approaching her face
+      to the clusters of flowers here and there as if to give time to her
+      thoughts to catch up with her slow footsteps along the straight vista of
+      the corredor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fringed Indian hammock from Aroa, gay with coloured featherwork, had
+      been swung judiciously in a corner that caught the early sun; for the
+      mornings are cool in Sulaco. The cluster of <i>flor de noche buena</i>
+      blazed in great masses before the open glass doors of the reception rooms.
+      A big green parrot, brilliant like an emerald in a cage that flashed like
+      gold, screamed out ferociously, &ldquo;<i>Viva Costaguana!</i>&rdquo; then called
+      twice mellifluously, &ldquo;Leonarda! Leonarda!&rdquo; in imitation of Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s
+      voice, and suddenly took refuge in immobility and silence. Mrs. Gould
+      reached the end of the gallery and put her head through the door of her
+      husband&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, with one foot on a low wooden stool, was already strapping
+      his spurs. He wanted to hurry back to the mine. Mrs. Gould, without coming
+      in, glanced about the room. One tall, broad bookcase, with glass doors,
+      was full of books; but in the other, without shelves, and lined with red
+      baize, were arranged firearms: Winchester carbines, revolvers, a couple of
+      shot-guns, and even two pairs of double-barrelled holster pistols. Between
+      them, by itself, upon a strip of scarlet velvet, hung an old cavalry
+      sabre, once the property of Don Enrique Gould, the hero of the Occidental
+      Province, presented by Don Jose Avellanos, the hereditary friend of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Otherwise, the plastered white walls were completely bare, except for a
+      water-colour sketch of the San Tome mountain&mdash;the work of Dona Emilia
+      herself. In the middle of the red-tiled floor stood two long tables
+      littered with plans and papers, a few chairs, and a glass show-case
+      containing specimens of ore from the mine. Mrs. Gould, looking at all
+      these things in turn, wondered aloud why the talk of these wealthy and
+      enterprising men discussing the prospects, the working, and the safety of
+      the mine rendered her so impatient and uneasy, whereas she could talk of
+      the mine by the hour with her husband with unwearied interest and
+      satisfaction. And dropping her eyelids expressively, she added&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you feel about it, Charley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, surprised at her husband&rsquo;s silence, she raised her eyes, opened
+      wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He had done with the spurs, and, twisting
+      his moustache with both hands, horizontally, he contemplated her from the
+      height of his long legs with a visible appreciation of her appearance. The
+      consciousness of being thus contemplated pleased Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are considerable men,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. But have you listened to their conversation? They don&rsquo;t seem to
+      have understood anything they have seen here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have seen the mine. They have understood that to some purpose,&rdquo;
+       Charles Gould interjected, in defence of the visitors; and then his wife
+      mentioned the name of the most considerable of the three. He was
+      considerable in finance and in industry. His name was familiar to many
+      millions of people. He was so considerable that he would never have
+      travelled so far away from the centre of his activity if the doctors had
+      not insisted, with veiled menaces, on his taking a long holiday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Holroyd&rsquo;s sense of religion,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould pursued, &ldquo;was shocked and
+      disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-up saints in the cathedral&mdash;the
+      worship, he called it, of wood and tinsel. But it seemed to me that he
+      looked upon his own God as a sort of influential partner, who gets his
+      share of profits in the endowment of churches. That&rsquo;s a sort of idolatry.
+      He told me he endowed churches every year, Charley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No end of them,&rdquo; said Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at the mobility of
+      her physiognomy. &ldquo;All over the country. He&rsquo;s famous for that sort of
+      munificence.&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, he didn&rsquo;t boast,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould declared, scrupulously. &ldquo;I
+      believe he&rsquo;s really a good man, but so stupid! A poor Chulo who offers a
+      little silver arm or leg to thank his god for a cure is as rational and
+      more touching.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s at the head of immense silver and iron interests,&rdquo; Charles Gould
+      observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He&rsquo;s a very civil man, though
+      he looked awfully solemn when he first saw the Madonna on the staircase,
+      who&rsquo;s only wood and paint; but he said nothing to me. My dear Charley, I
+      heard those men talk among themselves. Can it be that they really wish to
+      become, for an immense consideration, drawers of water and hewers of wood
+      to all the countries and nations of the earth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man must work to some end,&rdquo; Charles Gould said, vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould, frowning, surveyed him from head to foot. With his riding
+      breeches, leather leggings (an article of apparel never before seen in
+      Costaguana), a Norfolk coat of grey flannel, and those great flaming
+      moustaches, he suggested an officer of cavalry turned gentleman farmer.
+      This combination was gratifying to Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s tastes. &ldquo;How thin the poor
+      boy is!&rdquo; she thought. &ldquo;He overworks himself.&rdquo; But there was no denying
+      that his fine-drawn, keen red face, and his whole, long-limbed, lank
+      person had an air of breeding and distinction. And Mrs. Gould relented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wondered what you felt,&rdquo; she murmured, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the last few days, as it happened, Charles Gould had been kept too
+      busy thinking twice before he spoke to have paid much attention to the
+      state of his feelings. But theirs was a successful match, and he had no
+      difficulty in finding his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best of my feelings are in your keeping, my dear,&rdquo; he said, lightly;
+      and there was so much truth in that obscure phrase that he experienced
+      towards her at the moment a great increase of gratitude and tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould, however, did not seem to find this answer in the least
+      obscure. She brightened up delicately; already he had changed his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there are facts. The worth of the mine&mdash;as a mine&mdash;is
+      beyond doubt. It shall make us very wealthy. The mere working of it is a
+      matter of technical knowledge, which I have&mdash;which ten thousand other
+      men in the world have. But its safety, its continued existence as an
+      enterprise, giving a return to men&mdash;to strangers, comparative
+      strangers&mdash;who invest money in it, is left altogether in my hands. I
+      have inspired confidence in a man of wealth and position. You seem to
+      think this perfectly natural&mdash;do you? Well, I don&rsquo;t know. I don&rsquo;t
+      know why I have; but it is a fact. This fact makes everything possible,
+      because without it I would never have thought of disregarding my father&rsquo;s
+      wishes. I would never have disposed of the Concession as a speculator
+      disposes of a valuable right to a company&mdash;for cash and shares, to
+      grow rich eventually if possible, but at any rate to put some money at
+      once in his pocket. No. Even if it had been feasible&mdash;which I doubt&mdash;I
+      would not have done so. Poor father did not understand. He was afraid I
+      would hang on to the ruinous thing, waiting for just some such chance, and
+      waste my life miserably. That was the true sense of his prohibition, which
+      we have deliberately set aside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were walking up and down the corredor. Her head just reached to his
+      shoulder. His arm, extended downwards, was about her waist. His spurs
+      jingled slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know me. He parted from me
+      for my sake, and he would never let me come back. He was always talking in
+      his letters of leaving Costaguana, of abandoning everything and making his
+      escape. But he was too valuable a prey. They would have thrown him into
+      one of their prisons at the first suspicion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His spurred feet clinked slowly. He was bending over his wife as they
+      walked. The big parrot, turning its head askew, followed their pacing
+      figures with a round, unblinking eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years old he used to talk to me
+      as if I had been grown up. When I was in Europe he wrote to me every
+      month. Ten, twelve pages every month of my life for ten years. And, after
+      all, he did not know me! Just think of it&mdash;ten whole years away; the
+      years I was growing up into a man. He could not know me. Do you think he
+      could?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould shook her head negatively; which was just what her husband had
+      expected from the strength of the argument. But she shook her head
+      negatively only because she thought that no one could know her Charles&mdash;really
+      know him for what he was but herself. The thing was obvious. It could be
+      felt. It required no argument. And poor Mr. Gould, senior, who had died
+      too soon to ever hear of their engagement, remained too shadowy a figure
+      for her to be credited with knowledge of any sort whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he did not understand. In my view this mine could never have been a
+      thing to sell. Never! After all his misery I simply could not have touched
+      it for money alone,&rdquo; Charles Gould pursued: and she pressed her head to
+      his shoulder approvingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two young people remembered the life which had ended wretchedly just
+      when their own lives had come together in that splendour of hopeful love,
+      which to the most sensible minds appears like a triumph of good over all
+      the evils of the earth. A vague idea of rehabilitation had entered the
+      plan of their life. That it was so vague as to elude the support of
+      argument made it only the stronger. It had presented itself to them at the
+      instant when the woman&rsquo;s instinct of devotion and the man&rsquo;s instinct of
+      activity receive from the strongest of illusions their most powerful
+      impulse. The very prohibition imposed the necessity of success. It was as
+      if they had been morally bound to make good their vigorous view of life
+      against the unnatural error of weariness and despair. If the idea of
+      wealth was present to them it was only in so far as it was bound with that
+      other success. Mrs. Gould, an orphan from early childhood and without
+      fortune, brought up in an atmosphere of intellectual interests, had never
+      considered the aspects of great wealth. They were too remote, and she had
+      not learned that they were desirable. On the other hand, she had not known
+      anything of absolute want. Even the very poverty of her aunt, the
+      Marchesa, had nothing intolerable to a refined mind; it seemed in accord
+      with a great grief: it had the austerity of a sacrifice offered to a noble
+      ideal. Thus even the most legitimate touch of materialism was wanting in
+      Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s character. The dead man of whom she thought with tenderness
+      (because he was Charley&rsquo;s father) and with some impatience (because he had
+      been weak), must be put completely in the wrong. Nothing else would do to
+      keep their prosperity without a stain on its only real, on its immaterial
+      side!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, on his part, had been obliged to keep the idea of wealth
+      well to the fore; but he brought it forward as a means, not as an end.
+      Unless the mine was good business it could not be touched. He had to
+      insist on that aspect of the enterprise. It was his lever to move men who
+      had capital. And Charles Gould believed in the mine. He knew everything
+      that could be known of it. His faith in the mine was contagious, though it
+      was not served by a great eloquence; but business men are frequently as
+      sanguine and imaginative as lovers. They are affected by a personality
+      much oftener than people would suppose; and Charles Gould, in his unshaken
+      assurance, was absolutely convincing. Besides, it was a matter of common
+      knowledge to the men to whom he addressed himself that mining in
+      Costaguana was a game that could be made considerably more than worth the
+      candle. The men of affairs knew that very well. The real difficulty in
+      touching it was elsewhere. Against that there was an implication of calm
+      and implacable resolution in Charles Gould&rsquo;s very voice. Men of affairs
+      venture sometimes on acts that the common judgment of the world would
+      pronounce absurd; they make their decisions on apparently impulsive and
+      human grounds. &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; had said the considerable personage to whom
+      Charles Gould on his way out through San Francisco had lucidly exposed his
+      point of view. &ldquo;Let us suppose that the mining affairs of Sulaco are taken
+      in hand. There would then be in it: first, the house of Holroyd, which is
+      all right; then, Mr. Charles Gould, a citizen of Costaguana, who is also
+      all right; and, lastly, the Government of the Republic. So far this
+      resembles the first start of the Atacama nitrate fields, where there was a
+      financing house, a gentleman of the name of Edwards, and&mdash;a
+      Government; or, rather, two Governments&mdash;two South American
+      Governments. And you know what came of it. War came of it; devastating and
+      prolonged war came of it, Mr. Gould. However, here we possess the
+      advantage of having only one South American Government hanging around for
+      plunder out of the deal. It is an advantage; but then there are degrees of
+      badness, and that Government is the Costaguana Government.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the considerable personage, the millionaire endower of churches
+      on a scale befitting the greatness of his native land&mdash;the same to
+      whom the doctors used the language of horrid and veiled menaces. He was a
+      big-limbed, deliberate man, whose quiet burliness lent to an ample
+      silk-faced frock-coat a superfine dignity. His hair was iron grey, his
+      eyebrows were still black, and his massive profile was the profile of a
+      Caesar&rsquo;s head on an old Roman coin. But his parentage was German and
+      Scotch and English, with remote strains of Danish and French blood, giving
+      him the temperament of a Puritan and an insatiable imagination of
+      conquest. He was completely unbending to his visitor, because of the warm
+      introduction the visitor had brought from Europe, and because of an
+      irrational liking for earnestness and determination wherever met, to
+      whatever end directed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Costaguana Government shall play its hand for all it&rsquo;s worth&mdash;and
+      don&rsquo;t you forget it, Mr. Gould. Now, what is Costaguana? It is the
+      bottomless pit of 10 per cent. loans and other fool investments. European
+      capital has been flung into it with both hands for years. Not ours,
+      though. We in this country know just about enough to keep indoors when it
+      rains. We can sit and watch. Of course, some day we shall step in. We are
+      bound to. But there&rsquo;s no hurry. Time itself has got to wait on the
+      greatest country in the whole of God&rsquo;s Universe. We shall be giving the
+      word for everything: industry, trade, law, journalism, art, politics, and
+      religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith&rsquo;s Sound, and beyond, too, if
+      anything worth taking hold of turns up at the North Pole. And then we
+      shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying islands and continents
+      of the earth. We shall run the world&rsquo;s business whether the world likes it
+      or not. The world can&rsquo;t help it&mdash;and neither can we, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this he meant to express his faith in destiny in words suitable to his
+      intelligence, which was unskilled in the presentation of general ideas.
+      His intelligence was nourished on facts; and Charles Gould, whose
+      imagination had been permanently affected by the one great fact of a
+      silver mine, had no objection to this theory of the world&rsquo;s future. If it
+      had seemed distasteful for a moment it was because the sudden statement of
+      such vast eventualities dwarfed almost to nothingness the actual matter in
+      hand. He and his plans and all the mineral wealth of the Occidental
+      Province appeared suddenly robbed of every vestige of magnitude. The
+      sensation was disagreeable; but Charles Gould was not dull. Already he
+      felt that he was producing a favourable impression; the consciousness of
+      that flattering fact helped him to a vague smile, which his big
+      interlocutor took for a smile of discreet and admiring assent. He smiled
+      quietly, too; and immediately Charles Gould, with that mental agility
+      mankind will display in defence of a cherished hope, reflected that the
+      very apparent insignificance of his aim would help him to success. His
+      personality and his mine would be taken up because it was a matter of no
+      great consequence, one way or another, to a man who referred his action to
+      such a prodigious destiny. And Charles Gould was not humiliated by this
+      consideration, because the thing remained as big as ever for him. Nobody
+      else&rsquo;s vast conceptions of destiny could diminish the aspect of his desire
+      for the redemption of the San Tome mine. In comparison to the correctness
+      of his aim, definite in space and absolutely attainable within a limited
+      time, the other man appeared for an instant as a dreamy idealist of no
+      importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great man, massive and benignant, had been looking at him
+      thoughtfully; when he broke the short silence it was to remark that
+      concessions flew about thick in the air of Costaguana. Any simple soul
+      that just yearned to be taken in could bring down a concession at the
+      first shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our consuls get their mouths stopped with them,&rdquo; he continued, with a
+      twinkle of genial scorn in his eyes. But in a moment he became grave. &ldquo;A
+      conscientious, upright man, that cares nothing for boodle, and keeps clear
+      of their intrigues, conspiracies, and factions, soon gets his passports.
+      See that, Mr. Gould? Persona non grata. That&rsquo;s the reason our Government
+      is never properly informed. On the other hand, Europe must be kept out of
+      this continent, and for proper interference on our part the time is not
+      yet ripe, I dare say. But we here&mdash;we are not this country&rsquo;s
+      Government, neither are we simple souls. Your affair is all right. The
+      main question for us is whether the second partner, and that&rsquo;s you, is the
+      right sort to hold his own against the third and unwelcome partner, which
+      is one or another of the high and mighty robber gangs that run the
+      Costaguana Government. What do you think, Mr. Gould, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent forward to look steadily into the unflinching eyes of Charles
+      Gould, who, remembering the large box full of his father&rsquo;s letters, put
+      the accumulated scorn and bitterness of many years into the tone of his
+      answer&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as the knowledge of these men and their methods and their politics
+      is concerned, I can answer for myself. I have been fed on that sort of
+      knowledge since I was a boy. I am not likely to fall into mistakes from
+      excess of optimism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not likely, eh? That&rsquo;s all right. Tact and a stiff upper lip is what
+      you&rsquo;ll want; and you could bluff a little on the strength of your backing.
+      Not too much, though. We will go with you as long as the thing runs
+      straight. But we won&rsquo;t be drawn into any large trouble. This is the
+      experiment which I am willing to make. There is some risk, and we will
+      take it; but if you can&rsquo;t keep up your end, we will stand our loss, of
+      course, and then&mdash;we&rsquo;ll let the thing go. This mine can wait; it has
+      been shut up before, as you know. You must understand that under no
+      circumstances will we consent to throw good money after bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the great personage had spoken then, in his own private office, in a
+      great city where other men (very considerable in the eyes of a vain
+      populace) waited with alacrity upon a wave of his hand. And rather more
+      than a year later, during his unexpected appearance in Sulaco, he had
+      emphasized his uncompromising attitude with a freedom of sincerity
+      permitted to his wealth and influence. He did this with the less reserve,
+      perhaps, because the inspection of what had been done, and more still the
+      way in which successive steps had been taken, had impressed him with the
+      conviction that Charles Gould was perfectly capable of keeping up his end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This young fellow,&rdquo; he thought to himself, &ldquo;may yet become a power in the
+      land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This thought flattered him, for hitherto the only account of this young
+      man he could give to his intimates was&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brother-in-law met him in one of these one-horse old German towns,
+      near some mines, and sent him on to me with a letter. He&rsquo;s one of the
+      Costaguana Goulds, pure-bred Englishmen, but all born in the country. His
+      uncle went into politics, was the last Provincial President of Sulaco, and
+      got shot after a battle. His father was a prominent business man in Sta.
+      Marta, tried to keep clear of their politics, and died ruined after a lot
+      of revolutions. And that&rsquo;s your Costaguana in a nutshell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as to his motives, even
+      by his intimates. The outside world was at liberty to wonder respectfully
+      at the hidden meaning of his actions. He was so great a man that his
+      lavish patronage of the &ldquo;purer forms of Christianity&rdquo; (which in its naive
+      form of church-building amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by his
+      fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble spirit. But in
+      his own circles of the financial world the taking up of such a thing as
+      the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather as a
+      subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man&rsquo;s caprice. In the
+      great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks of
+      stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation of
+      telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged humorous
+      glances, which meant that they were not let into the secrets of the San
+      Tome business. The Costaguana mail (it was never large&mdash;one fairly
+      heavy envelope) was taken unopened straight into the great man&rsquo;s room, and
+      no instructions dealing with it had ever been issued thence. The office
+      whispered that he answered personally&mdash;and not by dictation either,
+      but actually writing in his own hand, with pen and ink, and, it was to be
+      supposed, taking a copy in his own private press copy-book, inaccessible
+      to profane eyes. Some scornful young men, insignificant pieces of minor
+      machinery in that eleven-storey-high workshop of great affairs, expressed
+      frankly their private opinion that the great chief had done at last
+      something silly, and was ashamed of his folly; others, elderly and
+      insignificant, but full of romantic reverence for the business that had
+      devoured their best years, used to mutter darkly and knowingly that this
+      was a portentous sign; that the Holroyd connection meant by-and-by to get
+      hold of the whole Republic of Costaguana, lock, stock, and barrel. But, in
+      fact, the hobby theory was the right one. It interested the great man to
+      attend personally to the San Tome mine; it interested him so much that he
+      allowed this hobby to give a direction to the first complete holiday he
+      had taken for quite a startling number of years. He was not running a
+      great enterprise there; no mere railway board or industrial corporation.
+      He was running a man! A success would have pleased him very much on
+      refreshingly novel grounds; but, on the other side of the same feeling, it
+      was incumbent upon him to cast it off utterly at the first sign of
+      failure. A man may be thrown off. The papers had unfortunately trumpeted
+      all over the land his journey to Costaguana. If he was pleased at the way
+      Charles Gould was going on, he infused an added grimness into his
+      assurances of support. Even at the very last interview, half an hour or so
+      before he rolled out of the patio, hat in hand, behind Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s white
+      mules, he had said in Charles&rsquo;s room&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go ahead in your own way, and I shall know how to help you as long as
+      you hold your own. But you may rest assured that in a given case we shall
+      know how to drop you in time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this Charles Gould&rsquo;s only answer had been: &ldquo;You may begin sending out
+      the machinery as soon as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the great man had liked this imperturbable assurance. The secret of it
+      was that to Charles Gould&rsquo;s mind these uncompromising terms were
+      agreeable. Like this the mine preserved its identity, with which he had
+      endowed it as a boy; and it remained dependent on himself alone. It was a
+      serious affair, and he, too, took it grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he said to his wife, alluding to this last conversation with
+      the departed guest, while they walked slowly up and down the corredor,
+      followed by the irritated eye of the parrot&mdash;&ldquo;of course, a man of
+      that sort can take up a thing or drop it when he likes. He will suffer
+      from no sense of defeat. He may have to give in, or he may have to die
+      to-morrow, but the great silver and iron interests will survive, and some
+      day will get hold of Costaguana along with the rest of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching the sound of a word
+      belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere. Parrots are very
+      human.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Viva Costaguana!&rdquo; he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and,
+      instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up somnolence
+      behind the glittering wires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you believe that, Charley?&rdquo; Mrs. Gould asked. &ldquo;This seems to me
+      most awful materialism, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s nothing to me,&rdquo; interrupted her husband, in a reasonable
+      tone. &ldquo;I make use of what I see. What&rsquo;s it to me whether his talk is the
+      voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There&rsquo;s a good
+      deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The
+      air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have you
+      forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours here&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but that&rsquo;s different,&rdquo; protested Mrs. Gould, almost shocked. The
+      allusion was not to the point. Don Jose was a dear good man, who talked
+      very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San Tome mine.
+      &ldquo;How can you compare them, Charles?&rdquo; she exclaimed, reproachfully. &ldquo;He has
+      suffered&mdash;and yet he hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The working competence of men&mdash;which she never questioned&mdash;was
+      very surprising to Mrs. Gould, because upon so many obvious issues they
+      showed themselves strangely muddle-headed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which secured for him at once his
+      wife&rsquo;s anxious sympathy, assured her that he was not comparing. He was an
+      American himself, after all, and perhaps he could understand both kinds of
+      eloquence&mdash;&ldquo;if it were worth while to try,&rdquo; he added, grimly. But he
+      had breathed the air of England longer than any of his people had done for
+      three generations, and really he begged to be excused. His poor father
+      could be eloquent, too. And he asked his wife whether she remembered a
+      passage in one of his father&rsquo;s last letters where Mr. Gould had expressed
+      the conviction that &ldquo;God looked wrathfully at these countries, or else He
+      would let some ray of hope fall through a rift in the appalling darkness
+      of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime that hung over the Queen of Continents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould had not forgotten. &ldquo;You read it to me, Charley,&rdquo; she murmured.
+      &ldquo;It was a striking pronouncement. How deeply your father must have felt
+      its terrible sadness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him,&rdquo; said Charles Gould.
+      &ldquo;But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here is law, good
+      faith, order, security. Any one can declaim about these things, but I pin
+      my faith to material interests. Only let the material interests once get a
+      firm footing, and they are bound to impose the conditions on which alone
+      they can continue to exist. That&rsquo;s how your money-making is justified here
+      in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified because the
+      security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed people. A
+      better justice will come afterwards. That&rsquo;s your ray of hope.&rdquo; His arm
+      pressed her slight form closer to his side for a moment. &ldquo;And who knows
+      whether in that sense even the San Tome mine may not become that little
+      rift in the darkness which poor father despaired of ever seeing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced up at him with admiration. He was competent; he had given a
+      vast shape to the vagueness of her unselfish ambitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charley,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you are splendidly disobedient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left her suddenly in the corredor to go and get his hat, a soft, grey
+      sombrero, an article of national costume which combined unexpectedly well
+      with his English get-up. He came back, a riding-whip under his arm,
+      buttoning up a dogskin glove; his face reflected the resolute nature of
+      his thoughts. His wife had waited for him at the head of the stairs, and
+      before he gave her the parting kiss he finished the conversation&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should be perfectly clear to us,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is the fact that there
+      is no going back. Where could we begin life afresh? We are in now for all
+      that there is in us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully.
+      Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould
+      Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at
+      once in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose
+      its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment
+      he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed
+      him further than he meant to go; and with the roundabout logic of
+      emotions, he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with
+      success. There was no going back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER SEVEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that feeling. It
+      made life exciting, and she was too much of a woman not to like
+      excitement. But it frightened her, too, a little; and when Don Jose
+      Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go so far as to say,
+      &ldquo;Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; even if some untoward event were
+      yet to destroy your work&mdash;which God forbid!&mdash;you would have
+      deserved well of your country,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould would look up from the
+      tea-table profoundly at her unmoved husband stirring the spoon in the cup
+      as though he had not heard a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort. He could not praise
+      enough dear Carlos&rsquo;s tact and courage. His English, rock-like quality of
+      character was his best safeguard, Don Jose affirmed; and, turning to Mrs.
+      Gould, &ldquo;As to you, Emilia, my soul&rdquo;&mdash;he would address her with the
+      familiarity of his age and old friendship&mdash;&ldquo;you are as true a patriot
+      as though you had been born in our midst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs. Gould, accompanying
+      her husband all over the province in the search for labour, had seen the
+      land with a deeper glance than a trueborn Costaguanera could have done. In
+      her travel-worn riding habit, her face powdered white like a plaster cast,
+      with a further protection of a small silk mask during the heat of the day,
+      she rode on a well-shaped, light-footed pony in the centre of a little
+      cavalcade. Two mozos de campo, picturesque in great hats, with spurred
+      bare heels, in white embroidered calzoneras, leather jackets and striped
+      ponchos, rode ahead with carbines across their shoulders, swaying in
+      unison to the pace of the horses. A tropilla of pack mules brought up the
+      rear in charge of a thin brown muleteer, sitting his long-eared beast very
+      near the tail, legs thrust far forward, the wide brim of his hat set far
+      back, making a sort of halo for his head. An old Costaguana officer, a
+      retired senior major of humble origin, but patronized by the first
+      families on account of his Blanco opinions, had been recommended by Don
+      Jose for commissary and organizer of that expedition. The points of his
+      grey moustache hung far below his chin, and, riding on Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s left
+      hand, he looked about with kindly eyes, pointing out the features of the
+      country, telling the names of the little pueblos and of the estates, of
+      the smooth-walled haciendas like long fortresses crowning the knolls above
+      the level of the Sulaco Valley. It unrolled itself, with green young
+      crops, plains, woodland, and gleams of water, park-like, from the blue
+      vapour of the distant sierra to an immense quivering horizon of grass and
+      sky, where big white clouds seemed to fall slowly into the darkness of
+      their own shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men ploughed with wooden ploughs and yoked oxen, small on a boundless
+      expanse, as if attacking immensity itself. The mounted figures of vaqueros
+      galloped in the distance, and the great herds fed with all their horned
+      heads one way, in one single wavering line as far as eye could reach
+      across the broad potreros. A spreading cotton-wool tree shaded a thatched
+      ranche by the road; the trudging files of burdened Indians taking off
+      their hats, would lift sad, mute eyes to the cavalcade raising the dust of
+      the crumbling camino real made by the hands of their enslaved forefathers.
+      And Mrs. Gould, with each day&rsquo;s journey, seemed to come nearer to the soul
+      of the land in the tremendous disclosure of this interior unaffected by
+      the slight European veneer of the coast towns, a great land of plain and
+      mountain and people, suffering and mute, waiting for the future in a
+      pathetic immobility of patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew its sights and its hospitality, dispensed with a sort of
+      slumbrous dignity in those great houses presenting long, blind walls and
+      heavy portals to the wind-swept pastures. She was given the head of the
+      tables, where masters and dependants sat in a simple and patriarchal
+      state. The ladies of the house would talk softly in the moonlight under
+      the orange trees of the courtyards, impressing upon her the sweetness of
+      their voices and the something mysterious in the quietude of their lives.
+      In the morning the gentlemen, well mounted in braided sombreros and
+      embroidered riding suits, with much silver on the trappings of their
+      horses, would ride forth to escort the departing guests before committing
+      them, with grave good-byes, to the care of God at the boundary pillars of
+      their estates. In all these households she could hear stories of political
+      outrage; friends, relatives, ruined, imprisoned, killed in the battles of
+      senseless civil wars, barbarously executed in ferocious proscriptions, as
+      though the government of the country had been a struggle of lust between
+      bands of absurd devils let loose upon the land with sabres and uniforms
+      and grandiloquent phrases. And on all the lips she found a weary desire
+      for peace, the dread of officialdom with its nightmarish parody of
+      administration without law, without security, and without justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bore a whole two months of wandering very well; she had that power of
+      resistance to fatigue which one discovers here and there in some quite
+      frail-looking women with surprise&mdash;like a state of possession by a
+      remarkably stubborn spirit. Don Pepe&mdash;the old Costaguana major&mdash;after
+      much display of solicitude for the delicate lady, had ended by conferring
+      upon her the name of the &ldquo;Never-tired Senora.&rdquo; Mrs. Gould was indeed
+      becoming a Costaguanera. Having acquired in Southern Europe a knowledge of
+      true peasantry, she was able to appreciate the great worth of the people.
+      She saw the man under the silent, sad-eyed beast of burden. She saw them
+      on the road carrying loads, lonely figures upon the plain, toiling under
+      great straw hats, with their white clothing flapping about their limbs in
+      the wind; she remembered the villages by some group of Indian women at the
+      fountain impressed upon her memory, by the face of some young Indian girl
+      with a melancholy and sensual profile, raising an earthenware vessel of
+      cool water at the door of a dark hut with a wooden porch cumbered with
+      great brown jars. The solid wooden wheels of an ox-cart, halted with its
+      shafts in the dust, showed the strokes of the axe; and a party of charcoal
+      carriers, with each man&rsquo;s load resting above his head on the top of the
+      low mud wall, slept stretched in a row within the strip of shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left by the conquerors
+      proclaimed the disregard of human labour, the tribute-labour of vanished
+      nations. The power of king and church was gone, but at the sight of some
+      heavy ruinous pile overtopping from a knoll the low mud walls of a
+      village, Don Pepe would interrupt the tale of his campaigns to exclaim&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Costaguana! Before, it was everything for the Padres, nothing for
+      the people; and now it is everything for those great politicos in Sta.
+      Marta, for negroes and thieves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles talked with the alcaldes, with the fiscales, with the principal
+      people in towns, and with the caballeros on the estates. The commandantes
+      of the districts offered him escorts&mdash;for he could show an
+      authorization from the Sulaco political chief of the day. How much the
+      document had cost him in gold twenty-dollar pieces was a secret between
+      himself, a great man in the United States (who condescended to answer the
+      Sulaco mail with his own hand), and a great man of another sort, with a
+      dark olive complexion and shifty eyes, inhabiting then the Palace of the
+      Intendencia in Sulaco, and who piqued himself on his culture and
+      Europeanism generally in a rather French style because he had lived in
+      Europe for some years&mdash;in exile, he said. However, it was pretty well
+      known that just before this exile he had incautiously gambled away all the
+      cash in the Custom House of a small port where a friend in power had
+      procured for him the post of subcollector. That youthful indiscretion had,
+      amongst other inconveniences, obliged him to earn his living for a time as
+      a cafe waiter in Madrid; but his talents must have been great, after all,
+      since they had enabled him to retrieve his political fortunes so
+      splendidly. Charles Gould, exposing his business with an imperturbable
+      steadiness, called him Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The provincial Excellency assumed a weary superiority, tilting his chair
+      far back near an open window in the true Costaguana manner. The military
+      band happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza just then,
+      and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to listen
+      to a favourite passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exquisite, delicious!&rdquo; he murmured; while Charles Gould waited, standing
+      by with inscrutable patience. &ldquo;Lucia, Lucia di Lammermoor! I am passionate
+      for music. It transports me. Ha! the divine&mdash;ha!&mdash;Mozart. Si!
+      divine . . . What is it you were saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, rumours had reached him already of the newcomer&rsquo;s intentions.
+      Besides, he had received an official warning from Sta. Marta. His manner
+      was intended simply to conceal his curiosity and impress his visitor. But
+      after he had locked up something valuable in the drawer of a large
+      writing-desk in a distant part of the room, he became very affable, and
+      walked back to his chair smartly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you intend to build villages and assemble a population near the mine,
+      you shall require a decree of the Minister of the Interior for that,&rdquo; he
+      suggested in a business-like manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already sent a memorial,&rdquo; said Charles Gould, steadily, &ldquo;and I
+      reckon now confidently upon your Excellency&rsquo;s favourable conclusions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Excellency was a man of many moods. With the receipt of the money a
+      great mellowness had descended upon his simple soul. Unexpectedly he
+      fetched a deep sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Don Carlos! What we want is advanced men like you in the province.
+      The lethargy&mdash;the lethargy of these aristocrats! The want of public
+      spirit! The absence of all enterprise! I, with my profound studies in
+      Europe, you understand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With one hand thrust into his swelling bosom, he rose and fell on his
+      toes, and for ten minutes, almost without drawing breath, went on hurling
+      himself intellectually to the assault of Charles Gould&rsquo;s polite silence;
+      and when, stopping abruptly, he fell back into his chair, it was as though
+      he had been beaten off from a fortress. To save his dignity he hastened to
+      dismiss this silent man with a solemn inclination of the head and the
+      words, pronounced with moody, fatigued condescension&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may depend upon my enlightened goodwill as long as your conduct as a
+      good citizen deserves it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took up a paper fan and began to cool himself with a consequential air,
+      while Charles Gould bowed and withdrew. Then he dropped the fan at once,
+      and stared with an appearance of wonder and perplexity at the closed door
+      for quite a long time. At last he shrugged his shoulders as if to assure
+      himself of his disdain. Cold, dull. No intellectuality. Red hair. A true
+      Englishman. He despised him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face darkened. What meant this unimpressed and frigid behaviour? He
+      was the first of the successive politicians sent out from the capital to
+      rule the Occidental Province whom the manner of Charles Gould in official
+      intercourse was to strike as offensively independent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould assumed that if the appearance of listening to deplorable
+      balderdash must form part of the price he had to pay for being left
+      unmolested, the obligation of uttering balderdash personally was by no
+      means included in the bargain. He drew the line there. To these provincial
+      autocrats, before whom the peaceable population of all classes had been
+      accustomed to tremble, the reserve of that English-looking engineer caused
+      an uneasiness which swung to and fro between cringing and truculence.
+      Gradually all of them discovered that, no matter what party was in power,
+      that man remained in most effective touch with the higher authorities in
+      Sta. Marta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a fact, and it accounted perfectly for the Goulds being by no
+      means so wealthy as the engineer-in-chief on the new railway could
+      legitimately suppose. Following the advice of Don Jose Avellanos, who was
+      a man of good counsel (though rendered timid by his horrible experiences
+      of Guzman Bento&rsquo;s time), Charles Gould had kept clear of the capital; but
+      in the current gossip of the foreign residents there he was known (with a
+      good deal of seriousness underlying the irony) by the nickname of &ldquo;King of
+      Sulaco.&rdquo; An advocate of the Costaguana Bar, a man of reputed ability and
+      good character, member of the distinguished Moraga family possessing
+      extensive estates in the Sulaco Valley, was pointed out to strangers, with
+      a shade of mystery and respect, as the agent of the San Tome mine&mdash;&ldquo;political,
+      you know.&rdquo; He was tall, black-whiskered, and discreet. It was known that
+      he had easy access to ministers, and that the numerous Costaguana generals
+      were always anxious to dine at his house. Presidents granted him audience
+      with facility. He corresponded actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose
+      Avellanos; but his letters&mdash;unless those expressing formally his
+      dutiful affection&mdash;were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post
+      Office. There the envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the
+      frankness of a brazen and childish impudence characteristic of some
+      Spanish-American Governments. But it must be noted that at about the time
+      of the re-opening of the San Tome mine the muleteer who had been employed
+      by Charles Gould in his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small
+      train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain
+      passes between the Sta. Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco. There are
+      no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very
+      exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not visibly
+      require additional transport facilities; but the man seemed to find his
+      account in it. A few packages were always found for him whenever he took
+      the road. Very brown and wooden, in goatskin breeches with the hair
+      outside, he sat near the tail of his own smart mule, his great hat turned
+      against the sun, an expression of blissful vacancy on his long face,
+      humming day after day a love-song in a plaintive key, or, without a change
+      of expression, letting out a yell at his small tropilla in front. A round
+      little guitar hung high up on his back; and there was a place scooped out
+      artistically in the wood of one of his pack-saddles where a tightly rolled
+      piece of paper could be slipped in, the wooden plug replaced, and the
+      coarse canvas nailed on again. When in Sulaco it was his practice to smoke
+      and doze all day long (as though he had no care in the world) on a stone
+      bench outside the doorway of the Casa Gould and facing the windows of the
+      Avellanos house. Years and years ago his mother had been chief
+      laundry-woman in that family&mdash;very accomplished in the matter of
+      clear-starching. He himself had been born on one of their haciendas. His
+      name was Bonifacio, and Don Jose, crossing the street about five o&rsquo;clock
+      to call on Dona Emilia, always acknowledged his humble salute by some
+      movement of hand or head. The porters of both houses conversed lazily with
+      him in tones of grave intimacy. His evenings he devoted to gambling and to
+      calls in a spirit of generous festivity upon the peyne d&rsquo;oro girls in the
+      more remote side-streets of the town. But he, too, was a discreet man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER EIGHT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Those of us whom business or curiosity took to Sulaco in these years
+      before the first advent of the railway can remember the steadying effect
+      of the San Tome mine upon the life of that remote province. The outward
+      appearances had not changed then as they have changed since, as I am told,
+      with cable cars running along the streets of the Constitution, and
+      carriage roads far into the country, to Rincon and other villages, where
+      the foreign merchants and the Ricos generally have their modern villas,
+      and a vast railway goods yard by the harbour, which has a quay-side, a
+      long range of warehouses, and quite serious, organized labour troubles of
+      its own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of the port
+      formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of scum, with a patron
+      saint of their own. They went on strike regularly (every bull-fight day),
+      a form of trouble that even Nostromo at the height of his prestige could
+      never cope with efficiently; but the morning after each fiesta, before the
+      Indian market-women had opened their mat parasols on the plaza, when the
+      snows of Higuerota gleamed pale over the town on a yet black sky, the
+      appearance of a phantom-like horseman mounted on a silver-grey mare solved
+      the problem of labour without fail. His steed paced the lanes of the slums
+      and the weed-grown enclosures within the old ramparts, between the black,
+      lightless cluster of huts, like cow-byres, like dog-kennels. The horseman
+      hammered with the butt of a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias,
+      of obscene lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble
+      wall, at the wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound of snores
+      and sleepy mutters within could be heard in the pauses of the thundering
+      clatter of his blows. He called out men&rsquo;s names menacingly from the
+      saddle, once, twice. The drowsy answers&mdash;grumpy, conciliating,
+      savage, jocular, or deprecating&mdash;came out into the silent darkness in
+      which the horseman sat still, and presently a dark figure would flit out
+      coughing in the still air. Sometimes a low-toned woman cried through the
+      window-hole softly, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s coming directly, senor,&rdquo; and the horseman waited
+      silent on a motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then,
+      after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a
+      ferocious scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head
+      first and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey
+      mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that
+      work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s revolver, reeling a little along the street and snarling low
+      curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell, coming out anxiously in his night
+      attire on to the wooden balcony running the whole length of the O.S.N.
+      Company&rsquo;s lonely building by the shore, would see the lighters already
+      under way, figures moving busily about the cargo cranes, perhaps hear the
+      invaluable Nostromo, now dismounted and in the checked shirt and red sash
+      of a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders from the end of the jetty in a
+      stentorian voice. A fellow in a thousand!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The material apparatus of perfected civilization which obliterates the
+      individuality of old towns under the stereotyped conveniences of modern
+      life had not intruded as yet; but over the worn-out antiquity of Sulaco,
+      so characteristic with its stuccoed houses and barred windows, with the
+      great yellowy-white walls of abandoned convents behind the rows of sombre
+      green cypresses, that fact&mdash;very modern in its spirit&mdash;the San
+      Tome mine had already thrown its subtle influence. It had altered, too,
+      the outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before the
+      open portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos with a green
+      stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome miners. They had also
+      adopted white hats with green cord and braid&mdash;articles of good
+      quality, which could be obtained in the storehouse of the administration
+      for very little money. A peaceable Cholo wearing these colours (unusual in
+      Costaguana) was somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his life
+      on a charge of disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much risk of
+      being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting party of lanceros&mdash;a
+      method of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost legal in the
+      Republic. Whole villages were known to have volunteered for the army in
+      that way; but, as Don Pepe would say with a hopeless shrug to Mrs. Gould,
+      &ldquo;What would you! Poor people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But the State must
+      have its soldiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with pendent moustaches,
+      a nut-brown, lean face, and a clean run of a cast-iron jaw, suggesting the
+      type of a cattle-herd horseman from the great Llanos of the South. &ldquo;If you
+      will listen to an old officer of Paez, senores,&rdquo; was the exordium of all
+      his speeches in the Aristocratic Club of Sulaco, where he was admitted on
+      account of his past services to the extinct cause of Federation. The club,
+      dating from the days of the proclamation of Costaguana&rsquo;s independence,
+      boasted many names of liberators amongst its first founders. Suppressed
+      arbitrarily innumerable times by various Governments, with memories of
+      proscriptions and of at least one wholesale massacre of its members, sadly
+      assembled for a banquet by the order of a zealous military commandante
+      (their bodies were afterwards stripped naked and flung into the plaza out
+      of the windows by the lowest scum of the populace), it was again
+      flourishing, at that period, peacefully. It extended to strangers the
+      large hospitality of the cool, big rooms of its historic quarters in the
+      front part of a house, once the residence of a high official of the Holy
+      Office. The two wings, shut up, crumbled behind the nailed doors, and what
+      may be described as a grove of young orange trees grown in the unpaved
+      patio concealed the utter ruin of the back part facing the gate. You
+      turned in from the street, as if entering a secluded orchard, where you
+      came upon the foot of a disjointed staircase, guarded by a moss-stained
+      effigy of some saintly bishop, mitred and staffed, and bearing the
+      indignity of a broken nose meekly, with his fine stone hands crossed on
+      his breast. The chocolate-coloured faces of servants with mops of black
+      hair peeped at you from above; the click of billiard balls came to your
+      ears, and ascending the steps, you would perhaps see in the first sala,
+      very stiff upon a straight-backed chair, in a good light, Don Pepe moving
+      his long moustaches as he spelt his way, at arm&rsquo;s length, through an old
+      Sta. Marta newspaper. His horse&mdash;a stony-hearted but persevering
+      black brute with a hammer head&mdash;you would have seen in the street
+      dozing motionless under an immense saddle, with its nose almost touching
+      the curbstone of the sidewalk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Pepe, when &ldquo;down from the mountain,&rdquo; as the phrase, often heard in
+      Sulaco, went, could also be seen in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould. He
+      sat with modest assurance at some distance from the tea-table. With his
+      knees close together, and a kindly twinkle of drollery in his deep-set
+      eyes, he would throw his small and ironic pleasantries into the current of
+      conversation. There was in that man a sort of sane, humorous shrewdness,
+      and a vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple old soldiers of
+      proved courage who have seen much desperate service. Of course he knew
+      nothing whatever of mining, but his employment was of a special kind. He
+      was in charge of the whole population in the territory of the mine, which
+      extended from the head of the gorge to where the cart track from the foot
+      of the mountain enters the plain, crossing a stream over a little wooden
+      bridge painted green&mdash;green, the colour of hope, being also the
+      colour of the mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was reported in Sulaco that up there &ldquo;at the mountain&rdquo; Don Pepe walked
+      about precipitous paths, girt with a great sword and in a shabby uniform
+      with tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior major. Most miners being
+      Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed him as Taita (father), as these
+      barefooted people of Costaguana will address anybody who wears shoes; but
+      it was Basilio, Mr. Gould&rsquo;s own mozo and the head servant of the Casa,
+      who, in all good faith and from a sense of propriety, announced him once
+      in the solemn words, &ldquo;El Senor Gobernador has arrived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was delighted beyond measure
+      at the aptness of the title, with which he greeted the old major
+      banteringly as soon as the latter&rsquo;s soldierly figure appeared in the
+      doorway. Don Pepe only smiled in his long moustaches, as much as to say,
+      &ldquo;You might have found a worse name for an old soldier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his small jokes upon his
+      function and upon his domain, where he affirmed with humorous exaggeration
+      to Mrs. Gould&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No two stones could come together anywhere without the Gobernador hearing
+      the click, senora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger knowingly. Even
+      when the number of the miners alone rose to over six hundred he seemed to
+      know each of them individually, all the innumerable Joses, Manuels,
+      Ignacios, from the villages <i>primero&mdash;segundo&mdash;or tercero</i>
+      (there were three mining villages) under his government. He could
+      distinguish them not only by their flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs.
+      Gould looked all alike, as if run into the same ancestral mould of
+      suffering and patience, but apparently also by the infinitely graduated
+      shades of reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the
+      two shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps, mingled
+      together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered picks, swinging
+      lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet on the open plateau before the
+      entrance of the main tunnel. It was a time of pause. The Indian boys
+      leaned idly against the long line of little cradle wagons standing empty;
+      the screeners and ore-breakers squatted on their heels smoking long
+      cigars; the great wooden shoots slanting over the edge of the tunnel
+      plateau were silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of water in the
+      open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, with the splash and rumble
+      of revolving turbine-wheels, and the thudding march of the stamps pounding
+      to powder the treasure rock on the plateau below. The heads of gangs,
+      distinguished by brass medals hanging on their bare breasts, marshalled
+      their squads; and at last the mountain would swallow one-half of the
+      silent crowd, while the other half would move off in long files down the
+      zigzag paths leading to the bottom of the gorge. It was deep; and, far
+      below, a thread of vegetation winding between the blazing rock faces
+      resembled a slender green cord, in which three lumpy knots of banana
+      patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees marked the Village One, Village
+      Two, Village Three, housing the miners of the Gould Concession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in the
+      Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had spread over the
+      pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the waters of a high flood,
+      into the nooks and crannies of the distant blue walls of the Sierras.
+      Father first, in a pointed straw hat, then the mother with the bigger
+      children, generally also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens, except
+      the leader himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the family,
+      stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of raven hair, a
+      thick, haughty profile, and no load to carry but the small guitar of the
+      country and a pair of soft leather sandals tied together on her back. At
+      the sight of such parties strung out on the cross trails between the
+      pastures, or camped by the side of the royal road, travellers on horseback
+      would remark to each other&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More people going to the San Tome mine. We shall see others to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And spurring on in the dusk they would discuss the great news of the
+      province, the news of the San Tome mine. A rich Englishman was going to
+      work it&mdash;and perhaps not an Englishman, Quien sabe! A foreigner with
+      much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of men who had been to Sulaco
+      with a herd of black bulls for the next corrida had reported that from the
+      porch of the posada in Rincon, only a short league from the town, the
+      lights on the mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees. And there
+      was a woman seen riding a horse sideways, not in the chair seat, but upon
+      a sort of saddle, and a man&rsquo;s hat on her head. She walked about, too, on
+      foot up the mountain paths. A woman engineer, it seemed she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well! if your worship is informed. <i>Una Americana</i>; it need be
+      something of that sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they would laugh a little with astonishment and scorn, keeping a wary
+      eye on the shadows of the road, for one is liable to meet bad men when
+      travelling late on the Campo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well, but he seemed
+      able, with one attentive, thoughtful glance, to classify each woman, girl,
+      or growing youth of his domain. It was only the small fry that puzzled him
+      sometimes. He and the padre could be seen frequently side by side,
+      meditative and gazing across the street of a village at a lot of sedate
+      brown children, trying to sort them out, as it were, in low, consulting
+      tones, or else they would together put searching questions as to the
+      parentage of some small, staid urchin met wandering, naked and grave,
+      along the road with a cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his mother&rsquo;s
+      rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hanging in a loop of
+      beads low down on his rotund little stomach. The spiritual and temporal
+      pastors of the mine flock were very good friends. With Dr. Monygham, the
+      medical pastor, who had accepted the charge from Mrs. Gould, and lived in
+      the hospital building, they were on not so intimate terms. But no one
+      could be on intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who, with his twisted
+      shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long bitter glance, was
+      mysterious and uncanny. The other two authorities worked in harmony.
+      Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert, wrinkled, with big round eyes, a
+      sharp chin, and a great snuff-taker, was an old campaigner, too; he had
+      shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of the Republic, kneeling by
+      the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of the forests, to
+      hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowder smoke in his
+      nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter of bullets in his
+      ears. And where was the harm if, at the presbytery, they had a game with a
+      pack of greasy cards in the early evening, before Don Pepe went his last
+      rounds to see that all the watchmen of the mine&mdash;a body organized by
+      himself&mdash;were at their posts? For that last duty before he slept Don
+      Pepe did actually gird his old sword on the verandah of an unmistakable
+      American white frame house, which Father Roman called the presbytery. Near
+      by, a long, low, dark building, steeple-roofed, like a vast barn with a
+      wooden cross over the gable, was the miners&rsquo; chapel. There Father Roman
+      said Mass every day before a sombre altar-piece representing the
+      Resurrection, the grey slab of the tombstone balanced on one corner, a
+      figure soaring upwards, long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light,
+      and a helmeted brown legionary smitten down, right across the bituminous
+      foreground. &ldquo;This picture, my children, <i>muy linda e maravillosa</i>,&rdquo;
+       Father Roman would say to some of his flock, &ldquo;which you behold here
+      through the munificence of the wife of our Senor Administrador, has been
+      painted in Europe, a country of saints and miracles, and much greater than
+      our Costaguana.&rdquo; And he would take a pinch of snuff with unction. But when
+      once an inquisitive spirit desired to know in what direction this Europe
+      was situated, whether up or down the coast, Father Roman, to conceal his
+      perplexity, became very reserved and severe. &ldquo;No doubt it is extremely far
+      away. But ignorant sinners like you of the San Tome mine should think
+      earnestly of everlasting punishment instead of inquiring into the
+      magnitude of the earth, with its countries and populations altogether
+      beyond your understanding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a &ldquo;Good-night, Padre,&rdquo; &ldquo;Good-night, Don Pepe,&rdquo; the Gobernador would
+      go off, holding up his sabre against his side, his body bent forward, with
+      a long, plodding stride in the dark. The jocularity proper to an innocent
+      card game for a few cigars or a bundle of yerba was replaced at once by
+      the stern duty mood of an officer setting out to visit the outposts of an
+      encamped army. One loud blast of the whistle that hung from his neck
+      provoked instantly a great shrilling of responding whistles, mingled with
+      the barking of dogs, that would calm down slowly at last, away up at the
+      head of the gorge; and in the stillness two serenos, on guard by the
+      bridge, would appear walking noiselessly towards him. On one side of the
+      road a long frame building&mdash;the store&mdash;would be closed and
+      barricaded from end to end; facing it another white frame house, still
+      longer, and with a verandah&mdash;the hospital&mdash;would have lights in
+      the two windows of Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s quarters. Even the delicate foliage of a
+      clump of pepper trees did not stir, so breathless would be the darkness
+      warmed by the radiation of the over-heated rocks. Don Pepe would stand
+      still for a moment with the two motionless serenos before him, and,
+      abruptly, high up on the sheer face of the mountain, dotted with single
+      torches, like drops of fire fallen from the two great blazing clusters of
+      lights above, the ore shoots would begin to rattle. The great clattering,
+      shuffling noise, gathering speed and weight, would be caught up by the
+      walls of the gorge, and sent upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The
+      pasadero in Rincon swore that on calm nights, by listening intently, he
+      could catch the sound in his doorway as of a storm in the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Charles Gould&rsquo;s fancy it seemed that the sound must reach the uttermost
+      limits of the province. Riding at night towards the mine, it would meet
+      him at the edge of a little wood just beyond Rincon. There was no
+      mistaking the growling mutter of the mountain pouring its stream of
+      treasure under the stamps; and it came to his heart with the peculiar
+      force of a proclamation thundered forth over the land and the
+      marvellousness of an accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious desire. He
+      had heard this very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening when
+      his wife and himself, after a tortuous ride through a strip of forest, had
+      reined in their horses near the stream, and had gazed for the first time
+      upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. The head of a palm rose here
+      and there. In a high ravine round the corner of the San Tome mountain
+      (which is square like a blockhouse) the thread of a slender waterfall
+      flashed bright and glassy through the dark green of the heavy fronds of
+      tree-ferns. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and, stretching his arm up
+      the gorge, had declared with mock solemnity, &ldquo;Behold the very paradise of
+      snakes, senora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back to sleep that night
+      at Rincon. The alcalde&mdash;an old, skinny Moreno, a sergeant of Guzman
+      Bento&rsquo;s time&mdash;had cleared respectfully out of his house with his
+      three pretty daughters, to make room for the foreign senora and their
+      worships the Caballeros. All he asked Charles Gould (whom he took for a
+      mysterious and official person) to do for him was to remind the supreme
+      Government&mdash;El Gobierno supreme&mdash;of a pension (amounting to
+      about a dollar a month) to which he believed himself entitled. It had been
+      promised to him, he affirmed, straightening his bent back martially, &ldquo;many
+      years ago, for my valour in the wars with the wild Indios when a young
+      man, senor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The waterfall existed no longer. The tree-ferns that had luxuriated in its
+      spray had died around the dried-up pool, and the high ravine was only a
+      big trench half filled up with the refuse of excavations and tailings. The
+      torrent, dammed up above, sent its water rushing along the open flumes of
+      scooped tree trunks striding on trestle-legs to the turbines working the
+      stamps on the lower plateau&mdash;the mesa grande of the San Tome
+      mountain. Only the memory of the waterfall, with its amazing fernery, like
+      a hanging garden above the rocks of the gorge, was preserved in Mrs.
+      Gould&rsquo;s water-colour sketch; she had made it hastily one day from a
+      cleared patch in the bushes, sitting in the shade of a roof of straw
+      erected for her on three rough poles under Don Pepe&rsquo;s direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould had seen it all from the beginning: the clearing of the
+      wilderness, the making of the road, the cutting of new paths up the cliff
+      face of San Tome. For weeks together she had lived on the spot with her
+      husband; and she was so little in Sulaco during that year that the
+      appearance of the Gould carriage on the Alameda would cause a social
+      excitement. From the heavy family coaches full of stately senoras and
+      black-eyed senoritas rolling solemnly in the shaded alley white hands were
+      waved towards her with animation in a flutter of greetings. Dona Emilia
+      was &ldquo;down from the mountain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But not for long. Dona Emilia would be gone &ldquo;up to the mountain&rdquo; in a day
+      or two, and her sleek carriage mules would have an easy time of it for
+      another long spell. She had watched the erection of the first frame-house
+      put up on the lower mesa for an office and Don Pepe&rsquo;s quarters; she heard
+      with a thrill of thankful emotion the first wagon load of ore rattle down
+      the then only shoot; she had stood by her husband&rsquo;s side perfectly silent,
+      and gone cold all over with excitement at the instant when the first
+      battery of only fifteen stamps was put in motion for the first time. On
+      the occasion when the fires under the first set of retorts in their shed
+      had glowed far into the night she did not retire to rest on the rough
+      cadre set up for her in the as yet bare frame-house till she had seen the
+      first spongy lump of silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the
+      dark depths of the Gould Concession; she had laid her unmercenary hands,
+      with an eagerness that made them tremble, upon the first silver ingot
+      turned out still warm from the mould; and by her imaginative estimate of
+      its power she endowed that lump of metal with a justificative conception,
+      as though it were not a mere fact, but something far-reaching and
+      impalpable, like the true expression of an emotion or the emergence of a
+      principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Pepe, extremely interested, too, looked over her shoulder with a smile
+      that, making longitudinal folds on his face, caused it to resemble a
+      leathern mask with a benignantly diabolic expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get hold of this
+      insignificant object, that looks, por Dios, very much like a piece of
+      tin?&rdquo; he remarked, jocularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hernandez, the robber, had been an inoffensive, small ranchero, kidnapped
+      with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home during one of the
+      civil wars, and forced to serve in the army. There his conduct as soldier
+      was exemplary, till, watching his chance, he killed his colonel, and
+      managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters, who chose him for
+      their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de
+      Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses;
+      extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes
+      from capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the villages and the
+      little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before him, with two
+      revolvers in his belt, go straight to the shop or store, select what he
+      wanted, and ride away unopposed because of the terror his exploits and his
+      audacity inspired. Poor country people he usually left alone; the upper
+      class were often stopped on the roads and robbed; but any unlucky official
+      that fell into his hands was sure to get a severe flogging. The army
+      officers did not like his name to be mentioned in their presence. His
+      followers, mounted on stolen horses, laughed at the pursuit of the regular
+      cavalry sent to hunt them down, and whom they took pleasure to ambush most
+      scientifically in the broken ground of their own fastness. Expeditions had
+      been fitted out; a price had been put upon his head; even attempts had
+      been made, treacherously of course, to open negotiations with him, without
+      in the slightest way affecting the even tenor of his career. At last, in
+      true Costaguana fashion, the Fiscal of Tonoro, who was ambitious of the
+      glory of having reduced the famous Hernandez, offered him a sum of money
+      and a safe conduct out of the country for the betrayal of his band. But
+      Hernandez evidently was not of the stuff of which the distinguished
+      military politicians and conspirators of Costaguana are made. This clever
+      but common device (which frequently works like a charm in putting down
+      revolutions) failed with the chief of vulgar Salteadores. It promised well
+      for the Fiscal at first, but ended very badly for the squadron of lanceros
+      posted (by the Fiscal&rsquo;s directions) in a fold of the ground into which
+      Hernandez had promised to lead his unsuspecting followers They came,
+      indeed, at the appointed time, but creeping on their hands and knees
+      through the bush, and only let their presence be known by a general
+      discharge of firearms, which emptied many saddles. The troopers who
+      escaped came riding very hard into Tonoro. It is said that their
+      commanding officer (who, being better mounted, rode far ahead of the rest)
+      afterwards got into a state of despairing intoxication and beat the
+      ambitious Fiscal severely with the flat of his sabre in the presence of
+      his wife and daughters, for bringing this disgrace upon the National Army.
+      The highest civil official of Tonoro, falling to the ground in a swoon,
+      was further kicked all over the body and rowelled with sharp spurs about
+      the neck and face because of the great sensitiveness of his military
+      colleague. This gossip of the inland Campo, so characteristic of the
+      rulers of the country with its story of oppression, inefficiency, fatuous
+      methods, treachery, and savage brutality, was perfectly known to Mrs.
+      Gould. That it should be accepted with no indignant comment by people of
+      intelligence, refinement, and character as something inherent in the
+      nature of things was one of the symptoms of degradation that had the power
+      to exasperate her almost to the verge of despair. Still looking at the
+      ingot of silver, she shook her head at Don Pepe&rsquo;s remark&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your Government, Don Pepe,
+      many an outlaw now with Hernandez would be living peaceably and happy by
+      the honest work of his hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senora,&rdquo; cried Don Pepe, with enthusiasm, &ldquo;it is true! It is as if God
+      had given you the power to look into the very breasts of people. You have
+      seen them working round you, Dona Emilia&mdash;meek as lambs, patient like
+      their own burros, brave like lions. I have led them to the very muzzles of
+      guns&mdash;I, who stand here before you, senora&mdash;in the time of Paez,
+      who was full of generosity, and in courage only approached by the uncle of
+      Don Carlos here, as far as I know. No wonder there are bandits in the
+      Campo when there are none but thieves, swindlers, and sanguinary macaques
+      to rule us in Sta. Marta. However, all the same, a bandit is a bandit, and
+      we shall have a dozen good straight Winchesters to ride with the silver
+      down to Sulaco.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s ride with the first silver escort to Sulaco was the closing
+      episode of what she called &ldquo;my camp life&rdquo; before she had settled in her
+      town-house permanently, as was proper and even necessary for the wife of
+      the administrator of such an important institution as the San Tome mine.
+      For the San Tome mine was to become an institution, a rallying point for
+      everything in the province that needed order and stability to live.
+      Security seemed to flow upon this land from the mountain-gorge. The
+      authorities of Sulaco had learned that the San Tome mine could make it
+      worth their while to leave things and people alone. This was the nearest
+      approach to the rule of common-sense and justice Charles Gould felt it
+      possible to secure at first. In fact, the mine, with its organization, its
+      population growing fiercely attached to their position of privileged
+      safety, with its armoury, with its Don Pepe, with its armed body of
+      serenos (where, it was said, many an outlaw and deserter&mdash;and even
+      some members of Hernandez&rsquo;s band&mdash;had found a place), the mine was a
+      power in the land. As a certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had exclaimed
+      with a hollow laugh, once, when discussing the line of action taken by the
+      Sulaco authorities at a time of political crisis&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You call these men Government officials? They? Never! They are officials
+      of the mine&mdash;officials of the Concession&mdash;I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prominent man (who was then a person in power, with a lemon-coloured
+      face and a very short and curly, not to say woolly, head of hair) went so
+      far in his temporary discontent as to shake his yellow fist under the nose
+      of his interlocutor, and shriek&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Gefe, the chief of the
+      police, the chief of the customs, the general, all, all, are the officials
+      of that Gould.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow on for a
+      space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent man&rsquo;s passion would
+      end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders. After all, he seemed to say, what
+      did it matter as long as the minister himself was not forgotten during his
+      brief day of authority? But all the same, the unofficial agent of the San
+      Tome mine, working for a good cause, had his moments of anxiety, which
+      were reflected in his letters to Don Jose Avellanos, his maternal uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set foot on that part of
+      Costaguana which lies beyond the San Tome bridge,&rdquo; Don Pepe used to assure
+      Mrs. Gould. &ldquo;Except, of course, as an honoured guest&mdash;for our Senor
+      Administrador is a deep politico.&rdquo; But to Charles Gould, in his own room,
+      the old Major would remark with a grim and soldierly cheeriness, &ldquo;We are
+      all playing our heads at this game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose Avellanos would mutter &ldquo;Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my soul,&rdquo;
+       with an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow, in a curious
+      way, seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily discomfort. But that,
+      perhaps, could only be visible to the initiated. And for the initiated it
+      was a wonderful place, this drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its
+      momentary glimpses of the master&mdash;El Senor Administrador&mdash;older,
+      harder, mysteriously silent, with the lines deepened on his English,
+      ruddy, out-of-doors complexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman&rsquo;s legs
+      across the doorways, either just &ldquo;back from the mountain&rdquo; or with jingling
+      spurs and riding-whip under his arm, on the point of starting &ldquo;for the
+      mountain.&rdquo; Then Don Pepe, modestly martial in his chair, the llanero who
+      seemed somehow to have found his martial jocularity, his knowledge of the
+      world, and his manner perfect for his station, in the midst of savage
+      armed contests with his kind; Avellanos, polished and familiar, the
+      diplomatist with his loquacity covering much caution and wisdom in
+      delicate advice, with his manuscript of a historical work on Costaguana,
+      entitled &ldquo;Fifty Years of Misrule,&rdquo; which, at present, he thought it was
+      not prudent (even if it were possible) &ldquo;to give to the world&rdquo;; these
+      three, and also Dona Emilia amongst them, gracious, small, and fairy-like,
+      before the glittering tea-set, with one common master-thought in their
+      heads, with one common feeling of a tense situation, with one ever-present
+      aim to preserve the inviolable character of the mine at every cost. And
+      there was also to be seen Captain Mitchell, a little apart, near one of
+      the long windows, with an air of old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood about
+      him, slightly pompous, in a white waistcoat, a little disregarded and
+      unconscious of it; utterly in the dark, and imagining himself to be in the
+      thick of things. The good man, having spent a clear thirty years of his
+      life on the high seas before getting what he called a &ldquo;shore billet,&rdquo; was
+      astonished at the importance of transactions (other than relating to
+      shipping) which take place on dry land. Almost every event out of the
+      usual daily course &ldquo;marked an epoch&rdquo; for him or else was &ldquo;history&rdquo;; unless
+      with his pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of his rubicund,
+      rather handsome face, set off by snow-white close hair and short whiskers,
+      he would mutter&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reception of the first consignment of San Tome silver for shipment to
+      San Francisco in one of the O.S.N. Co.&lsquo;s mail-boats had, of course,
+      &ldquo;marked an epoch&rdquo; for Captain Mitchell. The ingots packed in boxes of
+      stiff ox-hide with plaited handles, small enough to be carried easily by
+      two men, were brought down by the serenos of the mine walking in careful
+      couples along the half-mile or so of steep, zigzag paths to the foot of
+      the mountain. There they would be loaded into a string of two-wheeled
+      carts, resembling roomy coffers with a door at the back, and harnessed
+      tandem with two mules each, waiting under the guard of armed and mounted
+      serenos. Don Pepe padlocked each door in succession, and at the signal of
+      his whistle the string of carts would move off, closely surrounded by the
+      clank of spur and carbine, with jolts and cracking of whips, with a sudden
+      deep rumble over the boundary bridge (&ldquo;into the land of thieves and
+      sanguinary macaques,&rdquo; Don Pepe defined that crossing); hats bobbing in the
+      first light of the dawn, on the heads of cloaked figures; Winchesters on
+      hip; bridle hands protruding lean and brown from under the falling folds
+      of the ponchos. The convoy skirting a little wood, along the mine trail,
+      between the mud huts and low walls of Rincon, increased its pace on the
+      camino real, mules urged to speed, escort galloping, Don Carlos riding
+      alone ahead of a dust storm affording a vague vision of long ears of
+      mules, of fluttering little green and white flags stuck upon each cart; of
+      raised arms in a mob of sombreros with the white gleam of ranging eyes;
+      and Don Pepe, hardly visible in the rear of that rattling dust trail, with
+      a stiff seat and impassive face, rising and falling rhythmically on an
+      ewe-necked silver-bitted black brute with a hammer head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleepy people in the little clusters of huts, in the small ranches
+      near the road, recognized by the headlong sound the charge of the San Tome
+      silver escort towards the crumbling wall of the city on the Campo side.
+      They came to the doors to see it dash by over ruts and stones, with a
+      clatter and clank and cracking of whips, with the reckless rush and
+      precise driving of a field battery hurrying into action, and the solitary
+      English figure of the Senor Administrador riding far ahead in the lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fenced roadside paddocks loose horses galloped wildly for a while;
+      the heavy cattle stood up breast deep in the grass, lowing mutteringly at
+      the flying noise; a meek Indian villager would glance back once and hasten
+      to shove his loaded little donkey bodily against a wall, out of the way of
+      the San Tome silver escort going to the sea; a small knot of chilly
+      leperos under the Stone Horse of the Alameda would mutter: &ldquo;Caramba!&rdquo; on
+      seeing it take a wide curve at a gallop and dart into the empty Street of
+      the Constitution; for it was considered the correct thing, the only proper
+      style by the mule-drivers of the San Tome mine to go through the waking
+      town from end to end without a check in the speed as if chased by a devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The early sunshine glowed on the delicate primrose, pale pink, pale blue
+      fronts of the big houses with all their gates shut yet, and no face behind
+      the iron bars of the windows. In the whole sunlit range of empty balconies
+      along the street only one white figure would be visible high up above the
+      clear pavement&mdash;the wife of the Senor Administrador&mdash;leaning
+      over to see the escort go by to the harbour, a mass of heavy, fair hair
+      twisted up negligently on her little head, and a lot of lace about the
+      neck of her muslin wrapper. With a smile to her husband&rsquo;s single, quick,
+      upward glance, she would watch the whole thing stream past below her feet
+      with an orderly uproar, till she answered by a friendly sign the salute of
+      the galloping Don Pepe, the stiff, deferential inclination with a sweep of
+      the hat below the knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The string of padlocked carts lengthened, the size of the escort grew
+      bigger as the years went on. Every three months an increasing stream of
+      treasure swept through the streets of Sulaco on its way to the strong room
+      in the O.S.N. Co.&lsquo;s building by the harbour, there to await shipment for
+      the North. Increasing in volume, and of immense value also; for, as
+      Charles Gould told his wife once with some exultation, there had never
+      been seen anything in the world to approach the vein of the Gould
+      Concession. For them both, each passing of the escort under the balconies
+      of the Casa Gould was like another victory gained in the conquest of peace
+      for Sulaco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt the initial action of Charles Gould had been helped at the
+      beginning by a period of comparative peace which occurred just about that
+      time; and also by the general softening of manners as compared with the
+      epoch of civil wars whence had emerged the iron tyranny of Guzman Bento of
+      fearful memory. In the contests that broke out at the end of his rule
+      (which had kept peace in the country for a whole fifteen years) there was
+      more fatuous imbecility, plenty of cruelty and suffering still, but much
+      less of the old-time fierce and blindly ferocious political fanaticism. It
+      was all more vile, more base, more contemptible, and infinitely more
+      manageable in the very outspoken cynicism of motives. It was more clearly
+      a brazen-faced scramble for a constantly diminishing quantity of booty;
+      since all enterprise had been stupidly killed in the land. Thus it came to
+      pass that the province of Sulaco, once the field of cruel party
+      vengeances, had become in a way one of the considerable prizes of
+      political career. The great of the earth (in Sta. Marta) reserved the
+      posts in the old Occidental State to those nearest and dearest to them:
+      nephews, brothers, husbands of favourite sisters, bosom friends, trusty
+      supporters&mdash;or prominent supporters of whom perhaps they were afraid.
+      It was the blessed province of great opportunities and of largest
+      salaries; for the San Tome mine had its own unofficial pay list, whose
+      items and amounts, fixed in consultation by Charles Gould and Senor
+      Avellanos, were known to a prominent business man in the United States,
+      who for twenty minutes or so in every month gave his undivided attention
+      to Sulaco affairs. At the same time the material interests of all sorts,
+      backed up by the influence of the San Tome mine, were quietly gathering
+      substance in that part of the Republic. If, for instance, the Sulaco
+      Collectorship was generally understood, in the political world of the
+      capital, to open the way to the Ministry of Finance, and so on for every
+      official post, then, on the other hand, the despondent business circles of
+      the Republic had come to consider the Occidental Province as the promised
+      land of safety, especially if a man managed to get on good terms with the
+      administration of the mine. &ldquo;Charles Gould; excellent fellow! Absolutely
+      necessary to make sure of him before taking a single step. Get an
+      introduction to him from Moraga if you can&mdash;the agent of the King of
+      Sulaco, don&rsquo;t you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No wonder, then, that Sir John, coming from Europe to smooth the path for
+      his railway, had been meeting the name (and even the nickname) of Charles
+      Gould at every turn in Costaguana. The agent of the San Tome
+      Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished, well-informed gentleman, Sir
+      John thought him) had certainly helped so greatly in bringing about the
+      presidential tour that he began to think that there was something in the
+      faint whispers hinting at the immense occult influence of the Gould
+      Concession. What was currently whispered was this&mdash;that the San Tome
+      Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last revolution, which
+      had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don Vincente Ribiera, a man of
+      culture and of unblemished character, invested with a mandate of reform by
+      the best elements of the State. Serious, well-informed men seemed to
+      believe the fact, to hope for better things, for the establishment of
+      legality, of good faith and order in public life. So much the better,
+      then, thought Sir John. He worked always on a great scale; there was a
+      loan to the State, and a project for systematic colonization of the
+      Occidental Province, involved in one vast scheme with the construction of
+      the National Central Railway. Good faith, order, honesty, peace, were
+      badly wanted for this great development of material interests. Anybody on
+      the side of these things, and especially if able to help, had an
+      importance in Sir John&rsquo;s eyes. He had not been disappointed in the &ldquo;King
+      of Sulaco.&rdquo; The local difficulties had fallen away, as the
+      engineer-in-chief had foretold they would, before Charles Gould&rsquo;s
+      mediation. Sir John had been extremely feted in Sulaco, next to the
+      President-Dictator, a fact which might have accounted for the evident
+      ill-humour General Montero displayed at lunch given on board the Juno just
+      before she was to sail, taking away from Sulaco the President-Dictator and
+      the distinguished foreign guests in his train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Excellentissimo (&ldquo;the hope of honest men,&rdquo; as Don Jose had addressed
+      him in a public speech delivered in the name of the Provincial Assembly of
+      Sulaco) sat at the head of the long table; Captain Mitchell, positively
+      stony-eyed and purple in the face with the solemnity of this &ldquo;historical
+      event,&rdquo; occupied the foot as the representative of the O.S.N. Company in
+      Sulaco, the hosts of that informal function, with the captain of the ship
+      and some minor officials from the shore around him. Those cheery, swarthy
+      little gentlemen cast jovial side-glances at the bottles of champagne
+      beginning to pop behind the guests&rsquo; backs in the hands of the ship&rsquo;s
+      stewards. The amber wine creamed up to the rims of the glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould had his place next to a foreign envoy, who, in a listless
+      undertone, had been talking to him fitfully of hunting and shooting. The
+      well-nourished, pale face, with an eyeglass and drooping yellow moustache,
+      made the Senor Administrador appear by contrast twice as sunbaked, more
+      flaming red, a hundred times more intensely and silently alive. Don Jose
+      Avellanos touched elbows with the other foreign diplomat, a dark man with
+      a quiet, watchful, self-confident demeanour, and a touch of reserve. All
+      etiquette being laid aside on the occasion, General Montero was the only
+      one there in full uniform, so stiff with embroideries in front that his
+      broad chest seemed protected by a cuirass of gold. Sir John at the
+      beginning had got away from high places for the sake of sitting near Mrs.
+      Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great financier was trying to express to her his grateful sense of her
+      hospitality and of his obligation to her husband&rsquo;s &ldquo;enormous influence in
+      this part of the country,&rdquo; when she interrupted him by a low &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; The
+      President was going to make an informal pronouncement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Excellentissimo was on his legs. He said only a few words, evidently
+      deeply felt, and meant perhaps mostly for Avellanos&mdash;his old friend&mdash;as
+      to the necessity of unremitting effort to secure the lasting welfare of
+      the country emerging after this last struggle, he hoped, into a period of
+      peace and material prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice, looking at
+      this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body, obese to the point
+      of infirmity, thought that this man of delicate and melancholy mind,
+      physically almost a cripple, coming out of his retirement into a dangerous
+      strife at the call of his fellows, had the right to speak with the
+      authority of his self-sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He was more
+      pathetic than promising, this first civilian Chief of the State Costaguana
+      had ever known, pronouncing, glass in hand, his simple watchwords of
+      honesty, peace, respect for law, political good faith abroad and at home&mdash;the
+      safeguards of national honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices that
+      followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy, drooping
+      eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy dullness from face to
+      face. The military backwoods hero of the party, though secretly impressed
+      by the sudden novelties and splendours of his position (he had never been
+      on board a ship before, and had hardly ever seen the sea except from a
+      distance), understood by a sort of instinct the advantage his surly,
+      unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all these refined
+      Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was looking at him? he
+      wondered to himself angrily. He was able to spell out the print of
+      newspapers, and knew that he had performed the &ldquo;greatest military exploit
+      of modern times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband wanted the railway,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould said to Sir John in the
+      general murmur of resumed conversations. &ldquo;All this brings nearer the sort
+      of future we desire for the country, which has waited for it in sorrow
+      long enough, God knows. But I will confess that the other day, during my
+      afternoon drive when I suddenly saw an Indian boy ride out of a wood with
+      the red flag of a surveying party in his hand, I felt something of a
+      shock. The future means change&mdash;an utter change. And yet even here
+      there are simple and picturesque things that one would like to preserve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now to hush Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General Montero is going to speak,&rdquo; he whispered, and almost immediately
+      added, in comic alarm, &ldquo;Heavens! he&rsquo;s going to propose my own health, I
+      believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple of
+      glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared at his
+      side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with his bull
+      neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed
+      moustache, he looked like a disguised and sinister vaquero. The drone of
+      his voice had a strangely rasping, soulless ring. He floundered, lowering,
+      through a few vague sentences; then suddenly raising his big head and his
+      voice together, burst out harshly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The honour of the country is in the hands of the army. I assure you I
+      shall be faithful to it.&rdquo; He hesitated till his roaming eyes met Sir
+      John&rsquo;s face upon which he fixed a lurid, sleepy glance; and the figure of
+      the lately negotiated loan came into his mind. He lifted his glass. &ldquo;I
+      drink to the health of the man who brings us a million and a half of
+      pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tossed off his champagne, and sat down heavily with a half-surprised,
+      half-bullying look all round the faces in the profound, as if appalled,
+      silence which succeeded the felicitous toast. Sir John did not move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I am called upon to rise,&rdquo; he murmured to Mrs. Gould. &ldquo;That
+      sort of thing speaks for itself.&rdquo; But Don Jose Avellanos came to the
+      rescue with a short oration, in which he alluded pointedly to England&rsquo;s
+      goodwill towards Costaguana&mdash;&ldquo;a goodwill,&rdquo; he continued,
+      significantly, &ldquo;of which I, having been in my time accredited to the Court
+      of St. James, am able to speak with some knowledge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only then Sir John thought fit to respond, which he did gracefully in bad
+      French, punctuated by bursts of applause and the &ldquo;Hear! Hears!&rdquo; of Captain
+      Mitchell, who was able to understand a word now and then. Directly he had
+      done, the financier of railways turned to Mrs. Gould&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were good enough to say that you intended to ask me for something,&rdquo;
+       he reminded her, gallantly. &ldquo;What is it? Be assured that any request from
+      you would be considered in the light of a favour to myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thanked him by a gracious smile. Everybody was rising from the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go on deck,&rdquo; she proposed, &ldquo;where I&rsquo;ll be able to point out to you
+      the very object of my request.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An enormous national flag of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow, with two
+      green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the mainmast head of the
+      Juno. A multitude of fireworks being let off in their thousands at the
+      water&rsquo;s edge in honour of the President kept up a mysterious crepitating
+      noise half round the harbour. Now and then a lot of rockets, swishing
+      upwards invisibly, detonated overhead with only a puff of smoke in the
+      bright sky. Crowds of people could be seen between the town gate and the
+      harbour, under the bunches of multicoloured flags fluttering on tall
+      poles. Faint bursts of military music would be heard suddenly, and the
+      remote sound of shouting. A knot of ragged negroes at the end of the wharf
+      kept on loading and firing a small iron cannon time after time. A greyish
+      haze of dust hung thin and motionless against the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Vincente Ribiera made a few steps under the deck-awning, leaning on
+      the arm of Senor Avellanos; a wide circle was formed round him, where the
+      mirthless smile of his dark lips and the sightless glitter of his
+      spectacles could be seen turning amiably from side to side. The informal
+      function arranged on purpose on board the Juno to give the
+      President-Dictator an opportunity to meet intimately some of his most
+      notable adherents in Sulaco was drawing to an end. On one side, General
+      Montero, his bald head covered now by a plumed cocked hat, remained
+      motionless on a skylight seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded on
+      the hilt of the sabre standing upright between his legs. The white plume,
+      the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the moustaches under
+      the curved beak, the mass of gold on sleeves and breast, the high shining
+      boots with enormous spurs, the working nostrils, the imbecile and
+      domineering stare of the glorious victor of Rio Seco had in them something
+      ominous and incredible; the exaggeration of a cruel caricature, the
+      fatuity of solemn masquerading, the atrocious grotesqueness of some
+      military idol of Aztec conception and European bedecking, awaiting the
+      homage of worshippers. Don Jose approached diplomatically this weird and
+      inscrutable portent, and Mrs. Gould turned her fascinated eyes away at
+      last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles, coming up to take leave of Sir John, heard him say, as he bent
+      over his wife&rsquo;s hand, &ldquo;Certainly. Of course, my dear Mrs. Gould, for a
+      protege of yours! Not the slightest difficulty. Consider it done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don Jose Avellanos was very
+      silent. Even in the Gould carriage he did not open his lips for a long
+      time. The mules trotted slowly away from the wharf between the extended
+      hands of the beggars, who for that day seemed to have abandoned in a body
+      the portals of churches. Charles Gould sat on the back seat and looked
+      away upon the plain. A multitude of booths made of green boughs, of
+      rushes, of odd pieces of plank eked out with bits of canvas had been
+      erected all over it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit, of cigars.
+      Over little heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting on mats,
+      cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water for the mate
+      gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing voices to the country
+      people. A racecourse had been staked out for the vaqueros; and away to the
+      left, from where the crowd was massed thickly about a huge temporary
+      erection, like a circus tent of wood with a conical grass roof, came the
+      resonant twanging of harp strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the
+      grave drumming throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily through the
+      shrill choruses of the dancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould said presently&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Company. There will be
+      no more popular feasts held here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this opportunity to
+      mention how she had just obtained from Sir John the promise that the house
+      occupied by Giorgio Viola should not be interfered with. She declared she
+      could never understand why the survey engineers ever talked of demolishing
+      that old building. It was not in the way of the projected harbour branch
+      of the line in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at once the old
+      Genoese, who came out bare-headed and stood by the carriage step. She
+      talked to him in Italian, of course, and he thanked her with calm dignity.
+      An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from the bottom of his heart for
+      keeping the roof over the heads of his wife and children. He was too old
+      to wander any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is it for ever, signora?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For as long as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bene. Then the place must be named, It was not worth while before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled ruggedly, with a running together of wrinkles at the corners of
+      his eyes. &ldquo;I shall set about the painting of the name to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is it going to be, Giorgio?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Albergo d&rsquo;Italia Una,&rdquo; said the old Garibaldino, looking away for a
+      moment. &ldquo;More in memory of those who have died,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;than for the
+      country stolen from us soldiers of liberty by the craft of that accursed
+      Piedmontese race of kings and ministers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould smiled slightly, and, bending over a little, began to inquire
+      about his wife and children. He had sent them into town on that day. The
+      padrona was better in health; many thanks to the signora for inquiring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People were passing in twos and threes, in whole parties of men and women
+      attended by trotting children. A horseman mounted on a silver-grey mare
+      drew rein quietly in the shade of the house after taking off his hat to
+      the party in the carriage, who returned smiles and familiar nods. Old
+      Viola, evidently very pleased with the news he had just heard, interrupted
+      himself for a moment to tell him rapidly that the house was secured, by
+      the kindness of the English signora, for as long as he liked to keep it.
+      The other listened attentively, but made no response.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the carriage moved on he took off his hat again, a grey sombrero with
+      a silver cord and tassels. The bright colours of a Mexican serape twisted
+      on the cantle, the enormous silver buttons on the embroidered leather
+      jacket, the row of tiny silver buttons down the seam of the trousers, the
+      snowy linen, a silk sash with embroidered ends, the silver plates on
+      headstall and saddle, proclaimed the unapproachable style of the famous
+      Capataz de Cargadores&mdash;a Mediterranean sailor&mdash;got up with more
+      finished splendour than any well-to-do young ranchero of the Campo had
+      ever displayed on a high holiday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great thing for me,&rdquo; murmured old Giorgio, still thinking of the
+      house, for now he had grown weary of change. &ldquo;The signora just said a word
+      to the Englishman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old Englishman who has enough money to pay for a railway? He is going
+      off in an hour,&rdquo; remarked Nostromo, carelessly. &ldquo;<i>Buon viaggio</i>,
+      then. I&rsquo;ve guarded his bones all the way from the Entrada pass down to the
+      plain and into Sulaco, as though he had been my own father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Giorgio only moved his head sideways absently. Nostromo pointed after
+      the Goulds&rsquo; carriage, nearing the grass-grown gate in the old town wall
+      that was like a wall of matted jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I have sat alone at night with my revolver in the Company&rsquo;s warehouse
+      time and again by the side of that other Englishman&rsquo;s heap of silver,
+      guarding it as though it had been my own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola seemed lost in thought. &ldquo;It is a great thing for me,&rdquo; he repeated
+      again, as if to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; agreed the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, calmly. &ldquo;Listen,
+      Vecchio&mdash;go in and bring me, out a cigar, but don&rsquo;t look for it in my
+      room. There&rsquo;s nothing there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola stepped into the cafe and came out directly, still absorbed in his
+      idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in his moustache,
+      &ldquo;Children growing up&mdash;and girls, too! Girls!&rdquo; He sighed and fell
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, only one?&rdquo; remarked Nostromo, looking down with a sort of comic
+      inquisitiveness at the unconscious old man. &ldquo;No matter,&rdquo; he added, with
+      lofty negligence; &ldquo;one is enough till another is wanted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lit it and let the match drop from his passive fingers. Giorgio Viola
+      looked up, and said abruptly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son would have been just such a fine young man as you, Gian&rsquo; Battista,
+      if he had lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? Your son? But you are right, padrone. If he had been like me he
+      would have been a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the booths, checking the
+      mare almost to a standstill now and then for children, for the groups of
+      people from the distant Campo, who stared after him with admiration. The
+      Company&rsquo;s lightermen saluted him from afar; and the greatly envied Capataz
+      de Cargadores advanced, amongst murmurs of recognition and obsequious
+      greetings, towards the huge circus-like erection. The throng thickened;
+      the guitars tinkled louder; other horsemen sat motionless, smoking calmly
+      above the heads of the crowd; it eddied and pushed before the doors of the
+      high-roofed building, whence issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time
+      to the dance music vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung
+      by the tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The barbarous and
+      imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a crowd, and that even
+      Europeans cannot hear without a strange emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo
+      on to its source, while a man, wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho, walked
+      by his stirrup, and, buffeted right and left, begged &ldquo;his worship&rdquo;
+       insistently for employment on the wharf. He whined, offering the Senor
+      Capataz half his daily pay for the privilege of being admitted to the
+      swaggering fraternity of Cargadores; the other half would be enough for
+      him, he protested. But Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s right-hand man&mdash;&ldquo;invaluable
+      for our work&mdash;a perfectly incorruptible fellow&rdquo;&mdash;after looking
+      down critically at the ragged mozo, shook his head without a word in the
+      uproar going on around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had to pull up. From
+      the doors of the dance hall men and women emerged tottering, streaming
+      with sweat, trembling in every limb, to lean, panting, with staring eyes
+      and parted lips, against the wall of the structure, where the harps and
+      guitars played on with mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder. Hundreds
+      of hands clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at once would
+      sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with a dying
+      fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in the crowd,
+      struck the resplendent Capataz on the cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did not turn his head.
+      When at last he condescended to look round, the throng near him had parted
+      to make way for a pretty Morenita, her hair held up by a small golden
+      comb, who was walking towards him in the open space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a snowy chemisette; the blue
+      woollen skirt, with all the fullness gathered in front, scanty on the hips
+      and tight across the back, disclosed the provoking action of her walk. She
+      came straight on and laid her hand on the mare&rsquo;s neck with a timid,
+      coquettish look upwards out of the corner of her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Querido</i>,&rdquo; she murmured, caressingly, &ldquo;why do you pretend not to
+      see me when I pass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I don&rsquo;t love thee any more,&rdquo; said Nostromo, deliberately, after a
+      moment of reflective silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hand on the mare&rsquo;s neck trembled suddenly. She dropped her head before
+      all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the generous, the terrible,
+      the inconstant Capataz de Cargadores, and his Morenita.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo, looking down, saw tears beginning to fall down her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it come, then, ever beloved of my heart?&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Is it
+      true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Nostromo, looking away carelessly. &ldquo;It was a lie. I love thee
+      as much as ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that true?&rdquo; she cooed, joyously, her cheeks still wet with tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True on the life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As true as that; but thou must not ask me to swear it on the Madonna that
+      stands in thy room.&rdquo; And the Capataz laughed a little in response to the
+      grins of the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pouted&mdash;very pretty&mdash;a little uneasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I will not ask for that. I can see love in your eyes.&rdquo; She laid her
+      hand on his knee. &ldquo;Why are you trembling like this? From love?&rdquo; she
+      continued, while the cavernous thundering of the gombo went on without a
+      pause. &ldquo;But if you love her as much as that, you must give your Paquita a
+      gold-mounted rosary of beads for the neck of her Madonna.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Nostromo, looking into her uplifted, begging eyes, which
+      suddenly turned stony with surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? Then what else will your worship give me on the day of the fiesta?&rdquo;
+       she asked, angrily; &ldquo;so as not to shame me before all these people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no shame for thee in getting nothing from thy lover for once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True! The shame is your worship&rsquo;s&mdash;my poor lover&rsquo;s,&rdquo; she flared up,
+      sarcastically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laughs were heard at her anger, at her retort. What an audacious spitfire
+      she was! The people aware of this scene were calling out urgently to
+      others in the crowd. The circle round the silver-grey mare narrowed
+      slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl went off a pace or two, confronting the mocking curiosity of the
+      eyes, then flung back to the stirrup, tiptoeing, her enraged face turned
+      up to Nostromo with a pair of blazing eyes. He bent low to her in the
+      saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Juan,&rdquo; she hissed, &ldquo;I could stab thee to the heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dreaded Capataz de Cargadores, magnificent and carelessly public in
+      his amours, flung his arm round her neck and kissed her spluttering lips.
+      A murmur went round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A knife!&rdquo; he demanded at large, holding her firmly by the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty blades flashed out together in the circle. A young man in holiday
+      attire, bounding in, thrust one in Nostromo&rsquo;s hand and bounded back into
+      the ranks, very proud of himself. Nostromo had not even looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand on my foot,&rdquo; he commanded the girl, who, suddenly subdued, rose
+      lightly, and when he had her up, encircling her waist, her face near to
+      his, he pressed the knife into her little hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Morenita! You shall not put me to shame,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You shall have
+      your present; and so that everyone should know who is your lover to-day,
+      you may cut all the silver buttons off my coat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were shouts of laughter and applause at this witty freak, while the
+      girl passed the keen blade, and the impassive rider jingled in his palm
+      the increasing hoard of silver buttons. He eased her to the ground with
+      both her hands full. After whispering for a while with a very strenuous
+      face, she walked away, staring haughtily, and vanished into the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The circle had broken up, and the lordly Capataz de Cargadores, the
+      indispensable man, the tried and trusty Nostromo, the Mediterranean sailor
+      come ashore casually to try his luck in Costaguana, rode slowly towards
+      the harbour. The Juno was just then swinging round; and even as Nostromo
+      reined up again to look on, a flag ran up on the improvised flagstaff
+      erected in an ancient and dismantled little fort at the harbour entrance.
+      Half a battery of field guns had been hurried over there from the Sulaco
+      barracks for the purpose of firing the regulation salutes for the
+      President-Dictator and the War Minister. As the mail-boat headed through
+      the pass, the badly timed reports announced the end of Don Vincente
+      Ribiera&rsquo;s first official visit to Sulaco, and for Captain Mitchell the end
+      of another &ldquo;historic occasion.&rdquo; Next time when the &ldquo;Hope of honest men&rdquo;
+       was to come that way, a year and a half later, it was unofficially, over
+      the mountain tracks, fleeing after a defeat on a lame mule, to be only
+      just saved by Nostromo from an ignominious death at the hands of a mob. It
+      was a very different event, of which Captain Mitchell used to say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was history&mdash;history, sir! And that fellow of mine, Nostromo, you
+      know, was right in it. Absolutely making history, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But this event, creditable to Nostromo, was to lead immediately to
+      another, which could not be classed either as &ldquo;history&rdquo; or as &ldquo;a mistake&rdquo;
+       in Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s phraseology. He had another word for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir&rdquo; he used to say afterwards, &ldquo;that was no mistake. It was a fatality.
+      A misfortune, pure and simple, sir. And that poor fellow of mine was right
+      in it&mdash;right in the middle of it! A fatality, if ever there was one&mdash;and
+      to my mind he has never been the same man since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART SECOND THE ISABELS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER ONE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Through good and evil report in the varying fortune of that struggle which
+      Don Jose had characterized in the phrase, &ldquo;the fate of national honesty
+      trembles in the balance,&rdquo; the Gould Concession, &ldquo;Imperium in Imperio,&rdquo; had
+      gone on working; the square mountain had gone on pouring its treasure down
+      the wooden shoots to the unresting batteries of stamps; the lights of San
+      Tome had twinkled night after night upon the great, limitless shadow of
+      the Campo; every three months the silver escort had gone down to the sea
+      as if neither the war nor its consequences could ever affect the ancient
+      Occidental State secluded beyond its high barrier of the Cordillera. All
+      the fighting took place on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated
+      peaks lorded over by the white dome of Higuerota and as yet unbreached by
+      the railway, of which only the first part, the easy Campo part from Sulaco
+      to the Ivie Valley at the foot of the pass, had been laid. Neither did the
+      telegraph line cross the mountains yet; its poles, like slender beacons on
+      the plain, penetrated into the forest fringe of the foot-hills cut by the
+      deep avenue of the track; and its wire ended abruptly in the construction
+      camp at a white deal table supporting a Morse apparatus, in a long hut of
+      planks with a corrugated iron roof overshadowed by gigantic cedar trees&mdash;the
+      quarters of the engineer in charge of the advance section.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in railway material, and with
+      the movements of troops along the coast. The O.S.N. Company found much
+      occupation for its fleet. Costaguana had no navy, and, apart from a few
+      coastguard cutters, there were no national ships except a couple of old
+      merchant steamers used as transports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick of history, found
+      time for an hour or so during an afternoon in the drawing-room of the Casa
+      Gould, where, with a strange ignorance of the real forces at work around
+      him, he professed himself delighted to get away from the strain of
+      affairs. He did not know what he would have done without his invaluable
+      Nostromo, he declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics gave him more
+      work&mdash;he confided to Mrs. Gould&mdash;than he had bargained for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose Avellanos had displayed in the service of the endangered Ribiera
+      Government an organizing activity and an eloquence of which the echoes
+      reached even Europe. For, after the new loan to the Ribiera Government,
+      Europe had become interested in Costaguana. The Sala of the Provincial
+      Assembly (in the Municipal Buildings of Sulaco), with its portraits of the
+      Liberators on the walls and an old flag of Cortez preserved in a glass
+      case above the President&rsquo;s chair, had heard all these speeches&mdash;the
+      early one containing the impassioned declaration &ldquo;Militarism is the
+      enemy,&rdquo; the famous one of the &ldquo;trembling balance&rdquo; delivered on the
+      occasion of the vote for the raising of a second Sulaco regiment in the
+      defence of the reforming Government; and when the provinces again
+      displayed their old flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento&rsquo;s time) there was
+      another of those great orations, when Don Jose greeted these old emblems
+      of the war of Independence, brought out again in the name of new Ideals.
+      The old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For his part he did not wish
+      to revive old political doctrines. They were perishable. They died. But
+      the doctrine of political rectitude was immortal. The second Sulaco
+      regiment, to whom he was presenting this flag, was going to show its
+      valour in a contest for order, peace, progress; for the establishment of
+      national self-respect without which&mdash;he declared with energy&mdash;&ldquo;we
+      are a reproach and a byword amongst the powers of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly with his
+      fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later story of his captivity
+      and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known to his
+      listeners. It was a wonder that he had not been a victim of the ferocious
+      and summary executions which marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman
+      had ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of political fanaticism.
+      The power of Supreme Government had become in his dull mind an object of
+      strange worship, as if it were some sort of cruel deity. It was incarnated
+      in himself, and his adversaries, the Federalists, were the supreme
+      sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and fear, as heretics would be to a
+      convinced Inquisitor. For years he had carried about at the tail of the
+      Army of Pacification, all over the country, a captive band of such
+      atrocious criminals, who considered themselves most unfortunate at not
+      having been summarily executed. It was a diminishing company of nearly
+      naked skeletons, loaded with irons, covered with dirt, with vermin, with
+      raw wounds, all men of position, of education, of wealth, who had learned
+      to fight amongst themselves for scraps of rotten beef thrown to them by
+      soldiers, or to beg a negro cook for a drink of muddy water in pitiful
+      accents. Don Jose Avellanos, clanking his chains amongst the others,
+      seemed only to exist in order to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation,
+      and cruel torture a human body can stand without parting with the last
+      spark of life. Sometimes interrogatories, backed by some primitive method
+      of torture, were administered to them by a commission of officers hastily
+      assembled in a hut of sticks and branches, and made pitiless by the fear
+      for their own lives. A lucky one or two of that spectral company of
+      prisoners would perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a
+      file of soldiers. Always an army chaplain&mdash;some unshaven, dirty man,
+      girt with a sword and with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on the
+      left breast of a lieutenant&rsquo;s uniform&mdash;would follow, cigarette in the
+      corner of the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the confession and give
+      absolution; for the Citizen Saviour of the Country (Guzman Bento was
+      called thus officially in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of
+      rational clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad would be
+      heard, followed sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish
+      cloud of smoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Army of
+      Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the forests,
+      crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the haciendas of the
+      horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns in the fulfilment of its
+      patriotic mission, and leaving behind a united land wherein the evil taint
+      of Federalism could no longer be detected in the smoke of burning houses
+      and the smell of spilt blood. Don Jose Avellanos had survived that time.
+      Perhaps, when contemptuously signifying to him his release, the Citizen
+      Saviour of the Country might have thought this benighted aristocrat too
+      broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer dangerous. Or,
+      perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman Bento, usually full of
+      fanciful fears and brooding suspicions, had sudden accesses of
+      unreasonable self-confidence when he perceived himself elevated on a
+      pinnacle of power and safety beyond the reach of mere mortal plotters. At
+      such times he would impulsively command the celebration of a solemn Mass
+      of thanksgiving, which would be sung in great pomp in the cathedral of
+      Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient Archbishop of his creation. He
+      heard it sitting in a gilt armchair placed before the high altar,
+      surrounded by the civil and military heads of his Government. The
+      unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into the cathedral, for it was
+      not quite safe for anybody of mark to stay away from these manifestations
+      of presidential piety. Having thus acknowledged the only power he was at
+      all disposed to recognize as above himself, he would scatter acts of
+      political grace in a sardonic wantonness of clemency. There was no other
+      way left now to enjoy his power but by seeing his crushed adversaries
+      crawl impotently into the light of day out of the dark, noisome cells of
+      the Collegio. Their harmlessness fed his insatiable vanity, and they could
+      always be got hold of again. It was the rule for all the women of their
+      families to present thanks afterwards in a special audience. The
+      incarnation of that strange god, El Gobierno Supremo, received them
+      standing, cocked hat on head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter to
+      show their gratitude by bringing up their children in fidelity to the
+      democratic form of government, &ldquo;which I have established for the happiness
+      of our country.&rdquo; His front teeth having been knocked out in some accident
+      of his former herdsman&rsquo;s life, his utterance was spluttering and
+      indistinct. He had been working for Costaguana alone in the midst of
+      treachery and opposition. Let it cease now lest he should become weary of
+      forgiving!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose Avellanos had known this forgiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was broken in health and fortune deplorably enough to present a truly
+      gratifying spectacle to the supreme chief of democratic institutions. He
+      retired to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in that province, and she nursed
+      him back to life out of the house of death and captivity. When she died,
+      their daughter, an only child, was old enough to devote herself to &ldquo;poor
+      papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly in England, was a tall,
+      grave girl, with a self-possessed manner, a wide, white forehead, a wealth
+      of rich brown hair, and blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her character and
+      accomplishments. She was reputed to be terribly learned and serious. As to
+      pride, it was well known that all the Corbelans were proud, and her mother
+      was a Corbelan. Don Jose Avellanos depended very much upon the devotion of
+      his beloved Antonia. He accepted it in the benighted way of men, who,
+      though made in God&rsquo;s image, are like stone idols without sense before the
+      smoke of certain burnt offerings. He was ruined in every way, but a man
+      possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life. Don Jose Avellanos desired
+      passionately for his country: peace, prosperity, and (as the end of the
+      preface to &ldquo;Fifty Years of Misrule&rdquo; has it) &ldquo;an honourable place in the
+      comity of civilized nations.&rdquo; In this last phrase the Minister
+      Plenipotentiary, cruelly humiliated by the bad faith of his Government
+      towards the foreign bondholders, stands disclosed in the patriot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the tyranny of Guzman
+      Bento seemed to bring his desire to the very door of opportunity. He was
+      too old to descend personally into the centre of the arena at Sta. Marta.
+      But the men who acted there sought his advice at every step. He himself
+      thought that he could be most useful at a distance, in Sulaco. His name,
+      his connections, his former position, his experience commanded the respect
+      of his class. The discovery that this man, living in dignified poverty in
+      the Corbelan town residence (opposite the Casa Gould), could dispose of
+      material means towards the support of the cause increased his influence.
+      It was his open letter of appeal that decided the candidature of Don
+      Vincente Ribiera for the Presidency. Another of these informal State
+      papers drawn up by Don Jose (this time in the shape of an address from the
+      Province) induced that scrupulous constitutionalist to accept the
+      extraordinary powers conferred upon him for five years by an overwhelming
+      vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It was a specific mandate to establish the
+      prosperity of the people on the basis of firm peace at home, and to redeem
+      the national credit by the satisfaction of all just claims abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the afternoon the news of that vote had reached Sulaco by the usual
+      roundabout postal way through Cayta, and up the coast by steamer. Don
+      Jose, who had been waiting for the mail in the Goulds&rsquo; drawing-room, got
+      out of the rocking-chair, letting his hat fall off his knees. He rubbed
+      his silvery, short hair with both hands, speechless with the excess of
+      joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emilia, my soul,&rdquo; he had burst out, &ldquo;let me embrace you! Let me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an apt
+      remark about the dawn of a new era; but if Don Jose thought something of
+      the kind, his eloquence failed him on this occasion. The inspirer of that
+      revival of the Blanco party tottered where he stood. Mrs. Gould moved
+      forward quickly and, as she offered her cheek with a smile to her old
+      friend, managed very cleverly to give him the support of her arm he really
+      needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a time he could do no more
+      than murmur, &ldquo;Oh, you two patriots! Oh, you two patriots!&rdquo;&mdash;looking
+      from one to the other. Vague plans of another historical work, wherein all
+      the devotions to the regeneration of the country he loved would be
+      enshrined for the reverent worship of posterity, flitted through his mind.
+      The historian who had enough elevation of soul to write of Guzman Bento:
+      &ldquo;Yet this monster, imbrued in the blood of his countrymen, must not be
+      held unreservedly to the execration of future years. It appears to be true
+      that he, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve years of peace;
+      and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he was, he died poor. His
+      worst fault, perhaps, was not his ferocity, but his ignorance;&rdquo; the man
+      who could write thus of a cruel persecutor (the passage occurs in his
+      &ldquo;History of Misrule&rdquo;) felt at the foreshadowing of success an almost
+      boundless affection for his two helpers, for these two young people from
+      over the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practical necessity,
+      stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn the
+      sword, so now, the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung the silver
+      of the San Tome into the fray. The Inglez of Sulaco, the &ldquo;Costaguana
+      Englishman&rdquo; of the third generation, was as far from being a political
+      intriguer as his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler. Springing from
+      the instinctive uprightness of their natures their action was reasoned.
+      They saw an opportunity and used the weapon to hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould&rsquo;s position&mdash;a commanding position in the background of
+      that attempt to retrieve the peace and the credit of the Republic&mdash;was
+      very clear. At the beginning he had had to accommodate himself to existing
+      circumstances of corruption so naively brazen as to disarm the hate of a
+      man courageous enough not to be afraid of its irresponsible potency to
+      ruin everything it touched. It seemed to him too contemptible for hot
+      anger even. He made use of it with a cold, fearless scorn, manifested
+      rather than concealed by the forms of stony courtesy which did away with
+      much of the ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps, he suffered
+      from it, for he was not a man of cowardly illusions, but he refused to
+      discuss the ethical view with his wife. He trusted that, though a little
+      disenchanted, she would be intelligent enough to understand that his
+      character safeguarded the enterprise of their lives as much or more than
+      his policy. The extraordinary development of the mine had put a great
+      power into his hands. To feel that prosperity always at the mercy of
+      unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him. To Mrs. Gould it was
+      humiliating. At any rate, it was dangerous. In the confidential
+      communications passing between Charles Gould, the King of Sulaco, and the
+      head of the silver and steel interests far away in California, the
+      conviction was growing that any attempt made by men of education and
+      integrity ought to be discreetly supported. &ldquo;You may tell your friend
+      Avellanos that I think so,&rdquo; Mr. Holroyd had written at the proper moment
+      from his inviolable sanctuary within the eleven-storey high factory of
+      great affairs. And shortly afterwards, with a credit opened by the Third
+      Southern Bank (located next door but one to the Holroyd Building), the
+      Ribierist party in Costaguana took a practical shape under the eye of the
+      administrator of the San Tome mine. And Don Jose, the hereditary friend of
+      the Gould family, could say: &ldquo;Perhaps, my dear Carlos, I shall not have
+      believed in vain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER TWO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After another armed struggle, decided by Montero&rsquo;s victory of Rio Seco,
+      had been added to the tale of civil wars, the &ldquo;honest men,&rdquo; as Don Jose
+      called them, could breathe freely for the first time in half a century.
+      The Five-Year-Mandate law became the basis of that regeneration, the
+      passionate desire and hope for which had been like the elixir of
+      everlasting youth for Don Jose Avellanos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when it was suddenly&mdash;and not quite unexpectedly&mdash;endangered
+      by that &ldquo;brute Montero,&rdquo; it was a passionate indignation that gave him a
+      new lease of life, as it were. Already, at the time of the
+      President-Dictator&rsquo;s visit to Sulaco, Moraga had sounded a note of warning
+      from Sta. Marta about the War Minister. Montero and his brother made the
+      subject of an earnest talk between the Dictator-President and the
+      Nestor-inspirer of the party. But Don Vincente, a doctor of philosophy
+      from the Cordova University, seemed to have an exaggerated respect for
+      military ability, whose mysteriousness&mdash;since it appeared to be
+      altogether independent of intellect&mdash;imposed upon his imagination.
+      The victor of Rio Seco was a popular hero. His services were so recent
+      that the President-Dictator quailed before the obvious charge of political
+      ingratitude. Great regenerating transactions were being initiated&mdash;the
+      fresh loan, a new railway line, a vast colonization scheme. Anything that
+      could unsettle the public opinion in the capital was to be avoided. Don
+      Jose bowed to these arguments and tried to dismiss from his mind the
+      gold-laced portent in boots, and with a sabre, made meaningless now at
+      last, he hoped, in the new order of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Less than six months after the President-Dictator&rsquo;s visit, Sulaco learned
+      with stupefaction of the military revolt in the name of national honour.
+      The Minister of War, in a barrack-square allocution to the officers of the
+      artillery regiment he had been inspecting, had declared the national
+      honour sold to foreigners. The Dictator, by his weak compliance with the
+      demands of the European powers&mdash;for the settlement of long
+      outstanding money claims&mdash;had showed himself unfit to rule. A letter
+      from Moraga explained afterwards that the initiative, and even the very
+      text, of the incendiary allocution came, in reality, from the other
+      Montero, the ex-guerillero, the <i>Commandante de Plaza</i>. The energetic
+      treatment of Dr. Monygham, sent for in haste &ldquo;to the mountain,&rdquo; who came
+      galloping three leagues in the dark, saved Don Jose from a dangerous
+      attack of jaundice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After getting over the shock, Don Jose refused to let himself be
+      prostrated. Indeed, better news succeeded at first. The revolt in the
+      capital had been suppressed after a night of fighting in the streets.
+      Unfortunately, both the Monteros had been able to make their escape south,
+      to their native province of Entre-Montes. The hero of the forest march,
+      the victor of Rio Seco, had been received with frenzied acclamations in
+      Nicoya, the provincial capital. The troops in garrison there had gone to
+      him in a body. The brothers were organizing an army, gathering
+      malcontents, sending emissaries primed with patriotic lies to the people,
+      and with promises of plunder to the wild llaneros. Even a Monterist press
+      had come into existence, speaking oracularly of the secret promises of
+      support given by &ldquo;our great sister Republic of the North&rdquo; against the
+      sinister land-grabbing designs of European powers, cursing in every issue
+      the &ldquo;miserable Ribiera,&rdquo; who had plotted to deliver his country, bound
+      hand and foot, for a prey to foreign speculators.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sulaco, pastoral and sleepy, with its opulent Campo and the rich silver
+      mine, heard the din of arms fitfully in its fortunate isolation. It was
+      nevertheless in the very forefront of the defence with men and money; but
+      the very rumours reached it circuitously&mdash;from abroad even, so much
+      was it cut off from the rest of the Republic, not only by natural
+      obstacles, but also by the vicissitudes of the war. The Monteristos were
+      besieging Cayta, an important postal link. The overland couriers ceased to
+      come across the mountains, and no muleteer would consent to risk the
+      journey at last; even Bonifacio on one occasion failed to return from Sta.
+      Marta, either not daring to start, or perhaps captured by the parties of
+      the enemy raiding the country between the Cordillera and the capital.
+      Monterist publications, however, found their way into the province,
+      mysteriously enough; and also Monterist emissaries preaching death to
+      aristocrats in the villages and towns of the Campo. Very early, at the
+      beginning of the trouble, Hernandez, the bandit, had proposed (through the
+      agency of an old priest of a village in the wilds) to deliver two of them
+      to the Ribierist authorities in Tonoro. They had come to offer him a free
+      pardon and the rank of colonel from General Montero in consideration of
+      joining the rebel army with his mounted band. No notice was taken at the
+      time of the proposal. It was joined, as an evidence of good faith, to a
+      petition praying the Sulaco Assembly for permission to enlist, with all
+      his followers, in the forces being then raised in Sulaco for the defence
+      of the Five-Year Mandate of regeneration. The petition, like everything
+      else, had found its way into Don Jose&rsquo;s hands. He had showed to Mrs. Gould
+      these pages of dirty-greyish rough paper (perhaps looted in some village
+      store), covered with the crabbed, illiterate handwriting of the old padre,
+      carried off from his hut by the side of a mud-walled church to be the
+      secretary of the dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamplight of
+      the Gould drawing-room over the document containing the fierce and yet
+      humble appeal of the man against the blind and stupid barbarity turning an
+      honest ranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest stated that, but
+      for being deprived of his liberty for ten days, he had been treated with
+      humanity and the respect due to his sacred calling. He had been, it
+      appears, confessing and absolving the chief and most of the band, and he
+      guaranteed the sincerity of their good disposition. He had distributed
+      heavy penances, no doubt in the way of litanies and fasts; but he argued
+      shrewdly that it would be difficult for them to make their peace with God
+      durably till they had made peace with men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never before, perhaps, had Hernandez&rsquo;s head been in less jeopardy than
+      when he petitioned humbly for permission to buy a pardon for himself and
+      his gang of deserters by armed service. He could range afar from the waste
+      lands protecting his fastness, unchecked, because there were no troops
+      left in the whole province. The usual garrison of Sulaco had gone south to
+      the war, with its brass band playing the Bolivar march on the bridge of
+      one of the O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s steamers. The great family coaches drawn up
+      along the shore of the harbour were made to rock on the high leathern
+      springs by the enthusiasm of the senoras and the senoritas standing up to
+      wave their lace handkerchiefs, as lighter after lighter packed full of
+      troops left the end of the jetty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo directed the embarkation, under the superintendendence of Captain
+      Mitchell, red-faced in the sun, conspicuous in a white waistcoat,
+      representing the allied and anxious goodwill of all the material interests
+      of civilization. General Barrios, who commanded the troops, assured Don
+      Jose on parting that in three weeks he would have Montero in a wooden cage
+      drawn by three pair of oxen ready for a tour through all the towns of the
+      Republic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then, senora,&rdquo; he continued, baring his curly iron-grey head to Mrs.
+      Gould in her landau&mdash;&ldquo;and then, senora, we shall convert our swords
+      into plough-shares and grow rich. Even I, myself, as soon as this little
+      business is settled, shall open a fundacion on some land I have on the
+      llanos and try to make a little money in peace and quietness. Senora, you
+      know, all Costaguana knows&mdash;what do I say?&mdash;this whole South
+      American continent knows, that Pablo Barrios has had his fill of military
+      glory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and patriotic send-off. It
+      was not his part to see the soldiers embark. It was neither his part, nor
+      his inclination, nor his policy. His part, his inclination, and his policy
+      were united in one endeavour to keep unchecked the flow of treasure he had
+      started single-handed from the re-opened scar in the flank of the
+      mountain. As the mine developed he had trained for himself some native
+      help. There were foremen, artificers and clerks, with Don Pepe for the
+      gobernador of the mining population. For the rest his shoulders alone
+      sustained the whole weight of the &ldquo;Imperium in Imperio,&rdquo; the great Gould
+      Concession whose mere shadow had been enough to crush the life out of his
+      father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould had no silver mine to look after. In the general life of the
+      Gould Concession she was represented by her two lieutenants, the doctor
+      and the priest, but she fed her woman&rsquo;s love of excitement on events whose
+      significance was purified to her by the fire of her imaginative purpose.
+      On that day she had brought the Avellanos, father and daughter, down to
+      the harbour with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst his other activities of that stirring time, Don Jose had become
+      the chairman of a Patriotic Committee which had armed a great proportion
+      of troops in the Sulaco command with an improved model of a military
+      rifle. It had been just discarded for something still more deadly by one
+      of the great European powers. How much of the market-price for second-hand
+      weapons was covered by the voluntary contributions of the principal
+      families, and how much came from those funds Don Jose was understood to
+      command abroad, remained a secret which he alone could have disclosed; but
+      the Ricos, as the populace called them, had contributed under the pressure
+      of their Nestor&rsquo;s eloquence. Some of the more enthusiastic ladies had been
+      moved to bring offerings of jewels into the hands of the man who was the
+      life and soul of the party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were moments when both his life and his soul seemed overtaxed by so
+      many years of undiscouraged belief in regeneration. He appeared almost
+      inanimate, sitting rigidly by the side of Mrs. Gould in the landau, with
+      his fine, old, clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as if modelled in
+      yellow wax, shaded by a soft felt hat, the dark eyes looking out fixedly.
+      Antonia, the beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avellanos was called in Sulaco,
+      leaned back, facing them; and her full figure, the grave oval of her face
+      with full red lips, made her look more mature than Mrs. Gould, with her
+      mobile expression and small, erect person under a slightly swaying
+      sunshade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever possible Antonia attended her father; her recognized devotion
+      weakened the shocking effect of her scorn for the rigid conventions
+      regulating the life of Spanish-American girlhood. And, in truth, she was
+      no longer girlish. It was said that she often wrote State papers from her
+      father&rsquo;s dictation, and was allowed to read all the books in his library.
+      At the receptions&mdash;where the situation was saved by the presence of a
+      very decrepit old lady (a relation of the Corbelans), quite deaf and
+      motionless in an armchair&mdash;Antonia could hold her own in a discussion
+      with two or three men at a time. Obviously she was not the girl to be
+      content with peeping through a barred window at a cloaked figure of a
+      lover ensconced in a doorway opposite&mdash;which is the correct form of
+      Costaguana courtship. It was generally believed that with her foreign
+      upbringing and foreign ideas the learned and proud Antonia would never
+      marry&mdash;unless, indeed, she married a foreigner from Europe or North
+      America, now that Sulaco seemed on the point of being invaded by all the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER THREE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When General Barrios stopped to address Mrs. Gould, Antonia raised
+      negligently her hand holding an open fan, as if to shade from the sun her
+      head, wrapped in a light lace shawl. The clear gleam of her blue eyes
+      gliding behind the black fringe of eyelashes paused for a moment upon her
+      father, then travelled further to the figure of a young man of thirty at
+      most, of medium height, rather thick-set, wearing a light overcoat.
+      Bearing down with the open palm of his hand upon the knob of a flexible
+      cane, he had been looking on from a distance; but directly he saw himself
+      noticed, he approached quietly and put his elbow over the door of the
+      landau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shirt collar, cut low in the neck, the big bow of his cravat, the
+      style of his clothing, from the round hat to the varnished shoes,
+      suggested an idea of French elegance; but otherwise he was the very type
+      of a fair Spanish creole. The fluffy moustache and the short, curly,
+      golden beard did not conceal his lips, rosy, fresh, almost pouting in
+      expression. His full, round face was of that warm, healthy creole white
+      which is never tanned by its native sunshine. Martin Decoud was seldom
+      exposed to the Costaguana sun under which he was born. His people had been
+      long settled in Paris, where he had studied law, had dabbled in
+      literature, had hoped now and then in moments of exaltation to become a
+      poet like that other foreigner of Spanish blood, Jose Maria Heredia. In
+      other moments he had, to pass the time, condescended to write articles on
+      European affairs for the Semenario, the principal newspaper in Sta. Marta,
+      which printed them under the heading &ldquo;From our special correspondent,&rdquo;
+       though the authorship was an open secret. Everybody in Costaguana, where
+      the tale of compatriots in Europe is jealously kept, knew that it was &ldquo;the
+      son Decoud,&rdquo; a talented young man, supposed to be moving in the higher
+      spheres of Society. As a matter of fact, he was an idle boulevardier, in
+      touch with some smart journalists, made free of a few newspaper offices,
+      and welcomed in the pleasure haunts of pressmen. This life, whose dreary
+      superficiality is covered by the glitter of universal blague, like the
+      stupid clowning of a harlequin by the spangles of a motley costume,
+      induced in him a Frenchified&mdash;but most un-French&mdash;cosmopolitanism,
+      in reality a mere barren indifferentism posing as intellectual
+      superiority. Of his own country he used to say to his French associates:
+      &ldquo;Imagine an atmosphere of opera-bouffe in which all the comic business of
+      stage statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all their farcical stealing,
+      intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead earnest. It is screamingly funny,
+      the blood flows all the time, and the actors believe themselves to be
+      influencing the fate of the universe. Of course, government in general,
+      any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a
+      discerning mind; but really we Spanish-Americans do overstep the bounds.
+      No man of ordinary intelligence can take part in the intrigues of une
+      farce macabre. However, these Ribierists, of whom we hear so much just
+      now, are really trying in their own comical way to make the country
+      habitable, and even to pay some of its debts. My friends, you had better
+      write up Senor Ribiera all you can in kindness to your own bondholders.
+      Really, if what I am told in my letters is true, there is some chance for
+      them at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he would explain with railing verve what Don Vincente Ribiera stood
+      for&mdash;a mournful little man oppressed by his own good intentions, the
+      significance of battles won, who Montero was (<i>un grotesque vaniteux et
+      feroce</i>), and the manner of the new loan connected with railway
+      development, and the colonization of vast tracts of land in one great
+      financial scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And his French friends would remark that evidently this little fellow <i>Decoud
+      connaissait la question a fond</i>. An important Parisian review asked him
+      for an article on the situation. It was composed in a serious tone and in
+      a spirit of levity. Afterwards he asked one of his intimates&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you read my thing about the regeneration of Costaguana&mdash;<i>une
+      bonne blague, hein</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his fingers. But far from
+      being that he was in danger of remaining a sort of nondescript dilettante
+      all his life. He had pushed the habit of universal raillery to a point
+      where it blinded him to the genuine impulses of his own nature. To be
+      suddenly selected for the executive member of the patriotic small-arms
+      committee of Sulaco seemed to him the height of the unexpected, one of
+      those fantastic moves of which only his &ldquo;dear countrymen&rdquo; were capable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a tile falling on my head. I&mdash;I&mdash;executive member!
+      It&rsquo;s the first I hear of it! What do I know of military rifles? <i>C&rsquo;est
+      funambulesque!</i>&rdquo; he had exclaimed to his favourite sister; for the
+      Decoud family&mdash;except the old father and mother&mdash;used the French
+      language amongst themselves. &ldquo;And you should see the explanatory and
+      confidential letter! Eight pages of it&mdash;no less!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter, in Antonia&rsquo;s handwriting, was signed by Don Jose, who
+      appealed to the &ldquo;young and gifted Costaguanero&rdquo; on public grounds, and
+      privately opened his heart to his talented god-son, a man of wealth and
+      leisure, with wide relations, and by his parentage and bringing-up worthy
+      of all confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which means,&rdquo; Martin commented, cynically, to his sister, &ldquo;that I am not
+      likely to misappropriate the funds, or go blabbing to our <i>Charge
+      d&rsquo;Affaires</i> here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole thing was being carried out behind the back of the War Minister,
+      Montero, a mistrusted member of the Ribiera Government, but difficult to
+      get rid of at once. He was not to know anything of it till the troops
+      under Barrios&rsquo;s command had the new rifle in their hands. The
+      President-Dictator, whose position was very difficult, was alone in the
+      secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How funny!&rdquo; commented Martin&rsquo;s sister and confidante; to which the
+      brother, with an air of best Parisian blague, had retorted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s immense! The idea of that Chief of the State engaged, with the help
+      of private citizens, in digging a mine under his own indispensable War
+      Minister. No! We are unapproachable!&rdquo; And he laughed immoderately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards his sister was surprised at the earnestness and ability he
+      displayed in carrying out his mission, which circumstances made delicate,
+      and his want of special knowledge rendered difficult. She had never seen
+      Martin take so much trouble about anything in his whole life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It amuses me,&rdquo; he had explained, briefly. &ldquo;I am beset by a lot of
+      swindlers trying to sell all sorts of gaspipe weapons. They are charming;
+      they invite me to expensive luncheons; I keep up their hopes; it&rsquo;s
+      extremely entertaining. Meanwhile, the real affair is being carried
+      through in quite another quarter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the business was concluded he declared suddenly his intention of
+      seeing the precious consignment delivered safely in Sulaco. The whole
+      burlesque business, he thought, was worth following up to the end. He
+      mumbled his excuses, tugging at his golden beard, before the acute young
+      lady who (after the first wide stare of astonishment) looked at him with
+      narrowed eyes, and pronounced slowly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you want to see Antonia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Antonia?&rdquo; asked the Costaguana boulevardier, in a vexed and
+      disdainful tone. He shrugged his shoulders, and spun round on his heel.
+      His sister called out after him joyously&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Antonia you used to know when she wore her hair in two plaits down
+      her back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had known her some eight years since, shortly before the Avellanos had
+      left Europe for good, as a tall girl of sixteen, youthfully austere, and
+      of a character already so formed that she ventured to treat slightingly
+      his pose of disabused wisdom. On one occasion, as though she had lost all
+      patience, she flew out at him about the aimlessness of his life and the
+      levity of his opinions. He was twenty then, an only son, spoiled by his
+      adoring family. This attack disconcerted him so greatly that he had
+      faltered in his affectation of amused superiority before that
+      insignificant chit of a school-girl. But the impression left was so strong
+      that ever since all the girl friends of his sisters recalled to him
+      Antonia Avellanos by some faint resemblance, or by the great force of
+      contrast. It was, he told himself, like a ridiculous fatality. And, of
+      course, in the news the Decouds received regularly from Costaguana, the
+      name of their friends, the Avellanos, cropped up frequently&mdash;the
+      arrest and the abominable treatment of the ex-Minister, the dangers and
+      hardships endured by the family, its withdrawal in poverty to Sulaco, the
+      death of the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Monterist pronunciamento had taken place before Martin Decoud reached
+      Costaguana. He came out in a roundabout way, through Magellan&rsquo;s Straits by
+      the main line and the West Coast Service of the O.S.N. Company. His
+      precious consignment arrived just in time to convert the first feelings of
+      consternation into a mood of hope and resolution. Publicly he was made
+      much of by the <i>familias principales</i>. Privately Don Jose, still
+      shaken and weak, embraced him with tears in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come out yourself! No less could be expected from a Decoud.
+      Alas! our worst fears have been realized,&rdquo; he moaned, affectionately. And
+      again he hugged his god-son. This was indeed the time for men of intellect
+      and conscience to rally round the endangered cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Martin Decoud, the adopted child of Western Europe, felt
+      the absolute change of atmosphere. He submitted to being embraced and
+      talked to without a word. He was moved in spite of himself by that note of
+      passion and sorrow unknown on the more refined stage of European politics.
+      But when the tall Antonia, advancing with her light step in the dimness of
+      the big bare Sala of the Avellanos house, offered him her hand (in her
+      emancipated way), and murmured, &ldquo;I am glad to see you here, Don Martin,&rdquo;
+       he felt how impossible it would be to tell these two people that he had
+      intended to go away by the next month&rsquo;s packet. Don Jose, meantime,
+      continued his praises. Every accession added to public confidence, and,
+      besides, what an example to the young men at home from the brilliant
+      defender of the country&rsquo;s regeneration, the worthy expounder of the
+      party&rsquo;s political faith before the world! Everybody had read the
+      magnificent article in the famous Parisian Review. The world was now
+      informed: and the author&rsquo;s appearance at this moment was like a public act
+      of faith. Young Decoud felt overcome by a feeling of impatient confusion.
+      His plan had been to return by way of the United States through
+      California, visit Yellowstone Park, see Chicago, Niagara, have a look at
+      Canada, perhaps make a short stay in New York, a longer one in Newport,
+      use his letters of introduction. The pressure of Antonia&rsquo;s hand was so
+      frank, the tone of her voice was so unexpectedly unchanged in its
+      approving warmth, that all he found to say after his low bow was&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am inexpressibly grateful for your welcome; but why need a man be
+      thanked for returning to his native country? I am sure Dona Antonia does
+      not think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not, senor,&rdquo; she said, with that perfectly calm openness of
+      manner which characterized all her utterances. &ldquo;But when he returns, as
+      you return, one may be glad&mdash;for the sake of both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin Decoud said nothing of his plans. He not only never breathed a word
+      of them to any one, but only a fortnight later asked the mistress of the
+      Casa Gould (where he had of course obtained admission at once), leaning
+      forward in his chair with an air of well-bred familiarity, whether she
+      could not detect in him that day a marked change&mdash;an air, he
+      explained, of more excellent gravity. At this Mrs. Gould turned her face
+      full towards him with the silent inquiry of slightly widened eyes and the
+      merest ghost of a smile, an habitual movement with her, which was very
+      fascinating to men by something subtly devoted, finely self-forgetful in
+      its lively readiness of attention. Because, Decoud continued
+      imperturbably, he felt no longer an idle cumberer of the earth. She was,
+      he assured her, actually beholding at that moment the Journalist of
+      Sulaco. At once Mrs. Gould glanced towards Antonia, posed upright in the
+      corner of a high, straight-backed Spanish sofa, a large black fan waving
+      slowly against the curves of her fine figure, the tips of crossed feet
+      peeping from under the hem of the black skirt. Decoud&rsquo;s eyes also remained
+      fixed there, while in an undertone he added that Miss Avellanos was quite
+      aware of his new and unexpected vocation, which in Costaguana was
+      generally the speciality of half-educated negroes and wholly penniless
+      lawyers. Then, confronting with a sort of urbane effrontery Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s
+      gaze, now turned sympathetically upon himself, he breathed out the words,
+      &ldquo;<i>Pro Patria!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened was that he had all at once yielded to Don Jose&rsquo;s
+      pressing entreaties to take the direction of a newspaper that would &ldquo;voice
+      the aspirations of the province.&rdquo; It had been Don Jose&rsquo;s old and cherished
+      idea. The necessary plant (on a modest scale) and a large consignment of
+      paper had been received from America some time before; the right man alone
+      was wanted. Even Senor Moraga in Sta. Marta had not been able to find one,
+      and the matter was now becoming pressing; some organ was absolutely needed
+      to counteract the effect of the lies disseminated by the Monterist press:
+      the atrocious calumnies, the appeals to the people calling upon them to
+      rise with their knives in their hands and put an end once for all to the
+      Blancos, to these Gothic remnants, to these sinister mummies, these
+      impotent paraliticos, who plotted with foreigners for the surrender of the
+      lands and the slavery of the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clamour of this Negro Liberalism frightened Senor Avellanos. A
+      newspaper was the only remedy. And now that the right man had been found
+      in Decoud, great black letters appeared painted between the windows above
+      the arcaded ground floor of a house on the Plaza. It was next to Anzani&rsquo;s
+      great emporium of boots, silks, ironware, muslins, wooden toys, tiny
+      silver arms, legs, heads, hearts (for ex-voto offerings), rosaries,
+      champagne, women&rsquo;s hats, patent medicines, even a few dusty books in paper
+      covers and mostly in the French language. The big black letters formed the
+      words, &ldquo;Offices of the Porvenir.&rdquo; From these offices a single folded sheet
+      of Martin&rsquo;s journalism issued three times a week; and the sleek yellow
+      Anzani prowling in a suit of ample black and carpet slippers, before the
+      many doors of his establishment, greeted by a deep, side-long inclination
+      of his body the Journalist of Sulaco going to and fro on the business of
+      his august calling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER FOUR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was in the exercise of his calling that he had come to see the
+      troops depart. The Porvenir of the day after next would no doubt relate
+      the event, but its editor, leaning his side against the landau, seemed to
+      look at nothing. The front rank of the company of infantry drawn up three
+      deep across the shore end of the jetty when pressed too close would bring
+      their bayonets to the charge ferociously, with an awful rattle; and then
+      the crowd of spectators swayed back bodily, even under the noses of the
+      big white mules. Notwithstanding the great multitude there was only a low,
+      muttering noise; the dust hung in a brown haze, in which the horsemen,
+      wedged in the throng here and there, towered from the hips upwards, gazing
+      all one way over the heads. Almost every one of them had mounted a friend,
+      who steadied himself with both hands grasping his shoulders from behind;
+      and the rims of their hats touching, made like one disc sustaining the
+      cones of two pointed crowns with a double face underneath. A hoarse mozo
+      would bawl out something to an acquaintance in the ranks, or a woman would
+      shriek suddenly the word Adios! followed by the Christian name of a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Barrios, in a shabby blue tunic and white peg-top trousers falling
+      upon strange red boots, kept his head uncovered and stooped slightly,
+      propping himself up with a thick stick. No! He had earned enough military
+      glory to satiate any man, he insisted to Mrs. Gould, trying at the same
+      time to put an air of gallantry into his attitude. A few jetty hairs hung
+      sparsely from his upper lip, he had a salient nose, a thin, long jaw, and
+      a black silk patch over one eye. His other eye, small and deep-set,
+      twinkled erratically in all directions, aimlessly affable. The few
+      European spectators, all men, who had naturally drifted into the
+      neighbourhood of the Gould carriage, betrayed by the solemnity of their
+      faces their impression that the general must have had too much punch
+      (Swedish punch, imported in bottles by Anzani) at the Amarilla Club before
+      he had started with his Staff on a furious ride to the harbour. But Mrs.
+      Gould bent forward, self-possessed, and declared her conviction that still
+      more glory awaited the general in the near future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senora!&rdquo; he remonstrated, with great feeling, &ldquo;in the name of God,
+      reflect! How can there be any glory for a man like me in overcoming that
+      bald-headed embustero with the dyed moustaches?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pablo Ignacio Barrios, son of a village alcalde, general of division,
+      commanding in chief the Occidental Military district, did not frequent the
+      higher society of the town. He preferred the unceremonious gatherings of
+      men where he could tell jaguar-hunt stories, boast of his powers with the
+      lasso, with which he could perform extremely difficult feats of the sort
+      &ldquo;no married man should attempt,&rdquo; as the saying goes amongst the llaneros;
+      relate tales of extraordinary night rides, encounters with wild bulls,
+      struggles with crocodiles, adventures in the great forests, crossings of
+      swollen rivers. And it was not mere boastfulness that prompted the
+      general&rsquo;s reminiscences, but a genuine love of that wild life which he had
+      led in his young days before he turned his back for ever on the thatched
+      roof of the parental tolderia in the woods. Wandering away as far as
+      Mexico he had fought against the French by the side (as he said) of
+      Juarez, and was the only military man of Costaguana who had ever
+      encountered European troops in the field. That fact shed a great lustre
+      upon his name till it became eclipsed by the rising star of Montero. All
+      his life he had been an inveterate gambler. He alluded himself quite
+      openly to the current story how once, during some campaign (when in
+      command of a brigade), he had gambled away his horses, pistols, and
+      accoutrements, to the very epaulettes, playing monte with his colonels the
+      night before the battle. Finally, he had sent under escort his sword (a
+      presentation sword, with a gold hilt) to the town in the rear of his
+      position to be immediately pledged for five hundred pesetas with a sleepy
+      and frightened shop-keeper. By daybreak he had lost the last of that
+      money, too, when his only remark, as he rose calmly, was, &ldquo;Now let us go
+      and fight to the death.&rdquo; From that time he had become aware that a general
+      could lead his troops into battle very well with a simple stick in his
+      hand. &ldquo;It has been my custom ever since,&rdquo; he would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was always overwhelmed with debts; even during the periods of splendour
+      in his varied fortunes of a Costaguana general, when he held high military
+      commands, his gold-laced uniforms were almost always in pawn with some
+      tradesman. And at last, to avoid the incessant difficulties of costume
+      caused by the anxious lenders, he had assumed a disdain of military
+      trappings, an eccentric fashion of shabby old tunics, which had become
+      like a second nature. But the faction Barrios joined needed to fear no
+      political betrayal. He was too much of a real soldier for the ignoble
+      traffic of buying and selling victories. A member of the foreign
+      diplomatic body in Sta. Marta had once passed a judgment upon him:
+      &ldquo;Barrios is a man of perfect honesty and even of some talent for war, <i>mais
+      il manque de tenue</i>.&rdquo; After the triumph of the Ribierists he had
+      obtained the reputedly lucrative Occidental command, mainly through the
+      exertions of his creditors (the Sta. Marta shopkeepers, all great
+      politicians), who moved heaven and earth in his interest publicly, and
+      privately besieged Senor Moraga, the influential agent of the San Tome
+      mine, with the exaggerated lamentations that if the general were passed
+      over, &ldquo;We shall all be ruined.&rdquo; An incidental but favourable mention of
+      his name in Mr. Gould senior&rsquo;s long correspondence with his son had
+      something to do with his appointment, too; but most of all undoubtedly his
+      established political honesty. No one questioned the personal bravery of
+      the Tiger-killer, as the populace called him. He was, however, said to be
+      unlucky in the field&mdash;but this was to be the beginning of an era of
+      peace. The soldiers liked him for his humane temper, which was like a
+      strange and precious flower unexpectedly blooming on the hotbed of corrupt
+      revolutions; and when he rode slowly through the streets during some
+      military display, the contemptuous good humour of his solitary eye roaming
+      over the crowds extorted the acclamations of the populace. The women of
+      that class especially seemed positively fascinated by the long drooping
+      nose, the peaked chin, the heavy lower lip, the black silk eyepatch and
+      band slanting rakishly over the forehead. His high rank always procured an
+      audience of Caballeros for his sporting stories, which he detailed very
+      well with a simple, grave enjoyment. As to the society of ladies, it was
+      irksome by the restraints it imposed without any equivalent, as far as he
+      could see. He had not, perhaps, spoken three times on the whole to Mrs.
+      Gould since he had taken up his high command; but he had observed her
+      frequently riding with the Senor Administrador, and had pronounced that
+      there was more sense in her little bridle-hand than in all the female
+      heads in Sulaco. His impulse had been to be very civil on parting to a
+      woman who did not wobble in the saddle, and happened to be the wife of a
+      personality very important to a man always short of money. He even pushed
+      his attentions so far as to desire the aide-de-camp at his side (a
+      thick-set, short captain with a Tartar physiognomy) to bring along a
+      corporal with a file of men in front of the carriage, lest the crowd in
+      its backward surges should &ldquo;incommode the mules of the senora.&rdquo; Then,
+      turning to the small knot of silent Europeans looking on within earshot,
+      he raised his voice protectingly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senores, have no apprehension. Go on quietly making your Ferro Carril&mdash;your
+      railways, your telegraphs. Your&mdash;There&rsquo;s enough wealth in Costaguana
+      to pay for everything&mdash;or else you would not be here. Ha! ha! Don&rsquo;t
+      mind this little picardia of my friend Montero. In a little while you
+      shall behold his dyed moustaches through the bars of a strong wooden cage.
+      Si, senores! Fear nothing, develop the country, work, work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little group of engineers received this exhortation without a word,
+      and after waving his hand at them loftily, he addressed himself again to
+      Mrs. Gould&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enterprising! Work! Grow rich!
+      To put Montero in a cage is my work; and when that insignificant piece of
+      business is done, then, as Don Jose wishes us, we shall grow rich, one and
+      all, like so many Englishmen, because it is money that saves a country,
+      and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying up from the direction
+      of the jetty, interrupted his interpretation of Senor Avellanos&rsquo;s ideals.
+      The general made a movement of impatience; the other went on talking to
+      him insistently, with an air of respect. The horses of the Staff had been
+      embarked, the steamer&rsquo;s gig was awaiting the general at the boat steps;
+      and Barrios, after a fierce stare of his one eye, began to take leave. Don
+      Jose roused himself for an appropriate phrase pronounced mechanically. The
+      terrible strain of hope and fear was telling on him, and he seemed to
+      husband the last sparks of his fire for those oratorical efforts of which
+      even the distant Europe was to hear. Antonia, her red lips firmly closed,
+      averted her head behind the raised fan; and young Decoud, though he felt
+      the girl&rsquo;s eyes upon him, gazed away persistently, hooked on his elbow,
+      with a scornful and complete detachment. Mrs. Gould heroically concealed
+      her dismay at the appearance of men and events so remote from her racial
+      conventions, dismay too deep to be uttered in words even to her husband.
+      She understood his voiceless reserve better now. Their confidential
+      intercourse fell, not in moments of privacy, but precisely in public, when
+      the quick meeting of their glances would comment upon some fresh turn of
+      events. She had gone to his school of uncompromising silence, the only one
+      possible, since so much that seemed shocking, weird, and grotesque in the
+      working out of their purposes had to be accepted as normal in this
+      country. Decidedly, the stately Antonia looked more mature and infinitely
+      calm; but she would never have known how to reconcile the sudden sinkings
+      of her heart with an amiable mobility of expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould smiled a good-bye at Barrios, nodded round to the Europeans
+      (who raised their hats simultaneously) with an engaging invitation, &ldquo;I
+      hope to see you all presently, at home&rdquo;; then said nervously to Decoud,
+      &ldquo;Get in, Don Martin,&rdquo; and heard him mutter to himself in French, as he
+      opened the carriage door, &ldquo;<i>Le sort en est jete</i>.&rdquo; She heard him with
+      a sort of exasperation. Nobody ought to have known better than himself
+      that the first cast of dice had been already thrown long ago in a most
+      desperate game. Distant acclamations, words of command yelled out, and a
+      roll of drums on the jetty greeted the departing general. Something like a
+      slight faintness came over her, and she looked blankly at Antonia&rsquo;s still
+      face, wondering what would happen to Charley if that absurd man failed. &ldquo;A
+      la casa, Ignacio,&rdquo; she cried at the motionless broad back of the coachman,
+      who gathered the reins without haste, mumbling to himself under his
+      breath, &ldquo;Si, la casa. Si, si nina.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft track, the shadows fell long
+      on the dusty little plain interspersed with dark bushes, mounds of
+      turned-up earth, low wooden buildings with iron roofs of the Railway
+      Company; the sparse row of telegraph poles strode obliquely clear of the
+      town, bearing a single, almost invisible wire far into the great campo&mdash;like
+      a slender, vibrating feeler of that progress waiting outside for a moment
+      of peace to enter and twine itself about the weary heart of the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cafe window of the Albergo d&rsquo;ltalia Una was full of sunburnt,
+      whiskered faces of railway men. But at the other end of the house, the end
+      of the Signori Inglesi, old Giorgio, at the door with one of his girls on
+      each side, bared his bushy head, as white as the snows of Higuerota. Mrs.
+      Gould stopped the carriage. She seldom failed to speak to her protege;
+      moreover, the excitement, the heat, and the dust had made her thirsty. She
+      asked for a glass of water. Giorgio sent the children indoors for it, and
+      approached with pleasure expressed in his whole rugged countenance. It was
+      not often that he had occasion to see his benefactress, who was also an
+      Englishwoman&mdash;another title to his regard. He offered some excuses
+      for his wife. It was a bad day with her; her oppressions&mdash;he tapped
+      his own broad chest. She could not move from her chair that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud, ensconced in the corner of his seat, observed gloomily Mrs.
+      Gould&rsquo;s old revolutionist, then, offhand&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and what do you think of it all, Garibaldino?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Giorgio, looking at him with some curiosity, said civilly that the
+      troops had marched very well. One-eyed Barrios and his officers had done
+      wonders with the recruits in a short time. Those Indios, only caught the
+      other day, had gone swinging past in double quick time, like bersaglieri;
+      they looked well fed, too, and had whole uniforms. &ldquo;Uniforms!&rdquo; he repeated
+      with a half-smile of pity. A look of grim retrospect stole over his
+      piercing, steady eyes. It had been otherwise in his time when men fought
+      against tyranny, in the forests of Brazil, or on the plains of Uruguay,
+      starving on half-raw beef without salt, half naked, with often only a
+      knife tied to a stick for a weapon. &ldquo;And yet we used to prevail against
+      the oppressor,&rdquo; he concluded, proudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His animation fell; the slight gesture of his hand expressed
+      discouragement; but he added that he had asked one of the sergeants to
+      show him the new rifle. There was no such weapon in his fighting days; and
+      if Barrios could not&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; broke in Don Jose, almost trembling with eagerness. &ldquo;We are
+      safe. The good Senor Viola is a man of experience. Extremely deadly&mdash;is
+      it not so? You have accomplished your mission admirably, my dear Martin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud, lolling back moodily, contemplated old Viola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Yes. A man of experience. But who are you for, really, in your
+      heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould leaned over to the children. Linda had brought out a glass of
+      water on a tray, with extreme care; Giselle presented her with a bunch of
+      flowers gathered hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the people,&rdquo; declared old Viola, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are all for the people&mdash;in the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; muttered old Viola, savagely. &ldquo;And meantime they fight for you.
+      Blind. Esclavos!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment young Scarfe of the railway staff emerged from the door of
+      the part reserved for the Signori Inglesi. He had come down to
+      headquarters from somewhere up the line on a light engine, and had had
+      just time to get a bath and change his clothes. He was a nice boy, and
+      Mrs. Gould welcomed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a delightful surprise to see you, Mrs. Gould. I&rsquo;ve just come down.
+      Usual luck. Missed everything, of course. This show is just over, and I
+      hear there has been a great dance at Don Juste Lopez&rsquo;s last night. Is it
+      true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young patricians,&rdquo; Decoud began suddenly in his precise English,
+      &ldquo;have indeed been dancing before they started off to the war with the
+      Great Pompey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Scarfe stared, astounded. &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t met before,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould
+      intervened. &ldquo;Mr. Decoud&mdash;Mr. Scarfe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! But we are not going to Pharsalia,&rdquo; protested Don Jose, with nervous
+      haste, also in English. &ldquo;You should not jest like this, Martin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Antonia&rsquo;s breast rose and fell with a deeper breath. The young engineer
+      was utterly in the dark. &ldquo;Great what?&rdquo; he muttered, vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Luckily, Montero is not a Caesar,&rdquo; Decoud continued. &ldquo;Not the two
+      Monteros put together would make a decent parody of a Caesar.&rdquo; He crossed
+      his arms on his breast, looking at Senor Avellanos, who had returned to
+      his immobility. &ldquo;It is only you, Don Jose, who are a genuine old Roman&mdash;vir
+      Romanus&mdash;eloquent and inflexible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced, young Scarfe had been
+      eager to express his simple feelings. In a loud and youthful tone he hoped
+      that this Montero was going to be licked once for all and done with. There
+      was no saying what would happen to the railway if the revolution got the
+      upper hand. Perhaps it would have to be abandoned. It would not be the
+      first railway gone to pot in Costaguana. &ldquo;You know, it&rsquo;s one of their
+      so-called national things,&rdquo; he ran on, wrinkling up his nose as if the
+      word had a suspicious flavour to his profound experience of South American
+      affairs. And, of course, he chatted with animation, it had been such an
+      immense piece of luck for him at his age to get appointed on the staff &ldquo;of
+      a big thing like that&mdash;don&rsquo;t you know.&rdquo; It would give him the pull
+      over a lot of chaps all through life, he asserted. &ldquo;Therefore&mdash;down
+      with Montero! Mrs. Gould.&rdquo; His artless grin disappeared slowly before the
+      unanimous gravity of the faces turned upon him from the carriage; only
+      that &ldquo;old chap,&rdquo; Don Jose, presenting a motionless, waxy profile, stared
+      straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not know the Avellanos very well. They
+      did not give balls, and Antonia never appeared at a ground-floor window,
+      as some other young ladies used to do attended by elder women, to chat
+      with the caballeros on horseback in the Calle. The stares of these creoles
+      did not matter much; but what on earth had come to Mrs. Gould? She said,
+      &ldquo;Go on, Ignacio,&rdquo; and gave him a slow inclination of the head. He heard a
+      short laugh from that round-faced, Frenchified fellow. He coloured up to
+      the eyes, and stared at Giorgio Viola, who had fallen back with the
+      children, hat in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall want a horse presently,&rdquo; he said with some asperity to the old
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, senor. There are plenty of horses,&rdquo; murmured the Garibaldino,
+      smoothing absently, with his brown hands, the two heads, one dark with
+      bronze glints, the other fair with a coppery ripple, of the two girls by
+      his side. The returning stream of sightseers raised a great dust on the
+      road. Horsemen noticed the group. &ldquo;Go to your mother,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They are
+      growing up as I am growing older, and there is nobody&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at the young engineer and stopped, as if awakened from a dream;
+      then, folding his arms on his breast, took up his usual position, leaning
+      back in the doorway with an upward glance fastened on the white shoulder
+      of Higuerota far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the carriage Martin Decoud, shifting his position as though he could
+      not make himself comfortable, muttered as he swayed towards Antonia, &ldquo;I
+      suppose you hate me.&rdquo; Then in a loud voice he began to congratulate Don
+      Jose upon all the engineers being convinced Ribierists. The interest of
+      all those foreigners was gratifying. &ldquo;You have heard this one. He is an
+      enlightened well-wisher. It is pleasant to think that the prosperity of
+      Costaguana is of some use to the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is very young,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould remarked, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so very wise for his age,&rdquo; retorted Decoud. &ldquo;But here we have the
+      naked truth from the mouth of that child. You are right, Don Jose. The
+      natural treasures of Costaguana are of importance to the progressive
+      Europe represented by this youth, just as three hundred years ago the
+      wealth of our Spanish fathers was a serious object to the rest of Europe&mdash;as
+      represented by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of futility upon our
+      character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and materialism,
+      high-sounding sentiments and a supine morality, violent efforts for an
+      idea and a sullen acquiescence in every form of corruption. We convulsed a
+      continent for our independence only to become the passive prey of a
+      democratic parody, the helpless victims of scoundrels and cut-throats, our
+      institutions a mockery, our laws a farce&mdash;a Guzman Bento our master!
+      And we have sunk so low that when a man like you has awakened our
+      conscience, a stupid barbarian of a Montero&mdash;Great Heavens! a
+      Montero!&mdash;becomes a deadly danger, and an ignorant, boastful Indio,
+      like Barrios, is our defender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Don Jose, disregarding the general indictment as though he had not
+      heard a word of it, took up the defence of Barrios. The man was competent
+      enough for his special task in the plan of campaign. It consisted in an
+      offensive movement, with Cayta as base, upon the flank of the
+      Revolutionist forces advancing from the south against Sta. Marta, which
+      was covered by another army with the President-Dictator in its midst. Don
+      Jose became quite animated with a great flow of speech, bending forward
+      anxiously under the steady eyes of his daughter. Decoud, as if silenced by
+      so much ardour, did not make a sound. The bells of the city were striking
+      the hour of Oracion when the carriage rolled under the old gateway facing
+      the harbour like a shapeless monument of leaves and stones. The rumble of
+      wheels under the sonorous arch was traversed by a strange, piercing
+      shriek, and Decoud, from his back seat, had a view of the people behind
+      the carriage trudging along the road outside, all turning their heads, in
+      sombreros and rebozos, to look at a locomotive which rolled quickly out of
+      sight behind Giorgio Viola&rsquo;s house, under a white trail of steam that
+      seemed to vanish in the breathless, hysterically prolonged scream of
+      warlike triumph. And it was all like a fleeting vision, the shrieking
+      ghost of a railway engine fleeing across the frame of the archway, behind
+      the startled movement of the people streaming back from a military
+      spectacle with silent footsteps on the dust of the road. It was a material
+      train returning from the Campo to the palisaded yards. The empty cars
+      rolled lightly on the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no
+      tremor of the ground. The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with
+      the salute of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before entering
+      the yard; and when the ear-splitting screech of the steam-whistle for the
+      brakes had stopped, a series of hard, battering shocks, mingled with the
+      clanking of chain-couplings, made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters
+      under the vault of the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER FIVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Gould carriage was the first to return from the harbour to the empty
+      town. On the ancient pavement, laid out in patterns, sunk into ruts and
+      holes, the portly Ignacio, mindful of the springs of the Parisian-built
+      landau, had pulled up to a walk, and Decoud in his corner contemplated
+      moodily the inner aspect of the gate. The squat turreted sides held up
+      between them a mass of masonry with bunches of grass growing at the top,
+      and a grey, heavily scrolled, armorial shield of stone above the apex of
+      the arch with the arms of Spain nearly smoothed out as if in readiness for
+      some new device typical of the impending progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to augment Decoud&rsquo;s
+      irritation. He muttered something to himself, then began to talk aloud in
+      curt, angry phrases thrown at the silence of the two women. They did not
+      look at him at all; while Don Jose, with his semi-translucent, waxy
+      complexion, overshadowed by the soft grey hat, swayed a little to the
+      jolts of the carriage by the side of Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This sound puts a new edge on a very old truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio on the box above him;
+      the old coachman, with his broad back filling a short, silver-braided
+      jacket, had a big pair of ears, whose thick rims stood well away from his
+      cropped head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the principle is old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began afresh with a sidelong
+      glance at Antonia&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but just imagine our forefathers in morions and corselets drawn up
+      outside this gate, and a band of adventurers just landed from their ships
+      in the harbour there. Thieves, of course. Speculators, too. Their
+      expeditions, each one, were the speculations of grave and reverend persons
+      in England. That is history, as that absurd sailor Mitchell is always
+      saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mitchell&rsquo;s arrangements for the embarkation of the troops were
+      excellent!&rdquo; exclaimed Don Jose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That!&mdash;that! oh, that&rsquo;s really the work of that Genoese seaman! But
+      to return to my noises; there used to be in the old days the sound of
+      trumpets outside that gate. War trumpets! I&rsquo;m sure they were trumpets. I
+      have read somewhere that Drake, who was the greatest of these men, used to
+      dine alone in his cabin on board ship to the sound of trumpets. In those
+      days this town was full of wealth. Those men came to take it. Now the
+      whole land is like a treasure-house, and all these people are breaking
+      into it, whilst we are cutting each other&rsquo;s throats. The only thing that
+      keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they&rsquo;ll come to an agreement some
+      day&mdash;and by the time we&rsquo;ve settled our quarrels and become decent and
+      honourable, there&rsquo;ll be nothing left for us. It has always been the same.
+      We are a wonderful people, but it has always been our fate to be&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      did not say &ldquo;robbed,&rdquo; but added, after a pause&mdash;&ldquo;exploited!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould said, &ldquo;Oh, this is unjust!&rdquo; And Antonia interjected, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      answer him, Emilia. He is attacking me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos!&rdquo; Decoud answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the carriage stopped before the door of the Casa Gould. The young
+      man offered his hand to the ladies. They went in first together; Don Jose
+      walked by the side of Decoud, and the gouty old porter tottered after them
+      with some light wraps on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journalist of Sulaco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Porvenir must have a long and confident article upon Barrios and the
+      irresistibleness of his army of Cayta! The moral effect should be kept up
+      in the country. We must cable encouraging extracts to Europe and the
+      United States to maintain a favourable impression abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud muttered, &ldquo;Oh, yes, we must comfort our friends, the speculators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen of plants in vases
+      along the balustrade, holding out motionless blossoms, and all the glass
+      doors of the reception-rooms thrown open. A jingle of spurs died out at
+      the further end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft tone to the
+      passing ladies, &ldquo;The Senor Administrador is just back from the mountain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish and modern European
+      furniture making as if different centres under the high white spread of
+      the ceiling, the silver and porcelain of the tea-service gleamed among a
+      cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady&rsquo;s boudoir, putting in a note
+      of feminine and intimate delicacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose in his rocking-chair placed his hat on his lap, and Decoud walked
+      up and down the whole length of the room, passing between tables loaded
+      with knick-knacks and almost disappearing behind the high backs of
+      leathern sofas. He was thinking of the angry face of Antonia; he was
+      confident that he would make his peace with her. He had not stayed in
+      Sulaco to quarrel with Antonia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin Decoud was angry with himself. All he saw and heard going on around
+      him exasperated the preconceived views of his European civilization. To
+      contemplate revolutions from the distance of the Parisian Boulevards was
+      quite another matter. Here on the spot it was not possible to dismiss
+      their tragic comedy with the expression, &ldquo;<i>Quelle farce!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reality of the political action, such as it was, seemed closer, and
+      acquired poignancy by Antonia&rsquo;s belief in the cause. Its crudeness hurt
+      his feelings. He was surprised at his own sensitiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I am more of a Costaguanero than I would have believed
+      possible,&rdquo; he thought to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His disdain grew like a reaction of his scepticism against the action into
+      which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia. He soothed himself by
+      saying he was not a patriot, but a lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank low before the little
+      tea-table. Antonia took up her usual place at the reception hour&mdash;the
+      corner of a leathern couch, with a rigid grace in her pose and a fan in
+      her hand. Decoud, swerving from the straight line of his march, came to
+      lean over the high back of her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time he talked into her ear from behind, softly, with a half
+      smile and an air of apologetic familiarity. Her fan lay half grasped on
+      her knees. She never looked at him. His rapid utterance grew more and more
+      insistent and caressing. At last he ventured a slight laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, really. You must forgive me. One must be serious sometimes.&rdquo; He
+      paused. She turned her head a little; her blue eyes glided slowly towards
+      him, slightly upwards, mollified and questioning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t think I am serious when I call Montero a gran&rsquo; bestia every
+      second day in the Porvenir? That is not a serious occupation. No
+      occupation is serious, not even when a bullet through the heart is the
+      penalty of failure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hand closed firmly on her fan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense, may creep into thinking;
+      some glimpse of truth. I mean some effective truth, for which there is no
+      room in politics or journalism. I happen to have said what I thought. And
+      you are angry! If you do me the kindness to think a little you will see
+      that I spoke like a patriot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened her red lips for the first time, not unkindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used as they are. I suppose
+      nobody is really disinterested, unless, perhaps, you, Don Martin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God forbid! It&rsquo;s the last thing I should like you to believe of me.&rdquo; He
+      spoke lightly, and paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to fan herself with a slow movement without raising her hand.
+      After a time he whispered passionately&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antonia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled, and extended her hand after the English manner towards Charles
+      Gould, who was bowing before her; while Decoud, with his elbows spread on
+      the back of the sofa, dropped his eyes and murmured, &ldquo;Bonjour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine bent over his wife for a
+      moment. They exchanged a few words, of which only the phrase, &ldquo;The
+      greatest enthusiasm,&rdquo; pronounced by Mrs. Gould, could be heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Decoud began in a murmur. &ldquo;Even he!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is sheer calumny,&rdquo; said Antonia, not very severely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just ask him to throw his mine into the melting-pot for the great
+      cause,&rdquo; Decoud whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands cheerily. The excellent
+      aspect of the troops and the great quantity of new deadly rifles on the
+      shoulders of those brave men seemed to fill him with an ecstatic
+      confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair, listened, but nothing
+      could be discovered in his face except a kind and deferential attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the room, stood looking out of
+      one of the three long windows giving on the street. Decoud followed her.
+      The window was thrown open, and he leaned against the thickness of the
+      wall. The long folds of the damask curtain, falling straight from the
+      broad brass cornice, hid him partly from the room. He folded his arms on
+      his breast, and looked steadily at Antonia&rsquo;s profile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people returning from the harbour filled the pavements; the shuffle of
+      sandals and a low murmur of voices ascended to the window. Now and then a
+      coach rolled slowly along the disjointed roadway of the Calle de la
+      Constitucion. There were not many private carriages in Sulaco; at the most
+      crowded hour on the Alameda they could be counted with one glance of the
+      eye. The great family arks swayed on high leathern springs, full of pretty
+      powdered faces in which the eyes looked intensely alive and black. And
+      first Don Juste Lopez, the President of the Provincial Assembly, passed
+      with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a black frock-coat and stiff
+      white tie, as when directing a debate from a high tribune. Though they all
+      raised their eyes, Antonia did not make the usual greeting gesture of a
+      fluttered hand, and they affected not to see the two young people,
+      Costaguaneros with European manners, whose eccentricities were discussed
+      behind the barred windows of the first families in Sulaco. And then the
+      widowed Senora Gavilaso de Valdes rolled by, handsome and dignified, in a
+      great machine in which she used to travel to and from her country house,
+      surrounded by an armed retinue in leather suits and big sombreros, with
+      carbines at the bows of their saddles. She was a woman of most
+      distinguished family, proud, rich, and kind-hearted. Her second son,
+      Jaime, had just gone off on the Staff of Barrios. The eldest, a worthless
+      fellow of a moody disposition, filled Sulaco with the noise of his
+      dissipations, and gambled heavily at the club. The two youngest boys, with
+      yellow Ribierist cockades in their caps, sat on the front seat. She, too,
+      affected not to see the Senor Decoud talking publicly with Antonia in
+      defiance of every convention. And he not even her novio as far as the
+      world knew! Though, even in that case, it would have been scandal enough.
+      But the dignified old lady, respected and admired by the first families,
+      would have been still more shocked if she could have heard the words they
+      were exchanging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only one aim in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head, still
+      staring across the street at the Avellanos&rsquo;s house, grey, marked with
+      decay, and with iron bars like a prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it would be so easy of attainment,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;this aim which,
+      whether knowingly or not, I have always had in my heart&mdash;ever since
+      the day when you snubbed me so horribly once in Paris, you remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip that was on his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of Charlotte Corday in a
+      schoolgirl&rsquo;s dress; a ferocious patriot. I suppose you would have stuck a
+      knife into Guzman Bento?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him. &ldquo;You do me too much honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; he said, changing suddenly to a tone of bitter levity, &ldquo;you
+      would have sent me to stab him without compunction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ah, par exemple!</i>&rdquo; she murmured in a shocked tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he argued, mockingly, &ldquo;you do keep me here writing deadly
+      nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already killed my self-respect. And you may
+      imagine,&rdquo; he continued, his tone passing into light banter, &ldquo;that Montero,
+      should he be successful, would get even with me in the only way such a
+      brute can get even with a man of intelligence who condescends to call him
+      a gran&rsquo; bestia three times a week. It&rsquo;s a sort of intellectual death; but
+      there is the other one in the background for a journalist of my ability.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is successful!&rdquo; said Antonia, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread,&rdquo; Decoud replied, with
+      a broad smile. &ldquo;And the other Montero, the &lsquo;my trusted brother&rsquo; of the
+      proclamations, the guerrillero&mdash;haven&rsquo;t I written that he was taking
+      the guests&rsquo; overcoats and changing plates in Paris at our Legation in the
+      intervals of spying on our refugees there, in the time of Rojas? He will
+      wash out that sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you look annoyed?
+      This is simply a bit of the biography of one of our great men. What do you
+      think he will do to me? There is a certain convent wall round the corner
+      of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You know? Opposite the
+      door with the inscription, <i>Intrada de la Sombra</i>.&rsquo; Appropriate,
+      perhaps! That&rsquo;s where the uncle of our host gave up his
+      Anglo-South-American soul. And, note, he might have run away. A man who
+      has fought with weapons may run away. You might have let me go with
+      Barrios if you had cared for me. I would have carried one of those rifles,
+      in which Don Jose believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in the ranks
+      of poor peons and Indios, that know nothing either of reason or politics.
+      The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth would have been
+      safer than that for which you made me stay here. When you make war you may
+      retreat, but not when you spend your time in inciting poor ignorant fools
+      to kill and to die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she stood
+      motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down from her
+      interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go to the wall,&rdquo; he said, with a sort of jocular desperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her head remained
+      still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avellanos, whose chipped
+      pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden
+      now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole figure her lips
+      alone moved, forming the words&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin, you will make me cry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a sort of
+      awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still stiffened about
+      his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a sentence
+      is in the personality which utters it, for nothing new can be said by man
+      or woman; and those were the last words, it seemed to him, that could ever
+      have been spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up with her so
+      completely in all their intercourse of small encounters; but even before
+      she had time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with a rigid grace,
+      he had begun to plead&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is transported with
+      joy. I won&rsquo;t say anything of my mother! Our mothers were like sisters.
+      There is the mail-boat for the south next week&mdash;let us go. That
+      Moraga is a fool! A man like Montero is bribed. It&rsquo;s the practice of the
+      country. It&rsquo;s tradition&mdash;it&rsquo;s politics. Read &lsquo;Fifty Years of
+      Misrule.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the greatest tenderness for your father,&rdquo; he began, hurriedly.
+      &ldquo;But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has miserably mismanaged this
+      business. Perhaps your father did, too; I don&rsquo;t know. Montero was
+      bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of this famous loan for
+      national development. Why didn&rsquo;t the stupid Sta. Marta people give him a
+      mission to Europe, or something? He would have taken five years&rsquo; salary in
+      advance, and gone on loafing in Paris, this stupid, ferocious Indio!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man,&rdquo; she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before this outburst,
+      &ldquo;was intoxicated with vanity. We had all the information, not from Moraga
+      only; from others, too. There was his brother intriguing, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Of course you know. You know everything. You read all
+      the correspondence, you write all the papers&mdash;all those State papers
+      that are inspired here, in this room, in blind deference to a theory of
+      political purity. Hadn&rsquo;t you Charles Gould before your eyes? Rey de
+      Sulaco! He and his mine are the practical demonstration of what could have
+      been done. Do you think he succeeded by his fidelity to a theory of
+      virtue? And all those railway people, with their honest work! Of course,
+      their work is honest! But what if you cannot work honestly till the
+      thieves are satisfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told this Sir John
+      what&rsquo;s-his-name that Montero had to be bought off&mdash;he and all his
+      Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve? He ought to have been
+      bought off with his own stupid weight of gold&mdash;his weight of gold, I
+      tell you, boots, sabre, spurs, cocked hat, and all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head slightly. &ldquo;It was impossible,&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wanted the whole lot? What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was facing him now in the deep recess of the window, very close and
+      motionless. Her lips moved rapidly. Decoud, leaning his back against the
+      wall, listened with crossed arms and lowered eyelids. He drank the tones
+      of her even voice, and watched the agitated life of her throat, as if
+      waves of emotion had run from her heart to pass out into the air in her
+      reasonable words. He also had his aspirations, he aspired to carry her
+      away out of these deadly futilities of pronunciamientos and reforms. All
+      this was wrong&mdash;utterly wrong; but she fascinated him, and sometimes
+      the sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the charm, replace the
+      fascination by a sudden unwilling thrill of interest. Some women hovered,
+      as it were, on the threshold of genius, he reflected. They did not want to
+      know, or think, or understand. Passion stood for all that, and he was
+      ready to believe that some startlingly profound remark, some appreciation
+      of character, or a judgment upon an event, bordered on the miraculous. In
+      the mature Antonia he could see with an extraordinary vividness the
+      austere schoolgirl of the earlier days. She seduced his attention;
+      sometimes he could not restrain a murmur of assent; now and then he
+      advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they began to argue; the
+      curtain half hid them from the people in the sala.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of shadow between the
+      houses, lit up vaguely by the glimmer of street lamps, ascended the
+      evening silence of Sulaco; the silence of a town with few carriages, of
+      unshod horses, and a softly sandalled population. The windows of the Casa
+      Gould flung their shining parallelograms upon the house of the Avellanos.
+      Now and then a shuffle of feet passed below with the pulsating red glow of
+      a cigarette at the foot of the walls; and the night air, as if cooled by
+      the snows of Higuerota, refreshed their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We Occidentals,&rdquo; said Martin Decoud, using the usual term the provincials
+      of Sulaco applied to themselves, &ldquo;have been always distinct and separated.
+      As long as we hold Cayta nothing can reach us. In all our troubles no army
+      has marched over those mountains. A revolution in the central provinces
+      isolates us at once. Look how complete it is now! The news of Barrios&rsquo;
+      movement will be cabled to the United States, and only in that way will it
+      reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other seaboard. We have the
+      greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the purest blood in our great
+      families, the most laborious population. The Occidental Province should
+      stand alone. The early Federalism was not bad for us. Then came this union
+      which Don Henrique Gould resisted. It opened the road to tyranny; and,
+      ever since, the rest of Costaguana hangs like a millstone round our necks.
+      The Occidental territory is large enough to make any man&rsquo;s country. Look
+      at the mountains! Nature itself seems to cry to us, &lsquo;Separate!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made an energetic gesture of negation. A silence fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I know it&rsquo;s contrary to the doctrine laid down in the &lsquo;History
+      of Fifty Years&rsquo; Misrule.&rsquo; I am only trying to be sensible. But my sense
+      seems always to give you cause for offence. Have I startled you very much
+      with this perfectly reasonable aspiration?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but the idea shocked her
+      early convictions. Her patriotism was larger. She had never considered
+      that possibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may yet be the means of saving some of your convictions,&rdquo; he said,
+      prophetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not answer. She seemed tired. They leaned side by side on the rail
+      of the little balcony, very friendly, having exhausted politics, giving
+      themselves up to the silent feeling of their nearness, in one of those
+      profound pauses that fall upon the rhythm of passion. Towards the plaza
+      end of the street the glowing coals in the brazeros of the market women
+      cooking their evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the pavement. A
+      man appeared without a sound in the light of a street lamp, showing the
+      coloured inverted triangle of his bordered poncho, square on his
+      shoulders, hanging to a point below his knees. From the harbour end of the
+      Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping mount, gleaming silver-grey
+      abreast each lamp under the dark shape of the rider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores,&rdquo; said Decoud, gently,
+      &ldquo;coming in all his splendour after his work is done. The next great man of
+      Sulaco after Don Carlos Gould. But he is good-natured, and let me make
+      friends with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, indeed!&rdquo; said Antonia. &ldquo;How did you make friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular pulse, and this man
+      is one of the leaders of the populace. A journalist ought to know
+      remarkable men&mdash;and this man is remarkable in his way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes!&rdquo; said Antonia, thoughtfully. &ldquo;It is known that this Italian has
+      a great influence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam of dim light on the
+      shining broad quarters of the grey mare, on a bright heavy stirrup, on a
+      long silver spur; but the short flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was
+      powerless against the muffled-up mysteriousness of the dark figure with an
+      invisible face concealed by a great sombrero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the balcony, side by side,
+      touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness of the street,
+      and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs. This was a tete-a-tete of
+      extreme impropriety; something of which in the whole extent of the
+      Republic only the extraordinary Antonia could be capable&mdash;the poor,
+      motherless girl, never accompanied, with a careless father, who had
+      thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud himself seemed to feel
+      that this was as much as he could expect of having her to himself till&mdash;till
+      the revolution was over and he could carry her off to Europe, away from
+      the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed even harder to bear
+      than its ignominy. After one Montero there would be another, the
+      lawlessness of a populace of all colours and races, barbarism,
+      irremediable tyranny. As the great Liberator Bolivar had said in the
+      bitterness of his spirit, &ldquo;America is ungovernable. Those who worked for
+      her independence have ploughed the sea.&rdquo; He did not care, he declared
+      boldly; he seized every opportunity to tell her that though she had
+      managed to make a Blanco journalist of him, he was no patriot. First of
+      all, the word had no sense for cultured minds, to whom the narrowness of
+      every belief is odious; and secondly, in connection with the everlasting
+      troubles of this unhappy country it was hopelessly besmirched; it had been
+      the cry of dark barbarism, the cloak of lawlessness, of crimes, of
+      rapacity, of simple thieving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance. He had no need to
+      drop his voice; it had been low all the time, a mere murmur in the silence
+      of dark houses with their shutters closed early against the night air, as
+      is the custom of Sulaco. Only the sala of the Casa Gould flung out
+      defiantly the blaze of its four windows, the bright appeal of light in the
+      whole dumb obscurity of the street. And the murmur on the little balcony
+      went on after a short pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we are labouring to change all that,&rdquo; Antonia protested. &ldquo;It is
+      exactly what we desire. It is our object. It is the great cause. And the
+      word you despise has stood also for sacrifice, for courage, for constancy,
+      for suffering. Papa, who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ploughing the sea,&rdquo; interrupted Decoud, looking down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was below the sound of hasty and ponderous footsteps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your uncle, the grand-vicar of the cathedral, has just turned under the
+      gate,&rdquo; observed Decoud. &ldquo;He said Mass for the troops in the Plaza this
+      morning. They had built for him an altar of drums, you know. And they
+      brought outside all the painted blocks to take the air. All the wooden
+      saints stood militarily in a row at the top of the great flight of steps.
+      They looked like a gorgeous escort attending the Vicar-General. I saw the
+      great function from the windows of the Porvenir. He is amazing, your
+      uncle, the last of the Corbelans. He glittered exceedingly in his
+      vestments with a great crimson velvet cross down his back. And all the
+      time our saviour Barrios sat in the Amarilla Club drinking punch at an
+      open window. Esprit fort&mdash;our Barrios. I expected every moment your
+      uncle to launch an excommunication there and then at the black eye-patch
+      in the window across the Plaza. But not at all. Ultimately the troops
+      marched off. Later Barrios came down with some of the officers, and stood
+      with his uniform all unbuttoned, discoursing at the edge of the pavement.
+      Suddenly your uncle appeared, no longer glittering, but all black, at the
+      cathedral door with that threatening aspect he has&mdash;you know, like a
+      sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look, strides over straight at the
+      group of uniforms, and leads away the general by the elbow. He walked him
+      for a quarter of an hour in the shade of a wall. Never let go his elbow
+      for a moment, talking all the time with exaltation, and gesticulating with
+      a long black arm. It was a curious scene. The officers seemed struck with
+      astonishment. Remarkable man, your missionary uncle. He hates an infidel
+      much less than a heretic, and prefers a heathen many times to an infidel.
+      He condescends graciously to call me a heathen, sometimes, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade, opening and shutting
+      the fan gently; and Decoud talked a little nervously, as if afraid that
+      she would leave him at the first pause. Their comparative isolation, the
+      precious sense of intimacy, the slight contact of their arms, affected him
+      softly; for now and then a tender inflection crept into the flow of his
+      ironic murmurs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any slight sign of favour from a relative of yours is welcome, Antonia.
+      And perhaps he understands me, after all! But I know him, too, our Padre
+      Corbelan. The idea of political honour, justice, and honesty for him
+      consists in the restitution of the confiscated Church property. Nothing
+      else could have drawn that fierce converter of savage Indians out of the
+      wilds to work for the Ribierist cause! Nothing else but that wild hope! He
+      would make a pronunciamiento himself for such an object against any
+      Government if he could only get followers! What does Don Carlos Gould
+      think of that? But, of course, with his English impenetrability, nobody
+      can tell what he thinks. Probably he thinks of nothing apart from his
+      mine; of his &lsquo;Imperium in Imperio.&rsquo; As to Mrs. Gould, she thinks of her
+      schools, of her hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of every
+      sick old man in the three villages. If you were to turn your head now you
+      would see her extracting a report from that sinister doctor in a check
+      shirt&mdash;what&rsquo;s his name? Monygham&mdash;or else catechising Don Pepe
+      or perhaps listening to Padre Roman. They are all down here to-day&mdash;all
+      her ministers of state. Well, she is a sensible woman, and perhaps Don
+      Carlos is a sensible man. It&rsquo;s a part of solid English sense not to think
+      too much; to see only what may be of practical use at the moment. These
+      people are not like ourselves. We have no political reason; we have
+      political passions&mdash;sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular
+      view of our personal advantage either practical or emotional. No one is a
+      patriot for nothing. The word serves us well. But I am clear-sighted, and
+      I shall not use that word to you, Antonia! I have no patriotic illusions.
+      I have only the supreme illusion of a lover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly, &ldquo;That can lead one very far,
+      though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind their backs the political tide that once in every twenty-four hours
+      set with a strong flood through the Gould drawing-room could be heard,
+      rising higher in a hum of voices. Men had been dropping in singly, or in
+      twos and threes: the higher officials of the province, engineers of the
+      railway, sunburnt and in tweeds, with the frosted head of their chief
+      smiling with slow, humorous indulgence amongst the young eager faces.
+      Scarfe, the lover of fandangos, had already slipped out in search of some
+      dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the town. Don Juste Lopez,
+      after taking his daughters home, had entered solemnly, in a black creased
+      coat buttoned up under his spreading brown beard. The few members of the
+      Provincial Assembly present clustered at once around their President to
+      discuss the news of the war and the last proclamation of the rebel
+      Montero, the miserable Montero, calling in the name of &ldquo;a justly incensed
+      democracy&rdquo; upon all the Provincial Assemblies of the Republic to suspend
+      their sittings till his sword had made peace and the will of the people
+      could be consulted. It was practically an invitation to dissolve: an
+      unheard-of audacity of that evil madman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The indignation ran high in the knot of deputies behind Jose Avellanos.
+      Don Jose, lifting up his voice, cried out to them over the high back of
+      his chair, &ldquo;Sulaco has answered by sending to-day an army upon his flank.
+      If all the other provinces show only half as much patriotism as we
+      Occidentals&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrating treble of the life
+      and soul of the party. Yes! Yes! This was true! A great truth! Sulaco was
+      in the forefront, as ever! It was a boastful tumult, the hopefulness
+      inspired by the event of the day breaking out amongst those caballeros of
+      the Campo thinking of their herds, of their lands, of the safety of their
+      families. Everything was at stake. . . . No! It was impossible that
+      Montero should succeed! This criminal, this shameless Indio! The clamour
+      continued for some time, everybody else in the room looking towards the
+      group where Don Juste had put on his air of impartial solemnity as if
+      presiding at a sitting of the Provincial Assembly. Decoud had turned round
+      at the noise, and, leaning his back on the balustrade, shouted into the
+      room with all the strength of his lungs, &ldquo;Gran&rsquo; bestia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This unexpected cry had the effect of stilling the noise. All the eyes
+      were directed to the window with an approving expectation; but Decoud had
+      already turned his back upon the room, and was again leaning out over the
+      quiet street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the quintessence of my journalism; that is the supreme argument,&rdquo;
+       he said to Antonia. &ldquo;I have invented this definition, this last word on a
+      great question. But I am no patriot. I am no more of a patriot than the
+      Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this Genoese who has done such great
+      things for this harbour&mdash;this active usher-in of the material
+      implements for our progress. You have heard Captain Mitchell confess over
+      and over again that till he got this man he could never tell how long it
+      would take to unload a ship. That is bad for progress. You have seen him
+      pass by after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls in some
+      ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a fortunate fellow! His work is an
+      exercise of personal powers; his leisure is spent in receiving the marks
+      of extraordinary adulation. And he likes it, too. Can anybody be more
+      fortunate? To be feared and admired is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And are these your highest aspirations, Don Martin?&rdquo; interrupted Antonia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was speaking of a man of that sort,&rdquo; said Decoud, curtly. &ldquo;The heroes
+      of the world have been feared and admired. What more could he want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud had often felt his familiar habit of ironic thought fall shattered
+      against Antonia&rsquo;s gravity. She irritated him as if she, too, had suffered
+      from that inexplicable feminine obtuseness which stands so often between a
+      man and a woman of the more ordinary sort. But he overcame his vexation at
+      once. He was very far from thinking Antonia ordinary, whatever verdict his
+      scepticism might have pronounced upon himself. With a touch of penetrating
+      tenderness in his voice he assured her that his only aspiration was to a
+      felicity so high that it seemed almost unrealizable on this earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She coloured invisibly, with a warmth against which the breeze from the
+      sierra seemed to have lost its cooling power in the sudden melting of the
+      snows. His whisper could not have carried so far, though there was enough
+      ardour in his tone to melt a heart of ice. Antonia turned away abruptly,
+      as if to carry his whispered assurance into the room behind, full of
+      light, noisy with voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tide of political speculation was beating high within the four walls
+      of the great sala, as if driven beyond the marks by a great gust of hope.
+      Don Juste&rsquo;s fan-shaped beard was still the centre of loud and animated
+      discussions. There was a self-confident ring in all the voices. Even the
+      few Europeans around Charles Gould&mdash;a Dane, a couple of Frenchmen, a
+      discreet fat German, smiling, with down-cast eyes, the representatives of
+      those material interests that had got a footing in Sulaco under the
+      protecting might of the San Tome mine&mdash;had infused a lot of good
+      humour into their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they were paying their
+      court, was the visible sign of the stability that could be achieved on the
+      shifting ground of revolutions. They felt hopeful about their various
+      undertakings. One of the two Frenchmen, small, black, with glittering eyes
+      lost in an immense growth of bushy beard, waved his tiny brown hands and
+      delicate wrists. He had been travelling in the interior of the province
+      for a syndicate of European capitalists. His forcible &ldquo;<i>Monsieur
+      l&rsquo;Administrateur</i>&rdquo; returning every minute shrilled above the steady hum
+      of conversations. He was relating his discoveries. He was ecstatic.
+      Charles Gould glanced down at him courteously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a given moment of these necessary receptions it was Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s habit
+      to withdraw quietly into a little drawing-room, especially her own, next
+      to the great sala. She had risen, and, waiting for Antonia, listened with
+      a slightly worried graciousness to the engineer-in-chief of the railway,
+      who stooped over her, relating slowly, without the slightest gesture,
+      something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a humorous twinkle.
+      Antonia, before she advanced into the room to join Mrs. Gould, turned her
+      head over her shoulder towards Decoud, only for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should any one of us think his aspirations unrealizable?&rdquo; she said,
+      rapidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia,&rdquo; he answered, through
+      clenched teeth, then bowed very low, a little distantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his amusing story. The
+      humours of railway building in South America appealed to his keen
+      appreciation of the absurd, and he told his instances of ignorant
+      prejudice and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs. Gould gave him all
+      her attention as he walked by her side escorting the ladies out of the
+      room. Finally all three passed unnoticed through the glass doors in the
+      gallery. Only a tall priest stalking silently in the noise of the sala
+      checked himself to look after them. Father Corbelan, whom Decoud had seen
+      from the balcony turning into the gateway of the Casa Gould, had addressed
+      no one since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane accentuated the tallness
+      of his stature; he carried his powerful torso thrown forward; and the
+      straight, black bar of his joined eyebrows, the pugnacious outline of the
+      bony face, the white spot of a scar on the bluish shaven cheeks (a
+      testimonial to his apostolic zeal from a party of unconverted Indians),
+      suggested something unlawful behind his priesthood, the idea of a chaplain
+      of bandits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He separated his bony, knotted hands clasped behind his back, to shake his
+      finger at Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud had stepped into the room after Antonia. But he did not go far. He
+      had remained just within, against the curtain, with an expression of not
+      quite genuine gravity, like a grown-up person taking part in a game of
+      children. He gazed quietly at the threatening finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have watched your reverence converting General Barrios by a special
+      sermon on the Plaza,&rdquo; he said, without making the slightest movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What miserable nonsense!&rdquo; Father Corbelan&rsquo;s deep voice resounded all over
+      the room, making all the heads turn on the shoulders. &ldquo;The man is a
+      drunkard. Senores, the God of your General is a bottle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy suspension of every
+      sound, as if the self-confidence of the gathering had been staggered by a
+      blow. But nobody took up Father Corbelan&rsquo;s declaration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was known that Father Corbelan had come out of the wilds to advocate
+      the sacred rights of the Church with the same fanatical fearlessness with
+      which he had gone preaching to bloodthirsty savages, devoid of human
+      compassion or worship of any kind. Rumours of legendary proportions told
+      of his successes as a missionary beyond the eye of Christian men. He had
+      baptized whole nations of Indians, living with them like a savage himself.
+      It was related that the padre used to ride with his Indians for days, half
+      naked, carrying a bullock-hide shield, and, no doubt, a long lance, too&mdash;who
+      knows? That he had wandered clothed in skins, seeking for proselytes
+      somewhere near the snow line of the Cordillera. Of these exploits Padre
+      Corbelan himself was never known to talk. But he made no secret of his
+      opinion that the politicians of Sta. Marta had harder hearts and more
+      corrupt minds than the heathen to whom he had carried the word of God. His
+      injudicious zeal for the temporal welfare of the Church was damaging the
+      Ribierist cause. It was common knowledge that he had refused to be made
+      titular bishop of the Occidental diocese till justice was done to a
+      despoiled Church. The political Gefe of Sulaco (the same dignitary whom
+      Captain Mitchell saved from the mob afterwards) hinted with naive cynicism
+      that doubtless their Excellencies the Ministers sent the padre over the
+      mountains to Sulaco in the worst season of the year in the hope that he
+      would be frozen to death by the icy blasts of the high paramos. Every year
+      a few hardy muleteers&mdash;men inured to exposure&mdash;were known to
+      perish in that way. But what would you have? Their Excellencies possibly
+      had not realized what a tough priest he was. Meantime, the ignorant were
+      beginning to murmur that the Ribierist reforms meant simply the taking
+      away of the land from the people. Some of it was to be given to foreigners
+      who made the railway; the greater part was to go to the padres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the results of the Grand Vicar&rsquo;s zeal. Even from the short
+      allocution to the troops on the Plaza (which only the first ranks could
+      have heard) he had not been able to keep out his fixed idea of an outraged
+      Church waiting for reparation from a penitent country. The political Gefe
+      had been exasperated. But he could not very well throw the brother-in-law
+      of Don Jose into the prison of the Cabildo. The chief magistrate, an
+      easy-going and popular official, visited the Casa Gould, walking over
+      after sunset from the Intendencia, unattended, acknowledging with
+      dignified courtesy the salutations of high and low alike. That evening he
+      had walked up straight to Charles Gould and had hissed out to him that he
+      would have liked to deport the Grand Vicar out of Sulaco, anywhere, to
+      some desert island, to the Isabels, for instance. &ldquo;The one without water
+      preferably&mdash;eh, Don Carlos?&rdquo; he had added in a tone between jest and
+      earnest. This uncontrollable priest, who had rejected his offer of the
+      episcopal palace for a residence and preferred to hang his shabby hammock
+      amongst the rubble and spiders of the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had
+      taken into his head to advocate an unconditional pardon for Hernandez the
+      Robber! And this was not enough; he seemed to have entered into
+      communication with the most audacious criminal the country had known for
+      years. The Sulaco police knew, of course, what was going on. Padre
+      Corbelan had got hold of that reckless Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores,
+      the only man fit for such an errand, and had sent a message through him.
+      Father Corbelan had studied in Rome, and could speak Italian. The Capataz
+      was known to visit the old Dominican Convent at night. An old woman who
+      served the Grand Vicar had heard the name of Hernandez pronounced; and
+      only last Saturday afternoon the Capataz had been observed galloping out
+      of town. He did not return for two days. The police would have laid the
+      Italian by the heels if it had not been for fear of the Cargadores, a
+      turbulent body of men, quite apt to raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so
+      easy to govern Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the
+      money in the pockets of the railway workmen. The populace was made
+      restless by Father Corbelan&rsquo;s discourses. And the first magistrate
+      explained to Charles Gould that now the province was stripped of troops
+      any outbreak of lawlessness would find the authorities with their boots
+      off, as it were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair, smoking a long, thin
+      cigar, not very far from Don Jose, with whom, bending over sideways, he
+      exchanged a few words from time to time. He ignored the entrance of the
+      priest, and whenever Father Corbelan&rsquo;s voice was raised behind him, he
+      shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father Corbelan had remained quite motionless for a time with that
+      something vengeful in his immobility which seemed to characterize all his
+      attitudes. A lurid glow of strong convictions gave its peculiar aspect to
+      the black figure. But its fierceness became softened as the padre, fixing
+      his eyes upon Decoud, raised his long, black arm slowly, impressively&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&mdash;you are a perfect heathen,&rdquo; he said, in a subdued, deep
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the young man&rsquo;s breast.
+      Decoud, very calm, felt the wall behind the curtain with the back of his
+      head. Then, with his chin tilted well up, he smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he agreed with the slightly weary nonchalance of a man well
+      used to these passages. &ldquo;But is it perhaps that you have not discovered
+      yet what is the God of my worship? It was an easier task with our
+      Barrios.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement. &ldquo;You believe neither in
+      stick nor stone,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor bottle,&rdquo; added Decoud without stirring. &ldquo;Neither does the other of
+      your reverence&rsquo;s confidants. I mean the Capataz of the Cargadores. He does
+      not drink. Your reading of my character does honour to your perspicacity.
+      But why call me a heathen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; retorted the priest. &ldquo;You are ten times worse. A miracle could not
+      convert you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly do not believe in miracles,&rdquo; said Decoud, quietly. Father
+      Corbelan shrugged his high, broad shoulders doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sort of Frenchman&mdash;godless&mdash;a materialist,&rdquo; he pronounced
+      slowly, as if weighing the terms of a careful analysis. &ldquo;Neither the son
+      of his own country nor of any other,&rdquo; he continued, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scarcely human, in fact,&rdquo; Decoud commented under his breath, his head at
+      rest against the wall, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The victim of this faithless age,&rdquo; Father Corbelan resumed in a deep but
+      subdued voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But of some use as a journalist.&rdquo; Decoud changed his pose and spoke in a
+      more animated tone. &ldquo;Has your worship neglected to read the last number of
+      the Porvenir? I assure you it is just like the others. On the general
+      policy it continues to call Montero a gran&rsquo; bestia, and stigmatize his
+      brother, the guerrillero, for a combination of lackey and spy. What could
+      be more effective? In local affairs it urges the Provincial Government to
+      enlist bodily into the national army the band of Hernandez the Robber&mdash;who
+      is apparently the protege of the Church&mdash;or at least of the Grand
+      Vicar. Nothing could be more sound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his square-toed shoes with
+      big steel buckles. Again, with his hands clasped behind his back, he paced
+      to and fro, planting his feet firmly. When he swung about, the skirt of
+      his soutane was inflated slightly by the brusqueness of his movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great sala had been emptying itself slowly. When the Gefe Politico
+      rose to go, most of those still remaining stood up suddenly in sign of
+      respect, and Don Jose Avellanos stopped the rocking of his chair. But the
+      good-natured First Official made a deprecatory gesture, waved his hand to
+      Charles Gould, and went out discreetly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the comparative peace of the room the screaming &ldquo;Monsieur
+      l&rsquo;Administrateur&rdquo; of the frail, hairy Frenchman seemed to acquire a
+      preternatural shrillness. The explorer of the Capitalist syndicate was
+      still enthusiastic. &ldquo;Ten million dollars&rsquo; worth of copper practically in
+      sight, Monsieur l&rsquo;Administrateur. Ten millions in sight! And a railway
+      coming&mdash;a railway! They will never believe my report. C&rsquo;est trop
+      beau.&rdquo; He fell a prey to a screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely
+      nodding heads, before Charles Gould&rsquo;s imperturbable calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging round the skirt of his
+      soutane at each end of his beat. Decoud murmured to him ironically: &ldquo;Those
+      gentlemen talk about their gods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Father Corbelan stopped short, looked at the journalist of Sulaco fixedly
+      for a moment, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and resumed his plodding
+      walk of an obstinate traveller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the Europeans were dropping off from the group around Charles
+      Gould till the Administrador of the Great Silver Mine could be seen in his
+      whole lank length, from head to foot, left stranded by the ebbing tide of
+      his guests on the great square of carpet, as it were a multi-coloured
+      shoal of flowers and arabesques under his brown boots. Father Corbelan
+      approached the rocking-chair of Don Jose Avellanos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, brother,&rdquo; he said, with kindly brusqueness and a touch of relieved
+      impatience a man may feel at the end of a perfectly useless ceremony. &ldquo;A
+      la Casa! A la Casa! This has been all talk. Let us now go and think and
+      pray for guidance from Heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the frail diplomatist&mdash;the
+      life and soul of the party&mdash;he seemed gigantic, with a gleam of
+      fanaticism in the glance. But the voice of the party, or, rather, its
+      mouthpiece, the &ldquo;son Decoud&rdquo; from Paris, turned journalist for the sake of
+      Antonia&rsquo;s eyes, knew very well that it was not so, that he was only a
+      strenuous priest with one idea, feared by the women and execrated by the
+      men of the people. Martin Decoud, the dilettante in life, imagined himself
+      to derive an artistic pleasure from watching the picturesque extreme of
+      wrongheadedness into which an honest, almost sacred, conviction may drive
+      a man. &ldquo;It is like madness. It must be&mdash;because it&rsquo;s
+      self-destructive,&rdquo; Decoud had said to himself often. It seemed to him that
+      every conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned into that form of
+      dementia the gods send upon those they wish to destroy. But he enjoyed the
+      bitter flavour of that example with the zest of a connoisseur in the art
+      of his choice. Those two men got on well together, as if each had felt
+      respectively that a masterful conviction, as well as utter scepticism, may
+      lead a man very far on the by-paths of political action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. Decoud followed out the
+      brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in the vast empty
+      sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man,
+      with a drooping moustache, a hide merchant from Esmeralda, who had come
+      overland to Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range. He was
+      very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose of seeing the
+      Senor Administrador of San Tome in relation to some assistance he required
+      in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to enlarge it greatly now that
+      the country was going to be settled. It was going to be settled, he
+      repeated several times, degrading by a strange, anxious whine the sonority
+      of the Spanish language, which he pattered rapidly, like some sort of
+      cringing jargon. A plain man could carry on his little business now in the
+      country, and even think of enlarging it&mdash;with safety. Was it not so?
+      He seemed to beg Charles Gould for a confirmatory word, a grunt of assent,
+      a simple nod even.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he would dart
+      his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he would branch off into
+      feeling allusion to the dangers of his journey. The audacious Hernandez,
+      leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the Campo of Sulaco, and was known
+      to be lurking in the ravines of the coast range. Yesterday, when distant
+      only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant and his servants had seen
+      three men on the road arrested suspiciously, with their horses&rsquo; heads
+      together. Two of these rode off at once and disappeared in a shallow
+      quebrada to the left. &ldquo;We stopped,&rdquo; continued the man from Esmeralda, &ldquo;and
+      I tried to hide behind a small bush. But none of my mozos would go forward
+      to find out what it meant, and the third horseman seemed to be waiting for
+      us to come up. It was no use. We had been seen. So we rode slowly on,
+      trembling. He let us pass&mdash;a man on a grey horse with his hat down on
+      his eyes&mdash;without a word of greeting; but by-and-by we heard him
+      galloping after us. We faced about, but that did not seem to intimidate
+      him. He rode up at speed, and touching my foot with the toe of his boot,
+      asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling laugh. He did not seem armed,
+      but when he put his hand back to reach for the matches I saw an enormous
+      revolver strapped to his waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers,
+      Don Carlos, and as he did not offer to go on we dared not move. At last,
+      blowing the smoke of my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said,
+      &lsquo;Senor, it would be perhaps better for you if I rode behind your party.
+      You are not very far from Sulaco now. Go you with God.&rsquo; What would you? We
+      went on. There was no resisting him. He might have been Hernandez himself;
+      though my servant, who has been many times to Sulaco by sea, assured me
+      that he had recognized him very well for the Capataz of the Steamship
+      Company&rsquo;s Cargadores. Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the
+      corner of the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the
+      stirrup with her hand on the grey horse&rsquo;s mane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you, Senor Hirsch,&rdquo; murmured Charles Gould, &ldquo;that you ran no
+      risk on this occasion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most fierce man&mdash;to look
+      at. And what does it mean? A person employed by the Steamship Company
+      talking with salteadores&mdash;no less, senor; the other horsemen were
+      salteadores&mdash;in a lonely place, and behaving like a robber himself! A
+      cigar is nothing, but what was there to prevent him asking me for my
+      purse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, Senor Hirsch,&rdquo; Charles Gould murmured, letting his glance stray
+      away a little vacantly from the round face, with its hooked beak upturned
+      towards him in an almost childlike appeal. &ldquo;If it was the Capataz de
+      Cargadores you met&mdash;and there is no doubt, is there?&mdash;you were
+      perfectly safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-looking man, Don Carlos. He
+      asked me for a cigar in a most familiar manner. What would have happened
+      if I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What business had he to be
+      talking with robbers in a lonely place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave not a sign, made no sound.
+      The impenetrability of the embodied Gould Concession had its surface
+      shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction; but the King of Sulaco
+      had words enough to give him all the mysterious weight of a taciturn
+      force. His silences, backed by the power of speech, had as many shades of
+      significance as uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt, of negation&mdash;even
+      of simple comment. Some seemed to say plainly, &ldquo;Think it over&rdquo;; others
+      meant clearly, &ldquo;Go ahead&rdquo;; a simple, low &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; with an affirmative nod,
+      at the end of a patient listening half-hour was the equivalent of a verbal
+      contract, which men had learned to trust implicitly, since behind it all
+      there was the great San Tome mine, the head and front of the material
+      interests, so strong that it depended on no man&rsquo;s goodwill in the whole
+      length and breadth of the Occidental Province&mdash;that is, on no
+      goodwill which it could not buy ten times over. But to the little
+      hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about the export of hides, the
+      silence of Charles Gould portended a failure. Evidently this was no time
+      for extending a modest man&rsquo;s business. He enveloped in a swift mental
+      malediction the whole country, with all its inhabitants, partisans of
+      Ribiera and Montero alike; and there were incipient tears in his mute
+      anger at the thought of the innumerable ox-hides going to waste upon the
+      dreamy expanse of the Campo, with its single palms rising like ships at
+      sea within the perfect circle of the horizon, its clumps of heavy timber
+      motionless like solid islands of leaves above the running waves of grass.
+      There were hides there, rotting, with no profit to anybody&mdash;rotting
+      where they had been dropped by men called away to attend the urgent
+      necessities of political revolutions. The practical, mercantile soul of
+      Senor Hirsch rebelled against all that foolishness, while he was taking a
+      respectful but disconcerted leave of the might and majesty of the San Tome
+      mine in the person of Charles Gould. He could not restrain a heart-broken
+      murmur, wrung out of his very aching heart, as it were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this. The price of
+      hides in Hamburg is gone up&mdash;up. Of course the Ribierist Government
+      will do away with all that&mdash;when it gets established firmly. Meantime&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, meantime,&rdquo; repeated Charles Gould, inscrutably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not ready to go yet. There
+      was a little matter he would like to mention very much if permitted. It
+      appeared he had some good friends in Hamburg (he murmured the name of the
+      firm) who were very anxious to do business, in dynamite, he explained. A
+      contract for dynamite with the San Tome mine, and then, perhaps, later on,
+      other mines, which were sure to&mdash;The little man from Esmeralda was
+      ready to enlarge, but Charles interrupted him. It seemed as though the
+      patience of the Senor Administrador was giving way at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senor Hirsch,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have enough dynamite stored up at the mountain
+      to send it down crashing into the valley&rdquo;&mdash;his voice rose a little&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      send half Sulaco into the air if I liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of the dealer in hides,
+      who was murmuring hastily, &ldquo;Just so. Just so.&rdquo; And now he was going. It
+      was impossible to do business in explosives with an Administrador so well
+      provided and so discouraging. He had suffered agonies in the saddle and
+      had exposed himself to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for nothing
+      at all. Neither hides nor dynamite&mdash;and the very shoulders of the
+      enterprising Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low to
+      the engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio he
+      stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an attitude of
+      meditative astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;And why
+      does he talk like this to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala, whence
+      the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant drop, nodded
+      familiarly to the master of the house, standing motionless like a tall
+      beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs. The railway will know
+      where to go for dynamite should we get short at any time. We have done
+      cutting and chopping for a while now. We shall begin soon to blast our way
+      through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t come to me,&rdquo; said Charles Gould, with perfect serenity. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t
+      have an ounce to spare for anybody. Not an ounce. Not for my own brother,
+      if I had a brother, and he were the engineer-in-chief of the most
+      promising railway in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; asked the engineer-in-chief, with equanimity. &ldquo;Unkindness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Charles Gould, stolidly. &ldquo;Policy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Radical, I should think,&rdquo; the engineer-in-chief observed from the
+      doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the right name?&rdquo; Charles Gould said, from the middle of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, going to the roots, you know,&rdquo; the engineer explained, with an
+      air of enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; Charles pronounced, slowly. &ldquo;The Gould Concession has struck
+      such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the
+      mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it from
+      there. It&rsquo;s my choice. It&rsquo;s my last card to play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer-in-chief whistled low. &ldquo;A pretty game,&rdquo; he said, with a shade
+      of discretion. &ldquo;And have you told Holroyd of that extraordinary trump card
+      you hold in your hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Card only when it&rsquo;s played; when it falls at the end of the game. Till
+      then you may call it a&mdash;a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weapon,&rdquo; suggested the railway man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You may call it rather an argument,&rdquo; corrected Charles Gould, gently.
+      &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s how I&rsquo;ve presented it to Mr. Holroyd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what did he say to it?&rdquo; asked the engineer, with undisguised
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rdquo;&mdash;Charles Gould spoke after a slight pause&mdash;&ldquo;he said
+      something about holding on like grim death and putting our trust in God. I
+      should imagine he must have been rather startled. But then&rdquo;&mdash;pursued
+      the Administrador of the San Tome mine&mdash;&ldquo;but then, he is very far
+      away, you know, and, as they say in this country, God is very high above.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer&rsquo;s appreciative laugh died away down the stairs, where the
+      Madonna with the Child on her arm seemed to look after his shaking broad
+      back from her shallow niche.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER SIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A profound stillness reigned in the Casa Gould. The master of the house,
+      walking along the corredor, opened the door of his room, and saw his wife
+      sitting in a big armchair&mdash;his own smoking armchair&mdash;thoughtful,
+      contemplating her little shoes. And she did not raise her eyes when he
+      walked in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tired?&rdquo; asked Charles Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould. Still without looking up, she added with
+      feeling, &ldquo;There is an awful sense of unreality about all this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, before the long table strewn with papers, on which lay a
+      hunting crop and a pair of spurs, stood looking at his wife: &ldquo;The heat and
+      dust must have been awful this afternoon by the waterside,&rdquo; he murmured,
+      sympathetically. &ldquo;The glare on the water must have been simply terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One could close one&rsquo;s eyes to the glare,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould. &ldquo;But, my dear
+      Charley, it is impossible for me to close my eyes to our position; to this
+      awful . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyes and looked at her husband&rsquo;s face, from which all sign
+      of sympathy or any other feeling had disappeared. &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you tell me
+      something?&rdquo; she almost wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you had understood me perfectly from the first,&rdquo; Charles Gould
+      said, slowly. &ldquo;I thought we had said all there was to say a long time ago.
+      There is nothing to say now. There were things to be done. We have done
+      them; we have gone on doing them. There is no going back now. I don&rsquo;t
+      suppose that, even from the first, there was really any possible way back.
+      And, what&rsquo;s more, we can&rsquo;t even afford to stand still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go,&rdquo; said his wife inwardly
+      trembling, but in an almost playful tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any distance, any length, of course,&rdquo; was the answer, in a matter-of-fact
+      tone, which caused Mrs. Gould to make another effort to repress a shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure seemed to be
+      diminished still more by the heavy mass of her hair and the long train of
+      her gown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But always to success,&rdquo; she said, persuasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, enveloping her in the steely blue glance of his attentive
+      eyes, answered without hesitation&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there is no alternative.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to the words, this was all
+      that his conscience would allow him to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s smile remained a shade too long upon her lips. She murmured&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will leave you; I&rsquo;ve a slight headache. The heat, the dust, were indeed&mdash;I
+      suppose you are going back to the mine before the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At midnight,&rdquo; said Charles Gould. &ldquo;We are bringing down the silver
+      to-morrow. Then I shall take three whole days off in town with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are going to meet the escort. I shall be on the balcony at five
+      o&rsquo;clock to see you pass. Till then, good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould walked rapidly round the table, and, seizing her hands, bent
+      down, pressing them both to his lips. Before he straightened himself up
+      again to his full height she had disengaged one to smooth his cheek with a
+      light touch, as if he were a little boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try to get some rest for a couple of hours,&rdquo; she murmured, with a glance
+      at a hammock stretched in a distant part of the room. Her long train
+      swished softly after her on the red tiles. At the door she looked back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in a soft and abundant
+      light the four white walls of the room, with a glass case of arms, the
+      brass hilt of Henry Gould&rsquo;s cavalry sabre on its square of velvet, and the
+      water-colour sketch of the San Tome gorge. And Mrs. Gould, gazing at the
+      last in its black wooden frame, sighed out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, if we had left it alone, Charley!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Charles Gould said, moodily; &ldquo;it was impossible to leave it alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it was impossible,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould admitted, slowly. Her lips
+      quivered a little, but she smiled with an air of dainty bravado. &ldquo;We have
+      disturbed a good many snakes in that Paradise, Charley, haven&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember,&rdquo; said Charles Gould, &ldquo;it was Don Pepe who called the
+      gorge the Paradise of snakes. No doubt we have disturbed a great many. But
+      remember, my dear, that it is not now as it was when you made that
+      sketch.&rdquo; He waved his hand towards the small water-colour hanging alone
+      upon the great bare wall. &ldquo;It is no longer a Paradise of snakes. We have
+      brought mankind into it, and we cannot turn our backs upon them to go and
+      begin a new life elsewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He confronted his wife with a firm, concentrated gaze, which Mrs. Gould
+      returned with a brave assumption of fearlessness before she went out,
+      closing the door gently after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In contrast with the white glaring room the dimly lit corredor had a
+      restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the stems and the
+      leaves of the plants ranged along the balustrade of the open side. In the
+      streaks of light falling through the open doors of the reception-rooms,
+      the blossoms, white and red and pale lilac, came out vivid with the
+      brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine; and Mrs. Gould, passing on,
+      had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that
+      chequer the gloom of open glades in the woods. The stones in the rings
+      upon her hand pressed to her forehead glittered in the lamplight abreast
+      of the door of the sala.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; she asked, in a startled voice. &ldquo;Is that you, Basilio?&rdquo; She
+      looked in, and saw Martin Decoud walking about, with an air of having lost
+      something, amongst the chairs and tables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antonia has forgotten her fan in here,&rdquo; said Decoud, with a strange air
+      of distraction; &ldquo;so I entered to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, even as he said this, he had obviously given up his search, and
+      walked straight towards Mrs. Gould, who looked at him with doubtful
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senora,&rdquo; he began, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Don Martin?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Gould. And then she added, with a
+      slight laugh, &ldquo;I am so nervous to-day,&rdquo; as if to explain the eagerness of
+      the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing immediately dangerous,&rdquo; said Decoud, who now could not conceal
+      his agitation. &ldquo;Pray don&rsquo;t distress yourself. No, really, you must not
+      distress yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould, with her candid eyes very wide open, her lips composed into a
+      smile, was steadying herself with a little bejewelled hand against the
+      side of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you don&rsquo;t know how alarming you are, appearing like this
+      unexpectedly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I! Alarming!&rdquo; he protested, sincerely vexed and surprised. &ldquo;I assure you
+      that I am not in the least alarmed myself. A fan is lost; well, it will be
+      found again. But I don&rsquo;t think it is here. It is a fan I am looking for. I
+      cannot understand how Antonia could&mdash;Well! Have you found it, amigo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, senor,&rdquo; said behind Mrs. Gould the soft voice of Basilio, the head
+      servant of the Casa. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think the senorita could have left it in
+      this house at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my friend; look for it on
+      the steps, under the gate; examine every flagstone; search for it till I
+      come down again. . . . That fellow&rdquo;&mdash;he addressed himself in English
+      to Mrs. Gould&mdash;&ldquo;is always stealing up behind one&rsquo;s back on his bare
+      feet. I set him to look for that fan directly I came in to justify my
+      reappearance, my sudden return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused and Mrs. Gould said, amiably, &ldquo;You are always welcome.&rdquo; She
+      paused for a second, too. &ldquo;But I am waiting to learn the cause of your
+      return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause? Yes, there is a cause;
+      there is something else that is lost besides Antonia&rsquo;s favourite fan. As I
+      was walking home after seeing Don Jose and Antonia to their house, the
+      Capataz de Cargadores, riding down the street, spoke to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has anything happened to the Violas?&rdquo; inquired Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Violas? You mean the old Garibaldino who keeps the hotel where the
+      engineers live? Nothing happened there. The Capataz said nothing of them;
+      he only told me that the telegraphist of the Cable Company was walking on
+      the Plaza, bareheaded, looking out for me. There is news from the
+      interior, Mrs. Gould. I should rather say rumours of news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good news?&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worthless, I should think. But if I must define them, I would say bad.
+      They are to the effect that a two days&rsquo; battle had been fought near Sta.
+      Marta, and that the Ribierists are defeated. It must have happened a few
+      days ago&mdash;perhaps a week. The rumour has just reached Cayta, and the
+      man in charge of the cable station there has telegraphed the news to his
+      colleague here. We might just as well have kept Barrios in Sulaco.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s to be done now?&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. He&rsquo;s at sea with the troops. He will get to Cayta in a couple of
+      days&rsquo; time and learn the news there. What he will do then, who can say?
+      Hold Cayta? Offer his submission to Montero? Disband his army&mdash;this
+      last most likely, and go himself in one of the O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s steamers,
+      north or south&mdash;to Valparaiso or to San Francisco, no matter where.
+      Our Barrios has a great practice in exiles and repatriations, which mark
+      the points in the political game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud, exchanging a steady stare with Mrs. Gould, added, tentatively, as
+      it were, &ldquo;And yet, if we had could have been done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Montero victorious, completely victorious!&rdquo; Mrs. Gould breathed out in a
+      tone of unbelief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched in great numbers in such
+      times as these. And even if it were true? Well, let us put things at their
+      worst, let us say it is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then everything is lost,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, with the calmness of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she seemed to divine, she seemed to see Decoud&rsquo;s tremendous
+      excitement under its cloak of studied carelessness. It was, indeed,
+      becoming visible in his audacious and watchful stare, in the curve,
+      half-reckless, half-contemptuous, of his lips. And a French phrase came
+      upon them as if, for this Costaguanero of the Boulevard, that had been the
+      only forcible language&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Non, Madame. Rien n&rsquo;est perdu</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It electrified Mrs. Gould out of her benumbed attitude, and she said,
+      vivaciously&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you think of doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But already there was something of mockery in Decoud&rsquo;s suppressed
+      excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you expect a true Costaguanero to do? Another revolution, of
+      course. On my word of honour, Mrs. Gould, I believe I am a true <i>hijo
+      del pays</i>, a true son of the country, whatever Father Corbelan may say.
+      And I&rsquo;m not so much of an unbeliever as not to have faith in my own ideas,
+      in my own remedies, in my own desires.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t seem convinced,&rdquo; Decoud went on again in French. &ldquo;Say, then, in
+      my passions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould received this addition unflinchingly. To understand it
+      thoroughly she did not require to hear his muttered assurance&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing I would not do for the sake of Antonia. There is nothing
+      I am not prepared to undertake. There is no risk I am not ready to run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud seemed to find a fresh audacity in this voicing of his thoughts.
+      &ldquo;You would not believe me if I were to say that it is the love of the
+      country which&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a sort of discouraged protest with her arm, as if to express that
+      she had given up expecting that motive from any one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Sulaco revolution,&rdquo; Decoud pursued in a forcible undertone. &ldquo;The Great
+      Cause may be served here, on the very spot of its inception, in the place
+      of its birth, Mrs. Gould.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frowning, and biting her lower lip thoughtfully, she made a step away from
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not going to speak to your husband?&rdquo; Decoud arrested her
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will need his help?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; Decoud admitted without hesitation. &ldquo;Everything turns upon the
+      San Tome mine, but I would rather he didn&rsquo;t know anything as yet of my&mdash;my
+      hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A puzzled look came upon Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s face, and Decoud, approaching,
+      explained confidentially&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see, he&rsquo;s such an idealist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould flushed pink, and her eyes grew darker at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charley an idealist!&rdquo; she said, as if to herself, wonderingly. &ldquo;What on
+      earth do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; conceded Decoud, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a wonderful thing to say with the sight of
+      the San Tome mine, the greatest fact in the whole of South America,
+      perhaps, before our very eyes. But look even at that, he has idealized
+      this fact to a point&mdash;&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;Mrs. Gould, are you aware to what
+      point he has idealized the existence, the worth, the meaning of the San
+      Tome mine? Are you aware of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He must have known what he was talking about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect he expected was produced. Mrs. Gould, ready to take fire, gave
+      it up suddenly with a low little sound that resembled a moan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you know?&rdquo; she asked in a feeble voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; answered Decoud, firmly. &ldquo;But, then, don&rsquo;t you see, he&rsquo;s an
+      Englishman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what of that?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simply that he cannot act or exist without idealizing every simple
+      feeling, desire, or achievement. He could not believe his own motives if
+      he did not make them first a part of some fairy tale. The earth is not
+      quite good enough for him, I fear. Do you excuse my frankness? Besides,
+      whether you excuse it or not, it is part of the truth of things which
+      hurts the&mdash;what do you call them?&mdash;the Anglo-Saxon&rsquo;s
+      susceptibilities, and at the present moment I don&rsquo;t feel as if I could
+      treat seriously either his conception of things or&mdash;if you allow me
+      to say so&mdash;or yet yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould gave no sign of being offended. &ldquo;I suppose Antonia understands
+      you thoroughly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understands? Well, yes. But I am not sure that she approves. That,
+      however, makes no difference. I am honest enough to tell you that, Mrs.
+      Gould.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your idea, of course, is separation,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Separation, of course,&rdquo; declared Martin. &ldquo;Yes; separation of the whole
+      Occidental Province from the rest of the unquiet body. But my true idea,
+      the only one I care for, is not to be separated from Antonia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is all?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Gould, without severity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absolutely. I am not deceiving myself about my motives. She won&rsquo;t leave
+      Sulaco for my sake, therefore Sulaco must leave the rest of the Republic
+      to its fate. Nothing could be clearer than that. I like a clearly defined
+      situation. I cannot part with Antonia, therefore the one and indivisible
+      Republic of Costaguana must be made to part with its western province.
+      Fortunately it happens to be also a sound policy. The richest, the most
+      fertile part of this land may be saved from anarchy. Personally, I care
+      little, very little; but it&rsquo;s a fact that the establishment of Montero in
+      power would mean death to me. In all the proclamations of general pardon
+      which I have seen, my name, with a few others, is specially excepted. The
+      brothers hate me, as you know very well, Mrs. Gould; and behold, here is
+      the rumour of them having won a battle. You say that supposing it is true,
+      I have plenty of time to run away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The slight, protesting murmur on the part of Mrs. Gould made him pause for
+      a moment, while he looked at her with a sombre and resolute glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but I would, Mrs. Gould. I would run away if it served that which at
+      present is my only desire. I am courageous enough to say that, and to do
+      it, too. But women, even our women, are idealists. It is Antonia that
+      won&rsquo;t run away. A novel sort of vanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You call it vanity,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, in a shocked voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say pride, then, which Father Corbelan would tell you, is a mortal sin.
+      But I am not proud. I am simply too much in love to run away. At the same
+      time I want to live. There is no love for a dead man. Therefore it is
+      necessary that Sulaco should not recognize the victorious Montero.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think my husband will give you his support?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he can be drawn into it, like all idealists, when he once sees a
+      sentimental basis for his action. But I wouldn&rsquo;t talk to him. Mere clear
+      facts won&rsquo;t appeal to his sentiment. It is much better for him to convince
+      himself in his own way. And, frankly, I could not, perhaps, just now pay
+      sufficient respect to either his motives or even, perhaps, to yours, Mrs.
+      Gould.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evident that Mrs. Gould was very determined not to be offended. She
+      smiled vaguely, while she seemed to think the matter over. As far as she
+      could judge from the girl&rsquo;s half-confidences, Antonia understood that
+      young man. Obviously there was promise of safety in his plan, or rather in
+      his idea. Moreover, right or wrong, the idea could do no harm. And it was
+      quite possible, also, that the rumour was false.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have some sort of a plan,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simplicity itself. Barrios has started, let him go on then; he will hold
+      Cayta, which is the door of the sea route to Sulaco. They cannot send a
+      sufficient force over the mountains. No; not even to cope with the band of
+      Hernandez. Meantime we shall organize our resistance here. And for that,
+      this very Hernandez will be useful. He has defeated troops as a bandit; he
+      will no doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made a colonel or even a
+      general. You know the country well enough not to be shocked by what I say,
+      Mrs. Gould. I have heard you assert that this poor bandit was the living,
+      breathing example of cruelty, injustice, stupidity, and oppression, that
+      ruin men&rsquo;s souls as well as their fortunes in this country. Well, there
+      would be some poetical retribution in that man arising to crush the evils
+      which had driven an honest ranchero into a life of crime. A fine idea of
+      retribution in that, isn&rsquo;t there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he spoke with precision,
+      very correctly, but with too many z sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your ailing mothers and
+      feeble old men, of all that population which you and your husband have
+      brought into the rocky gorge of San Tome. Are you not responsible to your
+      conscience for all these people? Is it not worth while to make another
+      effort, which is not at all so desperate as it looks, rather than&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm, suggesting
+      annihilation; and Mrs. Gould turned away her head with a look of horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you say all this to my husband?&rdquo; she asked, without looking at
+      Decoud, who stood watching the effect of his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! But Don Carlos is so English,&rdquo; he began. Mrs. Gould interrupted&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave that alone, Don Martin. He&rsquo;s as much a Costaguanero&mdash;No! He&rsquo;s
+      more of a Costaguanero than yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sentimentalist, sentimentalist,&rdquo; Decoud almost cooed, in a tone of gentle
+      and soothing deference. &ldquo;Sentimentalist, after the amazing manner of your
+      people. I have been watching El Rey de Sulaco since I came here on a
+      fool&rsquo;s errand, and perhaps impelled by some treason of fate lurking behind
+      the unaccountable turns of a man&rsquo;s life. But I don&rsquo;t matter, I am not a
+      sentimentalist, I cannot endow my personal desires with a shining robe of
+      silk and jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from the
+      tradition of a pretty fairy tale. No, Mrs. Gould; I am practical. I am not
+      afraid of my motives. But, pardon me, I have been rather carried away.
+      What I wish to say is that I have been observing. I won&rsquo;t tell you what I
+      have discovered&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. That is unnecessary,&rdquo; whispered Mrs. Gould, once more averting her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is. Except one little fact, that your husband does not like me. It&rsquo;s a
+      small matter, which, in the circumstances, seems to acquire a perfectly
+      ridiculous importance. Ridiculous and immense; for, clearly, money is
+      required for my plan,&rdquo; he reflected; then added, meaningly, &ldquo;and we have
+      two sentimentalists to deal with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that I understand you, Don Martin,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, coldly,
+      preserving the low key of their conversation. &ldquo;But, speaking as if I did,
+      who is the other?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The great Holroyd in San Francisco, of course,&rdquo; Decoud whispered,
+      lightly. &ldquo;I think you understand me very well. Women are idealists; but
+      then they are so perspicacious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But whatever was the reason of that remark, disparaging and complimentary
+      at the same time, Mrs. Gould seemed not to pay attention to it. The name
+      of Holroyd had given a new tone to her anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The silver escort is coming down to the harbour tomorrow; a whole six
+      months&rsquo; working, Don Martin!&rdquo; she cried in dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let it come down, then,&rdquo; breathed out Decoud, earnestly, almost into her
+      ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if the rumour should get about, and especially if it turned out true,
+      troubles might break out in the town,&rdquo; objected Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud admitted that it was possible. He knew well the town children of
+      the Sulaco Campo: sullen, thievish, vindictive, and bloodthirsty, whatever
+      great qualities their brothers of the plain might have had. But then there
+      was that other sentimentalist, who attached a strangely idealistic meaning
+      to concrete facts. This stream of silver must be kept flowing north to
+      return in the form of financial backing from the great house of Holroyd.
+      Up at the mountain in the strong room of the mine the silver bars were
+      worth less for his purpose than so much lead, from which at least bullets
+      may be run. Let it come down to the harbour, ready for shipment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next north-going steamer would carry it off for the very salvation of
+      the San Tome mine, which had produced so much treasure. And, moreover, the
+      rumour was probably false, he remarked, with much conviction in his
+      hurried tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, senora,&rdquo; concluded Decoud, &ldquo;we may suppress it for many days. I
+      have been talking with the telegraphist in the middle of the Plaza Mayor;
+      thus I am certain that we could not have been overheard. There was not
+      even a bird in the air near us. And also let me tell you something more. I
+      have been making friends with this man called Nostromo, the Capataz. We
+      had a conversation this very evening, I walking by the side of his horse
+      as he rode slowly out of the town just now. He promised me that if a riot
+      took place for any reason&mdash;even for the most political of reasons,
+      you understand&mdash;his Cargadores, an important part of the populace,
+      you will admit, should be found on the side of the Europeans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has promised you that?&rdquo; Mrs. Gould inquired, with interest. &ldquo;What made
+      him make that promise to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; declared Decoud, in a slightly surprised
+      tone. &ldquo;He certainly promised me that, but now you ask me why, I could not
+      tell you his reasons. He talked with his usual carelessness, which, if he
+      had been anything else but a common sailor, I would call a pose or an
+      affectation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud, interrupting himself, looked at Mrs. Gould curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon the whole,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I suppose he expects something to his
+      advantage from it. You mustn&rsquo;t forget that he does not exercise his
+      extraordinary power over the lower classes without a certain amount of
+      personal risk and without a great profusion in spending his money. One
+      must pay in some way or other for such a solid thing as individual
+      prestige. He told me after we made friends at a dance, in a Posada kept by
+      a Mexican just outside the walls, that he had come here to make his
+      fortune. I suppose he looks upon his prestige as a sort of investment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he prizes it for its own sake,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould said in a tone as if
+      she were repelling an undeserved aspersion. &ldquo;Viola, the Garibaldino, with
+      whom he has lived for some years, calls him the Incorruptible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! he belongs to the group of your proteges out there towards the
+      harbour, Mrs. Gould. Muy bien. And Captain Mitchell calls him wonderful. I
+      have heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his fidelity. No
+      end of fine things. H&rsquo;m! incorruptible! It is indeed a name of honour for
+      the Capataz of the Cargadores of Sulaco. Incorruptible! Fine, but vague.
+      However, I suppose he&rsquo;s sensible, too. And I talked to him upon that sane
+      and practical assumption.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prefer to think him disinterested, and therefore trustworthy,&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Gould said, with the nearest approach to curtness it was in her nature to
+      assume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if so, then the silver will be still more safe. Let it come down,
+      senora. Let it come down, so that it may go north and return to us in the
+      shape of credit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould glanced along the corredor towards the door of her husband&rsquo;s
+      room. Decoud, watching her as if she had his fate in her hands, detected
+      an almost imperceptible nod of assent. He bowed with a smile, and, putting
+      his hand into the breast pocket of his coat, pulled out a fan of light
+      feathers set upon painted leaves of sandal-wood. &ldquo;I had it in my pocket,&rdquo;
+       he murmured, triumphantly, &ldquo;for a plausible pretext.&rdquo; He bowed again.
+      &ldquo;Good-night, senora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould continued along the corredor away from her husband&rsquo;s room. The
+      fate of the San Tome mine was lying heavy upon her heart. It was a long
+      time now since she had begun to fear it. It had been an idea. She had
+      watched it with misgivings turning into a fetish, and now the fetish had
+      grown into a monstrous and crushing weight. It was as if the inspiration
+      of their early years had left her heart to turn into a wall of
+      silver-bricks, erected by the silent work of evil spirits, between her and
+      her husband. He seemed to dwell alone within a circumvallation of precious
+      metal, leaving her outside with her school, her hospital, the sick mothers
+      and the feeble old men, mere insignificant vestiges of the initial
+      inspiration. &ldquo;Those poor people!&rdquo; she murmured to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Below she heard the voice of Martin Decoud in the patio speaking loudly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have found Dona Antonia&rsquo;s fan, Basilio. Look, here it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER SEVEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was part of what Decoud would have called his sane materialism that he
+      did not believe in the possibility of friendship between man and woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one exception he allowed confirmed, he maintained, that absolute rule.
+      Friendship was possible between brother and sister, meaning by friendship
+      the frank unreserve, as before another human being, of thoughts and
+      sensations; all the objectless and necessary sincerity of one&rsquo;s innermost
+      life trying to re-act upon the profound sympathies of another existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His favourite sister, the handsome, slightly arbitrary and resolute angel,
+      ruling the father and mother Decoud in the first-floor apartments of a
+      very fine Parisian house, was the recipient of Martin Decoud&rsquo;s confidences
+      as to his thoughts, actions, purposes, doubts, and even failures. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of another South
+      American Republic. One more or less, what does it matter? They may come
+      into the world like evil flowers on a hotbed of rotten institutions; but
+      the seed of this one has germinated in your brother&rsquo;s brain, and that will
+      be enough for your devoted assent. I am writing this to you by the light
+      of a single candle, in a sort of inn, near the harbour, kept by an Italian
+      called Viola, a protege of Mrs. Gould. The whole building, which, for all
+      I know, may have been contrived by a Conquistador farmer of the pearl
+      fishery three hundred years ago, is perfectly silent. So is the plain
+      between the town and the harbour; silent, but not so dark as the house,
+      because the pickets of Italian workmen guarding the railway have lighted
+      little fires all along the line. It was not so quiet around here
+      yesterday. We had an awful riot&mdash;a sudden outbreak of the populace,
+      which was not suppressed till late today. Its object, no doubt, was loot,
+      and that was defeated, as you may have learned already from the cablegram
+      sent via San Francisco and New York last night, when the cables were still
+      open. You have read already there that the energetic action of the
+      Europeans of the railway has saved the town from destruction, and you may
+      believe that. I wrote out the cable myself. We have no Reuter&rsquo;s agency man
+      here. I have also fired at the mob from the windows of the club, in
+      company with some other young men of position. Our object was to keep the
+      Calle de la Constitucion clear for the exodus of the ladies and children,
+      who have taken refuge on board a couple of cargo ships now in the harbour
+      here. That was yesterday. You should also have learned from the cable that
+      the missing President, Ribiera, who had disappeared after the battle of
+      Sta. Marta, has turned up here in Sulaco by one of those strange
+      coincidences that are almost incredible, riding on a lame mule into the
+      very midst of the street fighting. It appears that he had fled, in company
+      of a muleteer called Bonifacio, across the mountains from the threats of
+      Montero into the arms of an enraged mob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Capataz of Cargadores, that Italian sailor of whom I have written to
+      you before, has saved him from an ignoble death. That man seems to have a
+      particular talent for being on the spot whenever there is something
+      picturesque to be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was with me at four o&rsquo;clock in the morning at the offices of the
+      Porvenir, where he had turned up so early in order to warn me of the
+      coming trouble, and also to assure me that he would keep his Cargadores on
+      the side of order. When the full daylight came we were looking together at
+      the crowd on foot and on horseback, demonstrating on the Plaza and shying
+      stones at the windows of the Intendencia. Nostromo (that is the name they
+      call him by here) was pointing out to me his Cargadores interspersed in
+      the mob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sun shines late upon Sulaco, for it has first to climb above the
+      mountains. In that clear morning light, brighter than twilight, Nostromo
+      saw right across the vast Plaza, at the end of the street beyond the
+      cathedral, a mounted man apparently in difficulties with a yelling knot of
+      leperos. At once he said to me, &lsquo;That&rsquo;s a stranger. What is it they are
+      doing to him?&rsquo; Then he took out the silver whistle he is in the habit of
+      using on the wharf (this man seems to disdain the use of any metal less
+      precious than silver) and blew into it twice, evidently a preconcerted
+      signal for his Cargadores. He ran out immediately, and they rallied round
+      him. I ran out, too, but was too late to follow them and help in the
+      rescue of the stranger, whose animal had fallen. I was set upon at once as
+      a hated aristocrat, and was only too glad to get into the club, where Don
+      Jaime Berges (you may remember him visiting at our house in Paris some
+      three years ago) thrust a sporting gun into my hands. They were already
+      firing from the windows. There were little heaps of cartridges lying about
+      on the open card-tables. I remember a couple of overturned chairs, some
+      bottles rolling on the floor amongst the packs of cards scattered suddenly
+      as the caballeros rose from their game to open fire upon the mob. Most of
+      the young men had spent the night at the club in the expectation of some
+      such disturbance. In two of the candelabra, on the consoles, the candles
+      were burning down in their sockets. A large iron nut, probably stolen from
+      the railway workshops, flew in from the street as I entered, and broke one
+      of the large mirrors set in the wall. I noticed also one of the club
+      servants tied up hand and foot with the cords of the curtain and flung in
+      a corner. I have a vague recollection of Don Jaime assuring me hastily
+      that the fellow had been detected putting poison into the dishes at
+      supper. But I remember distinctly he was shrieking for mercy, without
+      stopping at all, continuously, and so absolutely disregarded that nobody
+      even took the trouble to gag him. The noise he made was so disagreeable
+      that I had half a mind to do it myself. But there was no time to waste on
+      such trifles. I took my place at one of the windows and began firing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t learn till later in the afternoon whom it was that Nostromo,
+      with his Cargadores and some Italian workmen as well, had managed to save
+      from those drunken rascals. That man has a peculiar talent when anything
+      striking to the imagination has to be done. I made that remark to him
+      afterwards when we met after some sort of order had been restored in the
+      town, and the answer he made rather surprised me. He said quite moodily,
+      &lsquo;And how much do I get for that, senor?&rsquo; Then it dawned upon me that
+      perhaps this man&rsquo;s vanity has been satiated by the adulation of the common
+      people and the confidence of his superiors!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud paused to light a cigarette, then, with his head still over his
+      writing, he blew a cloud of smoke, which seemed to rebound from the paper.
+      He took up the pencil again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was yesterday evening on the Plaza, while he sat on the steps of the
+      cathedral, his hands between his knees, holding the bridle of his famous
+      silver-grey mare. He had led his body of Cargadores splendidly all day
+      long. He looked fatigued. I don&rsquo;t know how I looked. Very dirty, I
+      suppose. But I suppose I also looked pleased. From the time the fugitive
+      President had been got off to the S. S. Minerva, the tide of success had
+      turned against the mob. They had been driven off the harbour, and out of
+      the better streets of the town, into their own maze of ruins and
+      tolderias. You must understand that this riot, whose primary object was
+      undoubtedly the getting hold of the San Tome silver stored in the lower
+      rooms of the Custom House (besides the general looting of the Ricos), had
+      acquired a political colouring from the fact of two Deputies to the
+      Provincial Assembly, Senores Gamacho and Fuentes, both from Bolson,
+      putting themselves at the head of it&mdash;late in the afternoon, it is
+      true, when the mob, disappointed in their hopes of loot, made a stand in
+      the narrow streets to the cries of &lsquo;Viva la Libertad! Down with
+      Feudalism!&rsquo; (I wonder what they imagine feudalism to be?) &lsquo;Down with the
+      Goths and Paralytics.&rsquo; I suppose the Senores Gamacho and Fuentes knew what
+      they were doing. They are prudent gentlemen. In the Assembly they called
+      themselves Moderates, and opposed every energetic measure with
+      philanthropic pensiveness. At the first rumours of Montero&rsquo;s victory, they
+      showed a subtle change of the pensive temper, and began to defy poor Don
+      Juste Lopez in his Presidential tribune with an effrontery to which the
+      poor man could only respond by a dazed smoothing of his beard and the
+      ringing of the presidential bell. Then, when the downfall of the Ribierist
+      cause became confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt, they have blossomed
+      into convinced Liberals, acting together as if they were Siamese twins,
+      and ultimately taking charge, as it were, of the riot in the name of
+      Monterist principles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their last move of eight o&rsquo;clock last night was to organize themselves
+      into a Monterist Committee which sits, as far as I know, in a posada kept
+      by a retired Mexican bull-fighter, a great politician, too, whose name I
+      have forgotten. Thence they have issued a communication to us, the Goths
+      and Paralytics of the Amarilla Club (who have our own committee), inviting
+      us to come to some provisional understanding for a truce, in order, they
+      have the impudence to say, that the noble cause of Liberty &lsquo;should not be
+      stained by the criminal excesses of Conservative selfishness!&rsquo; As I came
+      out to sit with Nostromo on the cathedral steps the club was busy
+      considering a proper reply in the principal room, littered with exploded
+      cartridges, with a lot of broken glass, blood smears, candlesticks, and
+      all sorts of wreckage on the floor. But all this is nonsense. Nobody in
+      the town has any real power except the railway engineers, whose men occupy
+      the dismantled houses acquired by the Company for their town station on
+      one side of the Plaza, and Nostromo, whose Cargadores were sleeping under
+      the arcades along the front of Anzani&rsquo;s shops. A fire of broken furniture
+      out of the Intendencia saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the Plaza, in
+      a high flame swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. The dead body of
+      a man was lying on the steps of the pedestal, his arms thrown wide open,
+      and his sombrero covering his face&mdash;the attention of some friend,
+      perhaps. The light of the flames touched the foliage of the first trees on
+      the Alameda, and played on the end of a side street near by, blocked up by
+      a jumble of ox-carts and dead bullocks. Sitting on one of the carcasses, a
+      lepero, muffled up, smoked a cigarette. It was a truce, you understand.
+      The only other living being on the Plaza besides ourselves was a Cargador
+      walking to and fro, with a long, bare knife in his hand, like a sentry
+      before the Arcades, where his friends were sleeping. And the only other
+      spot of light in the dark town were the lighted windows of the club, at
+      the corner of the Calle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After having written so far, Don Martin Decoud, the exotic dandy of the
+      Parisian boulevard, got up and walked across the sanded floor of the cafe
+      at one end of the Albergo of United Italy, kept by Giorgio Viola, the old
+      companion of Garibaldi. The highly coloured lithograph of the Faithful
+      Hero seemed to look dimly, in the light of one candle, at the man with no
+      faith in anything except the truth of his own sensations. Looking out of
+      the window, Decoud was met by a darkness so impenetrable that he could see
+      neither the mountains nor the town, nor yet the buildings near the
+      harbour; and there was not a sound, as if the tremendous obscurity of the
+      Placid Gulf, spreading from the waters over the land, had made it dumb as
+      well as blind. Presently Decoud felt a light tremor of the floor and a
+      distant clank of iron. A bright white light appeared, deep in the
+      darkness, growing bigger with a thundering noise. The rolling stock
+      usually kept on the sidings in Rincon was being run back to the yards for
+      safe keeping. Like a mysterious stirring of the darkness behind the
+      headlight of the engine, the train passed in a gust of hollow uproar, by
+      the end of the house, which seemed to vibrate all over in response. And
+      nothing was clearly visible but, on the end of the last flat car, a negro,
+      in white trousers and naked to the waist, swinging a blazing torch basket
+      incessantly with a circular movement of his bare arm. Decoud did not stir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind him, on the back of the chair from which he had risen, hung his
+      elegant Parisian overcoat, with a pearl-grey silk lining. But when he
+      turned back to come to the table the candlelight fell upon a face that was
+      grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat, the smoke of
+      gun-powder. Dirt and rust tarnished the lustre of his short beard. His
+      shirt collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie hung down his
+      breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow. He had not
+      taken off his clothing nor used water, except to snatch a hasty drink
+      greedily, for some forty hours. An awful restlessness had made him its
+      own, had marked him with all the signs of desperate strife, and put a dry,
+      sleepless stare into his eyes. He murmured to himself in a hoarse voice,
+      &ldquo;I wonder if there&rsquo;s any bread here,&rdquo; looked vaguely about him, then
+      dropped into the chair and took the pencil up again. He became aware he
+      had not eaten anything for many hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to him that no one could understand him so well as his sister.
+      In the most sceptical heart there lurks at such moments, when the chances
+      of existence are involved, a desire to leave a correct impression of the
+      feelings, like a light by which the action may be seen when personality is
+      gone, gone where no light of investigation can ever reach the truth which
+      every death takes out of the world. Therefore, instead of looking for
+      something to eat, or trying to snatch an hour or so of sleep, Decoud was
+      filling the pages of a large pocket-book with a letter to his sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his weariness,
+      his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily sensations. He began
+      again as if he were talking to her. With almost an illusion of her
+      presence, he wrote the phrase, &ldquo;I am very hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the feeling of a great solitude around me,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Is it,
+      perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea in his head, in
+      the complete collapse of every resolve, intention, and hope about me? But
+      the solitude is also very real. All the engineers are out, and have been
+      for two days, looking after the property of the National Central Railway,
+      of that great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money into the
+      pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, and God knows who
+      else. The silence about me is ominous. There is above the middle part of
+      this house a sort of first floor, with narrow openings like loopholes for
+      windows, probably used in old times for the better defence against the
+      savages, when the persistent barbarism of our native continent did not
+      wear the black coats of politicians, but went about yelling, half-naked,
+      with bows and arrows in its hands. The woman of the house is dying up
+      there, I believe, all alone with her old husband. There is a narrow
+      staircase, the sort of staircase one man could easily defend against a
+      mob, leading up there, and I have just heard, through the thickness of the
+      wall, the old fellow going down into their kitchen for something or other.
+      It was a sort of noise a mouse might make behind the plaster of a wall.
+      All the servants they had ran away yesterday and have not returned yet, if
+      ever they do. For the rest, there are only two children here, two girls.
+      The father has sent them downstairs, and they have crept into this cafe,
+      perhaps because I am here. They huddle together in a corner, in each
+      other&rsquo;s arms; I just noticed them a few minutes ago, and I feel more
+      lonely than ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud turned half round in his chair, and asked, &ldquo;Is there any bread
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda&rsquo;s dark head was shaken negatively in response, above the fair head
+      of her sister nestling on her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t get me some bread?&rdquo; insisted Decoud. The child did not move;
+      he saw her large eyes stare at him very dark from the corner. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not
+      afraid of me?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Linda, &ldquo;we are not afraid of you. You came here with Gian&rsquo;
+      Battista.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean Nostromo?&rdquo; said Decoud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The English call him so, but that is no name either for man or beast,&rdquo;
+       said the girl, passing her hand gently over her sister&rsquo;s hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he lets people call him so,&rdquo; remarked Decoud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in this house,&rdquo; retorted the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! well, I shall call him the Capataz then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud gave up the point, and after writing steadily for a while turned
+      round again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you expect him back?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After he brought you here he rode off to fetch the Senor Doctor from the
+      town for mother. He will be back soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He stands a good chance of getting shot somewhere on the road,&rdquo; Decoud
+      murmured to himself audibly; and Linda declared in her high-pitched voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody would dare to fire a shot at Gian&rsquo; Battista.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You believe that,&rdquo; asked Decoud, &ldquo;do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; said the child, with conviction. &ldquo;There is no one in this
+      place brave enough to attack Gian&rsquo; Battista.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t require much bravery to pull a trigger behind a bush,&rdquo;
+       muttered Decoud to himself. &ldquo;Fortunately, the night is dark, or there
+      would be but little chance of saving the silver of the mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned again to his pocket-book, glanced back through the pages, and
+      again started his pencil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was the position yesterday, after the Minerva with the fugitive
+      President had gone out of harbour, and the rioters had been driven back
+      into the side lanes of the town. I sat on the steps of the cathedral with
+      Nostromo, after sending out the cable message for the information of a
+      more or less attentive world. Strangely enough, though the offices of the
+      Cable Company are in the same building as the Porvenir, the mob, which has
+      thrown my presses out of the window and scattered the type all over the
+      Plaza, has been kept from interfering with the instruments on the other
+      side of the courtyard. As I sat talking with Nostromo, Bernhardt, the
+      telegraphist, came out from under the Arcades with a piece of paper in his
+      hand. The little man had tied himself up to an enormous sword and was hung
+      all over with revolvers. He is ridiculous, but the bravest German of his
+      size that ever tapped the key of a Morse transmitter. He had received the
+      message from Cayta reporting the transports with Barrios&rsquo;s army just
+      entering the port, and ending with the words, &lsquo;The greatest enthusiasm
+      prevails.&rsquo; I walked off to drink some water at the fountain, and I was
+      shot at from the Alameda by somebody hiding behind a tree. But I drank,
+      and didn&rsquo;t care; with Barrios in Cayta and the great Cordillera between us
+      and Montero&rsquo;s victorious army I seemed, notwithstanding Messrs. Gamacho
+      and Fuentes, to hold my new State in the hollow of my hand. I was ready to
+      sleep, but when I got as far as the Casa Gould I found the patio full of
+      wounded laid out on straw. Lights were burning, and in that enclosed
+      courtyard on that hot night a faint odour of chloroform and blood hung
+      about. At one end Doctor Monygham, the doctor of the mine, was dressing
+      the wounds; at the other, near the stairs, Father Corbelan, kneeling,
+      listened to the confession of a dying Cargador. Mrs. Gould was walking
+      about through these shambles with a large bottle in one hand and a lot of
+      cotton wool in the other. She just looked at me and never even winked. Her
+      camerista was following her, also holding a bottle, and sobbing gently to
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I busied myself for some time in fetching water from the cistern for the
+      wounded. Afterwards I wandered upstairs, meeting some of the first ladies
+      of Sulaco, paler than I had ever seen them before, with bandages over
+      their arms. Not all of them had fled to the ships. A good many had taken
+      refuge for the day in the Casa Gould. On the landing a girl, with her hair
+      half down, was kneeling against the wall under the niche where stands a
+      Madonna in blue robes and a gilt crown on her head. I think it was the
+      eldest Miss Lopez; I couldn&rsquo;t see her face, but I remember looking at the
+      high French heel of her little shoe. She did not make a sound, she did not
+      stir, she was not sobbing; she remained there, perfectly still, all black
+      against the white wall, a silent figure of passionate piety. I am sure she
+      was no more frightened than the other white-faced ladies I met carrying
+      bandages. One was sitting on the top step tearing a piece of linen hastily
+      into strips&mdash;the young wife of an elderly man of fortune here. She
+      interrupted herself to wave her hand to my bow, as though she were in her
+      carriage on the Alameda. The women of our country are worth looking at
+      during a revolution. The rouge and pearl powder fall off, together with
+      that passive attitude towards the outer world which education, tradition,
+      custom impose upon them from the earliest infancy. I thought of your face,
+      which from your infancy had the stamp of intelligence instead of that
+      patient and resigned cast which appears when some political commotion
+      tears down the veil of cosmetics and usage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the great sala upstairs a sort of Junta of Notables was sitting, the
+      remnant of the vanished Provincial Assembly. Don Juste Lopez had had half
+      his beard singed off at the muzzle of a trabuco loaded with slugs, of
+      which every one missed him, providentially. And as he turned his head from
+      side to side it was exactly as if there had been two men inside his
+      frock-coat, one nobly whiskered and solemn, the other untidy and scared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They raised a cry of &lsquo;Decoud! Don Martin!&rsquo; at my entrance. I asked them,
+      &lsquo;What are you deliberating upon, gentlemen?&rsquo; There did not seem to be any
+      president, though Don Jose Avellanos sat at the head of the table. They
+      all answered together, &lsquo;On the preservation of life and property.&rsquo; &lsquo;Till
+      the new officials arrive,&rsquo; Don Juste explained to me, with the solemn side
+      of his face offered to my view. It was as if a stream of water had been
+      poured upon my glowing idea of a new State. There was a hissing sound in
+      my ears, and the room grew dim, as if suddenly filled with vapour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I walked up to the table blindly, as though I had been drunk. &lsquo;You are
+      deliberating upon surrender,&rsquo; I said. They all sat still, with their noses
+      over the sheet of paper each had before him, God only knows why. Only Don
+      Jose hid his face in his hands, muttering, &lsquo;Never, never!&rsquo; But as I looked
+      at him, it seemed to me that I could have blown him away with my breath,
+      he looked so frail, so weak, so worn out. Whatever happens, he will not
+      survive. The deception is too great for a man of his age; and hasn&rsquo;t he
+      seen the sheets of &lsquo;Fifty Years of Misrule,&rsquo; which we have begun printing
+      on the presses of the Porvenir, littering the Plaza, floating in the
+      gutters, fired out as wads for trabucos loaded with handfuls of type,
+      blown in the wind, trampled in the mud? I have seen pages floating upon
+      the very waters of the harbour. It would be unreasonable to expect him to
+      survive. It would be cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Do you know,&rsquo; I cried, &lsquo;what surrender means to you, to your women, to
+      your children, to your property?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I declaimed for five minutes without drawing breath, it seems to me,
+      harping on our best chances, on the ferocity of Montero, whom I made out
+      to be as great a beast as I have no doubt he would like to be if he had
+      intelligence enough to conceive a systematic reign of terror. And then for
+      another five minutes or more I poured out an impassioned appeal to their
+      courage and manliness, with all the passion of my love for Antonia. For if
+      ever man spoke well, it would be from a personal feeling, denouncing an
+      enemy, defending himself, or pleading for what really may be dearer than
+      life. My dear girl, I absolutely thundered at them. It seemed as if my
+      voice would burst the walls asunder, and when I stopped I saw all their
+      scared eyes looking at me dubiously. And that was all the effect I had
+      produced! Only Don Jose&rsquo;s head had sunk lower and lower on his breast. I
+      bent my ear to his withered lips, and made out his whisper, something
+      like, &lsquo;In God&rsquo;s name, then, Martin, my son!&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t know exactly. There
+      was the name of God in it, I am certain. It seems to me I have caught his
+      last breath&mdash;the breath of his departing soul on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lives yet, it is true. I have seen him since; but it was only a senile
+      body, lying on its back, covered to the chin, with open eyes, and so still
+      that you might have said it was breathing no longer. I left him thus, with
+      Antonia kneeling by the side of the bed, just before I came to this
+      Italian&rsquo;s posada, where the ubiquitous death is also waiting. But I know
+      that Don Jose has really died there, in the Casa Gould, with that whisper
+      urging me to attempt what no doubt his soul, wrapped up in the sanctity of
+      diplomatic treaties and solemn declarations, must have abhorred. I had
+      exclaimed very loud, &lsquo;There is never any God in a country where men will
+      not help themselves.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanwhile, Don Juste had begun a pondered oration whose solemn effect was
+      spoiled by the ridiculous disaster to his beard. I did not wait to make it
+      out. He seemed to argue that Montero&rsquo;s (he called him The General)
+      intentions were probably not evil, though, he went on, &lsquo;that distinguished
+      man&rsquo; (only a week ago we used to call him a gran&rsquo; bestia) &lsquo;was perhaps
+      mistaken as to the true means.&rsquo; As you may imagine, I didn&rsquo;t stay to hear
+      the rest. I know the intentions of Montero&rsquo;s brother, Pedrito, the
+      guerrillero, whom I exposed in Paris, some years ago, in a cafe frequented
+      by South American students, where he tried to pass himself off for a
+      Secretary of Legation. He used to come in and talk for hours, twisting his
+      felt hat in his hairy paws, and his ambition seemed to become a sort of
+      Duc de Morny to a sort of Napoleon. Already, then, he used to talk of his
+      brother in inflated terms. He seemed fairly safe from being found out,
+      because the students, all of the Blanco families, did not, as you may
+      imagine, frequent the Legation. It was only Decoud, a man without faith
+      and principles, as they used to say, that went in there sometimes for the
+      sake of the fun, as it were to an assembly of trained monkeys. I know his
+      intentions. I have seen him change the plates at table. Whoever is allowed
+      to live on in terror, I must die the death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t stay to the end to hear Don Juste Lopez trying to persuade
+      himself in a grave oration of the clemency and justice, and honesty, and
+      purity of the brothers Montero. I went out abruptly to seek Antonia. I saw
+      her in the gallery. As I opened the door, she extended to me her clasped
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;What are they doing in there?&rsquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Talking,&rsquo; I said, with my eyes looking into hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Yes, yes, but&mdash;&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Empty speeches,&rsquo; I interrupted her. &lsquo;Hiding their fears behind imbecile
+      hopes. They are all great Parliamentarians there&mdash;on the English
+      model, as you know.&rsquo; I was so furious that I could hardly speak. She made
+      a gesture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Through the door I held a little ajar behind me, we heard Dun Juste&rsquo;s
+      measured mouthing monotone go on from phrase to phrase, like a sort of
+      awful and solemn madness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;After all, the Democratic aspirations have, perhaps, their legitimacy.
+      The ways of human progress are inscrutable, and if the fate of the country
+      is in the hand of Montero, we ought&mdash;&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I crashed the door to on that; it was enough; it was too much. There was
+      never a beautiful face expressing more horror and despair than the face of
+      Antonia. I couldn&rsquo;t bear it; I seized her wrists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Have they killed my father in there?&rsquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her eyes blazed with indignation, but as I looked on, fascinated, the
+      light in them went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;It is a surrender,&rsquo; I said. And I remember I was shaking her wrists I
+      held apart in my hands. &lsquo;But it&rsquo;s more than talk. Your father told me to
+      go on in God&rsquo;s name.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear girl, there is that in Antonia which would make me believe in the
+      feasibility of anything. One look at her face is enough to set my brain on
+      fire. And yet I love her as any other man would&mdash;with the heart, and
+      with that alone. She is more to me than his Church to Father Corbelan (the
+      Grand Vicar disappeared last night from the town; perhaps gone to join the
+      band of Hernandez). She is more to me than his precious mine to that
+      sentimental Englishman. I won&rsquo;t speak of his wife. She may have been
+      sentimental once. The San Tome mine stands now between those two people.
+      &lsquo;Your father himself, Antonia,&rsquo; I repeated; &lsquo;your father, do you
+      understand? has told me to go on.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She averted her face, and in a pained voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;He has?&rsquo; she cried. &lsquo;Then, indeed, I fear he will never speak again.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to cry in her handkerchief.
+      I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather see her miserable than not see
+      her at all, never any more; for whether I escaped or stayed to die, there
+      was for us no coming together, no future. And that being so, I had no pity
+      to waste upon the passing moments of her sorrow. I sent her off in tears
+      to fetch Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their sentiment was necessary to
+      the very life of my plan; the sentimentalism of the people that will never
+      do anything for the sake of their passionate desire, unless it comes to
+      them clothed in the fair robes of an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Late at night we formed a small junta of four&mdash;the two women, Don
+      Carlos, and myself&mdash;in Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s blue-and-white boudoir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;El Rey de Sulaco thinks himself, no doubt, a very honest man. And so he
+      is, if one could look behind his taciturnity. Perhaps he thinks that this
+      alone makes his honesty unstained. Those Englishmen live on illusions
+      which somehow or other help them to get a firm hold of the substance. When
+      he speaks it is by a rare &lsquo;yes&rsquo; or &lsquo;no&rsquo; that seems as impersonal as the
+      words of an oracle. But he could not impose on me by his dumb reserve. I
+      knew what he had in his head; he has his mine in his head; and his wife
+      had nothing in her head but his precious person, which he has bound up
+      with the Gould Concession and tied up to that little woman&rsquo;s neck. No
+      matter. The thing was to make him present the affair to Holroyd (the Steel
+      and Silver King) in such a manner as to secure his financial support. At
+      that time last night, just twenty-four hours ago, we thought the silver of
+      the mine safe in the Custom House vaults till the north-bound steamer came
+      to take it away. And as long as the treasure flowed north, without a
+      break, that utter sentimentalist, Holroyd, would not drop his idea of
+      introducing, not only justice, industry, peace, to the benighted
+      continents, but also that pet dream of his of a purer form of
+      Christianity. Later on, the principal European really in Sulaco, the
+      engineer-in-chief of the railway, came riding up the Calle, from the
+      harbour, and was admitted to our conclave. Meantime, the Junta of the
+      Notables in the great sala was still deliberating; only, one of them had
+      run out in the corredor to ask the servant whether something to eat
+      couldn&rsquo;t be sent in. The first words the engineer-in-chief said as he came
+      into the boudoir were, &lsquo;What is your house, dear Mrs. Gould? A war
+      hospital below, and apparently a restaurant above. I saw them carrying
+      trays full of good things into the sala.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And here, in this boudoir,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;you behold the inner cabinet of the
+      Occidental Republic that is to be.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was so preoccupied that he didn&rsquo;t smile at that, he didn&rsquo;t even look
+      surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told us that he was attending to the general dispositions for the
+      defence of the railway property at the railway yards when he was sent for
+      to go into the railway telegraph office. The engineer of the railhead, at
+      the foot of the mountains, wanted to talk to him from his end of the wire.
+      There was nobody in the office but himself and the operator of the railway
+      telegraph, who read off the clicks aloud as the tape coiled its length
+      upon the floor. And the purport of that talk, clicked nervously from a
+      wooden shed in the depths of the forests, had informed the chief that
+      President Ribiera had been, or was being, pursued. This was news, indeed,
+      to all of us in Sulaco. Ribiera himself, when rescued, revived, and
+      soothed by us, had been inclined to think that he had not been pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ribiera had yielded to the urgent solicitations of his friends, and had
+      left the headquarters of his discomfited army alone, under the guidance of
+      Bonifacio, the muleteer, who had been willing to take the responsibility
+      with the risk. He had departed at daybreak of the third day. His remaining
+      forces had melted away during the night. Bonifacio and he rode hard on
+      horses towards the Cordillera; then they obtained mules, entered the
+      passes, and crossed the Paramo of Ivie just before a freezing blast swept
+      over that stony plateau, burying in a drift of snow the little shelter-hut
+      of stones in which they had spent the night. Afterwards poor Ribiera had
+      many adventures, got separated from his guide, lost his mount, struggled
+      down to the Campo on foot, and if he had not thrown himself on the mercy
+      of a ranchero would have perished a long way from Sulaco. That man, who,
+      as a matter of fact, recognized him at once, let him have a fresh mule,
+      which the fugitive, heavy and unskilful, had ridden to death. And it was
+      true he had been pursued by a party commanded by no less a person than
+      Pedro Montero, the brother of the general. The cold wind of the Paramo
+      luckily caught the pursuers on the top of the pass. Some few men, and all
+      the animals, perished in the icy blast. The stragglers died, but the main
+      body kept on. They found poor Bonifacio lying half-dead at the foot of a
+      snow slope, and bayoneted him promptly in the true Civil War style. They
+      would have had Ribiera, too, if they had not, for some reason or other,
+      turned off the track of the old Camino Real, only to lose their way in the
+      forests at the foot of the lower slopes. And there they were at last,
+      having stumbled in unexpectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer
+      at the railhead told his chief by wire that he had Pedro Montero
+      absolutely there, in the very office, listening to the clicks. He was
+      going to take possession of Sulaco in the name of the Democracy. He was
+      very overbearing. His men slaughtered some of the Railway Company&rsquo;s cattle
+      without asking leave, and went to work broiling the meat on the embers.
+      Pedrito made many pointed inquiries as to the silver mine, and what had
+      become of the product of the last six months&rsquo; working. He had said
+      peremptorily, &lsquo;Ask your chief up there by wire, he ought to know; tell him
+      that Don Pedro Montero, Chief of the Campo and Minister of the Interior of
+      the new Government, desires to be correctly informed.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had his feet wrapped up in blood-stained rags, a lean, haggard face,
+      ragged beard and hair, and had walked in limping, with a crooked branch of
+      a tree for a staff. His followers were perhaps in a worse plight, but
+      apparently they had not thrown away their arms, and, at any rate, not all
+      their ammunition. Their lean faces filled the door and the windows of the
+      telegraph hut. As it was at the same time the bedroom of the
+      engineer-in-charge there, Montero had thrown himself on his clean blankets
+      and lay there shivering and dictating requisitions to be transmitted by
+      wire to Sulaco. He demanded a train of cars to be sent down at once to
+      transport his men up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;To this I answered from my end,&rsquo; the engineer-in-chief related to us,
+      &lsquo;that I dared not risk the rolling-stock in the interior, as there had
+      been attempts to wreck trains all along the line several times. I did that
+      for your sake, Gould,&rsquo; said the chief engineer. &lsquo;The answer to this was,
+      in the words of my subordinate, &ldquo;The filthy brute on my bed said, &lsquo;Suppose
+      I were to have you shot?&rsquo;&rdquo; To which my subordinate, who, it appears, was
+      himself operating, remarked that it would not bring the cars up. Upon
+      that, the other, yawning, said, &ldquo;Never mind, there is no lack of horses on
+      the Campo.&rdquo; And, turning over, went to sleep on Harris&rsquo;s bed.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is why, my dear girl, I am a fugitive to-night. The last wire from
+      railhead says that Pedro Montero and his men left at daybreak, after
+      feeding on asado beef all night. They took all the horses; they will find
+      more on the road; they&rsquo;ll be here in less than thirty hours, and thus
+      Sulaco is no place either for me or the great store of silver belonging to
+      the Gould Concession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that is not the worst. The garrison of Esmeralda has gone over to the
+      victorious party. We have heard this by means of the telegraphist of the
+      Cable Company, who came to the Casa Gould in the early morning with the
+      news. In fact, it was so early that the day had not yet quite broken over
+      Sulaco. His colleague in Esmeralda had called him up to say that the
+      garrison, after shooting some of their officers, had taken possession of a
+      Government steamer laid up in the harbour. It is really a heavy blow for
+      me. I thought I could depend on every man in this province. It was a
+      mistake. It was a Monterist Revolution in Esmeralda, just such as was
+      attempted in Sulaco, only that that one came off. The telegraphist was
+      signalling to Bernhardt all the time, and his last transmitted words were,
+      &lsquo;They are bursting in the door, and taking possession of the cable office.
+      You are cut off. Can do no more.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, as a matter of fact, he managed somehow to escape the vigilance of
+      his captors, who had tried to stop the communication with the outer world.
+      He did manage it. How it was done I don&rsquo;t know, but a few hours afterwards
+      he called up Sulaco again, and what he said was, &lsquo;The insurgent army has
+      taken possession of the Government transport in the bay and are filling
+      her with troops, with the intention of going round the coast to Sulaco.
+      Therefore look out for yourselves. They will be ready to start in a few
+      hours, and may be upon you before daybreak.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is all he could say. They drove him away from his instrument this
+      time for good, because Bernhardt has been calling up Esmeralda ever since
+      without getting an answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After setting these words down in the pocket-book which he was filling up
+      for the benefit of his sister, Decoud lifted his head to listen. But there
+      were no sounds, neither in the room nor in the house, except the drip of
+      the water from the filter into the vast earthenware jar under the wooden
+      stand. And outside the house there was a great silence. Decoud lowered his
+      head again over the pocket-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not running away, you understand,&rdquo; he wrote on. &ldquo;I am simply going
+      away with that great treasure of silver which must be saved at all costs.
+      Pedro Montero from the Campo and the revolted garrison of Esmeralda from
+      the sea are converging upon it. That it is there lying ready for them is
+      only an accident. The real objective is the San Tome mine itself, as you
+      may well imagine; otherwise the Occidental Province would have been, no
+      doubt, left alone for many weeks, to be gathered at leisure into the arms
+      of the victorious party. Don Carlos Gould will have enough to do to save
+      his mine, with its organization and its people; this &lsquo;Imperium in
+      Imperio,&rsquo; this wealth-producing thing, to which his sentimentalism
+      attaches a strange idea of justice. He holds to it as some men hold to the
+      idea of love or revenge. Unless I am much mistaken in the man, it must
+      remain inviolate or perish by an act of his will alone. A passion has
+      crept into his cold and idealistic life. A passion which I can only
+      comprehend intellectually. A passion that is not like the passions we
+      know, we men of another blood. But it is as dangerous as any of ours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife has understood it, too. That is why she is such a good ally of
+      mine. She seizes upon all my suggestions with a sure instinct that in the
+      end they make for the safety of the Gould Concession. And he defers to her
+      because he trusts her perhaps, but I fancy rather as if he wished to make
+      up for some subtle wrong, for that sentimental unfaithfulness which
+      surrenders her happiness, her life, to the seduction of an idea. The
+      little woman has discovered that he lives for the mine rather than for
+      her. But let them be. To each his fate, shaped by passion or sentiment.
+      The principal thing is that she has backed up my advice to get the silver
+      out of the town, out of the country, at once, at any cost, at any risk.
+      Don Carlos&rsquo; mission is to preserve unstained the fair fame of his mine;
+      Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s mission is to save him from the effects of that cold and
+      overmastering passion, which she dreads more than if it were an
+      infatuation for another woman. Nostromo&rsquo;s mission is to save the silver.
+      The plan is to load it into the largest of the Company&rsquo;s lighters, and
+      send it across the gulf to a small port out of Costaguana territory just
+      on the other side the Azuera, where the first northbound steamer will get
+      orders to pick it up. The waters here are calm. We shall slip away into
+      the darkness of the gulf before the Esmeralda rebels arrive; and by the
+      time the day breaks over the ocean we shall be out of sight, invisible,
+      hidden by Azuera, which itself looks from the Sulaco shore like a faint
+      blue cloud on the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores is the man for that work; and I,
+      the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go with him to return&mdash;to
+      play my part in the farce to the end, and, if successful, to receive my
+      reward, which no one but Antonia can give me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not see her again now before I depart. I left her, as I have
+      said, by Don Jose&rsquo;s bedside. The street was dark, the houses shut up, and
+      I walked out of the town in the night. Not a single street-lamp had been
+      lit for two days, and the archway of the gate was only a mass of darkness
+      in the vague form of a tower, in which I heard low, dismal groans, that
+      seemed to answer the murmurs of a man&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recognized something impassive and careless in its tone, characteristic
+      of that Genoese sailor who, like me, has come casually here to be drawn
+      into the events for which his scepticism as well as mine seems to
+      entertain a sort of passive contempt. The only thing he seems to care for,
+      as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well spoken of. An
+      ambition fit for noble souls, but also a profitable one for an
+      exceptionally intelligent scoundrel. Yes. His very words, &lsquo;To be well
+      spoken of. Si, senor.&rsquo; He does not seem to make any difference between
+      speaking and thinking. Is it sheer naiveness or the practical point of
+      view, I wonder? Exceptional individualities always interest me, because
+      they are true to the general formula expressing the moral state of
+      humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He joined me on the harbour road after I had passed them under the dark
+      archway without stopping. It was a woman in trouble he had been talking
+      to. Through discretion I kept silent while he walked by my side. After a
+      time he began to talk himself. It was not what I expected. It was only an
+      old woman, an old lace-maker, in search of her son, one of the
+      street-sweepers employed by the municipality. Friends had come the day
+      before at daybreak to the door of their hovel calling him out. He had gone
+      with them, and she had not seen him since; so she had left the food she
+      had been preparing half-cooked on the extinct embers and had crawled out
+      as far as the harbour, where she had heard that some town mozos had been
+      killed on the morning of the riot. One of the Cargadores guarding the
+      Custom House had brought out a lantern, and had helped her to look at the
+      few dead left lying about there. Now she was creeping back, having failed
+      in her search. So she sat down on the stone seat under the arch, moaning,
+      because she was very tired. The Capataz had questioned her, and after
+      hearing her broken and groaning tale had advised her to go and look
+      amongst the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould. He had also given her
+      a quarter dollar, he mentioned carelessly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Why did you do that?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;Do you know her?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;No, senor. I don&rsquo;t suppose I have ever seen her before. How should I?
+      She has not probably been out in the streets for years. She is one of
+      those old women that you find in this country at the back of huts,
+      crouching over fireplaces, with a stick on the ground by their side, and
+      almost too feeble to drive away the stray dogs from their cooking-pots.
+      Caramba! I could tell by her voice that death had forgotten her. But, old
+      or young, they like money, and will speak well of the man who gives it to
+      them.&rsquo; He laughed a little. &lsquo;Senor, you should have felt the clutch of her
+      paw as I put the piece in her palm.&rsquo; He paused. &lsquo;My last, too,&rsquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made no comment. He&rsquo;s known for his liberality and his bad luck at the
+      game of monte, which keeps him as poor as when he first came here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I suppose, Don Martin,&rsquo; he began, in a thoughtful, speculative tone,
+      &lsquo;that the Senor Administrador of San Tome will reward me some day if I
+      save his silver?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said that it could not be otherwise, surely. He walked on, muttering to
+      himself. &lsquo;Si, si, without doubt, without doubt; and, look you, Senor
+      Martin, what it is to be well spoken of! There is not another man that
+      could have been even thought of for such a thing. I shall get something
+      great for it some day. And let it come soon,&rsquo; he mumbled. &lsquo;Time passes in
+      this country as quick as anywhere else.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, <i>soeur cherie</i>, is my companion in the great escape for the
+      sake of the great cause. He is more naive than shrewd, more masterful than
+      crafty, more generous with his personality than the people who make use of
+      him are with their money. At least, that is what he thinks himself with
+      more pride than sentiment. I am glad I have made friends with him. As a
+      companion he acquires more importance than he ever had as a sort of minor
+      genius in his way&mdash;as an original Italian sailor whom I allowed to
+      come in in the small hours and talk familiarly to the editor of the
+      Porvenir while the paper was going through the press. And it is curious to
+      have met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in personal
+      prestige.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting for him here now. On arriving at the posada kept by Viola we
+      found the children alone down below, and the old Genoese shouted to his
+      countryman to go and fetch the doctor. Otherwise we would have gone on to
+      the wharf, where it appears Captain Mitchell with some volunteer Europeans
+      and a few picked Cargadores are loading the lighter with the silver that
+      must be saved from Montero&rsquo;s clutches in order to be used for Montero&rsquo;s
+      defeat. Nostromo galloped furiously back towards the town. He has been
+      long gone already. This delay gives me time to talk to you. By the time
+      this pocket-book reaches your hands much will have happened. But now it is
+      a pause under the hovering wing of death in this silent house buried in
+      the black night, with this dying woman, the two children crouching without
+      a sound, and that old man whom I can hear through the thickness of the
+      wall passing up and down with a light rubbing noise no louder than a
+      mouse. And I, the only other with them, don&rsquo;t really know whether to count
+      myself with the living or with the dead. &lsquo;Quien sabe?&rsquo; as the people here
+      are prone to say in answer to every question. But no! feeling for you is
+      certainly not dead, and the whole thing, the house, the dark night, the
+      silent children in this dim room, my very presence here&mdash;all this is
+      life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the writing of the last line there came upon Decoud a moment of
+      sudden and complete oblivion. He swayed over the table as if struck by a
+      bullet. The next moment he sat up, confused, with the idea that he had
+      heard his pencil roll on the floor. The low door of the cafe, wide open,
+      was filled with the glare of a torch in which was visible half of a horse,
+      switching its tail against the leg of a rider with a long iron spur
+      strapped to the naked heel. The two girls were gone, and Nostromo,
+      standing in the middle of the room, looked at him from under the round
+      brim of the sombrero low down over his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought that sour-faced English doctor in Senora Gould&rsquo;s
+      carriage,&rdquo; said Nostromo. &ldquo;I doubt if, with all his wisdom, he can save
+      the Padrona this time. They have sent for the children. A bad sign that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down on the end of a bench. &ldquo;She wants to give them her blessing, I
+      suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dazedly Decoud observed that he must have fallen sound asleep, and
+      Nostromo said, with a vague smile, that he had looked in at the window and
+      had seen him lying still across the table with his head on his arms. The
+      English senora had also come in the carriage, and went upstairs at once
+      with the doctor. She had told him not to wake up Don Martin yet; but when
+      they sent for the children he had come into the cafe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The half of the horse with its half of the rider swung round outside the
+      door; the torch of tow and resin in the iron basket which was carried on a
+      stick at the saddle-bow flared right into the room for a moment, and Mrs.
+      Gould entered hastily with a very white, tired face. The hood of her dark,
+      blue cloak had fallen back. Both men rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa wants to see you, Nostromo,&rdquo; she said. The Capataz did not move.
+      Decoud, with his back to the table, began to button up his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The silver, Mrs. Gould, the silver,&rdquo; he murmured in English. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      forget that the Esmeralda garrison have got a steamer. They may appear at
+      any moment at the harbour entrance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The doctor says there is no hope,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould spoke rapidly, also in
+      English. &ldquo;I shall take you down to the wharf in my carriage and then come
+      back to fetch away the girls.&rdquo; She changed swiftly into Spanish to address
+      Nostromo. &ldquo;Why are you wasting time? Old Giorgio&rsquo;s wife wishes to see
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to her, senora,&rdquo; muttered the Capataz. Dr. Monygham now showed
+      himself, bringing back the children. To Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s inquiring glance he
+      only shook his head and went outside at once, followed by Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse of the torch-bearer, motionless, hung his head low, and the
+      rider had dropped the reins to light a cigarette. The glare of the torch
+      played on the front of the house crossed by the big black letters of its
+      inscription in which only the word <i>Italia</i> was lighted fully. The
+      patch of wavering glare reached as far as Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s carriage waiting on
+      the road, with the yellow-faced, portly Ignacio apparently dozing on the
+      box. By his side Basilio, dark and skinny, held a Winchester carbine in
+      front of him, with both hands, and peered fearfully into the darkness.
+      Nostromo touched lightly the doctor&rsquo;s shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she really dying, senor doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the doctor, with a strange twitch of his scarred cheek. &ldquo;And
+      why she wants to see you I cannot imagine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has been like that before,&rdquo; suggested Nostromo, looking away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Capataz, I can assure you she will never be like that again,&rdquo;
+       snarled Dr. Monygham. &ldquo;You may go to her or stay away. There is very
+      little to be got from talking to the dying. But she told Dona Emilia in my
+      hearing that she has been like a mother to you ever since you first set
+      foot ashore here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si! And she never had a good word to say for me to anybody. It is more as
+      if she could not forgive me for being alive, and such a man, too, as she
+      would have liked her son to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe!&rdquo; exclaimed a mournful deep voice near them. &ldquo;Women have their own
+      ways of tormenting themselves.&rdquo; Giorgio Viola had come out of the house.
+      He threw a heavy black shadow in the torchlight, and the glare fell on his
+      big face, on the great bushy head of white hair. He motioned the Capataz
+      indoors with his extended arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham, after busying himself with a little medicament box of
+      polished wood on the seat of the landau, turned to old Giorgio and thrust
+      into his big, trembling hand one of the glass-stoppered bottles out of the
+      case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give her a spoonful of this now and then, in water,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It will
+      make her easier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is nothing more for her?&rdquo; asked the old man, patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Not on earth,&rdquo; said the doctor, with his back to him, clicking the
+      lock of the medicine case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo slowly crossed the large kitchen, all dark but for the glow of a
+      heap of charcoal under the heavy mantel of the cooking-range, where water
+      was boiling in an iron pot with a loud bubbling sound. Between the two
+      walls of a narrow staircase a bright light streamed from the sick-room
+      above; and the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores stepping noiselessly in
+      soft leather sandals, bushy whiskered, his muscular neck and bronzed chest
+      bare in the open check shirt, resembled a Mediterranean sailor just come
+      ashore from some wine or fruit-laden felucca. At the top he paused, broad
+      shouldered, narrow hipped and supple, looking at the large bed, like a
+      white couch of state, with a profusion of snowy linen, amongst which the
+      Padrona sat unpropped and bowed, her handsome, black-browed face bent over
+      her chest. A mass of raven hair with only a few white threads in it
+      covered her shoulders; one thick strand fallen forward half veiled her
+      cheek. Perfectly motionless in that pose, expressing physical anxiety and
+      unrest, she turned her eyes alone towards Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz had a red sash wound many times round his waist, and a heavy
+      silver ring on the forefinger of the hand he raised to give a twist to his
+      moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their revolutions, their revolutions,&rdquo; gasped Senora Teresa. &ldquo;Look, Gian&rsquo;
+      Battista, it has killed me at last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo said nothing, and the sick woman with an upward glance insisted.
+      &ldquo;Look, this one has killed me, while you were away fighting for what did
+      not concern you, foolish man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why talk like this?&rdquo; mumbled the Capataz between his teeth. &ldquo;Will you
+      never believe in my good sense? It concerns me to keep on being what I am:
+      every day alike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never change, indeed,&rdquo; she said, bitterly. &ldquo;Always thinking of
+      yourself and taking your pay out in fine words from those who care nothing
+      for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was between them an intimacy of antagonism as close in its way as
+      the intimacy of accord and affection. He had not walked along the way of
+      Teresa&rsquo;s expectations. It was she who had encouraged him to leave his
+      ship, in the hope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. The
+      wife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, and was haunted by
+      the fear of her aged husband&rsquo;s loneliness and the unprotected state of the
+      children. She had wanted to annex that apparently quiet and steady young
+      man, affectionate and pliable, an orphan from his tenderest age, as he had
+      told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner and master of a
+      felucca, from whose ill-usage he had run away before he was fourteen. He
+      had seemed to her courageous, a hard worker, determined to make his way in
+      the world. From gratitude and the ties of habit he would become like a son
+      to herself and Giorgio; and then, who knows, when Linda had grown up. . .
+      . Ten years&rsquo; difference between husband and wife was not so much. Her own
+      great man was nearly twenty years older than herself. Gian&rsquo; Battista was
+      an attractive young fellow, besides; attractive to men, women, and
+      children, just by that profound quietness of personality which, like a
+      serene twilight, rendered more seductive the promise of his vigorous form
+      and the resolution of his conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife&rsquo;s views and hopes, had a
+      great regard for his young countryman. &ldquo;A man ought not to be tame,&rdquo; he
+      used to tell her, quoting the Spanish proverb in defence of the splendid
+      Capataz. She was growing jealous of his success. He was escaping from her,
+      she feared. She was practical, and he seemed to her to be an absurd
+      spendthrift of these qualities which made him so valuable. He got too
+      little for them. He scattered them with both hands amongst too many
+      people, she thought. He laid no money by. She railed at his poverty, his
+      exploits, his adventures, his loves and his reputation; but in her heart
+      she had never given him up, as though, indeed, he had been her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even now, ill as she was, ill enough to feel the chill, black breath of
+      the approaching end, she had wished to see him. It was like putting out
+      her benumbed hand to regain her hold. But she had presumed too much on her
+      strength. She could not command her thoughts; they had become dim, like
+      her vision. The words faltered on her lips, and only the paramount anxiety
+      and desire of her life seemed to be too strong for death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz said, &ldquo;I have heard these things many times. You are unjust,
+      but it does not hurt me. Only now you do not seem to have much strength to
+      talk, and I have but little time to listen. I am engaged in a work of very
+      great moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made an effort to ask him whether it was true that he had found time
+      to go and fetch a doctor for her. Nostromo nodded affirmatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was pleased: it relieved her sufferings to know that the man had
+      condescended to do so much for those who really wanted his help. It was a
+      proof of his friendship. Her voice become stronger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want a priest more than a doctor,&rdquo; she said, pathetically. She did not
+      move her head; only her eyes ran into the corners to watch the Capataz
+      standing by the side of her bed. &ldquo;Would you go to fetch a priest for me
+      now? Think! A dying woman asks you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo shook his head resolutely. He did not believe in priests in their
+      sacerdotal character. A doctor was an efficacious person; but a priest, as
+      priest, was nothing, incapable of doing either good or harm. Nostromo did
+      not even dislike the sight of them as old Giorgio did. The utter
+      uselessness of the errand was what struck him most.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Padrona,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you have been like this before, and got better after
+      a few days. I have given you already the very last moments I can spare.
+      Ask Senora Gould to send you one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was feeling uneasy at the impiety of this refusal. The Padrona believed
+      in priests, and confessed herself to them. But all women did that. It
+      could not be of much consequence. And yet his heart felt oppressed for a
+      moment&mdash;at the thought what absolution would mean to her if she
+      believed in it only ever so little. No matter. It was quite true that he
+      had given her already the very last moment he could spare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You refuse to go?&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Ah! you are always yourself, indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to reason, Padrona,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am needed to save the silver of
+      the mine. Do you hear? A greater treasure than the one which they say is
+      guarded by ghosts and devils on Azuera. It is true. I am resolved to make
+      this the most desperate affair I was ever engaged on in my whole life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt a despairing indignation. The supreme test had failed. Standing
+      above her, Nostromo did not see the distorted features of her face,
+      distorted by a paroxysm of pain and anger. Only she began to tremble all
+      over. Her bowed head shook. The broad shoulders quivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then God, perhaps, will have mercy upon me! But do you look to it, man,
+      that you get something for yourself out of it, besides the remorse that
+      shall overtake you some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed feebly. &ldquo;Get riches at least for once, you indispensable,
+      admired Gian&rsquo; Battista, to whom the peace of a dying woman is less than
+      the praise of people who have given you a silly name&mdash;and nothing
+      besides&mdash;in exchange for your soul and body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz de Cargadores swore to himself under his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave my soul alone, Padrona, and I shall know how to take care of my
+      body. Where is the harm of people having need of me? What are you envying
+      me that I have robbed you and the children of? Those very people you are
+      throwing in my teeth have done more for old Giorgio than they ever thought
+      of doing for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He struck his breast with his open palm; his voice had remained low though
+      he had spoken in a forcible tone. He twisted his moustaches one after
+      another, and his eyes wandered a little about the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it my fault that I am the only man for their purposes? What angry
+      nonsense are you talking, mother? Would you rather have me timid and
+      foolish, selling water-melons on the market-place or rowing a boat for
+      passengers along the harbour, like a soft Neapolitan without courage or
+      reputation? Would you have a young man live like a monk? I do not believe
+      it. Would you want a monk for your eldest girl? Let her grow. What are you
+      afraid of? You have been angry with me for everything I did for years;
+      ever since you first spoke to me, in secret from old Giorgio, about your
+      Linda. Husband to one and brother to the other, did you say? Well, why
+      not! I like the little ones, and a man must marry some time. But ever
+      since that time you have been making little of me to everyone. Why? Did
+      you think you could put a collar and chain on me as if I were one of the
+      watch-dogs they keep over there in the railway yards? Look here, Padrona,
+      I am the same man who came ashore one evening and sat down in the thatched
+      ranche you lived in at that time on the other side of the town and told
+      you all about himself. You were not unjust to me then. What has happened
+      since? I am no longer an insignificant youth. A good name, Giorgio says,
+      is a treasure, Padrona.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have turned your head with their praises,&rdquo; gasped the sick woman.
+      &ldquo;They have been paying you with words. Your folly shall betray you into
+      poverty, misery, starvation. The very leperos shall laugh at you&mdash;the
+      great Capataz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo stood for a time as if struck dumb. She never looked at him. A
+      self-confident, mirthless smile passed quickly from his lips, and then he
+      backed away. His disregarded figure sank down beyond the doorway. He
+      descended the stairs backwards, with the usual sense of having been
+      somehow baffled by this woman&rsquo;s disparagement of this reputation he had
+      obtained and desired to keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Downstairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, surrounded by the
+      shadows of the walls, of the ceiling, but no ruddy glare filled the open
+      square of the outer door. The carriage with Mrs. Gould and Don Martin,
+      preceded by the horseman bearing the torch, had gone on to the jetty. Dr.
+      Monygham, who had remained, sat on the corner of a hard wood table near
+      the candlestick, his seamed, shaven face inclined sideways, his arms
+      crossed on his breast, his lips pursed up, and his prominent eyes glaring
+      stonily upon the floor of black earth. Near the overhanging mantel of the
+      fireplace, where the pot of water was still boiling violently, old Giorgio
+      held his chin in his hand, one foot advanced, as if arrested by a sudden
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adios, viejo,&rdquo; said Nostromo, feeling the handle of his revolver in the
+      belt and loosening his knife in its sheath. He picked up a blue poncho
+      lined with red from the table, and put it over his head. &ldquo;Adios, look
+      after the things in my sleeping-room, and if you hear from me no more,
+      give up the box to Paquita. There is not much of value there, except my
+      new serape from Mexico, and a few silver buttons on my best jacket. No
+      matter! The things will look well enough on the next lover she gets, and
+      the man need not be afraid I shall linger on earth after I am dead, like
+      those Gringos that haunt the Azuera.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham twisted his lips into a bitter smile. After old Giorgio, with
+      an almost imperceptible nod and without a word, had gone up the narrow
+      stairs, he said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Capataz! I thought you could never fail in anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo, glancing contemptuously at the doctor, lingered in the doorway
+      rolling a cigarette, then struck a match, and, after lighting it, held the
+      burning piece of wood above his head till the flame nearly touched his
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No wind!&rdquo; he muttered to himself. &ldquo;Look here, senor&mdash;do you know the
+      nature of my undertaking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham nodded sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is as if I were taking up a curse upon me, senor doctor. A man with a
+      treasure on this coast will have every knife raised against him in every
+      place upon the shore. You see that, senor doctor? I shall float along with
+      a spell upon my life till I meet somewhere the north-bound steamer of the
+      Company, and then indeed they will talk about the Capataz of the Sulaco
+      Cargadores from one end of America to another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham laughed his short, throaty laugh. Nostromo turned round in
+      the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if your worship can find any other man ready and fit for such
+      business I will stand back. I am not exactly tired of my life, though I am
+      so poor that I can carry all I have with myself on my horse&rsquo;s back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gamble too much, and never say &lsquo;no&rsquo; to a pretty face, Capataz,&rdquo; said
+      Dr. Monygham, with sly simplicity. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not the way to make a fortune.
+      But nobody that I know ever suspected you of being poor. I hope you have
+      made a good bargain in case you come back safe from this adventure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What bargain would your worship have made?&rdquo; asked Nostromo, blowing the
+      smoke out of his lips through the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a moment before he answered,
+      with another of his short, abrupt laughs&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Illustrious Capataz, for taking the curse of death upon my back, as you
+      call it, nothing else but the whole treasure would do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of discontent at this
+      jeering answer. Dr. Monygham heard him gallop away. Nostromo rode
+      furiously in the dark. There were lights in the buildings of the O.S.N.
+      Company near the wharf, but before he got there he met the Gould carriage.
+      The horseman preceded it with the torch, whose light showed the white
+      mules trotting, the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio with the carbine
+      on the box. From the dark body of the landau Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s voice cried,
+      &ldquo;They are waiting for you, Capataz!&rdquo; She was returning, chilly and
+      excited, with Decoud&rsquo;s pocket-book still held in her hand. He had confided
+      it to her to send to his sister. &ldquo;Perhaps my last words to her,&rdquo; he had
+      said, pressing Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz never checked his speed. At the head of the wharf vague
+      figures with rifles leapt to the head of his horse; others closed upon him&mdash;cargadores
+      of the company posted by Captain Mitchell on the watch. At a word from him
+      they fell back with subservient murmurs, recognizing his voice. At the
+      other end of the jetty, near a cargo crane, in a dark group with glowing
+      cigars, his name was pronounced in a tone of relief. Most of the Europeans
+      in Sulaco were there, rallied round Charles Gould, as if the silver of the
+      mine had been the emblem of a common cause, the symbol of the supreme
+      importance of material interests. They had loaded it into the lighter with
+      their own hands. Nostromo recognized Don Carlos Gould, a thin, tall shape
+      standing a little apart and silent, to whom another tall shape, the
+      engineer-in-chief, said aloud, &ldquo;If it must be lost, it is a million times
+      better that it should go to the bottom of the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin Decoud called out from the lighter, &ldquo;<i>Au revoir</i>, messieurs,
+      till we clasp hands again over the new-born Occidental Republic.&rdquo; Only a
+      subdued murmur responded to his clear, ringing tones; and then it seemed
+      to him that the wharf was floating away into the night; but it was
+      Nostromo, who was already pushing against a pile with one of the heavy
+      sweeps. Decoud did not move; the effect was that of being launched into
+      space. After a splash or two there was not a sound but the thud of
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s feet leaping about the boat. He hoisted the big sail; a breath
+      of wind fanned Decoud&rsquo;s cheek. Everything had vanished but the light of
+      the lantern Captain Mitchell had hoisted upon the post at the end of the
+      jetty to guide Nostromo out of the harbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till the lighter,
+      slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out between almost invisible
+      headlands into the still deeper darkness of the gulf. For a time the
+      lantern on the jetty shone after them. The wind failed, then fanned up
+      again, but so faintly that the big, half-decked boat slipped along with no
+      more noise than if she had been suspended in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are out in the gulf now,&rdquo; said the calm voice of Nostromo. A moment
+      after he added, &ldquo;Senor Mitchell has lowered the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Decoud; &ldquo;nobody can find us now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat. The sea in the gulf
+      was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo, after striking a couple of
+      matches to get a glimpse of the boat-compass he had with him in the
+      lighter, steered by the feel of the wind on his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysteriousness of the great
+      waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been
+      crushed by the weight of that dense night. The Placido was sleeping
+      profoundly under its black poncho.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and gain the
+      middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were somewhere at hand.
+      &ldquo;On your left as you look forward, senor,&rdquo; said Nostromo, suddenly. When
+      his voice ceased, the enormous stillness, without light or sound, seemed
+      to affect Decoud&rsquo;s senses like a powerful drug. He didn&rsquo;t even know at
+      times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man lost in slumber, he
+      heard nothing, he saw nothing. Even his hand held before his face did not
+      exist for his eyes. The change from the agitation, the passions and the
+      dangers, from the sights and sounds of the shore, was so complete that it
+      would have resembled death had it not been for the survival of his
+      thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal peace they floated vivid and light,
+      like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things that may haunt the souls
+      freed by death from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud
+      shook himself, shuddered a bit, though the air that drifted past him was
+      warm. He had the strangest sensation of his soul having just returned into
+      his body from the circumambient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the
+      mountains, and the rocks were as if they had not been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s voice was speaking, though he, at the tiller, was also as if he
+      were not. &ldquo;Have you been asleep, Don Martin? Caramba! If it were possible
+      I would think that I, too, have dozed off. I have a strange notion somehow
+      of having dreamt that there was a sound of blubbering, a sound a sorrowing
+      man could make, somewhere near this boat. Something between a sigh and a
+      sob.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange!&rdquo; muttered Decoud, stretched upon the pile of treasure boxes
+      covered by many tarpaulins. &ldquo;Could it be that there is another boat near
+      us in the gulf? We could not see it, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo laughed a little at the absurdity of the idea. They dismissed it
+      from their minds. The solitude could almost be felt. And when the breeze
+      ceased, the blackness seemed to weigh upon Decoud like a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is overpowering,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Do we move at all, Capataz?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the grass,&rdquo; answered
+      Nostromo, and his voice seemed deadened by the thick veil of obscurity
+      that felt warm and hopeless all about them. There were long periods when
+      he made no sound, invisible and inaudible as if he had mysteriously
+      stepped out of the lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the featureless night Nostromo was not even certain which way the
+      lighter headed after the wind had completely died out. He peered for the
+      islands. There was not a hint of them to be seen, as if they had sunk to
+      the bottom of the gulf. He threw himself down by the side of Decoud at
+      last, and whispered into his ear that if daylight caught them near the
+      Sulaco shore through want of wind, it would be possible to sweep the
+      lighter behind the cliff at the high end of the Great Isabel, where she
+      would lie concealed. Decoud was surprised at the grimness of his anxiety.
+      To him the removal of the treasure was a political move. It was necessary
+      for several reasons that it should not fall into the hands of Montero, but
+      here was a man who took another view of this enterprise. The Caballeros
+      over there did not seem to have the slightest idea of what they had given
+      him to do. Nostromo, as if affected by the gloom around, seemed nervously
+      resentful. Decoud was surprised. The Capataz, indifferent to those dangers
+      that seemed obvious to his companion, allowed himself to become scornfully
+      exasperated by the deadly nature of the trust put, as a matter of course,
+      into his hands. It was more dangerous, Nostromo said, with a laugh and a
+      curse, than sending a man to get the treasure that people said was guarded
+      by devils and ghosts in the deep ravines of Azuera. &ldquo;Senor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we
+      must catch the steamer at sea. We must keep out in the open looking for
+      her till we have eaten and drunk all that has been put on board here. And
+      if we miss her by some mischance, we must keep away from the land till we
+      grow weak, and perhaps mad, and die, and drift dead, until one or another
+      of the steamers of the Compania comes upon the boat with the two dead men
+      who have saved the treasure. That, senor, is the only way to save it; for,
+      don&rsquo;t you see? for us to come to the land anywhere in a hundred miles
+      along this coast with this silver in our possession is to run the naked
+      breast against the point of a knife. This thing has been given to me like
+      a deadly disease. If men discover it I am dead, and you, too, senor, since
+      you would come with me. There is enough silver to make a whole province
+      rich, let alone a seaboard pueblo inhabited by thieves and vagabonds.
+      Senor, they would think that heaven itself sent these riches into their
+      hands, and would cut our throats without hesitation. I would trust no fair
+      words from the best man around the shores of this wild gulf. Reflect that,
+      even by giving up the treasure at the first demand, we would not be able
+      to save our lives. Do you understand this, or must I explain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you needn&rsquo;t explain,&rdquo; said Decoud, a little listlessly. &ldquo;I can see it
+      well enough myself, that the possession of this treasure is very much like
+      a deadly disease for men situated as we are. But it had to be removed from
+      Sulaco, and you were the man for the task.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was; but I cannot believe,&rdquo; said Nostromo, &ldquo;that its loss would have
+      impoverished Don Carlos Gould very much. There is more wealth in the
+      mountain. I have heard it rolling down the shoots on quiet nights when I
+      used to ride to Rincon to see a certain girl, after my work at the harbour
+      was done. For years the rich rocks have been pouring down with a noise
+      like thunder, and the miners say that there is enough at the heart of the
+      mountain to thunder on for years and years to come. And yet, the day
+      before yesterday, we have been fighting to save it from the mob, and
+      to-night I am sent out with it into this darkness, where there is no wind
+      to get away with; as if it were the last lot of silver on earth to get
+      bread for the hungry with. Ha! ha! Well, I am going to make it the most
+      famous and desperate affair of my life&mdash;wind or no wind. It shall be
+      talked about when the little children are grown up and the grown men are
+      old. Aha! the Monterists must not get hold of it, I am told, whatever
+      happens to Nostromo the Capataz; and they shall not have it, I tell you,
+      since it has been tied for safety round Nostromo&rsquo;s neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see it,&rdquo; murmured Decoud. He saw, indeed, that his companion had his
+      own peculiar view of this enterprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo interrupted his reflections upon the way men&rsquo;s qualities are made
+      use of, without any fundamental knowledge of their nature, by the proposal
+      they should slip the long oars out and sweep the lighter in the direction
+      of the Isabels. It wouldn&rsquo;t do for daylight to reveal the treasure
+      floating within a mile or so of the harbour entrance. The denser the
+      darkness generally, the smarter were the puffs of wind on which he had
+      reckoned to make his way; but tonight the gulf, under its poncho of
+      clouds, remained breathless, as if dead rather than asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Martin&rsquo;s soft hands suffered cruelly, tugging at the thick handle of
+      the enormous oar. He stuck to it manfully, setting his teeth. He, too, was
+      in the toils of an imaginative existence, and that strange work of pulling
+      a lighter seemed to belong naturally to the inception of a new state,
+      acquired an ideal meaning from his love for Antonia. For all their
+      efforts, the heavily laden lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could be heard
+      swearing to himself between the regular splashes of the sweeps. &ldquo;We are
+      making a crooked path,&rdquo; he muttered to himself. &ldquo;I wish I could see the
+      islands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his unskilfulness Don Martin over-exerted himself. Now and then a sort
+      of muscular faintness would run from the tips of his aching fingers
+      through every fibre of his body, and pass off in a flush of heat. He had
+      fought, talked, suffered mentally and physically, exerting his mind and
+      body for the last forty-eight hours without intermission. He had had no
+      rest, very little food, no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his
+      feelings. Even his love for Antonia, whence he drew his strength and his
+      inspiration, had reached the point of tragic tension during their hurried
+      interview by Don Jose&rsquo;s bedside. And now, suddenly, he was thrown out of
+      all this into a dark gulf, whose very gloom, silence, and breathless peace
+      added a torment to the necessity for physical exertion. He imagined the
+      lighter sinking to the bottom with an extraordinary shudder of delight. &ldquo;I
+      am on the verge of delirium,&rdquo; he thought. He mastered the trembling of all
+      his limbs, of his breast, the inward trembling of all his body exhausted
+      of its nervous force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we rest, Capataz?&rdquo; he proposed in a careless tone. &ldquo;There are many
+      hours of night yet before us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True. It is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your arms, senor, if that
+      is what you mean. You will find no other sort of rest, I can promise you,
+      since you let yourself be bound to this treasure whose loss would make no
+      poor man poorer. No, senor; there is no rest till we find a north-bound
+      steamer, or else some ship finds us drifting about stretched out dead upon
+      the Englishman&rsquo;s silver. Or rather&mdash;no; por Dios! I shall cut down
+      the gunwale with the axe right to the water&rsquo;s edge before thirst and
+      hunger rob me of my strength. By all the saints and devils I shall let the
+      sea have the treasure rather than give it up to any stranger. Since it was
+      the good pleasure of the Caballeros to send me off on such an errand, they
+      shall learn I am just the man they take me for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud lay on the silver boxes panting. All his active sensations and
+      feelings from as far back as he could remember seemed to him the maddest
+      of dreams. Even his passionate devotion to Antonia into which he had
+      worked himself up out of the depths of his scepticism had lost all
+      appearance of reality. For a moment he was the prey of an extremely
+      languid but not unpleasant indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure they didn&rsquo;t mean you to take such a desperate view of this
+      affair,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it, then? A joke?&rdquo; snarled the man, who on the pay-sheets of the
+      O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s establishment in Sulaco was described as &ldquo;Foreman of the
+      wharf&rdquo; against the figure of his wages. &ldquo;Was it for a joke they woke me up
+      from my sleep after two days of street fighting to make me stake my life
+      upon a bad card? Everybody knows, too, that I am not a lucky gambler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, everybody knows of your good luck with women, Capataz,&rdquo; Decoud
+      propitiated his companion in a weary drawl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, senor,&rdquo; Nostromo went on. &ldquo;I never even remonstrated about
+      this affair. Directly I heard what was wanted I saw what a desperate
+      affair it must be, and I made up my mind to see it out. Every minute was
+      of importance. I had to wait for you first. Then, when we arrived at the
+      Italia Una, old Giorgio shouted to me to go for the English doctor. Later
+      on, that poor dying woman wanted to see me, as you know. Senor, I was
+      reluctant to go. I felt already this cursed silver growing heavy upon my
+      back, and I was afraid that, knowing herself to be dying, she would ask me
+      to ride off again for a priest. Father Corbelan, who is fearless, would
+      have come at a word; but Father Corbelan is far away, safe with the band
+      of Hernandez, and the populace, that would have liked to tear him to
+      pieces, are much incensed against the priests. Not a single fat padre
+      would have consented to put his head out of his hiding-place to-night to
+      save a Christian soul, except, perhaps, under my protection. That was in
+      her mind. I pretended I did not believe she was going to die. Senor, I
+      refused to fetch a priest for a dying woman. . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud was heard to stir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did, Capataz!&rdquo; he exclaimed. His tone changed. &ldquo;Well, you know&mdash;it
+      was rather fine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not believe in priests, Don Martin? Neither do I. What was the use
+      of wasting time? But she&mdash;she believes in them. The thing sticks in
+      my throat. She may be dead already, and here we are floating helpless with
+      no wind at all. Curse on all superstition. She died thinking I deprived
+      her of Paradise, I suppose. It shall be the most desperate affair of my
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud remained lost in reflection. He tried to analyze the sensations
+      awaked by what he had been told. The voice of the Capataz was heard again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Don Martin, let us take up the sweeps and try to find the Isabels.
+      It is either that or sinking the lighter if the day overtakes us. We must
+      not forget that the steamer from Esmeralda with the soldiers may be coming
+      along. We will pull straight on now. I have discovered a bit of a candle
+      here, and we must take the risk of a small light to make a course by the
+      boat compass. There is not enough wind to blow it out&mdash;may the curse
+      of Heaven fall upon this blind gulf!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A small flame appeared burning quite straight. It showed fragmentarily the
+      stout ribs and planking in the hollow, empty part of the lighter. Decoud
+      could see Nostromo standing up to pull. He saw him as high as the red sash
+      on his waist, with a gleam of a white-handled revolver and the wooden haft
+      of a long knife protruding on his left side. Decoud nerved himself for the
+      effort of rowing. Certainly there was not enough wind to blow the candle
+      out, but its flame swayed a little to the slow movement of the heavy boat.
+      It was so big that with their utmost efforts they could not move it
+      quicker than about a mile an hour. This was sufficient, however, to sweep
+      them amongst the Isabels long before daylight came. There was a good six
+      hours of darkness before them, and the distance from the harbour to the
+      Great Isabel did not exceed two miles. Decoud put this heavy toil to the
+      account of the Capataz&rsquo;s impatience. Sometimes they paused, and then
+      strained their ears to hear the boat from Esmeralda. In this perfect
+      quietness a steamer moving would have been heard from far off. As to
+      seeing anything it was out of the question. They could not see each other.
+      Even the lighter&rsquo;s sail, which remained set, was invisible. Very often
+      they rested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caramba!&rdquo; said Nostromo, suddenly, during one of those intervals when
+      they lolled idly against the heavy handles of the sweeps. &ldquo;What is it? Are
+      you distressed, Don Martin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud assured him that he was not distressed in the least. Nostromo for a
+      time kept perfectly still, and then in a whisper invited Martin to come
+      aft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his lips touching Decoud&rsquo;s ear he declared his belief that there was
+      somebody else besides themselves upon the lighter. Twice now he had heard
+      the sound of stifled sobbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senor,&rdquo; he whispered with awed wonder, &ldquo;I am certain that there is
+      somebody weeping in this lighter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud had heard nothing. He expressed his incredulity. However, it was
+      easy to ascertain the truth of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is most amazing,&rdquo; muttered Nostromo. &ldquo;Could anybody have concealed
+      himself on board while the lighter was lying alongside the wharf?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you say it was like sobbing?&rdquo; asked Decoud, lowering his voice, too.
+      &ldquo;If he is weeping, whoever he is he cannot be very dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Clambering over the precious pile in the middle, they crouched low on the
+      foreside of the mast and groped under the half-deck. Right forward, in the
+      narrowest part, their hands came upon the limbs of a man, who remained as
+      silent as death. Too startled themselves to make a sound, they dragged him
+      aft by one arm and the collar of his coat. He was limp&mdash;lifeless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light of the bit of candle fell upon a round, hook-nosed face with
+      black moustaches and little side-whiskers. He was extremely dirty. A
+      greasy growth of beard was sprouting on the shaven parts of the cheeks.
+      The thick lips were slightly parted, but the eyes remained closed. Decoud,
+      to his immense astonishment, recognized Senor Hirsch, the hide merchant
+      from Esmeralda. Nostromo, too, had recognized him. And they gazed at each
+      other across the body, lying with its naked feet higher than its head, in
+      an absurd pretence of sleep, faintness, or death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER EIGHT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a moment, before this extraordinary find, they forgot their own
+      concerns and sensations. Senor Hirsch&rsquo;s sensations as he lay there must
+      have been those of extreme terror. For a long time he refused to give a
+      sign of life, till at last Decoud&rsquo;s objurgations, and, perhaps more,
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s impatient suggestion that he should be thrown overboard, as he
+      seemed to be dead, induced him to raise one eyelid first, and then the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appeared that he had never found a safe opportunity to leave Sulaco. He
+      lodged with Anzani, the universal storekeeper, on the Plaza Mayor. But
+      when the riot broke out he had made his escape from his host&rsquo;s house
+      before daylight, and in such a hurry that he had forgotten to put on his
+      shoes. He had run out impulsively in his socks, and with his hat in his
+      hand, into the garden of Anzani&rsquo;s house. Fear gave him the necessary
+      agility to climb over several low walls, and afterwards he blundered into
+      the overgrown cloisters of the ruined Franciscan convent in one of the
+      by-streets. He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes with the
+      recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for his scratched body and
+      his torn clothing. He lay hidden there all day, his tongue cleaving to the
+      roof of his mouth with all the intensity of thirst engendered by heat and
+      fear. Three times different bands of men invaded the place with shouts and
+      imprecations, looking for Father Corbelan; but towards the evening, still
+      lying on his face in the bushes, he thought he would die from the fear of
+      silence. He was not very clear as to what had induced him to leave the
+      place, but evidently he had got out and slunk successfully out of town
+      along the deserted back lanes. He wandered in the darkness near the
+      railway, so maddened by apprehension that he dared not even approach the
+      fires of the pickets of Italian workmen guarding the line. He had a vague
+      idea evidently of finding refuge in the railway yards, but the dogs rushed
+      upon him, barking; men began to shout; a shot was fired at random. He fled
+      away from the gates. By the merest accident, as it happened, he took the
+      direction of the O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s offices. Twice he stumbled upon the
+      bodies of men killed during the day. But everything living frightened him
+      much more. He crouched, crept, crawled, made dashes, guided by a sort of
+      animal instinct, keeping away from every light and from every sound of
+      voices. His idea was to throw himself at the feet of Captain Mitchell and
+      beg for shelter in the Company&rsquo;s offices. It was all dark there as he
+      approached on his hands and knees, but suddenly someone on guard
+      challenged loudly, &ldquo;Quien vive?&rdquo; There were more dead men lying about, and
+      he flattened himself down at once by the side of a cold corpse. He heard a
+      voice saying, &ldquo;Here is one of those wounded rascals crawling about. Shall
+      I go and finish him?&rdquo; And another voice objected that it was not safe to
+      go out without a lantern upon such an errand; perhaps it was only some
+      negro Liberal looking for a chance to stick a knife into the stomach of an
+      honest man. Hirsch didn&rsquo;t stay to hear any more, but crawling away to the
+      end of the wharf, hid himself amongst a lot of empty casks. After a while
+      some people came along, talking, and with glowing cigarettes. He did not
+      stop to ask himself whether they would be likely to do him any harm, but
+      bolted incontinently along the jetty, saw a lighter lying moored at the
+      end, and threw himself into it. In his desire to find cover he crept right
+      forward under the half-deck, and he had remained there more dead than
+      alive, suffering agonies of hunger and thirst, and almost fainting with
+      terror, when he heard numerous footsteps and the voices of the Europeans
+      who came in a body escorting the wagonload of treasure, pushed along the
+      rails by a squad of Cargadores. He understood perfectly what was being
+      done from the talk, but did not disclose his presence from the fear that
+      he would not be allowed to remain. His only idea at the time, overpowering
+      and masterful, was to get away from this terrible Sulaco. And now he
+      regretted it very much. He had heard Nostromo talk to Decoud, and wished
+      himself back on shore. He did not desire to be involved in any desperate
+      affair&mdash;in a situation where one could not run away. The involuntary
+      groans of his anguished spirit had betrayed him to the sharp ears of the
+      Capataz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had propped him up in a sitting posture against the side of the
+      lighter, and he went on with the moaning account of his adventures till
+      his voice broke, his head fell forward. &ldquo;Water,&rdquo; he whispered, with
+      difficulty. Decoud held one of the cans to his lips. He revived after an
+      extraordinarily short time, and scrambled up to his feet wildly. Nostromo,
+      in an angry and threatening voice, ordered him forward. Hirsch was one of
+      those men whom fear lashes like a whip, and he must have had an appalling
+      idea of the Capataz&rsquo;s ferocity. He displayed an extraordinary agility in
+      disappearing forward into the darkness. They heard him getting over the
+      tarpaulin; then there was the sound of a heavy fall, followed by a weary
+      sigh. Afterwards all was still in the fore-part of the lighter, as though
+      he had killed himself in his headlong tumble. Nostromo shouted in a
+      menacing voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lie still there! Do not move a limb. If I hear as much as a loud breath
+      from you I shall come over there and put a bullet through your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of
+      treachery into a dangerous situation. Nostromo&rsquo;s nervous impatience passed
+      into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as if speaking to
+      himself, remarked that, after all, this bizarre event made no great
+      difference. He could not conceive what harm the man could do. At most he
+      would be in the way, like an inanimate and useless object&mdash;like a
+      block of wood, for instance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would think twice before getting rid of a piece of wood,&rdquo; said
+      Nostromo, calmly. &ldquo;Something may happen unexpectedly where you could make
+      use of it. But in an affair like ours a man like this ought to be thrown
+      overboard. Even if he were as brave as a lion we would not want him here.
+      We are not running away for our lives. Senor, there is no harm in a brave
+      man trying to save himself with ingenuity and courage; but you have heard
+      his tale, Don Martin. His being here is a miracle of fear&mdash;&rdquo; Nostromo
+      paused. &ldquo;There is no room for fear in this lighter,&rdquo; he added through his
+      teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud had no answer to make. It was not a position for argument, for a
+      display of scruples or feelings. There were a thousand ways in which a
+      panic-stricken man could make himself dangerous. It was evident that
+      Hirsch could not be spoken to, reasoned with, or persuaded into a rational
+      line of conduct. The story of his own escape demonstrated that clearly
+      enough. Decoud thought that it was a thousand pities the wretch had not
+      died of fright. Nature, who had made him what he was, seemed to have
+      calculated cruelly how much he could bear in the way of atrocious anguish
+      without actually expiring. Some compassion was due to so much terror.
+      Decoud, though imaginative enough for sympathy, resolved not to interfere
+      with any action that Nostromo would take. But Nostromo did nothing. And
+      the fate of Senor Hirsch remained suspended in the darkness of the gulf at
+      the mercy of events which could not be foreseen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz, extending his hand, put out the candle suddenly. It was to
+      Decoud as if his companion had destroyed, by a single touch, the world of
+      affairs, of loves, of revolution, where his complacent superiority
+      analyzed fearlessly all motives and all passions, including his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gasped a little. Decoud was affected by the novelty of his position.
+      Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from being deprived of the only
+      weapon he could use with effect. No intelligence could penetrate the
+      darkness of the Placid Gulf. There remained only one thing he was certain
+      of, and that was the overweening vanity of his companion. It was direct,
+      uncomplicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been making use of
+      him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He had discovered a
+      complete singleness of motive behind the varied manifestations of a
+      consistent character. This was why the man remained so astonishingly
+      simple in the jealous greatness of his conceit. And now there was a
+      complication. It was evident that he resented having been given a task in
+      which there were so many chances of failure. &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; thought Decoud,
+      &ldquo;how he would behave if I were not here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard Nostromo mutter again, &ldquo;No! there is no room for fear on this
+      lighter. Courage itself does not seem good enough. I have a good eye and a
+      steady hand; no man can say he ever saw me tired or uncertain what to do;
+      but por Dios, Don Martin, I have been sent out into this black calm on a
+      business where neither a good eye, nor a steady hand, nor judgment are any
+      use. . . .&rdquo; He swore a string of oaths in Spanish and Italian under his
+      breath. &ldquo;Nothing but sheer desperation will do for this affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words were in strange contrast to the prevailing peace&mdash;to this
+      almost solid stillness of the gulf. A shower fell with an abrupt
+      whispering sound all round the boat, and Decoud took off his hat, and,
+      letting his head get wet, felt greatly refreshed. Presently a steady
+      little draught of air caressed his cheek. The lighter began to move, but
+      the shower distanced it. The drops ceased to fall upon his head and hands,
+      the whispering died out in the distance. Nostromo emitted a grunt of
+      satisfaction, and grasping the tiller, chirruped softly, as sailors do, to
+      encourage the wind. Never for the last three days had Decoud felt less the
+      need for what the Capataz would call desperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy I hear another shower on the water,&rdquo; he observed in a tone of
+      quiet content. &ldquo;I hope it will catch us up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo ceased chirruping at once. &ldquo;You hear another shower?&rdquo; he said,
+      doubtfully. A sort of thinning of the darkness seemed to have taken place,
+      and Decoud could see now the outline of his companion&rsquo;s figure, and even
+      the sail came out of the night like a square block of dense snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound which Decoud had detected came along the water harshly. Nostromo
+      recognized that noise partaking of a hiss and a rustle which spreads out
+      on all sides of a steamer making her way through a smooth water on a quiet
+      night. It could be nothing else but the captured transport with troops
+      from Esmeralda. She carried no lights. The noise of her steaming, growing
+      louder every minute, would stop at times altogether, and then begin again
+      abruptly, and sound startlingly nearer; as if that invisible vessel, whose
+      position could not be precisely guessed, were making straight for the
+      lighter. Meantime, that last kept on sailing slowly and noiselessly before
+      a breeze so faint that it was only by leaning over the side and feeling
+      the water slip through his fingers that Decoud convinced himself they were
+      moving at all. His drowsy feeling had departed. He was glad to know that
+      the lighter was moving. After so much stillness the noise of the steamer
+      seemed uproarious and distracting. There was a weirdness in not being able
+      to see her. Suddenly all was still. She had stopped, but so close to them
+      that the steam, blowing off, sent its rumbling vibration right over their
+      heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are trying to make out where they are,&rdquo; said Decoud in a whisper.
+      Again he leaned over and put his fingers into the water. &ldquo;We are moving
+      quite smartly,&rdquo; he informed Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We seem to be crossing her bows,&rdquo; said the Capataz in a cautious tone.
+      &ldquo;But this is a blind game with death. Moving on is of no use. We mustn&rsquo;t
+      be seen or heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His whisper was hoarse with excitement. Of all his face there was nothing
+      visible but a gleam of white eyeballs. His fingers gripped Decoud&rsquo;s
+      shoulder. &ldquo;That is the only way to save this treasure from this steamer
+      full of soldiers. Any other would have carried lights. But you observe
+      there is not a gleam to show us where she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud stood as if paralyzed; only his thoughts were wildly active. In the
+      space of a second he remembered the desolate glance of Antonia as he left
+      her at the bedside of her father in the gloomy house of Avellanos, with
+      shuttered windows, but all the doors standing open, and deserted by all
+      the servants except an old negro at the gate. He remembered the Casa Gould
+      on his last visit, the arguments, the tones of his voice, the impenetrable
+      attitude of Charles, Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s face so blanched with anxiety and
+      fatigue that her eyes seemed to have changed colour, appearing nearly
+      black by contrast. Even whole sentences of the proclamation which he meant
+      to make Barrios issue from his headquarters at Cayta as soon as he got
+      there passed through his mind; the very germ of the new State, the
+      Separationist proclamation which he had tried before he left to read
+      hurriedly to Don Jose, stretched out on his bed under the fixed gaze of
+      his daughter. God knows whether the old statesman had understood it; he
+      was unable to speak, but he had certainly lifted his arm off the coverlet;
+      his hand had moved as if to make the sign of the cross in the air, a
+      gesture of blessing, of consent. Decoud had that very draft in his pocket,
+      written in pencil on several loose sheets of paper, with the
+      heavily-printed heading, &ldquo;Administration of the San Tome Silver Mine.
+      Sulaco. Republic of Costaguana.&rdquo; He had written it furiously, snatching
+      page after page on Charles Gould&rsquo;s table. Mrs. Gould had looked several
+      times over his shoulder as he wrote; but the Senor Administrador, standing
+      straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was finished. He had
+      waved it away firmly. It must have been scorn, and not caution, since he
+      never made a remark about the use of the Administration&rsquo;s paper for such a
+      compromising document. And that showed his disdain, the true English
+      disdain of common prudence, as if everything outside the range of their
+      own thoughts and feelings were unworthy of serious recognition. Decoud had
+      the time in a second or two to become furiously angry with Charles Gould,
+      and even resentful against Mrs. Gould, in whose care, tacitly it is true,
+      he had left the safety of Antonia. Better perish a thousand times than owe
+      your preservation to such people, he exclaimed mentally. The grip of
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s fingers never removed from his shoulder, tightening fiercely,
+      recalled him to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The darkness is our friend,&rdquo; the Capataz murmured into his ear. &ldquo;I am
+      going to lower the sail, and trust our escape to this black gulf. No eyes
+      could make us out lying silent with a naked mast. I will do it now, before
+      this steamer closes still more upon us. The faint creak of a block would
+      betray us and the San Tome treasure into the hands of those thieves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard no sound; and it was only
+      by the disappearance of the square blotch of darkness that he knew the
+      yard had come down, lowered as carefully as if it had been made of glass.
+      Next moment he heard Nostromo&rsquo;s quiet breathing by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better not move at all from where you are, Don Martin,&rdquo; advised
+      the Capataz, earnestly. &ldquo;You might stumble or displace something which
+      would make a noise. The sweeps and the punting poles are lying about. Move
+      not for your life. Por Dios, Don Martin,&rdquo; he went on in a keen but
+      friendly whisper, &ldquo;I am so desperate that if I didn&rsquo;t know your worship to
+      be a man of courage, capable of standing stock still whatever happens, I
+      would drive my knife into your heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was difficult to believe
+      that there was near a steamer full of men with many pairs of eyes peering
+      from her bridge for some hint of land in the night. Her steam had ceased
+      blowing off, and she remained stopped too far off apparently for any other
+      sound to reach the lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you would, Capataz,&rdquo; Decoud began in a whisper. &ldquo;However, you
+      need not trouble. There are other things than the fear of your knife to
+      keep my heart steady. It shall not betray you. Only, have you forgotten&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I spoke to you openly as to a man as desperate as myself,&rdquo; explained the
+      Capataz. &ldquo;The silver must be saved from the Monterists. I told Captain
+      Mitchell three times that I preferred to go alone. I told Don Carlos
+      Gould, too. It was in the Casa Gould. They had sent for me. The ladies
+      were there; and when I tried to explain why I did not wish to have you
+      with me, they promised me, both of them, great rewards for your safety. A
+      strange way to talk to a man you are sending out to an almost certain
+      death. Those gentlefolk do not seem to have sense enough to understand
+      what they are giving one to do. I told them I could do nothing for you.
+      You would have been safer with the bandit Hernandez. It would have been
+      possible to ride out of the town with no greater risk than a chance shot
+      sent after you in the dark. But it was as if they had been deaf. I had to
+      promise I would wait for you under the harbour gate. I did wait. And now
+      because you are a brave man you are as safe as the silver. Neither more
+      nor less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment, as if by way of comment upon Nostromo&rsquo;s words, the
+      invisible steamer went ahead at half speed only, as could be judged by the
+      leisurely beat of her propeller. The sound shifted its place markedly, but
+      without coming nearer. It even grew a little more distant right abeam of
+      the lighter, and then ceased again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are trying for a sight of the Isabels,&rdquo; muttered Nostromo, &ldquo;in order
+      to make for the harbour in a straight line and seize the Custom House with
+      the treasure in it. Have you ever seen the Commandant of Esmeralda,
+      Sotillo? A handsome fellow, with a soft voice. When I first came here I
+      used to see him in the Calle talking to the senoritas at the windows of
+      the houses, and showing his white teeth all the time. But one of my
+      Cargadores, who had been a soldier, told me that he had once ordered a man
+      to be flayed alive in the remote Campo, where he was sent recruiting
+      amongst the people of the Estancias. It has never entered his head that
+      the Compania had a man capable of baffling his game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The murmuring loquacity of the Capataz disturbed Decoud like a hint of
+      weakness. And yet, talkative resolution may be as genuine as grim silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sotillo is not baffled so far,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Have you forgotten that crazy
+      man forward?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had not forgotten Senor Hirsch. He reproached himself bitterly
+      for not having visited the lighter carefully before leaving the wharf. He
+      reproached himself for not having stabbed and flung Hirsch overboard at
+      the very moment of discovery without even looking at his face. That would
+      have been consistent with the desperate character of the affair. Whatever
+      happened, Sotillo was already baffled. Even if that wretch, now as silent
+      as death, did anything to betray the nearness of the lighter, Sotillo&mdash;if
+      Sotillo it was in command of the troops on board&mdash;would be still
+      baffled of his plunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have an axe in my hand,&rdquo; Nostromo whispered, wrathfully, &ldquo;that in three
+      strokes would cut through the side down to the water&rsquo;s edge. Moreover,
+      each lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know exactly where it is. I
+      feel it under the sole of my foot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud recognized the ring of genuine determination in the nervous
+      murmurs, the vindictive excitement of the famous Capataz. Before the
+      steamer, guided by a shriek or two (for there could be no more than that,
+      Nostromo said, gnashing his teeth audibly), could find the lighter there
+      would be plenty of time to sink this treasure tied up round his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words he hissed into Decoud&rsquo;s ear. Decoud said nothing. He was
+      perfectly convinced. The usual characteristic quietness of the man was
+      gone. It was not equal to the situation as he conceived it. Something
+      deeper, something unsuspected by everyone, had come to the surface.
+      Decoud, with careful movements, slipped off his overcoat and divested
+      himself of his boots; he did not consider himself bound in honour to sink
+      with the treasure. His object was to get down to Barrios, in Cayta, as the
+      Capataz knew very well; and he, too, meant, in his own way, to put into
+      that attempt all the desperation of which he was capable. Nostromo
+      muttered, &ldquo;True, true! You are a politician, senor. Rejoin the army, and
+      start another revolution.&rdquo; He pointed out, however, that there was a
+      little boat belonging to every lighter fit to carry two men, if not more.
+      Theirs was towing behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of that Decoud had not been aware. Of course, it was too dark to see, and
+      it was only when Nostromo put his hand upon its painter fastened to a
+      cleat in the stern that he experienced a full measure of relief. The
+      prospect of finding himself in the water and swimming, overwhelmed by
+      ignorance and darkness, probably in a circle, till he sank from
+      exhaustion, was revolting. The barren and cruel futility of such an end
+      intimidated his affectation of careless pessimism. In comparison to it,
+      the chance of being left floating in a boat, exposed to thirst, hunger,
+      discovery, imprisonment, execution, presented itself with an aspect of
+      amenity worth securing even at the cost of some self-contempt. He did not
+      accept Nostromo&rsquo;s proposal that he should get into the boat at once.
+      &ldquo;Something sudden may overwhelm us, senor,&rdquo; the Capataz remarked promising
+      faithfully, at the same time, to let go the painter at the moment when the
+      necessity became manifest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Decoud assured him lightly that he did not mean to take to the boat
+      till the very last moment, and that then he meant the Capataz to come
+      along, too. The darkness of the gulf was no longer for him the end of all
+      things. It was part of a living world since, pervading it, failure and
+      death could be felt at your elbow. And at the same time it was a shelter.
+      He exulted in its impenetrable obscurity. &ldquo;Like a wall, like a wall,&rdquo; he
+      muttered to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only thing which checked his confidence was the thought of Senor
+      Hirsch. Not to have bound and gagged him seemed to Decoud now the height
+      of improvident folly. As long as the miserable creature had the power to
+      raise a yell he was a constant danger. His abject terror was mute now, but
+      there was no saying from what cause it might suddenly find vent in
+      shrieks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This very madness of fear which both Decoud and Nostromo had seen in the
+      wild and irrational glances, and in the continuous twitchings of his
+      mouth, protected Senor Hirsch from the cruel necessities of this desperate
+      affair. The moment of silencing him for ever had passed. As Nostromo
+      remarked, in answer to Decoud&rsquo;s regrets, it was too late! It could not be
+      done without noise, especially in the ignorance of the man&rsquo;s exact
+      position. Wherever he had elected to crouch and tremble, it was too
+      hazardous to go near him. He would begin probably to yell for mercy. It
+      was much better to leave him quite alone since he was keeping so still.
+      But to trust to his silence became every moment a greater strain upon
+      Decoud&rsquo;s composure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish, Capataz, you had not let the right moment pass,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! To silence him for ever? I thought it good to hear first how he
+      came to be here. It was too strange. Who could imagine that it was all an
+      accident? Afterwards, senor, when I saw you giving him water to drink, I
+      could not do it. Not after I had seen you holding up the can to his lips
+      as though he were your brother. Senor, that sort of necessity must not be
+      thought of too long. And yet it would have been no cruelty to take away
+      from him his wretched life. It is nothing but fear. Your compassion saved
+      him then, Don Martin, and now it is too late. It couldn&rsquo;t be done without
+      noise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the steamer they were keeping a perfect silence, and the stillness was
+      so profound that Decoud felt as if the slightest sound conceivable must
+      travel unchecked and audible to the end of the world. What if Hirsch
+      coughed or sneezed? To feel himself at the mercy of such an idiotic
+      contingency was too exasperating to be looked upon with irony. Nostromo,
+      too, seemed to be getting restless. Was it possible, he asked himself,
+      that the steamer, finding the night too dark altogether, intended to
+      remain stopped where she was till daylight? He began to think that this,
+      after all, was the real danger. He was afraid that the darkness, which was
+      his protection, would, in the end, cause his undoing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command on board the transport.
+      The events of the last forty-eight hours in Sulaco were not known to him;
+      neither was he aware that the telegraphist in Esmeralda had managed to
+      warn his colleague in Sulaco. Like a good many officers of the troops
+      garrisoning the province, Sotillo had been influenced in his adoption of
+      the Ribierist cause by the belief that it had the enormous wealth of the
+      Gould Concession on its side. He had been one of the frequenters of the
+      Casa Gould, where he had aired his Blanco convictions and his ardour for
+      reform before Don Jose Avellanos, casting frank, honest glances towards
+      Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He was known to belong to a good family
+      persecuted and impoverished during the tyranny of Guzman Bento. The
+      opinions he expressed appeared eminently natural and proper in a man of
+      his parentage and antecedents. And he was not a deceiver; it was perfectly
+      natural for him to express elevated sentiments while his whole faculties
+      were taken up with what seemed then a solid and practical notion&mdash;the
+      notion that the husband of Antonia Avellanos would be, naturally, the
+      intimate friend of the Gould Concession. He even pointed this out to
+      Anzani once, when negotiating the sixth or seventh small loan in the
+      gloomy, damp apartment with enormous iron bars, behind the principal shop
+      in the whole row under the Arcades. He hinted to the universal shopkeeper
+      at the excellent terms he was on with the emancipated senorita, who was
+      like a sister to the Englishwoman. He would advance one leg and put his
+      arms akimbo, posing for Anzani&rsquo;s inspection, and fixing him with a haughty
+      stare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, miserable shopkeeper! How can a man like me fail with any woman,
+      let alone an emancipated girl living in scandalous freedom?&rdquo; he seemed to
+      say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His manner in the Casa Gould was, of course, very different&mdash;devoid
+      of all truculence, and even slightly mournful. Like most of his
+      countrymen, he was carried away by the sound of fine words, especially if
+      uttered by himself. He had no convictions of any sort upon anything except
+      as to the irresistible power of his personal advantages. But that was so
+      firm that even Decoud&rsquo;s appearance in Sulaco, and his intimacy with the
+      Goulds and the Avellanos, did not disquiet him. On the contrary, he tried
+      to make friends with that rich Costaguanero from Europe in the hope of
+      borrowing a large sum by-and-by. The only guiding motive of his life was
+      to get money for the satisfaction of his expensive tastes, which he
+      indulged recklessly, having no self-control. He imagined himself a master
+      of intrigue, but his corruption was as simple as an animal instinct. At
+      times, in solitude, he had his moments of ferocity, and also on such
+      occasions as, for instance, when alone in a room with Anzani trying to get
+      a loan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had talked himself into the command of the Esmeralda garrison. That
+      small seaport had its importance as the station of the main submarine
+      cable connecting the Occidental Provinces with the outer world, and the
+      junction with it of the Sulaco branch. Don Jose Avellanos proposed him,
+      and Barrios, with a rude and jeering guffaw, had said, &ldquo;Oh, let Sotillo
+      go. He is a very good man to keep guard over the cable, and the ladies of
+      Esmeralda ought to have their turn.&rdquo; Barrios, an indubitably brave man,
+      had no great opinion of Sotillo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was through the Esmeralda cable alone that the San Tome mine could be
+      kept in constant touch with the great financier, whose tacit approval made
+      the strength of the Ribierist movement. This movement had its adversaries
+      even there. Sotillo governed Esmeralda with repressive severity till the
+      adverse course of events upon the distant theatre of civil war forced upon
+      him the reflection that, after all, the great silver mine was fated to
+      become the spoil of the victors. But caution was necessary. He began by
+      assuming a dark and mysterious attitude towards the faithful Ribierist
+      municipality of Esmeralda. Later on, the information that the commandant
+      was holding assemblies of officers in the dead of night (which had leaked
+      out somehow) caused those gentlemen to neglect their civil duties
+      altogether, and remain shut up in their houses. Suddenly one day all the
+      letters from Sulaco by the overland courier were carried off by a file of
+      soldiers from the post office to the Commandancia, without disguise,
+      concealment, or apology. Sotillo had heard through Cayta of the final
+      defeat of Ribiera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the first open sign of the change in his convictions. Presently
+      notorious democrats, who had been living till then in constant fear of
+      arrest, leg irons, and even floggings, could be observed going in and out
+      at the great door of the Commandancia, where the horses of the orderlies
+      doze under their heavy saddles, while the men, in ragged uniforms and
+      pointed straw hats, lounge on a bench, with their naked feet stuck out
+      beyond the strip of shade; and a sentry, in a red baize coat with holes at
+      the elbows, stands at the top of the steps glaring haughtily at the common
+      people, who uncover their heads to him as they pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo&rsquo;s ideas did not soar above the care for his personal safety and
+      the chance of plundering the town in his charge, but he feared that such a
+      late adhesion would earn but scant gratitude from the victors. He had
+      believed just a little too long in the power of the San Tome mine. The
+      seized correspondence had confirmed his previous information of a large
+      amount of silver ingots lying in the Sulaco Custom House. To gain
+      possession of it would be a clear Monterist move; a sort of service that
+      would have to be rewarded. With the silver in his hands he could make
+      terms for himself and his soldiers. He was aware neither of the riots, nor
+      of the President&rsquo;s escape to Sulaco and the close pursuit led by Montero&rsquo;s
+      brother, the guerrillero. The game seemed in his own hands. The initial
+      moves were the seizure of the cable telegraph office and the securing of
+      the Government steamer lying in the narrow creek which is the harbour of
+      Esmeralda. The last was effected without difficulty by a company of
+      soldiers swarming with a rush over the gangways as she lay alongside the
+      quay; but the lieutenant charged with the duty of arresting the
+      telegraphist halted on the way before the only cafe in Esmeralda, where he
+      distributed some brandy to his men, and refreshed himself at the expense
+      of the owner, a known Ribierist. The whole party became intoxicated, and
+      proceeded on their mission up the street yelling and firing random shots
+      at the windows. This little festivity, which might have turned out
+      dangerous to the telegraphist&rsquo;s life, enabled him in the end to send his
+      warning to Sulaco. The lieutenant, staggering upstairs with a drawn sabre,
+      was before long kissing him on both cheeks in one of those swift changes
+      of mood peculiar to a state of drunkenness. He clasped the telegraphist
+      close round the neck, assuring him that all the officers of the Esmeralda
+      garrison were going to be made colonels, while tears of happiness streamed
+      down his sodden face. Thus it came about that the town major, coming along
+      later, found the whole party sleeping on the stairs and in passages, and
+      the telegraphist (who scorned this chance of escape) very busy clicking
+      the key of the transmitter. The major led him away bareheaded, with his
+      hands tied behind his back, but concealed the truth from Sotillo, who
+      remained in ignorance of the warning despatched to Sulaco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel was not the man to let any sort of darkness stand in the way
+      of the planned surprise. It appeared to him a dead certainty; his heart
+      was set upon his object with an ungovernable, childlike impatience. Ever
+      since the steamer had rounded Punta Mala, to enter the deeper shadow of
+      the gulf, he had remained on the bridge in a group of officers as excited
+      as himself. Distracted between the coaxings and menaces of Sotillo and his
+      Staff, the miserable commander of the steamer kept her moving with as much
+      prudence as they would let him exercise. Some of them had been drinking
+      heavily, no doubt; but the prospect of laying hands on so much wealth made
+      them absurdly foolhardy, and, at the same time, extremely anxious. The old
+      major of the battalion, a stupid, suspicious man, who had never been
+      afloat in his life, distinguished himself by putting out suddenly the
+      binnacle light, the only one allowed on board for the necessities of
+      navigation. He could not understand of what use it could be for finding
+      the way. To the vehement protestations of the ship&rsquo;s captain, he stamped
+      his foot and tapped the handle of his sword. &ldquo;Aha! I have unmasked you,&rdquo;
+       he cried, triumphantly. &ldquo;You are tearing your hair from despair at my
+      acuteness. Am I a child to believe that a light in that brass box can show
+      you where the harbour is? I am an old soldier, I am. I can smell a traitor
+      a league off. You wanted that gleam to betray our approach to your friend
+      the Englishman. A thing like that show you the way! What a miserable lie!
+      Que picardia! You Sulaco people are all in the pay of those foreigners.
+      You deserve to be run through the body with my sword.&rdquo; Other officers,
+      crowding round, tried to calm his indignation, repeating persuasively,
+      &ldquo;No, no! This is an appliance of the mariners, major. This is no
+      treachery.&rdquo; The captain of the transport flung himself face downwards on
+      the bridge, and refused to rise. &ldquo;Put an end to me at once,&rdquo; he repeated
+      in a stifled voice. Sotillo had to interfere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The uproar and confusion on the bridge became so great that the helmsman
+      fled from the wheel. He took refuge in the engine-room, and alarmed the
+      engineers, who, disregarding the threats of the soldiers set on guard over
+      them, stopped the engines, protesting that they would rather be shot than
+      run the risk of being drowned down below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the first time Nostromo and Decoud heard the steamer stop. After
+      order had been restored, and the binnacle lamp relighted, she went ahead
+      again, passing wide of the lighter in her search for the Isabels. The
+      group could not be made out, and, at the pitiful entreaties of the
+      captain, Sotillo allowed the engines to be stopped again to wait for one
+      of those periodical lightenings of darkness caused by the shifting of the
+      cloud canopy spread above the waters of the gulf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo, on the bridge, muttered from time to time angrily to the captain.
+      The other, in an apologetic and cringing tone, begged su merced the
+      colonel to take into consideration the limitations put upon human
+      faculties by the darkness of the night. Sotillo swelled with rage and
+      impatience. It was the chance of a lifetime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If your eyes are of no more use to you than this, I shall have them put
+      out,&rdquo; he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain of the steamer made no answer, for just then the mass of the
+      Great Isabel loomed up darkly after a passing shower, then vanished, as if
+      swept away by a wave of greater obscurity preceding another downpour. This
+      was enough for him. In the voice of a man come back to life again, he
+      informed Sotillo that in an hour he would be alongside the Sulaco wharf.
+      The ship was put then full speed on the course, and a great bustle of
+      preparation for landing arose among the soldiers on her deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was heard distinctly by Decoud and Nostromo. The Capataz understood its
+      meaning. They had made out the Isabels, and were going on now in a
+      straight line for Sulaco. He judged that they would pass close; but
+      believed that lying still like this, with the sail lowered, the lighter
+      could not be seen. &ldquo;No, not even if they rubbed sides with us,&rdquo; he
+      muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain began to fall again; first like a wet mist, then with a heavier
+      touch, thickening into a smart, perpendicular downpour; and the hiss and
+      thump of the approaching steamer was coming extremely near. Decoud, with
+      his eyes full of water, and lowered head, asked himself how long it would
+      be before she drew past, when unexpectedly he felt a lurch. An inrush of
+      foam broke swishing over the stern, simultaneously with a crack of timbers
+      and a staggering shock. He had the impression of an angry hand laying hold
+      of the lighter and dragging it along to destruction. The shock, of course,
+      had knocked him down, and he found himself rolling in a lot of water at
+      the bottom of the lighter. A violent churning went on alongside; a strange
+      and amazed voice cried out something above him in the night. He heard a
+      piercing shriek for help from Senor Hirsch. He kept his teeth hard set all
+      the time. It was a collision!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The steamer had struck the lighter obliquely, heeling her over till she
+      was half swamped, starting some of her timbers, and swinging her head
+      parallel to her own course with the force of the blow. The shock of it on
+      board of her was hardly perceptible. All the violence of that collision
+      was, as usual, felt only on board the smaller craft. Even Nostromo himself
+      thought that this was perhaps the end of his desperate adventure. He, too,
+      had been flung away from the long tiller, which took charge in the lurch.
+      Next moment the steamer would have passed on, leaving the lighter to sink
+      or swim after having shouldered her thus out of her way, and without even
+      getting a glimpse of her form, had it not been that, being deeply laden
+      with stores and the great number of people on board, her anchor was low
+      enough to hook itself into one of the wire shrouds of the lighter&rsquo;s mast.
+      For the space of two or three gasping breaths that new rope held against
+      the sudden strain. It was this that gave Decoud the sensation of the
+      snatching pull, dragging the lighter away to destruction. The cause of it,
+      of course, was inexplicable to him. The whole thing was so sudden that he
+      had no time to think. But all his sensations were perfectly clear; he had
+      kept complete possession of himself; in fact, he was even pleasantly aware
+      of that calmness at the very moment of being pitched head first over the
+      transom, to struggle on his back in a lot of water. Senor Hirsch&rsquo;s shriek
+      he had heard and recognized while he was regaining his feet, always with
+      that mysterious sensation of being dragged headlong through the darkness.
+      Not a word, not a cry escaped him; he had no time to see anything; and
+      following upon the despairing screams for help, the dragging motion ceased
+      so suddenly that he staggered forward with open arms and fell against the
+      pile of the treasure boxes. He clung to them instinctively, in the vague
+      apprehension of being flung about again; and immediately he heard another
+      lot of shrieks for help, prolonged and despairing, not near him at all,
+      but unaccountably in the distance, away from the lighter altogether, as if
+      some spirit in the night were mocking at Senor Hirsch&rsquo;s terror and
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then all was still&mdash;as still as when you wake up in your bed in a
+      dark room from a bizarre and agitated dream. The lighter rocked slightly;
+      the rain was still falling. Two groping hands took hold of his bruised
+      sides from behind, and the Capataz&rsquo;s voice whispered, in his ear,
+      &ldquo;Silence, for your life! Silence! The steamer has stopped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud listened. The gulf was dumb. He felt the water nearly up to his
+      knees. &ldquo;Are we sinking?&rdquo; he asked in a faint breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Nostromo breathed back to him. &ldquo;Senor, make not the
+      slightest sound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hirsch, when ordered forward by Nostromo, had not returned into his first
+      hiding-place. He had fallen near the mast, and had no strength to rise;
+      moreover, he feared to move. He had given himself up for dead, but not on
+      any rational grounds. It was simply a cruel and terrifying feeling.
+      Whenever he tried to think what would become of him his teeth would start
+      chattering violently. He was too absorbed in the utter misery of his fear
+      to take notice of anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he was stifling under the lighter&rsquo;s sail which Nostromo had
+      unwittingly lowered on top of him, he did not even dare to put out his
+      head till the very moment of the steamer striking. Then, indeed, he leaped
+      right out, spurred on to new miracles of bodily vigour by this new shape
+      of danger. The inrush of water when the lighter heeled over unsealed his
+      lips. His shriek, &ldquo;Save me!&rdquo; was the first distinct warning of the
+      collision for the people on board the steamer. Next moment the wire shroud
+      parted, and the released anchor swept over the lighter&rsquo;s forecastle. It
+      came against the breast of Senor Hirsch, who simply seized hold of it,
+      without in the least knowing what it was, but curling his arms and legs
+      upon the part above the fluke with an invincible, unreasonable tenacity.
+      The lighter yawed off wide, and the steamer, moving on, carried him away,
+      clinging hard, and shouting for help. It was some time, however, after the
+      steamer had stopped that his position was discovered. His sustained
+      yelping for help seemed to come from somebody swimming in the water. At
+      last a couple of men went over the bows and hauled him on board. He was
+      carried straight off to Sotillo on the bridge. His examination confirmed
+      the impression that some craft had been run over and sunk, but it was
+      impracticable on such a dark night to look for the positive proof of
+      floating wreckage. Sotillo was more anxious than ever now to enter the
+      harbour without loss of time; the idea that he had destroyed the principal
+      object of his expedition was too intolerable to be accepted. This feeling
+      made the story he had heard appear the more incredible. Senor Hirsch,
+      after being beaten a little for telling lies, was thrust into the
+      chartroom. But he was beaten only a little. His tale had taken the heart
+      out of Sotillo&rsquo;s Staff, though they all repeated round their chief,
+      &ldquo;Impossible! impossible!&rdquo; with the exception of the old major, who
+      triumphed gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you; I told you,&rdquo; he mumbled. &ldquo;I could smell some treachery, some
+      diableria a league off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, the steamer had kept on her way towards Sulaco, where only the
+      truth of that matter could be ascertained. Decoud and Nostromo heard the
+      loud churning of her propeller diminish and die out; and then, with no
+      useless words, busied themselves in making for the Isabels. The last
+      shower had brought with it a gentle but steady breeze. The danger was not
+      over yet, and there was no time for talk. The lighter was leaking like a
+      sieve. They splashed in the water at every step. The Capataz put into
+      Decoud&rsquo;s hands the handle of the pump which was fitted at the side aft,
+      and at once, without question or remark, Decoud began to pump in utter
+      forgetfulness of every desire but that of keeping the treasure afloat.
+      Nostromo hoisted the sail, flew back to the tiller, pulled at the sheet
+      like mad. The short flare of a match (they had been kept dry in a tight
+      tin box, though the man himself was completely wet), disclosed to the
+      toiling Decoud the eagerness of his face, bent low over the box of the
+      compass, and the attentive stare of his eyes. He knew now where he was,
+      and he hoped to run the sinking lighter ashore in the shallow cove where
+      the high, cliff-like end of the Great Isabel is divided in two equal parts
+      by a deep and overgrown ravine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoud pumped without intermission. Nostromo steered without relaxing for
+      a second the intense, peering effort of his stare. Each of them was as if
+      utterly alone with his task. It did not occur to them to speak. There was
+      nothing in common between them but the knowledge that the damaged lighter
+      must be slowly but surely sinking. In that knowledge, which was like the
+      crucial test of their desires, they seemed to have become completely
+      estranged, as if they had discovered in the very shock of the collision
+      that the loss of the lighter would not mean the same thing to them both.
+      This common danger brought their differences in aim, in view, in
+      character, and in position, into absolute prominence in the private vision
+      of each. There was no bond of conviction, of common idea; they were merely
+      two adventurers pursuing each his own adventure, involved in the same
+      imminence of deadly peril. Therefore they had nothing to say to each
+      other. But this peril, this only incontrovertible truth in which they
+      shared, seemed to act as an inspiration to their mental and bodily powers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was certainly something almost miraculous in the way the Capataz
+      made the cove with nothing but the shadowy hint of the island&rsquo;s shape and
+      the vague gleam of a small sandy strip for a guide. Where the ravine opens
+      between the cliffs, and a slender, shallow rivulet meanders out of the
+      bushes to lose itself in the sea, the lighter was run ashore; and the two
+      men, with a taciturn, undaunted energy, began to discharge her precious
+      freight, carrying each ox-hide box up the bed of the rivulet beyond the
+      bushes to a hollow place which the caving in of the soil had made below
+      the roots of a large tree. Its big smooth trunk leaned like a falling
+      column far over the trickle of water running amongst the loose stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A couple of years before Nostromo had spent a whole Sunday, all alone,
+      exploring the island. He explained this to Decoud after their task was
+      done, and they sat, weary in every limb, with their legs hanging down the
+      low bank, and their backs against the tree, like a pair of blind men aware
+      of each other and their surroundings by some indefinable sixth sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Nostromo repeated, &ldquo;I never forget a place I have carefully looked
+      at once.&rdquo; He spoke slowly, almost lazily, as if there had been a whole
+      leisurely life before him, instead of the scanty two hours before
+      daylight. The existence of the treasure, barely concealed in this
+      improbable spot, laid a burden of secrecy upon every contemplated step,
+      upon every intention and plan of future conduct. He felt the partial
+      failure of this desperate affair entrusted to the great reputation he had
+      known how to make for himself. However, it was also a partial success. His
+      vanity was half appeased. His nervous irritation had subsided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never know what may be of use,&rdquo; he pursued with his usual quietness
+      of tone and manner. &ldquo;I spent a whole miserable Sunday in exploring this
+      crumb of land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A misanthropic sort of occupation,&rdquo; muttered Decoud, viciously. &ldquo;You had
+      no money, I suppose, to gamble with, and to fling about amongst the girls
+      in your usual haunts, Capataz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>E vero!</i>&rdquo; exclaimed the Capataz, surprised into the use of his
+      native tongue by so much perspicacity. &ldquo;I had not! Therefore I did not
+      want to go amongst those beggarly people accustomed to my generosity. It
+      is looked for from the Capataz of the Cargadores, who are the rich men,
+      and, as it were, the Caballeros amongst the common people. I don&rsquo;t care
+      for cards but as a pastime; and as to those girls that boast of having
+      opened their doors to my knock, you know I wouldn&rsquo;t look at any one of
+      them twice except for what the people would say. They are queer, the good
+      people of Sulaco, and I have got much useful information simply by
+      listening patiently to the talk of the women that everybody believed I was
+      in love with. Poor Teresa could never understand that. On that particular
+      Sunday, senor, she scolded so that I went out of the house swearing that I
+      would never darken their door again unless to fetch away my hammock and my
+      chest of clothes. Senor, there is nothing more exasperating than to hear a
+      woman you respect rail against your good reputation when you have not a
+      single brass coin in your pocket. I untied one of the small boats and
+      pulled myself out of the harbour with nothing but three cigars in my
+      pocket to help me spend the day on this island. But the water of this
+      rivulet you hear under your feet is cool and sweet and good, senor, both
+      before and after a smoke.&rdquo; He was silent for a while, then added
+      reflectively, &ldquo;That was the first Sunday after I brought down the
+      white-whiskered English rico all the way down the mountains from the
+      Paramo on the top of the Entrada Pass&mdash;and in the coach, too! No
+      coach had gone up or down that mountain road within the memory of man,
+      senor, till I brought this one down in charge of fifty peons working like
+      one man with ropes, pickaxes, and poles under my direction. That was the
+      rich Englishman who, as people say, pays for the making of this railway.
+      He was very pleased with me. But my wages were not due till the end of the
+      month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slid down the bank suddenly. Decoud heard the splash of his feet in the
+      brook and followed his footsteps down the ravine. His form was lost among
+      the bushes till he had reached the strip of sand under the cliff. As often
+      happens in the gulf when the showers during the first part of the night
+      had been frequent and heavy, the darkness had thinned considerably towards
+      the morning though there were no signs of daylight as yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cargo-lighter, relieved of its precious burden, rocked feebly,
+      half-afloat, with her fore-foot on the sand. A long rope stretched away
+      like a black cotton thread across the strip of white beach to the grapnel
+      Nostromo had carried ashore and hooked to the stem of a tree-like shrub in
+      the very opening of the ravine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing for Decoud but to remain on the island. He received from
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s hands whatever food the foresight of Captain Mitchell had put
+      on board the lighter and deposited it temporarily in the little dinghy
+      which on their arrival they had hauled up out of sight amongst the bushes.
+      It was to be left with him. The island was to be a hiding-place, not a
+      prison; he could pull out to a passing ship. The O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s mail
+      boats passed close to the islands when going into Sulaco from the north.
+      But the Minerva, carrying off the ex-president, had taken the news up
+      north of the disturbances in Sulaco. It was possible that the next steamer
+      down would get instructions to miss the port altogether since the town, as
+      far as the Minerva&rsquo;s officers knew, was for the time being in the hands of
+      the rabble. This would mean that there would be no steamer for a month, as
+      far as the mail service went; but Decoud had to take his chance of that.
+      The island was his only shelter from the proscription hanging over his
+      head. The Capataz was, of course, going back. The unloaded lighter leaked
+      much less, and he thought that she would keep afloat as far as the
+      harbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed to Decoud, standing knee-deep alongside, one of the two spades
+      which belonged to the equipment of each lighter for use when ballasting
+      ships. By working with it carefully as soon as there was daylight enough
+      to see, Decoud could loosen a mass of earth and stones overhanging the
+      cavity in which they had deposited the treasure, so that it would look as
+      if it had fallen naturally. It would cover up not only the cavity, but
+      even all traces of their work, the footsteps, the displaced stones, and
+      even the broken bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, who would think of looking either for you or the treasure here?&rdquo;
+       Nostromo continued, as if he could not tear himself away from the spot.
+      &ldquo;Nobody is ever likely to come here. What could any man want with this
+      piece of earth as long as there is room for his feet on the mainland! The
+      people in this country are not curious. There are even no fishermen here
+      to intrude upon your worship. All the fishing that is done in the gulf
+      goes on near Zapiga, over there. Senor, if you are forced to leave this
+      island before anything can be arranged for you, do not try to make for
+      Zapiga. It is a settlement of thieves and matreros, where they would cut
+      your throat promptly for the sake of your gold watch and chain. And,
+      senor, think twice before confiding in any one whatever; even in the
+      officers of the Company&rsquo;s steamers, if you ever get on board one. Honesty
+      alone is not enough for security. You must look to discretion and prudence
+      in a man. And always remember, senor, before you open your lips for a
+      confidence, that this treasure may be left safely here for hundreds of
+      years. Time is on its side, senor. And silver is an incorruptible metal
+      that can be trusted to keep its value for ever. . . . An incorruptible
+      metal,&rdquo; he repeated, as if the idea had given him a profound pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As some men are said to be,&rdquo; Decoud pronounced, inscrutably, while the
+      Capataz, who busied himself in baling out the lighter with a wooden
+      bucket, went on throwing the water over the side with a regular splash.
+      Decoud, incorrigible in his scepticism, reflected, not cynically, but with
+      general satisfaction, that this man was made incorruptible by his enormous
+      vanity, that finest form of egoism which can take on the aspect of every
+      virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo ceased baling, and, as if struck with a sudden thought, dropped
+      the bucket with a clatter into the lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any message?&rdquo; he asked in a lowered voice. &ldquo;Remember, I shall be
+      asked questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must find the hopeful words that ought to be spoken to the people in
+      town. I trust for that your intelligence and your experience, Capataz. You
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, senor. . . . For the ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Decoud, hastily. &ldquo;Your wonderful reputation will make
+      them attach great value to your words; therefore be careful what you say.
+      I am looking forward,&rdquo; he continued, feeling the fatal touch of contempt
+      for himself to which his complex nature was subject, &ldquo;I am looking forward
+      to a glorious and successful ending to my mission. Do you hear, Capataz?
+      Use the words glorious and successful when you speak to the senorita. Your
+      own mission is accomplished gloriously and successfully. You have
+      indubitably saved the silver of the mine. Not only this silver, but
+      probably all the silver that shall ever come out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo detected the ironic tone. &ldquo;I dare say, Senor Don Martin,&rdquo; he
+      said, moodily. &ldquo;There are very few things that I am not equal to. Ask the
+      foreign signori. I, a man of the people, who cannot always understand what
+      you mean. But as to this lot which I must leave here, let me tell you that
+      I would believe it in greater safety if you had not been with me at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An exclamation escaped Decoud, and a short pause followed. &ldquo;Shall I go
+      back with you to Sulaco?&rdquo; he asked in an angry tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I strike you dead with my knife where you stand?&rdquo; retorted
+      Nostromo, contemptuously. &ldquo;It would be the same thing as taking you to
+      Sulaco. Come, senor. Your reputation is in your politics, and mine is
+      bound up with the fate of this silver. Do you wonder I wish there had been
+      no other man to share my knowledge? I wanted no one with me, senor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could not have kept the lighter afloat without me,&rdquo; Decoud almost
+      shouted. &ldquo;You would have gone to the bottom with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; uttered Nostromo, slowly; &ldquo;alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a man, Decoud reflected, that seemed as though he would have
+      preferred to die rather than deface the perfect form of his egoism. Such a
+      man was safe. In silence he helped the Capataz to get the grapnel on
+      board. Nostromo cleared the shelving shore with one push of the heavy oar,
+      and Decoud found himself solitary on the beach like a man in a dream. A
+      sudden desire to hear a human voice once more seized upon his heart. The
+      lighter was hardly distinguishable from the black water upon which she
+      floated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think has become of Hirsch?&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Knocked overboard and drowned,&rdquo; cried Nostromo&rsquo;s voice confidently out of
+      the black wastes of sky and sea around the islet. &ldquo;Keep close in the
+      ravine, senor. I shall try to come out to you in a night or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was setting the sail. It
+      filled all at once with a sound as of a single loud drum-tap. Decoud went
+      back to the ravine. Nostromo, at the tiller, looked back from time to time
+      at the vanishing mass of the Great Isabel, which, little by little, merged
+      into the uniform texture of the night. At last, when he turned his head
+      again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, like a solid wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude which had weighed
+      heavily on Decoud after the lighter had slipped off the shore. But while
+      the man on the island was oppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality
+      affecting the very ground upon which he walked, the mind of the Capataz of
+      the Cargadores turned alertly to the problem of future conduct. Nostromo&rsquo;s
+      faculties, working on parallel lines, enabled him to steer straight, to
+      keep a look-out for Hermosa, near which he had to pass, and to try to
+      imagine what would happen tomorrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or, as a matter
+      of fact, to-day, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillo would find out
+      in what way the treasure had gone. A gang of Cargadores had been employed
+      in loading it into a railway truck from the Custom House store-rooms, and
+      running the truck on to the wharf. There would be arrests made, and
+      certainly before noon Sotillo would know in what manner the silver had
+      left Sulaco, and who it was that took it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s intention had been to sail right into the harbour; but at this
+      thought by a sudden touch of the tiller he threw the lighter into the wind
+      and checked her rapid way. His re-appearance with the very boat would
+      raise suspicions, would cause surmises, would absolutely put Sotillo on
+      the track. He himself would be arrested; and once in the Calabozo there
+      was no saying what they would do to him to make him speak. He trusted
+      himself, but he stood up to look round. Near by, Hermosa showed low its
+      white surface as flat as a table, with the slight run of the sea raised by
+      the breeze washing over its edges noisily. The lighter must be sunk at
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He allowed her to drift with her sail aback. There was already a good deal
+      of water in her. He allowed her to drift towards the harbour entrance,
+      and, letting the tiller swing about, squatted down and busied himself in
+      loosening the plug. With that out she would fill very quickly, and every
+      lighter carried a little iron ballast&mdash;enough to make her go down
+      when full of water. When he stood up again the noisy wash about the
+      Hermosa sounded far away, almost inaudible; and already he could make out
+      the shape of land about the harbour entrance. This was a desperate affair,
+      and he was a good swimmer. A mile was nothing to him, and he knew of an
+      easy place for landing just below the earthworks of the old abandoned
+      fort. It occurred to him with a peculiar fascination that this fort was a
+      good place in which to sleep the day through after so many sleepless
+      nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With one blow of the tiller he unshipped for the purpose, he knocked the
+      plug out, but did not take the trouble to lower the sail. He felt the
+      water welling up heavily about his legs before he leaped on to the
+      taffrail. There, upright and motionless, in his shirt and trousers only,
+      he stood waiting. When he had felt her settle he sprang far away with a
+      mighty splash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once he turned his head. The gloomy, clouded dawn from behind the
+      mountains showed him on the smooth waters the upper corner of the sail, a
+      dark wet triangle of canvas waving slightly to and fro. He saw it vanish,
+      as if jerked under, and then struck out for the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART THIRD THE LIGHTHOUSE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER ONE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Directly the cargo boat had slipped away from the wharf and got lost in
+      the darkness of the harbour the Europeans of Sulaco separated, to prepare
+      for the coming of the Monterist regime, which was approaching Sulaco from
+      the mountains, as well as from the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This bit of manual work in loading the silver was their last concerted
+      action. It ended the three days of danger, during which, according to the
+      newspaper press of Europe, their energy had preserved the town from the
+      calamities of popular disorder. At the shore end of the jetty, Captain
+      Mitchell said good-night and turned back. His intention was to walk the
+      planks of the wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up. The
+      engineers of the railway staff, collecting their Basque and Italian
+      workmen, marched them away to the railway yards, leaving the Custom House,
+      so well defended on the first day of the riot, standing open to the four
+      winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves bravely and faithfully
+      during the famous &ldquo;three days&rdquo; of Sulaco. In a great part this
+      faithfulness and that courage had been exercised in self-defence rather
+      than in the cause of those material interests to which Charles Gould had
+      pinned his faith. Amongst the cries of the mob not the least loud had been
+      the cry of death to foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky circumstance for
+      Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen with the people of the
+      country had been uniformly bad from the first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola&rsquo;s kitchen, observed this
+      retreat marking the end of the foreign interference, this withdrawal of
+      the army of material progress from the field of Costaguana revolutions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Algarrobe torches carried on the outskirts of the moving body sent their
+      penetrating aroma into his nostrils. Their light, sweeping along the front
+      of the house, made the letters of the inscription, &ldquo;Albergo d&rsquo;ltalia Una,&rdquo;
+       leap out black from end to end of the long wall. His eyes blinked in the
+      clear blaze. Several young men, mostly fair and tall, shepherding this mob
+      of dark bronzed heads, surmounted by the glint of slanting rifle barrels,
+      nodded to him familiarly as they went by. The doctor was a well-known
+      character. Some of them wondered what he was doing there. Then, on the
+      flank of their workmen they tramped on, following the line of rails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Withdrawing your people from the harbour?&rdquo; said the doctor, addressing
+      himself to the chief engineer of the railway, who had accompanied Charles
+      Gould so far on his way to the town, walking by the side of the horse,
+      with his hand on the saddle-bow. They had stopped just outside the open
+      door to let the workmen cross the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As quick as I can. We are not a political faction,&rdquo; answered the
+      engineer, meaningly. &ldquo;And we are not going to give our new rulers a handle
+      against the railway. You approve me, Gould?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absolutely,&rdquo; said Charles Gould&rsquo;s impassive voice, high up and outside
+      the dim parallelogram of light falling on the road through the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro Montero from the other, the
+      engineer-in-chief&rsquo;s only anxiety now was to avoid a collision with either.
+      Sulaco, for him, was a railway station, a terminus, workshops, a great
+      accumulation of stores. As against the mob the railway defended its
+      property, but politically the railway was neutral. He was a brave man; and
+      in that spirit of neutrality he had carried proposals of truce to the
+      self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the deputies Fuentes and
+      Gamacho. Bullets were still flying about when he had crossed the Plaza on
+      that mission, waving above his head a white napkin belonging to the table
+      linen of the Amarilla Club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting that the doctor, busy
+      all day with the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould, had not had time
+      to hear the news, he began a succinct narrative. He had communicated to
+      them the intelligence from the Construction Camp as to Pedro Montero. The
+      brother of the victorious general, he had assured them, could be expected
+      at Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he anticipated), when shouted out
+      of the window by Senor Gamacho, induced a rush of the mob along the Campo
+      Road towards Rincon. The two deputies also, after shaking hands with him
+      effusively, mounted and galloped off to meet the great man. &ldquo;I have misled
+      them a little as to the time,&rdquo; the chief engineer confessed. &ldquo;However hard
+      he rides, he can scarcely get here before the morning. But my object is
+      attained. I&rsquo;ve secured several hours&rsquo; peace for the losing party. But I
+      did not tell them anything about Sotillo, for fear they would take it into
+      their heads to try to get hold of the harbour again, either to oppose him
+      or welcome him&mdash;there&rsquo;s no saying which. There was Gould&rsquo;s silver, on
+      which rests the remnant of our hopes. Decoud&rsquo;s retreat had to be thought
+      of, too. I think the railway has done pretty well by its friends without
+      compromising itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be left to
+      themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Costaguana for the Costaguaneros,&rdquo; interjected the doctor, sardonically.
+      &ldquo;It is a fine country, and they have raised a fine crop of hates,
+      vengeance, murder, and rapine&mdash;those sons of the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I am one of them,&rdquo; Charles Gould&rsquo;s voice sounded, calmly, &ldquo;and I
+      must be going on to see to my own crop of trouble. My wife has driven
+      straight on, doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has taken the two girls with
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief followed the doctor
+      indoors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man is calmness personified,&rdquo; he said, appreciatively, dropping on a
+      bench, and stretching his well-shaped legs in cycling stockings nearly
+      across the doorway. &ldquo;He must be extremely sure of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that&rsquo;s all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing,&rdquo; said the
+      doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table. He nursed
+      his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other sustained the elbow.
+      &ldquo;It is the last thing a man ought to be sure of.&rdquo; The candle,
+      half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick, lighted up from below
+      his inclined face, whose expression affected by the drawn-in cicatrices in
+      the cheeks, had something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated remorseful
+      bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of meditating upon sinister
+      things. The engineer-in-chief gazed at him for a time before he protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t see that. For me there seems to be nothing else. However&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal his contempt for that
+      sort of paradox; in fact. Dr. Monygham was not liked by the Europeans of
+      Sulaco. His outward aspect of an outcast, which he preserved even in Mrs.
+      Gould&rsquo;s drawing-room, provoked unfavourable criticism. There could be no
+      doubt of his intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty years in
+      the country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be altogether ignored.
+      But instinctively, in self-defence of their activities and hopes, his
+      hearers put it to the account of some hidden imperfection in the man&rsquo;s
+      character. It was known that many years before, when quite young, he had
+      been made by Guzman Bento chief medical officer of the army. Not one of
+      the Europeans then in the service of Costaguana had been so much liked and
+      trusted by the fierce old Dictator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself amongst the
+      innumerable tales of conspiracies and plots against the tyrant as a stream
+      is lost in an arid belt of sandy country before it emerges, diminished and
+      troubled, perhaps, on the other side. The doctor made no secret of it that
+      he had lived for years in the wildest parts of the Republic, wandering
+      with almost unknown Indian tribes in the great forests of the far interior
+      where the great rivers have their sources. But it was mere aimless
+      wandering; he had written nothing, collected nothing, brought nothing for
+      science out of the twilight of the forests, which seemed to cling to his
+      battered personality limping about Sulaco, where it had drifted in
+      casually, only to get stranded on the shores of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was also known that he had lived in a state of destitution till the
+      arrival of the Goulds from Europe. Don Carlos and Dona Emilia had taken up
+      the mad English doctor, when it became apparent that for all his savage
+      independence he could be tamed by kindness. Perhaps it was only hunger
+      that had tamed him. In years gone by he had certainly been acquainted with
+      Charles Gould&rsquo;s father in Sta. Marta; and now, no matter what were the
+      dark passages of his history, as the medical officer of the San Tome mine
+      he became a recognized personality. He was recognized, but not
+      unreservedly accepted. So much defiant eccentricity and such an outspoken
+      scorn for mankind seemed to point to mere recklessness of judgment, the
+      bravado of guilt. Besides, since he had become again of some account,
+      vague whispers had been heard that years ago, when fallen into disgrace
+      and thrown into prison by Guzman Bento at the time of the so-called Great
+      Conspiracy, he had betrayed some of his best friends amongst the
+      conspirators. Nobody pretended to believe that whisper; the whole story of
+      the Great Conspiracy was hopelessly involved and obscure; it is admitted
+      in Costaguana that there never had been a conspiracy except in the
+      diseased imagination of the Tyrant; and, therefore, nothing and no one to
+      betray; though the most distinguished Costaguaneros had been imprisoned
+      and executed upon that accusation. The procedure had dragged on for years,
+      decimating the better class like a pestilence. The mere expression of
+      sorrow for the fate of executed kinsmen had been punished with death. Don
+      Jose Avellanos was perhaps the only one living who knew the whole story of
+      those unspeakable cruelties. He had suffered from them himself, and he,
+      with a shrug of the shoulders and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was
+      wont to put away from him, as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever
+      the reason, Dr. Monygham, a personage in the administration of the Gould
+      Concession, treated with reverent awe by the miners, and indulged in his
+      peculiarities by Mrs. Gould, remained somehow outside the pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not from any liking for the doctor that the engineer-in-chief had
+      lingered in the inn upon the plain. He liked old Viola much better. He had
+      come to look upon the Albergo d&rsquo;ltalia Una as a dependence of the railway.
+      Many of his subordinates had their quarters there. Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s interest
+      in the family conferred upon it a sort of distinction. The
+      engineer-in-chief, with an army of workers under his orders, appreciated
+      the moral influence of the old Garibaldino upon his countrymen. His
+      austere, old-world Republicanism had a severe, soldier-like standard of
+      faithfulness and duty, as if the world were a battlefield where men had to
+      fight for the sake of universal love and brotherhood, instead of a more or
+      less large share of booty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor old chap!&rdquo; he said, after he had heard the doctor&rsquo;s account of
+      Teresa. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll never be able to keep the place going by himself. I shall
+      be sorry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s quite alone up there,&rdquo; grunted Doctor Monygham, with a toss of his
+      heavy head towards the narrow staircase. &ldquo;Every living soul has cleared
+      out, and Mrs. Gould took the girls away just now. It might not be
+      over-safe for them out here before very long. Of course, as a doctor I can
+      do nothing more here; but she has asked me to stay with old Viola, and as
+      I have no horse to get back to the mine, where I ought to be, I made no
+      difficulty to stay. They can do without me in the town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a good mind to remain with you, doctor, till we see whether
+      anything happens to-night at the harbour,&rdquo; declared the engineer-in-chief.
+      &ldquo;He must not be molested by Sotillo&rsquo;s soldiery, who may push on as far as
+      this at once. Sotillo used to be very cordial to me at the Goulds&rsquo; and at
+      the club. How that man&rsquo;ll ever dare to look any of his friends here in the
+      face I can&rsquo;t imagine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll no doubt begin by shooting some of them to get over the first
+      awkwardness,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;Nothing in this country serves better your
+      military man who has changed sides than a few summary executions.&rdquo; He
+      spoke with a gloomy positiveness that left no room for protest. The
+      engineer-in-chief did not attempt any. He simply nodded several times
+      regretfully, then said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we shall be able to mount you in the morning, doctor. Our peons
+      have recovered some of our stampeded horses. By riding hard and taking a
+      wide circuit by Los Hatos and along the edge of the forest, clear of
+      Rincon altogether, you may hope to reach the San Tome bridge without being
+      interfered with. The mine is just now, to my mind, the safest place for
+      anybody at all compromised. I only wish the railway was as difficult to
+      touch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I compromised?&rdquo; Doctor Monygham brought out slowly after a short
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole Gould Concession is compromised. It could not have remained for
+      ever outside the political life of the country&mdash;if those convulsions
+      may be called life. The thing is&mdash;can it be touched? The moment was
+      bound to come when neutrality would become impossible, and Charles Gould
+      understood this well. I believe he is prepared for every extremity. A man
+      of his sort has never contemplated remaining indefinitely at the mercy of
+      ignorance and corruption. It was like being a prisoner in a cavern of
+      banditti with the price of your ransom in your pocket, and buying your
+      life from day to day. Your mere safety, not your liberty, mind, doctor. I
+      know what I am talking about. The image at which you shrug your shoulders
+      is perfectly correct, especially if you conceive such a prisoner endowed
+      with the power of replenishing his pocket by means as remote from the
+      faculties of his captors as if they were magic. You must have understood
+      that as well as I do, doctor. He was in the position of the goose with the
+      golden eggs. I broached this matter to him as far back as Sir John&rsquo;s visit
+      here. The prisoner of stupid and greedy banditti is always at the mercy of
+      the first imbecile ruffian, who may blow out his brains in a fit of temper
+      or for some prospect of an immediate big haul. The tale of killing the
+      goose with the golden eggs has not been evolved for nothing out of the
+      wisdom of mankind. It is a story that will never grow old. That is why
+      Charles Gould in his deep, dumb way has countenanced the Ribierist
+      Mandate, the first public act that promised him safety on other than venal
+      grounds. Ribierism has failed, as everything merely rational fails in this
+      country. But Gould remains logical in wishing to save this big lot of
+      silver. Decoud&rsquo;s plan of a counter-revolution may be practicable or not,
+      it may have a chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my experience
+      of this revolutionary continent, I can hardly yet look at their methods
+      seriously. Decoud has been reading to us his draft of a proclamation, and
+      talking very well for two hours about his plan of action. He had arguments
+      which should have appeared solid enough if we, members of old, stable
+      political and national organizations, were not startled by the mere idea
+      of a new State evolved like this out of the head of a scoffing young man
+      fleeing for his life, with a proclamation in his pocket, to a rough,
+      jeering, half-bred swashbuckler, who in this part of the world is called a
+      general. It sounds like a comic fairy tale&mdash;and behold, it may come
+      off; because it is true to the very spirit of the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the silver gone off, then?&rdquo; asked the doctor, moodily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief engineer pulled out his watch. &ldquo;By Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s reckoning&mdash;and
+      he ought to know&mdash;it has been gone long enough now to be some three
+      or four miles outside the harbour; and, as Mitchell says, Nostromo is the
+      sort of seaman to make the best of his opportunities.&rdquo; Here the doctor
+      grunted so heavily that the other changed his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a poor opinion of that move, doctor? But why? Charles Gould has
+      got to play his game out, though he is not the man to formulate his
+      conduct even to himself, perhaps, let alone to others. It may be that the
+      game has been partly suggested to him by Holroyd; but it accords with his
+      character, too; and that is why it has been so successful. Haven&rsquo;t they
+      come to calling him &lsquo;El Rey de Sulaco&rsquo; in Sta. Marta? A nickname may be
+      the best record of a success. That&rsquo;s what I call putting the face of a
+      joke upon the body of a truth. My dear sir, when I first arrived in Sta.
+      Marta I was struck by the way all those journalists, demagogues, members
+      of Congress, and all those generals and judges cringed before a
+      sleepy-eyed advocate without practice simply because he was the
+      plenipotentiary of the Gould Concession. Sir John when he came out was
+      impressed, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A new State, with that plump dandy, Decoud, for the first President,&rdquo;
+       mused Dr. Monygham, nursing his cheek and swinging his legs all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word, and why not?&rdquo; the chief engineer retorted in an
+      unexpectedly earnest and confidential voice. It was as if something subtle
+      in the air of Costaguana had inoculated him with the local faith in
+      &ldquo;pronunciamientos.&rdquo; All at once he began to talk, like an expert
+      revolutionist, of the instrument ready to hand in the intact army at
+      Cayta, which could be brought back in a few days to Sulaco if only Decoud
+      managed to make his way at once down the coast. For the military chief
+      there was Barrios, who had nothing but a bullet to expect from Montero,
+      his former professional rival and bitter enemy. Barrios&rsquo;s concurrence was
+      assured. As to his army, it had nothing to expect from Montero either; not
+      even a month&rsquo;s pay. From that point of view the existence of the treasure
+      was of enormous importance. The mere knowledge that it had been saved from
+      the Monterists would be a strong inducement for the Cayta troops to
+      embrace the cause of the new State.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor turned round and contemplated his companion for some time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Decoud, I see, is a persuasive young beggar,&rdquo; he remarked at last.
+      &ldquo;And pray is it for this, then, that Charles Gould has let the whole lot
+      of ingots go out to sea in charge of that Nostromo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charles Gould,&rdquo; said the engineer-in-chief, &ldquo;has said no more about his
+      motive than usual. You know, he doesn&rsquo;t talk. But we all here know his
+      motive, and he has only one&mdash;the safety of the San Tome mine with the
+      preservation of the Gould Concession in the spirit of his compact with
+      Holroyd. Holroyd is another uncommon man. They understand each other&rsquo;s
+      imaginative side. One is thirty, the other nearly sixty, and they have
+      been made for each other. To be a millionaire, and such a millionaire as
+      Holroyd, is like being eternally young. The audacity of youth reckons upon
+      what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a millionaire has
+      unlimited means in his hand&mdash;which is better. One&rsquo;s time on earth is
+      an uncertain quantity, but about the long reach of millions there is no
+      doubt. The introduction of a pure form of Christianity into this continent
+      is a dream for a youthful enthusiast, and I have been trying to explain to
+      you why Holroyd at fifty-eight is like a man on the threshold of life, and
+      better, too. He&rsquo;s not a missionary, but the San Tome mine holds just that
+      for him. I assure you, in sober truth, that he could not manage to keep
+      this out of a strictly business conference upon the finances of Costaguana
+      he had with Sir John a couple of years ago. Sir John mentioned it with
+      amazement in a letter he wrote to me here, from San Francisco, when on his
+      way home. Upon my word, doctor, things seem to be worth nothing by what
+      they are in themselves. I begin to believe that the only solid thing about
+      them is the spiritual value which everyone discovers in his own form of
+      activity&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; interrupted the doctor, without stopping for an instant the idle
+      swinging movement of his legs. &ldquo;Self-flattery. Food for that vanity which
+      makes the world go round. Meantime, what do you think is going to happen
+      to the treasure floating about the gulf with the great Capataz and the
+      great politician?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put no spiritual value into
+      my desires, or my opinions, or my actions. They have not enough vastness
+      to give me room for self-flattery. Look, for instance, I should certainly
+      have liked to ease the last moments of that poor woman. And I can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s
+      impossible. Have you met the impossible face to face&mdash;or have you,
+      the Napoleon of railways, no such word in your dictionary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?&rdquo; asked the chief engineer,
+      with humane concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above the heavy hard wood
+      beams of the kitchen. Then down the narrow opening of the staircase made
+      in the thickness of the wall, and narrow enough to be defended by one man
+      against twenty enemies, came the murmur of two voices, one faint and
+      broken, the other deep and gentle answering it, and in its graver tone
+      covering the weaker sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men remained still and silent till the murmurs ceased, then the
+      doctor shrugged his shoulders and muttered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she&rsquo;s bound to. And I could do nothing if I went up now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A long period of silence above and below ensued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy,&rdquo; began the engineer, in a subdued voice, &ldquo;that you mistrust
+      Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s Capataz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mistrust him!&rdquo; muttered the doctor through his teeth. &ldquo;I believe him
+      capable of anything&mdash;even of the most absurd fidelity. I am the last
+      person he spoke to before he left the wharf, you know. The poor woman up
+      there wanted to see him, and I let him go up to her. The dying must not be
+      contradicted, you know. She seemed then fairly calm and resigned, but the
+      scoundrel in those ten minutes or so has done or said something which
+      seems to have driven her into despair. You know,&rdquo; went on the doctor,
+      hesitatingly, &ldquo;women are so very unaccountable in every position, and at
+      all times of life, that I thought sometimes she was in a way, don&rsquo;t you
+      see? in love with him&mdash;the Capataz. The rascal has his own charm
+      indubitably, or he would not have made the conquest of all the populace of
+      the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I may have given a wrong name to some
+      strong sentiment for him on her part, to an unreasonable and simple
+      attitude a woman is apt to take up emotionally towards a man. She used to
+      abuse him to me frequently, which, of course, is not inconsistent with my
+      idea. Not at all. It looked to me as if she were always thinking of him.
+      He was something important in her life. You know, I have seen a lot of
+      those people. Whenever I came down from the mine Mrs. Gould used to ask me
+      to keep my eye on them. She likes Italians; she has lived a long time in
+      Italy, I believe, and she took a special fancy to that old Garibaldino. A
+      remarkable chap enough. A rugged and dreamy character, living in the
+      republicanism of his young days as if in a cloud. He has encouraged much
+      of the Capataz&rsquo;s confounded nonsense&mdash;the high-strung, exalted old
+      beggar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of nonsense?&rdquo; wondered the chief engineer. &ldquo;I found the Capataz
+      always a very shrewd and sensible fellow, absolutely fearless, and
+      remarkably useful. A perfect handy man. Sir John was greatly impressed by
+      his resourcefulness and attention when he made that overland journey from
+      Sta. Marta. Later on, as you might have heard, he rendered us a service by
+      disclosing to the then chief of police the presence in the town of some
+      professional thieves, who came from a distance to wreck and rob our
+      monthly pay train. He has certainly organized the lighterage service of
+      the harbour for the O.S.N. Company with great ability. He knows how to
+      make himself obeyed, foreigner though he is. It is true that the
+      Cargadores are strangers here, too, for the most part&mdash;immigrants,
+      Islenos.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His prestige is his fortune,&rdquo; muttered the doctor, sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man has proved his trustworthiness up to the hilt on innumerable
+      occasions and in all sorts of ways,&rdquo; argued the engineer. &ldquo;When this
+      question of the silver arose, Captain Mitchell naturally was very warmly
+      of the opinion that his Capataz was the only man fit for the trust. As a
+      sailor, of course, I suppose so. But as a man, don&rsquo;t you know, Gould,
+      Decoud, and myself judged that it didn&rsquo;t matter in the least who went. Any
+      boatman would have done just as well. Pray, what could a thief do with
+      such a lot of ingots? If he ran off with them he would have in the end to
+      land somewhere, and how could he conceal his cargo from the knowledge of
+      the people ashore? We dismissed that consideration from our minds.
+      Moreover, Decoud was going. There have been occasions when the Capataz has
+      been more implicitly trusted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He took a slightly different view,&rdquo; the doctor said. &ldquo;I heard him declare
+      in this very room that it would be the most desperate affair of his life.
+      He made a sort of verbal will here in my hearing, appointing old Viola his
+      executor; and, by Jove! do you know, he&mdash;he&rsquo;s not grown rich by his
+      fidelity to you good people of the railway and the harbour. I suppose he
+      obtains some&mdash;how do you say that?&mdash;some spiritual value for his
+      labours, or else I don&rsquo;t know why the devil he should be faithful to you,
+      Gould, Mitchell, or anybody else. He knows this country well. He knows,
+      for instance, that Gamacho, the Deputy from Javira, has been nothing else
+      but a &lsquo;tramposo&rsquo; of the commonest sort, a petty pedlar of the Campo, till
+      he managed to get enough goods on credit from Anzani to open a little
+      store in the wilds, and got himself elected by the drunken mozos that hang
+      about the Estancias and the poorest sort of rancheros who were in his
+      debt. And Gamacho, who to-morrow will be probably one of our high
+      officials, is a stranger, too&mdash;an Isleno. He might have been a
+      Cargador on the O. S. N. wharf had he not (the posadero of Rincon is ready
+      to swear it) murdered a pedlar in the woods and stolen his pack to begin
+      life on. And do you think that Gamacho, then, would have ever become a
+      hero with the democracy of this place, like our Capataz? Of course not. He
+      isn&rsquo;t half the man. No; decidedly, I think that Nostromo is a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor&rsquo;s talk was distasteful to the builder of railways. &ldquo;It is
+      impossible to argue that point,&rdquo; he said, philosophically. &ldquo;Each man has
+      his gifts. You should have heard Gamacho haranguing his friends in the
+      street. He has a howling voice, and he shouted like mad, lifting his
+      clenched fist right above his head, and throwing his body half out of the
+      window. At every pause the rabble below yelled, &lsquo;Down with the Oligarchs!
+      Viva la Libertad!&rsquo; Fuentes inside looked extremely miserable. You know, he
+      is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of the Interior for
+      six months or so, some few years back. Of course, he has no conscience;
+      but he is a man of birth and education&mdash;at one time the director of
+      the Customs of Cayta. That idiot-brute Gamacho fastened himself upon him
+      with his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly fear of that ruffian
+      was the most rejoicing sight imaginable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up and went to the door to look out towards the harbour. &ldquo;All
+      quiet,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I wonder if Sotillo really means to turn up here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER TWO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell, pacing the wharf, was asking himself the same question.
+      There was always the doubt whether the warning of the Esmeralda
+      telegraphist&mdash;a fragmentary and interrupted message&mdash;had been
+      properly understood. However, the good man had made up his mind not to go
+      to bed till daylight, if even then. He imagined himself to have rendered
+      an enormous service to Charles Gould. When he thought of the saved silver
+      he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. In his simple way he was
+      proud at being a party to this extremely clever expedient. It was he who
+      had given it a practical shape by suggesting the possibility of
+      intercepting at sea the north-bound steamer. And it was advantageous to
+      his Company, too, which would have lost a valuable freight if the treasure
+      had been left ashore to be confiscated. The pleasure of disappointing the
+      Monterists was also very great. Authoritative by temperament and the long
+      habit of command, Captain Mitchell was no democrat. He even went so far as
+      to profess a contempt for parliamentarism itself. &ldquo;His Excellency Don
+      Vincente Ribiera,&rdquo; he used to say, &ldquo;whom I and that fellow of mine,
+      Nostromo, had the honour, sir, and the pleasure of saving from a cruel
+      death, deferred too much to his Congress. It was a mistake&mdash;a
+      distinct mistake, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N. service imagined that
+      the last three days had exhausted every startling surprise the political
+      life of Costaguana could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the
+      events which followed surpassed his imagination. To begin with, Sulaco
+      (because of the seizure of the cables and the disorganization of the steam
+      service) remained for a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of the world
+      like a besieged city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would not have believed it possible; but so it was, sir. A full
+      fortnight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The account of the extraordinary things that happened during that time,
+      and the powerful emotions he experienced, acquired a comic impressiveness
+      from the pompous manner of his personal narrative. He opened it always by
+      assuring his hearer that he was &ldquo;in the thick of things from first to
+      last.&rdquo; Then he would begin by describing the getting away of the silver,
+      and his natural anxiety lest &ldquo;his fellow&rdquo; in charge of the lighter should
+      make some mistake. Apart from the loss of so much precious metal, the life
+      of Senor Martin Decoud, an agreeable, wealthy, and well-informed young
+      gentleman, would have been jeopardized through his falling into the hands
+      of his political enemies. Captain Mitchell also admitted that in his
+      solitary vigil on the wharf he had felt a certain measure of concern for
+      the future of the whole country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A feeling, sir,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;perfectly comprehensible in a man
+      properly grateful for the many kindnesses received from the best families
+      of merchants and other native gentlemen of independent means, who, barely
+      saved by us from the excesses of the mob, seemed, to my mind&rsquo;s eye,
+      destined to become the prey in person and fortune of the native soldiery,
+      which, as is well known, behave with regrettable barbarity to the
+      inhabitants during their civil commotions. And then, sir, there were the
+      Goulds, for both of whom, man and wife, I could not but entertain the
+      warmest feelings deserved by their hospitality and kindness. I felt, too,
+      the dangers of the gentlemen of the Amarilla Club, who had made me
+      honorary member, and had treated me with uniform regard and civility, both
+      in my capacity of Consular Agent and as Superintendent of an important
+      Steam Service. Miss Antonia Avellanos, the most beautiful and accomplished
+      young lady whom it had ever been my privilege to speak to, was not a
+      little in my mind, I confess. How the interests of my Company would be
+      affected by the impending change of officials claimed a large share of my
+      attention, too. In short, sir, I was extremely anxious and very tired, as
+      you may suppose, by the exciting and memorable events in which I had taken
+      my little part. The Company&rsquo;s building containing my residence was within
+      five minutes&rsquo; walk, with the attraction of some supper and of my hammock
+      (I always take my nightly rest in a hammock, as the most suitable to the
+      climate); but somehow, sir, though evidently I could do nothing for any
+      one by remaining about, I could not tear myself away from that wharf,
+      where the fatigue made me stumble painfully at times. The night was
+      excessively dark&mdash;the darkest I remember in my life; so that I began
+      to think that the arrival of the transport from Esmeralda could not
+      possibly take place before daylight, owing to the difficulty of navigating
+      the gulf. The mosquitoes bit like fury. We have been infested here with
+      mosquitoes before the late improvements; a peculiar harbour brand, sir,
+      renowned for its ferocity. They were like a cloud about my head, and I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t wonder that but for their attacks I would have dozed off as I
+      walked up and down, and got a heavy fall. I kept on smoking cigar after
+      cigar, more to protect myself from being eaten up alive than from any real
+      relish for the weed. Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time I was
+      approaching my watch to the lighted end in order to see the time, and
+      observing with surprise that it wanted yet ten minutes to midnight, I
+      heard the splash of a ship&rsquo;s propeller&mdash;an unmistakable sound to a
+      sailor&rsquo;s ear on such a calm night. It was faint indeed, because they were
+      advancing with precaution and dead slow, both on account of the darkness
+      and from their desire of not revealing too soon their presence: a very
+      unnecessary care, because, I verily believe, in all the enormous extent of
+      this harbour I was the only living soul about. Even the usual staff of
+      watchmen and others had been absent from their posts for several nights
+      owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still, after dropping and
+      stamping out my cigar&mdash;a circumstance highly agreeable, I should
+      think, to the mosquitoes, if I may judge from the state of my face next
+      morning. But that was a trifling inconvenience in comparison with the
+      brutal proceedings I became victim of on the part of Sotillo. Something
+      utterly inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of a maniac than the
+      action of a sane man, however lost to all sense of honour and decency. But
+      Sotillo was furious at the failure of his thievish scheme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed infuriated. Captain
+      Mitchell, however, had not been arrested at once; a vivid curiosity
+      induced him to remain on the wharf (which is nearly four hundred feet
+      long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of disembarkation.
+      Concealed by the railway truck used for the silver, which had been run
+      back afterwards to the shore end of the jetty, Captain Mitchell saw the
+      small detachment thrown forward, pass by, taking different directions upon
+      the plain. Meantime, the troops were being landed and formed into a
+      column, whose head crept up gradually so close to him that he made it out,
+      barring nearly the whole width of the wharf, only a very few yards from
+      him. Then the low, shuffling, murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the
+      whole mass remained for about an hour motionless and silent, awaiting the
+      return of the scouts. On land nothing was to be heard except the deep
+      baying of the mastiffs at the railway yards, answered by the faint barking
+      of the curs infesting the outer limits of the town. A detached knot of
+      dark shapes stood in front of the head of the column.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to challenge in
+      undertones single figures approaching from the plain. Those messengers
+      sent back from the scouting parties flung to their comrades brief
+      sentences and passed on rapidly, becoming lost in the great motionless
+      mass, to make their report to the Staff. It occurred to Captain Mitchell
+      that his position could become disagreeable and perhaps dangerous, when
+      suddenly, at the head of the jetty, there was a shout of command, a bugle
+      call, followed by a stir and a rattling of arms, and a murmuring noise
+      that ran right up the column. Near by a loud voice directed hurriedly,
+      &ldquo;Push that railway car out of the way!&rdquo; At the rush of bare feet to
+      execute the order Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or two; the car,
+      suddenly impelled by many hands, flew away from him along the rails, and
+      before he knew what had happened he found himself surrounded and seized by
+      his arms and the collar of his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have caught a man hiding here, mi teniente!&rdquo; cried one of his captors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold him on one side till the rearguard comes along,&rdquo; answered the voice.
+      The whole column streamed past Captain Mitchell at a run, the thundering
+      noise of their feet dying away suddenly on the shore. His captors held him
+      tightly, disregarding his declaration that he was an Englishman and his
+      loud demands to be taken at once before their commanding officer. Finally
+      he lapsed into dignified silence. With a hollow rumble of wheels on the
+      planks a couple of field guns, dragged by hand, rolled by. Then, after a
+      small body of men had marched past escorting four or five figures which
+      walked in advance, with a jingle of steel scabbards, he felt a tug at his
+      arms, and was ordered to come along. During the passage from the wharf to
+      the Custom House it is to be feared that Captain Mitchell was subjected to
+      certain indignities at the hands of the soldiers&mdash;such as jerks,
+      thumps on the neck, forcible application of the butt of a rifle to the
+      small of his back. Their ideas of speed were not in accord with his notion
+      of his dignity. He became flustered, flushed, and helpless. It was as if
+      the world were coming to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long building was surrounded by troops, which were already piling arms
+      by companies and preparing to pass the night lying on the ground in their
+      ponchos with their sacks under their heads. Corporals moved with swinging
+      lanterns posting sentries all round the walls wherever there was a door or
+      an opening. Sotillo was taking his measures to protect his conquest as if
+      it had indeed contained the treasure. His desire to make his fortune at
+      one audacious stroke of genius had overmastered his reasoning faculties.
+      He would not believe in the possibility of failure; the mere hint of such
+      a thing made his brain reel with rage. Every circumstance pointing to it
+      appeared incredible. The statement of Hirsch, which was so absolutely
+      fatal to his hopes, could by no means be admitted. It is true, too, that
+      Hirsch&rsquo;s story had been told so incoherently, with such excessive signs of
+      distraction, that it really looked improbable. It was extremely difficult,
+      as the saying is, to make head or tail of it. On the bridge of the
+      steamer, directly after his rescue, Sotillo and his officers, in their
+      impatience and excitement, would not give the wretched man time to collect
+      such few wits as remained to him. He ought to have been quieted, soothed,
+      and reassured, whereas he had been roughly handled, cuffed, shaken, and
+      addressed in menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to
+      get down on his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break away,
+      as if he meant incontinently to jump overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings
+      and cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then with
+      a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of
+      every great passion. His Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German that
+      the better half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He tried to
+      propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which in itself
+      sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not to trifle he repeated his
+      entreaties and protestations of loyalty and innocence again in German,
+      obstinately, because he was not aware in what language he was speaking.
+      His identity, of course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant of
+      Esmeralda, but this made the matter no clearer. As he kept on forgetting
+      Decoud&rsquo;s name, mixing him up with several other people he had seen in the
+      Casa Gould, it looked as if they all had been in the lighter together; and
+      for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned every prominent Ribierist
+      of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw a doubt upon the whole
+      statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a part&mdash;pretending fear
+      and distraction on the spur of the moment to cover the truth. Sotillo&rsquo;s
+      rapacity, excited to the highest pitch by the prospect of an immense
+      booty, could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew might have been very
+      much frightened by the accident, but he knew where the silver was
+      concealed, and had invented this story, with his Jewish cunning, to put
+      him entirely off the track as to what had been done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor in a vast apartment
+      with heavy black beams. But there was no ceiling, and the eye lost itself
+      in the darkness under the high pitch of the roof. The thick shutters stood
+      open. On a long table could be seen a large inkstand, some stumpy, inky
+      quill pens, and two square wooden boxes, each holding half a
+      hundred-weight of sand. Sheets of grey coarse official paper bestrewed the
+      floor. It must have been a room occupied by some higher official of the
+      Customs, because a large leathern armchair stood behind the table, with
+      other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net hammock was swung under
+      one of the beams&mdash;for the official&rsquo;s afternoon siesta, no doubt. A
+      couple of candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a dim reddish
+      light. The colonel&rsquo;s hat, sword, and revolver lay between them, and a
+      couple of his more trusty officers lounged gloomily against the table. The
+      colonel threw himself into the armchair, and a big negro with a sergeant&rsquo;s
+      stripes on his ragged sleeve, kneeling down, pulled off his boots.
+      Sotillo&rsquo;s ebony moustache contrasted violently with the livid colouring of
+      his cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very far into his head. He
+      seemed exhausted by his perplexities, languid with disappointment; but
+      when the sentry on the landing thrust his head in to announce the arrival
+      of a prisoner, he revived at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him be brought in,&rdquo; he shouted, fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door flew open, and Captain Mitchell, bareheaded, his waistcoat open,
+      the bow of his tie under his ear, was hustled into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo recognized him at once. He could not have hoped for a more
+      precious capture; here was a man who could tell him, if he chose,
+      everything he wished to know&mdash;and directly the problem of how best to
+      make him talk to the point presented itself to his mind. The resentment of
+      a foreign nation had no terrors for Sotillo. The might of the whole armed
+      Europe would not have protected Captain Mitchell from insults and
+      ill-usage, so well as the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an
+      Englishman who would most likely turn obstinate under bad treatment, and
+      become quite unmanageable. At all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl
+      on his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! The excellent Senor Mitchell!&rdquo; he cried, in affected dismay. The
+      pretended anger of his swift advance and of his shout, &ldquo;Release the
+      caballero at once,&rdquo; was so effective that the astounded soldiers
+      positively sprang away from their prisoner. Thus suddenly deprived of
+      forcible support, Captain Mitchell reeled as though about to fall. Sotillo
+      took him familiarly under the arm, led him to a chair, waved his hand at
+      the room. &ldquo;Go out, all of you,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had been left alone he stood looking down, irresolute and
+      silent, watching till Captain Mitchell had recovered his power of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned in the removal of the
+      silver. Sotillo&rsquo;s temperament was of that sort that he experienced an
+      ardent desire to beat him; just as formerly when negotiating with
+      difficulty a loan from the cautious Anzani, his fingers always itched to
+      take the shopkeeper by the throat. As to Captain Mitchell, the suddenness,
+      unexpectedness, and general inconceivableness of this experience had
+      confused his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out of breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been knocked down three times between this and the wharf,&rdquo; he gasped
+      out at last. &ldquo;Somebody shall be made to pay for this.&rdquo; He had certainly
+      stumbled more than once, and had been dragged along for some distance
+      before he could regain his stride. With his recovered breath his
+      indignation seemed to madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his white
+      hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook violently the flaps
+      of his ruined waistcoat before the disconcerted Sotillo. &ldquo;Look! Those
+      uniformed thieves of yours downstairs have robbed me of my watch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old sailor&rsquo;s aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw himself cut off
+      from the table on which his sabre and revolver were lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I demand restitution and apologies,&rdquo; Mitchell thundered at him, quite
+      beside himself. &ldquo;From you! Yes, from you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a perfectly stony
+      expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell flung out an arm towards the
+      table as if to snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm,
+      bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming it after him.
+      Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s fury. Behind the closed door Sotillo
+      shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on the wooden
+      staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disarm him! Bind him!&rdquo; the colonel could be heard vociferating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the windows, with
+      three perpendicular bars of iron each and some twenty feet from the
+      ground, as he well knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him
+      took place. In an incredibly short time he found himself bound with many
+      turns of a hide rope to a high-backed chair, so that his head alone
+      remained free. Not till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the
+      doorway trembling visibly, venture again within. The soldiers, picking up
+      from the floor the rifles they had dropped to grapple with the prisoner,
+      filed out of the room. The officers remained leaning on their swords and
+      looking on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The watch! the watch!&rdquo; raved the colonel, pacing to and fro like a tiger
+      in a cage. &ldquo;Give me that man&rsquo;s watch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true, that when searched for arms in the hall downstairs, before
+      being taken into Sotillo&rsquo;s presence, Captain Mitchell had been relieved of
+      his watch and chain; but at the colonel&rsquo;s clamour it was produced quickly
+      enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried carefully in the palms of his
+      joined hands. Sotillo snatched it, and pushed the clenched fist from which
+      it dangled close to Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then! You arrogant Englishman! You dare to call the soldiers of the
+      army thieves! Behold your watch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner&rsquo;s nose. Captain
+      Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously at the
+      sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer, presented to him years ago by a
+      Committee of Underwriters for saving a ship from total loss by fire.
+      Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable appearance. He became silent
+      suddenly, stepped aside to the table, and began a careful examination in
+      the light of the candles. He had never seen anything so fine. His officers
+      closed in and craned their necks behind his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He became so interested that for an instant he forgot his precious
+      prisoner. There is always something childish in the rapacity of the
+      passionate, clear-minded, Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism of
+      the Northerners, who at the smallest encouragement dream of nothing less
+      than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo was fond of jewels, gold trinkets,
+      of personal adornment. After a moment he turned about, and with a
+      commanding gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid down the watch
+      on the table, then, negligently, pushed his hat over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; he began, going up very close to the chair. &ldquo;You dare call my
+      valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda regiment, thieves. You dare! What
+      impudence! You foreigners come here to rob our country of its wealth. You
+      never have enough! Your audacity knows no bounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked towards the officers, amongst whom there was an approving
+      murmur. The older major was moved to declare&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, mi colonel. They are all traitors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall say nothing,&rdquo; continued Sotillo, fixing the motionless and
+      powerless Mitchell with an angry but uneasy stare. &ldquo;I shall say nothing of
+      your treacherous attempt to get possession of my revolver to shoot me
+      while I was trying to treat you with consideration you did not deserve.
+      You have forfeited your life. Your only hope is in my clemency.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He watched for the effect of his words, but there was no obvious sign of
+      fear on Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s face. His white hair was full of dust, which
+      covered also the rest of his helpless person. As if he had heard nothing,
+      he twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a bit of straw which hung amongst the
+      hairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo. &ldquo;It is you, Mitchell,&rdquo;
+       he said, emphatically, &ldquo;who are the thief, not my soldiers!&rdquo; He pointed at
+      his prisoner a forefinger with a long, almond-shaped nail. &ldquo;Where is the
+      silver of the San Tome mine? I ask you, Mitchell, where is the silver that
+      was deposited in this Custom House? Answer me that! You stole it. You were
+      a party to stealing it. It was stolen from the Government. Aha! you think
+      I do not know what I say; but I am up to your foreign tricks. It is gone,
+      the silver! No? Gone in one of your lanchas, you miserable man! How dared
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time he produced his effect. &ldquo;How on earth could Sotillo know that?&rdquo;
+       thought Mitchell. His head, the only part of his body that could move,
+      betrayed his surprise by a sudden jerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! you tremble,&rdquo; Sotillo shouted, suddenly. &ldquo;It is a conspiracy. It is a
+      crime against the State. Did you not know that the silver belongs to the
+      Republic till the Government claims are satisfied? Where is it? Where have
+      you hidden it, you miserable thief?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this question Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s sinking spirits revived. In whatever
+      incomprehensible manner Sotillo had already got his information about the
+      lighter, he had not captured it. That was clear. In his outraged heart,
+      Captain Mitchell had resolved that nothing would induce him to say a word
+      while he remained so disgracefully bound, but his desire to help the
+      escape of the silver made him depart from this resolution. His wits were
+      very much at work. He detected in Sotillo a certain air of doubt, of
+      irresolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;is not certain of what he advances.&rdquo; For
+      all his pomposity in social intercourse, Captain Mitchell could meet the
+      realities of life in a resolute and ready spirit. Now he had got over the
+      first shock of the abominable treatment he was cool and collected enough.
+      The immense contempt he felt for Sotillo steadied him, and he said
+      oracularly, &ldquo;No doubt it is well concealed by this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. &ldquo;Muy bien, Mitchell,&rdquo; he said in a
+      cold and threatening manner. &ldquo;But can you produce the Government receipt
+      for the royalty and the Custom House permit of embarkation, hey? Can you?
+      No. Then the silver has been removed illegally, and the guilty shall be
+      made to suffer, unless it is produced within five days from this.&rdquo; He gave
+      orders for the prisoner to be unbound and locked up in one of the smaller
+      rooms downstairs. He walked about the room, moody and silent, till Captain
+      Mitchell, with each of his arms held by a couple of men, stood up, shook
+      himself, and stamped his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell?&rdquo; he asked, derisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the most incredible, abominable use of power!&rdquo; Captain Mitchell
+      declared in a loud voice. &ldquo;And whatever your purpose, you shall gain
+      nothing from it, I can promise you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and moustache,
+      crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of the short, thick-set,
+      red-faced prisoner with rumpled white hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That we shall see. You shall know my power a little better when I tie you
+      up to a potalon outside in the sun for a whole day.&rdquo; He drew himself up
+      haughtily, and made a sign for Captain Mitchell to be led away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about my watch?&rdquo; cried Captain Mitchell, hanging back from the
+      efforts of the men pulling him towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo turned to his officers. &ldquo;No! But only listen to this picaro,
+      caballeros,&rdquo; he pronounced with affected scorn, and was answered by a
+      chorus of derisive laughter. &ldquo;He demands his watch!&rdquo; . . . He ran up again
+      to Captain Mitchell, for the desire to relieve his feelings by inflicting
+      blows and pain upon this Englishman was very strong within him. &ldquo;Your
+      watch! You are a prisoner in war time, Mitchell! In war time! You have no
+      rights and no property! Caramba! The very breath in your body belongs to
+      me. Remember that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bosh!&rdquo; said Captain Mitchell, concealing a disagreeable impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down below, in a great hall, with the earthen floor and with a tall mound
+      thrown up by white ants in a corner, the soldiers had kindled a small fire
+      with broken chairs and tables near the arched gateway, through which the
+      faint murmur of the harbour waters on the beach could be heard. While
+      Captain Mitchell was being led down the staircase, an officer passed him,
+      running up to report to Sotillo the capture of more prisoners. A lot of
+      smoke hung about in the vast gloomy place, the fire crackled, and, as if
+      through a haze, Captain Mitchell made out, surrounded by short soldiers
+      with fixed bayonets, the heads of three tall prisoners&mdash;the doctor,
+      the engineer-in-chief, and the white leonine mane of old Viola, who stood
+      half-turned away from the others with his chin on his breast and his arms
+      crossed. Mitchell&rsquo;s astonishment knew no bounds. He cried out; the other
+      two exclaimed also. But he hurried on, diagonally, across the big
+      cavern-like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises, hints of caution, and so on,
+      crowded his head to distraction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he actually keeping you?&rdquo; shouted the chief engineer, whose single
+      eyeglass glittered in the firelight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting urgently, &ldquo;Bring them
+      all up&mdash;all three.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the clamour of voices and the rattle of arms, Captain Mitchell made
+      himself heard imperfectly: &ldquo;By heavens! the fellow has stolen my watch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the pressure long enough
+      to shout, &ldquo;What? What did you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My chronometer!&rdquo; Captain Mitchell yelled violently at the very moment of
+      being thrust head foremost through a small door into a sort of cell,
+      perfectly black, and so narrow that he fetched up against the opposite
+      wall. The door had been instantly slammed. He knew where they had put him.
+      This was the strong room of the Custom House, whence the silver had been
+      removed only a few hours earlier. It was almost as narrow as a corridor,
+      with a small square aperture, barred by a heavy grating, at the distant
+      end. Captain Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat down on the
+      earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, not even a gleam of
+      light from anywhere, interfered with Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s meditation. He did
+      some hard but not very extensive thinking. It was not of a gloomy cast.
+      The old sailor, with all his small weaknesses and absurdities, was
+      constitutionally incapable of entertaining for any length of time a fear
+      of his personal safety. It was not so much firmness of soul as the lack of
+      a certain kind of imagination&mdash;the kind whose undue development
+      caused intense suffering to Senor Hirsch; that sort of imagination which
+      adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and of death, envisaged as an
+      accident to the body alone, strictly&mdash;to all the other apprehensions
+      on which the sense of one&rsquo;s existence is based. Unfortunately, Captain
+      Mitchell had not much penetration of any kind; characteristic,
+      illuminating trifles of expression, action, or movement, escaped him
+      completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of his own existence
+      to observe that of others. For instance, he could not believe that Sotillo
+      had been really afraid of him, and this simply because it would never have
+      entered into his head to shoot any one except in the most pressing case of
+      self-defence. Anybody could see he was not a murdering kind of man, he
+      reflected quite gravely. Then why this preposterous and insulting charge?
+      he asked himself. But his thoughts mainly clung around the astounding and
+      unanswerable question: How the devil the fellow got to know that the
+      silver had gone off in the lighter? It was obvious that he had not
+      captured it. And, obviously, he could not have captured it! In this last
+      conclusion Captain Mitchell was misled by the assumption drawn from his
+      observation of the weather during his long vigil on the wharf. He thought
+      that there had been much more wind than usual that night in the gulf;
+      whereas, as a matter of fact, the reverse was the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How in the name of all that&rsquo;s marvellous did that confounded fellow get
+      wind of the affair?&rdquo; was the first question he asked directly after the
+      bang, clatter, and flash of the open door (which was closed again almost
+      before he could lift his dropped head) informed him that he had a
+      companion of captivity. Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s voice stopped muttering curses in
+      English and Spanish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that you, Mitchell?&rdquo; he made answer, surlily. &ldquo;I struck my forehead
+      against this confounded wall with enough force to fell an ox. Where are
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could make out the doctor
+      stretching out his hands blindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sitting here on the floor. Don&rsquo;t fall over my legs,&rdquo; Captain
+      Mitchell&rsquo;s voice announced with great dignity of tone. The doctor,
+      entreated not to walk about in the dark, sank down to the ground, too. The
+      two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads nearly touching, began to
+      exchange confidences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the doctor related in a low tone to Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s vehement
+      curiosity, &ldquo;we have been nabbed in old Viola&rsquo;s place. It seems that one of
+      their pickets, commanded by an officer, pushed as far as the town gate.
+      They had orders not to enter, but to bring along every soul they could
+      find on the plain. We had been talking in there with the door open, and no
+      doubt they saw the glimmer of our light. They must have been making their
+      approaches for some time. The engineer laid himself on a bench in a recess
+      by the fire-place, and I went upstairs to have a look. I hadn&rsquo;t heard any
+      sound from there for a long time. Old Viola, as soon as he saw me come up,
+      lifted his arm for silence. I stole in on tiptoe. By Jove, his wife was
+      lying down and had gone to sleep. The woman had actually dropped off to
+      sleep! &lsquo;Senor Doctor,&rsquo; Viola whispers to me, &lsquo;it looks as if her
+      oppression was going to get better.&rsquo; &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; I said, very much surprised;
+      &lsquo;your wife is a wonderful woman, Giorgio.&rsquo; Just then a shot was fired in
+      the kitchen, which made us jump and cower as if at a thunder-clap. It
+      seems that the party of soldiers had stolen quite close up, and one of
+      them had crept up to the door. He looked in, thought there was no one
+      there, and, holding his rifle ready, entered quietly. The chief told me
+      that he had just closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he saw
+      the man already in the middle of the room peering into the dark corners.
+      The chief was so startled that, without thinking, he made one leap from
+      the recess right out in front of the fireplace. The soldier, no less
+      startled, up with his rifle and pulls the trigger, deafening and singeing
+      the engineer, but in his flurry missing him completely. But, look what
+      happens! At the noise of the report the sleeping woman sat up, as if moved
+      by a spring, with a shriek, &lsquo;The children, Gian&rsquo; Battista! Save the
+      children!&rsquo; I have it in my ears now. It was the truest cry of distress I
+      ever heard. I stood as if paralyzed, but the old husband ran across to the
+      bedside, stretching out his hands. She clung to them! I could see her eyes
+      go glazed; the old fellow lowered her down on the pillows and then looked
+      round at me. She was dead! All this took less than five minutes, and then
+      I ran down to see what was the matter. It was no use thinking of any
+      resistance. Nothing we two could say availed with the officer, so I
+      volunteered to go up with a couple of soldiers and fetch down old Viola.
+      He was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking at his wife&rsquo;s face, and did
+      not seem to hear what I said; but after I had pulled the sheet over her
+      head, he got up and followed us downstairs quietly, in a sort of
+      thoughtful way. They marched us off along the road, leaving the door open
+      and the candle burning. The chief engineer strode on without a word, but I
+      looked back once or twice at the feeble gleam. After we had gone some
+      considerable distance, the Garibaldino, who was walking by my side,
+      suddenly said, &lsquo;I have buried many men on battlefields on this continent.
+      The priests talk of consecrated ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is
+      holy; but the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests and tyrants,
+      is the holiest of all. Doctor! I should like to bury her in the sea. No
+      mummeries, candles, incense, no holy water mumbled over by priests. The
+      spirit of liberty is upon the waters.&rsquo; . . . Amazing old man. He was
+      saying all this in an undertone as if talking to himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; interrupted Captain Mitchell, impatiently. &ldquo;Poor old chap! But
+      have you any idea how that ruffian Sotillo obtained his information? He
+      did not get hold of any of our Cargadores who helped with the truck, did
+      he? But no, it is impossible! These were picked men we&rsquo;ve had in our boats
+      for these five years, and I paid them myself specially for the job, with
+      instructions to keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at least. I saw
+      them with my own eyes march on with the Italians to the railway yards. The
+      chief promised to give them rations as long as they wanted to remain
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the doctor, slowly, &ldquo;I can tell you that you may say good-bye
+      for ever to your best lighter, and to the Capataz of Cargadores.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in the excess of his
+      excitement. The doctor, without giving him time to exclaim, stated briefly
+      the part played by Hirsch during the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell was overcome. &ldquo;Drowned!&rdquo; he muttered, in a bewildered and
+      appalled whisper. &ldquo;Drowned!&rdquo; Afterwards he kept still, apparently
+      listening, but too absorbed in the news of the catastrophe to follow the
+      doctor&rsquo;s narrative with attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect ignorance, till at last
+      Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story,
+      which was got out of him again with the greatest difficulty, because every
+      moment he would break out into lamentations. At last, Hirsch was led away,
+      looking more dead than alive, and shut up in one of the upstairs rooms to
+      be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his character of a man not
+      admitted to the inner councils of the San Tome Administration, remarked
+      that the story sounded incredible. Of course, he said, he couldn&rsquo;t tell
+      what had been the action of the Europeans, as he had been exclusively
+      occupied with his own work in looking after the wounded, and also in
+      attending Don Jose Avellanos. He had succeeded in assuming so well a tone
+      of impartial indifference, that Sotillo seemed to be completely deceived.
+      Till then a show of regular inquiry had been kept up; one of the officers
+      sitting at the table wrote down the questions and the answers, the others,
+      lounging about the room, listened attentively, puffing at their long
+      cigars and keeping their eyes on the doctor. But at that point Sotillo
+      ordered everybody out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER THREE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Directly they were alone, the colonel&rsquo;s severe official manner changed. He
+      rose and approached the doctor. His eyes shone with rapacity and hope; he
+      became confidential. &ldquo;The silver might have been indeed put on board the
+      lighter, but it was not conceivable that it should have been taken out to
+      sea.&rdquo; The doctor, watching every word, nodded slightly, smoking with
+      apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him as a sign of his
+      friendly intentions. The doctor&rsquo;s manner of cold detachment from the rest
+      of the Europeans led Sotillo on, till, from conjecture to conjecture, he
+      arrived at hinting that in his opinion this was a putup job on the part of
+      Charles Gould, in order to get hold of that immense treasure all to
+      himself. The doctor, observant and self-possessed, muttered, &ldquo;He is very
+      capable of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement, amusement, and
+      indignation, &ldquo;You said that of Charles Gould!&rdquo; Disgust, and even some
+      suspicion, crept into his tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans,
+      there appeared to be something dubious about the doctor&rsquo;s personality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth made you say that to this watch-stealing scoundrel?&rdquo; he
+      asked. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the object of an infernal lie of that sort? That confounded
+      pick-pocket was quite capable of believing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is exactly what I did say,&rdquo; he uttered at last, in a tone which
+      would have made it clear enough to a third party that the pause was not of
+      a reluctant but of a reflective character. Captain Mitchell thought that
+      he had never heard anything so brazenly impudent in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; he muttered to himself, but he had not the heart to voice
+      his thoughts. They were swept away by others full of astonishment and
+      regret. A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed him: the loss of the silver,
+      the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a blow to his sensibilities,
+      because he had become attached to his Capataz as people get attached to
+      their inferiors from love of ease and almost unconscious gratitude. And
+      when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his sensibility was almost
+      overcome by this miserable end. What a heavy blow for that poor young
+      woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the species of crabbed old
+      bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young men paying attentions to
+      young women. It seemed to him a natural and proper thing. Proper
+      especially. As to sailors, it was different; it was not their place to
+      marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as a matter of
+      self-denial, for, he explained, life on board ship is not fit for a woman
+      even at best, and if you leave her on shore, first of all it is not fair,
+      and next she either suffers from it or doesn&rsquo;t care a bit, which, in both
+      cases, is bad. He couldn&rsquo;t have told what upset him most&mdash;Charles
+      Gould&rsquo;s immense material loss, the death of Nostromo, which was a heavy
+      loss to himself, or the idea of that beautiful and accomplished young
+      woman being plunged into mourning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began again, &ldquo;he
+      believed me right enough. I thought he would have hugged me. &lsquo;Si, si,&rsquo; he
+      said, &lsquo;he will write to that partner of his, the rich Americano in San
+      Francisco, that it is all lost. Why not? There is enough to share with
+      many people.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is perfectly imbecile!&rdquo; cried Captain Mitchell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and that his imbecility was
+      ingenious enough to lead him completely astray. He had helped him only but
+      a little way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mentioned,&rdquo; the doctor said, &ldquo;in a sort of casual way, that treasure is
+      generally buried in the earth rather than set afloat upon the sea. At this
+      my Sotillo slapped his forehead. &lsquo;Por Dios, yes,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;they must have
+      buried it on the shores of this harbour somewhere before they sailed
+      out.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens and earth!&rdquo; muttered Captain Mitchell, &ldquo;I should not have
+      believed that anybody could be ass enough&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, then went on
+      mournfully: &ldquo;But what&rsquo;s the good of all this? It would have been a clever
+      enough lie if the lighter had been still afloat. It would have kept that
+      inconceivable idiot perhaps from sending out the steamer to cruise in the
+      gulf. That was the danger that worried me no end.&rdquo; Captain Mitchell sighed
+      profoundly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had an object,&rdquo; the doctor pronounced, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you?&rdquo; muttered Captain Mitchell. &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s lucky, or else I would
+      have thought that you went on fooling him for the fun of the thing. And
+      perhaps that was your object. Well, I must say I personally wouldn&rsquo;t
+      condescend to that sort of thing. It is not to my taste. No, no.
+      Blackening a friend&rsquo;s character is not my idea of fun, if it were to fool
+      the greatest blackguard on earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had it not been for Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s depression, caused by the fatal
+      news, his disgust of Dr. Monygham would have taken a more outspoken shape;
+      but he thought to himself that now it really did not matter what that man,
+      whom he had never liked, would say and do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; he grumbled, &ldquo;why they have shut us up together, or why
+      Sotillo should have shut you up at all, since it seems to me you have been
+      fairly chummy up there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I wonder,&rdquo; said the doctor grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s heart was so heavy that he would have preferred for the
+      time being a complete solitude to the best of company. But any company
+      would have been preferable to the doctor&rsquo;s, at whom he had always looked
+      askance as a sort of beachcomber of superior intelligence partly reclaimed
+      from his abased state. That feeling led him to ask&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has that ruffian done with the other two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chief engineer he would have let go in any case,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+      &ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t like to have a quarrel with the railway upon his hands. Not
+      just yet, at any rate. I don&rsquo;t think, Captain Mitchell, that you
+      understand exactly what Sotillo&rsquo;s position is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why I should bother my head about it,&rdquo; snarled Captain
+      Mitchell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; assented the doctor, with the same grim composure. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why
+      you should. It wouldn&rsquo;t help a single human being in the world if you
+      thought ever so hard upon any subject whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with evident depression. &ldquo;A man
+      locked up in a confounded dark hole is not much use to anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to old Viola,&rdquo; the doctor continued, as though he had not heard,
+      &ldquo;Sotillo released him for the same reason he is presently going to release
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh? What?&rdquo; exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring like an owl in the
+      darkness. &ldquo;What is there in common between me and old Viola? More likely
+      because the old chap has no watch and chain for the pickpocket to steal.
+      And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham,&rdquo; he went on with rising choler, &ldquo;he
+      will find it more difficult than he thinks to get rid of me. He will burn
+      his fingers over that job yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I won&rsquo;t go
+      without my watch, and as to the rest&mdash;we shall see. I dare say it is
+      no great matter for you to be locked up. But Joe Mitchell is a different
+      kind of man, sir. I don&rsquo;t mean to submit tamely to insult and robbery. I
+      am a public character, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Captain Mitchell became aware that the bars of the opening had
+      become visible, a black grating upon a square of grey. The coming of the
+      day silenced Captain Mitchell as if by the reflection that now in all the
+      future days he would be deprived of the invaluable services of his
+      Capataz. He leaned against the wall with his arms folded on his breast,
+      and the doctor walked up and down the whole length of the place with his
+      peculiar hobbling gait, as if slinking about on damaged feet. At the end
+      furthest from the grating he would be lost altogether in the darkness.
+      Only the slight limping shuffle could be heard. There was an air of moody
+      detachment in that painful prowl kept up without a pause. When the door of
+      the prison was suddenly flung open and his name shouted out he showed no
+      surprise. He swerved sharply in his walk, and passed out at once, as
+      though much depended upon his speed; but Captain Mitchell remained for
+      some time with his shoulders against the wall, quite undecided in the
+      bitterness of his spirit whether it wouldn&rsquo;t be better to refuse to stir a
+      limb in the way of protest. He had half a mind to get himself carried out,
+      but after the officer at the door had shouted three or four times in tones
+      of remonstrance and surprise he condescended to walk out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo&rsquo;s manner had changed. The colonel&rsquo;s off-hand civility was slightly
+      irresolute, as though he were in doubt if civility were the proper course
+      in this case. He observed Captain Mitchell attentively before he spoke
+      from the big armchair behind the table in a condescending voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have concluded not to detain you, Senor Mitchell. I am of a forgiving
+      disposition. I make allowances. Let this be a lesson to you, however.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The peculiar dawn of Sulaco, which seems to break far away to the westward
+      and creep back into the shade of the mountains, mingled with the reddish
+      light of the candles. Captain Mitchell, in sign of contempt and
+      indifference, let his eyes roam all over the room, and he gave a hard
+      stare to the doctor, perched already on the casement of one of the
+      windows, with his eyelids lowered, careless and thoughtful&mdash;or
+      perhaps ashamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo, ensconced in the vast armchair, remarked, &ldquo;I should have thought
+      that the feelings of a caballero would have dictated to you an appropriate
+      reply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited for it, but Captain Mitchell remaining mute, more from extreme
+      resentment than from reasoned intention, Sotillo hesitated, glanced
+      towards the doctor, who looked up and nodded, then went on with a slight
+      effort&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Senor Mitchell, is your watch. Learn how hasty and unjust has been
+      your judgment of my patriotic soldiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lying back in his seat, he extended his arm over the table and pushed the
+      watch away slightly. Captain Mitchell walked up with undisguised
+      eagerness, put it to his ear, then slipped it into his pocket coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance. Again he looked aside at
+      the doctor, who stared at him unwinkingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, without as much as a nod or a
+      glance, he hastened to say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may go and wait downstairs for the senor doctor, whom I am going to
+      liberate, too. You foreigners are insignificant, to my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself, while Captain
+      Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him with some interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The law shall take note later on of your transgressions,&rdquo; Sotillo hurried
+      on. &ldquo;But as for me, you can live free, unguarded, unobserved. Do you hear,
+      Senor Mitchell? You may depart to your affairs. You are beneath my notice.
+      My attention is claimed by matters of the very highest importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an answer. It displeased him
+      to be liberated insultingly; but want of sleep, prolonged anxieties, a
+      profound disappointment with the fatal ending of the silver-saving
+      business weighed upon his spirits. It was as much as he could do to
+      conceal his uneasiness, not about himself perhaps, but about things in
+      general. It occurred to him distinctly that something underhand was going
+      on. As he went out he ignored the doctor pointedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A brute!&rdquo; said Sotillo, as the door shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and, thrusting his hands into
+      the pockets of the long, grey dust coat he was wearing, made a few steps
+      into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way, examined him from
+      head to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So your countrymen do not confide in you very much, senor doctor. They do
+      not love you, eh? Why is that, I wonder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, lifeless stare and the
+      words, &ldquo;Perhaps because I have lived too long in Costaguana.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha! But you love yourself,&rdquo; he said, encouragingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you leave them alone,&rdquo; the doctor said, looking with the same lifeless
+      stare at Sotillo&rsquo;s handsome face, &ldquo;they will betray themselves very soon.
+      Meantime, I may try to make Don Carlos speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! senor doctor,&rdquo; said Sotillo, wagging his head, &ldquo;you are a man of
+      quick intelligence. We were made to understand each other.&rdquo; He turned
+      away. He could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless stare,
+      which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable emptiness like the black depth
+      of an abyss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there remains an appreciation
+      of rascality which, being conventional, is perfectly clear. Sotillo
+      thought that Dr. Monygham, so different from all Europeans, was ready to
+      sell his countrymen and Charles Gould, his employer, for some share of the
+      San Tome silver. Sotillo did not despise him for that. The colonel&rsquo;s want
+      of moral sense was of a profound and innocent character. It bordered upon
+      stupidity, moral stupidity. Nothing that served his ends could appear to
+      him really reprehensible. Nevertheless, he despised Dr. Monygham. He had
+      for him an immense and satisfactory contempt. He despised him with all his
+      heart because he did not mean to let the doctor have any reward at all. He
+      despised him, not as a man without faith and honour, but as a fool. Dr.
+      Monygham&rsquo;s insight into his character had deceived Sotillo completely.
+      Therefore he thought the doctor a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel&rsquo;s ideas had undergone some
+      modification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He no longer wished for a political career in Montero&rsquo;s administration. He
+      had always doubted the safety of that course. Since he had learned from
+      the chief engineer that at daylight most likely he would be confronted by
+      Pedro Montero his misgivings on that point had considerably increased. The
+      guerrillero brother of the general&mdash;the Pedrito of popular speech&mdash;had
+      a reputation of his own. He wasn&rsquo;t safe to deal with. Sotillo had vaguely
+      planned seizing not only the treasure but the town itself, and then
+      negotiating at leisure. But in the face of facts learned from the chief
+      engineer (who had frankly disclosed to him the whole situation) his
+      audacity, never of a very dashing kind, had been replaced by a most
+      cautious hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An army&mdash;an army crossed the mountains under Pedrito already,&rdquo; he
+      had repeated, unable to hide his consternation. &ldquo;If it had not been that I
+      am given the news by a man of your position I would never have believed
+      it. Astonishing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An armed force,&rdquo; corrected the engineer, suavely. His aim was attained.
+      It was to keep Sulaco clear of any armed occupation for a few hours
+      longer, to let those whom fear impelled leave the town. In the general
+      dismay there were families hopeful enough to fly upon the road towards Los
+      Hatos, which was left open by the withdrawal of the armed rabble under
+      Senores Fuentes and Gamacho, to Rincon, with their enthusiastic welcome
+      for Pedro Montero. It was a hasty and risky exodus, and it was said that
+      Hernandez, occupying with his band the woods about Los Hatos, was
+      receiving the fugitives. That a good many people he knew were
+      contemplating such a flight had been well known to the chief engineer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father Corbelan&rsquo;s efforts in the cause of that most pious robber had not
+      been altogether fruitless. The political chief of Sulaco had yielded at
+      the last moment to the urgent entreaties of the priest, had signed a
+      provisional nomination appointing Hernandez a general, and calling upon
+      him officially in this new capacity to preserve order in the town. The
+      fact is that the political chief, seeing the situation desperate, did not
+      care what he signed. It was the last official document he signed before he
+      left the palace of the Intendencia for the refuge of the O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s
+      office. But even had he meant his act to be effective it was already too
+      late. The riot which he feared and expected broke out in less than an hour
+      after Father Corbelan had left him. Indeed, Father Corbelan, who had
+      appointed a meeting with Nostromo in the Dominican Convent, where he had
+      his residence in one of the cells, never managed to reach the place. From
+      the Intendencia he had gone straight on to the Avellanos&rsquo;s house to tell
+      his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there no more than half an hour
+      he had found himself cut off from his ascetic abode. Nostromo, after
+      waiting there for some time, watching uneasily the increasing uproar in
+      the street, had made his way to the offices of the Porvenir, and stayed
+      there till daylight, as Decoud had mentioned in the letter to his sister.
+      Thus the Capataz, instead of riding towards the Los Hatos woods as bearer
+      of Hernandez&rsquo;s nomination, had remained in town to save the life of the
+      President Dictator, to assist in repressing the outbreak of the mob, and
+      at last to sail out with the silver of the mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Father Corbelan, escaping to Hernandez, had the document in his
+      pocket, a piece of official writing turning a bandit into a general in a
+      memorable last official act of the Ribierist party, whose watchwords were
+      honesty, peace, and progress. Probably neither the priest nor the bandit
+      saw the irony of it. Father Corbelan must have found messengers to send
+      into the town, for early on the second day of the disturbances there were
+      rumours of Hernandez being on the road to Los Hatos ready to receive those
+      who would put themselves under his protection. A strange-looking horseman,
+      elderly and audacious, had appeared in the town, riding slowly while his
+      eyes examined the fronts of the houses, as though he had never seen such
+      high buildings before. Before the cathedral he had dismounted, and,
+      kneeling in the middle of the Plaza, his bridle over his arm and his hat
+      lying in front of him on the ground, had bowed his head, crossing himself
+      and beating his breast for some little time. Remounting his horse, with a
+      fearless but not unfriendly look round the little gathering formed about
+      his public devotions, he had asked for the Casa Avellanos. A score of
+      hands were extended in answer, with fingers pointing up the Calle de la
+      Constitucion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horseman had gone on with only a glance of casual curiosity upwards to
+      the windows of the Amarilla Club at the corner. His stentorian voice
+      shouted periodically in the empty street, &ldquo;Which is the Casa Avellanos?&rdquo;
+       till an answer came from the scared porter, and he disappeared under the
+      gate. The letter he was bringing, written by Father Corbelan with a pencil
+      by the camp-fire of Hernandez, was addressed to Don Jose, of whose
+      critical state the priest was not aware. Antonia read it, and, after
+      consulting Charles Gould, sent it on for the information of the gentlemen
+      garrisoning the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made up; she
+      would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the last day&mdash;the last
+      hours perhaps&mdash;of her father&rsquo;s life to the keeping of the bandit,
+      whose existence was a protest against the irresponsible tyranny of all
+      parties alike, against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los
+      Hatos woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber
+      band less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle&rsquo;s
+      obstinate defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief in the man
+      whom she loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his head for Hernandez&rsquo;s
+      fidelity. As to his power, he pointed out that he had remained unsubdued
+      for so many years. In that letter Decoud&rsquo;s idea of the new Occidental
+      State (whose flourishing and stable condition is a matter of common
+      knowledge now) was for the first time made public and used as an argument.
+      Hernandez, ex-bandit and the last general of Ribierist creation, was
+      confident of being able to hold the tract of country between the woods of
+      Los Hatos and the coast range till that devoted patriot, Don Martin
+      Decoud, could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco for the reconquest of
+      the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side,&rdquo; wrote Father
+      Corbelan; there was no time to reflect upon or to controvert his
+      statement; and if the discussion started upon the reading of that letter
+      in the Amarilla Club was violent, it was also shortlived. In the general
+      bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at the idea with joyful
+      astonishment as upon the amazing discovery of a new hope. Others became
+      fascinated by the prospect of immediate personal safety for their women
+      and children. The majority caught at it as a drowning man catches at a
+      straw. Father Corbelan was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from
+      Pedrito Montero with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
+      with their armed rabble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discussion went on in the
+      big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even those members posted at the windows
+      with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street in case of an
+      offensive return of the populace shouted their opinions and arguments over
+      their shoulders. As dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting those caballeros
+      who were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew into the corredor,
+      where at a little table in the light of two candles he busied himself in
+      composing an address, or rather a solemn declaration to be presented to
+      Pedrito Montero by a deputation of such members of Assembly as had elected
+      to remain in town. His idea was to propitiate him in order to save the
+      form at least of parliamentary institutions. Seated before a blank sheet
+      of paper, a goose-quill pen in his hand and surged upon from all sides, he
+      turned to the right and to the left, repeating with solemn insistence&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of silence! We ought to make it
+      clear that we bow in all good faith to the accomplished facts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a melancholy satisfaction.
+      The hubbub of voices round him was growing strained and hoarse. In the
+      sudden pauses the excited grimacing of the faces would sink all at once
+      into the stillness of profound dejection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, the exodus had begun. Carretas full of ladies and children
+      rolled swaying across the Plaza, with men walking or riding by their side;
+      mounted parties followed on mules and horses; the poorest were setting out
+      on foot, men and women carrying bundles, clasping babies in their arms,
+      leading old people, dragging along the bigger children. When Charles
+      Gould, after leaving the doctor and the engineer at the Casa Viola,
+      entered the town by the harbour gate, all those that had meant to go were
+      gone, and the others had barricaded themselves in their houses. In the
+      whole dark street there was only one spot of flickering lights and moving
+      figures, where the Senor Administrador recognized his wife&rsquo;s carriage
+      waiting at the door of the Avellanos&rsquo;s house. He rode up, almost
+      unnoticed, and looked on without a word while some of his own servants
+      came out of the gate carrying Don Jose Avellanos, who, with closed eyes
+      and motionless features, appeared perfectly lifeless. His wife and Antonia
+      walked on each side of the improvised stretcher, which was put at once
+      into the carriage. The two women embraced; while from the other side of
+      the landau Father Corbelan&rsquo;s emissary, with his ragged beard all streaked
+      with grey, and high, bronzed cheek-bones, stared, sitting upright in the
+      saddle. Then Antonia, dry-eyed, got in by the side of the stretcher, and,
+      after making the sign of the cross rapidly, lowered a thick veil upon her
+      face. The servants and the three or four neighbours who had come to
+      assist, stood back, uncovering their heads. On the box, Ignacio, resigned
+      now to driving all night (and to having perhaps his throat cut before
+      daylight) looked back surlily over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drive carefully,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Gould in a tremulous voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, carefully; si nina,&rdquo; he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round leathery
+      cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will see them as far as the ford,&rdquo; said Charles Gould to his wife. She
+      stood on the edge of the sidewalk with her hands clasped lightly, and
+      nodded to him as he followed after the carriage. And now the windows of
+      the Amarilla Club were dark. The last spark of resistance had died out.
+      Turning his head at the corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing over
+      to their own gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of their
+      neighbours, a well-known merchant and landowner of the province, followed
+      at her elbow, talking with great gestures. As she passed in all the lights
+      went out in the street, which remained dark and empty from end to end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The houses of the vast Plaza were lost in the night. High up, like a star,
+      there was a small gleam in one of the towers of the cathedral; and the
+      equestrian statue gleamed pale against the black trees of the Alameda,
+      like a ghost of royalty haunting the scenes of revolution. The rare
+      prowlers they met ranged themselves against the wall. Beyond the last
+      houses the carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust, and
+      with a greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall from the
+      foliage of the trees bordering the country road. The emissary from
+      Hernandez&rsquo;s camp pushed his horse close to Charles Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caballero,&rdquo; he said in an interested voice, &ldquo;you are he whom they call
+      the King of Sulaco, the master of the mine? Is it not so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am the master of the mine,&rdquo; answered Charles Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man cantered for a time in silence, then said, &ldquo;I have a brother, a
+      sereno in your service in the San Tome valley. You have proved yourself a
+      just man. There has been no wrong done to any one since you called upon
+      the people to work in the mountains. My brother says that no official of
+      the Government, no oppressor of the Campo, has been seen on your side of
+      the stream. Your own officials do not oppress the people in the gorge.
+      Doubtless they are afraid of your severity. You are a just man and a
+      powerful one,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in an abrupt, independent tone, but evidently he was
+      communicative with a purpose. He told Charles Gould that he had been a
+      ranchero in one of the lower valleys, far south, a neighbour of Hernandez
+      in the old days, and godfather to his eldest boy; one of those who joined
+      him in his resistance to the recruiting raid which was the beginning of
+      all their misfortunes. It was he that, when his compadre had been carried
+      off, had buried his wife and children, murdered by the soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, senor,&rdquo; he muttered, hoarsely, &ldquo;I and two or three others, the lucky
+      ones left at liberty, buried them all in one grave near the ashes of their
+      ranch, under the tree that had shaded its roof.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to him, too, that Hernandez came after he had deserted, three years
+      afterwards. He had still his uniform on with the sergeant&rsquo;s stripes on the
+      sleeve, and the blood of his colonel upon his hands and breast. Three
+      troopers followed him, of those who had started in pursuit but had ridden
+      on for liberty. And he told Charles Gould how he and a few friends, seeing
+      those soldiers, lay in ambush behind some rocks ready to pull the trigger
+      on them, when he recognized his compadre and jumped up from cover,
+      shouting his name, because he knew that Hernandez could not have been
+      coming back on an errand of injustice and oppression. Those three
+      soldiers, together with the party who lay behind the rocks, had formed the
+      nucleus of the famous band, and he, the narrator, had been the favourite
+      lieutenant of Hernandez for many, many years. He mentioned proudly that
+      the officials had put a price upon his head, too; but it did not prevent
+      it getting sprinkled with grey upon his shoulders. And now he had lived
+      long enough to see his compadre made a general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a burst of muffled laughter. &ldquo;And now from robbers we have become
+      soldiers. But look, Caballero, at those who made us soldiers and him a
+      general! Look at these people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ignacio shouted. The light of the carriage lamps, running along the nopal
+      hedges that crowned the bank on each side, flashed upon the scared faces
+      of people standing aside in the road, sunk deep, like an English country
+      lane, into the soft soil of the Campo. They cowered; their eyes glistened
+      very big for a second; and then the light, running on, fell upon the
+      half-denuded roots of a big tree, on another stretch of nopal hedge,
+      caught up another bunch of faces glaring back apprehensively. Three women&mdash;of
+      whom one was carrying a child&mdash;and a couple of men in civilian dress&mdash;one
+      armed with a sabre and another with a gun&mdash;were grouped about a
+      donkey carrying two bundles tied up in blankets. Further on Ignacio
+      shouted again to pass a carreta, a long wooden box on two high wheels,
+      with the door at the back swinging open. Some ladies in it must have
+      recognized the white mules, because they screamed out, &ldquo;Is it you, Dona
+      Emilia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the turn of the road the glare of a big fire filled the short stretch
+      vaulted over by the branches meeting overhead. Near the ford of a shallow
+      stream a roadside rancho of woven rushes and a roof of grass had been set
+      on fire by accident, and the flames, roaring viciously, lit up an open
+      space blocked with horses, mules, and a distracted, shouting crowd of
+      people. When Ignacio pulled up, several ladies on foot assailed the
+      carriage, begging Antonia for a seat. To their clamour she answered by
+      pointing silently to her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must leave you here,&rdquo; said Charles Gould, in the uproar. The flames
+      leaped up sky-high, and in the recoil from the scorching heat across the
+      road the stream of fugitives pressed against the carriage. A middle-aged
+      lady dressed in black silk, but with a coarse manta over her head and a
+      rough branch for a stick in her hand, staggered against the front wheel.
+      Two young girls, frightened and silent, were clinging to her arms. Charles
+      Gould knew her very well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Misericordia! We are getting terribly bruised in this crowd!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed, smiling up courageously to him. &ldquo;We have started on foot. All
+      our servants ran away yesterday to join the democrats. We are going to put
+      ourselves under the protection of Father Corbelan, of your sainted uncle,
+      Antonia. He has wrought a miracle in the heart of a most merciless robber.
+      A miracle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her voice gradually up to a scream as she was borne along by
+      the pressure of people getting out of the way of some carts coming up out
+      of the ford at a gallop, with loud yells and cracking of whips. Great
+      masses of sparks mingled with black smoke flew over the road; the bamboos
+      of the walls detonated in the fire with the sound of an irregular
+      fusillade. And then the bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving only a red
+      dusk crowded with aimless dark shadows drifting in contrary directions;
+      the noise of voices seemed to die away with the flame; and the tumult of
+      heads, arms, quarrelling, and imprecations passed on fleeing into the
+      darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must leave you now,&rdquo; repeated Charles Gould to Antonia. She turned her
+      head slowly and uncovered her face. The emissary and compadre of Hernandez
+      spurred his horse close up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has not the master of the mine any message to send to Hernandez, the
+      master of the Campo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his
+      determined purpose he held the mine, and the indomitable bandit held the
+      Campo by the same precarious tenure. They were equals before the
+      lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disentangle one&rsquo;s activity
+      from its debasing contacts. A close-meshed net of crime and corruption lay
+      upon the whole country. An immense and weary discouragement sealed his
+      lips for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a just man,&rdquo; urged the emissary of Hernandez. &ldquo;Look at those
+      people who made my compadre a general and have turned us all into
+      soldiers. Look at those oligarchs fleeing for life, with only the clothes
+      on their backs. My compadre does not think of that, but our followers may
+      be wondering greatly, and I would speak for them to you. Listen, senor!
+      For many months now the Campo has been our own. We need ask no man for
+      anything; but soldiers must have their pay to live honestly when the wars
+      are over. It is believed that your soul is so just that a prayer from you
+      would cure the sickness of every beast, like the orison of the upright
+      judge. Let me have some words from your lips that would act like a charm
+      upon the doubts of our partida, where all are men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear what he says?&rdquo; Charles Gould said in English to Antonia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive us our misery!&rdquo; she exclaimed, hurriedly. &ldquo;It is your character
+      that is the inexhaustible treasure which may save us all yet; your
+      character, Carlos, not your wealth. I entreat you to give this man your
+      word that you will accept any arrangement my uncle may make with their
+      chief. One word. He will want no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the site of the roadside hut there remained nothing but an enormous
+      heap of embers, throwing afar a darkening red glow, in which Antonia&rsquo;s
+      face appeared deeply flushed with excitement. Charles Gould, with only a
+      short hesitation, pronounced the required pledge. He was like a man who
+      had ventured on a precipitous path with no room to turn, where the only
+      chance of safety is to press forward. At that moment he understood it
+      thoroughly as he looked down at Don Jose stretched out, hardly breathing,
+      by the side of the erect Antonia, vanquished in a lifelong struggle with
+      the powers of moral darkness, whose stagnant depths breed monstrous crimes
+      and monstrous illusions. In a few words the emissary from Hernandez
+      expressed his complete satisfaction. Stoically Antonia lowered her veil,
+      resisting the longing to inquire about Decoud&rsquo;s escape. But Ignacio leered
+      morosely over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a good look at the mules, mi amo,&rdquo; he grumbled. &ldquo;You shall never see
+      them again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER FOUR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould turned towards the town. Before him the jagged peaks of the
+      Sierra came out all black in the clear dawn. Here and there a muffled
+      lepero whisked round the corner of a grass-grown street before the ringing
+      hoofs of his horse. Dogs barked behind the walls of the gardens; and with
+      the colourless light the chill of the snows seemed to fall from the
+      mountains upon the disjointed pavements and the shuttered houses with
+      broken cornices and the plaster peeling in patches between the flat
+      pilasters of the fronts. The daybreak struggled with the gloom under the
+      arcades on the Plaza, with no signs of country people disposing their
+      goods for the day&rsquo;s market, piles of fruit, bundles of vegetables
+      ornamented with flowers, on low benches under enormous mat umbrellas; with
+      no cheery early morning bustle of villagers, women, children, and loaded
+      donkeys. Only a few scattered knots of revolutionists stood in the vast
+      space, all looking one way from under their slouched hats for some sign of
+      news from Rincon. The largest of those groups turned about like one man as
+      Charles Gould passed, and shouted, &ldquo;Viva la libertad!&rdquo; after him in a
+      menacing tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould rode on, and turned into the archway of his house. In the
+      patio littered with straw, a practicante, one of Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s native
+      assistants, sat on the ground with his back against the rim of the
+      fountain, fingering a guitar discreetly, while two girls of the lower
+      class, standing up before him, shuffled their feet a little and waved
+      their arms, humming a popular dance tune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of the wounded during the two days of rioting had been taken away
+      already by their friends and relations, but several figures could be seen
+      sitting up balancing their bandaged heads in time to the music. Charles
+      Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the bakery door took hold of
+      the horse&rsquo;s bridle; the practicante endeavoured to conceal his guitar
+      hastily; the girls, unabashed, stepped back smiling; and Charles Gould, on
+      his way to the staircase, glanced into a dark corner of the patio at
+      another group, a mortally wounded Cargador with a woman kneeling by his
+      side; she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the same time to force a
+      piece of orange between the stiffening lips of the dying man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity and sufferings
+      of that incorrigible people; the cruel futility of lives and of deaths
+      thrown away in the vain endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the
+      problem. Unlike Decoud, Charles Gould could not play lightly a part in a
+      tragic farce. It was tragic enough for him in all conscience, but he could
+      see no farcical element. He suffered too much under a conviction of
+      irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and too idealistic to
+      look upon its terrible humours with amusement, as Martin Decoud, the
+      imaginative materialist, was able to do in the dry light of his
+      scepticism. To him, as to all of us, the compromises with his conscience
+      appeared uglier than ever in the light of failure. His taciturnity,
+      assumed with a purpose, had prevented him from tampering openly with his
+      thoughts; but the Gould Concession had insidiously corrupted his judgment.
+      He might have known, he said to himself, leaning over the balustrade of
+      the corredor, that Ribierism could never come to anything. The mine had
+      corrupted his judgment by making him sick of bribing and intriguing merely
+      to have his work left alone from day to day. Like his father, he did not
+      like to be robbed. It exasperated him. He had persuaded himself that,
+      apart from higher considerations, the backing up of Don Jose&rsquo;s hopes of
+      reform was good business. He had gone forth into the senseless fray as his
+      poor uncle, whose sword hung on the wall of his study, had gone forth&mdash;in
+      the defence of the commonest decencies of organized society. Only his
+      weapon was the wealth of the mine, more far-reaching and subtle than an
+      honest blade of steel fitted into a simple brass guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of wealth, double-edged
+      with the cupidity and misery of mankind, steeped in all the vices of
+      self-indulgence as in a concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very
+      cause for which it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly in the hand.
+      There was nothing for it now but to go on using it. But he promised
+      himself to see it shattered into small bits before he let it be wrenched
+      from his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, with his English parentage and English upbringing, he perceived
+      that he was an adventurer in Costaguana, the descendant of adventurers
+      enlisted in a foreign legion, of men who had sought fortune in a
+      revolutionary war, who had planned revolutions, who had believed in
+      revolutions. For all the uprightness of his character, he had something of
+      an adventurer&rsquo;s easy morality which takes count of personal risk in the
+      ethical appraising of his action. He was prepared, if need be, to blow up
+      the whole San Tome mountain sky high out of the territory of the Republic.
+      This resolution expressed the tenacity of his character, the remorse of
+      that subtle conjugal infidelity through which his wife was no longer the
+      sole mistress of his thoughts, something of his father&rsquo;s imaginative
+      weakness, and something, too, of the spirit of a buccaneer throwing a
+      lighted match into the magazine rather than surrender his ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down below in the patio the wounded Cargador had breathed his last. The
+      woman cried out once, and her cry, unexpected and shrill, made all the
+      wounded sit up. The practicante scrambled to his feet, and, guitar in
+      hand, gazed steadily in her direction with elevated eyebrows. The two
+      girls&mdash;sitting now one on each side of their wounded relative, with
+      their knees drawn up and long cigars between their lips&mdash;nodded at
+      each other significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, looking down over the balustrade, saw three men dressed
+      ceremoniously in black frock-coats with white shirts, and wearing European
+      round hats, enter the patio from the street. One of them, head and
+      shoulders taller than the two others, advanced with marked gravity,
+      leading the way. This was Don Juste Lopez, accompanied by two of his
+      friends, members of Assembly, coming to call upon the Administrador of the
+      San Tome mine at this early hour. They saw him, too, waved their hands to
+      him urgently, walking up the stairs as if in procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Juste, astonishingly changed by having shaved off altogether his
+      damaged beard, had lost with it nine-tenths of his outward dignity. Even
+      at that time of serious pre-occupation Charles Gould could not help noting
+      the revealed ineptitude in the aspect of the man. His companions looked
+      crestfallen and sleepy. One kept on passing the tip of his tongue over his
+      parched lips; the other&rsquo;s eyes strayed dully over the tiled floor of the
+      corredor, while Don Juste, standing a little in advance, harangued the
+      Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. It was his firm opinion that
+      forms had to be observed. A new governor is always visited by deputations
+      from the Cabildo, which is the Municipal Council, from the Consulado, the
+      commercial Board, and it was proper that the Provincial Assembly should
+      send a deputation, too, if only to assert the existence of parliamentary
+      institutions. Don Juste proposed that Don Carlos Gould, as the most
+      prominent citizen of the province, should join the Assembly&rsquo;s deputation.
+      His position was exceptional, his personality known through the length and
+      breadth of the whole Republic. Official courtesies must not be neglected,
+      if they are gone through with a bleeding heart. The acceptance of
+      accomplished facts may save yet the precious vestiges of parliamentary
+      institutions. Don Juste&rsquo;s eyes glowed dully; he believed in parliamentary
+      institutions&mdash;and the convinced drone of his voice lost itself in the
+      stillness of the house like the deep buzzing of some ponderous insect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould had turned round to listen patiently, leaning his elbow on
+      the balustrade. He shook his head a little, refusing, almost touched by
+      the anxious gaze of the President of the Provincial Assembly. It was not
+      Charles Gould&rsquo;s policy to make the San Tome mine a party to any formal
+      proceedings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My advice, senores, is that you should wait for your fate in your houses.
+      There is no necessity for you to give yourselves up formally into
+      Montero&rsquo;s hands. Submission to the inevitable, as Don Juste calls it, is
+      all very well, but when the inevitable is called Pedrito Montero there is
+      no need to exhibit pointedly the whole extent of your surrender. The fault
+      of this country is the want of measure in political life. Flat
+      acquiescence in illegality, followed by sanguinary reaction&mdash;that,
+      senores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould stopped before the sad bewilderment of the faces, the
+      wondering, anxious glances of the eyes. The feeling of pity for those men,
+      putting all their trust into words of some sort, while murder and rapine
+      stalked over the land, had betrayed him into what seemed empty loquacity.
+      Don Juste murmured&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are abandoning us, Don Carlos. . . . And yet, parliamentary
+      institutions&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not finish from grief. For a moment he put his hand over his
+      eyes. Charles Gould, in his fear of empty loquacity, made no answer to the
+      charge. He returned in silence their ceremonious bows. His taciturnity was
+      his refuge. He understood that what they sought was to get the influence
+      of the San Tome mine on their side. They wanted to go on a conciliating
+      errand to the victor under the wing of the Gould Concession. Other public
+      bodies&mdash;the Cabildo, the Consulado&mdash;would be coming, too,
+      presently, seeking the support of the most stable, the most effective
+      force they had ever known to exist in their province.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, arriving with his sharp, jerky walk, found that the master had
+      retired into his own room with orders not to be disturbed on any account.
+      But Dr. Monygham was not anxious to see Charles Gould at once. He spent
+      some time in a rapid examination of his wounded. He gazed down upon each
+      in turn, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger; his steady
+      stare met without expression their silently inquisitive look. All these
+      cases were doing well; but when he came to the dead Cargador he stopped a
+      little longer, surveying not the man who had ceased to suffer, but the
+      woman kneeling in silent contemplation of the rigid face, with its pinched
+      nostrils and a white gleam in the imperfectly closed eyes. She lifted her
+      head slowly, and said in a dull voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not long since he had become a Cargador&mdash;only a few weeks. His
+      worship the Capataz had accepted him after many entreaties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not responsible for the great Capataz,&rdquo; muttered the doctor, moving
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Directing his course upstairs towards the door of Charles Gould&rsquo;s room,
+      the doctor at the last moment hesitated; then, turning away from the
+      handle with a shrug of his uneven shoulders, slunk off hastily along the
+      corredor in search of Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s camerista.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leonarda told him that the senora had not risen yet. The senora had given
+      into her charge the girls belonging to that Italian posadero. She,
+      Leonarda, had put them to bed in her own room. The fair girl had cried
+      herself to sleep, but the dark one&mdash;the bigger&mdash;had not closed
+      her eyes yet. She sat up in bed clutching the sheets right up under her
+      chin and staring before her like a little witch. Leonarda did not approve
+      of the Viola children being admitted to the house. She made this feeling
+      clear by the indifferent tone in which she inquired whether their mother
+      was dead yet. As to the senora, she must be asleep. Ever since she had
+      gone into her room after seeing the departure of Dona Antonia with her
+      dying father, there had been no sound behind her door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, rousing himself out of profound reflection, told her abruptly
+      to call her mistress at once. He hobbled off to wait for Mrs. Gould in the
+      sala. He was very tired, but too excited to sit down. In this great
+      drawing-room, now empty, in which his withered soul had been refreshed
+      after many arid years and his outcast spirit had accepted silently the
+      toleration of many side-glances, he wandered haphazard amongst the chairs
+      and tables till Mrs. Gould, enveloped in a morning wrapper, came in
+      rapidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that I never approved of the silver being sent away,&rdquo; the doctor
+      began at once, as a preliminary to the narrative of his night&rsquo;s adventures
+      in association with Captain Mitchell, the engineer-in-chief, and old
+      Viola, at Sotillo&rsquo;s headquarters. To the doctor, with his special
+      conception of this political crisis, the removal of the silver had seemed
+      an irrational and ill-omened measure. It was as if a general were sending
+      the best part of his troops away on the eve of battle upon some recondite
+      pretext. The whole lot of ingots might have been concealed somewhere where
+      they could have been got at for the purpose of staving off the dangers
+      which were menacing the security of the Gould Concession. The
+      Administrador had acted as if the immense and powerful prosperity of the
+      mine had been founded on methods of probity, on the sense of usefulness.
+      And it was nothing of the kind. The method followed had been the only one
+      possible. The Gould Concession had ransomed its way through all those
+      years. It was a nauseous process. He quite understood that Charles Gould
+      had got sick of it and had left the old path to back up that hopeless
+      attempt at reform. The doctor did not believe in the reform of Costaguana.
+      And now the mine was back again in its old path, with the disadvantage
+      that henceforth it had to deal not only with the greed provoked by its
+      wealth, but with the resentment awakened by the attempt to free itself
+      from its bondage to moral corruption. That was the penalty of failure.
+      What made him uneasy was that Charles Gould seemed to him to have weakened
+      at the decisive moment when a frank return to the old methods was the only
+      chance. Listening to Decoud&rsquo;s wild scheme had been a weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, &ldquo;Decoud! Decoud!&rdquo; He hobbled
+      about the room with slight, angry laughs. Many years ago both his ankles
+      had been seriously damaged in the course of a certain investigation
+      conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a commission composed of military
+      men. Their nomination had been signified to them unexpectedly at the dead
+      of night, with scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a tempestuous voice,
+      by Guzman Bento. The old tyrant, maddened by one of his sudden accesses of
+      suspicion, mingled spluttering appeals to their fidelity with imprecations
+      and horrible menaces. The cells and casements of the castle on the hill
+      had been already filled with prisoners. The commission was charged now
+      with the task of discovering the iniquitous conspiracy against the
+      Citizen-Saviour of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into a hasty ferocity
+      of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was not accustomed to wait. A conspiracy
+      had to be discovered. The courtyards of the castle resounded with the
+      clanking of leg-irons, sounds of blows, yells of pain; and the commission
+      of high officers laboured feverishly, concealing their distress and
+      apprehensions from each other, and especially from their secretary, Father
+      Beron, an army chaplain, at that time very much in the confidence of the
+      Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big round-shouldered man, with an
+      unclean-looking, overgrown tonsure on the top of his flat head, of a
+      dingy, yellow complexion, softly fat, with greasy stains all down the
+      front of his lieutenant&rsquo;s uniform, and a small cross embroidered in white
+      cotton on his left breast. He had a heavy nose and a pendant lip. Dr.
+      Monygham remembered him still. He remembered him against all the force of
+      his will striving its utmost to forget. Father Beron had been adjoined to
+      the commission by Guzman Bento expressly for the purpose that his
+      enlightened zeal should assist them in their labours. Dr. Monygham could
+      by no manner of means forget the zeal of Father Beron, or his face, or the
+      pitiless, monotonous voice in which he pronounced the words, &ldquo;Will you
+      confess now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This memory did not make him shudder, but it had made of him what he was
+      in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of common decencies,
+      something between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor. But not all
+      respectable people would have had the necessary delicacy of sentiment to
+      understand with what trouble of mind and accuracy of vision Dr. Monygham,
+      medical officer of the San Tome mine, remembered Father Beron, army
+      chaplain, and once a secretary of a military commission. After all these
+      years Dr. Monygham, in his rooms at the end of the hospital building in
+      the San Tome gorge, remembered Father Beron as distinctly as ever. He
+      remembered that priest at night, sometimes, in his sleep. On such nights
+      the doctor waited for daylight with a candle lighted, and walking the
+      whole length of his rooms to and fro, staring down at his bare feet, his
+      arms hugging his sides tightly. He would dream of Father Beron sitting at
+      the end of a long black table, behind which, in a row, appeared the heads,
+      shoulders, and epaulettes of the military members, nibbling the feather of
+      a quill pen, and listening with weary and impatient scorn to the
+      protestations of some prisoner calling heaven to witness of his innocence,
+      till he burst out, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use of wasting time over that miserable
+      nonsense! Let me take him outside for a while.&rdquo; And Father Beron would go
+      outside after the clanking prisoner, led away between two soldiers. Such
+      interludes happened on many days, many times, with many prisoners. When
+      the prisoner returned he was ready to make a full confession, Father Beron
+      would declare, leaning forward with that dull, surfeited look which can be
+      seen in the eyes of gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest&rsquo;s inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from the want of
+      classical apparatus of the Inquisition. At no time of the world&rsquo;s history
+      have men been at a loss how to inflict mental and bodily anguish upon
+      their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to them in the growing
+      complexity of their passions and the early refinement of their ingenuity.
+      But it may safely be said that primeval man did not go to the trouble of
+      inventing tortures. He was indolent and pure of heart. He brained his
+      neighbour ferociously with a stone axe from necessity and without malice.
+      The stupidest mind may invent a rankling phrase or brand the innocent with
+      a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod; a few muskets in
+      combination with a length of hide rope; or even a simple mallet of heavy,
+      hard wood applied with a swing to human fingers or to the joints of a
+      human body is enough for the infliction of the most exquisite torture. The
+      doctor had been a very stubborn prisoner, and, as a natural consequence of
+      that &ldquo;bad disposition&rdquo; (so Father Beron called it), his subjugation had
+      been very crushing and very complete. That is why the limp in his walk,
+      the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his cheeks were so pronounced.
+      His confessions, when they came at last, were very complete, too.
+      Sometimes on the nights when he walked the floor, he wondered, grinding
+      his teeth with shame and rage, at the fertility of his imagination when
+      stimulated by a sort of pain which makes truth, honour, selfrespect, and
+      life itself matters of little moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he could not forget Father Beron with his monotonous phrase, &ldquo;Will you
+      confess now?&rdquo; reaching him in an awful iteration and lucidity of meaning
+      through the delirious incoherence of unbearable pain. He could not forget.
+      But that was not the worst. Had he met Father Beron in the street after
+      all these years Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him.
+      This contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was dead; but the
+      sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking anybody in the
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham had become, in a manner, the slave of a ghost. It was
+      obviously impossible to take his knowledge of Father Beron home to Europe.
+      When making his extorted confessions to the Military Board, Dr. Monygham
+      was not seeking to avoid death. He longed for it. Sitting half-naked for
+      hours on the wet earth of his prison, and so motionless that the spiders,
+      his companions, attached their webs to his matted hair, he consoled the
+      misery of his soul with acute reasonings that he had confessed to crimes
+      enough for a sentence of death&mdash;that they had gone too far with him
+      to let him live to tell the tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as if by a refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham was left for months to
+      decay slowly in the darkness of his grave-like prison. It was no doubt
+      hoped that it would finish him off without the trouble of an execution;
+      but Dr. Monygham had an iron constitution. It was Guzman Bento who died,
+      not by the knife thrust of a conspirator, but from a stroke of apoplexy,
+      and Dr. Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters were struck off by the
+      light of a candle, which, after months of gloom, hurt his eyes so much
+      that he had to cover his face with his hands. He was raised up. His heart
+      was beating violently with the fear of this liberty. When he tried to walk
+      the extraordinary lightness of his feet made him giddy, and he fell down.
+      Two sticks were thrust into his hands, and he was pushed out of the
+      passage. It was dusk; candles glimmered already in the windows of the
+      officers&rsquo; quarters round the courtyard; but the twilight sky dazed him by
+      its enormous and overwhelming brilliance. A thin poncho hung over his
+      naked, bony shoulders; the rags of his trousers came down no lower than
+      his knees; an eighteen months&rsquo; growth of hair fell in dirty grey locks on
+      each side of his sharp cheek-bones. As he dragged himself past the
+      guard-room door, one of the soldiers, lolling outside, moved by some
+      obscure impulse, leaped forward with a strange laugh and rammed a broken
+      old straw hat on his head. And Dr. Monygham, after having tottered,
+      continued on his way. He advanced one stick, then one maimed foot, then
+      the other stick; the other foot followed only a very short distance along
+      the ground, toilfully, as though it were almost too heavy to be moved at
+      all; and yet his legs under the hanging angles of the poncho appeared no
+      thicker than the two sticks in his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated
+      his bent body, all his wasted limbs, his bony head, the conical, ragged
+      crown of the sombrero, whose ample flat rim rested on his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr. Monygham go forth to take
+      possession of his liberty. And these conditions seemed to bind him
+      indissolubly to the land of Costaguana like an awful procedure of
+      naturalization, involving him deep in the national life, far deeper than
+      any amount of success and honour could have done. They did away with his
+      Europeanism; for Dr. Monygham had made himself an ideal conception of his
+      disgrace. It was a conception eminently fit and proper for an officer and
+      a gentleman. Dr. Monygham, before he went out to Costaguana, had been
+      surgeon in one of Her Majesty&rsquo;s regiments of foot. It was a conception
+      which took no account of physiological facts or reasonable arguments; but
+      it was not stupid for all that. It was simple. A rule of conduct resting
+      mainly on severe rejections is necessarily simple. Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s view of
+      what it behoved him to do was severe; it was an ideal view, in so much
+      that it was the imaginative exaggeration of a correct feeling. It was
+      also, in its force, influence, and persistency, the view of an eminently
+      loyal nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s nature. He had settled
+      it all on Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s head. He believed her worthy of every devotion. At
+      the bottom of his heart he felt an angry uneasiness before the prosperity
+      of the San Tome mine, because its growth was robbing her of all peace of
+      mind. Costaguana was no place for a woman of that kind. What could Charles
+      Gould have been thinking of when he brought her out there! It was
+      outrageous! And the doctor had watched the course of events with a grim
+      and distant reserve which, he imagined, his lamentable history imposed
+      upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out of account the safety
+      of her husband. The doctor had contrived to be in town at the critical
+      time because he mistrusted Charles Gould. He considered him hopelessly
+      infected with the madness of revolutions. That is why he hobbled in
+      distress in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould on that morning,
+      exclaiming, &ldquo;Decoud, Decoud!&rdquo; in a tone of mournful irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening eyes, looked
+      straight before her at the sudden enormity of that disaster. The
+      finger-tips on one hand rested lightly on a low little table by her side,
+      and the arm trembled right up to the shoulder. The sun, which looks late
+      upon Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of its power high up on the sky
+      from behind the dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had precipitated the
+      delicate, smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which the town lies steeped
+      during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of black shade and spaces of
+      hot, blinding glare. Three long rectangles of sunshine fell through the
+      windows of the sala; while just across the street the front of the
+      Avellanos&rsquo;s house appeared very sombre in its own shadow seen through the
+      flood of light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice said at the door, &ldquo;What of Decoud?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming along the corredor.
+      His glance just glided over his wife and struck full at the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have brought some news, doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough. For some time after
+      he had done, the Administrador of the San Tome mine remained looking at
+      him without a word. Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her hands lying
+      on her lap. A silence reigned between those three motionless persons. Then
+      Charles Gould spoke&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must want some breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up her husband&rsquo;s
+      hand and pressed it as she went out, raising her handkerchief to her eyes.
+      The sight of her husband had brought Antonia&rsquo;s position to her mind, and
+      she could not contain her tears at the thought of the poor girl. When she
+      rejoined the two men in the diningroom after having bathed her face,
+      Charles Gould was saying to the doctor across the table&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, there does not seem any room for doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the doctor assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t see myself how we could question that wretched Hirsch&rsquo;s tale.
+      It&rsquo;s only too true, I fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from one to
+      the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their heads away, tried
+      to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry; he
+      seized his knife and fork, and began to eat with emphasis, as if on the
+      stage. Charles Gould made no pretence of the sort; with his elbows raised
+      squarely, he twisted both ends of his flaming moustaches&mdash;they were
+      so long that his hands were quite away from his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not surprised,&rdquo; he muttered, abandoning his moustaches and throwing
+      one arm over the back of his chair. His face was calm with that immobility
+      of expression which betrays the intensity of a mental struggle. He felt
+      that this accident had brought to a point all the consequences involved in
+      his line of conduct, with its conscious and subconscious intentions. There
+      must be an end now of this silent reserve, of that air of impenetrability
+      behind which he had been safeguarding his dignity. It was the least
+      ignoble form of dissembling forced upon him by that parody of civilized
+      institutions which offended his intelligence, his uprightness, and his
+      sense of right. He was like his father. He had no ironic eye. He was not
+      amused at the absurdities that prevail in this world. They hurt him in his
+      innate gravity. He felt that the miserable death of that poor Decoud took
+      from him his inaccessible position of a force in the background. It
+      committed him openly unless he wished to throw up the game&mdash;and that
+      was impossible. The material interests required from him the sacrifice of
+      his aloofness&mdash;perhaps his own safety too. And he reflected that
+      Decoud&rsquo;s separationist plan had not gone to the bottom with the lost
+      silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only thing that was not changed was his position towards Mr. Holroyd.
+      The head of silver and steel interests had entered into Costaguana affairs
+      with a sort of passion. Costaguana had become necessary to his existence;
+      in the San Tome mine he had found the imaginative satisfaction which other
+      minds would get from drama, from art, or from a risky and fascinating
+      sport. It was a special form of the great man&rsquo;s extravagance, sanctioned
+      by a moral intention, big enough to flatter his vanity. Even in this
+      aberration of his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles
+      Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and judged with the
+      indulgence of their common passion. Nothing now could surprise or startle
+      this great man. And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San
+      Francisco in some such words: &ldquo;. . . . The men at the head of the movement
+      are dead or have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end
+      for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, but
+      in the characteristic manner of this country. But Barrios, untouched in
+      Cayta, remains still available. I am forced to take up openly the plan of
+      a provincial revolution as the only way of placing the enormous material
+      interests involved in the prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position of
+      permanent safety. . . .&rdquo; That was clear. He saw these words as if written
+      in letters of fire upon the wall at which he was gazing abstractedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It was a domestic and
+      frightful phenomenon that darkened and chilled the house for her like a
+      thundercloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould&rsquo;s fits of abstraction
+      depicted the energetic concentration of a will haunted by a fixed idea. A
+      man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if that idea
+      is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the heaven down pitilessly
+      upon a loved head? The eyes of Mrs. Gould, watching her husband&rsquo;s profile,
+      filled with tears again. And again she seemed to see the despair of the
+      unfortunate Antonia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would I have done if Charley had been drowned while we were
+      engaged?&rdquo; she exclaimed, mentally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice,
+      while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre
+      consuming all her earthly affections. The tears burst out of her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antonia will kill herself!&rdquo; she cried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This cry fell into the silence of the room with strangely little effect.
+      Only the doctor, crumbling up a piece of bread, with his head inclined on
+      one side, raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of his
+      shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr. Monygham thought quite
+      sincerely that Decoud was a singularly unworthy object for any woman&rsquo;s
+      affection. Then he lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip, and his
+      heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thinks of that girl,&rdquo; he said to himself; &ldquo;she thinks of the Viola
+      children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners; she always
+      thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if
+      Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage those confounded
+      Avellanos have drawn him into? No one seems to be thinking of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections subtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is big enough to take in
+      hand the making of a new State. It&rsquo;ll please him. It&rsquo;ll reconcile him to
+      the risk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he was inaccessible. To
+      send off a boat to Cayta was no longer possible, since Sotillo was master
+      of the harbour, and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with all the
+      democrats in the province up, and every Campo township in a state of
+      disturbance, where could he find a man who would make his way successfully
+      overland to Cayta with a message, a ten days&rsquo; ride at least; a man of
+      courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or murder, and if arrested
+      would faithfully eat the paper? The Capataz de Cargadores would have been
+      just such a man. But the Capataz of the Cargadores was no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the wall, said gently, &ldquo;That
+      Hirsch! What an extraordinary thing! Saved himself by clinging to the
+      anchor, did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco. I thought he
+      had gone back overland to Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came here
+      once to talk to me about his hide business and some other things. I made
+      it clear to him that nothing could be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez being about,&rdquo;
+       remarked the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And but for him we might not have known anything of what has happened,&rdquo;
+       marvelled Charles Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould cried out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antonia must not know! She must not be told. Not now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody&rsquo;s likely to carry the news,&rdquo; remarked the doctor. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no one&rsquo;s
+      interest. Moreover, the people here are afraid of Hernandez as if he were
+      the devil.&rdquo; He turned to Charles Gould. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s even awkward, because if you
+      wanted to communicate with the refugees you could find no messenger. When
+      Hernandez was ranging hundreds of miles away from here the Sulaco populace
+      used to shudder at the tales of him roasting his prisoners alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; murmured Charles Gould; &ldquo;Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s Capataz was the only
+      man in the town who had seen Hernandez eye to eye. Father Corbelan
+      employed him. He opened the communications first. It is a pity that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was covered by the booming of the great bell of the cathedral.
+      Three single strokes, one after another, burst out explosively, dying away
+      in deep and mellow vibrations. And then all the bells in the tower of
+      every church, convent, or chapel in town, even those that had remained
+      shut up for years, pealed out together with a crash. In this furious flood
+      of metallic uproar there was a power of suggesting images of strife and
+      violence which blanched Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s cheek. Basilio, who had been waiting
+      at table, shrinking within himself, clung to the sideboard with chattering
+      teeth. It was impossible to hear yourself speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut these windows!&rdquo; Charles Gould yelled at him, angrily. All the other
+      servants, terrified at what they took for the signal of a general
+      massacre, had rushed upstairs, tumbling over each other, men and women,
+      the obscure and generally invisible population of the ground floor on the
+      four sides of the patio. The women, screaming &ldquo;Misericordia!&rdquo; ran right
+      into the room, and, falling on their knees against the walls, began to
+      cross themselves convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked the
+      doorway in an instant&mdash;mozos from the stable, gardeners, nondescript
+      helpers living on the crumbs of the munificent house&mdash;and Charles
+      Gould beheld all the extent of his domestic establishment, even to the
+      gatekeeper. This was a half-paralyzed old man, whose long white locks fell
+      down to his shoulders: an heirloom taken up by Charles Gould&rsquo;s familial
+      piety. He could remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a Costaguanero of
+      the second generation, chief of the Sulaco province; he had been his
+      personal mozo years and years ago in peace and war; had been allowed to
+      attend his master in prison; had, on the fatal morning, followed the
+      firing squad; and, peeping from behind one of the cypresses growing along
+      the wall of the Franciscan Convent, had seen, with his eyes starting out
+      of his head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall with his face in the
+      dust. Charles Gould noted particularly the big patriarchal head of that
+      witness in the rear of the other servants. But he was surprised to see a
+      shrivelled old hag or two, of whose existence within the walls of his
+      house he had not been aware. They must have been the mothers, or even the
+      grandmothers of some of his people. There were a few children, too, more
+      or less naked, crying and clinging to the legs of their elders. He had
+      never before noticed any sign of a child in his patio. Even Leonarda, the
+      camerista, came in a fright, pushing through, with her spoiled, pouting
+      face of a favourite maid, leading the Viola girls by the hand. The
+      crockery rattled on table and sideboard, and the whole house seemed to
+      sway in the deafening wave of sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER FIVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During the night the expectant populace had taken possession of all the
+      belfries in the town in order to welcome Pedrito Montero, who was making
+      his entry after having slept the night in Rincon. And first came
+      straggling in through the land gate the armed mob of all colours,
+      complexions, types, and states of raggedness, calling themselves the
+      Sulaco National Guard, and commanded by Senor Gamacho. Through the middle
+      of the street streamed, like a torrent of rubbish, a mass of straw hats,
+      ponchos, gun-barrels, with an enormous green and yellow flag flapping in
+      their midst, in a cloud of dust, to the furious beating of drums. The
+      spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses shouting their Vivas!
+      Behind the rabble could be seen the lances of the cavalry, the &ldquo;army&rdquo; of
+      Pedro Montero. He advanced between Senores Fuentes and Gamacho at the head
+      of his llaneros, who had accomplished the feat of crossing the Paramos of
+      the Higuerota in a snow-storm. They rode four abreast, mounted on
+      confiscated Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous stock of roadside
+      stores they had looted hurriedly in their rapid ride through the northern
+      part of the province; for Pedro Montero had been in a great hurry to
+      occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely around their bare throats
+      were glaringly new, and all the right sleeves of their cotton shirts had
+      been cut off close to the shoulder for greater freedom in throwing the
+      lazo. Emaciated greybeards rode by the side of lean dark youths, marked by
+      all the hardships of campaigning, with strips of raw beef twined round the
+      crowns of their hats, and huge iron spurs fastened to their naked heels.
+      Those that in the passes of the mountain had lost their lances had
+      provided themselves with the goads used by the Campo cattlemen: slender
+      shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with a lot of loose rings jingling
+      under the ironshod point. They were armed with knives and revolvers. A
+      haggard fearlessness characterized the expression of all these sun-blacked
+      countenances; they glared down haughtily with their scorched eyes at the
+      crowd, or, blinking upwards insolently, pointed out to each other some
+      particular head amongst the women at the windows. When they had ridden
+      into the Plaza and caught sight of the equestrian statue of the King
+      dazzlingly white in the sunshine, towering enormous and motionless above
+      the surges of the crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting, a murmur of
+      surprise ran through their ranks. &ldquo;What is that saint in the big hat?&rdquo;
+       they asked each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains with which Pedro
+      Montero had helped so much the victorious career of his brother the
+      general. The influence which that man, brought up in coast towns, acquired
+      in a short time over the plainsmen of the Republic can be ascribed only to
+      a genius for treachery of so effective a kind that it must have appeared
+      to those violent men but little removed from a state of utter savagery, as
+      the perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular lore of all nations
+      testifies that duplicity and cunning, together with bodily strength, were
+      looked upon, even more than courage, as heroic virtues by primitive
+      mankind. To overcome your adversary was the great affair of life. Courage
+      was taken for granted. But the use of intelligence awakened wonder and
+      respect. Stratagems, providing they did not fail, were honourable; the
+      easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy evoked no feelings but those of
+      gladness, pride, and admiration. Not perhaps that primitive men were more
+      faithless than their descendants of to-day, but that they went straighter
+      to their aim, and were more artless in their recognition of success as the
+      only standard of morality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have changed since. The use of intelligence awakens little wonder and
+      less respect. But the ignorant and barbarous plainsmen engaging in civil
+      strife followed willingly a leader who often managed to deliver their
+      enemies bound, as it were, into their hands. Pedro Montero had a talent
+      for lulling his adversaries into a sense of security. And as men learn
+      wisdom with extreme slowness, and are always ready to believe promises
+      that flatter their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful time after
+      time. Whether only a servant or some inferior official in the Costaguana
+      Legation in Paris, he had rushed back to his country directly he heard
+      that his brother had emerged from the obscurity of his frontier
+      commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his gift of plausibility the
+      chiefs of the Ribierist movement in the capital, and even the acute agent
+      of the San Tome mine had failed to understand him thoroughly. At once he
+      had obtained an enormous influence over his brother. They were very much
+      alike in appearance, both bald, with bunches of crisp hair above their
+      ears, arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro was smaller
+      than the general, more delicate altogether, with an ape-like faculty for
+      imitating all the outward signs of refinement and distinction, and with a
+      parrot-like talent for languages. Both brothers had received some
+      elementary instruction by the munificence of a great European traveller,
+      to whom their father had been a body-servant during his journeys in the
+      interior of the country. In General Montero&rsquo;s case it enabled him to rise
+      from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger, incorrigibly lazy and slovenly, had
+      drifted aimlessly from one coast town to another, hanging about
+      counting-houses, attaching himself to strangers as a sort of
+      valet-de-place, picking up an easy and disreputable living. His ability to
+      read did nothing for him but fill his head with absurd visions. His
+      actions were usually determined by motives so improbable in themselves as
+      to escape the penetration of a rational person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession in Sta. Marta had
+      credited him with the possession of sane views, and even with a
+      restraining power over the general&rsquo;s everlastingly discontented vanity. It
+      could never have entered his head that Pedrito Montero, lackey or inferior
+      scribe, lodged in the garrets of the various Parisian hotels where the
+      Costaguana Legation used to shelter its diplomatic dignity, had been
+      devouring the lighter sort of historical works in the French language,
+      such, for instance as the books of Imbert de Saint Amand upon the Second
+      Empire. But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a brilliant court,
+      and had conceived the idea of an existence for himself where, like the Duc
+      de Morny, he would associate the command of every pleasure with the
+      conduct of political affairs and enjoy power supremely in every way.
+      Nobody could have guessed that. And yet this was one of the immediate
+      causes of the Monterist Revolution. This will appear less incredible by
+      the reflection that the fundamental causes were the same as ever, rooted
+      in the political immaturity of the people, in the indolence of the upper
+      classes and the mental darkness of the lower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother the road wide open to
+      his wildest imaginings. This was what made the Monterist pronunciamiento
+      so unpreventable. The general himself probably could have been bought off,
+      pacified with flatteries, despatched on a diplomatic mission to Europe. It
+      was his brother who had egged him on from first to last. He wanted to
+      become the most brilliant statesman of South America. He did not desire
+      supreme power. He would have been afraid of its labour and risk, in fact.
+      Before all, Pedrito Montero, taught by his European experience, meant to
+      acquire a serious fortune for himself. With this object in view he
+      obtained from his brother, on the very morrow of the successful battle,
+      the permission to push on over the mountains and take possession of
+      Sulaco. Sulaco was the land of future prosperity, the chosen land of
+      material progress, the only province in the Republic of interest to
+      European capitalists. Pedrito Montero, following the example of the Duc de
+      Morny, meant to have his share of this prosperity. This is what he meant
+      literally. Now his brother was master of the country, whether as
+      President, Dictator, or even as Emperor&mdash;why not as an Emperor?&mdash;he
+      meant to demand a share in every enterprise&mdash;in railways, in mines,
+      in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land companies, in each and every
+      undertaking&mdash;as the price of his protection. The desire to be on the
+      spot early was the real cause of the celebrated ride over the mountains
+      with some two hundred llaneros, an enterprise of which the dangers had not
+      appeared at first clearly to his impatience. Coming from a series of
+      victories, it seemed to him that a Montero had only to appear to be master
+      of the situation. This illusion had betrayed him into a rashness of which
+      he was becoming aware. As he rode at the head of his llaneros he regretted
+      that there were so few of them. The enthusiasm of the populace reassured
+      him. They yelled &ldquo;Viva Montero! Viva Pedrito!&rdquo; In order to make them still
+      more enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had in dissembling, he
+      dropped the reins on his horse&rsquo;s neck, and with a tremendous effect of
+      familiarity and confidence slipped his hands under the arms of Senores
+      Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture, with a ragged town mozo holding his
+      horse by the bridle, he rode triumphantly across the Plaza to the door of
+      the Intendencia. Its old gloomy walls seemed to shake in the acclamations
+      that rent the air and covered the crashing peals of the cathedral bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dismounted into a shouting and
+      perspiring throng of enthusiasts whom the ragged Nationals were pushing
+      back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he surveyed the large crowd gaping at
+      him and the bullet-speckled walls of the houses opposite lightly veiled by
+      a sunny haze of dust. The word &ldquo;<i>Pourvenir</i>&rdquo; in immense black
+      capitals, alternating with broken windows, stared at him across the vast
+      space; and he thought with delight of the hour of vengeance, because he
+      was very sure of laying his hands upon Decoud. On his left hand, Gamacho,
+      big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face, uncovered a set of yellow fangs in
+      a grin of stupid hilarity. On his right, Senor Fuentes, small and lean,
+      looked on with compressed lips. The crowd stared literally open-mouthed,
+      lost in eager stillness, as though they had expected the great
+      guerrillero, the famous Pedrito, to begin scattering at once some sort of
+      visible largesse. What he began was a speech. He began it with the shouted
+      word &ldquo;Citizens!&rdquo; which reached even those in the middle of the Plaza.
+      Afterwards the greater part of the citizens remained fascinated by the
+      orator&rsquo;s action alone, his tip-toeing, the arms flung above his head with
+      the fists clenched, a hand laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of
+      rolling eyes, the sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, a hand laid
+      familiarly on Gamacho&rsquo;s shoulder; a hand waved formally towards the little
+      black-coated person of Senor Fuentes, advocate and politician and a true
+      friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the orator bursting
+      out suddenly propagated themselves irregularly to the confines of the
+      crowd, like flames running over dry grass, and expired in the opening of
+      the streets. In the intervals, over the swarming Plaza brooded a heavy
+      silence, in which the mouth of the orator went on opening and shutting,
+      and detached phrases&mdash;&ldquo;The happiness of the people,&rdquo; &ldquo;Sons of the
+      country,&rdquo; &ldquo;The entire world, el mundo entiero&rdquo;&mdash;reached even the
+      packed steps of the cathedral with a feeble clear ring, thin as the
+      buzzing of a mosquito. But the orator struck his breast; he seemed to
+      prance between his two supporters. It was the supreme effort of his
+      peroration. Then the two smaller figures disappeared from the public gaze
+      and the enormous Gamacho, left alone, advanced, raising his hat high above
+      his head. Then he covered himself proudly and yelled out, &ldquo;Ciudadanos!&rdquo; A
+      dull roar greeted Senor Gamacho, ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of
+      the National Guards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from one wrecked room of the
+      Intendencia to another, snarling incessantly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What stupidity! What destruction!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Senor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn disposition to murmur&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;&rdquo; and then, inclining his
+      head on his left shoulder, would press together his lips so firmly that a
+      little hollow would appear at each corner. He had his nomination for
+      Political Chief of the town in his pocket, and was all impatience to enter
+      upon his functions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all starred by stones,
+      the hangings torn down and the canopy over the platform at the upper end
+      pulled to pieces, the vast, deep muttering of the crowd and the howling
+      voice of Gamacho speaking just below reached them through the shutters as
+      they stood idly in dimness and desolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The brute!&rdquo; observed his Excellency Don Pedro Montero through clenched
+      teeth. &ldquo;We must contrive as quickly as possible to send him and his
+      Nationals out there to fight Hernandez.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new Gefe Politico only jerked his head sideways, and took a puff at
+      his cigarette in sign of his agreement with this method for ridding the
+      town of Gamacho and his inconvenient rabble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely bare floor, and at
+      the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames running round the room, out of which
+      the remnants of torn and slashed canvases fluttered like dingy rags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are not barbarians,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was what said his Excellency, the popular Pedrito, the guerrillero
+      skilled in the art of laying ambushes, charged by his brother at his own
+      demand with the organization of Sulaco on democratic principles. The night
+      before, during the consultation with his partisans, who had come out to
+      meet him in Rincon, he had opened his intentions to Senor Fuentes&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, confiding the destinies
+      of our beloved country to the wisdom and valiance of my heroic brother,
+      the invincible general. A plebiscite. Do you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Senor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks, had inclined his head
+      slightly to the left, letting a thin, bluish jet of smoke escape through
+      his pursed lips. He had understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation. Not a single chair,
+      table, sofa, etagere or console had been left in the state rooms of the
+      Intendencia. His Excellency, though twitching all over with rage, was
+      restrained from bursting into violence by a sense of his remoteness and
+      isolation. His heroic brother was very far away. Meantime, how was he
+      going to take his siesta? He had expected to find comfort and luxury in
+      the Intendencia after a year of hard camp life, ending with the hardships
+      and privations of the daring dash upon Sulaco&mdash;upon the province
+      which was worth more in wealth and influence than all the rest of the
+      Republic&rsquo;s territory. He would get even with Gamacho by-and-by. And Senor
+      Gamacho&rsquo;s oration, delectable to popular ears, went on in the heat and
+      glare of the Plaza like the uncouth howlings of an inferior sort of devil
+      cast into a white-hot furnace. Every moment he had to wipe his streaming
+      face with his bare fore-arm; he had flung off his coat, and had turned up
+      the sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but he kept on his head
+      the large cocked hat with white plumes. His ingenuousness cherished this
+      sign of his rank as Commandante of the National Guards. Approving and
+      grave murmurs greeted his periods. His opinion was that war should be
+      declared at once against France, England, Germany, and the United States,
+      who, by introducing railways, mining enterprises, colonization, and under
+      such other shallow pretences, aimed at robbing poor people of their lands,
+      and with the help of these Goths and paralytics, the aristocrats would
+      convert them into toiling and miserable slaves. And the leperos, flinging
+      about the corners of their dirty white mantas, yelled their approbation.
+      General Montero, Gamacho howled with conviction, was the only man equal to
+      the patriotic task. They assented to that, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning was wearing on; there were already signs of disruption,
+      currents and eddies in the crowd. Some were seeking the shade of the walls
+      and under the trees of the Alameda. Horsemen spurred through, shouting;
+      groups of sombreros set level on heads against the vertical sun were
+      drifting away into the streets, where the open doors of pulperias revealed
+      an enticing gloom resounding with the gentle tinkling of guitars. The
+      National Guards were thinking of siesta, and the eloquence of Gamacho,
+      their chief, was exhausted. Later on, when, in the cooler hours of the
+      afternoon, they tried to assemble again for further consideration of
+      public affairs, detachments of Montero&rsquo;s cavalry camped on the Alameda
+      charged them without parley, at speed, with long lances levelled at their
+      flying backs as far as the ends of the streets. The National Guards of
+      Sulaco were surprised by this proceeding. But they were not indignant. No
+      Costaguanero had ever learned to question the eccentricities of a military
+      force. They were part of the natural order of things. This must be, they
+      concluded, some kind of administrative measure, no doubt. But the motive
+      of it escaped their unaided intelligence, and their chief and orator,
+      Gamacho, Commandante of the National Guard, was lying drunk and asleep in
+      the bosom of his family. His bare feet were upturned in the shadows
+      repulsively, in the manner of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had dropped
+      open. His youngest daughter, scratching her head with one hand, with the
+      other waved a green bough over his scorched and peeling face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER SIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The declining sun had shifted the shadows from west to east amongst the
+      houses of the town. It had shifted them upon the whole extent of the
+      immense Campo, with the white walls of its haciendas on the knolls
+      dominating the green distances; with its grass-thatched ranches crouching
+      in the folds of ground by the banks of streams; with the dark islands of
+      clustered trees on a clear sea of grass, and the precipitous range of the
+      Cordillera, immense and motionless, emerging from the billows of the lower
+      forests like the barren coast of a land of giants. The sunset rays
+      striking the snow-slope of Higuerota from afar gave it an air of rosy
+      youth, while the serrated mass of distant peaks remained black, as if
+      calcined in the fiery radiance. The undulating surface of the forests
+      seemed powdered with pale gold dust; and away there, beyond Rincon, hidden
+      from the town by two wooded spurs, the rocks of the San Tome gorge, with
+      the flat wall of the mountain itself crowned by gigantic ferns, took on
+      warm tones of brown and yellow, with red rusty streaks, and the dark green
+      clumps of bushes rooted in crevices. From the plain the stamp sheds and
+      the houses of the mine appeared dark and small, high up, like the nests of
+      birds clustered on the ledges of a cliff. The zigzag paths resembled faint
+      tracings scratched on the wall of a cyclopean blockhouse. To the two
+      serenos of the mine on patrol duty, strolling, carbine in hand, and
+      watchful eyes, in the shade of the trees lining the stream near the
+      bridge, Don Pepe, descending the path from the upper plateau, appeared no
+      bigger than a large beetle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his air of aimless, insect-like going to and fro upon the face of the
+      rock, Don Pepe&rsquo;s figure kept on descending steadily, and, when near the
+      bottom, sank at last behind the roofs of store-houses, forges, and
+      workshops. For a time the pair of serenos strolled back and forth before
+      the bridge, on which they had stopped a horseman holding a large white
+      envelope in his hand. Then Don Pepe, emerging in the village street from
+      amongst the houses, not a stone&rsquo;s throw from the frontier bridge,
+      approached, striding in wide dark trousers tucked into boots, a white
+      linen jacket, sabre at his side, and revolver at his belt. In this
+      disturbed time nothing could find the Senor Gobernador with his boots off,
+      as the saying is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a slight nod from one of the serenos, the man, a messenger from the
+      town, dismounted, and crossed the bridge, leading his horse by the bridle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Pepe received the letter from his other hand, slapped his left side
+      and his hips in succession, feeling for his spectacle case. After settling
+      the heavy silvermounted affair astride his nose, and adjusting it
+      carefully behind his ears, he opened the envelope, holding it up at about
+      a foot in front of his eyes. The paper he pulled out contained some three
+      lines of writing. He looked at them for a long time. His grey moustache
+      moved slightly up and down, and the wrinkles, radiating at the corners of
+      his eyes, ran together. He nodded serenely. &ldquo;Bueno,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There is no
+      answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in his quiet, kindly way, he engaged in a cautious conversation with
+      the man, who was willing to talk cheerily, as if something lucky had
+      happened to him recently. He had seen from a distance Sotillo&rsquo;s infantry
+      camped along the shore of the harbour on each side of the Custom House.
+      They had done no damage to the buildings. The foreigners of the railway
+      remained shut up within the yards. They were no longer anxious to shoot
+      poor people. He cursed the foreigners; then he reported Montero&rsquo;s entry
+      and the rumours of the town. The poor were going to be made rich now. That
+      was very good. More he did not know, and, breaking into propitiatory
+      smiles, he intimated that he was hungry and thirsty. The old major
+      directed him to go to the alcalde of the first village. The man rode off,
+      and Don Pepe, striding slowly in the direction of a little wooden belfry,
+      looked over a hedge into a little garden, and saw Father Roman sitting in
+      a white hammock slung between two orange trees in front of the presbytery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An enormous tamarind shaded with its dark foliage the whole white
+      framehouse. A young Indian girl with long hair, big eyes, and small hands
+      and feet, carried out a wooden chair, while a thin old woman, crabbed and
+      vigilant, watched her all the time from the verandah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Pepe sat down in the chair and lighted a cigar; the priest drew in an
+      immense quantity of snuff out of the hollow of his palm. On his
+      reddish-brown face, worn, hollowed as if crumbled, the eyes, fresh and
+      candid, sparkled like two black diamonds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Pepe, in a mild and humorous voice, informed Father Roman that Pedrito
+      Montero, by the hand of Senor Fuentes, had asked him on what terms he
+      would surrender the mine in proper working order to a legally constituted
+      commission of patriotic citizens, escorted by a small military force. The
+      priest cast his eyes up to heaven. However, Don Pepe continued, the mozo
+      who brought the letter said that Don Carlos Gould was alive, and so far
+      unmolested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father Roman expressed in a few words his thankfulness at hearing of the
+      Senor Administrador&rsquo;s safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hour of oration had gone by in the silvery ringing of a bell in the
+      little belfry. The belt of forest closing the entrance of the valley stood
+      like a screen between the low sun and the street of the village. At the
+      other end of the rocky gorge, between the walls of basalt and granite, a
+      forest-clad mountain, hiding all the range from the San Tome dwellers,
+      rose steeply, lighted up and leafy to the very top. Three small rosy
+      clouds hung motionless overhead in the great depth of blue. Knots of
+      people sat in the street between the wattled huts. Before the casa of the
+      alcalde, the foremen of the night-shift, already assembled to lead their
+      men, squatted on the ground in a circle of leather skull-caps, and, bowing
+      their bronze backs, were passing round the gourd of mate. The mozo from
+      the town, having fastened his horse to a wooden post before the door, was
+      telling them the news of Sulaco as the blackened gourd of the decoction
+      passed from hand to hand. The grave alcalde himself, in a white waistcloth
+      and a flowered chintz gown with sleeves, open wide upon his naked stout
+      person with an effect of a gaudy bathing robe, stood by, wearing a rough
+      beaver hat at the back of his head, and grasping a tall staff with a
+      silver knob in his hand. These insignia of his dignity had been conferred
+      upon him by the Administration of the mine, the fountain of honour, of
+      prosperity, and peace. He had been one of the first immigrants into this
+      valley; his sons and sons-in-law worked within the mountain which seemed
+      with its treasures to pour down the thundering ore shoots of the upper
+      mesa, the gifts of well-being, security, and justice upon the toilers. He
+      listened to the news from the town with curiosity and indifference, as if
+      concerning another world than his own. And it was true that they appeared
+      to him so. In a very few years the sense of belonging to a powerful
+      organization had been developed in these harassed, half-wild Indians. They
+      were proud of, and attached to, the mine. It had secured their confidence
+      and belief. They invested it with a protecting and invincible virtue as
+      though it were a fetish made by their own hands, for they were ignorant,
+      and in other respects did not differ appreciably from the rest of mankind
+      which puts infinite trust in its own creations. It never entered the
+      alcalde&rsquo;s head that the mine could fail in its protection and force.
+      Politics were good enough for the people of the town and the Campo. His
+      yellow, round face, with wide nostrils, and motionless in expression,
+      resembled a fierce full moon. He listened to the excited vapourings of the
+      mozo without misgivings, without surprise, without any active sentiment
+      whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Padre Roman sat dejectedly balancing himself, his feet just touching the
+      ground, his hands gripping the edge of the hammock. With less confidence,
+      but as ignorant as his flock, he asked the major what did he think was
+      going to happen now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Pepe, bolt upright in the chair, folded his hands peacefully on the
+      hilt of his sword, standing perpendicular between his thighs, and answered
+      that he did not know. The mine could be defended against any force likely
+      to be sent to take possession. On the other hand, from the arid character
+      of the valley, when the regular supplies from the Campo had been cut off,
+      the population of the three villages could be starved into submission. Don
+      Pepe exposed these contingencies with serenity to Father Roman, who, as an
+      old campaigner, was able to understand the reasoning of a military man.
+      They talked with simplicity and directness. Father Roman was saddened at
+      the idea of his flock being scattered or else enslaved. He had no
+      illusions as to their fate, not from penetration, but from long experience
+      of political atrocities, which seemed to him fatal and unavoidable in the
+      life of a State. The working of the usual public institutions presented
+      itself to him most distinctly as a series of calamities overtaking private
+      individuals and flowing logically from each other through hate, revenge,
+      folly, and rapacity, as though they had been part of a divine
+      dispensation. Father Roman&rsquo;s clear-sightedness was served by an uninformed
+      intelligence; but his heart, preserving its tenderness amongst scenes of
+      carnage, spoliation, and violence, abhorred these calamities the more as
+      his association with the victims was closer. He entertained towards the
+      Indians of the valley feelings of paternal scorn. He had been marrying,
+      baptizing, confessing, absolving, and burying the workers of the San Tome
+      mine with dignity and unction for five years or more; and he believed in
+      the sacredness of these ministrations, which made them his own in a
+      spiritual sense. They were dear to his sacerdotal supremacy. Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s
+      earnest interest in the concerns of these people enhanced their importance
+      in the priest&rsquo;s eyes, because it really augmented his own. When talking
+      over with her the innumerable Marias and Brigidas of the villages, he felt
+      his own humanity expand. Padre Roman was incapable of fanaticism to an
+      almost reprehensible degree. The English senora was evidently a heretic;
+      but at the same time she seemed to him wonderful and angelic. Whenever
+      that confused state of his feelings occurred to him, while strolling, for
+      instance, his breviary under his arm, in the wide shade of the tamarind,
+      he would stop short to inhale with a strong snuffling noise a large
+      quantity of snuff, and shake his head profoundly. At the thought of what
+      might befall the illustrious senora presently, he became gradually
+      overcome with dismay. He voiced it in an agitated murmur. Even Don Pepe
+      lost his serenity for a moment. He leaned forward stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, Padre. The very fact that those thieving macaques in Sulaco are
+      trying to find out the price of my honour proves that Senor Don Carlos and
+      all in the Casa Gould are safe. As to my honour, that also is safe, as
+      every man, woman, and child knows. But the negro Liberals who have
+      snatched the town by surprise do not know that. Bueno. Let them sit and
+      wait. While they wait they can do no harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he regained his composure. He regained it easily, because whatever
+      happened his honour of an old officer of Paez was safe. He had promised
+      Charles Gould that at the approach of an armed force he would defend the
+      gorge just long enough to give himself time to destroy scientifically the
+      whole plant, buildings, and workshops of the mine with heavy charges of
+      dynamite; block with ruins the main tunnel, break down the pathways, blow
+      up the dam of the water-power, shatter the famous Gould Concession into
+      fragments, flying sky high out of a horrified world. The mine had got hold
+      of Charles Gould with a grip as deadly as ever it had laid upon his
+      father. But this extreme resolution had seemed to Don Pepe the most
+      natural thing in the world. His measures had been taken with judgment.
+      Everything was prepared with a careful completeness. And Don Pepe folded
+      his hands pacifically on his sword hilt, and nodded at the priest. In his
+      excitement, Father Roman had flung snuff in handfuls at his face, and, all
+      besmeared with tobacco, round-eyed, and beside himself, had got out of the
+      hammock to walk about, uttering exclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Pepe stroked his grey and pendant moustache, whose fine ends hung far
+      below the clean-cut line of his jaw, and spoke with a conscious pride in
+      his reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So, Padre, I don&rsquo;t know what will happen. But I know that as long as I am
+      here Don Carlos can speak to that macaque, Pedrito Montero, and threaten
+      the destruction of the mine with perfect assurance that he will be taken
+      seriously. For people know me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to turn the cigar in his lips a little nervously, and went on&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that is talk&mdash;good for the politicos. I am a military man. I do
+      not know what may happen. But I know what ought to be done&mdash;the mine
+      should march upon the town with guns, axes, knives tied up to sticks&mdash;por
+      Dios. That is what should be done. Only&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His folded hands twitched on the hilt. The cigar turned faster in the
+      corner of his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who should lead but I? Unfortunately&mdash;observe&mdash;I have given
+      my word of honour to Don Carlos not to let the mine fall into the hands of
+      these thieves. In war&mdash;you know this, Padre&mdash;the fate of battles
+      is uncertain, and whom could I leave here to act for me in case of defeat?
+      The explosives are ready. But it would require a man of high honour, of
+      intelligence, of judgment, of courage, to carry out the prepared
+      destruction. Somebody I can trust with my honour as I can trust myself.
+      Another old officer of Paez, for instance. Or&mdash;or&mdash;perhaps one
+      of Paez&rsquo;s old chaplains would do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up, long, lank, upright, hard, with his martial moustache and the
+      bony structure of his face, from which the glance of the sunken eyes
+      seemed to transfix the priest, who stood still, an empty wooden snuff-box
+      held upside down in his hand, and glared back, speechless, at the governor
+      of the mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER SEVEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At about that time, in the Intendencia of Sulaco, Charles Gould was
+      assuring Pedrito Montero, who had sent a request for his presence there,
+      that he would never let the mine pass out of his hands for the profit of a
+      Government who had robbed him of it. The Gould Concession could not be
+      resumed. His father had not desired it. The son would never surrender it.
+      He would never surrender it alive. And once dead, where was the power
+      capable of resuscitating such an enterprise in all its vigour and wealth
+      out of the ashes and ruin of destruction? There was no such power in the
+      country. And where was the skill and capital abroad that would condescend
+      to touch such an ill-omened corpse? Charles Gould talked in the impassive
+      tone which had for many years served to conceal his anger and contempt. He
+      suffered. He was disgusted with what he had to say. It was too much like
+      heroics. In him the strictly practical instinct was in profound discord
+      with the almost mystic view he took of his right. The Gould Concession was
+      symbolic of abstract justice. Let the heavens fall. But since the San Tome
+      mine had developed into world-wide fame his threat had enough force and
+      effectiveness to reach the rudimentary intelligence of Pedro Montero,
+      wrapped up as it was in the futilities of historical anecdotes. The Gould
+      Concession was a serious asset in the country&rsquo;s finance, and, what was
+      more, in the private budgets of many officials as well. It was
+      traditional. It was known. It was said. It was credible. Every Minister of
+      Interior drew a salary from the San Tome mine. It was natural. And Pedrito
+      intended to be Minister of the Interior and President of the Council in
+      his brother&rsquo;s Government. The Duc de Morny had occupied those high posts
+      during the Second French Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured for His Excellency,
+      who, after a short siesta, rendered absolutely necessary by the labours
+      and the pomps of his entry into Sulaco, had been getting hold of the
+      administrative machine by making appointments, giving orders, and signing
+      proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould in the audience room, His
+      Excellency managed with his well-known skill to conceal his annoyance and
+      consternation. He had begun at first to talk loftily of confiscation, but
+      the want of all proper feeling and mobility in the Senor Administrador&rsquo;s
+      features ended by affecting adversely his power of masterful expression.
+      Charles Gould had repeated: &ldquo;The Government can certainly bring about the
+      destruction of the San Tome mine if it likes; but without me it can do
+      nothing else.&rdquo; It was an alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to
+      hurt the sensibilities of a politician whose mind is bent upon the spoils
+      of victory. And Charles Gould said also that the destruction of the San
+      Tome mine would cause the ruin of other undertakings, the withdrawal of
+      European capital, the withholding, most probably, of the last instalment
+      of the foreign loan. That stony fiend of a man said all these things
+      (which were accessible to His Excellency&rsquo;s intelligence) in a coldblooded
+      manner which made one shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long course of reading historical works, light and gossipy in tone,
+      carried out in garrets of Parisian hotels, sprawling on an untidy bed, to
+      the neglect of his duties, menial or otherwise, had affected the manners
+      of Pedro Montero. Had he seen around him the splendour of the old
+      Intendencia, the magnificent hangings, the gilt furniture ranged along the
+      walls; had he stood upon a dais on a noble square of red carpet, he would
+      have probably been very dangerous from a sense of success and elevation.
+      But in this sacked and devastated residence, with the three pieces of
+      common furniture huddled up in the middle of the vast apartment, Pedrito&rsquo;s
+      imagination was subdued by a feeling of insecurity and impermanence. That
+      feeling and the firm attitude of Charles Gould who had not once, so far,
+      pronounced the word &ldquo;Excellency,&rdquo; diminished him in his own eyes. He
+      assumed the tone of an enlightened man of the world, and begged Charles
+      Gould to dismiss from his mind every cause for alarm. He was now
+      conversing, he reminded him, with the brother of the master of the
+      country, charged with a reorganizing mission. The trusted brother of the
+      master of the country, he repeated. Nothing was further from the thoughts
+      of that wise and patriotic hero than ideas of destruction. &ldquo;I entreat you,
+      Don Carlos, not to give way to your anti-democratic prejudices,&rdquo; he cried,
+      in a burst of condescending effusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pedrito Montero surprised one at first sight by the vast development of
+      his bald forehead, a shiny yellow expanse between the crinkly coal-black
+      tufts of hair without any lustre, the engaging form of his mouth, and an
+      unexpectedly cultivated voice. But his eyes, very glistening as if freshly
+      painted on each side of his hooked nose, had a round, hopeless, birdlike
+      stare when opened fully. Now, however, he narrowed them agreeably,
+      throwing his square chin up and speaking with closed teeth slightly
+      through the nose, with what he imagined to be the manner of a grand
+      seigneur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that attitude, he declared suddenly that the highest expression of
+      democracy was Caesarism: the imperial rule based upon the direct popular
+      vote. Caesarism was conservative. It was strong. It recognized the
+      legitimate needs of democracy which requires orders, titles, and
+      distinctions. They would be showered upon deserving men. Caesarism was
+      peace. It was progressive. It secured the prosperity of a country. Pedrito
+      Montero was carried away. Look at what the Second Empire had done for
+      France. It was a regime which delighted to honour men of Don Carlos&rsquo;s
+      stamp. The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief was devoid
+      of that military genius which had raised General Montero to the pinnacle
+      of fame and glory. Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to help the idea of
+      pinnacle, of fame. &ldquo;We shall have many talks yet. We shall understand each
+      other thoroughly, Don Carlos!&rdquo; he cried in a tone of fellowship.
+      Republicanism had done its work. Imperial democracy was the power of the
+      future. Pedrito, the guerrillero, showing his hand, lowered his voice
+      forcibly. A man singled out by his fellow-citizens for the honourable
+      nickname of El Rey de Sulaco could not but receive a full recognition from
+      an imperial democracy as a great captain of industry and a person of
+      weighty counsel, whose popular designation would be soon replaced by a
+      more solid title. &ldquo;Eh, Don Carlos? No! What do you say? Conde de Sulaco&mdash;Eh?&mdash;or
+      marquis . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a patrol of cavalry rode
+      round and round without penetrating into the streets, which resounded with
+      shouts and the strumming of guitars issuing from the open doors of
+      pulperias. The orders were not to interfere with the enjoyments of the
+      people. And above the roofs, next to the perpendicular lines of the
+      cathedral towers the snowy curve of Higuerota blocked a large space of
+      darkening blue sky before the windows of the Intendencia. After a time
+      Pedrito Montero, thrusting his hand in the bosom of his coat, bowed his
+      head with slow dignity. The audience was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his forehead as if to
+      disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose grotesque extravagance
+      leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay. In
+      the passages and on the staircases of the old palace Montero&rsquo;s troopers
+      lounged about insolently, smoking and making way for no one; the clanking
+      of sabres and spurs resounded all over the building. Three silent groups
+      of civilians in severe black waited in the main gallery, formal and
+      helpless, a little huddled up, each keeping apart from the others, as if
+      in the exercise of a public duty they had been overcome by a desire to
+      shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations waiting for their
+      audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly, more restless and uneasy
+      in its corporate expression, was overtopped by the big face of Don Juste
+      Lopez, soft and white, with prominent eyelids and wreathed in impenetrable
+      solemnity as if in a dense cloud. The President of the Provincial
+      Assembly, coming bravely to save the last shred of parliamentary
+      institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes from the
+      Administrador of the San Tome mine as a dignified rebuke of his little
+      faith in that only saving principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect Charles Gould, but he
+      was sensible to the glances of the others directed upon him without
+      reproach, as if only to read their own fate upon his face. All of them had
+      talked, shouted, and declaimed in the great sala of the Casa Gould. The
+      feeling of compassion for those men, struck with a strange impotence in
+      the toils of moral degradation, did not induce him to make a sign. He
+      suffered from his fellowship in evil with them too much. He crossed the
+      Plaza unmolested. The Amarilla Club was full of festive ragamuffins. Their
+      frowsy heads protruded from every window, and from within came drunken
+      shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging of harps. Broken bottles
+      strewed the pavement below. Charles Gould found the doctor still in his
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutter through which he had
+      been watching the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! You are back at last!&rdquo; he said in a tone of relief. &ldquo;I have been
+      telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe, but I was not by any
+      means certain that the fellow would have let you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither was I,&rdquo; confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will have to take action.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that this was the only
+      course. This was as far as Charles Gould was accustomed to go towards
+      expressing his intentions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean to do,&rdquo; the doctor said,
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried to make him see that the existence of the mine was bound up with
+      my personal safety,&rdquo; continued Charles Gould, looking away from the
+      doctor, and fixing his eyes upon the water-colour sketch upon the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He believed you?&rdquo; the doctor asked, eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows!&rdquo; said Charles Gould. &ldquo;I owed it to my wife to say that much.
+      He is well enough informed. He knows that I have Don Pepe there. Fuentes
+      must have told him. They know that the old major is perfectly capable of
+      blowing up the San Tome mine without hesitation or compunction. Had it not
+      been for that I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;d have left the Intendencia a free man. He
+      would blow everything up from loyalty and from hate&mdash;from hate of
+      these Liberals, as they call themselves. Liberals! The words one knows so
+      well have a nightmarish meaning in this country. Liberty, democracy,
+      patriotism, government&mdash;all of them have a flavour of folly and
+      murder. Haven&rsquo;t they, doctor? . . . I alone can restrain Don Pepe. If they
+      were to&mdash;to do away with me, nothing could prevent him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will try to tamper with him,&rdquo; the doctor suggested, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very possible,&rdquo; Charles Gould said very low, as if speaking to
+      himself, and still gazing at the sketch of the San Tome gorge upon the
+      wall. &ldquo;Yes, I expect they will try that.&rdquo; Charles Gould looked for the
+      first time at the doctor. &ldquo;It would give me time,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his excitement. &ldquo;Especially if
+      Don Pepe behaves diplomatically. Why shouldn&rsquo;t he give them some hope of
+      success? Eh? Otherwise you wouldn&rsquo;t gain so much time. Couldn&rsquo;t he be
+      instructed to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Gould, looking at the doctor steadily, shook his head, but the
+      doctor continued with a certain amount of fire&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of the mine. It is a
+      good notion. You would mature your plan. Of course, I don&rsquo;t ask what it
+      is. I don&rsquo;t want to know. I would refuse to listen to you if you tried to
+      tell me. I am not fit for confidences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What nonsense!&rdquo; muttered Charles Gould, with displeasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He disapproved of the doctor&rsquo;s sensitiveness about that far-off episode of
+      his life. So much memory shocked Charles Gould. It was like morbidness.
+      And again he shook his head. He refused to tamper with the open rectitude
+      of Don Pepe&rsquo;s conduct, both from taste and from policy. Instructions would
+      have to be either verbal or in writing. In either case they ran the risk
+      of being intercepted. It was by no means certain that a messenger could
+      reach the mine; and, besides, there was no one to send. It was on the tip
+      of Charles&rsquo;s tongue to say that only the late Capataz de Cargadores could
+      have been employed with some chance of success and the certitude of
+      discretion. But he did not say that. He pointed out to the doctor that it
+      would have been bad policy. Directly Don Pepe let it be supposed that he
+      could be bought over, the Administrador&rsquo;s personal safety and the safety
+      of his friends would become endangered. For there would be then no reason
+      for moderation. The incorruptibility of Don Pepe was the essential and
+      restraining fact. The doctor hung his head and admitted that in a way it
+      was so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He couldn&rsquo;t deny to himself that the reasoning was sound enough. Don
+      Pepe&rsquo;s usefulness consisted in his unstained character. As to his own
+      usefulness, he reflected bitterly it was also his own character. He
+      declared to Charles Gould that he had the means of keeping Sotillo from
+      joining his forces with Montero, at least for the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had had all this silver here,&rdquo; the doctor said, &ldquo;or even if it had
+      been known to be at the mine, you could have bribed Sotillo to throw off
+      his recent Monterism. You could have induced him either to go away in his
+      steamer or even to join you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not that last,&rdquo; Charles Gould declared, firmly. &ldquo;What could one
+      do with a man like that, afterwards&mdash;tell me, doctor? The silver is
+      gone, and I am glad of it. It would have been an immediate and strong
+      temptation. The scramble for that visible plunder would have precipitated
+      a disastrous ending. I would have had to defend it, too. I am glad we&rsquo;ve
+      removed it&mdash;even if it is lost. It would have been a danger and a
+      curse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he is right,&rdquo; the doctor, an hour later, said hurriedly to Mrs.
+      Gould, whom he met in the corridor. &ldquo;The thing is done, and the shadow of
+      the treasure may do just as well as the substance. Let me try to serve you
+      to the whole extent of my evil reputation. I am off now to play my game of
+      betrayal with Sotillo, and keep him off the town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put out both her hands impulsively. &ldquo;Dr. Monygham, you are running a
+      terrible risk,&rdquo; she whispered, averting from his face her eyes, full of
+      tears, for a short glance at the door of her husband&rsquo;s room. She pressed
+      both his hands, and the doctor stood as if rooted to the spot, looking
+      down at her, and trying to twist his lips into a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know you will defend my memory,&rdquo; he uttered at last, and ran
+      tottering down the stairs across the patio, and out of the house. In the
+      street he kept up a great pace with his smart hobbling walk, a case of
+      instruments under his arm. He was known for being loco. Nobody interfered
+      with him. From under the seaward gate, across the dusty, arid plain,
+      interspersed with low bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the ugly
+      enormity of the Custom House, and the two or three other buildings which
+      at that time constituted the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to the south
+      groves of palm trees edged the curve of the harbour shore. The distant
+      peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of clearcut shapes in the
+      steadily deepening blue of the eastern sky. The doctor walked briskly. A
+      darkling shadow seemed to fall upon him from the zenith. The sun had set.
+      For a time the snows of Higuerota continued to glow with the reflected
+      glory of the west. The doctor, holding a straight course for the Custom
+      House, appeared lonely, hopping amongst the dark bushes like a tall bird
+      with a broken wing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the clear water of the
+      harbour. A long tongue of land, straight as a wall, with the grass-grown
+      ruins of the fort making a sort of rounded green mound, plainly visible
+      from the inner shore, closed its circuit; while beyond the Placid Gulf
+      repeated those splendours of colouring on a greater scale and with a more
+      sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloud filling the head of the gulf
+      had long red smears amongst its convoluted folds of grey and black, as of
+      a floating mantle stained with blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed and
+      clear cut in a great smoothness confounding the sea and sky, appeared
+      suspended, purple-black, in the air. The little wavelets seemed to be
+      tossing tiny red sparks upon the sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water
+      along the horizon gave out a fiery red glow, as if fire and water had been
+      mingled together in the vast bed of the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced and still in a
+      flaming contact upon the edge of the world, went out. The red sparks in
+      the water vanished together with the stains of blood in the black mantle
+      draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up and
+      died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined
+      earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours&rsquo; sleep, and
+      arose full length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee deep
+      amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the lost air
+      of a man just born into the world. Handsome, robust, and supple, he threw
+      back his head, flung his arms open, and stretched himself with a slow
+      twist of the waist and a leisurely growling yawn of white teeth, as
+      natural and free from evil in the moment of waking as a magnificent and
+      unconscious wild beast. Then, in the suddenly steadied glance fixed upon
+      nothing from under a thoughtful frown, appeared the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER EIGHT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After landing from his swim Nostromo had scrambled up, all dripping, into
+      the main quadrangle of the old fort; and there, amongst ruined bits of
+      walls and rotting remnants of roofs and sheds, he had slept the day
+      through. He had slept in the shadow of the mountains, in the white blaze
+      of noon, in the stillness and solitude of that overgrown piece of land
+      between the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle of the gulf.
+      He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing like a tiny black speck in the
+      blue, stooped, circling prudently with a stealthiness of flight startling
+      in a bird of that great size. The shadow of his pearly-white body, of his
+      black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no more silently than he alighted
+      himself on a hillock of rubbish within three yards of that man, lying as
+      still as a corpse. The bird stretched his bare neck, craned his bald head,
+      loathsome in the brilliance of varied colouring, with an air of voracious
+      anxiety towards the promising stillness of that prostrate body. Then,
+      sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled himself to wait.
+      The first thing upon which Nostromo&rsquo;s eyes fell on waking was this patient
+      watcher for the signs of death and corruption. When the man got up the
+      vulture hopped away in great, side-long, fluttering jumps. He lingered for
+      a while, morose and reluctant, before he rose, circling noiselessly with a
+      sinister droop of beak and claws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long after he had vanished, Nostromo, lifting his eyes up to the sky,
+      muttered, &ldquo;I am not dead yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores had lived in splendour and publicity
+      up to the very moment, as it were, when he took charge of the lighter
+      containing the treasure of silver ingots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last act he had performed in Sulaco was in complete harmony with his
+      vanity, and as such perfectly genuine. He had given his last dollar to an
+      old woman moaning with the grief and fatigue of a dismal search under the
+      arch of the ancient gate. Performed in obscurity and without witnesses, it
+      had still the characteristics of splendour and publicity, and was in
+      strict keeping with his reputation. But this awakening in solitude, except
+      for the watchful vulture, amongst the ruins of the fort, had no such
+      characteristics. His first confused feeling was exactly this&mdash;that it
+      was not in keeping. It was more like the end of things. The necessity of
+      living concealed somehow, for God knows how long, which assailed him on
+      his return to consciousness, made everything that had gone before for
+      years appear vain and foolish, like a flattering dream come suddenly to an
+      end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and, putting aside the
+      bushes, looked upon the harbour. He saw a couple of ships at anchor upon
+      the sheet of water reflecting the last gleams of light, and Sotillo&rsquo;s
+      steamer moored to the jetty. And behind the pale long front of the Custom
+      House, there appeared the extent of the town like a grove of thick timber
+      on the plain with a gateway in front, and the cupolas, towers, and
+      miradors rising above the trees, all dark, as if surrendered already to
+      the night. The thought that it was no longer open to him to ride through
+      the streets, recognized by everyone, great and little, as he used to do
+      every evening on his way to play monte in the posada of the Mexican
+      Domingo; or to sit in the place of honour, listening to songs and looking
+      at dances, made it appear to him as a town that had no existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time he gazed on, then let the parted bushes spring back, and,
+      crossing over to the other side of the fort, surveyed the vaster emptiness
+      of the great gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the narrowing long
+      band of red in the west, which gleamed low between their black shapes, and
+      the Capataz thought of Decoud alone there with the treasure. That man was
+      the only one who cared whether he fell into the hands of the Monterists or
+      not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. And that merely would be an anxiety
+      for his own sake. As to the rest, they neither knew nor cared. What he had
+      heard Giorgio Viola say once was very true. Kings, ministers, aristocrats,
+      the rich in general, kept the people in poverty and subjection; they kept
+      them as they kept dogs, to fight and hunt for their service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness of the sky had descended to the line of the horizon,
+      enveloping the whole gulf, the islets, and the lover of Antonia alone with
+      the treasure on the Great Isabel. The Capataz, turning his back on these
+      things invisible and existing, sat down and took his face between his
+      fists. He felt the pinch of poverty for the first time in his life. To
+      find himself without money after a run of bad luck at monte in the low,
+      smoky room of Domingo&rsquo;s posada, where the fraternity of Cargadores
+      gambled, sang, and danced of an evening; to remain with empty pockets
+      after a burst of public generosity to some peyne d&rsquo;oro girl or other (for
+      whom he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitution. He
+      remained rich in glory and reputation. But since it was no longer possible
+      for him to parade the streets of the town, and be hailed with respect in
+      the usual haunts of his leisure, this sailor felt himself destitute
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and extremely anxious
+      thinking, as it had never been dry before. It may be said that Nostromo
+      tasted the dust and ashes of the fruit of life into which he had bitten
+      deeply in his hunger for praise. Without removing his head from between
+      his fists, he tried to spit before him&mdash;&ldquo;Tfui&rdquo;&mdash;and muttered a
+      curse upon the selfishness of all the rich people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was the feeling of his
+      waking), the idea of leaving the country altogether had presented itself
+      to Nostromo. At that thought he had seen, like the beginning of another
+      dream, a vision of steep and tideless shores, with dark pines on the
+      heights and white houses low down near a very blue sea. He saw the quays
+      of a big port, where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails
+      outspread like motionless wings, enter gliding silently between the end of
+      long moles of squared blocks that project angularly towards each other,
+      hugging a cluster of shipping to the superb bosom of a hill covered with
+      palaces. He remembered these sights not without some filial emotion,
+      though he had been habitually and severely beaten as a boy on one of these
+      feluccas by a short-necked, shaven Genoese, with a deliberate and
+      distrustful manner, who (he firmly believed) had cheated him out of his
+      orphan&rsquo;s inheritance. But it is mercifully decreed that the evils of the
+      past should appear but faintly in retrospect. Under the sense of
+      loneliness, abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to these things
+      appeared tolerable. But, what? Return? With bare feet and head, with one
+      check shirt and a pair of cotton calzoneros for all worldly possessions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a fist dug into each
+      cheek, laughed with self-derision, as he had spat with disgust, straight
+      out before him into the night. The confused and intimate impressions of
+      universal dissolution which beset a subjective nature at any strong check
+      to its ruling passion had a bitterness approaching that of death itself.
+      He was simple. He was as ready to become the prey of any belief,
+      superstition, or desire as a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The facts of his situation he could appreciate like a man with a distinct
+      experience of the country. He saw them clearly. He was as if sobered after
+      a long bout of intoxication. His fidelity had been taken advantage of. He
+      had persuaded the body of Cargadores to side with the Blancos against the
+      rest of the people; he had had interviews with Don Jose; he had been made
+      use of by Father Corbelan for negotiating with Hernandez; it was known
+      that Don Martin Decoud had admitted him to a sort of intimacy, so that he
+      had been free of the offices of the Porvenir. All these things had
+      flattered him in the usual way. What did he care about their politics?
+      Nothing at all. And at the end of it all&mdash;Nostromo here and Nostromo
+      there&mdash;where is Nostromo? Nostromo can do this and that&mdash;work
+      all day and ride all night&mdash;behold! he found himself a marked
+      Ribierist for any sort of vengeance Gamacho, for instance, would choose to
+      take, now the Montero party, had, after all, mastered the town. The
+      Europeans had given up; the Caballeros had given up. Don Martin had indeed
+      explained it was only temporary&mdash;that he was going to bring Barrios
+      to the rescue. Where was that now&mdash;with Don Martin (whose ironic
+      manner of talk had always made the Capataz feel vaguely uneasy) stranded
+      on the Great Isabel? Everybody had given up. Even Don Carlos had given up.
+      The hurried removal of the treasure out to sea meant nothing else than
+      that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a revulsion of subjectiveness,
+      exasperated almost to insanity, beheld all his world without faith and
+      courage. He had been betrayed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the boundless shadows of the sea behind him, out of his silence and
+      immobility, facing the lofty shapes of the lower peaks crowded around the
+      white, misty sheen of Higuerota, Nostromo laughed aloud again, sprang
+      abruptly to his feet, and stood still. He must go. But where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage us as if we were dogs
+      born to fight and hunt for them. The vecchio is right,&rdquo; he said, slowly
+      and scathingly. He remembered old Giorgio taking his pipe out of his mouth
+      to throw these words over his shoulder at the cafe, full of engine-drivers
+      and fitters from the railway workshops. This image fixed his wavering
+      purpose. He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God knows what
+      might have happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped again and
+      shook his head. To the left and right, in front and behind him, the
+      scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa was right, too,&rdquo; he added in a low tone touched with awe. He
+      wondered whether she was dead in her anger with him or still alive. As if
+      in answer to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with a soft
+      flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling cry: &ldquo;Ya-acabo!
+      Ya-acabo!&mdash;it is finished; it is finished&rdquo;&mdash;announces calamity
+      and death in the popular belief, drifted vaguely like a large dark ball
+      across his path. In the downfall of all the realities that made his force,
+      he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered slightly. Signora
+      Teresa must have died, then. It could mean nothing else. The cry of the
+      ill-omened bird, the first sound he was to hear on his return, was a
+      fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The unseen powers which he
+      had offended by refusing to bring a priest to a dying woman were lifting
+      up their voice against him. She was dead. With admirable and human
+      consistency he referred everything to himself. She had been a woman of
+      good counsel always. And the bereaved old Giorgio remained stunned by his
+      loss just as he was likely to require the advice of his sagacity. The blow
+      would render the dreamy old man quite stupid for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner of trusted
+      subordinates, considered him as a person fitted by education perhaps to
+      sign papers in an office and to give orders, but otherwise of no use
+      whatever, and something of a fool. The necessity of winding round his
+      little finger, almost daily, the pompous and testy self-importance of the
+      old seaman had grown irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had given
+      him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of overcoming small
+      obstacles becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality as much by the
+      certitude of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted his
+      superior&rsquo;s proneness to fussy action. That old Englishman had no judgment,
+      he said to himself. It was useless to suppose that, acquainted with the
+      true state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He would talk of
+      doing impracticable things. Nostromo feared him as one would fear saddling
+      one&rsquo;s self with some persistent worry. He had no discretion. He would
+      betray the treasure. And Nostromo had made up his mind that the treasure
+      should not be betrayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence. His imagination
+      had seized upon the clear and simple notion of betrayal to account for the
+      dazed feeling of enlightenment as to being done for, of having
+      inadvertently gone out of his existence on an issue in which his
+      personality had not been taken into account. A man betrayed is a man
+      destroyed. Signora Teresa (may God have her soul!) had been right. He had
+      never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her white form sitting up bowed
+      in bed, the falling black hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to
+      him, the anger of her denunciations appeared to him now majestic with the
+      awfulness of inspiration and of death. For it was not for nothing that the
+      evil bird had uttered its lamentable shriek over his head. She was dead&mdash;may
+      God have her soul!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses, his mind used the
+      pious formula from the superficial force of habit, but with a deep-seated
+      sincerity. The popular mind is incapable of scepticism; and that
+      incapacity delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of swindlers and
+      to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders inspired by visions of a high
+      destiny. She was dead. But would God consent to receive her soul? She had
+      died without confession or absolution, because he had not been willing to
+      spare her another moment of his time. His scorn of priests as priests
+      remained; but after all, it was impossible to know whether what they
+      affirmed was not true. Power, punishment, pardon, are simple and credible
+      notions. The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, deprived of certain simple
+      realities, such as the admiration of women, the adulation of men, the
+      admired publicity of his life, was ready to feel the burden of
+      sacrilegious guilt descend upon his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the lingering warmth of
+      the fine sand under the soles of his feet. The narrow strand gleamed far
+      ahead in a long curve, defining the outline of this wild side of the
+      harbour. He flitted along the shore like a pursued shadow between the
+      sombre palm-groves and the sheet of water lying as still as death on his
+      right hand. He strode with headlong haste in the silence and solitude as
+      though he had forgotten all prudence and caution. But he knew that on this
+      side of the water he ran no risk of discovery. The only inhabitant was a
+      lonely, silent, apathetic Indian in charge of the palmarias, who brought
+      sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the town for sale. He lived without a
+      woman in an open shed, with a perpetual fire of dry sticks smouldering
+      near an old canoe lying bottom up on the beach. He could be easily
+      avoided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The barking of the dogs about that man&rsquo;s ranche was the first thing that
+      checked his speed. He had forgotten the dogs. He swerved sharply, and
+      plunged into the palm-grove, as into a wilderness of columns in an immense
+      hall, whose dense obscurity seemed to whisper and rustle faintly high
+      above his head. He traversed it, entered a ravine, and climbed to the top
+      of a steep ridge free of trees and bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw the plain between the
+      town and the harbour. In the woods above some night-bird made a strange
+      drumming noise. Below beyond the palmaria on the beach, the Indian&rsquo;s dogs
+      continued to bark uproariously. He wondered what had upset them so much,
+      and, peering down from his elevation, was surprised to detect
+      unaccountable movements of the ground below, as if several oblong pieces
+      of the plain had been in motion. Those dark, shifting patches, alternately
+      catching and eluding the eye, altered their place always away from the
+      harbour, with a suggestion of consecutive order and purpose. A light
+      dawned upon him. It was a column of infantry on a night march towards the
+      higher broken country at the foot of the hills. But he was too much in the
+      dark about everything for wonder and speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plain had resumed its shadowy immobility. He descended the ridge and
+      found himself in the open solitude, between the harbour and the town. Its
+      spaciousness, extended indefinitely by an effect of obscurity, rendered
+      more sensible his profound isolation. His pace became slower. No one
+      waited for him; no one thought of him; no one expected or wished his
+      return. &ldquo;Betrayed! Betrayed!&rdquo; he muttered to himself. No one cared. He
+      might have been drowned by this time. No one would have cared&mdash;unless,
+      perhaps, the children, he thought to himself. But they were with the
+      English signora, and not thinking of him at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wavered in his purpose of making straight for the Casa Viola. To what
+      end? What could he expect there? His life seemed to fail him in all its
+      details, even to the scornful reproaches of Teresa. He was aware painfully
+      of his reluctance. Was it that remorse which she had prophesied with, what
+      he saw now, was her last breath?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, he had deviated from the straight course, inclining by a sort of
+      instinct to the right, towards the jetty and the harbour, the scene of his
+      daily labours. The great length of the Custom House loomed up all at once
+      like the wall of a factory. Not a soul challenged his approach, and his
+      curiosity became excited as he passed cautiously towards the front by the
+      unexpected sight of two lighted windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had the fascination of a lonely vigil kept by some mysterious watcher
+      up there, those two windows shining dimly upon the harbour in the whole
+      vast extent of the abandoned building. The solitude could almost be felt.
+      A strong smell of wood smoke hung about in a thin haze, which was faintly
+      perceptible to his raised eyes against the glitter of the stars. As he
+      advanced in the profound silence, the shrilling of innumerable cicalas in
+      the dry grass seemed positively deafening to his strained ears. Slowly,
+      step by step, he found himself in the great hall, sombre and full of acrid
+      smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fire built against the staircase had burnt down impotently to a low heap
+      of embers. The hard wood had failed to catch; only a few steps at the
+      bottom smouldered, with a creeping glow of sparks defining their charred
+      edges. At the top he saw a streak of light from an open door. It fell upon
+      the vast landing, all foggy with a slow drift of smoke. That was the room.
+      He climbed the stairs, then checked himself, because he had seen within
+      the shadow of a man cast upon one of the walls. It was a shapeless,
+      high-shouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with lowered head, out
+      of his line of sight. The Capataz, remembering that he was totally
+      unarmed, stepped aside, and, effacing himself upright in a dark corner,
+      waited with his eyes fixed on the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole enormous ruined barrack of a place, unfinished, without ceilings
+      under its lofty roof, was pervaded by the smoke swaying to and fro in the
+      faint cross draughts playing in the obscurity of many lofty rooms and
+      barnlike passages. Once one of the swinging shutters came against the wall
+      with a single sharp crack, as if pushed by an impatient hand. A piece of
+      paper scurried out from somewhere, rustling along the landing. The man,
+      whoever he was, did not darken the lighted doorway. Twice the Capataz,
+      advancing a couple of steps out of his corner, craned his neck in the hope
+      of catching sight of what he could be at, so quietly, in there. But every
+      time he saw only the distorted shadow of broad shoulders and bowed head.
+      He was doing apparently nothing, and stirred not from the spot, as though
+      he were meditating&mdash;or, perhaps, reading a paper. And not a sound
+      issued from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more the Capataz stepped back. He wondered who it was&mdash;some
+      Monterist? But he dreaded to show himself. To discover his presence on
+      shore, unless after many days, would, he believed, endanger the treasure.
+      With his own knowledge possessing his whole soul, it seemed impossible
+      that anybody in Sulaco should fail to jump at the right surmise. After a
+      couple of weeks or so it would be different. Who could tell he had not
+      returned overland from some port beyond the limits of the Republic? The
+      existence of the treasure confused his thoughts with a peculiar sort of
+      anxiety, as though his life had become bound up with it. It rendered him
+      timorous for a moment before that enigmatic, lighted door. Devil take the
+      fellow! He did not want to see him. There would be nothing to learn from
+      his face, known or unknown. He was a fool to waste his time there in
+      waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Less than five minutes after entering the place the Capataz began his
+      retreat. He got away down the stairs with perfect success, gave one upward
+      look over his shoulder at the light on the landing, and ran stealthily
+      across the hall. But at the very moment he was turning out of the great
+      door, with his mind fixed upon escaping the notice of the man upstairs,
+      somebody he had not heard coming briskly along the front ran full into
+      him. Both muttered a stifled exclamation of surprise, and leaped back and
+      stood still, each indistinct to the other. Nostromo was silent. The other
+      man spoke first, in an amazed and deadened tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Already Nostromo had seemed to recognize Dr. Monygham. He had no doubt
+      now. He hesitated the space of a second. The idea of bolting without a
+      word presented itself to his mind. No use! An inexplicable repugnance to
+      pronounce the name by which he was known kept him silent a little longer.
+      At last he said in a low voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Cargador.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked up to the other. Dr. Monygham had received a shock. He flung his
+      arms up and cried out his wonder aloud, forgetting himself before the
+      marvel of this meeting. Nostromo angrily warned him to moderate his voice.
+      The Custom House was not so deserted as it looked. There was somebody in
+      the lighted room above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no more evanescent quality in an accomplished fact than its
+      wonderfulness. Solicited incessantly by the considerations affecting its
+      fears and desires, the human mind turns naturally away from the marvellous
+      side of events. And it was in the most natural way possible that the
+      doctor asked this man whom only two minutes before he believed to have
+      been drowned in the gulf&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have seen somebody up there? Have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I have not seen him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was running away from his shadow when we met.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His shadow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. His shadow in the lighted room,&rdquo; said Nostromo, in a contemptuous
+      tone. Leaning back with folded arms at the foot of the immense building,
+      he dropped his head, biting his lips slightly, and not looking at the
+      doctor. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he thought to himself, &ldquo;he will begin asking me about the
+      treasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the doctor&rsquo;s thoughts were concerned with an event not as marvellous
+      as Nostromo&rsquo;s appearance, but in itself much less clear. Why had Sotillo
+      taken himself off with his whole command with this suddenness and secrecy?
+      What did this move portend? However, it dawned upon the doctor that the
+      man upstairs was one of the officers left behind by the disappointed
+      colonel to communicate with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe he is waiting for me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must see. Do not go away yet, Capataz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away where?&rdquo; muttered Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already the doctor had left him. He remained leaning against the wall,
+      staring at the dark water of the harbour; the shrilling of cicalas filled
+      his ears. An invincible vagueness coming over his thoughts took from them
+      all power to determine his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capataz! Capataz!&rdquo; the doctor&rsquo;s voice called urgently from above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sense of betrayal and ruin floated upon his sombre indifference as
+      upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he stepped out from under the wall, and,
+      looking up, saw Dr. Monygham leaning out of a lighted window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up and see what Sotillo has done. You need not fear the man up
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered by a slight, bitter laugh. Fear a man! The Capataz of the
+      Sulaco Cargadores fear a man! It angered him that anybody should suggest
+      such a thing. It angered him to be disarmed and skulking and in danger
+      because of the accursed treasure, which was of so little account to the
+      people who had tied it round his neck. He could not shake off the worry of
+      it. To Nostromo the doctor represented all these people. . . . And he had
+      never even asked after it. Not a word of inquiry about the most desperate
+      undertaking of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again through the cavernous hall,
+      where the smoke was considerably thinned, and went up the stairs, not so
+      warm to his feet now, towards the streak of light at the top. The doctor
+      appeared in it for a moment, agitated and impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up! Come up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz experienced a shock of
+      surprise. The man had not moved. He saw his shadow in the same place. He
+      started, then stepped in with a feeling of being about to solve a mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second, against the
+      light of two flaring and guttering candles, through a blue, pungent, thin
+      haze which made his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he had
+      imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an enormous and distorted
+      shadow upon the wall. Swifter than a flash of lightning followed the
+      impression of his constrained, toppling attitude&mdash;the shoulders
+      projecting forward, the head sunk low upon the breast. Then he
+      distinguished the arms behind his back, and wrenched so terribly that the
+      two clenched fists, lashed together, had been forced up higher than the
+      shoulder-blades. From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous glance
+      the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over a heavy beam and
+      down to a staple in the wall. He did not want to look at the rigid legs,
+      at the feet hanging down nervelessly, with their bare toes some six inches
+      above the floor, to know that the man had been given the estrapade till he
+      had swooned. His first impulse was to dash forward and sever the rope at
+      one blow. He felt for his knife. He had no knife&mdash;not even a knife.
+      He stood quivering, and the doctor, perched on the edge of the table,
+      facing thoughtfully the cruel and lamentable sight, his chin in his hand,
+      uttered, without stirring&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tortured&mdash;and shot dead through the breast&mdash;getting cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This information calmed the Capataz. One of the candles flickering in the
+      socket went out. &ldquo;Who did this?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sotillo, I tell you. Who else? Tortured&mdash;of course. But why shot?&rdquo;
+       The doctor looked fixedly at Nostromo, who shrugged his shoulders
+      slightly. &ldquo;And mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is evident. I wish I
+      had his secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to look. &ldquo;I seem to have seen
+      that face somewhere,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. &ldquo;I may yet come to envying his
+      fate. What do you think of that, Capataz, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing the remaining light,
+      he thrust it under the drooping head. The doctor sat oblivious, with a
+      lost gaze. Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of Nostromo&rsquo;s
+      hand, clattered on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo!&rdquo; exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a start. He could hear the
+      Capataz stagger against the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction of
+      the light within, the dead blackness sealing the window-frames became
+      alive with stars to his sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, of course,&rdquo; the doctor muttered to himself in English. &ldquo;Enough
+      to make him jump out of his skin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s heart seemed to force itself into his throat. His head swam.
+      Hirsch! The man was Hirsch! He held on tight to the edge of the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he was hiding in the lighter,&rdquo; he almost shouted His voice fell. &ldquo;In
+      the lighter, and&mdash;and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Sotillo brought him in,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;He is no more startling to
+      you than you were to me. What I want to know is how he induced some
+      compassionate soul to shoot him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So Sotillo knows&mdash;&rdquo; began Nostromo, in a more equable voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything!&rdquo; interrupted the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz was heard striking the table with his fist. &ldquo;Everything? What
+      are you saying, there? Everything? Know everything? It is impossible!
+      Everything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I tell you I have heard this
+      Hirsch questioned last night, here, in this very room. He knew your name,
+      Decoud&rsquo;s name, and all about the loading of the silver. . . . The lighter
+      was cut in two. He was grovelling in abject terror before Sotillo, but he
+      remembered that much. What do you want more? He knew least about himself.
+      They found him clinging to their anchor. He must have caught at it just as
+      the lighter went to the bottom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Went to the bottom?&rdquo; repeated Nostromo, slowly. &ldquo;Sotillo believes that?
+      Bueno!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to imagine what else could
+      anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo believed that the lighter was sunk, and the
+      Capataz de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud and perhaps one or two
+      other political fugitives, had been drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you well, senor doctor,&rdquo; remarked Nostromo at that point, &ldquo;that
+      Sotillo did not know everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not know I was not dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither did we.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you did not care&mdash;none of you caballeros on the wharf&mdash;once
+      you got off a man of flesh and blood like yourselves on a fool&rsquo;s business
+      that could not end well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget, Capataz, I was not on the wharf. And I did not think well of
+      the business. So you need not taunt me. I tell you what, man, we had but
+      little leisure to think of the dead. Death stands near behind us all. You
+      were gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went, indeed!&rdquo; broke in Nostromo. &ldquo;And for the sake of what&mdash;tell
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that is your own affair,&rdquo; the doctor said, roughly. &ldquo;Do not ask me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their flowing murmurs paused in the dark. Perched on the edge of the table
+      with slightly averted faces, they felt their shoulders touch, and their
+      eyes remained directed towards an upright shape nearly lost in the
+      obscurity of the inner part of the room, that with projecting head and
+      shoulders, in ghastly immobility, seemed intent on catching every word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Muy bien!&rdquo; Nostromo muttered at last. &ldquo;So be it. Teresa was right. It is
+      my own affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teresa is dead,&rdquo; remarked the doctor, absently, while his mind followed a
+      new line of thought suggested by what might have been called Nostromo&rsquo;s
+      return to life. &ldquo;She died, the poor woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without a priest?&rdquo; the Capataz asked, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a question! Who could have got a priest for her last night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May God keep her soul!&rdquo; ejaculated Nostromo, with a gloomy and hopeless
+      fervour which had no time to surprise Dr. Monygham, before, reverting to
+      their previous conversation, he continued in a sinister tone, &ldquo;Si, senor
+      doctor. As you were saying, it is my own affair. A very desperate affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no two men in this part of the world that could have saved
+      themselves by swimming as you have done,&rdquo; the doctor said, admiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And again there was silence between those two men. They were both
+      reflecting, and the diversity of their natures made their thoughts born
+      from their meeting swing afar from each other. The doctor, impelled to
+      risky action by his loyalty to the Goulds, wondered with thankfulness at
+      the chain of accident which had brought that man back where he would be of
+      the greatest use in the work of saving the San Tome mine. The doctor was
+      loyal to the mine. It presented itself to his fifty-years&rsquo; old eyes in the
+      shape of a little woman in a soft dress with a long train, with a head
+      attractively overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and the delicate
+      preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of a gem and a flower, revealed
+      in every attitude of her person. As the dangers thickened round the San
+      Tome mine this illusion acquired force, permanency, and authority. It
+      claimed him at last! This claim, exalted by a spiritual detachment from
+      the usual sanctions of hope and reward, made Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s thinking,
+      acting, individuality extremely dangerous to himself and to others, all
+      his scruples vanishing in the proud feeling that his devotion was the only
+      thing that stood between an admirable woman and a frightful disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly indifferent to
+      Decoud&rsquo;s fate, but left his wits perfectly clear for the appreciation of
+      Decoud&rsquo;s political idea. It was a good idea&mdash;and Barrios was the only
+      instrument of its realization. The doctor&rsquo;s soul, withered and shrunk by
+      the shame of a moral disgrace, became implacable in the expansion of its
+      tenderness. Nostromo&rsquo;s return was providential. He did not think of him
+      humanely, as of a fellow-creature just escaped from the jaws of death. The
+      Capataz for him was the only possible messenger to Cayta. The very man.
+      The doctor&rsquo;s misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer because based
+      on personal failure) did not lift him sufficiently above common
+      weaknesses. He was under the spell of an established reputation. Trumpeted
+      by Captain Mitchell, grown in repetition, and fixed in general assent,
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s faithfulness had never been questioned by Dr. Monygham as a
+      fact. It was not likely to be questioned now he stood in desperate need of
+      it himself. Dr. Monygham was human; he accepted the popular conception of
+      the Capataz&rsquo;s incorruptibility simply because no word or fact had ever
+      contradicted a mere affirmation. It seemed to be a part of the man, like
+      his whiskers or his teeth. It was impossible to conceive him otherwise.
+      The question was whether he would consent to go on such a dangerous and
+      desperate errand. The doctor was observant enough to have become aware
+      from the first of something peculiar in the man&rsquo;s temper. He was no doubt
+      sore about the loss of the silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be necessary to take him into my fullest confidence,&rdquo; he said to
+      himself, with a certain acuteness of insight into the nature he had to
+      deal with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Nostromo&rsquo;s side the silence had been full of black irresolution, anger,
+      and mistrust. He was the first to break it, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The swimming was no great matter,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is what went before&mdash;and
+      what comes after that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not quite finish what he meant to say, breaking off short, as
+      though his thought had butted against a solid obstacle. The doctor&rsquo;s mind
+      pursued its own schemes with Machiavellian subtlety. He said as
+      sympathetically as he was able&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is unfortunate, Capataz. But no one would think of blaming you. Very
+      unfortunate. To begin with, the treasure ought never to have left the
+      mountain. But it was Decoud who&mdash;however, he is dead. There is no
+      need to talk of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; assented Nostromo, as the doctor paused, &ldquo;there is no need to talk
+      of dead men. But I am not dead yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are all right. Only a man of your intrepidity could have saved
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In this Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed highly the intrepidity of
+      that man, whom he valued but little, being disillusioned as to mankind in
+      general, because of the particular instance in which his own manhood had
+      failed. Having had to encounter singlehanded during his period of eclipse
+      many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element
+      common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human littleness,
+      which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural forces, alone,
+      far from the eyes of his fellows. He was eminently fit to appreciate the
+      mental image he made for himself of the Capataz, after hours of tension
+      and anxiety, precipitated suddenly into an abyss of waters and darkness,
+      without earth or sky, and confronting it not only with an undismayed mind,
+      but with sensible success. Of course, the man was an incomparable swimmer,
+      that was known, but the doctor judged that this instance testified to a
+      still greater intrepidity of spirit. It was pleasing to him; he augured
+      well from it for the success of the arduous mission with which he meant to
+      entrust the Capataz so marvellously restored to usefulness. And in a tone
+      vaguely gratified, he observed&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have been terribly dark!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the worst darkness of the Golfo,&rdquo; the Capataz assented, briefly.
+      He was mollified by what seemed a sign of some faint interest in such
+      things as had befallen him, and dropped a few descriptive phrases with an
+      affected and curt nonchalance. At that moment he felt communicative. He
+      expected the continuance of that interest which, whether accepted or
+      rejected, would have restored to him his personality&mdash;the only thing
+      lost in that desperate affair. But the doctor, engrossed by a desperate
+      adventure of his own, was terrible in the pursuit of his idea. He let an
+      exclamation of regret escape him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz by its character of
+      cold-blooded atrocity. It was as much as to say, &ldquo;I wish you had shown
+      yourself a coward; I wish you had had your throat cut for your pains.&rdquo;
+       Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it related only to the
+      silver, being uttered simply and with many mental reservations. Surprise
+      and rage rendered him speechless, and the doctor pursued, practically
+      unheard by Nostromo, whose stirred blood was beating violently in his
+      ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the silver would have turned
+      short round and made for some small port abroad. Economically it would
+      have been wasteful, but still less wasteful than having it sunk. It was
+      the next best thing to having it at hand in some safe place, and using
+      part of it to buy up Sotillo. But I doubt whether Don Carlos would have
+      ever made up his mind to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that is a
+      fact, Capataz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a tempest in his ears in
+      time to hear the name of Don Carlos. He seemed to have come out of it a
+      changed man&mdash;a man who spoke thoughtfully in a soft and even voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And would Don Carlos have been content if I had surrendered this
+      treasure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should not wonder if they were all of that way of thinking now,&rdquo; the
+      doctor said, grimly. &ldquo;I was never consulted. Decoud had it his own way.
+      Their eyes are opened by this time, I should think. I for one know that if
+      that silver turned up this moment miraculously ashore I would give it to
+      Sotillo. And, as things stand, I would be approved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Turned up miraculously,&rdquo; repeated the Capataz very low; then raised his
+      voice. &ldquo;That, senor, would be a greater miracle than any saint could
+      perform.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you, Capataz,&rdquo; said the doctor, drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on to develop his view of Sotillo&rsquo;s dangerous influence upon the
+      situation. And the Capataz, listening as if in a dream, felt himself of as
+      little account as the indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man whom he
+      saw upright under the beam, with his air of listening also, disregarded,
+      forgotten, like a terrible example of neglect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that they came to me, then?&rdquo;
+       he interrupted suddenly. &ldquo;Had I not done enough for them to be of some
+      account, por Dios? Is it that the hombres finos&mdash;the gentlemen&mdash;need
+      not think as long as there is a man of the people ready to risk his body
+      and soul? Or, perhaps, we have no souls&mdash;like dogs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was Decoud, too, with his plan,&rdquo; the doctor reminded him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had something to do with that
+      treasure, too&mdash;what do I know? No! I have heard too many things. It
+      seems to me that everything is permitted to the rich.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand, Capataz,&rdquo; the doctor began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Capataz?&rdquo; broke in Nostromo, in a forcible but even voice. &ldquo;The
+      Capataz is undone, destroyed. There is no Capataz. Oh, no! You will find
+      the Capataz no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, this is childish!&rdquo; remonstrated the doctor; and the other calmed
+      down suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been indeed like a little child,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as his eyes met again the shape of the murdered man suspended in his
+      awful immobility, which seemed the uncomplaining immobility of attention,
+      he asked, wondering gently&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful wretch? Do you know?
+      No torture could have been worse than his fear. Killing I can understand.
+      His anguish was intolerable to behold. But why should he torment him like
+      this? He could tell no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man would have seen that. He had
+      told him everything. But I tell you what it is, Capataz. Sotillo would not
+      believe what he was told. Not everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it he would not believe? I cannot understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to believe that the
+      treasure is lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; the Capataz cried out in a discomposed tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That startles you&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I to understand, senor,&rdquo; Nostromo went on in a deliberate and, as it
+      were, watchful tone, &ldquo;that Sotillo thinks the treasure has been saved by
+      some means?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! That would be impossible,&rdquo; said the doctor, with conviction; and
+      Nostromo emitted a grunt in the dark. &ldquo;That would be impossible. He thinks
+      that the silver was no longer in the lighter when she was sunk. He has
+      convinced himself that the whole show of getting it away to sea is a mere
+      sham got up to deceive Gamacho and his Nationals, Pedrito Montero, Senor
+      Fuentes, our new Gefe Politico, and himself, too. Only, he says, he is no
+      such fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest imbecile that ever called
+      himself a colonel in this country of evil,&rdquo; growled Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is no more unreasonable than many sensible men,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;He
+      has convinced himself that the treasure can be found because he desires
+      passionately to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid of his
+      officers turning upon him and going over to Pedrito, whom he has not the
+      courage either to fight or trust. Do you see that, Capataz? He need fear
+      no desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous plunder turning
+      up. I have made it my business to keep this very hope up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have?&rdquo; the Capataz de Cargadores repeated cautiously. &ldquo;Well, that is
+      wonderful. And how long do you think you are going to keep it up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As long as I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can tell you exactly. As long as I live,&rdquo; the doctor retorted in a
+      stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, he described the story of his arrest
+      and the circumstances of his release. &ldquo;I was going back to that silly
+      scoundrel when we met,&rdquo; he concluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had listened with profound attention. &ldquo;You have made up your
+      mind, then, to a speedy death,&rdquo; he muttered through his clenched teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz,&rdquo; the doctor said, testily. &ldquo;You are not
+      the only one here who can look an ugly death in the face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be overheard. &ldquo;There may be
+      even more than two fools in this place. Who knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is my affair,&rdquo; said the doctor, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my affair,&rdquo; retorted
+      Nostromo. &ldquo;I see. Bueno! Each of us has his reasons. But you were the last
+      man I conversed with before I started, and you talked to me as if I were a
+      fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor&rsquo;s sardonic treatment of his
+      great reputation. Decoud&rsquo;s faintly ironic recognition used to make him
+      uneasy; but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was flattering,
+      whereas the doctor was a nobody. He could remember him a penniless
+      outcast, slinking about the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend or
+      acquaintance, till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service of the mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may be very wise,&rdquo; he went on, thoughtfully, staring into the
+      obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome enigma of the tortured and
+      murdered Hirsch. &ldquo;But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have
+      learned one thing since, and that is that you are a dangerous man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than exclaim&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he could speak he would say the same thing,&rdquo; pursued Nostromo, with a
+      nod of his shadowy head silhouetted against the starlit window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand you,&rdquo; said Dr. Monygham, faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in his madness, he would
+      have been in no haste to give the estrapade to that miserable Hirsch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion, absorbing all his
+      sensibilities, had left his heart steeled against remorse and pity. Still,
+      for complete relief, he felt the necessity of repelling it loudly and
+      contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like Sotillo. I confess I did
+      not give a thought to Hirsch. If I had it would have been useless. Anybody
+      can see that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment he caught hold
+      of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell you! Just as I myself am doomed&mdash;most
+      probably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo&rsquo;s remark, which was
+      plausible enough to prick his conscience. He was not a callous man. But
+      the necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task he had taken upon
+      himself dwarfed all merely humane considerations. He had undertaken it in
+      a fanatical spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to circumvent
+      even the basest of mankind was odious to him. It was odious to him by
+      training, instinct, and tradition. To do these things in the character of
+      a traitor was abhorrent to his nature and terrible to his feelings. He had
+      made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He had said to himself
+      bitterly, &ldquo;I am the only one fit for that dirty work.&rdquo; And he believed
+      this. He was not subtle. His simplicity was such that, though he had no
+      sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly enough, to which he
+      exposed himself, had a sustaining and comforting effect. To that spiritual
+      state the fate of Hirsch presented itself as part of the general atrocity
+      of things. He considered that episode practically. What did it mean? Was
+      it a sign of some dangerous change in Sotillo&rsquo;s delusion? That the man
+      should have been killed like this was what the doctor could not
+      understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But why shot?&rdquo; he murmured to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo kept very still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER NINE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Distracted between doubts and hopes, dismayed by the sound of bells
+      pealing out the arrival of Pedrito Montero, Sotillo had spent the morning
+      in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal, from the
+      vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions. Disappointment,
+      greed, anger, and fear made a tumult, in the colonel&rsquo;s breast louder than
+      the din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned had come to pass.
+      Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the mine had fallen into his hands. He
+      had performed no military exploit to secure his position, and had obtained
+      no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito Montero, either as friend or
+      foe, filled him with dread. The sound of bells maddened him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, he had made his
+      battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the length
+      of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his right hand
+      with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with a sullen,
+      repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in savage
+      aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on the
+      table. His officers, crowding the window giving the view of the town gate,
+      disputed amongst themselves the use of his field-glass bought last year on
+      long credit from Anzani. It passed from hand to hand, and the possessor
+      for the time being was besieged by anxious inquiries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing; there is nothing to see!&rdquo; he would repeat impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing. And when the picket in the bushes near the Casa Viola
+      had been ordered to fall back upon the main body, no stir of life appeared
+      on the stretch of dusty and arid land between the town and the waters of
+      the port. But late in the afternoon a horseman issuing from the gate was
+      made out riding up fearlessly. It was an emissary from Senor Fuentes.
+      Being all alone he was allowed to come on. Dismounting at the great door
+      he greeted the silent bystanders with cheery impudence, and begged to be
+      taken up at once to the &ldquo;muy valliente&rdquo; colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Senor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Gefe Politico, had turned
+      his diplomatic abilities to getting hold of the harbour as well as of the
+      mine. The man he pitched upon to negotiate with Sotillo was a Notary
+      Public, whom the revolution had found languishing in the common jail on a
+      charge of forging documents. Liberated by the mob along with the other
+      &ldquo;victims of Blanco tyranny,&rdquo; he had hastened to offer his services to the
+      new Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He set out determined to display much zeal and eloquence in trying to
+      induce Sotillo to come into town alone for a conference with Pedrito
+      Montero. Nothing was further from the colonel&rsquo;s intentions. The mere
+      fleeting idea of trusting himself into the famous Pedrito&rsquo;s hands had made
+      him feel unwell several times. It was out of the question&mdash;it was
+      madness. And to put himself in open hostility was madness, too. It would
+      render impossible a systematic search for that treasure, for that wealth
+      of silver which he seemed to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere
+      near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But where? Where? Heavens! Where? Oh! why had he allowed that doctor to
+      go! Imbecile that he was. But no! It was the only right course, he
+      reflected distractedly, while the messenger waited downstairs chatting
+      agreeably to the officers. It was in that scoundrelly doctor&rsquo;s true
+      interest to return with positive information. But what if anything stopped
+      him? A general prohibition to leave the town, for instance! There would be
+      patrols!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in his tracks as if
+      struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration suggested to him an
+      expedient not unknown to European statesmen when they wish to delay a
+      difficult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled into the hammock
+      with undignified haste. His handsome face had turned yellow with the
+      strain of weighty cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp;
+      the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. The velvety, caressing
+      glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even decomposed; for these
+      almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot with
+      much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the surprised envoy of Senor
+      Fuentes in a deadened, exhausted voice. It came pathetically feeble from
+      under a pile of ponchos, which buried his elegant person right up to the
+      black moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign of bodily prostration and
+      mental incapacity. Fever, fever&mdash;a heavy fever had overtaken the &ldquo;muy
+      valliente&rdquo; colonel. A wavering wildness of expression, caused by the
+      passing spasms of a slight colic which had declared itself suddenly, and
+      the rattling teeth of repressed panic, had a genuineness which impressed
+      the envoy. It was a cold fit. The colonel explained that he was unable to
+      think, to listen, to speak. With an appearance of superhuman effort the
+      colonel gasped out that he was not in a state to return a suitable reply
+      or to execute any of his Excellency&rsquo;s orders. But to-morrow! To-morrow!
+      Ah! to-morrow! Let his Excellency Don Pedro be without uneasiness. The
+      brave Esmeralda Regiment held the harbour, held&mdash;And closing his
+      eyes, he rolled his aching head like a half-delirious invalid under the
+      inquisitive stare of the envoy, who was obliged to bend down over the
+      hammock in order to catch the painful and broken accents. Meantime,
+      Colonel Sotillo trusted that his Excellency&rsquo;s humanity would permit the
+      doctor, the English doctor, to come out of town with his case of foreign
+      remedies to attend upon him. He begged anxiously his worship the caballero
+      now present for the grace of looking in as he passed the Casa Gould, and
+      informing the English doctor, who was probably there, that his services
+      were immediately required by Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of fever in the
+      Custom House. Immediately. Most urgently required. Awaited with extreme
+      impatience. A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and would not
+      open them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, dumb, insensible, overcome,
+      vanquished, crushed, annihilated by the fell disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as soon as the other had shut after him the door of the landing, the
+      colonel leaped out with a fling of both feet in an avalanche of woollen
+      coverings. His spurs having become entangled in a perfect welter of
+      ponchos he nearly pitched on his head, and did not recover his balance
+      till the middle of the room. Concealed behind the half-closed jalousies he
+      listened to what went on below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The envoy had already mounted, and turning to the morose officers
+      occupying the great doorway, took off his hat formally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caballeros,&rdquo; he said, in a very loud tone, &ldquo;allow me to recommend you to
+      take great care of your colonel. It has done me much honour and
+      gratification to have seen you all, a fine body of men exercising the
+      soldierly virtue of patience in this exposed situation, where there is
+      much sun, and no water to speak of, while a town full of wine and feminine
+      charms is ready to embrace you for the brave men you are. Caballeros, I
+      have the honour to salute you. There will be much dancing to-night in
+      Sulaco. Good-bye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he reined in his horse and inclined his head sideways on seeing the
+      old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a straight narrow coat coming
+      down to his ankles as it were the casing of the regimental colours rolled
+      round their staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intelligent old warrior, after enunciating in a dogmatic tone the
+      general proposition that the &ldquo;world was full of traitors,&rdquo; went on
+      pronouncing deliberately a panegyric upon Sotillo. He ascribed to him with
+      leisurely emphasis every virtue under heaven, summing it all up in an
+      absurd colloquialism current amongst the lower class of Occidentals
+      (especially about Esmeralda). &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he concluded, with a sudden rise in
+      the voice, &ldquo;a man of many teeth&mdash;&lsquo;hombre de muchos dientes.&rsquo; Si,
+      senor. As to us,&rdquo; he pursued, portentous and impressive, &ldquo;your worship is
+      beholding the finest body of officers in the Republic, men unequalled for
+      valour and sagacity, &lsquo;y hombres de muchos dientes.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? All of them?&rdquo; inquired the disreputable envoy of Senor Fuentes,
+      with a faint, derisive smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Todos. Si, senor,&rdquo; the major affirmed, gravely, with conviction. &ldquo;Men of
+      many teeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other wheeled his horse to face the portal resembling the high gate of
+      a dismal barn. He raised himself in his stirrups, extended one arm. He was
+      a facetious scoundrel, entertaining for these stupid Occidentals a feeling
+      of great scorn natural in a native from the central provinces. The folly
+      of Esmeraldians especially aroused his amused contempt. He began an
+      oration upon Pedro Montero, keeping a solemn countenance. He flourished
+      his hand as if introducing him to their notice. And when he saw every face
+      set, all the eyes fixed upon his lips, he began to shout a sort of
+      catalogue of perfections: &ldquo;Generous, valorous, affable, profound&rdquo;&mdash;(he
+      snatched off his hat enthusiastically)&mdash;&ldquo;a statesman, an invincible
+      chief of partisans&mdash;&rdquo; He dropped his voice startlingly to a deep,
+      hollow note&mdash;&ldquo;and a dentist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid straddle of his legs, the
+      turned-out feet, the stiff back, the rakish slant of the sombrero above
+      the square, motionless set of the shoulders expressing an infinite,
+      awe-inspiring impudence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upstairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move for a long time. The
+      audacity of the fellow appalled him. What were his officers saying below?
+      They were saying nothing. Complete silence. He quaked. It was not thus
+      that he had imagined himself at that stage of the expedition. He had seen
+      himself triumphant, unquestioned, appeased, the idol of the soldiers,
+      weighing in secret complacency the agreeable alternatives of power and
+      wealth open to his choice. Alas! How different! Distracted, restless,
+      supine, burning with fury, or frozen with terror, he felt a dread as
+      fathomless as the sea creep upon him from every side. That rogue of a
+      doctor had to come out with his information. That was clear. It would be
+      of no use to him&mdash;alone. He could do nothing with it. Malediction!
+      The doctor would never come out. He was probably under arrest already,
+      shut up together with Don Carlos. He laughed aloud insanely. Ha! ha! ha!
+      ha! It was Pedrito Montero who would get the information. Ha! ha! ha! ha!&mdash;and
+      the silver. Ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became motionless and silent as
+      if turned into stone. He too, had a prisoner. A prisoner who must, must
+      know the real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And Sotillo, who
+      all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch, felt an inexplicable
+      reluctance at the notion of proceeding to extremities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt a reluctance&mdash;part of that unfathomable dread that crept on
+      all sides upon him. He remembered reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of
+      the hide merchant, his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It
+      was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility. The fact was that
+      though Sotillo did never for a moment believe his story&mdash;he could not
+      believe it; nobody could believe such nonsense&mdash;yet those accents of
+      despairing truth impressed him disagreeably. They made him feel sick. And
+      he suspected also that the man might have gone mad with fear. A lunatic is
+      a hopeless subject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence. He would know
+      how to deal with that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. His fine eyes
+      squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a bare-footed orderly appeared
+      noiselessly, a corporal, with his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a stick
+      in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable Hirsch, pushed in
+      by several soldiers, found him frowning awfully in a broad armchair, hat
+      on head, knees wide apart, arms akimbo, masterful, imposing, irresistible,
+      haughty, sublime, terrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled violently
+      into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he remained apparently
+      forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full of
+      despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows,
+      passive, sunk in hebetude. He listened to threats and admonitions, and
+      afterwards made his usual answers to questions, with his chin sunk on his
+      breast, his hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front of
+      Sotillo, and never looking up. When he was forced to hold up his head, by
+      means of a bayonet-point prodding him under the chin, his eyes had a
+      vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were
+      seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of his white face. Then
+      they stopped suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo looked at him in silence. &ldquo;Will you depart from your obstinacy,
+      you rogue?&rdquo; he asked. Already a rope, whose one end was fastened to Senor
+      Hirsch&rsquo;s wrists, had been thrown over a beam, and three soldiers held the
+      other end, waiting. He made no answer. His heavy lower lip hung stupidly.
+      Sotillo made a sign. Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a yell of
+      despair and agony burst out in the room, filled the passage of the great
+      buildings, rent the air outside, caused every soldier of the camp along
+      the shore to look up at the windows, started some of the officers in the
+      hall babbling excitedly, with shining eyes; others, setting their lips,
+      looked gloomily at the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room. The sentry on the
+      landing presented arms. Hirsch went on screaming all alone behind the
+      half-closed jalousies while the sunshine, reflected from the water of the
+      harbour, made an ever-running ripple of light high up on the wall. He
+      screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a wide-open mouth&mdash;incredibly
+      wide, black, enormous, full of teeth&mdash;comical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he made the waves of
+      his agony travel as far as the O. S. N. Company&rsquo;s offices. Captain
+      Mitchell on the balcony, trying to make out what went on generally, had
+      heard him faintly but distinctly, and the feeble and appalling sound
+      lingered in his ears after he had retreated indoors with blanched cheeks.
+      He had been driven off the balcony several times during that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held consultations
+      with his officers, gave contradictory orders in this shrill clamour
+      pervading the whole empty edifice. Sometimes there would be long and awful
+      silences. Several times he had entered the torture-chamber where his
+      sword, horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass were lying on the table, to
+      ask with forced calmness, &ldquo;Will you speak the truth now? No? I can wait.&rdquo;
+       But he could not afford to wait much longer. That was just it. Every time
+      he went in and came out with a slam of the door, the sentry on the landing
+      presented arms, and got in return a black, venomous, unsteady glance,
+      which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being merely the reflection of the
+      soul within&mdash;a soul of gloomy hatred, irresolution, avarice, and
+      fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun had set when he went in once more. A soldier carried in two
+      lighted candles and slunk out, shutting the door without noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver! The silver, I say!
+      Where is it? Where have you foreign rogues hidden it? Confess or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked limbs, but the
+      body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising business man from Esmeralda, hung under
+      the heavy beam perpendicular and silent, facing the colonel awfully. The
+      inflow of the night air, cooled by the snows of the Sierra, spread
+      gradually a delicious freshness through the close heat of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak&mdash;thief&mdash;scoundrel&mdash;picaro&mdash;or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his arm lifted up. For
+      a word, for one little word, he felt he would have knelt, cringed,
+      grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed
+      eyeballs starting out of the grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very
+      still with its mouth closed askew. The colonel ground his teeth with rage
+      and struck. The rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long string
+      of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging motion was imparted to
+      the body of Senor Hirsch, the well-known hide merchant on the coast. With
+      a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a few inches, curling
+      upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. Senor Hirsch&rsquo;s head was
+      flung back on his straining throat; his chin trembled. For a moment the
+      rattle of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast, shadowy room, where the
+      candles made a patch of light round the two flames burning side by side.
+      And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand, waited for him to speak, with the
+      sudden flash of a grin and a straining forward of the wrenched shoulders,
+      he spat violently into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with a low cry of
+      dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom. Quick as thought he
+      snatched up his revolver, and fired twice. The report and the concussion
+      of the shots seemed to throw him at once from ungovernable rage into
+      idiotic stupor. He stood with drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he
+      done, Sangre de Dios! What had he done? He was basely appalled at his
+      impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips from which so much was to be
+      extorted. What could he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong
+      flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind; even the craven and
+      absurd notion of hiding under the table occurred to his cowardice. It was
+      too late; his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great clatter of
+      scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and wonder. But since they did
+      not immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his breast, the brazen
+      side of his character asserted itself. Passing the sleeve of his uniform
+      over his face he pulled himself together, His truculent glance turned
+      slowly here and there, checked the noise where it fell; and the stiff body
+      of the late Senor Hirsch, merchant, after swaying imperceptibly, made a
+      half turn, and came to a rest in the midst of awed murmurs and uneasy
+      shuffling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice remarked loudly, &ldquo;Behold a man who will never speak again.&rdquo; And
+      another, from the back row of faces, timid and pressing, cried out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you kill him, mi colonel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he has confessed everything,&rdquo; answered Sotillo, with the
+      hardihood of desperation. He felt himself cornered. He brazened it out on
+      the strength of his reputation with very fair success. His hearers thought
+      him very capable of such an act. They were disposed to believe his
+      flattering tale. There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity
+      of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery
+      and the intellectual destitution of mankind. Ah! he had confessed
+      everything, this fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer
+      wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain&mdash;a
+      big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat cheeks which
+      never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged like a
+      scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch, muttering to
+      himself with ineffable complacency that like this there was no need to
+      guard against any future treacheries of that scoundrel. The others stared,
+      shifting from foot to foot, and whispering short remarks to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremptory orders to hasten
+      the retirement decided upon in the afternoon. Sinister, impressive, his
+      sombrero pulled right down upon his eyebrows, he marched first through the
+      door in such disorder of mind that he forgot utterly to provide for Dr.
+      Monygham&rsquo;s possible return. As the officers trooped out after him, one or
+      two looked back hastily at the late Senor Hirsch, merchant from Esmeralda,
+      left swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the two burning candles. In the
+      emptiness of the room the burly shadow of head and shoulders on the wall
+      had an air of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by companies without drum
+      or trumpet. The old scarecrow major commanded the rearguard; but the party
+      he left behind with orders to fire the Custom House (and &ldquo;burn the carcass
+      of the treacherous Jew where it hung&rdquo;) failed somehow in their haste to
+      set the staircase properly alight. The body of the late Senor Hirsch dwelt
+      alone for a time in the dismal solitude of the unfinished building,
+      resounding weirdly with sudden slams and clicks of doors and latches, with
+      rustling scurries of torn papers, and the tremulous sighs that at each
+      gust of wind passed under the high roof. The light of the two candles
+      burning before the perpendicular and breathless immobility of the late
+      Senor Hirsch threw a gleam afar over land and water, like a signal in the
+      night. He remained to startle Nostromo by his presence, and to puzzle Dr.
+      Monygham by the mystery of his atrocious end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why shot?&rdquo; the doctor again asked himself, audibly. This time he was
+      answered by a dry laugh from Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem much concerned at a very natural thing, senor doctor. I wonder
+      why? It is very likely that before long we shall all get shot one after
+      another, if not by Sotillo, then by Pedrito, or Fuentes, or Gamacho. And
+      we may even get the estrapade, too, or worse&mdash;quien sabe?&mdash;with
+      your pretty tale of the silver you put into Sotillo&rsquo;s head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was in his head already,&rdquo; the doctor protested. &ldquo;I only&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. And you only nailed it there so that the devil himself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely what I meant to do,&rdquo; caught up the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what you meant to do. Bueno. It is as I say. You are a dangerous
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their voices, which without rising had been growing quarrelsome, ceased
+      suddenly. The late Senor Hirsch, erect and shadowy against the stars,
+      seemed to be waiting attentive, in impartial silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dr. Monygham had no mind to quarrel with Nostromo. At this supremely
+      critical point of Sulaco&rsquo;s fortunes it was borne upon him at last that
+      this man was really indispensable, more indispensable than ever the
+      infatuation of Captain Mitchell, his proud discoverer, could conceive; far
+      beyond what Decoud&rsquo;s best dry raillery about &ldquo;my illustrious friend, the
+      unique Capataz de Cargadores,&rdquo; had ever intended. The fellow was unique.
+      He was not &ldquo;one in a thousand.&rdquo; He was absolutely the only one. The doctor
+      surrendered. There was something in the genius of that Genoese seaman
+      which dominated the destinies of great enterprises and of many people, the
+      fortunes of Charles Gould, the fate of an admirable woman. At this last
+      thought the doctor had to clear his throat before he could speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a completely changed tone he pointed out to the Capataz that, to begin
+      with, he personally ran no great risk. As far as everybody knew he was
+      dead. It was an enormous advantage. He had only to keep out of sight in
+      the Casa Viola, where the old Garibaldino was known to be alone&mdash;with
+      his dead wife. The servants had all run away. No one would think of
+      searching for him there, or anywhere else on earth, for that matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be very true,&rdquo; Nostromo spoke up, bitterly, &ldquo;if I had not met
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time the doctor kept silent. &ldquo;Do you mean to say that you think I
+      may give you away?&rdquo; he asked in an unsteady voice. &ldquo;Why? Why should I do
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I know? Why not? To gain a day perhaps. It would take Sotillo a
+      day to give me the estrapade, and try some other things perhaps, before he
+      puts a bullet through my heart&mdash;as he did to that poor wretch here.
+      Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor swallowed with difficulty. His throat had gone dry in a moment.
+      It was not from indignation. The doctor, pathetically enough, believed
+      that he had forfeited the right to be indignant with any one&mdash;for
+      anything. It was simple dread. Had the fellow heard his story by some
+      chance? If so, there was an end of his usefulness in that direction. The
+      indispensable man escaped his influence, because of that indelible blot
+      which made him fit for dirty work. A feeling as of sickness came upon the
+      doctor. He would have given anything to know, but he dared not clear up
+      the point. The fanaticism of his devotion, fed on the sense of his
+      abasement, hardened his heart in sadness and scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, indeed?&rdquo; he reechoed, sardonically. &ldquo;Then the safe thing for you
+      is to kill me on the spot. I would defend myself. But you may just as well
+      know I am going about unarmed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Por Dios!&rdquo; said the Capataz, passionately. &ldquo;You fine people are all
+      alike. All dangerous. All betrayers of the poor who are your dogs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not understand,&rdquo; began the doctor, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand you all!&rdquo; cried the other with a violent movement, as
+      shadowy to the doctor&rsquo;s eyes as the persistent immobility of the late
+      Senor Hirsch. &ldquo;A poor man amongst you has got to look after himself. I say
+      that you do not care for those that serve you. Look at me! After all these
+      years, suddenly, here I find myself like one of these curs that bark
+      outside the walls&mdash;without a kennel or a dry bone for my teeth. <i>Caramba!</i>&rdquo;
+       But he relented with a contemptuous fairness. &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he went on,
+      quietly, &ldquo;I do not suppose that you would hasten to give me up to Sotillo,
+      for example. It is not that. It is that I am nothing! Suddenly&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      swung his arm downwards. &ldquo;Nothing to any one,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor breathed freely. &ldquo;Listen, Capataz,&rdquo; he said, stretching out his
+      arm almost affectionately towards Nostromo&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;I am going to tell
+      you a very simple thing. You are safe because you are needed. I would not
+      give you away for any conceivable reason, because I want you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dark Nostromo bit his lip. He had heard enough of that. He knew
+      what that meant. No more of that for him. But he had to look after himself
+      now, he thought. And he thought, too, that it would not be prudent to part
+      in anger from his companion. The doctor, admitted to be a great healer,
+      had, amongst the populace of Sulaco, the reputation of being an evil sort
+      of man. It was based solidly on his personal appearance, which was
+      strange, and on his rough ironic manner&mdash;proofs visible, sensible,
+      and incontrovertible of the doctor&rsquo;s malevolent disposition. And Nostromo
+      was of the people. So he only grunted incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, to speak plainly, are the only man,&rdquo; the doctor pursued. &ldquo;It is in
+      your power to save this town and . . . everybody from the destructive
+      rapacity of men who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, senor,&rdquo; said Nostromo, sullenly. &ldquo;It is not in my power to get the
+      treasure back for you to give up to Sotillo, or Pedrito, or Gamacho. What
+      do I know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody expects the impossible,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have said it yourself&mdash;nobody,&rdquo; muttered Nostromo, in a gloomy,
+      threatening tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dr. Monygham, full of hope, disregarded the enigmatic words and the
+      threatening tone. To their eyes, accustomed to obscurity, the late Senor
+      Hirsch, growing more distinct, seemed to have come nearer. And the doctor
+      lowered his voice in exposing his scheme as though afraid of being
+      overheard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was taking the indispensable man into his fullest confidence. Its
+      implied flattery and suggestion of great risks came with a familiar sound
+      to the Capataz. His mind, floating in irresolution and discontent,
+      recognized it with bitterness. He understood well that the doctor was
+      anxious to save the San Tome mine from annihilation. He would be nothing
+      without it. It was his interest. Just as it had been the interest of Senor
+      Decoud, of the Blancos, and of the Europeans to get his Cargadores on
+      their side. His thought became arrested upon Decoud. What would happen to
+      him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s prolonged silence made the doctor uneasy. He pointed out, quite
+      unnecessarily, that though for the present he was safe, he could not live
+      concealed for ever. The choice was between accepting the mission to
+      Barrios, with all its dangers and difficulties, and leaving Sulaco by
+      stealth, ingloriously, in poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None of your friends could reward you and protect you just now, Capataz.
+      Not even Don Carlos himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would have none of your protection and none of your rewards. I only
+      wish I could trust your courage and your sense. When I return in triumph,
+      as you say, with Barrios, I may find you all destroyed. You have the knife
+      at your throat now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the doctor&rsquo;s turn to remain silent in the contemplation of horrible
+      contingencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we would trust your courage and your sense. And you, too, have a
+      knife at your throat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! And whom am I to thank for that? What are your politics and your
+      mines to me&mdash;your silver and your constitutions&mdash;your Don Carlos
+      this, and Don Jose that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; burst out the exasperated doctor. &ldquo;There are innocent
+      people in danger whose little finger is worth more than you or I and all
+      the Ribierists together. I don&rsquo;t know. You should have asked yourself
+      before you allowed Decoud to lead you into all this. It was your place to
+      think like a man; but if you did not think then, try to act like a man
+      now. Did you imagine Decoud cared very much for what would happen to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more than you care for what will happen to me,&rdquo; muttered the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I care for what will happen to you as little as I care for what will
+      happen to myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And all this because you are such a devoted Ribierist?&rdquo; Nostromo said in
+      an incredulous tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this because I am such a devoted Ribierist,&rdquo; repeated Dr. Monygham,
+      grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Nostromo, gazing abstractedly at the body of the late Senor Hirsch,
+      remained silent, thinking that the doctor was a dangerous person in more
+      than one sense. It was impossible to trust him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you speak in the name of Don Carlos?&rdquo; he asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I do,&rdquo; the doctor said, loudly, without hesitation. &ldquo;He must come
+      forward now. He must,&rdquo; he added in a mutter, which Nostromo did not catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say, senor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor started. &ldquo;I say that you must be true to yourself, Capataz. It
+      would be worse than folly to fail now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True to myself,&rdquo; repeated Nostromo. &ldquo;How do you know that I would not be
+      true to myself if I told you to go to the devil with your propositions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. Maybe you would,&rdquo; the doctor said, with a roughness of
+      tone intended to hide the sinking of his heart and the faltering of his
+      voice. &ldquo;All I know is, that you had better get away from here. Some of
+      Sotillo&rsquo;s men may turn up here looking for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped off the table, listening intently. The Capataz, too, stood up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose I went to Cayta, what would you do meantime?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would go to Sotillo directly you had left&mdash;in the way I am
+      thinking of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very good way&mdash;if only that engineer-in-chief consents. Remind
+      him, senor, that I looked after the old rich Englishman who pays for the
+      railway, and that I saved the lives of some of his people that time when a
+      gang of thieves came from the south to wreck one of his pay-trains. It was
+      I who discovered it all at the risk of my life, by pretending to enter
+      into their plans. Just as you are doing with Sotillo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Yes, of course. But I can offer him better arguments,&rdquo; the doctor
+      said, hastily. &ldquo;Leave it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes! True. I am nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. You are everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They moved a few paces towards the door. Behind them the late Senor Hirsch
+      preserved the immobility of a disregarded man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will be all right. I know what to say to the engineer,&rdquo; pursued the
+      doctor, in a low tone. &ldquo;My difficulty will be with Sotillo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Dr. Monygham stopped short in the doorway as if intimidated by the
+      difficulty. He had made the sacrifice of his life. He considered this a
+      fitting opportunity. But he did not want to throw his life away too soon.
+      In his quality of betrayer of Don Carlos&rsquo; confidence, he would have
+      ultimately to indicate the hiding-place of the treasure. That would be the
+      end of his deception, and the end of himself as well, at the hands of the
+      infuriated colonel. He wanted to delay him to the very last moment; and he
+      had been racking his brains to invent some place of concealment at once
+      plausible and difficult of access.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He imparted his trouble to Nostromo, and concluded&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what, Capataz? I think that when the time comes and some
+      information must be given, I shall indicate the Great Isabel. That is the
+      best place I can think of. What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A low exclamation had escaped Nostromo. The doctor waited, surprised, and
+      after a moment of profound silence, heard a thick voice stammer out,
+      &ldquo;Utter folly,&rdquo; and stop with a gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why folly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! You do not see it,&rdquo; began Nostromo, scathingly, gathering scorn as he
+      went on. &ldquo;Three men in half an hour would see that no ground had been
+      disturbed anywhere on that island. Do you think that such a treasure can
+      be buried without leaving traces of the work&mdash;eh! senor doctor? Why!
+      you would not gain half a day more before having your throat cut by
+      Sotillo. The Isabel! What stupidity! What miserable invention! Ah! you are
+      all alike, you fine men of intelligence. All you are fit for is to betray
+      men of the people into undertaking deadly risks for objects that you are
+      not even sure about. If it comes off you get the benefit. If not, then it
+      does not matter. He is only a dog. Ah! Madre de Dios, I would&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      shook his fists above his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was overwhelmed at first by this fierce, hissing vehemence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! It seems to me on your own showing that the men of the people are
+      no mean fools, too,&rdquo; he said, sullenly. &ldquo;No, but come. You are so clever.
+      Have you a better place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had calmed down as quickly as he had flared up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am clever enough for that,&rdquo; he said, quietly, almost with indifference.
+      &ldquo;You want to tell him of a hiding-place big enough to take days in
+      ransacking&mdash;a place where a treasure of silver ingots can be buried
+      without leaving a sign on the surface.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And close at hand,&rdquo; the doctor put in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so, senor. Tell him it is sunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This has the merit of being the truth,&rdquo; the doctor said, contemptuously.
+      &ldquo;He will not believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You tell him that it is sunk where he may hope to lay his hands on it,
+      and he will believe you quick enough. Tell him it has been sunk in the
+      harbour in order to be recovered afterwards by divers. Tell him you found
+      out that I had orders from Don Carlos Gould to lower the cases quietly
+      overboard somewhere in a line between the end of the jetty and the
+      entrance. The depth is not too great there. He has no divers, but he has a
+      ship, boats, ropes, chains, sailors&mdash;of a sort. Let him fish for the
+      silver. Let him set his fools to drag backwards and forwards and crossways
+      while he sits and watches till his eyes drop out of his head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, this is an admirable idea,&rdquo; muttered the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si. You tell him that, and see whether he will not believe you! He will
+      spend days in rage and torment&mdash;and still he will believe. He will
+      have no thought for anything else. He will not give up till he is driven
+      off&mdash;why, he may even forget to kill you. He will neither eat nor
+      sleep. He&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very thing! The very thing!&rdquo; the doctor repeated in an excited
+      whisper. &ldquo;Capataz, I begin to believe that you are a great genius in your
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had paused; then began again in a changed tone, sombre, speaking
+      to himself as though he had forgotten the doctor&rsquo;s existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a man&rsquo;s mind. He will
+      pray and blaspheme and still persevere, and will curse the day he ever
+      heard of it, and will let his last hour come upon him unawares, still
+      believing that he missed it only by a foot. He will see it every time he
+      closes his eyes. He will never forget it till he is dead&mdash;and even
+      then&mdash;&mdash;Doctor, did you ever hear of the miserable gringos on
+      Azuera, that cannot die? Ha! ha! Sailors like myself. There is no getting
+      away from a treasure that once fastens upon your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a devil of a man, Capataz. It is the most plausible thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo pressed his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be worse for him than thirst at sea or hunger in a town full of
+      people. Do you know what that is? He shall suffer greater torments than he
+      inflicted upon that terrified wretch who had no invention. None! none! Not
+      like me. I could have told Sotillo a deadly tale for very little pain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed wildly and turned in the doorway towards the body of the late
+      Senor Hirsch, an opaque long blotch in the semi-transparent obscurity of
+      the room between the two tall parallelograms of the windows full of stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You man of fear!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You shall be avenged by me&mdash;Nostromo.
+      Out of my way, doctor! Stand aside&mdash;or, by the suffering soul of a
+      woman dead without confession, I will strangle you with my two hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bounded downwards into the black, smoky hall. With a grunt of
+      astonishment, Dr. Monygham threw himself recklessly into the pursuit. At
+      the bottom of the charred stairs he had a fall, pitching forward on his
+      face with a force that would have stunned a spirit less intent upon a task
+      of love and devotion. He was up in a moment, jarred, shaken, with a queer
+      impression of the terrestrial globe having been flung at his head in the
+      dark. But it wanted more than that to stop Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s body, possessed
+      by the exaltation of self-sacrifice; a reasonable exaltation, determined
+      not to lose whatever advantage chance put into its way. He ran with
+      headlong, tottering swiftness, his arms going like a windmill in his
+      effort to keep his balance on his crippled feet. He lost his hat; the
+      tails of his open gaberdine flew behind him. He had no mind to lose sight
+      of the indispensable man. But it was a long time, and a long way from the
+      Custom House, before he managed to seize his arm from behind, roughly, out
+      of breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop! Are you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Already Nostromo was walking slowly, his head dropping, as if checked in
+      his pace by the weariness of irresolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that to you? Ah! I forgot you want me for something. Always.
+      Siempre Nostromo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by talking of strangling me?&rdquo; panted the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I mean? I mean that the king of the devils himself has sent you
+      out of this town of cowards and talkers to meet me to-night of all the
+      nights of my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the starry sky the Albergo d&rsquo;ltalia Una emerged, black and low,
+      breaking the dark level of the plain. Nostromo stopped altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The priests say he is a tempter, do they not?&rdquo; he added, through his
+      clenched teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good man, you drivel. The devil has nothing to do with this. Neither
+      has the town, which you may call by what name you please. But Don Carlos
+      Gould is neither a coward nor an empty talker. You will admit that?&rdquo; He
+      waited. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could I see Don Carlos?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heavens! No! Why? What for?&rdquo; exclaimed the doctor in agitation. &ldquo;I
+      tell you it is madness. I will not let you go into the town for anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not!&rdquo; hissed the doctor, fiercely, almost beside himself with
+      the fear of the man doing away with his usefulness for an imbecile whim of
+      some sort. &ldquo;I tell you you shall not. I would rather&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped at loss for words, feeling fagged out, powerless, holding on to
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s sleeve, absolutely for support after his run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am betrayed!&rdquo; muttered the Capataz to himself; and the doctor, who
+      overheard the last word, made an effort to speak calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is exactly what would happen to you. You would be betrayed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought with a sickening dread that the man was so well known that he
+      could not escape recognition. The house of the Senor Administrador was
+      beset by spies, no doubt. And even the very servants of the casa were not
+      to be trusted. &ldquo;Reflect, Capataz,&rdquo; he said, impressively. . . . &ldquo;What are
+      you laughing at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am laughing to think that if somebody that did not approve of my
+      presence in town, for instance&mdash;you understand, senor doctor&mdash;if
+      somebody were to give me up to Pedrito, it would not be beyond my power to
+      make friends even with him. It is true. What do you think of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a man of infinite resource, Capataz,&rdquo; said Dr. Monygham,
+      dismally. &ldquo;I recognize that. But the town is full of talk about you; and
+      those few Cargadores that are not in hiding with the railway people have
+      been shouting &lsquo;Viva Montero&rsquo; on the Plaza all day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Cargadores!&rdquo; muttered Nostromo. &ldquo;Betrayed! Betrayed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand that on the wharf you were pretty free in laying about you
+      with a stick amongst your poor Cargadores,&rdquo; the doctor said in a grim
+      tone, which showed that he was recovering from his exertions. &ldquo;Make no
+      mistake. Pedrito is furious at Senor Ribiera&rsquo;s rescue, and at having lost
+      the pleasure of shooting Decoud. Already there are rumours in the town of
+      the treasure having been spirited away. To have missed that does not
+      please Pedrito either; but let me tell you that if you had all that silver
+      in your hand for ransom it would not save you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning swiftly, and catching the doctor by the shoulders, Nostromo thrust
+      his face close to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maladetta! You follow me speaking of the treasure. You have sworn my
+      ruin. You were the last man who looked upon me before I went out with it.
+      And Sidoni the engine-driver says you have an evil eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to know. I saved his broken leg for him last year,&rdquo; the doctor
+      said, stoically. He felt on his shoulders the weight of these hands famed
+      amongst the populace for snapping thick ropes and bending horseshoes. &ldquo;And
+      to you I offer the best means of saving yourself&mdash;let me go&mdash;and
+      of retrieving your great reputation. You boasted of making the Capataz de
+      Cargadores famous from one end of America to the other about this wretched
+      silver. But I bring you a better opportunity&mdash;let me go, hombre!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor feared that the
+      indispensable man would run off again. But he did not. He walked on
+      slowly. The doctor hobbled by his side till, within a stone&rsquo;s throw from
+      the Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed to have changed its
+      nature; his home appeared to repel him with an air of hopeless and
+      inimical mystery. The doctor said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I go in?&rdquo; Nostromo seemed to ask himself in a low, inward tone.
+      &ldquo;She cannot unsay what she said, and I cannot undo what I have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there. I looked in as I
+      came out of the town. You will be perfectly safe in that house till you
+      leave it to make your name famous on the Campo. I am going now to arrange
+      for your departure with the engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring you news
+      here long before daybreak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to penetrate the meaning of
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s silence, clapped him lightly on the shoulder, and starting off
+      with his smart, lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth hop in
+      the direction of the railway track. Arrested between the two wooden posts
+      for people to fasten their horses to, Nostromo did not move, as if he,
+      too, had been planted solidly in the ground. At the end of half an hour he
+      lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the railway yards, which
+      had burst out suddenly, tumultuous and deadened as if coming from under
+      the plain. That lame doctor with the evil eye had got there pretty fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo d&rsquo;Italia Una, which he had
+      never known so lightless, so silent, before. The door, all black in the
+      pale wall, stood open as he had left it twenty-four hours before, when he
+      had nothing to hide from the world. He remained before it, irresolute,
+      like a fugitive, like a man betrayed. Poverty, misery, starvation! Where
+      had he heard these words? The anger of a dying woman had prophesied that
+      fate for his folly. It looked as if it would come true very quickly. And
+      the leperos would laugh&mdash;she had said. Yes, they would laugh if they
+      knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at the mercy of the mad doctor
+      whom they could remember, only a few years ago, buying cooked food from a
+      stall on the Plaza for a copper coin&mdash;like one of themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mitchell passed through his
+      mind. He glanced in the direction of the jetty and saw a small gleam of
+      light in the O.S.N. Company&rsquo;s building. The thought of lighted windows was
+      not attractive. Two lighted windows had decoyed him into the empty Custom
+      House, only to fall into the clutches of that doctor. No! He would not go
+      near lighted windows again on that night. Captain Mitchell was there. And
+      what could he be told? That doctor would worm it all out of him as if he
+      were a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the threshold he called out &ldquo;Giorgio!&rdquo; in an undertone. Nobody
+      answered. He stepped in. &ldquo;Ola! viejo! Are you there? . . .&rdquo; In the
+      impenetrable darkness his head swam with the illusion that the obscurity
+      of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, and that the floor dipped
+      forward like a sinking lighter. &ldquo;Ola! viejo!&rdquo; he repeated, falteringly,
+      swaying where he stood. His hand, extended to steady himself, fell upon
+      the table. Moving a step forward, he shifted it, and felt a box of matches
+      under his fingers. He fancied he had heard a quiet sigh. He listened for a
+      moment, holding his breath; then, with trembling hands, tried to strike a
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tiny piece of wood flamed up quite blindingly at the end of his
+      fingers, raised above his blinking eyes. A concentrated glare fell upon
+      the leonine white head of old Giorgio against the black fire-place&mdash;showed
+      him leaning forward in a chair in staring immobility, surrounded,
+      overhung, by great masses of shadow, his legs crossed, his cheek in his
+      hand, an empty pipe in the corner of his mouth. It seemed hours before he
+      attempted to turn his face; at the very moment the match went out, and he
+      disappeared, overwhelmed by the shadows, as if the walls and roof of the
+      desolate house had collapsed upon his white head in ghostly silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo heard him stir and utter dispassionately the words&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may have been a vision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, softly. &ldquo;It is no vision, old man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A strong chest voice asked in the dark&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that you I hear, Giovann&rsquo; Battista?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, viejo. Steady. Not so loud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After his release by Sotillo, Giorgio Viola, attended to the very door by
+      the good-natured engineer-in-chief, had reentered his house, which he had
+      been made to leave almost at the very moment of his wife&rsquo;s death. All was
+      still. The lamp above was burning. He nearly called out to her by name;
+      and the thought that no call from him would ever again evoke the answer of
+      her voice, made him drop heavily into the chair with a loud groan, wrung
+      out by the pain as of a keen blade piercing his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the night he made no sound. The darkness turned to grey, and
+      on the colourless, clear, glassy dawn the jagged sierra stood out flat and
+      opaque, as if cut out of paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The enthusiastic and severe soul of Giorgio Viola, sailor, champion of
+      oppressed humanity, enemy of kings, and, by the grace of Mrs. Gould,
+      hotel-keeper of the Sulaco harbour, had descended into the open abyss of
+      desolation amongst the shattered vestiges of his past. He remembered his
+      wooing between two campaigns, a single short week in the season of
+      gathering olives. Nothing approached the grave passion of that time but
+      the deep, passionate sense of his bereavement. He discovered all the
+      extent of his dependence upon the silenced voice of that woman. It was her
+      voice that he missed. Abstracted, busy, lost in inward contemplation, he
+      seldom looked at his wife in those later years. The thought of his girls
+      was a matter of concern, not of consolation. It was her voice that he
+      would miss. And he remembered the other child&mdash;the little boy who
+      died at sea. Ah! a man would have been something to lean upon. And, alas!
+      even Gian&rsquo; Battista&mdash;he of whom, and of Linda, his wife had spoken to
+      him so anxiously before she dropped off into her last sleep on earth, he
+      on whom she had called aloud to save the children, just before she died&mdash;even
+      he was dead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, sat through the day
+      in immobility and solitude. He never heard the brazen roar of the bells in
+      town. When it ceased the earthenware filter in the corner of the kitchen
+      kept on its swift musical drip, drip into the great porous jar below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements disappeared up the
+      narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; and the rubbing of his shoulders
+      made a small noise as of a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall.
+      While he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave. Then, with
+      the same faint rubbing noise, he descended. He had to catch at the chairs
+      and tables to regain his seat. He seized his pipe off the high mantel of
+      the fire-place&mdash;but made no attempt to reach the tobacco&mdash;thrust
+      it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat down again in the same
+      staring pose. The sun of Pedrito&rsquo;s entry into Sulaco, the last sun of
+      Senor Hirsch&rsquo;s life, the first of Decoud&rsquo;s solitude on the Great Isabel,
+      passed over the Albergo d&rsquo;ltalia Una on its way to the west. The tinkling
+      drip, drip of the filter had ceased, the lamp upstairs had burnt itself
+      out, and the night beset Giorgio Viola and his dead wife with its
+      obscurity and silence that seemed invincible till the Capataz de
+      Cargadores, returning from the dead, put them to flight with the splutter
+      and flare of a match.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, viejo. It is me. Wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the shutters carefully,
+      groped upon a shelf for a candle, and lit it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the dark the sounds made
+      by Nostromo. The light disclosed him standing without support, as if the
+      mere presence of that man who was loyal, brave, incorruptible, who was all
+      his son would have been, were enough for the support of his decaying
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He extended his hand grasping the briar-wood pipe, whose bowl was charred
+      on the edge, and knitted his bushy eyebrows heavily at the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have returned,&rdquo; he said, with shaky dignity. &ldquo;Ah! Very well! I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off. Nostromo, leaning back against the table, his arms folded on
+      his breast, nodded at him slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog of the rich, of the
+      aristocrats, of these fine men who can only talk and betray the people, is
+      not dead yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the sound of the
+      well-known voice. His head moved slightly once as if in sign of approval;
+      but Nostromo saw clearly that the old man understood nothing of the words.
+      There was no one to understand; no one he could take into the confidence
+      of Decoud&rsquo;s fate, of his own, into the secret of the silver. That doctor
+      was an enemy of the people&mdash;a tempter. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Giorgio&rsquo;s heavy frame shook from head to foot with the effort to
+      overcome his emotion at the sight of that man, who had shared the
+      intimacies of his domestic life as though he had been a grown-up son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She believed you would return,&rdquo; he said, solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo raised his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come back&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He finished the thought mentally: &ldquo;Since she has prophesied for me an end
+      of poverty, misery, and starvation.&rdquo; These words of Teresa&rsquo;s anger, from
+      the circumstances in which they had been uttered, like the cry of a soul
+      prevented from making its peace with God, stirred the obscure superstition
+      of personal fortune from which even the greatest genius amongst men of
+      adventure and action is seldom free. They reigned over Nostromo&rsquo;s mind
+      with the force of a potent malediction. And what a curse it was that which
+      her words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned so young that he could
+      remember no other woman whom he called mother. Henceforth there would be
+      no enterprise in which he would not fail. The spell was working already.
+      Death itself would elude him now. . . . He said violently&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am hungry! Sangre de Dios! The
+      emptiness of my belly makes me lightheaded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast above his folded arms,
+      barefooted, watching from under a gloomy brow the movements of old Viola
+      foraging amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if indeed fallen under a
+      curse&mdash;a ruined and sinister Capataz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a word, emptied upon
+      the table out of his hollowed palms a few dry crusts of bread and half a
+      raw onion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the Capataz began to devour this beggar&rsquo;s fare, taking up with
+      stony-eyed voracity piece after piece lying by his side, the Garibaldino
+      went off, and squatting down in another corner filled an earthenware mug
+      with red wine out of a wicker-covered demijohn. With a familiar gesture,
+      as when serving customers in the cafe, he had thrust his pipe between his
+      teeth to have his hands free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened the bronze of his
+      cheek. Before him, Viola, with a turn of his white and massive head
+      towards the staircase, took his empty pipe out of his mouth, and
+      pronounced slowly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After the shot was fired down here, which killed her as surely as if the
+      bullet had struck her oppressed heart, she called upon you to save the
+      children. Upon you, Gian&rsquo; Battista.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz looked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she do that, Padrone? To save the children! They are with the English
+      senora, their rich benefactress. Hey! old man of the people. Thy
+      benefactress. . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am old,&rdquo; muttered Giorgio Viola. &ldquo;An Englishwoman was allowed to give a
+      bed to Garibaldi lying wounded in prison. The greatest man that ever
+      lived. A man of the people, too&mdash;a sailor. I may let another keep a
+      roof over my head. Si . . . I am old. I may let her. Life lasts too long
+      sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she herself may not have a roof over her head before many days are
+      out, unless I . . . What do you say? Am I to keep a roof over her head? Am
+      I to try&mdash;and save all the Blancos together with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall do it,&rdquo; said old Viola in a strong voice. &ldquo;You shall do it as
+      my son would have. . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy son, viejo! .. .. There never has been a man like thy son. Ha, I must
+      try. . . . But what if it were only a part of the curse to lure me on? . .
+      . And so she called upon me to save&mdash;and then&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She spoke no more.&rdquo; The heroic follower of Garibaldi, at the thought of
+      the eternal stillness and silence fallen upon the shrouded form stretched
+      out on the bed upstairs, averted his face and raised his hand to his
+      furrowed brow. &ldquo;She was dead before I could seize her hands,&rdquo; he stammered
+      out, pitifully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the wide eyes of the Capataz, staring at the doorway of the dark
+      staircase, floated the shape of the Great Isabel, like a strange ship in
+      distress, freighted with enormous wealth and the solitary life of a man.
+      It was impossible for him to do anything. He could only hold his tongue,
+      since there was no one to trust. The treasure would be lost, probably&mdash;unless
+      Decoud. . . . And his thought came abruptly to an end. He perceived that
+      he could not imagine in the least what Decoud was likely to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Viola had not stirred. And the motionless Capataz dropped his long,
+      soft eyelashes, which gave to the upper part of his fierce,
+      black-whiskered face a touch of feminine ingenuousness. The silence had
+      lasted for a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God rest her soul!&rdquo; he murmured, gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER TEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day was quiet in the morning, except for the faint sound of
+      firing to the northward, in the direction of Los Hatos. Captain Mitchell
+      had listened to it from his balcony anxiously. The phrase, &ldquo;In my delicate
+      position as the only consular agent then in the port, everything, sir,
+      everything was a just cause for anxiety,&rdquo; had its place in the more or
+      less stereotyped relation of the &ldquo;historical events&rdquo; which for the next
+      few years was at the service of distinguished strangers visiting Sulaco.
+      The mention of the dignity and neutrality of the flag, so difficult to
+      preserve in his position, &ldquo;right in the thick of these events between the
+      lawlessness of that piratical villain Sotillo and the more regularly
+      established but scarcely less atrocious tyranny of his Excellency Don
+      Pedro Montero,&rdquo; came next in order. Captain Mitchell was not the man to
+      enlarge upon mere dangers much. But he insisted that it was a memorable
+      day. On that day, towards dusk, he had seen &ldquo;that poor fellow of mine&mdash;Nostromo.
+      The sailor whom I discovered, and, I may say, made, sir. The man of the
+      famous ride to Cayta, sir. An historical event, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and faithful servant, Captain
+      Mitchell was allowed to attain the term of his usefulness in ease and
+      dignity at the head of the enormously extended service. The augmentation
+      of the establishment, with its crowds of clerks, an office in town, the
+      old office in the harbour, the division into departments&mdash;passenger,
+      cargo, lighterage, and so on&mdash;secured a greater leisure for his last
+      years in the regenerated Sulaco, the capital of the Occidental Republic.
+      Liked by the natives for his good nature and the formality of his manner,
+      self-important and simple, known for years as a &ldquo;friend of our country,&rdquo;
+       he felt himself a personality of mark in the town. Getting up early for a
+      turn in the market-place while the gigantic shadow of Higuerota was still
+      lying upon the fruit and flower stalls piled up with masses of gorgeous
+      colouring, attending easily to current affairs, welcomed in houses,
+      greeted by ladies on the Alameda, with his entry into all the clubs and a
+      footing in the Casa Gould, he led his privileged old bachelor,
+      man-about-town existence with great comfort and solemnity. But on
+      mail-boat days he was down at the Harbour Office at an early hour, with
+      his own gig, manned by a smart crew in white and blue, ready to dash off
+      and board the ship directly she showed her bows between the harbour heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be into the Harbour Office that he would lead some privileged
+      passenger he had brought off in his own boat, and invite him to take a
+      seat for a moment while he signed a few papers. And Captain Mitchell,
+      seating himself at his desk, would keep on talking hospitably&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t much time if you are to see everything in a day. We shall be
+      off in a moment. We&rsquo;ll have lunch at the Amarilla Club&mdash;though I
+      belong also to the Anglo-American&mdash;mining engineers and business men,
+      don&rsquo;t you know&mdash;and to the Mirliflores as well, a new club&mdash;English,
+      French, Italians, all sorts&mdash;lively young fellows mostly, who wanted
+      to pay a compliment to an old resident, sir. But we&rsquo;ll lunch at the
+      Amarilla. Interest you, I fancy. Real thing of the country. Men of the
+      first families. The President of the Occidental Republic himself belongs
+      to it, sir. Fine old bishop with a broken nose in the patio. Remarkable
+      piece of statuary, I believe. Cavaliere Parrochetti&mdash;you know
+      Parrochetti, the famous Italian sculptor&mdash;was working here for two
+      years&mdash;thought very highly of our old bishop. . . . There! I am very
+      much at your service now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Proud of his experience, penetrated by the sense of historical importance
+      of men, events, and buildings, he talked pompously in jerky periods, with
+      slight sweeps of his short, thick arm, letting nothing &ldquo;escape the
+      attention&rdquo; of his privileged captive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lot of building going on, as you observe. Before the Separation it was a
+      plain of burnt grass smothered in clouds of dust, with an ox-cart track to
+      our Jetty. Nothing more. This is the Harbour Gate. Picturesque, is it not?
+      Formerly the town stopped short there. We enter now the Calle de la
+      Constitucion. Observe the old Spanish houses. Great dignity. Eh? I suppose
+      it&rsquo;s just as it was in the time of the Viceroys, except for the pavement.
+      Wood blocks now. Sulaco National Bank there, with the sentry boxes each
+      side of the gate. Casa Avellanos this side, with all the ground-floor
+      windows shuttered. A wonderful woman lives there&mdash;Miss Avellanos&mdash;the
+      beautiful Antonia. A character, sir! A historical woman! Opposite&mdash;Casa
+      Gould. Noble gateway. Yes, the Goulds of the original Gould Concession,
+      that all the world knows of now. I hold seventeen of the thousand-dollar
+      shares in the Consolidated San Tome mines. All the poor savings of my
+      lifetime, sir, and it will be enough to keep me in comfort to the end of
+      my days at home when I retire. I got in on the ground-floor, you see. Don
+      Carlos, great friend of mine. Seventeen shares&mdash;quite a little
+      fortune to leave behind one, too. I have a niece&mdash;married a parson&mdash;most
+      worthy man, incumbent of a small parish in Sussex; no end of children. I
+      was never married myself. A sailor should exercise self-denial. Standing
+      under that very gateway, sir, with some young engineer-fellows, ready to
+      defend that house where we had received so much kindness and hospitality,
+      I saw the first and last charge of Pedrito&rsquo;s horsemen upon Barrios&rsquo;s
+      troops, who had just taken the Harbour Gate. They could not stand the new
+      rifles brought out by that poor Decoud. It was a murderous fire. In a
+      moment the street became blocked with a mass of dead men and horses. They
+      never came on again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And all day Captain Mitchell would talk like this to his more or less
+      willing victim&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area of Trafalgar Square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the very centre, in the blazing sunshine, he pointed out the
+      buildings&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Intendencia, now President&rsquo;s Palace&mdash;Cabildo, where the Lower
+      Chamber of Parliament sits. You notice the new houses on that side of the
+      Plaza? Compania Anzani, a great general store, like those cooperative
+      things at home. Old Anzani was murdered by the National Guards in front of
+      his safe. It was even for that specific crime that the deputy Gamacho,
+      commanding the Nationals, a bloodthirsty and savage brute, was executed
+      publicly by garrotte upon the sentence of a court-martial ordered by
+      Barrios. Anzani&rsquo;s nephews converted the business into a company. All that
+      side of the Plaza had been burnt; used to be colonnaded before. A terrible
+      fire, by the light of which I saw the last of the fighting, the llaneros
+      flying, the Nationals throwing their arms down, and the miners of San
+      Tome, all Indians from the Sierra, rolling by like a torrent to the sound
+      of pipes and cymbals, green flags flying, a wild mass of men in white
+      ponchos and green hats, on foot, on mules, on donkeys. Such a sight, sir,
+      will never be seen again. The miners, sir, had marched upon the town, Don
+      Pepe leading on his black horse, and their very wives in the rear on
+      burros, screaming encouragement, sir, and beating tambourines. I remember
+      one of these women had a green parrot seated on her shoulder, as calm as a
+      bird of stone. They had just saved their Senor Administrador; for Barrios,
+      though he ordered the assault at once, at night, too, would have been too
+      late. Pedrito Montero had Don Carlos led out to be shot&mdash;like his
+      uncle many years ago&mdash;and then, as Barrios said afterwards, &lsquo;Sulaco
+      would not have been worth fighting for.&rsquo; Sulaco without the Concession was
+      nothing; and there were tons and tons of dynamite distributed all over the
+      mountain with detonators arranged, and an old priest, Father Roman,
+      standing by to annihilate the San Tome mine at the first news of failure.
+      Don Carlos had made up his mind not to leave it behind, and he had the
+      right men to see to it, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Captain Mitchell would talk in the middle of the Plaza, holding over
+      his head a white umbrella with a green lining; but inside the cathedral,
+      in the dim light, with a faint scent of incense floating in the cool
+      atmosphere, and here and there a kneeling female figure, black or all
+      white, with a veiled head, his lowered voice became solemn and impressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he would say, pointing to a niche in the wall of the dusky aisle,
+      &ldquo;you see the bust of Don Jose Avellanos, &lsquo;Patriot and Statesman,&rsquo; as the
+      inscription says, &lsquo;Minister to Courts of England and Spain, etc., etc.,
+      died in the woods of Los Hatos worn out with his lifelong struggle for
+      Right and Justice at the dawn of the New Era.&rsquo; A fair likeness.
+      Parrochetti&rsquo;s work from some old photographs and a pencil sketch by Mrs.
+      Gould. I was well acquainted with that distinguished Spanish-American of
+      the old school, a true Hidalgo, beloved by everybody who knew him. The
+      marble medallion in the wall, in the antique style, representing a veiled
+      woman seated with her hands clasped loosely over her knees, commemorates
+      that unfortunate young gentleman who sailed out with Nostromo on that
+      fatal night, sir. See, &lsquo;To the memory of Martin Decoud, his betrothed
+      Antonia Avellanos.&rsquo; Frank, simple, noble. There you have that lady, sir,
+      as she is. An exceptional woman. Those who thought she would give way to
+      despair were mistaken, sir. She has been blamed in many quarters for not
+      having taken the veil. It was expected of her. But Dona Antonia is not the
+      stuff they make nuns of. Bishop Corbelan, her uncle, lives with her in the
+      Corbelan town house. He is a fierce sort of priest, everlastingly worrying
+      the Government about the old Church lands and convents. I believe they
+      think a lot of him in Rome. Now let us go to the Amarilla Club, just
+      across the Plaza, to get some lunch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Directly outside the cathedral on the very top of the noble flight of
+      steps, his voice rose pompously, his arm found again its sweeping gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Porvenir, over there on that first floor, above those French plate-glass
+      shop-fronts; our biggest daily. Conservative, or, rather, I should say,
+      Parliamentary. We have the Parliamentary party here of which the actual
+      Chief of the State, Don Juste Lopez, is the head; a very sagacious man, I
+      think. A first-rate intellect, sir. The Democratic party in opposition
+      rests mostly, I am sorry to say, on these socialistic Italians, sir, with
+      their secret societies, camorras, and such-like. There are lots of
+      Italians settled here on the railway lands, dismissed navvies, mechanics,
+      and so on, all along the trunk line. There are whole villages of Italians
+      on the Campo. And the natives, too, are being drawn into these ways . . .
+      American bar? Yes. And over there you can see another. New Yorkers mostly
+      frequent that one&mdash;&mdash;Here we are at the Amarilla. Observe the
+      bishop at the foot of the stairs to the right as we go in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the lunch would begin and terminate its lavish and leisurely course at
+      a little table in the gallery, Captain Mitchell nodding, bowing, getting
+      up to speak for a moment to different officials in black clothes,
+      merchants in jackets, officers in uniform, middle-aged caballeros from the
+      Campo&mdash;sallow, little, nervous men, and fat, placid, swarthy men, and
+      Europeans or North Americans of superior standing, whose faces looked very
+      white amongst the majority of dark complexions and black, glistening eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting around looks of
+      satisfaction, and tender over the table a case full of thick cigars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The black coffee you get at
+      the Amarilla, sir, you don&rsquo;t meet anywhere in the world. We get the bean
+      from a famous cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose owner sends three sacks
+      every year as a present to his fellow members in remembrance of the fight
+      against Gamacho&rsquo;s Nationals, carried on from these very windows by the
+      caballeros. He was in town at the time, and took part, sir, to the bitter
+      end. It arrives on three mules&mdash;not in the common way, by rail; no
+      fear!&mdash;right into the patio, escorted by mounted peons, in charge of
+      the Mayoral of his estate, who walks upstairs, booted and spurred, and
+      delivers it to our committee formally with the words, &lsquo;For the sake of
+      those fallen on the third of May.&rsquo; We call it Tres de Mayo coffee. Taste
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making ready to hear a
+      sermon in a church, would lift the tiny cup to his lips. And the nectar
+      would be sipped to the bottom during a restful silence in a cloud of cigar
+      smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at this man in black just going out,&rdquo; he would begin, leaning
+      forward hastily. &ldquo;This is the famous Hernandez, Minister of War. The
+      Times&rsquo; special correspondent, who wrote that striking series of letters
+      calling the Occidental Republic the &lsquo;Treasure House of the World,&rsquo; gave a
+      whole article to him and the force he has organized&mdash;the renowned
+      Carabineers of the Campo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell&rsquo;s guest, staring curiously, would see a figure in a
+      long-tailed black coat walking gravely, with downcast eyelids in a long,
+      composed face, a brow furrowed horizontally, a pointed head, whose grey
+      hair, thin at the top, combed down carefully on all sides and rolled at
+      the ends, fell low on the neck and shoulders. This, then, was the famous
+      bandit of whom Europe had heard with interest. He put on a high-crowned
+      sombrero with a wide flat brim; a rosary of wooden beads was twisted about
+      his right wrist. And Captain Mitchell would proceed&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The protector of the Sulaco refugees from the rage of Pedrito. As general
+      of cavalry with Barrios he distinguished himself at the storming of
+      Tonoro, where Senor Fuentes was killed with the last remnant of the
+      Monterists. He is the friend and humble servant of Bishop Corbelan. Hears
+      three Masses every day. I bet you he will step into the cathedral to say a
+      prayer or two on his way home to his siesta.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took several puffs at his cigar in silence; then, in his most important
+      manner, pronounced:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Spanish race, sir, is prolific of remarkable characters in every rank
+      of life. . . . I propose we go now into the billiard-room, which is cool,
+      for a quiet chat. There&rsquo;s never anybody there till after five. I could
+      tell you episodes of the Separationist revolution that would astonish you.
+      When the great heat&rsquo;s over, we&rsquo;ll take a turn on the Alameda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The programme went on relentless, like a law of Nature. The turn on the
+      Alameda was taken with slow steps and stately remarks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the great world of Sulaco here, sir.&rdquo; Captain Mitchell bowed right
+      and left with no end of formality; then with animation, &ldquo;Dona Emilia, Mrs.
+      Gould&rsquo;s carriage. Look. Always white mules. The kindest, most gracious
+      woman the sun ever shone upon. A great position, sir. A great position.
+      First lady in Sulaco&mdash;far before the President&rsquo;s wife. And worthy of
+      it.&rdquo; He took off his hat; then, with a studied change of tone, added,
+      negligently, that the man in black by her side, with a high white collar
+      and a scarred, snarly face, was Dr. Monygham, Inspector of State
+      Hospitals, chief medical officer of the Consolidated San Tome mines. &ldquo;A
+      familiar of the house. Everlastingly there. No wonder. The Goulds made
+      him. Very clever man and all that, but I never liked him. Nobody does. I
+      can recollect him limping about the streets in a check shirt and native
+      sandals with a watermelon under his arm&mdash;all he would get to eat for
+      the day. A big-wig now, sir, and as nasty as ever. However . . . There&rsquo;s
+      no doubt he played his part fairly well at the time. He saved us all from
+      the deadly incubus of Sotillo, where a more particular man might have
+      failed&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His arm went up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The equestrian statue that used to stand on the pedestal over there has
+      been removed. It was an anachronism,&rdquo; Captain Mitchell commented,
+      obscurely. &ldquo;There is some talk of replacing it by a marble shaft
+      commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at the four corners, and
+      bronze Justice holding an even balance, all gilt, on the top. Cavaliere
+      Parrochetti was asked to make a design, which you can see framed under
+      glass in the Municipal Sala. Names are to be engraved all round the base.
+      Well! They could do no better than begin with the name of Nostromo. He has
+      done for Separation as much as anybody else, and,&rdquo; added Captain Mitchell,
+      &ldquo;has got less than many others by it&mdash;when it comes to that.&rdquo; He
+      dropped on to a stone seat under a tree, and tapped invitingly at the
+      place by his side. &ldquo;He carried to Barrios the letters from Sulaco which
+      decided the General to abandon Cayta for a time, and come back to our help
+      here by sea. The transports were still in harbour fortunately. Sir, I did
+      not even know that my Capataz de Cargadores was alive. I had no idea. It
+      was Dr. Monygham who came upon him, by chance, in the Custom House,
+      evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched Sotillo. I was never told;
+      never given a hint, nothing&mdash;as if I were unworthy of confidence.
+      Monygham arranged it all. He went to the railway yards, and got admission
+      to the engineer-in-chief, who, for the sake of the Goulds as much as for
+      anything else, consented to let an engine make a dash down the line, one
+      hundred and eighty miles, with Nostromo aboard. It was the only way to get
+      him off. In the Construction Camp at the railhead, he obtained a horse,
+      arms, some clothing, and started alone on that marvellous ride&mdash;four
+      hundred miles in six days, through a disturbed country, ending by the feat
+      of passing through the Monterist lines outside Cayta. The history of that
+      ride, sir, would make a most exciting book. He carried all our lives in
+      his pocket. Devotion, courage, fidelity, intelligence were not enough. Of
+      course, he was perfectly fearless and incorruptible. But a man was wanted
+      that would know how to succeed. He was that man, sir. On the fifth of May,
+      being practically a prisoner in the Harbour Office of my Company, I
+      suddenly heard the whistle of an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of
+      a mile away. I could not believe my ears. I made one jump on to the
+      balcony, and beheld a locomotive under a great head of steam run out of
+      the yard gates, screeching like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and then,
+      just abreast of old Viola&rsquo;s inn, check almost to a standstill. I made out,
+      sir, a man&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t tell who&mdash;dash out of the Albergo
+      d&rsquo;ltalia Una, climb into the cab, and then, sir, that engine seemed
+      positively to leap clear of the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an
+      eye. As you blow a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the
+      foot-plate, sir, I can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the
+      National Guards in Rincon and one other place. Fortunately the line had
+      not been torn up. In four hours they reached the Construction Camp.
+      Nostromo had his start. . . . The rest you know. You&rsquo;ve got only to look
+      round you. There are people on this Alameda that ride in their carriages,
+      or even are alive at all to-day, because years ago I engaged a runaway
+      Italian sailor for a foreman of our wharf simply on the strength of his
+      looks. And that&rsquo;s a fact. You can&rsquo;t get over it, sir. On the seventeenth
+      of May, just twelve days after I saw the man from the Casa Viola get on
+      the engine, and wondered what it meant, Barrios&rsquo;s transports were entering
+      this harbour, and the &lsquo;Treasure House of the World,&rsquo; as The Times man
+      calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact for civilization&mdash;for a
+      great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandez on the west, and the San Tome
+      miners pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose the landing. He
+      had been sending messages to Sotillo for a week to join him. Had Sotillo
+      done so there would have been massacres and proscription that would have
+      left no man or woman of position alive. But that&rsquo;s where Dr. Monygham
+      comes in. Sotillo, blind and deaf to everything, stuck on board his
+      steamer watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to be sunk at
+      the bottom of the harbour. They say that for the last three days he was
+      out of his mind raving and foaming with disappointment at getting nothing,
+      flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats with the drags,
+      ordering them in, and then suddenly stamping his foot and crying out, &lsquo;And
+      yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he had on board) at the end
+      of the after-derrick, when the first of Barrios&rsquo;s transports, one of our
+      own ships at that, steamed right in, and ranging close alongside opened a
+      small-arm fire without as much preliminaries as a hail. It was the
+      completest surprise in the world, sir. They were too astounded at first to
+      bolt below. Men were falling right and left like ninepins. It&rsquo;s a miracle
+      that Monygham, standing on the after-hatch with the rope already round his
+      neck, escaped being riddled through and through like a sieve. He told me
+      since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on yelling with all
+      the strength of his lungs: &lsquo;Hoist a white flag! Hoist a white flag!&rsquo;
+      Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda regiment, standing by, unsheathed
+      his sword with a shriek: &lsquo;Die, perjured traitor!&rsquo; and ran Sotillo clean
+      through the body, just before he fell himself shot through the head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Mitchell stopped for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours. But it&rsquo;s time we started
+      off to Rincon. It would not do for you to pass through Sulaco and not see
+      the lights of the San Tome mine, a whole mountain ablaze like a lighted
+      palace above the dark Campo. It&rsquo;s a fashionable drive. . . . But let me
+      tell you one little anecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight or more
+      later, when Barrios, declared Generalissimo, was gone in pursuit of
+      Pedrito away south, when the Provisional Junta, with Don Juste Lopez at
+      its head, had promulgated the new Constitution, and our Don Carlos Gould
+      was packing up his trunks bound on a mission to San Francisco and
+      Washington (the United States, sir, were the first great power to
+      recognize the Occidental Republic)&mdash;a fortnight later, I say, when we
+      were beginning to feel that our heads were safe on our shoulders, if I may
+      express myself so, a prominent man, a large shipper by our line, came to
+      see me on business, and, says he, the first thing: &lsquo;I say, Captain
+      Mitchell, is that fellow&rsquo; (meaning Nostromo) &lsquo;still the Capataz of your
+      Cargadores or not?&rsquo; &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rsquo; says I. &lsquo;Because, if he is, then
+      I don&rsquo;t mind; I send and receive a good lot of cargo by your ships; but I
+      have observed him several days loafing about the wharf, and just now he
+      stopped me as cool as you please, with a request for a cigar. Now, you
+      know, my cigars are rather special, and I can&rsquo;t get them so easily as all
+      that.&rsquo; &lsquo;I hope you stretched a point,&rsquo; I said, very gently. &lsquo;Why, yes. But
+      it&rsquo;s a confounded nuisance. The fellow&rsquo;s everlastingly cadging for
+      smokes.&rsquo; Sir, I turned my eyes away, and then asked, &lsquo;Weren&rsquo;t you one of
+      the prisoners in the Cabildo?&rsquo; &lsquo;You know very well I was, and in chains,
+      too,&rsquo; says he. &lsquo;And under a fine of fifteen thousand dollars?&rsquo; He
+      coloured, sir, because it got about that he fainted from fright when they
+      came to arrest him, and then behaved before Fuentes in a manner to make
+      the very policianos, who had dragged him there by the hair of his head,
+      smile at his cringing. &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he says, in a sort of shy way. &lsquo;Why?&rsquo; &lsquo;Oh,
+      nothing. You stood to lose a tidy bit,&rsquo; says I, &lsquo;even if you saved your
+      life. . . . But what can I do for you?&rsquo; He never even saw the point. Not
+      he. And that&rsquo;s how the world wags, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose a little stiffly, and the drive to Rincon would be taken with only
+      one philosophical remark, uttered by the merciless cicerone, with his eyes
+      fixed upon the lights of San Tome, that seemed suspended in the dark night
+      between earth and heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great power, this, for good and evil, sir. A great power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten, excellent as to cooking,
+      and leaving upon the traveller&rsquo;s mind an impression that there were in
+      Sulaco many pleasant, able young men with salaries apparently too large
+      for their discretion, and amongst them a few, mostly Anglo-Saxon, skilled
+      in the art of, as the saying is, &ldquo;taking a rise&rdquo; out of his kind host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a two-wheeled machine
+      (which Captain Mitchell called a curricle) behind a fleet and scraggy mule
+      beaten all the time by an obviously Neapolitan driver, the cycle would be
+      nearly closed before the lighted-up offices of the O. S. N. Company,
+      remaining open so late because of the steamer. Nearly&mdash;but not quite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten o&rsquo;clock. Your ship won&rsquo;t be ready to leave till half-past twelve, if
+      by then. Come in for a brandy-and-soda and one more cigar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the superintendent&rsquo;s private room the privileged passenger by the
+      Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were annihilated mentally by
+      a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated
+      information imperfectly apprehended, would listen like a tired child to a
+      fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its
+      pompousness, tell him, as if from another world, how there was &ldquo;in this
+      very harbour&rdquo; an international naval demonstration, which put an end to
+      the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United States cruiser, Powhattan, was
+      the first to salute the Occidental flag&mdash;white, with a wreath of
+      green laurel in the middle encircling a yellow amarilla flower. Would hear
+      how General Montero, in less than a month after proclaiming himself
+      Emperor of Costaguana, was shot dead (during a solemn and public
+      distribution of orders and crosses) by a young artillery officer, the
+      brother of his then mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country,&rdquo; the voice would say. And
+      it would continue: &ldquo;A captain of one of our ships told me lately that he
+      recognized Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in purple slippers and a
+      velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel, keeping a disorderly house in one
+      of the southern ports.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?&rdquo; would wonder the distinguished
+      bird of passage hovering on the confines of waking and sleep with
+      resolutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl upon his lips, from
+      between which stuck out the eighteenth or twentieth cigar of that
+      memorable day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting ghost, sir&rdquo;&mdash;Captain
+      Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo with true warmth of feeling and a
+      touch of wistful pride. &ldquo;You may imagine, sir, what an effect it produced
+      on me. He had come round by sea with Barrios, of course. And the first
+      thing he told me after I became fit to hear him was that he had picked up
+      the lighter&rsquo;s boat floating in the gulf! He seemed quite overcome by the
+      circumstance. And a remarkable enough circumstance it was, when you
+      remember that it was then sixteen days since the sinking of the silver. At
+      once I could see he was another man. He stared at the wall, sir, as if
+      there had been a spider or something running about there. The loss of the
+      silver preyed on his mind. The first thing he asked me about was whether
+      Dona Antonia had heard yet of Decoud&rsquo;s death. His voice trembled. I had to
+      tell him that Dona Antonia, as a matter of fact, was not back in town yet.
+      Poor girl! And just as I was making ready to ask him a thousand questions,
+      with a sudden, &lsquo;Pardon me, senor,&rsquo; he cleared out of the office
+      altogether. I did not see him again for three days. I was terribly busy,
+      you know. It seems that he wandered about in and out of the town, and on
+      two nights turned up to sleep in the baracoons of the railway people. He
+      seemed absolutely indifferent to what went on. I asked him on the wharf,
+      &lsquo;When are you going to take hold again, Nostromo? There will be plenty of
+      work for the Cargadores presently.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Senor,&rsquo; says he, looking at me in a slow, inquisitive manner, &lsquo;would it
+      surprise you to hear that I am too tired to work just yet? And what work
+      could I do now? How can I look my Cargadores in the face after losing a
+      lighter?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begged him not to think any more about the silver, and he smiled. A
+      smile that went to my heart, sir. &lsquo;It was no mistake,&rsquo; I told him. &lsquo;It was
+      a fatality. A thing that could not be helped.&rsquo; &lsquo;Si, si!&rdquo; he said, and
+      turned away. I thought it best to leave him alone for a bit to get over
+      it. Sir, it took him years really, to get over it. I was present at his
+      interview with Don Carlos. I must say that Gould is rather a cold man. He
+      had to keep a tight hand on his feelings, dealing with thieves and
+      rascals, in constant danger of ruin for himself and wife for so many
+      years, that it had become a second nature. They looked at each other for a
+      long time. Don Carlos asked what he could do for him, in his quiet,
+      reserved way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;My name is known from one end of Sulaco to the other,&rsquo; he said, as quiet
+      as the other. &lsquo;What more can you do for me?&rsquo; That was all that passed on
+      that occasion. Later, however, there was a very fine coasting schooner for
+      sale, and Mrs. Gould and I put our heads together to get her bought and
+      presented to him. It was done, but he paid all the price back within the
+      next three years. Business was booming all along this seaboard, sir.
+      Moreover, that man always succeeded in everything except in saving the
+      silver. Poor Dona Antonia, fresh from her terrible experiences in the
+      woods of Los Hatos, had an interview with him, too. Wanted to hear about
+      Decoud: what they said, what they did, what they thought up to the last on
+      that fatal night. Mrs. Gould told me his manner was perfect for quietness
+      and sympathy. Miss Avellanos burst into tears only when he told her how
+      Decoud had happened to say that his plan would be a glorious success. . .
+      . And there&rsquo;s no doubt, sir, that it is. It is a success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cycle was about to close at last. And while the privileged passenger,
+      shivering with the pleasant anticipations of his berth, forgot to ask
+      himself, &ldquo;What on earth Decoud&rsquo;s plan could be?&rdquo; Captain Mitchell was
+      saying, &ldquo;Sorry we must part so soon. Your intelligent interest made this a
+      pleasant day to me. I shall see you now on board. You had a glimpse of the
+      &lsquo;Treasure House of the World.&rsquo; A very good name that.&rdquo; And the coxswain&rsquo;s
+      voice at the door, announcing that the gig was ready, closed the cycle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had, indeed, found the lighter&rsquo;s boat, which he had left on the
+      Great Isabel with Decoud, floating empty far out in the gulf. He was then
+      on the bridge of the first of Barrios&rsquo;s transports, and within an hour&rsquo;s
+      steaming from Sulaco. Barrios, always delighted with a feat of daring and
+      a good judge of courage, had taken a great liking to the Capataz. During
+      the passage round the coast the General kept Nostromo near his person,
+      addressing him frequently in that abrupt and boisterous manner which was
+      the sign of his high favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s eyes were the first to catch, broad on the bow, the tiny,
+      elusive dark speck, which, alone with the forms of the Three Isabels right
+      ahead, appeared on the flat, shimmering emptiness of the gulf. There are
+      times when no fact should be neglected as insignificant; a small boat so
+      far from the land might have had some meaning worth finding out. At a nod
+      of consent from Barrios the transport swept out of her course, passing
+      near enough to ascertain that no one manned the little cockle-shell. It
+      was merely a common small boat gone adrift with her oars in her. But
+      Nostromo, to whose mind Decoud had been insistently present for days, had
+      long before recognized with excitement the dinghy of the lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There could be no question of stopping to pick up that thing. Every minute
+      of time was momentous with the lives and futures of a whole town. The head
+      of the leading ship, with the General on board, fell off to her course.
+      Behind her, the fleet of transports, scattered haphazard over a mile or so
+      in the offing, like the finish of an ocean race, pressed on, all black and
+      smoking on the western sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mi General,&rdquo; Nostromo&rsquo;s voice rang out loud, but quiet, from behind a
+      group of officers, &ldquo;I should like to save that little boat. Por Dios, I
+      know her. She belongs to my Company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, por Dios,&rdquo; guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, good-humoured voice, &ldquo;you
+      belong to me. I am going to make you a captain of cavalry directly we get
+      within sight of a horse again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General,&rdquo; cried Nostromo,
+      pushing through to the rail with a set stare in his eyes. &ldquo;Let me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let you? What a conceited fellow that is,&rdquo; bantered the General,
+      jovially, without even looking at him. &ldquo;Let him go! Ha! ha! ha! He wants
+      me to admit that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha! ha! ha! Would you
+      like to swim off to her, my son?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other stopped his
+      guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and his black head bobbed up far
+      away already from the ship. The General muttered an appalled &ldquo;Cielo!
+      Sinner that I am!&rdquo; in a thunderstruck tone. One anxious glance was enough
+      to show him that Nostromo was swimming with perfect ease; and then he
+      thundered terribly, &ldquo;No! no! We shall not stop to pick up this impertinent
+      fellow. Let him drown&mdash;that mad Capataz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo from leaping
+      overboard. That empty boat, coming out to meet him mysteriously, as if
+      rowed by an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of some sign, of
+      some warning, seemed to answer in a startling and enigmatic way the
+      persistent thought of a treasure and of a man&rsquo;s fate. He would have leaped
+      if there had been death in that half-mile of water. It was as smooth as a
+      pond, and for some reason sharks are unknown in the Placid Gulf, though on
+      the other side of the Punta Mala the coastline swarms with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with force. A queer, faint
+      feeling had come over him while he swam. He had got rid of his boots and
+      coat in the water. He hung on for a time, regaining his breath. In the
+      distance the transports, more in a bunch now, held on straight for Sulaco,
+      with their air of friendly contest, of nautical sport, of a regatta; and
+      the united smoke of their funnels drove like a thin, sulphurous fogbank
+      right over his head. It was his daring, his courage, his act that had set
+      these ships in motion upon the sea, hurrying on to save the lives and
+      fortunes of the Blancos, the taskmasters of the people; to save the San
+      Tome mine; to save the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over the stern. The very
+      boat! No doubt of it; no doubt whatever. It was the dinghy of the lighter
+      No. 3&mdash;the dinghy left with Martin Decoud on the Great Isabel so that
+      he should have some means to help himself if nothing could be done for him
+      from the shore. And here she had come out to meet him empty and
+      inexplicable. What had become of Decoud? The Capataz made a minute
+      examination. He looked for some scratch, for some mark, for some sign. All
+      he discovered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the thwart. He
+      bent his face over it and rubbed hard with his finger. Then he sat down in
+      the stern sheets, passive, with his knees close together and legs aslant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers hanging lank and
+      dripping and a lustreless stare fixed upon the bottom boards, the Capataz
+      of the Sulaco Cargadores resembled a drowned corpse come up from the
+      bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a small boat. The excitement of his
+      adventurous ride, the excitement of the return in time, of achievement, of
+      success, all this excitement centred round the associated ideas of the
+      great treasure and of the only other man who knew of its existence, had
+      departed from him. To the very last moment he had been cudgelling his
+      brains as to how he could manage to visit the Great Isabel without loss of
+      time and undetected. For the idea of secrecy had come to be connected with
+      the treasure so closely that even to Barrios himself he had refrained from
+      mentioning the existence of Decoud and of the silver on the island. The
+      letters he carried to the General, however, made brief mention of the loss
+      of the lighter, as having its bearing upon the situation in Sulaco. In the
+      circumstances, the one-eyed tiger-slayer, scenting battle from afar, had
+      not wasted his time in making inquiries from the messenger. In fact,
+      Barrios, talking with Nostromo, assumed that both Don Martin Decoud and
+      the ingots of San Tome were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned
+      directly, had kept silent, under the influence of some indefinable form of
+      resentment and distrust. Let Don Martin speak of everything with his own
+      lips&mdash;was what he told himself mentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel thrown thus in his way
+      at the earliest possible moment, his excitement had departed, as when the
+      soul takes flight leaving the body inert upon an earth it knows no more.
+      Nostromo did not seem to know the gulf. For a long time even his eyelids
+      did not flutter once upon the glazed emptiness of his stare. Then slowly,
+      without a limb having stirred, without a twitch of muscle or quiver of an
+      eyelash, an expression, a living expression came upon the still features,
+      deep thought crept into the empty stare&mdash;as if an outcast soul, a
+      quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted body in its way, had come in
+      stealthily to take possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness of sea, islands, and
+      coast, of cloud forms on the sky and trails of light upon the water, the
+      knitting of that brow had the emphasis of a powerful gesture. Nothing else
+      budged for a long time; then the Capataz shook his head and again
+      surrendered himself to the universal repose of all visible things.
+      Suddenly he seized the oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin
+      round, head-on to the Great Isabel. But before he began to pull he bent
+      once more over the brown stain on the gunwale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that thing,&rdquo; he muttered to himself, with a sagacious jerk of the
+      head. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady. Now and then he looked over his
+      shoulder at the Great Isabel, presenting its low cliff to his anxious gaze
+      like an impenetrable face. At last the stem touched the strand. He flung
+      rather than dragged the boat up the little beach. At once, turning his
+      back upon the sunset, he plunged with long strides into the ravine, making
+      the water of the stream spurt and fly upwards at every step, as if
+      spurning its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit with his feet. He wanted to
+      save every moment of daylight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mass of earth, grass, and smashed bushes had fallen down very naturally
+      from above upon the cavity under the leaning tree. Decoud had attended to
+      the concealment of the silver as instructed, using the spade with some
+      intelligence. But Nostromo&rsquo;s half-smile of approval changed into a
+      scornful curl of the lip by the sight of the spade itself flung there in
+      full view, as if in utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving away the
+      whole thing. Ah! They were all alike in their folly, these hombres finos
+      that invented laws and governments and barren tasks for the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz picked up the spade, and with the feel of the handle in his
+      palm the desire of having a look at the horse-hide boxes of treasure came
+      upon him suddenly. In a very few strokes he uncovered the edges and
+      corners of several; then, clearing away more earth, became aware that one
+      of them had been slashed with a knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and dropped on his
+      knees with a look of irrational apprehension over one shoulder, then over
+      the other. The stiff hide had closed, and he hesitated before he pushed
+      his hand through the long slit and felt the ingots inside. There they
+      were. One, two, three. Yes, four gone. Taken away. Four ingots. But who?
+      Decoud? Nobody else. And why? For what purpose? For what cursed fancy? Let
+      him explain. Four ingots carried off in a boat, and&mdash;blood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded, unaltered,
+      plunged into the waters in a grave and untroubled mystery of
+      self-immolation consummated far from all mortal eyes, with an infinite
+      majesty of silence and peace. Four ingots short!&mdash;and blood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Capataz got up slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He might simply have cut his hand,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;But, then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down on the soft earth, unresisting, as if he had been chained to
+      the treasure, his drawn-up legs clasped in his hands with an air of
+      hopeless submission, like a slave set on guard. Once only he lifted his
+      head smartly: the rattle of hot musketry fire had reached his ears, like
+      pouring from on high a stream of dry peas upon a drum. After listening for
+      a while, he said, half aloud&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will never come back to explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he lowered his head again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; he muttered, gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great conflagration in Sulaco
+      flashed up red above the coast, played on the clouds at the head of the
+      gulf, seemed to touch with a ruddy and sinister reflection the forms of
+      the Three Isabels. He never saw it, though he raised his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, then, I cannot know,&rdquo; he pronounced, distinctly, and remained silent
+      and staring for hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not know. Nobody was to know. As might have been supposed, the
+      end of Don Martin Decoud never became a subject of speculation for any one
+      except Nostromo. Had the truth of the facts been known, there would always
+      have remained the question. Why? Whereas the version of his death at the
+      sinking of the lighter had no uncertainty of motive. The young apostle of
+      Separation had died striving for his idea by an ever-lamented accident.
+      But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few
+      on this earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The
+      brilliant Costaguanero of the boulevards had died from solitude and want
+      of faith in himself and others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human comprehension, the
+      sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels. The rocky head of Azuera is their
+      haunt, whose stony levels and chasms resound with their wild and
+      tumultuous clamour as if they were for ever quarrelling over the legendary
+      treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, Decoud, turning in his
+      lair of coarse grass, under the shade of a tree, said to himself&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not seen as much as one single bird all day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that one now of his own
+      muttering voice. It had been a day of absolute silence&mdash;the first he
+      had known in his life. And he had not slept a wink. Not for all these
+      wakeful nights and the days of fighting, planning, talking; not for all
+      that last night of danger and hard physical toil upon the gulf, had he
+      been able to close his eyes for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset
+      he had been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended into the gully to
+      spend the night by the side of the silver. If Nostromo returned&mdash;as
+      he might have done at any moment&mdash;it was there that he would look
+      first; and night would, of course, be the proper time for an attempt to
+      communicate. He remembered with profound indifference that he had not
+      eaten anything yet since he had been left alone on the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day broke he ate something with
+      the same indifference. The brilliant &ldquo;Son Decoud,&rdquo; the spoiled darling of
+      the family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of Sulaco, was not fit to
+      grapple with himself single-handed. Solitude from mere outward condition
+      of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the
+      affectations of irony and scepticism have no place. It takes possession of
+      the mind, and drives forth the thought into the exile of utter unbelief.
+      After three days of waiting for the sight of some human face, Decoud
+      caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own individuality. It had
+      merged into the world of cloud and water, of natural forces and forms of
+      nature. In our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion of an
+      independent existence as against the whole scheme of things of which we
+      form a helpless part. Decoud lost all belief in the reality of his action
+      past and to come. On the fifth day an immense melancholy descended upon
+      him palpably. He resolved not to give himself up to these people in
+      Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and terrible, like jibbering and obscene
+      spectres. He saw himself struggling feebly in their midst, and Antonia,
+      gigantic and lovely like an allegorical statue, looking on with scornful
+      eyes at his weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared within the range
+      of his vision; and, as if to escape from this solitude, he absorbed
+      himself in his melancholy. The vague consciousness of a misdirected life
+      given up to impulses whose memory left a bitter taste in his mouth was the
+      first moral sentiment of his manhood. But at the same time he felt no
+      remorse. What should he regret? He had recognized no other virtue than
+      intelligence, and had erected passions into duties. Both his intelligence
+      and his passion were swallowed up easily in this great unbroken solitude
+      of waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had robbed his will of all energy,
+      for he had not slept seven hours in the seven days. His sadness was the
+      sadness of a sceptical mind. He beheld the universe as a succession of
+      incomprehensible images. Nostromo was dead. Everything had failed
+      ignominiously. He no longer dared to think of Antonia. She had not
+      survived. But if she survived he could not face her. And all exertion
+      seemed senseless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the tenth day, after a night spent without even dozing off once (it had
+      occurred to him that Antonia could not possibly have ever loved a being so
+      impalpable as himself), the solitude appeared like a great void, and the
+      silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by
+      both hands, without fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion
+      whatever. Only towards the evening, in the comparative relief of coolness,
+      he began to wish that this cord would snap. He imagined it snapping with a
+      report as of a pistol&mdash;a sharp, full crack. And that would be the end
+      of him. He contemplated that eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded
+      the sleepless nights in which the silence, remaining unbroken in the shape
+      of a cord to which he hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless
+      phrases, always the same but utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo,
+      Antonia, Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an ironical and senseless
+      buzzing. In the daytime he could look at the silence like a still cord
+      stretched to breaking-point, with his life, his vain life, suspended to it
+      like a weight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell,&rdquo; he asked himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt, dirty,
+      white-faced, and looked at it with his red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed
+      him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without tremor; and the effect of that
+      physical condition gave to his movements an unhesitating, deliberate
+      dignity. He acted as if accomplishing some sort of rite. He descended into
+      the gully; for the fascination of all that silver, with its potential
+      power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the belt with the
+      revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his waist. The cord
+      of silence could never snap on the island. It must let him fall and sink
+      into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was looking at the loose earth
+      covering the treasure. In the sea! His aspect was that of a somnambulist.
+      He lowered himself down on his knees slowly and went on grubbing with his
+      fingers with industrious patience till he uncovered one of the boxes.
+      Without a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it
+      open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He covered up the
+      exposed box again and step by step came out of the gully. The bushes
+      closed after him with a swish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the dinghy
+      near the water with an idea of rowing away somewhere, but had desisted
+      partly at the whisper of lingering hope that Nostromo would return, partly
+      from conviction of utter uselessness of all effort. Now she wanted only a
+      slight shove to be set afloat. He had eaten a little every day after the
+      first, and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up the oars slowly,
+      he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that stood behind him
+      warm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life, bathed in a rich light
+      from head to foot as if in a radiance of hope and joy. He pulled straight
+      towards the setting sun. When the gulf had grown dark, he ceased rowing
+      and flung the sculls in. The hollow clatter they made in falling was the
+      loudest noise he had ever heard in his life. It was a revelation. It
+      seemed to recall him from far away, Actually the thought, &ldquo;Perhaps I may
+      sleep to-night,&rdquo; passed through his mind. But he did not believe it. He
+      believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on the thwart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into his unwinking eyes.
+      After a clear daybreak the sun appeared splendidly above the peaks of the
+      range. The great gulf burst into a glitter all around the boat; and in
+      this glory of merciless solitude the silence appeared again before him,
+      stretched taut like a dark, thin string.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted his seat from the
+      thwart to the gunwale. They looked at it fixedly, while his hand, feeling
+      about his waist, unbuttoned the flap of the leather case, drew the
+      revolver, cocked it, brought it forward pointing at his breast, pulled the
+      trigger, and, with convulsive force, sent the still-smoking weapon
+      hurtling through the air. His eyes looked at it while he fell forward and
+      hung with his breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his right hand
+      hooked under the thwart. They looked&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is done,&rdquo; he stammered out, in a sudden flow of blood. His last
+      thought was: &ldquo;I wonder how that Capataz died.&rdquo; The stiffness of the
+      fingers relaxed, and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled overboard
+      without having heard the cord of silence snap in the solitude of the
+      Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface remained untroubled by the fall of
+      his body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the retribution meted out
+      to intellectual audacity, the brilliant Don Martin Decoud, weighted by the
+      bars of San Tome silver, disappeared without a trace, swallowed up in the
+      immense indifference of things. His sleepless, crouching figure was gone
+      from the side of the San Tome silver; and for a time the spirits of good
+      and evil that hover near every concealed treasure of the earth might have
+      thought that this one had been forgotten by all mankind. Then, after a few
+      days, another form appeared striding away from the setting sun to sit
+      motionless and awake in the narrow black gully all through the night, in
+      nearly the same pose, in the same place in which had sat that other
+      sleepless man who had gone away for ever so quietly in a small boat, about
+      the time of sunset. And the spirits of good and evil that hover about a
+      forbidden treasure understood well that the silver of San Tome was
+      provided now with a faithful and lifelong slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of the disenchanted vanity
+      which is the reward of audacious action, sat in the weary pose of a hunted
+      outcast through a night of sleeplessness as tormenting as any known to
+      Decoud, his companion in the most desperate affair of his life. And he
+      wondered how Decoud had died. But he knew the part he had played himself.
+      First a woman, then a man, abandoned both in their last extremity, for the
+      sake of this accursed treasure. It was paid for by a soul lost and by a
+      vanished life. The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by a gust of
+      immense pride. There was no one in the world but Gian&rsquo; Battista Fidanza,
+      Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptible and faithful Nostromo, to pay
+      such a price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had made up his mind that nothing should be allowed now to rob him of
+      his bargain. Nothing. Decoud had died. But how? That he was dead he had
+      not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . . What for? Did he mean to
+      come for more&mdash;some other time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The treasure was putting forth its latent power. It troubled the clear
+      mind of the man who had paid the price. He was sure that Decoud was dead.
+      The island seemed full of that whisper. Dead! Gone! And he caught himself
+      listening for the swish of bushes and the splash of the footfalls in the
+      bed of the brook. Dead! The talker, the novio of Dona Antonia!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; he murmured, with his head on his knees, under the livid clouded
+      dawn breaking over the liberated Sulaco and upon the gulf as gray as
+      ashes. &ldquo;It is to her that he will fly. To her that he will fly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to cast a spell, like the
+      angry woman who had prophesied remorse and failure, and yet had laid upon
+      him the task of saving the children? Well, he had saved the children. He
+      had defeated the spell of poverty and starvation. He had done it all alone&mdash;or
+      perhaps helped by the devil. Who cared? He had done it, betrayed as he
+      was, and saving by the same stroke the San Tome mine, which appeared to
+      him hateful and immense, lording it by its vast wealth over the valour,
+      the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and peace, over the labours
+      of the town, the sea, and the Campo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cordillera. The Capataz
+      looked down for a time upon the fall of loose earth, stones, and smashed
+      bushes, concealing the hiding-place of the silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must grow rich very slowly,&rdquo; he meditated, aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER ELEVEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sulaco outstripped Nostromo&rsquo;s prudence, growing rich swiftly on the hidden
+      treasures of the earth, hovered over by the anxious spirits of good and
+      evil, torn out by the labouring hands of the people. It was like a second
+      youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest, of toil, scattering
+      lavishly its wealth to the four corners of an excited world. Material
+      changes swept along in the train of material interests. And other changes
+      more subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds and hearts of the
+      workers. Captain Mitchell had gone home to live on his savings invested in
+      the San Tome mine; and Dr. Monygham had grown older, with his head
+      steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his face, living on the
+      inexhaustible treasure of his devotion drawn upon in the secret of his
+      heart like a store of unlawful wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose maintenance is a charge
+      upon the Gould Concession), Official Adviser on Sanitation to the
+      Municipality, Chief Medical Officer of the San Tome Consolidated Mines
+      (whose territory, containing gold, silver, copper, lead, cobalt, extends
+      for miles along the foot-hills of the Cordillera), had felt
+      poverty-stricken, miserable, and starved during the prolonged, second
+      visit the Goulds paid to Europe and the United States of America. Intimate
+      of the casa, proved friend, a bachelor without ties and without
+      establishment (except of the professional sort), he had been asked to take
+      up his quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months of their absence
+      the familiar rooms, recalling at every glance the woman to whom he had
+      given all his loyalty, had grown intolerable. As the day approached for
+      the arrival of the mail boat Hermes (the latest addition to the O. S. N.
+      Co.&lsquo;s splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled about more vivaciously, snapped
+      more sardonically at simple and gentle out of sheer nervousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with fury, with enthusiasm, and
+      saw it carried out past the old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould with
+      delight, with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting alone in
+      the great landau behind the white mules, a little sideways, his drawn-in
+      face positively venomous with the effort of self-control, and holding a
+      pair of new gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart dilated within him so, when he saw the Goulds on the deck of the
+      Hermes, that his greetings were reduced to a casual mutter. Driving back
+      to town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor, in a more
+      natural manner, said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll leave you now to yourselves. I&rsquo;ll call to-morrow if I may?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come early,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, in
+      her travelling dress and her veil down, turning to look at him at the foot
+      of the stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in blue robes
+      and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome her with an aspect of pitying
+      tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t expect to find me at home,&rdquo; Charles Gould warned him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be off
+      early to the mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After lunch, Dona Emilia and the senor doctor came slowly through the
+      inner gateway of the patio. The large gardens of the Casa Gould,
+      surrounded by high walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighbouring roofs,
+      lay open before them, with masses of shade under the trees and level
+      surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. A triple row of old orange trees
+      surrounded the whole. Barefooted, brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts
+      and wide calzoneras, dotted the grounds, squatting over flowerbeds,
+      passing between the trees, dragging slender India-rubber tubes across the
+      gravel of the paths; and the fine jets of water crossed each other in
+      graceful curves, sparkling in the sunshine with a slight pattering noise
+      upon the bushes, and an effect of showered diamonds upon the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dona Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress, walked by the side of
+      Dr. Monygham, in a longish black coat and severe black bow on an
+      immaculate shirtfront. Under a shady clump of trees, where stood scattered
+      little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs. Gould sat down in a low and
+      ample seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go yet,&rdquo; she said to Dr. Monygham, who was unable to tear himself
+      away from the spot. His chin nestling within the points of his collar, he
+      devoured her stealthily with his eyes, which, luckily, were round and hard
+      like clouded marbles, and incapable of disclosing his sentiments. His
+      pitying emotion at the marks of time upon the face of that woman, the air
+      of frailty and weary fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and temples of
+      the &ldquo;Never-tired Senora&rdquo; (as Don Pepe years ago used to call her with
+      admiration), touched him almost to tears. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go yet. To-day is all my
+      own,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould urged, gently. &ldquo;We are not back yet officially. No one
+      will come. It&rsquo;s only to-morrow that the windows of the Casa Gould are to
+      be lit up for a reception.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor dropped into a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Giving a tertulia?&rdquo; he said, with a detached air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And only to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the mine, and so I&mdash;&mdash;It
+      would be good to have him to myself for one evening on our return to this
+      house I love. It has seen all my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes!&rdquo; snarled the doctor, suddenly. &ldquo;Women count time from the
+      marriage feast. Didn&rsquo;t you live a little before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no cares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long separation, will
+      revert to the most agitated period of their lives, they began to talk of
+      the Sulaco Revolution. It seemed strange to Mrs. Gould that people who had
+      taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and its lesson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; struck in the doctor, &ldquo;we who played our part in it had our
+      reward. Don Pepe, though superannuated, still can sit a horse. Barrios is
+      drinking himself to death in jovial company away somewhere on his
+      fundacion beyond the Bolson de Tonoro. And the heroic Father Roman&mdash;I
+      imagine the old padre blowing up systematically the San Tome mine,
+      uttering a pious exclamation at every bang, and taking handfuls of snuff
+      between the explosions&mdash;the heroic Padre Roman says that he is not
+      afraid of the harm Holroyd&rsquo;s missionaries can do to his flock, as long as
+      he is alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould shuddered a little at the allusion to the destruction that had
+      come so near to the San Tome mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but you, dear friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did the work I was fit for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You faced the most cruel dangers of all. Something more than death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mrs. Gould! Only death&mdash;by hanging. And I am rewarded beyond my
+      deserts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Noticing Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s gaze fixed upon him, he dropped his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made my career&mdash;as you see,&rdquo; said the Inspector-General of
+      State Hospitals, taking up lightly the lapels of his superfine black coat.
+      The doctor&rsquo;s self-respect marked inwardly by the almost complete
+      disappearance from his dreams of Father Beron appeared visibly in what, by
+      contrast with former carelessness, seemed an immoderate cult of personal
+      appearance. Carried out within severe limits of form and colour, and in
+      perpetual freshness, this change of apparel gave to Dr. Monygham an air at
+      the same time professional and festive; while his gait and the unchanged
+      crabbed character of his face acquired from it a startling force of
+      incongruity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;We all had our rewards&mdash;the engineer-in-chief,
+      Captain Mitchell&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We saw him,&rdquo; interrupted Mrs. Gould, in her charming voice. &ldquo;The poor
+      dear man came up from the country on purpose to call on us in our hotel in
+      London. He comported himself with great dignity, but I fancy he regrets
+      Sulaco. He rambled feebly about &lsquo;historical events&rsquo; till I felt I could
+      have a cry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H&rsquo;m,&rdquo; grunted the doctor; &ldquo;getting old, I suppose. Even Nostromo is
+      getting older&mdash;though he is not changed. And, speaking of that
+      fellow, I wanted to tell you something&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of agitation. Suddenly
+      the two gardeners, busy with rose trees at the side of the garden arch,
+      fell upon their knees with bowed heads on the passage of Antonia
+      Avellanos, who appeared walking beside her uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome, where he had been
+      invited by the Propaganda, Father Corbelan, missionary to the wild
+      Indians, conspirator, friend and patron of Hernandez the robber, advanced
+      with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning forward, with his powerful hands
+      clasped behind his back. The first Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco had
+      preserved his fanatical and morose air; the aspect of a chaplain of
+      bandits. It was believed that his unexpected elevation to the purple was a
+      counter-move to the Protestant invasion of Sulaco organized by the Holroyd
+      Missionary Fund. Antonia, the beauty of her face as if a little blurred,
+      her figure slightly fuller, advanced with her light walk and her high
+      serenity, smiling from a distance at Mrs. Gould. She had brought her uncle
+      over to see dear Emilia, without ceremony, just for a moment before the
+      siesta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all were seated again, Dr. Monygham, who had come to dislike heartily
+      everybody who approached Mrs. Gould with any intimacy, kept aside,
+      pretending to be lost in profound meditation. A louder phrase of Antonia
+      made him lift his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, those who have been our
+      countrymen only a few years ago, who are our countrymen now?&rdquo; Miss
+      Avellanos was saying. &ldquo;How can we remain blind, and deaf without pity to
+      the cruel wrongs suffered by our brothers? There is a remedy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and prosperity of Sulaco,&rdquo;
+       snapped the doctor. &ldquo;There is no other remedy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am convinced, senor doctor,&rdquo; Antonia said, with the earnest calm of
+      invincible resolution, &ldquo;that this was from the first poor Martin&rsquo;s
+      intention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but the material interests will not let you jeopardize their
+      development for a mere idea of pity and justice,&rdquo; the doctor muttered
+      grumpily. &ldquo;And it is just as well perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cardinal-Archbishop straightened up his gaunt, bony frame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have worked for them; we have made them, these material interests of
+      the foreigners,&rdquo; the last of the Corbelans uttered in a deep, denunciatory
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And without them you are nothing,&rdquo; cried the doctor from the distance.
+      &ldquo;They will not let you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them beware, then, lest the people, prevented from their aspirations,
+      should rise and claim their share of the wealth and their share of the
+      power,&rdquo; the popular Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco declared, significantly,
+      menacingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence ensued, during which his Eminence stared, frowning at the
+      ground, and Antonia, graceful and rigid in her chair, breathed calmly in
+      the strength of her convictions. Then the conversation took a social turn,
+      touching on the visit of the Goulds to Europe. The Cardinal-Archbishop,
+      when in Rome, had suffered from neuralgia in the head all the time. It was
+      the climate&mdash;the bad air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When uncle and niece had gone away, with the servants again falling on
+      their knees, and the old porter, who had known Henry Gould, almost totally
+      blind and impotent now, creeping up to kiss his Eminence&rsquo;s extended hand,
+      Dr. Monygham, looking after them, pronounced the one word&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Incorrigible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould, with a look upwards, dropped wearily on her lap her white
+      hands flashing with the gold and stones of many rings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Conspiring. Yes!&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;The last of the Avellanos and the
+      last of the Corbelans are conspiring with the refugees from Sta. Marta
+      that flock here after every revolution. The Cafe Lambroso at the corner of
+      the Plaza is full of them; you can hear their chatter across the street
+      like the noise of a parrot-house. They are conspiring for the invasion of
+      Costaguana. And do you know where they go for strength, for the necessary
+      force? To the secret societies amongst immigrants and natives, where
+      Nostromo&mdash;I should say Captain Fidanza&mdash;is the great man. What
+      gives him that position? Who can say? Genius? He has genius. He is greater
+      with the populace than ever he was before. It is as if he had some secret
+      power; some mysterious means to keep up his influence. He holds
+      conferences with the Archbishop, as in those old days which you and I
+      remember. Barrios is useless. But for a military head they have the pious
+      Hernandez. And they may raise the country with the new cry of the wealth
+      for the people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will there be never any peace? Will there be no rest?&rdquo; Mrs. Gould
+      whispered. &ldquo;I thought that we&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; interrupted the doctor. &ldquo;There is no peace and no rest in the
+      development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice.
+      But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude,
+      without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral
+      principle. Mrs. Gould, the time approaches when all that the Gould
+      Concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the
+      barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?&rdquo; she cried out, as if hurt in the
+      most sensitive place of her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can say what is true,&rdquo; the doctor insisted, obstinately. &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll weigh
+      as heavily, and provoke resentment, bloodshed, and vengeance, because the
+      men have grown different. Do you think that now the mine would march upon
+      the town to save their Senor Administrador? Do you think that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her eyes and murmured
+      hopelessly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it this we have worked for, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her silent thought. Was it
+      for this that her life had been robbed of all the intimate felicities of
+      daily affection which her tenderness needed as the human body needs air to
+      breathe? And the doctor, indignant with Charles Gould&rsquo;s blindness,
+      hastened to change the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you. Ah! that fellow has
+      some continuity and force. Nothing will put an end to him. But never mind
+      that. There&rsquo;s something inexplicable going on&mdash;or perhaps only too
+      easy to explain. You know, Linda is practically the lighthouse keeper of
+      the Great Isabel light. The Garibaldino is too old now. His part is to
+      clean the lamps and to cook in the house; but he can&rsquo;t get up the stairs
+      any longer. The black-eyed Linda sleeps all day and watches the light all
+      night. Not all day, though. She is up towards five in the afternoon, when
+      our Nostromo, whenever he is in harbour with his schooner, comes out on
+      his courting visit, pulling in a small boat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t they married yet?&rdquo; Mrs. Gould asked. &ldquo;The mother wished it, as far
+      as I can understand, while Linda was yet quite a child. When I had the
+      girls with me for a year or so during the War of Separation, that
+      extraordinary Linda used to declare quite simply that she was going to be
+      Gian&rsquo; Battista&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not married yet,&rdquo; said the doctor, curtly. &ldquo;I have looked after
+      them a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, dear Dr. Monygham,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould; and under the shade of
+      the big trees her little, even teeth gleamed in a youthful smile of gentle
+      malice. &ldquo;People don&rsquo;t know how really good you are. You will not let them
+      know, as if on purpose to annoy me, who have put my faith in your good
+      heart long ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, with a lifting up of his upper lip, as though he were longing
+      to bite, bowed stiffly in his chair. With the utter absorption of a man to
+      whom love comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions, but like an
+      enlightening and priceless misfortune, the sight of that woman (of whom he
+      had been deprived for nearly a year) suggested ideas of adoration, of
+      kissing the hem of her robe. And this excess of feeling translated itself
+      naturally into an augmented grimness of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid of being overwhelmed by too much gratitude. However, these
+      people interest me. I went out several times to the Great Isabel light to
+      look after old Giorgio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not tell Mrs. Gould that it was because he found there, in her
+      absence, the relief of an atmosphere of congenial sentiment in old
+      Giorgio&rsquo;s austere admiration for the &ldquo;English signora&mdash;the
+      benefactress&rdquo;; in black-eyed Linda&rsquo;s voluble, torrential, passionate
+      affection for &ldquo;our Dona Emilia&mdash;that angel&rdquo;; in the white-throated,
+      fair Giselle&rsquo;s adoring upward turn of the eyes, which then glided towards
+      him with a sidelong, half-arch, half-candid glance, which made the doctor
+      exclaim to himself mentally, &ldquo;If I weren&rsquo;t what I am, old and ugly, I
+      would think the minx is making eyes at me. And perhaps she is. I dare say
+      she would make eyes at anybody.&rdquo; Dr. Monygham said nothing of this to Mrs.
+      Gould, the providence of the Viola family, but reverted to what he called
+      &ldquo;our great Nostromo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I wanted to tell you is this: Our great Nostromo did not take much
+      notice of the old man and the children for some years. It&rsquo;s true, too,
+      that he was away on his coasting voyages certainly ten months out of the
+      twelve. He was making his fortune, as he told Captain Mitchell once. He
+      seems to have done uncommonly well. It was only to be expected. He is a
+      man full of resource, full of confidence in himself, ready to take chances
+      and risks of every sort. I remember being in Mitchell&rsquo;s office one day,
+      when he came in with that calm, grave air he always carries everywhere. He
+      had been away trading in the Gulf of California, he said, looking straight
+      past us at the wall, as his manner is, and was glad to see on his return
+      that a lighthouse was being built on the cliff of the Great Isabel. Very
+      glad, he repeated. Mitchell explained that it was the O. S. N. Co. who was
+      building it, for the convenience of the mail service, on his own advice.
+      Captain Fidanza was good enough to say that it was excellent advice. I
+      remember him twisting up his moustaches and looking all round the cornice
+      of the room before he proposed that old Giorgio should be made the keeper
+      of that light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard of this. I was consulted at the time,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould said. &ldquo;I
+      doubted whether it would be good for these girls to be shut up on that
+      island as if in a prison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The proposal fell in with the old Garibaldino&rsquo;s humour. As to Linda, any
+      place was lovely and delightful enough for her as long as it was
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s suggestion. She could wait for her Gian&rsquo; Battista&rsquo;s good
+      pleasure there as well as anywhere else. My opinion is that she was always
+      in love with that incorruptible Capataz. Moreover, both father and sister
+      were anxious to get Giselle away from the attentions of a certain
+      Ramirez.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, interested. &ldquo;Ramirez? What sort of man is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a mozo of the town. His father was a Cargador. As a lanky boy he ran
+      about the wharf in rags, till Nostromo took him up and made a man of him.
+      When he got a little older, he put him into a lighter and very soon gave
+      him charge of the No. 3 boat&mdash;the boat which took the silver away,
+      Mrs. Gould. Nostromo selected that lighter for the work because she was
+      the best sailing and the strongest boat of all the Company&rsquo;s fleet. Young
+      Ramirez was one of the five Cargadores entrusted with the removal of the
+      treasure from the Custom House on that famous night. As the boat he had
+      charge of was sunk, Nostromo, on leaving the Company&rsquo;s service,
+      recommended him to Captain Mitchell for his successor. He had trained him
+      in the routine of work perfectly, and thus Mr. Ramirez, from a starving
+      waif, becomes a man and the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks to Nostromo,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, with warm approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks to Nostromo,&rdquo; repeated Dr. Monygham. &ldquo;Upon my word, the fellow&rsquo;s
+      power frightens me when I think of it. That our poor old Mitchell was only
+      too glad to appoint somebody trained to the work, who saved him trouble,
+      is not surprising. What is wonderful is the fact that the Sulaco
+      Cargadores accepted Ramirez for their chief, simply because such was
+      Nostromo&rsquo;s good pleasure. Of course, he is not a second Nostromo, as he
+      fondly imagined he would be; but still, the position was brilliant enough.
+      It emboldened him to make up to Giselle Viola, who, you know, is the
+      recognized beauty of the town. The old Garibaldino, however, took a
+      violent dislike to him. I don&rsquo;t know why. Perhaps because he was not a
+      model of perfection like his Gian&rsquo; Battista, the incarnation of the
+      courage, the fidelity, the honour of &lsquo;the people.&rsquo; Signor Viola does not
+      think much of Sulaco natives. Both of them, the old Spartan and that
+      white-faced Linda, with her red mouth and coal-black eyes, were looking
+      rather fiercely after the fair one. Ramirez was warned off. Father Viola,
+      I am told, threatened him with his gun once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what of Giselle herself?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a bit of a flirt, I believe,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think she
+      cared much one way or another. Of course she likes men&rsquo;s attentions.
+      Ramirez was not the only one, let me tell you, Mrs. Gould. There was one
+      engineer, at least, on the railway staff who got warned off with a gun,
+      too. Old Viola does not allow any trifling with his honour. He has grown
+      uneasy and suspicious since his wife died. He was very pleased to remove
+      his youngest girl away from the town. But look what happens, Mrs. Gould.
+      Ramirez, the honest, lovelorn swain, is forbidden the island. Very well.
+      He respects the prohibition, but naturally turns his eyes frequently
+      towards the Great Isabel. It seems as though he had been in the habit of
+      gazing late at night upon the light. And during these sentimental vigils
+      he discovers that Nostromo, Captain Fidanza that is, returns very late
+      from his visits to the Violas. As late as midnight at times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor paused and stared meaningly at Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; she began, looking puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now comes the strange part,&rdquo; went on Dr. Monygham. &ldquo;Viola, who is king on
+      his island, will allow no visitor on it after dark. Even Captain Fidanza
+      has got to leave after sunset, when Linda has gone up to tend the light.
+      And Nostromo goes away obediently. But what happens afterwards? What does
+      he do in the gulf between half-past six and midnight? He has been seen
+      more than once at that late hour pulling quietly into the harbour. Ramirez
+      is devoured by jealousy. He dared not approach old Viola; but he plucked
+      up courage to rail at Linda about it on Sunday morning as she came on the
+      mainland to hear mass and visit her mother&rsquo;s grave. There was a scene on
+      the wharf, which, as a matter of fact, I witnessed. It was early morning.
+      He must have been waiting for her on purpose. I was there by the merest
+      chance, having been called to an urgent consultation by the doctor of the
+      German gunboat in the harbour. She poured wrath, scorn, and flame upon
+      Ramirez, who seemed out of his mind. It was a strange sight, Mrs. Gould:
+      the long jetty, with this raving Cargador in his crimson sash and the girl
+      all in black, at the end; the early Sunday morning quiet of the harbour in
+      the shade of the mountains; nothing but a canoe or two moving between the
+      ships at anchor, and the German gunboat&rsquo;s gig coming to take me off. Linda
+      passed me within a foot. I noticed her wild eyes. I called out to her. She
+      never heard me. She never saw me. But I looked at her face. It was awful
+      in its anger and wretchedness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould sat up, opening her eyes very wide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Dr. Monygham? Do you mean to say that you suspect the
+      younger sister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quien sabe! Who can tell?&rdquo; said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders like
+      a born Costaguanero. &ldquo;Ramirez came up to me on the wharf. He reeled&mdash;he
+      looked insane. He took his head into his hands. He had to talk to someone&mdash;simply
+      had to. Of course for all his mad state he recognized me. People know me
+      well here. I have lived too long amongst them to be anything else but the
+      evil-eyed doctor, who can cure all the ills of the flesh, and bring bad
+      luck by a glance. He came up to me. He tried to be calm. He tried to make
+      it out that he wanted merely to warn me against Nostromo. It seems that
+      Captain Fidanza at some secret meeting or other had mentioned me as the
+      worst despiser of all the poor&mdash;of the people. It&rsquo;s very possible. He
+      honours me with his undying dislike. And a word from the great Fidanza may
+      be quite enough to send some fool&rsquo;s knife into my back. The Sanitary
+      Commission I preside over is not in favour with the populace. &lsquo;Beware of
+      him, senor doctor. Destroy him, senor doctor,&rsquo; Ramirez hissed right into
+      my face. And then he broke out. &lsquo;That man,&rsquo; he spluttered, &lsquo;has cast a
+      spell upon both these girls.&rsquo; As to himself, he had said too much. He must
+      run away now&mdash;run away and hide somewhere. He moaned tenderly about
+      Giselle, and then called her names that cannot be repeated. If he thought
+      she could be made to love him by any means, he would carry her off from
+      the island. Off into the woods. But it was no good. . . . He strode away,
+      flourishing his arms above his head. Then I noticed an old negro, who had
+      been sitting behind a pile of cases, fishing from the wharf. He wound up
+      his lines and slunk away at once. But he must have heard something, and
+      must have talked, too, because some of the old Garibaldino&rsquo;s railway
+      friends, I suppose, warned him against Ramirez. At any rate, the father
+      has been warned. But Ramirez has disappeared from the town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel I have a duty towards these girls,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, uneasily. &ldquo;Is
+      Nostromo in Sulaco now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is, since last Sunday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to be spoken to&mdash;at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will dare speak to him? Even the love-mad Ramirez runs away from the
+      mere shadow of Captain Fidanza.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can. I will,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould declared. &ldquo;A word will be enough for a man
+      like Nostromo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor smiled sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must end this situation which lends itself to&mdash;&mdash;I can&rsquo;t
+      believe it of that child,&rdquo; pursued Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very attractive,&rdquo; muttered the doctor, gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll see it, I am sure. He must put an end to all this by marrying Linda
+      at once,&rdquo; pronounced the first lady of Sulaco with immense decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the garden gate emerged Basilio, grown fat and sleek, with an
+      elderly hairless face, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his
+      jet-black, coarse hair plastered down smoothly. Stooping carefully behind
+      an ornamental clump of bushes, he put down with precaution a small child
+      he had been carrying on his shoulder&mdash;his own and Leonarda&rsquo;s last
+      born. The pouting, spoiled Camerista and the head mozo of the Casa Gould
+      had been married for some years now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained squatting on his heels for a time, gazing fondly at his
+      offspring, which returned his stare with imperturbable gravity; then,
+      solemn and respectable, walked down the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Basilio?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A telephone came through from the office of the mine. The master remains
+      to sleep at the mountain to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham had got up and stood looking away. A profound silence reigned
+      for a time under the shade of the biggest trees in the lovely gardens of
+      the Casa Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Basilio,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould. She watched him walk away along the
+      path, step aside behind the flowering bush, and reappear with the child
+      seated on his shoulder. He passed through the gateway between the garden
+      and the patio with measured steps, careful of his light burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, with his back to Mrs. Gould, contemplated a flower-bed away in
+      the sunshine. People believed him scornful and soured. The truth of his
+      nature consisted in his capacity for passion and in the sensitiveness of
+      his temperament. What he lacked was the polished callousness of men of the
+      world, the callousness from which springs an easy tolerance for oneself
+      and others; the tolerance wide as poles asunder from true sympathy and
+      human compassion. This want of callousness accounted for his sardonic turn
+      of mind and his biting speeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In profound silence, and glaring viciously at the brilliant flower-bed,
+      Dr. Monygham poured mental imprecations on Charles Gould&rsquo;s head. Behind
+      him the immobility of Mrs. Gould added to the grace of her seated figure
+      the charm of art, of an attitude caught and interpreted for ever. Turning
+      abruptly, the doctor took his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould leaned back in the shade of the big trees planted in a circle.
+      She leaned back with her eyes closed and her white hands lying idle on the
+      arms of her seat. The half-light under the thick mass of leaves brought
+      out the youthful prettiness of her face; made the clear, light fabrics and
+      white lace of her dress appear luminous. Small and dainty, as if radiating
+      a light of her own in the deep shade of the interlaced boughs, she
+      resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career of well-doing, touched by
+      the withering suspicion of the uselessness of her labours, the
+      powerlessness of her magic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had anybody asked her of what she was thinking, alone in the garden of the
+      Casa, with her husband at the mine and the house closed to the street like
+      an empty dwelling, her frankness would have had to evade the question. It
+      had come into her mind that for life to be large and full, it must contain
+      the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the
+      present. Our daily work must be done to the glory of the dead, and for the
+      good of those who come after. She thought that, and sighed without opening
+      her eyes&mdash;without moving at all. Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s face became set and
+      rigid for a second, as if to receive, without flinching, a great wave of
+      loneliness that swept over her head. And it came into her mind, too, that
+      no one would ever ask her with solicitude what she was thinking of. No
+      one. No one, but perhaps the man who had just gone away. No; no one who
+      could be answered with careless sincerity in the ideal perfection of
+      confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The word &ldquo;incorrigible&rdquo;&mdash;a word lately pronounced by Dr. Monygham&mdash;floated
+      into her still and sad immobility. Incorrigible in his devotion to the
+      great silver mine was the Senor Administrador! Incorrigible in his hard,
+      determined service of the material interests to which he had pinned his
+      faith in the triumph of order and justice. Poor boy! She had a clear
+      vision of the grey hairs on his temples. He was perfect&mdash;perfect.
+      What more could she have expected? It was a colossal and lasting success;
+      and love was only a short moment of forgetfulness, a short intoxication,
+      whose delight one remembered with a sense of sadness, as if it had been a
+      deep grief lived through. There was something inherent in the necessities
+      of successful action which carried with it the moral degradation of the
+      idea. She saw the San Tome mountain hanging over the Campo, over the whole
+      land, feared, hated, wealthy; more soulless than any tyrant, more pitiless
+      and autocratic than the worst Government; ready to crush innumerable lives
+      in the expansion of its greatness. He did not see it. He could not see it.
+      It was not his fault. He was perfect, perfect; but she would never have
+      him to herself. Never; not for one short hour altogether to herself in
+      this old Spanish house she loved so well! Incorrigible, the last of the
+      Corbelans, the last of the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw
+      clearly the San Tome mine possessing, consuming, burning up the life of
+      the last of the Costaguana Goulds; mastering the energetic spirit of the
+      son as it had mastered the lamentable weakness of the father. A terrible
+      success for the last of the Goulds. The last! She had hoped for a long,
+      long time, that perhaps&mdash;&mdash;But no! There were to be no more. An
+      immense desolation, the dread of her own continued life, descended upon
+      the first lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself
+      surviving alone the degradation of her young ideal of life, of love, of
+      work&mdash;all alone in the Treasure House of the World. The profound,
+      blind, suffering expression of a painful dream settled on her face with
+      its closed eyes. In the indistinct voice of an unlucky sleeper lying
+      passive in the grip of a merciless nightmare, she stammered out aimlessly
+      the words&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Material interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER TWELVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo had been growing rich very slowly. It was an effect of his
+      prudence. He could command himself even when thrown off his balance. And
+      to become the slave of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an
+      occurrence rare and mentally disturbing. But it was also in a great part
+      because of the difficulty of converting it into a form in which it could
+      become available. The mere act of getting it away from the island
+      piecemeal, little by little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the
+      dangers of imminent detection. He had to visit the Great Isabel in secret,
+      between his voyages along the coast, which were the ostensible source of
+      his fortune. The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as if they had
+      been spies upon their dreaded captain. He did not dare stay too long in
+      port. When his coaster was unloaded, he hurried away on another trip, for
+      he feared arousing suspicion even by a day&rsquo;s delay. Sometimes during a
+      week&rsquo;s stay, or more, he could only manage one visit to the treasure. And
+      that was all. A couple of ingots. He suffered through his fears as much as
+      through his prudence. To do things by stealth humiliated him. And he
+      suffered most from the concentration of his thought upon the treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A transgression, a crime, entering a man&rsquo;s existence, eats it up like a
+      malignant growth, consumes it like a fever. Nostromo had lost his peace;
+      the genuineness of all his qualities was destroyed. He felt it himself,
+      and often cursed the silver of San Tome. His courage, his magnificence,
+      his leisure, his work, everything was as before, only everything was a
+      sham. But the treasure was real. He clung to it with a more tenacious,
+      mental grip. But he hated the feel of the ingots. Sometimes, after putting
+      away a couple of them in his cabin&mdash;the fruit of a secret night
+      expedition to the Great Isabel&mdash;he would look fixedly at his fingers,
+      as if surprised they had left no stain on his skin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had found means of disposing of the silver bars in distant ports. The
+      necessity to go far afield made his coasting voyages long, and caused his
+      visits to the Viola household to be rare and far between. He was fated to
+      have his wife from there. He had said so once to Giorgio himself. But the
+      Garibaldino had put the subject aside with a majestic wave of his hand,
+      clutching a smouldering black briar-root pipe. There was plenty of time;
+      he was not the man to force his girls upon anybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As time went on, Nostromo discovered his preference for the younger of the
+      two. They had some profound similarities of nature, which must exist for
+      complete confidence and understanding, no matter what outward differences
+      of temperament there may be to exercise their own fascination of contrast.
+      His wife would have to know his secret or else life would be impossible.
+      He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid gaze and white throat,
+      pliable, silent, fond of excitement under her quiet indolence; whereas
+      Linda, with her intense, passionately pale face, energetic, all fire and
+      words, touched with gloom and scorn, a chip of the old block, true
+      daughter of the austere republican, but with Teresa&rsquo;s voice, inspired him
+      with a deep-seated mistrust. Moreover, the poor girl could not conceal her
+      love for Gian&rsquo; Battista. He could see it would be violent, exacting,
+      suspicious, uncompromising&mdash;like her soul. Giselle, by her fair but
+      warm beauty, by the surface placidity of her nature holding a promise of
+      submissiveness, by the charm of her girlish mysteriousness, excited his
+      passion and allayed his fears as to the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning from the longest of them,
+      he made out lighters loaded with blocks of stone lying under the cliff of
+      the Great Isabel; cranes and scaffolding above; workmen&rsquo;s figures moving
+      about, and a small lighthouse already rising from its foundations on the
+      edge of the cliff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he thought himself lost
+      irretrievably. What could save him from detection now? Nothing! He was
+      struck with amazed dread at this turn of chance, that would kindle a
+      far-reaching light upon the only secret spot of his life; that life whose
+      very essence, value, reality, consisted in its reflection from the
+      admiring eyes of men. All of it but that thing which was beyond common
+      comprehension; which stood between him and the power that hears and gives
+      effect to the evil intention of curses. It was dark. Not every man had
+      such a darkness. And they were going to put a light there. A light! He saw
+      it shining upon disgrace, poverty, contempt. Somebody was sure to. . . .
+      Perhaps somebody had already. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared Captain
+      Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a republican like
+      old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), was on
+      the point of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner. That
+      man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide deliberately in the
+      face. But he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought that this
+      was no escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace, the shame going
+      on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine himself dead. He
+      was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own existence, a thing of
+      infinite duration in its changes, to grasp the notion of finality. The
+      earth goes on for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it was as good for
+      his purposes as the other kind. He sailed close to the cliff of the Great
+      Isabel, throwing a penetrating glance from the deck at the mouth of the
+      ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth of bushes. He sailed close enough
+      to exchange hails with the workmen, shading their eyes on the edge of the
+      sheer drop of the cliff overhung by the jib-head of a powerful crane. He
+      perceived that none of them had any occasion even to approach the ravine
+      where the silver lay hidden; let alone to enter it. In the harbour he
+      learned that no one slept on the island. The labouring gangs returned to
+      port every evening, singing chorus songs in the empty lighters towed by a
+      harbour tug. For the moment he had nothing to fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper came to live in the
+      cottage that was being built some hundred and fifty yards back from the
+      low lighttower, and four hundred or so from the dark, shaded, jungly
+      ravine, containing the secret of his safety, of his influence, of his
+      magnificence, of his power over the future, of his defiance of ill-luck,
+      of every possible betrayal from rich and poor alike&mdash;what then? He
+      could never shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater than that of
+      other men, had welded that vein of silver into his life. And the feeling
+      of fearful and ardent subjection, the feeling of his slavery&mdash;so
+      irremediable and profound that often, in his thoughts, he compared himself
+      to the legendary Gringos, neither dead nor alive, bound down to their
+      conquest of unlawful wealth on Azuera&mdash;weighed heavily on the
+      independent Captain Fidanza, owner and master of a coasting schooner,
+      whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well
+      known along the western seaboard of a vast continent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in his walk, the vigour
+      and symmetry of his powerful limbs lost in the vulgarity of a brown tweed
+      suit, made by Jews in the slums of London, and sold by the clothing
+      department of the Compania Anzani, Captain Fidanza was seen in the streets
+      of Sulaco attending to his business, as usual, that trip. And, as usual,
+      he allowed it to get about that he had made a great profit on his cargo.
+      It was a cargo of salt fish, and Lent was approaching. He was seen in
+      tramcars going to and fro between the town and the harbour; he talked with
+      people in a cafe or two in his measured, steady voice. Captain Fidanza was
+      seen. The generation that would know nothing of the famous ride to Cayta
+      was not born yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo, the miscalled Capataz de Cargadores, had made for himself, under
+      his rightful name, another public existence, but modified by the new
+      conditions, less picturesque, more difficult to keep up in the increased
+      size and varied population of Sulaco, the progressive capital of the
+      Occidental Republic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Fidanza, unpicturesque, but always a little mysterious, was
+      recognized quite sufficiently under the lofty glass and iron roof of the
+      Sulaco railway station. He took a local train, and got out in Rincon,
+      where he visited the widow of the Cargador who had died of his wounds (at
+      the dawn of the New Era, like Don Jose Avellanos) in the patio of the Casa
+      Gould. He consented to sit down and drink a glass of cool lemonade in the
+      hut, while the woman, standing up, poured a perfect torrent of words to
+      which he did not listen. He left some money with her, as usual. The
+      orphaned children, growing up and well schooled, calling him uncle,
+      clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too; and in the doorway paused
+      for a moment to look at the flat face of the San Tome mountain with a
+      faint frown. This slight contraction of his bronzed brow casting a marked
+      tinge of severity upon his usual unbending expression, was observed at the
+      Lodge which he attended&mdash;but went away before the banquet. He wore it
+      at the meeting of some good comrades, Italians and Occidentals, assembled
+      in his honour under the presidency of an indigent, sickly, somewhat
+      hunchbacked little photographer, with a white face and a magnanimous soul
+      dyed crimson by a bloodthirsty hate of all capitalists, oppressors of the
+      two hemispheres. The heroic Giorgio Viola, old revolutionist, would have
+      understood nothing of his opening speech; and Captain Fidanza, lavishly
+      generous as usual to some poor comrades, made no speech at all. He had
+      listened, frowning, with his mind far away, and walked off unapproachable,
+      silent, like a man full of cares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His frown deepened as, in the early morning, he watched the stone-masons
+      go off to the Great Isabel, in lighters loaded with squared blocks of
+      stone, enough to add another course to the squat light-tower. That was the
+      rate of the work. One course per day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Captain Fidanza meditated. The presence of strangers on the island
+      would cut him completely off the treasure. It had been difficult and
+      dangerous enough before. He was afraid, and he was angry. He thought with
+      the resolution of a master and the cunning of a cowed slave. Then he went
+      ashore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man of resource and ingenuity; and, as usual, the expedient he
+      found at a critical moment was effective enough to alter the situation
+      radically. He had the gift of evolving safety out of the very danger, this
+      incomparable Nostromo, this &ldquo;fellow in a thousand.&rdquo; With Giorgio
+      established on the Great Isabel, there would be no need for concealment.
+      He would be able to go openly, in daylight, to see his daughters&mdash;one
+      of his daughters&mdash;and stay late talking to the old Garibaldino. Then
+      in the dark . . . Night after night . . . He would dare to grow rich
+      quicker now. He yearned to clasp, embrace, absorb, subjugate in
+      unquestioned possession this treasure, whose tyranny had weighed upon his
+      mind, his actions, his very sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to see his friend Captain Mitchell&mdash;and the thing was done as
+      Dr. Monygham had related to Mrs. Gould. When the project was mooted to the
+      Garibaldino, something like the faint reflection, the dim ghost of a very
+      ancient smile, stole under the white and enormous moustaches of the old
+      hater of kings and ministers. His daughters were the object of his anxious
+      care. The younger, especially. Linda, with her mother&rsquo;s voice, had taken
+      more her mother&rsquo;s place. Her deep, vibrating &ldquo;Eh, Padre?&rdquo; seemed, but for
+      the change of the word, the very echo of the impassioned, remonstrating
+      &ldquo;Eh, Giorgio?&rdquo; of poor Signora Teresa. It was his fixed opinion that the
+      town was no proper place for his girls. The infatuated but guileless
+      Ramirez was the object of his profound aversion, as resuming the sins of
+      the country whose people were blind, vile esclavos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his return from his next voyage, Captain Fidanza found the Violas
+      settled in the light-keeper&rsquo;s cottage. His knowledge of Giorgio&rsquo;s
+      idiosyncrasies had not played him false. The Garibaldino had refused to
+      entertain the idea of any companion whatever, except his girls. And
+      Captain Mitchell, anxious to please his poor Nostromo, with that felicity
+      of inspiration which only true affection can give, had formally appointed
+      Linda Viola as under-keeper of the Isabel&rsquo;s Light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The light is private property,&rdquo; he used to explain. &ldquo;It belongs to my
+      Company. I&rsquo;ve the power to nominate whom I like, and Viola it shall be.
+      It&rsquo;s about the only thing Nostromo&mdash;a man worth his weight in gold,
+      mind you&mdash;has ever asked me to do for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Directly his schooner was anchored opposite the New Custom House, with its
+      sham air of a Greek temple, flatroofed, with a colonnade, Captain Fidanza
+      went pulling his small boat out of the harbour, bound for the Great
+      Isabel, openly in the light of a declining day, before all men&rsquo;s eyes,
+      with a sense of having mastered the fates. He must establish a regular
+      position. He would ask him for his daughter now. He thought of Giselle as
+      he pulled. Linda loved him, perhaps, but the old man would be glad to keep
+      the elder, who had his wife&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not pull for the narrow strand where he had landed with Decoud, and
+      afterwards alone on his first visit to the treasure. He made for the beach
+      at the other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope of the
+      wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he saw from afar, sitting on a
+      bench under the front wall of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly to his
+      loud hail. He walked up. Neither of the girls appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is good here,&rdquo; said the old man, in his austere, far-away manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo nodded; then, after a short silence&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw my schooner pass in not two hours ago? Do you know why I am here
+      before, so to speak, my anchor has fairly bitten into the ground of this
+      port of Sulaco?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are welcome like a son,&rdquo; the old man declared, quietly, staring away
+      upon the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! thy son. I know. I am what thy son would have been. It is well,
+      viejo. It is a very good welcome. Listen, I have come to ask you for&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden dread came upon the fearless and incorruptible Nostromo. He dared
+      not utter the name in his mind. The slight pause only imparted a marked
+      weight and solemnity to the changed end of the phrase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For my wife!&rdquo; . . . His heart was beating fast. &ldquo;It is time you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Garibaldino arrested him with an extended arm. &ldquo;That was left for you
+      to judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up slowly. His beard, unclipped since Teresa&rsquo;s death, thick,
+      snow-white, covered his powerful chest. He turned his head to the door,
+      and called out in his strong voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her answer came sharp and faint from within; and the appalled Nostromo
+      stood up, too, but remained mute, gazing at the door. He was afraid. He
+      was not afraid of being refused the girl he loved&mdash;no mere refusal
+      could stand between him and a woman he desired&mdash;but the shining
+      spectre of the treasure rose before him, claiming his allegiance in a
+      silence that could not be gainsaid. He was afraid, because, neither dead
+      nor alive, like the Gringos on Azuera, he belonged body and soul to the
+      unlawfulness of his audacity. He was afraid of being forbidden the island.
+      He was afraid, and said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing the two men standing up side by side to await her, Linda stopped in
+      the doorway. Nothing could alter the passionate dead whiteness of her
+      face; but her black eyes seemed to catch and concentrate all the light of
+      the low sun in a flaming spark within the black depths, covered at once by
+      the slow descent of heavy eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behold thy husband, master, and benefactor.&rdquo; Old Viola&rsquo;s voice resounded
+      with a force that seemed to fill the whole gulf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a sleep-walker in a
+      beatific dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo made a superhuman effort. &ldquo;It is time, Linda, we two were
+      betrothed,&rdquo; he said, steadily, in his level, careless, unbending tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her head, dark with
+      bronze glints, upon which her father&rsquo;s hand rested for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so the soul of the dead is satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking for a while of his dead
+      wife; while the two, sitting side by side, never looked at each other.
+      Then the old man ceased; and Linda, motionless, began to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived for you alone, Gian&rsquo;
+      Battista. And that you knew! You knew it . . . Battistino.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pronounced the name exactly with her mother&rsquo;s intonation. A gloom as
+      of the grave covered Nostromo&rsquo;s heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I knew,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary head, his
+      old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and violent, terrible
+      and dreary&mdash;solitary on the earth full of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, &ldquo;I was yours ever since I
+      can remember. I had only to think of you for the earth to become empty to
+      my eyes. When you were there, I could see no one else. I was yours.
+      Nothing is changed. The world belongs to you, and you let me live in it.&rdquo;
+       . . . She dropped her low, vibrating voice to a still lower note, and
+      found other things to say&mdash;torturing for the man at her side. Her
+      murmur ran on ardent and voluble. She did not seem to see her sister, who
+      came out with an altar-cloth she was embroidering in her hands, and passed
+      in front of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a faint
+      smile, to sit a little away on the other side of Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the edge of a purple ocean;
+      and the white lighthouse, livid against the background of clouds filling
+      the head of the gulf, bore the lantern red and glowing, like a live ember
+      kindled by the fire of the sky. Giselle, indolent and demure, raised the
+      altar-cloth from time to time to hide nervous yawns, as of a young
+      panther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her head, covered her
+      face with kisses. Nostromo&rsquo;s brain reeled. When she left her, as if
+      stunned by the violent caresses, with her hands lying in her lap, the
+      slave of the treasure felt as if he could shoot that woman. Old Giorgio
+      lifted his leonine head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you going, Linda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the light, padre mio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Si, si&mdash;to your duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then, in a tone whose
+      festive note seemed the echo of a mood lost in the night of ages&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The old man knows where to
+      find a bottle of wine, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests and slaves, but to
+      the God of orphans, of the oppressed, of the poor, of little children, to
+      give thee a man like this one for a husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo&rsquo;s shoulder; then he went
+      in. The hopeless slave of the San Tome silver felt at these words the
+      venomous fangs of jealousy biting deep into his heart. He was appalled by
+      the novelty of the experience, by its force, by its physical intimacy. A
+      husband! A husband for her! And yet it was natural that Giselle should
+      have a husband at some time or other. He had never realized that before.
+      In discovering that her beauty could belong to another he felt as though
+      he could kill this one of old Giorgio&rsquo;s daughters also. He muttered
+      moodily&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say you love Ramirez.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head without looking at him. Coppery glints rippled to and
+      fro on the wealth of her gold hair. Her smooth forehead had the soft, pure
+      sheen of a priceless pearl in the splendour of the sunset, mingling the
+      gloom of starry spaces, the purple of the sea, and the crimson of the sky
+      in a magnificent stillness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, slowly. &ldquo;I never loved him. I think I never . . . He loves
+      me&mdash;perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air, and her raised eyes
+      remained fixed on nothing, as if indifferent and without thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ramirez told you he loved you?&rdquo; asked Nostromo, restraining himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! once&mdash;one evening . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The miserable . . . Ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood before her mute with
+      anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian&rsquo; Battista! Poor wretch that I am!&rdquo;
+       she lamented in ingenuous tones. &ldquo;I told Linda, and she scolded&mdash;she
+      scolded. Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this world? And she told
+      father, who took down his gun and cleaned it. Poor Ramirez! Then you came,
+      and she told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of her white
+      throat, which had the invincible charm of things young, palpitating,
+      delicate, and alive. Was this the child he had known? Was it possible? It
+      dawned upon him that in these last years he had really seen very little&mdash;nothing&mdash;of
+      her. Nothing. She had come into the world like a thing unknown. She had
+      come upon him unawares. She was a danger. A frightful danger. The
+      instinctive mood of fierce determination that had never failed him before
+      the perils of this life added its steady force to the violence of his
+      passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the song of running water,
+      the tinkling of a silver bell, continued&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And between you three you have brought me here into this captivity to the
+      sky and water. Nothing else. Sky and water. Oh, Sanctissima Madre. My hair
+      shall turn grey on this tedious island. I could hate you, Gian&rsquo; Battista!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a caress. She bemoaned her
+      fate, spreading unconsciously, like a flower its perfume in the coolness
+      of the evening, the indefinable seduction of her person. Was it her fault
+      that nobody ever had admired Linda? Even when they were little, going out
+      with their mother to Mass, she remembered that people took no notice of
+      Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten her, who was timid,
+      with their attention. It was her hair like gold, she supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips like the
+      rose; your round arms, your white throat.&rdquo; . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply all over to
+      the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was no more
+      self-conscious than a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even a
+      flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced down, and added,
+      impetuously&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your little feet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she seemed to
+      bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes
+      glanced at her little feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you are going at last to marry our Linda. She is terrible. Ah! now
+      she will understand better since you have told her you love her. She will
+      not be so fierce.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chica!&rdquo; said Nostromo, &ldquo;I have not told her anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and tell her, so that I may have
+      some peace from her scolding and&mdash;perhaps&mdash;who knows . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,&rdquo; she said, unmoved. &ldquo;Who is
+      Ramirez . . . Ramirez . . . Who is he?&rdquo; she repeated, dreamily, in the
+      dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a low red streak in the west like
+      a hot bar of glowing iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a
+      cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had hidden his
+      conquests of love and wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, Giselle,&rdquo; he said, in measured tones; &ldquo;I will tell no word of
+      love to your sister. Do you want to know why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father says you are not
+      like other men; that no one had ever understood you properly; that the
+      rich will be surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints in heaven! I am weary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of her face, then let
+      it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land side, but slanting
+      away from the dark column of the lighthouse they could see the long shaft
+      of light, kindled by Linda, go out to strike the expiring glow in a
+      horizon of purple and red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the house, her
+      eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white stockings and black
+      slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil
+      and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the promising
+      mysteriousness of her indolence, went out into the night of the Placid
+      Gulf like a fresh and intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shadows,
+      impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed her ambient
+      seduction in the tumultuous heaving of his breast. Before leaving the
+      harbour he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain Fidanza, for
+      greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He stood before her in
+      the red sash and check shirt as he used to appear on the Company&rsquo;s wharf&mdash;a
+      Mediterranean sailor come ashore to try his luck in Costaguana. The dusk
+      of purple and red enveloped him, too&mdash;close, soft, profound, as no
+      more than fifty yards from that spot it had gathered evening after evening
+      about the self-destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud&rsquo;s utter
+      scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have got to hear,&rdquo; he began at last, with perfect self-control. &ldquo;I
+      shall say no word of love to your sister, to whom I am betrothed from this
+      evening, because it is you that I love. It is you!&rdquo; . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that came
+      instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses, freeze hard in the
+      drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not restrain himself any longer.
+      While she shrank from his approach, her arms went out to him, abandoned
+      and regal in the dignity of her languid surrender. He held her head in his
+      two hands, and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face that gleamed
+      in the purple dusk. Masterful and tender, he was entering slowly upon the
+      fulness of his possession. And he perceived that she was crying. Then the
+      incomparable Capataz, the man of careless loves, became gentle and
+      caressing, like a woman to the grief of a child. He murmured to her
+      fondly. He sat down by her and nursed her fair head on his breast. He
+      called her his star and his little flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had grown dark. From the living-room of the light-keeper&rsquo;s cottage,
+      where Giorgio, one of the Immortal Thousand, was bending his leonine and
+      heroic head over a charcoal fire, there came the sound of sizzling and the
+      aroma of an artistic frittura.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a cataclysm, it was
+      in her feminine head that some gleam of reason survived. He was lost to
+      the world in their embraced stillness. But she said, whispering into his
+      ear&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God of mercy! What will become of me&mdash;here&mdash;now&mdash;between
+      this sky and this water I hate? Linda, Linda&mdash;I see her!&rdquo; . . . She
+      tried to get out of his arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of that name.
+      But there was no one approaching their black shapes, enlaced and
+      struggling on the white background of the wall. &ldquo;Linda! Poor Linda! I
+      tremble! I shall die of fear before my poor sister Linda, betrothed to-day
+      to Giovanni&mdash;my lover! Giovanni, you must have been mad! I cannot
+      understand you! You are not like other men! I will not give you up&mdash;never&mdash;only
+      to God himself! But why have you done this blind, mad, cruel, frightful
+      thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Released, she hung her head, let fall her hands. The altar-cloth, as if
+      tossed by a great wind, lay far away from them, gleaming white on the
+      black ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From fear of losing my hope of you,&rdquo; said Nostromo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew that you had my soul! You know everything! It was made for you!
+      But what could stand between you and me? What? Tell me!&rdquo; she repeated,
+      without impatience, in superb assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your dead mother,&rdquo; he said, very low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! . . . Poor mother! She has always . . . She is a saint in heaven now,
+      and I cannot give you up to her. No, Giovanni. Only to God alone. You were
+      mad&mdash;but it is done. Oh! what have you done? Giovanni, my beloved, my
+      life, my master, do not leave me here in this grave of clouds. You cannot
+      leave me now. You must take me away&mdash;at once&mdash;this instant&mdash;in
+      the little boat. Giovanni, carry me off to-night, from my fear of Linda&rsquo;s
+      eyes, before I have to look at her again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nestled close to him. The slave of the San Tome silver felt the weight
+      as of chains upon his limbs, a pressure as of a cold hand upon his lips.
+      He struggled against the spell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Not yet. There is something that stands between us
+      two and the freedom of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed her form closer to his side with a subtle and naive instinct
+      of seduction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You rave, Giovanni&mdash;my lover!&rdquo; she whispered, engagingly. &ldquo;What can
+      there be? Carry me off&mdash;in thy very hands&mdash;to Dona Emilia&mdash;away
+      from here. I am not very heavy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as though she expected him to lift her up at once in his two
+      palms. She had lost the notion of all impossibility. Anything could happen
+      on this night of wonder. As he made no movement, she almost cried aloud&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you I am afraid of Linda!&rdquo; And still he did not move. She became
+      quiet and wily. &ldquo;What can there be?&rdquo; she asked, coaxingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the hollow of his arm. In
+      the exulting consciousness of his strength, and the triumphant excitement
+      of his mind, he struck out for his freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A treasure,&rdquo; he said. All was still. She did not understand. &ldquo;A treasure.
+      A treasure of silver to buy a gold crown for thy brow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A treasure?&rdquo; she repeated in a faint voice, as if from the depths of a
+      dream. &ldquo;What is it you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked down at her, aware of
+      her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimples on her cheeks&mdash;seeing
+      the fascination of her person in the night of the gulf as if in the blaze
+      of noonday. Her nonchalant and seductive voice trembled with the
+      excitement of admiring awe and ungovernable curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A treasure of silver!&rdquo; she stammered out. Then pressed on faster: &ldquo;What?
+      Where? How did you get it, Giovanni?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if striking a heroic
+      blow that he burst out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a thief!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to fall upon his head. He
+      could not see her now. She had vanished into a long, obscure abysmal
+      silence, whence her voice came back to him after a time with a faint
+      glimmer, which was her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you! I love you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom; they cast a spell
+      stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure; they changed his weary
+      subjection to that dead thing into an exulting conviction of his power. He
+      would cherish her, he said, in a splendour as great as Dona Emilia&rsquo;s. The
+      rich lived on wealth stolen from the people, but he had taken from the
+      rich nothing&mdash;nothing that was not lost to them already by their
+      folly and their betrayal. For he had been betrayed&mdash;he said&mdash;deceived,
+      tempted. She believed him. . . . He had kept the treasure for purposes of
+      revenge; but now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her. He would
+      put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned with olive trees&mdash;a
+      white palace above a blue sea. He would keep her there like a jewel in a
+      casket. He would get land for her&mdash;her own land fertile with vines
+      and corn&mdash;to set her little feet upon. He kissed them. . . . He had
+      already paid for it all with the soul of a woman and the life of a man. .
+      . . The Capataz de Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his
+      generosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her feet in the
+      impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the darkness defying&mdash;as men
+      said&mdash;the knowledge of God and the wit of the devil. But she must let
+      him grow rich first&mdash;he warned her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in his hair. He got up
+      from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as though he had flung his soul away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make haste, then,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Make haste, Giovanni, my lover, my master,
+      for I will give thee up to no one but God. And I am afraid of Linda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. He trusted the
+      courage of her love. She promised to be brave in order to be loved always&mdash;far
+      away in a white palace upon a hill above a blue sea. Then with a timid,
+      tentative eagerness she murmured&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is it? Where? Tell me that, Giovanni.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened his mouth and remained silent&mdash;thunderstruck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that! Not that!&rdquo; he gasped out, appalled at the spell of secrecy that
+      had kept him dumb before so many people falling upon his lips again with
+      unimpaired force. Not even to her. Not even to her. It was too dangerous.
+      &ldquo;I forbid thee to ask,&rdquo; he cried at her, deadening cautiously the anger of
+      his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the unlawful treasure
+      arose, standing by her side like a figure of silver, pitiless and secret,
+      with a finger on its pale lips. His soul died within him at the vision of
+      himself creeping in presently along the ravine, with the smell of earth,
+      of damp foliage in his nostrils&mdash;creeping in, determined in a purpose
+      that numbed his breast, and creeping out again loaded with silver, with
+      his ears alert to every sound. It must be done on this very night&mdash;that
+      work of a craven slave!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped low, pressed the hem of her skirt to his lips, with a muttered
+      command&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him I would not stay,&rdquo; and was gone suddenly from her, silent,
+      without as much as a footfall in the dark night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat still, her head resting indolently against the wall, and her
+      little feet in white stockings and black slippers crossed over each other.
+      Old Giorgio, coming out, did not seem to be surprised at the intelligence
+      as much as she had vaguely feared. For she was full of inexplicable fear
+      now&mdash;fear of everything and everybody except of her Giovanni and his
+      treasure. But that was incredible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo&rsquo;s abrupt departure with a
+      sagacious indulgence. He remembered his own feelings, and exhibited a
+      masculine penetration of the true state of the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Va bene. Let him go. Ha! ha! No matter how fair the woman, it galls a
+      little. Liberty, liberty. There&rsquo;s more than one kind! He has said the
+      great word, and son Gian&rsquo; Battista is not tame.&rdquo; He seemed to be
+      instructing the motionless and scared Giselle. . . . &ldquo;A man should not be
+      tame,&rdquo; he added, dogmatically out of the doorway. Her stillness and
+      silence seemed to displease him. &ldquo;Do not give way to the enviousness of
+      your sister&rsquo;s lot,&rdquo; he admonished her, very grave, in his deep voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he had to come to the door again to call in his younger
+      daughter. It was late. He shouted her name three times before she even
+      moved her head. Left alone, she had become the helpless prey of
+      astonishment. She walked into the bedroom she shared with Linda like a
+      person profoundly asleep. That aspect was so marked that even old Giorgio,
+      spectacled, raising his eyes from the Bible, shook his head as she shut
+      the door behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She walked right across the room without looking at anything, and sat down
+      at once by the open window. Linda, stealing down from the tower in the
+      exuberance of her happiness, found her with a lighted candle at her back,
+      facing the black night full of sighing gusts of wind and the sound of
+      distant showers&mdash;a true night of the gulf, too dense for the eye of
+      God and the wiles of the devil. She did not turn her head at the opening
+      of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in that immobility which reached Linda in the depths
+      of her paradise. The elder sister guessed angrily: the child is thinking
+      of that wretched Ramirez. Linda longed to talk. She said in her arbitrary
+      voice, &ldquo;Giselle!&rdquo; and was not answered by the slightest movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl that was going to live in a palace and walk on ground of her own
+      was ready to die with terror. Not for anything in the world would she have
+      turned her head to face her sister. Her heart was beating madly. She said
+      with subdued haste&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not speak to me. I am praying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda, disappointed, went out quietly; and Giselle sat on unbelieving,
+      lost, dazed, patient, as if waiting for the confirmation of the
+      incredible. The hopeless blackness of the clouds seemed part of a dream,
+      too. She waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not wait in vain. The man whose soul was dead within him, creeping
+      out of the ravine, weighted with silver, had seen the gleam of the lighted
+      window, and could not help retracing his steps from the beach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that impenetrable background, obliterating the lofty mountains by the
+      seaboard, she saw the slave of the San Tome silver, as if by an
+      extraordinary power of a miracle. She accepted his return as if henceforth
+      the world could hold no surprise for all eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose, compelled and rigid, and began to speak long before the light
+      from within fell upon the face of the approaching man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come back to carry me off. It is well! Open thy arms, Giovanni,
+      my lover. I am coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His prudent footsteps stopped, and with his eyes glistening wildly, he
+      spoke in a harsh voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet. I must grow rich slowly.&rdquo; . . . A threatening note came into his
+      tone. &ldquo;Do not forget that you have a thief for your lover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! Yes!&rdquo; she whispered, hastily. &ldquo;Come nearer! Listen! Do not give me
+      up, Giovanni! Never, never! . . . I will be patient! . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her form drooped consolingly over the low casement towards the slave of
+      the unlawful treasure. The light in the room went out, and weighted with
+      silver, the magnificent Capataz clasped her round her white neck in the
+      darkness of the gulf as a drowning man clutches at a straw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the day Mrs. Gould was going, in Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s words, to &ldquo;give a
+      tertulia,&rdquo; Captain Fidanza went down the side of his schooner lying in
+      Sulaco harbour, calm, unbending, deliberate in the way he sat down in his
+      dinghy and took up his sculls. He was later than usual. The afternoon was
+      well advanced before he landed on the beach of the Great Isabel, and with
+      a steady pace climbed the slope of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair tilted back against
+      the end of the house, under the window of the girl&rsquo;s room. She had her
+      embroidery in her hands, and held it well up to her eyes. The tranquillity
+      of that girlish figure exasperated the feeling of perpetual struggle and
+      strife he carried in his breast. He became angry. It seemed to him that
+      she ought to hear the clanking of his fetters&mdash;his silver fetters,
+      from afar. And while ashore that day, he had met the doctor with the evil
+      eye, who had looked at him very hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in their flower-like
+      freshness straight upon his heart. Then she frowned. It was a warning to
+      be cautious. He stopped some distance away, and in a loud, indifferent
+      tone, said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. She is in the big room with father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He approached then, and, looking through the window into the bedroom for
+      fear of being detected by Linda returning there for some reason, he said,
+      moving only his lips&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You love me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than my life.&rdquo; She went on with her embroidery under his
+      contemplating gaze and continued to speak, looking at her work, &ldquo;Or I
+      could not live. I could not, Giovanni. For this life is like death. Oh,
+      Giovanni, I shall perish if you do not take me away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled carelessly. &ldquo;I will come to the window when it&rsquo;s dark,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t, Giovanni. Not-to-night. Linda and father have been talking
+      together for a long time today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I am afraid. I am always afraid.
+      It is like dying a thousand times a day. Your love is to me like your
+      treasure to you. It is there, but I can never get enough of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His desire had grown
+      within him. He had two masters now. But she was incapable of sustained
+      emotion. She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly at
+      night. When she saw him she flamed up always. Then only an increased
+      taciturnity marked the change in her. She was afraid of betraying herself.
+      She was afraid of pain, of bodily harm, of sharp words, of facing anger,
+      and witnessing violence. For her soul was light and tender with a pagan
+      sincerity in its impulses. She murmured&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on the hills, for which
+      we are starving our love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting, and was amazed at
+      her sunken eyes, at her hollow cheeks, at the air of illness and anguish
+      in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been ill?&rdquo; he asked, trying to put some concern into this
+      question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her black eyes blazed at him. &ldquo;Am I thinner?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;perhaps&mdash;a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And older?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every day counts&mdash;for all of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger,&rdquo; she said,
+      slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for what he would say, rolling down her turned-up sleeves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No fear of that,&rdquo; he said, absently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away as if it had been something final, and busied herself with
+      household cares while Nostromo talked with her father. Conversation with
+      the old Garibaldino was not easy. Age had left his faculties unimpaired,
+      only they seemed to have withdrawn somewhere deep within him. His answers
+      were slow in coming, with an effect of august gravity. But that day he was
+      more animated, quicker; there seemed to be more life in the old lion. He
+      was uneasy for the integrity of his honour. He believed Sidoni&rsquo;s warning
+      as to Ramirez&rsquo;s designs upon his younger daughter. And he did not trust
+      her. She was flighty. He said nothing of his cares to &ldquo;Son Gian&rsquo;
+      Battista.&rdquo; It was a touch of senile vanity. He wanted to show that he was
+      equal yet to the task of guarding alone the honour of his house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had disappeared, walking towards
+      the beach, Linda stepped over the threshold and, with a haggard smile, sat
+      down by the side of her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and desperate Ramirez had
+      waited for her on the wharf, she had no doubts whatever. The jealous
+      ravings of that man were no revelation. They had only fixed with
+      precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that sense of unreality
+      and deception which, instead of bliss and security, she had found in her
+      intercourse with her promised husband. She had passed on, pouring
+      indignation and scorn upon Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly died of
+      wretchedness and shame, lying on the carved and lettered stone of Teresa&rsquo;s
+      grave, subscribed for by the engine-drivers and the fitters of the railway
+      workshops, in sign of their respect for the hero of Italian Unity. Old
+      Viola had not been able to carry out his desire of burying his wife in the
+      sea; and Linda wept upon the stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to break her heart&mdash;well
+      and good. Everything was permitted to Gian&rsquo; Battista. But why trample upon
+      the pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He could not break
+      that. She dried her tears. And Giselle! Giselle! The little one that, ever
+      since she could toddle, had always clung to her skirt for protection. What
+      duplicity! But she could not help it probably. When there was a man in the
+      case the poor featherheaded wretch could not help herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She resolved to say nothing.
+      But woman-like she put passion into her stoicism. Giselle&rsquo;s short answers,
+      prompted by fearful caution, drove her beside herself by their curtness
+      that resembled disdain. One day she flung herself upon the chair in which
+      her indolent sister was lying and impressed the mark of her teeth at the
+      base of the whitest neck in Sulaco. Giselle cried out. But she had her
+      share of the Viola heroism. Ready to faint with terror, she only said, in
+      a lazy voice, &ldquo;Madre de Dios! Are you going to eat me alive, Linda?&rdquo; And
+      this outburst passed off leaving no trace upon the situation. &ldquo;She knows
+      nothing. She cannot know any thing,&rdquo; reflected Giselle. &ldquo;Perhaps it is not
+      true. It cannot be true,&rdquo; Linda tried to persuade herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she saw Captain Fidanza for the first time after her meeting with
+      the distracted Ramirez, the certitude of her misfortune returned. She
+      watched him from the doorway go away to his boat, asking herself
+      stoically, &ldquo;Will they meet to-night?&rdquo; She made up her mind not to leave
+      the tower for a second. When he had disappeared she came out and sat down
+      by her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The venerable Garibaldino felt, in his own words, &ldquo;a young man yet.&rdquo; In
+      one way or another a good deal of talk about Ramirez had reached him of
+      late; and his contempt and dislike of that man who obviously was not what
+      his son would have been, had made him restless. He slept very little now;
+      but for several nights past instead of reading&mdash;or only sitting, with
+      Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s silver spectacles on his nose, before the open Bible, he had
+      been prowling actively all about the island with his old gun, on watch
+      over his honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda, laying her thin brown hand on his knee, tried to soothe his
+      excitement. Ramirez was not in Sulaco. Nobody knew where he was. He was
+      gone. His talk of what he would do meant nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; the old man interrupted. &ldquo;But son Gian&rsquo; Battista told me&mdash;quite
+      of himself&mdash;that the cowardly esclavo was drinking and gambling with
+      the rascals of Zapiga, over there on the north side of the gulf. He may
+      get some of the worst scoundrels of that scoundrelly town of negroes to
+      help him in his attempt upon the little one. . . . But I am not so old.
+      No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She argued earnestly against the probability of any attempt being made;
+      and at last the old man fell silent, chewing his white moustache. Women
+      had their obstinate notions which must be humoured&mdash;his poor wife was
+      like that, and Linda resembled her mother. It was not seemly for a man to
+      argue. &ldquo;May be. May be,&rdquo; he mumbled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was by no means easy in her mind. She loved Nostromo. She turned her
+      eyes upon Giselle, sitting at a distance, with something of maternal
+      tenderness, and the jealous anguish of a rival outraged in her defeat.
+      Then she rose and walked over to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen&mdash;you,&rdquo; she said, roughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The invincible candour of the gaze, raised up all violet and dew, excited
+      her rage and admiration. She had beautiful eyes&mdash;the Chica&mdash;this
+      vile thing of white flesh and black deception. She did not know whether
+      she wanted to tear them out with shouts of vengeance or cover up their
+      mysterious and shameless innocence with kisses of pity and love. And
+      suddenly they became empty, gazing blankly at her, except for a little
+      fear not quite buried deep enough with all the other emotions in Giselle&rsquo;s
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda said, &ldquo;Ramirez is boasting in town that he will carry you off from
+      the island.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What folly!&rdquo; answered the other, and in a perversity born of long
+      restraint, she added: &ldquo;He is not the man,&rdquo; in a jesting tone with a
+      trembling audacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No?&rdquo; said Linda, through her clenched teeth. &ldquo;Is he not? Well, then, look
+      to it; because father has been walking about with a loaded gun at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not good for him. You must tell him not to, Linda. He will not
+      listen to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall say nothing&mdash;never any more&mdash;to anybody,&rdquo; cried Linda,
+      passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This could not last, thought Giselle. Giovanni must take her away soon&mdash;the
+      very next time he came. She would not suffer these terrors for ever so
+      much silver. To speak with her sister made her ill. But she was not uneasy
+      at her father&rsquo;s watchfulness. She had begged Nostromo not to come to the
+      window that night. He had promised to keep away for this once. And she did
+      not know, could not guess or imagine, that he had another reason for
+      coming on the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda had gone straight to the tower. It was time to light up. She
+      unlocked the little door, and went heavily up the spiral staircase,
+      carrying her love for the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores like an
+      ever-increasing load of shameful fetters. No; she could not throw it off.
+      No; let Heaven dispose of these two. And moving about the lantern, filled
+      with twilight and the sheen of the moon, with careful movements she
+      lighted the lamp. Then her arms fell along her body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And with our mother looking on,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;My own sister&mdash;the
+      Chica!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole refracting apparatus, with its brass fittings and rings of
+      prisms, glittered and sparkled like a domeshaped shrine of diamonds,
+      containing not a lamp, but some sacred flame, dominating the sea. And
+      Linda, the keeper, in black, with a pale face, drooped low in a wooden
+      chair, alone with her jealousy, far above the shames and passions of the
+      earth. A strange, dragging pain as if somebody were pulling her about
+      brutally by her dark hair with bronze glints, made her put her hands up to
+      her temples. They would meet. They would meet. And she knew where, too. At
+      the window. The sweat of torture fell in drops on her cheeks, while the
+      moonlight in the offing closed as if with a colossal bar of silver the
+      entrance of the Placid Gulf&mdash;the sombre cavern of clouds and
+      stillness in the surf-fretted seaboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda Viola stood up suddenly with a finger on her lip. He loved neither
+      her nor her sister. The whole thing seemed so objectless as to frighten
+      her, and also give her some hope. Why did he not carry her off? What
+      prevented him? He was incomprehensible. What were they waiting for? For
+      what end were these two lying and deceiving? Not for the ends of their
+      love. There was no such thing. The hope of regaining him for herself made
+      her break her vow of not leaving the tower that night. She must talk at
+      once to her father, who was wise, and would understand. She ran down the
+      spiral stairs. At the moment of opening the door at the bottom she heard
+      the sound of the first shot ever fired on the Great Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her breast. She ran on
+      without pausing. The cottage was dark. She cried at the door, &ldquo;Giselle!
+      Giselle!&rdquo; then dashed round the corner and screamed her sister&rsquo;s name at
+      the open window, without getting an answer; but as she was rushing,
+      distracted, round the house, Giselle came out of the door, and darted past
+      her, running silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring straight
+      ahead. She seemed to skim along the grass as if on tiptoe, and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out before her. All was
+      still on the island; she did not know where she was going. The tree under
+      which Martin Decoud spent his last days, beholding life like a succession
+      of senseless images, threw a large blotch of black shade upon the grass.
+      Suddenly she saw her father, standing quietly all alone in the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Garibaldino&mdash;big, erect, with his snow-white hair and beard&mdash;had
+      a monumental repose in his immobility, leaning upon a rifle. She put her
+      hand upon his arm lightly. He never stirred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you done?&rdquo; she asked, in her ordinary voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have shot Ramirez&mdash;infame!&rdquo; he answered, with his eyes directed to
+      where the shade was blackest. &ldquo;Like a thief he came, and like a thief he
+      fell. The child had to be protected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single step. He stood
+      there, rugged and unstirring, like a statue of an old man guarding the
+      honour of his house. Linda removed her trembling hand from his arm, firm
+      and steady like an arm of stone, and, without a word, entered the
+      blackness of the shade. She saw a stir of formless shapes on the ground,
+      and stopped short. A murmur of despair and tears grew louder to her
+      strained hearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my Giovanni! And you promised.
+      Oh! Why&mdash;why did you come, Giovanni?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was her sister&rsquo;s voice. It broke on a heartrending sob. And the voice
+      of the resourceful Capataz de Cargadores, master and slave of the San Tome
+      treasure, who had been caught unawares by old Giorgio while stealing
+      across the open towards the ravine to get some more silver, answered
+      careless and cool, but sounding startlingly weak from the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seemed as though I could not live through the night without seeing
+      thee once more&mdash;my star, my little flower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The brilliant tertulia was just over, the last guests had departed, and
+      the Senor Administrador had gone to his room already, when Dr. Monygham,
+      who had been expected in the evening but had not turned up, arrived
+      driving along the wood-block pavement under the electric-lamps of the
+      deserted Calle de la Constitucion, and found the great gateway of the Casa
+      still open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He limped in, stumped up the stairs, and found the fat and sleek Basilio
+      on the point of turning off the lights in the sala. The prosperous
+      majordomo remained open-mouthed at this late invasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t put out the lights,&rdquo; commanded the doctor. &ldquo;I want to see the
+      senora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The senora is in the Senor Adminstrador&rsquo;s cancillaria,&rdquo; said Basilio, in
+      an unctuous voice. &ldquo;The Senor Administrador starts for the mountain in an
+      hour. There is some trouble with the workmen to be feared, it appears. A
+      shameless people without reason and decency. And idle, senor. Idle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are shamelessly lazy and imbecile yourself,&rdquo; said the doctor, with
+      that faculty for exasperation which made him so generally beloved. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      put the lights out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Basilio retired with dignity. Dr. Monygham, waiting in the brilliantly
+      lighted sala, heard presently a door close at the further end of the
+      house. A jingle of spurs died out. The Senor Administrador was off to the
+      mountain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a measured swish of her long train, flashing with jewels and the
+      shimmer of silk, her delicate head bowed as if under the weight of a mass
+      of fair hair, in which the silver threads were lost, the &ldquo;first lady of
+      Sulaco,&rdquo; as Captain Mitchell used to describe her, moved along the lighted
+      corredor, wealthy beyond great dreams of wealth, considered, loved,
+      respected, honoured, and as solitary as any human being had ever been,
+      perhaps, on this earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor&rsquo;s &ldquo;Mrs. Gould! One minute!&rdquo; stopped her with a start at the
+      door of the lighted and empty sala. From the similarity of mood and
+      circumstance, the sight of the doctor, standing there all alone amongst
+      the groups of furniture, recalled to her emotional memory her unexpected
+      meeting with Martin Decoud; she seemed to hear in the silence the voice of
+      that man, dead miserably so many years ago, pronounce the words, &ldquo;Antonia
+      left her fan here.&rdquo; But it was the doctor&rsquo;s voice that spoke, a little
+      altered by his excitement. She remarked his shining eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Gould, you are wanted. Do you know what has happened? You remember
+      what I told you yesterday about Nostromo. Well, it seems that a lancha, a
+      decked boat, coming from Zapiga, with four negroes in her, passing close
+      to the Great Isabel, was hailed from the cliff by a woman&rsquo;s voice&mdash;Linda&rsquo;s,
+      as a matter of fact&mdash;commanding them (it&rsquo;s a moonlight night) to go
+      round to the beach and take up a wounded man to the town. The patron (from
+      whom I&rsquo;ve heard all this), of course, did so at once. He told me that when
+      they got round to the low side of the Great Isabel, they found Linda Viola
+      waiting for them. They followed her: she led them under a tree not far
+      from the cottage. There they found Nostromo lying on the ground with his
+      head in the younger girl&rsquo;s lap, and father Viola standing some distance
+      off leaning on his gun. Under Linda&rsquo;s direction they got a table out of
+      the cottage for a stretcher, after breaking off the legs. They are here,
+      Mrs. Gould. I mean Nostromo and&mdash;and Giselle. The negroes brought him
+      in to the first-aid hospital near the harbour. He made the attendant send
+      for me. But it was not me he wanted to see&mdash;it was you, Mrs. Gould!
+      It was you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo; whispered Mrs. Gould, shrinking a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you!&rdquo; the doctor burst out. &ldquo;He begged me&mdash;his enemy, as he
+      thinks&mdash;to bring you to him at once. It seems he has something to say
+      to you alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said to me, &lsquo;Remind her that I have done something to keep a roof over
+      her head.&rsquo; . . . Mrs. Gould,&rdquo; the doctor pursued, in the greatest
+      excitement. &ldquo;Do you remember the silver? The silver in the lighter&mdash;that
+      was lost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she hated the mere mention of
+      that silver. Frankness personified, she remembered with an exaggerated
+      horror that for the first and last time of her life she had concealed the
+      truth from her husband about that very silver. She had been corrupted by
+      her fears at that time, and she had never forgiven herself. Moreover, that
+      silver, which would never have come down if her husband had been made
+      acquainted with the news brought by Decoud, had been in a roundabout way
+      nearly the cause of Dr. Monygham&rsquo;s death. And these things appeared to her
+      very dreadful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it lost, though?&rdquo; the doctor exclaimed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always felt that there
+      was a mystery about our Nostromo ever since. I do believe he wants now, at
+      the point of death&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The point of death?&rdquo; repeated Mrs. Gould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Yes. . . . He wants perhaps to tell you something concerning that
+      silver which&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! No!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low voice. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it lost and
+      done with? Isn&rsquo;t there enough treasure without it to make everybody in the
+      world miserable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed silence. At last
+      he ventured, very low&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are we to do? It looks as
+      though father and sister had&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to do her best for these
+      girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a volante here,&rdquo; the doctor said. &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t mind getting into
+      that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reappeared, having thrown over
+      her dress a grey cloak with a deep hood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded over her evening
+      costume, this woman, full of endurance and compassion, stood by the side
+      of the bed on which the splendid Capataz de Cargadores lay stretched out
+      motionless on his back. The whiteness of sheets and pillows gave a sombre
+      and energetic relief to his bronzed face, to the dark, nervous hands, so
+      good on a tiller, upon a bridle and on a trigger, lying open and idle upon
+      a white coverlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is innocent,&rdquo; the Capataz was saying in a deep and level voice, as
+      though afraid that a louder word would break the slender hold his spirit
+      still kept upon his body. &ldquo;She is innocent. It is I alone. But no matter.
+      For these things I would answer to no man or woman alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused. Mrs. Gould&rsquo;s face, very white within the shadow of the hood,
+      bent over him with an invincible and dreary sadness. And the low sobs of
+      Giselle Viola, kneeling at the end of the bed, her gold hair with coppery
+      gleams loose and scattered over the Capataz&rsquo;s feet, hardly troubled the
+      silence of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! Old Giorgio&mdash;the guardian of thine honour! Fancy the Vecchio
+      coming upon me so light of foot, so steady of aim. I myself could have
+      done no better. But the price of a charge of powder might have been saved.
+      The honour was safe. . . . Senora, she would have followed to the end of
+      the world Nostromo the thief. . . . I have said the word. The spell is
+      broken!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot see her. . . . No matter,&rdquo; he went on, with the shadow of the
+      old magnificent carelessness in his voice. &ldquo;One kiss is enough, if there
+      is no time for more. An airy soul, senora! Bright and warm, like sunshine&mdash;soon
+      clouded, and soon serene. They would crush it there between them. Senora,
+      cast on her the eye of your compassion, as famed from one end of the land
+      to the other as the courage and daring of the man who speaks to you. She
+      will console herself in time. And even Ramirez is not a bad fellow. I am
+      not angry. No! It is not Ramirez who overcame the Capataz of the Sulaco
+      Cargadores.&rdquo; He paused, made an effort, and in louder voice, a little
+      wildly, declared&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I die betrayed&mdash;betrayed by&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not say by whom or by what he was dying betrayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would not have betrayed me,&rdquo; he began again, opening his eyes very
+      wide. &ldquo;She was faithful. We were going very far&mdash;very soon. I could
+      have torn myself away from that accursed treasure for her. For that child
+      I would have left boxes and boxes of it&mdash;full. And Decoud took four.
+      Four ingots. Why? Picardia! To betray me? How could I give back the
+      treasure with four ingots missing? They would have said I had purloined
+      them. The doctor would have said that. Alas! it holds me yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould bent low, fascinated&mdash;cold with apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What became of Don Martin on that night, Nostromo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who knows? I wondered what would become of me. Now I know. Death was to
+      come upon me unawares. He went away! He betrayed me. And you think I have
+      killed him! You are all alike, you fine people. The silver has killed me.
+      It has held me. It holds me yet. Nobody knows where it is. But you are the
+      wife of Don Carlos, who put it into my hands and said, &lsquo;Save it on your
+      life.&rsquo; And when I returned, and you all thought it was lost, what do I
+      hear? &lsquo;It was nothing of importance. Let it go. Up, Nostromo, the
+      faithful, and ride away to save us, for dear life!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nostromo!&rdquo; Mrs. Gould whispered, bending very low. &ldquo;I, too, have hated
+      the idea of that silver from the bottom of my heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marvellous!&mdash;that one of you should hate the wealth that you know so
+      well how to take from the hands of the poor. The world rests upon the
+      poor, as old Giorgio says. You have been always good to the poor. But
+      there is something accursed in wealth. Senora, shall I tell you where the
+      treasure is? To you alone. . . . Shining! Incorruptible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone, in his eyes, plain
+      to the woman with the genius of sympathetic intuition. She averted her
+      glance from the miserable subjection of the dying man, appalled, wishing
+      to hear no more of the silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Capataz,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;No one misses it now. Let it be lost for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes, uttered no word, made
+      no movement. Outside the door of the sick-room Dr. Monygham, excited to
+      the highest pitch, his eyes shining with eagerness, came up to the two
+      women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mrs. Gould,&rdquo; he said, almost brutally in his impatience, &ldquo;tell me,
+      was I right? There is a mystery. You have got the word of it, have you
+      not? He told you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me nothing,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gould, steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo went out of Dr.
+      Monygham&rsquo;s eyes. He stepped back submissively. He did not believe Mrs.
+      Gould. But her word was law. He accepted her denial like an inexplicable
+      fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo&rsquo;s genius over his own. Even
+      before that woman, whom he loved with secret devotion, he had been
+      defeated by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, the man who had lived
+      his own life on the assumption of unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and
+      courage!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray send at once somebody for my carriage,&rdquo; spoke Mrs. Gould from within
+      her hood. Then, turning to Giselle Viola, &ldquo;Come nearer me, child; come
+      closer. We will wait here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face veiled in her falling
+      hair, crept up to her side. Mrs. Gould slipped her hand through the arm of
+      the unworthy daughter of old Viola, the immaculate republican, the hero
+      without a stain. Slowly, gradually, as a withered flower droops, the head
+      of the girl, who would have followed a thief to the end of the world,
+      rested on the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady of Sulaco, the wife
+      of the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. And Mrs. Gould, feeling
+      her suppressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the first and only moment
+      of bitterness in her life. It was worthy of Dr. Monygham himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgotten you for his
+      treasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senora, he loved me. He loved me,&rdquo; Giselle whispered, despairingly. &ldquo;He
+      loved me as no one had ever been loved before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been loved, too,&rdquo; Mrs. Gould said in a severe tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle clung to her convulsively. &ldquo;Oh, senora, but you shall live adored
+      to the end of your life,&rdquo; she sobbed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage arrived. She helped
+      in the half-fainting girl. After the doctor had shut the door of the
+      landau, she leaned over to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can do nothing?&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won&rsquo;t let us touch him. It does not matter.
+      I just had one look. . . . Useless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl that very night. He
+      could get the police-boat to take him off to the island. He remained in
+      the street, looking after the landau rolling away slowly behind the white
+      mules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rumour of some accident&mdash;an accident to Captain Fidanza&mdash;had
+      been spreading along the new quays with their rows of lamps and the dark
+      shapes of towering cranes. A knot of night prowlers&mdash;the poorest of
+      the poor&mdash;hung about the door of the first-aid hospital, whispering
+      in the moonlight of the empty street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no one with the wounded man but the pale photographer, small,
+      frail, bloodthirsty, the hater of capitalists, perched on a high stool
+      near the head of the bed with his knees up and his chin in his hands. He
+      had been fetched by a comrade who, working late on the wharf, had heard
+      from a negro belonging to a lancha, that Captain Fidanza had been brought
+      ashore mortally wounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any dispositions to make, comrade?&rdquo; he asked, anxiously. &ldquo;Do not
+      forget that we want money for our work. The rich must be fought with their
+      own weapons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nostromo made no answer. The other did not insist, remaining huddled up on
+      the stool, shock-headed, wildly hairy, like a hunchbacked monkey. Then,
+      after a long silence&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comrade Fidanza,&rdquo; he began, solemnly, &ldquo;you have refused all aid from that
+      doctor. Is he really a dangerous enemy of the people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dimly lit room Nostromo rolled his head slowly on the pillow and
+      opened his eyes, directing at the weird figure perched by his bedside a
+      glance of enigmatic and profound inquiry. Then his head rolled back, his
+      eyelids fell, and the Capataz de Cargadores died without a word or moan
+      after an hour of immobility, broken by short shudders testifying to the
+      most atrocious sufferings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham, going out in the police-galley to the islands, beheld the
+      glitter of the moon upon the gulf and the high black shape of the Great
+      Isabel sending a shaft of light afar, from under the canopy of clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pull easy,&rdquo; he said, wondering what he would find there. He tried to
+      imagine Linda and her father, and discovered a strange reluctance within
+      himself. &ldquo;Pull easy,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour, Giorgio Viola had not
+      stirred from the spot. He stood, his old gun grounded, his hand grasping
+      the barrel near the muzzle. After the lancha carrying off Nostromo for
+      ever from her had left the shore, Linda, coming up, stopped before him. He
+      did not seem to be aware of her presence, but when, losing her forced
+      calmness, she cried out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know whom you have killed?&rdquo; he answered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ramirez the vagabond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda laughed in his face.
+      After a time he joined her faintly in a deep-toned and distant echo of her
+      peals. Then she stopped, and the old man spoke as if startled&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He cried out in son Gian&rsquo; Battista&rsquo;s voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained extended for a
+      moment as if still supported. Linda seized it roughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too old to understand. Come into the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled heavily, nearly coming
+      to the ground together with his daughter. His excitement, his activity of
+      the last few days, had been like the flare of a dying lamp. He caught at
+      the back of his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In son Gian&rsquo; Battista&rsquo;s voice,&rdquo; he repeated in a severe tone. &ldquo;I heard
+      him&mdash;Ramirez&mdash;the miserable&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, hissed into his ear&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have killed Gian&rsquo; Battista.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man smiled under his thick moustache. Women had strange fancies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the child?&rdquo; he asked, surprised at the penetrating chilliness of
+      the air and the unwonted dimness of the lamp by which he used to sit up
+      half the night with the open Bible before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is asleep,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We shall talk of her tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and with an
+      almost unbearable feeling of pity. She had observed the change that came
+      over him. He would never understand what he had done; and even to her the
+      whole thing remained incomprehensible. He said with difficulty&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn leather cover, the
+      Bible given him ages ago by an Englishman in Palermo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child had to be protected,&rdquo; he said, in a strange, mournful voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying without noise. Suddenly she
+      started for the door. He heard her move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the light,&rdquo; she answered, turning round to look at him balefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The light! Si&mdash;duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed quietness, he
+      felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the spectacles given him by Dona
+      Emilia. He put them on. After a long period of immobility he opened the
+      book, and from on high looked through the glasses at the small print in
+      double columns. A rigid, stern expression settled upon his features with a
+      slight frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought or unpleasant
+      sensation. But he never detached his eyes from the book while he swayed
+      forward, gently, gradually, till his snow-white head rested upon the open
+      pages. A wooden clock ticked methodically on the white-washed wall, and
+      growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay alone, rugged, undecayed, like an
+      old oak uprooted by a treacherous gust of wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light of the Great Isabel burned unfailing above the lost treasure of
+      the San Tome mine. Into the bluish sheen of a night without stars the
+      lantern sent out a yellow beam towards the far horizon. Like a black speck
+      upon the shining panes, Linda, crouching in the outer gallery, rested her
+      head on the rail. The moon, drooping in the western board, looked at her
+      radiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of oars from a passing
+      boat ceased, and Dr. Monygham stood up in the stern sheets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linda!&rdquo; he shouted, throwing back his head. &ldquo;Linda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda stood up. She had recognized the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; she cried, bending over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my poor girl. I am coming round,&rdquo; the doctor answered from below.
+      &ldquo;Pull to the beach,&rdquo; he said to the rowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linda&rsquo;s black figure detached itself upright on the light of the lantern
+      with her arms raised above her head as though she were going to throw
+      herself over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is I who loved you,&rdquo; she whispered, with a face as set and white as
+      marble in the moonlight. &ldquo;I! Only I! She will forget thee, killed
+      miserably for her pretty face. I cannot understand. I cannot understand.
+      But I shall never forget thee. Never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood silent and still, collecting her strength to throw all her
+      fidelity, her pain, bewilderment, and despair into one great cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never! Gian&rsquo; Battista!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Monygham, pulling round in the police-galley, heard the name pass over
+      his head. It was another of Nostromo&rsquo;s triumphs, the greatest, the most
+      enviable, the most sinister of all. In that true cry of undying passion
+      that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to the bright
+      line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining like a mass of
+      solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores
+      dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and love.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, by Joseph Conrad
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+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, by Joseph Conrad
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOSTROMO: A TALE OF THE SEABOARD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+NOSTROMO
+
+A TALE OF THE SEABOARD
+
+
+By Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+
+"So foul a sky clears not without a storm." --SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+
+"_Nostromo_" is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels which
+belong to the period following upon the publication of the "Typhoon"
+volume of short stories.
+
+I don't mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change
+in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing
+life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious,
+extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a
+subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I
+can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some
+concern was that after finishing the last story of the "Typhoon" volume
+it seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write
+about.
+
+This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little
+time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for
+"Nostromo" came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely
+destitute of valuable details.
+
+As a matter of fact in 1875 or '6, when very young, in the West Indies
+or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short,
+few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to
+have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on
+the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution.
+
+On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no details,
+and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to
+keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven
+years afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked
+up outside a second-hand book-shop. It was the life story of an American
+seaman written by himself with the assistance of a journalist. In the
+course of his wanderings that American sailor worked for some months on
+board a schooner, the master and owner of which was the thief of whom I
+had heard in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there
+could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the same
+part of the world and both connected with a South American revolution.
+
+The fellow had actually managed to steal a lighter with silver, and
+this, it seems, only because he was implicitly trusted by his employers,
+who must have been singularly poor judges of character. In the sailor's
+story he is represented as an unmitigated rascal, a small cheat,
+stupidly ferocious, morose, of mean appearance, and altogether unworthy
+of the greatness this opportunity had thrust upon him. What was
+interesting was that he would boast of it openly.
+
+He used to say: "People think I make a lot of money in this schooner of
+mine. But that is nothing. I don't care for that. Now and then I go
+away quietly and lift a bar of silver. I must get rich slowly--you
+understand."
+
+There was also another curious point about the man. Once in the course
+of some quarrel the sailor threatened him: "What's to prevent me
+reporting ashore what you have told me about that silver?"
+
+The cynical ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He actually laughed.
+"You fool, if you dare talk like that on shore about me you will get a
+knife stuck in your back. Every man, woman, and child in that port is
+my friend. And who's to prove the lighter wasn't sunk? I didn't show you
+where the silver is hidden. Did I? So you know nothing. And suppose I
+lied? Eh?"
+
+Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid meanness of that
+impenitent thief, deserted from the schooner. The whole episode takes
+about three pages of his autobiography. Nothing to speak of; but as I
+looked them over, the curious confirmation of the few casual words
+heard in my early youth evoked the memories of that distant time when
+everything was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting;
+bits of strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the
+sunshine, men's passions in the dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown
+dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world something to
+write about. Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A
+rascal steals a large parcel of a valuable commodity--so people say.
+It's either true or untrue; and in any case it has no value in itself.
+To invent a circumstantial account of the robbery did not appeal to me,
+because my talents not running that way I did not think that the game
+was worth the candle. It was only when it dawned upon me that the
+purloiner of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue,
+that he could be even a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim
+in the changing scenes of a revolution, it was only then that I had the
+first vision of a twilight country which was to become the province
+of Sulaco, with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty Campo for mute
+witnesses of events flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in
+good and evil.
+
+Such are in very truth the obscure origins of "Nostromo"--the book. From
+that moment, I suppose, it had to be. Yet even then I hesitated, as if
+warned by the instinct of self-preservation from venturing on a distant
+and toilsome journey into a land full of intrigues and revolutions. But
+it had to be done.
+
+It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with many intervals
+of renewed hesitation, lest I should lose myself in the ever-enlarging
+vistas opening before me as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the
+country. Often, also, when I had thought myself to a standstill over the
+tangled-up affairs of the Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack
+my bag, rush away from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages
+of the "Mirror of the Sea." But generally, as I've said before, my
+sojourn on the Continent of Latin America, famed for its hospitality,
+lasted for about two years. On my return I found (speaking somewhat in
+the style of Captain Gulliver) my family all well, my wife heartily
+glad to learn that the fuss was all over, and our small boy considerably
+grown during my absence.
+
+My principal authority for the history of Costaguana is, of course, my
+venerated friend, the late Don Jose Avellanos, Minister to the Courts of
+England and Spain, etc., etc., in his impartial and eloquent "History of
+Fifty Years of Misrule." That work was never published--the reader will
+discover why--and I am in fact the only person in the world possessed
+of its contents. I have mastered them in not a few hours of earnest
+meditation, and I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In justice to
+myself, and to allay the fears of prospective readers, I beg to point
+out that the few historical allusions are never dragged in for the
+sake of parading my unique erudition, but that each of them is closely
+related to actuality; either throwing a light on the nature of current
+events or affecting directly the fortunes of the people of whom I speak.
+
+As to their own histories I have tried to set them down, Aristocracy
+and People, men and women, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, bandit and politician,
+with as cool a hand as was possible in the heat and clash of my own
+conflicting emotions. And after all this is also the story of their
+conflicts. It is for the reader to say how far they are deserving of
+interest in their actions and in the secret purposes of their hearts
+revealed in the bitter necessities of the time. I confess that, for me,
+that time is the time of firm friendships and unforgotten hospitalities.
+And in my gratitude I must mention here Mrs. Gould, "the first lady
+of Sulaco," whom we may safely leave to the secret devotion of Dr.
+Monygham, and Charles Gould, the Idealist-creator of Material Interests
+whom we must leave to his Mine--from which there is no escape in this
+world.
+
+About Nostromo, the second of the two racially and socially contrasted
+men, both captured by the silver of the San Tome Mine, I feel bound to
+say something more.
+
+I did not hesitate to make that central figure an Italian. First of
+all the thing is perfectly credible: Italians were swarming into the
+Occidental Province at the time, as anybody who will read further can
+see; and secondly, there was no one who could stand so well by the side
+of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist of the old, humanitarian
+revolutions. For myself I needed there a Man of the People as free as
+possible from his class-conventions and all settled modes of thinking.
+This is not a side snarl at conventions. My reasons were not moral but
+artistic. Had he been an Anglo-Saxon he would have tried to get into
+local politics. But Nostromo does not aspire to be a leader in a
+personal game. He does not want to raise himself above the mass. He is
+content to feel himself a power--within the People.
+
+But mainly Nostromo is what he is because I received the inspiration for
+him in my early days from a Mediterranean sailor. Those who have read
+certain pages of mine will see at once what I mean when I say that
+Dominic, the padrone of the Tremolino, might under given circumstances
+have been a Nostromo. At any rate Dominic would have understood the
+younger man perfectly--if scornfully. He and I were engaged together in
+a rather absurd adventure, but the absurdity does not matter. It is a
+real satisfaction to think that in my very young days there must, after
+all, have been something in me worthy to command that man's half-bitter
+fidelity, his half-ironic devotion. Many of Nostromo's speeches I have
+heard first in Dominic's voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless
+eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his
+face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "_Vous
+autres gentilhommes!_" in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like
+Nostromo! "You _hombres finos!_" Very much like Nostromo. But Dominic the
+Corsican nursed a certain pride of ancestry from which my Nostromo is
+free; for Nostromo's lineage had to be more ancient still. He is a man
+with the weight of countless generations behind him and no parentage to
+boast of. . . . Like the People.
+
+In his firm grip on the earth he inherits, in his improvidence and
+generosity, in his lavishness with his gifts, in his manly vanity, in
+the obscure sense of his greatness and in his faithful devotion with
+something despairing as well as desperate in its impulses, he is a Man
+of the People, their very own unenvious force, disdaining to lead but
+ruling from within. Years afterwards, grown older as the famous Captain
+Fidanza, with a stake in the country, going about his many affairs
+followed by respectful glances in the modernized streets of Sulaco,
+calling on the widow of the cargador, attending the Lodge, listening in
+unmoved silence to anarchist speeches at the meeting, the enigmatical
+patron of the new revolutionary agitation, the trusted, the wealthy
+comrade Fidanza with the knowledge of his moral ruin locked up in his
+breast, he remains essentially a Man of the People. In his mingled
+love and scorn of life and in the bewildered conviction of having been
+betrayed, of dying betrayed he hardly knows by what or by whom, he is
+still of the People, their undoubted Great Man--with a private history
+of his own.
+
+One more figure of those stirring times I would like to mention: and
+that is Antonia Avellanos--the "beautiful Antonia." Whether she is a
+possible variation of Latin-American girlhood I wouldn't dare to affirm.
+But, for me, she is. Always a little in the background by the side of
+her father (my venerated friend) I hope she has yet relief enough to
+make intelligible what I am going to say. Of all the people who had seen
+with me the birth of the Occidental Republic, she is the only one
+who has kept in my memory the aspect of continued life. Antonia the
+Aristocrat and Nostromo the Man of the People are the artisans of the
+New Era, the true creators of the New State; he by his legendary and
+daring feat, she, like a woman, simply by the force of what she is:
+the only being capable of inspiring a sincere passion in the heart of a
+trifler.
+
+If anything could induce me to revisit Sulaco (I should hate to see all
+these changes) it would be Antonia. And the true reason for that--why
+not be frank about it?--the true reason is that I have modelled her on
+my first love. How we, a band of tallish schoolboys, the chums of
+her two brothers, how we used to look up to that girl just out of the
+schoolroom herself, as the standard-bearer of a faith to which we all
+were born but which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching
+hope! She had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than
+Antonia, but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no
+taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only
+one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing
+criticism of my levities--very much like poor Decoud--or stand the
+brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite
+understand--but never mind. That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking
+yet defiant sinner, to say the final good-bye I received a hand-squeeze
+that made my heart leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was
+softened at the last as though she had suddenly perceived (we were such
+children still!) that I was really going away for good, going very far
+away--even as far as Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes in the
+darkness of the Placid Gulf.
+
+That's why I long sometimes for another glimpse of the "beautiful
+Antonia" (or can it be the Other?) moving in the dimness of the great
+cathedral, saying a short prayer at the tomb of the first and last
+Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco, standing absorbed in filial devotion
+before the monument of Don Jose Avellanos, and, with a lingering,
+tender, faithful glance at the medallion-memorial to Martin Decoud,
+going out serenely into the sunshine of the Plaza with her upright
+carriage and her white head; a relic of the past disregarded by men
+awaiting impatiently the Dawns of other New Eras, the coming of more
+Revolutions.
+
+But this is the idlest of dreams; for I did understand perfectly well
+at the time that the moment the breath left the body of the Magnificent
+Capataz, the Man of the People, freed at last from the toils of love and
+wealth, there was nothing more for me to do in Sulaco.
+
+
+J. C.
+
+October, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART FIRST   THE SILVER OF THE MINE
+
+PART SECOND  THE ISABELS
+
+PART THIRD   THE LIGHTHOUSE
+
+
+
+
+NOSTROMO
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST THE SILVER OF THE MINE
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of
+Sulaco--the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its
+antiquity--had never been commercially anything more important than a
+coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo.
+The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk
+gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on
+clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been
+barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some
+harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery
+of sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an
+inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in
+the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous
+semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of
+lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.
+
+On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard of the Republic
+of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an insignificant
+cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of
+the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill
+at the back can be made out faintly like a shadow on the sky.
+
+On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist
+floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula
+of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by
+vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone
+stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of
+sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the
+rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil
+enough--it is said--to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were
+blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of
+consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is
+deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the
+neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains,
+tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a
+basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of
+shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony
+levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time
+had perished in the search. The story goes also that within men's memory
+two wandering sailors--Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for
+certain--talked over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three
+stole a donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin,
+and provisions enough to last a few days. Thus accompanied, and with
+revolvers at their belts, they had started to chop their way with
+machetes through the thorny scrub on the neck of the peninsula.
+
+On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it could only have
+been from their camp-fire) was seen for the first time within memory of
+man standing up faintly upon the sky above a razor-backed ridge on the
+stony head. The crew of a coasting schooner, lying becalmed three miles
+off the shore, stared at it with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman,
+living in a lonely hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and
+was on the lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the
+sun was about to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy,
+incredulity, and awe.
+
+The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the Indian,
+and the stolen burro were never seen again. As to the mozo, a Sulaco
+man--his wife paid for some masses, and the poor four-footed beast,
+being without sin, had been probably permitted to die; but the two
+gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to be dwelling to this day
+amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell of their success. Their souls
+cannot tear themselves away from their bodies mounting guard over the
+discovered treasure. They are now rich and hungry and thirsty--a strange
+theory of tenacious gringo ghosts suffering in their starved and parched
+flesh of defiant heretics, where a Christian would have renounced and
+been released.
+
+These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera guarding its
+forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the sky on one side with the round
+patch of blue haze blurring the bright skirt of the horizon on the
+other, mark the two outermost points of the bend which bears the name of
+Golfo Placido, because never a strong wind had been known to blow upon
+its waters.
+
+On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta Mala to Azuera the
+ships from Europe bound to Sulaco lose at once the strong breezes of the
+ocean. They become the prey of capricious airs that play with them for
+thirty hours at a stretch sometimes. Before them the head of the calm
+gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless
+and opaque clouds. On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast
+upon the sweep of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering
+and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks
+rearing their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the
+very edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises
+majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks sprinkle
+with tiny black dots the smooth dome of snow.
+
+Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf the shadow of the
+mountains, the clouds begin to roll out of the lower valleys. They
+swathe in sombre tatters the naked crags of precipices above the wooded
+slopes, hide the peaks, smoke in stormy trails across the snows of
+Higuerota. The Cordillera is gone from you as if it had dissolved itself
+into great piles of grey and black vapours that travel out slowly to
+seaward and vanish into thin air all along the front before the blazing
+heat of the day. The wasting edge of the cloud-bank always strives for,
+but seldom wins, the middle of the gulf. The sun--as the sailors say--is
+eating it up. Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away from
+the main body to career all over the gulf till it escapes into the
+offing beyond Azuera, where it bursts suddenly into flame and crashes
+like a sinster pirate-ship of the air, hove-to above the horizon,
+engaging the sea.
+
+At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the sky smothers the
+whole quiet gulf below with an impenetrable darkness, in which the sound
+of the falling showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly--now
+here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the
+seamen along the whole west coast of a great continent. Sky, land, and
+sea disappear together out of the world when the Placido--as the saying
+is--goes to sleep under its black poncho. The few stars left below the
+seaward frown of the vault shine feebly as into the mouth of a black
+cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her
+sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself--they
+add with grim profanity--could not find out what work a man's hand is
+doing in there; and you would be free to call the devil to your aid with
+impunity if even his malice were not defeated by such a blind darkness.
+
+The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three uninhabited islets
+basking in the sunshine just outside the cloud veil, and opposite the
+entrance to the harbour of Sulaco, bear the name of "The Isabels."
+
+There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, which is round; and
+Hermosa, which is the smallest.
+
+That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven paces across,
+a mere flat top of a grey rock which smokes like a hot cinder after
+a shower, and where no man would care to venture a naked sole before
+sunset. On the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick bulging
+trunk rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles a
+dismal bunch of dead leaves above the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has
+a spring of fresh water issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine.
+Resembling an emerald green wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat
+upon the sea, it bears two forest trees standing close together, with
+a wide spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine
+extending the whole length of the island is full of bushes; and
+presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high side spreads itself out on
+the other into a shallow depression abutting on a small strip of sandy
+shore.
+
+From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an opening
+two miles away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out of the regular
+sweep of the coast, right into the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong,
+lake-like piece of water. On one side the short wooded spurs and valleys
+of the Cordillera come down at right angles to the very strand; on
+the other the open view of the great Sulaco plain passes into the opal
+mystery of great distances overhung by dry haze. The town of Sulaco
+itself--tops of walls, a great cupola, gleams of white miradors in a
+vast grove of orange trees--lies between the mountains and the plain,
+at some little distance from its harbour and out of the direct line of
+sight from the sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+The only sign of commercial activity within the harbour, visible from
+the beach of the Great Isabel, is the square blunt end of the wooden
+jetty which the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (the O.S.N. of familiar
+speech) had thrown over the shallow part of the bay soon after they had
+resolved to make of Sulaco one of their ports of call for the Republic
+of Costaguana. The State possesses several harbours on its long
+seaboard, but except Cayta, an important place, all are either small
+and inconvenient inlets in an iron-bound coast--like Esmeralda, for
+instance, sixty miles to the south--or else mere open roadsteads exposed
+to the winds and fretted by the surf.
+
+Perhaps the very atmospheric conditions which had kept away the
+merchant fleets of bygone ages induced the O.S.N. Company to violate the
+sanctuary of peace sheltering the calm existence of Sulaco. The variable
+airs sporting lightly with the vast semicircle of waters within the head
+of Azuera could not baffle the steam power of their excellent fleet.
+Year after year the black hulls of their ships had gone up and down
+the coast, in and out, past Azuera, past the Isabels, past Punta
+Mala--disregarding everything but the tyranny of time. Their names, the
+names of all mythology, became the household words of a coast that had
+never been ruled by the gods of Olympus. The Juno was known only for
+her comfortable cabins amidships, the Saturn for the geniality of her
+captain and the painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas
+the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for cattle transport, and to be
+avoided by coastwise passengers. The humblest Indian in the obscurest
+village on the coast was familiar with the Cerberus, a little black
+puffer without charm or living accommodation to speak of, whose mission
+was to creep inshore along the wooded beaches close to mighty ugly
+rocks, stopping obligingly before every cluster of huts to collect
+produce, down to three-pound parcels of indiarubber bound in a wrapper
+of dry grass.
+
+And as they seldom failed to account for the smallest package, rarely
+lost a bullock, and had never drowned a single passenger, the name of
+the O.S.N. stood very high for trustworthiness. People declared that
+under the Company's care their lives and property were safer on the
+water than in their own houses on shore.
+
+The O.S.N.'s superintendent in Sulaco for the whole Costaguana section
+of the service was very proud of his Company's standing. He resumed it
+in a saying which was very often on his lips, "We never make mistakes."
+To the Company's officers it took the form of a severe injunction, "We
+must make no mistakes. I'll have no mistakes here, no matter what Smith
+may do at his end."
+
+Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was the other
+superintendent of the service, quartered some fifteen hundred miles away
+from Sulaco. "Don't talk to me of your Smith."
+
+Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the subject with studied
+negligence.
+
+"Smith knows no more of this continent than a baby."
+
+"Our excellent Senor Mitchell" for the business and official world of
+Sulaco; "Fussy Joe" for the commanders of the Company's ships, Captain
+Joseph Mitchell prided himself on his profound knowledge of men and
+things in the country--cosas de Costaguana. Amongst these last he
+accounted as most unfavourable to the orderly working of his Company
+the frequent changes of government brought about by revolutions of the
+military type.
+
+The political atmosphere of the Republic was generally stormy in these
+days. The fugitive patriots of the defeated party had the knack of
+turning up again on the coast with half a steamer's load of small arms
+and ammunition. Such resourcefulness Captain Mitchell considered as
+perfectly wonderful in view of their utter destitution at the time of
+flight. He had observed that "they never seemed to have enough change
+about them to pay for their passage ticket out of the country." And
+he could speak with knowledge; for on a memorable occasion he had been
+called upon to save the life of a dictator, together with the lives of a
+few Sulaco officials--the political chief, the director of the customs,
+and the head of police--belonging to an overturned government. Poor
+Senor Ribiera (such was the dictator's name) had come pelting eighty
+miles over mountain tracks after the lost battle of Socorro, in the hope
+of out-distancing the fatal news--which, of course, he could not manage
+to do on a lame mule. The animal, moreover, expired under him at the end
+of the Alameda, where the military band plays sometimes in the evenings
+between the revolutions. "Sir," Captain Mitchell would pursue with
+portentous gravity, "the ill-timed end of that mule attracted attention
+to the unfortunate rider. His features were recognized by several
+deserters from the Dictatorial army amongst the rascally mob already
+engaged in smashing the windows of the Intendencia."
+
+Early on the morning of that day the local authorities of Sulaco had
+fled for refuge to the O.S.N. Company's offices, a strong building
+near the shore end of the jetty, leaving the town to the mercies of a
+revolutionary rabble; and as the Dictator was execrated by the populace
+on account of the severe recruitment law his necessities had compelled
+him to enforce during the struggle, he stood a good chance of being
+torn to pieces. Providentially, Nostromo--invaluable fellow--with some
+Italian workmen, imported to work upon the National Central Railway,
+was at hand, and managed to snatch him away--for the time at least.
+Ultimately, Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in his
+own gig to one of the Company's steamers--it was the Minerva--just then,
+as luck would have it, entering the harbour.
+
+He had to lower these gentlemen at the end of a rope out of a hole in
+the wall at the back, while the mob which, pouring out of the town, had
+spread itself all along the shore, howled and foamed at the foot of the
+building in front. He had to hurry them then the whole length of the
+jetty; it had been a desperate dash, neck or nothing--and again it was
+Nostromo, a fellow in a thousand, who, at the head, this time, of the
+Company's body of lightermen, held the jetty against the rushes of the
+rabble, thus giving the fugitives time to reach the gig lying ready
+for them at the other end with the Company's flag at the stern. Sticks,
+stones, shots flew; knives, too, were thrown. Captain Mitchell exhibited
+willingly the long cicatrice of a cut over his left ear and temple, made
+by a razor-blade fastened to a stick--a weapon, he explained, very much
+in favour with the "worst kind of nigger out here."
+
+Captain Mitchell was a thick, elderly man, wearing high, pointed collars
+and short side-whiskers, partial to white waistcoats, and really very
+communicative under his air of pompous reserve.
+
+"These gentlemen," he would say, staring with great solemnity, "had
+to run like rabbits, sir. I ran like a rabbit myself. Certain forms of
+death are--er--distasteful to a--a--er--respectable man. They would have
+pounded me to death, too. A crazy mob, sir, does not discriminate. Under
+providence we owed our preservation to my Capataz de Cargadores, as they
+called him in the town, a man who, when I discovered his value, sir, was
+just the bos'n of an Italian ship, a big Genoese ship, one of the few
+European ships that ever came to Sulaco with a general cargo before the
+building of the National Central. He left her on account of some very
+respectable friends he made here, his own countrymen, but also, I
+suppose, to better himself. Sir, I am a pretty good judge of character.
+I engaged him to be the foreman of our lightermen, and caretaker of our
+jetty. That's all that he was. But without him Senor Ribiera would have
+been a dead man. This Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above reproach,
+became the terror of all the thieves in the town. We were infested,
+infested, overrun, sir, here at that time by ladrones and matreros,
+thieves and murderers from the whole province. On this occasion they
+had been flocking into Sulaco for a week past. They had scented the end,
+sir. Fifty per cent. of that murdering mob were professional bandits
+from the Campo, sir, but there wasn't one that hadn't heard of Nostromo.
+As to the town leperos, sir, the sight of his black whiskers and white
+teeth was enough for them. They quailed before him, sir. That's what the
+force of character will do for you."
+
+It could very well be said that it was Nostromo alone who saved the
+lives of these gentlemen. Captain Mitchell, on his part, never left them
+till he had seen them collapse, panting, terrified, and exasperated,
+but safe, on the luxuriant velvet sofas in the first-class saloon of the
+Minerva. To the very last he had been careful to address the ex-Dictator
+as "Your Excellency."
+
+"Sir, I could do no other. The man was down--ghastly, livid, one mass of
+scratches."
+
+The Minerva never let go her anchor that call. The superintendent
+ordered her out of the harbour at once. No cargo could be landed, of
+course, and the passengers for Sulaco naturally refused to go ashore.
+They could hear the firing and see plainly the fight going on at the
+edge of the water. The repulsed mob devoted its energies to an attack
+upon the Custom House, a dreary, unfinished-looking structure with many
+windows two hundred yards away from the O.S.N. Offices, and the only
+other building near the harbour. Captain Mitchell, after directing the
+commander of the Minerva to land "these gentlemen" in the first port of
+call outside Costaguana, went back in his gig to see what could be done
+for the protection of the Company's property. That and the property
+of the railway were preserved by the European residents; that is, by
+Captain Mitchell himself and the staff of engineers building the road,
+aided by the Italian and Basque workmen who rallied faithfully round
+their English chiefs. The Company's lightermen, too, natives of the
+Republic, behaved very well under their Capataz. An outcast lot of
+very mixed blood, mainly negroes, everlastingly at feud with the other
+customers of low grog shops in the town, they embraced with delight
+this opportunity to settle their personal scores under such favourable
+auspices. There was not one of them that had not, at some time or other,
+looked with terror at Nostromo's revolver poked very close at his face,
+or been otherwise daunted by Nostromo's resolution. He was "much of a
+man," their Capataz was, they said, too scornful in his temper ever to
+utter abuse, a tireless taskmaster, and the more to be feared because
+of his aloofness. And behold! there he was that day, at their head,
+condescending to make jocular remarks to this man or the other.
+
+Such leadership was inspiriting, and in truth all the harm the
+mob managed to achieve was to set fire to one--only one--stack of
+railway-sleepers, which, being creosoted, burned well. The main attack
+on the railway yards, on the O.S.N. Offices, and especially on the
+Custom House, whose strong room, it was well known, contained a large
+treasure in silver ingots, failed completely. Even the little hotel kept
+by old Giorgio, standing alone halfway between the harbour and the town,
+escaped looting and destruction, not by a miracle, but because with the
+safes in view they had neglected it at first, and afterwards found no
+leisure to stop. Nostromo, with his Cargadores, was pressing them too
+hard then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+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. It was too late then to remove his
+family, and, indeed, where could he have run to with the portly Signora
+Teresa and two little girls on that great plain? So, barricading every
+opening, the old man sat down sternly in the middle of the darkened cafe
+with an old shot-gun on his knees. His wife sat on another chair by his
+side, muttering pious invocations to all the saints of the calendar.
+
+The old republican did not believe in saints, or in prayers, or in
+what he called "priest's religion." Liberty and Garibaldi were his
+divinities; but he tolerated "superstition" in women, preserving in
+these matters a lofty and silent attitude.
+
+His two girls, the eldest fourteen, and the other two years younger,
+crouched on the sanded floor, on each side of the Signora Teresa, with
+their heads on their mother's lap, both scared, but each in her own
+way, the dark-haired Linda indignant and angry, the fair Giselle, the
+younger, bewildered and resigned. The Patrona removed her arms, which
+embraced her daughters, for a moment to cross herself and wring her
+hands hurriedly. She moaned a little louder.
+
+"Oh! Gian' Battista, why art thou not here? Oh! why art thou not here?"
+
+She was not then invoking the saint himself, but calling upon Nostromo,
+whose patron he was. And Giorgio, motionless on the chair by her side,
+would be provoked by these reproachful and distracted appeals.
+
+"Peace, woman! Where's the sense of it? There's his duty," he murmured
+in the dark; and she would retort, panting--
+
+"Eh! I have no patience. Duty! What of the woman who has been like a
+mother to him? I bent my knee to him this morning; don't you go out,
+Gian' Battista--stop in the house, Battistino--look at those two little
+innocent children!"
+
+Mrs. Viola was an Italian, too, a native of Spezzia, and though
+considerably younger than her husband, already middle-aged. She had a
+handsome face, whose complexion had turned yellow because the climate
+of Sulaco did not suit her at all. Her voice was a rich contralto. When,
+with her arms folded tight under her ample bosom, she scolded the squat,
+thick-legged China girls handling linen, plucking fowls, pounding corn
+in wooden mortars amongst the mud outbuildings at the back of the house,
+she could bring out such an impassioned, vibrating, sepulchral note that
+the chained watch-dog bolted into his kennel with a great rattle. Luis,
+a cinnamon-coloured mulatto with a sprouting moustache and thick, dark
+lips, would stop sweeping the cafe with a broom of palm-leaves to let
+a gentle shudder run down his spine. His languishing almond eyes would
+remain closed for a long time.
+
+This was the staff of the Casa Viola, but all these people had fled
+early that morning at the first sounds of the riot, preferring to hide
+on the plain rather than trust themselves in the house; a preference for
+which they were in no way to blame, since, whether true or not, it
+was generally believed in the town that the Garibaldino had some money
+buried under the clay floor of the kitchen. The dog, an irritable,
+shaggy brute, barked violently and whined plaintively in turns at the
+back, running in and out of his kennel as rage or fear prompted him.
+
+Bursts of great shouting rose and died away, like wild gusts of wind on
+the plain round the barricaded house; the fitful popping of shots
+grew louder above the yelling. Sometimes there were intervals of
+unaccountable stillness outside, and nothing could have been more gaily
+peaceful than the narrow bright lines of sunlight from the cracks in the
+shutters, ruled straight across the cafe over the disarranged chairs
+and tables to the wall opposite. Old Giorgio had chosen that bare,
+whitewashed room for a retreat. It had only one window, and its only
+door swung out upon the track of thick dust fenced by aloe hedges
+between the harbour and the town, where clumsy carts used to creak along
+behind slow yokes of oxen guided by boys on horseback.
+
+In a pause of stillness Giorgio cocked his gun. The ominous sound wrung
+a low moan from the rigid figure of the woman sitting by his side. A
+sudden outbreak of defiant yelling quite near the house sank all at once
+to a confused murmur of growls. Somebody ran along; the loud catching of
+his breath was heard for an instant passing the door; there were hoarse
+mutters and footsteps near the wall; a shoulder rubbed against the
+shutter, effacing the bright lines of sunshine pencilled across the
+whole breadth of the room. Signora Teresa's arms thrown about the
+kneeling forms of her daughters embraced them closer with a convulsive
+pressure.
+
+The mob, driven away from the Custom House, had broken up into several
+bands, retreating across the plain in the direction of the town. The
+subdued crash of irregular volleys fired in the distance was answered by
+faint yells far away. In the intervals the single shots rang feebly, and
+the low, long, white building blinded in every window seemed to be
+the centre of a turmoil widening in a great circle about its closed-up
+silence. But the cautious movements and whispers of a routed party
+seeking a momentary shelter behind the wall made the darkness of the
+room, striped by threads of quiet sunlight, alight with evil, stealthy
+sounds. The Violas had them in their ears as though invisible ghosts
+hovering about their chairs had consulted in mutters as to the
+advisability of setting fire to this foreigner's casa.
+
+It was trying to the nerves. Old Viola had risen slowly, gun in hand,
+irresolute, for he did not see how he could prevent them. Already voices
+could be heard talking at the back. Signora Teresa was beside herself
+with terror.
+
+"Ah! the traitor! the traitor!" she mumbled, almost inaudibly. "Now we
+are going to be burnt; and I bent my knee to him. No! he must run at the
+heels of his English."
+
+She seemed to think that Nostromo's mere presence in the house would
+have made it perfectly safe. So far, she, too, was under the spell of
+that reputation the Capataz de Cargadores had made for himself by
+the waterside, along the railway line, with the English and with the
+populace of Sulaco. To his face, and even against her husband, she
+invariably affected to laugh it to scorn, sometimes good-naturedly,
+more often with a curious bitterness. But then women are unreasonable in
+their opinions, as Giorgio used to remark calmly on fitting occasions.
+On this occasion, with his gun held at ready before him, he stooped down
+to his wife's head, and, keeping his eyes steadfastly on the barricaded
+door, he breathed out into her ear that Nostromo would have been
+powerless to help. What could two men shut up in a house do against
+twenty or more bent upon setting fire to the roof? Gian' Battista was
+thinking of the casa all the time, he was sure.
+
+"He think of the casa! He!" gasped Signora Viola, crazily. She struck
+her breast with her open hands. "I know him. He thinks of nobody but
+himself."
+
+A discharge of firearms near by made her throw her head back and close
+her eyes. Old Giorgio set his teeth hard under his white moustache, and
+his eyes began to roll fiercely. Several bullets struck the end of the
+wall together; pieces of plaster could be heard falling outside; a voice
+screamed "Here they come!" and after a moment of uneasy silence there
+was a rush of running feet along the front.
+
+Then the tension of old Giorgio's attitude relaxed, and a smile of
+contemptuous relief came upon his lips of an old fighter with a leonine
+face. These were not a people striving for justice, but thieves. Even to
+defend his life against them was a sort of degradation for a man who had
+been one of Garibaldi's immortal thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He
+had an immense scorn for this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, who
+did not know the meaning of the word "liberty."
+
+He grounded his old gun, and, turning his head, glanced at the coloured
+lithograph of Garibaldi in a black frame on the white wall; a thread
+of strong sunshine cut it perpendicularly. His eyes, accustomed to the
+luminous twilight, made out the high colouring of the face, the red of
+the shirt, the outlines of the square shoulders, the black patch of the
+Bersagliere hat with cock's feathers curling over the crown. An immortal
+hero! This was your liberty; it gave you not only life, but immortality
+as well!
+
+For that one man his fanaticism had suffered no diminution. In the
+moment of relief from the apprehension of the greatest danger, perhaps,
+his family had been exposed to in all their wanderings, he had turned to
+the picture of his old chief, first and only, then laid his hand on his
+wife's shoulder.
+
+The children kneeling on the floor had not moved. Signora Teresa opened
+her eyes a little, as though he had awakened her from a very deep and
+dreamless slumber. Before he had time in his deliberate way to say a
+reassuring word she jumped up, with the children clinging to her, one on
+each side, gasped for breath, and let out a hoarse shriek.
+
+It was simultaneous with the bang of a violent blow struck on the
+outside of the shutter. They could hear suddenly the snorting of a
+horse, the restive tramping of hoofs on the narrow, hard path in front
+of the house; the toe of a boot struck at the shutter again; a spur
+jingled at every blow, and an excited voice shouted, "Hola! hola, in
+there!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+All the morning Nostromo had kept his eye from afar on the Casa Viola,
+even in the thick of the hottest scrimmage near the Custom House. "If
+I see smoke rising over there," he thought to himself, "they are lost."
+Directly the mob had broken he pressed with a small band of Italian
+workmen in that direction, which, indeed, was the shortest line towards
+the town. That part of the rabble he was pursuing seemed to think of
+making a stand under the house; a volley fired by his followers from
+behind an aloe hedge made the rascals fly. In a gap chopped out for
+the rails of the harbour branch line Nostromo appeared, mounted on
+his silver-grey mare. He shouted, sent after them one shot from his
+revolver, and galloped up to the cafe window. He had an idea that old
+Giorgio would choose that part of the house for a refuge.
+
+His voice had penetrated to them, sounding breathlessly hurried: "Hola!
+Vecchio! O, Vecchio! Is it all well with you in there?"
+
+"You see--" murmured old Viola to his wife. Signora Teresa was silent
+now. Outside Nostromo laughed.
+
+"I can hear the padrona is not dead."
+
+"You have done your best to kill me with fear," cried Signora Teresa.
+She wanted to say something more, but her voice failed her.
+
+Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but old Giorgio shouted
+apologetically--
+
+"She is a little upset."
+
+Outside Nostromo shouted back with another laugh--
+
+"She cannot upset me."
+
+Signora Teresa found her voice.
+
+"It is what I say. You have no heart--and you have no conscience, Gian'
+Battista--"
+
+They heard him wheel his horse away from the shutters. The party he led
+were babbling excitedly in Italian and Spanish, inciting each other to
+the pursuit. He put himself at their head, crying, "Avanti!"
+
+"He has not stopped very long with us. There is no praise from strangers
+to be got here," Signora Teresa said tragically. "Avanti! Yes! That is
+all he cares for. To be first somewhere--somehow--to be first with these
+English. They will be showing him to everybody. 'This is our Nostromo!'"
+She laughed ominously. "What a name! What is that? Nostromo? He would
+take a name that is properly no word from them."
+
+Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had been unfastening the
+door; the flood of light fell on Signora Teresa, with her two girls
+gathered to her side, a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal
+exaltation. Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white, and the crude
+colours of the Garibaldi lithograph paled in the sunshine.
+
+Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if referring all his
+quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture of his old chief on the wall.
+Even when he was cooking for the "Signori Inglesi"--the engineers (he
+was a famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark place)--he was, as
+it were, under the eye of the great man who had led him in a glorious
+struggle where, under the walls of Gaeta, tyranny would have expired
+for ever had it not been for that accursed Piedmontese race of kings
+and ministers. When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate
+operation with some shredded onions, and the old man was seen backing
+out of the doorway, swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud
+of smoke, the name of Cavour--the arch intriguer sold to kings and
+tyrants--could be heard involved in imprecations against the China
+girls, cooking in general, and the brute of a country where he was
+reduced to live for the love of liberty that traitor had strangled.
+
+Then Signora Teresa, all in black, issuing from another door, advanced,
+portly and anxious, inclining her fine, black-browed head, opening her
+arms, and crying in a profound tone--
+
+"Giorgio! thou passionate man! Misericordia Divina! In the sun like
+this! He will make himself ill."
+
+At her feet the hens made off in all directions, with immense strides;
+if there were any engineers from up the line staying in Sulaco, a young
+English face or two would appear at the billiard-room occupying one end
+of the house; but at the other end, in the cafe, Luis, the mulatto, took
+good care not to show himself. The Indian girls, with hair like flowing
+black manes, and dressed only in a shift and short petticoat, stared
+dully from under the square-cut fringes on their foreheads; the noisy
+frizzling of fat had stopped, the fumes floated upwards in sunshine,
+a strong smell of burnt onions hung in the drowsy heat, enveloping the
+house; and the eye lost itself in a vast flat expanse of grass to the
+west, as if the plain between the Sierra overtopping Sulaco and the
+coast range away there towards Esmeralda had been as big as half the
+world.
+
+Signora Teresa, after an impressive pause, remonstrated--
+
+"Eh, Giorgio! Leave Cavour alone and take care of yourself now we are
+lost in this country all alone with the two children, because you cannot
+live under a king."
+
+And while she looked at him she would sometimes put her hand hastily
+to her side with a short twitch of her fine lips and a knitting of
+her black, straight eyebrows like a flicker of angry pain or an angry
+thought on her handsome, regular features.
+
+It was pain; she suppressed the twinge. It had come to her first a few
+years after they had left Italy to emigrate to America and settle at
+last in Sulaco after wandering from town to town, trying shopkeeping
+in a small way here and there; and once an organized enterprise of
+fishing--in Maldonado--for Giorgio, like the great Garibaldi, had been a
+sailor in his time.
+
+Sometimes she had no patience with pain. For years its gnawing had been
+part of the landscape embracing the glitter of the harbour under
+the wooded spurs of the range; and the sunshine itself was heavy and
+dull--heavy with pain--not like the sunshine of her girlhood, in which
+middle-aged Giorgio had wooed her gravely and passionately on the shores
+of the gulf of Spezzia.
+
+"You go in at once, Giorgio," she directed. "One would think you do not
+wish to have any pity on me--with four Signori Inglesi staying in the
+house." "_Va bene, va bene_," Giorgio would mutter. He obeyed. The Signori
+Inglesi would require their midday meal presently. He had been one
+of the immortal and invincible band of liberators who had made the
+mercenaries of tyranny fly like chaff before a hurricane, "_un uragano
+terribile_." But that was before he was married and had children; and
+before tyranny had reared its head again amongst the traitors who had
+imprisoned Garibaldi, his hero.
+
+There were three doors in the front of the house, and each afternoon the
+Garibaldino could be seen at one or another of them with his big bush of
+white hair, his arms folded, his legs crossed, leaning back his leonine
+head against the side, and looking up the wooded slopes of the foothills
+at the snowy dome of Higuerota. The front of his house threw off a black
+long rectangle of shade, broadening slowly over the soft ox-cart track.
+Through the gaps, chopped out in the oleander hedges, the harbour branch
+railway, laid out temporarily on the level of the plain, curved away its
+shining parallel ribbons on a belt of scorched and withered grass within
+sixty yards of the end of the house. In the evening the empty material
+trains of flat cars circled round the dark green grove of Sulaco,
+and ran, undulating slightly with white jets of steam, over the plain
+towards the Casa Viola, on their way to the railway yards by the
+harbour. The Italian drivers saluted him from the foot-plate with raised
+hand, while the negro brakesmen sat carelessly on the brakes, looking
+straight forward, with the rims of their big hats flapping in the wind.
+In return Giorgio would give a slight sideways jerk of the head, without
+unfolding his arms.
+
+On this memorable day of the riot his arms were not folded on his chest.
+His hand grasped the barrel of the gun grounded on the threshold; he
+did not look up once at the white dome of Higuerota, whose cool purity
+seemed to hold itself aloof from a hot earth. His eyes examined the
+plain curiously. Tall trails of dust subsided here and there. In
+a speckless sky the sun hung clear and blinding. Knots of men ran
+headlong; others made a stand; and the irregular rattle of firearms came
+rippling to his ears in the fiery, still air. Single figures on foot
+raced desperately. Horsemen galloped towards each other, wheeled round
+together, separated at speed. Giorgio saw one fall, rider and horse
+disappearing as if they had galloped into a chasm, and the movements of
+the animated scene were like the passages of a violent game played upon
+the plain by dwarfs mounted and on foot, yelling with tiny throats,
+under the mountain that seemed a colossal embodiment of silence. Never
+before had Giorgio seen this bit of plain so full of active life; his
+gaze could not take in all its details at once; he shaded his eyes with
+his hand, till suddenly the thundering of many hoofs near by startled
+him.
+
+A troop of horses had broken out of the fenced paddock of the Railway
+Company. They came on like a whirlwind, and dashed over the line
+snorting, kicking, squealing in a compact, piebald, tossing mob of bay,
+brown, grey backs, eyes staring, necks extended, nostrils red, long
+tails streaming. As soon as they had leaped upon the road the thick dust
+flew upwards from under their hoofs, and within six yards of Giorgio
+only a brown cloud with vague forms of necks and cruppers rolled by,
+making the soil tremble on its passage.
+
+Viola coughed, turning his face away from the dust, and shaking his head
+slightly.
+
+"There will be some horse-catching to be done before to-night," he
+muttered.
+
+In the square of sunlight falling through the door Signora Teresa,
+kneeling before the chair, had bowed her head, heavy with a twisted
+mass of ebony hair streaked with silver, into the palm of her hands.
+The black lace shawl she used to drape about her face had dropped to
+the ground by her side. The two girls had got up, hand-in-hand, in short
+skirts, their loose hair falling in disorder. The younger had thrown
+her arm across her eyes, as if afraid to face the light. Linda, with
+her hand on the other's shoulder, stared fearlessly. Viola looked at his
+children. The sun brought out the deep lines on his face, and, energetic
+in expression, it had the immobility of a carving. It was impossible to
+discover what he thought. Bushy grey eyebrows shaded his dark glance.
+
+"Well! And do you not pray like your mother?"
+
+Linda pouted, advancing her red lips, which were almost too red; but she
+had admirable eyes, brown, with a sparkle of gold in the irises, full of
+intelligence and meaning, and so clear that they seemed to throw a glow
+upon her thin, colourless face. There were bronze glints in the sombre
+clusters of her hair, and the eyelashes, long and coal black, made her
+complexion appear still more pale.
+
+"Mother is going to offer up a lot of candles in the church. She always
+does when Nostromo has been away fighting. I shall have some to carry up
+to the Chapel of the Madonna in the Cathedral."
+
+She said all this quickly, with great assurance, in an animated,
+penetrating voice. Then, giving her sister's shoulder a slight shake,
+she added--
+
+"And she will be made to carry one, too!"
+
+"Why made?" inquired Giorgio, gravely. "Does she not want to?"
+
+"She is timid," said Linda, with a little burst of laughter. "People
+notice her fair hair as she goes along with us. They call out after
+her, 'Look at the Rubia! Look at the Rubiacita!' They call out in the
+streets. She is timid."
+
+"And you? You are not timid--eh?" the father pronounced, slowly.
+
+She tossed back all her dark hair.
+
+"Nobody calls out after me."
+
+Old Giorgio contemplated his children thoughtfully. There was two years
+difference between them. They had been born to him late, years after
+the boy had died. Had he lived he would have been nearly as old as Gian'
+Battista--he whom the English called Nostromo; but as to his daughters,
+the severity of his temper, his advancing age, his absorption in his
+memories, had prevented his taking much notice of them. He loved his
+children, but girls belong more to the mother, and much of his affection
+had been expended in the worship and service of liberty.
+
+When quite a youth he had deserted from a ship trading to La Plata, to
+enlist in the navy of Montevideo, then under the command of Garibaldi.
+Afterwards, in the Italian legion of the Republic struggling against the
+encroaching tyranny of Rosas, he had taken part, on great plains, on the
+banks of immense rivers, in the fiercest fighting perhaps the world had
+ever known. He had lived amongst men who had declaimed about liberty,
+suffered for liberty, died for liberty, with a desperate exaltation, and
+with their eyes turned towards an oppressed Italy. His own enthusiasm
+had been fed on scenes of carnage, on the examples of lofty devotion, on
+the din of armed struggle, on the inflamed language of proclamations.
+He had never parted from the chief of his choice--the fiery apostle of
+independence--keeping by his side in America and in Italy till after
+the fatal day of Aspromonte, when the treachery of kings, emperors,
+and ministers had been revealed to the world in the wounding and
+imprisonment of his hero--a catastrophe that had instilled into him
+a gloomy doubt of ever being able to understand the ways of Divine
+justice.
+
+He did not deny it, however. It required patience, he would say. Though
+he disliked priests, and would not put his foot inside a church for
+anything, he believed in God. Were not the proclamations against tyrants
+addressed to the peoples in the name of God and liberty? "God for
+men--religions for women," he muttered sometimes. In Sicily, an
+Englishman who had turned up in Palermo after its evacuation by the army
+of the king, had given him a Bible in Italian--the publication of the
+British and Foreign Bible Society, bound in a dark leather cover.
+In periods of political adversity, in the pauses of silence when the
+revolutionists issued no proclamations, Giorgio earned his living with
+the first work that came to hand--as sailor, as dock labourer on the
+quays of Genoa, once as a hand on a farm in the hills above Spezzia--and
+in his spare time he studied the thick volume. He carried it with
+him into battles. Now it was his only reading, and in order not to be
+deprived of it (the print was small) he had consented to accept the
+present of a pair of silver-mounted spectacles from Senora Emilia Gould,
+the wife of the Englishman who managed the silver mine in the mountains
+three leagues from the town. She was the only Englishwoman in Sulaco.
+
+Giorgio Viola had a great consideration for the English. This feeling,
+born on the battlefields of Uruguay, was forty years old at the very
+least. Several of them had poured their blood for the cause of freedom
+in America, and the first he had ever known he remembered by the name of
+Samuel; he commanded a negro company under Garibaldi, during the famous
+siege of Montevideo, and died heroically with his negroes at the fording
+of the Boyana. He, Giorgio, had reached the rank of ensign-alferez-and
+cooked for the general. Later, in Italy, he, with the rank of
+lieutenant, rode with the staff and still cooked for the general. He had
+cooked for him in Lombardy through the whole campaign; on the march to
+Rome he had lassoed his beef in the Campagna after the American manner;
+he had been wounded in the defence of the Roman Republic; he was one of
+the four fugitives who, with the general, carried out of the woods the
+inanimate body of the general's wife into the farmhouse where she died,
+exhausted by the hardships of that terrible retreat. He had survived
+that disastrous time to attend his general in Palermo when the
+Neapolitan shells from the castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked
+for him on the field of Volturno after fighting all day. And everywhere
+he had seen Englishmen in the front rank of the army of freedom.
+He respected their nation because they loved Garibaldi. Their very
+countesses and princesses had kissed the general's hands in London, it
+was said. He could well believe it; for the nation was noble, and the
+man was a saint. It was enough to look once at his face to see the
+divine force of faith in him and his great pity for all that was poor,
+suffering, and oppressed in this world.
+
+The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to a vast
+humanitarian idea which inspired the thought and stress of that
+revolutionary time, had left its mark upon Giorgio in a sort of austere
+contempt for all personal advantage. This man, whom the lowest class in
+Sulaco suspected of having a buried hoard in his kitchen, had all his
+life despised money. The leaders of his youth had lived poor, had died
+poor. It had been a habit of his mind to disregard to-morrow. It was
+engendered partly by an existence of excitement, adventure, and wild
+warfare. But mostly it was a matter of principle. It did not resemble
+the carelessness of a condottiere, it was a puritanism of conduct, born
+of stern enthusiasm like the puritanism of religion.
+
+This stern devotion to a cause had cast a gloom upon Giorgio's old
+age. It cast a gloom because the cause seemed lost. Too many kings and
+emperors flourished yet in the world which God had meant for the people.
+He was sad because of his simplicity. Though always ready to help his
+countrymen, and greatly respected by the Italian emigrants wherever he
+lived (in his exile he called it), he could not conceal from himself
+that they cared nothing for the wrongs of down-trodden nations. They
+listened to his tales of war readily, but seemed to ask themselves what
+he had got out of it after all. There was nothing that they could see.
+"We wanted nothing, we suffered for the love of all humanity!" he cried
+out furiously sometimes, and the powerful voice, the blazing eyes, the
+shaking of the white mane, the brown, sinewy hand pointing upwards as
+if to call heaven to witness, impressed his hearers. After the old man
+had broken off abruptly with a jerk of the head and a movement of the
+arm, meaning clearly, "But what's the good of talking to you?" they
+nudged each other. There was in old Giorgio an energy of feeling, a
+personal quality of conviction, something they called "terribilita"--"an
+old lion," they used to say of him. Some slight incident, a chance
+word would set him off talking on the beach to the Italian fishermen of
+Maldonado, in the little shop he kept afterwards (in Valparaiso) to his
+countrymen customers; of an evening, suddenly, in the cafe at one end of
+the Casa Viola (the other was reserved for the English engineers) to the
+select clientele of engine-drivers and foremen of the railway shops.
+
+With their handsome, bronzed, lean faces, shiny black ringlets,
+glistening eyes, broad-chested, bearded, sometimes a tiny gold ring in
+the lobe of the ear, the aristocracy of the railway works listened
+to him, turning away from their cards or dominoes. Here and there a
+fair-haired Basque studied his hand meantime, waiting without protest.
+No native of Costaguana intruded there. This was the Italian stronghold.
+Even the Sulaco policemen on a night patrol let their horses pace softly
+by, bending low in the saddle to glance through the window at the heads
+in a fog of smoke; and the drone of old Giorgio's declamatory narrative
+seemed to sink behind them into the plain. Only now and then the
+assistant of the chief of police, some broad-faced, brown little
+gentleman, with a great deal of Indian in him, would put in an
+appearance. Leaving his man outside with the horses he advanced with a
+confident, sly smile, and without a word up to the long trestle table.
+He pointed to one of the bottles on the shelf; Giorgio, thrusting his
+pipe into his mouth abruptly, served him in person. Nothing would be
+heard but the slight jingle of the spurs. His glass emptied, he would
+take a leisurely, scrutinizing look all round the room, go out, and ride
+away slowly, circling towards the town.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+In this way only was the power of the local authorities vindicated
+amongst the great body of strong-limbed foreigners who dug the earth,
+blasted the rocks, drove the engines for the "progressive and
+patriotic undertaking." In these very words eighteen months before the
+Excellentissimo Senor don Vincente Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana,
+had described the National Central Railway in his great speech at the
+turning of the first sod.
+
+He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a one-o'clock
+dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N. Company on board the Juno
+after the function on shore. Captain Mitchell had himself steered the
+cargo lighter, all draped with flags, which, in tow of the Juno's steam
+launch, took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the ship. Everybody
+of note in Sulaco had been invited--the one or two foreign merchants,
+all the representatives of the old Spanish families then in town, the
+great owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple men,
+caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and feet, conservative,
+hospitable, and kind. The Occidental Province was their stronghold;
+their Blanco party had triumphed now; it was their President-Dictator,
+a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat smiling urbanely between the
+representatives of two friendly foreign powers. They had come with him
+from Sta. Marta to countenance by their presence the enterprise in
+which the capital of their countries was engaged. The only lady of that
+company was Mrs. Gould, the wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the
+San Tome silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced enough to
+take part in the public life to that extent. They had come out strongly
+at the great ball at the Intendencia the evening before, but Mrs. Gould
+alone had appeared, a bright spot in the group of black coats behind the
+President-Dictator, on the crimson cloth-covered stage erected under a
+shady tree on the shore of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning
+the first sod had taken place. She had come off in the cargo lighter,
+full of notabilities, sitting under the flutter of gay flags, in the
+place of honour by the side of Captain Mitchell, who steered, and her
+clear dress gave the only truly festive note to the sombre gathering in
+the long, gorgeous saloon of the Juno.
+
+The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London), handsome
+and pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped beard, hovered near
+her shoulder attentive, smiling, and fatigued. The journey from London
+to Sta. Marta in mail boats and the special carriages of the Sta.
+Marta coast-line (the only railway so far) had been tolerable--even
+pleasant--quite tolerable. But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was
+another sort of experience, in an old diligencia over impassable roads
+skirting awful precipices.
+
+"We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of very deep ravines,"
+he was telling Mrs. Gould in an undertone. "And when we arrived here
+at last I don't know what we should have done without your hospitality.
+What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco is!--and for a harbour, too!
+Astonishing!"
+
+"Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be historically important.
+The highest ecclesiastical court for two viceroyalties, sat here in the
+olden time," she instructed him with animation.
+
+"I am impressed. I didn't mean to be disparaging. You seem very
+patriotic."
+
+"The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you don't know
+what an old resident I am."
+
+"How old, I wonder," he murmured, looking at her with a slight smile.
+Mrs. Gould's appearance was made youthful by the mobile intelligence of
+her face. "We can't give you your ecclesiastical court back again; but
+you shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable--a future
+in the great world which is worth infinitely more than any amount
+of ecclesiastical past. You shall be brought in touch with something
+greater than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on
+a sea-coast could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a
+thousand miles inland now--most remarkable! Has anything ever happened
+here for a hundred years before to-day?"
+
+While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept her little smile.
+Agreeing ironically, she assured him that certainly not--nothing ever
+happened in Sulaco. Even the revolutions, of which there had been two in
+her time, had respected the repose of the place. Their course ran in the
+more populous southern parts of the Republic, and the great valley of
+Sta. Marta, which was like one great battlefield of the parties, with
+the possession of the capital for a prize and an outlet to another
+ocean. They were more advanced over there. Here in Sulaco they heard
+only the echoes of these great questions, and, of course, their official
+world changed each time, coming to them over their rampart of mountains
+which he himself had traversed in an old diligencia, with such a risk to
+life and limb.
+
+The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitality for
+several days, and he was really grateful for it. It was only since he
+had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly lost touch with the feeling
+of European life on the background of his exotic surroundings. In the
+capital he had been the guest of the Legation, and had been kept busy
+negotiating with the members of Don Vincente's Government--cultured men,
+men to whom the conditions of civilized business were not unknown.
+
+What concerned him most at the time was the acquisition of land for the
+railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where there was already one line in
+existence, the people were tractable, and it was only a matter of price.
+A commission had been nominated to fix the values, and the difficulty
+resolved itself into the judicious influencing of the Commissioners.
+But in Sulaco--the Occidental Province for whose very development the
+railway was intended--there had been trouble. It had been lying for ages
+ensconced behind its natural barriers, repelling modern enterprise by
+the precipices of its mountain range, by its shallow harbour opening
+into the everlasting calms of a gulf full of clouds, by the benighted
+state of mind of the owners of its fertile territory--all these
+aristocratic old Spanish families, all those Don Ambrosios this and Don
+Fernandos that, who seemed actually to dislike and distrust the coming
+of the railway over their lands. It had happened that some of the
+surveying parties scattered all over the province had been warned off
+with threats of violence. In other cases outrageous pretensions as to
+price had been raised. But the man of railways prided himself on being
+equal to every emergency. Since he was met by the inimical sentiment of
+blind conservatism in Sulaco he would meet it by sentiment, too, before
+taking his stand on his right alone. The Government was bound to carry
+out its part of the contract with the board of the new railway company,
+even if it had to use force for the purpose. But he desired nothing less
+than an armed disturbance in the smooth working of his plans. They
+were much too vast and far-reaching, and too promising to leave a stone
+unturned; and so he imagined to get the President-Dictator over there
+on a tour of ceremonies and speeches, culminating in a great function
+at the turning of the first sod by the harbour shore. After all he was
+their own creature--that Don Vincente. He was the embodied triumph of
+the best elements in the State. These were facts, and, unless facts
+meant nothing, Sir John argued to himself, such a man's influence must
+be real, and his personal action would produce the conciliatory effect
+he required. He had succeeded in arranging the trip with the help of a
+very clever advocate, who was known in Sta. Marta as the agent of the
+Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in Sulaco, and even in the whole
+Republic. It was indeed a fabulously rich mine. Its so-called agent,
+evidently a man of culture and ability, seemed, without official
+position, to possess an extraordinary influence in the highest
+Government spheres. He was able to assure Sir John that the
+President-Dictator would make the journey. He regretted, however, in
+the course of the same conversation, that General Montero insisted upon
+going, too.
+
+General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle had found an obscure
+army captain employed on the wild eastern frontier of the State, had
+thrown in his lot with the Ribiera party at a moment when special
+circumstances had given that small adhesion a fortuitous importance.
+The fortunes of war served him marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco
+(after a day of desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the
+end he emerged General, Minister of War, and the military head of the
+Blanco party, although there was nothing aristocratic in his descent.
+Indeed, it was said that he and his brother, orphans, had been brought
+up by the munificence of a famous European traveller, in whose service
+their father had lost his life. Another story was that their father
+had been nothing but a charcoal burner in the woods, and their mother a
+baptised Indian woman from the far interior.
+
+However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in the habit of styling
+Montero's forest march from his commandancia to join the Blanco forces
+at the beginning of the troubles, the "most heroic military exploit of
+modern times." About the same time, too, his brother had turned up from
+Europe, where he had gone apparently as secretary to a consul. Having,
+however, collected a small band of outlaws, he showed some talent as
+guerilla chief and had been rewarded at the pacification by the post of
+Military Commandant of the capital.
+
+The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator. The board of the
+O.S.N. Company, working hand-in-hand with the railway people for the
+good of the Republic, had on this important occasion instructed Captain
+Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at the disposal of the distinguished
+party. Don Vincente, journeying south from Sta. Marta, had embarked at
+Cayta, the principal port of Costaguana, and came to Sulaco by sea.
+But the chairman of the railway company had courageously crossed the
+mountains in a ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting
+his engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the road.
+
+For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature, whose hostility
+can always be overcome by the resources of finance, he could not help
+being impressed by his surroundings during his halt at the surveying
+camp established at the highest point his railway was to reach. He spent
+the night there, arriving just too late to see the last dying glow of
+sunlight upon the snowy flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black
+basalt framed like an open portal a portion of the white field lying
+aslant against the west. In the transparent air of the high altitudes
+everything seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an
+imponderable liquid; and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of
+the expected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the door of a hut of
+rough stones, had contemplated the changing hues on the enormous side
+of the mountain, thinking that in this sight, as in a piece of inspired
+music, there could be found together the utmost delicacy of shaded
+expression and a stupendous magnificence of effect.
+
+Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and inaudible strain
+sung by the sunset amongst the high peaks of the Sierra. It had sung
+itself out into the breathless pause of deep dusk before, climbing down
+the fore wheel of the diligencia with stiff limbs, he shook hands with
+the engineer.
+
+They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical boulder, with no
+door or windows in its two openings; a bright fire of sticks (brought
+on muleback from the first valley below) burning outside, sent in a
+wavering glare; and two candles in tin candlesticks--lighted, it was
+explained to him, in his honour--stood on a sort of rough camp table, at
+which he sat on the right hand of the chief. He knew how to be amiable;
+and the young men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of
+the railway track had the glamour of the first steps on the path of
+life, sat there, too, listening modestly, with their smooth faces tanned
+by the weather, and very pleased to witness so much affability in so
+great a man.
+
+Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside, he had a long talk
+with his chief engineer. He knew him well of old. This was not the first
+undertaking in which their gifts, as elementally different as fire
+and water, had worked in conjunction. From the contact of these two
+personalities, who had not the same vision of the world, there was
+generated a power for the world's service--a subtle force that could
+set in motion mighty machines, men's muscles, and awaken also in human
+breasts an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the young fellows at the
+table, to whom the survey of the track was like the tracing of the path
+of life, more than one would be called to meet death before the work was
+done. But the work would be done: the force would be almost as strong
+as a faith. Not quite, however. In the silence of the sleeping camp upon
+the moonlit plateau forming the top of the pass like the floor of a
+vast arena surrounded by the basalt walls of precipices, two strolling
+figures in thick ulsters stood still, and the voice of the engineer
+pronounced distinctly the words--
+
+"We can't move mountains!"
+
+Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing gesture, felt the full
+force of the words. The white Higuerota soared out of the shadows of
+rock and earth like a frozen bubble under the moon. All was still, till
+near by, behind the wall of a corral for the camp animals, built
+roughly of loose stones in the form of a circle, a pack mule stamped his
+forefoot and blew heavily twice.
+
+The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer to the chairman's
+tentative suggestion that the tracing of the line could, perhaps, be
+altered in deference to the prejudices of the Sulaco landowners.
+The chief engineer believed that the obstinacy of men was the lesser
+obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had the great influence of
+Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under Higuerota would have been a
+colossal undertaking.
+
+"Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?"
+
+Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta. Marta, and wanted to
+know more. The engineer-in-chief assured him that the administrator of
+the San Tome silver mine had an immense influence over all these Spanish
+Dons. He had also one of the best houses in Sulaco, and the Gould
+hospitality was beyond all praise.
+
+"They received me as if they had known me for years," he said. "The
+little lady is kindness personified. I stayed with them for a month. He
+helped me to organize the surveying parties. His practical ownership of
+the San Tome silver mine gives him a special position. He seems to have
+the ear of every provincial authority apparently, and, as I said, he can
+wind all the hidalgos of the province round his little finger. If you
+follow his advice the difficulties will fall away, because he wants the
+railway. Of course, you must be careful in what you say. He's English,
+and besides he must be immensely wealthy. The Holroyd house is in with
+him in that mine, so you may imagine--"
+
+He interrupted himself as, from before one of the little fires burning
+outside the low wall of the corral, arose the figure of a man wrapped in
+a poncho up to the neck. The saddle which he had been using for a pillow
+made a dark patch on the ground against the red glow of embers.
+
+"I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through the States," said
+Sir John. "I've ascertained that he, too, wants the railway."
+
+The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity of the voices, had
+arisen from the ground, struck a match to light a cigarette. The flame
+showed a bronzed, black-whiskered face, a pair of eyes gazing straight;
+then, rearranging his wrappings, he sank full length and laid his head
+again on the saddle.
+
+"That's our camp-master, whom I must send back to Sulaco now we
+are going to carry our survey into the Sta. Marta Valley," said the
+engineer. "A most useful fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell of the
+O.S.N. Company. It was very good of Mitchell. Charles Gould told me I
+couldn't do better than take advantage of the offer. He seems to know
+how to rule all these muleteers and peons. We had not the slightest
+trouble with our people. He shall escort your diligencia right into
+Sulaco with some of our railway peons. The road is bad. To have him at
+hand may save you an upset or two. He promised me to take care of your
+person all the way down as if you were his father."
+
+This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in
+Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell's mispronunciation, were in the
+habit of calling Nostromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take
+excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the road, as Sir John
+himself acknowledged to Mrs. Gould afterwards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+At that time Nostromo had been already long enough in the country
+to raise to the highest pitch Captain Mitchell's opinion of the
+extraordinary value of his discovery. Clearly he was one of those
+invaluable subordinates whom to possess is a legitimate cause of
+boasting. Captain Mitchell plumed himself upon his eye for men--but
+he was not selfish--and in the innocence of his pride was already
+developing that mania for "lending you my Capataz de Cargadores" which
+was to bring Nostromo into personal contact, sooner or later, with
+every European in Sulaco, as a sort of universal factotum--a prodigy of
+efficiency in his own sphere of life.
+
+"The fellow is devoted to me, body and soul!" Captain Mitchell was
+given to affirm; and though nobody, perhaps, could have explained why it
+should be so, it was impossible on a survey of their relation to throw
+doubt on that statement, unless, indeed, one were a bitter, eccentric
+character like Dr. Monygham--for instance--whose short, hopeless laugh
+expressed somehow an immense mistrust of mankind. Not that Dr. Monygham
+was a prodigal either of laughter or of words. He was bitterly taciturn
+when at his best. At his worst people feared the open scornfulness of
+his tongue. Only Mrs. Gould could keep his unbelief in men's motives
+within due bounds; but even to her (on an occasion not connected with
+Nostromo, and in a tone which for him was gentle), even to her, he had
+said once, "Really, it is most unreasonable to demand that a man
+should think of other people so much better than he is able to think of
+himself."
+
+And Mrs. Gould had hastened to drop the subject. There were strange
+rumours of the English doctor. Years ago, in the time of Guzman Bento,
+he had been mixed up, it was whispered, in a conspiracy which was
+betrayed and, as people expressed it, drowned in blood. His hair had
+turned grey, his hairless, seamed face was of a brick-dust colour; the
+large check pattern of his flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat
+were an established defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco. Had
+it not been for the immaculate cleanliness of his apparel he might have
+been taken for one of those shiftless Europeans that are a moral eyesore
+to the respectability of a foreign colony in almost every exotic part of
+the world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorning with clusters of pretty
+faces the balconies along the Street of the Constitution, when they saw
+him pass, with his limping gait and bowed head, a short linen jacket
+drawn on carelessly over the flannel check shirt, would remark to each
+other, "Here is the Senor doctor going to call on Dona Emilia. He has
+got his little coat on." The inference was true. Its deeper meaning was
+hidden from their simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no
+store of thought on the doctor. He was old, ugly, learned--and a little
+"loco"--mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected
+him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a concession
+to Mrs. Gould's humanizing influence. The doctor, with his habit of
+sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his profound
+respect for the character of the woman who was known in the country as
+the English Senora. He presented this tribute very seriously indeed;
+it was no trifle for a man of his habits. Mrs. Gould felt that, too,
+perfectly. She would never have thought of imposing upon him this marked
+show of deference.
+
+She kept her old Spanish house (one of the finest specimens in Sulaco)
+open for the dispensation of the small graces of existence. She
+dispensed them with simplicity and charm because she was guided by an
+alert perception of values. She was highly gifted in the art of human
+intercourse which consists in delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and
+in the suggestion of universal comprehension. Charles Gould (the Gould
+family, established in Costaguana for three generations, always went to
+England for their education and for their wives) imagined that he had
+fallen in love with a girl's sound common sense like any other man,
+but these were not exactly the reasons why, for instance, the whole
+surveying camp, from the youngest of the young men to their mature
+chief, should have found occasion to allude to Mrs. Gould's house
+so frequently amongst the high peaks of the Sierra. She would have
+protested that she had done nothing for them, with a low laugh and
+a surprised widening of her grey eyes, had anybody told her how
+convincingly she was remembered on the edge of the snow-line above
+Sulaco. But directly, with a little capable air of setting her wits to
+work, she would have found an explanation. "Of course, it was such a
+surprise for these boys to find any sort of welcome here. And I suppose
+they are homesick. I suppose everybody must be always just a little
+homesick."
+
+She was always sorry for homesick people.
+
+Born in the country, as his father before him, spare and tall, with
+a flaming moustache, a neat chin, clear blue eyes, auburn hair, and a
+thin, fresh, red face, Charles Gould looked like a new arrival from over
+the sea. His grandfather had fought in the cause of independence under
+Bolivar, in that famous English legion which on the battlefield of
+Carabobo had been saluted by the great Liberator as Saviours of his
+country. One of Charles Gould's uncles had been the elected President
+of that very province of Sulaco (then called a State) in the days of
+Federation, and afterwards had been put up against the wall of a church
+and shot by the order of the barbarous Unionist general, Guzman Bento.
+It was the same Guzman Bento who, becoming later Perpetual President,
+famed for his ruthless and cruel tyranny, readied his apotheosis in the
+popular legend of a sanguinary land-haunting spectre whose body had been
+carried off by the devil in person from the brick mausoleum in the nave
+of the Church of Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests
+explained its disappearance to the barefooted multitude that streamed
+in, awestruck, to gaze at the hole in the side of the ugly box of bricks
+before the great altar.
+
+Guzman Bento of cruel memory had put to death great numbers of people
+besides Charles Gould's uncle; but with a relative martyred in the cause
+of aristocracy, the Sulaco Oligarchs (this was the phraseology of Guzman
+Bento's time; now they were called Blancos, and had given up the federal
+idea), which meant the families of pure Spanish descent, considered
+Charles as one of themselves. With such a family record, no one could
+be more of a Costaguanero than Don Carlos Gould; but his aspect was
+so characteristic that in the talk of common people he was just the
+Inglez--the Englishman of Sulaco. He looked more English than a casual
+tourist, a sort of heretic pilgrim, however, quite unknown in Sulaco.
+He looked more English than the last arrived batch of young railway
+engineers, than anybody out of the hunting-field pictures in the numbers
+of Punch reaching his wife's drawing-room two months or so after date.
+It astonished you to hear him talk Spanish (Castillan, as the natives
+say) or the Indian dialect of the country-people so naturally. His
+accent had never been English; but there was something so indelible
+in all these ancestral Goulds--liberators, explorers, coffee
+planters, merchants, revolutionists--of Costaguana, that he, the only
+representative of the third generation in a continent possessing its
+own style of horsemanship, went on looking thoroughly English even
+on horseback. This is not said of him in the mocking spirit of the
+Llaneros--men of the great plains--who think that no one in the world
+knows how to sit a horse but themselves. Charles Gould, to use the
+suitably lofty phrase, rode like a centaur. Riding for him was not a
+special form of exercise; it was a natural faculty, as walking straight
+is to all men sound of mind and limb; but, all the same, when cantering
+beside the rutty ox-cart track to the mine he looked in his English
+clothes and with his imported saddlery as though he had come this moment
+to Costaguana at his easy swift pasotrote, straight out of some green
+meadow at the other side of the world.
+
+His way would lie along the old Spanish road--the Camino Real of popular
+speech--the only remaining vestige of a fact and name left by that
+royalty old Giorgio Viola hated, and whose very shadow had departed from
+the land; for the big equestrian statue of Charles IV. at the entrance
+of the Alameda, towering white against the trees, was only known to the
+folk from the country and to the beggars of the town that slept on the
+steps around the pedestal, as the Horse of Stone. The other Carlos,
+turning off to the left with a rapid clatter of hoofs on the disjointed
+pavement--Don Carlos Gould, in his English clothes, looked as
+incongruous, but much more at home than the kingly cavalier reining in
+his steed on the pedestal above the sleeping leperos, with his marble
+arm raised towards the marble rim of a plumed hat.
+
+The weather-stained effigy of the mounted king, with its vague
+suggestion of a saluting gesture, seemed to present an inscrutable
+breast to the political changes which had robbed it of its very name;
+but neither did the other horseman, well known to the people, keen and
+alive on his well-shaped, slate-coloured beast with a white eye, wear
+his heart on the sleeve of his English coat. His mind preserved its
+steady poise as if sheltered in the passionless stability of private
+and public decencies at home in Europe. He accepted with a like calm the
+shocking manner in which the Sulaco ladies smothered their faces with
+pearl powder till they looked like white plaster casts with beautiful
+living eyes, the peculiar gossip of the town, and the continuous
+political changes, the constant "saving of the country," which to his
+wife seemed a puerile and bloodthirsty game of murder and rapine played
+with terrible earnestness by depraved children. In the early days of
+her Costaguana life, the little lady used to clench her hands with
+exasperation at not being able to take the public affairs of the country
+as seriously as the incidental atrocity of methods deserved. She saw in
+them a comedy of naive pretences, but hardly anything genuine except
+her own appalled indignation. Charles, very quiet and twisting his long
+moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all. Once, however, he
+observed to her gently--
+
+"My dear, you seem to forget that I was born here." These few words made
+her pause as if they had been a sudden revelation. Perhaps the mere
+fact of being born in the country did make a difference. She had a great
+confidence in her husband; it had always been very great. He had struck
+her imagination from the first by his unsentimentalism, by that very
+quietude of mind which she had erected in her thought for a sign of
+perfect competency in the business of living. Don Jose Avellanos, their
+neighbour across the street, a statesman, a poet, a man of culture, who
+had represented his country at several European Courts (and had suffered
+untold indignities as a state prisoner in the time of the tyrant Guzman
+Bento), used to declare in Dona Emilia's drawing-room that Carlos had
+all the English qualities of character with a truly patriotic heart.
+
+Mrs. Gould, raising her eyes to her husband's thin, red and tan face,
+could not detect the slightest quiver of a feature at what he must have
+heard said of his patriotism. Perhaps he had just dismounted on his
+return from the mine; he was English enough to disregard the hottest
+hours of the day. Basilio, in a livery of white linen and a red sash,
+had squatted for a moment behind his heels to unstrap the heavy, blunt
+spurs in the patio; and then the Senor Administrator would go up the
+staircase into the gallery. Rows of plants in pots, ranged on the
+balustrade between the pilasters of the arches, screened the corredor
+with their leaves and flowers from the quadrangle below, whose paved
+space is the true hearthstone of a South American house, where the quiet
+hours of domestic life are marked by the shifting of light and shadow on
+the flagstones.
+
+Senor Avellanos was in the habit of crossing the patio at five o'clock
+almost every day. Don Jose chose to come over at tea-time because the
+English rite at Dona Emilia's house reminded him of the time he lived in
+London as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He did
+not like tea; and, usually, rocking his American chair, his neat little
+shiny boots crossed on the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a
+sort of complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he
+held the cup in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was
+perfectly white; his eyes coalblack.
+
+On seeing Charles Gould step into the sala he would nod provisionally
+and go on to the end of the oratorial period. Only then he would say--
+
+"Carlos, my friend, you have ridden from San Tome in the heat of the
+day. Always the true English activity. No? What?"
+
+He drank up all the tea at once in one draught. This performance
+was invariably followed by a slight shudder and a low, involuntary
+"br-r-r-r," which was not covered by the hasty exclamation, "Excellent!"
+
+Then giving up the empty cup into his young friend's hand, extended with
+a smile, he continued to expatiate upon the patriotic nature of the San
+Tome mine for the simple pleasure of talking fluently, it seemed, while
+his reclining body jerked backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair of
+the sort exported from the United States. The ceiling of the largest
+drawing-room of the Casa Gould extended its white level far above
+his head. The loftiness dwarfed the mixture of heavy, straight-backed
+Spanish chairs of brown wood with leathern seats, and European
+furniture, low, and cushioned all over, like squat little monsters
+gorged to bursting with steel springs and horsehair. There were
+knick-knacks on little tables, mirrors let into the wall above marble
+consoles, square spaces of carpet under the two groups of armchairs,
+each presided over by a deep sofa; smaller rugs scattered all over the
+floor of red tiles; three windows from the ceiling down to the ground,
+opening on a balcony, and flanked by the perpendicular folds of the
+dark hangings. The stateliness of ancient days lingered between the four
+high, smooth walls, tinted a delicate primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould,
+with her little head and shining coils of hair, sitting in a cloud of
+muslin and lace before a slender mahogany table, resembled a fairy posed
+lightly before dainty philtres dispensed out of vessels of silver and
+porcelain.
+
+Mrs. Gould knew the history of the San Tome mine. Worked in the early
+days mostly by means of lashes on the backs of slaves, its yield had
+been paid for in its own weight of human bones. Whole tribes of Indians
+had perished in the exploitation; and then the mine was abandoned, since
+with this primitive method it had ceased to make a profitable return,
+no matter how many corpses were thrown into its maw. Then it became
+forgotten. It was rediscovered after the War of Independence. An English
+company obtained the right to work it, and found so rich a vein that
+neither the exactions of successive governments, nor the periodical
+raids of recruiting officers upon the population of paid miners they had
+created, could discourage their perseverance. But in the end, during the
+long turmoil of pronunciamentos that followed the death of the famous
+Guzman Bento, the native miners, incited to revolt by the emissaries
+sent out from the capital, had risen upon their English chiefs and
+murdered them to a man. The decree of confiscation which appeared
+immediately afterwards in the Diario Official, published in Sta. Marta,
+began with the words: "Justly incensed at the grinding oppression of
+foreigners, actuated by sordid motives of gain rather than by love for a
+country where they come impoverished to seek their fortunes, the mining
+population of San Tome, etc. . . ." and ended with the declaration: "The
+chief of the State has resolved to exercise to the full his power
+of clemency. The mine, which by every law, international, human, and
+divine, reverts now to the Government as national property, shall remain
+closed till the sword drawn for the sacred defence of liberal principles
+has accomplished its mission of securing the happiness of our beloved
+country."
+
+And for many years this was the last of the San Tome mine. What
+advantage that Government had expected from the spoliation, it is
+impossible to tell now. Costaguana was made with difficulty to pay a
+beggarly money compensation to the families of the victims, and then
+the matter dropped out of diplomatic despatches. But afterwards another
+Government bethought itself of that valuable asset. It was an ordinary
+Costaguana Government--the fourth in six years--but it judged of its
+opportunities sanely. It remembered the San Tome mine with a secret
+conviction of its worthlessness in their own hands, but with an
+ingenious insight into the various uses a silver mine can be put to,
+apart from the sordid process of extracting the metal from under the
+ground. The father of Charles Gould, for a long time one of the most
+wealthy merchants of Costaguana, had already lost a considerable part of
+his fortune in forced loans to the successive Governments. He was a man
+of calm judgment, who never dreamed of pressing his claims; and when,
+suddenly, the perpetual concession of the San Tome mine was offered to
+him in full settlement, his alarm became extreme. He was versed in the
+ways of Governments. Indeed, the intention of this affair, though no
+doubt deeply meditated in the closet, lay open on the surface of the
+document presented urgently for his signature. The third and most
+important clause stipulated that the concession-holder should pay at
+once to the Government five years' royalties on the estimated output of
+the mine.
+
+Mr. Gould, senior, defended himself from this fatal favour with many
+arguments and entreaties, but without success. He knew nothing of
+mining; he had no means to put his concession on the European market;
+the mine as a working concern did not exist. The buildings had been
+burnt down, the mining plant had been destroyed, the mining population
+had disappeared from the neighbourhood years and years ago; the very
+road had vanished under a flood of tropical vegetation as effectually
+as if swallowed by the sea; and the main gallery had fallen in within a
+hundred yards from the entrance. It was no longer an abandoned mine; it
+was a wild, inaccessible, and rocky gorge of the Sierra, where vestiges
+of charred timber, some heaps of smashed bricks, and a few shapeless
+pieces of rusty iron could have been found under the matted mass of
+thorny creepers covering the ground. Mr. Gould, senior, did not desire
+the perpetual possession of that desolate locality; in fact, the mere
+vision of it arising before his mind in the still watches of the night
+had the power to exasperate him into hours of hot and agitated insomnia.
+
+It so happened, however, that the Finance Minister of the time was a
+man to whom, in years gone by, Mr. Gould had, unfortunately, declined to
+grant some small pecuniary assistance, basing his refusal on the ground
+that the applicant was a notorious gambler and cheat, besides being more
+than half suspected of a robbery with violence on a wealthy ranchero in
+a remote country district, where he was actually exercising the function
+of a judge. Now, after reaching his exalted position, that politician
+had proclaimed his intention to repay evil with good to Senor
+Gould--the poor man. He affirmed and reaffirmed this resolution in the
+drawing-rooms of Sta. Marta, in a soft and implacable voice, and
+with such malicious glances that Mr. Gould's best friends advised him
+earnestly to attempt no bribery to get the matter dropped. It would have
+been useless. Indeed, it would not have been a very safe proceeding.
+Such was also the opinion of a stout, loud-voiced lady of French
+extraction, the daughter, she said, of an officer of high rank (_officier
+superieur de l'armee_), who was accommodated with lodgings within the
+walls of a secularized convent next door to the Ministry of Finance.
+That florid person, when approached on behalf of Mr. Gould in a proper
+manner, and with a suitable present, shook her head despondently. She
+was good-natured, and her despondency was genuine. She imagined she
+could not take money in consideration of something she could not
+accomplish. The friend of Mr. Gould, charged with the delicate mission,
+used to say afterwards that she was the only honest person closely or
+remotely connected with the Government he had ever met. "No go," she
+had said with a cavalier, husky intonation which was natural to her, and
+using turns of expression more suitable to a child of parents unknown
+than to the orphaned daughter of a general officer. "No; it's no go. _Pas
+moyen, mon garcon. C'est dommage, tout de meme. Ah! zut! Je ne vole
+pas mon monde. Je ne suis pas ministre--moi! Vous pouvez emporter votre
+petit sac_."
+
+For a moment, biting her carmine lip, she deplored inwardly the tyranny
+of the rigid principles governing the sale of her influence in high
+places. Then, significantly, and with a touch of impatience, "_Allez_,"
+she added, "_et dites bien a votre bonhomme--entendez-vous?--qu'il faut
+avaler la pilule_."
+
+After such a warning there was nothing for it but to sign and pay.
+Mr. Gould had swallowed the pill, and it was as though it had been
+compounded of some subtle poison that acted directly on his brain. He
+became at once mine-ridden, and as he was well read in light literature
+it took to his mind the form of the Old Man of the Sea fastened upon his
+shoulders. He also began to dream of vampires. Mr. Gould exaggerated
+to himself the disadvantages of his new position, because he viewed it
+emotionally. His position in Costaguana was no worse than before. But
+man is a desperately conservative creature, and the extravagant novelty
+of this outrage upon his purse distressed his sensibilities. Everybody
+around him was being robbed by the grotesque and murderous bands that
+played their game of governments and revolutions after the death of
+Guzman Bento. His experience had taught him that, however short
+the plunder might fall of their legitimate expectations, no gang in
+possession of the Presidential Palace would be so incompetent as to
+suffer itself to be baffled by the want of a pretext. The first casual
+colonel of the barefooted army of scarecrows that came along was able to
+expose with force and precision to any mere civilian his titles to a sum
+of 10,000 dollars; the while his hope would be immutably fixed upon a
+gratuity, at any rate, of no less than a thousand. Mr. Gould knew that
+very well, and, armed with resignation, had waited for better times. But
+to be robbed under the forms of legality and business was intolerable to
+his imagination. Mr. Gould, the father, had one fault in his sagacious
+and honourable character: he attached too much importance to form. It is
+a failing common to mankind, whose views are tinged by prejudices. There
+was for him in that affair a malignancy of perverted justice which, by
+means of a moral shock, attacked his vigorous physique. "It will end
+by killing me," he used to affirm many times a day. And, in fact, since
+that time he began to suffer from fever, from liver pains, and mostly
+from a worrying inability to think of anything else. The Finance
+Minister could have formed no conception of the profound subtlety of his
+revenge. Even Mr. Gould's letters to his fourteen-year-old boy Charles,
+then away in England for his education, came at last to talk of
+practically nothing but the mine. He groaned over the injustice, the
+persecution, the outrage of that mine; he occupied whole pages in the
+exposition of the fatal consequences attaching to the possession of that
+mine from every point of view, with every dismal inference, with words
+of horror at the apparently eternal character of that curse. For the
+Concession had been granted to him and his descendants for ever. He
+implored his son never to return to Costaguana, never to claim any
+part of his inheritance there, because it was tainted by the infamous
+Concession; never to touch it, never to approach it, to forget that
+America existed, and pursue a mercantile career in Europe. And each
+letter ended with bitter self-reproaches for having stayed too long in
+that cavern of thieves, intriguers, and brigands.
+
+To be told repeatedly that one's future is blighted because of the
+possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a matter
+of prime importance as to its main statement; but in its form it is
+calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and attention. In course
+of time the boy, at first only puzzled by the angry jeremiads, but
+rather sorry for his dad, began to turn the matter over in his mind in
+such moments as he could spare from play and study. In about a year he
+had evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite conviction
+that there was a silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of
+Costaguana, where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great
+many years before. There was also connected closely with that mine a
+thing called the "iniquitous Gould Concession," apparently written on
+a paper which his father desired ardently to "tear and fling into the
+faces" of presidents, members of judicature, and ministers of State.
+And this desire persisted, though the names of these people, he noticed,
+seldom remained the same for a whole year together. This desire (since
+the thing was iniquitous) seemed quite natural to the boy, though why
+the affair was iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards, with advancing
+wisdom, he managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the
+fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, and ghouls,
+which had lent to his father's correspondence the flavour of a gruesome
+Arabian Nights tale. In the end, the growing youth attained to as
+close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the old man who wrote these
+plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the sea. He had been
+made several times already to pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the
+mine, he reported, besides other sums extracted from him on account
+of future royalties, on the ground that a man with such a valuable
+concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial assistance to
+the Government of the Republic. The last of his fortune was passing away
+from him against worthless receipts, he wrote, in a rage, whilst he was
+being pointed out as an individual who had known how to secure enormous
+advantages from the necessities of his country. And the young man in
+Europe grew more and more interested in that thing which could provoke
+such a tumult of words and passion.
+
+He thought of it every day; but he thought of it without bitterness. It
+might have been an unfortunate affair for his poor dad, and the
+whole story threw a queer light upon the social and political life of
+Costaguana. The view he took of it was sympathetic to his father, yet
+calm and reflective. His personal feelings had not been outraged, and it
+is difficult to resent with proper and durable indignation the physical
+or mental anguish of another organism, even if that other organism is
+one's own father. By the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his
+turn, fallen under the spell of the San Tome mine. But it was another
+form of enchantment, more suitable to his youth, into whose magic
+formula there entered hope, vigour, and self-confidence, instead of
+weary indignation and despair. Left after he was twenty to his own
+guidance (except for the severe injunction not to return to Costaguana),
+he had pursued his studies in Belgium and France with the idea of
+qualifying for a mining engineer. But this scientific aspect of his
+labours remained vague and imperfect in his mind. Mines had acquired for
+him a dramatic interest. He studied their peculiarities from a personal
+point of view, too, as one would study the varied characters of men. He
+visited them as one goes with curiosity to call upon remarkable persons.
+He visited mines in Germany, in Spain, in Cornwall. Abandoned workings
+had for him strong fascination. Their desolation appealed to him like
+the sight of human misery, whose causes are varied and profound. They
+might have been worthless, but also they might have been misunderstood.
+His future wife was the first, and perhaps the only person to detect
+this secret mood which governed the profoundly sensible, almost
+voiceless attitude of this man towards the world of material things. And
+at once her delight in him, lingering with half-open wings like those
+birds that cannot rise easily from a flat level, found a pinnacle from
+which to soar up into the skies.
+
+They had become acquainted in Italy, where the future Mrs. Gould was
+staying with an old and pale aunt who, years before, had married a
+middle-aged, impoverished Italian marquis. She now mourned that man, who
+had known how to give up his life to the independence and unity of his
+country, who had known how to be as enthusiastic in his generosity as
+the youngest of those who fell for that very cause of which old Giorgio
+Viola was a drifting relic, as a broken spar is suffered to float away
+disregarded after a naval victory. The Marchesa led a still, whispering
+existence, nun-like in her black robes and a white band over the
+forehead, in a corner of the first floor of an ancient and ruinous
+palace, whose big, empty halls downstairs sheltered under their painted
+ceilings the harvests, the fowls, and even the cattle, together with the
+whole family of the tenant farmer.
+
+The two young people had met in Lucca. After that meeting Charles Gould
+visited no mines, though they went together in a carriage, once, to see
+some marble quarries, where the work resembled mining in so far that
+it also was the tearing of the raw material of treasure from the earth.
+Charles Gould did not open his heart to her in any set speeches. He
+simply went on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true method
+of sincerity. One of his frequent remarks was, "I think sometimes that
+poor father takes a wrong view of that San Tome business." And they
+discussed that opinion long and earnestly, as if they could influence a
+mind across half the globe; but in reality they discussed it because the
+sentiment of love can enter into any subject and live ardently in remote
+phrases. For this natural reason these discussions were precious to Mrs.
+Gould in her engaged state. Charles feared that Mr. Gould, senior, was
+wasting his strength and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid
+of the Concession. "I fancy that this is not the kind of handling it
+requires," he mused aloud, as if to himself. And when she wondered
+frankly that a man of character should devote his energies to plotting
+and intrigues, Charles would remark, with a gentle concern that
+understood her wonder, "You must not forget that he was born there."
+
+She would set her quick mind to work upon that, and then make the
+inconsequent retort, which he accepted as perfectly sagacious, because,
+in fact, it was so--
+
+"Well, and you? You were born there, too."
+
+He knew his answer.
+
+"That's different. I've been away ten years. Dad never had such a long
+spell; and it was more than thirty years ago."
+
+She was the first person to whom he opened his lips after receiving the
+news of his father's death.
+
+"It has killed him!" he said.
+
+He had walked straight out of town with the news, straight out before
+him in the noonday sun on the white road, and his feet had brought
+him face to face with her in the hall of the ruined palazzo, a room
+magnificent and naked, with here and there a long strip of damask, black
+with damp and age, hanging down on a bare panel of the wall. It was
+furnished with exactly one gilt armchair, with a broken back, and an
+octagon columnar stand bearing a heavy marble vase ornamented with
+sculptured masks and garlands of flowers, and cracked from top to
+bottom. Charles Gould was dusty with the white dust of the road lying
+on his boots, on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks. Water dripped
+from under it all over his face, and he grasped a thick oaken cudgel in
+his bare right hand.
+
+She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat, gloved,
+swinging a clear sunshade, caught just as she was going out to meet him
+at the bottom of the hill, where three poplars stand near the wall of a
+vineyard.
+
+"It has killed him!" he repeated. "He ought to have had many years yet.
+We are a long-lived family."
+
+She was too startled to say anything; he was contemplating with a
+penetrating and motionless stare the cracked marble urn as though he
+had resolved to fix its shape for ever in his memory. It was only when,
+turning suddenly to her, he blurted out twice, "I've come to you--I've
+come straight to you--," without being able to finish his phrase, that
+the great pitifulness of that lonely and tormented death in Costaguana
+came to her with the full force of its misery. He caught hold of her
+hand, raised it to his lips, and at that she dropped her parasol to pat
+him on the cheek, murmured "Poor boy," and began to dry her eyes under
+the downward curve of her hat-brim, very small in her simple, white
+frock, almost like a lost child crying in the degraded grandeur of the
+noble hall, while he stood by her, again perfectly motionless in the
+contemplation of the marble urn.
+
+Afterwards they went out for a long walk, which was silent till he
+exclaimed suddenly--
+
+"Yes. But if he had only grappled with it in a proper way!"
+
+And then they stopped. Everywhere there were long shadows lying on the
+hills, on the roads, on the enclosed fields of olive trees; the shadows
+of poplars, of wide chestnuts, of farm buildings, of stone walls; and
+in mid-air the sound of a bell, thin and alert, was like the throbbing
+pulse of the sunset glow. Her lips were slightly parted as though in
+surprise that he should not be looking at her with his usual expression.
+His usual expression was unconditionally approving and attentive. He was
+in his talks with her the most anxious and deferential of dictators,
+an attitude that pleased her immensely. It affirmed her power without
+detracting from his dignity. That slight girl, with her little feet,
+little hands, little face attractively overweighted by great coils of
+hair; with a rather large mouth, whose mere parting seemed to breathe
+upon you the fragrance of frankness and generosity, had the fastidious
+soul of an experienced woman. She was, before all things and all
+flatteries, careful of her pride in the object of her choice. But now he
+was actually not looking at her at all; and his expression was tense and
+irrational, as is natural in a man who elects to stare at nothing past a
+young girl's head.
+
+"Well, yes. It was iniquitous. They corrupted him thoroughly, the poor
+old boy. Oh! why wouldn't he let me go back to him? But now I shall know
+how to grapple with this."
+
+After pronouncing these words with immense assurance, he glanced down at
+her, and at once fell a prey to distress, incertitude, and fear.
+
+The only thing he wanted to know now, he said, was whether she did love
+him enough--whether she would have the courage to go with him so far
+away? He put these questions to her in a voice that trembled with
+anxiety--for he was a determined man.
+
+She did. She would. And immediately the future hostess of all the
+Europeans in Sulaco had the physical experience of the earth falling
+away from under her. It vanished completely, even to the very sound of
+the bell. When her feet touched the ground again, the bell was still
+ringing in the valley; she put her hands up to her hair, breathing
+quickly, and glanced up and down the stony lane. It was reassuringly
+empty. Meantime, Charles, stepping with one foot into a dry and dusty
+ditch, picked up the open parasol, which had bounded away from them
+with a martial sound of drum taps. He handed it to her soberly, a little
+crestfallen.
+
+They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand on his arm, the
+first words he pronounced were--
+
+"It's lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast town. You've
+heard its name. It is Sulaco. I am so glad poor father did get that
+house. He bought a big house there years ago, in order that there should
+always be a Casa Gould in the principal town of what used to be called
+the Occidental Province. I lived there once, as a small boy, with my
+dear mother, for a whole year, while poor father was away in the United
+States on business. You shall be the new mistress of the Casa Gould."
+
+And later, in the inhabited corner of the Palazzo above the vineyards,
+the marble hills, the pines and olives of Lucca, he also said--
+
+"The name of Gould has been always highly respected in Sulaco. My uncle
+Harry was chief of the State for some time, and has left a great name
+amongst the first families. By this I mean the pure Creole families, who
+take no part in the miserable farce of governments. Uncle Harry was no
+adventurer. In Costaguana we Goulds are no adventurers. He was of the
+country, and he loved it, but he remained essentially an Englishman
+in his ideas. He made use of the political cry of his time. It was
+Federation. But he was no politician. He simply stood up for social
+order out of pure love for rational liberty and from his hate of
+oppression. There was no nonsense about him. He went to work in his
+own way because it seemed right, just as I feel I must lay hold of that
+mine."
+
+In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full of the
+country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that girl, and his
+mind of the San Tome Concession. He added that he would have to leave
+her for a few days to find an American, a man from San Francisco, who
+was still somewhere in Europe. A few months before he had made his
+acquaintance in an old historic German town, situated in a mining
+district. The American had his womankind with him, but seemed lonely
+while they were sketching all day long the old doorways and the
+turreted corners of the mediaeval houses. Charles Gould had with him the
+inseparable companionship of the mine. The other man was interested in
+mining enterprises, knew something of Costaguana, and was no stranger to
+the name of Gould. They had talked together with some intimacy which
+was made possible by the difference of their ages. Charles wanted now
+to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible character. His
+father's fortune in Costaguana, which he had supposed to be still
+considerable, seemed to have melted in the rascally crucible of
+revolutions. Apart from some ten thousand pounds deposited in England,
+there appeared to be nothing left except the house in Sulaco, a vague
+right of forest exploitation in a remote and savage district, and the
+San Tome Concession, which had attended his poor father to the very
+brink of the grave.
+
+He explained those things. It was late when they parted. She had never
+before given him such a fascinating vision of herself. All the eagerness
+of youth for a strange life, for great distances, for a future in which
+there was an air of adventure, of combat--a subtle thought of redress
+and conquest, had filled her with an intense excitement, which she
+returned to the giver with a more open and exquisite display of
+tenderness.
+
+He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he found himself alone
+he became sober. That irreparable change a death makes in the course
+of our daily thoughts can be felt in a vague and poignant discomfort
+of mind. It hurt Charles Gould to feel that never more, by no effort of
+will, would he be able to think of his father in the same way he used
+to think of him when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was
+no longer in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his own
+identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action.
+In this his instinct was unerring. Action is consolatory. It is the
+enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the
+conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.
+For his action, the mine was obviously the only field. It was imperative
+sometimes to know how to disobey the solemn wishes of the dead.
+He resolved firmly to make his disobedience as thorough (by way of
+atonement) as it well could be. The mine had been the cause of an absurd
+moral disaster; its working must be made a serious and moral success.
+He owed it to the dead man's memory. Such were the--properly
+speaking--emotions of Charles Gould. His thoughts ran upon the means
+of raising a large amount of capital in San Francisco or elsewhere; and
+incidentally there occurred to him also the general reflection that the
+counsel of the departed must be an unsound guide. Not one of them
+could be aware beforehand what enormous changes the death of any given
+individual may produce in the very aspect of the world.
+
+The latest phase in the history of the mine Mrs. Gould knew from
+personal experience. It was in essence the history of her married life.
+The mantle of the Goulds' hereditary position in Sulaco had descended
+amply upon her little person; but she would not allow the peculiarities
+of the strange garment to weigh down the vivacity of her character,
+which was the sign of no mere mechanical sprightliness, but of an
+eager intelligence. It must not be supposed that Mrs. Gould's mind was
+masculine. A woman with a masculine mind is not a being of
+superior efficiency; she is simply a phenomenon of imperfect
+differentiation--interestingly barren and without importance. Dona
+Emilia's intelligence being feminine led her to achieve the conquest of
+Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her unselfishness and sympathy.
+She could converse charmingly, but she was not talkative. The wisdom of
+the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition of theories
+any more than with the defence of prejudices, has no random words at its
+command. The words it pronounces have the value of acts of integrity,
+tolerance, and compassion. A woman's true tenderness, like the true
+virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind. The ladies
+of Sulaco adored Mrs. Gould. "They still look upon me as something of a
+monster," Mrs. Gould had said pleasantly to one of the three gentlemen
+from San Francisco she had to entertain in her new Sulaco house just
+about a year after her marriage.
+
+They were her first visitors from abroad, and they had come to look at
+the San Tome mine. She jested most agreeably, they thought; and Charles
+Gould, besides knowing thoroughly what he was about, had shown himself
+a real hustler. These facts caused them to be well disposed towards his
+wife. An unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by a slight flavour of irony,
+made her talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and
+provoked them to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good
+deal of deference. Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by
+an idealistic view of success they would have been amazed at the state
+of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had been amazed at the
+tireless activity of her body. She would--in her own words--have
+been for them "something of a monster." However, the Goulds were in
+essentials a reticent couple, and their guests departed without the
+suspicion of any other purpose but simple profit in the working of a
+silver mine. Mrs. Gould had out her own carriage, with two white mules,
+to drive them down to the harbour, whence the Ceres was to carry them
+off into the Olympus of plutocrats. Captain Mitchell had snatched at the
+occasion of leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, confidential
+mutter, "This marks an epoch."
+
+Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broad flight of stone
+steps was overlooked silently from a niche in the wall by a Madonna in
+blue robes with the crowned child sitting on her arm. Subdued voices
+ascended in the early mornings from the paved well of the quadrangle,
+with the stamping of horses and mules led out in pairs to drink at the
+cistern. A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow, blade-like
+leaves over the square pool of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled
+up on the edge, holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand.
+Barefooted servants passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways
+below; two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker with
+the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda--her own camerista--bearing
+high up, swung from her hand raised above her raven black head, a bunch
+of starched under-skirts dazzlingly white in the slant of sunshine. Then
+the old porter would hobble in, sweeping the flagstones, and the
+house was ready for the day. All the lofty rooms on three sides of
+the quadrangle opened into each other and into the corredor, with its
+wrought-iron railings and a border of flowers, whence, like the lady of
+the mediaeval castle, she could witness from above all the departures
+and arrivals of the Casa, to which the sonorous arched gateway lent an
+air of stately importance.
+
+She had watched her carriage roll away with the three guests from the
+north. She smiled. Their three arms went up simultaneously to their
+three hats. Captain Mitchell, the fourth, in attendance, had already
+begun a pompous discourse. Then she lingered. She lingered, approaching
+her face to the clusters of flowers here and there as if to give time
+to her thoughts to catch up with her slow footsteps along the straight
+vista of the corredor.
+
+A fringed Indian hammock from Aroa, gay with coloured featherwork, had
+been swung judiciously in a corner that caught the early sun; for the
+mornings are cool in Sulaco. The cluster of _flor de noche buena_ blazed
+in great masses before the open glass doors of the reception rooms. A
+big green parrot, brilliant like an emerald in a cage that flashed like
+gold, screamed out ferociously, "_Viva Costaguana!_" then called twice
+mellifluously, "Leonarda! Leonarda!" in imitation of Mrs. Gould's voice,
+and suddenly took refuge in immobility and silence. Mrs. Gould reached
+the end of the gallery and put her head through the door of her
+husband's room.
+
+Charles Gould, with one foot on a low wooden stool, was already
+strapping his spurs. He wanted to hurry back to the mine. Mrs. Gould,
+without coming in, glanced about the room. One tall, broad bookcase,
+with glass doors, was full of books; but in the other, without shelves,
+and lined with red baize, were arranged firearms: Winchester carbines,
+revolvers, a couple of shot-guns, and even two pairs of double-barrelled
+holster pistols. Between them, by itself, upon a strip of scarlet
+velvet, hung an old cavalry sabre, once the property of Don Enrique
+Gould, the hero of the Occidental Province, presented by Don Jose
+Avellanos, the hereditary friend of the family.
+
+Otherwise, the plastered white walls were completely bare, except for
+a water-colour sketch of the San Tome mountain--the work of Dona Emilia
+herself. In the middle of the red-tiled floor stood two long tables
+littered with plans and papers, a few chairs, and a glass show-case
+containing specimens of ore from the mine. Mrs. Gould, looking at all
+these things in turn, wondered aloud why the talk of these wealthy and
+enterprising men discussing the prospects, the working, and the safety
+of the mine rendered her so impatient and uneasy, whereas she could talk
+of the mine by the hour with her husband with unwearied interest and
+satisfaction. And dropping her eyelids expressively, she added--
+
+"What do you feel about it, Charley?"
+
+Then, surprised at her husband's silence, she raised her eyes, opened
+wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He had done with the spurs, and,
+twisting his moustache with both hands, horizontally, he contemplated
+her from the height of his long legs with a visible appreciation of her
+appearance. The consciousness of being thus contemplated pleased Mrs.
+Gould.
+
+"They are considerable men," he said.
+
+"I know. But have you listened to their conversation? They don't seem to
+have understood anything they have seen here."
+
+"They have seen the mine. They have understood that to some purpose,"
+Charles Gould interjected, in defence of the visitors; and then his
+wife mentioned the name of the most considerable of the three. He was
+considerable in finance and in industry. His name was familiar to many
+millions of people. He was so considerable that he would never have
+travelled so far away from the centre of his activity if the doctors had
+not insisted, with veiled menaces, on his taking a long holiday.
+
+"Mr. Holroyd's sense of religion," Mrs. Gould pursued, "was shocked
+and disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-up saints in the
+cathedral--the worship, he called it, of wood and tinsel. But it seemed
+to me that he looked upon his own God as a sort of influential partner,
+who gets his share of profits in the endowment of churches. That's a
+sort of idolatry. He told me he endowed churches every year, Charley."
+
+"No end of them," said Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at the mobility
+of her physiognomy. "All over the country. He's famous for that sort of
+munificence." "Oh, he didn't boast," Mrs. Gould declared, scrupulously.
+"I believe he's really a good man, but so stupid! A poor Chulo who
+offers a little silver arm or leg to thank his god for a cure is as
+rational and more touching."
+
+"He's at the head of immense silver and iron interests," Charles Gould
+observed.
+
+"Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He's a very civil man, though
+he looked awfully solemn when he first saw the Madonna on the staircase,
+who's only wood and paint; but he said nothing to me. My dear Charley,
+I heard those men talk among themselves. Can it be that they really wish
+to become, for an immense consideration, drawers of water and hewers of
+wood to all the countries and nations of the earth?"
+
+"A man must work to some end," Charles Gould said, vaguely.
+
+Mrs. Gould, frowning, surveyed him from head to foot. With his riding
+breeches, leather leggings (an article of apparel never before seen in
+Costaguana), a Norfolk coat of grey flannel, and those great flaming
+moustaches, he suggested an officer of cavalry turned gentleman farmer.
+This combination was gratifying to Mrs. Gould's tastes. "How thin the
+poor boy is!" she thought. "He overworks himself." But there was no
+denying that his fine-drawn, keen red face, and his whole, long-limbed,
+lank person had an air of breeding and distinction. And Mrs. Gould
+relented.
+
+"I only wondered what you felt," she murmured, gently.
+
+During the last few days, as it happened, Charles Gould had been kept
+too busy thinking twice before he spoke to have paid much attention to
+the state of his feelings. But theirs was a successful match, and he had
+no difficulty in finding his answer.
+
+"The best of my feelings are in your keeping, my dear," he said,
+lightly; and there was so much truth in that obscure phrase that he
+experienced towards her at the moment a great increase of gratitude and
+tenderness.
+
+Mrs. Gould, however, did not seem to find this answer in the least
+obscure. She brightened up delicately; already he had changed his tone.
+
+"But there are facts. The worth of the mine--as a mine--is beyond doubt.
+It shall make us very wealthy. The mere working of it is a matter of
+technical knowledge, which I have--which ten thousand other men in the
+world have. But its safety, its continued existence as an enterprise,
+giving a return to men--to strangers, comparative strangers--who invest
+money in it, is left altogether in my hands. I have inspired confidence
+in a man of wealth and position. You seem to think this perfectly
+natural--do you? Well, I don't know. I don't know why I have; but it is
+a fact. This fact makes everything possible, because without it I would
+never have thought of disregarding my father's wishes. I would never
+have disposed of the Concession as a speculator disposes of a valuable
+right to a company--for cash and shares, to grow rich eventually if
+possible, but at any rate to put some money at once in his pocket. No.
+Even if it had been feasible--which I doubt--I would not have done so.
+Poor father did not understand. He was afraid I would hang on to the
+ruinous thing, waiting for just some such chance, and waste my life
+miserably. That was the true sense of his prohibition, which we have
+deliberately set aside."
+
+They were walking up and down the corredor. Her head just reached to his
+shoulder. His arm, extended downwards, was about her waist. His spurs
+jingled slightly.
+
+"He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know me. He parted from me
+for my sake, and he would never let me come back. He was always talking
+in his letters of leaving Costaguana, of abandoning everything and
+making his escape. But he was too valuable a prey. They would have
+thrown him into one of their prisons at the first suspicion."
+
+His spurred feet clinked slowly. He was bending over his wife as they
+walked. The big parrot, turning its head askew, followed their pacing
+figures with a round, unblinking eye.
+
+"He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years old he used to talk to
+me as if I had been grown up. When I was in Europe he wrote to me every
+month. Ten, twelve pages every month of my life for ten years. And,
+after all, he did not know me! Just think of it--ten whole years away;
+the years I was growing up into a man. He could not know me. Do you
+think he could?"
+
+Mrs. Gould shook her head negatively; which was just what her husband
+had expected from the strength of the argument. But she shook her
+head negatively only because she thought that no one could know her
+Charles--really know him for what he was but herself. The thing was
+obvious. It could be felt. It required no argument. And poor Mr. Gould,
+senior, who had died too soon to ever hear of their engagement, remained
+too shadowy a figure for her to be credited with knowledge of any sort
+whatever.
+
+"No, he did not understand. In my view this mine could never have been
+a thing to sell. Never! After all his misery I simply could not have
+touched it for money alone," Charles Gould pursued: and she pressed her
+head to his shoulder approvingly.
+
+These two young people remembered the life which had ended wretchedly
+just when their own lives had come together in that splendour of hopeful
+love, which to the most sensible minds appears like a triumph of good
+over all the evils of the earth. A vague idea of rehabilitation had
+entered the plan of their life. That it was so vague as to elude the
+support of argument made it only the stronger. It had presented itself
+to them at the instant when the woman's instinct of devotion and the
+man's instinct of activity receive from the strongest of illusions their
+most powerful impulse. The very prohibition imposed the necessity of
+success. It was as if they had been morally bound to make good their
+vigorous view of life against the unnatural error of weariness and
+despair. If the idea of wealth was present to them it was only in so
+far as it was bound with that other success. Mrs. Gould, an orphan from
+early childhood and without fortune, brought up in an atmosphere of
+intellectual interests, had never considered the aspects of great
+wealth. They were too remote, and she had not learned that they were
+desirable. On the other hand, she had not known anything of absolute
+want. Even the very poverty of her aunt, the Marchesa, had nothing
+intolerable to a refined mind; it seemed in accord with a great grief:
+it had the austerity of a sacrifice offered to a noble ideal. Thus even
+the most legitimate touch of materialism was wanting in Mrs. Gould's
+character. The dead man of whom she thought with tenderness (because
+he was Charley's father) and with some impatience (because he had been
+weak), must be put completely in the wrong. Nothing else would do
+to keep their prosperity without a stain on its only real, on its
+immaterial side!
+
+Charles Gould, on his part, had been obliged to keep the idea of wealth
+well to the fore; but he brought it forward as a means, not as an end.
+Unless the mine was good business it could not be touched. He had to
+insist on that aspect of the enterprise. It was his lever to move
+men who had capital. And Charles Gould believed in the mine. He
+knew everything that could be known of it. His faith in the mine was
+contagious, though it was not served by a great eloquence; but business
+men are frequently as sanguine and imaginative as lovers. They are
+affected by a personality much oftener than people would suppose; and
+Charles Gould, in his unshaken assurance, was absolutely convincing.
+Besides, it was a matter of common knowledge to the men to whom he
+addressed himself that mining in Costaguana was a game that could be
+made considerably more than worth the candle. The men of affairs knew that
+very well. The real difficulty in touching it was elsewhere. Against
+that there was an implication of calm and implacable resolution in
+Charles Gould's very voice. Men of affairs venture sometimes on acts
+that the common judgment of the world would pronounce absurd; they make
+their decisions on apparently impulsive and human grounds. "Very well,"
+had said the considerable personage to whom Charles Gould on his way
+out through San Francisco had lucidly exposed his point of view. "Let us
+suppose that the mining affairs of Sulaco are taken in hand. There would
+then be in it: first, the house of Holroyd, which is all right; then,
+Mr. Charles Gould, a citizen of Costaguana, who is also all right; and,
+lastly, the Government of the Republic. So far this resembles the first
+start of the Atacama nitrate fields, where there was a financing house,
+a gentleman of the name of Edwards, and--a Government; or, rather, two
+Governments--two South American Governments. And you know what came of
+it. War came of it; devastating and prolonged war came of it, Mr. Gould.
+However, here we possess the advantage of having only one South
+American Government hanging around for plunder out of the deal. It is an
+advantage; but then there are degrees of badness, and that Government is
+the Costaguana Government."
+
+Thus spoke the considerable personage, the millionaire endower of
+churches on a scale befitting the greatness of his native land--the same
+to whom the doctors used the language of horrid and veiled menaces. He
+was a big-limbed, deliberate man, whose quiet burliness lent to an ample
+silk-faced frock-coat a superfine dignity. His hair was iron grey, his
+eyebrows were still black, and his massive profile was the profile of
+a Caesar's head on an old Roman coin. But his parentage was German and
+Scotch and English, with remote strains of Danish and French blood,
+giving him the temperament of a Puritan and an insatiable imagination
+of conquest. He was completely unbending to his visitor, because of the
+warm introduction the visitor had brought from Europe, and because of
+an irrational liking for earnestness and determination wherever met, to
+whatever end directed.
+
+"The Costaguana Government shall play its hand for all it's worth--and
+don't you forget it, Mr. Gould. Now, what is Costaguana? It is the
+bottomless pit of 10 per cent. loans and other fool investments.
+European capital has been flung into it with both hands for years. Not
+ours, though. We in this country know just about enough to keep indoors
+when it rains. We can sit and watch. Of course, some day we shall step
+in. We are bound to. But there's no hurry. Time itself has got to wait
+on the greatest country in the whole of God's Universe. We shall be
+giving the word for everything: industry, trade, law, journalism, art,
+politics, and religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith's Sound,
+and beyond, too, if anything worth taking hold of turns up at the North
+Pole. And then we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying
+islands and continents of the earth. We shall run the world's business
+whether the world likes it or not. The world can't help it--and neither
+can we, I guess."
+
+By this he meant to express his faith in destiny in words suitable to
+his intelligence, which was unskilled in the presentation of general
+ideas. His intelligence was nourished on facts; and Charles Gould, whose
+imagination had been permanently affected by the one great fact of a
+silver mine, had no objection to this theory of the world's future.
+If it had seemed distasteful for a moment it was because the sudden
+statement of such vast eventualities dwarfed almost to nothingness the
+actual matter in hand. He and his plans and all the mineral wealth of
+the Occidental Province appeared suddenly robbed of every vestige of
+magnitude. The sensation was disagreeable; but Charles Gould was not
+dull. Already he felt that he was producing a favourable impression; the
+consciousness of that flattering fact helped him to a vague smile, which
+his big interlocutor took for a smile of discreet and admiring assent.
+He smiled quietly, too; and immediately Charles Gould, with that mental
+agility mankind will display in defence of a cherished hope, reflected
+that the very apparent insignificance of his aim would help him to
+success. His personality and his mine would be taken up because it was
+a matter of no great consequence, one way or another, to a man who
+referred his action to such a prodigious destiny. And Charles Gould was
+not humiliated by this consideration, because the thing remained as
+big as ever for him. Nobody else's vast conceptions of destiny could
+diminish the aspect of his desire for the redemption of the San Tome
+mine. In comparison to the correctness of his aim, definite in space and
+absolutely attainable within a limited time, the other man appeared for
+an instant as a dreamy idealist of no importance.
+
+The great man, massive and benignant, had been looking at him
+thoughtfully; when he broke the short silence it was to remark that
+concessions flew about thick in the air of Costaguana. Any simple soul
+that just yearned to be taken in could bring down a concession at the
+first shot.
+
+"Our consuls get their mouths stopped with them," he continued, with a
+twinkle of genial scorn in his eyes. But in a moment he became grave.
+"A conscientious, upright man, that cares nothing for boodle, and keeps
+clear of their intrigues, conspiracies, and factions, soon gets his
+passports. See that, Mr. Gould? Persona non grata. That's the reason our
+Government is never properly informed. On the other hand, Europe must be
+kept out of this continent, and for proper interference on our part the
+time is not yet ripe, I dare say. But we here--we are not this country's
+Government, neither are we simple souls. Your affair is all right. The
+main question for us is whether the second partner, and that's you, is
+the right sort to hold his own against the third and unwelcome partner,
+which is one or another of the high and mighty robber gangs that run the
+Costaguana Government. What do you think, Mr. Gould, eh?"
+
+He bent forward to look steadily into the unflinching eyes of Charles
+Gould, who, remembering the large box full of his father's letters, put
+the accumulated scorn and bitterness of many years into the tone of his
+answer--
+
+"As far as the knowledge of these men and their methods and their
+politics is concerned, I can answer for myself. I have been fed on
+that sort of knowledge since I was a boy. I am not likely to fall into
+mistakes from excess of optimism."
+
+"Not likely, eh? That's all right. Tact and a stiff upper lip is what
+you'll want; and you could bluff a little on the strength of your
+backing. Not too much, though. We will go with you as long as the thing
+runs straight. But we won't be drawn into any large trouble. This is the
+experiment which I am willing to make. There is some risk, and we will
+take it; but if you can't keep up your end, we will stand our loss, of
+course, and then--we'll let the thing go. This mine can wait; it has
+been shut up before, as you know. You must understand that under no
+circumstances will we consent to throw good money after bad."
+
+Thus the great personage had spoken then, in his own private office, in
+a great city where other men (very considerable in the eyes of a vain
+populace) waited with alacrity upon a wave of his hand. And rather more
+than a year later, during his unexpected appearance in Sulaco, he had
+emphasized his uncompromising attitude with a freedom of sincerity
+permitted to his wealth and influence. He did this with the less
+reserve, perhaps, because the inspection of what had been done, and more
+still the way in which successive steps had been taken, had impressed
+him with the conviction that Charles Gould was perfectly capable of
+keeping up his end.
+
+"This young fellow," he thought to himself, "may yet become a power in
+the land."
+
+This thought flattered him, for hitherto the only account of this young
+man he could give to his intimates was--
+
+"My brother-in-law met him in one of these one-horse old German towns,
+near some mines, and sent him on to me with a letter. He's one of the
+Costaguana Goulds, pure-bred Englishmen, but all born in the country.
+His uncle went into politics, was the last Provincial President of
+Sulaco, and got shot after a battle. His father was a prominent business
+man in Sta. Marta, tried to keep clear of their politics, and died
+ruined after a lot of revolutions. And that's your Costaguana in a
+nutshell."
+
+Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as to his motives,
+even by his intimates. The outside world was at liberty to wonder
+respectfully at the hidden meaning of his actions. He was so great a man
+that his lavish patronage of the "purer forms of Christianity" (which in
+its naive form of church-building amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by
+his fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble spirit.
+But in his own circles of the financial world the taking up of such a
+thing as the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather
+as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man's caprice. In
+the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks
+of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation
+of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged
+humorous glances, which meant that they were not let into the secrets
+of the San Tome business. The Costaguana mail (it was never large--one
+fairly heavy envelope) was taken unopened straight into the great man's
+room, and no instructions dealing with it had ever been issued thence.
+The office whispered that he answered personally--and not by dictation
+either, but actually writing in his own hand, with pen and ink, and, it
+was to be supposed, taking a copy in his own private press copy-book,
+inaccessible to profane eyes. Some scornful young men, insignificant
+pieces of minor machinery in that eleven-storey-high workshop of great
+affairs, expressed frankly their private opinion that the great chief
+had done at last something silly, and was ashamed of his folly; others,
+elderly and insignificant, but full of romantic reverence for the
+business that had devoured their best years, used to mutter darkly and
+knowingly that this was a portentous sign; that the Holroyd connection
+meant by-and-by to get hold of the whole Republic of Costaguana, lock,
+stock, and barrel. But, in fact, the hobby theory was the right one. It
+interested the great man to attend personally to the San Tome mine; it
+interested him so much that he allowed this hobby to give a direction to
+the first complete holiday he had taken for quite a startling number
+of years. He was not running a great enterprise there; no mere railway
+board or industrial corporation. He was running a man! A success would
+have pleased him very much on refreshingly novel grounds; but, on the
+other side of the same feeling, it was incumbent upon him to cast it
+off utterly at the first sign of failure. A man may be thrown off. The
+papers had unfortunately trumpeted all over the land his journey to
+Costaguana. If he was pleased at the way Charles Gould was going on, he
+infused an added grimness into his assurances of support. Even at the
+very last interview, half an hour or so before he rolled out of the
+patio, hat in hand, behind Mrs. Gould's white mules, he had said in
+Charles's room--
+
+"You go ahead in your own way, and I shall know how to help you as long
+as you hold your own. But you may rest assured that in a given case we
+shall know how to drop you in time."
+
+To this Charles Gould's only answer had been: "You may begin sending out
+the machinery as soon as you like."
+
+And the great man had liked this imperturbable assurance. The secret
+of it was that to Charles Gould's mind these uncompromising terms were
+agreeable. Like this the mine preserved its identity, with which he had
+endowed it as a boy; and it remained dependent on himself alone. It was
+a serious affair, and he, too, took it grimly.
+
+"Of course," he said to his wife, alluding to this last conversation
+with the departed guest, while they walked slowly up and down the
+corredor, followed by the irritated eye of the parrot--"of course, a
+man of that sort can take up a thing or drop it when he likes. He will
+suffer from no sense of defeat. He may have to give in, or he may have
+to die to-morrow, but the great silver and iron interests will survive,
+and some day will get hold of Costaguana along with the rest of the
+world."
+
+They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching the sound of a word
+belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere. Parrots are very
+human.
+
+"Viva Costaguana!" he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and,
+instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up
+somnolence behind the glittering wires.
+
+"And do you believe that, Charley?" Mrs. Gould asked. "This seems to me
+most awful materialism, and--"
+
+"My dear, it's nothing to me," interrupted her husband, in a reasonable
+tone. "I make use of what I see. What's it to me whether his talk is the
+voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There's a good
+deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The
+air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have
+you forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours here--?"
+
+"Oh, but that's different," protested Mrs. Gould, almost shocked. The
+allusion was not to the point. Don Jose was a dear good man, who talked
+very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San Tome
+mine. "How can you compare them, Charles?" she exclaimed, reproachfully.
+"He has suffered--and yet he hopes."
+
+The working competence of men--which she never questioned--was very
+surprising to Mrs. Gould, because upon so many obvious issues they
+showed themselves strangely muddle-headed.
+
+Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which secured for him at once
+his wife's anxious sympathy, assured her that he was not comparing. He
+was an American himself, after all, and perhaps he could understand both
+kinds of eloquence--"if it were worth while to try," he added, grimly.
+But he had breathed the air of England longer than any of his people had
+done for three generations, and really he begged to be excused. His
+poor father could be eloquent, too. And he asked his wife whether she
+remembered a passage in one of his father's last letters where Mr.
+Gould had expressed the conviction that "God looked wrathfully at these
+countries, or else He would let some ray of hope fall through a rift in
+the appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime that hung over
+the Queen of Continents."
+
+Mrs. Gould had not forgotten. "You read it to me, Charley," she
+murmured. "It was a striking pronouncement. How deeply your father must
+have felt its terrible sadness!"
+
+"He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him," said Charles Gould.
+"But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here is law, good
+faith, order, security. Any one can declaim about these things, but I
+pin my faith to material interests. Only let the material interests once
+get a firm footing, and they are bound to impose the conditions on
+which alone they can continue to exist. That's how your money-making is
+justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified
+because the security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed
+people. A better justice will come afterwards. That's your ray of hope."
+His arm pressed her slight form closer to his side for a moment. "And
+who knows whether in that sense even the San Tome mine may not become
+that little rift in the darkness which poor father despaired of ever
+seeing?"
+
+She glanced up at him with admiration. He was competent; he had given a
+vast shape to the vagueness of her unselfish ambitions.
+
+"Charley," she said, "you are splendidly disobedient."
+
+He left her suddenly in the corredor to go and get his hat, a soft, grey
+sombrero, an article of national costume which combined unexpectedly
+well with his English get-up. He came back, a riding-whip under his arm,
+buttoning up a dogskin glove; his face reflected the resolute nature of
+his thoughts. His wife had waited for him at the head of the stairs, and
+before he gave her the parting kiss he finished the conversation--
+
+"What should be perfectly clear to us," he said, "is the fact that there
+is no going back. Where could we begin life afresh? We are in now for
+all that there is in us."
+
+He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully.
+Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould
+Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at
+once in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose
+its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment
+he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed
+him further than he meant to go; and with the roundabout logic of
+emotions, he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with
+success. There was no going back.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+Mrs. Gould was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that feeling.
+It made life exciting, and she was too much of a woman not to like
+excitement. But it frightened her, too, a little; and when Don Jose
+Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go so far as to say,
+"Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; even if some untoward event
+were yet to destroy your work--which God forbid!--you would have
+deserved well of your country," Mrs. Gould would look up from the
+tea-table profoundly at her unmoved husband stirring the spoon in the
+cup as though he had not heard a word.
+
+Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort. He could not praise
+enough dear Carlos's tact and courage. His English, rock-like quality
+of character was his best safeguard, Don Jose affirmed; and, turning to
+Mrs. Gould, "As to you, Emilia, my soul"--he would address her with the
+familiarity of his age and old friendship--"you are as true a patriot as
+though you had been born in our midst."
+
+This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs. Gould,
+accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for labour,
+had seen the land with a deeper glance than a trueborn Costaguanera
+could have done. In her travel-worn riding habit, her face powdered
+white like a plaster cast, with a further protection of a small silk
+mask during the heat of the day, she rode on a well-shaped, light-footed
+pony in the centre of a little cavalcade. Two mozos de campo,
+picturesque in great hats, with spurred bare heels, in white embroidered
+calzoneras, leather jackets and striped ponchos, rode ahead with
+carbines across their shoulders, swaying in unison to the pace of the
+horses. A tropilla of pack mules brought up the rear in charge of a thin
+brown muleteer, sitting his long-eared beast very near the tail, legs
+thrust far forward, the wide brim of his hat set far back, making a sort
+of halo for his head. An old Costaguana officer, a retired senior major
+of humble origin, but patronized by the first families on account of
+his Blanco opinions, had been recommended by Don Jose for commissary and
+organizer of that expedition. The points of his grey moustache hung far
+below his chin, and, riding on Mrs. Gould's left hand, he looked about
+with kindly eyes, pointing out the features of the country, telling the
+names of the little pueblos and of the estates, of the smooth-walled
+haciendas like long fortresses crowning the knolls above the level of
+the Sulaco Valley. It unrolled itself, with green young crops, plains,
+woodland, and gleams of water, park-like, from the blue vapour of the
+distant sierra to an immense quivering horizon of grass and sky, where
+big white clouds seemed to fall slowly into the darkness of their own
+shadows.
+
+Men ploughed with wooden ploughs and yoked oxen, small on a boundless
+expanse, as if attacking immensity itself. The mounted figures of
+vaqueros galloped in the distance, and the great herds fed with all
+their horned heads one way, in one single wavering line as far as eye
+could reach across the broad potreros. A spreading cotton-wool tree
+shaded a thatched ranche by the road; the trudging files of burdened
+Indians taking off their hats, would lift sad, mute eyes to the
+cavalcade raising the dust of the crumbling camino real made by the
+hands of their enslaved forefathers. And Mrs. Gould, with each day's
+journey, seemed to come nearer to the soul of the land in the tremendous
+disclosure of this interior unaffected by the slight European veneer
+of the coast towns, a great land of plain and mountain and people,
+suffering and mute, waiting for the future in a pathetic immobility of
+patience.
+
+She knew its sights and its hospitality, dispensed with a sort of
+slumbrous dignity in those great houses presenting long, blind walls and
+heavy portals to the wind-swept pastures. She was given the head of the
+tables, where masters and dependants sat in a simple and patriarchal
+state. The ladies of the house would talk softly in the moonlight under
+the orange trees of the courtyards, impressing upon her the sweetness
+of their voices and the something mysterious in the quietude of their
+lives. In the morning the gentlemen, well mounted in braided sombreros
+and embroidered riding suits, with much silver on the trappings of
+their horses, would ride forth to escort the departing guests before
+committing them, with grave good-byes, to the care of God at the
+boundary pillars of their estates. In all these households she
+could hear stories of political outrage; friends, relatives, ruined,
+imprisoned, killed in the battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously
+executed in ferocious proscriptions, as though the government of the
+country had been a struggle of lust between bands of absurd devils let
+loose upon the land with sabres and uniforms and grandiloquent phrases.
+And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace, the dread of
+officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administration without law,
+without security, and without justice.
+
+She bore a whole two months of wandering very well; she had that power
+of resistance to fatigue which one discovers here and there in some
+quite frail-looking women with surprise--like a state of possession by
+a remarkably stubborn spirit. Don Pepe--the old Costaguana major--after
+much display of solicitude for the delicate lady, had ended by
+conferring upon her the name of the "Never-tired Senora." Mrs. Gould
+was indeed becoming a Costaguanera. Having acquired in Southern Europe a
+knowledge of true peasantry, she was able to appreciate the great worth
+of the people. She saw the man under the silent, sad-eyed beast of
+burden. She saw them on the road carrying loads, lonely figures upon
+the plain, toiling under great straw hats, with their white clothing
+flapping about their limbs in the wind; she remembered the villages by
+some group of Indian women at the fountain impressed upon her memory,
+by the face of some young Indian girl with a melancholy and sensual
+profile, raising an earthenware vessel of cool water at the door of a
+dark hut with a wooden porch cumbered with great brown jars. The solid
+wooden wheels of an ox-cart, halted with its shafts in the dust, showed
+the strokes of the axe; and a party of charcoal carriers, with each
+man's load resting above his head on the top of the low mud wall, slept
+stretched in a row within the strip of shade.
+
+The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left by the conquerors
+proclaimed the disregard of human labour, the tribute-labour of vanished
+nations. The power of king and church was gone, but at the sight of
+some heavy ruinous pile overtopping from a knoll the low mud walls of a
+village, Don Pepe would interrupt the tale of his campaigns to exclaim--
+
+"Poor Costaguana! Before, it was everything for the Padres, nothing for
+the people; and now it is everything for those great politicos in Sta.
+Marta, for negroes and thieves."
+
+Charles talked with the alcaldes, with the fiscales, with the
+principal people in towns, and with the caballeros on the estates. The
+commandantes of the districts offered him escorts--for he could show an
+authorization from the Sulaco political chief of the day. How much the
+document had cost him in gold twenty-dollar pieces was a secret between
+himself, a great man in the United States (who condescended to answer
+the Sulaco mail with his own hand), and a great man of another sort,
+with a dark olive complexion and shifty eyes, inhabiting then the Palace
+of the Intendencia in Sulaco, and who piqued himself on his culture and
+Europeanism generally in a rather French style because he had lived in
+Europe for some years--in exile, he said. However, it was pretty well
+known that just before this exile he had incautiously gambled away all
+the cash in the Custom House of a small port where a friend in power had
+procured for him the post of subcollector. That youthful indiscretion
+had, amongst other inconveniences, obliged him to earn his living for a
+time as a cafe waiter in Madrid; but his talents must have been great,
+after all, since they had enabled him to retrieve his political
+fortunes so splendidly. Charles Gould, exposing his business with an
+imperturbable steadiness, called him Excellency.
+
+The provincial Excellency assumed a weary superiority, tilting his chair
+far back near an open window in the true Costaguana manner. The military
+band happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza just then,
+and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to listen
+to a favourite passage.
+
+"Exquisite, delicious!" he murmured; while Charles Gould waited,
+standing by with inscrutable patience. "Lucia, Lucia di Lammermoor! I am
+passionate for music. It transports me. Ha! the divine--ha!--Mozart. Si!
+divine . . . What is it you were saying?"
+
+Of course, rumours had reached him already of the newcomer's intentions.
+Besides, he had received an official warning from Sta. Marta. His manner
+was intended simply to conceal his curiosity and impress his visitor.
+But after he had locked up something valuable in the drawer of a large
+writing-desk in a distant part of the room, he became very affable, and
+walked back to his chair smartly.
+
+"If you intend to build villages and assemble a population near the
+mine, you shall require a decree of the Minister of the Interior for
+that," he suggested in a business-like manner.
+
+"I have already sent a memorial," said Charles Gould, steadily, "and I
+reckon now confidently upon your Excellency's favourable conclusions."
+
+The Excellency was a man of many moods. With the receipt of the money
+a great mellowness had descended upon his simple soul. Unexpectedly he
+fetched a deep sigh.
+
+"Ah, Don Carlos! What we want is advanced men like you in the province.
+The lethargy--the lethargy of these aristocrats! The want of public
+spirit! The absence of all enterprise! I, with my profound studies in
+Europe, you understand--"
+
+With one hand thrust into his swelling bosom, he rose and fell on
+his toes, and for ten minutes, almost without drawing breath, went on
+hurling himself intellectually to the assault of Charles Gould's polite
+silence; and when, stopping abruptly, he fell back into his chair,
+it was as though he had been beaten off from a fortress. To save his
+dignity he hastened to dismiss this silent man with a solemn
+inclination of the head and the words, pronounced with moody, fatigued
+condescension--
+
+"You may depend upon my enlightened goodwill as long as your conduct as
+a good citizen deserves it."
+
+He took up a paper fan and began to cool himself with a consequential
+air, while Charles Gould bowed and withdrew. Then he dropped the fan
+at once, and stared with an appearance of wonder and perplexity at the
+closed door for quite a long time. At last he shrugged his shoulders as
+if to assure himself of his disdain. Cold, dull. No intellectuality. Red
+hair. A true Englishman. He despised him.
+
+His face darkened. What meant this unimpressed and frigid behaviour? He
+was the first of the successive politicians sent out from the capital
+to rule the Occidental Province whom the manner of Charles Gould in
+official intercourse was to strike as offensively independent.
+
+Charles Gould assumed that if the appearance of listening to deplorable
+balderdash must form part of the price he had to pay for being left
+unmolested, the obligation of uttering balderdash personally was by
+no means included in the bargain. He drew the line there. To these
+provincial autocrats, before whom the peaceable population of
+all classes had been accustomed to tremble, the reserve of that
+English-looking engineer caused an uneasiness which swung to and fro
+between cringing and truculence. Gradually all of them discovered that,
+no matter what party was in power, that man remained in most effective
+touch with the higher authorities in Sta. Marta.
+
+This was a fact, and it accounted perfectly for the Goulds being by
+no means so wealthy as the engineer-in-chief on the new railway could
+legitimately suppose. Following the advice of Don Jose Avellanos,
+who was a man of good counsel (though rendered timid by his horrible
+experiences of Guzman Bento's time), Charles Gould had kept clear of the
+capital; but in the current gossip of the foreign residents there he
+was known (with a good deal of seriousness underlying the irony) by the
+nickname of "King of Sulaco." An advocate of the Costaguana Bar, a
+man of reputed ability and good character, member of the distinguished
+Moraga family possessing extensive estates in the Sulaco Valley, was
+pointed out to strangers, with a shade of mystery and respect, as
+the agent of the San Tome mine--"political, you know." He was tall,
+black-whiskered, and discreet. It was known that he had easy access to
+ministers, and that the numerous Costaguana generals were always anxious
+to dine at his house. Presidents granted him audience with facility. He
+corresponded actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose Avellanos;
+but his letters--unless those expressing formally his dutiful
+affection--were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post Office. There
+the envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the frankness of a
+brazen and childish impudence characteristic of some Spanish-American
+Governments. But it must be noted that at about the time of the
+re-opening of the San Tome mine the muleteer who had been employed by
+Charles Gould in his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small
+train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain
+passes between the Sta. Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco. There
+are no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very
+exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not visibly
+require additional transport facilities; but the man seemed to find his
+account in it. A few packages were always found for him whenever he
+took the road. Very brown and wooden, in goatskin breeches with the
+hair outside, he sat near the tail of his own smart mule, his great hat
+turned against the sun, an expression of blissful vacancy on his long
+face, humming day after day a love-song in a plaintive key, or, without
+a change of expression, letting out a yell at his small tropilla in
+front. A round little guitar hung high up on his back; and there was a
+place scooped out artistically in the wood of one of his pack-saddles
+where a tightly rolled piece of paper could be slipped in, the wooden
+plug replaced, and the coarse canvas nailed on again. When in Sulaco
+it was his practice to smoke and doze all day long (as though he had
+no care in the world) on a stone bench outside the doorway of the Casa
+Gould and facing the windows of the Avellanos house. Years and years
+ago his mother had been chief laundry-woman in that family--very
+accomplished in the matter of clear-starching. He himself had been
+born on one of their haciendas. His name was Bonifacio, and Don Jose,
+crossing the street about five o'clock to call on Dona Emilia, always
+acknowledged his humble salute by some movement of hand or head. The
+porters of both houses conversed lazily with him in tones of grave
+intimacy. His evenings he devoted to gambling and to calls in a spirit
+of generous festivity upon the peyne d'oro girls in the more remote
+side-streets of the town. But he, too, was a discreet man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+Those of us whom business or curiosity took to Sulaco in these years
+before the first advent of the railway can remember the steadying effect
+of the San Tome mine upon the life of that remote province. The outward
+appearances had not changed then as they have changed since, as I am
+told, with cable cars running along the streets of the Constitution, and
+carriage roads far into the country, to Rincon and other villages, where
+the foreign merchants and the Ricos generally have their modern villas,
+and a vast railway goods yard by the harbour, which has a quay-side, a
+long range of warehouses, and quite serious, organized labour troubles
+of its own.
+
+Nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of the
+port formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of scum, with
+a patron saint of their own. They went on strike regularly (every
+bull-fight day), a form of trouble that even Nostromo at the height of
+his prestige could never cope with efficiently; but the morning after
+each fiesta, before the Indian market-women had opened their mat
+parasols on the plaza, when the snows of Higuerota gleamed pale over
+the town on a yet black sky, the appearance of a phantom-like horseman
+mounted on a silver-grey mare solved the problem of labour without fail.
+His steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown enclosures
+within the old ramparts, between the black, lightless cluster of huts,
+like cow-byres, like dog-kennels. The horseman hammered with the butt of
+a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias, of obscene lean-to sheds
+sloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble wall, at the wooden
+sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound of snores and sleepy mutters
+within could be heard in the pauses of the thundering clatter of his
+blows. He called out men's names menacingly from the saddle, once,
+twice. The drowsy answers--grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, or
+deprecating--came out into the silent darkness in which the horseman sat
+still, and presently a dark figure would flit out coughing in the still
+air. Sometimes a low-toned woman cried through the window-hole softly,
+"He's coming directly, senor," and the horseman waited silent on a
+motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a
+while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious
+scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first
+and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare,
+who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that
+work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from
+Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along the street and snarling low
+curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell, coming out anxiously in his night
+attire on to the wooden balcony running the whole length of the O.S.N.
+Company's lonely building by the shore, would see the lighters already
+under way, figures moving busily about the cargo cranes, perhaps hear
+the invaluable Nostromo, now dismounted and in the checked shirt and red
+sash of a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders from the end of the jetty
+in a stentorian voice. A fellow in a thousand!
+
+The material apparatus of perfected civilization which obliterates the
+individuality of old towns under the stereotyped conveniences of modern
+life had not intruded as yet; but over the worn-out antiquity of Sulaco,
+so characteristic with its stuccoed houses and barred windows, with
+the great yellowy-white walls of abandoned convents behind the rows of
+sombre green cypresses, that fact--very modern in its spirit--the San
+Tome mine had already thrown its subtle influence. It had altered, too,
+the outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before
+the open portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos with a
+green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome miners. They had
+also adopted white hats with green cord and braid--articles of good
+quality, which could be obtained in the storehouse of the administration
+for very little money. A peaceable Cholo wearing these colours (unusual
+in Costaguana) was somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his
+life on a charge of disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much
+risk of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting party of
+lanceros--a method of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost legal
+in the Republic. Whole villages were known to have volunteered for the
+army in that way; but, as Don Pepe would say with a hopeless shrug to
+Mrs. Gould, "What would you! Poor people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But
+the State must have its soldiers."
+
+Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with pendent
+moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a clean run of a cast-iron jaw,
+suggesting the type of a cattle-herd horseman from the great Llanos of
+the South. "If you will listen to an old officer of Paez, senores," was
+the exordium of all his speeches in the Aristocratic Club of Sulaco,
+where he was admitted on account of his past services to the extinct
+cause of Federation. The club, dating from the days of the proclamation
+of Costaguana's independence, boasted many names of liberators amongst
+its first founders. Suppressed arbitrarily innumerable times by
+various Governments, with memories of proscriptions and of at least one
+wholesale massacre of its members, sadly assembled for a banquet by the
+order of a zealous military commandante (their bodies were afterwards
+stripped naked and flung into the plaza out of the windows by the
+lowest scum of the populace), it was again flourishing, at that period,
+peacefully. It extended to strangers the large hospitality of the cool,
+big rooms of its historic quarters in the front part of a house, once
+the residence of a high official of the Holy Office. The two wings, shut
+up, crumbled behind the nailed doors, and what may be described as a
+grove of young orange trees grown in the unpaved patio concealed the
+utter ruin of the back part facing the gate. You turned in from the
+street, as if entering a secluded orchard, where you came upon the foot
+of a disjointed staircase, guarded by a moss-stained effigy of some
+saintly bishop, mitred and staffed, and bearing the indignity of a
+broken nose meekly, with his fine stone hands crossed on his breast. The
+chocolate-coloured faces of servants with mops of black hair peeped
+at you from above; the click of billiard balls came to your ears, and
+ascending the steps, you would perhaps see in the first sala, very stiff
+upon a straight-backed chair, in a good light, Don Pepe moving his long
+moustaches as he spelt his way, at arm's length, through an old Sta.
+Marta newspaper. His horse--a stony-hearted but persevering black brute
+with a hammer head--you would have seen in the street dozing motionless
+under an immense saddle, with its nose almost touching the curbstone of
+the sidewalk.
+
+Don Pepe, when "down from the mountain," as the phrase, often heard in
+Sulaco, went, could also be seen in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould.
+He sat with modest assurance at some distance from the tea-table.
+With his knees close together, and a kindly twinkle of drollery in his
+deep-set eyes, he would throw his small and ironic pleasantries into the
+current of conversation. There was in that man a sort of sane, humorous
+shrewdness, and a vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple
+old soldiers of proved courage who have seen much desperate service. Of
+course he knew nothing whatever of mining, but his employment was of a
+special kind. He was in charge of the whole population in the territory
+of the mine, which extended from the head of the gorge to where the cart
+track from the foot of the mountain enters the plain, crossing a stream
+over a little wooden bridge painted green--green, the colour of hope,
+being also the colour of the mine.
+
+It was reported in Sulaco that up there "at the mountain" Don Pepe
+walked about precipitous paths, girt with a great sword and in a shabby
+uniform with tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior major. Most miners
+being Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed him as Taita (father), as
+these barefooted people of Costaguana will address anybody who wears
+shoes; but it was Basilio, Mr. Gould's own mozo and the head servant
+of the Casa, who, in all good faith and from a sense of propriety,
+announced him once in the solemn words, "El Senor Gobernador has
+arrived."
+
+Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was delighted beyond
+measure at the aptness of the title, with which he greeted the old major
+banteringly as soon as the latter's soldierly figure appeared in the
+doorway. Don Pepe only smiled in his long moustaches, as much as to say,
+"You might have found a worse name for an old soldier."
+
+And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his small jokes upon
+his function and upon his domain, where he affirmed with humorous
+exaggeration to Mrs. Gould--
+
+"No two stones could come together anywhere without the Gobernador
+hearing the click, senora."
+
+And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger knowingly. Even
+when the number of the miners alone rose to over six hundred he seemed
+to know each of them individually, all the innumerable Joses, Manuels,
+Ignacios, from the villages _primero--segundo--or tercero_ (there were
+three mining villages) under his government. He could distinguish them
+not only by their flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked
+all alike, as if run into the same ancestral mould of suffering and
+patience, but apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of
+reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the two
+shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps, mingled
+together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered picks, swinging
+lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet on the open plateau before
+the entrance of the main tunnel. It was a time of pause. The Indian
+boys leaned idly against the long line of little cradle wagons standing
+empty; the screeners and ore-breakers squatted on their heels smoking
+long cigars; the great wooden shoots slanting over the edge of the
+tunnel plateau were silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of
+water in the open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, with the
+splash and rumble of revolving turbine-wheels, and the thudding march
+of the stamps pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau below.
+The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals hanging on their bare
+breasts, marshalled their squads; and at last the mountain would swallow
+one-half of the silent crowd, while the other half would move off in
+long files down the zigzag paths leading to the bottom of the gorge.
+It was deep; and, far below, a thread of vegetation winding between the
+blazing rock faces resembled a slender green cord, in which three lumpy
+knots of banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees marked the
+Village One, Village Two, Village Three, housing the miners of the Gould
+Concession.
+
+Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in the
+Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had spread over
+the pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the waters of a high
+flood, into the nooks and crannies of the distant blue walls of the
+Sierras. Father first, in a pointed straw hat, then the mother with the
+bigger children, generally also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens,
+except the leader himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the
+family, stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of
+raven hair, a thick, haughty profile, and no load to carry but the small
+guitar of the country and a pair of soft leather sandals tied together
+on her back. At the sight of such parties strung out on the cross
+trails between the pastures, or camped by the side of the royal road,
+travellers on horseback would remark to each other--
+
+"More people going to the San Tome mine. We shall see others to-morrow."
+
+And spurring on in the dusk they would discuss the great news of the
+province, the news of the San Tome mine. A rich Englishman was going
+to work it--and perhaps not an Englishman, Quien sabe! A foreigner with
+much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of men who had been to Sulaco
+with a herd of black bulls for the next corrida had reported that from
+the porch of the posada in Rincon, only a short league from the town,
+the lights on the mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees. And
+there was a woman seen riding a horse sideways, not in the chair seat,
+but upon a sort of saddle, and a man's hat on her head. She walked
+about, too, on foot up the mountain paths. A woman engineer, it seemed
+she was.
+
+"What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!"
+
+"_Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte_."
+
+"Ah, well! if your worship is informed. _Una Americana_; it need be
+something of that sort."
+
+And they would laugh a little with astonishment and scorn, keeping a
+wary eye on the shadows of the road, for one is liable to meet bad men
+when travelling late on the Campo.
+
+And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well, but he seemed
+able, with one attentive, thoughtful glance, to classify each woman,
+girl, or growing youth of his domain. It was only the small fry that
+puzzled him sometimes. He and the padre could be seen frequently side by
+side, meditative and gazing across the street of a village at a lot
+of sedate brown children, trying to sort them out, as it were, in low,
+consulting tones, or else they would together put searching questions
+as to the parentage of some small, staid urchin met wandering, naked and
+grave, along the road with a cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his
+mother's rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hanging in a
+loop of beads low down on his rotund little stomach. The spiritual and
+temporal pastors of the mine flock were very good friends. With Dr.
+Monygham, the medical pastor, who had accepted the charge from Mrs.
+Gould, and lived in the hospital building, they were on not so intimate
+terms. But no one could be on intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who,
+with his twisted shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long
+bitter glance, was mysterious and uncanny. The other two authorities
+worked in harmony. Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert, wrinkled,
+with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great snuff-taker, was an old
+campaigner, too; he had shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of
+the Republic, kneeling by the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in
+the gloom of the forests, to hear the last confession with the smell
+of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum
+and spatter of bullets in his ears. And where was the harm if, at the
+presbytery, they had a game with a pack of greasy cards in the early
+evening, before Don Pepe went his last rounds to see that all the
+watchmen of the mine--a body organized by himself--were at their posts?
+For that last duty before he slept Don Pepe did actually gird his old
+sword on the verandah of an unmistakable American white frame house,
+which Father Roman called the presbytery. Near by, a long, low, dark
+building, steeple-roofed, like a vast barn with a wooden cross over the
+gable, was the miners' chapel. There Father Roman said Mass every day
+before a sombre altar-piece representing the Resurrection, the grey
+slab of the tombstone balanced on one corner, a figure soaring upwards,
+long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light, and a helmeted brown
+legionary smitten down, right across the bituminous foreground. "This
+picture, my children, _muy linda e maravillosa_," Father Roman would say
+to some of his flock, "which you behold here through the munificence
+of the wife of our Senor Administrador, has been painted in Europe, a
+country of saints and miracles, and much greater than our Costaguana."
+And he would take a pinch of snuff with unction. But when once an
+inquisitive spirit desired to know in what direction this Europe was
+situated, whether up or down the coast, Father Roman, to conceal his
+perplexity, became very reserved and severe. "No doubt it is extremely
+far away. But ignorant sinners like you of the San Tome mine should
+think earnestly of everlasting punishment instead of inquiring into the
+magnitude of the earth, with its countries and populations altogether
+beyond your understanding."
+
+With a "Good-night, Padre," "Good-night, Don Pepe," the Gobernador would
+go off, holding up his sabre against his side, his body bent forward,
+with a long, plodding stride in the dark. The jocularity proper to an
+innocent card game for a few cigars or a bundle of yerba was replaced
+at once by the stern duty mood of an officer setting out to visit the
+outposts of an encamped army. One loud blast of the whistle that
+hung from his neck provoked instantly a great shrilling of responding
+whistles, mingled with the barking of dogs, that would calm down slowly
+at last, away up at the head of the gorge; and in the stillness two
+serenos, on guard by the bridge, would appear walking noiselessly
+towards him. On one side of the road a long frame building--the
+store--would be closed and barricaded from end to end; facing it
+another white frame house, still longer, and with a verandah--the
+hospital--would have lights in the two windows of Dr. Monygham's
+quarters. Even the delicate foliage of a clump of pepper trees did not
+stir, so breathless would be the darkness warmed by the radiation of the
+over-heated rocks. Don Pepe would stand still for a moment with the two
+motionless serenos before him, and, abruptly, high up on the sheer face
+of the mountain, dotted with single torches, like drops of fire fallen
+from the two great blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots
+would begin to rattle. The great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering
+speed and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge, and sent
+upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasadero in Rincon swore that
+on calm nights, by listening intently, he could catch the sound in his
+doorway as of a storm in the mountains.
+
+To Charles Gould's fancy it seemed that the sound must reach the
+uttermost limits of the province. Riding at night towards the mine, it
+would meet him at the edge of a little wood just beyond Rincon. There
+was no mistaking the growling mutter of the mountain pouring its stream
+of treasure under the stamps; and it came to his heart with the
+peculiar force of a proclamation thundered forth over the land and the
+marvellousness of an accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious desire.
+He had heard this very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening
+when his wife and himself, after a tortuous ride through a strip of
+forest, had reined in their horses near the stream, and had gazed for
+the first time upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. The head of
+a palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round the corner of the
+San Tome mountain (which is square like a blockhouse) the thread of a
+slender waterfall flashed bright and glassy through the dark green of
+the heavy fronds of tree-ferns. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and,
+stretching his arm up the gorge, had declared with mock solemnity,
+"Behold the very paradise of snakes, senora."
+
+And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back to sleep that
+night at Rincon. The alcalde--an old, skinny Moreno, a sergeant of
+Guzman Bento's time--had cleared respectfully out of his house with his
+three pretty daughters, to make room for the foreign senora and their
+worships the Caballeros. All he asked Charles Gould (whom he took for a
+mysterious and official person) to do for him was to remind the supreme
+Government--El Gobierno supreme--of a pension (amounting to about a
+dollar a month) to which he believed himself entitled. It had been
+promised to him, he affirmed, straightening his bent back martially,
+"many years ago, for my valour in the wars with the wild Indios when a
+young man, senor."
+
+The waterfall existed no longer. The tree-ferns that had luxuriated in
+its spray had died around the dried-up pool, and the high ravine was
+only a big trench half filled up with the refuse of excavations and
+tailings. The torrent, dammed up above, sent its water rushing along
+the open flumes of scooped tree trunks striding on trestle-legs to the
+turbines working the stamps on the lower plateau--the mesa grande of the
+San Tome mountain. Only the memory of the waterfall, with its amazing
+fernery, like a hanging garden above the rocks of the gorge, was
+preserved in Mrs. Gould's water-colour sketch; she had made it hastily
+one day from a cleared patch in the bushes, sitting in the shade of
+a roof of straw erected for her on three rough poles under Don Pepe's
+direction.
+
+Mrs. Gould had seen it all from the beginning: the clearing of the
+wilderness, the making of the road, the cutting of new paths up the
+cliff face of San Tome. For weeks together she had lived on the spot
+with her husband; and she was so little in Sulaco during that year that
+the appearance of the Gould carriage on the Alameda would cause a social
+excitement. From the heavy family coaches full of stately senoras and
+black-eyed senoritas rolling solemnly in the shaded alley white hands
+were waved towards her with animation in a flutter of greetings. Dona
+Emilia was "down from the mountain."
+
+But not for long. Dona Emilia would be gone "up to the mountain" in a
+day or two, and her sleek carriage mules would have an easy time of
+it for another long spell. She had watched the erection of the first
+frame-house put up on the lower mesa for an office and Don Pepe's
+quarters; she heard with a thrill of thankful emotion the first wagon
+load of ore rattle down the then only shoot; she had stood by her
+husband's side perfectly silent, and gone cold all over with excitement
+at the instant when the first battery of only fifteen stamps was put
+in motion for the first time. On the occasion when the fires under the
+first set of retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did
+not retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet bare
+frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lump of silver yielded to
+the hazards of the world by the dark depths of the Gould Concession;
+she had laid her unmercenary hands, with an eagerness that made them
+tremble, upon the first silver ingot turned out still warm from the
+mould; and by her imaginative estimate of its power she endowed that
+lump of metal with a justificative conception, as though it were not
+a mere fact, but something far-reaching and impalpable, like the true
+expression of an emotion or the emergence of a principle.
+
+Don Pepe, extremely interested, too, looked over her shoulder with a
+smile that, making longitudinal folds on his face, caused it to resemble
+a leathern mask with a benignantly diabolic expression.
+
+"Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get hold of this
+insignificant object, that looks, por Dios, very much like a piece of
+tin?" he remarked, jocularly.
+
+Hernandez, the robber, had been an inoffensive, small ranchero,
+kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home during
+one of the civil wars, and forced to serve in the army. There his
+conduct as soldier was exemplary, till, watching his chance, he killed
+his colonel, and managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters,
+who chose him for their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and
+waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle
+and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his
+wonderful escapes from capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the
+villages and the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before
+him, with two revolvers in his belt, go straight to the shop or store,
+select what he wanted, and ride away unopposed because of the terror his
+exploits and his audacity inspired. Poor country people he usually left
+alone; the upper class were often stopped on the roads and robbed; but
+any unlucky official that fell into his hands was sure to get a severe
+flogging. The army officers did not like his name to be mentioned in
+their presence. His followers, mounted on stolen horses, laughed at the
+pursuit of the regular cavalry sent to hunt them down, and whom they
+took pleasure to ambush most scientifically in the broken ground of
+their own fastness. Expeditions had been fitted out; a price had been
+put upon his head; even attempts had been made, treacherously of course,
+to open negotiations with him, without in the slightest way affecting
+the even tenor of his career. At last, in true Costaguana fashion, the
+Fiscal of Tonoro, who was ambitious of the glory of having reduced the
+famous Hernandez, offered him a sum of money and a safe conduct out of
+the country for the betrayal of his band. But Hernandez evidently was
+not of the stuff of which the distinguished military politicians and
+conspirators of Costaguana are made. This clever but common device
+(which frequently works like a charm in putting down revolutions) failed
+with the chief of vulgar Salteadores. It promised well for the Fiscal at
+first, but ended very badly for the squadron of lanceros posted (by the
+Fiscal's directions) in a fold of the ground into which Hernandez had
+promised to lead his unsuspecting followers They came, indeed, at the
+appointed time, but creeping on their hands and knees through the bush,
+and only let their presence be known by a general discharge of firearms,
+which emptied many saddles. The troopers who escaped came riding very
+hard into Tonoro. It is said that their commanding officer (who, being
+better mounted, rode far ahead of the rest) afterwards got into a state
+of despairing intoxication and beat the ambitious Fiscal severely with
+the flat of his sabre in the presence of his wife and daughters,
+for bringing this disgrace upon the National Army. The highest civil
+official of Tonoro, falling to the ground in a swoon, was further kicked
+all over the body and rowelled with sharp spurs about the neck and
+face because of the great sensitiveness of his military colleague.
+This gossip of the inland Campo, so characteristic of the rulers of the
+country with its story of oppression, inefficiency, fatuous methods,
+treachery, and savage brutality, was perfectly known to Mrs. Gould.
+That it should be accepted with no indignant comment by people of
+intelligence, refinement, and character as something inherent in the
+nature of things was one of the symptoms of degradation that had the
+power to exasperate her almost to the verge of despair. Still looking at
+the ingot of silver, she shook her head at Don Pepe's remark--
+
+"If it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your Government, Don
+Pepe, many an outlaw now with Hernandez would be living peaceably and
+happy by the honest work of his hands."
+
+"Senora," cried Don Pepe, with enthusiasm, "it is true! It is as if God
+had given you the power to look into the very breasts of people. You
+have seen them working round you, Dona Emilia--meek as lambs, patient
+like their own burros, brave like lions. I have led them to the very
+muzzles of guns--I, who stand here before you, senora--in the time of
+Paez, who was full of generosity, and in courage only approached by the
+uncle of Don Carlos here, as far as I know. No wonder there are bandits
+in the Campo when there are none but thieves, swindlers, and sanguinary
+macaques to rule us in Sta. Marta. However, all the same, a bandit is a
+bandit, and we shall have a dozen good straight Winchesters to ride with
+the silver down to Sulaco."
+
+Mrs. Gould's ride with the first silver escort to Sulaco was the closing
+episode of what she called "my camp life" before she had settled in her
+town-house permanently, as was proper and even necessary for the wife of
+the administrator of such an important institution as the San Tome mine.
+For the San Tome mine was to become an institution, a rallying point
+for everything in the province that needed order and stability to live.
+Security seemed to flow upon this land from the mountain-gorge. The
+authorities of Sulaco had learned that the San Tome mine could make it
+worth their while to leave things and people alone. This was the nearest
+approach to the rule of common-sense and justice Charles Gould felt it
+possible to secure at first. In fact, the mine, with its organization,
+its population growing fiercely attached to their position of privileged
+safety, with its armoury, with its Don Pepe, with its armed body of
+serenos (where, it was said, many an outlaw and deserter--and even some
+members of Hernandez's band--had found a place), the mine was a power in
+the land. As a certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had exclaimed with
+a hollow laugh, once, when discussing the line of action taken by the
+Sulaco authorities at a time of political crisis--
+
+"You call these men Government officials? They? Never! They are
+officials of the mine--officials of the Concession--I tell you."
+
+The prominent man (who was then a person in power, with a lemon-coloured
+face and a very short and curly, not to say woolly, head of hair) went
+so far in his temporary discontent as to shake his yellow fist under the
+nose of his interlocutor, and shriek--
+
+"Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Gefe, the chief of
+the police, the chief of the customs, the general, all, all, are the
+officials of that Gould."
+
+Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow on
+for a space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent man's passion
+would end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders. After all, he seemed
+to say, what did it matter as long as the minister himself was not
+forgotten during his brief day of authority? But all the same, the
+unofficial agent of the San Tome mine, working for a good cause, had
+his moments of anxiety, which were reflected in his letters to Don Jose
+Avellanos, his maternal uncle.
+
+"No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set foot on that part of
+Costaguana which lies beyond the San Tome bridge," Don Pepe used to
+assure Mrs. Gould. "Except, of course, as an honoured guest--for our
+Senor Administrador is a deep politico." But to Charles Gould, in
+his own room, the old Major would remark with a grim and soldierly
+cheeriness, "We are all playing our heads at this game."
+
+Don Jose Avellanos would mutter "Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my soul,"
+with an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow, in a curious
+way, seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily discomfort. But that,
+perhaps, could only be visible to the initiated. And for the initiated
+it was a wonderful place, this drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its
+momentary glimpses of the master--El Senor Administrador--older, harder,
+mysteriously silent, with the lines deepened on his English, ruddy,
+out-of-doors complexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman's legs across
+the doorways, either just "back from the mountain" or with jingling
+spurs and riding-whip under his arm, on the point of starting "for the
+mountain." Then Don Pepe, modestly martial in his chair, the llanero who
+seemed somehow to have found his martial jocularity, his knowledge
+of the world, and his manner perfect for his station, in the midst of
+savage armed contests with his kind; Avellanos, polished and familiar,
+the diplomatist with his loquacity covering much caution and wisdom in
+delicate advice, with his manuscript of a historical work on Costaguana,
+entitled "Fifty Years of Misrule," which, at present, he thought it was
+not prudent (even if it were possible) "to give to the world";
+these three, and also Dona Emilia amongst them, gracious, small,
+and fairy-like, before the glittering tea-set, with one common
+master-thought in their heads, with one common feeling of a tense
+situation, with one ever-present aim to preserve the inviolable
+character of the mine at every cost. And there was also to be seen
+Captain Mitchell, a little apart, near one of the long windows, with an
+air of old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood about him, slightly pompous,
+in a white waistcoat, a little disregarded and unconscious of it;
+utterly in the dark, and imagining himself to be in the thick of things.
+The good man, having spent a clear thirty years of his life on the high
+seas before getting what he called a "shore billet," was astonished at
+the importance of transactions (other than relating to shipping) which
+take place on dry land. Almost every event out of the usual daily
+course "marked an epoch" for him or else was "history"; unless with his
+pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of his rubicund, rather
+handsome face, set off by snow-white close hair and short whiskers, he
+would mutter--
+
+"Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake."
+
+The reception of the first consignment of San Tome silver for shipment
+to San Francisco in one of the O.S.N. Co.'s mail-boats had, of course,
+"marked an epoch" for Captain Mitchell. The ingots packed in boxes of
+stiff ox-hide with plaited handles, small enough to be carried easily by
+two men, were brought down by the serenos of the mine walking in careful
+couples along the half-mile or so of steep, zigzag paths to the foot of
+the mountain. There they would be loaded into a string of two-wheeled
+carts, resembling roomy coffers with a door at the back, and harnessed
+tandem with two mules each, waiting under the guard of armed and mounted
+serenos. Don Pepe padlocked each door in succession, and at the signal
+of his whistle the string of carts would move off, closely surrounded by
+the clank of spur and carbine, with jolts and cracking of whips, with a
+sudden deep rumble over the boundary bridge ("into the land of thieves
+and sanguinary macaques," Don Pepe defined that crossing); hats bobbing
+in the first light of the dawn, on the heads of cloaked figures;
+Winchesters on hip; bridle hands protruding lean and brown from under
+the falling folds of the ponchos. The convoy skirting a little wood,
+along the mine trail, between the mud huts and low walls of Rincon,
+increased its pace on the camino real, mules urged to speed, escort
+galloping, Don Carlos riding alone ahead of a dust storm affording a
+vague vision of long ears of mules, of fluttering little green and white
+flags stuck upon each cart; of raised arms in a mob of sombreros with
+the white gleam of ranging eyes; and Don Pepe, hardly visible in the
+rear of that rattling dust trail, with a stiff seat and impassive face,
+rising and falling rhythmically on an ewe-necked silver-bitted black
+brute with a hammer head.
+
+The sleepy people in the little clusters of huts, in the small ranches
+near the road, recognized by the headlong sound the charge of the San
+Tome silver escort towards the crumbling wall of the city on the Campo
+side. They came to the doors to see it dash by over ruts and stones,
+with a clatter and clank and cracking of whips, with the reckless rush
+and precise driving of a field battery hurrying into action, and the
+solitary English figure of the Senor Administrador riding far ahead in
+the lead.
+
+In the fenced roadside paddocks loose horses galloped wildly for a
+while; the heavy cattle stood up breast deep in the grass, lowing
+mutteringly at the flying noise; a meek Indian villager would glance
+back once and hasten to shove his loaded little donkey bodily against a
+wall, out of the way of the San Tome silver escort going to the sea; a
+small knot of chilly leperos under the Stone Horse of the Alameda would
+mutter: "Caramba!" on seeing it take a wide curve at a gallop and dart
+into the empty Street of the Constitution; for it was considered the
+correct thing, the only proper style by the mule-drivers of the San Tome
+mine to go through the waking town from end to end without a check in
+the speed as if chased by a devil.
+
+The early sunshine glowed on the delicate primrose, pale pink, pale
+blue fronts of the big houses with all their gates shut yet, and no face
+behind the iron bars of the windows. In the whole sunlit range of empty
+balconies along the street only one white figure would be visible
+high up above the clear pavement--the wife of the Senor
+Administrador--leaning over to see the escort go by to the harbour, a
+mass of heavy, fair hair twisted up negligently on her little head, and
+a lot of lace about the neck of her muslin wrapper. With a smile to her
+husband's single, quick, upward glance, she would watch the whole thing
+stream past below her feet with an orderly uproar, till she answered
+by a friendly sign the salute of the galloping Don Pepe, the stiff,
+deferential inclination with a sweep of the hat below the knee.
+
+The string of padlocked carts lengthened, the size of the escort grew
+bigger as the years went on. Every three months an increasing stream of
+treasure swept through the streets of Sulaco on its way to the strong
+room in the O.S.N. Co.'s building by the harbour, there to await
+shipment for the North. Increasing in volume, and of immense value also;
+for, as Charles Gould told his wife once with some exultation, there had
+never been seen anything in the world to approach the vein of the
+Gould Concession. For them both, each passing of the escort under the
+balconies of the Casa Gould was like another victory gained in the
+conquest of peace for Sulaco.
+
+No doubt the initial action of Charles Gould had been helped at the
+beginning by a period of comparative peace which occurred just about
+that time; and also by the general softening of manners as compared with
+the epoch of civil wars whence had emerged the iron tyranny of Guzman
+Bento of fearful memory. In the contests that broke out at the end of
+his rule (which had kept peace in the country for a whole fifteen years)
+there was more fatuous imbecility, plenty of cruelty and suffering
+still, but much less of the old-time fierce and blindly ferocious
+political fanaticism. It was all more vile, more base, more
+contemptible, and infinitely more manageable in the very outspoken
+cynicism of motives. It was more clearly a brazen-faced scramble for a
+constantly diminishing quantity of booty; since all enterprise had been
+stupidly killed in the land. Thus it came to pass that the province of
+Sulaco, once the field of cruel party vengeances, had become in a way
+one of the considerable prizes of political career. The great of the
+earth (in Sta. Marta) reserved the posts in the old Occidental State
+to those nearest and dearest to them: nephews, brothers, husbands
+of favourite sisters, bosom friends, trusty supporters--or prominent
+supporters of whom perhaps they were afraid. It was the blessed province
+of great opportunities and of largest salaries; for the San Tome mine
+had its own unofficial pay list, whose items and amounts, fixed in
+consultation by Charles Gould and Senor Avellanos, were known to a
+prominent business man in the United States, who for twenty minutes or
+so in every month gave his undivided attention to Sulaco affairs. At
+the same time the material interests of all sorts, backed up by the
+influence of the San Tome mine, were quietly gathering substance in that
+part of the Republic. If, for instance, the Sulaco Collectorship was
+generally understood, in the political world of the capital, to open the
+way to the Ministry of Finance, and so on for every official post, then,
+on the other hand, the despondent business circles of the Republic had
+come to consider the Occidental Province as the promised land of safety,
+especially if a man managed to get on good terms with the administration
+of the mine. "Charles Gould; excellent fellow! Absolutely necessary to
+make sure of him before taking a single step. Get an introduction to
+him from Moraga if you can--the agent of the King of Sulaco, don't you
+know."
+
+No wonder, then, that Sir John, coming from Europe to smooth the path
+for his railway, had been meeting the name (and even the nickname) of
+Charles Gould at every turn in Costaguana. The agent of the San Tome
+Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished, well-informed gentleman, Sir
+John thought him) had certainly helped so greatly in bringing about the
+presidential tour that he began to think that there was something in
+the faint whispers hinting at the immense occult influence of the Gould
+Concession. What was currently whispered was this--that the San Tome
+Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last revolution,
+which had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don Vincente Ribiera, a
+man of culture and of unblemished character, invested with a mandate
+of reform by the best elements of the State. Serious, well-informed
+men seemed to believe the fact, to hope for better things, for the
+establishment of legality, of good faith and order in public life. So
+much the better, then, thought Sir John. He worked always on a great
+scale; there was a loan to the State, and a project for systematic
+colonization of the Occidental Province, involved in one vast scheme
+with the construction of the National Central Railway. Good faith,
+order, honesty, peace, were badly wanted for this great development of
+material interests. Anybody on the side of these things, and especially
+if able to help, had an importance in Sir John's eyes. He had not been
+disappointed in the "King of Sulaco." The local difficulties had fallen
+away, as the engineer-in-chief had foretold they would, before Charles
+Gould's mediation. Sir John had been extremely feted in Sulaco, next
+to the President-Dictator, a fact which might have accounted for the
+evident ill-humour General Montero displayed at lunch given on board
+the Juno just before she was to sail, taking away from Sulaco the
+President-Dictator and the distinguished foreign guests in his train.
+
+The Excellentissimo ("the hope of honest men," as Don Jose had addressed
+him in a public speech delivered in the name of the Provincial Assembly
+of Sulaco) sat at the head of the long table; Captain Mitchell,
+positively stony-eyed and purple in the face with the solemnity of
+this "historical event," occupied the foot as the representative of the
+O.S.N. Company in Sulaco, the hosts of that informal function, with the
+captain of the ship and some minor officials from the shore around him.
+Those cheery, swarthy little gentlemen cast jovial side-glances at the
+bottles of champagne beginning to pop behind the guests' backs in the
+hands of the ship's stewards. The amber wine creamed up to the rims of
+the glasses.
+
+Charles Gould had his place next to a foreign envoy, who, in a listless
+undertone, had been talking to him fitfully of hunting and shooting.
+The well-nourished, pale face, with an eyeglass and drooping yellow
+moustache, made the Senor Administrador appear by contrast twice as
+sunbaked, more flaming red, a hundred times more intensely and silently
+alive. Don Jose Avellanos touched elbows with the other foreign
+diplomat, a dark man with a quiet, watchful, self-confident demeanour,
+and a touch of reserve. All etiquette being laid aside on the occasion,
+General Montero was the only one there in full uniform, so stiff with
+embroideries in front that his broad chest seemed protected by a cuirass
+of gold. Sir John at the beginning had got away from high places for the
+sake of sitting near Mrs. Gould.
+
+The great financier was trying to express to her his grateful sense
+of her hospitality and of his obligation to her husband's "enormous
+influence in this part of the country," when she interrupted him by a
+low "Hush!" The President was going to make an informal pronouncement.
+
+The Excellentissimo was on his legs. He said only a few words, evidently
+deeply felt, and meant perhaps mostly for Avellanos--his old friend--as
+to the necessity of unremitting effort to secure the lasting welfare of
+the country emerging after this last struggle, he hoped, into a period
+of peace and material prosperity.
+
+Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice, looking
+at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body, obese to the
+point of infirmity, thought that this man of delicate and melancholy
+mind, physically almost a cripple, coming out of his retirement into a
+dangerous strife at the call of his fellows, had the right to speak with
+the authority of his self-sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He
+was more pathetic than promising, this first civilian Chief of the
+State Costaguana had ever known, pronouncing, glass in hand, his simple
+watchwords of honesty, peace, respect for law, political good faith
+abroad and at home--the safeguards of national honour.
+
+He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices that
+followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy, drooping
+eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy dullness from face
+to face. The military backwoods hero of the party, though secretly
+impressed by the sudden novelties and splendours of his position (he
+had never been on board a ship before, and had hardly ever seen the sea
+except from a distance), understood by a sort of instinct the advantage
+his surly, unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all
+these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was looking
+at him? he wondered to himself angrily. He was able to spell out the
+print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed the "greatest
+military exploit of modern times."
+
+"My husband wanted the railway," Mrs. Gould said to Sir John in the
+general murmur of resumed conversations. "All this brings nearer the
+sort of future we desire for the country, which has waited for it in
+sorrow long enough, God knows. But I will confess that the other day,
+during my afternoon drive when I suddenly saw an Indian boy ride out
+of a wood with the red flag of a surveying party in his hand, I felt
+something of a shock. The future means change--an utter change. And yet
+even here there are simple and picturesque things that one would like to
+preserve."
+
+Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now to hush Mrs. Gould.
+
+"General Montero is going to speak," he whispered, and almost
+immediately added, in comic alarm, "Heavens! he's going to propose my
+own health, I believe."
+
+General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple
+of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared
+at his side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with
+his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black,
+dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised and sinister vaquero.
+The drone of his voice had a strangely rasping, soulless ring. He
+floundered, lowering, through a few vague sentences; then suddenly
+raising his big head and his voice together, burst out harshly--
+
+"The honour of the country is in the hands of the army. I assure you
+I shall be faithful to it." He hesitated till his roaming eyes met Sir
+John's face upon which he fixed a lurid, sleepy glance; and the figure
+of the lately negotiated loan came into his mind. He lifted his glass.
+"I drink to the health of the man who brings us a million and a half of
+pounds."
+
+He tossed off his champagne, and sat down heavily with a half-surprised,
+half-bullying look all round the faces in the profound, as if appalled,
+silence which succeeded the felicitous toast. Sir John did not move.
+
+"I don't think I am called upon to rise," he murmured to Mrs. Gould.
+"That sort of thing speaks for itself." But Don Jose Avellanos came
+to the rescue with a short oration, in which he alluded pointedly to
+England's goodwill towards Costaguana--"a goodwill," he continued,
+significantly, "of which I, having been in my time accredited to the
+Court of St. James, am able to speak with some knowledge."
+
+Only then Sir John thought fit to respond, which he did gracefully in
+bad French, punctuated by bursts of applause and the "Hear! Hears!"
+of Captain Mitchell, who was able to understand a word now and then.
+Directly he had done, the financier of railways turned to Mrs. Gould--
+
+"You were good enough to say that you intended to ask me for something,"
+he reminded her, gallantly. "What is it? Be assured that any request
+from you would be considered in the light of a favour to myself."
+
+She thanked him by a gracious smile. Everybody was rising from the
+table.
+
+"Let us go on deck," she proposed, "where I'll be able to point out to
+you the very object of my request."
+
+An enormous national flag of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow, with
+two green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the mainmast head
+of the Juno. A multitude of fireworks being let off in their thousands
+at the water's edge in honour of the President kept up a mysterious
+crepitating noise half round the harbour. Now and then a lot of rockets,
+swishing upwards invisibly, detonated overhead with only a puff of smoke
+in the bright sky. Crowds of people could be seen between the town gate
+and the harbour, under the bunches of multicoloured flags fluttering on
+tall poles. Faint bursts of military music would be heard suddenly, and
+the remote sound of shouting. A knot of ragged negroes at the end of the
+wharf kept on loading and firing a small iron cannon time after time. A
+greyish haze of dust hung thin and motionless against the sun.
+
+Don Vincente Ribiera made a few steps under the deck-awning, leaning on
+the arm of Senor Avellanos; a wide circle was formed round him, where
+the mirthless smile of his dark lips and the sightless glitter of his
+spectacles could be seen turning amiably from side to side. The
+informal function arranged on purpose on board the Juno to give the
+President-Dictator an opportunity to meet intimately some of his most
+notable adherents in Sulaco was drawing to an end. On one side, General
+Montero, his bald head covered now by a plumed cocked hat, remained
+motionless on a skylight seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded
+on the hilt of the sabre standing upright between his legs. The white
+plume, the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the
+moustaches under the curved beak, the mass of gold on sleeves and
+breast, the high shining boots with enormous spurs, the working
+nostrils, the imbecile and domineering stare of the glorious victor of
+Rio Seco had in them something ominous and incredible; the exaggeration
+of a cruel caricature, the fatuity of solemn masquerading, the atrocious
+grotesqueness of some military idol of Aztec conception and European
+bedecking, awaiting the homage of worshippers. Don Jose approached
+diplomatically this weird and inscrutable portent, and Mrs. Gould turned
+her fascinated eyes away at last.
+
+Charles, coming up to take leave of Sir John, heard him say, as he bent
+over his wife's hand, "Certainly. Of course, my dear Mrs. Gould, for a
+protege of yours! Not the slightest difficulty. Consider it done."
+
+Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don Jose Avellanos was
+very silent. Even in the Gould carriage he did not open his lips for
+a long time. The mules trotted slowly away from the wharf between the
+extended hands of the beggars, who for that day seemed to have abandoned
+in a body the portals of churches. Charles Gould sat on the back seat
+and looked away upon the plain. A multitude of booths made of green
+boughs, of rushes, of odd pieces of plank eked out with bits of canvas
+had been erected all over it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit,
+of cigars. Over little heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting
+on mats, cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water for the
+mate gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing voices to the country
+people. A racecourse had been staked out for the vaqueros; and away to
+the left, from where the crowd was massed thickly about a huge temporary
+erection, like a circus tent of wood with a conical grass roof, came the
+resonant twanging of harp strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the
+grave drumming throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily through the
+shrill choruses of the dancers.
+
+Charles Gould said presently--
+
+"All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Company. There will
+be no more popular feasts held here."
+
+Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this opportunity to
+mention how she had just obtained from Sir John the promise that the
+house occupied by Giorgio Viola should not be interfered with. She
+declared she could never understand why the survey engineers ever talked
+of demolishing that old building. It was not in the way of the projected
+harbour branch of the line in the least.
+
+She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at once the old
+Genoese, who came out bare-headed and stood by the carriage step.
+She talked to him in Italian, of course, and he thanked her with calm
+dignity. An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from the bottom of his
+heart for keeping the roof over the heads of his wife and children. He
+was too old to wander any more.
+
+"And is it for ever, signora?" he asked.
+
+"For as long as you like."
+
+"Bene. Then the place must be named, It was not worth while before."
+
+He smiled ruggedly, with a running together of wrinkles at the corners
+of his eyes. "I shall set about the painting of the name to-morrow."
+
+"And what is it going to be, Giorgio?"
+
+"Albergo d'Italia Una," said the old Garibaldino, looking away for a
+moment. "More in memory of those who have died," he added, "than for the
+country stolen from us soldiers of liberty by the craft of that accursed
+Piedmontese race of kings and ministers."
+
+Mrs. Gould smiled slightly, and, bending over a little, began to inquire
+about his wife and children. He had sent them into town on that day. The
+padrona was better in health; many thanks to the signora for inquiring.
+
+People were passing in twos and threes, in whole parties of men and
+women attended by trotting children. A horseman mounted on a silver-grey
+mare drew rein quietly in the shade of the house after taking off his
+hat to the party in the carriage, who returned smiles and familiar
+nods. Old Viola, evidently very pleased with the news he had just heard,
+interrupted himself for a moment to tell him rapidly that the house was
+secured, by the kindness of the English signora, for as long as he liked
+to keep it. The other listened attentively, but made no response.
+
+When the carriage moved on he took off his hat again, a grey sombrero
+with a silver cord and tassels. The bright colours of a Mexican serape
+twisted on the cantle, the enormous silver buttons on the embroidered
+leather jacket, the row of tiny silver buttons down the seam of the
+trousers, the snowy linen, a silk sash with embroidered ends, the silver
+plates on headstall and saddle, proclaimed the unapproachable style of
+the famous Capataz de Cargadores--a Mediterranean sailor--got up with
+more finished splendour than any well-to-do young ranchero of the Campo
+had ever displayed on a high holiday.
+
+"It is a great thing for me," murmured old Giorgio, still thinking of
+the house, for now he had grown weary of change. "The signora just said
+a word to the Englishman."
+
+"The old Englishman who has enough money to pay for a railway? He is
+going off in an hour," remarked Nostromo, carelessly. "_Buon viaggio_,
+then. I've guarded his bones all the way from the Entrada pass down to
+the plain and into Sulaco, as though he had been my own father."
+
+Old Giorgio only moved his head sideways absently. Nostromo pointed
+after the Goulds' carriage, nearing the grass-grown gate in the old town
+wall that was like a wall of matted jungle.
+
+"And I have sat alone at night with my revolver in the Company's
+warehouse time and again by the side of that other Englishman's heap of
+silver, guarding it as though it had been my own."
+
+Viola seemed lost in thought. "It is a great thing for me," he repeated
+again, as if to himself.
+
+"It is," agreed the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, calmly. "Listen,
+Vecchio--go in and bring me, out a cigar, but don't look for it in my
+room. There's nothing there."
+
+Viola stepped into the cafe and came out directly, still absorbed in his
+idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in his moustache,
+"Children growing up--and girls, too! Girls!" He sighed and fell silent.
+
+"What, only one?" remarked Nostromo, looking down with a sort of comic
+inquisitiveness at the unconscious old man. "No matter," he added, with
+lofty negligence; "one is enough till another is wanted."
+
+He lit it and let the match drop from his passive fingers. Giorgio Viola
+looked up, and said abruptly--
+
+"My son would have been just such a fine young man as you, Gian'
+Battista, if he had lived."
+
+"What? Your son? But you are right, padrone. If he had been like me he
+would have been a man."
+
+He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the booths, checking
+the mare almost to a standstill now and then for children, for the
+groups of people from the distant Campo, who stared after him with
+admiration. The Company's lightermen saluted him from afar; and the
+greatly envied Capataz de Cargadores advanced, amongst murmurs of
+recognition and obsequious greetings, towards the huge circus-like
+erection. The throng thickened; the guitars tinkled louder; other
+horsemen sat motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the crowd; it
+eddied and pushed before the doors of the high-roofed building, whence
+issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance music
+vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by the
+tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The barbarous and
+imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a crowd, and that even
+Europeans cannot hear without a strange emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo
+on to its source, while a man, wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho,
+walked by his stirrup, and, buffeted right and left, begged "his
+worship" insistently for employment on the wharf. He whined, offering
+the Senor Capataz half his daily pay for the privilege of being admitted
+to the swaggering fraternity of Cargadores; the other half would
+be enough for him, he protested. But Captain Mitchell's right-hand
+man--"invaluable for our work--a perfectly incorruptible fellow"--after
+looking down critically at the ragged mozo, shook his head without a
+word in the uproar going on around.
+
+The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had to pull up. From
+the doors of the dance hall men and women emerged tottering, streaming
+with sweat, trembling in every limb, to lean, panting, with staring eyes
+and parted lips, against the wall of the structure, where the harps
+and guitars played on with mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder.
+Hundreds of hands clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at
+once would sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with
+a dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in the
+crowd, struck the resplendent Capataz on the cheek.
+
+He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did not turn his
+head. When at last he condescended to look round, the throng near him
+had parted to make way for a pretty Morenita, her hair held up by a
+small golden comb, who was walking towards him in the open space.
+
+Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a snowy chemisette; the
+blue woollen skirt, with all the fullness gathered in front, scanty on
+the hips and tight across the back, disclosed the provoking action of
+her walk. She came straight on and laid her hand on the mare's neck with
+a timid, coquettish look upwards out of the corner of her eyes.
+
+"_Querido_," she murmured, caressingly, "why do you pretend not to see me
+when I pass?"
+
+"Because I don't love thee any more," said Nostromo, deliberately, after
+a moment of reflective silence.
+
+The hand on the mare's neck trembled suddenly. She dropped her head
+before all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the generous, the
+terrible, the inconstant Capataz de Cargadores, and his Morenita.
+
+Nostromo, looking down, saw tears beginning to fall down her face.
+
+"Has it come, then, ever beloved of my heart?" she whispered. "Is it
+true?"
+
+"No," said Nostromo, looking away carelessly. "It was a lie. I love thee
+as much as ever."
+
+"Is that true?" she cooed, joyously, her cheeks still wet with tears.
+
+"It is true."
+
+"True on the life?"
+
+"As true as that; but thou must not ask me to swear it on the Madonna
+that stands in thy room." And the Capataz laughed a little in response
+to the grins of the crowd.
+
+She pouted--very pretty--a little uneasy.
+
+"No, I will not ask for that. I can see love in your eyes." She laid
+her hand on his knee. "Why are you trembling like this? From love?" she
+continued, while the cavernous thundering of the gombo went on without a
+pause. "But if you love her as much as that, you must give your Paquita
+a gold-mounted rosary of beads for the neck of her Madonna."
+
+"No," said Nostromo, looking into her uplifted, begging eyes, which
+suddenly turned stony with surprise.
+
+"No? Then what else will your worship give me on the day of the fiesta?"
+she asked, angrily; "so as not to shame me before all these people."
+
+"There is no shame for thee in getting nothing from thy lover for once."
+
+"True! The shame is your worship's--my poor lover's," she flared up,
+sarcastically.
+
+Laughs were heard at her anger, at her retort. What an audacious
+spitfire she was! The people aware of this scene were calling out
+urgently to others in the crowd. The circle round the silver-grey mare
+narrowed slowly.
+
+The girl went off a pace or two, confronting the mocking curiosity of
+the eyes, then flung back to the stirrup, tiptoeing, her enraged face
+turned up to Nostromo with a pair of blazing eyes. He bent low to her in
+the saddle.
+
+"Juan," she hissed, "I could stab thee to the heart!"
+
+The dreaded Capataz de Cargadores, magnificent and carelessly public
+in his amours, flung his arm round her neck and kissed her spluttering
+lips. A murmur went round.
+
+"A knife!" he demanded at large, holding her firmly by the shoulder.
+
+Twenty blades flashed out together in the circle. A young man in holiday
+attire, bounding in, thrust one in Nostromo's hand and bounded back into
+the ranks, very proud of himself. Nostromo had not even looked at him.
+
+"Stand on my foot," he commanded the girl, who, suddenly subdued, rose
+lightly, and when he had her up, encircling her waist, her face near to
+his, he pressed the knife into her little hand.
+
+"No, Morenita! You shall not put me to shame," he said. "You shall have
+your present; and so that everyone should know who is your lover to-day,
+you may cut all the silver buttons off my coat."
+
+There were shouts of laughter and applause at this witty freak, while
+the girl passed the keen blade, and the impassive rider jingled in his
+palm the increasing hoard of silver buttons. He eased her to the ground
+with both her hands full. After whispering for a while with a very
+strenuous face, she walked away, staring haughtily, and vanished into
+the crowd.
+
+The circle had broken up, and the lordly Capataz de Cargadores, the
+indispensable man, the tried and trusty Nostromo, the Mediterranean
+sailor come ashore casually to try his luck in Costaguana, rode slowly
+towards the harbour. The Juno was just then swinging round; and even
+as Nostromo reined up again to look on, a flag ran up on the improvised
+flagstaff erected in an ancient and dismantled little fort at the
+harbour entrance. Half a battery of field guns had been hurried over
+there from the Sulaco barracks for the purpose of firing the regulation
+salutes for the President-Dictator and the War Minister. As the
+mail-boat headed through the pass, the badly timed reports announced the
+end of Don Vincente Ribiera's first official visit to Sulaco, and for
+Captain Mitchell the end of another "historic occasion." Next time when
+the "Hope of honest men" was to come that way, a year and a half later,
+it was unofficially, over the mountain tracks, fleeing after a defeat on
+a lame mule, to be only just saved by Nostromo from an ignominious death
+at the hands of a mob. It was a very different event, of which Captain
+Mitchell used to say--
+
+"It was history--history, sir! And that fellow of mine, Nostromo, you
+know, was right in it. Absolutely making history, sir."
+
+But this event, creditable to Nostromo, was to lead immediately to
+another, which could not be classed either as "history" or as "a
+mistake" in Captain Mitchell's phraseology. He had another word for it.
+
+"Sir" he used to say afterwards, "that was no mistake. It was a
+fatality. A misfortune, pure and simple, sir. And that poor fellow of
+mine was right in it--right in the middle of it! A fatality, if ever
+there was one--and to my mind he has never been the same man since."
+
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND THE ISABELS
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Through good and evil report in the varying fortune of that struggle
+which Don Jose had characterized in the phrase, "the fate of national
+honesty trembles in the balance," the Gould Concession, "Imperium in
+Imperio," had gone on working; the square mountain had gone on pouring
+its treasure down the wooden shoots to the unresting batteries of
+stamps; the lights of San Tome had twinkled night after night upon the
+great, limitless shadow of the Campo; every three months the silver
+escort had gone down to the sea as if neither the war nor its
+consequences could ever affect the ancient Occidental State secluded
+beyond its high barrier of the Cordillera. All the fighting took place
+on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated peaks lorded over by
+the white dome of Higuerota and as yet unbreached by the railway, of
+which only the first part, the easy Campo part from Sulaco to the Ivie
+Valley at the foot of the pass, had been laid. Neither did the telegraph
+line cross the mountains yet; its poles, like slender beacons on the
+plain, penetrated into the forest fringe of the foot-hills cut by
+the deep avenue of the track; and its wire ended abruptly in the
+construction camp at a white deal table supporting a Morse apparatus,
+in a long hut of planks with a corrugated iron roof overshadowed by
+gigantic cedar trees--the quarters of the engineer in charge of the
+advance section.
+
+The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in railway material, and
+with the movements of troops along the coast. The O.S.N. Company found
+much occupation for its fleet. Costaguana had no navy, and, apart from a
+few coastguard cutters, there were no national ships except a couple of
+old merchant steamers used as transports.
+
+Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick of history, found
+time for an hour or so during an afternoon in the drawing-room of the
+Casa Gould, where, with a strange ignorance of the real forces at work
+around him, he professed himself delighted to get away from the
+strain of affairs. He did not know what he would have done without his
+invaluable Nostromo, he declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics
+gave him more work--he confided to Mrs. Gould--than he had bargained
+for.
+
+Don Jose Avellanos had displayed in the service of the endangered
+Ribiera Government an organizing activity and an eloquence of which
+the echoes reached even Europe. For, after the new loan to the Ribiera
+Government, Europe had become interested in Costaguana. The Sala of the
+Provincial Assembly (in the Municipal Buildings of Sulaco), with its
+portraits of the Liberators on the walls and an old flag of Cortez
+preserved in a glass case above the President's chair, had heard all
+these speeches--the early one containing the impassioned declaration
+"Militarism is the enemy," the famous one of the "trembling balance"
+delivered on the occasion of the vote for the raising of a second
+Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming Government; and when the
+provinces again displayed their old flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento's
+time) there was another of those great orations, when Don Jose greeted
+these old emblems of the war of Independence, brought out again in the
+name of new Ideals. The old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For
+his part he did not wish to revive old political doctrines. They were
+perishable. They died. But the doctrine of political rectitude was
+immortal. The second Sulaco regiment, to whom he was presenting this
+flag, was going to show its valour in a contest for order, peace,
+progress; for the establishment of national self-respect without
+which--he declared with energy--"we are a reproach and a byword amongst
+the powers of the world."
+
+Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly with
+his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later story of his
+captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known
+to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not been a victim of
+the ferocious and summary executions which marked the course of that
+tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of
+political fanaticism. The power of Supreme Government had become in his
+dull mind an object of strange worship, as if it were some sort of
+cruel deity. It was incarnated in himself, and his adversaries, the
+Federalists, were the supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and
+fear, as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For years he had
+carried about at the tail of the Army of Pacification, all over the
+country, a captive band of such atrocious criminals, who considered
+themselves most unfortunate at not having been summarily executed. It
+was a diminishing company of nearly naked skeletons, loaded with irons,
+covered with dirt, with vermin, with raw wounds, all men of position,
+of education, of wealth, who had learned to fight amongst themselves for
+scraps of rotten beef thrown to them by soldiers, or to beg a negro
+cook for a drink of muddy water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos,
+clanking his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in order to
+prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel torture a human
+body can stand without parting with the last spark of life. Sometimes
+interrogatories, backed by some primitive method of torture, were
+administered to them by a commission of officers hastily assembled in a
+hut of sticks and branches, and made pitiless by the fear for their own
+lives. A lucky one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would
+perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a file of soldiers.
+Always an army chaplain--some unshaven, dirty man, girt with a sword and
+with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on the left breast of
+a lieutenant's uniform--would follow, cigarette in the corner of the
+mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the confession and give absolution;
+for the Citizen Saviour of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus
+officially in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational
+clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad would be heard,
+followed sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud
+of smoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Army of
+Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the forests,
+crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the haciendas of
+the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns in the fulfilment of
+its patriotic mission, and leaving behind a united land wherein the evil
+taint of Federalism could no longer be detected in the smoke of burning
+houses and the smell of spilt blood. Don Jose Avellanos had survived
+that time. Perhaps, when contemptuously signifying to him his release,
+the Citizen Saviour of the Country might have thought this benighted
+aristocrat too broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer
+dangerous. Or, perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman Bento,
+usually full of fanciful fears and brooding suspicions, had sudden
+accesses of unreasonable self-confidence when he perceived himself
+elevated on a pinnacle of power and safety beyond the reach of mere
+mortal plotters. At such times he would impulsively command the
+celebration of a solemn Mass of thanksgiving, which would be sung in
+great pomp in the cathedral of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient
+Archbishop of his creation. He heard it sitting in a gilt armchair
+placed before the high altar, surrounded by the civil and military heads
+of his Government. The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into
+the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of mark to stay
+away from these manifestations of presidential piety. Having thus
+acknowledged the only power he was at all disposed to recognize as
+above himself, he would scatter acts of political grace in a sardonic
+wantonness of clemency. There was no other way left now to enjoy his
+power but by seeing his crushed adversaries crawl impotently into the
+light of day out of the dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their
+harmlessness fed his insatiable vanity, and they could always be got
+hold of again. It was the rule for all the women of their families to
+present thanks afterwards in a special audience. The incarnation of that
+strange god, El Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked hat on
+head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter to show their gratitude
+by bringing up their children in fidelity to the democratic form of
+government, "which I have established for the happiness of our country."
+His front teeth having been knocked out in some accident of his former
+herdsman's life, his utterance was spluttering and indistinct. He
+had been working for Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and
+opposition. Let it cease now lest he should become weary of forgiving!
+
+Don Jose Avellanos had known this forgiveness.
+
+He was broken in health and fortune deplorably enough to present a truly
+gratifying spectacle to the supreme chief of democratic institutions.
+He retired to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in that province, and she
+nursed him back to life out of the house of death and captivity. When
+she died, their daughter, an only child, was old enough to devote
+herself to "poor papa."
+
+Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly in England, was a
+tall, grave girl, with a self-possessed manner, a wide, white forehead,
+a wealth of rich brown hair, and blue eyes.
+
+The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her character and
+accomplishments. She was reputed to be terribly learned and serious. As
+to pride, it was well known that all the Corbelans were proud, and her
+mother was a Corbelan. Don Jose Avellanos depended very much upon the
+devotion of his beloved Antonia. He accepted it in the benighted way of
+men, who, though made in God's image, are like stone idols without sense
+before the smoke of certain burnt offerings. He was ruined in every
+way, but a man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life. Don Jose
+Avellanos desired passionately for his country: peace, prosperity,
+and (as the end of the preface to "Fifty Years of Misrule" has it)
+"an honourable place in the comity of civilized nations." In this last
+phrase the Minister Plenipotentiary, cruelly humiliated by the bad faith
+of his Government towards the foreign bondholders, stands disclosed in
+the patriot.
+
+The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the tyranny of Guzman
+Bento seemed to bring his desire to the very door of opportunity. He
+was too old to descend personally into the centre of the arena at Sta.
+Marta. But the men who acted there sought his advice at every step. He
+himself thought that he could be most useful at a distance, in Sulaco.
+His name, his connections, his former position, his experience commanded
+the respect of his class. The discovery that this man, living in
+dignified poverty in the Corbelan town residence (opposite the Casa
+Gould), could dispose of material means towards the support of the cause
+increased his influence. It was his open letter of appeal that decided
+the candidature of Don Vincente Ribiera for the Presidency. Another of
+these informal State papers drawn up by Don Jose (this time in the
+shape of an address from the Province) induced that scrupulous
+constitutionalist to accept the extraordinary powers conferred upon him
+for five years by an overwhelming vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It
+was a specific mandate to establish the prosperity of the people on the
+basis of firm peace at home, and to redeem the national credit by the
+satisfaction of all just claims abroad.
+
+On the afternoon the news of that vote had reached Sulaco by the usual
+roundabout postal way through Cayta, and up the coast by steamer. Don
+Jose, who had been waiting for the mail in the Goulds' drawing-room, got
+out of the rocking-chair, letting his hat fall off his knees. He rubbed
+his silvery, short hair with both hands, speechless with the excess of
+joy.
+
+"Emilia, my soul," he had burst out, "let me embrace you! Let me--"
+
+Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an apt
+remark about the dawn of a new era; but if Don Jose thought something
+of the kind, his eloquence failed him on this occasion. The inspirer
+of that revival of the Blanco party tottered where he stood. Mrs. Gould
+moved forward quickly and, as she offered her cheek with a smile to her
+old friend, managed very cleverly to give him the support of her arm he
+really needed.
+
+Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a time he could do no
+more than murmur, "Oh, you two patriots! Oh, you two patriots!"--looking
+from one to the other. Vague plans of another historical work, wherein
+all the devotions to the regeneration of the country he loved would be
+enshrined for the reverent worship of posterity, flitted through his
+mind. The historian who had enough elevation of soul to write of Guzman
+Bento: "Yet this monster, imbrued in the blood of his countrymen, must
+not be held unreservedly to the execration of future years. It appears
+to be true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve years
+of peace; and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he was, he
+died poor. His worst fault, perhaps, was not his ferocity, but his
+ignorance;" the man who could write thus of a cruel persecutor (the
+passage occurs in his "History of Misrule") felt at the foreshadowing of
+success an almost boundless affection for his two helpers, for these two
+young people from over the sea.
+
+Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practical necessity,
+stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn
+the sword, so now, the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung
+the silver of the San Tome into the fray. The Inglez of Sulaco, the
+"Costaguana Englishman" of the third generation, was as far from being
+a political intriguer as his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler.
+Springing from the instinctive uprightness of their natures their action
+was reasoned. They saw an opportunity and used the weapon to hand.
+
+Charles Gould's position--a commanding position in the background of
+that attempt to retrieve the peace and the credit of the Republic--was
+very clear. At the beginning he had had to accommodate himself to
+existing circumstances of corruption so naively brazen as to disarm the
+hate of a man courageous enough not to be afraid of its irresponsible
+potency to ruin everything it touched. It seemed to him too contemptible
+for hot anger even. He made use of it with a cold, fearless scorn,
+manifested rather than concealed by the forms of stony courtesy which
+did away with much of the ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps,
+he suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly illusions, but
+he refused to discuss the ethical view with his wife. He trusted
+that, though a little disenchanted, she would be intelligent enough to
+understand that his character safeguarded the enterprise of their lives
+as much or more than his policy. The extraordinary development of the
+mine had put a great power into his hands. To feel that prosperity
+always at the mercy of unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him.
+To Mrs. Gould it was humiliating. At any rate, it was dangerous. In the
+confidential communications passing between Charles Gould, the King
+of Sulaco, and the head of the silver and steel interests far away in
+California, the conviction was growing that any attempt made by men of
+education and integrity ought to be discreetly supported. "You may tell
+your friend Avellanos that I think so," Mr. Holroyd had written at the
+proper moment from his inviolable sanctuary within the eleven-storey
+high factory of great affairs. And shortly afterwards, with a credit
+opened by the Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to the
+Holroyd Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana took a practical
+shape under the eye of the administrator of the San Tome mine. And Don
+Jose, the hereditary friend of the Gould family, could say: "Perhaps, my
+dear Carlos, I shall not have believed in vain."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+After another armed struggle, decided by Montero's victory of Rio Seco,
+had been added to the tale of civil wars, the "honest men," as Don Jose
+called them, could breathe freely for the first time in half a century.
+The Five-Year-Mandate law became the basis of that regeneration,
+the passionate desire and hope for which had been like the elixir of
+everlasting youth for Don Jose Avellanos.
+
+And when it was suddenly--and not quite unexpectedly--endangered by that
+"brute Montero," it was a passionate indignation that gave him a
+new lease of life, as it were. Already, at the time of the
+President-Dictator's visit to Sulaco, Moraga had sounded a note of
+warning from Sta. Marta about the War Minister. Montero and his brother
+made the subject of an earnest talk between the Dictator-President
+and the Nestor-inspirer of the party. But Don Vincente, a doctor of
+philosophy from the Cordova University, seemed to have an exaggerated
+respect for military ability, whose mysteriousness--since it appeared
+to be altogether independent of intellect--imposed upon his imagination.
+The victor of Rio Seco was a popular hero. His services were so recent
+that the President-Dictator quailed before the obvious charge of
+political ingratitude. Great regenerating transactions were being
+initiated--the fresh loan, a new railway line, a vast colonization
+scheme. Anything that could unsettle the public opinion in the capital
+was to be avoided. Don Jose bowed to these arguments and tried to
+dismiss from his mind the gold-laced portent in boots, and with a sabre,
+made meaningless now at last, he hoped, in the new order of things.
+
+Less than six months after the President-Dictator's visit, Sulaco
+learned with stupefaction of the military revolt in the name of national
+honour. The Minister of War, in a barrack-square allocution to the
+officers of the artillery regiment he had been inspecting, had declared
+the national honour sold to foreigners. The Dictator, by his weak
+compliance with the demands of the European powers--for the settlement
+of long outstanding money claims--had showed himself unfit to rule. A
+letter from Moraga explained afterwards that the initiative, and even
+the very text, of the incendiary allocution came, in reality, from
+the other Montero, the ex-guerillero, the _Commandante de Plaza_.
+The energetic treatment of Dr. Monygham, sent for in haste "to the
+mountain," who came galloping three leagues in the dark, saved Don Jose
+from a dangerous attack of jaundice.
+
+After getting over the shock, Don Jose refused to let himself be
+prostrated. Indeed, better news succeeded at first. The revolt in the
+capital had been suppressed after a night of fighting in the streets.
+Unfortunately, both the Monteros had been able to make their escape
+south, to their native province of Entre-Montes. The hero of the
+forest march, the victor of Rio Seco, had been received with frenzied
+acclamations in Nicoya, the provincial capital. The troops in garrison
+there had gone to him in a body. The brothers were organizing an army,
+gathering malcontents, sending emissaries primed with patriotic lies to
+the people, and with promises of plunder to the wild llaneros. Even
+a Monterist press had come into existence, speaking oracularly of the
+secret promises of support given by "our great sister Republic of the
+North" against the sinister land-grabbing designs of European powers,
+cursing in every issue the "miserable Ribiera," who had plotted
+to deliver his country, bound hand and foot, for a prey to foreign
+speculators.
+
+Sulaco, pastoral and sleepy, with its opulent Campo and the rich silver
+mine, heard the din of arms fitfully in its fortunate isolation. It was
+nevertheless in the very forefront of the defence with men and money;
+but the very rumours reached it circuitously--from abroad even, so
+much was it cut off from the rest of the Republic, not only by natural
+obstacles, but also by the vicissitudes of the war. The Monteristos were
+besieging Cayta, an important postal link. The overland couriers ceased
+to come across the mountains, and no muleteer would consent to risk the
+journey at last; even Bonifacio on one occasion failed to return from
+Sta. Marta, either not daring to start, or perhaps captured by the
+parties of the enemy raiding the country between the Cordillera and
+the capital. Monterist publications, however, found their way into the
+province, mysteriously enough; and also Monterist emissaries preaching
+death to aristocrats in the villages and towns of the Campo. Very early,
+at the beginning of the trouble, Hernandez, the bandit, had proposed
+(through the agency of an old priest of a village in the wilds) to
+deliver two of them to the Ribierist authorities in Tonoro. They had
+come to offer him a free pardon and the rank of colonel from General
+Montero in consideration of joining the rebel army with his mounted
+band. No notice was taken at the time of the proposal. It was joined, as
+an evidence of good faith, to a petition praying the Sulaco Assembly for
+permission to enlist, with all his followers, in the forces being
+then raised in Sulaco for the defence of the Five-Year Mandate of
+regeneration. The petition, like everything else, had found its way
+into Don Jose's hands. He had showed to Mrs. Gould these pages of
+dirty-greyish rough paper (perhaps looted in some village store),
+covered with the crabbed, illiterate handwriting of the old padre,
+carried off from his hut by the side of a mud-walled church to be the
+secretary of the dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamplight
+of the Gould drawing-room over the document containing the fierce and
+yet humble appeal of the man against the blind and stupid barbarity
+turning an honest ranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest
+stated that, but for being deprived of his liberty for ten days, he had
+been treated with humanity and the respect due to his sacred calling. He
+had been, it appears, confessing and absolving the chief and most of the
+band, and he guaranteed the sincerity of their good disposition. He had
+distributed heavy penances, no doubt in the way of litanies and fasts;
+but he argued shrewdly that it would be difficult for them to make their
+peace with God durably till they had made peace with men.
+
+Never before, perhaps, had Hernandez's head been in less jeopardy than
+when he petitioned humbly for permission to buy a pardon for himself
+and his gang of deserters by armed service. He could range afar from the
+waste lands protecting his fastness, unchecked, because there were no
+troops left in the whole province. The usual garrison of Sulaco had gone
+south to the war, with its brass band playing the Bolivar march on the
+bridge of one of the O.S.N. Company's steamers. The great family coaches
+drawn up along the shore of the harbour were made to rock on the high
+leathern springs by the enthusiasm of the senoras and the senoritas
+standing up to wave their lace handkerchiefs, as lighter after lighter
+packed full of troops left the end of the jetty.
+
+Nostromo directed the embarkation, under the superintendendence
+of Captain Mitchell, red-faced in the sun, conspicuous in a white
+waistcoat, representing the allied and anxious goodwill of all the
+material interests of civilization. General Barrios, who commanded the
+troops, assured Don Jose on parting that in three weeks he would have
+Montero in a wooden cage drawn by three pair of oxen ready for a tour
+through all the towns of the Republic.
+
+"And then, senora," he continued, baring his curly iron-grey head to
+Mrs. Gould in her landau--"and then, senora, we shall convert our swords
+into plough-shares and grow rich. Even I, myself, as soon as this little
+business is settled, shall open a fundacion on some land I have on the
+llanos and try to make a little money in peace and quietness. Senora,
+you know, all Costaguana knows--what do I say?--this whole South
+American continent knows, that Pablo Barrios has had his fill of
+military glory."
+
+Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and patriotic send-off. It
+was not his part to see the soldiers embark. It was neither his part,
+nor his inclination, nor his policy. His part, his inclination, and
+his policy were united in one endeavour to keep unchecked the flow of
+treasure he had started single-handed from the re-opened scar in the
+flank of the mountain. As the mine developed he had trained for himself
+some native help. There were foremen, artificers and clerks, with Don
+Pepe for the gobernador of the mining population. For the rest his
+shoulders alone sustained the whole weight of the "Imperium in Imperio,"
+the great Gould Concession whose mere shadow had been enough to crush
+the life out of his father.
+
+Mrs. Gould had no silver mine to look after. In the general life of the
+Gould Concession she was represented by her two lieutenants, the doctor
+and the priest, but she fed her woman's love of excitement on events
+whose significance was purified to her by the fire of her imaginative
+purpose. On that day she had brought the Avellanos, father and daughter,
+down to the harbour with her.
+
+Amongst his other activities of that stirring time, Don Jose had become
+the chairman of a Patriotic Committee which had armed a great proportion
+of troops in the Sulaco command with an improved model of a military
+rifle. It had been just discarded for something still more deadly by
+one of the great European powers. How much of the market-price for
+second-hand weapons was covered by the voluntary contributions of the
+principal families, and how much came from those funds Don Jose was
+understood to command abroad, remained a secret which he alone could
+have disclosed; but the Ricos, as the populace called them, had
+contributed under the pressure of their Nestor's eloquence. Some of the
+more enthusiastic ladies had been moved to bring offerings of jewels
+into the hands of the man who was the life and soul of the party.
+
+There were moments when both his life and his soul seemed overtaxed
+by so many years of undiscouraged belief in regeneration. He appeared
+almost inanimate, sitting rigidly by the side of Mrs. Gould in the
+landau, with his fine, old, clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as if
+modelled in yellow wax, shaded by a soft felt hat, the dark eyes looking
+out fixedly. Antonia, the beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avellanos was
+called in Sulaco, leaned back, facing them; and her full figure, the
+grave oval of her face with full red lips, made her look more mature
+than Mrs. Gould, with her mobile expression and small, erect person
+under a slightly swaying sunshade.
+
+Whenever possible Antonia attended her father; her recognized devotion
+weakened the shocking effect of her scorn for the rigid conventions
+regulating the life of Spanish-American girlhood. And, in truth, she was
+no longer girlish. It was said that she often wrote State papers from
+her father's dictation, and was allowed to read all the books in
+his library. At the receptions--where the situation was saved by the
+presence of a very decrepit old lady (a relation of the Corbelans),
+quite deaf and motionless in an armchair--Antonia could hold her own in
+a discussion with two or three men at a time. Obviously she was not the
+girl to be content with peeping through a barred window at a cloaked
+figure of a lover ensconced in a doorway opposite--which is the correct
+form of Costaguana courtship. It was generally believed that with her
+foreign upbringing and foreign ideas the learned and proud Antonia would
+never marry--unless, indeed, she married a foreigner from Europe or
+North America, now that Sulaco seemed on the point of being invaded by
+all the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+When General Barrios stopped to address Mrs. Gould, Antonia raised
+negligently her hand holding an open fan, as if to shade from the sun
+her head, wrapped in a light lace shawl. The clear gleam of her blue
+eyes gliding behind the black fringe of eyelashes paused for a moment
+upon her father, then travelled further to the figure of a young man
+of thirty at most, of medium height, rather thick-set, wearing a light
+overcoat. Bearing down with the open palm of his hand upon the knob of
+a flexible cane, he had been looking on from a distance; but directly
+he saw himself noticed, he approached quietly and put his elbow over the
+door of the landau.
+
+The shirt collar, cut low in the neck, the big bow of his cravat,
+the style of his clothing, from the round hat to the varnished shoes,
+suggested an idea of French elegance; but otherwise he was the very type
+of a fair Spanish creole. The fluffy moustache and the short, curly,
+golden beard did not conceal his lips, rosy, fresh, almost pouting in
+expression. His full, round face was of that warm, healthy creole white
+which is never tanned by its native sunshine. Martin Decoud was seldom
+exposed to the Costaguana sun under which he was born. His people had
+been long settled in Paris, where he had studied law, had dabbled in
+literature, had hoped now and then in moments of exaltation to become a
+poet like that other foreigner of Spanish blood, Jose Maria Heredia. In
+other moments he had, to pass the time, condescended to write articles
+on European affairs for the Semenario, the principal newspaper in
+Sta. Marta, which printed them under the heading "From our special
+correspondent," though the authorship was an open secret. Everybody in
+Costaguana, where the tale of compatriots in Europe is jealously kept,
+knew that it was "the son Decoud," a talented young man, supposed to be
+moving in the higher spheres of Society. As a matter of fact, he was an
+idle boulevardier, in touch with some smart journalists, made free of a
+few newspaper offices, and welcomed in the pleasure haunts of pressmen.
+This life, whose dreary superficiality is covered by the glitter
+of universal blague, like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by the
+spangles of a motley costume, induced in him a Frenchified--but most
+un-French--cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren indifferentism
+posing as intellectual superiority. Of his own country he used to say to
+his French associates: "Imagine an atmosphere of opera-bouffe in which
+all the comic business of stage statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all
+their farcical stealing, intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead
+earnest. It is screamingly funny, the blood flows all the time, and the
+actors believe themselves to be influencing the fate of the universe.
+Of course, government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing
+of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind; but really we
+Spanish-Americans do overstep the bounds. No man of ordinary
+intelligence can take part in the intrigues of une farce macabre.
+However, these Ribierists, of whom we hear so much just now, are really
+trying in their own comical way to make the country habitable, and even
+to pay some of its debts. My friends, you had better write up Senor
+Ribiera all you can in kindness to your own bondholders. Really, if what
+I am told in my letters is true, there is some chance for them at last."
+
+And he would explain with railing verve what Don Vincente Ribiera stood
+for--a mournful little man oppressed by his own good intentions, the
+significance of battles won, who Montero was (_un grotesque vaniteux
+et feroce_), and the manner of the new loan connected with railway
+development, and the colonization of vast tracts of land in one great
+financial scheme.
+
+And his French friends would remark that evidently this little fellow
+_Decoud connaissait la question a fond_. An important Parisian review
+asked him for an article on the situation. It was composed in a
+serious tone and in a spirit of levity. Afterwards he asked one of his
+intimates--
+
+"Have you read my thing about the regeneration of Costaguana--_une bonne
+blague, hein_?"
+
+He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his fingers. But far
+from being that he was in danger of remaining a sort of nondescript
+dilettante all his life. He had pushed the habit of universal raillery
+to a point where it blinded him to the genuine impulses of his own
+nature. To be suddenly selected for the executive member of the
+patriotic small-arms committee of Sulaco seemed to him the height of
+the unexpected, one of those fantastic moves of which only his "dear
+countrymen" were capable.
+
+"It's like a tile falling on my head. I--I--executive member! It's
+the first I hear of it! What do I know of military rifles? _C'est
+funambulesque!_" he had exclaimed to his favourite sister; for the Decoud
+family--except the old father and mother--used the French language
+amongst themselves. "And you should see the explanatory and confidential
+letter! Eight pages of it--no less!"
+
+This letter, in Antonia's handwriting, was signed by Don Jose, who
+appealed to the "young and gifted Costaguanero" on public grounds, and
+privately opened his heart to his talented god-son, a man of wealth
+and leisure, with wide relations, and by his parentage and bringing-up
+worthy of all confidence.
+
+"Which means," Martin commented, cynically, to his sister, "that I am
+not likely to misappropriate the funds, or go blabbing to our _Charge
+d'Affaires_ here."
+
+The whole thing was being carried out behind the back of the War
+Minister, Montero, a mistrusted member of the Ribiera Government, but
+difficult to get rid of at once. He was not to know anything of it till
+the troops under Barrios's command had the new rifle in their hands. The
+President-Dictator, whose position was very difficult, was alone in the
+secret.
+
+"How funny!" commented Martin's sister and confidante; to which the
+brother, with an air of best Parisian blague, had retorted:
+
+"It's immense! The idea of that Chief of the State engaged, with the
+help of private citizens, in digging a mine under his own indispensable
+War Minister. No! We are unapproachable!" And he laughed immoderately.
+
+Afterwards his sister was surprised at the earnestness and ability
+he displayed in carrying out his mission, which circumstances made
+delicate, and his want of special knowledge rendered difficult. She had
+never seen Martin take so much trouble about anything in his whole life.
+
+"It amuses me," he had explained, briefly. "I am beset by a lot
+of swindlers trying to sell all sorts of gaspipe weapons. They are
+charming; they invite me to expensive luncheons; I keep up their hopes;
+it's extremely entertaining. Meanwhile, the real affair is being carried
+through in quite another quarter."
+
+When the business was concluded he declared suddenly his intention of
+seeing the precious consignment delivered safely in Sulaco. The whole
+burlesque business, he thought, was worth following up to the end. He
+mumbled his excuses, tugging at his golden beard, before the acute young
+lady who (after the first wide stare of astonishment) looked at him with
+narrowed eyes, and pronounced slowly--
+
+"I believe you want to see Antonia."
+
+"What Antonia?" asked the Costaguana boulevardier, in a vexed and
+disdainful tone. He shrugged his shoulders, and spun round on his heel.
+His sister called out after him joyously--
+
+"The Antonia you used to know when she wore her hair in two plaits down
+her back."
+
+He had known her some eight years since, shortly before the Avellanos
+had left Europe for good, as a tall girl of sixteen, youthfully
+austere, and of a character already so formed that she ventured to treat
+slightingly his pose of disabused wisdom. On one occasion, as though she
+had lost all patience, she flew out at him about the aimlessness of his
+life and the levity of his opinions. He was twenty then, an only son,
+spoiled by his adoring family. This attack disconcerted him so greatly
+that he had faltered in his affectation of amused superiority before
+that insignificant chit of a school-girl. But the impression left was so
+strong that ever since all the girl friends of his sisters recalled to
+him Antonia Avellanos by some faint resemblance, or by the great force
+of contrast. It was, he told himself, like a ridiculous fatality. And,
+of course, in the news the Decouds received regularly from Costaguana,
+the name of their friends, the Avellanos, cropped up frequently--the
+arrest and the abominable treatment of the ex-Minister, the dangers and
+hardships endured by the family, its withdrawal in poverty to Sulaco,
+the death of the mother.
+
+The Monterist pronunciamento had taken place before Martin Decoud
+reached Costaguana. He came out in a roundabout way, through Magellan's
+Straits by the main line and the West Coast Service of the O.S.N.
+Company. His precious consignment arrived just in time to convert the
+first feelings of consternation into a mood of hope and resolution.
+Publicly he was made much of by the _familias principales_. Privately Don
+Jose, still shaken and weak, embraced him with tears in his eyes.
+
+"You have come out yourself! No less could be expected from a Decoud.
+Alas! our worst fears have been realized," he moaned, affectionately.
+And again he hugged his god-son. This was indeed the time for men of
+intellect and conscience to rally round the endangered cause.
+
+It was then that Martin Decoud, the adopted child of Western Europe,
+felt the absolute change of atmosphere. He submitted to being embraced
+and talked to without a word. He was moved in spite of himself by that
+note of passion and sorrow unknown on the more refined stage of European
+politics. But when the tall Antonia, advancing with her light step in
+the dimness of the big bare Sala of the Avellanos house, offered him her
+hand (in her emancipated way), and murmured, "I am glad to see you here,
+Don Martin," he felt how impossible it would be to tell these two people
+that he had intended to go away by the next month's packet. Don Jose,
+meantime, continued his praises. Every accession added to public
+confidence, and, besides, what an example to the young men at home
+from the brilliant defender of the country's regeneration, the worthy
+expounder of the party's political faith before the world! Everybody had
+read the magnificent article in the famous Parisian Review. The world
+was now informed: and the author's appearance at this moment was like
+a public act of faith. Young Decoud felt overcome by a feeling of
+impatient confusion. His plan had been to return by way of the United
+States through California, visit Yellowstone Park, see Chicago, Niagara,
+have a look at Canada, perhaps make a short stay in New York, a longer
+one in Newport, use his letters of introduction. The pressure of
+Antonia's hand was so frank, the tone of her voice was so unexpectedly
+unchanged in its approving warmth, that all he found to say after his
+low bow was--
+
+"I am inexpressibly grateful for your welcome; but why need a man be
+thanked for returning to his native country? I am sure Dona Antonia does
+not think so."
+
+"Certainly not, senor," she said, with that perfectly calm openness of
+manner which characterized all her utterances. "But when he returns, as
+you return, one may be glad--for the sake of both."
+
+Martin Decoud said nothing of his plans. He not only never breathed a
+word of them to any one, but only a fortnight later asked the mistress
+of the Casa Gould (where he had of course obtained admission at once),
+leaning forward in his chair with an air of well-bred familiarity,
+whether she could not detect in him that day a marked change--an air, he
+explained, of more excellent gravity. At this Mrs. Gould turned her face
+full towards him with the silent inquiry of slightly widened eyes and
+the merest ghost of a smile, an habitual movement with her, which
+was very fascinating to men by something subtly devoted, finely
+self-forgetful in its lively readiness of attention. Because, Decoud
+continued imperturbably, he felt no longer an idle cumberer of the
+earth. She was, he assured her, actually beholding at that moment the
+Journalist of Sulaco. At once Mrs. Gould glanced towards Antonia, posed
+upright in the corner of a high, straight-backed Spanish sofa, a large
+black fan waving slowly against the curves of her fine figure, the tips
+of crossed feet peeping from under the hem of the black skirt. Decoud's
+eyes also remained fixed there, while in an undertone he added that Miss
+Avellanos was quite aware of his new and unexpected vocation, which in
+Costaguana was generally the speciality of half-educated negroes and
+wholly penniless lawyers. Then, confronting with a sort of urbane
+effrontery Mrs. Gould's gaze, now turned sympathetically upon himself,
+he breathed out the words, "_Pro Patria!_"
+
+What had happened was that he had all at once yielded to Don Jose's
+pressing entreaties to take the direction of a newspaper that would
+"voice the aspirations of the province." It had been Don Jose's old
+and cherished idea. The necessary plant (on a modest scale) and a large
+consignment of paper had been received from America some time before;
+the right man alone was wanted. Even Senor Moraga in Sta. Marta had not
+been able to find one, and the matter was now becoming pressing;
+some organ was absolutely needed to counteract the effect of the lies
+disseminated by the Monterist press: the atrocious calumnies, the
+appeals to the people calling upon them to rise with their knives in
+their hands and put an end once for all to the Blancos, to these Gothic
+remnants, to these sinister mummies, these impotent paraliticos, who
+plotted with foreigners for the surrender of the lands and the slavery
+of the people.
+
+The clamour of this Negro Liberalism frightened Senor Avellanos. A
+newspaper was the only remedy. And now that the right man had been found
+in Decoud, great black letters appeared painted between the windows
+above the arcaded ground floor of a house on the Plaza. It was next to
+Anzani's great emporium of boots, silks, ironware, muslins, wooden toys,
+tiny silver arms, legs, heads, hearts (for ex-voto offerings), rosaries,
+champagne, women's hats, patent medicines, even a few dusty books in
+paper covers and mostly in the French language. The big black letters
+formed the words, "Offices of the Porvenir." From these offices a single
+folded sheet of Martin's journalism issued three times a week; and
+the sleek yellow Anzani prowling in a suit of ample black and carpet
+slippers, before the many doors of his establishment, greeted by a deep,
+side-long inclination of his body the Journalist of Sulaco going to and
+fro on the business of his august calling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+Perhaps it was in the exercise of his calling that he had come to see
+the troops depart. The Porvenir of the day after next would no doubt
+relate the event, but its editor, leaning his side against the landau,
+seemed to look at nothing. The front rank of the company of infantry
+drawn up three deep across the shore end of the jetty when pressed too
+close would bring their bayonets to the charge ferociously, with an
+awful rattle; and then the crowd of spectators swayed back bodily,
+even under the noses of the big white mules. Notwithstanding the great
+multitude there was only a low, muttering noise; the dust hung in a
+brown haze, in which the horsemen, wedged in the throng here and there,
+towered from the hips upwards, gazing all one way over the heads. Almost
+every one of them had mounted a friend, who steadied himself with both
+hands grasping his shoulders from behind; and the rims of their hats
+touching, made like one disc sustaining the cones of two pointed crowns
+with a double face underneath. A hoarse mozo would bawl out something to
+an acquaintance in the ranks, or a woman would shriek suddenly the word
+Adios! followed by the Christian name of a man.
+
+General Barrios, in a shabby blue tunic and white peg-top trousers
+falling upon strange red boots, kept his head uncovered and stooped
+slightly, propping himself up with a thick stick. No! He had earned
+enough military glory to satiate any man, he insisted to Mrs. Gould,
+trying at the same time to put an air of gallantry into his attitude. A
+few jetty hairs hung sparsely from his upper lip, he had a salient nose,
+a thin, long jaw, and a black silk patch over one eye. His other eye,
+small and deep-set, twinkled erratically in all directions, aimlessly
+affable. The few European spectators, all men, who had naturally drifted
+into the neighbourhood of the Gould carriage, betrayed by the solemnity
+of their faces their impression that the general must have had too much
+punch (Swedish punch, imported in bottles by Anzani) at the Amarilla
+Club before he had started with his Staff on a furious ride to the
+harbour. But Mrs. Gould bent forward, self-possessed, and declared her
+conviction that still more glory awaited the general in the near future.
+
+"Senora!" he remonstrated, with great feeling, "in the name of God,
+reflect! How can there be any glory for a man like me in overcoming that
+bald-headed embustero with the dyed moustaches?"
+
+Pablo Ignacio Barrios, son of a village alcalde, general of division,
+commanding in chief the Occidental Military district, did not frequent
+the higher society of the town. He preferred the unceremonious
+gatherings of men where he could tell jaguar-hunt stories, boast of his
+powers with the lasso, with which he could perform extremely difficult
+feats of the sort "no married man should attempt," as the saying
+goes amongst the llaneros; relate tales of extraordinary night rides,
+encounters with wild bulls, struggles with crocodiles, adventures in
+the great forests, crossings of swollen rivers. And it was not mere
+boastfulness that prompted the general's reminiscences, but a genuine
+love of that wild life which he had led in his young days before he
+turned his back for ever on the thatched roof of the parental tolderia
+in the woods. Wandering away as far as Mexico he had fought against the
+French by the side (as he said) of Juarez, and was the only military
+man of Costaguana who had ever encountered European troops in the field.
+That fact shed a great lustre upon his name till it became eclipsed
+by the rising star of Montero. All his life he had been an inveterate
+gambler. He alluded himself quite openly to the current story how once,
+during some campaign (when in command of a brigade), he had gambled away
+his horses, pistols, and accoutrements, to the very epaulettes, playing
+monte with his colonels the night before the battle. Finally, he had
+sent under escort his sword (a presentation sword, with a gold hilt) to
+the town in the rear of his position to be immediately pledged for five
+hundred pesetas with a sleepy and frightened shop-keeper. By daybreak he
+had lost the last of that money, too, when his only remark, as he rose
+calmly, was, "Now let us go and fight to the death." From that time he
+had become aware that a general could lead his troops into battle
+very well with a simple stick in his hand. "It has been my custom ever
+since," he would say.
+
+He was always overwhelmed with debts; even during the periods of
+splendour in his varied fortunes of a Costaguana general, when he held
+high military commands, his gold-laced uniforms were almost always
+in pawn with some tradesman. And at last, to avoid the incessant
+difficulties of costume caused by the anxious lenders, he had assumed
+a disdain of military trappings, an eccentric fashion of shabby old
+tunics, which had become like a second nature. But the faction Barrios
+joined needed to fear no political betrayal. He was too much of a real
+soldier for the ignoble traffic of buying and selling victories. A
+member of the foreign diplomatic body in Sta. Marta had once passed a
+judgment upon him: "Barrios is a man of perfect honesty and even of
+some talent for war, _mais il manque de tenue_." After the triumph of the
+Ribierists he had obtained the reputedly lucrative Occidental
+command, mainly through the exertions of his creditors (the Sta. Marta
+shopkeepers, all great politicians), who moved heaven and earth in his
+interest publicly, and privately besieged Senor Moraga, the influential
+agent of the San Tome mine, with the exaggerated lamentations that if
+the general were passed over, "We shall all be ruined." An incidental
+but favourable mention of his name in Mr. Gould senior's long
+correspondence with his son had something to do with his appointment,
+too; but most of all undoubtedly his established political honesty. No
+one questioned the personal bravery of the Tiger-killer, as the populace
+called him. He was, however, said to be unlucky in the field--but this
+was to be the beginning of an era of peace. The soldiers liked him
+for his humane temper, which was like a strange and precious flower
+unexpectedly blooming on the hotbed of corrupt revolutions; and when
+he rode slowly through the streets during some military display, the
+contemptuous good humour of his solitary eye roaming over the crowds
+extorted the acclamations of the populace. The women of that class
+especially seemed positively fascinated by the long drooping nose,
+the peaked chin, the heavy lower lip, the black silk eyepatch and band
+slanting rakishly over the forehead. His high rank always procured an
+audience of Caballeros for his sporting stories, which he detailed very
+well with a simple, grave enjoyment. As to the society of ladies, it was
+irksome by the restraints it imposed without any equivalent, as far as
+he could see. He had not, perhaps, spoken three times on the whole to
+Mrs. Gould since he had taken up his high command; but he had observed
+her frequently riding with the Senor Administrador, and had pronounced
+that there was more sense in her little bridle-hand than in all the
+female heads in Sulaco. His impulse had been to be very civil on parting
+to a woman who did not wobble in the saddle, and happened to be the wife
+of a personality very important to a man always short of money. He even
+pushed his attentions so far as to desire the aide-de-camp at his side
+(a thick-set, short captain with a Tartar physiognomy) to bring along a
+corporal with a file of men in front of the carriage, lest the crowd in
+its backward surges should "incommode the mules of the senora." Then,
+turning to the small knot of silent Europeans looking on within earshot,
+he raised his voice protectingly--
+
+"Senores, have no apprehension. Go on quietly making your Ferro
+Carril--your railways, your telegraphs. Your--There's enough wealth in
+Costaguana to pay for everything--or else you would not be here. Ha! ha!
+Don't mind this little picardia of my friend Montero. In a little while
+you shall behold his dyed moustaches through the bars of a strong wooden
+cage. Si, senores! Fear nothing, develop the country, work, work!"
+
+The little group of engineers received this exhortation without a word,
+and after waving his hand at them loftily, he addressed himself again to
+Mrs. Gould--
+
+"That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enterprising! Work! Grow
+rich! To put Montero in a cage is my work; and when that insignificant
+piece of business is done, then, as Don Jose wishes us, we shall grow
+rich, one and all, like so many Englishmen, because it is money that
+saves a country, and--"
+
+But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying up from the
+direction of the jetty, interrupted his interpretation of Senor
+Avellanos's ideals. The general made a movement of impatience; the other
+went on talking to him insistently, with an air of respect. The horses
+of the Staff had been embarked, the steamer's gig was awaiting the
+general at the boat steps; and Barrios, after a fierce stare of his one
+eye, began to take leave. Don Jose roused himself for an appropriate
+phrase pronounced mechanically. The terrible strain of hope and fear was
+telling on him, and he seemed to husband the last sparks of his fire for
+those oratorical efforts of which even the distant Europe was to hear.
+Antonia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head behind the raised
+fan; and young Decoud, though he felt the girl's eyes upon him, gazed
+away persistently, hooked on his elbow, with a scornful and complete
+detachment. Mrs. Gould heroically concealed her dismay at the appearance
+of men and events so remote from her racial conventions, dismay too deep
+to be uttered in words even to her husband. She understood his voiceless
+reserve better now. Their confidential intercourse fell, not in moments
+of privacy, but precisely in public, when the quick meeting of their
+glances would comment upon some fresh turn of events. She had gone to
+his school of uncompromising silence, the only one possible, since so
+much that seemed shocking, weird, and grotesque in the working out of
+their purposes had to be accepted as normal in this country. Decidedly,
+the stately Antonia looked more mature and infinitely calm; but she
+would never have known how to reconcile the sudden sinkings of her heart
+with an amiable mobility of expression.
+
+Mrs. Gould smiled a good-bye at Barrios, nodded round to the Europeans
+(who raised their hats simultaneously) with an engaging invitation, "I
+hope to see you all presently, at home"; then said nervously to Decoud,
+"Get in, Don Martin," and heard him mutter to himself in French, as he
+opened the carriage door, "_Le sort en est jete_." She heard him with a
+sort of exasperation. Nobody ought to have known better than himself
+that the first cast of dice had been already thrown long ago in a most
+desperate game. Distant acclamations, words of command yelled out, and a
+roll of drums on the jetty greeted the departing general. Something like
+a slight faintness came over her, and she looked blankly at Antonia's
+still face, wondering what would happen to Charley if that absurd man
+failed. "A la casa, Ignacio," she cried at the motionless broad back of
+the coachman, who gathered the reins without haste, mumbling to himself
+under his breath, "Si, la casa. Si, si nina."
+
+The carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft track, the shadows fell
+long on the dusty little plain interspersed with dark bushes, mounds
+of turned-up earth, low wooden buildings with iron roofs of the Railway
+Company; the sparse row of telegraph poles strode obliquely clear of
+the town, bearing a single, almost invisible wire far into the great
+campo--like a slender, vibrating feeler of that progress waiting outside
+for a moment of peace to enter and twine itself about the weary heart of
+the land.
+
+The cafe window of the Albergo d'ltalia Una was full of sunburnt,
+whiskered faces of railway men. But at the other end of the house, the
+end of the Signori Inglesi, old Giorgio, at the door with one of his
+girls on each side, bared his bushy head, as white as the snows of
+Higuerota. Mrs. Gould stopped the carriage. She seldom failed to speak
+to her protege; moreover, the excitement, the heat, and the dust had
+made her thirsty. She asked for a glass of water. Giorgio sent the
+children indoors for it, and approached with pleasure expressed in his
+whole rugged countenance. It was not often that he had occasion to see
+his benefactress, who was also an Englishwoman--another title to his
+regard. He offered some excuses for his wife. It was a bad day with her;
+her oppressions--he tapped his own broad chest. She could not move from
+her chair that day.
+
+Decoud, ensconced in the corner of his seat, observed gloomily Mrs.
+Gould's old revolutionist, then, offhand--
+
+"Well, and what do you think of it all, Garibaldino?"
+
+Old Giorgio, looking at him with some curiosity, said civilly that the
+troops had marched very well. One-eyed Barrios and his officers had done
+wonders with the recruits in a short time. Those Indios, only caught
+the other day, had gone swinging past in double quick time, like
+bersaglieri; they looked well fed, too, and had whole uniforms.
+"Uniforms!" he repeated with a half-smile of pity. A look of grim
+retrospect stole over his piercing, steady eyes. It had been otherwise
+in his time when men fought against tyranny, in the forests of Brazil,
+or on the plains of Uruguay, starving on half-raw beef without salt,
+half naked, with often only a knife tied to a stick for a weapon. "And
+yet we used to prevail against the oppressor," he concluded, proudly.
+
+His animation fell; the slight gesture of his hand expressed
+discouragement; but he added that he had asked one of the sergeants to
+show him the new rifle. There was no such weapon in his fighting days;
+and if Barrios could not--
+
+"Yes, yes," broke in Don Jose, almost trembling with eagerness. "We are
+safe. The good Senor Viola is a man of experience. Extremely deadly--is
+it not so? You have accomplished your mission admirably, my dear
+Martin."
+
+Decoud, lolling back moodily, contemplated old Viola.
+
+"Ah! Yes. A man of experience. But who are you for, really, in your
+heart?"
+
+Mrs. Gould leaned over to the children. Linda had brought out a glass of
+water on a tray, with extreme care; Giselle presented her with a bunch
+of flowers gathered hastily.
+
+"For the people," declared old Viola, sternly.
+
+"We are all for the people--in the end."
+
+"Yes," muttered old Viola, savagely. "And meantime they fight for you.
+Blind. Esclavos!"
+
+At that moment young Scarfe of the railway staff emerged from the
+door of the part reserved for the Signori Inglesi. He had come down to
+headquarters from somewhere up the line on a light engine, and had had
+just time to get a bath and change his clothes. He was a nice boy, and
+Mrs. Gould welcomed him.
+
+"It's a delightful surprise to see you, Mrs. Gould. I've just come down.
+Usual luck. Missed everything, of course. This show is just over, and I
+hear there has been a great dance at Don Juste Lopez's last night. Is it
+true?"
+
+"The young patricians," Decoud began suddenly in his precise English,
+"have indeed been dancing before they started off to the war with the
+Great Pompey."
+
+Young Scarfe stared, astounded. "You haven't met before," Mrs. Gould
+intervened. "Mr. Decoud--Mr. Scarfe."
+
+"Ah! But we are not going to Pharsalia," protested Don Jose, with
+nervous haste, also in English. "You should not jest like this, Martin."
+
+Antonia's breast rose and fell with a deeper breath. The young engineer
+was utterly in the dark. "Great what?" he muttered, vaguely.
+
+"Luckily, Montero is not a Caesar," Decoud continued. "Not the two
+Monteros put together would make a decent parody of a Caesar." He
+crossed his arms on his breast, looking at Senor Avellanos, who had
+returned to his immobility. "It is only you, Don Jose, who are a genuine
+old Roman--vir Romanus--eloquent and inflexible."
+
+Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced, young Scarfe had been
+eager to express his simple feelings. In a loud and youthful tone he
+hoped that this Montero was going to be licked once for all and done
+with. There was no saying what would happen to the railway if the
+revolution got the upper hand. Perhaps it would have to be abandoned.
+It would not be the first railway gone to pot in Costaguana. "You know,
+it's one of their so-called national things," he ran on, wrinkling
+up his nose as if the word had a suspicious flavour to his profound
+experience of South American affairs. And, of course, he chatted with
+animation, it had been such an immense piece of luck for him at his
+age to get appointed on the staff "of a big thing like that--don't you
+know." It would give him the pull over a lot of chaps all through life,
+he asserted. "Therefore--down with Montero! Mrs. Gould." His artless
+grin disappeared slowly before the unanimous gravity of the faces turned
+upon him from the carriage; only that "old chap," Don Jose, presenting a
+motionless, waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not
+know the Avellanos very well. They did not give balls, and Antonia never
+appeared at a ground-floor window, as some other young ladies used to do
+attended by elder women, to chat with the caballeros on horseback in
+the Calle. The stares of these creoles did not matter much; but what on
+earth had come to Mrs. Gould? She said, "Go on, Ignacio," and gave him
+a slow inclination of the head. He heard a short laugh from that
+round-faced, Frenchified fellow. He coloured up to the eyes, and stared
+at Giorgio Viola, who had fallen back with the children, hat in hand.
+
+"I shall want a horse presently," he said with some asperity to the old
+man.
+
+"Si, senor. There are plenty of horses," murmured the Garibaldino,
+smoothing absently, with his brown hands, the two heads, one dark with
+bronze glints, the other fair with a coppery ripple, of the two girls by
+his side. The returning stream of sightseers raised a great dust on the
+road. Horsemen noticed the group. "Go to your mother," he said. "They
+are growing up as I am growing older, and there is nobody--"
+
+He looked at the young engineer and stopped, as if awakened from a
+dream; then, folding his arms on his breast, took up his usual position,
+leaning back in the doorway with an upward glance fastened on the white
+shoulder of Higuerota far away.
+
+In the carriage Martin Decoud, shifting his position as though he could
+not make himself comfortable, muttered as he swayed towards Antonia, "I
+suppose you hate me." Then in a loud voice he began to congratulate Don
+Jose upon all the engineers being convinced Ribierists. The interest of
+all those foreigners was gratifying. "You have heard this one. He is an
+enlightened well-wisher. It is pleasant to think that the prosperity of
+Costaguana is of some use to the world."
+
+"He is very young," Mrs. Gould remarked, quietly.
+
+"And so very wise for his age," retorted Decoud. "But here we have the
+naked truth from the mouth of that child. You are right, Don Jose. The
+natural treasures of Costaguana are of importance to the progressive
+Europe represented by this youth, just as three hundred years ago
+the wealth of our Spanish fathers was a serious object to the rest
+of Europe--as represented by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of
+futility upon our character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and
+materialism, high-sounding sentiments and a supine morality, violent
+efforts for an idea and a sullen acquiescence in every form of
+corruption. We convulsed a continent for our independence only to
+become the passive prey of a democratic parody, the helpless victims
+of scoundrels and cut-throats, our institutions a mockery, our laws a
+farce--a Guzman Bento our master! And we have sunk so low that when
+a man like you has awakened our conscience, a stupid barbarian of a
+Montero--Great Heavens! a Montero!--becomes a deadly danger, and an
+ignorant, boastful Indio, like Barrios, is our defender."
+
+But Don Jose, disregarding the general indictment as though he had
+not heard a word of it, took up the defence of Barrios. The man was
+competent enough for his special task in the plan of campaign. It
+consisted in an offensive movement, with Cayta as base, upon the flank
+of the Revolutionist forces advancing from the south against Sta. Marta,
+which was covered by another army with the President-Dictator in its
+midst. Don Jose became quite animated with a great flow of speech,
+bending forward anxiously under the steady eyes of his daughter. Decoud,
+as if silenced by so much ardour, did not make a sound. The bells of the
+city were striking the hour of Oracion when the carriage rolled under
+the old gateway facing the harbour like a shapeless monument of leaves
+and stones. The rumble of wheels under the sonorous arch was traversed
+by a strange, piercing shriek, and Decoud, from his back seat, had a
+view of the people behind the carriage trudging along the road outside,
+all turning their heads, in sombreros and rebozos, to look at a
+locomotive which rolled quickly out of sight behind Giorgio Viola's
+house, under a white trail of steam that seemed to vanish in the
+breathless, hysterically prolonged scream of warlike triumph. And it
+was all like a fleeting vision, the shrieking ghost of a railway engine
+fleeing across the frame of the archway, behind the startled movement
+of the people streaming back from a military spectacle with silent
+footsteps on the dust of the road. It was a material train returning
+from the Campo to the palisaded yards. The empty cars rolled lightly
+on the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor of the
+ground. The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with the salute
+of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before entering the yard;
+and when the ear-splitting screech of the steam-whistle for the brakes
+had stopped, a series of hard, battering shocks, mingled with the
+clanking of chain-couplings, made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters
+under the vault of the gate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+The Gould carriage was the first to return from the harbour to the empty
+town. On the ancient pavement, laid out in patterns, sunk into ruts and
+holes, the portly Ignacio, mindful of the springs of the Parisian-built
+landau, had pulled up to a walk, and Decoud in his corner contemplated
+moodily the inner aspect of the gate. The squat turreted sides held up
+between them a mass of masonry with bunches of grass growing at the top,
+and a grey, heavily scrolled, armorial shield of stone above the apex of
+the arch with the arms of Spain nearly smoothed out as if in readiness
+for some new device typical of the impending progress.
+
+The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to augment Decoud's
+irritation. He muttered something to himself, then began to talk aloud
+in curt, angry phrases thrown at the silence of the two women. They did
+not look at him at all; while Don Jose, with his semi-translucent, waxy
+complexion, overshadowed by the soft grey hat, swayed a little to the
+jolts of the carriage by the side of Mrs. Gould.
+
+"This sound puts a new edge on a very old truth."
+
+Decoud spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio on the box above him;
+the old coachman, with his broad back filling a short, silver-braided
+jacket, had a big pair of ears, whose thick rims stood well away from
+his cropped head.
+
+"Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the principle is old."
+
+He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began afresh with a
+sidelong glance at Antonia--
+
+"No, but just imagine our forefathers in morions and corselets drawn
+up outside this gate, and a band of adventurers just landed from their
+ships in the harbour there. Thieves, of course. Speculators, too. Their
+expeditions, each one, were the speculations of grave and reverend
+persons in England. That is history, as that absurd sailor Mitchell is
+always saying."
+
+"Mitchell's arrangements for the embarkation of the troops were
+excellent!" exclaimed Don Jose.
+
+"That!--that! oh, that's really the work of that Genoese seaman! But
+to return to my noises; there used to be in the old days the sound of
+trumpets outside that gate. War trumpets! I'm sure they were trumpets. I
+have read somewhere that Drake, who was the greatest of these men, used
+to dine alone in his cabin on board ship to the sound of trumpets. In
+those days this town was full of wealth. Those men came to take it.
+Now the whole land is like a treasure-house, and all these people are
+breaking into it, whilst we are cutting each other's throats. The only
+thing that keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they'll come to an
+agreement some day--and by the time we've settled our quarrels and
+become decent and honourable, there'll be nothing left for us. It has
+always been the same. We are a wonderful people, but it has always
+been our fate to be"--he did not say "robbed," but added, after a
+pause--"exploited!"
+
+Mrs. Gould said, "Oh, this is unjust!" And Antonia interjected, "Don't
+answer him, Emilia. He is attacking me."
+
+"You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos!" Decoud answered.
+
+And then the carriage stopped before the door of the Casa Gould. The
+young man offered his hand to the ladies. They went in first together;
+Don Jose walked by the side of Decoud, and the gouty old porter tottered
+after them with some light wraps on his arm.
+
+Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journalist of Sulaco.
+
+"The Porvenir must have a long and confident article upon Barrios and
+the irresistibleness of his army of Cayta! The moral effect should be
+kept up in the country. We must cable encouraging extracts to Europe and
+the United States to maintain a favourable impression abroad."
+
+Decoud muttered, "Oh, yes, we must comfort our friends, the
+speculators."
+
+The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen of plants in vases
+along the balustrade, holding out motionless blossoms, and all the glass
+doors of the reception-rooms thrown open. A jingle of spurs died out at
+the further end.
+
+Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft tone to
+the passing ladies, "The Senor Administrador is just back from the
+mountain."
+
+In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish and modern
+European furniture making as if different centres under the high white
+spread of the ceiling, the silver and porcelain of the tea-service
+gleamed among a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady's boudoir,
+putting in a note of feminine and intimate delicacy.
+
+Don Jose in his rocking-chair placed his hat on his lap, and Decoud
+walked up and down the whole length of the room, passing between tables
+loaded with knick-knacks and almost disappearing behind the high backs
+of leathern sofas. He was thinking of the angry face of Antonia; he was
+confident that he would make his peace with her. He had not stayed in
+Sulaco to quarrel with Antonia.
+
+Martin Decoud was angry with himself. All he saw and heard going
+on around him exasperated the preconceived views of his European
+civilization. To contemplate revolutions from the distance of the
+Parisian Boulevards was quite another matter. Here on the spot it was
+not possible to dismiss their tragic comedy with the expression, "_Quelle
+farce!_"
+
+The reality of the political action, such as it was, seemed closer, and
+acquired poignancy by Antonia's belief in the cause. Its crudeness hurt
+his feelings. He was surprised at his own sensitiveness.
+
+"I suppose I am more of a Costaguanero than I would have believed
+possible," he thought to himself.
+
+His disdain grew like a reaction of his scepticism against the action
+into which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia. He soothed
+himself by saying he was not a patriot, but a lover.
+
+The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank low before the little
+tea-table. Antonia took up her usual place at the reception hour--the
+corner of a leathern couch, with a rigid grace in her pose and a fan in
+her hand. Decoud, swerving from the straight line of his march, came to
+lean over the high back of her seat.
+
+For a long time he talked into her ear from behind, softly, with a half
+smile and an air of apologetic familiarity. Her fan lay half grasped on
+her knees. She never looked at him. His rapid utterance grew more and
+more insistent and caressing. At last he ventured a slight laugh.
+
+"No, really. You must forgive me. One must be serious sometimes."
+He paused. She turned her head a little; her blue eyes glided slowly
+towards him, slightly upwards, mollified and questioning.
+
+"You can't think I am serious when I call Montero a gran' bestia
+every second day in the Porvenir? That is not a serious occupation. No
+occupation is serious, not even when a bullet through the heart is the
+penalty of failure!"
+
+Her hand closed firmly on her fan.
+
+"Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense, may creep into
+thinking; some glimpse of truth. I mean some effective truth, for which
+there is no room in politics or journalism. I happen to have said what I
+thought. And you are angry! If you do me the kindness to think a little
+you will see that I spoke like a patriot."
+
+She opened her red lips for the first time, not unkindly.
+
+"Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used as they are. I suppose
+nobody is really disinterested, unless, perhaps, you, Don Martin."
+
+"God forbid! It's the last thing I should like you to believe of me." He
+spoke lightly, and paused.
+
+She began to fan herself with a slow movement without raising her hand.
+After a time he whispered passionately--
+
+"Antonia!"
+
+She smiled, and extended her hand after the English manner towards
+Charles Gould, who was bowing before her; while Decoud, with his
+elbows spread on the back of the sofa, dropped his eyes and murmured,
+"Bonjour."
+
+The Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine bent over his wife for
+a moment. They exchanged a few words, of which only the phrase, "The
+greatest enthusiasm," pronounced by Mrs. Gould, could be heard.
+
+"Yes," Decoud began in a murmur. "Even he!"
+
+"This is sheer calumny," said Antonia, not very severely.
+
+"You just ask him to throw his mine into the melting-pot for the great
+cause," Decoud whispered.
+
+Don Jose had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands cheerily. The
+excellent aspect of the troops and the great quantity of new deadly
+rifles on the shoulders of those brave men seemed to fill him with an
+ecstatic confidence.
+
+Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair, listened, but
+nothing could be discovered in his face except a kind and deferential
+attention.
+
+Meantime, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the room, stood looking out
+of one of the three long windows giving on the street. Decoud followed
+her. The window was thrown open, and he leaned against the thickness of
+the wall. The long folds of the damask curtain, falling straight from
+the broad brass cornice, hid him partly from the room. He folded his
+arms on his breast, and looked steadily at Antonia's profile.
+
+The people returning from the harbour filled the pavements; the shuffle
+of sandals and a low murmur of voices ascended to the window. Now and
+then a coach rolled slowly along the disjointed roadway of the Calle de
+la Constitucion. There were not many private carriages in Sulaco; at the
+most crowded hour on the Alameda they could be counted with one glance
+of the eye. The great family arks swayed on high leathern springs, full
+of pretty powdered faces in which the eyes looked intensely alive
+and black. And first Don Juste Lopez, the President of the Provincial
+Assembly, passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a black
+frock-coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a debate from a high
+tribune. Though they all raised their eyes, Antonia did not make the
+usual greeting gesture of a fluttered hand, and they affected not to
+see the two young people, Costaguaneros with European manners, whose
+eccentricities were discussed behind the barred windows of the first
+families in Sulaco. And then the widowed Senora Gavilaso de Valdes
+rolled by, handsome and dignified, in a great machine in which she used
+to travel to and from her country house, surrounded by an armed retinue
+in leather suits and big sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their
+saddles. She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud, rich, and
+kind-hearted. Her second son, Jaime, had just gone off on the Staff of
+Barrios. The eldest, a worthless fellow of a moody disposition, filled
+Sulaco with the noise of his dissipations, and gambled heavily at the
+club. The two youngest boys, with yellow Ribierist cockades in their
+caps, sat on the front seat. She, too, affected not to see the Senor
+Decoud talking publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention.
+And he not even her novio as far as the world knew! Though, even in that
+case, it would have been scandal enough. But the dignified old lady,
+respected and admired by the first families, would have been still more
+shocked if she could have heard the words they were exchanging.
+
+"Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only one aim in the world."
+
+She made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head, still
+staring across the street at the Avellanos's house, grey, marked with
+decay, and with iron bars like a prison.
+
+"And it would be so easy of attainment," he continued, "this aim which,
+whether knowingly or not, I have always had in my heart--ever since the
+day when you snubbed me so horribly once in Paris, you remember."
+
+A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip that was on his
+side.
+
+"You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of Charlotte Corday
+in a schoolgirl's dress; a ferocious patriot. I suppose you would have
+stuck a knife into Guzman Bento?"
+
+She interrupted him. "You do me too much honour."
+
+"At any rate," he said, changing suddenly to a tone of bitter levity,
+"you would have sent me to stab him without compunction."
+
+"_Ah, par exemple!_" she murmured in a shocked tone.
+
+"Well," he argued, mockingly, "you do keep me here writing deadly
+nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already killed my self-respect. And you
+may imagine," he continued, his tone passing into light banter, "that
+Montero, should he be successful, would get even with me in the only way
+such a brute can get even with a man of intelligence who condescends to
+call him a gran' bestia three times a week. It's a sort of intellectual
+death; but there is the other one in the background for a journalist of
+my ability."
+
+"If he is successful!" said Antonia, thoughtfully.
+
+"You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread," Decoud replied,
+with a broad smile. "And the other Montero, the 'my trusted brother' of
+the proclamations, the guerrillero--haven't I written that he was taking
+the guests' overcoats and changing plates in Paris at our Legation in
+the intervals of spying on our refugees there, in the time of Rojas? He
+will wash out that sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you look
+annoyed? This is simply a bit of the biography of one of our great men.
+What do you think he will do to me? There is a certain convent wall
+round the corner of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You
+know? Opposite the door with the inscription, _Intrada de la Sombra_.'
+Appropriate, perhaps! That's where the uncle of our host gave up his
+Anglo-South-American soul. And, note, he might have run away. A man
+who has fought with weapons may run away. You might have let me go
+with Barrios if you had cared for me. I would have carried one of those
+rifles, in which Don Jose believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in
+the ranks of poor peons and Indios, that know nothing either of reason
+or politics. The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth
+would have been safer than that for which you made me stay here. When
+you make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your time in
+inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die."
+
+His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she stood
+motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down from her
+interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then--
+
+"I shall go to the wall," he said, with a sort of jocular desperation.
+
+Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her head remained
+still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avellanos, whose chipped
+pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden
+now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole figure her lips
+alone moved, forming the words--
+
+"Martin, you will make me cry."
+
+He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a sort
+of awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still stiffened
+about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a
+sentence is in the personality which utters it, for nothing new can be
+said by man or woman; and those were the last words, it seemed to him,
+that could ever have been spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up
+with her so completely in all their intercourse of small encounters; but
+even before she had time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with
+a rigid grace, he had begun to plead--
+
+"My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is transported with
+joy. I won't say anything of my mother! Our mothers were like sisters.
+There is the mail-boat for the south next week--let us go. That Moraga
+is a fool! A man like Montero is bribed. It's the practice of the
+country. It's tradition--it's politics. Read 'Fifty Years of Misrule.'"
+
+"Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes--"
+
+"I have the greatest tenderness for your father," he began, hurriedly.
+"But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has miserably mismanaged this
+business. Perhaps your father did, too; I don't know. Montero was
+bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of this famous loan
+for national development. Why didn't the stupid Sta. Marta people give
+him a mission to Europe, or something? He would have taken five years'
+salary in advance, and gone on loafing in Paris, this stupid, ferocious
+Indio!"
+
+"The man," she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before this outburst,
+"was intoxicated with vanity. We had all the information, not from
+Moraga only; from others, too. There was his brother intriguing, too."
+
+"Oh, yes!" he said. "Of course you know. You know everything. You read
+all the correspondence, you write all the papers--all those State papers
+that are inspired here, in this room, in blind deference to a theory
+of political purity. Hadn't you Charles Gould before your eyes? Rey de
+Sulaco! He and his mine are the practical demonstration of what could
+have been done. Do you think he succeeded by his fidelity to a theory of
+virtue? And all those railway people, with their honest work! Of course,
+their work is honest! But what if you cannot work honestly till the
+thieves are satisfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told this Sir
+John what's-his-name that Montero had to be bought off--he and all his
+Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve? He ought to have
+been bought off with his own stupid weight of gold--his weight of gold,
+I tell you, boots, sabre, spurs, cocked hat, and all."
+
+She shook her head slightly. "It was impossible," she murmured.
+
+"He wanted the whole lot? What?"
+
+She was facing him now in the deep recess of the window, very close and
+motionless. Her lips moved rapidly. Decoud, leaning his back against the
+wall, listened with crossed arms and lowered eyelids. He drank the tones
+of her even voice, and watched the agitated life of her throat, as if
+waves of emotion had run from her heart to pass out into the air in her
+reasonable words. He also had his aspirations, he aspired to carry her
+away out of these deadly futilities of pronunciamientos and reforms. All
+this was wrong--utterly wrong; but she fascinated him, and sometimes
+the sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the charm, replace the
+fascination by a sudden unwilling thrill of interest. Some women
+hovered, as it were, on the threshold of genius, he reflected. They did
+not want to know, or think, or understand. Passion stood for all that,
+and he was ready to believe that some startlingly profound remark, some
+appreciation of character, or a judgment upon an event, bordered on the
+miraculous. In the mature Antonia he could see with an extraordinary
+vividness the austere schoolgirl of the earlier days. She seduced his
+attention; sometimes he could not restrain a murmur of assent; now and
+then he advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they began to
+argue; the curtain half hid them from the people in the sala.
+
+Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of shadow between the
+houses, lit up vaguely by the glimmer of street lamps, ascended the
+evening silence of Sulaco; the silence of a town with few carriages,
+of unshod horses, and a softly sandalled population. The windows of
+the Casa Gould flung their shining parallelograms upon the house of
+the Avellanos. Now and then a shuffle of feet passed below with the
+pulsating red glow of a cigarette at the foot of the walls; and the
+night air, as if cooled by the snows of Higuerota, refreshed their
+faces.
+
+"We Occidentals," said Martin Decoud, using the usual term the
+provincials of Sulaco applied to themselves, "have been always distinct
+and separated. As long as we hold Cayta nothing can reach us. In all our
+troubles no army has marched over those mountains. A revolution in the
+central provinces isolates us at once. Look how complete it is now! The
+news of Barrios' movement will be cabled to the United States, and
+only in that way will it reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other
+seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the
+purest blood in our great families, the most laborious population. The
+Occidental Province should stand alone. The early Federalism was not
+bad for us. Then came this union which Don Henrique Gould resisted.
+It opened the road to tyranny; and, ever since, the rest of Costaguana
+hangs like a millstone round our necks. The Occidental territory is
+large enough to make any man's country. Look at the mountains! Nature
+itself seems to cry to us, 'Separate!'"
+
+She made an energetic gesture of negation. A silence fell.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know it's contrary to the doctrine laid down in the 'History
+of Fifty Years' Misrule.' I am only trying to be sensible. But my sense
+seems always to give you cause for offence. Have I startled you very
+much with this perfectly reasonable aspiration?"
+
+She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but the idea shocked her
+early convictions. Her patriotism was larger. She had never considered
+that possibility.
+
+"It may yet be the means of saving some of your convictions," he said,
+prophetically.
+
+She did not answer. She seemed tired. They leaned side by side on the
+rail of the little balcony, very friendly, having exhausted politics,
+giving themselves up to the silent feeling of their nearness, in one of
+those profound pauses that fall upon the rhythm of passion. Towards the
+plaza end of the street the glowing coals in the brazeros of the market
+women cooking their evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the
+pavement. A man appeared without a sound in the light of a street lamp,
+showing the coloured inverted triangle of his bordered poncho, square on
+his shoulders, hanging to a point below his knees. From the harbour
+end of the Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping mount, gleaming
+silver-grey abreast each lamp under the dark shape of the rider.
+
+"Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores," said Decoud, gently,
+"coming in all his splendour after his work is done. The next great man
+of Sulaco after Don Carlos Gould. But he is good-natured, and let me
+make friends with him."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Antonia. "How did you make friends?"
+
+"A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular pulse, and this
+man is one of the leaders of the populace. A journalist ought to know
+remarkable men--and this man is remarkable in his way."
+
+"Ah, yes!" said Antonia, thoughtfully. "It is known that this Italian
+has a great influence."
+
+The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam of dim light on the
+shining broad quarters of the grey mare, on a bright heavy stirrup, on a
+long silver spur; but the short flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was
+powerless against the muffled-up mysteriousness of the dark figure with
+an invisible face concealed by a great sombrero.
+
+Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the balcony, side by side,
+touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness of the
+street, and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs. This was a
+tete-a-tete of extreme impropriety; something of which in the whole
+extent of the Republic only the extraordinary Antonia could be
+capable--the poor, motherless girl, never accompanied, with a careless
+father, who had thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud himself
+seemed to feel that this was as much as he could expect of having her to
+himself till--till the revolution was over and he could carry her off
+to Europe, away from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed
+even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one Montero there would
+be another, the lawlessness of a populace of all colours and races,
+barbarism, irremediable tyranny. As the great Liberator Bolivar had said
+in the bitterness of his spirit, "America is ungovernable. Those who
+worked for her independence have ploughed the sea." He did not care, he
+declared boldly; he seized every opportunity to tell her that though she
+had managed to make a Blanco journalist of him, he was no patriot. First
+of all, the word had no sense for cultured minds, to whom the narrowness
+of every belief is odious; and secondly, in connection with the
+everlasting troubles of this unhappy country it was hopelessly
+besmirched; it had been the cry of dark barbarism, the cloak of
+lawlessness, of crimes, of rapacity, of simple thieving.
+
+He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance. He had no need
+to drop his voice; it had been low all the time, a mere murmur in the
+silence of dark houses with their shutters closed early against the
+night air, as is the custom of Sulaco. Only the sala of the Casa Gould
+flung out defiantly the blaze of its four windows, the bright appeal of
+light in the whole dumb obscurity of the street. And the murmur on the
+little balcony went on after a short pause.
+
+"But we are labouring to change all that," Antonia protested. "It is
+exactly what we desire. It is our object. It is the great cause. And
+the word you despise has stood also for sacrifice, for courage, for
+constancy, for suffering. Papa, who--"
+
+"Ploughing the sea," interrupted Decoud, looking down.
+
+There was below the sound of hasty and ponderous footsteps.
+
+"Your uncle, the grand-vicar of the cathedral, has just turned under the
+gate," observed Decoud. "He said Mass for the troops in the Plaza this
+morning. They had built for him an altar of drums, you know. And they
+brought outside all the painted blocks to take the air. All the wooden
+saints stood militarily in a row at the top of the great flight of
+steps. They looked like a gorgeous escort attending the Vicar-General. I
+saw the great function from the windows of the Porvenir. He is amazing,
+your uncle, the last of the Corbelans. He glittered exceedingly in his
+vestments with a great crimson velvet cross down his back. And all the
+time our saviour Barrios sat in the Amarilla Club drinking punch at
+an open window. Esprit fort--our Barrios. I expected every moment your
+uncle to launch an excommunication there and then at the black eye-patch
+in the window across the Plaza. But not at all. Ultimately the troops
+marched off. Later Barrios came down with some of the officers, and
+stood with his uniform all unbuttoned, discoursing at the edge of the
+pavement. Suddenly your uncle appeared, no longer glittering, but all
+black, at the cathedral door with that threatening aspect he has--you
+know, like a sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look, strides over
+straight at the group of uniforms, and leads away the general by the
+elbow. He walked him for a quarter of an hour in the shade of a
+wall. Never let go his elbow for a moment, talking all the time with
+exaltation, and gesticulating with a long black arm. It was a curious
+scene. The officers seemed struck with astonishment. Remarkable man,
+your missionary uncle. He hates an infidel much less than a heretic, and
+prefers a heathen many times to an infidel. He condescends graciously to
+call me a heathen, sometimes, you know."
+
+Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade, opening and
+shutting the fan gently; and Decoud talked a little nervously, as if
+afraid that she would leave him at the first pause. Their comparative
+isolation, the precious sense of intimacy, the slight contact of their
+arms, affected him softly; for now and then a tender inflection crept
+into the flow of his ironic murmurs.
+
+"Any slight sign of favour from a relative of yours is welcome, Antonia.
+And perhaps he understands me, after all! But I know him, too, our Padre
+Corbelan. The idea of political honour, justice, and honesty for him
+consists in the restitution of the confiscated Church property. Nothing
+else could have drawn that fierce converter of savage Indians out of the
+wilds to work for the Ribierist cause! Nothing else but that wild hope!
+He would make a pronunciamiento himself for such an object against any
+Government if he could only get followers! What does Don Carlos Gould
+think of that? But, of course, with his English impenetrability, nobody
+can tell what he thinks. Probably he thinks of nothing apart from his
+mine; of his 'Imperium in Imperio.' As to Mrs. Gould, she thinks of
+her schools, of her hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of
+every sick old man in the three villages. If you were to turn your head
+now you would see her extracting a report from that sinister doctor in a
+check shirt--what's his name? Monygham--or else catechising Don Pepe or
+perhaps listening to Padre Roman. They are all down here to-day--all
+her ministers of state. Well, she is a sensible woman, and perhaps Don
+Carlos is a sensible man. It's a part of solid English sense not to
+think too much; to see only what may be of practical use at the moment.
+These people are not like ourselves. We have no political reason; we
+have political passions--sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular
+view of our personal advantage either practical or emotional. No one is
+a patriot for nothing. The word serves us well. But I am clear-sighted,
+and I shall not use that word to you, Antonia! I have no patriotic
+illusions. I have only the supreme illusion of a lover."
+
+He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly, "That can lead one very far,
+though."
+
+Behind their backs the political tide that once in every twenty-four
+hours set with a strong flood through the Gould drawing-room could
+be heard, rising higher in a hum of voices. Men had been dropping in
+singly, or in twos and threes: the higher officials of the province,
+engineers of the railway, sunburnt and in tweeds, with the frosted head
+of their chief smiling with slow, humorous indulgence amongst the young
+eager faces. Scarfe, the lover of fandangos, had already slipped out in
+search of some dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the town. Don
+Juste Lopez, after taking his daughters home, had entered solemnly, in a
+black creased coat buttoned up under his spreading brown beard. The
+few members of the Provincial Assembly present clustered at once around
+their President to discuss the news of the war and the last proclamation
+of the rebel Montero, the miserable Montero, calling in the name of "a
+justly incensed democracy" upon all the Provincial Assemblies of the
+Republic to suspend their sittings till his sword had made peace and the
+will of the people could be consulted. It was practically an invitation
+to dissolve: an unheard-of audacity of that evil madman.
+
+The indignation ran high in the knot of deputies behind Jose Avellanos.
+Don Jose, lifting up his voice, cried out to them over the high back
+of his chair, "Sulaco has answered by sending to-day an army upon his
+flank. If all the other provinces show only half as much patriotism as
+we Occidentals--"
+
+A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrating treble of the
+life and soul of the party. Yes! Yes! This was true! A great truth!
+Sulaco was in the forefront, as ever! It was a boastful tumult, the
+hopefulness inspired by the event of the day breaking out amongst those
+caballeros of the Campo thinking of their herds, of their lands, of
+the safety of their families. Everything was at stake. . . . No! It was
+impossible that Montero should succeed! This criminal, this shameless
+Indio! The clamour continued for some time, everybody else in the
+room looking towards the group where Don Juste had put on his air of
+impartial solemnity as if presiding at a sitting of the Provincial
+Assembly. Decoud had turned round at the noise, and, leaning his back
+on the balustrade, shouted into the room with all the strength of his
+lungs, "Gran' bestia!"
+
+This unexpected cry had the effect of stilling the noise. All the eyes
+were directed to the window with an approving expectation; but Decoud
+had already turned his back upon the room, and was again leaning out
+over the quiet street.
+
+"This is the quintessence of my journalism; that is the supreme
+argument," he said to Antonia. "I have invented this definition, this
+last word on a great question. But I am no patriot. I am no more of a
+patriot than the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this Genoese who has
+done such great things for this harbour--this active usher-in of the
+material implements for our progress. You have heard Captain Mitchell
+confess over and over again that till he got this man he could never
+tell how long it would take to unload a ship. That is bad for progress.
+You have seen him pass by after his labours on his famous horse to
+dazzle the girls in some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a
+fortunate fellow! His work is an exercise of personal powers; his
+leisure is spent in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation.
+And he likes it, too. Can anybody be more fortunate? To be feared and
+admired is--"
+
+"And are these your highest aspirations, Don Martin?" interrupted
+Antonia.
+
+"I was speaking of a man of that sort," said Decoud, curtly. "The heroes
+of the world have been feared and admired. What more could he want?"
+
+Decoud had often felt his familiar habit of ironic thought fall
+shattered against Antonia's gravity. She irritated him as if she, too,
+had suffered from that inexplicable feminine obtuseness which stands
+so often between a man and a woman of the more ordinary sort. But he
+overcame his vexation at once. He was very far from thinking Antonia
+ordinary, whatever verdict his scepticism might have pronounced upon
+himself. With a touch of penetrating tenderness in his voice he assured
+her that his only aspiration was to a felicity so high that it seemed
+almost unrealizable on this earth.
+
+She coloured invisibly, with a warmth against which the breeze from the
+sierra seemed to have lost its cooling power in the sudden melting of
+the snows. His whisper could not have carried so far, though there was
+enough ardour in his tone to melt a heart of ice. Antonia turned away
+abruptly, as if to carry his whispered assurance into the room behind,
+full of light, noisy with voices.
+
+The tide of political speculation was beating high within the four walls
+of the great sala, as if driven beyond the marks by a great gust of
+hope. Don Juste's fan-shaped beard was still the centre of loud and
+animated discussions. There was a self-confident ring in all the
+voices. Even the few Europeans around Charles Gould--a Dane, a couple
+of Frenchmen, a discreet fat German, smiling, with down-cast eyes, the
+representatives of those material interests that had got a footing in
+Sulaco under the protecting might of the San Tome mine--had infused a
+lot of good humour into their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they
+were paying their court, was the visible sign of the stability that
+could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolutions. They felt
+hopeful about their various undertakings. One of the two Frenchmen,
+small, black, with glittering eyes lost in an immense growth of bushy
+beard, waved his tiny brown hands and delicate wrists. He had been
+travelling in the interior of the province for a syndicate of European
+capitalists. His forcible "_Monsieur l'Administrateur_" returning every
+minute shrilled above the steady hum of conversations. He was relating
+his discoveries. He was ecstatic. Charles Gould glanced down at him
+courteously.
+
+At a given moment of these necessary receptions it was Mrs. Gould's
+habit to withdraw quietly into a little drawing-room, especially her
+own, next to the great sala. She had risen, and, waiting for Antonia,
+listened with a slightly worried graciousness to the engineer-in-chief
+of the railway, who stooped over her, relating slowly, without the
+slightest gesture, something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a
+humorous twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the room to join
+Mrs. Gould, turned her head over her shoulder towards Decoud, only for a
+moment.
+
+"Why should any one of us think his aspirations unrealizable?" she said,
+rapidly.
+
+"I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia," he answered, through
+clenched teeth, then bowed very low, a little distantly.
+
+The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his amusing story.
+The humours of railway building in South America appealed to his keen
+appreciation of the absurd, and he told his instances of ignorant
+prejudice and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs. Gould gave him
+all her attention as he walked by her side escorting the ladies out of
+the room. Finally all three passed unnoticed through the glass doors in
+the gallery. Only a tall priest stalking silently in the noise of the
+sala checked himself to look after them. Father Corbelan, whom Decoud
+had seen from the balcony turning into the gateway of the Casa
+Gould, had addressed no one since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane
+accentuated the tallness of his stature; he carried his powerful torso
+thrown forward; and the straight, black bar of his joined eyebrows, the
+pugnacious outline of the bony face, the white spot of a scar on the
+bluish shaven cheeks (a testimonial to his apostolic zeal from a
+party of unconverted Indians), suggested something unlawful behind his
+priesthood, the idea of a chaplain of bandits.
+
+He separated his bony, knotted hands clasped behind his back, to shake
+his finger at Martin.
+
+Decoud had stepped into the room after Antonia. But he did not go far.
+He had remained just within, against the curtain, with an expression of
+not quite genuine gravity, like a grown-up person taking part in a game
+of children. He gazed quietly at the threatening finger.
+
+"I have watched your reverence converting General Barrios by a special
+sermon on the Plaza," he said, without making the slightest movement.
+
+"What miserable nonsense!" Father Corbelan's deep voice resounded all
+over the room, making all the heads turn on the shoulders. "The man is a
+drunkard. Senores, the God of your General is a bottle!"
+
+His contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy suspension of every
+sound, as if the self-confidence of the gathering had been staggered by
+a blow. But nobody took up Father Corbelan's declaration.
+
+It was known that Father Corbelan had come out of the wilds to advocate
+the sacred rights of the Church with the same fanatical fearlessness
+with which he had gone preaching to bloodthirsty savages, devoid
+of human compassion or worship of any kind. Rumours of legendary
+proportions told of his successes as a missionary beyond the eye of
+Christian men. He had baptized whole nations of Indians, living with
+them like a savage himself. It was related that the padre used to ride
+with his Indians for days, half naked, carrying a bullock-hide shield,
+and, no doubt, a long lance, too--who knows? That he had wandered
+clothed in skins, seeking for proselytes somewhere near the snow line of
+the Cordillera. Of these exploits Padre Corbelan himself was never known
+to talk. But he made no secret of his opinion that the politicians of
+Sta. Marta had harder hearts and more corrupt minds than the heathen
+to whom he had carried the word of God. His injudicious zeal for the
+temporal welfare of the Church was damaging the Ribierist cause. It was
+common knowledge that he had refused to be made titular bishop of the
+Occidental diocese till justice was done to a despoiled Church. The
+political Gefe of Sulaco (the same dignitary whom Captain Mitchell saved
+from the mob afterwards) hinted with naive cynicism that doubtless their
+Excellencies the Ministers sent the padre over the mountains to Sulaco
+in the worst season of the year in the hope that he would be frozen
+to death by the icy blasts of the high paramos. Every year a few hardy
+muleteers--men inured to exposure--were known to perish in that way. But
+what would you have? Their Excellencies possibly had not realized what
+a tough priest he was. Meantime, the ignorant were beginning to murmur
+that the Ribierist reforms meant simply the taking away of the land
+from the people. Some of it was to be given to foreigners who made the
+railway; the greater part was to go to the padres.
+
+These were the results of the Grand Vicar's zeal. Even from the short
+allocution to the troops on the Plaza (which only the first ranks
+could have heard) he had not been able to keep out his fixed idea of
+an outraged Church waiting for reparation from a penitent country. The
+political Gefe had been exasperated. But he could not very well throw
+the brother-in-law of Don Jose into the prison of the Cabildo. The chief
+magistrate, an easy-going and popular official, visited the Casa
+Gould, walking over after sunset from the Intendencia, unattended,
+acknowledging with dignified courtesy the salutations of high and low
+alike. That evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gould and had
+hissed out to him that he would have liked to deport the Grand Vicar
+out of Sulaco, anywhere, to some desert island, to the Isabels, for
+instance. "The one without water preferably--eh, Don Carlos?" he had
+added in a tone between jest and earnest. This uncontrollable priest,
+who had rejected his offer of the episcopal palace for a residence and
+preferred to hang his shabby hammock amongst the rubble and spiders of
+the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had taken into his head to advocate
+an unconditional pardon for Hernandez the Robber! And this was not
+enough; he seemed to have entered into communication with the most
+audacious criminal the country had known for years. The Sulaco police
+knew, of course, what was going on. Padre Corbelan had got hold of that
+reckless Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores, the only man fit for such
+an errand, and had sent a message through him. Father Corbelan had
+studied in Rome, and could speak Italian. The Capataz was known to visit
+the old Dominican Convent at night. An old woman who served the Grand
+Vicar had heard the name of Hernandez pronounced; and only last Saturday
+afternoon the Capataz had been observed galloping out of town. He did
+not return for two days. The police would have laid the Italian by the
+heels if it had not been for fear of the Cargadores, a turbulent body of
+men, quite apt to raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern
+Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the money in the
+pockets of the railway workmen. The populace was made restless by Father
+Corbelan's discourses. And the first magistrate explained to Charles
+Gould that now the province was stripped of troops any outbreak of
+lawlessness would find the authorities with their boots off, as it were.
+
+Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair, smoking a long, thin
+cigar, not very far from Don Jose, with whom, bending over sideways, he
+exchanged a few words from time to time. He ignored the entrance of the
+priest, and whenever Father Corbelan's voice was raised behind him, he
+shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
+
+Father Corbelan had remained quite motionless for a time with that
+something vengeful in his immobility which seemed to characterize all
+his attitudes. A lurid glow of strong convictions gave its peculiar
+aspect to the black figure. But its fierceness became softened as the
+padre, fixing his eyes upon Decoud, raised his long, black arm slowly,
+impressively--
+
+"And you--you are a perfect heathen," he said, in a subdued, deep voice.
+
+He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the young man's breast.
+Decoud, very calm, felt the wall behind the curtain with the back of his
+head. Then, with his chin tilted well up, he smiled.
+
+"Very well," he agreed with the slightly weary nonchalance of a man well
+used to these passages. "But is it perhaps that you have not discovered
+yet what is the God of my worship? It was an easier task with our
+Barrios."
+
+The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement. "You believe neither
+in stick nor stone," he said.
+
+"Nor bottle," added Decoud without stirring. "Neither does the other of
+your reverence's confidants. I mean the Capataz of the Cargadores.
+He does not drink. Your reading of my character does honour to your
+perspicacity. But why call me a heathen?"
+
+"True," retorted the priest. "You are ten times worse. A miracle could
+not convert you."
+
+"I certainly do not believe in miracles," said Decoud, quietly. Father
+Corbelan shrugged his high, broad shoulders doubtfully.
+
+"A sort of Frenchman--godless--a materialist," he pronounced slowly, as
+if weighing the terms of a careful analysis. "Neither the son of his own
+country nor of any other," he continued, thoughtfully.
+
+"Scarcely human, in fact," Decoud commented under his breath, his head
+at rest against the wall, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling.
+
+"The victim of this faithless age," Father Corbelan resumed in a deep
+but subdued voice.
+
+"But of some use as a journalist." Decoud changed his pose and spoke
+in a more animated tone. "Has your worship neglected to read the last
+number of the Porvenir? I assure you it is just like the others. On
+the general policy it continues to call Montero a gran' bestia, and
+stigmatize his brother, the guerrillero, for a combination of lackey
+and spy. What could be more effective? In local affairs it urges the
+Provincial Government to enlist bodily into the national army the band
+of Hernandez the Robber--who is apparently the protege of the Church--or
+at least of the Grand Vicar. Nothing could be more sound."
+
+The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his square-toed shoes with
+big steel buckles. Again, with his hands clasped behind his back, he
+paced to and fro, planting his feet firmly. When he swung about, the
+skirt of his soutane was inflated slightly by the brusqueness of his
+movements.
+
+The great sala had been emptying itself slowly. When the Gefe Politico
+rose to go, most of those still remaining stood up suddenly in sign of
+respect, and Don Jose Avellanos stopped the rocking of his chair. But
+the good-natured First Official made a deprecatory gesture, waved his
+hand to Charles Gould, and went out discreetly.
+
+In the comparative peace of the room the screaming "Monsieur
+l'Administrateur" of the frail, hairy Frenchman seemed to acquire a
+preternatural shrillness. The explorer of the Capitalist syndicate was
+still enthusiastic. "Ten million dollars' worth of copper practically in
+sight, Monsieur l'Administrateur. Ten millions in sight! And a railway
+coming--a railway! They will never believe my report. C'est trop beau."
+He fell a prey to a screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely nodding
+heads, before Charles Gould's imperturbable calm.
+
+And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging round the skirt of
+his soutane at each end of his beat. Decoud murmured to him ironically:
+"Those gentlemen talk about their gods."
+
+Father Corbelan stopped short, looked at the journalist of Sulaco
+fixedly for a moment, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and resumed his
+plodding walk of an obstinate traveller.
+
+And now the Europeans were dropping off from the group around Charles
+Gould till the Administrador of the Great Silver Mine could be seen in
+his whole lank length, from head to foot, left stranded by the
+ebbing tide of his guests on the great square of carpet, as it were a
+multi-coloured shoal of flowers and arabesques under his brown boots.
+Father Corbelan approached the rocking-chair of Don Jose Avellanos.
+
+"Come, brother," he said, with kindly brusqueness and a touch of
+relieved impatience a man may feel at the end of a perfectly useless
+ceremony. "A la Casa! A la Casa! This has been all talk. Let us now go
+and think and pray for guidance from Heaven."
+
+He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the frail
+diplomatist--the life and soul of the party--he seemed gigantic, with
+a gleam of fanaticism in the glance. But the voice of the party, or,
+rather, its mouthpiece, the "son Decoud" from Paris, turned journalist
+for the sake of Antonia's eyes, knew very well that it was not so, that
+he was only a strenuous priest with one idea, feared by the women and
+execrated by the men of the people. Martin Decoud, the dilettante in
+life, imagined himself to derive an artistic pleasure from watching
+the picturesque extreme of wrongheadedness into which an honest,
+almost sacred, conviction may drive a man. "It is like madness. It must
+be--because it's self-destructive," Decoud had said to himself often.
+It seemed to him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective,
+turned into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to
+destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with the zest
+of a connoisseur in the art of his choice. Those two men got on well
+together, as if each had felt respectively that a masterful conviction,
+as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man very far on the by-paths of
+political action.
+
+Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. Decoud followed out the
+brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in the vast empty
+sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man,
+with a drooping moustache, a hide merchant from Esmeralda, who had come
+overland to Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range.
+He was very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose
+of seeing the Senor Administrador of San Tome in relation to some
+assistance he required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to
+enlarge it greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was
+going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a strange,
+anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language, which he pattered
+rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A plain man could carry
+on his little business now in the country, and even think of enlarging
+it--with safety. Was it not so? He seemed to beg Charles Gould for a
+confirmatory word, a grunt of assent, a simple nod even.
+
+He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he would
+dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he would branch
+off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his journey. The audacious
+Hernandez, leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the Campo of Sulaco,
+and was known to be lurking in the ravines of the coast range.
+Yesterday, when distant only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant
+and his servants had seen three men on the road arrested suspiciously,
+with their horses' heads together. Two of these rode off at once and
+disappeared in a shallow quebrada to the left. "We stopped," continued
+the man from Esmeralda, "and I tried to hide behind a small bush. But
+none of my mozos would go forward to find out what it meant, and the
+third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was no use. We
+had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling. He let us pass--a man on
+a grey horse with his hat down on his eyes--without a word of greeting;
+but by-and-by we heard him galloping after us. We faced about, but that
+did not seem to intimidate him. He rode up at speed, and touching
+my foot with the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a
+blood-curdling laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand
+back to reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his
+waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and as he
+did not offer to go on we dared not move. At last, blowing the smoke of
+my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said, 'Senor, it would be
+perhaps better for you if I rode behind your party. You are not very far
+from Sulaco now. Go you with God.' What would you? We went on. There
+was no resisting him. He might have been Hernandez himself; though my
+servant, who has been many times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he
+had recognized him very well for the Capataz of the Steamship Company's
+Cargadores. Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the corner
+of the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup
+with her hand on the grey horse's mane."
+
+"I assure you, Senor Hirsch," murmured Charles Gould, "that you ran no
+risk on this occasion."
+
+"That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most fierce man--to look
+at. And what does it mean? A person employed by the Steamship Company
+talking with salteadores--no less, senor; the other horsemen were
+salteadores--in a lonely place, and behaving like a robber himself! A
+cigar is nothing, but what was there to prevent him asking me for my
+purse?"
+
+"No, no, Senor Hirsch," Charles Gould murmured, letting his glance
+stray away a little vacantly from the round face, with its hooked beak
+upturned towards him in an almost childlike appeal. "If it was the
+Capataz de Cargadores you met--and there is no doubt, is there?--you
+were perfectly safe."
+
+"Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-looking man, Don Carlos. He
+asked me for a cigar in a most familiar manner. What would have happened
+if I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What business had he to be
+talking with robbers in a lonely place?"
+
+But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave not a sign, made no
+sound. The impenetrability of the embodied Gould Concession had its
+surface shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction; but the King
+of Sulaco had words enough to give him all the mysterious weight of a
+taciturn force. His silences, backed by the power of speech, had as many
+shades of significance as uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt,
+of negation--even of simple comment. Some seemed to say plainly, "Think
+it over"; others meant clearly, "Go ahead"; a simple, low "I see," with
+an affirmative nod, at the end of a patient listening half-hour was
+the equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned to trust
+implicitly, since behind it all there was the great San Tome mine, the
+head and front of the material interests, so strong that it depended
+on no man's goodwill in the whole length and breadth of the Occidental
+Province--that is, on no goodwill which it could not buy ten times
+over. But to the little hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about
+the export of hides, the silence of Charles Gould portended a failure.
+Evidently this was no time for extending a modest man's business. He
+enveloped in a swift mental malediction the whole country, with all
+its inhabitants, partisans of Ribiera and Montero alike; and there were
+incipient tears in his mute anger at the thought of the innumerable
+ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy expanse of the Campo, with its
+single palms rising like ships at sea within the perfect circle of the
+horizon, its clumps of heavy timber motionless like solid islands
+of leaves above the running waves of grass. There were hides there,
+rotting, with no profit to anybody--rotting where they had been dropped
+by men called away to attend the urgent necessities of political
+revolutions. The practical, mercantile soul of Senor Hirsch rebelled
+against all that foolishness, while he was taking a respectful but
+disconcerted leave of the might and majesty of the San Tome mine in the
+person of Charles Gould. He could not restrain a heart-broken murmur,
+wrung out of his very aching heart, as it were.
+
+"It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this. The price of
+hides in Hamburg is gone up--up. Of course the Ribierist Government will
+do away with all that--when it gets established firmly. Meantime--"
+
+He sighed.
+
+"Yes, meantime," repeated Charles Gould, inscrutably.
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not ready to go yet. There
+was a little matter he would like to mention very much if permitted. It
+appeared he had some good friends in Hamburg (he murmured the name
+of the firm) who were very anxious to do business, in dynamite, he
+explained. A contract for dynamite with the San Tome mine, and then,
+perhaps, later on, other mines, which were sure to--The little man from
+Esmeralda was ready to enlarge, but Charles interrupted him. It seemed
+as though the patience of the Senor Administrador was giving way at
+last.
+
+"Senor Hirsch," he said, "I have enough dynamite stored up at the
+mountain to send it down crashing into the valley"--his voice rose a
+little--"to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked."
+
+Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of the dealer in hides,
+who was murmuring hastily, "Just so. Just so." And now he was going.
+It was impossible to do business in explosives with an Administrador so
+well provided and so discouraging. He had suffered agonies in the saddle
+and had exposed himself to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for
+nothing at all. Neither hides nor dynamite--and the very shoulders of
+the enterprising Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low
+to the engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio
+he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an attitude of
+meditative astonishment.
+
+"What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?" he muttered. "And why
+does he talk like this to me?"
+
+The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala, whence
+the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant drop, nodded
+familiarly to the master of the house, standing motionless like a tall
+beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture.
+
+"Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs. The railway will know
+where to go for dynamite should we get short at any time. We have done
+cutting and chopping for a while now. We shall begin soon to blast our
+way through."
+
+"Don't come to me," said Charles Gould, with perfect serenity. "I
+shan't have an ounce to spare for anybody. Not an ounce. Not for my own
+brother, if I had a brother, and he were the engineer-in-chief of the
+most promising railway in the world."
+
+"What's that?" asked the engineer-in-chief, with equanimity.
+"Unkindness?"
+
+"No," said Charles Gould, stolidly. "Policy."
+
+"Radical, I should think," the engineer-in-chief observed from the
+doorway.
+
+"Is that the right name?" Charles Gould said, from the middle of the
+room.
+
+"I mean, going to the roots, you know," the engineer explained, with an
+air of enjoyment.
+
+"Why, yes," Charles pronounced, slowly. "The Gould Concession has struck
+such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the
+mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it
+from there. It's my choice. It's my last card to play."
+
+The engineer-in-chief whistled low. "A pretty game," he said, with a
+shade of discretion. "And have you told Holroyd of that extraordinary
+trump card you hold in your hand?"
+
+"Card only when it's played; when it falls at the end of the game. Till
+then you may call it a--a--"
+
+"Weapon," suggested the railway man.
+
+"No. You may call it rather an argument," corrected Charles Gould,
+gently. "And that's how I've presented it to Mr. Holroyd."
+
+"And what did he say to it?" asked the engineer, with undisguised
+interest.
+
+"He"--Charles Gould spoke after a slight pause--"he said something
+about holding on like grim death and putting our trust in God. I should
+imagine he must have been rather startled. But then"--pursued the
+Administrador of the San Tome mine--"but then, he is very far away, you
+know, and, as they say in this country, God is very high above."
+
+The engineer's appreciative laugh died away down the stairs, where the
+Madonna with the Child on her arm seemed to look after his shaking broad
+back from her shallow niche.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+A profound stillness reigned in the Casa Gould. The master of the house,
+walking along the corredor, opened the door of his room, and saw his
+wife sitting in a big armchair--his own smoking armchair--thoughtful,
+contemplating her little shoes. And she did not raise her eyes when he
+walked in.
+
+"Tired?" asked Charles Gould.
+
+"A little," said Mrs. Gould. Still without looking up, she added with
+feeling, "There is an awful sense of unreality about all this."
+
+Charles Gould, before the long table strewn with papers, on which lay a
+hunting crop and a pair of spurs, stood looking at his wife: "The heat
+and dust must have been awful this afternoon by the waterside," he
+murmured, sympathetically. "The glare on the water must have been simply
+terrible."
+
+"One could close one's eyes to the glare," said Mrs. Gould. "But, my
+dear Charley, it is impossible for me to close my eyes to our position;
+to this awful . . ."
+
+She raised her eyes and looked at her husband's face, from which all
+sign of sympathy or any other feeling had disappeared. "Why don't you
+tell me something?" she almost wailed.
+
+"I thought you had understood me perfectly from the first," Charles
+Gould said, slowly. "I thought we had said all there was to say a long
+time ago. There is nothing to say now. There were things to be done. We
+have done them; we have gone on doing them. There is no going back now.
+I don't suppose that, even from the first, there was really any possible
+way back. And, what's more, we can't even afford to stand still."
+
+"Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go," said his wife inwardly
+trembling, but in an almost playful tone.
+
+"Any distance, any length, of course," was the answer, in a
+matter-of-fact tone, which caused Mrs. Gould to make another effort to
+repress a shudder.
+
+She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure seemed to be
+diminished still more by the heavy mass of her hair and the long train
+of her gown.
+
+"But always to success," she said, persuasively.
+
+Charles Gould, enveloping her in the steely blue glance of his attentive
+eyes, answered without hesitation--
+
+"Oh, there is no alternative."
+
+He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to the words, this was all
+that his conscience would allow him to say.
+
+Mrs. Gould's smile remained a shade too long upon her lips. She
+murmured--
+
+"I will leave you; I've a slight headache. The heat, the dust, were
+indeed--I suppose you are going back to the mine before the morning?"
+
+"At midnight," said Charles Gould. "We are bringing down the silver
+to-morrow. Then I shall take three whole days off in town with you."
+
+"Ah, you are going to meet the escort. I shall be on the balcony at five
+o'clock to see you pass. Till then, good-bye."
+
+Charles Gould walked rapidly round the table, and, seizing her hands,
+bent down, pressing them both to his lips. Before he straightened
+himself up again to his full height she had disengaged one to smooth his
+cheek with a light touch, as if he were a little boy.
+
+"Try to get some rest for a couple of hours," she murmured, with a
+glance at a hammock stretched in a distant part of the room. Her long
+train swished softly after her on the red tiles. At the door she looked
+back.
+
+Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in a soft and abundant
+light the four white walls of the room, with a glass case of arms, the
+brass hilt of Henry Gould's cavalry sabre on its square of velvet, and
+the water-colour sketch of the San Tome gorge. And Mrs. Gould, gazing at
+the last in its black wooden frame, sighed out--
+
+"Ah, if we had left it alone, Charley!"
+
+"No," Charles Gould said, moodily; "it was impossible to leave it
+alone."
+
+"Perhaps it was impossible," Mrs. Gould admitted, slowly. Her lips
+quivered a little, but she smiled with an air of dainty bravado. "We
+have disturbed a good many snakes in that Paradise, Charley, haven't
+we?"
+
+"Yes, I remember," said Charles Gould, "it was Don Pepe who called the
+gorge the Paradise of snakes. No doubt we have disturbed a great many.
+But remember, my dear, that it is not now as it was when you made that
+sketch." He waved his hand towards the small water-colour hanging alone
+upon the great bare wall. "It is no longer a Paradise of snakes. We have
+brought mankind into it, and we cannot turn our backs upon them to go
+and begin a new life elsewhere."
+
+He confronted his wife with a firm, concentrated gaze, which Mrs. Gould
+returned with a brave assumption of fearlessness before she went out,
+closing the door gently after her.
+
+In contrast with the white glaring room the dimly lit corredor had a
+restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the stems and the
+leaves of the plants ranged along the balustrade of the open side.
+In the streaks of light falling through the open doors of the
+reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and pale lilac, came out
+vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine; and Mrs.
+Gould, passing on, had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear
+patches of sun that chequer the gloom of open glades in the woods. The
+stones in the rings upon her hand pressed to her forehead glittered in
+the lamplight abreast of the door of the sala.
+
+"Who's there?" she asked, in a startled voice. "Is that you, Basilio?"
+She looked in, and saw Martin Decoud walking about, with an air of
+having lost something, amongst the chairs and tables.
+
+"Antonia has forgotten her fan in here," said Decoud, with a strange air
+of distraction; "so I entered to see."
+
+But, even as he said this, he had obviously given up his search, and
+walked straight towards Mrs. Gould, who looked at him with doubtful
+surprise.
+
+"Senora," he began, in a low voice.
+
+"What is it, Don Martin?" asked Mrs. Gould. And then she added, with a
+slight laugh, "I am so nervous to-day," as if to explain the eagerness
+of the question.
+
+"Nothing immediately dangerous," said Decoud, who now could not conceal
+his agitation. "Pray don't distress yourself. No, really, you must not
+distress yourself."
+
+Mrs. Gould, with her candid eyes very wide open, her lips composed into
+a smile, was steadying herself with a little bejewelled hand against the
+side of the door.
+
+"Perhaps you don't know how alarming you are, appearing like this
+unexpectedly--"
+
+"I! Alarming!" he protested, sincerely vexed and surprised. "I assure
+you that I am not in the least alarmed myself. A fan is lost; well,
+it will be found again. But I don't think it is here. It is a fan I am
+looking for. I cannot understand how Antonia could--Well! Have you found
+it, amigo?"
+
+"No, senor," said behind Mrs. Gould the soft voice of Basilio, the head
+servant of the Casa. "I don't think the senorita could have left it in
+this house at all."
+
+"Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my friend; look for it
+on the steps, under the gate; examine every flagstone; search for it
+till I come down again. . . . That fellow"--he addressed himself in
+English to Mrs. Gould--"is always stealing up behind one's back on his
+bare feet. I set him to look for that fan directly I came in to justify
+my reappearance, my sudden return."
+
+He paused and Mrs. Gould said, amiably, "You are always welcome." She
+paused for a second, too. "But I am waiting to learn the cause of your
+return."
+
+Decoud affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance.
+
+"I can't bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause? Yes, there is a cause;
+there is something else that is lost besides Antonia's favourite fan. As
+I was walking home after seeing Don Jose and Antonia to their house, the
+Capataz de Cargadores, riding down the street, spoke to me."
+
+"Has anything happened to the Violas?" inquired Mrs. Gould.
+
+"The Violas? You mean the old Garibaldino who keeps the hotel where
+the engineers live? Nothing happened there. The Capataz said nothing
+of them; he only told me that the telegraphist of the Cable Company was
+walking on the Plaza, bareheaded, looking out for me. There is news from
+the interior, Mrs. Gould. I should rather say rumours of news."
+
+"Good news?" said Mrs. Gould in a low voice.
+
+"Worthless, I should think. But if I must define them, I would say bad.
+They are to the effect that a two days' battle had been fought near Sta.
+Marta, and that the Ribierists are defeated. It must have happened a few
+days ago--perhaps a week. The rumour has just reached Cayta, and the
+man in charge of the cable station there has telegraphed the news to his
+colleague here. We might just as well have kept Barrios in Sulaco."
+
+"What's to be done now?" murmured Mrs. Gould.
+
+"Nothing. He's at sea with the troops. He will get to Cayta in a couple
+of days' time and learn the news there. What he will do then, who can
+say? Hold Cayta? Offer his submission to Montero? Disband his army--this
+last most likely, and go himself in one of the O.S.N. Company's
+steamers, north or south--to Valparaiso or to San Francisco, no matter
+where. Our Barrios has a great practice in exiles and repatriations,
+which mark the points in the political game."
+
+Decoud, exchanging a steady stare with Mrs. Gould, added, tentatively,
+as it were, "And yet, if we had could have been done."
+
+"Montero victorious, completely victorious!" Mrs. Gould breathed out in
+a tone of unbelief.
+
+"A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched in great numbers in
+such times as these. And even if it were true? Well, let us put things
+at their worst, let us say it is true."
+
+"Then everything is lost," said Mrs. Gould, with the calmness of
+despair.
+
+Suddenly she seemed to divine, she seemed to see Decoud's tremendous
+excitement under its cloak of studied carelessness. It was, indeed,
+becoming visible in his audacious and watchful stare, in the curve,
+half-reckless, half-contemptuous, of his lips. And a French phrase came
+upon them as if, for this Costaguanero of the Boulevard, that had been
+the only forcible language--
+
+"_Non, Madame. Rien n'est perdu_."
+
+It electrified Mrs. Gould out of her benumbed attitude, and she said,
+vivaciously--
+
+"What would you think of doing?"
+
+But already there was something of mockery in Decoud's suppressed
+excitement.
+
+"What would you expect a true Costaguanero to do? Another revolution, of
+course. On my word of honour, Mrs. Gould, I believe I am a true _hijo del
+pays_, a true son of the country, whatever Father Corbelan may say. And
+I'm not so much of an unbeliever as not to have faith in my own ideas,
+in my own remedies, in my own desires."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Gould, doubtfully.
+
+"You don't seem convinced," Decoud went on again in French. "Say, then,
+in my passions."
+
+Mrs. Gould received this addition unflinchingly. To understand it
+thoroughly she did not require to hear his muttered assurance--
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for the sake of Antonia. There is
+nothing I am not prepared to undertake. There is no risk I am not ready
+to run."
+
+Decoud seemed to find a fresh audacity in this voicing of his thoughts.
+"You would not believe me if I were to say that it is the love of the
+country which--"
+
+She made a sort of discouraged protest with her arm, as if to express
+that she had given up expecting that motive from any one.
+
+"A Sulaco revolution," Decoud pursued in a forcible undertone. "The
+Great Cause may be served here, on the very spot of its inception, in
+the place of its birth, Mrs. Gould."
+
+Frowning, and biting her lower lip thoughtfully, she made a step away
+from the door.
+
+"You are not going to speak to your husband?" Decoud arrested her
+anxiously.
+
+"But you will need his help?"
+
+"No doubt," Decoud admitted without hesitation. "Everything turns upon
+the San Tome mine, but I would rather he didn't know anything as yet of
+my--my hopes."
+
+A puzzled look came upon Mrs. Gould's face, and Decoud, approaching,
+explained confidentially--
+
+"Don't you see, he's such an idealist."
+
+Mrs. Gould flushed pink, and her eyes grew darker at the same time.
+
+"Charley an idealist!" she said, as if to herself, wonderingly. "What on
+earth do you mean?"
+
+"Yes," conceded Decoud, "it's a wonderful thing to say with the sight
+of the San Tome mine, the greatest fact in the whole of South America,
+perhaps, before our very eyes. But look even at that, he has idealized
+this fact to a point--" He paused. "Mrs. Gould, are you aware to what
+point he has idealized the existence, the worth, the meaning of the San
+Tome mine? Are you aware of it?"
+
+He must have known what he was talking about.
+
+The effect he expected was produced. Mrs. Gould, ready to take fire,
+gave it up suddenly with a low little sound that resembled a moan.
+
+"What do you know?" she asked in a feeble voice.
+
+"Nothing," answered Decoud, firmly. "But, then, don't you see, he's an
+Englishman?"
+
+"Well, what of that?" asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+"Simply that he cannot act or exist without idealizing every simple
+feeling, desire, or achievement. He could not believe his own motives if
+he did not make them first a part of some fairy tale. The earth is not
+quite good enough for him, I fear. Do you excuse my frankness? Besides,
+whether you excuse it or not, it is part of the truth of things which
+hurts the--what do you call them?--the Anglo-Saxon's susceptibilities,
+and at the present moment I don't feel as if I could treat seriously
+either his conception of things or--if you allow me to say so--or yet
+yours."
+
+Mrs. Gould gave no sign of being offended. "I suppose Antonia
+understands you thoroughly?"
+
+"Understands? Well, yes. But I am not sure that she approves. That,
+however, makes no difference. I am honest enough to tell you that, Mrs.
+Gould."
+
+"Your idea, of course, is separation," she said.
+
+"Separation, of course," declared Martin. "Yes; separation of the whole
+Occidental Province from the rest of the unquiet body. But my true idea,
+the only one I care for, is not to be separated from Antonia."
+
+"And that is all?" asked Mrs. Gould, without severity.
+
+"Absolutely. I am not deceiving myself about my motives. She won't leave
+Sulaco for my sake, therefore Sulaco must leave the rest of the Republic
+to its fate. Nothing could be clearer than that. I like a clearly
+defined situation. I cannot part with Antonia, therefore the one and
+indivisible Republic of Costaguana must be made to part with its western
+province. Fortunately it happens to be also a sound policy. The
+richest, the most fertile part of this land may be saved from anarchy.
+Personally, I care little, very little; but it's a fact that the
+establishment of Montero in power would mean death to me. In all the
+proclamations of general pardon which I have seen, my name, with a few
+others, is specially excepted. The brothers hate me, as you know very
+well, Mrs. Gould; and behold, here is the rumour of them having won a
+battle. You say that supposing it is true, I have plenty of time to run
+away."
+
+The slight, protesting murmur on the part of Mrs. Gould made him pause
+for a moment, while he looked at her with a sombre and resolute glance.
+
+"Ah, but I would, Mrs. Gould. I would run away if it served that which
+at present is my only desire. I am courageous enough to say that, and to
+do it, too. But women, even our women, are idealists. It is Antonia that
+won't run away. A novel sort of vanity."
+
+"You call it vanity," said Mrs. Gould, in a shocked voice.
+
+"Say pride, then, which Father Corbelan would tell you, is a mortal
+sin. But I am not proud. I am simply too much in love to run away. At
+the same time I want to live. There is no love for a dead man. Therefore
+it is necessary that Sulaco should not recognize the victorious
+Montero."
+
+"And you think my husband will give you his support?"
+
+"I think he can be drawn into it, like all idealists, when he once sees
+a sentimental basis for his action. But I wouldn't talk to him. Mere
+clear facts won't appeal to his sentiment. It is much better for him
+to convince himself in his own way. And, frankly, I could not, perhaps,
+just now pay sufficient respect to either his motives or even, perhaps,
+to yours, Mrs. Gould."
+
+It was evident that Mrs. Gould was very determined not to be offended.
+She smiled vaguely, while she seemed to think the matter over. As far
+as she could judge from the girl's half-confidences, Antonia understood
+that young man. Obviously there was promise of safety in his plan, or
+rather in his idea. Moreover, right or wrong, the idea could do no harm.
+And it was quite possible, also, that the rumour was false.
+
+"You have some sort of a plan," she said.
+
+"Simplicity itself. Barrios has started, let him go on then; he will
+hold Cayta, which is the door of the sea route to Sulaco. They cannot
+send a sufficient force over the mountains. No; not even to cope with
+the band of Hernandez. Meantime we shall organize our resistance here.
+And for that, this very Hernandez will be useful. He has defeated troops
+as a bandit; he will no doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made
+a colonel or even a general. You know the country well enough not to
+be shocked by what I say, Mrs. Gould. I have heard you assert that this
+poor bandit was the living, breathing example of cruelty, injustice,
+stupidity, and oppression, that ruin men's souls as well as their
+fortunes in this country. Well, there would be some poetical retribution
+in that man arising to crush the evils which had driven an honest
+ranchero into a life of crime. A fine idea of retribution in that, isn't
+there?"
+
+Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he spoke with precision,
+very correctly, but with too many z sounds.
+
+"Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your ailing mothers
+and feeble old men, of all that population which you and your husband
+have brought into the rocky gorge of San Tome. Are you not responsible
+to your conscience for all these people? Is it not worth while to make
+another effort, which is not at all so desperate as it looks, rather
+than--"
+
+Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm, suggesting
+annihilation; and Mrs. Gould turned away her head with a look of horror.
+
+"Why don't you say all this to my husband?" she asked, without looking
+at Decoud, who stood watching the effect of his words.
+
+"Ah! But Don Carlos is so English," he began. Mrs. Gould interrupted--
+
+"Leave that alone, Don Martin. He's as much a Costaguanero--No! He's
+more of a Costaguanero than yourself."
+
+"Sentimentalist, sentimentalist," Decoud almost cooed, in a tone of
+gentle and soothing deference. "Sentimentalist, after the amazing manner
+of your people. I have been watching El Rey de Sulaco since I came here
+on a fool's errand, and perhaps impelled by some treason of fate lurking
+behind the unaccountable turns of a man's life. But I don't matter, I am
+not a sentimentalist, I cannot endow my personal desires with a shining
+robe of silk and jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from
+the tradition of a pretty fairy tale. No, Mrs. Gould; I am practical. I
+am not afraid of my motives. But, pardon me, I have been rather carried
+away. What I wish to say is that I have been observing. I won't tell you
+what I have discovered--"
+
+"No. That is unnecessary," whispered Mrs. Gould, once more averting her
+head.
+
+"It is. Except one little fact, that your husband does not like me.
+It's a small matter, which, in the circumstances, seems to acquire a
+perfectly ridiculous importance. Ridiculous and immense; for, clearly,
+money is required for my plan," he reflected; then added, meaningly,
+"and we have two sentimentalists to deal with."
+
+"I don't know that I understand you, Don Martin," said Mrs. Gould,
+coldly, preserving the low key of their conversation. "But, speaking as
+if I did, who is the other?"
+
+"The great Holroyd in San Francisco, of course," Decoud whispered,
+lightly. "I think you understand me very well. Women are idealists; but
+then they are so perspicacious."
+
+But whatever was the reason of that remark, disparaging and
+complimentary at the same time, Mrs. Gould seemed not to pay attention
+to it. The name of Holroyd had given a new tone to her anxiety.
+
+"The silver escort is coming down to the harbour tomorrow; a whole six
+months' working, Don Martin!" she cried in dismay.
+
+"Let it come down, then," breathed out Decoud, earnestly, almost into
+her ear.
+
+"But if the rumour should get about, and especially if it turned out
+true, troubles might break out in the town," objected Mrs. Gould.
+
+Decoud admitted that it was possible. He knew well the town children
+of the Sulaco Campo: sullen, thievish, vindictive, and bloodthirsty,
+whatever great qualities their brothers of the plain might have had.
+But then there was that other sentimentalist, who attached a strangely
+idealistic meaning to concrete facts. This stream of silver must be kept
+flowing north to return in the form of financial backing from the great
+house of Holroyd. Up at the mountain in the strong room of the mine
+the silver bars were worth less for his purpose than so much lead, from
+which at least bullets may be run. Let it come down to the harbour,
+ready for shipment.
+
+The next north-going steamer would carry it off for the very salvation
+of the San Tome mine, which had produced so much treasure. And,
+moreover, the rumour was probably false, he remarked, with much
+conviction in his hurried tone.
+
+"Besides, senora," concluded Decoud, "we may suppress it for many days.
+I have been talking with the telegraphist in the middle of the Plaza
+Mayor; thus I am certain that we could not have been overheard. There
+was not even a bird in the air near us. And also let me tell you
+something more. I have been making friends with this man called
+Nostromo, the Capataz. We had a conversation this very evening, I
+walking by the side of his horse as he rode slowly out of the town just
+now. He promised me that if a riot took place for any reason--even
+for the most political of reasons, you understand--his Cargadores, an
+important part of the populace, you will admit, should be found on the
+side of the Europeans."
+
+"He has promised you that?" Mrs. Gould inquired, with interest. "What
+made him make that promise to you?"
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know," declared Decoud, in a slightly surprised
+tone. "He certainly promised me that, but now you ask me why, I could
+not tell you his reasons. He talked with his usual carelessness, which,
+if he had been anything else but a common sailor, I would call a pose or
+an affectation."
+
+Decoud, interrupting himself, looked at Mrs. Gould curiously.
+
+"Upon the whole," he continued, "I suppose he expects something to his
+advantage from it. You mustn't forget that he does not exercise his
+extraordinary power over the lower classes without a certain amount of
+personal risk and without a great profusion in spending his money.
+One must pay in some way or other for such a solid thing as individual
+prestige. He told me after we made friends at a dance, in a Posada kept
+by a Mexican just outside the walls, that he had come here to make his
+fortune. I suppose he looks upon his prestige as a sort of investment."
+
+"Perhaps he prizes it for its own sake," Mrs. Gould said in a tone as
+if she were repelling an undeserved aspersion. "Viola, the Garibaldino,
+with whom he has lived for some years, calls him the Incorruptible."
+
+"Ah! he belongs to the group of your proteges out there towards the
+harbour, Mrs. Gould. Muy bien. And Captain Mitchell calls him wonderful.
+I have heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his
+fidelity. No end of fine things. H'm! incorruptible! It is indeed a name
+of honour for the Capataz of the Cargadores of Sulaco. Incorruptible!
+Fine, but vague. However, I suppose he's sensible, too. And I talked to
+him upon that sane and practical assumption."
+
+"I prefer to think him disinterested, and therefore trustworthy," Mrs.
+Gould said, with the nearest approach to curtness it was in her nature
+to assume.
+
+"Well, if so, then the silver will be still more safe. Let it come down,
+senora. Let it come down, so that it may go north and return to us in
+the shape of credit."
+
+Mrs. Gould glanced along the corredor towards the door of her husband's
+room. Decoud, watching her as if she had his fate in her hands, detected
+an almost imperceptible nod of assent. He bowed with a smile, and,
+putting his hand into the breast pocket of his coat, pulled out a fan of
+light feathers set upon painted leaves of sandal-wood. "I had it in my
+pocket," he murmured, triumphantly, "for a plausible pretext." He bowed
+again. "Good-night, senora."
+
+Mrs. Gould continued along the corredor away from her husband's room.
+The fate of the San Tome mine was lying heavy upon her heart. It was a
+long time now since she had begun to fear it. It had been an idea. She
+had watched it with misgivings turning into a fetish, and now the
+fetish had grown into a monstrous and crushing weight. It was as if the
+inspiration of their early years had left her heart to turn into a wall
+of silver-bricks, erected by the silent work of evil spirits, between
+her and her husband. He seemed to dwell alone within a circumvallation
+of precious metal, leaving her outside with her school, her hospital,
+the sick mothers and the feeble old men, mere insignificant vestiges of
+the initial inspiration. "Those poor people!" she murmured to herself.
+
+Below she heard the voice of Martin Decoud in the patio speaking loudly:
+
+"I have found Dona Antonia's fan, Basilio. Look, here it is!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+It was part of what Decoud would have called his sane materialism that
+he did not believe in the possibility of friendship between man and
+woman.
+
+The one exception he allowed confirmed, he maintained, that absolute
+rule. Friendship was possible between brother and sister, meaning
+by friendship the frank unreserve, as before another human being, of
+thoughts and sensations; all the objectless and necessary sincerity of
+one's innermost life trying to re-act upon the profound sympathies of
+another existence.
+
+His favourite sister, the handsome, slightly arbitrary and resolute
+angel, ruling the father and mother Decoud in the first-floor apartments
+of a very fine Parisian house, was the recipient of Martin Decoud's
+confidences as to his thoughts, actions, purposes, doubts, and even
+failures. . . .
+
+"Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of another South
+American Republic. One more or less, what does it matter? They may come
+into the world like evil flowers on a hotbed of rotten institutions; but
+the seed of this one has germinated in your brother's brain, and that
+will be enough for your devoted assent. I am writing this to you by the
+light of a single candle, in a sort of inn, near the harbour, kept by
+an Italian called Viola, a protege of Mrs. Gould. The whole building,
+which, for all I know, may have been contrived by a Conquistador farmer
+of the pearl fishery three hundred years ago, is perfectly silent. So is
+the plain between the town and the harbour; silent, but not so dark as
+the house, because the pickets of Italian workmen guarding the railway
+have lighted little fires all along the line. It was not so quiet around
+here yesterday. We had an awful riot--a sudden outbreak of the populace,
+which was not suppressed till late today. Its object, no doubt, was
+loot, and that was defeated, as you may have learned already from the
+cablegram sent via San Francisco and New York last night, when the
+cables were still open. You have read already there that the energetic
+action of the Europeans of the railway has saved the town from
+destruction, and you may believe that. I wrote out the cable myself. We
+have no Reuter's agency man here. I have also fired at the mob from the
+windows of the club, in company with some other young men of position.
+Our object was to keep the Calle de la Constitucion clear for the exodus
+of the ladies and children, who have taken refuge on board a couple of
+cargo ships now in the harbour here. That was yesterday. You should also
+have learned from the cable that the missing President, Ribiera, who had
+disappeared after the battle of Sta. Marta, has turned up here in Sulaco
+by one of those strange coincidences that are almost incredible, riding
+on a lame mule into the very midst of the street fighting. It appears
+that he had fled, in company of a muleteer called Bonifacio, across the
+mountains from the threats of Montero into the arms of an enraged mob.
+
+"The Capataz of Cargadores, that Italian sailor of whom I have written
+to you before, has saved him from an ignoble death. That man seems
+to have a particular talent for being on the spot whenever there is
+something picturesque to be done.
+
+"He was with me at four o'clock in the morning at the offices of the
+Porvenir, where he had turned up so early in order to warn me of the
+coming trouble, and also to assure me that he would keep his Cargadores
+on the side of order. When the full daylight came we were looking
+together at the crowd on foot and on horseback, demonstrating on the
+Plaza and shying stones at the windows of the Intendencia. Nostromo
+(that is the name they call him by here) was pointing out to me his
+Cargadores interspersed in the mob.
+
+"The sun shines late upon Sulaco, for it has first to climb above the
+mountains. In that clear morning light, brighter than twilight, Nostromo
+saw right across the vast Plaza, at the end of the street beyond the
+cathedral, a mounted man apparently in difficulties with a yelling knot
+of leperos. At once he said to me, 'That's a stranger. What is it they
+are doing to him?' Then he took out the silver whistle he is in the
+habit of using on the wharf (this man seems to disdain the use of any
+metal less precious than silver) and blew into it twice, evidently a
+preconcerted signal for his Cargadores. He ran out immediately, and they
+rallied round him. I ran out, too, but was too late to follow them and
+help in the rescue of the stranger, whose animal had fallen. I was set
+upon at once as a hated aristocrat, and was only too glad to get into
+the club, where Don Jaime Berges (you may remember him visiting at
+our house in Paris some three years ago) thrust a sporting gun into
+my hands. They were already firing from the windows. There were little
+heaps of cartridges lying about on the open card-tables. I remember a
+couple of overturned chairs, some bottles rolling on the floor amongst
+the packs of cards scattered suddenly as the caballeros rose from their
+game to open fire upon the mob. Most of the young men had spent the
+night at the club in the expectation of some such disturbance. In two of
+the candelabra, on the consoles, the candles were burning down in their
+sockets. A large iron nut, probably stolen from the railway workshops,
+flew in from the street as I entered, and broke one of the large mirrors
+set in the wall. I noticed also one of the club servants tied up hand
+and foot with the cords of the curtain and flung in a corner. I have a
+vague recollection of Don Jaime assuring me hastily that the fellow had
+been detected putting poison into the dishes at supper. But I remember
+distinctly he was shrieking for mercy, without stopping at all,
+continuously, and so absolutely disregarded that nobody even took the
+trouble to gag him. The noise he made was so disagreeable that I had
+half a mind to do it myself. But there was no time to waste on such
+trifles. I took my place at one of the windows and began firing.
+
+"I didn't learn till later in the afternoon whom it was that Nostromo,
+with his Cargadores and some Italian workmen as well, had managed to
+save from those drunken rascals. That man has a peculiar talent when
+anything striking to the imagination has to be done. I made that remark
+to him afterwards when we met after some sort of order had been restored
+in the town, and the answer he made rather surprised me. He said quite
+moodily, 'And how much do I get for that, senor?' Then it dawned upon me
+that perhaps this man's vanity has been satiated by the adulation of the
+common people and the confidence of his superiors!"
+
+Decoud paused to light a cigarette, then, with his head still over his
+writing, he blew a cloud of smoke, which seemed to rebound from the
+paper. He took up the pencil again.
+
+"That was yesterday evening on the Plaza, while he sat on the steps of
+the cathedral, his hands between his knees, holding the bridle of his
+famous silver-grey mare. He had led his body of Cargadores splendidly
+all day long. He looked fatigued. I don't know how I looked. Very
+dirty, I suppose. But I suppose I also looked pleased. From the time the
+fugitive President had been got off to the S. S. Minerva, the tide
+of success had turned against the mob. They had been driven off the
+harbour, and out of the better streets of the town, into their own
+maze of ruins and tolderias. You must understand that this riot, whose
+primary object was undoubtedly the getting hold of the San Tome silver
+stored in the lower rooms of the Custom House (besides the general
+looting of the Ricos), had acquired a political colouring from the fact
+of two Deputies to the Provincial Assembly, Senores Gamacho and Fuentes,
+both from Bolson, putting themselves at the head of it--late in the
+afternoon, it is true, when the mob, disappointed in their hopes of
+loot, made a stand in the narrow streets to the cries of 'Viva la
+Libertad! Down with Feudalism!' (I wonder what they imagine feudalism to
+be?) 'Down with the Goths and Paralytics.' I suppose the Senores Gamacho
+and Fuentes knew what they were doing. They are prudent gentlemen.
+In the Assembly they called themselves Moderates, and opposed every
+energetic measure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the first rumours
+of Montero's victory, they showed a subtle change of the pensive temper,
+and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopez in his Presidential tribune
+with an effrontery to which the poor man could only respond by a dazed
+smoothing of his beard and the ringing of the presidential bell. Then,
+when the downfall of the Ribierist cause became confirmed beyond the
+shadow of a doubt, they have blossomed into convinced Liberals, acting
+together as if they were Siamese twins, and ultimately taking charge, as
+it were, of the riot in the name of Monterist principles.
+
+"Their last move of eight o'clock last night was to organize themselves
+into a Monterist Committee which sits, as far as I know, in a posada
+kept by a retired Mexican bull-fighter, a great politician, too, whose
+name I have forgotten. Thence they have issued a communication to
+us, the Goths and Paralytics of the Amarilla Club (who have our own
+committee), inviting us to come to some provisional understanding for a
+truce, in order, they have the impudence to say, that the noble cause of
+Liberty 'should not be stained by the criminal excesses of Conservative
+selfishness!' As I came out to sit with Nostromo on the cathedral steps
+the club was busy considering a proper reply in the principal room,
+littered with exploded cartridges, with a lot of broken glass, blood
+smears, candlesticks, and all sorts of wreckage on the floor. But all
+this is nonsense. Nobody in the town has any real power except the
+railway engineers, whose men occupy the dismantled houses acquired
+by the Company for their town station on one side of the Plaza, and
+Nostromo, whose Cargadores were sleeping under the arcades along
+the front of Anzani's shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the
+Intendencia saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the Plaza, in a high
+flame swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. The dead body of a
+man was lying on the steps of the pedestal, his arms thrown wide open,
+and his sombrero covering his face--the attention of some friend,
+perhaps. The light of the flames touched the foliage of the first trees
+on the Alameda, and played on the end of a side street near by, blocked
+up by a jumble of ox-carts and dead bullocks. Sitting on one of the
+carcasses, a lepero, muffled up, smoked a cigarette. It was a truce, you
+understand. The only other living being on the Plaza besides ourselves
+was a Cargador walking to and fro, with a long, bare knife in his hand,
+like a sentry before the Arcades, where his friends were sleeping. And
+the only other spot of light in the dark town were the lighted windows
+of the club, at the corner of the Calle."
+
+After having written so far, Don Martin Decoud, the exotic dandy of the
+Parisian boulevard, got up and walked across the sanded floor of the
+cafe at one end of the Albergo of United Italy, kept by Giorgio Viola,
+the old companion of Garibaldi. The highly coloured lithograph of the
+Faithful Hero seemed to look dimly, in the light of one candle, at the
+man with no faith in anything except the truth of his own sensations.
+Looking out of the window, Decoud was met by a darkness so impenetrable
+that he could see neither the mountains nor the town, nor yet the
+buildings near the harbour; and there was not a sound, as if the
+tremendous obscurity of the Placid Gulf, spreading from the waters over
+the land, had made it dumb as well as blind. Presently Decoud felt a
+light tremor of the floor and a distant clank of iron. A bright white
+light appeared, deep in the darkness, growing bigger with a thundering
+noise. The rolling stock usually kept on the sidings in Rincon was being
+run back to the yards for safe keeping. Like a mysterious stirring of
+the darkness behind the headlight of the engine, the train passed in a
+gust of hollow uproar, by the end of the house, which seemed to vibrate
+all over in response. And nothing was clearly visible but, on the end
+of the last flat car, a negro, in white trousers and naked to the waist,
+swinging a blazing torch basket incessantly with a circular movement of
+his bare arm. Decoud did not stir.
+
+Behind him, on the back of the chair from which he had risen, hung his
+elegant Parisian overcoat, with a pearl-grey silk lining. But when he
+turned back to come to the table the candlelight fell upon a face that
+was grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat, the
+smoke of gun-powder. Dirt and rust tarnished the lustre of his short
+beard. His shirt collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie
+hung down his breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow.
+He had not taken off his clothing nor used water, except to snatch a
+hasty drink greedily, for some forty hours. An awful restlessness had
+made him its own, had marked him with all the signs of desperate strife,
+and put a dry, sleepless stare into his eyes. He murmured to himself
+in a hoarse voice, "I wonder if there's any bread here," looked vaguely
+about him, then dropped into the chair and took the pencil up again. He
+became aware he had not eaten anything for many hours.
+
+It occurred to him that no one could understand him so well as his
+sister. In the most sceptical heart there lurks at such moments, when
+the chances of existence are involved, a desire to leave a correct
+impression of the feelings, like a light by which the action may be seen
+when personality is gone, gone where no light of investigation can ever
+reach the truth which every death takes out of the world. Therefore,
+instead of looking for something to eat, or trying to snatch an hour or
+so of sleep, Decoud was filling the pages of a large pocket-book with a
+letter to his sister.
+
+In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his weariness,
+his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily sensations. He began
+again as if he were talking to her. With almost an illusion of her
+presence, he wrote the phrase, "I am very hungry."
+
+"I have the feeling of a great solitude around me," he continued. "Is
+it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea in his head,
+in the complete collapse of every resolve, intention, and hope about me?
+But the solitude is also very real. All the engineers are out, and have
+been for two days, looking after the property of the National Central
+Railway, of that great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money into
+the pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, and God knows
+who else. The silence about me is ominous. There is above the middle
+part of this house a sort of first floor, with narrow openings like
+loopholes for windows, probably used in old times for the better
+defence against the savages, when the persistent barbarism of our native
+continent did not wear the black coats of politicians, but went about
+yelling, half-naked, with bows and arrows in its hands. The woman of
+the house is dying up there, I believe, all alone with her old husband.
+There is a narrow staircase, the sort of staircase one man could easily
+defend against a mob, leading up there, and I have just heard, through
+the thickness of the wall, the old fellow going down into their kitchen
+for something or other. It was a sort of noise a mouse might make behind
+the plaster of a wall. All the servants they had ran away yesterday and
+have not returned yet, if ever they do. For the rest, there are only two
+children here, two girls. The father has sent them downstairs, and
+they have crept into this cafe, perhaps because I am here. They huddle
+together in a corner, in each other's arms; I just noticed them a few
+minutes ago, and I feel more lonely than ever."
+
+Decoud turned half round in his chair, and asked, "Is there any bread
+here?"
+
+Linda's dark head was shaken negatively in response, above the fair head
+of her sister nestling on her breast.
+
+"You couldn't get me some bread?" insisted Decoud. The child did not
+move; he saw her large eyes stare at him very dark from the corner.
+"You're not afraid of me?" he said.
+
+"No," said Linda, "we are not afraid of you. You came here with Gian'
+Battista."
+
+"You mean Nostromo?" said Decoud.
+
+"The English call him so, but that is no name either for man or beast,"
+said the girl, passing her hand gently over her sister's hair.
+
+"But he lets people call him so," remarked Decoud.
+
+"Not in this house," retorted the child.
+
+"Ah! well, I shall call him the Capataz then."
+
+Decoud gave up the point, and after writing steadily for a while turned
+round again.
+
+"When do you expect him back?" he asked.
+
+"After he brought you here he rode off to fetch the Senor Doctor from
+the town for mother. He will be back soon."
+
+"He stands a good chance of getting shot somewhere on the road," Decoud
+murmured to himself audibly; and Linda declared in her high-pitched
+voice--
+
+"Nobody would dare to fire a shot at Gian' Battista."
+
+"You believe that," asked Decoud, "do you?"
+
+"I know it," said the child, with conviction. "There is no one in this
+place brave enough to attack Gian' Battista."
+
+"It doesn't require much bravery to pull a trigger behind a bush,"
+muttered Decoud to himself. "Fortunately, the night is dark, or there
+would be but little chance of saving the silver of the mine."
+
+He turned again to his pocket-book, glanced back through the pages, and
+again started his pencil.
+
+"That was the position yesterday, after the Minerva with the fugitive
+President had gone out of harbour, and the rioters had been driven back
+into the side lanes of the town. I sat on the steps of the cathedral
+with Nostromo, after sending out the cable message for the information
+of a more or less attentive world. Strangely enough, though the offices
+of the Cable Company are in the same building as the Porvenir, the mob,
+which has thrown my presses out of the window and scattered the type all
+over the Plaza, has been kept from interfering with the instruments
+on the other side of the courtyard. As I sat talking with Nostromo,
+Bernhardt, the telegraphist, came out from under the Arcades with a
+piece of paper in his hand. The little man had tied himself up to an
+enormous sword and was hung all over with revolvers. He is ridiculous,
+but the bravest German of his size that ever tapped the key of a Morse
+transmitter. He had received the message from Cayta reporting the
+transports with Barrios's army just entering the port, and ending with
+the words, 'The greatest enthusiasm prevails.' I walked off to drink
+some water at the fountain, and I was shot at from the Alameda by
+somebody hiding behind a tree. But I drank, and didn't care; with
+Barrios in Cayta and the great Cordillera between us and Montero's
+victorious army I seemed, notwithstanding Messrs. Gamacho and Fuentes,
+to hold my new State in the hollow of my hand. I was ready to sleep, but
+when I got as far as the Casa Gould I found the patio full of wounded
+laid out on straw. Lights were burning, and in that enclosed courtyard
+on that hot night a faint odour of chloroform and blood hung about.
+At one end Doctor Monygham, the doctor of the mine, was dressing the
+wounds; at the other, near the stairs, Father Corbelan, kneeling,
+listened to the confession of a dying Cargador. Mrs. Gould was walking
+about through these shambles with a large bottle in one hand and a
+lot of cotton wool in the other. She just looked at me and never even
+winked. Her camerista was following her, also holding a bottle, and
+sobbing gently to herself.
+
+"I busied myself for some time in fetching water from the cistern for
+the wounded. Afterwards I wandered upstairs, meeting some of the first
+ladies of Sulaco, paler than I had ever seen them before, with bandages
+over their arms. Not all of them had fled to the ships. A good many had
+taken refuge for the day in the Casa Gould. On the landing a girl, with
+her hair half down, was kneeling against the wall under the niche where
+stands a Madonna in blue robes and a gilt crown on her head. I think
+it was the eldest Miss Lopez; I couldn't see her face, but I remember
+looking at the high French heel of her little shoe. She did not make
+a sound, she did not stir, she was not sobbing; she remained there,
+perfectly still, all black against the white wall, a silent figure of
+passionate piety. I am sure she was no more frightened than the other
+white-faced ladies I met carrying bandages. One was sitting on the top
+step tearing a piece of linen hastily into strips--the young wife of an
+elderly man of fortune here. She interrupted herself to wave her hand to
+my bow, as though she were in her carriage on the Alameda. The women
+of our country are worth looking at during a revolution. The rouge and
+pearl powder fall off, together with that passive attitude towards the
+outer world which education, tradition, custom impose upon them from the
+earliest infancy. I thought of your face, which from your infancy had
+the stamp of intelligence instead of that patient and resigned cast
+which appears when some political commotion tears down the veil of
+cosmetics and usage.
+
+"In the great sala upstairs a sort of Junta of Notables was sitting,
+the remnant of the vanished Provincial Assembly. Don Juste Lopez had had
+half his beard singed off at the muzzle of a trabuco loaded with slugs,
+of which every one missed him, providentially. And as he turned his head
+from side to side it was exactly as if there had been two men inside his
+frock-coat, one nobly whiskered and solemn, the other untidy and scared.
+
+"They raised a cry of 'Decoud! Don Martin!' at my entrance. I asked
+them, 'What are you deliberating upon, gentlemen?' There did not seem
+to be any president, though Don Jose Avellanos sat at the head of the
+table. They all answered together, 'On the preservation of life and
+property.' 'Till the new officials arrive,' Don Juste explained to me,
+with the solemn side of his face offered to my view. It was as if a
+stream of water had been poured upon my glowing idea of a new State.
+There was a hissing sound in my ears, and the room grew dim, as if
+suddenly filled with vapour.
+
+"I walked up to the table blindly, as though I had been drunk. 'You are
+deliberating upon surrender,' I said. They all sat still, with their
+noses over the sheet of paper each had before him, God only knows why.
+Only Don Jose hid his face in his hands, muttering, 'Never, never!' But
+as I looked at him, it seemed to me that I could have blown him away
+with my breath, he looked so frail, so weak, so worn out. Whatever
+happens, he will not survive. The deception is too great for a man of
+his age; and hasn't he seen the sheets of 'Fifty Years of Misrule,'
+which we have begun printing on the presses of the Porvenir, littering
+the Plaza, floating in the gutters, fired out as wads for trabucos
+loaded with handfuls of type, blown in the wind, trampled in the mud? I
+have seen pages floating upon the very waters of the harbour. It would
+be unreasonable to expect him to survive. It would be cruel.
+
+"'Do you know,' I cried, 'what surrender means to you, to your women, to
+your children, to your property?'
+
+"I declaimed for five minutes without drawing breath, it seems to me,
+harping on our best chances, on the ferocity of Montero, whom I made out
+to be as great a beast as I have no doubt he would like to be if he had
+intelligence enough to conceive a systematic reign of terror. And then
+for another five minutes or more I poured out an impassioned appeal
+to their courage and manliness, with all the passion of my love for
+Antonia. For if ever man spoke well, it would be from a personal
+feeling, denouncing an enemy, defending himself, or pleading for what
+really may be dearer than life. My dear girl, I absolutely thundered at
+them. It seemed as if my voice would burst the walls asunder, and when
+I stopped I saw all their scared eyes looking at me dubiously. And that
+was all the effect I had produced! Only Don Jose's head had sunk lower
+and lower on his breast. I bent my ear to his withered lips, and made
+out his whisper, something like, 'In God's name, then, Martin, my son!'
+I don't know exactly. There was the name of God in it, I am certain. It
+seems to me I have caught his last breath--the breath of his departing
+soul on his lips.
+
+"He lives yet, it is true. I have seen him since; but it was only a
+senile body, lying on its back, covered to the chin, with open eyes, and
+so still that you might have said it was breathing no longer. I left him
+thus, with Antonia kneeling by the side of the bed, just before I came
+to this Italian's posada, where the ubiquitous death is also waiting.
+But I know that Don Jose has really died there, in the Casa Gould, with
+that whisper urging me to attempt what no doubt his soul, wrapped up in
+the sanctity of diplomatic treaties and solemn declarations, must
+have abhorred. I had exclaimed very loud, 'There is never any God in a
+country where men will not help themselves.'
+
+"Meanwhile, Don Juste had begun a pondered oration whose solemn effect
+was spoiled by the ridiculous disaster to his beard. I did not wait
+to make it out. He seemed to argue that Montero's (he called him The
+General) intentions were probably not evil, though, he went on, 'that
+distinguished man' (only a week ago we used to call him a gran' bestia)
+'was perhaps mistaken as to the true means.' As you may imagine,
+I didn't stay to hear the rest. I know the intentions of Montero's
+brother, Pedrito, the guerrillero, whom I exposed in Paris, some years
+ago, in a cafe frequented by South American students, where he tried
+to pass himself off for a Secretary of Legation. He used to come in
+and talk for hours, twisting his felt hat in his hairy paws, and his
+ambition seemed to become a sort of Duc de Morny to a sort of Napoleon.
+Already, then, he used to talk of his brother in inflated terms. He
+seemed fairly safe from being found out, because the students, all of
+the Blanco families, did not, as you may imagine, frequent the Legation.
+It was only Decoud, a man without faith and principles, as they used to
+say, that went in there sometimes for the sake of the fun, as it were to
+an assembly of trained monkeys. I know his intentions. I have seen him
+change the plates at table. Whoever is allowed to live on in terror, I
+must die the death.
+
+"No, I didn't stay to the end to hear Don Juste Lopez trying to persuade
+himself in a grave oration of the clemency and justice, and honesty, and
+purity of the brothers Montero. I went out abruptly to seek Antonia.
+I saw her in the gallery. As I opened the door, she extended to me her
+clasped hands.
+
+"'What are they doing in there?' she asked.
+
+"'Talking,' I said, with my eyes looking into hers.
+
+"'Yes, yes, but--'
+
+"'Empty speeches,' I interrupted her. 'Hiding their fears behind
+imbecile hopes. They are all great Parliamentarians there--on the
+English model, as you know.' I was so furious that I could hardly speak.
+She made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Through the door I held a little ajar behind me, we heard Dun Juste's
+measured mouthing monotone go on from phrase to phrase, like a sort of
+awful and solemn madness.
+
+"'After all, the Democratic aspirations have, perhaps, their legitimacy.
+The ways of human progress are inscrutable, and if the fate of the
+country is in the hand of Montero, we ought--'
+
+"I crashed the door to on that; it was enough; it was too much. There
+was never a beautiful face expressing more horror and despair than the
+face of Antonia. I couldn't bear it; I seized her wrists.
+
+"'Have they killed my father in there?' she asked.
+
+"Her eyes blazed with indignation, but as I looked on, fascinated, the
+light in them went out.
+
+"'It is a surrender,' I said. And I remember I was shaking her wrists I
+held apart in my hands. 'But it's more than talk. Your father told me to
+go on in God's name.'
+
+"My dear girl, there is that in Antonia which would make me believe in
+the feasibility of anything. One look at her face is enough to set
+my brain on fire. And yet I love her as any other man would--with the
+heart, and with that alone. She is more to me than his Church to Father
+Corbelan (the Grand Vicar disappeared last night from the town; perhaps
+gone to join the band of Hernandez). She is more to me than his precious
+mine to that sentimental Englishman. I won't speak of his wife. She may
+have been sentimental once. The San Tome mine stands now between those
+two people. 'Your father himself, Antonia,' I repeated; 'your father, do
+you understand? has told me to go on.'
+
+"She averted her face, and in a pained voice--
+
+"'He has?' she cried. 'Then, indeed, I fear he will never speak again.'
+
+"She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to cry in her
+handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather see her miserable
+than not see her at all, never any more; for whether I escaped or stayed
+to die, there was for us no coming together, no future. And that being
+so, I had no pity to waste upon the passing moments of her sorrow. I
+sent her off in tears to fetch Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their
+sentiment was necessary to the very life of my plan; the sentimentalism
+of the people that will never do anything for the sake of their
+passionate desire, unless it comes to them clothed in the fair robes of
+an idea.
+
+"Late at night we formed a small junta of four--the two women, Don
+Carlos, and myself--in Mrs. Gould's blue-and-white boudoir.
+
+"El Rey de Sulaco thinks himself, no doubt, a very honest man. And so
+he is, if one could look behind his taciturnity. Perhaps he thinks
+that this alone makes his honesty unstained. Those Englishmen live on
+illusions which somehow or other help them to get a firm hold of the
+substance. When he speaks it is by a rare 'yes' or 'no' that seems as
+impersonal as the words of an oracle. But he could not impose on me by
+his dumb reserve. I knew what he had in his head; he has his mine in
+his head; and his wife had nothing in her head but his precious person,
+which he has bound up with the Gould Concession and tied up to that
+little woman's neck. No matter. The thing was to make him present the
+affair to Holroyd (the Steel and Silver King) in such a manner as to
+secure his financial support. At that time last night, just twenty-four
+hours ago, we thought the silver of the mine safe in the Custom House
+vaults till the north-bound steamer came to take it away. And as long as
+the treasure flowed north, without a break, that utter sentimentalist,
+Holroyd, would not drop his idea of introducing, not only justice,
+industry, peace, to the benighted continents, but also that pet dream
+of his of a purer form of Christianity. Later on, the principal European
+really in Sulaco, the engineer-in-chief of the railway, came riding up
+the Calle, from the harbour, and was admitted to our conclave. Meantime,
+the Junta of the Notables in the great sala was still deliberating;
+only, one of them had run out in the corredor to ask the servant
+whether something to eat couldn't be sent in. The first words the
+engineer-in-chief said as he came into the boudoir were, 'What is
+your house, dear Mrs. Gould? A war hospital below, and apparently a
+restaurant above. I saw them carrying trays full of good things into the
+sala.'
+
+"'And here, in this boudoir,' I said, 'you behold the inner cabinet of
+the Occidental Republic that is to be.'
+
+"He was so preoccupied that he didn't smile at that, he didn't even look
+surprised.
+
+"He told us that he was attending to the general dispositions for the
+defence of the railway property at the railway yards when he was
+sent for to go into the railway telegraph office. The engineer of the
+railhead, at the foot of the mountains, wanted to talk to him from his
+end of the wire. There was nobody in the office but himself and the
+operator of the railway telegraph, who read off the clicks aloud as the
+tape coiled its length upon the floor. And the purport of that talk,
+clicked nervously from a wooden shed in the depths of the forests,
+had informed the chief that President Ribiera had been, or was being,
+pursued. This was news, indeed, to all of us in Sulaco. Ribiera himself,
+when rescued, revived, and soothed by us, had been inclined to think
+that he had not been pursued.
+
+"Ribiera had yielded to the urgent solicitations of his friends, and had
+left the headquarters of his discomfited army alone, under the
+guidance of Bonifacio, the muleteer, who had been willing to take the
+responsibility with the risk. He had departed at daybreak of the third
+day. His remaining forces had melted away during the night. Bonifacio
+and he rode hard on horses towards the Cordillera; then they obtained
+mules, entered the passes, and crossed the Paramo of Ivie just before a
+freezing blast swept over that stony plateau, burying in a drift of
+snow the little shelter-hut of stones in which they had spent the night.
+Afterwards poor Ribiera had many adventures, got separated from his
+guide, lost his mount, struggled down to the Campo on foot, and if he
+had not thrown himself on the mercy of a ranchero would have perished a
+long way from Sulaco. That man, who, as a matter of fact, recognized
+him at once, let him have a fresh mule, which the fugitive, heavy and
+unskilful, had ridden to death. And it was true he had been pursued by
+a party commanded by no less a person than Pedro Montero, the brother of
+the general. The cold wind of the Paramo luckily caught the pursuers on
+the top of the pass. Some few men, and all the animals, perished in the
+icy blast. The stragglers died, but the main body kept on. They
+found poor Bonifacio lying half-dead at the foot of a snow slope, and
+bayoneted him promptly in the true Civil War style. They would have had
+Ribiera, too, if they had not, for some reason or other, turned off the
+track of the old Camino Real, only to lose their way in the forests
+at the foot of the lower slopes. And there they were at last, having
+stumbled in unexpectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer at
+the railhead told his chief by wire that he had Pedro Montero absolutely
+there, in the very office, listening to the clicks. He was going to
+take possession of Sulaco in the name of the Democracy. He was very
+overbearing. His men slaughtered some of the Railway Company's cattle
+without asking leave, and went to work broiling the meat on the embers.
+Pedrito made many pointed inquiries as to the silver mine, and what
+had become of the product of the last six months' working. He had said
+peremptorily, 'Ask your chief up there by wire, he ought to know; tell
+him that Don Pedro Montero, Chief of the Campo and Minister of the
+Interior of the new Government, desires to be correctly informed.'
+
+"He had his feet wrapped up in blood-stained rags, a lean, haggard face,
+ragged beard and hair, and had walked in limping, with a crooked branch
+of a tree for a staff. His followers were perhaps in a worse plight, but
+apparently they had not thrown away their arms, and, at any rate, not
+all their ammunition. Their lean faces filled the door and the windows
+of the telegraph hut. As it was at the same time the bedroom of the
+engineer-in-charge there, Montero had thrown himself on his clean
+blankets and lay there shivering and dictating requisitions to be
+transmitted by wire to Sulaco. He demanded a train of cars to be sent
+down at once to transport his men up.
+
+"'To this I answered from my end,' the engineer-in-chief related to us,
+'that I dared not risk the rolling-stock in the interior, as there had
+been attempts to wreck trains all along the line several times. I did
+that for your sake, Gould,' said the chief engineer. 'The answer to this
+was, in the words of my subordinate, "The filthy brute on my bed said,
+'Suppose I were to have you shot?'" To which my subordinate, who, it
+appears, was himself operating, remarked that it would not bring the
+cars up. Upon that, the other, yawning, said, "Never mind, there is
+no lack of horses on the Campo." And, turning over, went to sleep on
+Harris's bed.'
+
+"This is why, my dear girl, I am a fugitive to-night. The last wire from
+railhead says that Pedro Montero and his men left at daybreak, after
+feeding on asado beef all night. They took all the horses; they will
+find more on the road; they'll be here in less than thirty hours, and
+thus Sulaco is no place either for me or the great store of silver
+belonging to the Gould Concession.
+
+"But that is not the worst. The garrison of Esmeralda has gone over to
+the victorious party. We have heard this by means of the telegraphist of
+the Cable Company, who came to the Casa Gould in the early morning with
+the news. In fact, it was so early that the day had not yet quite broken
+over Sulaco. His colleague in Esmeralda had called him up to say
+that the garrison, after shooting some of their officers, had taken
+possession of a Government steamer laid up in the harbour. It is really
+a heavy blow for me. I thought I could depend on every man in this
+province. It was a mistake. It was a Monterist Revolution in Esmeralda,
+just such as was attempted in Sulaco, only that that one came off. The
+telegraphist was signalling to Bernhardt all the time, and his last
+transmitted words were, 'They are bursting in the door, and taking
+possession of the cable office. You are cut off. Can do no more.'
+
+"But, as a matter of fact, he managed somehow to escape the vigilance
+of his captors, who had tried to stop the communication with the outer
+world. He did manage it. How it was done I don't know, but a few
+hours afterwards he called up Sulaco again, and what he said was, 'The
+insurgent army has taken possession of the Government transport in the
+bay and are filling her with troops, with the intention of going round
+the coast to Sulaco. Therefore look out for yourselves. They will be
+ready to start in a few hours, and may be upon you before daybreak.'
+
+"This is all he could say. They drove him away from his instrument this
+time for good, because Bernhardt has been calling up Esmeralda ever
+since without getting an answer."
+
+After setting these words down in the pocket-book which he was filling
+up for the benefit of his sister, Decoud lifted his head to listen. But
+there were no sounds, neither in the room nor in the house, except the
+drip of the water from the filter into the vast earthenware jar under
+the wooden stand. And outside the house there was a great silence.
+Decoud lowered his head again over the pocket-book.
+
+"I am not running away, you understand," he wrote on. "I am simply
+going away with that great treasure of silver which must be saved at
+all costs. Pedro Montero from the Campo and the revolted garrison of
+Esmeralda from the sea are converging upon it. That it is there lying
+ready for them is only an accident. The real objective is the San Tome
+mine itself, as you may well imagine; otherwise the Occidental Province
+would have been, no doubt, left alone for many weeks, to be gathered
+at leisure into the arms of the victorious party. Don Carlos Gould
+will have enough to do to save his mine, with its organization and its
+people; this 'Imperium in Imperio,' this wealth-producing thing, to
+which his sentimentalism attaches a strange idea of justice. He holds
+to it as some men hold to the idea of love or revenge. Unless I am much
+mistaken in the man, it must remain inviolate or perish by an act of
+his will alone. A passion has crept into his cold and idealistic life.
+A passion which I can only comprehend intellectually. A passion that
+is not like the passions we know, we men of another blood. But it is as
+dangerous as any of ours.
+
+"His wife has understood it, too. That is why she is such a good ally
+of mine. She seizes upon all my suggestions with a sure instinct that in
+the end they make for the safety of the Gould Concession. And he defers
+to her because he trusts her perhaps, but I fancy rather as if he wished
+to make up for some subtle wrong, for that sentimental unfaithfulness
+which surrenders her happiness, her life, to the seduction of an idea.
+The little woman has discovered that he lives for the mine rather
+than for her. But let them be. To each his fate, shaped by passion or
+sentiment. The principal thing is that she has backed up my advice to
+get the silver out of the town, out of the country, at once, at any
+cost, at any risk. Don Carlos' mission is to preserve unstained the fair
+fame of his mine; Mrs. Gould's mission is to save him from the effects
+of that cold and overmastering passion, which she dreads more than if it
+were an infatuation for another woman. Nostromo's mission is to save
+the silver. The plan is to load it into the largest of the Company's
+lighters, and send it across the gulf to a small port out of Costaguana
+territory just on the other side the Azuera, where the first northbound
+steamer will get orders to pick it up. The waters here are calm. We
+shall slip away into the darkness of the gulf before the Esmeralda
+rebels arrive; and by the time the day breaks over the ocean we shall be
+out of sight, invisible, hidden by Azuera, which itself looks from the
+Sulaco shore like a faint blue cloud on the horizon.
+
+"The incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores is the man for that work;
+and I, the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go with him to
+return--to play my part in the farce to the end, and, if successful, to
+receive my reward, which no one but Antonia can give me.
+
+"I shall not see her again now before I depart. I left her, as I have
+said, by Don Jose's bedside. The street was dark, the houses shut up,
+and I walked out of the town in the night. Not a single street-lamp had
+been lit for two days, and the archway of the gate was only a mass of
+darkness in the vague form of a tower, in which I heard low, dismal
+groans, that seemed to answer the murmurs of a man's voice.
+
+"I recognized something impassive and careless in its tone,
+characteristic of that Genoese sailor who, like me, has come casually
+here to be drawn into the events for which his scepticism as well as
+mine seems to entertain a sort of passive contempt. The only thing he
+seems to care for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well
+spoken of. An ambition fit for noble souls, but also a profitable one
+for an exceptionally intelligent scoundrel. Yes. His very words, 'To
+be well spoken of. Si, senor.' He does not seem to make any difference
+between speaking and thinking. Is it sheer naiveness or the practical
+point of view, I wonder? Exceptional individualities always interest me,
+because they are true to the general formula expressing the moral state
+of humanity.
+
+"He joined me on the harbour road after I had passed them under the dark
+archway without stopping. It was a woman in trouble he had been talking
+to. Through discretion I kept silent while he walked by my side. After
+a time he began to talk himself. It was not what I expected. It was
+only an old woman, an old lace-maker, in search of her son, one of the
+street-sweepers employed by the municipality. Friends had come the day
+before at daybreak to the door of their hovel calling him out. He had
+gone with them, and she had not seen him since; so she had left the food
+she had been preparing half-cooked on the extinct embers and had crawled
+out as far as the harbour, where she had heard that some town mozos had
+been killed on the morning of the riot. One of the Cargadores guarding
+the Custom House had brought out a lantern, and had helped her to look
+at the few dead left lying about there. Now she was creeping back,
+having failed in her search. So she sat down on the stone seat under the
+arch, moaning, because she was very tired. The Capataz had questioned
+her, and after hearing her broken and groaning tale had advised her to
+go and look amongst the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould. He had
+also given her a quarter dollar, he mentioned carelessly."
+
+"'Why did you do that?' I asked. 'Do you know her?'
+
+"'No, senor. I don't suppose I have ever seen her before. How should I?
+She has not probably been out in the streets for years. She is one
+of those old women that you find in this country at the back of huts,
+crouching over fireplaces, with a stick on the ground by their side, and
+almost too feeble to drive away the stray dogs from their cooking-pots.
+Caramba! I could tell by her voice that death had forgotten her. But,
+old or young, they like money, and will speak well of the man who gives
+it to them.' He laughed a little. 'Senor, you should have felt the
+clutch of her paw as I put the piece in her palm.' He paused. 'My last,
+too,' he added.
+
+"I made no comment. He's known for his liberality and his bad luck at
+the game of monte, which keeps him as poor as when he first came here.
+
+"'I suppose, Don Martin,' he began, in a thoughtful, speculative tone,
+'that the Senor Administrador of San Tome will reward me some day if I
+save his silver?'
+
+"I said that it could not be otherwise, surely. He walked on, muttering
+to himself. 'Si, si, without doubt, without doubt; and, look you, Senor
+Martin, what it is to be well spoken of! There is not another man that
+could have been even thought of for such a thing. I shall get something
+great for it some day. And let it come soon,' he mumbled. 'Time passes
+in this country as quick as anywhere else.'
+
+"This, _soeur cherie_, is my companion in the great escape for the sake
+of the great cause. He is more naive than shrewd, more masterful than
+crafty, more generous with his personality than the people who make use
+of him are with their money. At least, that is what he thinks himself
+with more pride than sentiment. I am glad I have made friends with him.
+As a companion he acquires more importance than he ever had as a sort of
+minor genius in his way--as an original Italian sailor whom I allowed
+to come in in the small hours and talk familiarly to the editor of the
+Porvenir while the paper was going through the press. And it is curious
+to have met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in
+personal prestige.
+
+"I am waiting for him here now. On arriving at the posada kept by Viola
+we found the children alone down below, and the old Genoese shouted to
+his countryman to go and fetch the doctor. Otherwise we would have gone
+on to the wharf, where it appears Captain Mitchell with some volunteer
+Europeans and a few picked Cargadores are loading the lighter with the
+silver that must be saved from Montero's clutches in order to be used
+for Montero's defeat. Nostromo galloped furiously back towards the town.
+He has been long gone already. This delay gives me time to talk to you.
+By the time this pocket-book reaches your hands much will have happened.
+But now it is a pause under the hovering wing of death in this silent
+house buried in the black night, with this dying woman, the two children
+crouching without a sound, and that old man whom I can hear through the
+thickness of the wall passing up and down with a light rubbing noise no
+louder than a mouse. And I, the only other with them, don't really know
+whether to count myself with the living or with the dead. 'Quien sabe?'
+as the people here are prone to say in answer to every question. But no!
+feeling for you is certainly not dead, and the whole thing, the house,
+the dark night, the silent children in this dim room, my very presence
+here--all this is life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream."
+
+With the writing of the last line there came upon Decoud a moment of
+sudden and complete oblivion. He swayed over the table as if struck by
+a bullet. The next moment he sat up, confused, with the idea that he had
+heard his pencil roll on the floor. The low door of the cafe, wide open,
+was filled with the glare of a torch in which was visible half of a
+horse, switching its tail against the leg of a rider with a long iron
+spur strapped to the naked heel. The two girls were gone, and Nostromo,
+standing in the middle of the room, looked at him from under the round
+brim of the sombrero low down over his brow.
+
+"I have brought that sour-faced English doctor in Senora Gould's
+carriage," said Nostromo. "I doubt if, with all his wisdom, he can
+save the Padrona this time. They have sent for the children. A bad sign
+that."
+
+He sat down on the end of a bench. "She wants to give them her blessing,
+I suppose."
+
+Dazedly Decoud observed that he must have fallen sound asleep, and
+Nostromo said, with a vague smile, that he had looked in at the window
+and had seen him lying still across the table with his head on his arms.
+The English senora had also come in the carriage, and went upstairs at
+once with the doctor. She had told him not to wake up Don Martin yet;
+but when they sent for the children he had come into the cafe.
+
+The half of the horse with its half of the rider swung round outside the
+door; the torch of tow and resin in the iron basket which was carried on
+a stick at the saddle-bow flared right into the room for a moment, and
+Mrs. Gould entered hastily with a very white, tired face. The hood of
+her dark, blue cloak had fallen back. Both men rose.
+
+"Teresa wants to see you, Nostromo," she said. The Capataz did not move.
+Decoud, with his back to the table, began to button up his coat.
+
+"The silver, Mrs. Gould, the silver," he murmured in English. "Don't
+forget that the Esmeralda garrison have got a steamer. They may appear
+at any moment at the harbour entrance."
+
+"The doctor says there is no hope," Mrs. Gould spoke rapidly, also in
+English. "I shall take you down to the wharf in my carriage and then
+come back to fetch away the girls." She changed swiftly into Spanish to
+address Nostromo. "Why are you wasting time? Old Giorgio's wife wishes
+to see you."
+
+"I am going to her, senora," muttered the Capataz. Dr. Monygham now
+showed himself, bringing back the children. To Mrs. Gould's inquiring
+glance he only shook his head and went outside at once, followed by
+Nostromo.
+
+The horse of the torch-bearer, motionless, hung his head low, and the
+rider had dropped the reins to light a cigarette. The glare of the torch
+played on the front of the house crossed by the big black letters of its
+inscription in which only the word _Italia_ was lighted fully. The patch
+of wavering glare reached as far as Mrs. Gould's carriage waiting on
+the road, with the yellow-faced, portly Ignacio apparently dozing on the
+box. By his side Basilio, dark and skinny, held a Winchester carbine in
+front of him, with both hands, and peered fearfully into the darkness.
+Nostromo touched lightly the doctor's shoulder.
+
+"Is she really dying, senor doctor?"
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, with a strange twitch of his scarred cheek. "And
+why she wants to see you I cannot imagine."
+
+"She has been like that before," suggested Nostromo, looking away.
+
+"Well, Capataz, I can assure you she will never be like that again,"
+snarled Dr. Monygham. "You may go to her or stay away. There is very
+little to be got from talking to the dying. But she told Dona Emilia in
+my hearing that she has been like a mother to you ever since you first
+set foot ashore here."
+
+"Si! And she never had a good word to say for me to anybody. It is more
+as if she could not forgive me for being alive, and such a man, too, as
+she would have liked her son to be."
+
+"Maybe!" exclaimed a mournful deep voice near them. "Women have their
+own ways of tormenting themselves." Giorgio Viola had come out of the
+house. He threw a heavy black shadow in the torchlight, and the glare
+fell on his big face, on the great bushy head of white hair. He motioned
+the Capataz indoors with his extended arm.
+
+Dr. Monygham, after busying himself with a little medicament box of
+polished wood on the seat of the landau, turned to old Giorgio and
+thrust into his big, trembling hand one of the glass-stoppered bottles
+out of the case.
+
+"Give her a spoonful of this now and then, in water," he said. "It will
+make her easier."
+
+"And there is nothing more for her?" asked the old man, patiently.
+
+"No. Not on earth," said the doctor, with his back to him, clicking the
+lock of the medicine case.
+
+Nostromo slowly crossed the large kitchen, all dark but for the glow of
+a heap of charcoal under the heavy mantel of the cooking-range, where
+water was boiling in an iron pot with a loud bubbling sound. Between
+the two walls of a narrow staircase a bright light streamed from the
+sick-room above; and the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores stepping
+noiselessly in soft leather sandals, bushy whiskered, his muscular
+neck and bronzed chest bare in the open check shirt, resembled a
+Mediterranean sailor just come ashore from some wine or fruit-laden
+felucca. At the top he paused, broad shouldered, narrow hipped and
+supple, looking at the large bed, like a white couch of state, with a
+profusion of snowy linen, amongst which the Padrona sat unpropped and
+bowed, her handsome, black-browed face bent over her chest. A mass of
+raven hair with only a few white threads in it covered her shoulders;
+one thick strand fallen forward half veiled her cheek. Perfectly
+motionless in that pose, expressing physical anxiety and unrest, she
+turned her eyes alone towards Nostromo.
+
+The Capataz had a red sash wound many times round his waist, and a heavy
+silver ring on the forefinger of the hand he raised to give a twist to
+his moustache.
+
+"Their revolutions, their revolutions," gasped Senora Teresa. "Look,
+Gian' Battista, it has killed me at last!"
+
+Nostromo said nothing, and the sick woman with an upward glance
+insisted. "Look, this one has killed me, while you were away fighting
+for what did not concern you, foolish man."
+
+"Why talk like this?" mumbled the Capataz between his teeth. "Will you
+never believe in my good sense? It concerns me to keep on being what I
+am: every day alike."
+
+"You never change, indeed," she said, bitterly. "Always thinking of
+yourself and taking your pay out in fine words from those who care
+nothing for you."
+
+There was between them an intimacy of antagonism as close in its way as
+the intimacy of accord and affection. He had not walked along the way
+of Teresa's expectations. It was she who had encouraged him to leave his
+ship, in the hope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. The
+wife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, and was haunted
+by the fear of her aged husband's loneliness and the unprotected state
+of the children. She had wanted to annex that apparently quiet and
+steady young man, affectionate and pliable, an orphan from his tenderest
+age, as he had told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner
+and master of a felucca, from whose ill-usage he had run away before he
+was fourteen. He had seemed to her courageous, a hard worker, determined
+to make his way in the world. From gratitude and the ties of habit he
+would become like a son to herself and Giorgio; and then, who knows,
+when Linda had grown up. . . . Ten years' difference between husband and
+wife was not so much. Her own great man was nearly twenty years older
+than herself. Gian' Battista was an attractive young fellow, besides;
+attractive to men, women, and children, just by that profound quietness
+of personality which, like a serene twilight, rendered more seductive
+the promise of his vigorous form and the resolution of his conduct.
+
+Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife's views and hopes, had a
+great regard for his young countryman. "A man ought not to be tame," he
+used to tell her, quoting the Spanish proverb in defence of the splendid
+Capataz. She was growing jealous of his success. He was escaping from
+her, she feared. She was practical, and he seemed to her to be an absurd
+spendthrift of these qualities which made him so valuable. He got too
+little for them. He scattered them with both hands amongst too many
+people, she thought. He laid no money by. She railed at his poverty, his
+exploits, his adventures, his loves and his reputation; but in her heart
+she had never given him up, as though, indeed, he had been her son.
+
+Even now, ill as she was, ill enough to feel the chill, black breath of
+the approaching end, she had wished to see him. It was like putting out
+her benumbed hand to regain her hold. But she had presumed too much on
+her strength. She could not command her thoughts; they had become dim,
+like her vision. The words faltered on her lips, and only the paramount
+anxiety and desire of her life seemed to be too strong for death.
+
+The Capataz said, "I have heard these things many times. You are unjust,
+but it does not hurt me. Only now you do not seem to have much strength
+to talk, and I have but little time to listen. I am engaged in a work of
+very great moment."
+
+She made an effort to ask him whether it was true that he had found time
+to go and fetch a doctor for her. Nostromo nodded affirmatively.
+
+She was pleased: it relieved her sufferings to know that the man had
+condescended to do so much for those who really wanted his help. It was
+a proof of his friendship. Her voice become stronger.
+
+"I want a priest more than a doctor," she said, pathetically. She did
+not move her head; only her eyes ran into the corners to watch the
+Capataz standing by the side of her bed. "Would you go to fetch a priest
+for me now? Think! A dying woman asks you!"
+
+Nostromo shook his head resolutely. He did not believe in priests in
+their sacerdotal character. A doctor was an efficacious person; but a
+priest, as priest, was nothing, incapable of doing either good or harm.
+Nostromo did not even dislike the sight of them as old Giorgio did. The
+utter uselessness of the errand was what struck him most.
+
+"Padrona," he said, "you have been like this before, and got better
+after a few days. I have given you already the very last moments I can
+spare. Ask Senora Gould to send you one."
+
+He was feeling uneasy at the impiety of this refusal. The Padrona
+believed in priests, and confessed herself to them. But all women
+did that. It could not be of much consequence. And yet his heart felt
+oppressed for a moment--at the thought what absolution would mean to her
+if she believed in it only ever so little. No matter. It was quite true
+that he had given her already the very last moment he could spare.
+
+"You refuse to go?" she gasped. "Ah! you are always yourself, indeed."
+
+"Listen to reason, Padrona," he said. "I am needed to save the silver of
+the mine. Do you hear? A greater treasure than the one which they say
+is guarded by ghosts and devils on Azuera. It is true. I am resolved to
+make this the most desperate affair I was ever engaged on in my whole
+life."
+
+She felt a despairing indignation. The supreme test had failed. Standing
+above her, Nostromo did not see the distorted features of her face,
+distorted by a paroxysm of pain and anger. Only she began to tremble all
+over. Her bowed head shook. The broad shoulders quivered.
+
+"Then God, perhaps, will have mercy upon me! But do you look to it, man,
+that you get something for yourself out of it, besides the remorse that
+shall overtake you some day."
+
+She laughed feebly. "Get riches at least for once, you indispensable,
+admired Gian' Battista, to whom the peace of a dying woman is less
+than the praise of people who have given you a silly name--and nothing
+besides--in exchange for your soul and body."
+
+The Capataz de Cargadores swore to himself under his breath.
+
+"Leave my soul alone, Padrona, and I shall know how to take care of
+my body. Where is the harm of people having need of me? What are you
+envying me that I have robbed you and the children of? Those very people
+you are throwing in my teeth have done more for old Giorgio than they
+ever thought of doing for me."
+
+He struck his breast with his open palm; his voice had remained low
+though he had spoken in a forcible tone. He twisted his moustaches one
+after another, and his eyes wandered a little about the room.
+
+"Is it my fault that I am the only man for their purposes? What angry
+nonsense are you talking, mother? Would you rather have me timid and
+foolish, selling water-melons on the market-place or rowing a boat for
+passengers along the harbour, like a soft Neapolitan without courage
+or reputation? Would you have a young man live like a monk? I do not
+believe it. Would you want a monk for your eldest girl? Let her grow.
+What are you afraid of? You have been angry with me for everything I did
+for years; ever since you first spoke to me, in secret from old Giorgio,
+about your Linda. Husband to one and brother to the other, did you say?
+Well, why not! I like the little ones, and a man must marry some time.
+But ever since that time you have been making little of me to everyone.
+Why? Did you think you could put a collar and chain on me as if I were
+one of the watch-dogs they keep over there in the railway yards? Look
+here, Padrona, I am the same man who came ashore one evening and sat
+down in the thatched ranche you lived in at that time on the other side
+of the town and told you all about himself. You were not unjust to me
+then. What has happened since? I am no longer an insignificant youth. A
+good name, Giorgio says, is a treasure, Padrona."
+
+"They have turned your head with their praises," gasped the sick woman.
+"They have been paying you with words. Your folly shall betray you into
+poverty, misery, starvation. The very leperos shall laugh at you--the
+great Capataz."
+
+Nostromo stood for a time as if struck dumb. She never looked at him. A
+self-confident, mirthless smile passed quickly from his lips, and then
+he backed away. His disregarded figure sank down beyond the doorway.
+He descended the stairs backwards, with the usual sense of having been
+somehow baffled by this woman's disparagement of this reputation he had
+obtained and desired to keep.
+
+Downstairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, surrounded by the
+shadows of the walls, of the ceiling, but no ruddy glare filled the open
+square of the outer door. The carriage with Mrs. Gould and Don Martin,
+preceded by the horseman bearing the torch, had gone on to the jetty.
+Dr. Monygham, who had remained, sat on the corner of a hard wood table
+near the candlestick, his seamed, shaven face inclined sideways, his
+arms crossed on his breast, his lips pursed up, and his prominent eyes
+glaring stonily upon the floor of black earth. Near the overhanging
+mantel of the fireplace, where the pot of water was still boiling
+violently, old Giorgio held his chin in his hand, one foot advanced, as
+if arrested by a sudden thought.
+
+"Adios, viejo," said Nostromo, feeling the handle of his revolver in the
+belt and loosening his knife in its sheath. He picked up a blue poncho
+lined with red from the table, and put it over his head. "Adios, look
+after the things in my sleeping-room, and if you hear from me no more,
+give up the box to Paquita. There is not much of value there, except my
+new serape from Mexico, and a few silver buttons on my best jacket. No
+matter! The things will look well enough on the next lover she gets, and
+the man need not be afraid I shall linger on earth after I am dead, like
+those Gringos that haunt the Azuera."
+
+Dr. Monygham twisted his lips into a bitter smile. After old Giorgio,
+with an almost imperceptible nod and without a word, had gone up the
+narrow stairs, he said--
+
+"Why, Capataz! I thought you could never fail in anything."
+
+Nostromo, glancing contemptuously at the doctor, lingered in the doorway
+rolling a cigarette, then struck a match, and, after lighting it, held
+the burning piece of wood above his head till the flame nearly touched
+his fingers.
+
+"No wind!" he muttered to himself. "Look here, senor--do you know the
+nature of my undertaking?"
+
+Dr. Monygham nodded sourly.
+
+"It is as if I were taking up a curse upon me, senor doctor. A man with
+a treasure on this coast will have every knife raised against him in
+every place upon the shore. You see that, senor doctor? I shall float
+along with a spell upon my life till I meet somewhere the north-bound
+steamer of the Company, and then indeed they will talk about the Capataz
+of the Sulaco Cargadores from one end of America to another."
+
+Dr. Monygham laughed his short, throaty laugh. Nostromo turned round in
+the doorway.
+
+"But if your worship can find any other man ready and fit for such
+business I will stand back. I am not exactly tired of my life, though I
+am so poor that I can carry all I have with myself on my horse's back."
+
+"You gamble too much, and never say 'no' to a pretty face, Capataz,"
+said Dr. Monygham, with sly simplicity. "That's not the way to make a
+fortune. But nobody that I know ever suspected you of being poor. I
+hope you have made a good bargain in case you come back safe from this
+adventure."
+
+"What bargain would your worship have made?" asked Nostromo, blowing the
+smoke out of his lips through the doorway.
+
+Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a moment before he answered,
+with another of his short, abrupt laughs--
+
+"Illustrious Capataz, for taking the curse of death upon my back, as you
+call it, nothing else but the whole treasure would do."
+
+Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of discontent at
+this jeering answer. Dr. Monygham heard him gallop away. Nostromo rode
+furiously in the dark. There were lights in the buildings of the
+O.S.N. Company near the wharf, but before he got there he met the Gould
+carriage. The horseman preceded it with the torch, whose light showed
+the white mules trotting, the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio with
+the carbine on the box. From the dark body of the landau Mrs. Gould's
+voice cried, "They are waiting for you, Capataz!" She was returning,
+chilly and excited, with Decoud's pocket-book still held in her hand. He
+had confided it to her to send to his sister. "Perhaps my last words to
+her," he had said, pressing Mrs. Gould's hand.
+
+The Capataz never checked his speed. At the head of the wharf vague
+figures with rifles leapt to the head of his horse; others closed upon
+him--cargadores of the company posted by Captain Mitchell on the watch.
+At a word from him they fell back with subservient murmurs, recognizing
+his voice. At the other end of the jetty, near a cargo crane, in a dark
+group with glowing cigars, his name was pronounced in a tone of relief.
+Most of the Europeans in Sulaco were there, rallied round Charles Gould,
+as if the silver of the mine had been the emblem of a common cause, the
+symbol of the supreme importance of material interests. They had loaded
+it into the lighter with their own hands. Nostromo recognized Don Carlos
+Gould, a thin, tall shape standing a little apart and silent, to whom
+another tall shape, the engineer-in-chief, said aloud, "If it must be
+lost, it is a million times better that it should go to the bottom of
+the sea."
+
+Martin Decoud called out from the lighter, "_Au revoir_, messieurs, till
+we clasp hands again over the new-born Occidental Republic." Only a
+subdued murmur responded to his clear, ringing tones; and then it seemed
+to him that the wharf was floating away into the night; but it was
+Nostromo, who was already pushing against a pile with one of the heavy
+sweeps. Decoud did not move; the effect was that of being launched
+into space. After a splash or two there was not a sound but the thud
+of Nostromo's feet leaping about the boat. He hoisted the big sail; a
+breath of wind fanned Decoud's cheek. Everything had vanished but the
+light of the lantern Captain Mitchell had hoisted upon the post at the
+end of the jetty to guide Nostromo out of the harbour.
+
+The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till the lighter,
+slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out between almost invisible
+headlands into the still deeper darkness of the gulf. For a time the
+lantern on the jetty shone after them. The wind failed, then fanned up
+again, but so faintly that the big, half-decked boat slipped along with
+no more noise than if she had been suspended in the air.
+
+"We are out in the gulf now," said the calm voice of Nostromo. A moment
+after he added, "Senor Mitchell has lowered the light."
+
+"Yes," said Decoud; "nobody can find us now."
+
+A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat. The sea in the
+gulf was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo, after striking a couple
+of matches to get a glimpse of the boat-compass he had with him in the
+lighter, steered by the feel of the wind on his cheek.
+
+It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysteriousness of the great
+waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been
+crushed by the weight of that dense night. The Placido was sleeping
+profoundly under its black poncho.
+
+The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and gain
+the middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were somewhere
+at hand. "On your left as you look forward, senor," said Nostromo,
+suddenly. When his voice ceased, the enormous stillness, without light
+or sound, seemed to affect Decoud's senses like a powerful drug. He
+didn't even know at times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man
+lost in slumber, he heard nothing, he saw nothing. Even his hand
+held before his face did not exist for his eyes. The change from the
+agitation, the passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of
+the shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it
+not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal
+peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of
+earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty
+atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, shuddered a bit,
+though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had the strangest
+sensation of his soul having just returned into his body from the
+circumambient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the mountains, and the
+rocks were as if they had not been.
+
+Nostromo's voice was speaking, though he, at the tiller, was also as
+if he were not. "Have you been asleep, Don Martin? Caramba! If it were
+possible I would think that I, too, have dozed off. I have a strange
+notion somehow of having dreamt that there was a sound of blubbering,
+a sound a sorrowing man could make, somewhere near this boat. Something
+between a sigh and a sob."
+
+"Strange!" muttered Decoud, stretched upon the pile of treasure boxes
+covered by many tarpaulins. "Could it be that there is another boat near
+us in the gulf? We could not see it, you know."
+
+Nostromo laughed a little at the absurdity of the idea. They dismissed
+it from their minds. The solitude could almost be felt. And when the
+breeze ceased, the blackness seemed to weigh upon Decoud like a stone.
+
+"This is overpowering," he muttered. "Do we move at all, Capataz?"
+
+"Not so fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the grass," answered
+Nostromo, and his voice seemed deadened by the thick veil of obscurity
+that felt warm and hopeless all about them. There were long periods
+when he made no sound, invisible and inaudible as if he had mysteriously
+stepped out of the lighter.
+
+In the featureless night Nostromo was not even certain which way the
+lighter headed after the wind had completely died out. He peered for the
+islands. There was not a hint of them to be seen, as if they had sunk to
+the bottom of the gulf. He threw himself down by the side of Decoud at
+last, and whispered into his ear that if daylight caught them near the
+Sulaco shore through want of wind, it would be possible to sweep the
+lighter behind the cliff at the high end of the Great Isabel, where
+she would lie concealed. Decoud was surprised at the grimness of his
+anxiety. To him the removal of the treasure was a political move. It was
+necessary for several reasons that it should not fall into the hands of
+Montero, but here was a man who took another view of this enterprise.
+The Caballeros over there did not seem to have the slightest idea of
+what they had given him to do. Nostromo, as if affected by the gloom
+around, seemed nervously resentful. Decoud was surprised. The Capataz,
+indifferent to those dangers that seemed obvious to his companion,
+allowed himself to become scornfully exasperated by the deadly nature
+of the trust put, as a matter of course, into his hands. It was more
+dangerous, Nostromo said, with a laugh and a curse, than sending a man
+to get the treasure that people said was guarded by devils and ghosts in
+the deep ravines of Azuera. "Senor," he said, "we must catch the steamer
+at sea. We must keep out in the open looking for her till we have eaten
+and drunk all that has been put on board here. And if we miss her by
+some mischance, we must keep away from the land till we grow weak,
+and perhaps mad, and die, and drift dead, until one or another of the
+steamers of the Compania comes upon the boat with the two dead men who
+have saved the treasure. That, senor, is the only way to save it; for,
+don't you see? for us to come to the land anywhere in a hundred miles
+along this coast with this silver in our possession is to run the naked
+breast against the point of a knife. This thing has been given to me
+like a deadly disease. If men discover it I am dead, and you, too,
+senor, since you would come with me. There is enough silver to make a
+whole province rich, let alone a seaboard pueblo inhabited by thieves
+and vagabonds. Senor, they would think that heaven itself sent these
+riches into their hands, and would cut our throats without hesitation.
+I would trust no fair words from the best man around the shores of this
+wild gulf. Reflect that, even by giving up the treasure at the first
+demand, we would not be able to save our lives. Do you understand this,
+or must I explain?"
+
+"No, you needn't explain," said Decoud, a little listlessly. "I can see
+it well enough myself, that the possession of this treasure is very
+much like a deadly disease for men situated as we are. But it had to be
+removed from Sulaco, and you were the man for the task."
+
+"I was; but I cannot believe," said Nostromo, "that its loss would have
+impoverished Don Carlos Gould very much. There is more wealth in the
+mountain. I have heard it rolling down the shoots on quiet nights when
+I used to ride to Rincon to see a certain girl, after my work at the
+harbour was done. For years the rich rocks have been pouring down with a
+noise like thunder, and the miners say that there is enough at the heart
+of the mountain to thunder on for years and years to come. And yet, the
+day before yesterday, we have been fighting to save it from the mob,
+and to-night I am sent out with it into this darkness, where there is no
+wind to get away with; as if it were the last lot of silver on earth to
+get bread for the hungry with. Ha! ha! Well, I am going to make it the
+most famous and desperate affair of my life--wind or no wind. It shall
+be talked about when the little children are grown up and the grown
+men are old. Aha! the Monterists must not get hold of it, I am told,
+whatever happens to Nostromo the Capataz; and they shall not have it, I
+tell you, since it has been tied for safety round Nostromo's neck."
+
+"I see it," murmured Decoud. He saw, indeed, that his companion had his
+own peculiar view of this enterprise.
+
+Nostromo interrupted his reflections upon the way men's qualities are
+made use of, without any fundamental knowledge of their nature, by the
+proposal they should slip the long oars out and sweep the lighter in
+the direction of the Isabels. It wouldn't do for daylight to reveal
+the treasure floating within a mile or so of the harbour entrance. The
+denser the darkness generally, the smarter were the puffs of wind on
+which he had reckoned to make his way; but tonight the gulf, under its
+poncho of clouds, remained breathless, as if dead rather than asleep.
+
+Don Martin's soft hands suffered cruelly, tugging at the thick handle of
+the enormous oar. He stuck to it manfully, setting his teeth. He, too,
+was in the toils of an imaginative existence, and that strange work of
+pulling a lighter seemed to belong naturally to the inception of a new
+state, acquired an ideal meaning from his love for Antonia. For all
+their efforts, the heavily laden lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could
+be heard swearing to himself between the regular splashes of the sweeps.
+"We are making a crooked path," he muttered to himself. "I wish I could
+see the islands."
+
+In his unskilfulness Don Martin over-exerted himself. Now and then a
+sort of muscular faintness would run from the tips of his aching fingers
+through every fibre of his body, and pass off in a flush of heat. He had
+fought, talked, suffered mentally and physically, exerting his mind and
+body for the last forty-eight hours without intermission. He had had no
+rest, very little food, no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his
+feelings. Even his love for Antonia, whence he drew his strength and
+his inspiration, had reached the point of tragic tension during their
+hurried interview by Don Jose's bedside. And now, suddenly, he was
+thrown out of all this into a dark gulf, whose very gloom, silence, and
+breathless peace added a torment to the necessity for physical exertion.
+He imagined the lighter sinking to the bottom with an extraordinary
+shudder of delight. "I am on the verge of delirium," he thought. He
+mastered the trembling of all his limbs, of his breast, the inward
+trembling of all his body exhausted of its nervous force.
+
+"Shall we rest, Capataz?" he proposed in a careless tone. "There are
+many hours of night yet before us."
+
+"True. It is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your arms, senor, if that
+is what you mean. You will find no other sort of rest, I can promise
+you, since you let yourself be bound to this treasure whose loss would
+make no poor man poorer. No, senor; there is no rest till we find a
+north-bound steamer, or else some ship finds us drifting about stretched
+out dead upon the Englishman's silver. Or rather--no; por Dios! I shall
+cut down the gunwale with the axe right to the water's edge before
+thirst and hunger rob me of my strength. By all the saints and devils
+I shall let the sea have the treasure rather than give it up to any
+stranger. Since it was the good pleasure of the Caballeros to send me
+off on such an errand, they shall learn I am just the man they take me
+for."
+
+Decoud lay on the silver boxes panting. All his active sensations and
+feelings from as far back as he could remember seemed to him the maddest
+of dreams. Even his passionate devotion to Antonia into which he had
+worked himself up out of the depths of his scepticism had lost all
+appearance of reality. For a moment he was the prey of an extremely
+languid but not unpleasant indifference.
+
+"I am sure they didn't mean you to take such a desperate view of this
+affair," he said.
+
+"What was it, then? A joke?" snarled the man, who on the pay-sheets of
+the O.S.N. Company's establishment in Sulaco was described as "Foreman
+of the wharf" against the figure of his wages. "Was it for a joke they
+woke me up from my sleep after two days of street fighting to make me
+stake my life upon a bad card? Everybody knows, too, that I am not a
+lucky gambler."
+
+"Yes, everybody knows of your good luck with women, Capataz," Decoud
+propitiated his companion in a weary drawl.
+
+"Look here, senor," Nostromo went on. "I never even remonstrated about
+this affair. Directly I heard what was wanted I saw what a desperate
+affair it must be, and I made up my mind to see it out. Every minute was
+of importance. I had to wait for you first. Then, when we arrived at
+the Italia Una, old Giorgio shouted to me to go for the English doctor.
+Later on, that poor dying woman wanted to see me, as you know. Senor,
+I was reluctant to go. I felt already this cursed silver growing heavy
+upon my back, and I was afraid that, knowing herself to be dying, she
+would ask me to ride off again for a priest. Father Corbelan, who is
+fearless, would have come at a word; but Father Corbelan is far away,
+safe with the band of Hernandez, and the populace, that would have liked
+to tear him to pieces, are much incensed against the priests. Not
+a single fat padre would have consented to put his head out of his
+hiding-place to-night to save a Christian soul, except, perhaps, under
+my protection. That was in her mind. I pretended I did not believe she
+was going to die. Senor, I refused to fetch a priest for a dying
+woman. . . ."
+
+Decoud was heard to stir.
+
+"You did, Capataz!" he exclaimed. His tone changed. "Well, you know--it
+was rather fine."
+
+"You do not believe in priests, Don Martin? Neither do I. What was the
+use of wasting time? But she--she believes in them. The thing sticks in
+my throat. She may be dead already, and here we are floating helpless
+with no wind at all. Curse on all superstition. She died thinking I
+deprived her of Paradise, I suppose. It shall be the most desperate
+affair of my life."
+
+Decoud remained lost in reflection. He tried to analyze the sensations
+awaked by what he had been told. The voice of the Capataz was heard
+again:
+
+"Now, Don Martin, let us take up the sweeps and try to find the Isabels.
+It is either that or sinking the lighter if the day overtakes us. We
+must not forget that the steamer from Esmeralda with the soldiers may be
+coming along. We will pull straight on now. I have discovered a bit of a
+candle here, and we must take the risk of a small light to make a course
+by the boat compass. There is not enough wind to blow it out--may the
+curse of Heaven fall upon this blind gulf!"
+
+A small flame appeared burning quite straight. It showed fragmentarily
+the stout ribs and planking in the hollow, empty part of the lighter.
+Decoud could see Nostromo standing up to pull. He saw him as high as the
+red sash on his waist, with a gleam of a white-handled revolver and the
+wooden haft of a long knife protruding on his left side. Decoud nerved
+himself for the effort of rowing. Certainly there was not enough wind to
+blow the candle out, but its flame swayed a little to the slow movement
+of the heavy boat. It was so big that with their utmost efforts
+they could not move it quicker than about a mile an hour. This was
+sufficient, however, to sweep them amongst the Isabels long before
+daylight came. There was a good six hours of darkness before them, and
+the distance from the harbour to the Great Isabel did not exceed two
+miles. Decoud put this heavy toil to the account of the Capataz's
+impatience. Sometimes they paused, and then strained their ears to hear
+the boat from Esmeralda. In this perfect quietness a steamer moving
+would have been heard from far off. As to seeing anything it was out of
+the question. They could not see each other. Even the lighter's sail,
+which remained set, was invisible. Very often they rested.
+
+"Caramba!" said Nostromo, suddenly, during one of those intervals when
+they lolled idly against the heavy handles of the sweeps. "What is it?
+Are you distressed, Don Martin?"
+
+Decoud assured him that he was not distressed in the least. Nostromo
+for a time kept perfectly still, and then in a whisper invited Martin to
+come aft.
+
+With his lips touching Decoud's ear he declared his belief that there
+was somebody else besides themselves upon the lighter. Twice now he had
+heard the sound of stifled sobbing.
+
+"Senor," he whispered with awed wonder, "I am certain that there is
+somebody weeping in this lighter."
+
+Decoud had heard nothing. He expressed his incredulity. However, it was
+easy to ascertain the truth of the matter.
+
+"It is most amazing," muttered Nostromo. "Could anybody have concealed
+himself on board while the lighter was lying alongside the wharf?"
+
+"And you say it was like sobbing?" asked Decoud, lowering his voice,
+too. "If he is weeping, whoever he is he cannot be very dangerous."
+
+Clambering over the precious pile in the middle, they crouched low on
+the foreside of the mast and groped under the half-deck. Right forward,
+in the narrowest part, their hands came upon the limbs of a man, who
+remained as silent as death. Too startled themselves to make a sound,
+they dragged him aft by one arm and the collar of his coat. He was
+limp--lifeless.
+
+The light of the bit of candle fell upon a round, hook-nosed face with
+black moustaches and little side-whiskers. He was extremely dirty. A
+greasy growth of beard was sprouting on the shaven parts of the cheeks.
+The thick lips were slightly parted, but the eyes remained closed.
+Decoud, to his immense astonishment, recognized Senor Hirsch, the hide
+merchant from Esmeralda. Nostromo, too, had recognized him. And they
+gazed at each other across the body, lying with its naked feet higher
+than its head, in an absurd pretence of sleep, faintness, or death.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+For a moment, before this extraordinary find, they forgot their own
+concerns and sensations. Senor Hirsch's sensations as he lay there must
+have been those of extreme terror. For a long time he refused to give
+a sign of life, till at last Decoud's objurgations, and, perhaps more,
+Nostromo's impatient suggestion that he should be thrown overboard, as
+he seemed to be dead, induced him to raise one eyelid first, and then
+the other.
+
+It appeared that he had never found a safe opportunity to leave Sulaco.
+He lodged with Anzani, the universal storekeeper, on the Plaza Mayor.
+But when the riot broke out he had made his escape from his host's house
+before daylight, and in such a hurry that he had forgotten to put on his
+shoes. He had run out impulsively in his socks, and with his hat in his
+hand, into the garden of Anzani's house. Fear gave him the necessary
+agility to climb over several low walls, and afterwards he blundered
+into the overgrown cloisters of the ruined Franciscan convent in one of
+the by-streets. He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes with
+the recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for his scratched
+body and his torn clothing. He lay hidden there all day, his tongue
+cleaving to the roof of his mouth with all the intensity of thirst
+engendered by heat and fear. Three times different bands of men invaded
+the place with shouts and imprecations, looking for Father Corbelan; but
+towards the evening, still lying on his face in the bushes, he thought
+he would die from the fear of silence. He was not very clear as to what
+had induced him to leave the place, but evidently he had got out
+and slunk successfully out of town along the deserted back lanes. He
+wandered in the darkness near the railway, so maddened by apprehension
+that he dared not even approach the fires of the pickets of Italian
+workmen guarding the line. He had a vague idea evidently of finding
+refuge in the railway yards, but the dogs rushed upon him, barking; men
+began to shout; a shot was fired at random. He fled away from the gates.
+By the merest accident, as it happened, he took the direction of the
+O.S.N. Company's offices. Twice he stumbled upon the bodies of men
+killed during the day. But everything living frightened him much more.
+He crouched, crept, crawled, made dashes, guided by a sort of animal
+instinct, keeping away from every light and from every sound of voices.
+His idea was to throw himself at the feet of Captain Mitchell and
+beg for shelter in the Company's offices. It was all dark there as
+he approached on his hands and knees, but suddenly someone on guard
+challenged loudly, "Quien vive?" There were more dead men lying about,
+and he flattened himself down at once by the side of a cold corpse. He
+heard a voice saying, "Here is one of those wounded rascals crawling
+about. Shall I go and finish him?" And another voice objected that it
+was not safe to go out without a lantern upon such an errand; perhaps it
+was only some negro Liberal looking for a chance to stick a knife into
+the stomach of an honest man. Hirsch didn't stay to hear any more, but
+crawling away to the end of the wharf, hid himself amongst a lot of
+empty casks. After a while some people came along, talking, and with
+glowing cigarettes. He did not stop to ask himself whether they would be
+likely to do him any harm, but bolted incontinently along the jetty,
+saw a lighter lying moored at the end, and threw himself into it. In his
+desire to find cover he crept right forward under the half-deck, and he
+had remained there more dead than alive, suffering agonies of hunger
+and thirst, and almost fainting with terror, when he heard numerous
+footsteps and the voices of the Europeans who came in a body escorting
+the wagonload of treasure, pushed along the rails by a squad of
+Cargadores. He understood perfectly what was being done from the talk,
+but did not disclose his presence from the fear that he would not
+be allowed to remain. His only idea at the time, overpowering and
+masterful, was to get away from this terrible Sulaco. And now he
+regretted it very much. He had heard Nostromo talk to Decoud, and wished
+himself back on shore. He did not desire to be involved in any desperate
+affair--in a situation where one could not run away. The involuntary
+groans of his anguished spirit had betrayed him to the sharp ears of the
+Capataz.
+
+They had propped him up in a sitting posture against the side of the
+lighter, and he went on with the moaning account of his adventures till
+his voice broke, his head fell forward. "Water," he whispered, with
+difficulty. Decoud held one of the cans to his lips. He revived after
+an extraordinarily short time, and scrambled up to his feet wildly.
+Nostromo, in an angry and threatening voice, ordered him forward. Hirsch
+was one of those men whom fear lashes like a whip, and he must have
+had an appalling idea of the Capataz's ferocity. He displayed an
+extraordinary agility in disappearing forward into the darkness. They
+heard him getting over the tarpaulin; then there was the sound of a
+heavy fall, followed by a weary sigh. Afterwards all was still in
+the fore-part of the lighter, as though he had killed himself in his
+headlong tumble. Nostromo shouted in a menacing voice--
+
+"Lie still there! Do not move a limb. If I hear as much as a loud breath
+from you I shall come over there and put a bullet through your head."
+
+The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of
+treachery into a dangerous situation. Nostromo's nervous impatience
+passed into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as if
+speaking to himself, remarked that, after all, this bizarre event made
+no great difference. He could not conceive what harm the man could
+do. At most he would be in the way, like an inanimate and useless
+object--like a block of wood, for instance.
+
+"I would think twice before getting rid of a piece of wood," said
+Nostromo, calmly. "Something may happen unexpectedly where you could
+make use of it. But in an affair like ours a man like this ought to be
+thrown overboard. Even if he were as brave as a lion we would not want
+him here. We are not running away for our lives. Senor, there is no harm
+in a brave man trying to save himself with ingenuity and courage; but
+you have heard his tale, Don Martin. His being here is a miracle of
+fear--" Nostromo paused. "There is no room for fear in this lighter," he
+added through his teeth.
+
+Decoud had no answer to make. It was not a position for argument, for a
+display of scruples or feelings. There were a thousand ways in which
+a panic-stricken man could make himself dangerous. It was evident
+that Hirsch could not be spoken to, reasoned with, or persuaded into a
+rational line of conduct. The story of his own escape demonstrated that
+clearly enough. Decoud thought that it was a thousand pities the wretch
+had not died of fright. Nature, who had made him what he was, seemed to
+have calculated cruelly how much he could bear in the way of atrocious
+anguish without actually expiring. Some compassion was due to so much
+terror. Decoud, though imaginative enough for sympathy, resolved not
+to interfere with any action that Nostromo would take. But Nostromo did
+nothing. And the fate of Senor Hirsch remained suspended in the darkness
+of the gulf at the mercy of events which could not be foreseen.
+
+The Capataz, extending his hand, put out the candle suddenly. It was to
+Decoud as if his companion had destroyed, by a single touch, the world
+of affairs, of loves, of revolution, where his complacent superiority
+analyzed fearlessly all motives and all passions, including his own.
+
+He gasped a little. Decoud was affected by the novelty of his position.
+Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from being deprived of the
+only weapon he could use with effect. No intelligence could penetrate
+the darkness of the Placid Gulf. There remained only one thing he was
+certain of, and that was the overweening vanity of his companion. It was
+direct, uncomplicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been
+making use of him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He
+had discovered a complete singleness of motive behind the varied
+manifestations of a consistent character. This was why the man remained
+so astonishingly simple in the jealous greatness of his conceit. And now
+there was a complication. It was evident that he resented having been
+given a task in which there were so many chances of failure. "I wonder,"
+thought Decoud, "how he would behave if I were not here."
+
+He heard Nostromo mutter again, "No! there is no room for fear on this
+lighter. Courage itself does not seem good enough. I have a good eye and
+a steady hand; no man can say he ever saw me tired or uncertain what to
+do; but por Dios, Don Martin, I have been sent out into this black calm
+on a business where neither a good eye, nor a steady hand, nor judgment
+are any use. . . ." He swore a string of oaths in Spanish and Italian
+under his breath. "Nothing but sheer desperation will do for this
+affair."
+
+These words were in strange contrast to the prevailing peace--to
+this almost solid stillness of the gulf. A shower fell with an abrupt
+whispering sound all round the boat, and Decoud took off his hat, and,
+letting his head get wet, felt greatly refreshed. Presently a steady
+little draught of air caressed his cheek. The lighter began to move,
+but the shower distanced it. The drops ceased to fall upon his head and
+hands, the whispering died out in the distance. Nostromo emitted a grunt
+of satisfaction, and grasping the tiller, chirruped softly, as sailors
+do, to encourage the wind. Never for the last three days had Decoud felt
+less the need for what the Capataz would call desperation.
+
+"I fancy I hear another shower on the water," he observed in a tone of
+quiet content. "I hope it will catch us up."
+
+Nostromo ceased chirruping at once. "You hear another shower?" he said,
+doubtfully. A sort of thinning of the darkness seemed to have taken
+place, and Decoud could see now the outline of his companion's figure,
+and even the sail came out of the night like a square block of dense
+snow.
+
+The sound which Decoud had detected came along the water harshly.
+Nostromo recognized that noise partaking of a hiss and a rustle which
+spreads out on all sides of a steamer making her way through a smooth
+water on a quiet night. It could be nothing else but the captured
+transport with troops from Esmeralda. She carried no lights. The noise
+of her steaming, growing louder every minute, would stop at times
+altogether, and then begin again abruptly, and sound startlingly nearer;
+as if that invisible vessel, whose position could not be precisely
+guessed, were making straight for the lighter. Meantime, that last kept
+on sailing slowly and noiselessly before a breeze so faint that it was
+only by leaning over the side and feeling the water slip through his
+fingers that Decoud convinced himself they were moving at all. His
+drowsy feeling had departed. He was glad to know that the lighter
+was moving. After so much stillness the noise of the steamer seemed
+uproarious and distracting. There was a weirdness in not being able to
+see her. Suddenly all was still. She had stopped, but so close to them
+that the steam, blowing off, sent its rumbling vibration right over
+their heads.
+
+"They are trying to make out where they are," said Decoud in a whisper.
+Again he leaned over and put his fingers into the water. "We are moving
+quite smartly," he informed Nostromo.
+
+"We seem to be crossing her bows," said the Capataz in a cautious tone.
+"But this is a blind game with death. Moving on is of no use. We mustn't
+be seen or heard."
+
+His whisper was hoarse with excitement. Of all his face there was
+nothing visible but a gleam of white eyeballs. His fingers gripped
+Decoud's shoulder. "That is the only way to save this treasure from this
+steamer full of soldiers. Any other would have carried lights. But you
+observe there is not a gleam to show us where she is."
+
+Decoud stood as if paralyzed; only his thoughts were wildly active. In
+the space of a second he remembered the desolate glance of Antonia as he
+left her at the bedside of her father in the gloomy house of Avellanos,
+with shuttered windows, but all the doors standing open, and deserted by
+all the servants except an old negro at the gate. He remembered the
+Casa Gould on his last visit, the arguments, the tones of his voice,
+the impenetrable attitude of Charles, Mrs. Gould's face so blanched
+with anxiety and fatigue that her eyes seemed to have changed colour,
+appearing nearly black by contrast. Even whole sentences of the
+proclamation which he meant to make Barrios issue from his headquarters
+at Cayta as soon as he got there passed through his mind; the very germ
+of the new State, the Separationist proclamation which he had tried
+before he left to read hurriedly to Don Jose, stretched out on his
+bed under the fixed gaze of his daughter. God knows whether the
+old statesman had understood it; he was unable to speak, but he had
+certainly lifted his arm off the coverlet; his hand had moved as if
+to make the sign of the cross in the air, a gesture of blessing, of
+consent. Decoud had that very draft in his pocket, written in pencil
+on several loose sheets of paper, with the heavily-printed heading,
+"Administration of the San Tome Silver Mine. Sulaco. Republic of
+Costaguana." He had written it furiously, snatching page after page
+on Charles Gould's table. Mrs. Gould had looked several times over
+his shoulder as he wrote; but the Senor Administrador, standing
+straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was finished. He
+had waved it away firmly. It must have been scorn, and not caution,
+since he never made a remark about the use of the Administration's paper
+for such a compromising document. And that showed his disdain, the true
+English disdain of common prudence, as if everything outside the range
+of their own thoughts and feelings were unworthy of serious recognition.
+Decoud had the time in a second or two to become furiously angry with
+Charles Gould, and even resentful against Mrs. Gould, in whose care,
+tacitly it is true, he had left the safety of Antonia. Better perish a
+thousand times than owe your preservation to such people, he exclaimed
+mentally. The grip of Nostromo's fingers never removed from his
+shoulder, tightening fiercely, recalled him to himself.
+
+"The darkness is our friend," the Capataz murmured into his ear. "I am
+going to lower the sail, and trust our escape to this black gulf. No
+eyes could make us out lying silent with a naked mast. I will do it
+now, before this steamer closes still more upon us. The faint creak of a
+block would betray us and the San Tome treasure into the hands of those
+thieves."
+
+He moved about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard no sound; and it was
+only by the disappearance of the square blotch of darkness that he knew
+the yard had come down, lowered as carefully as if it had been made of
+glass. Next moment he heard Nostromo's quiet breathing by his side.
+
+"You had better not move at all from where you are, Don Martin," advised
+the Capataz, earnestly. "You might stumble or displace something which
+would make a noise. The sweeps and the punting poles are lying about.
+Move not for your life. Por Dios, Don Martin," he went on in a keen but
+friendly whisper, "I am so desperate that if I didn't know your worship
+to be a man of courage, capable of standing stock still whatever
+happens, I would drive my knife into your heart."
+
+A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was difficult to
+believe that there was near a steamer full of men with many pairs of
+eyes peering from her bridge for some hint of land in the night. Her
+steam had ceased blowing off, and she remained stopped too far off
+apparently for any other sound to reach the lighter.
+
+"Perhaps you would, Capataz," Decoud began in a whisper. "However, you
+need not trouble. There are other things than the fear of your knife
+to keep my heart steady. It shall not betray you. Only, have you
+forgotten--"
+
+"I spoke to you openly as to a man as desperate as myself," explained
+the Capataz. "The silver must be saved from the Monterists. I told
+Captain Mitchell three times that I preferred to go alone. I told Don
+Carlos Gould, too. It was in the Casa Gould. They had sent for me. The
+ladies were there; and when I tried to explain why I did not wish to
+have you with me, they promised me, both of them, great rewards for your
+safety. A strange way to talk to a man you are sending out to an almost
+certain death. Those gentlefolk do not seem to have sense enough to
+understand what they are giving one to do. I told them I could do
+nothing for you. You would have been safer with the bandit Hernandez.
+It would have been possible to ride out of the town with no greater risk
+than a chance shot sent after you in the dark. But it was as if they had
+been deaf. I had to promise I would wait for you under the harbour gate.
+I did wait. And now because you are a brave man you are as safe as the
+silver. Neither more nor less."
+
+At that moment, as if by way of comment upon Nostromo's words, the
+invisible steamer went ahead at half speed only, as could be judged
+by the leisurely beat of her propeller. The sound shifted its place
+markedly, but without coming nearer. It even grew a little more distant
+right abeam of the lighter, and then ceased again.
+
+"They are trying for a sight of the Isabels," muttered Nostromo, "in
+order to make for the harbour in a straight line and seize the Custom
+House with the treasure in it. Have you ever seen the Commandant of
+Esmeralda, Sotillo? A handsome fellow, with a soft voice. When I first
+came here I used to see him in the Calle talking to the senoritas at the
+windows of the houses, and showing his white teeth all the time. But
+one of my Cargadores, who had been a soldier, told me that he had once
+ordered a man to be flayed alive in the remote Campo, where he was sent
+recruiting amongst the people of the Estancias. It has never entered his
+head that the Compania had a man capable of baffling his game."
+
+The murmuring loquacity of the Capataz disturbed Decoud like a hint
+of weakness. And yet, talkative resolution may be as genuine as grim
+silence.
+
+"Sotillo is not baffled so far," he said. "Have you forgotten that crazy
+man forward?"
+
+Nostromo had not forgotten Senor Hirsch. He reproached himself bitterly
+for not having visited the lighter carefully before leaving the wharf.
+He reproached himself for not having stabbed and flung Hirsch overboard
+at the very moment of discovery without even looking at his face. That
+would have been consistent with the desperate character of the affair.
+Whatever happened, Sotillo was already baffled. Even if that wretch, now
+as silent as death, did anything to betray the nearness of the lighter,
+Sotillo--if Sotillo it was in command of the troops on board--would be
+still baffled of his plunder.
+
+"I have an axe in my hand," Nostromo whispered, wrathfully, "that in
+three strokes would cut through the side down to the water's edge.
+Moreover, each lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know exactly where
+it is. I feel it under the sole of my foot."
+
+Decoud recognized the ring of genuine determination in the nervous
+murmurs, the vindictive excitement of the famous Capataz. Before the
+steamer, guided by a shriek or two (for there could be no more than
+that, Nostromo said, gnashing his teeth audibly), could find the lighter
+there would be plenty of time to sink this treasure tied up round his
+neck.
+
+The last words he hissed into Decoud's ear. Decoud said nothing. He was
+perfectly convinced. The usual characteristic quietness of the man was
+gone. It was not equal to the situation as he conceived it. Something
+deeper, something unsuspected by everyone, had come to the surface.
+Decoud, with careful movements, slipped off his overcoat and divested
+himself of his boots; he did not consider himself bound in honour to
+sink with the treasure. His object was to get down to Barrios, in Cayta,
+as the Capataz knew very well; and he, too, meant, in his own way,
+to put into that attempt all the desperation of which he was capable.
+Nostromo muttered, "True, true! You are a politician, senor. Rejoin the
+army, and start another revolution." He pointed out, however, that there
+was a little boat belonging to every lighter fit to carry two men, if
+not more. Theirs was towing behind.
+
+Of that Decoud had not been aware. Of course, it was too dark to see,
+and it was only when Nostromo put his hand upon its painter fastened to
+a cleat in the stern that he experienced a full measure of relief. The
+prospect of finding himself in the water and swimming, overwhelmed
+by ignorance and darkness, probably in a circle, till he sank from
+exhaustion, was revolting. The barren and cruel futility of such an end
+intimidated his affectation of careless pessimism. In comparison to it,
+the chance of being left floating in a boat, exposed to thirst, hunger,
+discovery, imprisonment, execution, presented itself with an aspect of
+amenity worth securing even at the cost of some self-contempt. He did
+not accept Nostromo's proposal that he should get into the boat at
+once. "Something sudden may overwhelm us, senor," the Capataz remarked
+promising faithfully, at the same time, to let go the painter at the
+moment when the necessity became manifest.
+
+But Decoud assured him lightly that he did not mean to take to the boat
+till the very last moment, and that then he meant the Capataz to come
+along, too. The darkness of the gulf was no longer for him the end of
+all things. It was part of a living world since, pervading it, failure
+and death could be felt at your elbow. And at the same time it was a
+shelter. He exulted in its impenetrable obscurity. "Like a wall, like a
+wall," he muttered to himself.
+
+The only thing which checked his confidence was the thought of Senor
+Hirsch. Not to have bound and gagged him seemed to Decoud now the height
+of improvident folly. As long as the miserable creature had the power to
+raise a yell he was a constant danger. His abject terror was mute now,
+but there was no saying from what cause it might suddenly find vent in
+shrieks.
+
+This very madness of fear which both Decoud and Nostromo had seen in
+the wild and irrational glances, and in the continuous twitchings of
+his mouth, protected Senor Hirsch from the cruel necessities of this
+desperate affair. The moment of silencing him for ever had passed. As
+Nostromo remarked, in answer to Decoud's regrets, it was too late! It
+could not be done without noise, especially in the ignorance of the
+man's exact position. Wherever he had elected to crouch and tremble, it
+was too hazardous to go near him. He would begin probably to yell for
+mercy. It was much better to leave him quite alone since he was keeping
+so still. But to trust to his silence became every moment a greater
+strain upon Decoud's composure.
+
+"I wish, Capataz, you had not let the right moment pass," he murmured.
+
+"What! To silence him for ever? I thought it good to hear first how he
+came to be here. It was too strange. Who could imagine that it was
+all an accident? Afterwards, senor, when I saw you giving him water to
+drink, I could not do it. Not after I had seen you holding up the can to
+his lips as though he were your brother. Senor, that sort of necessity
+must not be thought of too long. And yet it would have been no cruelty
+to take away from him his wretched life. It is nothing but fear. Your
+compassion saved him then, Don Martin, and now it is too late. It
+couldn't be done without noise."
+
+In the steamer they were keeping a perfect silence, and the stillness
+was so profound that Decoud felt as if the slightest sound conceivable
+must travel unchecked and audible to the end of the world. What if
+Hirsch coughed or sneezed? To feel himself at the mercy of such an
+idiotic contingency was too exasperating to be looked upon with irony.
+Nostromo, too, seemed to be getting restless. Was it possible, he
+asked himself, that the steamer, finding the night too dark altogether,
+intended to remain stopped where she was till daylight? He began to
+think that this, after all, was the real danger. He was afraid that
+the darkness, which was his protection, would, in the end, cause his
+undoing.
+
+Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command on board the
+transport. The events of the last forty-eight hours in Sulaco were not
+known to him; neither was he aware that the telegraphist in Esmeralda
+had managed to warn his colleague in Sulaco. Like a good many officers
+of the troops garrisoning the province, Sotillo had been influenced
+in his adoption of the Ribierist cause by the belief that it had the
+enormous wealth of the Gould Concession on its side. He had been one
+of the frequenters of the Casa Gould, where he had aired his Blanco
+convictions and his ardour for reform before Don Jose Avellanos, casting
+frank, honest glances towards Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He was
+known to belong to a good family persecuted and impoverished during the
+tyranny of Guzman Bento. The opinions he expressed appeared eminently
+natural and proper in a man of his parentage and antecedents. And he
+was not a deceiver; it was perfectly natural for him to express elevated
+sentiments while his whole faculties were taken up with what seemed then
+a solid and practical notion--the notion that the husband of Antonia
+Avellanos would be, naturally, the intimate friend of the Gould
+Concession. He even pointed this out to Anzani once, when negotiating
+the sixth or seventh small loan in the gloomy, damp apartment with
+enormous iron bars, behind the principal shop in the whole row under the
+Arcades. He hinted to the universal shopkeeper at the excellent terms
+he was on with the emancipated senorita, who was like a sister to the
+Englishwoman. He would advance one leg and put his arms akimbo, posing
+for Anzani's inspection, and fixing him with a haughty stare.
+
+"Look, miserable shopkeeper! How can a man like me fail with any woman,
+let alone an emancipated girl living in scandalous freedom?" he seemed
+to say.
+
+His manner in the Casa Gould was, of course, very different--devoid of
+all truculence, and even slightly mournful. Like most of his countrymen,
+he was carried away by the sound of fine words, especially if uttered
+by himself. He had no convictions of any sort upon anything except as to
+the irresistible power of his personal advantages. But that was so
+firm that even Decoud's appearance in Sulaco, and his intimacy with
+the Goulds and the Avellanos, did not disquiet him. On the contrary,
+he tried to make friends with that rich Costaguanero from Europe in the
+hope of borrowing a large sum by-and-by. The only guiding motive of
+his life was to get money for the satisfaction of his expensive tastes,
+which he indulged recklessly, having no self-control. He imagined
+himself a master of intrigue, but his corruption was as simple as an
+animal instinct. At times, in solitude, he had his moments of ferocity,
+and also on such occasions as, for instance, when alone in a room with
+Anzani trying to get a loan.
+
+He had talked himself into the command of the Esmeralda garrison. That
+small seaport had its importance as the station of the main submarine
+cable connecting the Occidental Provinces with the outer world, and the
+junction with it of the Sulaco branch. Don Jose Avellanos proposed him,
+and Barrios, with a rude and jeering guffaw, had said, "Oh, let Sotillo
+go. He is a very good man to keep guard over the cable, and the ladies
+of Esmeralda ought to have their turn." Barrios, an indubitably brave
+man, had no great opinion of Sotillo.
+
+It was through the Esmeralda cable alone that the San Tome mine could
+be kept in constant touch with the great financier, whose tacit approval
+made the strength of the Ribierist movement. This movement had its
+adversaries even there. Sotillo governed Esmeralda with repressive
+severity till the adverse course of events upon the distant theatre
+of civil war forced upon him the reflection that, after all, the great
+silver mine was fated to become the spoil of the victors. But caution
+was necessary. He began by assuming a dark and mysterious attitude
+towards the faithful Ribierist municipality of Esmeralda. Later on, the
+information that the commandant was holding assemblies of officers in
+the dead of night (which had leaked out somehow) caused those gentlemen
+to neglect their civil duties altogether, and remain shut up in their
+houses. Suddenly one day all the letters from Sulaco by the overland
+courier were carried off by a file of soldiers from the post office to
+the Commandancia, without disguise, concealment, or apology. Sotillo had
+heard through Cayta of the final defeat of Ribiera.
+
+This was the first open sign of the change in his convictions. Presently
+notorious democrats, who had been living till then in constant fear of
+arrest, leg irons, and even floggings, could be observed going in and
+out at the great door of the Commandancia, where the horses of the
+orderlies doze under their heavy saddles, while the men, in ragged
+uniforms and pointed straw hats, lounge on a bench, with their naked
+feet stuck out beyond the strip of shade; and a sentry, in a red baize
+coat with holes at the elbows, stands at the top of the steps glaring
+haughtily at the common people, who uncover their heads to him as they
+pass.
+
+Sotillo's ideas did not soar above the care for his personal safety and
+the chance of plundering the town in his charge, but he feared that such
+a late adhesion would earn but scant gratitude from the victors. He had
+believed just a little too long in the power of the San Tome mine. The
+seized correspondence had confirmed his previous information of a
+large amount of silver ingots lying in the Sulaco Custom House. To gain
+possession of it would be a clear Monterist move; a sort of service that
+would have to be rewarded. With the silver in his hands he could make
+terms for himself and his soldiers. He was aware neither of the riots,
+nor of the President's escape to Sulaco and the close pursuit led by
+Montero's brother, the guerrillero. The game seemed in his own hands.
+The initial moves were the seizure of the cable telegraph office and the
+securing of the Government steamer lying in the narrow creek which is
+the harbour of Esmeralda. The last was effected without difficulty by
+a company of soldiers swarming with a rush over the gangways as she
+lay alongside the quay; but the lieutenant charged with the duty of
+arresting the telegraphist halted on the way before the only cafe in
+Esmeralda, where he distributed some brandy to his men, and refreshed
+himself at the expense of the owner, a known Ribierist. The whole party
+became intoxicated, and proceeded on their mission up the street yelling
+and firing random shots at the windows. This little festivity, which
+might have turned out dangerous to the telegraphist's life, enabled him
+in the end to send his warning to Sulaco. The lieutenant, staggering
+upstairs with a drawn sabre, was before long kissing him on both
+cheeks in one of those swift changes of mood peculiar to a state of
+drunkenness. He clasped the telegraphist close round the neck, assuring
+him that all the officers of the Esmeralda garrison were going to be
+made colonels, while tears of happiness streamed down his sodden face.
+Thus it came about that the town major, coming along later, found the
+whole party sleeping on the stairs and in passages, and the telegraphist
+(who scorned this chance of escape) very busy clicking the key of the
+transmitter. The major led him away bareheaded, with his hands tied
+behind his back, but concealed the truth from Sotillo, who remained in
+ignorance of the warning despatched to Sulaco.
+
+The colonel was not the man to let any sort of darkness stand in the way
+of the planned surprise. It appeared to him a dead certainty; his heart
+was set upon his object with an ungovernable, childlike impatience. Ever
+since the steamer had rounded Punta Mala, to enter the deeper shadow
+of the gulf, he had remained on the bridge in a group of officers as
+excited as himself. Distracted between the coaxings and menaces of
+Sotillo and his Staff, the miserable commander of the steamer kept her
+moving with as much prudence as they would let him exercise. Some of
+them had been drinking heavily, no doubt; but the prospect of laying
+hands on so much wealth made them absurdly foolhardy, and, at the same
+time, extremely anxious. The old major of the battalion, a stupid,
+suspicious man, who had never been afloat in his life, distinguished
+himself by putting out suddenly the binnacle light, the only one allowed
+on board for the necessities of navigation. He could not understand of
+what use it could be for finding the way. To the vehement protestations
+of the ship's captain, he stamped his foot and tapped the handle of
+his sword. "Aha! I have unmasked you," he cried, triumphantly. "You are
+tearing your hair from despair at my acuteness. Am I a child to believe
+that a light in that brass box can show you where the harbour is? I am
+an old soldier, I am. I can smell a traitor a league off. You wanted
+that gleam to betray our approach to your friend the Englishman. A thing
+like that show you the way! What a miserable lie! Que picardia! You
+Sulaco people are all in the pay of those foreigners. You deserve to
+be run through the body with my sword." Other officers, crowding round,
+tried to calm his indignation, repeating persuasively, "No, no! This is
+an appliance of the mariners, major. This is no treachery." The captain
+of the transport flung himself face downwards on the bridge, and refused
+to rise. "Put an end to me at once," he repeated in a stifled voice.
+Sotillo had to interfere.
+
+The uproar and confusion on the bridge became so great that the helmsman
+fled from the wheel. He took refuge in the engine-room, and alarmed the
+engineers, who, disregarding the threats of the soldiers set on guard
+over them, stopped the engines, protesting that they would rather be
+shot than run the risk of being drowned down below.
+
+This was the first time Nostromo and Decoud heard the steamer stop.
+After order had been restored, and the binnacle lamp relighted, she went
+ahead again, passing wide of the lighter in her search for the Isabels.
+The group could not be made out, and, at the pitiful entreaties of the
+captain, Sotillo allowed the engines to be stopped again to wait for one
+of those periodical lightenings of darkness caused by the shifting of
+the cloud canopy spread above the waters of the gulf.
+
+Sotillo, on the bridge, muttered from time to time angrily to the
+captain. The other, in an apologetic and cringing tone, begged su merced
+the colonel to take into consideration the limitations put upon human
+faculties by the darkness of the night. Sotillo swelled with rage and
+impatience. It was the chance of a lifetime.
+
+"If your eyes are of no more use to you than this, I shall have them put
+out," he yelled.
+
+The captain of the steamer made no answer, for just then the mass of the
+Great Isabel loomed up darkly after a passing shower, then vanished, as
+if swept away by a wave of greater obscurity preceding another downpour.
+This was enough for him. In the voice of a man come back to life again,
+he informed Sotillo that in an hour he would be alongside the Sulaco
+wharf. The ship was put then full speed on the course, and a great
+bustle of preparation for landing arose among the soldiers on her deck.
+
+It was heard distinctly by Decoud and Nostromo. The Capataz understood
+its meaning. They had made out the Isabels, and were going on now in
+a straight line for Sulaco. He judged that they would pass close; but
+believed that lying still like this, with the sail lowered, the lighter
+could not be seen. "No, not even if they rubbed sides with us," he
+muttered.
+
+The rain began to fall again; first like a wet mist, then with a heavier
+touch, thickening into a smart, perpendicular downpour; and the hiss and
+thump of the approaching steamer was coming extremely near. Decoud,
+with his eyes full of water, and lowered head, asked himself how long
+it would be before she drew past, when unexpectedly he felt a lurch.
+An inrush of foam broke swishing over the stern, simultaneously with
+a crack of timbers and a staggering shock. He had the impression of
+an angry hand laying hold of the lighter and dragging it along to
+destruction. The shock, of course, had knocked him down, and he found
+himself rolling in a lot of water at the bottom of the lighter. A
+violent churning went on alongside; a strange and amazed voice cried out
+something above him in the night. He heard a piercing shriek for help
+from Senor Hirsch. He kept his teeth hard set all the time. It was a
+collision!
+
+The steamer had struck the lighter obliquely, heeling her over till she
+was half swamped, starting some of her timbers, and swinging her head
+parallel to her own course with the force of the blow. The shock of
+it on board of her was hardly perceptible. All the violence of that
+collision was, as usual, felt only on board the smaller craft. Even
+Nostromo himself thought that this was perhaps the end of his desperate
+adventure. He, too, had been flung away from the long tiller, which
+took charge in the lurch. Next moment the steamer would have passed on,
+leaving the lighter to sink or swim after having shouldered her thus out
+of her way, and without even getting a glimpse of her form, had it not
+been that, being deeply laden with stores and the great number of people
+on board, her anchor was low enough to hook itself into one of the wire
+shrouds of the lighter's mast. For the space of two or three gasping
+breaths that new rope held against the sudden strain. It was this that
+gave Decoud the sensation of the snatching pull, dragging the lighter
+away to destruction. The cause of it, of course, was inexplicable to
+him. The whole thing was so sudden that he had no time to think. But all
+his sensations were perfectly clear; he had kept complete possession of
+himself; in fact, he was even pleasantly aware of that calmness at the
+very moment of being pitched head first over the transom, to struggle
+on his back in a lot of water. Senor Hirsch's shriek he had heard and
+recognized while he was regaining his feet, always with that mysterious
+sensation of being dragged headlong through the darkness. Not a word,
+not a cry escaped him; he had no time to see anything; and following
+upon the despairing screams for help, the dragging motion ceased so
+suddenly that he staggered forward with open arms and fell against the
+pile of the treasure boxes. He clung to them instinctively, in the
+vague apprehension of being flung about again; and immediately he heard
+another lot of shrieks for help, prolonged and despairing, not near
+him at all, but unaccountably in the distance, away from the lighter
+altogether, as if some spirit in the night were mocking at Senor
+Hirsch's terror and despair.
+
+Then all was still--as still as when you wake up in your bed in a dark
+room from a bizarre and agitated dream. The lighter rocked slightly; the
+rain was still falling. Two groping hands took hold of his bruised sides
+from behind, and the Capataz's voice whispered, in his ear, "Silence,
+for your life! Silence! The steamer has stopped."
+
+Decoud listened. The gulf was dumb. He felt the water nearly up to his
+knees. "Are we sinking?" he asked in a faint breath.
+
+"I don't know," Nostromo breathed back to him. "Senor, make not the
+slightest sound."
+
+Hirsch, when ordered forward by Nostromo, had not returned into his
+first hiding-place. He had fallen near the mast, and had no strength to
+rise; moreover, he feared to move. He had given himself up for dead,
+but not on any rational grounds. It was simply a cruel and terrifying
+feeling. Whenever he tried to think what would become of him his teeth
+would start chattering violently. He was too absorbed in the utter
+misery of his fear to take notice of anything.
+
+Though he was stifling under the lighter's sail which Nostromo had
+unwittingly lowered on top of him, he did not even dare to put out his
+head till the very moment of the steamer striking. Then, indeed, he
+leaped right out, spurred on to new miracles of bodily vigour by this
+new shape of danger. The inrush of water when the lighter heeled over
+unsealed his lips. His shriek, "Save me!" was the first distinct warning
+of the collision for the people on board the steamer. Next moment the
+wire shroud parted, and the released anchor swept over the lighter's
+forecastle. It came against the breast of Senor Hirsch, who simply
+seized hold of it, without in the least knowing what it was, but curling
+his arms and legs upon the part above the fluke with an invincible,
+unreasonable tenacity. The lighter yawed off wide, and the steamer,
+moving on, carried him away, clinging hard, and shouting for help. It
+was some time, however, after the steamer had stopped that his position
+was discovered. His sustained yelping for help seemed to come from
+somebody swimming in the water. At last a couple of men went over the
+bows and hauled him on board. He was carried straight off to Sotillo on
+the bridge. His examination confirmed the impression that some craft had
+been run over and sunk, but it was impracticable on such a dark night
+to look for the positive proof of floating wreckage. Sotillo was more
+anxious than ever now to enter the harbour without loss of time; the
+idea that he had destroyed the principal object of his expedition was
+too intolerable to be accepted. This feeling made the story he had heard
+appear the more incredible. Senor Hirsch, after being beaten a little
+for telling lies, was thrust into the chartroom. But he was beaten only
+a little. His tale had taken the heart out of Sotillo's Staff, though
+they all repeated round their chief, "Impossible! impossible!" with the
+exception of the old major, who triumphed gloomily.
+
+"I told you; I told you," he mumbled. "I could smell some treachery,
+some diableria a league off."
+
+Meantime, the steamer had kept on her way towards Sulaco, where only the
+truth of that matter could be ascertained. Decoud and Nostromo heard the
+loud churning of her propeller diminish and die out; and then, with no
+useless words, busied themselves in making for the Isabels. The last
+shower had brought with it a gentle but steady breeze. The danger was
+not over yet, and there was no time for talk. The lighter was leaking
+like a sieve. They splashed in the water at every step. The Capataz put
+into Decoud's hands the handle of the pump which was fitted at the side
+aft, and at once, without question or remark, Decoud began to pump in
+utter forgetfulness of every desire but that of keeping the treasure
+afloat. Nostromo hoisted the sail, flew back to the tiller, pulled at
+the sheet like mad. The short flare of a match (they had been kept
+dry in a tight tin box, though the man himself was completely wet),
+disclosed to the toiling Decoud the eagerness of his face, bent low over
+the box of the compass, and the attentive stare of his eyes. He knew
+now where he was, and he hoped to run the sinking lighter ashore in
+the shallow cove where the high, cliff-like end of the Great Isabel is
+divided in two equal parts by a deep and overgrown ravine.
+
+Decoud pumped without intermission. Nostromo steered without relaxing
+for a second the intense, peering effort of his stare. Each of them was
+as if utterly alone with his task. It did not occur to them to speak.
+There was nothing in common between them but the knowledge that the
+damaged lighter must be slowly but surely sinking. In that knowledge,
+which was like the crucial test of their desires, they seemed to have
+become completely estranged, as if they had discovered in the very shock
+of the collision that the loss of the lighter would not mean the same
+thing to them both. This common danger brought their differences in aim,
+in view, in character, and in position, into absolute prominence in the
+private vision of each. There was no bond of conviction, of common
+idea; they were merely two adventurers pursuing each his own adventure,
+involved in the same imminence of deadly peril. Therefore they had
+nothing to say to each other. But this peril, this only incontrovertible
+truth in which they shared, seemed to act as an inspiration to their
+mental and bodily powers.
+
+There was certainly something almost miraculous in the way the Capataz
+made the cove with nothing but the shadowy hint of the island's shape
+and the vague gleam of a small sandy strip for a guide. Where the ravine
+opens between the cliffs, and a slender, shallow rivulet meanders out
+of the bushes to lose itself in the sea, the lighter was run ashore; and
+the two men, with a taciturn, undaunted energy, began to discharge her
+precious freight, carrying each ox-hide box up the bed of the rivulet
+beyond the bushes to a hollow place which the caving in of the soil had
+made below the roots of a large tree. Its big smooth trunk leaned like
+a falling column far over the trickle of water running amongst the loose
+stones.
+
+A couple of years before Nostromo had spent a whole Sunday, all alone,
+exploring the island. He explained this to Decoud after their task was
+done, and they sat, weary in every limb, with their legs hanging down
+the low bank, and their backs against the tree, like a pair of blind
+men aware of each other and their surroundings by some indefinable sixth
+sense.
+
+"Yes," Nostromo repeated, "I never forget a place I have carefully
+looked at once." He spoke slowly, almost lazily, as if there had been a
+whole leisurely life before him, instead of the scanty two hours before
+daylight. The existence of the treasure, barely concealed in this
+improbable spot, laid a burden of secrecy upon every contemplated step,
+upon every intention and plan of future conduct. He felt the partial
+failure of this desperate affair entrusted to the great reputation
+he had known how to make for himself. However, it was also a partial
+success. His vanity was half appeased. His nervous irritation had
+subsided.
+
+"You never know what may be of use," he pursued with his usual quietness
+of tone and manner. "I spent a whole miserable Sunday in exploring this
+crumb of land."
+
+"A misanthropic sort of occupation," muttered Decoud, viciously. "You
+had no money, I suppose, to gamble with, and to fling about amongst the
+girls in your usual haunts, Capataz."
+
+"_E vero!_" exclaimed the Capataz, surprised into the use of his native
+tongue by so much perspicacity. "I had not! Therefore I did not want
+to go amongst those beggarly people accustomed to my generosity. It is
+looked for from the Capataz of the Cargadores, who are the rich men,
+and, as it were, the Caballeros amongst the common people. I don't care
+for cards but as a pastime; and as to those girls that boast of having
+opened their doors to my knock, you know I wouldn't look at any one of
+them twice except for what the people would say. They are queer, the
+good people of Sulaco, and I have got much useful information simply by
+listening patiently to the talk of the women that everybody believed
+I was in love with. Poor Teresa could never understand that. On that
+particular Sunday, senor, she scolded so that I went out of the house
+swearing that I would never darken their door again unless to fetch
+away my hammock and my chest of clothes. Senor, there is nothing more
+exasperating than to hear a woman you respect rail against your good
+reputation when you have not a single brass coin in your pocket. I
+untied one of the small boats and pulled myself out of the harbour with
+nothing but three cigars in my pocket to help me spend the day on this
+island. But the water of this rivulet you hear under your feet is cool
+and sweet and good, senor, both before and after a smoke." He was silent
+for a while, then added reflectively, "That was the first Sunday after
+I brought down the white-whiskered English rico all the way down the
+mountains from the Paramo on the top of the Entrada Pass--and in the
+coach, too! No coach had gone up or down that mountain road within the
+memory of man, senor, till I brought this one down in charge of fifty
+peons working like one man with ropes, pickaxes, and poles under my
+direction. That was the rich Englishman who, as people say, pays for the
+making of this railway. He was very pleased with me. But my wages were
+not due till the end of the month."
+
+He slid down the bank suddenly. Decoud heard the splash of his feet in
+the brook and followed his footsteps down the ravine. His form was lost
+among the bushes till he had reached the strip of sand under the cliff.
+As often happens in the gulf when the showers during the first part
+of the night had been frequent and heavy, the darkness had thinned
+considerably towards the morning though there were no signs of daylight
+as yet.
+
+The cargo-lighter, relieved of its precious burden, rocked feebly,
+half-afloat, with her fore-foot on the sand. A long rope stretched
+away like a black cotton thread across the strip of white beach to
+the grapnel Nostromo had carried ashore and hooked to the stem of a
+tree-like shrub in the very opening of the ravine.
+
+There was nothing for Decoud but to remain on the island. He received
+from Nostromo's hands whatever food the foresight of Captain Mitchell
+had put on board the lighter and deposited it temporarily in the little
+dinghy which on their arrival they had hauled up out of sight amongst
+the bushes. It was to be left with him. The island was to be a
+hiding-place, not a prison; he could pull out to a passing ship. The
+O.S.N. Company's mail boats passed close to the islands when going into
+Sulaco from the north. But the Minerva, carrying off the ex-president,
+had taken the news up north of the disturbances in Sulaco. It was
+possible that the next steamer down would get instructions to miss the
+port altogether since the town, as far as the Minerva's officers knew,
+was for the time being in the hands of the rabble. This would mean that
+there would be no steamer for a month, as far as the mail service went;
+but Decoud had to take his chance of that. The island was his only
+shelter from the proscription hanging over his head. The Capataz was,
+of course, going back. The unloaded lighter leaked much less, and he
+thought that she would keep afloat as far as the harbour.
+
+He passed to Decoud, standing knee-deep alongside, one of the two spades
+which belonged to the equipment of each lighter for use when ballasting
+ships. By working with it carefully as soon as there was daylight enough
+to see, Decoud could loosen a mass of earth and stones overhanging the
+cavity in which they had deposited the treasure, so that it would look
+as if it had fallen naturally. It would cover up not only the cavity,
+but even all traces of their work, the footsteps, the displaced stones,
+and even the broken bushes.
+
+"Besides, who would think of looking either for you or the treasure
+here?" Nostromo continued, as if he could not tear himself away from the
+spot. "Nobody is ever likely to come here. What could any man want
+with this piece of earth as long as there is room for his feet on the
+mainland! The people in this country are not curious. There are even
+no fishermen here to intrude upon your worship. All the fishing that
+is done in the gulf goes on near Zapiga, over there. Senor, if you are
+forced to leave this island before anything can be arranged for you, do
+not try to make for Zapiga. It is a settlement of thieves and matreros,
+where they would cut your throat promptly for the sake of your gold
+watch and chain. And, senor, think twice before confiding in any one
+whatever; even in the officers of the Company's steamers, if you ever
+get on board one. Honesty alone is not enough for security. You must
+look to discretion and prudence in a man. And always remember, senor,
+before you open your lips for a confidence, that this treasure may be
+left safely here for hundreds of years. Time is on its side, senor. And
+silver is an incorruptible metal that can be trusted to keep its value
+for ever. . . . An incorruptible metal," he repeated, as if the idea had
+given him a profound pleasure.
+
+"As some men are said to be," Decoud pronounced, inscrutably, while
+the Capataz, who busied himself in baling out the lighter with a wooden
+bucket, went on throwing the water over the side with a regular splash.
+Decoud, incorrigible in his scepticism, reflected, not cynically, but
+with general satisfaction, that this man was made incorruptible by his
+enormous vanity, that finest form of egoism which can take on the aspect
+of every virtue.
+
+Nostromo ceased baling, and, as if struck with a sudden thought, dropped
+the bucket with a clatter into the lighter.
+
+"Have you any message?" he asked in a lowered voice. "Remember, I shall
+be asked questions."
+
+"You must find the hopeful words that ought to be spoken to the people
+in town. I trust for that your intelligence and your experience,
+Capataz. You understand?"
+
+"Si, senor. . . . For the ladies."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Decoud, hastily. "Your wonderful reputation will make
+them attach great value to your words; therefore be careful what you
+say. I am looking forward," he continued, feeling the fatal touch of
+contempt for himself to which his complex nature was subject, "I am
+looking forward to a glorious and successful ending to my mission. Do
+you hear, Capataz? Use the words glorious and successful when you
+speak to the senorita. Your own mission is accomplished gloriously and
+successfully. You have indubitably saved the silver of the mine. Not
+only this silver, but probably all the silver that shall ever come out
+of it."
+
+Nostromo detected the ironic tone. "I dare say, Senor Don Martin," he
+said, moodily. "There are very few things that I am not equal to.
+Ask the foreign signori. I, a man of the people, who cannot always
+understand what you mean. But as to this lot which I must leave here,
+let me tell you that I would believe it in greater safety if you had not
+been with me at all."
+
+An exclamation escaped Decoud, and a short pause followed. "Shall I go
+back with you to Sulaco?" he asked in an angry tone.
+
+"Shall I strike you dead with my knife where you stand?" retorted
+Nostromo, contemptuously. "It would be the same thing as taking you to
+Sulaco. Come, senor. Your reputation is in your politics, and mine is
+bound up with the fate of this silver. Do you wonder I wish there
+had been no other man to share my knowledge? I wanted no one with me,
+senor."
+
+"You could not have kept the lighter afloat without me," Decoud almost
+shouted. "You would have gone to the bottom with her."
+
+"Yes," uttered Nostromo, slowly; "alone."
+
+Here was a man, Decoud reflected, that seemed as though he would have
+preferred to die rather than deface the perfect form of his egoism. Such
+a man was safe. In silence he helped the Capataz to get the grapnel on
+board. Nostromo cleared the shelving shore with one push of the heavy
+oar, and Decoud found himself solitary on the beach like a man in a
+dream. A sudden desire to hear a human voice once more seized upon his
+heart. The lighter was hardly distinguishable from the black water upon
+which she floated.
+
+"What do you think has become of Hirsch?" he shouted.
+
+"Knocked overboard and drowned," cried Nostromo's voice confidently out
+of the black wastes of sky and sea around the islet. "Keep close in the
+ravine, senor. I shall try to come out to you in a night or two."
+
+A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was setting the sail. It
+filled all at once with a sound as of a single loud drum-tap. Decoud
+went back to the ravine. Nostromo, at the tiller, looked back from time
+to time at the vanishing mass of the Great Isabel, which, little by
+little, merged into the uniform texture of the night. At last, when
+he turned his head again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, like a
+solid wall.
+
+Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude which had weighed
+heavily on Decoud after the lighter had slipped off the shore. But while
+the man on the island was oppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality
+affecting the very ground upon which he walked, the mind of the Capataz
+of the Cargadores turned alertly to the problem of future conduct.
+Nostromo's faculties, working on parallel lines, enabled him to steer
+straight, to keep a look-out for Hermosa, near which he had to pass, and
+to try to imagine what would happen tomorrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or,
+as a matter of fact, to-day, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillo
+would find out in what way the treasure had gone. A gang of Cargadores
+had been employed in loading it into a railway truck from the Custom
+House store-rooms, and running the truck on to the wharf. There would
+be arrests made, and certainly before noon Sotillo would know in what
+manner the silver had left Sulaco, and who it was that took it out.
+
+Nostromo's intention had been to sail right into the harbour; but at
+this thought by a sudden touch of the tiller he threw the lighter into
+the wind and checked her rapid way. His re-appearance with the very
+boat would raise suspicions, would cause surmises, would absolutely
+put Sotillo on the track. He himself would be arrested; and once in
+the Calabozo there was no saying what they would do to him to make
+him speak. He trusted himself, but he stood up to look round. Near by,
+Hermosa showed low its white surface as flat as a table, with the slight
+run of the sea raised by the breeze washing over its edges noisily. The
+lighter must be sunk at once.
+
+He allowed her to drift with her sail aback. There was already a good
+deal of water in her. He allowed her to drift towards the harbour
+entrance, and, letting the tiller swing about, squatted down and
+busied himself in loosening the plug. With that out she would fill very
+quickly, and every lighter carried a little iron ballast--enough to make
+her go down when full of water. When he stood up again the noisy wash
+about the Hermosa sounded far away, almost inaudible; and already he
+could make out the shape of land about the harbour entrance. This was a
+desperate affair, and he was a good swimmer. A mile was nothing to him,
+and he knew of an easy place for landing just below the earthworks of
+the old abandoned fort. It occurred to him with a peculiar fascination
+that this fort was a good place in which to sleep the day through after
+so many sleepless nights.
+
+With one blow of the tiller he unshipped for the purpose, he knocked the
+plug out, but did not take the trouble to lower the sail. He felt the
+water welling up heavily about his legs before he leaped on to the
+taffrail. There, upright and motionless, in his shirt and trousers only,
+he stood waiting. When he had felt her settle he sprang far away with a
+mighty splash.
+
+At once he turned his head. The gloomy, clouded dawn from behind the
+mountains showed him on the smooth waters the upper corner of the sail,
+a dark wet triangle of canvas waving slightly to and fro. He saw it
+vanish, as if jerked under, and then struck out for the shore.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD THE LIGHTHOUSE
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Directly the cargo boat had slipped away from the wharf and got lost
+in the darkness of the harbour the Europeans of Sulaco separated, to
+prepare for the coming of the Monterist regime, which was approaching
+Sulaco from the mountains, as well as from the sea.
+
+This bit of manual work in loading the silver was their last concerted
+action. It ended the three days of danger, during which, according to
+the newspaper press of Europe, their energy had preserved the town
+from the calamities of popular disorder. At the shore end of the jetty,
+Captain Mitchell said good-night and turned back. His intention was to
+walk the planks of the wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up.
+The engineers of the railway staff, collecting their Basque and Italian
+workmen, marched them away to the railway yards, leaving the Custom
+House, so well defended on the first day of the riot, standing open to
+the four winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves bravely
+and faithfully during the famous "three days" of Sulaco. In a great part
+this faithfulness and that courage had been exercised in self-defence
+rather than in the cause of those material interests to which Charles
+Gould had pinned his faith. Amongst the cries of the mob not the least
+loud had been the cry of death to foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky
+circumstance for Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen
+with the people of the country had been uniformly bad from the first.
+
+Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola's kitchen, observed this
+retreat marking the end of the foreign interference, this withdrawal of
+the army of material progress from the field of Costaguana revolutions.
+
+Algarrobe torches carried on the outskirts of the moving body sent their
+penetrating aroma into his nostrils. Their light, sweeping along the
+front of the house, made the letters of the inscription, "Albergo
+d'ltalia Una," leap out black from end to end of the long wall. His eyes
+blinked in the clear blaze. Several young men, mostly fair and tall,
+shepherding this mob of dark bronzed heads, surmounted by the glint of
+slanting rifle barrels, nodded to him familiarly as they went by. The
+doctor was a well-known character. Some of them wondered what he was
+doing there. Then, on the flank of their workmen they tramped on,
+following the line of rails.
+
+"Withdrawing your people from the harbour?" said the doctor, addressing
+himself to the chief engineer of the railway, who had accompanied
+Charles Gould so far on his way to the town, walking by the side of the
+horse, with his hand on the saddle-bow. They had stopped just outside
+the open door to let the workmen cross the road.
+
+"As quick as I can. We are not a political faction," answered the
+engineer, meaningly. "And we are not going to give our new rulers a
+handle against the railway. You approve me, Gould?"
+
+"Absolutely," said Charles Gould's impassive voice, high up and outside
+the dim parallelogram of light falling on the road through the open
+door.
+
+With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro Montero from the other,
+the engineer-in-chief's only anxiety now was to avoid a collision with
+either. Sulaco, for him, was a railway station, a terminus, workshops,
+a great accumulation of stores. As against the mob the railway defended
+its property, but politically the railway was neutral. He was a brave
+man; and in that spirit of neutrality he had carried proposals of truce
+to the self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the deputies Fuentes
+and Gamacho. Bullets were still flying about when he had crossed the
+Plaza on that mission, waving above his head a white napkin belonging to
+the table linen of the Amarilla Club.
+
+He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting that the doctor,
+busy all day with the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould, had
+not had time to hear the news, he began a succinct narrative. He had
+communicated to them the intelligence from the Construction Camp as to
+Pedro Montero. The brother of the victorious general, he had assured
+them, could be expected at Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he
+anticipated), when shouted out of the window by Senor Gamacho, induced
+a rush of the mob along the Campo Road towards Rincon. The two deputies
+also, after shaking hands with him effusively, mounted and galloped off
+to meet the great man. "I have misled them a little as to the time," the
+chief engineer confessed. "However hard he rides, he can scarcely get
+here before the morning. But my object is attained. I've secured several
+hours' peace for the losing party. But I did not tell them anything
+about Sotillo, for fear they would take it into their heads to try
+to get hold of the harbour again, either to oppose him or welcome
+him--there's no saying which. There was Gould's silver, on which rests
+the remnant of our hopes. Decoud's retreat had to be thought of, too.
+I think the railway has done pretty well by its friends without
+compromising itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be left to
+themselves."
+
+"Costaguana for the Costaguaneros," interjected the doctor,
+sardonically. "It is a fine country, and they have raised a fine crop of
+hates, vengeance, murder, and rapine--those sons of the country."
+
+"Well, I am one of them," Charles Gould's voice sounded, calmly, "and
+I must be going on to see to my own crop of trouble. My wife has driven
+straight on, doctor?"
+
+"Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has taken the two girls
+with her."
+
+Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief followed the doctor
+indoors.
+
+"That man is calmness personified," he said, appreciatively, dropping on
+a bench, and stretching his well-shaped legs in cycling stockings nearly
+across the doorway. "He must be extremely sure of himself."
+
+"If that's all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing," said the
+doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table. He nursed
+his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other sustained the
+elbow. "It is the last thing a man ought to be sure of." The candle,
+half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick, lighted up from below
+his inclined face, whose expression affected by the drawn-in cicatrices
+in the cheeks, had something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated
+remorseful bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of meditating upon
+sinister things. The engineer-in-chief gazed at him for a time before he
+protested.
+
+"I really don't see that. For me there seems to be nothing else.
+However----"
+
+He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal his contempt for that
+sort of paradox; in fact. Dr. Monygham was not liked by the Europeans
+of Sulaco. His outward aspect of an outcast, which he preserved even in
+Mrs. Gould's drawing-room, provoked unfavourable criticism. There could
+be no doubt of his intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty
+years in the country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be
+altogether ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence of their
+activities and hopes, his hearers put it to the account of some hidden
+imperfection in the man's character. It was known that many years
+before, when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento chief medical
+officer of the army. Not one of the Europeans then in the service
+of Costaguana had been so much liked and trusted by the fierce old
+Dictator.
+
+Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself amongst the
+innumerable tales of conspiracies and plots against the tyrant as a
+stream is lost in an arid belt of sandy country before it emerges,
+diminished and troubled, perhaps, on the other side. The doctor made
+no secret of it that he had lived for years in the wildest parts of
+the Republic, wandering with almost unknown Indian tribes in the great
+forests of the far interior where the great rivers have their sources.
+But it was mere aimless wandering; he had written nothing, collected
+nothing, brought nothing for science out of the twilight of the forests,
+which seemed to cling to his battered personality limping about Sulaco,
+where it had drifted in casually, only to get stranded on the shores of
+the sea.
+
+It was also known that he had lived in a state of destitution till the
+arrival of the Goulds from Europe. Don Carlos and Dona Emilia had taken
+up the mad English doctor, when it became apparent that for all his
+savage independence he could be tamed by kindness. Perhaps it was
+only hunger that had tamed him. In years gone by he had certainly been
+acquainted with Charles Gould's father in Sta. Marta; and now, no matter
+what were the dark passages of his history, as the medical officer of
+the San Tome mine he became a recognized personality. He was recognized,
+but not unreservedly accepted. So much defiant eccentricity and such
+an outspoken scorn for mankind seemed to point to mere recklessness of
+judgment, the bravado of guilt. Besides, since he had become again of
+some account, vague whispers had been heard that years ago, when fallen
+into disgrace and thrown into prison by Guzman Bento at the time of the
+so-called Great Conspiracy, he had betrayed some of his best friends
+amongst the conspirators. Nobody pretended to believe that whisper; the
+whole story of the Great Conspiracy was hopelessly involved and obscure;
+it is admitted in Costaguana that there never had been a conspiracy
+except in the diseased imagination of the Tyrant; and, therefore,
+nothing and no one to betray; though the most distinguished
+Costaguaneros had been imprisoned and executed upon that accusation. The
+procedure had dragged on for years, decimating the better class like
+a pestilence. The mere expression of sorrow for the fate of executed
+kinsmen had been punished with death. Don Jose Avellanos was perhaps the
+only one living who knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties.
+He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a shrug of the shoulders
+and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was wont to put away from him,
+as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever the reason, Dr. Monygham,
+a personage in the administration of the Gould Concession, treated with
+reverent awe by the miners, and indulged in his peculiarities by Mrs.
+Gould, remained somehow outside the pale.
+
+It was not from any liking for the doctor that the engineer-in-chief had
+lingered in the inn upon the plain. He liked old Viola much better. He
+had come to look upon the Albergo d'ltalia Una as a dependence of the
+railway. Many of his subordinates had their quarters there. Mrs. Gould's
+interest in the family conferred upon it a sort of distinction. The
+engineer-in-chief, with an army of workers under his orders, appreciated
+the moral influence of the old Garibaldino upon his countrymen. His
+austere, old-world Republicanism had a severe, soldier-like standard of
+faithfulness and duty, as if the world were a battlefield where men had
+to fight for the sake of universal love and brotherhood, instead of a
+more or less large share of booty.
+
+"Poor old chap!" he said, after he had heard the doctor's account of
+Teresa. "He'll never be able to keep the place going by himself. I shall
+be sorry."
+
+"He's quite alone up there," grunted Doctor Monygham, with a toss of his
+heavy head towards the narrow staircase. "Every living soul has cleared
+out, and Mrs. Gould took the girls away just now. It might not be
+over-safe for them out here before very long. Of course, as a doctor I
+can do nothing more here; but she has asked me to stay with old Viola,
+and as I have no horse to get back to the mine, where I ought to be, I
+made no difficulty to stay. They can do without me in the town."
+
+"I have a good mind to remain with you, doctor, till we see
+whether anything happens to-night at the harbour," declared the
+engineer-in-chief. "He must not be molested by Sotillo's soldiery, who
+may push on as far as this at once. Sotillo used to be very cordial to
+me at the Goulds' and at the club. How that man'll ever dare to look any
+of his friends here in the face I can't imagine."
+
+"He'll no doubt begin by shooting some of them to get over the first
+awkwardness," said the doctor. "Nothing in this country serves better
+your military man who has changed sides than a few summary executions."
+He spoke with a gloomy positiveness that left no room for protest. The
+engineer-in-chief did not attempt any. He simply nodded several times
+regretfully, then said--
+
+"I think we shall be able to mount you in the morning, doctor. Our peons
+have recovered some of our stampeded horses. By riding hard and taking
+a wide circuit by Los Hatos and along the edge of the forest, clear of
+Rincon altogether, you may hope to reach the San Tome bridge without
+being interfered with. The mine is just now, to my mind, the safest
+place for anybody at all compromised. I only wish the railway was as
+difficult to touch."
+
+"Am I compromised?" Doctor Monygham brought out slowly after a short
+silence.
+
+"The whole Gould Concession is compromised. It could not have remained
+for ever outside the political life of the country--if those convulsions
+may be called life. The thing is--can it be touched? The moment was
+bound to come when neutrality would become impossible, and Charles Gould
+understood this well. I believe he is prepared for every extremity. A
+man of his sort has never contemplated remaining indefinitely at the
+mercy of ignorance and corruption. It was like being a prisoner in a
+cavern of banditti with the price of your ransom in your pocket, and
+buying your life from day to day. Your mere safety, not your liberty,
+mind, doctor. I know what I am talking about. The image at which you
+shrug your shoulders is perfectly correct, especially if you conceive
+such a prisoner endowed with the power of replenishing his pocket by
+means as remote from the faculties of his captors as if they were magic.
+You must have understood that as well as I do, doctor. He was in the
+position of the goose with the golden eggs. I broached this matter to
+him as far back as Sir John's visit here. The prisoner of stupid and
+greedy banditti is always at the mercy of the first imbecile ruffian,
+who may blow out his brains in a fit of temper or for some prospect of
+an immediate big haul. The tale of killing the goose with the golden
+eggs has not been evolved for nothing out of the wisdom of mankind. It
+is a story that will never grow old. That is why Charles Gould in his
+deep, dumb way has countenanced the Ribierist Mandate, the first public
+act that promised him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has
+failed, as everything merely rational fails in this country. But Gould
+remains logical in wishing to save this big lot of silver. Decoud's plan
+of a counter-revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a
+chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my experience of this
+revolutionary continent, I can hardly yet look at their methods
+seriously. Decoud has been reading to us his draft of a proclamation,
+and talking very well for two hours about his plan of action. He had
+arguments which should have appeared solid enough if we, members of old,
+stable political and national organizations, were not startled by the
+mere idea of a new State evolved like this out of the head of a scoffing
+young man fleeing for his life, with a proclamation in his pocket, to a
+rough, jeering, half-bred swashbuckler, who in this part of the world is
+called a general. It sounds like a comic fairy tale--and behold, it may
+come off; because it is true to the very spirit of the country."
+
+"Is the silver gone off, then?" asked the doctor, moodily.
+
+The chief engineer pulled out his watch. "By Captain Mitchell's
+reckoning--and he ought to know--it has been gone long enough now to
+be some three or four miles outside the harbour; and, as Mitchell says,
+Nostromo is the sort of seaman to make the best of his opportunities."
+Here the doctor grunted so heavily that the other changed his tone.
+
+"You have a poor opinion of that move, doctor? But why? Charles Gould
+has got to play his game out, though he is not the man to formulate his
+conduct even to himself, perhaps, let alone to others. It may be that
+the game has been partly suggested to him by Holroyd; but it accords
+with his character, too; and that is why it has been so successful.
+Haven't they come to calling him 'El Rey de Sulaco' in Sta. Marta? A
+nickname may be the best record of a success. That's what I call putting
+the face of a joke upon the body of a truth. My dear sir, when I first
+arrived in Sta. Marta I was struck by the way all those journalists,
+demagogues, members of Congress, and all those generals and judges
+cringed before a sleepy-eyed advocate without practice simply because he
+was the plenipotentiary of the Gould Concession. Sir John when he came
+out was impressed, too."
+
+"A new State, with that plump dandy, Decoud, for the first President,"
+mused Dr. Monygham, nursing his cheek and swinging his legs all the
+time.
+
+"Upon my word, and why not?" the chief engineer retorted in an
+unexpectedly earnest and confidential voice. It was as if something
+subtle in the air of Costaguana had inoculated him with the local faith
+in "pronunciamientos." All at once he began to talk, like an expert
+revolutionist, of the instrument ready to hand in the intact army at
+Cayta, which could be brought back in a few days to Sulaco if only
+Decoud managed to make his way at once down the coast. For the military
+chief there was Barrios, who had nothing but a bullet to expect from
+Montero, his former professional rival and bitter enemy. Barrios's
+concurrence was assured. As to his army, it had nothing to expect from
+Montero either; not even a month's pay. From that point of view the
+existence of the treasure was of enormous importance. The mere knowledge
+that it had been saved from the Monterists would be a strong inducement
+for the Cayta troops to embrace the cause of the new State.
+
+The doctor turned round and contemplated his companion for some time.
+
+"This Decoud, I see, is a persuasive young beggar," he remarked at last.
+"And pray is it for this, then, that Charles Gould has let the whole lot
+of ingots go out to sea in charge of that Nostromo?"
+
+"Charles Gould," said the engineer-in-chief, "has said no more about his
+motive than usual. You know, he doesn't talk. But we all here know his
+motive, and he has only one--the safety of the San Tome mine with the
+preservation of the Gould Concession in the spirit of his compact with
+Holroyd. Holroyd is another uncommon man. They understand each other's
+imaginative side. One is thirty, the other nearly sixty, and they have
+been made for each other. To be a millionaire, and such a millionaire
+as Holroyd, is like being eternally young. The audacity of youth
+reckons upon what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a
+millionaire has unlimited means in his hand--which is better. One's time
+on earth is an uncertain quantity, but about the long reach of millions
+there is no doubt. The introduction of a pure form of Christianity into
+this continent is a dream for a youthful enthusiast, and I have been
+trying to explain to you why Holroyd at fifty-eight is like a man on the
+threshold of life, and better, too. He's not a missionary, but the San
+Tome mine holds just that for him. I assure you, in sober truth, that he
+could not manage to keep this out of a strictly business conference upon
+the finances of Costaguana he had with Sir John a couple of years ago.
+Sir John mentioned it with amazement in a letter he wrote to me here,
+from San Francisco, when on his way home. Upon my word, doctor, things
+seem to be worth nothing by what they are in themselves. I begin to
+believe that the only solid thing about them is the spiritual value
+which everyone discovers in his own form of activity----"
+
+"Bah!" interrupted the doctor, without stopping for an instant the idle
+swinging movement of his legs. "Self-flattery. Food for that vanity
+which makes the world go round. Meantime, what do you think is going to
+happen to the treasure floating about the gulf with the great Capataz
+and the great politician?"
+
+"Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?"
+
+"I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put no spiritual value into
+my desires, or my opinions, or my actions. They have not enough
+vastness to give me room for self-flattery. Look, for instance, I should
+certainly have liked to ease the last moments of that poor woman. And
+I can't. It's impossible. Have you met the impossible face to face--or
+have you, the Napoleon of railways, no such word in your dictionary?"
+
+"Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?" asked the chief engineer,
+with humane concern.
+
+Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above the heavy hard wood
+beams of the kitchen. Then down the narrow opening of the staircase made
+in the thickness of the wall, and narrow enough to be defended by one
+man against twenty enemies, came the murmur of two voices, one faint and
+broken, the other deep and gentle answering it, and in its graver tone
+covering the weaker sound.
+
+The two men remained still and silent till the murmurs ceased, then the
+doctor shrugged his shoulders and muttered--
+
+"Yes, she's bound to. And I could do nothing if I went up now."
+
+A long period of silence above and below ensued.
+
+"I fancy," began the engineer, in a subdued voice, "that you mistrust
+Captain Mitchell's Capataz."
+
+"Mistrust him!" muttered the doctor through his teeth. "I believe him
+capable of anything--even of the most absurd fidelity. I am the last
+person he spoke to before he left the wharf, you know. The poor woman up
+there wanted to see him, and I let him go up to her. The dying must not
+be contradicted, you know. She seemed then fairly calm and resigned,
+but the scoundrel in those ten minutes or so has done or said something
+which seems to have driven her into despair. You know," went on
+the doctor, hesitatingly, "women are so very unaccountable in every
+position, and at all times of life, that I thought sometimes she was in
+a way, don't you see? in love with him--the Capataz. The rascal has his
+own charm indubitably, or he would not have made the conquest of all the
+populace of the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I may have given a wrong
+name to some strong sentiment for him on her part, to an unreasonable
+and simple attitude a woman is apt to take up emotionally towards a
+man. She used to abuse him to me frequently, which, of course, is not
+inconsistent with my idea. Not at all. It looked to me as if she were
+always thinking of him. He was something important in her life. You
+know, I have seen a lot of those people. Whenever I came down from
+the mine Mrs. Gould used to ask me to keep my eye on them. She likes
+Italians; she has lived a long time in Italy, I believe, and she took
+a special fancy to that old Garibaldino. A remarkable chap enough. A
+rugged and dreamy character, living in the republicanism of his
+young days as if in a cloud. He has encouraged much of the Capataz's
+confounded nonsense--the high-strung, exalted old beggar!"
+
+"What sort of nonsense?" wondered the chief engineer. "I found the
+Capataz always a very shrewd and sensible fellow, absolutely fearless,
+and remarkably useful. A perfect handy man. Sir John was greatly
+impressed by his resourcefulness and attention when he made that
+overland journey from Sta. Marta. Later on, as you might have heard,
+he rendered us a service by disclosing to the then chief of police
+the presence in the town of some professional thieves, who came from
+a distance to wreck and rob our monthly pay train. He has certainly
+organized the lighterage service of the harbour for the O.S.N. Company
+with great ability. He knows how to make himself obeyed, foreigner
+though he is. It is true that the Cargadores are strangers here, too,
+for the most part--immigrants, Islenos."
+
+"His prestige is his fortune," muttered the doctor, sourly.
+
+"The man has proved his trustworthiness up to the hilt on innumerable
+occasions and in all sorts of ways," argued the engineer. "When this
+question of the silver arose, Captain Mitchell naturally was very warmly
+of the opinion that his Capataz was the only man fit for the trust. As
+a sailor, of course, I suppose so. But as a man, don't you know, Gould,
+Decoud, and myself judged that it didn't matter in the least who went.
+Any boatman would have done just as well. Pray, what could a thief do
+with such a lot of ingots? If he ran off with them he would have in
+the end to land somewhere, and how could he conceal his cargo from the
+knowledge of the people ashore? We dismissed that consideration from our
+minds. Moreover, Decoud was going. There have been occasions when the
+Capataz has been more implicitly trusted."
+
+"He took a slightly different view," the doctor said. "I heard him
+declare in this very room that it would be the most desperate affair of
+his life. He made a sort of verbal will here in my hearing, appointing
+old Viola his executor; and, by Jove! do you know, he--he's not grown
+rich by his fidelity to you good people of the railway and the harbour.
+I suppose he obtains some--how do you say that?--some spiritual value
+for his labours, or else I don't know why the devil he should be
+faithful to you, Gould, Mitchell, or anybody else. He knows this country
+well. He knows, for instance, that Gamacho, the Deputy from Javira, has
+been nothing else but a 'tramposo' of the commonest sort, a petty pedlar
+of the Campo, till he managed to get enough goods on credit from Anzani
+to open a little store in the wilds, and got himself elected by the
+drunken mozos that hang about the Estancias and the poorest sort of
+rancheros who were in his debt. And Gamacho, who to-morrow will be
+probably one of our high officials, is a stranger, too--an Isleno.
+He might have been a Cargador on the O. S. N. wharf had he not (the
+posadero of Rincon is ready to swear it) murdered a pedlar in the woods
+and stolen his pack to begin life on. And do you think that Gamacho,
+then, would have ever become a hero with the democracy of this place,
+like our Capataz? Of course not. He isn't half the man. No; decidedly, I
+think that Nostromo is a fool."
+
+The doctor's talk was distasteful to the builder of railways. "It is
+impossible to argue that point," he said, philosophically. "Each man has
+his gifts. You should have heard Gamacho haranguing his friends in the
+street. He has a howling voice, and he shouted like mad, lifting his
+clenched fist right above his head, and throwing his body half out
+of the window. At every pause the rabble below yelled, 'Down with the
+Oligarchs! Viva la Libertad!' Fuentes inside looked extremely miserable.
+You know, he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of
+the Interior for six months or so, some few years back. Of course, he
+has no conscience; but he is a man of birth and education--at one time
+the director of the Customs of Cayta. That idiot-brute Gamacho fastened
+himself upon him with his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly
+fear of that ruffian was the most rejoicing sight imaginable."
+
+He got up and went to the door to look out towards the harbour. "All
+quiet," he said; "I wonder if Sotillo really means to turn up here?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+Captain Mitchell, pacing the wharf, was asking himself the same
+question. There was always the doubt whether the warning of the
+Esmeralda telegraphist--a fragmentary and interrupted message--had been
+properly understood. However, the good man had made up his mind not
+to go to bed till daylight, if even then. He imagined himself to have
+rendered an enormous service to Charles Gould. When he thought of the
+saved silver he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. In his
+simple way he was proud at being a party to this extremely clever
+expedient. It was he who had given it a practical shape by suggesting
+the possibility of intercepting at sea the north-bound steamer. And it
+was advantageous to his Company, too, which would have lost a valuable
+freight if the treasure had been left ashore to be confiscated.
+The pleasure of disappointing the Monterists was also very great.
+Authoritative by temperament and the long habit of command, Captain
+Mitchell was no democrat. He even went so far as to profess a contempt
+for parliamentarism itself. "His Excellency Don Vincente Ribiera," he
+used to say, "whom I and that fellow of mine, Nostromo, had the honour,
+sir, and the pleasure of saving from a cruel death, deferred too much to
+his Congress. It was a mistake--a distinct mistake, sir."
+
+The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N. service imagined that
+the last three days had exhausted every startling surprise the political
+life of Costaguana could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the
+events which followed surpassed his imagination. To begin with, Sulaco
+(because of the seizure of the cables and the disorganization of the
+steam service) remained for a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of
+the world like a besieged city.
+
+"One would not have believed it possible; but so it was, sir. A full
+fortnight."
+
+The account of the extraordinary things that happened during that
+time, and the powerful emotions he experienced, acquired a comic
+impressiveness from the pompous manner of his personal narrative. He
+opened it always by assuring his hearer that he was "in the thick
+of things from first to last." Then he would begin by describing the
+getting away of the silver, and his natural anxiety lest "his fellow" in
+charge of the lighter should make some mistake. Apart from the loss of
+so much precious metal, the life of Senor Martin Decoud, an agreeable,
+wealthy, and well-informed young gentleman, would have been jeopardized
+through his falling into the hands of his political enemies. Captain
+Mitchell also admitted that in his solitary vigil on the wharf he had
+felt a certain measure of concern for the future of the whole country.
+
+"A feeling, sir," he explained, "perfectly comprehensible in a man
+properly grateful for the many kindnesses received from the best
+families of merchants and other native gentlemen of independent means,
+who, barely saved by us from the excesses of the mob, seemed, to my
+mind's eye, destined to become the prey in person and fortune of the
+native soldiery, which, as is well known, behave with regrettable
+barbarity to the inhabitants during their civil commotions. And then,
+sir, there were the Goulds, for both of whom, man and wife, I could not
+but entertain the warmest feelings deserved by their hospitality and
+kindness. I felt, too, the dangers of the gentlemen of the Amarilla
+Club, who had made me honorary member, and had treated me with uniform
+regard and civility, both in my capacity of Consular Agent and as
+Superintendent of an important Steam Service. Miss Antonia Avellanos,
+the most beautiful and accomplished young lady whom it had ever been my
+privilege to speak to, was not a little in my mind, I confess. How the
+interests of my Company would be affected by the impending change of
+officials claimed a large share of my attention, too. In short, sir,
+I was extremely anxious and very tired, as you may suppose, by the
+exciting and memorable events in which I had taken my little part. The
+Company's building containing my residence was within five minutes'
+walk, with the attraction of some supper and of my hammock (I always
+take my nightly rest in a hammock, as the most suitable to the climate);
+but somehow, sir, though evidently I could do nothing for any one by
+remaining about, I could not tear myself away from that wharf, where the
+fatigue made me stumble painfully at times. The night was excessively
+dark--the darkest I remember in my life; so that I began to think that
+the arrival of the transport from Esmeralda could not possibly take
+place before daylight, owing to the difficulty of navigating the gulf.
+The mosquitoes bit like fury. We have been infested here with mosquitoes
+before the late improvements; a peculiar harbour brand, sir, renowned
+for its ferocity. They were like a cloud about my head, and I shouldn't
+wonder that but for their attacks I would have dozed off as I walked
+up and down, and got a heavy fall. I kept on smoking cigar after cigar,
+more to protect myself from being eaten up alive than from any real
+relish for the weed. Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time I
+was approaching my watch to the lighted end in order to see the time,
+and observing with surprise that it wanted yet ten minutes to midnight,
+I heard the splash of a ship's propeller--an unmistakable sound to a
+sailor's ear on such a calm night. It was faint indeed, because they
+were advancing with precaution and dead slow, both on account of the
+darkness and from their desire of not revealing too soon their presence:
+a very unnecessary care, because, I verily believe, in all the enormous
+extent of this harbour I was the only living soul about. Even the
+usual staff of watchmen and others had been absent from their posts for
+several nights owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still, after
+dropping and stamping out my cigar--a circumstance highly agreeable,
+I should think, to the mosquitoes, if I may judge from the state of my
+face next morning. But that was a trifling inconvenience in comparison
+with the brutal proceedings I became victim of on the part of Sotillo.
+Something utterly inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of
+a maniac than the action of a sane man, however lost to all sense
+of honour and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of his
+thievish scheme."
+
+In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed infuriated.
+Captain Mitchell, however, had not been arrested at once; a vivid
+curiosity induced him to remain on the wharf (which is nearly four
+hundred feet long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of
+disembarkation. Concealed by the railway truck used for the silver,
+which had been run back afterwards to the shore end of the jetty,
+Captain Mitchell saw the small detachment thrown forward, pass by,
+taking different directions upon the plain. Meantime, the troops were
+being landed and formed into a column, whose head crept up gradually so
+close to him that he made it out, barring nearly the whole width of
+the wharf, only a very few yards from him. Then the low, shuffling,
+murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the whole mass remained for about
+an hour motionless and silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On
+land nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the mastiffs at
+the railway yards, answered by the faint barking of the curs infesting
+the outer limits of the town. A detached knot of dark shapes stood in
+front of the head of the column.
+
+Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to challenge in
+undertones single figures approaching from the plain. Those messengers
+sent back from the scouting parties flung to their comrades brief
+sentences and passed on rapidly, becoming lost in the great motionless
+mass, to make their report to the Staff. It occurred to Captain Mitchell
+that his position could become disagreeable and perhaps dangerous, when
+suddenly, at the head of the jetty, there was a shout of command, a
+bugle call, followed by a stir and a rattling of arms, and a murmuring
+noise that ran right up the column. Near by a loud voice directed
+hurriedly, "Push that railway car out of the way!" At the rush of bare
+feet to execute the order Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or two;
+the car, suddenly impelled by many hands, flew away from him along the
+rails, and before he knew what had happened he found himself surrounded
+and seized by his arms and the collar of his coat.
+
+"We have caught a man hiding here, mi teniente!" cried one of his
+captors.
+
+"Hold him on one side till the rearguard comes along," answered the
+voice. The whole column streamed past Captain Mitchell at a run, the
+thundering noise of their feet dying away suddenly on the shore. His
+captors held him tightly, disregarding his declaration that he was
+an Englishman and his loud demands to be taken at once before their
+commanding officer. Finally he lapsed into dignified silence. With a
+hollow rumble of wheels on the planks a couple of field guns, dragged
+by hand, rolled by. Then, after a small body of men had marched past
+escorting four or five figures which walked in advance, with a jingle
+of steel scabbards, he felt a tug at his arms, and was ordered to come
+along. During the passage from the wharf to the Custom House it is to be
+feared that Captain Mitchell was subjected to certain indignities at
+the hands of the soldiers--such as jerks, thumps on the neck, forcible
+application of the butt of a rifle to the small of his back. Their ideas
+of speed were not in accord with his notion of his dignity. He became
+flustered, flushed, and helpless. It was as if the world were coming to
+an end.
+
+The long building was surrounded by troops, which were already piling
+arms by companies and preparing to pass the night lying on the ground in
+their ponchos with their sacks under their heads. Corporals moved with
+swinging lanterns posting sentries all round the walls wherever there
+was a door or an opening. Sotillo was taking his measures to protect his
+conquest as if it had indeed contained the treasure. His desire to
+make his fortune at one audacious stroke of genius had overmastered his
+reasoning faculties. He would not believe in the possibility of failure;
+the mere hint of such a thing made his brain reel with rage. Every
+circumstance pointing to it appeared incredible. The statement of
+Hirsch, which was so absolutely fatal to his hopes, could by no means
+be admitted. It is true, too, that Hirsch's story had been told so
+incoherently, with such excessive signs of distraction, that it really
+looked improbable. It was extremely difficult, as the saying is, to make
+head or tail of it. On the bridge of the steamer, directly after his
+rescue, Sotillo and his officers, in their impatience and excitement,
+would not give the wretched man time to collect such few wits as
+remained to him. He ought to have been quieted, soothed, and reassured,
+whereas he had been roughly handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in
+menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get down on
+his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break away, as if he
+meant incontinently to jump overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings and
+cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then with
+a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of
+every great passion. His Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German
+that the better half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He
+tried to propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which
+in itself sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not to trifle he
+repeated his entreaties and protestations of loyalty and innocence again
+in German, obstinately, because he was not aware in what language he was
+speaking. His identity, of course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant
+of Esmeralda, but this made the matter no clearer. As he kept on
+forgetting Decoud's name, mixing him up with several other people he had
+seen in the Casa Gould, it looked as if they all had been in the lighter
+together; and for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned every
+prominent Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw
+a doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a
+part--pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the moment to
+cover the truth. Sotillo's rapacity, excited to the highest pitch by the
+prospect of an immense booty, could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew
+might have been very much frightened by the accident, but he knew where
+the silver was concealed, and had invented this story, with his Jewish
+cunning, to put him entirely off the track as to what had been done.
+
+Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor in a vast apartment
+with heavy black beams. But there was no ceiling, and the eye lost
+itself in the darkness under the high pitch of the roof. The thick
+shutters stood open. On a long table could be seen a large inkstand,
+some stumpy, inky quill pens, and two square wooden boxes, each holding
+half a hundred-weight of sand. Sheets of grey coarse official paper
+bestrewed the floor. It must have been a room occupied by some higher
+official of the Customs, because a large leathern armchair stood behind
+the table, with other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net hammock
+was swung under one of the beams--for the official's afternoon siesta,
+no doubt. A couple of candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a
+dim reddish light. The colonel's hat, sword, and revolver lay between
+them, and a couple of his more trusty officers lounged gloomily against
+the table. The colonel threw himself into the armchair, and a big negro
+with a sergeant's stripes on his ragged sleeve, kneeling down, pulled
+off his boots. Sotillo's ebony moustache contrasted violently with the
+livid colouring of his cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very
+far into his head. He seemed exhausted by his perplexities, languid with
+disappointment; but when the sentry on the landing thrust his head in to
+announce the arrival of a prisoner, he revived at once.
+
+"Let him be brought in," he shouted, fiercely.
+
+The door flew open, and Captain Mitchell, bareheaded, his waistcoat
+open, the bow of his tie under his ear, was hustled into the room.
+
+Sotillo recognized him at once. He could not have hoped for a more
+precious capture; here was a man who could tell him, if he chose,
+everything he wished to know--and directly the problem of how best to
+make him talk to the point presented itself to his mind. The resentment
+of a foreign nation had no terrors for Sotillo. The might of the whole
+armed Europe would not have protected Captain Mitchell from insults and
+ill-usage, so well as the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an
+Englishman who would most likely turn obstinate under bad treatment, and
+become quite unmanageable. At all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl
+on his brow.
+
+"What! The excellent Senor Mitchell!" he cried, in affected dismay.
+The pretended anger of his swift advance and of his shout, "Release
+the caballero at once," was so effective that the astounded soldiers
+positively sprang away from their prisoner. Thus suddenly deprived
+of forcible support, Captain Mitchell reeled as though about to fall.
+Sotillo took him familiarly under the arm, led him to a chair, waved his
+hand at the room. "Go out, all of you," he commanded.
+
+When they had been left alone he stood looking down, irresolute and
+silent, watching till Captain Mitchell had recovered his power of
+speech.
+
+Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned in the removal of
+the silver. Sotillo's temperament was of that sort that he experienced
+an ardent desire to beat him; just as formerly when negotiating with
+difficulty a loan from the cautious Anzani, his fingers always itched
+to take the shopkeeper by the throat. As to Captain Mitchell, the
+suddenness, unexpectedness, and general inconceivableness of this
+experience had confused his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out of
+breath.
+
+"I've been knocked down three times between this and the wharf," he
+gasped out at last. "Somebody shall be made to pay for this." He had
+certainly stumbled more than once, and had been dragged along for some
+distance before he could regain his stride. With his recovered breath
+his indignation seemed to madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his
+white hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook violently
+the flaps of his ruined waistcoat before the disconcerted Sotillo.
+"Look! Those uniformed thieves of yours downstairs have robbed me of my
+watch."
+
+The old sailor's aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw himself cut
+off from the table on which his sabre and revolver were lying.
+
+"I demand restitution and apologies," Mitchell thundered at him, quite
+beside himself. "From you! Yes, from you!"
+
+For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a perfectly stony
+expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell flung out an arm towards
+the table as if to snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of
+alarm, bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming it after
+him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell's fury. Behind the closed door
+Sotillo shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on
+the wooden staircase.
+
+"Disarm him! Bind him!" the colonel could be heard vociferating.
+
+Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the windows, with
+three perpendicular bars of iron each and some twenty feet from the
+ground, as he well knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him
+took place. In an incredibly short time he found himself bound with
+many turns of a hide rope to a high-backed chair, so that his head alone
+remained free. Not till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the
+doorway trembling visibly, venture again within. The soldiers, picking
+up from the floor the rifles they had dropped to grapple with the
+prisoner, filed out of the room. The officers remained leaning on their
+swords and looking on.
+
+"The watch! the watch!" raved the colonel, pacing to and fro like a
+tiger in a cage. "Give me that man's watch."
+
+It was true, that when searched for arms in the hall downstairs, before
+being taken into Sotillo's presence, Captain Mitchell had been relieved
+of his watch and chain; but at the colonel's clamour it was produced
+quickly enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried carefully in the
+palms of his joined hands. Sotillo snatched it, and pushed the clenched
+fist from which it dangled close to Captain Mitchell's face.
+
+"Now then! You arrogant Englishman! You dare to call the soldiers of the
+army thieves! Behold your watch."
+
+He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner's nose.
+Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously at
+the sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer, presented to him years ago by
+a Committee of Underwriters for saving a ship from total loss by fire.
+Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable appearance. He became
+silent suddenly, stepped aside to the table, and began a careful
+examination in the light of the candles. He had never seen anything so
+fine. His officers closed in and craned their necks behind his back.
+
+He became so interested that for an instant he forgot his precious
+prisoner. There is always something childish in the rapacity of the
+passionate, clear-minded, Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism
+of the Northerners, who at the smallest encouragement dream of nothing
+less than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo was fond of jewels, gold
+trinkets, of personal adornment. After a moment he turned about, and
+with a commanding gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid down
+the watch on the table, then, negligently, pushed his hat over it.
+
+"Ha!" he began, going up very close to the chair. "You dare call my
+valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda regiment, thieves. You dare! What
+impudence! You foreigners come here to rob our country of its wealth.
+You never have enough! Your audacity knows no bounds."
+
+He looked towards the officers, amongst whom there was an approving
+murmur. The older major was moved to declare--
+
+"Si, mi colonel. They are all traitors."
+
+"I shall say nothing," continued Sotillo, fixing the motionless and
+powerless Mitchell with an angry but uneasy stare. "I shall say nothing
+of your treacherous attempt to get possession of my revolver to shoot me
+while I was trying to treat you with consideration you did not deserve.
+You have forfeited your life. Your only hope is in my clemency."
+
+He watched for the effect of his words, but there was no obvious sign of
+fear on Captain Mitchell's face. His white hair was full of dust,
+which covered also the rest of his helpless person. As if he had heard
+nothing, he twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a bit of straw which hung
+amongst the hairs.
+
+Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo. "It is you, Mitchell,"
+he said, emphatically, "who are the thief, not my soldiers!" He pointed
+at his prisoner a forefinger with a long, almond-shaped nail. "Where
+is the silver of the San Tome mine? I ask you, Mitchell, where is the
+silver that was deposited in this Custom House? Answer me that! You
+stole it. You were a party to stealing it. It was stolen from the
+Government. Aha! you think I do not know what I say; but I am up to your
+foreign tricks. It is gone, the silver! No? Gone in one of your lanchas,
+you miserable man! How dared you?"
+
+This time he produced his effect. "How on earth could Sotillo know
+that?" thought Mitchell. His head, the only part of his body that could
+move, betrayed his surprise by a sudden jerk.
+
+"Ha! you tremble," Sotillo shouted, suddenly. "It is a conspiracy. It is
+a crime against the State. Did you not know that the silver belongs
+to the Republic till the Government claims are satisfied? Where is it?
+Where have you hidden it, you miserable thief?"
+
+At this question Captain Mitchell's sinking spirits revived. In whatever
+incomprehensible manner Sotillo had already got his information about
+the lighter, he had not captured it. That was clear. In his outraged
+heart, Captain Mitchell had resolved that nothing would induce him to
+say a word while he remained so disgracefully bound, but his desire to
+help the escape of the silver made him depart from this resolution. His
+wits were very much at work. He detected in Sotillo a certain air of
+doubt, of irresolution.
+
+"That man," he said to himself, "is not certain of what he advances."
+For all his pomposity in social intercourse, Captain Mitchell could meet
+the realities of life in a resolute and ready spirit. Now he had
+got over the first shock of the abominable treatment he was cool and
+collected enough. The immense contempt he felt for Sotillo steadied him,
+and he said oracularly, "No doubt it is well concealed by this time."
+
+Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. "Muy bien, Mitchell," he said in a
+cold and threatening manner. "But can you produce the Government receipt
+for the royalty and the Custom House permit of embarkation, hey? Can
+you? No. Then the silver has been removed illegally, and the guilty
+shall be made to suffer, unless it is produced within five days from
+this." He gave orders for the prisoner to be unbound and locked up in
+one of the smaller rooms downstairs. He walked about the room, moody and
+silent, till Captain Mitchell, with each of his arms held by a couple of
+men, stood up, shook himself, and stamped his feet.
+
+"How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell?" he asked, derisively.
+
+"It is the most incredible, abominable use of power!" Captain Mitchell
+declared in a loud voice. "And whatever your purpose, you shall gain
+nothing from it, I can promise you."
+
+The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and moustache,
+crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of the short, thick-set,
+red-faced prisoner with rumpled white hair.
+
+"That we shall see. You shall know my power a little better when I tie
+you up to a potalon outside in the sun for a whole day." He drew himself
+up haughtily, and made a sign for Captain Mitchell to be led away.
+
+"What about my watch?" cried Captain Mitchell, hanging back from the
+efforts of the men pulling him towards the door.
+
+Sotillo turned to his officers. "No! But only listen to this picaro,
+caballeros," he pronounced with affected scorn, and was answered by a
+chorus of derisive laughter. "He demands his watch!" . . . He ran up
+again to Captain Mitchell, for the desire to relieve his feelings by
+inflicting blows and pain upon this Englishman was very strong within
+him. "Your watch! You are a prisoner in war time, Mitchell! In war time!
+You have no rights and no property! Caramba! The very breath in your
+body belongs to me. Remember that."
+
+"Bosh!" said Captain Mitchell, concealing a disagreeable impression.
+
+Down below, in a great hall, with the earthen floor and with a tall
+mound thrown up by white ants in a corner, the soldiers had kindled
+a small fire with broken chairs and tables near the arched gateway,
+through which the faint murmur of the harbour waters on the beach could
+be heard. While Captain Mitchell was being led down the staircase, an
+officer passed him, running up to report to Sotillo the capture of more
+prisoners. A lot of smoke hung about in the vast gloomy place, the
+fire crackled, and, as if through a haze, Captain Mitchell made out,
+surrounded by short soldiers with fixed bayonets, the heads of three
+tall prisoners--the doctor, the engineer-in-chief, and the white leonine
+mane of old Viola, who stood half-turned away from the others with his
+chin on his breast and his arms crossed. Mitchell's astonishment knew no
+bounds. He cried out; the other two exclaimed also. But he hurried on,
+diagonally, across the big cavern-like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises,
+hints of caution, and so on, crowded his head to distraction.
+
+"Is he actually keeping you?" shouted the chief engineer, whose single
+eyeglass glittered in the firelight.
+
+An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting urgently, "Bring them
+all up--all three."
+
+In the clamour of voices and the rattle of arms, Captain Mitchell made
+himself heard imperfectly: "By heavens! the fellow has stolen my watch."
+
+The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the pressure long enough
+to shout, "What? What did you say?"
+
+"My chronometer!" Captain Mitchell yelled violently at the very moment
+of being thrust head foremost through a small door into a sort of cell,
+perfectly black, and so narrow that he fetched up against the opposite
+wall. The door had been instantly slammed. He knew where they had put
+him. This was the strong room of the Custom House, whence the silver
+had been removed only a few hours earlier. It was almost as narrow as
+a corridor, with a small square aperture, barred by a heavy grating, at
+the distant end. Captain Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat
+down on the earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, not even
+a gleam of light from anywhere, interfered with Captain Mitchell's
+meditation. He did some hard but not very extensive thinking. It was
+not of a gloomy cast. The old sailor, with all his small weaknesses
+and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable of entertaining for
+any length of time a fear of his personal safety. It was not so much
+firmness of soul as the lack of a certain kind of imagination--the kind
+whose undue development caused intense suffering to Senor Hirsch; that
+sort of imagination which adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and
+of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone, strictly--to all
+the other apprehensions on which the sense of one's existence is based.
+Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much penetration of any kind;
+characteristic, illuminating trifles of expression, action, or movement,
+escaped him completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of
+his own existence to observe that of others. For instance, he could
+not believe that Sotillo had been really afraid of him, and this simply
+because it would never have entered into his head to shoot any one
+except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Anybody could see he
+was not a murdering kind of man, he reflected quite gravely. Then
+why this preposterous and insulting charge? he asked himself. But his
+thoughts mainly clung around the astounding and unanswerable question:
+How the devil the fellow got to know that the silver had gone off in the
+lighter? It was obvious that he had not captured it. And, obviously, he
+could not have captured it! In this last conclusion Captain Mitchell
+was misled by the assumption drawn from his observation of the weather
+during his long vigil on the wharf. He thought that there had been much
+more wind than usual that night in the gulf; whereas, as a matter of
+fact, the reverse was the case.
+
+"How in the name of all that's marvellous did that confounded fellow get
+wind of the affair?" was the first question he asked directly after the
+bang, clatter, and flash of the open door (which was closed again
+almost before he could lift his dropped head) informed him that he had a
+companion of captivity. Dr. Monygham's voice stopped muttering curses in
+English and Spanish.
+
+"Is that you, Mitchell?" he made answer, surlily. "I struck my forehead
+against this confounded wall with enough force to fell an ox. Where are
+you?"
+
+Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could make out the doctor
+stretching out his hands blindly.
+
+"I am sitting here on the floor. Don't fall over my legs," Captain
+Mitchell's voice announced with great dignity of tone. The doctor,
+entreated not to walk about in the dark, sank down to the ground, too.
+The two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads nearly touching, began to
+exchange confidences.
+
+"Yes," the doctor related in a low tone to Captain Mitchell's vehement
+curiosity, "we have been nabbed in old Viola's place. It seems that one
+of their pickets, commanded by an officer, pushed as far as the town
+gate. They had orders not to enter, but to bring along every soul they
+could find on the plain. We had been talking in there with the door
+open, and no doubt they saw the glimmer of our light. They must have
+been making their approaches for some time. The engineer laid himself
+on a bench in a recess by the fire-place, and I went upstairs to have a
+look. I hadn't heard any sound from there for a long time. Old Viola,
+as soon as he saw me come up, lifted his arm for silence. I stole in
+on tiptoe. By Jove, his wife was lying down and had gone to sleep. The
+woman had actually dropped off to sleep! 'Senor Doctor,' Viola whispers
+to me, 'it looks as if her oppression was going to get better.' 'Yes,'
+I said, very much surprised; 'your wife is a wonderful woman, Giorgio.'
+Just then a shot was fired in the kitchen, which made us jump and cower
+as if at a thunder-clap. It seems that the party of soldiers had stolen
+quite close up, and one of them had crept up to the door. He looked in,
+thought there was no one there, and, holding his rifle ready, entered
+quietly. The chief told me that he had just closed his eyes for a
+moment. When he opened them, he saw the man already in the middle of
+the room peering into the dark corners. The chief was so startled that,
+without thinking, he made one leap from the recess right out in front
+of the fireplace. The soldier, no less startled, up with his rifle
+and pulls the trigger, deafening and singeing the engineer, but in his
+flurry missing him completely. But, look what happens! At the noise of
+the report the sleeping woman sat up, as if moved by a spring, with a
+shriek, 'The children, Gian' Battista! Save the children!' I have it in
+my ears now. It was the truest cry of distress I ever heard. I stood as
+if paralyzed, but the old husband ran across to the bedside, stretching
+out his hands. She clung to them! I could see her eyes go glazed; the
+old fellow lowered her down on the pillows and then looked round at me.
+She was dead! All this took less than five minutes, and then I ran down
+to see what was the matter. It was no use thinking of any resistance.
+Nothing we two could say availed with the officer, so I volunteered to
+go up with a couple of soldiers and fetch down old Viola. He was sitting
+at the foot of the bed, looking at his wife's face, and did not seem to
+hear what I said; but after I had pulled the sheet over her head, he got
+up and followed us downstairs quietly, in a sort of thoughtful way.
+They marched us off along the road, leaving the door open and the candle
+burning. The chief engineer strode on without a word, but I looked back
+once or twice at the feeble gleam. After we had gone some considerable
+distance, the Garibaldino, who was walking by my side, suddenly said, 'I
+have buried many men on battlefields on this continent. The priests talk
+of consecrated ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is holy; but
+the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests and tyrants, is
+the holiest of all. Doctor! I should like to bury her in the sea. No
+mummeries, candles, incense, no holy water mumbled over by priests. The
+spirit of liberty is upon the waters.' . . . Amazing old man. He was
+saying all this in an undertone as if talking to himself."
+
+"Yes, yes," interrupted Captain Mitchell, impatiently. "Poor old chap!
+But have you any idea how that ruffian Sotillo obtained his information?
+He did not get hold of any of our Cargadores who helped with the truck,
+did he? But no, it is impossible! These were picked men we've had in
+our boats for these five years, and I paid them myself specially for the
+job, with instructions to keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at
+least. I saw them with my own eyes march on with the Italians to the
+railway yards. The chief promised to give them rations as long as they
+wanted to remain there."
+
+"Well," said the doctor, slowly, "I can tell you that you may
+say good-bye for ever to your best lighter, and to the Capataz of
+Cargadores."
+
+At this, Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in the excess of
+his excitement. The doctor, without giving him time to exclaim, stated
+briefly the part played by Hirsch during the night.
+
+Captain Mitchell was overcome. "Drowned!" he muttered, in a bewildered
+and appalled whisper. "Drowned!" Afterwards he kept still, apparently
+listening, but too absorbed in the news of the catastrophe to follow the
+doctor's narrative with attention.
+
+The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect ignorance, till at last
+Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story,
+which was got out of him again with the greatest difficulty, because
+every moment he would break out into lamentations. At last, Hirsch
+was led away, looking more dead than alive, and shut up in one of the
+upstairs rooms to be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his
+character of a man not admitted to the inner councils of the San Tome
+Administration, remarked that the story sounded incredible. Of course,
+he said, he couldn't tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as
+he had been exclusively occupied with his own work in looking after the
+wounded, and also in attending Don Jose Avellanos. He had succeeded in
+assuming so well a tone of impartial indifference, that Sotillo seemed
+to be completely deceived. Till then a show of regular inquiry had
+been kept up; one of the officers sitting at the table wrote down the
+questions and the answers, the others, lounging about the room, listened
+attentively, puffing at their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the
+doctor. But at that point Sotillo ordered everybody out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+Directly they were alone, the colonel's severe official manner changed.
+He rose and approached the doctor. His eyes shone with rapacity and
+hope; he became confidential. "The silver might have been indeed put on
+board the lighter, but it was not conceivable that it should have been
+taken out to sea." The doctor, watching every word, nodded slightly,
+smoking with apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him
+as a sign of his friendly intentions. The doctor's manner of cold
+detachment from the rest of the Europeans led Sotillo on, till, from
+conjecture to conjecture, he arrived at hinting that in his opinion this
+was a putup job on the part of Charles Gould, in order to get hold
+of that immense treasure all to himself. The doctor, observant and
+self-possessed, muttered, "He is very capable of that."
+
+Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement, amusement, and
+indignation, "You said that of Charles Gould!" Disgust, and even some
+suspicion, crept into his tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans,
+there appeared to be something dubious about the doctor's personality.
+
+"What on earth made you say that to this watch-stealing scoundrel?"
+he asked. "What's the object of an infernal lie of that sort? That
+confounded pick-pocket was quite capable of believing you."
+
+He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent in the dark.
+
+"Yes, that is exactly what I did say," he uttered at last, in a tone
+which would have made it clear enough to a third party that the pause
+was not of a reluctant but of a reflective character. Captain Mitchell
+thought that he had never heard anything so brazenly impudent in his
+life.
+
+"Well, well!" he muttered to himself, but he had not the heart to voice
+his thoughts. They were swept away by others full of astonishment and
+regret. A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed him: the loss of the
+silver, the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a blow to his
+sensibilities, because he had become attached to his Capataz as people
+get attached to their inferiors from love of ease and almost unconscious
+gratitude. And when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his
+sensibility was almost overcome by this miserable end. What a heavy
+blow for that poor young woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the
+species of crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young
+men paying attentions to young women. It seemed to him a natural and
+proper thing. Proper especially. As to sailors, it was different; it was
+not their place to marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as
+a matter of self-denial, for, he explained, life on board ship is not
+fit for a woman even at best, and if you leave her on shore, first of
+all it is not fair, and next she either suffers from it or doesn't care
+a bit, which, in both cases, is bad. He couldn't have told what upset
+him most--Charles Gould's immense material loss, the death of Nostromo,
+which was a heavy loss to himself, or the idea of that beautiful and
+accomplished young woman being plunged into mourning.
+
+"Yes," the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began again, "he
+believed me right enough. I thought he would have hugged me. 'Si, si,'
+he said, 'he will write to that partner of his, the rich Americano in
+San Francisco, that it is all lost. Why not? There is enough to share
+with many people.'"
+
+"But this is perfectly imbecile!" cried Captain Mitchell.
+
+The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and that his imbecility
+was ingenious enough to lead him completely astray. He had helped him
+only but a little way.
+
+"I mentioned," the doctor said, "in a sort of casual way, that treasure
+is generally buried in the earth rather than set afloat upon the sea.
+At this my Sotillo slapped his forehead. 'Por Dios, yes,' he said; 'they
+must have buried it on the shores of this harbour somewhere before they
+sailed out.'"
+
+"Heavens and earth!" muttered Captain Mitchell, "I should not have
+believed that anybody could be ass enough--" He paused, then went on
+mournfully: "But what's the good of all this? It would have been a
+clever enough lie if the lighter had been still afloat. It would have
+kept that inconceivable idiot perhaps from sending out the steamer to
+cruise in the gulf. That was the danger that worried me no end." Captain
+Mitchell sighed profoundly.
+
+"I had an object," the doctor pronounced, slowly.
+
+"Had you?" muttered Captain Mitchell. "Well, that's lucky, or else
+I would have thought that you went on fooling him for the fun of the
+thing. And perhaps that was your object. Well, I must say I personally
+wouldn't condescend to that sort of thing. It is not to my taste. No,
+no. Blackening a friend's character is not my idea of fun, if it were to
+fool the greatest blackguard on earth."
+
+Had it not been for Captain Mitchell's depression, caused by the fatal
+news, his disgust of Dr. Monygham would have taken a more outspoken
+shape; but he thought to himself that now it really did not matter what
+that man, whom he had never liked, would say and do.
+
+"I wonder," he grumbled, "why they have shut us up together, or why
+Sotillo should have shut you up at all, since it seems to me you have
+been fairly chummy up there?"
+
+"Yes, I wonder," said the doctor grimly.
+
+Captain Mitchell's heart was so heavy that he would have preferred
+for the time being a complete solitude to the best of company. But
+any company would have been preferable to the doctor's, at whom he had
+always looked askance as a sort of beachcomber of superior intelligence
+partly reclaimed from his abased state. That feeling led him to ask--
+
+"What has that ruffian done with the other two?"
+
+"The chief engineer he would have let go in any case," said the doctor.
+"He wouldn't like to have a quarrel with the railway upon his hands.
+Not just yet, at any rate. I don't think, Captain Mitchell, that you
+understand exactly what Sotillo's position is--"
+
+"I don't see why I should bother my head about it," snarled Captain
+Mitchell.
+
+"No," assented the doctor, with the same grim composure. "I don't see
+why you should. It wouldn't help a single human being in the world if
+you thought ever so hard upon any subject whatever."
+
+"No," said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with evident depression. "A man
+locked up in a confounded dark hole is not much use to anybody."
+
+"As to old Viola," the doctor continued, as though he had not heard,
+"Sotillo released him for the same reason he is presently going to
+release you."
+
+"Eh? What?" exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring like an owl in the
+darkness. "What is there in common between me and old Viola? More likely
+because the old chap has no watch and chain for the pickpocket to steal.
+And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham," he went on with rising choler, "he
+will find it more difficult than he thinks to get rid of me. He will
+burn his fingers over that job yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I
+won't go without my watch, and as to the rest--we shall see. I dare say
+it is no great matter for you to be locked up. But Joe Mitchell is a
+different kind of man, sir. I don't mean to submit tamely to insult and
+robbery. I am a public character, sir."
+
+And then Captain Mitchell became aware that the bars of the opening had
+become visible, a black grating upon a square of grey. The coming of the
+day silenced Captain Mitchell as if by the reflection that now in all
+the future days he would be deprived of the invaluable services of his
+Capataz. He leaned against the wall with his arms folded on his breast,
+and the doctor walked up and down the whole length of the place with his
+peculiar hobbling gait, as if slinking about on damaged feet. At the end
+furthest from the grating he would be lost altogether in the darkness.
+Only the slight limping shuffle could be heard. There was an air of
+moody detachment in that painful prowl kept up without a pause. When the
+door of the prison was suddenly flung open and his name shouted out he
+showed no surprise. He swerved sharply in his walk, and passed out
+at once, as though much depended upon his speed; but Captain Mitchell
+remained for some time with his shoulders against the wall, quite
+undecided in the bitterness of his spirit whether it wouldn't be better
+to refuse to stir a limb in the way of protest. He had half a mind to
+get himself carried out, but after the officer at the door had
+shouted three or four times in tones of remonstrance and surprise he
+condescended to walk out.
+
+Sotillo's manner had changed. The colonel's off-hand civility was
+slightly irresolute, as though he were in doubt if civility were the
+proper course in this case. He observed Captain Mitchell attentively
+before he spoke from the big armchair behind the table in a
+condescending voice--
+
+"I have concluded not to detain you, Senor Mitchell. I am of a forgiving
+disposition. I make allowances. Let this be a lesson to you, however."
+
+The peculiar dawn of Sulaco, which seems to break far away to the
+westward and creep back into the shade of the mountains, mingled with
+the reddish light of the candles. Captain Mitchell, in sign of contempt
+and indifference, let his eyes roam all over the room, and he gave a
+hard stare to the doctor, perched already on the casement of one of the
+windows, with his eyelids lowered, careless and thoughtful--or perhaps
+ashamed.
+
+Sotillo, ensconced in the vast armchair, remarked, "I should have
+thought that the feelings of a caballero would have dictated to you an
+appropriate reply."
+
+He waited for it, but Captain Mitchell remaining mute, more from extreme
+resentment than from reasoned intention, Sotillo hesitated, glanced
+towards the doctor, who looked up and nodded, then went on with a slight
+effort--
+
+"Here, Senor Mitchell, is your watch. Learn how hasty and unjust has
+been your judgment of my patriotic soldiers."
+
+Lying back in his seat, he extended his arm over the table and pushed
+the watch away slightly. Captain Mitchell walked up with undisguised
+eagerness, put it to his ear, then slipped it into his pocket coolly.
+
+Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance. Again he looked aside
+at the doctor, who stared at him unwinkingly.
+
+But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, without as much as a nod or a
+glance, he hastened to say--
+
+"You may go and wait downstairs for the senor doctor, whom I am going to
+liberate, too. You foreigners are insignificant, to my mind."
+
+He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself, while Captain
+Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him with some interest.
+
+"The law shall take note later on of your transgressions," Sotillo
+hurried on. "But as for me, you can live free, unguarded, unobserved.
+Do you hear, Senor Mitchell? You may depart to your affairs. You are
+beneath my notice. My attention is claimed by matters of the very
+highest importance."
+
+Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an answer. It displeased
+him to be liberated insultingly; but want of sleep, prolonged anxieties,
+a profound disappointment with the fatal ending of the silver-saving
+business weighed upon his spirits. It was as much as he could do to
+conceal his uneasiness, not about himself perhaps, but about things
+in general. It occurred to him distinctly that something underhand was
+going on. As he went out he ignored the doctor pointedly.
+
+"A brute!" said Sotillo, as the door shut.
+
+Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and, thrusting his hands into
+the pockets of the long, grey dust coat he was wearing, made a few steps
+into the room.
+
+Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way, examined him from
+head to foot.
+
+"So your countrymen do not confide in you very much, senor doctor. They
+do not love you, eh? Why is that, I wonder?"
+
+The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, lifeless stare and the
+words, "Perhaps because I have lived too long in Costaguana."
+
+Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black moustache.
+
+"Aha! But you love yourself," he said, encouragingly.
+
+"If you leave them alone," the doctor said, looking with the same
+lifeless stare at Sotillo's handsome face, "they will betray themselves
+very soon. Meantime, I may try to make Don Carlos speak?"
+
+"Ah! senor doctor," said Sotillo, wagging his head, "you are a man of
+quick intelligence. We were made to understand each other." He turned
+away. He could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless stare,
+which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable emptiness like the black
+depth of an abyss.
+
+Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there remains an
+appreciation of rascality which, being conventional, is perfectly clear.
+Sotillo thought that Dr. Monygham, so different from all Europeans, was
+ready to sell his countrymen and Charles Gould, his employer, for some
+share of the San Tome silver. Sotillo did not despise him for that. The
+colonel's want of moral sense was of a profound and innocent character.
+It bordered upon stupidity, moral stupidity. Nothing that served his
+ends could appear to him really reprehensible. Nevertheless, he despised
+Dr. Monygham. He had for him an immense and satisfactory contempt.
+He despised him with all his heart because he did not mean to let the
+doctor have any reward at all. He despised him, not as a man without
+faith and honour, but as a fool. Dr. Monygham's insight into his
+character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore he thought the
+doctor a fool.
+
+Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel's ideas had undergone some
+modification.
+
+He no longer wished for a political career in Montero's administration.
+He had always doubted the safety of that course. Since he had learned
+from the chief engineer that at daylight most likely he would
+be confronted by Pedro Montero his misgivings on that point had
+considerably increased. The guerrillero brother of the general--the
+Pedrito of popular speech--had a reputation of his own. He wasn't safe
+to deal with. Sotillo had vaguely planned seizing not only the treasure
+but the town itself, and then negotiating at leisure. But in the face of
+facts learned from the chief engineer (who had frankly disclosed to him
+the whole situation) his audacity, never of a very dashing kind, had
+been replaced by a most cautious hesitation.
+
+"An army--an army crossed the mountains under Pedrito already," he had
+repeated, unable to hide his consternation. "If it had not been that I
+am given the news by a man of your position I would never have believed
+it. Astonishing!"
+
+"An armed force," corrected the engineer, suavely. His aim was attained.
+It was to keep Sulaco clear of any armed occupation for a few hours
+longer, to let those whom fear impelled leave the town. In the general
+dismay there were families hopeful enough to fly upon the road towards
+Los Hatos, which was left open by the withdrawal of the armed rabble
+under Senores Fuentes and Gamacho, to Rincon, with their enthusiastic
+welcome for Pedro Montero. It was a hasty and risky exodus, and it was
+said that Hernandez, occupying with his band the woods about Los Hatos,
+was receiving the fugitives. That a good many people he knew were
+contemplating such a flight had been well known to the chief engineer.
+
+Father Corbelan's efforts in the cause of that most pious robber had not
+been altogether fruitless. The political chief of Sulaco had yielded
+at the last moment to the urgent entreaties of the priest, had signed a
+provisional nomination appointing Hernandez a general, and calling upon
+him officially in this new capacity to preserve order in the town. The
+fact is that the political chief, seeing the situation desperate, did
+not care what he signed. It was the last official document he signed
+before he left the palace of the Intendencia for the refuge of the
+O.S.N. Company's office. But even had he meant his act to be effective
+it was already too late. The riot which he feared and expected broke out
+in less than an hour after Father Corbelan had left him. Indeed, Father
+Corbelan, who had appointed a meeting with Nostromo in the Dominican
+Convent, where he had his residence in one of the cells, never managed
+to reach the place. From the Intendencia he had gone straight on to the
+Avellanos's house to tell his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there
+no more than half an hour he had found himself cut off from his ascetic
+abode. Nostromo, after waiting there for some time, watching uneasily
+the increasing uproar in the street, had made his way to the offices of
+the Porvenir, and stayed there till daylight, as Decoud had mentioned
+in the letter to his sister. Thus the Capataz, instead of riding towards
+the Los Hatos woods as bearer of Hernandez's nomination, had remained in
+town to save the life of the President Dictator, to assist in repressing
+the outbreak of the mob, and at last to sail out with the silver of the
+mine.
+
+But Father Corbelan, escaping to Hernandez, had the document in his
+pocket, a piece of official writing turning a bandit into a general in
+a memorable last official act of the Ribierist party, whose watchwords
+were honesty, peace, and progress. Probably neither the priest nor the
+bandit saw the irony of it. Father Corbelan must have found messengers
+to send into the town, for early on the second day of the disturbances
+there were rumours of Hernandez being on the road to Los Hatos ready
+to receive those who would put themselves under his protection. A
+strange-looking horseman, elderly and audacious, had appeared in the
+town, riding slowly while his eyes examined the fronts of the houses,
+as though he had never seen such high buildings before. Before the
+cathedral he had dismounted, and, kneeling in the middle of the Plaza,
+his bridle over his arm and his hat lying in front of him on the ground,
+had bowed his head, crossing himself and beating his breast for some
+little time. Remounting his horse, with a fearless but not unfriendly
+look round the little gathering formed about his public devotions, he
+had asked for the Casa Avellanos. A score of hands were extended in
+answer, with fingers pointing up the Calle de la Constitucion.
+
+The horseman had gone on with only a glance of casual curiosity upwards
+to the windows of the Amarilla Club at the corner. His stentorian voice
+shouted periodically in the empty street, "Which is the Casa Avellanos?"
+till an answer came from the scared porter, and he disappeared under
+the gate. The letter he was bringing, written by Father Corbelan with
+a pencil by the camp-fire of Hernandez, was addressed to Don Jose, of
+whose critical state the priest was not aware. Antonia read it, and,
+after consulting Charles Gould, sent it on for the information of the
+gentlemen garrisoning the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made
+up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the last day--the last
+hours perhaps--of her father's life to the keeping of the bandit, whose
+existence was a protest against the irresponsible tyranny of all parties
+alike, against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos
+woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band
+less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle's obstinate
+defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief in the man whom
+she loved.
+
+In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his head for Hernandez's
+fidelity. As to his power, he pointed out that he had remained unsubdued
+for so many years. In that letter Decoud's idea of the new Occidental
+State (whose flourishing and stable condition is a matter of common
+knowledge now) was for the first time made public and used as an
+argument. Hernandez, ex-bandit and the last general of Ribierist
+creation, was confident of being able to hold the tract of country
+between the woods of Los Hatos and the coast range till that devoted
+patriot, Don Martin Decoud, could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco
+for the reconquest of the town.
+
+"Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side," wrote Father
+Corbelan; there was no time to reflect upon or to controvert his
+statement; and if the discussion started upon the reading of that letter
+in the Amarilla Club was violent, it was also shortlived. In the
+general bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at the idea with joyful
+astonishment as upon the amazing discovery of a new hope. Others became
+fascinated by the prospect of immediate personal safety for their women
+and children. The majority caught at it as a drowning man catches at
+a straw. Father Corbelan was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from
+Pedrito Montero with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
+with their armed rabble.
+
+All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discussion went on in
+the big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even those members posted at the
+windows with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street in
+case of an offensive return of the populace shouted their opinions and
+arguments over their shoulders. As dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting
+those caballeros who were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew
+into the corredor, where at a little table in the light of two
+candles he busied himself in composing an address, or rather a solemn
+declaration to be presented to Pedrito Montero by a deputation of such
+members of Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea was
+to propitiate him in order to save the form at least of parliamentary
+institutions. Seated before a blank sheet of paper, a goose-quill pen in
+his hand and surged upon from all sides, he turned to the right and to
+the left, repeating with solemn insistence--
+
+"Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of silence! We ought to make
+it clear that we bow in all good faith to the accomplished facts."
+
+The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a melancholy
+satisfaction. The hubbub of voices round him was growing strained and
+hoarse. In the sudden pauses the excited grimacing of the faces would
+sink all at once into the stillness of profound dejection.
+
+Meantime, the exodus had begun. Carretas full of ladies and children
+rolled swaying across the Plaza, with men walking or riding by their
+side; mounted parties followed on mules and horses; the poorest were
+setting out on foot, men and women carrying bundles, clasping babies in
+their arms, leading old people, dragging along the bigger children. When
+Charles Gould, after leaving the doctor and the engineer at the Casa
+Viola, entered the town by the harbour gate, all those that had meant to
+go were gone, and the others had barricaded themselves in their houses.
+In the whole dark street there was only one spot of flickering lights
+and moving figures, where the Senor Administrador recognized his wife's
+carriage waiting at the door of the Avellanos's house. He rode up,
+almost unnoticed, and looked on without a word while some of his own
+servants came out of the gate carrying Don Jose Avellanos, who, with
+closed eyes and motionless features, appeared perfectly lifeless. His
+wife and Antonia walked on each side of the improvised stretcher, which
+was put at once into the carriage. The two women embraced; while from
+the other side of the landau Father Corbelan's emissary, with his ragged
+beard all streaked with grey, and high, bronzed cheek-bones, stared,
+sitting upright in the saddle. Then Antonia, dry-eyed, got in by the
+side of the stretcher, and, after making the sign of the cross rapidly,
+lowered a thick veil upon her face. The servants and the three or four
+neighbours who had come to assist, stood back, uncovering their heads.
+On the box, Ignacio, resigned now to driving all night (and to having
+perhaps his throat cut before daylight) looked back surlily over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Drive carefully," cried Mrs. Gould in a tremulous voice.
+
+"Si, carefully; si nina," he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round
+leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of the
+light.
+
+"I will see them as far as the ford," said Charles Gould to his wife.
+She stood on the edge of the sidewalk with her hands clasped lightly,
+and nodded to him as he followed after the carriage. And now the windows
+of the Amarilla Club were dark. The last spark of resistance had died
+out. Turning his head at the corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing
+over to their own gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of
+their neighbours, a well-known merchant and landowner of the province,
+followed at her elbow, talking with great gestures. As she passed in all
+the lights went out in the street, which remained dark and empty from
+end to end.
+
+The houses of the vast Plaza were lost in the night. High up, like a
+star, there was a small gleam in one of the towers of the cathedral;
+and the equestrian statue gleamed pale against the black trees of the
+Alameda, like a ghost of royalty haunting the scenes of revolution. The
+rare prowlers they met ranged themselves against the wall. Beyond the
+last houses the carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust,
+and with a greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall from
+the foliage of the trees bordering the country road. The emissary from
+Hernandez's camp pushed his horse close to Charles Gould.
+
+"Caballero," he said in an interested voice, "you are he whom they call
+the King of Sulaco, the master of the mine? Is it not so?"
+
+"Yes, I am the master of the mine," answered Charles Gould.
+
+The man cantered for a time in silence, then said, "I have a brother, a
+sereno in your service in the San Tome valley. You have proved yourself
+a just man. There has been no wrong done to any one since you called
+upon the people to work in the mountains. My brother says that no
+official of the Government, no oppressor of the Campo, has been seen on
+your side of the stream. Your own officials do not oppress the people
+in the gorge. Doubtless they are afraid of your severity. You are a just
+man and a powerful one," he added.
+
+He spoke in an abrupt, independent tone, but evidently he was
+communicative with a purpose. He told Charles Gould that he had been
+a ranchero in one of the lower valleys, far south, a neighbour of
+Hernandez in the old days, and godfather to his eldest boy; one of those
+who joined him in his resistance to the recruiting raid which was the
+beginning of all their misfortunes. It was he that, when his compadre
+had been carried off, had buried his wife and children, murdered by the
+soldiers.
+
+"Si, senor," he muttered, hoarsely, "I and two or three others, the
+lucky ones left at liberty, buried them all in one grave near the ashes
+of their ranch, under the tree that had shaded its roof."
+
+It was to him, too, that Hernandez came after he had deserted, three
+years afterwards. He had still his uniform on with the sergeant's
+stripes on the sleeve, and the blood of his colonel upon his hands and
+breast. Three troopers followed him, of those who had started in pursuit
+but had ridden on for liberty. And he told Charles Gould how he and
+a few friends, seeing those soldiers, lay in ambush behind some rocks
+ready to pull the trigger on them, when he recognized his compadre and
+jumped up from cover, shouting his name, because he knew that
+Hernandez could not have been coming back on an errand of injustice and
+oppression. Those three soldiers, together with the party who lay
+behind the rocks, had formed the nucleus of the famous band, and he, the
+narrator, had been the favourite lieutenant of Hernandez for many, many
+years. He mentioned proudly that the officials had put a price upon his
+head, too; but it did not prevent it getting sprinkled with grey upon
+his shoulders. And now he had lived long enough to see his compadre made
+a general.
+
+He had a burst of muffled laughter. "And now from robbers we have become
+soldiers. But look, Caballero, at those who made us soldiers and him a
+general! Look at these people!"
+
+Ignacio shouted. The light of the carriage lamps, running along the
+nopal hedges that crowned the bank on each side, flashed upon the scared
+faces of people standing aside in the road, sunk deep, like an English
+country lane, into the soft soil of the Campo. They cowered; their eyes
+glistened very big for a second; and then the light, running on, fell
+upon the half-denuded roots of a big tree, on another stretch of nopal
+hedge, caught up another bunch of faces glaring back apprehensively.
+Three women--of whom one was carrying a child--and a couple of men in
+civilian dress--one armed with a sabre and another with a gun--were
+grouped about a donkey carrying two bundles tied up in blankets. Further
+on Ignacio shouted again to pass a carreta, a long wooden box on two
+high wheels, with the door at the back swinging open. Some ladies in it
+must have recognized the white mules, because they screamed out, "Is it
+you, Dona Emilia?"
+
+At the turn of the road the glare of a big fire filled the short stretch
+vaulted over by the branches meeting overhead. Near the ford of a
+shallow stream a roadside rancho of woven rushes and a roof of grass had
+been set on fire by accident, and the flames, roaring viciously, lit
+up an open space blocked with horses, mules, and a distracted, shouting
+crowd of people. When Ignacio pulled up, several ladies on foot assailed
+the carriage, begging Antonia for a seat. To their clamour she answered
+by pointing silently to her father.
+
+"I must leave you here," said Charles Gould, in the uproar. The flames
+leaped up sky-high, and in the recoil from the scorching heat across the
+road the stream of fugitives pressed against the carriage. A middle-aged
+lady dressed in black silk, but with a coarse manta over her head and a
+rough branch for a stick in her hand, staggered against the front wheel.
+Two young girls, frightened and silent, were clinging to her arms.
+Charles Gould knew her very well.
+
+"Misericordia! We are getting terribly bruised in this crowd!" she
+exclaimed, smiling up courageously to him. "We have started on foot. All
+our servants ran away yesterday to join the democrats. We are going to
+put ourselves under the protection of Father Corbelan, of your sainted
+uncle, Antonia. He has wrought a miracle in the heart of a most
+merciless robber. A miracle!"
+
+She raised her voice gradually up to a scream as she was borne along by
+the pressure of people getting out of the way of some carts coming up
+out of the ford at a gallop, with loud yells and cracking of whips.
+Great masses of sparks mingled with black smoke flew over the road;
+the bamboos of the walls detonated in the fire with the sound of an
+irregular fusillade. And then the bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving
+only a red dusk crowded with aimless dark shadows drifting in contrary
+directions; the noise of voices seemed to die away with the flame;
+and the tumult of heads, arms, quarrelling, and imprecations passed on
+fleeing into the darkness.
+
+"I must leave you now," repeated Charles Gould to Antonia. She turned
+her head slowly and uncovered her face. The emissary and compadre of
+Hernandez spurred his horse close up.
+
+"Has not the master of the mine any message to send to Hernandez, the
+master of the Campo?"
+
+The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his
+determined purpose he held the mine, and the indomitable bandit held
+the Campo by the same precarious tenure. They were equals before the
+lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disentangle one's activity
+from its debasing contacts. A close-meshed net of crime and corruption
+lay upon the whole country. An immense and weary discouragement sealed
+his lips for a time.
+
+"You are a just man," urged the emissary of Hernandez. "Look at those
+people who made my compadre a general and have turned us all into
+soldiers. Look at those oligarchs fleeing for life, with only the
+clothes on their backs. My compadre does not think of that, but our
+followers may be wondering greatly, and I would speak for them to you.
+Listen, senor! For many months now the Campo has been our own. We
+need ask no man for anything; but soldiers must have their pay to live
+honestly when the wars are over. It is believed that your soul is so
+just that a prayer from you would cure the sickness of every beast, like
+the orison of the upright judge. Let me have some words from your lips
+that would act like a charm upon the doubts of our partida, where all
+are men."
+
+"Do you hear what he says?" Charles Gould said in English to Antonia.
+
+"Forgive us our misery!" she exclaimed, hurriedly. "It is your character
+that is the inexhaustible treasure which may save us all yet; your
+character, Carlos, not your wealth. I entreat you to give this man your
+word that you will accept any arrangement my uncle may make with their
+chief. One word. He will want no more."
+
+On the site of the roadside hut there remained nothing but an enormous
+heap of embers, throwing afar a darkening red glow, in which Antonia's
+face appeared deeply flushed with excitement. Charles Gould, with only a
+short hesitation, pronounced the required pledge. He was like a man who
+had ventured on a precipitous path with no room to turn, where the only
+chance of safety is to press forward. At that moment he understood
+it thoroughly as he looked down at Don Jose stretched out, hardly
+breathing, by the side of the erect Antonia, vanquished in a lifelong
+struggle with the powers of moral darkness, whose stagnant depths breed
+monstrous crimes and monstrous illusions. In a few words the emissary
+from Hernandez expressed his complete satisfaction. Stoically Antonia
+lowered her veil, resisting the longing to inquire about Decoud's
+escape. But Ignacio leered morosely over his shoulder.
+
+"Take a good look at the mules, mi amo," he grumbled. "You shall never
+see them again!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+Charles Gould turned towards the town. Before him the jagged peaks
+of the Sierra came out all black in the clear dawn. Here and there a
+muffled lepero whisked round the corner of a grass-grown street before
+the ringing hoofs of his horse. Dogs barked behind the walls of the
+gardens; and with the colourless light the chill of the snows seemed to
+fall from the mountains upon the disjointed pavements and the shuttered
+houses with broken cornices and the plaster peeling in patches between
+the flat pilasters of the fronts. The daybreak struggled with the
+gloom under the arcades on the Plaza, with no signs of country people
+disposing their goods for the day's market, piles of fruit, bundles of
+vegetables ornamented with flowers, on low benches under enormous mat
+umbrellas; with no cheery early morning bustle of villagers,
+women, children, and loaded donkeys. Only a few scattered knots of
+revolutionists stood in the vast space, all looking one way from under
+their slouched hats for some sign of news from Rincon. The largest of
+those groups turned about like one man as Charles Gould passed, and
+shouted, "Viva la libertad!" after him in a menacing tone.
+
+Charles Gould rode on, and turned into the archway of his house. In the
+patio littered with straw, a practicante, one of Dr. Monygham's native
+assistants, sat on the ground with his back against the rim of the
+fountain, fingering a guitar discreetly, while two girls of the lower
+class, standing up before him, shuffled their feet a little and waved
+their arms, humming a popular dance tune.
+
+Most of the wounded during the two days of rioting had been taken away
+already by their friends and relations, but several figures could be
+seen sitting up balancing their bandaged heads in time to the music.
+Charles Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the bakery door
+took hold of the horse's bridle; the practicante endeavoured to conceal
+his guitar hastily; the girls, unabashed, stepped back smiling; and
+Charles Gould, on his way to the staircase, glanced into a dark corner
+of the patio at another group, a mortally wounded Cargador with a woman
+kneeling by his side; she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the same
+time to force a piece of orange between the stiffening lips of the dying
+man.
+
+The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity and sufferings
+of that incorrigible people; the cruel futility of lives and of deaths
+thrown away in the vain endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the
+problem. Unlike Decoud, Charles Gould could not play lightly a part in
+a tragic farce. It was tragic enough for him in all conscience, but he
+could see no farcical element. He suffered too much under a conviction
+of irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and too idealistic
+to look upon its terrible humours with amusement, as Martin Decoud,
+the imaginative materialist, was able to do in the dry light of his
+scepticism. To him, as to all of us, the compromises with his conscience
+appeared uglier than ever in the light of failure. His taciturnity,
+assumed with a purpose, had prevented him from tampering openly with
+his thoughts; but the Gould Concession had insidiously corrupted his
+judgment. He might have known, he said to himself, leaning over the
+balustrade of the corredor, that Ribierism could never come to anything.
+The mine had corrupted his judgment by making him sick of bribing and
+intriguing merely to have his work left alone from day to day. Like
+his father, he did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him. He had
+persuaded himself that, apart from higher considerations, the backing up
+of Don Jose's hopes of reform was good business. He had gone forth into
+the senseless fray as his poor uncle, whose sword hung on the wall of
+his study, had gone forth--in the defence of the commonest decencies
+of organized society. Only his weapon was the wealth of the mine, more
+far-reaching and subtle than an honest blade of steel fitted into a
+simple brass guard.
+
+More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of wealth, double-edged
+with the cupidity and misery of mankind, steeped in all the vices of
+self-indulgence as in a concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very
+cause for which it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly in the hand.
+There was nothing for it now but to go on using it. But he promised
+himself to see it shattered into small bits before he let it be wrenched
+from his grasp.
+
+After all, with his English parentage and English upbringing, he
+perceived that he was an adventurer in Costaguana, the descendant of
+adventurers enlisted in a foreign legion, of men who had sought fortune
+in a revolutionary war, who had planned revolutions, who had believed in
+revolutions. For all the uprightness of his character, he had something
+of an adventurer's easy morality which takes count of personal risk in
+the ethical appraising of his action. He was prepared, if need be, to
+blow up the whole San Tome mountain sky high out of the territory of the
+Republic. This resolution expressed the tenacity of his character, the
+remorse of that subtle conjugal infidelity through which his wife was
+no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts, something of his father's
+imaginative weakness, and something, too, of the spirit of a buccaneer
+throwing a lighted match into the magazine rather than surrender his
+ship.
+
+Down below in the patio the wounded Cargador had breathed his last. The
+woman cried out once, and her cry, unexpected and shrill, made all the
+wounded sit up. The practicante scrambled to his feet, and, guitar in
+hand, gazed steadily in her direction with elevated eyebrows. The two
+girls--sitting now one on each side of their wounded relative, with
+their knees drawn up and long cigars between their lips--nodded at each
+other significantly.
+
+Charles Gould, looking down over the balustrade, saw three men dressed
+ceremoniously in black frock-coats with white shirts, and wearing
+European round hats, enter the patio from the street. One of them, head
+and shoulders taller than the two others, advanced with marked gravity,
+leading the way. This was Don Juste Lopez, accompanied by two of his
+friends, members of Assembly, coming to call upon the Administrador of
+the San Tome mine at this early hour. They saw him, too, waved their
+hands to him urgently, walking up the stairs as if in procession.
+
+Don Juste, astonishingly changed by having shaved off altogether his
+damaged beard, had lost with it nine-tenths of his outward dignity. Even
+at that time of serious pre-occupation Charles Gould could not help
+noting the revealed ineptitude in the aspect of the man. His companions
+looked crestfallen and sleepy. One kept on passing the tip of his tongue
+over his parched lips; the other's eyes strayed dully over the tiled
+floor of the corredor, while Don Juste, standing a little in advance,
+harangued the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. It was his firm
+opinion that forms had to be observed. A new governor is always visited
+by deputations from the Cabildo, which is the Municipal Council,
+from the Consulado, the commercial Board, and it was proper that the
+Provincial Assembly should send a deputation, too, if only to assert
+the existence of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste proposed that Don
+Carlos Gould, as the most prominent citizen of the province, should join
+the Assembly's deputation. His position was exceptional, his personality
+known through the length and breadth of the whole Republic. Official
+courtesies must not be neglected, if they are gone through with a
+bleeding heart. The acceptance of accomplished facts may save yet the
+precious vestiges of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste's eyes glowed
+dully; he believed in parliamentary institutions--and the convinced
+drone of his voice lost itself in the stillness of the house like the
+deep buzzing of some ponderous insect.
+
+Charles Gould had turned round to listen patiently, leaning his elbow on
+the balustrade. He shook his head a little, refusing, almost touched by
+the anxious gaze of the President of the Provincial Assembly. It was not
+Charles Gould's policy to make the San Tome mine a party to any formal
+proceedings.
+
+"My advice, senores, is that you should wait for your fate in your
+houses. There is no necessity for you to give yourselves up formally
+into Montero's hands. Submission to the inevitable, as Don Juste calls
+it, is all very well, but when the inevitable is called Pedrito
+Montero there is no need to exhibit pointedly the whole extent of your
+surrender. The fault of this country is the want of measure in
+political life. Flat acquiescence in illegality, followed by sanguinary
+reaction--that, senores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous
+future."
+
+Charles Gould stopped before the sad bewilderment of the faces, the
+wondering, anxious glances of the eyes. The feeling of pity for those
+men, putting all their trust into words of some sort, while murder and
+rapine stalked over the land, had betrayed him into what seemed empty
+loquacity. Don Juste murmured--
+
+"You are abandoning us, Don Carlos. . . . And yet, parliamentary
+institutions--"
+
+He could not finish from grief. For a moment he put his hand over his
+eyes. Charles Gould, in his fear of empty loquacity, made no answer
+to the charge. He returned in silence their ceremonious bows. His
+taciturnity was his refuge. He understood that what they sought was to
+get the influence of the San Tome mine on their side. They wanted to
+go on a conciliating errand to the victor under the wing of the Gould
+Concession. Other public bodies--the Cabildo, the Consulado--would be
+coming, too, presently, seeking the support of the most stable, the most
+effective force they had ever known to exist in their province.
+
+The doctor, arriving with his sharp, jerky walk, found that the master
+had retired into his own room with orders not to be disturbed on any
+account. But Dr. Monygham was not anxious to see Charles Gould at once.
+He spent some time in a rapid examination of his wounded. He gazed down
+upon each in turn, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger;
+his steady stare met without expression their silently inquisitive look.
+All these cases were doing well; but when he came to the dead Cargador
+he stopped a little longer, surveying not the man who had ceased to
+suffer, but the woman kneeling in silent contemplation of the rigid
+face, with its pinched nostrils and a white gleam in the imperfectly
+closed eyes. She lifted her head slowly, and said in a dull voice--
+
+"It is not long since he had become a Cargador--only a few weeks. His
+worship the Capataz had accepted him after many entreaties."
+
+"I am not responsible for the great Capataz," muttered the doctor,
+moving off.
+
+Directing his course upstairs towards the door of Charles Gould's room,
+the doctor at the last moment hesitated; then, turning away from the
+handle with a shrug of his uneven shoulders, slunk off hastily along the
+corredor in search of Mrs. Gould's camerista.
+
+Leonarda told him that the senora had not risen yet. The senora had
+given into her charge the girls belonging to that Italian posadero. She,
+Leonarda, had put them to bed in her own room. The fair girl had cried
+herself to sleep, but the dark one--the bigger--had not closed her eyes
+yet. She sat up in bed clutching the sheets right up under her chin and
+staring before her like a little witch. Leonarda did not approve of the
+Viola children being admitted to the house. She made this feeling clear
+by the indifferent tone in which she inquired whether their mother was
+dead yet. As to the senora, she must be asleep. Ever since she had gone
+into her room after seeing the departure of Dona Antonia with her dying
+father, there had been no sound behind her door.
+
+The doctor, rousing himself out of profound reflection, told her
+abruptly to call her mistress at once. He hobbled off to wait for Mrs.
+Gould in the sala. He was very tired, but too excited to sit down. In
+this great drawing-room, now empty, in which his withered soul had been
+refreshed after many arid years and his outcast spirit had accepted
+silently the toleration of many side-glances, he wandered haphazard
+amongst the chairs and tables till Mrs. Gould, enveloped in a morning
+wrapper, came in rapidly.
+
+"You know that I never approved of the silver being sent away," the
+doctor began at once, as a preliminary to the narrative of his night's
+adventures in association with Captain Mitchell, the engineer-in-chief,
+and old Viola, at Sotillo's headquarters. To the doctor, with his
+special conception of this political crisis, the removal of the silver
+had seemed an irrational and ill-omened measure. It was as if a general
+were sending the best part of his troops away on the eve of battle
+upon some recondite pretext. The whole lot of ingots might have been
+concealed somewhere where they could have been got at for the purpose
+of staving off the dangers which were menacing the security of the Gould
+Concession. The Administrador had acted as if the immense and powerful
+prosperity of the mine had been founded on methods of probity, on the
+sense of usefulness. And it was nothing of the kind. The method followed
+had been the only one possible. The Gould Concession had ransomed
+its way through all those years. It was a nauseous process. He quite
+understood that Charles Gould had got sick of it and had left the old
+path to back up that hopeless attempt at reform. The doctor did not
+believe in the reform of Costaguana. And now the mine was back again in
+its old path, with the disadvantage that henceforth it had to deal not
+only with the greed provoked by its wealth, but with the resentment
+awakened by the attempt to free itself from its bondage to moral
+corruption. That was the penalty of failure. What made him uneasy was
+that Charles Gould seemed to him to have weakened at the decisive moment
+when a frank return to the old methods was the only chance. Listening to
+Decoud's wild scheme had been a weakness.
+
+The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, "Decoud! Decoud!" He hobbled
+about the room with slight, angry laughs. Many years ago both his ankles
+had been seriously damaged in the course of a certain investigation
+conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a commission composed of
+military men. Their nomination had been signified to them unexpectedly
+at the dead of night, with scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a
+tempestuous voice, by Guzman Bento. The old tyrant, maddened by one of
+his sudden accesses of suspicion, mingled spluttering appeals to their
+fidelity with imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and casements
+of the castle on the hill had been already filled with prisoners. The
+commission was charged now with the task of discovering the iniquitous
+conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour of his country.
+
+Their dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into a hasty
+ferocity of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was not accustomed to wait. A
+conspiracy had to be discovered. The courtyards of the castle resounded
+with the clanking of leg-irons, sounds of blows, yells of pain; and
+the commission of high officers laboured feverishly, concealing their
+distress and apprehensions from each other, and especially from their
+secretary, Father Beron, an army chaplain, at that time very much in
+the confidence of the Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big
+round-shouldered man, with an unclean-looking, overgrown tonsure on the
+top of his flat head, of a dingy, yellow complexion, softly fat, with
+greasy stains all down the front of his lieutenant's uniform, and a
+small cross embroidered in white cotton on his left breast. He had a
+heavy nose and a pendant lip. Dr. Monygham remembered him still. He
+remembered him against all the force of his will striving its utmost to
+forget. Father Beron had been adjoined to the commission by Guzman Bento
+expressly for the purpose that his enlightened zeal should assist them
+in their labours. Dr. Monygham could by no manner of means forget the
+zeal of Father Beron, or his face, or the pitiless, monotonous voice in
+which he pronounced the words, "Will you confess now?"
+
+This memory did not make him shudder, but it had made of him what he was
+in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of common decencies,
+something between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor. But
+not all respectable people would have had the necessary delicacy of
+sentiment to understand with what trouble of mind and accuracy of vision
+Dr. Monygham, medical officer of the San Tome mine, remembered Father
+Beron, army chaplain, and once a secretary of a military commission.
+After all these years Dr. Monygham, in his rooms at the end of the
+hospital building in the San Tome gorge, remembered Father Beron as
+distinctly as ever. He remembered that priest at night, sometimes, in
+his sleep. On such nights the doctor waited for daylight with a candle
+lighted, and walking the whole length of his rooms to and fro, staring
+down at his bare feet, his arms hugging his sides tightly. He would
+dream of Father Beron sitting at the end of a long black table, behind
+which, in a row, appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes of the
+military members, nibbling the feather of a quill pen, and listening
+with weary and impatient scorn to the protestations of some prisoner
+calling heaven to witness of his innocence, till he burst out, "What's
+the use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let me take
+him outside for a while." And Father Beron would go outside after
+the clanking prisoner, led away between two soldiers. Such interludes
+happened on many days, many times, with many prisoners. When the
+prisoner returned he was ready to make a full confession, Father Beron
+would declare, leaning forward with that dull, surfeited look which can
+be seen in the eyes of gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.
+
+The priest's inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from the want
+of classical apparatus of the Inquisition. At no time of the world's
+history have men been at a loss how to inflict mental and bodily anguish
+upon their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to them in the
+growing complexity of their passions and the early refinement of their
+ingenuity. But it may safely be said that primeval man did not go to
+the trouble of inventing tortures. He was indolent and pure of heart.
+He brained his neighbour ferociously with a stone axe from necessity and
+without malice. The stupidest mind may invent a rankling phrase or brand
+the innocent with a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod; a
+few muskets in combination with a length of hide rope; or even a simple
+mallet of heavy, hard wood applied with a swing to human fingers or
+to the joints of a human body is enough for the infliction of the most
+exquisite torture. The doctor had been a very stubborn prisoner, and, as
+a natural consequence of that "bad disposition" (so Father Beron called
+it), his subjugation had been very crushing and very complete. That is
+why the limp in his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his
+cheeks were so pronounced. His confessions, when they came at last, were
+very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the floor,
+he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and rage, at the fertility
+of his imagination when stimulated by a sort of pain which makes truth,
+honour, selfrespect, and life itself matters of little moment.
+
+And he could not forget Father Beron with his monotonous phrase, "Will
+you confess now?" reaching him in an awful iteration and lucidity of
+meaning through the delirious incoherence of unbearable pain. He could
+not forget. But that was not the worst. Had he met Father Beron in the
+street after all these years Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed
+before him. This contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was
+dead; but the sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking
+anybody in the face.
+
+Dr. Monygham had become, in a manner, the slave of a ghost. It was
+obviously impossible to take his knowledge of Father Beron home to
+Europe. When making his extorted confessions to the Military Board,
+Dr. Monygham was not seeking to avoid death. He longed for it. Sitting
+half-naked for hours on the wet earth of his prison, and so motionless
+that the spiders, his companions, attached their webs to his matted
+hair, he consoled the misery of his soul with acute reasonings that he
+had confessed to crimes enough for a sentence of death--that they had
+gone too far with him to let him live to tell the tale.
+
+But, as if by a refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham was left for months
+to decay slowly in the darkness of his grave-like prison. It was no
+doubt hoped that it would finish him off without the trouble of an
+execution; but Dr. Monygham had an iron constitution. It was Guzman
+Bento who died, not by the knife thrust of a conspirator, but from a
+stroke of apoplexy, and Dr. Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters
+were struck off by the light of a candle, which, after months of gloom,
+hurt his eyes so much that he had to cover his face with his hands. He
+was raised up. His heart was beating violently with the fear of this
+liberty. When he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his feet
+made him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were thrust into his hands,
+and he was pushed out of the passage. It was dusk; candles glimmered
+already in the windows of the officers' quarters round the courtyard;
+but the twilight sky dazed him by its enormous and overwhelming
+brilliance. A thin poncho hung over his naked, bony shoulders; the rags
+of his trousers came down no lower than his knees; an eighteen months'
+growth of hair fell in dirty grey locks on each side of his sharp
+cheek-bones. As he dragged himself past the guard-room door, one of the
+soldiers, lolling outside, moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward
+with a strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on his head. And
+Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, continued on his way. He advanced
+one stick, then one maimed foot, then the other stick; the other foot
+followed only a very short distance along the ground, toilfully, as
+though it were almost too heavy to be moved at all; and yet his legs
+under the hanging angles of the poncho appeared no thicker than the two
+sticks in his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated his bent body,
+all his wasted limbs, his bony head, the conical, ragged crown of the
+sombrero, whose ample flat rim rested on his shoulders.
+
+In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr. Monygham go forth to
+take possession of his liberty. And these conditions seemed to bind
+him indissolubly to the land of Costaguana like an awful procedure of
+naturalization, involving him deep in the national life, far deeper than
+any amount of success and honour could have done. They did away with his
+Europeanism; for Dr. Monygham had made himself an ideal conception
+of his disgrace. It was a conception eminently fit and proper for an
+officer and a gentleman. Dr. Monygham, before he went out to Costaguana,
+had been surgeon in one of Her Majesty's regiments of foot. It was a
+conception which took no account of physiological facts or reasonable
+arguments; but it was not stupid for all that. It was simple. A rule of
+conduct resting mainly on severe rejections is necessarily simple. Dr.
+Monygham's view of what it behoved him to do was severe; it was an ideal
+view, in so much that it was the imaginative exaggeration of a correct
+feeling. It was also, in its force, influence, and persistency, the view
+of an eminently loyal nature.
+
+There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham's nature. He had
+settled it all on Mrs. Gould's head. He believed her worthy of every
+devotion. At the bottom of his heart he felt an angry uneasiness before
+the prosperity of the San Tome mine, because its growth was robbing her
+of all peace of mind. Costaguana was no place for a woman of that kind.
+What could Charles Gould have been thinking of when he brought her
+out there! It was outrageous! And the doctor had watched the course
+of events with a grim and distant reserve which, he imagined, his
+lamentable history imposed upon him.
+
+Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out of account the
+safety of her husband. The doctor had contrived to be in town at the
+critical time because he mistrusted Charles Gould. He considered him
+hopelessly infected with the madness of revolutions. That is why he
+hobbled in distress in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould on that
+morning, exclaiming, "Decoud, Decoud!" in a tone of mournful irritation.
+
+Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening eyes, looked
+straight before her at the sudden enormity of that disaster. The
+finger-tips on one hand rested lightly on a low little table by her
+side, and the arm trembled right up to the shoulder. The sun, which
+looks late upon Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of its power high
+up on the sky from behind the dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had
+precipitated the delicate, smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which
+the town lies steeped during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of
+black shade and spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three long rectangles
+of sunshine fell through the windows of the sala; while just across the
+street the front of the Avellanos's house appeared very sombre in its
+own shadow seen through the flood of light.
+
+A voice said at the door, "What of Decoud?"
+
+It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming along the corredor.
+His glance just glided over his wife and struck full at the doctor.
+
+"You have brought some news, doctor?"
+
+Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough. For some time
+after he had done, the Administrador of the San Tome mine remained
+looking at him without a word. Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her
+hands lying on her lap. A silence reigned between those three motionless
+persons. Then Charles Gould spoke--
+
+"You must want some breakfast."
+
+He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up her husband's
+hand and pressed it as she went out, raising her handkerchief to her
+eyes. The sight of her husband had brought Antonia's position to her
+mind, and she could not contain her tears at the thought of the poor
+girl. When she rejoined the two men in the diningroom after having
+bathed her face, Charles Gould was saying to the doctor across the
+table--
+
+"No, there does not seem any room for doubt."
+
+And the doctor assented.
+
+"No, I don't see myself how we could question that wretched Hirsch's
+tale. It's only too true, I fear."
+
+She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from one
+to the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their heads away,
+tried to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry;
+he seized his knife and fork, and began to eat with emphasis, as if on
+the stage. Charles Gould made no pretence of the sort; with his elbows
+raised squarely, he twisted both ends of his flaming moustaches--they
+were so long that his hands were quite away from his face.
+
+"I am not surprised," he muttered, abandoning his moustaches and
+throwing one arm over the back of his chair. His face was calm with
+that immobility of expression which betrays the intensity of a mental
+struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a point all the
+consequences involved in his line of conduct, with its conscious
+and subconscious intentions. There must be an end now of this silent
+reserve, of that air of impenetrability behind which he had been
+safeguarding his dignity. It was the least ignoble form of dissembling
+forced upon him by that parody of civilized institutions which offended
+his intelligence, his uprightness, and his sense of right. He was like
+his father. He had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the absurdities
+that prevail in this world. They hurt him in his innate gravity. He
+felt that the miserable death of that poor Decoud took from him his
+inaccessible position of a force in the background. It committed him
+openly unless he wished to throw up the game--and that was impossible.
+The material interests required from him the sacrifice of his
+aloofness--perhaps his own safety too. And he reflected that Decoud's
+separationist plan had not gone to the bottom with the lost silver.
+
+The only thing that was not changed was his position towards Mr.
+Holroyd. The head of silver and steel interests had entered into
+Costaguana affairs with a sort of passion. Costaguana had become
+necessary to his existence; in the San Tome mine he had found the
+imaginative satisfaction which other minds would get from drama, from
+art, or from a risky and fascinating sport. It was a special form of the
+great man's extravagance, sanctioned by a moral intention, big enough to
+flatter his vanity. Even in this aberration of his genius he served the
+progress of the world. Charles Gould felt sure of being understood
+with precision and judged with the indulgence of their common passion.
+Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould
+imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words:
+". . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the
+civil organization of the province is at an end for the present;
+the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, but in the
+characteristic manner of this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta,
+remains still available. I am forced to take up openly the plan of a
+provincial revolution as the only way of placing the enormous material
+interests involved in the prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position
+of permanent safety. . . ." That was clear. He saw these words as
+if written in letters of fire upon the wall at which he was gazing
+abstractedly.
+
+Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It was a domestic and
+frightful phenomenon that darkened and chilled the house for her like a
+thundercloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould's fits of abstraction
+depicted the energetic concentration of a will haunted by a fixed idea.
+A man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if
+that idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the heaven down
+pitilessly upon a loved head? The eyes of Mrs. Gould, watching her
+husband's profile, filled with tears again. And again she seemed to see
+the despair of the unfortunate Antonia.
+
+"What would I have done if Charley had been drowned while we were
+engaged?" she exclaimed, mentally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice,
+while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre
+consuming all her earthly affections. The tears burst out of her eyes.
+
+"Antonia will kill herself!" she cried out.
+
+This cry fell into the silence of the room with strangely little effect.
+Only the doctor, crumbling up a piece of bread, with his head inclined
+on one side, raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of his
+shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr. Monygham thought quite
+sincerely that Decoud was a singularly unworthy object for any woman's
+affection. Then he lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip, and
+his heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.
+
+"She thinks of that girl," he said to himself; "she thinks of the Viola
+children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners; she always
+thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if
+Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage those confounded
+Avellanos have drawn him into? No one seems to be thinking of her."
+
+Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections subtly.
+
+"I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is big enough to take
+in hand the making of a new State. It'll please him. It'll reconcile him
+to the risk."
+
+But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he was inaccessible.
+To send off a boat to Cayta was no longer possible, since Sotillo was
+master of the harbour, and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with
+all the democrats in the province up, and every Campo township in a
+state of disturbance, where could he find a man who would make his
+way successfully overland to Cayta with a message, a ten days' ride
+at least; a man of courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or
+murder, and if arrested would faithfully eat the paper? The Capataz
+de Cargadores would have been just such a man. But the Capataz of the
+Cargadores was no more.
+
+And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the wall, said gently,
+"That Hirsch! What an extraordinary thing! Saved himself by clinging to
+the anchor, did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco. I thought
+he had gone back overland to Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came
+here once to talk to me about his hide business and some other things. I
+made it clear to him that nothing could be done."
+
+"He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez being about,"
+remarked the doctor.
+
+"And but for him we might not have known anything of what has happened,"
+marvelled Charles Gould.
+
+Mrs. Gould cried out--
+
+"Antonia must not know! She must not be told. Not now."
+
+"Nobody's likely to carry the news," remarked the doctor. "It's no one's
+interest. Moreover, the people here are afraid of Hernandez as if he
+were the devil." He turned to Charles Gould. "It's even awkward,
+because if you wanted to communicate with the refugees you could find no
+messenger. When Hernandez was ranging hundreds of miles away from here
+the Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales of him roasting his
+prisoners alive."
+
+"Yes," murmured Charles Gould; "Captain Mitchell's Capataz was the
+only man in the town who had seen Hernandez eye to eye. Father Corbelan
+employed him. He opened the communications first. It is a pity that--"
+
+His voice was covered by the booming of the great bell of the cathedral.
+Three single strokes, one after another, burst out explosively, dying
+away in deep and mellow vibrations. And then all the bells in the
+tower of every church, convent, or chapel in town, even those that had
+remained shut up for years, pealed out together with a crash. In this
+furious flood of metallic uproar there was a power of suggesting images
+of strife and violence which blanched Mrs. Gould's cheek. Basilio,
+who had been waiting at table, shrinking within himself, clung to the
+sideboard with chattering teeth. It was impossible to hear yourself
+speak.
+
+"Shut these windows!" Charles Gould yelled at him, angrily. All the
+other servants, terrified at what they took for the signal of a general
+massacre, had rushed upstairs, tumbling over each other, men and women,
+the obscure and generally invisible population of the ground floor on
+the four sides of the patio. The women, screaming "Misericordia!" ran
+right into the room, and, falling on their knees against the walls,
+began to cross themselves convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked
+the doorway in an instant--mozos from the stable, gardeners, nondescript
+helpers living on the crumbs of the munificent house--and Charles
+Gould beheld all the extent of his domestic establishment, even to the
+gatekeeper. This was a half-paralyzed old man, whose long white locks
+fell down to his shoulders: an heirloom taken up by Charles Gould's
+familial piety. He could remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a
+Costaguanero of the second generation, chief of the Sulaco province;
+he had been his personal mozo years and years ago in peace and war; had
+been allowed to attend his master in prison; had, on the fatal morning,
+followed the firing squad; and, peeping from behind one of the cypresses
+growing along the wall of the Franciscan Convent, had seen, with his
+eyes starting out of his head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall
+with his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly the big
+patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the other servants. But
+he was surprised to see a shrivelled old hag or two, of whose existence
+within the walls of his house he had not been aware. They must have been
+the mothers, or even the grandmothers of some of his people. There were
+a few children, too, more or less naked, crying and clinging to the legs
+of their elders. He had never before noticed any sign of a child in his
+patio. Even Leonarda, the camerista, came in a fright, pushing through,
+with her spoiled, pouting face of a favourite maid, leading the Viola
+girls by the hand. The crockery rattled on table and sideboard, and the
+whole house seemed to sway in the deafening wave of sound.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+During the night the expectant populace had taken possession of all the
+belfries in the town in order to welcome Pedrito Montero, who was
+making his entry after having slept the night in Rincon. And first
+came straggling in through the land gate the armed mob of all colours,
+complexions, types, and states of raggedness, calling themselves the
+Sulaco National Guard, and commanded by Senor Gamacho. Through the
+middle of the street streamed, like a torrent of rubbish, a mass of
+straw hats, ponchos, gun-barrels, with an enormous green and yellow flag
+flapping in their midst, in a cloud of dust, to the furious beating of
+drums. The spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses shouting
+their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be seen the lances of the cavalry,
+the "army" of Pedro Montero. He advanced between Senores Fuentes and
+Gamacho at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the feat of
+crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in a snow-storm. They rode four
+abreast, mounted on confiscated Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous
+stock of roadside stores they had looted hurriedly in their rapid ride
+through the northern part of the province; for Pedro Montero had been in
+a great hurry to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely around
+their bare throats were glaringly new, and all the right sleeves of
+their cotton shirts had been cut off close to the shoulder for greater
+freedom in throwing the lazo. Emaciated greybeards rode by the side
+of lean dark youths, marked by all the hardships of campaigning, with
+strips of raw beef twined round the crowns of their hats, and huge iron
+spurs fastened to their naked heels. Those that in the passes of the
+mountain had lost their lances had provided themselves with the goads
+used by the Campo cattlemen: slender shafts of palm fully ten feet long,
+with a lot of loose rings jingling under the ironshod point. They were
+armed with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessness characterized
+the expression of all these sun-blacked countenances; they glared down
+haughtily with their scorched eyes at the crowd, or, blinking upwards
+insolently, pointed out to each other some particular head amongst the
+women at the windows. When they had ridden into the Plaza and caught
+sight of the equestrian statue of the King dazzlingly white in the
+sunshine, towering enormous and motionless above the surges of the
+crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting, a murmur of surprise ran
+through their ranks. "What is that saint in the big hat?" they asked
+each other.
+
+They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains with which Pedro
+Montero had helped so much the victorious career of his brother the
+general. The influence which that man, brought up in coast towns,
+acquired in a short time over the plainsmen of the Republic can be
+ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so effective a kind that it
+must have appeared to those violent men but little removed from a state
+of utter savagery, as the perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular
+lore of all nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, together with
+bodily strength, were looked upon, even more than courage, as heroic
+virtues by primitive mankind. To overcome your adversary was the
+great affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But the use of
+intelligence awakened wonder and respect. Stratagems, providing they did
+not fail, were honourable; the easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy
+evoked no feelings but those of gladness, pride, and admiration. Not
+perhaps that primitive men were more faithless than their descendants
+of to-day, but that they went straighter to their aim, and were
+more artless in their recognition of success as the only standard of
+morality.
+
+We have changed since. The use of intelligence awakens little wonder and
+less respect. But the ignorant and barbarous plainsmen engaging in civil
+strife followed willingly a leader who often managed to deliver their
+enemies bound, as it were, into their hands. Pedro Montero had a talent
+for lulling his adversaries into a sense of security. And as men learn
+wisdom with extreme slowness, and are always ready to believe promises
+that flatter their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful time after
+time. Whether only a servant or some inferior official in the Costaguana
+Legation in Paris, he had rushed back to his country directly he
+heard that his brother had emerged from the obscurity of his frontier
+commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his gift of plausibility
+the chiefs of the Ribierist movement in the capital, and even the acute
+agent of the San Tome mine had failed to understand him thoroughly. At
+once he had obtained an enormous influence over his brother. They were
+very much alike in appearance, both bald, with bunches of crisp hair
+above their ears, arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro
+was smaller than the general, more delicate altogether, with an
+ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward signs of refinement and
+distinction, and with a parrot-like talent for languages. Both brothers
+had received some elementary instruction by the munificence of a great
+European traveller, to whom their father had been a body-servant during
+his journeys in the interior of the country. In General Montero's
+case it enabled him to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger,
+incorrigibly lazy and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from one coast
+town to another, hanging about counting-houses, attaching himself
+to strangers as a sort of valet-de-place, picking up an easy and
+disreputable living. His ability to read did nothing for him but fill
+his head with absurd visions. His actions were usually determined by
+motives so improbable in themselves as to escape the penetration of a
+rational person.
+
+Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession in Sta. Marta
+had credited him with the possession of sane views, and even with a
+restraining power over the general's everlastingly discontented vanity.
+It could never have entered his head that Pedrito Montero, lackey or
+inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets of the various Parisian hotels
+where the Costaguana Legation used to shelter its diplomatic dignity,
+had been devouring the lighter sort of historical works in the French
+language, such, for instance as the books of Imbert de Saint Amand upon
+the Second Empire. But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a
+brilliant court, and had conceived the idea of an existence for himself
+where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the command of every
+pleasure with the conduct of political affairs and enjoy power supremely
+in every way. Nobody could have guessed that. And yet this was one of
+the immediate causes of the Monterist Revolution. This will appear less
+incredible by the reflection that the fundamental causes were the
+same as ever, rooted in the political immaturity of the people, in the
+indolence of the upper classes and the mental darkness of the lower.
+
+Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother the road wide
+open to his wildest imaginings. This was what made the Monterist
+pronunciamiento so unpreventable. The general himself probably could
+have been bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched on a
+diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who had egged him on
+from first to last. He wanted to become the most brilliant statesman
+of South America. He did not desire supreme power. He would have been
+afraid of its labour and risk, in fact. Before all, Pedrito Montero,
+taught by his European experience, meant to acquire a serious fortune
+for himself. With this object in view he obtained from his brother, on
+the very morrow of the successful battle, the permission to push on
+over the mountains and take possession of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land
+of future prosperity, the chosen land of material progress, the only
+province in the Republic of interest to European capitalists. Pedrito
+Montero, following the example of the Duc de Morny, meant to have his
+share of this prosperity. This is what he meant literally. Now his
+brother was master of the country, whether as President, Dictator, or
+even as Emperor--why not as an Emperor?--he meant to demand a share in
+every enterprise--in railways, in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton
+mills, in land companies, in each and every undertaking--as the price of
+his protection. The desire to be on the spot early was the real cause of
+the celebrated ride over the mountains with some two hundred llaneros,
+an enterprise of which the dangers had not appeared at first clearly to
+his impatience. Coming from a series of victories, it seemed to him
+that a Montero had only to appear to be master of the situation. This
+illusion had betrayed him into a rashness of which he was becoming
+aware. As he rode at the head of his llaneros he regretted that there
+were so few of them. The enthusiasm of the populace reassured him. They
+yelled "Viva Montero! Viva Pedrito!" In order to make them still more
+enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had in dissembling, he
+dropped the reins on his horse's neck, and with a tremendous effect of
+familiarity and confidence slipped his hands under the arms of Senores
+Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture, with a ragged town mozo holding
+his horse by the bridle, he rode triumphantly across the Plaza to the
+door of the Intendencia. Its old gloomy walls seemed to shake in the
+acclamations that rent the air and covered the crashing peals of the
+cathedral bells.
+
+Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dismounted into a shouting
+and perspiring throng of enthusiasts whom the ragged Nationals were
+pushing back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he surveyed the large crowd
+gaping at him and the bullet-speckled walls of the houses opposite
+lightly veiled by a sunny haze of dust. The word "_Pourvenir_" in
+immense black capitals, alternating with broken windows, stared at
+him across the vast space; and he thought with delight of the hour of
+vengeance, because he was very sure of laying his hands upon Decoud.
+On his left hand, Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face,
+uncovered a set of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilarity. On his
+right, Senor Fuentes, small and lean, looked on with compressed lips.
+The crowd stared literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness, as
+though they had expected the great guerrillero, the famous Pedrito, to
+begin scattering at once some sort of visible largesse. What he began
+was a speech. He began it with the shouted word "Citizens!" which
+reached even those in the middle of the Plaza. Afterwards the greater
+part of the citizens remained fascinated by the orator's action alone,
+his tip-toeing, the arms flung above his head with the fists clenched,
+a hand laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of rolling eyes,
+the sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, a hand laid familiarly
+on Gamacho's shoulder; a hand waved formally towards the little
+black-coated person of Senor Fuentes, advocate and politician and a true
+friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the orator bursting
+out suddenly propagated themselves irregularly to the confines of the
+crowd, like flames running over dry grass, and expired in the opening of
+the streets. In the intervals, over the swarming Plaza brooded a heavy
+silence, in which the mouth of the orator went on opening and shutting,
+and detached phrases--"The happiness of the people," "Sons of the
+country," "The entire world, el mundo entiero"--reached even the packed
+steps of the cathedral with a feeble clear ring, thin as the buzzing
+of a mosquito. But the orator struck his breast; he seemed to prance
+between his two supporters. It was the supreme effort of his peroration.
+Then the two smaller figures disappeared from the public gaze and the
+enormous Gamacho, left alone, advanced, raising his hat high above his
+head. Then he covered himself proudly and yelled out, "Ciudadanos!" A
+dull roar greeted Senor Gamacho, ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of
+the National Guards.
+
+Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from one wrecked room of
+the Intendencia to another, snarling incessantly--
+
+"What stupidity! What destruction!"
+
+Senor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn disposition to
+murmur--
+
+"It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;" and then, inclining
+his head on his left shoulder, would press together his lips so firmly
+that a little hollow would appear at each corner. He had his nomination
+for Political Chief of the town in his pocket, and was all impatience to
+enter upon his functions.
+
+In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all starred by stones,
+the hangings torn down and the canopy over the platform at the upper end
+pulled to pieces, the vast, deep muttering of the crowd and the howling
+voice of Gamacho speaking just below reached them through the shutters
+as they stood idly in dimness and desolation.
+
+"The brute!" observed his Excellency Don Pedro Montero through clenched
+teeth. "We must contrive as quickly as possible to send him and his
+Nationals out there to fight Hernandez."
+
+The new Gefe Politico only jerked his head sideways, and took a puff at
+his cigarette in sign of his agreement with this method for ridding the
+town of Gamacho and his inconvenient rabble.
+
+Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely bare floor, and
+at the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames running round the room, out
+of which the remnants of torn and slashed canvases fluttered like dingy
+rags.
+
+"We are not barbarians," he said.
+
+This was what said his Excellency, the popular Pedrito, the guerrillero
+skilled in the art of laying ambushes, charged by his brother at his
+own demand with the organization of Sulaco on democratic principles. The
+night before, during the consultation with his partisans, who had
+come out to meet him in Rincon, he had opened his intentions to Senor
+Fuentes--
+
+"We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, confiding the destinies
+of our beloved country to the wisdom and valiance of my heroic brother,
+the invincible general. A plebiscite. Do you understand?"
+
+And Senor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks, had inclined his
+head slightly to the left, letting a thin, bluish jet of smoke escape
+through his pursed lips. He had understood.
+
+His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation. Not a single chair,
+table, sofa, etagere or console had been left in the state rooms of the
+Intendencia. His Excellency, though twitching all over with rage, was
+restrained from bursting into violence by a sense of his remoteness and
+isolation. His heroic brother was very far away. Meantime, how was he
+going to take his siesta? He had expected to find comfort and luxury
+in the Intendencia after a year of hard camp life, ending with the
+hardships and privations of the daring dash upon Sulaco--upon the
+province which was worth more in wealth and influence than all the rest
+of the Republic's territory. He would get even with Gamacho by-and-by.
+And Senor Gamacho's oration, delectable to popular ears, went on in the
+heat and glare of the Plaza like the uncouth howlings of an inferior
+sort of devil cast into a white-hot furnace. Every moment he had to wipe
+his streaming face with his bare fore-arm; he had flung off his coat,
+and had turned up the sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but
+he kept on his head the large cocked hat with white plumes. His
+ingenuousness cherished this sign of his rank as Commandante of the
+National Guards. Approving and grave murmurs greeted his periods. His
+opinion was that war should be declared at once against France, England,
+Germany, and the United States, who, by introducing railways, mining
+enterprises, colonization, and under such other shallow pretences, aimed
+at robbing poor people of their lands, and with the help of these Goths
+and paralytics, the aristocrats would convert them into toiling and
+miserable slaves. And the leperos, flinging about the corners of their
+dirty white mantas, yelled their approbation. General Montero, Gamacho
+howled with conviction, was the only man equal to the patriotic task.
+They assented to that, too.
+
+The morning was wearing on; there were already signs of disruption,
+currents and eddies in the crowd. Some were seeking the shade of the
+walls and under the trees of the Alameda. Horsemen spurred through,
+shouting; groups of sombreros set level on heads against the vertical
+sun were drifting away into the streets, where the open doors of
+pulperias revealed an enticing gloom resounding with the gentle tinkling
+of guitars. The National Guards were thinking of siesta, and the
+eloquence of Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on, when, in the
+cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried to assemble again for further
+consideration of public affairs, detachments of Montero's cavalry camped
+on the Alameda charged them without parley, at speed, with long lances
+levelled at their flying backs as far as the ends of the streets. The
+National Guards of Sulaco were surprised by this proceeding. But they
+were not indignant. No Costaguanero had ever learned to question the
+eccentricities of a military force. They were part of the natural order
+of things. This must be, they concluded, some kind of administrative
+measure, no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their unaided
+intelligence, and their chief and orator, Gamacho, Commandante of the
+National Guard, was lying drunk and asleep in the bosom of his family.
+His bare feet were upturned in the shadows repulsively, in the manner
+of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had dropped open. His youngest daughter,
+scratching her head with one hand, with the other waved a green bough
+over his scorched and peeling face.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+The declining sun had shifted the shadows from west to east amongst the
+houses of the town. It had shifted them upon the whole extent of the
+immense Campo, with the white walls of its haciendas on the knolls
+dominating the green distances; with its grass-thatched ranches
+crouching in the folds of ground by the banks of streams; with the dark
+islands of clustered trees on a clear sea of grass, and the precipitous
+range of the Cordillera, immense and motionless, emerging from the
+billows of the lower forests like the barren coast of a land of giants.
+The sunset rays striking the snow-slope of Higuerota from afar gave it
+an air of rosy youth, while the serrated mass of distant peaks remained
+black, as if calcined in the fiery radiance. The undulating surface of
+the forests seemed powdered with pale gold dust; and away there, beyond
+Rincon, hidden from the town by two wooded spurs, the rocks of the
+San Tome gorge, with the flat wall of the mountain itself crowned by
+gigantic ferns, took on warm tones of brown and yellow, with red rusty
+streaks, and the dark green clumps of bushes rooted in crevices. From
+the plain the stamp sheds and the houses of the mine appeared dark and
+small, high up, like the nests of birds clustered on the ledges of a
+cliff. The zigzag paths resembled faint tracings scratched on the wall
+of a cyclopean blockhouse. To the two serenos of the mine on patrol
+duty, strolling, carbine in hand, and watchful eyes, in the shade of the
+trees lining the stream near the bridge, Don Pepe, descending the path
+from the upper plateau, appeared no bigger than a large beetle.
+
+With his air of aimless, insect-like going to and fro upon the face of
+the rock, Don Pepe's figure kept on descending steadily, and, when near
+the bottom, sank at last behind the roofs of store-houses, forges, and
+workshops. For a time the pair of serenos strolled back and forth before
+the bridge, on which they had stopped a horseman holding a large white
+envelope in his hand. Then Don Pepe, emerging in the village street
+from amongst the houses, not a stone's throw from the frontier bridge,
+approached, striding in wide dark trousers tucked into boots, a white
+linen jacket, sabre at his side, and revolver at his belt. In this
+disturbed time nothing could find the Senor Gobernador with his boots
+off, as the saying is.
+
+At a slight nod from one of the serenos, the man, a messenger from
+the town, dismounted, and crossed the bridge, leading his horse by the
+bridle.
+
+Don Pepe received the letter from his other hand, slapped his left
+side and his hips in succession, feeling for his spectacle case. After
+settling the heavy silvermounted affair astride his nose, and adjusting
+it carefully behind his ears, he opened the envelope, holding it up at
+about a foot in front of his eyes. The paper he pulled out contained
+some three lines of writing. He looked at them for a long time. His grey
+moustache moved slightly up and down, and the wrinkles, radiating at the
+corners of his eyes, ran together. He nodded serenely. "Bueno," he said.
+"There is no answer."
+
+Then, in his quiet, kindly way, he engaged in a cautious conversation
+with the man, who was willing to talk cheerily, as if something lucky
+had happened to him recently. He had seen from a distance Sotillo's
+infantry camped along the shore of the harbour on each side of the
+Custom House. They had done no damage to the buildings. The foreigners
+of the railway remained shut up within the yards. They were no longer
+anxious to shoot poor people. He cursed the foreigners; then he reported
+Montero's entry and the rumours of the town. The poor were going to be
+made rich now. That was very good. More he did not know, and, breaking
+into propitiatory smiles, he intimated that he was hungry and thirsty.
+The old major directed him to go to the alcalde of the first village.
+The man rode off, and Don Pepe, striding slowly in the direction of a
+little wooden belfry, looked over a hedge into a little garden, and saw
+Father Roman sitting in a white hammock slung between two orange trees
+in front of the presbytery.
+
+An enormous tamarind shaded with its dark foliage the whole white
+framehouse. A young Indian girl with long hair, big eyes, and small
+hands and feet, carried out a wooden chair, while a thin old woman,
+crabbed and vigilant, watched her all the time from the verandah.
+
+Don Pepe sat down in the chair and lighted a cigar; the priest drew
+in an immense quantity of snuff out of the hollow of his palm. On his
+reddish-brown face, worn, hollowed as if crumbled, the eyes, fresh and
+candid, sparkled like two black diamonds.
+
+Don Pepe, in a mild and humorous voice, informed Father Roman that
+Pedrito Montero, by the hand of Senor Fuentes, had asked him on what
+terms he would surrender the mine in proper working order to a legally
+constituted commission of patriotic citizens, escorted by a small
+military force. The priest cast his eyes up to heaven. However, Don Pepe
+continued, the mozo who brought the letter said that Don Carlos Gould
+was alive, and so far unmolested.
+
+Father Roman expressed in a few words his thankfulness at hearing of the
+Senor Administrador's safety.
+
+The hour of oration had gone by in the silvery ringing of a bell in the
+little belfry. The belt of forest closing the entrance of the valley
+stood like a screen between the low sun and the street of the village.
+At the other end of the rocky gorge, between the walls of basalt and
+granite, a forest-clad mountain, hiding all the range from the San Tome
+dwellers, rose steeply, lighted up and leafy to the very top. Three
+small rosy clouds hung motionless overhead in the great depth of blue.
+Knots of people sat in the street between the wattled huts. Before the
+casa of the alcalde, the foremen of the night-shift, already assembled
+to lead their men, squatted on the ground in a circle of leather
+skull-caps, and, bowing their bronze backs, were passing round the gourd
+of mate. The mozo from the town, having fastened his horse to a wooden
+post before the door, was telling them the news of Sulaco as the
+blackened gourd of the decoction passed from hand to hand. The grave
+alcalde himself, in a white waistcloth and a flowered chintz gown with
+sleeves, open wide upon his naked stout person with an effect of a gaudy
+bathing robe, stood by, wearing a rough beaver hat at the back of his
+head, and grasping a tall staff with a silver knob in his hand.
+These insignia of his dignity had been conferred upon him by the
+Administration of the mine, the fountain of honour, of prosperity, and
+peace. He had been one of the first immigrants into this valley; his
+sons and sons-in-law worked within the mountain which seemed with its
+treasures to pour down the thundering ore shoots of the upper mesa, the
+gifts of well-being, security, and justice upon the toilers. He listened
+to the news from the town with curiosity and indifference, as if
+concerning another world than his own. And it was true that they
+appeared to him so. In a very few years the sense of belonging to a
+powerful organization had been developed in these harassed, half-wild
+Indians. They were proud of, and attached to, the mine. It had secured
+their confidence and belief. They invested it with a protecting and
+invincible virtue as though it were a fetish made by their own hands,
+for they were ignorant, and in other respects did not differ appreciably
+from the rest of mankind which puts infinite trust in its own creations.
+It never entered the alcalde's head that the mine could fail in its
+protection and force. Politics were good enough for the people of the
+town and the Campo. His yellow, round face, with wide nostrils, and
+motionless in expression, resembled a fierce full moon. He listened to
+the excited vapourings of the mozo without misgivings, without surprise,
+without any active sentiment whatever.
+
+Padre Roman sat dejectedly balancing himself, his feet just touching
+the ground, his hands gripping the edge of the hammock. With less
+confidence, but as ignorant as his flock, he asked the major what did he
+think was going to happen now.
+
+Don Pepe, bolt upright in the chair, folded his hands peacefully on
+the hilt of his sword, standing perpendicular between his thighs, and
+answered that he did not know. The mine could be defended against any
+force likely to be sent to take possession. On the other hand, from the
+arid character of the valley, when the regular supplies from the Campo
+had been cut off, the population of the three villages could be starved
+into submission. Don Pepe exposed these contingencies with serenity
+to Father Roman, who, as an old campaigner, was able to understand the
+reasoning of a military man. They talked with simplicity and directness.
+Father Roman was saddened at the idea of his flock being scattered
+or else enslaved. He had no illusions as to their fate, not from
+penetration, but from long experience of political atrocities, which
+seemed to him fatal and unavoidable in the life of a State. The working
+of the usual public institutions presented itself to him most distinctly
+as a series of calamities overtaking private individuals and flowing
+logically from each other through hate, revenge, folly, and rapacity,
+as though they had been part of a divine dispensation. Father Roman's
+clear-sightedness was served by an uninformed intelligence; but his
+heart, preserving its tenderness amongst scenes of carnage, spoliation,
+and violence, abhorred these calamities the more as his association with
+the victims was closer. He entertained towards the Indians of the valley
+feelings of paternal scorn. He had been marrying, baptizing, confessing,
+absolving, and burying the workers of the San Tome mine with dignity
+and unction for five years or more; and he believed in the sacredness of
+these ministrations, which made them his own in a spiritual sense. They
+were dear to his sacerdotal supremacy. Mrs. Gould's earnest interest in
+the concerns of these people enhanced their importance in the priest's
+eyes, because it really augmented his own. When talking over with her
+the innumerable Marias and Brigidas of the villages, he felt his own
+humanity expand. Padre Roman was incapable of fanaticism to an almost
+reprehensible degree. The English senora was evidently a heretic; but
+at the same time she seemed to him wonderful and angelic. Whenever that
+confused state of his feelings occurred to him, while strolling, for
+instance, his breviary under his arm, in the wide shade of the tamarind,
+he would stop short to inhale with a strong snuffling noise a large
+quantity of snuff, and shake his head profoundly. At the thought of
+what might befall the illustrious senora presently, he became gradually
+overcome with dismay. He voiced it in an agitated murmur. Even Don Pepe
+lost his serenity for a moment. He leaned forward stiffly.
+
+"Listen, Padre. The very fact that those thieving macaques in Sulaco are
+trying to find out the price of my honour proves that Senor Don Carlos
+and all in the Casa Gould are safe. As to my honour, that also is safe,
+as every man, woman, and child knows. But the negro Liberals who have
+snatched the town by surprise do not know that. Bueno. Let them sit and
+wait. While they wait they can do no harm."
+
+And he regained his composure. He regained it easily, because whatever
+happened his honour of an old officer of Paez was safe. He had promised
+Charles Gould that at the approach of an armed force he would defend the
+gorge just long enough to give himself time to destroy scientifically
+the whole plant, buildings, and workshops of the mine with heavy charges
+of dynamite; block with ruins the main tunnel, break down the pathways,
+blow up the dam of the water-power, shatter the famous Gould Concession
+into fragments, flying sky high out of a horrified world. The mine had
+got hold of Charles Gould with a grip as deadly as ever it had laid upon
+his father. But this extreme resolution had seemed to Don Pepe the most
+natural thing in the world. His measures had been taken with judgment.
+Everything was prepared with a careful completeness. And Don Pepe folded
+his hands pacifically on his sword hilt, and nodded at the priest. In
+his excitement, Father Roman had flung snuff in handfuls at his face,
+and, all besmeared with tobacco, round-eyed, and beside himself, had got
+out of the hammock to walk about, uttering exclamations.
+
+Don Pepe stroked his grey and pendant moustache, whose fine ends hung
+far below the clean-cut line of his jaw, and spoke with a conscious
+pride in his reputation.
+
+"So, Padre, I don't know what will happen. But I know that as long as
+I am here Don Carlos can speak to that macaque, Pedrito Montero, and
+threaten the destruction of the mine with perfect assurance that he will
+be taken seriously. For people know me."
+
+He began to turn the cigar in his lips a little nervously, and went on--
+
+"But that is talk--good for the politicos. I am a military man. I do not
+know what may happen. But I know what ought to be done--the mine should
+march upon the town with guns, axes, knives tied up to sticks--por Dios.
+That is what should be done. Only--"
+
+His folded hands twitched on the hilt. The cigar turned faster in the
+corner of his lips.
+
+"And who should lead but I? Unfortunately--observe--I have given my word
+of honour to Don Carlos not to let the mine fall into the hands of these
+thieves. In war--you know this, Padre--the fate of battles is uncertain,
+and whom could I leave here to act for me in case of defeat? The
+explosives are ready. But it would require a man of high honour,
+of intelligence, of judgment, of courage, to carry out the prepared
+destruction. Somebody I can trust with my honour as I can trust myself.
+Another old officer of Paez, for instance. Or--or--perhaps one of Paez's
+old chaplains would do."
+
+He got up, long, lank, upright, hard, with his martial moustache and
+the bony structure of his face, from which the glance of the sunken
+eyes seemed to transfix the priest, who stood still, an empty wooden
+snuff-box held upside down in his hand, and glared back, speechless, at
+the governor of the mine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+At about that time, in the Intendencia of Sulaco, Charles Gould was
+assuring Pedrito Montero, who had sent a request for his presence there,
+that he would never let the mine pass out of his hands for the profit of
+a Government who had robbed him of it. The Gould Concession could not
+be resumed. His father had not desired it. The son would never surrender
+it. He would never surrender it alive. And once dead, where was the
+power capable of resuscitating such an enterprise in all its vigour and
+wealth out of the ashes and ruin of destruction? There was no such power
+in the country. And where was the skill and capital abroad that would
+condescend to touch such an ill-omened corpse? Charles Gould talked in
+the impassive tone which had for many years served to conceal his anger
+and contempt. He suffered. He was disgusted with what he had to say. It
+was too much like heroics. In him the strictly practical instinct was in
+profound discord with the almost mystic view he took of his right. The
+Gould Concession was symbolic of abstract justice. Let the heavens
+fall. But since the San Tome mine had developed into world-wide fame
+his threat had enough force and effectiveness to reach the rudimentary
+intelligence of Pedro Montero, wrapped up as it was in the futilities
+of historical anecdotes. The Gould Concession was a serious asset in the
+country's finance, and, what was more, in the private budgets of many
+officials as well. It was traditional. It was known. It was said. It
+was credible. Every Minister of Interior drew a salary from the San
+Tome mine. It was natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister of the
+Interior and President of the Council in his brother's Government. The
+Duc de Morny had occupied those high posts during the Second French
+Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself.
+
+A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured for His
+Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered absolutely necessary
+by the labours and the pomps of his entry into Sulaco, had been getting
+hold of the administrative machine by making appointments, giving
+orders, and signing proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould in the
+audience room, His Excellency managed with his well-known skill to
+conceal his annoyance and consternation. He had begun at first to talk
+loftily of confiscation, but the want of all proper feeling and mobility
+in the Senor Administrador's features ended by affecting adversely
+his power of masterful expression. Charles Gould had repeated: "The
+Government can certainly bring about the destruction of the San Tome
+mine if it likes; but without me it can do nothing else." It was an
+alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to hurt the sensibilities of
+a politician whose mind is bent upon the spoils of victory. And Charles
+Gould said also that the destruction of the San Tome mine would cause
+the ruin of other undertakings, the withdrawal of European capital, the
+withholding, most probably, of the last instalment of the foreign loan.
+That stony fiend of a man said all these things (which were accessible
+to His Excellency's intelligence) in a coldblooded manner which made one
+shudder.
+
+A long course of reading historical works, light and gossipy in tone,
+carried out in garrets of Parisian hotels, sprawling on an untidy bed,
+to the neglect of his duties, menial or otherwise, had affected the
+manners of Pedro Montero. Had he seen around him the splendour of the
+old Intendencia, the magnificent hangings, the gilt furniture ranged
+along the walls; had he stood upon a dais on a noble square of red
+carpet, he would have probably been very dangerous from a sense of
+success and elevation. But in this sacked and devastated residence, with
+the three pieces of common furniture huddled up in the middle of the
+vast apartment, Pedrito's imagination was subdued by a feeling of
+insecurity and impermanence. That feeling and the firm attitude
+of Charles Gould who had not once, so far, pronounced the word
+"Excellency," diminished him in his own eyes. He assumed the tone of an
+enlightened man of the world, and begged Charles Gould to dismiss from
+his mind every cause for alarm. He was now conversing, he reminded
+him, with the brother of the master of the country, charged with a
+reorganizing mission. The trusted brother of the master of the country,
+he repeated. Nothing was further from the thoughts of that wise and
+patriotic hero than ideas of destruction. "I entreat you, Don Carlos,
+not to give way to your anti-democratic prejudices," he cried, in a
+burst of condescending effusion.
+
+Pedrito Montero surprised one at first sight by the vast development of
+his bald forehead, a shiny yellow expanse between the crinkly coal-black
+tufts of hair without any lustre, the engaging form of his mouth, and
+an unexpectedly cultivated voice. But his eyes, very glistening as if
+freshly painted on each side of his hooked nose, had a round, hopeless,
+birdlike stare when opened fully. Now, however, he narrowed them
+agreeably, throwing his square chin up and speaking with closed teeth
+slightly through the nose, with what he imagined to be the manner of a
+grand seigneur.
+
+In that attitude, he declared suddenly that the highest expression of
+democracy was Caesarism: the imperial rule based upon the direct popular
+vote. Caesarism was conservative. It was strong. It recognized the
+legitimate needs of democracy which requires orders, titles, and
+distinctions. They would be showered upon deserving men. Caesarism
+was peace. It was progressive. It secured the prosperity of a country.
+Pedrito Montero was carried away. Look at what the Second Empire had
+done for France. It was a regime which delighted to honour men of Don
+Carlos's stamp. The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief
+was devoid of that military genius which had raised General Montero to
+the pinnacle of fame and glory. Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to
+help the idea of pinnacle, of fame. "We shall have many talks yet. We
+shall understand each other thoroughly, Don Carlos!" he cried in a tone
+of fellowship. Republicanism had done its work. Imperial democracy was
+the power of the future. Pedrito, the guerrillero, showing his hand,
+lowered his voice forcibly. A man singled out by his fellow-citizens for
+the honourable nickname of El Rey de Sulaco could not but receive a full
+recognition from an imperial democracy as a great captain of industry
+and a person of weighty counsel, whose popular designation would be soon
+replaced by a more solid title. "Eh, Don Carlos? No! What do you say?
+Conde de Sulaco--Eh?--or marquis . . ."
+
+He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a patrol of cavalry rode
+round and round without penetrating into the streets, which resounded
+with shouts and the strumming of guitars issuing from the open doors of
+pulperias. The orders were not to interfere with the enjoyments of the
+people. And above the roofs, next to the perpendicular lines of the
+cathedral towers the snowy curve of Higuerota blocked a large space of
+darkening blue sky before the windows of the Intendencia. After a time
+Pedrito Montero, thrusting his hand in the bosom of his coat, bowed his
+head with slow dignity. The audience was over.
+
+Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his forehead as if to
+disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose grotesque extravagance
+leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay. In
+the passages and on the staircases of the old palace Montero's troopers
+lounged about insolently, smoking and making way for no one; the
+clanking of sabres and spurs resounded all over the building. Three
+silent groups of civilians in severe black waited in the main gallery,
+formal and helpless, a little huddled up, each keeping apart from the
+others, as if in the exercise of a public duty they had been overcome
+by a desire to shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations
+waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly, more
+restless and uneasy in its corporate expression, was overtopped by the
+big face of Don Juste Lopez, soft and white, with prominent eyelids and
+wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as if in a dense cloud. The President
+of the Provincial Assembly, coming bravely to save the last shred of
+parliamentary institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes
+from the Administrador of the San Tome mine as a dignified rebuke of his
+little faith in that only saving principle.
+
+The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect Charles Gould, but
+he was sensible to the glances of the others directed upon him without
+reproach, as if only to read their own fate upon his face. All of them
+had talked, shouted, and declaimed in the great sala of the Casa Gould.
+The feeling of compassion for those men, struck with a strange impotence
+in the toils of moral degradation, did not induce him to make a sign. He
+suffered from his fellowship in evil with them too much. He crossed the
+Plaza unmolested. The Amarilla Club was full of festive ragamuffins.
+Their frowsy heads protruded from every window, and from within came
+drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging of harps. Broken
+bottles strewed the pavement below. Charles Gould found the doctor still
+in his house.
+
+Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutter through which he
+had been watching the street.
+
+"Ah! You are back at last!" he said in a tone of relief. "I have been
+telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe, but I was not by any
+means certain that the fellow would have let you go."
+
+"Neither was I," confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat on the table.
+
+"You will have to take action."
+
+The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that this was the only
+course. This was as far as Charles Gould was accustomed to go towards
+expressing his intentions.
+
+"I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean to do," the doctor
+said, anxiously.
+
+"I tried to make him see that the existence of the mine was bound up
+with my personal safety," continued Charles Gould, looking away from the
+doctor, and fixing his eyes upon the water-colour sketch upon the wall.
+
+"He believed you?" the doctor asked, eagerly.
+
+"God knows!" said Charles Gould. "I owed it to my wife to say that much.
+He is well enough informed. He knows that I have Don Pepe there. Fuentes
+must have told him. They know that the old major is perfectly capable of
+blowing up the San Tome mine without hesitation or compunction. Had it
+not been for that I don't think I'd have left the Intendencia a free
+man. He would blow everything up from loyalty and from hate--from hate
+of these Liberals, as they call themselves. Liberals! The words one
+knows so well have a nightmarish meaning in this country. Liberty,
+democracy, patriotism, government--all of them have a flavour of folly
+and murder. Haven't they, doctor? . . . I alone can restrain Don Pepe.
+If they were to--to do away with me, nothing could prevent him."
+
+"They will try to tamper with him," the doctor suggested, thoughtfully.
+
+"It is very possible," Charles Gould said very low, as if speaking to
+himself, and still gazing at the sketch of the San Tome gorge upon the
+wall. "Yes, I expect they will try that." Charles Gould looked for the
+first time at the doctor. "It would give me time," he added.
+
+"Exactly," said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his excitement. "Especially if
+Don Pepe behaves diplomatically. Why shouldn't he give them some hope
+of success? Eh? Otherwise you wouldn't gain so much time. Couldn't he be
+instructed to--"
+
+Charles Gould, looking at the doctor steadily, shook his head, but the
+doctor continued with a certain amount of fire--
+
+"Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of the mine. It is a
+good notion. You would mature your plan. Of course, I don't ask what it
+is. I don't want to know. I would refuse to listen to you if you tried
+to tell me. I am not fit for confidences."
+
+"What nonsense!" muttered Charles Gould, with displeasure.
+
+He disapproved of the doctor's sensitiveness about that far-off
+episode of his life. So much memory shocked Charles Gould. It was like
+morbidness. And again he shook his head. He refused to tamper with the
+open rectitude of Don Pepe's conduct, both from taste and from policy.
+Instructions would have to be either verbal or in writing. In either
+case they ran the risk of being intercepted. It was by no means certain
+that a messenger could reach the mine; and, besides, there was no one
+to send. It was on the tip of Charles's tongue to say that only the
+late Capataz de Cargadores could have been employed with some chance
+of success and the certitude of discretion. But he did not say that. He
+pointed out to the doctor that it would have been bad policy.
+Directly Don Pepe let it be supposed that he could be bought over, the
+Administrador's personal safety and the safety of his friends would
+become endangered. For there would be then no reason for moderation. The
+incorruptibility of Don Pepe was the essential and restraining fact. The
+doctor hung his head and admitted that in a way it was so.
+
+He couldn't deny to himself that the reasoning was sound enough. Don
+Pepe's usefulness consisted in his unstained character. As to his own
+usefulness, he reflected bitterly it was also his own character. He
+declared to Charles Gould that he had the means of keeping Sotillo from
+joining his forces with Montero, at least for the present.
+
+"If you had had all this silver here," the doctor said, "or even if it
+had been known to be at the mine, you could have bribed Sotillo to throw
+off his recent Monterism. You could have induced him either to go away
+in his steamer or even to join you."
+
+"Certainly not that last," Charles Gould declared, firmly. "What could
+one do with a man like that, afterwards--tell me, doctor? The silver is
+gone, and I am glad of it. It would have been an immediate and
+strong temptation. The scramble for that visible plunder would have
+precipitated a disastrous ending. I would have had to defend it, too.
+I am glad we've removed it--even if it is lost. It would have been a
+danger and a curse."
+
+"Perhaps he is right," the doctor, an hour later, said hurriedly to Mrs.
+Gould, whom he met in the corridor. "The thing is done, and the shadow
+of the treasure may do just as well as the substance. Let me try to
+serve you to the whole extent of my evil reputation. I am off now to
+play my game of betrayal with Sotillo, and keep him off the town."
+
+She put out both her hands impulsively. "Dr. Monygham, you are running a
+terrible risk," she whispered, averting from his face her eyes, full of
+tears, for a short glance at the door of her husband's room. She pressed
+both his hands, and the doctor stood as if rooted to the spot, looking
+down at her, and trying to twist his lips into a smile.
+
+"Oh, I know you will defend my memory," he uttered at last, and ran
+tottering down the stairs across the patio, and out of the house. In the
+street he kept up a great pace with his smart hobbling walk, a case
+of instruments under his arm. He was known for being loco. Nobody
+interfered with him. From under the seaward gate, across the dusty, arid
+plain, interspersed with low bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the
+ugly enormity of the Custom House, and the two or three other buildings
+which at that time constituted the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to the
+south groves of palm trees edged the curve of the harbour shore. The
+distant peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of clearcut
+shapes in the steadily deepening blue of the eastern sky. The doctor
+walked briskly. A darkling shadow seemed to fall upon him from the
+zenith. The sun had set. For a time the snows of Higuerota continued
+to glow with the reflected glory of the west. The doctor, holding a
+straight course for the Custom House, appeared lonely, hopping amongst
+the dark bushes like a tall bird with a broken wing.
+
+Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the clear water
+of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight as a wall, with the
+grass-grown ruins of the fort making a sort of rounded green mound,
+plainly visible from the inner shore, closed its circuit; while beyond
+the Placid Gulf repeated those splendours of colouring on a greater
+scale and with a more sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloud
+filling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted
+folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained with blood.
+The three Isabels, overshadowed and clear cut in a great smoothness
+confounding the sea and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the
+air. The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks upon the
+sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along the horizon gave out a
+fiery red glow, as if fire and water had been mingled together in the
+vast bed of the ocean.
+
+At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced and still in a
+flaming contact upon the edge of the world, went out. The red sparks in
+the water vanished together with the stains of blood in the black mantle
+draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up
+and died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined
+earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours' sleep,
+and arose full length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee
+deep amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the
+lost air of a man just born into the world. Handsome, robust, and
+supple, he threw back his head, flung his arms open, and stretched
+himself with a slow twist of the waist and a leisurely growling yawn of
+white teeth, as natural and free from evil in the moment of waking as a
+magnificent and unconscious wild beast. Then, in the suddenly steadied
+glance fixed upon nothing from under a thoughtful frown, appeared the
+man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+After landing from his swim Nostromo had scrambled up, all dripping,
+into the main quadrangle of the old fort; and there, amongst ruined bits
+of walls and rotting remnants of roofs and sheds, he had slept the day
+through. He had slept in the shadow of the mountains, in the white blaze
+of noon, in the stillness and solitude of that overgrown piece of land
+between the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle of the
+gulf. He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing like a tiny black speck
+in the blue, stooped, circling prudently with a stealthiness of flight
+startling in a bird of that great size. The shadow of his pearly-white
+body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no more silently than
+he alighted himself on a hillock of rubbish within three yards of that
+man, lying as still as a corpse. The bird stretched his bare neck,
+craned his bald head, loathsome in the brilliance of varied colouring,
+with an air of voracious anxiety towards the promising stillness of that
+prostrate body. Then, sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he
+settled himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nostromo's eyes
+fell on waking was this patient watcher for the signs of death and
+corruption. When the man got up the vulture hopped away in great,
+side-long, fluttering jumps. He lingered for a while, morose and
+reluctant, before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister droop of
+beak and claws.
+
+Long after he had vanished, Nostromo, lifting his eyes up to the sky,
+muttered, "I am not dead yet."
+
+The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores had lived in splendour and
+publicity up to the very moment, as it were, when he took charge of the
+lighter containing the treasure of silver ingots.
+
+The last act he had performed in Sulaco was in complete harmony with his
+vanity, and as such perfectly genuine. He had given his last dollar to
+an old woman moaning with the grief and fatigue of a dismal search
+under the arch of the ancient gate. Performed in obscurity and without
+witnesses, it had still the characteristics of splendour and publicity,
+and was in strict keeping with his reputation. But this awakening in
+solitude, except for the watchful vulture, amongst the ruins of the
+fort, had no such characteristics. His first confused feeling was
+exactly this--that it was not in keeping. It was more like the end of
+things. The necessity of living concealed somehow, for God knows how
+long, which assailed him on his return to consciousness, made everything
+that had gone before for years appear vain and foolish, like a
+flattering dream come suddenly to an end.
+
+He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and, putting aside the
+bushes, looked upon the harbour. He saw a couple of ships at anchor upon
+the sheet of water reflecting the last gleams of light, and Sotillo's
+steamer moored to the jetty. And behind the pale long front of the
+Custom House, there appeared the extent of the town like a grove of
+thick timber on the plain with a gateway in front, and the cupolas,
+towers, and miradors rising above the trees, all dark, as if surrendered
+already to the night. The thought that it was no longer open to him to
+ride through the streets, recognized by everyone, great and little, as
+he used to do every evening on his way to play monte in the posada of
+the Mexican Domingo; or to sit in the place of honour, listening to
+songs and looking at dances, made it appear to him as a town that had no
+existence.
+
+For a long time he gazed on, then let the parted bushes spring back,
+and, crossing over to the other side of the fort, surveyed the vaster
+emptiness of the great gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the
+narrowing long band of red in the west, which gleamed low between their
+black shapes, and the Capataz thought of Decoud alone there with the
+treasure. That man was the only one who cared whether he fell into the
+hands of the Monterists or not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. And
+that merely would be an anxiety for his own sake. As to the rest, they
+neither knew nor cared. What he had heard Giorgio Viola say once was
+very true. Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept the
+people in poverty and subjection; they kept them as they kept dogs, to
+fight and hunt for their service.
+
+The darkness of the sky had descended to the line of the horizon,
+enveloping the whole gulf, the islets, and the lover of Antonia alone
+with the treasure on the Great Isabel. The Capataz, turning his back on
+these things invisible and existing, sat down and took his face between
+his fists. He felt the pinch of poverty for the first time in his life.
+To find himself without money after a run of bad luck at monte in the
+low, smoky room of Domingo's posada, where the fraternity of Cargadores
+gambled, sang, and danced of an evening; to remain with empty pockets
+after a burst of public generosity to some peyne d'oro girl or other
+(for whom he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitution.
+He remained rich in glory and reputation. But since it was no longer
+possible for him to parade the streets of the town, and be hailed with
+respect in the usual haunts of his leisure, this sailor felt himself
+destitute indeed.
+
+His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and extremely anxious
+thinking, as it had never been dry before. It may be said that Nostromo
+tasted the dust and ashes of the fruit of life into which he had bitten
+deeply in his hunger for praise. Without removing his head from between
+his fists, he tried to spit before him--"Tfui"--and muttered a curse
+upon the selfishness of all the rich people.
+
+Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was the feeling of his
+waking), the idea of leaving the country altogether had presented itself
+to Nostromo. At that thought he had seen, like the beginning of another
+dream, a vision of steep and tideless shores, with dark pines on the
+heights and white houses low down near a very blue sea. He saw the quays
+of a big port, where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails
+outspread like motionless wings, enter gliding silently between the
+end of long moles of squared blocks that project angularly towards
+each other, hugging a cluster of shipping to the superb bosom of a hill
+covered with palaces. He remembered these sights not without some filial
+emotion, though he had been habitually and severely beaten as a boy
+on one of these feluccas by a short-necked, shaven Genoese, with a
+deliberate and distrustful manner, who (he firmly believed) had cheated
+him out of his orphan's inheritance. But it is mercifully decreed that
+the evils of the past should appear but faintly in retrospect. Under
+the sense of loneliness, abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to
+these things appeared tolerable. But, what? Return? With bare feet
+and head, with one check shirt and a pair of cotton calzoneros for all
+worldly possessions?
+
+The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a fist dug into each
+cheek, laughed with self-derision, as he had spat with disgust, straight
+out before him into the night. The confused and intimate impressions
+of universal dissolution which beset a subjective nature at any strong
+check to its ruling passion had a bitterness approaching that of death
+itself. He was simple. He was as ready to become the prey of any belief,
+superstition, or desire as a child.
+
+The facts of his situation he could appreciate like a man with a
+distinct experience of the country. He saw them clearly. He was as if
+sobered after a long bout of intoxication. His fidelity had been taken
+advantage of. He had persuaded the body of Cargadores to side with the
+Blancos against the rest of the people; he had had interviews with Don
+Jose; he had been made use of by Father Corbelan for negotiating with
+Hernandez; it was known that Don Martin Decoud had admitted him to
+a sort of intimacy, so that he had been free of the offices of the
+Porvenir. All these things had flattered him in the usual way. What
+did he care about their politics? Nothing at all. And at the end of it
+all--Nostromo here and Nostromo there--where is Nostromo? Nostromo can
+do this and that--work all day and ride all night--behold! he found
+himself a marked Ribierist for any sort of vengeance Gamacho, for
+instance, would choose to take, now the Montero party, had, after all,
+mastered the town. The Europeans had given up; the Caballeros had given
+up. Don Martin had indeed explained it was only temporary--that he
+was going to bring Barrios to the rescue. Where was that now--with Don
+Martin (whose ironic manner of talk had always made the Capataz feel
+vaguely uneasy) stranded on the Great Isabel? Everybody had given up.
+Even Don Carlos had given up. The hurried removal of the treasure out
+to sea meant nothing else than that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a
+revulsion of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity, beheld all
+his world without faith and courage. He had been betrayed!
+
+With the boundless shadows of the sea behind him, out of his silence and
+immobility, facing the lofty shapes of the lower peaks crowded around
+the white, misty sheen of Higuerota, Nostromo laughed aloud again,
+sprang abruptly to his feet, and stood still. He must go. But where?
+
+"There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage us as if we were dogs
+born to fight and hunt for them. The vecchio is right," he said, slowly
+and scathingly. He remembered old Giorgio taking his pipe out of his
+mouth to throw these words over his shoulder at the cafe, full of
+engine-drivers and fitters from the railway workshops. This image fixed
+his wavering purpose. He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God
+knows what might have happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped
+again and shook his head. To the left and right, in front and behind
+him, the scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.
+
+"Teresa was right, too," he added in a low tone touched with awe. He
+wondered whether she was dead in her anger with him or still alive. As
+if in answer to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with
+a soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling cry:
+"Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo!--it is finished; it is finished"--announces
+calamity and death in the popular belief, drifted vaguely like a large
+dark ball across his path. In the downfall of all the realities that
+made his force, he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered
+slightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It could mean nothing
+else. The cry of the ill-omened bird, the first sound he was to hear on
+his return, was a fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The
+unseen powers which he had offended by refusing to bring a priest to a
+dying woman were lifting up their voice against him. She was dead. With
+admirable and human consistency he referred everything to himself. She
+had been a woman of good counsel always. And the bereaved old Giorgio
+remained stunned by his loss just as he was likely to require the advice
+of his sagacity. The blow would render the dreamy old man quite stupid
+for a time.
+
+As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner of trusted
+subordinates, considered him as a person fitted by education perhaps
+to sign papers in an office and to give orders, but otherwise of no use
+whatever, and something of a fool. The necessity of winding round his
+little finger, almost daily, the pompous and testy self-importance of
+the old seaman had grown irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had
+given him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of overcoming small
+obstacles becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality as much by
+the certitude of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted
+his superior's proneness to fussy action. That old Englishman had no
+judgment, he said to himself. It was useless to suppose that, acquainted
+with the true state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He would
+talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo feared him as one
+would fear saddling one's self with some persistent worry. He had no
+discretion. He would betray the treasure. And Nostromo had made up his
+mind that the treasure should not be betrayed.
+
+The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence. His
+imagination had seized upon the clear and simple notion of betrayal to
+account for the dazed feeling of enlightenment as to being done for, of
+having inadvertently gone out of his existence on an issue in which his
+personality had not been taken into account. A man betrayed is a man
+destroyed. Signora Teresa (may God have her soul!) had been right. He
+had never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her white form sitting
+up bowed in bed, the falling black hair, the wide-browed suffering
+face raised to him, the anger of her denunciations appeared to him now
+majestic with the awfulness of inspiration and of death. For it was not
+for nothing that the evil bird had uttered its lamentable shriek over
+his head. She was dead--may God have her soul!
+
+Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses, his mind used
+the pious formula from the superficial force of habit, but with a
+deep-seated sincerity. The popular mind is incapable of scepticism;
+and that incapacity delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of
+swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders inspired by visions
+of a high destiny. She was dead. But would God consent to receive her
+soul? She had died without confession or absolution, because he had
+not been willing to spare her another moment of his time. His scorn of
+priests as priests remained; but after all, it was impossible to know
+whether what they affirmed was not true. Power, punishment, pardon,
+are simple and credible notions. The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores,
+deprived of certain simple realities, such as the admiration of women,
+the adulation of men, the admired publicity of his life, was ready to
+feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt descend upon his shoulders.
+
+Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the lingering warmth of
+the fine sand under the soles of his feet. The narrow strand gleamed
+far ahead in a long curve, defining the outline of this wild side of the
+harbour. He flitted along the shore like a pursued shadow between the
+sombre palm-groves and the sheet of water lying as still as death on his
+right hand. He strode with headlong haste in the silence and solitude
+as though he had forgotten all prudence and caution. But he knew that on
+this side of the water he ran no risk of discovery. The only inhabitant
+was a lonely, silent, apathetic Indian in charge of the palmarias, who
+brought sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the town for sale. He lived
+without a woman in an open shed, with a perpetual fire of dry sticks
+smouldering near an old canoe lying bottom up on the beach. He could be
+easily avoided.
+
+The barking of the dogs about that man's ranche was the first thing that
+checked his speed. He had forgotten the dogs. He swerved sharply, and
+plunged into the palm-grove, as into a wilderness of columns in an
+immense hall, whose dense obscurity seemed to whisper and rustle faintly
+high above his head. He traversed it, entered a ravine, and climbed to
+the top of a steep ridge free of trees and bushes.
+
+From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw the plain between
+the town and the harbour. In the woods above some night-bird made a
+strange drumming noise. Below beyond the palmaria on the beach, the
+Indian's dogs continued to bark uproariously. He wondered what had upset
+them so much, and, peering down from his elevation, was surprised to
+detect unaccountable movements of the ground below, as if several oblong
+pieces of the plain had been in motion. Those dark, shifting patches,
+alternately catching and eluding the eye, altered their place always
+away from the harbour, with a suggestion of consecutive order and
+purpose. A light dawned upon him. It was a column of infantry on a night
+march towards the higher broken country at the foot of the hills. But he
+was too much in the dark about everything for wonder and speculation.
+
+The plain had resumed its shadowy immobility. He descended the ridge and
+found himself in the open solitude, between the harbour and the town.
+Its spaciousness, extended indefinitely by an effect of obscurity,
+rendered more sensible his profound isolation. His pace became slower.
+No one waited for him; no one thought of him; no one expected or wished
+his return. "Betrayed! Betrayed!" he muttered to himself. No one
+cared. He might have been drowned by this time. No one would have
+cared--unless, perhaps, the children, he thought to himself. But they
+were with the English signora, and not thinking of him at all.
+
+He wavered in his purpose of making straight for the Casa Viola. To what
+end? What could he expect there? His life seemed to fail him in all
+its details, even to the scornful reproaches of Teresa. He was
+aware painfully of his reluctance. Was it that remorse which she had
+prophesied with, what he saw now, was her last breath?
+
+Meantime, he had deviated from the straight course, inclining by a sort
+of instinct to the right, towards the jetty and the harbour, the scene
+of his daily labours. The great length of the Custom House loomed up all
+at once like the wall of a factory. Not a soul challenged his approach,
+and his curiosity became excited as he passed cautiously towards the
+front by the unexpected sight of two lighted windows.
+
+They had the fascination of a lonely vigil kept by some mysterious
+watcher up there, those two windows shining dimly upon the harbour in
+the whole vast extent of the abandoned building. The solitude could
+almost be felt. A strong smell of wood smoke hung about in a thin haze,
+which was faintly perceptible to his raised eyes against the glitter
+of the stars. As he advanced in the profound silence, the shrilling of
+innumerable cicalas in the dry grass seemed positively deafening to his
+strained ears. Slowly, step by step, he found himself in the great hall,
+sombre and full of acrid smoke.
+
+A fire built against the staircase had burnt down impotently to a low
+heap of embers. The hard wood had failed to catch; only a few steps at
+the bottom smouldered, with a creeping glow of sparks defining their
+charred edges. At the top he saw a streak of light from an open door. It
+fell upon the vast landing, all foggy with a slow drift of smoke. That
+was the room. He climbed the stairs, then checked himself, because he
+had seen within the shadow of a man cast upon one of the walls. It was
+a shapeless, high-shouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with
+lowered head, out of his line of sight. The Capataz, remembering that he
+was totally unarmed, stepped aside, and, effacing himself upright in a
+dark corner, waited with his eyes fixed on the door.
+
+The whole enormous ruined barrack of a place, unfinished, without
+ceilings under its lofty roof, was pervaded by the smoke swaying to and
+fro in the faint cross draughts playing in the obscurity of many lofty
+rooms and barnlike passages. Once one of the swinging shutters came
+against the wall with a single sharp crack, as if pushed by an impatient
+hand. A piece of paper scurried out from somewhere, rustling along the
+landing. The man, whoever he was, did not darken the lighted doorway.
+Twice the Capataz, advancing a couple of steps out of his corner,
+craned his neck in the hope of catching sight of what he could be at,
+so quietly, in there. But every time he saw only the distorted shadow
+of broad shoulders and bowed head. He was doing apparently nothing, and
+stirred not from the spot, as though he were meditating--or, perhaps,
+reading a paper. And not a sound issued from the room.
+
+Once more the Capataz stepped back. He wondered who it was--some
+Monterist? But he dreaded to show himself. To discover his presence
+on shore, unless after many days, would, he believed, endanger the
+treasure. With his own knowledge possessing his whole soul, it seemed
+impossible that anybody in Sulaco should fail to jump at the right
+surmise. After a couple of weeks or so it would be different. Who could
+tell he had not returned overland from some port beyond the limits of
+the Republic? The existence of the treasure confused his thoughts with
+a peculiar sort of anxiety, as though his life had become bound up with
+it. It rendered him timorous for a moment before that enigmatic, lighted
+door. Devil take the fellow! He did not want to see him. There would be
+nothing to learn from his face, known or unknown. He was a fool to waste
+his time there in waiting.
+
+Less than five minutes after entering the place the Capataz began his
+retreat. He got away down the stairs with perfect success, gave one
+upward look over his shoulder at the light on the landing, and ran
+stealthily across the hall. But at the very moment he was turning out of
+the great door, with his mind fixed upon escaping the notice of the man
+upstairs, somebody he had not heard coming briskly along the front ran
+full into him. Both muttered a stifled exclamation of surprise, and
+leaped back and stood still, each indistinct to the other. Nostromo was
+silent. The other man spoke first, in an amazed and deadened tone.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+Already Nostromo had seemed to recognize Dr. Monygham. He had no doubt
+now. He hesitated the space of a second. The idea of bolting without a
+word presented itself to his mind. No use! An inexplicable repugnance
+to pronounce the name by which he was known kept him silent a little
+longer. At last he said in a low voice--
+
+"A Cargador."
+
+He walked up to the other. Dr. Monygham had received a shock. He flung
+his arms up and cried out his wonder aloud, forgetting himself before
+the marvel of this meeting. Nostromo angrily warned him to moderate
+his voice. The Custom House was not so deserted as it looked. There was
+somebody in the lighted room above.
+
+There is no more evanescent quality in an accomplished fact than its
+wonderfulness. Solicited incessantly by the considerations affecting
+its fears and desires, the human mind turns naturally away from the
+marvellous side of events. And it was in the most natural way possible
+that the doctor asked this man whom only two minutes before he believed
+to have been drowned in the gulf--
+
+"You have seen somebody up there? Have you?"
+
+"No, I have not seen him."
+
+"Then how do you know?"
+
+"I was running away from his shadow when we met."
+
+"His shadow?"
+
+"Yes. His shadow in the lighted room," said Nostromo, in a contemptuous
+tone. Leaning back with folded arms at the foot of the immense building,
+he dropped his head, biting his lips slightly, and not looking at the
+doctor. "Now," he thought to himself, "he will begin asking me about the
+treasure."
+
+But the doctor's thoughts were concerned with an event not as marvellous
+as Nostromo's appearance, but in itself much less clear. Why had Sotillo
+taken himself off with his whole command with this suddenness and
+secrecy? What did this move portend? However, it dawned upon the
+doctor that the man upstairs was one of the officers left behind by the
+disappointed colonel to communicate with him.
+
+"I believe he is waiting for me," he said.
+
+"It is possible."
+
+"I must see. Do not go away yet, Capataz."
+
+"Go away where?" muttered Nostromo.
+
+Already the doctor had left him. He remained leaning against the wall,
+staring at the dark water of the harbour; the shrilling of cicalas
+filled his ears. An invincible vagueness coming over his thoughts took
+from them all power to determine his will.
+
+"Capataz! Capataz!" the doctor's voice called urgently from above.
+
+The sense of betrayal and ruin floated upon his sombre indifference as
+upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he stepped out from under the wall,
+and, looking up, saw Dr. Monygham leaning out of a lighted window.
+
+"Come up and see what Sotillo has done. You need not fear the man up
+here."
+
+He answered by a slight, bitter laugh. Fear a man! The Capataz of the
+Sulaco Cargadores fear a man! It angered him that anybody should suggest
+such a thing. It angered him to be disarmed and skulking and in danger
+because of the accursed treasure, which was of so little account to the
+people who had tied it round his neck. He could not shake off the worry
+of it. To Nostromo the doctor represented all these people. . . . And
+he had never even asked after it. Not a word of inquiry about the most
+desperate undertaking of his life.
+
+Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again through the cavernous
+hall, where the smoke was considerably thinned, and went up the stairs,
+not so warm to his feet now, towards the streak of light at the top. The
+doctor appeared in it for a moment, agitated and impatient.
+
+"Come up! Come up!"
+
+At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz experienced a shock of
+surprise. The man had not moved. He saw his shadow in the same place.
+He started, then stepped in with a feeling of being about to solve a
+mystery.
+
+It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second, against
+the light of two flaring and guttering candles, through a blue, pungent,
+thin haze which made his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he
+had imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an enormous and
+distorted shadow upon the wall. Swifter than a flash of lightning
+followed the impression of his constrained, toppling attitude--the
+shoulders projecting forward, the head sunk low upon the breast. Then
+he distinguished the arms behind his back, and wrenched so terribly that
+the two clenched fists, lashed together, had been forced up higher than
+the shoulder-blades. From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous
+glance the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over a heavy
+beam and down to a staple in the wall. He did not want to look at the
+rigid legs, at the feet hanging down nervelessly, with their bare toes
+some six inches above the floor, to know that the man had been given the
+estrapade till he had swooned. His first impulse was to dash forward and
+sever the rope at one blow. He felt for his knife. He had no knife--not
+even a knife. He stood quivering, and the doctor, perched on the edge of
+the table, facing thoughtfully the cruel and lamentable sight, his chin
+in his hand, uttered, without stirring--
+
+"Tortured--and shot dead through the breast--getting cold."
+
+This information calmed the Capataz. One of the candles flickering in
+the socket went out. "Who did this?" he asked.
+
+"Sotillo, I tell you. Who else? Tortured--of course. But why shot?" The
+doctor looked fixedly at Nostromo, who shrugged his shoulders slightly.
+"And mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is evident. I wish I had his
+secret."
+
+Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to look. "I seem to have
+seen that face somewhere," he muttered. "Who is he?"
+
+The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. "I may yet come to envying
+his fate. What do you think of that, Capataz, eh?"
+
+But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing the remaining light,
+he thrust it under the drooping head. The doctor sat oblivious, with
+a lost gaze. Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of
+Nostromo's hand, clattered on the floor.
+
+"Hullo!" exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a start. He could hear
+the Capataz stagger against the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction
+of the light within, the dead blackness sealing the window-frames became
+alive with stars to his sight.
+
+"Of course, of course," the doctor muttered to himself in English.
+"Enough to make him jump out of his skin."
+
+Nostromo's heart seemed to force itself into his throat. His head swam.
+Hirsch! The man was Hirsch! He held on tight to the edge of the table.
+
+"But he was hiding in the lighter," he almost shouted His voice fell.
+"In the lighter, and--and--"
+
+"And Sotillo brought him in," said the doctor. "He is no more startling
+to you than you were to me. What I want to know is how he induced some
+compassionate soul to shoot him."
+
+"So Sotillo knows--" began Nostromo, in a more equable voice.
+
+"Everything!" interrupted the doctor.
+
+The Capataz was heard striking the table with his fist. "Everything?
+What are you saying, there? Everything? Know everything? It is
+impossible! Everything?"
+
+"Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I tell you I have heard
+this Hirsch questioned last night, here, in this very room. He knew your
+name, Decoud's name, and all about the loading of the silver. . . .
+The lighter was cut in two. He was grovelling in abject terror before
+Sotillo, but he remembered that much. What do you want more? He knew
+least about himself. They found him clinging to their anchor. He must
+have caught at it just as the lighter went to the bottom."
+
+"Went to the bottom?" repeated Nostromo, slowly. "Sotillo believes that?
+Bueno!"
+
+The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to imagine what else could
+anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo believed that the lighter was sunk, and
+the Capataz de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud and perhaps one
+or two other political fugitives, had been drowned.
+
+"I told you well, senor doctor," remarked Nostromo at that point, "that
+Sotillo did not know everything."
+
+"Eh? What do you mean?"
+
+"He did not know I was not dead."
+
+"Neither did we."
+
+"And you did not care--none of you caballeros on the wharf--once you got
+off a man of flesh and blood like yourselves on a fool's business that
+could not end well."
+
+"You forget, Capataz, I was not on the wharf. And I did not think well
+of the business. So you need not taunt me. I tell you what, man, we had
+but little leisure to think of the dead. Death stands near behind us
+all. You were gone."
+
+"I went, indeed!" broke in Nostromo. "And for the sake of what--tell
+me?"
+
+"Ah! that is your own affair," the doctor said, roughly. "Do not ask
+me."
+
+Their flowing murmurs paused in the dark. Perched on the edge of the
+table with slightly averted faces, they felt their shoulders touch, and
+their eyes remained directed towards an upright shape nearly lost in the
+obscurity of the inner part of the room, that with projecting head and
+shoulders, in ghastly immobility, seemed intent on catching every word.
+
+"Muy bien!" Nostromo muttered at last. "So be it. Teresa was right. It
+is my own affair."
+
+"Teresa is dead," remarked the doctor, absently, while his mind
+followed a new line of thought suggested by what might have been called
+Nostromo's return to life. "She died, the poor woman."
+
+"Without a priest?" the Capataz asked, anxiously.
+
+"What a question! Who could have got a priest for her last night?"
+
+"May God keep her soul!" ejaculated Nostromo, with a gloomy and hopeless
+fervour which had no time to surprise Dr. Monygham, before, reverting to
+their previous conversation, he continued in a sinister tone, "Si,
+senor doctor. As you were saying, it is my own affair. A very desperate
+affair."
+
+"There are no two men in this part of the world that could have saved
+themselves by swimming as you have done," the doctor said, admiringly.
+
+And again there was silence between those two men. They were both
+reflecting, and the diversity of their natures made their thoughts born
+from their meeting swing afar from each other. The doctor, impelled to
+risky action by his loyalty to the Goulds, wondered with thankfulness at
+the chain of accident which had brought that man back where he would be
+of the greatest use in the work of saving the San Tome mine. The doctor
+was loyal to the mine. It presented itself to his fifty-years' old eyes
+in the shape of a little woman in a soft dress with a long train, with
+a head attractively overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and the
+delicate preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of a gem and
+a flower, revealed in every attitude of her person. As the dangers
+thickened round the San Tome mine this illusion acquired force,
+permanency, and authority. It claimed him at last! This claim, exalted
+by a spiritual detachment from the usual sanctions of hope and reward,
+made Dr. Monygham's thinking, acting, individuality extremely dangerous
+to himself and to others, all his scruples vanishing in the proud
+feeling that his devotion was the only thing that stood between an
+admirable woman and a frightful disaster.
+
+It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly indifferent to
+Decoud's fate, but left his wits perfectly clear for the appreciation
+of Decoud's political idea. It was a good idea--and Barrios was the only
+instrument of its realization. The doctor's soul, withered and shrunk by
+the shame of a moral disgrace, became implacable in the expansion of its
+tenderness. Nostromo's return was providential. He did not think of him
+humanely, as of a fellow-creature just escaped from the jaws of death.
+The Capataz for him was the only possible messenger to Cayta. The very
+man. The doctor's misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer because
+based on personal failure) did not lift him sufficiently above common
+weaknesses. He was under the spell of an established reputation.
+Trumpeted by Captain Mitchell, grown in repetition, and fixed in
+general assent, Nostromo's faithfulness had never been questioned by Dr.
+Monygham as a fact. It was not likely to be questioned now he stood in
+desperate need of it himself. Dr. Monygham was human; he accepted the
+popular conception of the Capataz's incorruptibility simply because no
+word or fact had ever contradicted a mere affirmation. It seemed to be
+a part of the man, like his whiskers or his teeth. It was impossible to
+conceive him otherwise. The question was whether he would consent to
+go on such a dangerous and desperate errand. The doctor was observant
+enough to have become aware from the first of something peculiar in the
+man's temper. He was no doubt sore about the loss of the silver.
+
+"It will be necessary to take him into my fullest confidence," he said
+to himself, with a certain acuteness of insight into the nature he had
+to deal with.
+
+On Nostromo's side the silence had been full of black irresolution,
+anger, and mistrust. He was the first to break it, however.
+
+"The swimming was no great matter," he said. "It is what went
+before--and what comes after that--"
+
+He did not quite finish what he meant to say, breaking off short, as
+though his thought had butted against a solid obstacle. The doctor's
+mind pursued its own schemes with Machiavellian subtlety. He said as
+sympathetically as he was able--
+
+"It is unfortunate, Capataz. But no one would think of blaming you. Very
+unfortunate. To begin with, the treasure ought never to have left the
+mountain. But it was Decoud who--however, he is dead. There is no need
+to talk of him."
+
+"No," assented Nostromo, as the doctor paused, "there is no need to talk
+of dead men. But I am not dead yet."
+
+"You are all right. Only a man of your intrepidity could have saved
+himself."
+
+In this Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed highly the intrepidity of
+that man, whom he valued but little, being disillusioned as to mankind
+in general, because of the particular instance in which his own manhood
+had failed. Having had to encounter singlehanded during his period of
+eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous
+element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human
+littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural
+forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows. He was eminently fit
+to appreciate the mental image he made for himself of the Capataz, after
+hours of tension and anxiety, precipitated suddenly into an abyss of
+waters and darkness, without earth or sky, and confronting it not only
+with an undismayed mind, but with sensible success. Of course, the man
+was an incomparable swimmer, that was known, but the doctor judged that
+this instance testified to a still greater intrepidity of spirit. It was
+pleasing to him; he augured well from it for the success of the arduous
+mission with which he meant to entrust the Capataz so marvellously
+restored to usefulness. And in a tone vaguely gratified, he observed--
+
+"It must have been terribly dark!"
+
+"It was the worst darkness of the Golfo," the Capataz assented, briefly.
+He was mollified by what seemed a sign of some faint interest in such
+things as had befallen him, and dropped a few descriptive phrases with
+an affected and curt nonchalance. At that moment he felt communicative.
+He expected the continuance of that interest which, whether accepted
+or rejected, would have restored to him his personality--the only thing
+lost in that desperate affair. But the doctor, engrossed by a desperate
+adventure of his own, was terrible in the pursuit of his idea. He let an
+exclamation of regret escape him.
+
+"I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a light."
+
+This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz by its character of
+cold-blooded atrocity. It was as much as to say, "I wish you had shown
+yourself a coward; I wish you had had your throat cut for your pains."
+Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it related only to the
+silver, being uttered simply and with many mental reservations. Surprise
+and rage rendered him speechless, and the doctor pursued, practically
+unheard by Nostromo, whose stirred blood was beating violently in his
+ears.
+
+"For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the silver would have
+turned short round and made for some small port abroad. Economically it
+would have been wasteful, but still less wasteful than having it sunk.
+It was the next best thing to having it at hand in some safe place, and
+using part of it to buy up Sotillo. But I doubt whether Don Carlos would
+have ever made up his mind to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that
+is a fact, Capataz."
+
+The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a tempest in his ears in
+time to hear the name of Don Carlos. He seemed to have come out of it a
+changed man--a man who spoke thoughtfully in a soft and even voice.
+
+"And would Don Carlos have been content if I had surrendered this
+treasure?"
+
+"I should not wonder if they were all of that way of thinking now," the
+doctor said, grimly. "I was never consulted. Decoud had it his own way.
+Their eyes are opened by this time, I should think. I for one know that
+if that silver turned up this moment miraculously ashore I would give it
+to Sotillo. And, as things stand, I would be approved."
+
+"Turned up miraculously," repeated the Capataz very low; then raised
+his voice. "That, senor, would be a greater miracle than any saint could
+perform."
+
+"I believe you, Capataz," said the doctor, drily.
+
+He went on to develop his view of Sotillo's dangerous influence upon the
+situation. And the Capataz, listening as if in a dream, felt himself of
+as little account as the indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man
+whom he saw upright under the beam, with his air of listening also,
+disregarded, forgotten, like a terrible example of neglect.
+
+"Was it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that they came to me,
+then?" he interrupted suddenly. "Had I not done enough for them to be
+of some account, por Dios? Is it that the hombres finos--the
+gentlemen--need not think as long as there is a man of the people ready
+to risk his body and soul? Or, perhaps, we have no souls--like dogs?"
+
+"There was Decoud, too, with his plan," the doctor reminded him again.
+
+"Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had something to do with
+that treasure, too--what do I know? No! I have heard too many things. It
+seems to me that everything is permitted to the rich."
+
+"I understand, Capataz," the doctor began.
+
+"What Capataz?" broke in Nostromo, in a forcible but even voice. "The
+Capataz is undone, destroyed. There is no Capataz. Oh, no! You will find
+the Capataz no more."
+
+"Come, this is childish!" remonstrated the doctor; and the other calmed
+down suddenly.
+
+"I have been indeed like a little child," he muttered.
+
+And as his eyes met again the shape of the murdered man suspended in
+his awful immobility, which seemed the uncomplaining immobility of
+attention, he asked, wondering gently--
+
+"Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful wretch? Do you
+know? No torture could have been worse than his fear. Killing I can
+understand. His anguish was intolerable to behold. But why should he
+torment him like this? He could tell no more."
+
+"No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man would have seen that. He
+had told him everything. But I tell you what it is, Capataz. Sotillo
+would not believe what he was told. Not everything."
+
+"What is it he would not believe? I cannot understand."
+
+"I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to believe that the
+treasure is lost."
+
+"What?" the Capataz cried out in a discomposed tone.
+
+"That startles you--eh?"
+
+"Am I to understand, senor," Nostromo went on in a deliberate and, as it
+were, watchful tone, "that Sotillo thinks the treasure has been saved by
+some means?"
+
+"No! no! That would be impossible," said the doctor, with conviction;
+and Nostromo emitted a grunt in the dark. "That would be impossible. He
+thinks that the silver was no longer in the lighter when she was sunk.
+He has convinced himself that the whole show of getting it away to sea
+is a mere sham got up to deceive Gamacho and his Nationals, Pedrito
+Montero, Senor Fuentes, our new Gefe Politico, and himself, too. Only,
+he says, he is no such fool."
+
+"But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest imbecile that ever called
+himself a colonel in this country of evil," growled Nostromo.
+
+"He is no more unreasonable than many sensible men," said the doctor.
+"He has convinced himself that the treasure can be found because he
+desires passionately to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid of
+his officers turning upon him and going over to Pedrito, whom he has not
+the courage either to fight or trust. Do you see that, Capataz? He need
+fear no desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous plunder
+turning up. I have made it my business to keep this very hope up."
+
+"You have?" the Capataz de Cargadores repeated cautiously. "Well, that
+is wonderful. And how long do you think you are going to keep it up?"
+
+"As long as I can."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"I can tell you exactly. As long as I live," the doctor retorted in
+a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, he described the story of his
+arrest and the circumstances of his release. "I was going back to that
+silly scoundrel when we met," he concluded.
+
+Nostromo had listened with profound attention. "You have made up your
+mind, then, to a speedy death," he muttered through his clenched teeth.
+
+"Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz," the doctor said, testily. "You are
+not the only one here who can look an ugly death in the face."
+
+"No doubt," mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be overheard. "There may be
+even more than two fools in this place. Who knows?"
+
+"And that is my affair," said the doctor, curtly.
+
+"As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my affair," retorted
+Nostromo. "I see. Bueno! Each of us has his reasons. But you were the
+last man I conversed with before I started, and you talked to me as if I
+were a fool."
+
+Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor's sardonic treatment of his
+great reputation. Decoud's faintly ironic recognition used to make him
+uneasy; but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was flattering,
+whereas the doctor was a nobody. He could remember him a penniless
+outcast, slinking about the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend
+or acquaintance, till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service of the
+mine.
+
+"You may be very wise," he went on, thoughtfully, staring into the
+obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome enigma of the tortured
+and murdered Hirsch. "But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have
+learned one thing since, and that is that you are a dangerous man."
+
+Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than exclaim--
+
+"What is it you say?"
+
+"If he could speak he would say the same thing," pursued Nostromo, with
+a nod of his shadowy head silhouetted against the starlit window.
+
+"I do not understand you," said Dr. Monygham, faintly.
+
+"No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in his madness, he would
+have been in no haste to give the estrapade to that miserable Hirsch."
+
+The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion, absorbing all
+his sensibilities, had left his heart steeled against remorse and pity.
+Still, for complete relief, he felt the necessity of repelling it loudly
+and contemptuously.
+
+"Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like Sotillo. I confess I
+did not give a thought to Hirsch. If I had it would have been useless.
+Anybody can see that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment he
+caught hold of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell you! Just as I myself
+am doomed--most probably."
+
+This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo's remark, which was
+plausible enough to prick his conscience. He was not a callous man. But
+the necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task he had taken
+upon himself dwarfed all merely humane considerations. He had undertaken
+it in a fanatical spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to
+circumvent even the basest of mankind was odious to him. It was odious
+to him by training, instinct, and tradition. To do these things in the
+character of a traitor was abhorrent to his nature and terrible to his
+feelings. He had made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He had
+said to himself bitterly, "I am the only one fit for that dirty work."
+And he believed this. He was not subtle. His simplicity was such that,
+though he had no sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly
+enough, to which he exposed himself, had a sustaining and comforting
+effect. To that spiritual state the fate of Hirsch presented itself
+as part of the general atrocity of things. He considered that episode
+practically. What did it mean? Was it a sign of some dangerous change in
+Sotillo's delusion? That the man should have been killed like this was
+what the doctor could not understand.
+
+"Yes. But why shot?" he murmured to himself.
+
+Nostromo kept very still.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+Distracted between doubts and hopes, dismayed by the sound of bells
+pealing out the arrival of Pedrito Montero, Sotillo had spent the
+morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was
+unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions.
+Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear made a tumult, in the colonel's
+breast louder than the din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned
+had come to pass. Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the mine had fallen
+into his hands. He had performed no military exploit to secure his
+position, and had obtained no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito
+Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread. The sound of
+bells maddened him.
+
+Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, he had made his
+battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the
+length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his
+right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with
+a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in
+savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on
+the table. His officers, crowding the window giving the view of the town
+gate, disputed amongst themselves the use of his field-glass bought last
+year on long credit from Anzani. It passed from hand to hand, and the
+possessor for the time being was besieged by anxious inquiries.
+
+"There is nothing; there is nothing to see!" he would repeat
+impatiently.
+
+There was nothing. And when the picket in the bushes near the Casa
+Viola had been ordered to fall back upon the main body, no stir of life
+appeared on the stretch of dusty and arid land between the town and the
+waters of the port. But late in the afternoon a horseman issuing from
+the gate was made out riding up fearlessly. It was an emissary from
+Senor Fuentes. Being all alone he was allowed to come on. Dismounting at
+the great door he greeted the silent bystanders with cheery impudence,
+and begged to be taken up at once to the "muy valliente" colonel.
+
+Senor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Gefe Politico, had
+turned his diplomatic abilities to getting hold of the harbour as well
+as of the mine. The man he pitched upon to negotiate with Sotillo was a
+Notary Public, whom the revolution had found languishing in the common
+jail on a charge of forging documents. Liberated by the mob along with
+the other "victims of Blanco tyranny," he had hastened to offer his
+services to the new Government.
+
+He set out determined to display much zeal and eloquence in trying to
+induce Sotillo to come into town alone for a conference with Pedrito
+Montero. Nothing was further from the colonel's intentions. The mere
+fleeting idea of trusting himself into the famous Pedrito's hands had
+made him feel unwell several times. It was out of the question--it was
+madness. And to put himself in open hostility was madness, too. It would
+render impossible a systematic search for that treasure, for that wealth
+of silver which he seemed to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere
+near.
+
+But where? Where? Heavens! Where? Oh! why had he allowed that doctor
+to go! Imbecile that he was. But no! It was the only right course, he
+reflected distractedly, while the messenger waited downstairs chatting
+agreeably to the officers. It was in that scoundrelly doctor's true
+interest to return with positive information. But what if anything
+stopped him? A general prohibition to leave the town, for instance!
+There would be patrols!
+
+The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in his tracks as if
+struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration suggested to him an
+expedient not unknown to European statesmen when they wish to delay a
+difficult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled into the hammock
+with undignified haste. His handsome face had turned yellow with the
+strain of weighty cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp;
+the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. The velvety, caressing
+glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even decomposed; for these
+almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot
+with much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the surprised envoy
+of Senor Fuentes in a deadened, exhausted voice. It came pathetically
+feeble from under a pile of ponchos, which buried his elegant person
+right up to the black moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign of bodily
+prostration and mental incapacity. Fever, fever--a heavy fever
+had overtaken the "muy valliente" colonel. A wavering wildness of
+expression, caused by the passing spasms of a slight colic which had
+declared itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic, had
+a genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a cold fit. The colonel
+explained that he was unable to think, to listen, to speak. With an
+appearance of superhuman effort the colonel gasped out that he was
+not in a state to return a suitable reply or to execute any of his
+Excellency's orders. But to-morrow! To-morrow! Ah! to-morrow! Let his
+Excellency Don Pedro be without uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda Regiment
+held the harbour, held--And closing his eyes, he rolled his aching head
+like a half-delirious invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy,
+who was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order to catch the
+painful and broken accents. Meantime, Colonel Sotillo trusted that his
+Excellency's humanity would permit the doctor, the English doctor, to
+come out of town with his case of foreign remedies to attend upon him.
+He begged anxiously his worship the caballero now present for the grace
+of looking in as he passed the Casa Gould, and informing the English
+doctor, who was probably there, that his services were immediately
+required by Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of fever in the Custom House.
+Immediately. Most urgently required. Awaited with extreme impatience.
+A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and would not open
+them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, dumb, insensible, overcome,
+vanquished, crushed, annihilated by the fell disease.
+
+But as soon as the other had shut after him the door of the landing, the
+colonel leaped out with a fling of both feet in an avalanche of woollen
+coverings. His spurs having become entangled in a perfect welter of
+ponchos he nearly pitched on his head, and did not recover his balance
+till the middle of the room. Concealed behind the half-closed jalousies
+he listened to what went on below.
+
+The envoy had already mounted, and turning to the morose officers
+occupying the great doorway, took off his hat formally.
+
+"Caballeros," he said, in a very loud tone, "allow me to recommend
+you to take great care of your colonel. It has done me much honour and
+gratification to have seen you all, a fine body of men exercising the
+soldierly virtue of patience in this exposed situation, where there
+is much sun, and no water to speak of, while a town full of wine and
+feminine charms is ready to embrace you for the brave men you are.
+Caballeros, I have the honour to salute you. There will be much dancing
+to-night in Sulaco. Good-bye!"
+
+But he reined in his horse and inclined his head sideways on seeing
+the old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a straight narrow
+coat coming down to his ankles as it were the casing of the regimental
+colours rolled round their staff.
+
+The intelligent old warrior, after enunciating in a dogmatic tone the
+general proposition that the "world was full of traitors," went on
+pronouncing deliberately a panegyric upon Sotillo. He ascribed to him
+with leisurely emphasis every virtue under heaven, summing it all up in
+an absurd colloquialism current amongst the lower class of Occidentals
+(especially about Esmeralda). "And," he concluded, with a sudden rise in
+the voice, "a man of many teeth--'hombre de muchos dientes.' Si, senor.
+As to us," he pursued, portentous and impressive, "your worship is
+beholding the finest body of officers in the Republic, men unequalled
+for valour and sagacity, 'y hombres de muchos dientes.'"
+
+"What? All of them?" inquired the disreputable envoy of Senor Fuentes,
+with a faint, derisive smile.
+
+"Todos. Si, senor," the major affirmed, gravely, with conviction. "Men
+of many teeth."
+
+The other wheeled his horse to face the portal resembling the high gate
+of a dismal barn. He raised himself in his stirrups, extended one arm.
+He was a facetious scoundrel, entertaining for these stupid Occidentals
+a feeling of great scorn natural in a native from the central provinces.
+The folly of Esmeraldians especially aroused his amused contempt. He
+began an oration upon Pedro Montero, keeping a solemn countenance. He
+flourished his hand as if introducing him to their notice. And when he
+saw every face set, all the eyes fixed upon his lips, he began to
+shout a sort of catalogue of perfections: "Generous, valorous, affable,
+profound"--(he snatched off his hat enthusiastically)--"a statesman, an
+invincible chief of partisans--" He dropped his voice startlingly to a
+deep, hollow note--"and a dentist."
+
+He was off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid straddle of his legs,
+the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the rakish slant of the sombrero
+above the square, motionless set of the shoulders expressing an
+infinite, awe-inspiring impudence.
+
+Upstairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move for a long time.
+The audacity of the fellow appalled him. What were his officers saying
+below? They were saying nothing. Complete silence. He quaked. It was not
+thus that he had imagined himself at that stage of the expedition. He
+had seen himself triumphant, unquestioned, appeased, the idol of the
+soldiers, weighing in secret complacency the agreeable alternatives of
+power and wealth open to his choice. Alas! How different! Distracted,
+restless, supine, burning with fury, or frozen with terror, he felt
+a dread as fathomless as the sea creep upon him from every side. That
+rogue of a doctor had to come out with his information. That was clear.
+It would be of no use to him--alone. He could do nothing with it.
+Malediction! The doctor would never come out. He was probably under
+arrest already, shut up together with Don Carlos. He laughed aloud
+insanely. Ha! ha! ha! ha! It was Pedrito Montero who would get the
+information. Ha! ha! ha! ha!--and the silver. Ha!
+
+All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became motionless and silent
+as if turned into stone. He too, had a prisoner. A prisoner who must,
+must know the real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And
+Sotillo, who all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch, felt an
+inexplicable reluctance at the notion of proceeding to extremities.
+
+He felt a reluctance--part of that unfathomable dread that crept on all
+sides upon him. He remembered reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of the
+hide merchant, his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It
+was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility. The fact was that
+though Sotillo did never for a moment believe his story--he could not
+believe it; nobody could believe such nonsense--yet those accents of
+despairing truth impressed him disagreeably. They made him feel sick.
+And he suspected also that the man might have gone mad with fear. A
+lunatic is a hopeless subject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence.
+He would know how to deal with that.
+
+He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. His fine eyes
+squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a bare-footed orderly appeared
+noiselessly, a corporal, with his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a
+stick in his hand.
+
+The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable Hirsch, pushed
+in by several soldiers, found him frowning awfully in a broad armchair,
+hat on head, knees wide apart, arms akimbo, masterful, imposing,
+irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible.
+
+Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled violently
+into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he remained apparently
+forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full
+of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows,
+passive, sunk in hebetude. He listened to threats and admonitions, and
+afterwards made his usual answers to questions, with his chin sunk on
+his breast, his hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front of
+Sotillo, and never looking up. When he was forced to hold up his head,
+by means of a bayonet-point prodding him under the chin, his eyes had a
+vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were
+seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of his white face.
+Then they stopped suddenly.
+
+Sotillo looked at him in silence. "Will you depart from your obstinacy,
+you rogue?" he asked. Already a rope, whose one end was fastened to
+Senor Hirsch's wrists, had been thrown over a beam, and three soldiers
+held the other end, waiting. He made no answer. His heavy lower lip hung
+stupidly. Sotillo made a sign. Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a
+yell of despair and agony burst out in the room, filled the passage of
+the great buildings, rent the air outside, caused every soldier of the
+camp along the shore to look up at the windows, started some of the
+officers in the hall babbling excitedly, with shining eyes; others,
+setting their lips, looked gloomily at the floor.
+
+Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room. The sentry on the
+landing presented arms. Hirsch went on screaming all alone behind the
+half-closed jalousies while the sunshine, reflected from the water of
+the harbour, made an ever-running ripple of light high up on the wall.
+He screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a wide-open mouth--incredibly
+wide, black, enormous, full of teeth--comical.
+
+In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he made the waves
+of his agony travel as far as the O. S. N. Company's offices. Captain
+Mitchell on the balcony, trying to make out what went on generally, had
+heard him faintly but distinctly, and the feeble and appalling sound
+lingered in his ears after he had retreated indoors with blanched
+cheeks. He had been driven off the balcony several times during that
+afternoon.
+
+Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held consultations
+with his officers, gave contradictory orders in this shrill clamour
+pervading the whole empty edifice. Sometimes there would be long and
+awful silences. Several times he had entered the torture-chamber where
+his sword, horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass were lying on the table,
+to ask with forced calmness, "Will you speak the truth now? No? I can
+wait." But he could not afford to wait much longer. That was just it.
+Every time he went in and came out with a slam of the door, the sentry
+on the landing presented arms, and got in return a black, venomous,
+unsteady glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being merely the
+reflection of the soul within--a soul of gloomy hatred, irresolution,
+avarice, and fury.
+
+The sun had set when he went in once more. A soldier carried in two
+lighted candles and slunk out, shutting the door without noise.
+
+"Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver! The silver, I say!
+Where is it? Where have you foreign rogues hidden it? Confess or--"
+
+A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked limbs, but the
+body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising business man from Esmeralda, hung
+under the heavy beam perpendicular and silent, facing the colonel
+awfully. The inflow of the night air, cooled by the snows of the Sierra,
+spread gradually a delicious freshness through the close heat of the
+room.
+
+"Speak--thief--scoundrel--picaro--or--"
+
+Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his arm lifted up.
+For a word, for one little word, he felt he would have knelt, cringed,
+grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed
+eyeballs starting out of the grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very
+still with its mouth closed askew. The colonel ground his teeth with
+rage and struck. The rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long
+string of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging motion was
+imparted to the body of Senor Hirsch, the well-known hide merchant on
+the coast. With a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a
+few inches, curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. Senor
+Hirsch's head was flung back on his straining throat; his chin trembled.
+For a moment the rattle of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast,
+shadowy room, where the candles made a patch of light round the two
+flames burning side by side. And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand,
+waited for him to speak, with the sudden flash of a grin and a straining
+forward of the wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his face.
+
+The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with a low cry of
+dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom. Quick as thought he
+snatched up his revolver, and fired twice. The report and the concussion
+of the shots seemed to throw him at once from ungovernable rage into
+idiotic stupor. He stood with drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he
+done, Sangre de Dios! What had he done? He was basely appalled at his
+impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips from which so much was to
+be extorted. What could he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong
+flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind; even the craven and
+absurd notion of hiding under the table occurred to his cowardice.
+It was too late; his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great
+clatter of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and wonder. But
+since they did not immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his
+breast, the brazen side of his character asserted itself. Passing the
+sleeve of his uniform over his face he pulled himself together, His
+truculent glance turned slowly here and there, checked the noise where
+it fell; and the stiff body of the late Senor Hirsch, merchant, after
+swaying imperceptibly, made a half turn, and came to a rest in the midst
+of awed murmurs and uneasy shuffling.
+
+A voice remarked loudly, "Behold a man who will never speak again." And
+another, from the back row of faces, timid and pressing, cried out--
+
+"Why did you kill him, mi colonel?"
+
+"Because he has confessed everything," answered Sotillo, with the
+hardihood of desperation. He felt himself cornered. He brazened it out
+on the strength of his reputation with very fair success. His hearers
+thought him very capable of such an act. They were disposed to believe
+his flattering tale. There is no credulity so eager and blind as the
+credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the
+moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. Ah! he had
+confessed everything, this fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he
+was no longer wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior
+captain--a big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat
+cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged
+like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch,
+muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this there was
+no need to guard against any future treacheries of that scoundrel. The
+others stared, shifting from foot to foot, and whispering short remarks
+to each other.
+
+Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremptory orders to hasten
+the retirement decided upon in the afternoon. Sinister, impressive, his
+sombrero pulled right down upon his eyebrows, he marched first through
+the door in such disorder of mind that he forgot utterly to provide for
+Dr. Monygham's possible return. As the officers trooped out after him,
+one or two looked back hastily at the late Senor Hirsch, merchant from
+Esmeralda, left swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the two burning
+candles. In the emptiness of the room the burly shadow of head and
+shoulders on the wall had an air of life.
+
+Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by companies without
+drum or trumpet. The old scarecrow major commanded the rearguard; but
+the party he left behind with orders to fire the Custom House (and "burn
+the carcass of the treacherous Jew where it hung") failed somehow in
+their haste to set the staircase properly alight. The body of the
+late Senor Hirsch dwelt alone for a time in the dismal solitude of the
+unfinished building, resounding weirdly with sudden slams and clicks
+of doors and latches, with rustling scurries of torn papers, and the
+tremulous sighs that at each gust of wind passed under the high roof.
+The light of the two candles burning before the perpendicular and
+breathless immobility of the late Senor Hirsch threw a gleam afar over
+land and water, like a signal in the night. He remained to startle
+Nostromo by his presence, and to puzzle Dr. Monygham by the mystery of
+his atrocious end.
+
+"But why shot?" the doctor again asked himself, audibly. This time he
+was answered by a dry laugh from Nostromo.
+
+"You seem much concerned at a very natural thing, senor doctor. I wonder
+why? It is very likely that before long we shall all get shot one after
+another, if not by Sotillo, then by Pedrito, or Fuentes, or Gamacho.
+And we may even get the estrapade, too, or worse--quien sabe?--with your
+pretty tale of the silver you put into Sotillo's head."
+
+"It was in his head already," the doctor protested. "I only--"
+
+"Yes. And you only nailed it there so that the devil himself--"
+
+"That is precisely what I meant to do," caught up the doctor.
+
+"That is what you meant to do. Bueno. It is as I say. You are a
+dangerous man."
+
+Their voices, which without rising had been growing quarrelsome, ceased
+suddenly. The late Senor Hirsch, erect and shadowy against the stars,
+seemed to be waiting attentive, in impartial silence.
+
+But Dr. Monygham had no mind to quarrel with Nostromo. At this supremely
+critical point of Sulaco's fortunes it was borne upon him at last that
+this man was really indispensable, more indispensable than ever the
+infatuation of Captain Mitchell, his proud discoverer, could conceive;
+far beyond what Decoud's best dry raillery about "my illustrious friend,
+the unique Capataz de Cargadores," had ever intended. The fellow was
+unique. He was not "one in a thousand." He was absolutely the only
+one. The doctor surrendered. There was something in the genius of that
+Genoese seaman which dominated the destinies of great enterprises and
+of many people, the fortunes of Charles Gould, the fate of an admirable
+woman. At this last thought the doctor had to clear his throat before he
+could speak.
+
+In a completely changed tone he pointed out to the Capataz that, to
+begin with, he personally ran no great risk. As far as everybody knew he
+was dead. It was an enormous advantage. He had only to keep out of sight
+in the Casa Viola, where the old Garibaldino was known to be alone--with
+his dead wife. The servants had all run away. No one would think of
+searching for him there, or anywhere else on earth, for that matter.
+
+"That would be very true," Nostromo spoke up, bitterly, "if I had not
+met you."
+
+For a time the doctor kept silent. "Do you mean to say that you think I
+may give you away?" he asked in an unsteady voice. "Why? Why should I do
+that?"
+
+"What do I know? Why not? To gain a day perhaps. It would take Sotillo a
+day to give me the estrapade, and try some other things perhaps, before
+he puts a bullet through my heart--as he did to that poor wretch here.
+Why not?"
+
+The doctor swallowed with difficulty. His throat had gone dry in a
+moment. It was not from indignation. The doctor, pathetically enough,
+believed that he had forfeited the right to be indignant with any
+one--for anything. It was simple dread. Had the fellow heard his story
+by some chance? If so, there was an end of his usefulness in that
+direction. The indispensable man escaped his influence, because of
+that indelible blot which made him fit for dirty work. A feeling as of
+sickness came upon the doctor. He would have given anything to know, but
+he dared not clear up the point. The fanaticism of his devotion, fed on
+the sense of his abasement, hardened his heart in sadness and scorn.
+
+"Why not, indeed?" he reechoed, sardonically. "Then the safe thing for
+you is to kill me on the spot. I would defend myself. But you may just
+as well know I am going about unarmed."
+
+"Por Dios!" said the Capataz, passionately. "You fine people are all
+alike. All dangerous. All betrayers of the poor who are your dogs."
+
+"You do not understand," began the doctor, slowly.
+
+"I understand you all!" cried the other with a violent movement, as
+shadowy to the doctor's eyes as the persistent immobility of the late
+Senor Hirsch. "A poor man amongst you has got to look after himself. I
+say that you do not care for those that serve you. Look at me! After all
+these years, suddenly, here I find myself like one of these curs that
+bark outside the walls--without a kennel or a dry bone for my teeth.
+_Caramba!_" But he relented with a contemptuous fairness. "Of course," he
+went on, quietly, "I do not suppose that you would hasten to give me
+up to Sotillo, for example. It is not that. It is that I am nothing!
+Suddenly--" He swung his arm downwards. "Nothing to any one," he
+repeated.
+
+The doctor breathed freely. "Listen, Capataz," he said, stretching out
+his arm almost affectionately towards Nostromo's shoulder. "I am going
+to tell you a very simple thing. You are safe because you are needed. I
+would not give you away for any conceivable reason, because I want you."
+
+In the dark Nostromo bit his lip. He had heard enough of that. He knew
+what that meant. No more of that for him. But he had to look after
+himself now, he thought. And he thought, too, that it would not be
+prudent to part in anger from his companion. The doctor, admitted to be
+a great healer, had, amongst the populace of Sulaco, the reputation
+of being an evil sort of man. It was based solidly on his personal
+appearance, which was strange, and on his rough ironic manner--proofs
+visible, sensible, and incontrovertible of the doctor's malevolent
+disposition. And Nostromo was of the people. So he only grunted
+incredulously.
+
+"You, to speak plainly, are the only man," the doctor pursued. "It is
+in your power to save this town and . . . everybody from the destructive
+rapacity of men who--"
+
+"No, senor," said Nostromo, sullenly. "It is not in my power to get the
+treasure back for you to give up to Sotillo, or Pedrito, or Gamacho.
+What do I know?"
+
+"Nobody expects the impossible," was the answer.
+
+"You have said it yourself--nobody," muttered Nostromo, in a gloomy,
+threatening tone.
+
+But Dr. Monygham, full of hope, disregarded the enigmatic words and the
+threatening tone. To their eyes, accustomed to obscurity, the late
+Senor Hirsch, growing more distinct, seemed to have come nearer. And
+the doctor lowered his voice in exposing his scheme as though afraid of
+being overheard.
+
+He was taking the indispensable man into his fullest confidence. Its
+implied flattery and suggestion of great risks came with a familiar
+sound to the Capataz. His mind, floating in irresolution and discontent,
+recognized it with bitterness. He understood well that the doctor was
+anxious to save the San Tome mine from annihilation. He would be nothing
+without it. It was his interest. Just as it had been the interest of
+Senor Decoud, of the Blancos, and of the Europeans to get his Cargadores
+on their side. His thought became arrested upon Decoud. What would
+happen to him?
+
+Nostromo's prolonged silence made the doctor uneasy. He pointed out,
+quite unnecessarily, that though for the present he was safe, he could
+not live concealed for ever. The choice was between accepting the
+mission to Barrios, with all its dangers and difficulties, and leaving
+Sulaco by stealth, ingloriously, in poverty.
+
+"None of your friends could reward you and protect you just now,
+Capataz. Not even Don Carlos himself."
+
+"I would have none of your protection and none of your rewards. I
+only wish I could trust your courage and your sense. When I return in
+triumph, as you say, with Barrios, I may find you all destroyed. You
+have the knife at your throat now."
+
+It was the doctor's turn to remain silent in the contemplation of
+horrible contingencies.
+
+"Well, we would trust your courage and your sense. And you, too, have a
+knife at your throat."
+
+"Ah! And whom am I to thank for that? What are your politics and your
+mines to me--your silver and your constitutions--your Don Carlos this,
+and Don Jose that--"
+
+"I don't know," burst out the exasperated doctor. "There are innocent
+people in danger whose little finger is worth more than you or I and all
+the Ribierists together. I don't know. You should have asked yourself
+before you allowed Decoud to lead you into all this. It was your place
+to think like a man; but if you did not think then, try to act like a
+man now. Did you imagine Decoud cared very much for what would happen to
+you?"
+
+"No more than you care for what will happen to me," muttered the other.
+
+"No; I care for what will happen to you as little as I care for what
+will happen to myself."
+
+"And all this because you are such a devoted Ribierist?" Nostromo said
+in an incredulous tone.
+
+"All this because I am such a devoted Ribierist," repeated Dr. Monygham,
+grimly.
+
+Again Nostromo, gazing abstractedly at the body of the late Senor
+Hirsch, remained silent, thinking that the doctor was a dangerous person
+in more than one sense. It was impossible to trust him.
+
+"Do you speak in the name of Don Carlos?" he asked at last.
+
+"Yes. I do," the doctor said, loudly, without hesitation. "He must come
+forward now. He must," he added in a mutter, which Nostromo did not
+catch.
+
+"What did you say, senor?"
+
+The doctor started. "I say that you must be true to yourself, Capataz.
+It would be worse than folly to fail now."
+
+"True to myself," repeated Nostromo. "How do you know that I would
+not be true to myself if I told you to go to the devil with your
+propositions?"
+
+"I do not know. Maybe you would," the doctor said, with a roughness of
+tone intended to hide the sinking of his heart and the faltering of his
+voice. "All I know is, that you had better get away from here. Some of
+Sotillo's men may turn up here looking for me."
+
+He slipped off the table, listening intently. The Capataz, too, stood
+up.
+
+"Suppose I went to Cayta, what would you do meantime?" he asked.
+
+"I would go to Sotillo directly you had left--in the way I am thinking
+of."
+
+"A very good way--if only that engineer-in-chief consents. Remind him,
+senor, that I looked after the old rich Englishman who pays for the
+railway, and that I saved the lives of some of his people that time when
+a gang of thieves came from the south to wreck one of his pay-trains.
+It was I who discovered it all at the risk of my life, by pretending to
+enter into their plans. Just as you are doing with Sotillo."
+
+"Yes. Yes, of course. But I can offer him better arguments," the doctor
+said, hastily. "Leave it to me."
+
+"Ah, yes! True. I am nothing."
+
+"Not at all. You are everything."
+
+They moved a few paces towards the door. Behind them the late Senor
+Hirsch preserved the immobility of a disregarded man.
+
+"That will be all right. I know what to say to the engineer," pursued
+the doctor, in a low tone. "My difficulty will be with Sotillo."
+
+And Dr. Monygham stopped short in the doorway as if intimidated by the
+difficulty. He had made the sacrifice of his life. He considered this
+a fitting opportunity. But he did not want to throw his life away too
+soon. In his quality of betrayer of Don Carlos' confidence, he would
+have ultimately to indicate the hiding-place of the treasure. That would
+be the end of his deception, and the end of himself as well, at the
+hands of the infuriated colonel. He wanted to delay him to the very
+last moment; and he had been racking his brains to invent some place of
+concealment at once plausible and difficult of access.
+
+He imparted his trouble to Nostromo, and concluded--
+
+"Do you know what, Capataz? I think that when the time comes and some
+information must be given, I shall indicate the Great Isabel. That is
+the best place I can think of. What is the matter?"
+
+A low exclamation had escaped Nostromo. The doctor waited, surprised,
+and after a moment of profound silence, heard a thick voice stammer out,
+"Utter folly," and stop with a gasp.
+
+"Why folly?"
+
+"Ah! You do not see it," began Nostromo, scathingly, gathering scorn as
+he went on. "Three men in half an hour would see that no ground had been
+disturbed anywhere on that island. Do you think that such a treasure can
+be buried without leaving traces of the work--eh! senor doctor? Why! you
+would not gain half a day more before having your throat cut by Sotillo.
+The Isabel! What stupidity! What miserable invention! Ah! you are all
+alike, you fine men of intelligence. All you are fit for is to betray
+men of the people into undertaking deadly risks for objects that you are
+not even sure about. If it comes off you get the benefit. If not, then
+it does not matter. He is only a dog. Ah! Madre de Dios, I would--" He
+shook his fists above his head.
+
+The doctor was overwhelmed at first by this fierce, hissing vehemence.
+
+"Well! It seems to me on your own showing that the men of the people
+are no mean fools, too," he said, sullenly. "No, but come. You are so
+clever. Have you a better place?"
+
+Nostromo had calmed down as quickly as he had flared up.
+
+"I am clever enough for that," he said, quietly, almost with
+indifference. "You want to tell him of a hiding-place big enough to take
+days in ransacking--a place where a treasure of silver ingots can be
+buried without leaving a sign on the surface."
+
+"And close at hand," the doctor put in.
+
+"Just so, senor. Tell him it is sunk."
+
+"This has the merit of being the truth," the doctor said,
+contemptuously. "He will not believe it."
+
+"You tell him that it is sunk where he may hope to lay his hands on it,
+and he will believe you quick enough. Tell him it has been sunk in the
+harbour in order to be recovered afterwards by divers. Tell him you
+found out that I had orders from Don Carlos Gould to lower the cases
+quietly overboard somewhere in a line between the end of the jetty and
+the entrance. The depth is not too great there. He has no divers, but he
+has a ship, boats, ropes, chains, sailors--of a sort. Let him fish for
+the silver. Let him set his fools to drag backwards and forwards and
+crossways while he sits and watches till his eyes drop out of his head."
+
+"Really, this is an admirable idea," muttered the doctor.
+
+"Si. You tell him that, and see whether he will not believe you! He will
+spend days in rage and torment--and still he will believe. He will have
+no thought for anything else. He will not give up till he is driven
+off--why, he may even forget to kill you. He will neither eat nor sleep.
+He--"
+
+"The very thing! The very thing!" the doctor repeated in an excited
+whisper. "Capataz, I begin to believe that you are a great genius in
+your way."
+
+Nostromo had paused; then began again in a changed tone, sombre,
+speaking to himself as though he had forgotten the doctor's existence.
+
+"There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a man's mind. He
+will pray and blaspheme and still persevere, and will curse the day he
+ever heard of it, and will let his last hour come upon him unawares,
+still believing that he missed it only by a foot. He will see it every
+time he closes his eyes. He will never forget it till he is dead--and
+even then----Doctor, did you ever hear of the miserable gringos on
+Azuera, that cannot die? Ha! ha! Sailors like myself. There is no
+getting away from a treasure that once fastens upon your mind."
+
+"You are a devil of a man, Capataz. It is the most plausible thing."
+
+Nostromo pressed his arm.
+
+"It will be worse for him than thirst at sea or hunger in a town full of
+people. Do you know what that is? He shall suffer greater torments than
+he inflicted upon that terrified wretch who had no invention. None!
+none! Not like me. I could have told Sotillo a deadly tale for very
+little pain."
+
+He laughed wildly and turned in the doorway towards the body of the late
+Senor Hirsch, an opaque long blotch in the semi-transparent obscurity
+of the room between the two tall parallelograms of the windows full of
+stars.
+
+"You man of fear!" he cried. "You shall be avenged by me--Nostromo. Out
+of my way, doctor! Stand aside--or, by the suffering soul of a woman
+dead without confession, I will strangle you with my two hands."
+
+He bounded downwards into the black, smoky hall. With a grunt of
+astonishment, Dr. Monygham threw himself recklessly into the pursuit. At
+the bottom of the charred stairs he had a fall, pitching forward on his
+face with a force that would have stunned a spirit less intent upon a
+task of love and devotion. He was up in a moment, jarred, shaken, with a
+queer impression of the terrestrial globe having been flung at his head
+in the dark. But it wanted more than that to stop Dr. Monygham's body,
+possessed by the exaltation of self-sacrifice; a reasonable exaltation,
+determined not to lose whatever advantage chance put into its way. He
+ran with headlong, tottering swiftness, his arms going like a windmill
+in his effort to keep his balance on his crippled feet. He lost his hat;
+the tails of his open gaberdine flew behind him. He had no mind to lose
+sight of the indispensable man. But it was a long time, and a long way
+from the Custom House, before he managed to seize his arm from behind,
+roughly, out of breath.
+
+"Stop! Are you mad?"
+
+Already Nostromo was walking slowly, his head dropping, as if checked in
+his pace by the weariness of irresolution.
+
+"What is that to you? Ah! I forgot you want me for something. Always.
+Siempre Nostromo."
+
+"What do you mean by talking of strangling me?" panted the doctor.
+
+"What do I mean? I mean that the king of the devils himself has sent you
+out of this town of cowards and talkers to meet me to-night of all the
+nights of my life."
+
+Under the starry sky the Albergo d'ltalia Una emerged, black and low,
+breaking the dark level of the plain. Nostromo stopped altogether.
+
+"The priests say he is a tempter, do they not?" he added, through his
+clenched teeth.
+
+"My good man, you drivel. The devil has nothing to do with this. Neither
+has the town, which you may call by what name you please. But Don Carlos
+Gould is neither a coward nor an empty talker. You will admit that?" He
+waited. "Well?"
+
+"Could I see Don Carlos?"
+
+"Great heavens! No! Why? What for?" exclaimed the doctor in agitation.
+"I tell you it is madness. I will not let you go into the town for
+anything."
+
+"I must."
+
+"You must not!" hissed the doctor, fiercely, almost beside himself with
+the fear of the man doing away with his usefulness for an imbecile whim
+of some sort. "I tell you you shall not. I would rather----"
+
+He stopped at loss for words, feeling fagged out, powerless, holding on
+to Nostromo's sleeve, absolutely for support after his run.
+
+"I am betrayed!" muttered the Capataz to himself; and the doctor, who
+overheard the last word, made an effort to speak calmly.
+
+"That is exactly what would happen to you. You would be betrayed."
+
+He thought with a sickening dread that the man was so well known that he
+could not escape recognition. The house of the Senor Administrador was
+beset by spies, no doubt. And even the very servants of the casa were
+not to be trusted. "Reflect, Capataz," he said, impressively. . . .
+"What are you laughing at?"
+
+"I am laughing to think that if somebody that did not approve of
+my presence in town, for instance--you understand, senor doctor--if
+somebody were to give me up to Pedrito, it would not be beyond my power
+to make friends even with him. It is true. What do you think of that?"
+
+"You are a man of infinite resource, Capataz," said Dr. Monygham,
+dismally. "I recognize that. But the town is full of talk about you; and
+those few Cargadores that are not in hiding with the railway people have
+been shouting 'Viva Montero' on the Plaza all day."
+
+"My poor Cargadores!" muttered Nostromo. "Betrayed! Betrayed!"
+
+"I understand that on the wharf you were pretty free in laying about you
+with a stick amongst your poor Cargadores," the doctor said in a grim
+tone, which showed that he was recovering from his exertions. "Make no
+mistake. Pedrito is furious at Senor Ribiera's rescue, and at having
+lost the pleasure of shooting Decoud. Already there are rumours in the
+town of the treasure having been spirited away. To have missed that does
+not please Pedrito either; but let me tell you that if you had all that
+silver in your hand for ransom it would not save you."
+
+Turning swiftly, and catching the doctor by the shoulders, Nostromo
+thrust his face close to his.
+
+"Maladetta! You follow me speaking of the treasure. You have sworn my
+ruin. You were the last man who looked upon me before I went out with
+it. And Sidoni the engine-driver says you have an evil eye."
+
+"He ought to know. I saved his broken leg for him last year," the doctor
+said, stoically. He felt on his shoulders the weight of these hands
+famed amongst the populace for snapping thick ropes and bending
+horseshoes. "And to you I offer the best means of saving yourself--let
+me go--and of retrieving your great reputation. You boasted of making
+the Capataz de Cargadores famous from one end of America to the other
+about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better opportunity--let me
+go, hombre!"
+
+Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor feared that the
+indispensable man would run off again. But he did not. He walked on
+slowly. The doctor hobbled by his side till, within a stone's throw from
+the Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again.
+
+Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed to have changed
+its nature; his home appeared to repel him with an air of hopeless and
+inimical mystery. The doctor said--
+
+"You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz."
+
+"How can I go in?" Nostromo seemed to ask himself in a low, inward tone.
+"She cannot unsay what she said, and I cannot undo what I have done."
+
+"I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there. I looked in
+as I came out of the town. You will be perfectly safe in that house till
+you leave it to make your name famous on the Campo. I am going now to
+arrange for your departure with the engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring
+you news here long before daybreak."
+
+Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to penetrate the meaning
+of Nostromo's silence, clapped him lightly on the shoulder, and starting
+off with his smart, lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth
+hop in the direction of the railway track. Arrested between the two
+wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to, Nostromo did not
+move, as if he, too, had been planted solidly in the ground. At the end
+of half an hour he lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the
+railway yards, which had burst out suddenly, tumultuous and deadened as
+if coming from under the plain. That lame doctor with the evil eye had
+got there pretty fast.
+
+Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo d'Italia Una, which he had
+never known so lightless, so silent, before. The door, all black in the
+pale wall, stood open as he had left it twenty-four hours before,
+when he had nothing to hide from the world. He remained before it,
+irresolute, like a fugitive, like a man betrayed. Poverty, misery,
+starvation! Where had he heard these words? The anger of a dying woman
+had prophesied that fate for his folly. It looked as if it would come
+true very quickly. And the leperos would laugh--she had said. Yes, they
+would laugh if they knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at the mercy
+of the mad doctor whom they could remember, only a few years ago, buying
+cooked food from a stall on the Plaza for a copper coin--like one of
+themselves.
+
+At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mitchell passed through his
+mind. He glanced in the direction of the jetty and saw a small gleam of
+light in the O.S.N. Company's building. The thought of lighted windows
+was not attractive. Two lighted windows had decoyed him into the empty
+Custom House, only to fall into the clutches of that doctor. No! He
+would not go near lighted windows again on that night. Captain Mitchell
+was there. And what could he be told? That doctor would worm it all out
+of him as if he were a child.
+
+On the threshold he called out "Giorgio!" in an undertone. Nobody
+answered. He stepped in. "Ola! viejo! Are you there? . . ." In the
+impenetrable darkness his head swam with the illusion that the obscurity
+of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, and that the floor dipped
+forward like a sinking lighter. "Ola! viejo!" he repeated, falteringly,
+swaying where he stood. His hand, extended to steady himself, fell
+upon the table. Moving a step forward, he shifted it, and felt a box
+of matches under his fingers. He fancied he had heard a quiet sigh. He
+listened for a moment, holding his breath; then, with trembling hands,
+tried to strike a light.
+
+The tiny piece of wood flamed up quite blindingly at the end of his
+fingers, raised above his blinking eyes. A concentrated glare fell
+upon the leonine white head of old Giorgio against the black
+fire-place--showed him leaning forward in a chair in staring immobility,
+surrounded, overhung, by great masses of shadow, his legs crossed, his
+cheek in his hand, an empty pipe in the corner of his mouth. It seemed
+hours before he attempted to turn his face; at the very moment the match
+went out, and he disappeared, overwhelmed by the shadows, as if the
+walls and roof of the desolate house had collapsed upon his white head
+in ghostly silence.
+
+Nostromo heard him stir and utter dispassionately the words--
+
+"It may have been a vision."
+
+"No," he said, softly. "It is no vision, old man."
+
+A strong chest voice asked in the dark--
+
+"Is that you I hear, Giovann' Battista?"
+
+"Si, viejo. Steady. Not so loud."
+
+After his release by Sotillo, Giorgio Viola, attended to the very door
+by the good-natured engineer-in-chief, had reentered his house, which
+he had been made to leave almost at the very moment of his wife's death.
+All was still. The lamp above was burning. He nearly called out to her
+by name; and the thought that no call from him would ever again evoke
+the answer of her voice, made him drop heavily into the chair with
+a loud groan, wrung out by the pain as of a keen blade piercing his
+breast.
+
+The rest of the night he made no sound. The darkness turned to grey, and
+on the colourless, clear, glassy dawn the jagged sierra stood out flat
+and opaque, as if cut out of paper.
+
+The enthusiastic and severe soul of Giorgio Viola, sailor, champion of
+oppressed humanity, enemy of kings, and, by the grace of Mrs. Gould,
+hotel-keeper of the Sulaco harbour, had descended into the open abyss of
+desolation amongst the shattered vestiges of his past. He remembered
+his wooing between two campaigns, a single short week in the season of
+gathering olives. Nothing approached the grave passion of that time but
+the deep, passionate sense of his bereavement. He discovered all the
+extent of his dependence upon the silenced voice of that woman. It
+was her voice that he missed. Abstracted, busy, lost in inward
+contemplation, he seldom looked at his wife in those later years. The
+thought of his girls was a matter of concern, not of consolation. It
+was her voice that he would miss. And he remembered the other child--the
+little boy who died at sea. Ah! a man would have been something to lean
+upon. And, alas! even Gian' Battista--he of whom, and of Linda, his
+wife had spoken to him so anxiously before she dropped off into her last
+sleep on earth, he on whom she had called aloud to save the children,
+just before she died--even he was dead!
+
+And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, sat through the day
+in immobility and solitude. He never heard the brazen roar of the bells
+in town. When it ceased the earthenware filter in the corner of the
+kitchen kept on its swift musical drip, drip into the great porous jar
+below.
+
+Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements disappeared up the
+narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; and the rubbing of his shoulders
+made a small noise as of a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall.
+While he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave. Then,
+with the same faint rubbing noise, he descended. He had to catch at the
+chairs and tables to regain his seat. He seized his pipe off the
+high mantel of the fire-place--but made no attempt to reach the
+tobacco--thrust it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat down
+again in the same staring pose. The sun of Pedrito's entry into Sulaco,
+the last sun of Senor Hirsch's life, the first of Decoud's solitude on
+the Great Isabel, passed over the Albergo d'ltalia Una on its way to
+the west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had ceased, the lamp
+upstairs had burnt itself out, and the night beset Giorgio Viola and his
+dead wife with its obscurity and silence that seemed invincible till the
+Capataz de Cargadores, returning from the dead, put them to flight with
+the splutter and flare of a match.
+
+"Si, viejo. It is me. Wait."
+
+Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the shutters carefully,
+groped upon a shelf for a candle, and lit it.
+
+Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the dark the sounds
+made by Nostromo. The light disclosed him standing without support, as
+if the mere presence of that man who was loyal, brave, incorruptible,
+who was all his son would have been, were enough for the support of his
+decaying strength.
+
+He extended his hand grasping the briar-wood pipe, whose bowl was
+charred on the edge, and knitted his bushy eyebrows heavily at the
+light.
+
+"You have returned," he said, with shaky dignity. "Ah! Very well! I----"
+
+He broke off. Nostromo, leaning back against the table, his arms folded
+on his breast, nodded at him slightly.
+
+"You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog of the rich, of the
+aristocrats, of these fine men who can only talk and betray the people,
+is not dead yet."
+
+The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the sound of the
+well-known voice. His head moved slightly once as if in sign of
+approval; but Nostromo saw clearly that the old man understood nothing
+of the words. There was no one to understand; no one he could take into
+the confidence of Decoud's fate, of his own, into the secret of the
+silver. That doctor was an enemy of the people--a tempter. . . .
+
+Old Giorgio's heavy frame shook from head to foot with the effort
+to overcome his emotion at the sight of that man, who had shared the
+intimacies of his domestic life as though he had been a grown-up son.
+
+"She believed you would return," he said, solemnly.
+
+Nostromo raised his head.
+
+"She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come back----?"
+
+He finished the thought mentally: "Since she has prophesied for me an
+end of poverty, misery, and starvation." These words of Teresa's anger,
+from the circumstances in which they had been uttered, like the cry of
+a soul prevented from making its peace with God, stirred the obscure
+superstition of personal fortune from which even the greatest genius
+amongst men of adventure and action is seldom free. They reigned over
+Nostromo's mind with the force of a potent malediction. And what a curse
+it was that which her words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned
+so young that he could remember no other woman whom he called mother.
+Henceforth there would be no enterprise in which he would not fail. The
+spell was working already. Death itself would elude him now. . . . He
+said violently--
+
+"Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am hungry! Sangre de Dios! The
+emptiness of my belly makes me lightheaded."
+
+With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast above his folded arms,
+barefooted, watching from under a gloomy brow the movements of old Viola
+foraging amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if indeed fallen under a
+curse--a ruined and sinister Capataz.
+
+Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a word, emptied upon
+the table out of his hollowed palms a few dry crusts of bread and half a
+raw onion.
+
+While the Capataz began to devour this beggar's fare, taking up with
+stony-eyed voracity piece after piece lying by his side, the Garibaldino
+went off, and squatting down in another corner filled an earthenware mug
+with red wine out of a wicker-covered demijohn. With a familiar gesture,
+as when serving customers in the cafe, he had thrust his pipe between
+his teeth to have his hands free.
+
+The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened the bronze of his
+cheek. Before him, Viola, with a turn of his white and massive head
+towards the staircase, took his empty pipe out of his mouth, and
+pronounced slowly--
+
+"After the shot was fired down here, which killed her as surely as if
+the bullet had struck her oppressed heart, she called upon you to save
+the children. Upon you, Gian' Battista."
+
+The Capataz looked up.
+
+"Did she do that, Padrone? To save the children! They are with the
+English senora, their rich benefactress. Hey! old man of the people. Thy
+benefactress. . . ."
+
+"I am old," muttered Giorgio Viola. "An Englishwoman was allowed to give
+a bed to Garibaldi lying wounded in prison. The greatest man that ever
+lived. A man of the people, too--a sailor. I may let another keep a
+roof over my head. Si . . . I am old. I may let her. Life lasts too long
+sometimes."
+
+"And she herself may not have a roof over her head before many days are
+out, unless I . . . What do you say? Am I to keep a roof over her head?
+Am I to try--and save all the Blancos together with her?"
+
+"You shall do it," said old Viola in a strong voice. "You shall do it as
+my son would have. . . ."
+
+"Thy son, viejo! .. .. There never has been a man like thy son. Ha, I
+must try. . . . But what if it were only a part of the curse to lure me
+on? . . . And so she called upon me to save--and then----?"
+
+"She spoke no more." The heroic follower of Garibaldi, at the thought
+of the eternal stillness and silence fallen upon the shrouded form
+stretched out on the bed upstairs, averted his face and raised his hand
+to his furrowed brow. "She was dead before I could seize her hands," he
+stammered out, pitifully.
+
+Before the wide eyes of the Capataz, staring at the doorway of the dark
+staircase, floated the shape of the Great Isabel, like a strange ship in
+distress, freighted with enormous wealth and the solitary life of a man.
+It was impossible for him to do anything. He could only hold his
+tongue, since there was no one to trust. The treasure would be lost,
+probably--unless Decoud. . . . And his thought came abruptly to an end.
+He perceived that he could not imagine in the least what Decoud was
+likely to do.
+
+Old Viola had not stirred. And the motionless Capataz dropped his
+long, soft eyelashes, which gave to the upper part of his fierce,
+black-whiskered face a touch of feminine ingenuousness. The silence had
+lasted for a long time.
+
+"God rest her soul!" he murmured, gloomily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+The next day was quiet in the morning, except for the faint sound of
+firing to the northward, in the direction of Los Hatos. Captain Mitchell
+had listened to it from his balcony anxiously. The phrase, "In
+my delicate position as the only consular agent then in the port,
+everything, sir, everything was a just cause for anxiety," had its place
+in the more or less stereotyped relation of the "historical events"
+which for the next few years was at the service of distinguished
+strangers visiting Sulaco. The mention of the dignity and neutrality of
+the flag, so difficult to preserve in his position, "right in the
+thick of these events between the lawlessness of that piratical villain
+Sotillo and the more regularly established but scarcely less atrocious
+tyranny of his Excellency Don Pedro Montero," came next in order.
+Captain Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere dangers much. But
+he insisted that it was a memorable day. On that day, towards dusk,
+he had seen "that poor fellow of mine--Nostromo. The sailor whom I
+discovered, and, I may say, made, sir. The man of the famous ride to
+Cayta, sir. An historical event, sir!"
+
+Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and faithful servant, Captain
+Mitchell was allowed to attain the term of his usefulness in ease and
+dignity at the head of the enormously extended service. The augmentation
+of the establishment, with its crowds of clerks, an office in town, the
+old office in the harbour, the division into departments--passenger,
+cargo, lighterage, and so on--secured a greater leisure for his last
+years in the regenerated Sulaco, the capital of the Occidental Republic.
+Liked by the natives for his good nature and the formality of his
+manner, self-important and simple, known for years as a "friend of our
+country," he felt himself a personality of mark in the town. Getting
+up early for a turn in the market-place while the gigantic shadow of
+Higuerota was still lying upon the fruit and flower stalls piled up
+with masses of gorgeous colouring, attending easily to current affairs,
+welcomed in houses, greeted by ladies on the Alameda, with his
+entry into all the clubs and a footing in the Casa Gould, he led his
+privileged old bachelor, man-about-town existence with great comfort and
+solemnity. But on mail-boat days he was down at the Harbour Office at an
+early hour, with his own gig, manned by a smart crew in white and
+blue, ready to dash off and board the ship directly she showed her bows
+between the harbour heads.
+
+It would be into the Harbour Office that he would lead some privileged
+passenger he had brought off in his own boat, and invite him to take a
+seat for a moment while he signed a few papers. And Captain Mitchell,
+seating himself at his desk, would keep on talking hospitably--
+
+"There isn't much time if you are to see everything in a day. We shall
+be off in a moment. We'll have lunch at the Amarilla Club--though I
+belong also to the Anglo-American--mining engineers and business men,
+don't you know--and to the Mirliflores as well, a new club--English,
+French, Italians, all sorts--lively young fellows mostly, who wanted
+to pay a compliment to an old resident, sir. But we'll lunch at the
+Amarilla. Interest you, I fancy. Real thing of the country. Men of the
+first families. The President of the Occidental Republic himself belongs
+to it, sir. Fine old bishop with a broken nose in the patio. Remarkable
+piece of statuary, I believe. Cavaliere Parrochetti--you know
+Parrochetti, the famous Italian sculptor--was working here for two
+years--thought very highly of our old bishop. . . . There! I am very
+much at your service now."
+
+Proud of his experience, penetrated by the sense of historical
+importance of men, events, and buildings, he talked pompously in jerky
+periods, with slight sweeps of his short, thick arm, letting nothing
+"escape the attention" of his privileged captive.
+
+"Lot of building going on, as you observe. Before the Separation it
+was a plain of burnt grass smothered in clouds of dust, with an ox-cart
+track to our Jetty. Nothing more. This is the Harbour Gate. Picturesque,
+is it not? Formerly the town stopped short there. We enter now the Calle
+de la Constitucion. Observe the old Spanish houses. Great dignity. Eh? I
+suppose it's just as it was in the time of the Viceroys, except for the
+pavement. Wood blocks now. Sulaco National Bank there, with the sentry
+boxes each side of the gate. Casa Avellanos this side, with all the
+ground-floor windows shuttered. A wonderful woman lives there--Miss
+Avellanos--the beautiful Antonia. A character, sir! A historical woman!
+Opposite--Casa Gould. Noble gateway. Yes, the Goulds of the original
+Gould Concession, that all the world knows of now. I hold seventeen of
+the thousand-dollar shares in the Consolidated San Tome mines. All the
+poor savings of my lifetime, sir, and it will be enough to keep me in
+comfort to the end of my days at home when I retire. I got in on the
+ground-floor, you see. Don Carlos, great friend of mine. Seventeen
+shares--quite a little fortune to leave behind one, too. I have a
+niece--married a parson--most worthy man, incumbent of a small parish in
+Sussex; no end of children. I was never married myself. A sailor should
+exercise self-denial. Standing under that very gateway, sir, with some
+young engineer-fellows, ready to defend that house where we had received
+so much kindness and hospitality, I saw the first and last charge of
+Pedrito's horsemen upon Barrios's troops, who had just taken the Harbour
+Gate. They could not stand the new rifles brought out by that poor
+Decoud. It was a murderous fire. In a moment the street became blocked
+with a mass of dead men and horses. They never came on again."
+
+And all day Captain Mitchell would talk like this to his more or less
+willing victim--
+
+"The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area of Trafalgar Square."
+
+From the very centre, in the blazing sunshine, he pointed out the
+buildings--
+
+"The Intendencia, now President's Palace--Cabildo, where the Lower
+Chamber of Parliament sits. You notice the new houses on that side
+of the Plaza? Compania Anzani, a great general store, like those
+cooperative things at home. Old Anzani was murdered by the National
+Guards in front of his safe. It was even for that specific crime that
+the deputy Gamacho, commanding the Nationals, a bloodthirsty and
+savage brute, was executed publicly by garrotte upon the sentence of
+a court-martial ordered by Barrios. Anzani's nephews converted the
+business into a company. All that side of the Plaza had been burnt; used
+to be colonnaded before. A terrible fire, by the light of which I saw
+the last of the fighting, the llaneros flying, the Nationals throwing
+their arms down, and the miners of San Tome, all Indians from the
+Sierra, rolling by like a torrent to the sound of pipes and cymbals,
+green flags flying, a wild mass of men in white ponchos and green hats,
+on foot, on mules, on donkeys. Such a sight, sir, will never be seen
+again. The miners, sir, had marched upon the town, Don Pepe leading on
+his black horse, and their very wives in the rear on burros, screaming
+encouragement, sir, and beating tambourines. I remember one of these
+women had a green parrot seated on her shoulder, as calm as a bird
+of stone. They had just saved their Senor Administrador; for Barrios,
+though he ordered the assault at once, at night, too, would have been
+too late. Pedrito Montero had Don Carlos led out to be shot--like his
+uncle many years ago--and then, as Barrios said afterwards, 'Sulaco
+would not have been worth fighting for.' Sulaco without the Concession
+was nothing; and there were tons and tons of dynamite distributed all
+over the mountain with detonators arranged, and an old priest, Father
+Roman, standing by to annihilate the San Tome mine at the first news of
+failure. Don Carlos had made up his mind not to leave it behind, and he
+had the right men to see to it, too."
+
+Thus Captain Mitchell would talk in the middle of the Plaza, holding
+over his head a white umbrella with a green lining; but inside the
+cathedral, in the dim light, with a faint scent of incense floating in
+the cool atmosphere, and here and there a kneeling female figure, black
+or all white, with a veiled head, his lowered voice became solemn and
+impressive.
+
+"Here," he would say, pointing to a niche in the wall of the dusky
+aisle, "you see the bust of Don Jose Avellanos, 'Patriot and Statesman,'
+as the inscription says, 'Minister to Courts of England and Spain, etc.,
+etc., died in the woods of Los Hatos worn out with his lifelong struggle
+for Right and Justice at the dawn of the New Era.' A fair likeness.
+Parrochetti's work from some old photographs and a pencil sketch by Mrs.
+Gould. I was well acquainted with that distinguished Spanish-American of
+the old school, a true Hidalgo, beloved by everybody who knew him.
+The marble medallion in the wall, in the antique style, representing
+a veiled woman seated with her hands clasped loosely over her knees,
+commemorates that unfortunate young gentleman who sailed out with
+Nostromo on that fatal night, sir. See, 'To the memory of Martin Decoud,
+his betrothed Antonia Avellanos.' Frank, simple, noble. There you have
+that lady, sir, as she is. An exceptional woman. Those who thought she
+would give way to despair were mistaken, sir. She has been blamed in
+many quarters for not having taken the veil. It was expected of her. But
+Dona Antonia is not the stuff they make nuns of. Bishop Corbelan, her
+uncle, lives with her in the Corbelan town house. He is a fierce sort of
+priest, everlastingly worrying the Government about the old Church lands
+and convents. I believe they think a lot of him in Rome. Now let us go
+to the Amarilla Club, just across the Plaza, to get some lunch."
+
+Directly outside the cathedral on the very top of the noble flight
+of steps, his voice rose pompously, his arm found again its sweeping
+gesture.
+
+"Porvenir, over there on that first floor, above those French
+plate-glass shop-fronts; our biggest daily. Conservative, or, rather, I
+should say, Parliamentary. We have the Parliamentary party here of which
+the actual Chief of the State, Don Juste Lopez, is the head; a very
+sagacious man, I think. A first-rate intellect, sir. The Democratic
+party in opposition rests mostly, I am sorry to say, on these
+socialistic Italians, sir, with their secret societies, camorras, and
+such-like. There are lots of Italians settled here on the railway lands,
+dismissed navvies, mechanics, and so on, all along the trunk line. There
+are whole villages of Italians on the Campo. And the natives, too, are
+being drawn into these ways . . . American bar? Yes. And over there you
+can see another. New Yorkers mostly frequent that one----Here we are at
+the Amarilla. Observe the bishop at the foot of the stairs to the right
+as we go in."
+
+And the lunch would begin and terminate its lavish and leisurely course
+at a little table in the gallery, Captain Mitchell nodding, bowing,
+getting up to speak for a moment to different officials in black
+clothes, merchants in jackets, officers in uniform, middle-aged
+caballeros from the Campo--sallow, little, nervous men, and fat, placid,
+swarthy men, and Europeans or North Americans of superior standing,
+whose faces looked very white amongst the majority of dark complexions
+and black, glistening eyes.
+
+Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting around looks of
+satisfaction, and tender over the table a case full of thick cigars.
+
+"Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The black coffee you get at
+the Amarilla, sir, you don't meet anywhere in the world. We get the bean
+from a famous cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose owner sends three sacks
+every year as a present to his fellow members in remembrance of the
+fight against Gamacho's Nationals, carried on from these very windows by
+the caballeros. He was in town at the time, and took part, sir, to the
+bitter end. It arrives on three mules--not in the common way, by rail;
+no fear!--right into the patio, escorted by mounted peons, in charge of
+the Mayoral of his estate, who walks upstairs, booted and spurred, and
+delivers it to our committee formally with the words, 'For the sake of
+those fallen on the third of May.' We call it Tres de Mayo coffee. Taste
+it."
+
+Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making ready to hear a
+sermon in a church, would lift the tiny cup to his lips. And the nectar
+would be sipped to the bottom during a restful silence in a cloud of
+cigar smoke.
+
+"Look at this man in black just going out," he would begin, leaning
+forward hastily. "This is the famous Hernandez, Minister of War. The
+Times' special correspondent, who wrote that striking series of letters
+calling the Occidental Republic the 'Treasure House of the World,' gave
+a whole article to him and the force he has organized--the renowned
+Carabineers of the Campo."
+
+Captain Mitchell's guest, staring curiously, would see a figure in a
+long-tailed black coat walking gravely, with downcast eyelids in a long,
+composed face, a brow furrowed horizontally, a pointed head, whose grey
+hair, thin at the top, combed down carefully on all sides and rolled at
+the ends, fell low on the neck and shoulders. This, then, was the famous
+bandit of whom Europe had heard with interest. He put on a high-crowned
+sombrero with a wide flat brim; a rosary of wooden beads was twisted
+about his right wrist. And Captain Mitchell would proceed--
+
+"The protector of the Sulaco refugees from the rage of Pedrito. As
+general of cavalry with Barrios he distinguished himself at the storming
+of Tonoro, where Senor Fuentes was killed with the last remnant of the
+Monterists. He is the friend and humble servant of Bishop Corbelan.
+Hears three Masses every day. I bet you he will step into the cathedral
+to say a prayer or two on his way home to his siesta."
+
+He took several puffs at his cigar in silence; then, in his most
+important manner, pronounced:
+
+"The Spanish race, sir, is prolific of remarkable characters in every
+rank of life. . . . I propose we go now into the billiard-room, which is
+cool, for a quiet chat. There's never anybody there till after five.
+I could tell you episodes of the Separationist revolution that would
+astonish you. When the great heat's over, we'll take a turn on the
+Alameda."
+
+The programme went on relentless, like a law of Nature. The turn on the
+Alameda was taken with slow steps and stately remarks.
+
+"All the great world of Sulaco here, sir." Captain Mitchell bowed right
+and left with no end of formality; then with animation, "Dona Emilia,
+Mrs. Gould's carriage. Look. Always white mules. The kindest, most
+gracious woman the sun ever shone upon. A great position, sir. A great
+position. First lady in Sulaco--far before the President's wife. And
+worthy of it." He took off his hat; then, with a studied change of tone,
+added, negligently, that the man in black by her side, with a high white
+collar and a scarred, snarly face, was Dr. Monygham, Inspector of State
+Hospitals, chief medical officer of the Consolidated San Tome mines. "A
+familiar of the house. Everlastingly there. No wonder. The Goulds made
+him. Very clever man and all that, but I never liked him. Nobody does. I
+can recollect him limping about the streets in a check shirt and native
+sandals with a watermelon under his arm--all he would get to eat for the
+day. A big-wig now, sir, and as nasty as ever. However . . . There's no
+doubt he played his part fairly well at the time. He saved us all from
+the deadly incubus of Sotillo, where a more particular man might have
+failed----"
+
+His arm went up.
+
+"The equestrian statue that used to stand on the pedestal over there
+has been removed. It was an anachronism," Captain Mitchell commented,
+obscurely. "There is some talk of replacing it by a marble shaft
+commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at the four corners,
+and bronze Justice holding an even balance, all gilt, on the top.
+Cavaliere Parrochetti was asked to make a design, which you can see
+framed under glass in the Municipal Sala. Names are to be engraved all
+round the base. Well! They could do no better than begin with the name
+of Nostromo. He has done for Separation as much as anybody else, and,"
+added Captain Mitchell, "has got less than many others by it--when it
+comes to that." He dropped on to a stone seat under a tree, and tapped
+invitingly at the place by his side. "He carried to Barrios the letters
+from Sulaco which decided the General to abandon Cayta for a time, and
+come back to our help here by sea. The transports were still in harbour
+fortunately. Sir, I did not even know that my Capataz de Cargadores was
+alive. I had no idea. It was Dr. Monygham who came upon him, by chance,
+in the Custom House, evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched
+Sotillo. I was never told; never given a hint, nothing--as if I were
+unworthy of confidence. Monygham arranged it all. He went to the railway
+yards, and got admission to the engineer-in-chief, who, for the sake of
+the Goulds as much as for anything else, consented to let an engine
+make a dash down the line, one hundred and eighty miles, with Nostromo
+aboard. It was the only way to get him off. In the Construction Camp
+at the railhead, he obtained a horse, arms, some clothing, and started
+alone on that marvellous ride--four hundred miles in six days, through
+a disturbed country, ending by the feat of passing through the Monterist
+lines outside Cayta. The history of that ride, sir, would make a
+most exciting book. He carried all our lives in his pocket. Devotion,
+courage, fidelity, intelligence were not enough. Of course, he was
+perfectly fearless and incorruptible. But a man was wanted that would
+know how to succeed. He was that man, sir. On the fifth of May, being
+practically a prisoner in the Harbour Office of my Company, I suddenly
+heard the whistle of an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of a mile
+away. I could not believe my ears. I made one jump on to the balcony,
+and beheld a locomotive under a great head of steam run out of the yard
+gates, screeching like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and then, just
+abreast of old Viola's inn, check almost to a standstill. I made out,
+sir, a man--I couldn't tell who--dash out of the Albergo d'ltalia Una,
+climb into the cab, and then, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap
+clear of the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. As you blow
+a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the foot-plate, sir,
+I can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the National Guards in
+Rincon and one other place. Fortunately the line had not been torn
+up. In four hours they reached the Construction Camp. Nostromo had his
+start. . . . The rest you know. You've got only to look round you. There
+are people on this Alameda that ride in their carriages, or even are
+alive at all to-day, because years ago I engaged a runaway Italian
+sailor for a foreman of our wharf simply on the strength of his looks.
+And that's a fact. You can't get over it, sir. On the seventeenth of
+May, just twelve days after I saw the man from the Casa Viola get on the
+engine, and wondered what it meant, Barrios's transports were entering
+this harbour, and the 'Treasure House of the World,' as The Times man
+calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact for civilization--for a
+great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandez on the west, and the San Tome
+miners pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose the landing. He
+had been sending messages to Sotillo for a week to join him. Had Sotillo
+done so there would have been massacres and proscription that would have
+left no man or woman of position alive. But that's where Dr. Monygham
+comes in. Sotillo, blind and deaf to everything, stuck on board his
+steamer watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to be sunk
+at the bottom of the harbour. They say that for the last three days he
+was out of his mind raving and foaming with disappointment at getting
+nothing, flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats with the
+drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly stamping his foot and crying
+out, 'And yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!'
+
+"He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he had on board) at the end
+of the after-derrick, when the first of Barrios's transports, one of our
+own ships at that, steamed right in, and ranging close alongside opened
+a small-arm fire without as much preliminaries as a hail. It was the
+completest surprise in the world, sir. They were too astounded at first
+to bolt below. Men were falling right and left like ninepins. It's a
+miracle that Monygham, standing on the after-hatch with the rope already
+round his neck, escaped being riddled through and through like a sieve.
+He told me since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on
+yelling with all the strength of his lungs: 'Hoist a white flag! Hoist
+a white flag!' Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda regiment, standing
+by, unsheathed his sword with a shriek: 'Die, perjured traitor!' and ran
+Sotillo clean through the body, just before he fell himself shot through
+the head."
+
+Captain Mitchell stopped for a while.
+
+"Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours. But it's time we started
+off to Rincon. It would not do for you to pass through Sulaco and not
+see the lights of the San Tome mine, a whole mountain ablaze like a
+lighted palace above the dark Campo. It's a fashionable drive. . . . But
+let me tell you one little anecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight
+or more later, when Barrios, declared Generalissimo, was gone in pursuit
+of Pedrito away south, when the Provisional Junta, with Don Juste Lopez
+at its head, had promulgated the new Constitution, and our Don Carlos
+Gould was packing up his trunks bound on a mission to San Francisco
+and Washington (the United States, sir, were the first great power to
+recognize the Occidental Republic)--a fortnight later, I say, when we
+were beginning to feel that our heads were safe on our shoulders, if
+I may express myself so, a prominent man, a large shipper by our line,
+came to see me on business, and, says he, the first thing: 'I say,
+Captain Mitchell, is that fellow' (meaning Nostromo) 'still the Capataz
+of your Cargadores or not?' 'What's the matter?' says I. 'Because, if
+he is, then I don't mind; I send and receive a good lot of cargo by your
+ships; but I have observed him several days loafing about the wharf,
+and just now he stopped me as cool as you please, with a request for a
+cigar. Now, you know, my cigars are rather special, and I can't get them
+so easily as all that.' 'I hope you stretched a point,' I said,
+very gently. 'Why, yes. But it's a confounded nuisance. The fellow's
+everlastingly cadging for smokes.' Sir, I turned my eyes away, and then
+asked, 'Weren't you one of the prisoners in the Cabildo?' 'You know very
+well I was, and in chains, too,' says he. 'And under a fine of fifteen
+thousand dollars?' He coloured, sir, because it got about that he
+fainted from fright when they came to arrest him, and then behaved
+before Fuentes in a manner to make the very policianos, who had dragged
+him there by the hair of his head, smile at his cringing. 'Yes,' he
+says, in a sort of shy way. 'Why?' 'Oh, nothing. You stood to lose a
+tidy bit,' says I, 'even if you saved your life. . . . But what can I do
+for you?' He never even saw the point. Not he. And that's how the world
+wags, sir."
+
+He rose a little stiffly, and the drive to Rincon would be taken with
+only one philosophical remark, uttered by the merciless cicerone, with
+his eyes fixed upon the lights of San Tome, that seemed suspended in the
+dark night between earth and heaven.
+
+"A great power, this, for good and evil, sir. A great power."
+
+And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten, excellent as to
+cooking, and leaving upon the traveller's mind an impression that there
+were in Sulaco many pleasant, able young men with salaries apparently
+too large for their discretion, and amongst them a few, mostly
+Anglo-Saxon, skilled in the art of, as the saying is, "taking a rise"
+out of his kind host.
+
+With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a two-wheeled machine
+(which Captain Mitchell called a curricle) behind a fleet and scraggy
+mule beaten all the time by an obviously Neapolitan driver, the cycle
+would be nearly closed before the lighted-up offices of the O. S. N.
+Company, remaining open so late because of the steamer. Nearly--but not
+quite.
+
+"Ten o'clock. Your ship won't be ready to leave till half-past twelve,
+if by then. Come in for a brandy-and-soda and one more cigar."
+
+And in the superintendent's private room the privileged passenger by the
+Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were annihilated mentally
+by a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated
+information imperfectly apprehended, would listen like a tired child
+to a fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its
+pompousness, tell him, as if from another world, how there was "in this
+very harbour" an international naval demonstration, which put an end to
+the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United States cruiser, Powhattan, was
+the first to salute the Occidental flag--white, with a wreath of green
+laurel in the middle encircling a yellow amarilla flower. Would hear how
+General Montero, in less than a month after proclaiming himself Emperor
+of Costaguana, was shot dead (during a solemn and public distribution
+of orders and crosses) by a young artillery officer, the brother of his
+then mistress.
+
+"The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country," the voice would say.
+And it would continue: "A captain of one of our ships told me lately
+that he recognized Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in purple slippers
+and a velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel, keeping a disorderly house
+in one of the southern ports."
+
+"Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?" would wonder the
+distinguished bird of passage hovering on the confines of waking and
+sleep with resolutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl upon his
+lips, from between which stuck out the eighteenth or twentieth cigar of
+that memorable day.
+
+"He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting ghost,
+sir"--Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo with true warmth of
+feeling and a touch of wistful pride. "You may imagine, sir, what an
+effect it produced on me. He had come round by sea with Barrios, of
+course. And the first thing he told me after I became fit to hear him
+was that he had picked up the lighter's boat floating in the gulf!
+He seemed quite overcome by the circumstance. And a remarkable enough
+circumstance it was, when you remember that it was then sixteen days
+since the sinking of the silver. At once I could see he was another man.
+He stared at the wall, sir, as if there had been a spider or something
+running about there. The loss of the silver preyed on his mind. The
+first thing he asked me about was whether Dona Antonia had heard yet of
+Decoud's death. His voice trembled. I had to tell him that Dona Antonia,
+as a matter of fact, was not back in town yet. Poor girl! And just as I
+was making ready to ask him a thousand questions, with a sudden, 'Pardon
+me, senor,' he cleared out of the office altogether. I did not see him
+again for three days. I was terribly busy, you know. It seems that he
+wandered about in and out of the town, and on two nights turned up
+to sleep in the baracoons of the railway people. He seemed absolutely
+indifferent to what went on. I asked him on the wharf, 'When are you
+going to take hold again, Nostromo? There will be plenty of work for the
+Cargadores presently.'
+
+"'Senor,' says he, looking at me in a slow, inquisitive manner, 'would
+it surprise you to hear that I am too tired to work just yet? And what
+work could I do now? How can I look my Cargadores in the face after
+losing a lighter?'
+
+"I begged him not to think any more about the silver, and he smiled. A
+smile that went to my heart, sir. 'It was no mistake,' I told him. 'It
+was a fatality. A thing that could not be helped.' 'Si, si!" he said,
+and turned away. I thought it best to leave him alone for a bit to get
+over it. Sir, it took him years really, to get over it. I was present
+at his interview with Don Carlos. I must say that Gould is rather a cold
+man. He had to keep a tight hand on his feelings, dealing with thieves
+and rascals, in constant danger of ruin for himself and wife for so many
+years, that it had become a second nature. They looked at each other for
+a long time. Don Carlos asked what he could do for him, in his quiet,
+reserved way.
+
+"'My name is known from one end of Sulaco to the other,' he said, as
+quiet as the other. 'What more can you do for me?' That was all that
+passed on that occasion. Later, however, there was a very fine coasting
+schooner for sale, and Mrs. Gould and I put our heads together to get
+her bought and presented to him. It was done, but he paid all the price
+back within the next three years. Business was booming all along this
+seaboard, sir. Moreover, that man always succeeded in everything
+except in saving the silver. Poor Dona Antonia, fresh from her terrible
+experiences in the woods of Los Hatos, had an interview with him, too.
+Wanted to hear about Decoud: what they said, what they did, what they
+thought up to the last on that fatal night. Mrs. Gould told me his
+manner was perfect for quietness and sympathy. Miss Avellanos burst into
+tears only when he told her how Decoud had happened to say that his plan
+would be a glorious success. . . . And there's no doubt, sir, that it
+is. It is a success."
+
+The cycle was about to close at last. And while the privileged
+passenger, shivering with the pleasant anticipations of his berth,
+forgot to ask himself, "What on earth Decoud's plan could be?" Captain
+Mitchell was saying, "Sorry we must part so soon. Your intelligent
+interest made this a pleasant day to me. I shall see you now on board.
+You had a glimpse of the 'Treasure House of the World.' A very good name
+that." And the coxswain's voice at the door, announcing that the gig was
+ready, closed the cycle.
+
+Nostromo had, indeed, found the lighter's boat, which he had left on
+the Great Isabel with Decoud, floating empty far out in the gulf. He was
+then on the bridge of the first of Barrios's transports, and within an
+hour's steaming from Sulaco. Barrios, always delighted with a feat of
+daring and a good judge of courage, had taken a great liking to the
+Capataz. During the passage round the coast the General kept Nostromo
+near his person, addressing him frequently in that abrupt and boisterous
+manner which was the sign of his high favour.
+
+Nostromo's eyes were the first to catch, broad on the bow, the tiny,
+elusive dark speck, which, alone with the forms of the Three Isabels
+right ahead, appeared on the flat, shimmering emptiness of the gulf.
+There are times when no fact should be neglected as insignificant;
+a small boat so far from the land might have had some meaning worth
+finding out. At a nod of consent from Barrios the transport swept out
+of her course, passing near enough to ascertain that no one manned the
+little cockle-shell. It was merely a common small boat gone adrift with
+her oars in her. But Nostromo, to whose mind Decoud had been insistently
+present for days, had long before recognized with excitement the dinghy
+of the lighter.
+
+There could be no question of stopping to pick up that thing. Every
+minute of time was momentous with the lives and futures of a whole town.
+The head of the leading ship, with the General on board, fell off to her
+course. Behind her, the fleet of transports, scattered haphazard over a
+mile or so in the offing, like the finish of an ocean race, pressed on,
+all black and smoking on the western sky.
+
+"Mi General," Nostromo's voice rang out loud, but quiet, from behind a
+group of officers, "I should like to save that little boat. Por Dios, I
+know her. She belongs to my Company."
+
+"And, por Dios," guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, good-humoured voice, "you
+belong to me. I am going to make you a captain of cavalry directly we
+get within sight of a horse again."
+
+"I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General," cried Nostromo,
+pushing through to the rail with a set stare in his eyes. "Let me----"
+
+"Let you? What a conceited fellow that is," bantered the General,
+jovially, without even looking at him. "Let him go! Ha! ha! ha! He wants
+me to admit that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha! ha! ha! Would
+you like to swim off to her, my son?"
+
+A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other stopped his
+guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and his black head bobbed up far
+away already from the ship. The General muttered an appalled "Cielo!
+Sinner that I am!" in a thunderstruck tone. One anxious glance was
+enough to show him that Nostromo was swimming with perfect ease; and
+then he thundered terribly, "No! no! We shall not stop to pick up this
+impertinent fellow. Let him drown--that mad Capataz."
+
+Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo from leaping
+overboard. That empty boat, coming out to meet him mysteriously, as if
+rowed by an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of some sign,
+of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling and enigmatic way the
+persistent thought of a treasure and of a man's fate. He would have
+leaped if there had been death in that half-mile of water. It was as
+smooth as a pond, and for some reason sharks are unknown in the Placid
+Gulf, though on the other side of the Punta Mala the coastline swarms
+with them.
+
+The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with force. A queer, faint
+feeling had come over him while he swam. He had got rid of his boots and
+coat in the water. He hung on for a time, regaining his breath. In
+the distance the transports, more in a bunch now, held on straight for
+Sulaco, with their air of friendly contest, of nautical sport, of
+a regatta; and the united smoke of their funnels drove like a thin,
+sulphurous fogbank right over his head. It was his daring, his courage,
+his act that had set these ships in motion upon the sea, hurrying on
+to save the lives and fortunes of the Blancos, the taskmasters of the
+people; to save the San Tome mine; to save the children.
+
+With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over the stern. The
+very boat! No doubt of it; no doubt whatever. It was the dinghy of the
+lighter No. 3--the dinghy left with Martin Decoud on the Great Isabel so
+that he should have some means to help himself if nothing could be done
+for him from the shore. And here she had come out to meet him empty
+and inexplicable. What had become of Decoud? The Capataz made a minute
+examination. He looked for some scratch, for some mark, for some sign.
+All he discovered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the
+thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard with his finger. Then
+he sat down in the stern sheets, passive, with his knees close together
+and legs aslant.
+
+Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers hanging lank
+and dripping and a lustreless stare fixed upon the bottom boards, the
+Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores resembled a drowned corpse come up from
+the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a small boat. The excitement
+of his adventurous ride, the excitement of the return in time,
+of achievement, of success, all this excitement centred round the
+associated ideas of the great treasure and of the only other man who
+knew of its existence, had departed from him. To the very last moment
+he had been cudgelling his brains as to how he could manage to visit
+the Great Isabel without loss of time and undetected. For the idea of
+secrecy had come to be connected with the treasure so closely that even
+to Barrios himself he had refrained from mentioning the existence of
+Decoud and of the silver on the island. The letters he carried to the
+General, however, made brief mention of the loss of the lighter, as
+having its bearing upon the situation in Sulaco. In the circumstances,
+the one-eyed tiger-slayer, scenting battle from afar, had not wasted his
+time in making inquiries from the messenger. In fact, Barrios, talking
+with Nostromo, assumed that both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San
+Tome were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned directly, had kept
+silent, under the influence of some indefinable form of resentment and
+distrust. Let Don Martin speak of everything with his own lips--was what
+he told himself mentally.
+
+And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel thrown thus in his
+way at the earliest possible moment, his excitement had departed, as
+when the soul takes flight leaving the body inert upon an earth it knows
+no more. Nostromo did not seem to know the gulf. For a long time even
+his eyelids did not flutter once upon the glazed emptiness of his stare.
+Then slowly, without a limb having stirred, without a twitch of muscle
+or quiver of an eyelash, an expression, a living expression came upon
+the still features, deep thought crept into the empty stare--as if an
+outcast soul, a quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted body in
+its way, had come in stealthily to take possession.
+
+The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness of sea, islands, and
+coast, of cloud forms on the sky and trails of light upon the water, the
+knitting of that brow had the emphasis of a powerful gesture. Nothing
+else budged for a long time; then the Capataz shook his head and again
+surrendered himself to the universal repose of all visible things.
+Suddenly he seized the oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin
+round, head-on to the Great Isabel. But before he began to pull he bent
+once more over the brown stain on the gunwale.
+
+"I know that thing," he muttered to himself, with a sagacious jerk of
+the head. "That's blood."
+
+His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady. Now and then he looked
+over his shoulder at the Great Isabel, presenting its low cliff to his
+anxious gaze like an impenetrable face. At last the stem touched the
+strand. He flung rather than dragged the boat up the little beach. At
+once, turning his back upon the sunset, he plunged with long strides
+into the ravine, making the water of the stream spurt and fly upwards at
+every step, as if spurning its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit with his
+feet. He wanted to save every moment of daylight.
+
+A mass of earth, grass, and smashed bushes had fallen down very
+naturally from above upon the cavity under the leaning tree. Decoud had
+attended to the concealment of the silver as instructed, using the spade
+with some intelligence. But Nostromo's half-smile of approval changed
+into a scornful curl of the lip by the sight of the spade itself flung
+there in full view, as if in utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving
+away the whole thing. Ah! They were all alike in their folly, these
+hombres finos that invented laws and governments and barren tasks for
+the people.
+
+The Capataz picked up the spade, and with the feel of the handle in his
+palm the desire of having a look at the horse-hide boxes of treasure
+came upon him suddenly. In a very few strokes he uncovered the edges and
+corners of several; then, clearing away more earth, became aware that
+one of them had been slashed with a knife.
+
+He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and dropped on his
+knees with a look of irrational apprehension over one shoulder, then
+over the other. The stiff hide had closed, and he hesitated before he
+pushed his hand through the long slit and felt the ingots inside. There
+they were. One, two, three. Yes, four gone. Taken away. Four ingots.
+But who? Decoud? Nobody else. And why? For what purpose? For what cursed
+fancy? Let him explain. Four ingots carried off in a boat, and--blood!
+
+In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded, unaltered,
+plunged into the waters in a grave and untroubled mystery of
+self-immolation consummated far from all mortal eyes, with an infinite
+majesty of silence and peace. Four ingots short!--and blood!
+
+The Capataz got up slowly.
+
+"He might simply have cut his hand," he muttered. "But, then----"
+
+He sat down on the soft earth, unresisting, as if he had been chained
+to the treasure, his drawn-up legs clasped in his hands with an air of
+hopeless submission, like a slave set on guard. Once only he lifted his
+head smartly: the rattle of hot musketry fire had reached his ears, like
+pouring from on high a stream of dry peas upon a drum. After listening
+for a while, he said, half aloud--
+
+"He will never come back to explain."
+
+And he lowered his head again.
+
+"Impossible!" he muttered, gloomily.
+
+The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great conflagration in
+Sulaco flashed up red above the coast, played on the clouds at the head
+of the gulf, seemed to touch with a ruddy and sinister reflection the
+forms of the Three Isabels. He never saw it, though he raised his head.
+
+"But, then, I cannot know," he pronounced, distinctly, and remained
+silent and staring for hours.
+
+He could not know. Nobody was to know. As might have been supposed, the
+end of Don Martin Decoud never became a subject of speculation for any
+one except Nostromo. Had the truth of the facts been known, there would
+always have remained the question. Why? Whereas the version of his death
+at the sinking of the lighter had no uncertainty of motive. The young
+apostle of Separation had died striving for his idea by an ever-lamented
+accident. But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known
+but to few on this earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to
+withstand. The brilliant Costaguanero of the boulevards had died from
+solitude and want of faith in himself and others.
+
+For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human comprehension, the
+sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels. The rocky head of Azuera is
+their haunt, whose stony levels and chasms resound with their wild
+and tumultuous clamour as if they were for ever quarrelling over the
+legendary treasure.
+
+At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, Decoud, turning in his
+lair of coarse grass, under the shade of a tree, said to himself--
+
+"I have not seen as much as one single bird all day."
+
+And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that one now of his
+own muttering voice. It had been a day of absolute silence--the first
+he had known in his life. And he had not slept a wink. Not for all these
+wakeful nights and the days of fighting, planning, talking; not for all
+that last night of danger and hard physical toil upon the gulf, had he
+been able to close his eyes for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset
+he had been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on his
+face.
+
+He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended into the gully to
+spend the night by the side of the silver. If Nostromo returned--as he
+might have done at any moment--it was there that he would look first;
+and night would, of course, be the proper time for an attempt to
+communicate. He remembered with profound indifference that he had not
+eaten anything yet since he had been left alone on the island.
+
+He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day broke he ate something
+with the same indifference. The brilliant "Son Decoud," the spoiled
+darling of the family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of Sulaco,
+was not fit to grapple with himself single-handed. Solitude from mere
+outward condition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in
+which the affectations of irony and scepticism have no place. It takes
+possession of the mind, and drives forth the thought into the exile of
+utter unbelief. After three days of waiting for the sight of some
+human face, Decoud caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own
+individuality. It had merged into the world of cloud and water, of
+natural forces and forms of nature. In our activity alone do we find
+the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the
+whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part. Decoud lost all
+belief in the reality of his action past and to come. On the fifth day
+an immense melancholy descended upon him palpably. He resolved not to
+give himself up to these people in Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and
+terrible, like jibbering and obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling
+feebly in their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an
+allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his weakness.
+
+Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared within
+the range of his vision; and, as if to escape from this solitude,
+he absorbed himself in his melancholy. The vague consciousness of a
+misdirected life given up to impulses whose memory left a bitter taste
+in his mouth was the first moral sentiment of his manhood. But at the
+same time he felt no remorse. What should he regret? He had recognized
+no other virtue than intelligence, and had erected passions into duties.
+Both his intelligence and his passion were swallowed up easily in this
+great unbroken solitude of waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had
+robbed his will of all energy, for he had not slept seven hours in the
+seven days. His sadness was the sadness of a sceptical mind. He beheld
+the universe as a succession of incomprehensible images. Nostromo was
+dead. Everything had failed ignominiously. He no longer dared to think
+of Antonia. She had not survived. But if she survived he could not face
+her. And all exertion seemed senseless.
+
+On the tenth day, after a night spent without even dozing off once (it
+had occurred to him that Antonia could not possibly have ever loved
+a being so impalpable as himself), the solitude appeared like a great
+void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he
+hung suspended by both hands, without fear, without surprise, without
+any sort of emotion whatever. Only towards the evening, in the
+comparative relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord would
+snap. He imagined it snapping with a report as of a pistol--a sharp,
+full crack. And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that
+eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless nights in
+which the silence, remaining unbroken in the shape of a cord to which he
+hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless phrases, always the same
+but utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and
+proclamations mingled into an ironical and senseless buzzing. In the
+daytime he could look at the silence like a still cord stretched to
+breaking-point, with his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a
+weight.
+
+"I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell," he asked himself.
+
+The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt, dirty,
+white-faced, and looked at it with his red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed
+him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without tremor; and the effect
+of that physical condition gave to his movements an unhesitating,
+deliberate dignity. He acted as if accomplishing some sort of rite. He
+descended into the gully; for the fascination of all that silver, with
+its potential power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the
+belt with the revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his
+waist. The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let
+him fall and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was looking at
+the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea! His aspect was that
+of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on his knees slowly and went
+on grubbing with his fingers with industrious patience till he uncovered
+one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing some work done many
+times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his
+pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out
+of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish.
+
+It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the dinghy
+near the water with an idea of rowing away somewhere, but had desisted
+partly at the whisper of lingering hope that Nostromo would return,
+partly from conviction of utter uselessness of all effort. Now she
+wanted only a slight shove to be set afloat. He had eaten a little every
+day after the first, and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up
+the oars slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that
+stood behind him warm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life, bathed
+in a rich light from head to foot as if in a radiance of hope and joy.
+He pulled straight towards the setting sun. When the gulf had grown
+dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls in. The hollow clatter they
+made in falling was the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life. It
+was a revelation. It seemed to recall him from far away, Actually the
+thought, "Perhaps I may sleep to-night," passed through his mind. But he
+did not believe it. He believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on
+the thwart.
+
+The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into his unwinking eyes.
+After a clear daybreak the sun appeared splendidly above the peaks of
+the range. The great gulf burst into a glitter all around the boat; and
+in this glory of merciless solitude the silence appeared again before
+him, stretched taut like a dark, thin string.
+
+His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted his seat from
+the thwart to the gunwale. They looked at it fixedly, while his hand,
+feeling about his waist, unbuttoned the flap of the leather case, drew
+the revolver, cocked it, brought it forward pointing at his breast,
+pulled the trigger, and, with convulsive force, sent the still-smoking
+weapon hurtling through the air. His eyes looked at it while he fell
+forward and hung with his breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his
+right hand hooked under the thwart. They looked----
+
+"It is done," he stammered out, in a sudden flow of blood. His last
+thought was: "I wonder how that Capataz died." The stiffness of the
+fingers relaxed, and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled overboard
+without having heard the cord of silence snap in the solitude of the
+Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface remained untroubled by the fall of
+his body.
+
+A victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the retribution meted
+out to intellectual audacity, the brilliant Don Martin Decoud, weighted
+by the bars of San Tome silver, disappeared without a trace, swallowed
+up in the immense indifference of things. His sleepless, crouching
+figure was gone from the side of the San Tome silver; and for a time the
+spirits of good and evil that hover near every concealed treasure of
+the earth might have thought that this one had been forgotten by all
+mankind. Then, after a few days, another form appeared striding away
+from the setting sun to sit motionless and awake in the narrow black
+gully all through the night, in nearly the same pose, in the same place
+in which had sat that other sleepless man who had gone away for ever so
+quietly in a small boat, about the time of sunset. And the spirits of
+good and evil that hover about a forbidden treasure understood well that
+the silver of San Tome was provided now with a faithful and lifelong
+slave.
+
+The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of the disenchanted vanity
+which is the reward of audacious action, sat in the weary pose of a
+hunted outcast through a night of sleeplessness as tormenting as any
+known to Decoud, his companion in the most desperate affair of his life.
+And he wondered how Decoud had died. But he knew the part he had
+played himself. First a woman, then a man, abandoned both in their last
+extremity, for the sake of this accursed treasure. It was paid for by
+a soul lost and by a vanished life. The blank stillness of awe was
+succeeded by a gust of immense pride. There was no one in the world but
+Gian' Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptible and
+faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price.
+
+He had made up his mind that nothing should be allowed now to rob him of
+his bargain. Nothing. Decoud had died. But how? That he was dead he had
+not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . . What for? Did he mean to
+come for more--some other time?
+
+The treasure was putting forth its latent power. It troubled the clear
+mind of the man who had paid the price. He was sure that Decoud was
+dead. The island seemed full of that whisper. Dead! Gone! And he
+caught himself listening for the swish of bushes and the splash of the
+footfalls in the bed of the brook. Dead! The talker, the novio of Dona
+Antonia!
+
+"Ha!" he murmured, with his head on his knees, under the livid clouded
+dawn breaking over the liberated Sulaco and upon the gulf as gray as
+ashes. "It is to her that he will fly. To her that he will fly!"
+
+And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to cast a spell, like the
+angry woman who had prophesied remorse and failure, and yet had laid
+upon him the task of saving the children? Well, he had saved the
+children. He had defeated the spell of poverty and starvation. He had
+done it all alone--or perhaps helped by the devil. Who cared? He had
+done it, betrayed as he was, and saving by the same stroke the San Tome
+mine, which appeared to him hateful and immense, lording it by its vast
+wealth over the valour, the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and
+peace, over the labours of the town, the sea, and the Campo.
+
+The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cordillera. The Capataz
+looked down for a time upon the fall of loose earth, stones, and smashed
+bushes, concealing the hiding-place of the silver.
+
+"I must grow rich very slowly," he meditated, aloud.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+Sulaco outstripped Nostromo's prudence, growing rich swiftly on the
+hidden treasures of the earth, hovered over by the anxious spirits of
+good and evil, torn out by the labouring hands of the people. It was
+like a second youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest, of
+toil, scattering lavishly its wealth to the four corners of an excited
+world. Material changes swept along in the train of material interests.
+And other changes more subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds
+and hearts of the workers. Captain Mitchell had gone home to live on his
+savings invested in the San Tome mine; and Dr. Monygham had grown older,
+with his head steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his face,
+living on the inexhaustible treasure of his devotion drawn upon in the
+secret of his heart like a store of unlawful wealth.
+
+The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose maintenance is a charge
+upon the Gould Concession), Official Adviser on Sanitation to the
+Municipality, Chief Medical Officer of the San Tome Consolidated Mines
+(whose territory, containing gold, silver, copper, lead, cobalt,
+extends for miles along the foot-hills of the Cordillera), had felt
+poverty-stricken, miserable, and starved during the prolonged, second
+visit the Goulds paid to Europe and the United States of America.
+Intimate of the casa, proved friend, a bachelor without ties and without
+establishment (except of the professional sort), he had been asked to
+take up his quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months of their
+absence the familiar rooms, recalling at every glance the woman to
+whom he had given all his loyalty, had grown intolerable. As the day
+approached for the arrival of the mail boat Hermes (the latest addition
+to the O. S. N. Co.'s splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled about more
+vivaciously, snapped more sardonically at simple and gentle out of sheer
+nervousness.
+
+He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with fury, with enthusiasm,
+and saw it carried out past the old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould
+with delight, with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting
+alone in the great landau behind the white mules, a little sideways, his
+drawn-in face positively venomous with the effort of self-control, and
+holding a pair of new gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour.
+
+His heart dilated within him so, when he saw the Goulds on the deck of
+the Hermes, that his greetings were reduced to a casual mutter. Driving
+back to town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor, in a
+more natural manner, said--
+
+"I'll leave you now to yourselves. I'll call to-morrow if I may?"
+
+"Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come early," said Mrs. Gould, in
+her travelling dress and her veil down, turning to look at him at the
+foot of the stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in blue
+robes and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome her with an aspect of
+pitying tenderness.
+
+"Don't expect to find me at home," Charles Gould warned him. "I'll be
+off early to the mine."
+
+After lunch, Dona Emilia and the senor doctor came slowly through
+the inner gateway of the patio. The large gardens of the Casa Gould,
+surrounded by high walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighbouring roofs,
+lay open before them, with masses of shade under the trees and level
+surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. A triple row of old orange trees
+surrounded the whole. Barefooted, brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts
+and wide calzoneras, dotted the grounds, squatting over flowerbeds,
+passing between the trees, dragging slender India-rubber tubes across
+the gravel of the paths; and the fine jets of water crossed each other
+in graceful curves, sparkling in the sunshine with a slight pattering
+noise upon the bushes, and an effect of showered diamonds upon the
+grass.
+
+Dona Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress, walked by the side
+of Dr. Monygham, in a longish black coat and severe black bow on
+an immaculate shirtfront. Under a shady clump of trees, where stood
+scattered little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs. Gould sat down in a
+low and ample seat.
+
+"Don't go yet," she said to Dr. Monygham, who was unable to tear himself
+away from the spot. His chin nestling within the points of his collar,
+he devoured her stealthily with his eyes, which, luckily, were round and
+hard like clouded marbles, and incapable of disclosing his sentiments.
+His pitying emotion at the marks of time upon the face of that woman,
+the air of frailty and weary fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and
+temples of the "Never-tired Senora" (as Don Pepe years ago used to call
+her with admiration), touched him almost to tears. "Don't go yet.
+To-day is all my own," Mrs. Gould urged, gently. "We are not back yet
+officially. No one will come. It's only to-morrow that the windows of
+the Casa Gould are to be lit up for a reception."
+
+The doctor dropped into a chair.
+
+"Giving a tertulia?" he said, with a detached air.
+
+"A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to come."
+
+"And only to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the mine, and so I----It
+would be good to have him to myself for one evening on our return to
+this house I love. It has seen all my life."
+
+"Ah, yes!" snarled the doctor, suddenly. "Women count time from the
+marriage feast. Didn't you live a little before?"
+
+"Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no cares."
+
+Mrs. Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long separation, will
+revert to the most agitated period of their lives, they began to talk of
+the Sulaco Revolution. It seemed strange to Mrs. Gould that people who
+had taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and its lesson.
+
+"And yet," struck in the doctor, "we who played our part in it had our
+reward. Don Pepe, though superannuated, still can sit a horse. Barrios
+is drinking himself to death in jovial company away somewhere on his
+fundacion beyond the Bolson de Tonoro. And the heroic Father Roman--I
+imagine the old padre blowing up systematically the San Tome mine,
+uttering a pious exclamation at every bang, and taking handfuls of
+snuff between the explosions--the heroic Padre Roman says that he is not
+afraid of the harm Holroyd's missionaries can do to his flock, as long
+as he is alive."
+
+Mrs. Gould shuddered a little at the allusion to the destruction that
+had come so near to the San Tome mine.
+
+"Ah, but you, dear friend?"
+
+"I did the work I was fit for."
+
+"You faced the most cruel dangers of all. Something more than death."
+
+"No, Mrs. Gould! Only death--by hanging. And I am rewarded beyond my
+deserts."
+
+Noticing Mrs. Gould's gaze fixed upon him, he dropped his eyes.
+
+"I've made my career--as you see," said the Inspector-General of State
+Hospitals, taking up lightly the lapels of his superfine black coat.
+The doctor's self-respect marked inwardly by the almost complete
+disappearance from his dreams of Father Beron appeared visibly in what,
+by contrast with former carelessness, seemed an immoderate cult of
+personal appearance. Carried out within severe limits of form and
+colour, and in perpetual freshness, this change of apparel gave to Dr.
+Monygham an air at the same time professional and festive; while his
+gait and the unchanged crabbed character of his face acquired from it a
+startling force of incongruity.
+
+"Yes," he went on. "We all had our rewards--the engineer-in-chief,
+Captain Mitchell----"
+
+"We saw him," interrupted Mrs. Gould, in her charming voice. "The poor
+dear man came up from the country on purpose to call on us in our hotel
+in London. He comported himself with great dignity, but I fancy he
+regrets Sulaco. He rambled feebly about 'historical events' till I felt
+I could have a cry."
+
+"H'm," grunted the doctor; "getting old, I suppose. Even Nostromo is
+getting older--though he is not changed. And, speaking of that fellow, I
+wanted to tell you something----"
+
+For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of agitation. Suddenly
+the two gardeners, busy with rose trees at the side of the garden
+arch, fell upon their knees with bowed heads on the passage of Antonia
+Avellanos, who appeared walking beside her uncle.
+
+Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome, where he had
+been invited by the Propaganda, Father Corbelan, missionary to the
+wild Indians, conspirator, friend and patron of Hernandez the robber,
+advanced with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning forward, with his
+powerful hands clasped behind his back. The first Cardinal-Archbishop
+of Sulaco had preserved his fanatical and morose air; the aspect of a
+chaplain of bandits. It was believed that his unexpected elevation
+to the purple was a counter-move to the Protestant invasion of Sulaco
+organized by the Holroyd Missionary Fund. Antonia, the beauty of her
+face as if a little blurred, her figure slightly fuller, advanced with
+her light walk and her high serenity, smiling from a distance at Mrs.
+Gould. She had brought her uncle over to see dear Emilia, without
+ceremony, just for a moment before the siesta.
+
+When all were seated again, Dr. Monygham, who had come to dislike
+heartily everybody who approached Mrs. Gould with any intimacy, kept
+aside, pretending to be lost in profound meditation. A louder phrase of
+Antonia made him lift his head.
+
+"How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, those who have been
+our countrymen only a few years ago, who are our countrymen now?" Miss
+Avellanos was saying. "How can we remain blind, and deaf without pity to
+the cruel wrongs suffered by our brothers? There is a remedy."
+
+"Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and prosperity of Sulaco,"
+snapped the doctor. "There is no other remedy."
+
+"I am convinced, senor doctor," Antonia said, with the earnest calm
+of invincible resolution, "that this was from the first poor Martin's
+intention."
+
+"Yes, but the material interests will not let you jeopardize their
+development for a mere idea of pity and justice," the doctor muttered
+grumpily. "And it is just as well perhaps."
+
+The Cardinal-Archbishop straightened up his gaunt, bony frame.
+
+"We have worked for them; we have made them, these material interests
+of the foreigners," the last of the Corbelans uttered in a deep,
+denunciatory tone.
+
+"And without them you are nothing," cried the doctor from the distance.
+"They will not let you."
+
+"Let them beware, then, lest the people, prevented from their
+aspirations, should rise and claim their share of the wealth and their
+share of the power," the popular Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco declared,
+significantly, menacingly.
+
+A silence ensued, during which his Eminence stared, frowning at the
+ground, and Antonia, graceful and rigid in her chair, breathed calmly
+in the strength of her convictions. Then the conversation took a
+social turn, touching on the visit of the Goulds to Europe. The
+Cardinal-Archbishop, when in Rome, had suffered from neuralgia in the
+head all the time. It was the climate--the bad air.
+
+When uncle and niece had gone away, with the servants again falling
+on their knees, and the old porter, who had known Henry Gould, almost
+totally blind and impotent now, creeping up to kiss his Eminence's
+extended hand, Dr. Monygham, looking after them, pronounced the one
+word--
+
+"Incorrigible!"
+
+Mrs. Gould, with a look upwards, dropped wearily on her lap her white
+hands flashing with the gold and stones of many rings.
+
+"Conspiring. Yes!" said the doctor. "The last of the Avellanos and the
+last of the Corbelans are conspiring with the refugees from Sta. Marta
+that flock here after every revolution. The Cafe Lambroso at the corner
+of the Plaza is full of them; you can hear their chatter across the
+street like the noise of a parrot-house. They are conspiring for the
+invasion of Costaguana. And do you know where they go for strength,
+for the necessary force? To the secret societies amongst immigrants and
+natives, where Nostromo--I should say Captain Fidanza--is the great man.
+What gives him that position? Who can say? Genius? He has genius. He is
+greater with the populace than ever he was before. It is as if he had
+some secret power; some mysterious means to keep up his influence. He
+holds conferences with the Archbishop, as in those old days which you
+and I remember. Barrios is useless. But for a military head they have
+the pious Hernandez. And they may raise the country with the new cry of
+the wealth for the people."
+
+"Will there be never any peace? Will there be no rest?" Mrs. Gould
+whispered. "I thought that we----"
+
+"No!" interrupted the doctor. "There is no peace and no rest in the
+development of material interests. They have their law, and their
+justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without
+rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only
+in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time approaches when all that the
+Gould Concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as
+the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back."
+
+"How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?" she cried out, as if hurt in the
+most sensitive place of her soul.
+
+"I can say what is true," the doctor insisted, obstinately. "It'll weigh
+as heavily, and provoke resentment, bloodshed, and vengeance, because
+the men have grown different. Do you think that now the mine would march
+upon the town to save their Senor Administrador? Do you think that?"
+
+She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her eyes and murmured
+hopelessly--
+
+"Is it this we have worked for, then?"
+
+The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her silent thought. Was it
+for this that her life had been robbed of all the intimate felicities of
+daily affection which her tenderness needed as the human body needs air
+to breathe? And the doctor, indignant with Charles Gould's blindness,
+hastened to change the conversation.
+
+"It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you. Ah! that fellow has
+some continuity and force. Nothing will put an end to him. But never
+mind that. There's something inexplicable going on--or perhaps only too
+easy to explain. You know, Linda is practically the lighthouse keeper of
+the Great Isabel light. The Garibaldino is too old now. His part is to
+clean the lamps and to cook in the house; but he can't get up the stairs
+any longer. The black-eyed Linda sleeps all day and watches the light
+all night. Not all day, though. She is up towards five in the afternoon,
+when our Nostromo, whenever he is in harbour with his schooner, comes
+out on his courting visit, pulling in a small boat."
+
+"Aren't they married yet?" Mrs. Gould asked. "The mother wished it, as
+far as I can understand, while Linda was yet quite a child. When I had
+the girls with me for a year or so during the War of Separation, that
+extraordinary Linda used to declare quite simply that she was going to
+be Gian' Battista's wife."
+
+"They are not married yet," said the doctor, curtly. "I have looked
+after them a little."
+
+"Thank you, dear Dr. Monygham," said Mrs. Gould; and under the shade
+of the big trees her little, even teeth gleamed in a youthful smile of
+gentle malice. "People don't know how really good you are. You will not
+let them know, as if on purpose to annoy me, who have put my faith in
+your good heart long ago."
+
+The doctor, with a lifting up of his upper lip, as though he were
+longing to bite, bowed stiffly in his chair. With the utter absorption
+of a man to whom love comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions,
+but like an enlightening and priceless misfortune, the sight of that
+woman (of whom he had been deprived for nearly a year) suggested ideas
+of adoration, of kissing the hem of her robe. And this excess of feeling
+translated itself naturally into an augmented grimness of speech.
+
+"I am afraid of being overwhelmed by too much gratitude. However, these
+people interest me. I went out several times to the Great Isabel light
+to look after old Giorgio."
+
+He did not tell Mrs. Gould that it was because he found there, in her
+absence, the relief of an atmosphere of congenial sentiment in
+old Giorgio's austere admiration for the "English signora--the
+benefactress"; in black-eyed Linda's voluble, torrential, passionate
+affection for "our Dona Emilia--that angel"; in the white-throated, fair
+Giselle's adoring upward turn of the eyes, which then glided towards him
+with a sidelong, half-arch, half-candid glance, which made the doctor
+exclaim to himself mentally, "If I weren't what I am, old and ugly, I
+would think the minx is making eyes at me. And perhaps she is. I dare
+say she would make eyes at anybody." Dr. Monygham said nothing of this
+to Mrs. Gould, the providence of the Viola family, but reverted to what
+he called "our great Nostromo."
+
+"What I wanted to tell you is this: Our great Nostromo did not take much
+notice of the old man and the children for some years. It's true, too,
+that he was away on his coasting voyages certainly ten months out of the
+twelve. He was making his fortune, as he told Captain Mitchell once. He
+seems to have done uncommonly well. It was only to be expected. He is
+a man full of resource, full of confidence in himself, ready to take
+chances and risks of every sort. I remember being in Mitchell's office
+one day, when he came in with that calm, grave air he always carries
+everywhere. He had been away trading in the Gulf of California, he said,
+looking straight past us at the wall, as his manner is, and was glad to
+see on his return that a lighthouse was being built on the cliff of the
+Great Isabel. Very glad, he repeated. Mitchell explained that it was
+the O. S. N. Co. who was building it, for the convenience of the mail
+service, on his own advice. Captain Fidanza was good enough to say that
+it was excellent advice. I remember him twisting up his moustaches and
+looking all round the cornice of the room before he proposed that old
+Giorgio should be made the keeper of that light."
+
+"I heard of this. I was consulted at the time," Mrs. Gould said. "I
+doubted whether it would be good for these girls to be shut up on that
+island as if in a prison."
+
+"The proposal fell in with the old Garibaldino's humour. As to Linda,
+any place was lovely and delightful enough for her as long as it was
+Nostromo's suggestion. She could wait for her Gian' Battista's good
+pleasure there as well as anywhere else. My opinion is that she was
+always in love with that incorruptible Capataz. Moreover, both father
+and sister were anxious to get Giselle away from the attentions of a
+certain Ramirez."
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Gould, interested. "Ramirez? What sort of man is that?"
+
+"Just a mozo of the town. His father was a Cargador. As a lanky boy he
+ran about the wharf in rags, till Nostromo took him up and made a man of
+him. When he got a little older, he put him into a lighter and very soon
+gave him charge of the No. 3 boat--the boat which took the silver away,
+Mrs. Gould. Nostromo selected that lighter for the work because she
+was the best sailing and the strongest boat of all the Company's fleet.
+Young Ramirez was one of the five Cargadores entrusted with the removal
+of the treasure from the Custom House on that famous night. As the boat
+he had charge of was sunk, Nostromo, on leaving the Company's service,
+recommended him to Captain Mitchell for his successor. He had trained
+him in the routine of work perfectly, and thus Mr. Ramirez, from a
+starving waif, becomes a man and the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores."
+
+"Thanks to Nostromo," said Mrs. Gould, with warm approval.
+
+"Thanks to Nostromo," repeated Dr. Monygham. "Upon my word, the fellow's
+power frightens me when I think of it. That our poor old Mitchell was
+only too glad to appoint somebody trained to the work, who saved him
+trouble, is not surprising. What is wonderful is the fact that the
+Sulaco Cargadores accepted Ramirez for their chief, simply because such
+was Nostromo's good pleasure. Of course, he is not a second Nostromo,
+as he fondly imagined he would be; but still, the position was brilliant
+enough. It emboldened him to make up to Giselle Viola, who, you know, is
+the recognized beauty of the town. The old Garibaldino, however, took a
+violent dislike to him. I don't know why. Perhaps because he was not
+a model of perfection like his Gian' Battista, the incarnation of the
+courage, the fidelity, the honour of 'the people.' Signor Viola does
+not think much of Sulaco natives. Both of them, the old Spartan and that
+white-faced Linda, with her red mouth and coal-black eyes, were looking
+rather fiercely after the fair one. Ramirez was warned off. Father
+Viola, I am told, threatened him with his gun once."
+
+"But what of Giselle herself?" asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+"She's a bit of a flirt, I believe," said the doctor. "I don't think
+she cared much one way or another. Of course she likes men's attentions.
+Ramirez was not the only one, let me tell you, Mrs. Gould. There was one
+engineer, at least, on the railway staff who got warned off with a gun,
+too. Old Viola does not allow any trifling with his honour. He has grown
+uneasy and suspicious since his wife died. He was very pleased to remove
+his youngest girl away from the town. But look what happens, Mrs. Gould.
+Ramirez, the honest, lovelorn swain, is forbidden the island. Very well.
+He respects the prohibition, but naturally turns his eyes frequently
+towards the Great Isabel. It seems as though he had been in the habit of
+gazing late at night upon the light. And during these sentimental vigils
+he discovers that Nostromo, Captain Fidanza that is, returns very late
+from his visits to the Violas. As late as midnight at times."
+
+The doctor paused and stared meaningly at Mrs. Gould.
+
+"Yes. But I don't understand," she began, looking puzzled.
+
+"Now comes the strange part," went on Dr. Monygham. "Viola, who is king
+on his island, will allow no visitor on it after dark. Even Captain
+Fidanza has got to leave after sunset, when Linda has gone up to
+tend the light. And Nostromo goes away obediently. But what happens
+afterwards? What does he do in the gulf between half-past six and
+midnight? He has been seen more than once at that late hour pulling
+quietly into the harbour. Ramirez is devoured by jealousy. He dared not
+approach old Viola; but he plucked up courage to rail at Linda about it
+on Sunday morning as she came on the mainland to hear mass and visit her
+mother's grave. There was a scene on the wharf, which, as a matter of
+fact, I witnessed. It was early morning. He must have been waiting for
+her on purpose. I was there by the merest chance, having been called
+to an urgent consultation by the doctor of the German gunboat in the
+harbour. She poured wrath, scorn, and flame upon Ramirez, who seemed out
+of his mind. It was a strange sight, Mrs. Gould: the long jetty, with
+this raving Cargador in his crimson sash and the girl all in black, at
+the end; the early Sunday morning quiet of the harbour in the shade of
+the mountains; nothing but a canoe or two moving between the ships at
+anchor, and the German gunboat's gig coming to take me off. Linda passed
+me within a foot. I noticed her wild eyes. I called out to her. She
+never heard me. She never saw me. But I looked at her face. It was awful
+in its anger and wretchedness."
+
+Mrs. Gould sat up, opening her eyes very wide.
+
+"What do you mean, Dr. Monygham? Do you mean to say that you suspect the
+younger sister?"
+
+"Quien sabe! Who can tell?" said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders
+like a born Costaguanero. "Ramirez came up to me on the wharf. He
+reeled--he looked insane. He took his head into his hands. He had to
+talk to someone--simply had to. Of course for all his mad state he
+recognized me. People know me well here. I have lived too long amongst
+them to be anything else but the evil-eyed doctor, who can cure all the
+ills of the flesh, and bring bad luck by a glance. He came up to me. He
+tried to be calm. He tried to make it out that he wanted merely to
+warn me against Nostromo. It seems that Captain Fidanza at some secret
+meeting or other had mentioned me as the worst despiser of all the
+poor--of the people. It's very possible. He honours me with his undying
+dislike. And a word from the great Fidanza may be quite enough to send
+some fool's knife into my back. The Sanitary Commission I preside
+over is not in favour with the populace. 'Beware of him, senor doctor.
+Destroy him, senor doctor,' Ramirez hissed right into my face. And then
+he broke out. 'That man,' he spluttered, 'has cast a spell upon both
+these girls.' As to himself, he had said too much. He must run away
+now--run away and hide somewhere. He moaned tenderly about Giselle, and
+then called her names that cannot be repeated. If he thought she could
+be made to love him by any means, he would carry her off from the
+island. Off into the woods. But it was no good. . . . He strode away,
+flourishing his arms above his head. Then I noticed an old negro, who
+had been sitting behind a pile of cases, fishing from the wharf. He
+wound up his lines and slunk away at once. But he must have heard
+something, and must have talked, too, because some of the old
+Garibaldino's railway friends, I suppose, warned him against Ramirez. At
+any rate, the father has been warned. But Ramirez has disappeared from
+the town."
+
+"I feel I have a duty towards these girls," said Mrs. Gould, uneasily.
+"Is Nostromo in Sulaco now?"
+
+"He is, since last Sunday."
+
+"He ought to be spoken to--at once."
+
+"Who will dare speak to him? Even the love-mad Ramirez runs away from
+the mere shadow of Captain Fidanza."
+
+"I can. I will," Mrs. Gould declared. "A word will be enough for a man
+like Nostromo."
+
+The doctor smiled sourly.
+
+"He must end this situation which lends itself to----I can't believe it
+of that child," pursued Mrs. Gould.
+
+"He's very attractive," muttered the doctor, gloomily.
+
+"He'll see it, I am sure. He must put an end to all this by marrying
+Linda at once," pronounced the first lady of Sulaco with immense
+decision.
+
+Through the garden gate emerged Basilio, grown fat and sleek, with an
+elderly hairless face, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his
+jet-black, coarse hair plastered down smoothly. Stooping carefully
+behind an ornamental clump of bushes, he put down with precaution a
+small child he had been carrying on his shoulder--his own and Leonarda's
+last born. The pouting, spoiled Camerista and the head mozo of the Casa
+Gould had been married for some years now.
+
+He remained squatting on his heels for a time, gazing fondly at his
+offspring, which returned his stare with imperturbable gravity; then,
+solemn and respectable, walked down the path.
+
+"What is it, Basilio?" asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+"A telephone came through from the office of the mine. The master
+remains to sleep at the mountain to-night."
+
+Dr. Monygham had got up and stood looking away. A profound silence
+reigned for a time under the shade of the biggest trees in the lovely
+gardens of the Casa Gould.
+
+"Very well, Basilio," said Mrs. Gould. She watched him walk away along
+the path, step aside behind the flowering bush, and reappear with the
+child seated on his shoulder. He passed through the gateway between the
+garden and the patio with measured steps, careful of his light burden.
+
+The doctor, with his back to Mrs. Gould, contemplated a flower-bed away
+in the sunshine. People believed him scornful and soured. The truth
+of his nature consisted in his capacity for passion and in the
+sensitiveness of his temperament. What he lacked was the polished
+callousness of men of the world, the callousness from which springs
+an easy tolerance for oneself and others; the tolerance wide as
+poles asunder from true sympathy and human compassion. This want of
+callousness accounted for his sardonic turn of mind and his biting
+speeches.
+
+In profound silence, and glaring viciously at the brilliant flower-bed,
+Dr. Monygham poured mental imprecations on Charles Gould's head. Behind
+him the immobility of Mrs. Gould added to the grace of her seated
+figure the charm of art, of an attitude caught and interpreted for ever.
+Turning abruptly, the doctor took his leave.
+
+Mrs. Gould leaned back in the shade of the big trees planted in a
+circle. She leaned back with her eyes closed and her white hands lying
+idle on the arms of her seat. The half-light under the thick mass of
+leaves brought out the youthful prettiness of her face; made the clear,
+light fabrics and white lace of her dress appear luminous. Small and
+dainty, as if radiating a light of her own in the deep shade of the
+interlaced boughs, she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career
+of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of the uselessness of
+her labours, the powerlessness of her magic.
+
+Had anybody asked her of what she was thinking, alone in the garden
+of the Casa, with her husband at the mine and the house closed to the
+street like an empty dwelling, her frankness would have had to evade the
+question. It had come into her mind that for life to be large and full,
+it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing
+moment of the present. Our daily work must be done to the glory of the
+dead, and for the good of those who come after. She thought that, and
+sighed without opening her eyes--without moving at all. Mrs. Gould's
+face became set and rigid for a second, as if to receive, without
+flinching, a great wave of loneliness that swept over her head. And it
+came into her mind, too, that no one would ever ask her with solicitude
+what she was thinking of. No one. No one, but perhaps the man who had
+just gone away. No; no one who could be answered with careless sincerity
+in the ideal perfection of confidence.
+
+The word "incorrigible"--a word lately pronounced by Dr.
+Monygham--floated into her still and sad immobility. Incorrigible in
+his devotion to the great silver mine was the Senor Administrador!
+Incorrigible in his hard, determined service of the material interests
+to which he had pinned his faith in the triumph of order and justice.
+Poor boy! She had a clear vision of the grey hairs on his temples.
+He was perfect--perfect. What more could she have expected? It was
+a colossal and lasting success; and love was only a short moment of
+forgetfulness, a short intoxication, whose delight one remembered with
+a sense of sadness, as if it had been a deep grief lived through. There
+was something inherent in the necessities of successful action which
+carried with it the moral degradation of the idea. She saw the San Tome
+mountain hanging over the Campo, over the whole land, feared, hated,
+wealthy; more soulless than any tyrant, more pitiless and autocratic
+than the worst Government; ready to crush innumerable lives in the
+expansion of its greatness. He did not see it. He could not see it. It
+was not his fault. He was perfect, perfect; but she would never have him
+to herself. Never; not for one short hour altogether to herself in
+this old Spanish house she loved so well! Incorrigible, the last of the
+Corbelans, the last of the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw
+clearly the San Tome mine possessing, consuming, burning up the life of
+the last of the Costaguana Goulds; mastering the energetic spirit of the
+son as it had mastered the lamentable weakness of the father. A terrible
+success for the last of the Goulds. The last! She had hoped for a long,
+long time, that perhaps----But no! There were to be no more. An immense
+desolation, the dread of her own continued life, descended upon the
+first lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself surviving
+alone the degradation of her young ideal of life, of love, of work--all
+alone in the Treasure House of the World. The profound, blind, suffering
+expression of a painful dream settled on her face with its closed eyes.
+In the indistinct voice of an unlucky sleeper lying passive in the grip
+of a merciless nightmare, she stammered out aimlessly the words--
+
+"Material interest."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+Nostromo had been growing rich very slowly. It was an effect of his
+prudence. He could command himself even when thrown off his balance.
+And to become the slave of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an
+occurrence rare and mentally disturbing. But it was also in a great part
+because of the difficulty of converting it into a form in which it
+could become available. The mere act of getting it away from the island
+piecemeal, little by little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the
+dangers of imminent detection. He had to visit the Great Isabel in
+secret, between his voyages along the coast, which were the ostensible
+source of his fortune. The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as
+if they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He did not dare stay
+too long in port. When his coaster was unloaded, he hurried away on
+another trip, for he feared arousing suspicion even by a day's delay.
+Sometimes during a week's stay, or more, he could only manage one visit
+to the treasure. And that was all. A couple of ingots. He suffered
+through his fears as much as through his prudence. To do things by
+stealth humiliated him. And he suffered most from the concentration of
+his thought upon the treasure.
+
+A transgression, a crime, entering a man's existence, eats it up like a
+malignant growth, consumes it like a fever. Nostromo had lost his peace;
+the genuineness of all his qualities was destroyed. He felt it himself,
+and often cursed the silver of San Tome. His courage, his magnificence,
+his leisure, his work, everything was as before, only everything was a
+sham. But the treasure was real. He clung to it with a more tenacious,
+mental grip. But he hated the feel of the ingots. Sometimes, after
+putting away a couple of them in his cabin--the fruit of a secret night
+expedition to the Great Isabel--he would look fixedly at his fingers, as
+if surprised they had left no stain on his skin.
+
+He had found means of disposing of the silver bars in distant ports. The
+necessity to go far afield made his coasting voyages long, and caused
+his visits to the Viola household to be rare and far between. He was
+fated to have his wife from there. He had said so once to Giorgio
+himself. But the Garibaldino had put the subject aside with a majestic
+wave of his hand, clutching a smouldering black briar-root pipe. There
+was plenty of time; he was not the man to force his girls upon anybody.
+
+As time went on, Nostromo discovered his preference for the younger of
+the two. They had some profound similarities of nature, which must
+exist for complete confidence and understanding, no matter what
+outward differences of temperament there may be to exercise their own
+fascination of contrast. His wife would have to know his secret or else
+life would be impossible. He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid
+gaze and white throat, pliable, silent, fond of excitement under her
+quiet indolence; whereas Linda, with her intense, passionately pale
+face, energetic, all fire and words, touched with gloom and scorn, a
+chip of the old block, true daughter of the austere republican, but with
+Teresa's voice, inspired him with a deep-seated mistrust. Moreover, the
+poor girl could not conceal her love for Gian' Battista. He could see it
+would be violent, exacting, suspicious, uncompromising--like her soul.
+Giselle, by her fair but warm beauty, by the surface placidity of her
+nature holding a promise of submissiveness, by the charm of her girlish
+mysteriousness, excited his passion and allayed his fears as to the
+future.
+
+His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning from the longest of
+them, he made out lighters loaded with blocks of stone lying under
+the cliff of the Great Isabel; cranes and scaffolding above; workmen's
+figures moving about, and a small lighthouse already rising from its
+foundations on the edge of the cliff.
+
+At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he thought himself
+lost irretrievably. What could save him from detection now? Nothing! He
+was struck with amazed dread at this turn of chance, that would kindle
+a far-reaching light upon the only secret spot of his life; that life
+whose very essence, value, reality, consisted in its reflection from the
+admiring eyes of men. All of it but that thing which was beyond common
+comprehension; which stood between him and the power that hears and
+gives effect to the evil intention of curses. It was dark. Not every man
+had such a darkness. And they were going to put a light there. A light!
+He saw it shining upon disgrace, poverty, contempt. Somebody was sure
+to. . . . Perhaps somebody had already. . . .
+
+The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared Captain
+Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a republican like
+old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), was
+on the point of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner.
+That man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide deliberately in
+the face. But he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought
+that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace,
+the shame going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine
+himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own
+existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to grasp the
+notion of finality. The earth goes on for ever.
+
+And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it was as good
+for his purposes as the other kind. He sailed close to the cliff of the
+Great Isabel, throwing a penetrating glance from the deck at the mouth
+of the ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth of bushes. He sailed
+close enough to exchange hails with the workmen, shading their eyes on
+the edge of the sheer drop of the cliff overhung by the jib-head of a
+powerful crane. He perceived that none of them had any occasion even to
+approach the ravine where the silver lay hidden; let alone to enter it.
+In the harbour he learned that no one slept on the island. The labouring
+gangs returned to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the empty
+lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the moment he had nothing to fear.
+
+But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper came to live in
+the cottage that was being built some hundred and fifty yards back from
+the low lighttower, and four hundred or so from the dark, shaded, jungly
+ravine, containing the secret of his safety, of his influence, of his
+magnificence, of his power over the future, of his defiance of ill-luck,
+of every possible betrayal from rich and poor alike--what then? He could
+never shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater than that of other
+men, had welded that vein of silver into his life. And the feeling
+of fearful and ardent subjection, the feeling of his slavery--so
+irremediable and profound that often, in his thoughts, he compared
+himself to the legendary Gringos, neither dead nor alive, bound down
+to their conquest of unlawful wealth on Azuera--weighed heavily on the
+independent Captain Fidanza, owner and master of a coasting schooner,
+whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well
+known along the western seaboard of a vast continent.
+
+Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in his walk, the
+vigour and symmetry of his powerful limbs lost in the vulgarity of a
+brown tweed suit, made by Jews in the slums of London, and sold by the
+clothing department of the Compania Anzani, Captain Fidanza was seen in
+the streets of Sulaco attending to his business, as usual, that trip.
+And, as usual, he allowed it to get about that he had made a great
+profit on his cargo. It was a cargo of salt fish, and Lent was
+approaching. He was seen in tramcars going to and fro between the town
+and the harbour; he talked with people in a cafe or two in his measured,
+steady voice. Captain Fidanza was seen. The generation that would know
+nothing of the famous ride to Cayta was not born yet.
+
+Nostromo, the miscalled Capataz de Cargadores, had made for himself,
+under his rightful name, another public existence, but modified by
+the new conditions, less picturesque, more difficult to keep up in the
+increased size and varied population of Sulaco, the progressive capital
+of the Occidental Republic.
+
+Captain Fidanza, unpicturesque, but always a little mysterious, was
+recognized quite sufficiently under the lofty glass and iron roof of the
+Sulaco railway station. He took a local train, and got out in Rincon,
+where he visited the widow of the Cargador who had died of his wounds
+(at the dawn of the New Era, like Don Jose Avellanos) in the patio
+of the Casa Gould. He consented to sit down and drink a glass of cool
+lemonade in the hut, while the woman, standing up, poured a perfect
+torrent of words to which he did not listen. He left some money with
+her, as usual. The orphaned children, growing up and well schooled,
+calling him uncle, clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too; and in
+the doorway paused for a moment to look at the flat face of the San Tome
+mountain with a faint frown. This slight contraction of his bronzed brow
+casting a marked tinge of severity upon his usual unbending expression,
+was observed at the Lodge which he attended--but went away before the
+banquet. He wore it at the meeting of some good comrades, Italians
+and Occidentals, assembled in his honour under the presidency of an
+indigent, sickly, somewhat hunchbacked little photographer, with a white
+face and a magnanimous soul dyed crimson by a bloodthirsty hate of
+all capitalists, oppressors of the two hemispheres. The heroic Giorgio
+Viola, old revolutionist, would have understood nothing of his opening
+speech; and Captain Fidanza, lavishly generous as usual to some poor
+comrades, made no speech at all. He had listened, frowning, with his
+mind far away, and walked off unapproachable, silent, like a man full of
+cares.
+
+His frown deepened as, in the early morning, he watched the stone-masons
+go off to the Great Isabel, in lighters loaded with squared blocks of
+stone, enough to add another course to the squat light-tower. That was
+the rate of the work. One course per day.
+
+And Captain Fidanza meditated. The presence of strangers on the island
+would cut him completely off the treasure. It had been difficult and
+dangerous enough before. He was afraid, and he was angry. He thought
+with the resolution of a master and the cunning of a cowed slave. Then
+he went ashore.
+
+He was a man of resource and ingenuity; and, as usual, the expedient he
+found at a critical moment was effective enough to alter the situation
+radically. He had the gift of evolving safety out of the very danger,
+this incomparable Nostromo, this "fellow in a thousand." With Giorgio
+established on the Great Isabel, there would be no need for concealment.
+He would be able to go openly, in daylight, to see his daughters--one of
+his daughters--and stay late talking to the old Garibaldino. Then in the
+dark . . . Night after night . . . He would dare to grow rich quicker
+now. He yearned to clasp, embrace, absorb, subjugate in unquestioned
+possession this treasure, whose tyranny had weighed upon his mind, his
+actions, his very sleep.
+
+He went to see his friend Captain Mitchell--and the thing was done as
+Dr. Monygham had related to Mrs. Gould. When the project was mooted to
+the Garibaldino, something like the faint reflection, the dim ghost of a
+very ancient smile, stole under the white and enormous moustaches of the
+old hater of kings and ministers. His daughters were the object of his
+anxious care. The younger, especially. Linda, with her mother's voice,
+had taken more her mother's place. Her deep, vibrating "Eh, Padre?"
+seemed, but for the change of the word, the very echo of the
+impassioned, remonstrating "Eh, Giorgio?" of poor Signora Teresa. It was
+his fixed opinion that the town was no proper place for his girls.
+The infatuated but guileless Ramirez was the object of his profound
+aversion, as resuming the sins of the country whose people were blind,
+vile esclavos.
+
+On his return from his next voyage, Captain Fidanza found the Violas
+settled in the light-keeper's cottage. His knowledge of Giorgio's
+idiosyncrasies had not played him false. The Garibaldino had refused
+to entertain the idea of any companion whatever, except his girls.
+And Captain Mitchell, anxious to please his poor Nostromo, with that
+felicity of inspiration which only true affection can give, had formally
+appointed Linda Viola as under-keeper of the Isabel's Light.
+
+"The light is private property," he used to explain. "It belongs to my
+Company. I've the power to nominate whom I like, and Viola it shall be.
+It's about the only thing Nostromo--a man worth his weight in gold, mind
+you--has ever asked me to do for him."
+
+Directly his schooner was anchored opposite the New Custom House, with
+its sham air of a Greek temple, flatroofed, with a colonnade, Captain
+Fidanza went pulling his small boat out of the harbour, bound for the
+Great Isabel, openly in the light of a declining day, before all men's
+eyes, with a sense of having mastered the fates. He must establish a
+regular position. He would ask him for his daughter now. He thought of
+Giselle as he pulled. Linda loved him, perhaps, but the old man would be
+glad to keep the elder, who had his wife's voice.
+
+He did not pull for the narrow strand where he had landed with Decoud,
+and afterwards alone on his first visit to the treasure. He made for the
+beach at the other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope of
+the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he saw from afar, sitting
+on a bench under the front wall of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly
+to his loud hail. He walked up. Neither of the girls appeared.
+
+"It is good here," said the old man, in his austere, far-away manner.
+
+Nostromo nodded; then, after a short silence--
+
+"You saw my schooner pass in not two hours ago? Do you know why I am
+here before, so to speak, my anchor has fairly bitten into the ground of
+this port of Sulaco?"
+
+"You are welcome like a son," the old man declared, quietly, staring
+away upon the sea.
+
+"Ah! thy son. I know. I am what thy son would have been. It is well,
+viejo. It is a very good welcome. Listen, I have come to ask you
+for----"
+
+A sudden dread came upon the fearless and incorruptible Nostromo. He
+dared not utter the name in his mind. The slight pause only imparted a
+marked weight and solemnity to the changed end of the phrase.
+
+"For my wife!" . . . His heart was beating fast. "It is time you----"
+
+The Garibaldino arrested him with an extended arm. "That was left for
+you to judge."
+
+He got up slowly. His beard, unclipped since Teresa's death, thick,
+snow-white, covered his powerful chest. He turned his head to the door,
+and called out in his strong voice--
+
+"Linda."
+
+Her answer came sharp and faint from within; and the appalled Nostromo
+stood up, too, but remained mute, gazing at the door. He was afraid. He
+was not afraid of being refused the girl he loved--no mere refusal could
+stand between him and a woman he desired--but the shining spectre of
+the treasure rose before him, claiming his allegiance in a silence that
+could not be gainsaid. He was afraid, because, neither dead nor
+alive, like the Gringos on Azuera, he belonged body and soul to the
+unlawfulness of his audacity. He was afraid of being forbidden the
+island. He was afraid, and said nothing.
+
+Seeing the two men standing up side by side to await her, Linda stopped
+in the doorway. Nothing could alter the passionate dead whiteness of her
+face; but her black eyes seemed to catch and concentrate all the light
+of the low sun in a flaming spark within the black depths, covered at
+once by the slow descent of heavy eyelids.
+
+"Behold thy husband, master, and benefactor." Old Viola's voice
+resounded with a force that seemed to fill the whole gulf.
+
+She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a sleep-walker in
+a beatific dream.
+
+Nostromo made a superhuman effort. "It is time, Linda, we two were
+betrothed," he said, steadily, in his level, careless, unbending tone.
+
+She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her head, dark with
+bronze glints, upon which her father's hand rested for a moment.
+
+"And so the soul of the dead is satisfied."
+
+This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking for a while of his
+dead wife; while the two, sitting side by side, never looked at each
+other. Then the old man ceased; and Linda, motionless, began to speak.
+
+"Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived for you alone,
+Gian' Battista. And that you knew! You knew it . . . Battistino."
+
+She pronounced the name exactly with her mother's intonation. A gloom as
+of the grave covered Nostromo's heart.
+
+"Yes. I knew," he said.
+
+The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary head, his
+old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and violent, terrible
+and dreary--solitary on the earth full of men.
+
+And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, "I was yours ever since
+I can remember. I had only to think of you for the earth to become empty
+to my eyes. When you were there, I could see no one else. I was yours.
+Nothing is changed. The world belongs to you, and you let me live in
+it." . . . She dropped her low, vibrating voice to a still lower note,
+and found other things to say--torturing for the man at her side. Her
+murmur ran on ardent and voluble. She did not seem to see her sister,
+who came out with an altar-cloth she was embroidering in her hands, and
+passed in front of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a
+faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of Nostromo.
+
+The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the edge of a purple
+ocean; and the white lighthouse, livid against the background of clouds
+filling the head of the gulf, bore the lantern red and glowing, like a
+live ember kindled by the fire of the sky. Giselle, indolent and demure,
+raised the altar-cloth from time to time to hide nervous yawns, as of a
+young panther.
+
+Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her head, covered her
+face with kisses. Nostromo's brain reeled. When she left her, as if
+stunned by the violent caresses, with her hands lying in her lap, the
+slave of the treasure felt as if he could shoot that woman. Old Giorgio
+lifted his leonine head.
+
+"Where are you going, Linda?"
+
+"To the light, padre mio."
+
+"Si, si--to your duty."
+
+He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then, in a tone whose
+festive note seemed the echo of a mood lost in the night of ages--
+
+"I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The old man knows where to
+find a bottle of wine, too."
+
+He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere tenderness.
+
+"And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests and slaves, but to
+the God of orphans, of the oppressed, of the poor, of little children,
+to give thee a man like this one for a husband."
+
+His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo's shoulder; then he
+went in. The hopeless slave of the San Tome silver felt at these words
+the venomous fangs of jealousy biting deep into his heart. He was
+appalled by the novelty of the experience, by its force, by its physical
+intimacy. A husband! A husband for her! And yet it was natural that
+Giselle should have a husband at some time or other. He had never
+realized that before. In discovering that her beauty could belong
+to another he felt as though he could kill this one of old Giorgio's
+daughters also. He muttered moodily--
+
+"They say you love Ramirez."
+
+She shook her head without looking at him. Coppery glints rippled to and
+fro on the wealth of her gold hair. Her smooth forehead had the soft,
+pure sheen of a priceless pearl in the splendour of the sunset, mingling
+the gloom of starry spaces, the purple of the sea, and the crimson of
+the sky in a magnificent stillness.
+
+"No," she said, slowly. "I never loved him. I think I never . . . He
+loves me--perhaps."
+
+The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air, and her raised eyes
+remained fixed on nothing, as if indifferent and without thought.
+
+"Ramirez told you he loved you?" asked Nostromo, restraining himself.
+
+"Ah! once--one evening . . ."
+
+"The miserable . . . Ha!"
+
+He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood before her mute
+with anger.
+
+"Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian' Battista! Poor wretch that I am!"
+she lamented in ingenuous tones. "I told Linda, and she scolded--she
+scolded. Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this world? And she told
+father, who took down his gun and cleaned it. Poor Ramirez! Then you
+came, and she told you."
+
+He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of her white
+throat, which had the invincible charm of things young, palpitating,
+delicate, and alive. Was this the child he had known? Was it possible?
+It dawned upon him that in these last years he had really seen very
+little--nothing--of her. Nothing. She had come into the world like
+a thing unknown. She had come upon him unawares. She was a danger. A
+frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce determination that had
+never failed him before the perils of this life added its steady force
+to the violence of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the
+song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell, continued--
+
+"And between you three you have brought me here into this captivity to
+the sky and water. Nothing else. Sky and water. Oh, Sanctissima Madre.
+My hair shall turn grey on this tedious island. I could hate you, Gian'
+Battista!"
+
+He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a caress. She bemoaned
+her fate, spreading unconsciously, like a flower its perfume in the
+coolness of the evening, the indefinable seduction of her person. Was
+it her fault that nobody ever had admired Linda? Even when they were
+little, going out with their mother to Mass, she remembered that people
+took no notice of Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten
+her, who was timid, with their attention. It was her hair like gold, she
+supposed.
+
+He broke out--
+
+"Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips like the
+rose; your round arms, your white throat." . . .
+
+Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply all
+over to the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was no more
+self-conscious than a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even
+a flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced down, and added,
+impetuously--
+
+"Your little feet!"
+
+Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she seemed to
+bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes
+glanced at her little feet.
+
+"And so you are going at last to marry our Linda. She is terrible. Ah!
+now she will understand better since you have told her you love her. She
+will not be so fierce."
+
+"Chica!" said Nostromo, "I have not told her anything."
+
+"Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and tell her, so that I may have
+some peace from her scolding and--perhaps--who knows . . ."
+
+"Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You . . ."
+
+"Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni," she said, unmoved. "Who
+is Ramirez . . . Ramirez . . . Who is he?" she repeated, dreamily, in
+the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a low red streak in the
+west like a hot bar of glowing iron laid across the entrance of a world
+sombre as a cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had
+hidden his conquests of love and wealth.
+
+"Listen, Giselle," he said, in measured tones; "I will tell no word of
+love to your sister. Do you want to know why?"
+
+"Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father says you are not
+like other men; that no one had ever understood you properly; that the
+rich will be surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints in heaven! I am weary."
+
+She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of her face, then
+let it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land side, but
+slanting away from the dark column of the lighthouse they could see the
+long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go out to strike the expiring
+glow in a horizon of purple and red.
+
+Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the house,
+her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white stockings and black
+slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil
+and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the promising
+mysteriousness of her indolence, went out into the night of the Placid
+Gulf like a fresh and intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the
+shadows, impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed
+her ambient seduction in the tumultuous heaving of his breast. Before
+leaving the harbour he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain
+Fidanza, for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He stood
+before her in the red sash and check shirt as he used to appear on the
+Company's wharf--a Mediterranean sailor come ashore to try his luck in
+Costaguana. The dusk of purple and red enveloped him, too--close, soft,
+profound, as no more than fifty yards from that spot it had gathered
+evening after evening about the self-destructive passion of Don Martin
+Decoud's utter scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.
+
+"You have got to hear," he began at last, with perfect self-control. "I
+shall say no word of love to your sister, to whom I am betrothed from
+this evening, because it is you that I love. It is you!" . . .
+
+The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that came
+instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses, freeze hard in
+the drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not restrain himself any
+longer. While she shrank from his approach, her arms went out to him,
+abandoned and regal in the dignity of her languid surrender. He held her
+head in his two hands, and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face
+that gleamed in the purple dusk. Masterful and tender, he was entering
+slowly upon the fulness of his possession. And he perceived that she was
+crying. Then the incomparable Capataz, the man of careless loves, became
+gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a child. He murmured
+to her fondly. He sat down by her and nursed her fair head on his
+breast. He called her his star and his little flower.
+
+It had grown dark. From the living-room of the light-keeper's cottage,
+where Giorgio, one of the Immortal Thousand, was bending his leonine and
+heroic head over a charcoal fire, there came the sound of sizzling and
+the aroma of an artistic frittura.
+
+In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a cataclysm, it
+was in her feminine head that some gleam of reason survived. He was lost
+to the world in their embraced stillness. But she said, whispering into
+his ear--
+
+"God of mercy! What will become of me--here--now--between this sky and
+this water I hate? Linda, Linda--I see her!" . . . She tried to get out
+of his arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of that name. But there was
+no one approaching their black shapes, enlaced and struggling on the
+white background of the wall. "Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die
+of fear before my poor sister Linda, betrothed to-day to Giovanni--my
+lover! Giovanni, you must have been mad! I cannot understand you! You
+are not like other men! I will not give you up--never--only to God
+himself! But why have you done this blind, mad, cruel, frightful thing?"
+
+Released, she hung her head, let fall her hands. The altar-cloth, as if
+tossed by a great wind, lay far away from them, gleaming white on the
+black ground.
+
+"From fear of losing my hope of you," said Nostromo.
+
+"You knew that you had my soul! You know everything! It was made for
+you! But what could stand between you and me? What? Tell me!" she
+repeated, without impatience, in superb assurance.
+
+"Your dead mother," he said, very low.
+
+"Ah! . . . Poor mother! She has always . . . She is a saint in heaven
+now, and I cannot give you up to her. No, Giovanni. Only to God alone.
+You were mad--but it is done. Oh! what have you done? Giovanni, my
+beloved, my life, my master, do not leave me here in this grave of
+clouds. You cannot leave me now. You must take me away--at once--this
+instant--in the little boat. Giovanni, carry me off to-night, from my
+fear of Linda's eyes, before I have to look at her again."
+
+She nestled close to him. The slave of the San Tome silver felt the
+weight as of chains upon his limbs, a pressure as of a cold hand upon
+his lips. He struggled against the spell.
+
+"I cannot," he said. "Not yet. There is something that stands between us
+two and the freedom of the world."
+
+She pressed her form closer to his side with a subtle and naive instinct
+of seduction.
+
+"You rave, Giovanni--my lover!" she whispered, engagingly. "What can
+there be? Carry me off--in thy very hands--to Dona Emilia--away from
+here. I am not very heavy."
+
+It seemed as though she expected him to lift her up at once in his two
+palms. She had lost the notion of all impossibility. Anything could
+happen on this night of wonder. As he made no movement, she almost cried
+aloud--
+
+"I tell you I am afraid of Linda!" And still he did not move. She became
+quiet and wily. "What can there be?" she asked, coaxingly.
+
+He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the hollow of his
+arm. In the exulting consciousness of his strength, and the triumphant
+excitement of his mind, he struck out for his freedom.
+
+"A treasure," he said. All was still. She did not understand. "A
+treasure. A treasure of silver to buy a gold crown for thy brow."
+
+"A treasure?" she repeated in a faint voice, as if from the depths of a
+dream. "What is it you say?"
+
+She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked down at her, aware
+of her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimples on her cheeks--seeing
+the fascination of her person in the night of the gulf as if in the
+blaze of noonday. Her nonchalant and seductive voice trembled with the
+excitement of admiring awe and ungovernable curiosity.
+
+"A treasure of silver!" she stammered out. Then pressed on faster:
+"What? Where? How did you get it, Giovanni?"
+
+He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if striking a heroic
+blow that he burst out--
+
+"Like a thief!"
+
+The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to fall upon his head.
+He could not see her now. She had vanished into a long, obscure abysmal
+silence, whence her voice came back to him after a time with a faint
+glimmer, which was her face.
+
+"I love you! I love you!"
+
+These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom; they cast a spell
+stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure; they changed his weary
+subjection to that dead thing into an exulting conviction of his power.
+He would cherish her, he said, in a splendour as great as Dona Emilia's.
+The rich lived on wealth stolen from the people, but he had taken from
+the rich nothing--nothing that was not lost to them already by their
+folly and their betrayal. For he had been betrayed--he said--deceived,
+tempted. She believed him. . . . He had kept the treasure for purposes
+of revenge; but now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her. He
+would put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned with olive trees--a
+white palace above a blue sea. He would keep her there like a jewel in
+a casket. He would get land for her--her own land fertile with vines and
+corn--to set her little feet upon. He kissed them. . . . He had already
+paid for it all with the soul of a woman and the life of a man. . . .
+The Capataz de Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his
+generosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her feet in
+the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the darkness defying--as men
+said--the knowledge of God and the wit of the devil. But she must let
+him grow rich first--he warned her.
+
+She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in his hair. He got
+up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as though he had flung his soul
+away.
+
+"Make haste, then," she said. "Make haste, Giovanni, my lover, my
+master, for I will give thee up to no one but God. And I am afraid of
+Linda."
+
+He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. He trusted the
+courage of her love. She promised to be brave in order to be loved
+always--far away in a white palace upon a hill above a blue sea. Then
+with a timid, tentative eagerness she murmured--
+
+"Where is it? Where? Tell me that, Giovanni."
+
+He opened his mouth and remained silent--thunderstruck.
+
+"Not that! Not that!" he gasped out, appalled at the spell of secrecy
+that had kept him dumb before so many people falling upon his lips again
+with unimpaired force. Not even to her. Not even to her. It was too
+dangerous. "I forbid thee to ask," he cried at her, deadening cautiously
+the anger of his voice.
+
+He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the unlawful treasure
+arose, standing by her side like a figure of silver, pitiless and
+secret, with a finger on its pale lips. His soul died within him at the
+vision of himself creeping in presently along the ravine, with the smell
+of earth, of damp foliage in his nostrils--creeping in, determined in
+a purpose that numbed his breast, and creeping out again loaded with
+silver, with his ears alert to every sound. It must be done on this very
+night--that work of a craven slave!
+
+He stooped low, pressed the hem of her skirt to his lips, with a
+muttered command--
+
+"Tell him I would not stay," and was gone suddenly from her, silent,
+without as much as a footfall in the dark night.
+
+She sat still, her head resting indolently against the wall, and her
+little feet in white stockings and black slippers crossed over each
+other. Old Giorgio, coming out, did not seem to be surprised at the
+intelligence as much as she had vaguely feared. For she was full of
+inexplicable fear now--fear of everything and everybody except of her
+Giovanni and his treasure. But that was incredible.
+
+The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo's abrupt departure with a
+sagacious indulgence. He remembered his own feelings, and exhibited a
+masculine penetration of the true state of the case.
+
+"Va bene. Let him go. Ha! ha! No matter how fair the woman, it galls a
+little. Liberty, liberty. There's more than one kind! He has said
+the great word, and son Gian' Battista is not tame." He seemed to be
+instructing the motionless and scared Giselle. . . . "A man should not
+be tame," he added, dogmatically out of the doorway. Her stillness and
+silence seemed to displease him. "Do not give way to the enviousness of
+your sister's lot," he admonished her, very grave, in his deep voice.
+
+Presently he had to come to the door again to call in his younger
+daughter. It was late. He shouted her name three times before she
+even moved her head. Left alone, she had become the helpless prey of
+astonishment. She walked into the bedroom she shared with Linda like
+a person profoundly asleep. That aspect was so marked that even old
+Giorgio, spectacled, raising his eyes from the Bible, shook his head as
+she shut the door behind her.
+
+She walked right across the room without looking at anything, and sat
+down at once by the open window. Linda, stealing down from the tower in
+the exuberance of her happiness, found her with a lighted candle at her
+back, facing the black night full of sighing gusts of wind and the sound
+of distant showers--a true night of the gulf, too dense for the eye of
+God and the wiles of the devil. She did not turn her head at the opening
+of the door.
+
+There was something in that immobility which reached Linda in the depths
+of her paradise. The elder sister guessed angrily: the child is
+thinking of that wretched Ramirez. Linda longed to talk. She said in
+her arbitrary voice, "Giselle!" and was not answered by the slightest
+movement.
+
+The girl that was going to live in a palace and walk on ground of her
+own was ready to die with terror. Not for anything in the world would
+she have turned her head to face her sister. Her heart was beating
+madly. She said with subdued haste--
+
+"Do not speak to me. I am praying."
+
+Linda, disappointed, went out quietly; and Giselle sat on unbelieving,
+lost, dazed, patient, as if waiting for the confirmation of the
+incredible. The hopeless blackness of the clouds seemed part of a dream,
+too. She waited.
+
+She did not wait in vain. The man whose soul was dead within him,
+creeping out of the ravine, weighted with silver, had seen the gleam
+of the lighted window, and could not help retracing his steps from the
+beach.
+
+On that impenetrable background, obliterating the lofty mountains by
+the seaboard, she saw the slave of the San Tome silver, as if by
+an extraordinary power of a miracle. She accepted his return as if
+henceforth the world could hold no surprise for all eternity.
+
+She rose, compelled and rigid, and began to speak long before the light
+from within fell upon the face of the approaching man.
+
+"You have come back to carry me off. It is well! Open thy arms,
+Giovanni, my lover. I am coming."
+
+His prudent footsteps stopped, and with his eyes glistening wildly, he
+spoke in a harsh voice:
+
+"Not yet. I must grow rich slowly." . . . A threatening note came into
+his tone. "Do not forget that you have a thief for your lover."
+
+"Yes! Yes!" she whispered, hastily. "Come nearer! Listen! Do not give me
+up, Giovanni! Never, never! . . . I will be patient! . . ."
+
+Her form drooped consolingly over the low casement towards the slave of
+the unlawful treasure. The light in the room went out, and weighted with
+silver, the magnificent Capataz clasped her round her white neck in the
+darkness of the gulf as a drowning man clutches at a straw.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+On the day Mrs. Gould was going, in Dr. Monygham's words, to "give a
+tertulia," Captain Fidanza went down the side of his schooner lying in
+Sulaco harbour, calm, unbending, deliberate in the way he sat down
+in his dinghy and took up his sculls. He was later than usual. The
+afternoon was well advanced before he landed on the beach of the Great
+Isabel, and with a steady pace climbed the slope of the island.
+
+From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair tilted back
+against the end of the house, under the window of the girl's room. She
+had her embroidery in her hands, and held it well up to her eyes. The
+tranquillity of that girlish figure exasperated the feeling of perpetual
+struggle and strife he carried in his breast. He became angry. It seemed
+to him that she ought to hear the clanking of his fetters--his silver
+fetters, from afar. And while ashore that day, he had met the doctor
+with the evil eye, who had looked at him very hard.
+
+The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in their flower-like
+freshness straight upon his heart. Then she frowned. It was a warning to
+be cautious. He stopped some distance away, and in a loud, indifferent
+tone, said--
+
+"Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?"
+
+"Yes. She is in the big room with father."
+
+He approached then, and, looking through the window into the bedroom
+for fear of being detected by Linda returning there for some reason, he
+said, moving only his lips--
+
+"You love me?"
+
+"More than my life." She went on with her embroidery under his
+contemplating gaze and continued to speak, looking at her work, "Or I
+could not live. I could not, Giovanni. For this life is like death. Oh,
+Giovanni, I shall perish if you do not take me away."
+
+He smiled carelessly. "I will come to the window when it's dark," he
+said.
+
+"No, don't, Giovanni. Not-to-night. Linda and father have been talking
+together for a long time today."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I am afraid. I am always
+afraid. It is like dying a thousand times a day. Your love is to me like
+your treasure to you. It is there, but I can never get enough of it."
+
+He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His desire had grown
+within him. He had two masters now. But she was incapable of sustained
+emotion. She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly at
+night. When she saw him she flamed up always. Then only an increased
+taciturnity marked the change in her. She was afraid of betraying
+herself. She was afraid of pain, of bodily harm, of sharp words, of
+facing anger, and witnessing violence. For her soul was light and tender
+with a pagan sincerity in its impulses. She murmured--
+
+"Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on the hills, for which
+we are starving our love."
+
+She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner of the house.
+
+Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting, and was amazed at
+her sunken eyes, at her hollow cheeks, at the air of illness and anguish
+in her face.
+
+"Have you been ill?" he asked, trying to put some concern into this
+question.
+
+Her black eyes blazed at him. "Am I thinner?" she asked.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--a little."
+
+"And older?"
+
+"Every day counts--for all of us."
+
+"I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger," she said,
+slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon him.
+
+She waited for what he would say, rolling down her turned-up sleeves.
+
+"No fear of that," he said, absently.
+
+She turned away as if it had been something final, and busied herself
+with household cares while Nostromo talked with her father. Conversation
+with the old Garibaldino was not easy. Age had left his faculties
+unimpaired, only they seemed to have withdrawn somewhere deep within
+him. His answers were slow in coming, with an effect of august gravity.
+But that day he was more animated, quicker; there seemed to be more
+life in the old lion. He was uneasy for the integrity of his honour.
+He believed Sidoni's warning as to Ramirez's designs upon his younger
+daughter. And he did not trust her. She was flighty. He said nothing of
+his cares to "Son Gian' Battista." It was a touch of senile vanity. He
+wanted to show that he was equal yet to the task of guarding alone the
+honour of his house.
+
+Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had disappeared, walking towards
+the beach, Linda stepped over the threshold and, with a haggard smile,
+sat down by the side of her father.
+
+Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and desperate Ramirez had
+waited for her on the wharf, she had no doubts whatever. The jealous
+ravings of that man were no revelation. They had only fixed with
+precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that sense of unreality
+and deception which, instead of bliss and security, she had found in
+her intercourse with her promised husband. She had passed on, pouring
+indignation and scorn upon Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly died
+of wretchedness and shame, lying on the carved and lettered stone of
+Teresa's grave, subscribed for by the engine-drivers and the fitters of
+the railway workshops, in sign of their respect for the hero of Italian
+Unity. Old Viola had not been able to carry out his desire of burying
+his wife in the sea; and Linda wept upon the stone.
+
+The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to break her
+heart--well and good. Everything was permitted to Gian' Battista. But
+why trample upon the pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He
+could not break that. She dried her tears. And Giselle! Giselle! The
+little one that, ever since she could toddle, had always clung to
+her skirt for protection. What duplicity! But she could not help it
+probably. When there was a man in the case the poor featherheaded wretch
+could not help herself.
+
+Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She resolved to say
+nothing. But woman-like she put passion into her stoicism. Giselle's
+short answers, prompted by fearful caution, drove her beside herself by
+their curtness that resembled disdain. One day she flung herself upon
+the chair in which her indolent sister was lying and impressed the mark
+of her teeth at the base of the whitest neck in Sulaco. Giselle cried
+out. But she had her share of the Viola heroism. Ready to faint with
+terror, she only said, in a lazy voice, "Madre de Dios! Are you going to
+eat me alive, Linda?" And this outburst passed off leaving no trace upon
+the situation. "She knows nothing. She cannot know any thing," reflected
+Giselle. "Perhaps it is not true. It cannot be true," Linda tried to
+persuade herself.
+
+But when she saw Captain Fidanza for the first time after her meeting
+with the distracted Ramirez, the certitude of her misfortune returned.
+She watched him from the doorway go away to his boat, asking herself
+stoically, "Will they meet to-night?" She made up her mind not to leave
+the tower for a second. When he had disappeared she came out and sat
+down by her father.
+
+The venerable Garibaldino felt, in his own words, "a young man yet." In
+one way or another a good deal of talk about Ramirez had reached him
+of late; and his contempt and dislike of that man who obviously was
+not what his son would have been, had made him restless. He slept very
+little now; but for several nights past instead of reading--or only
+sitting, with Mrs. Gould's silver spectacles on his nose, before the
+open Bible, he had been prowling actively all about the island with his
+old gun, on watch over his honour.
+
+Linda, laying her thin brown hand on his knee, tried to soothe his
+excitement. Ramirez was not in Sulaco. Nobody knew where he was. He was
+gone. His talk of what he would do meant nothing.
+
+"No," the old man interrupted. "But son Gian' Battista told me--quite
+of himself--that the cowardly esclavo was drinking and gambling with the
+rascals of Zapiga, over there on the north side of the gulf. He may get
+some of the worst scoundrels of that scoundrelly town of negroes to help
+him in his attempt upon the little one. . . . But I am not so old. No!"
+
+She argued earnestly against the probability of any attempt being made;
+and at last the old man fell silent, chewing his white moustache. Women
+had their obstinate notions which must be humoured--his poor wife was
+like that, and Linda resembled her mother. It was not seemly for a man
+to argue. "May be. May be," he mumbled.
+
+She was by no means easy in her mind. She loved Nostromo. She turned
+her eyes upon Giselle, sitting at a distance, with something of maternal
+tenderness, and the jealous anguish of a rival outraged in her defeat.
+Then she rose and walked over to her.
+
+"Listen--you," she said, roughly.
+
+The invincible candour of the gaze, raised up all violet and dew,
+excited her rage and admiration. She had beautiful eyes--the Chica--this
+vile thing of white flesh and black deception. She did not know whether
+she wanted to tear them out with shouts of vengeance or cover up their
+mysterious and shameless innocence with kisses of pity and love. And
+suddenly they became empty, gazing blankly at her, except for a little
+fear not quite buried deep enough with all the other emotions in
+Giselle's heart.
+
+Linda said, "Ramirez is boasting in town that he will carry you off from
+the island."
+
+"What folly!" answered the other, and in a perversity born of long
+restraint, she added: "He is not the man," in a jesting tone with a
+trembling audacity.
+
+"No?" said Linda, through her clenched teeth. "Is he not? Well, then,
+look to it; because father has been walking about with a loaded gun at
+night."
+
+"It is not good for him. You must tell him not to, Linda. He will not
+listen to me."
+
+"I shall say nothing--never any more--to anybody," cried Linda,
+passionately.
+
+This could not last, thought Giselle. Giovanni must take her away
+soon--the very next time he came. She would not suffer these terrors for
+ever so much silver. To speak with her sister made her ill. But she was
+not uneasy at her father's watchfulness. She had begged Nostromo not
+to come to the window that night. He had promised to keep away for this
+once. And she did not know, could not guess or imagine, that he had
+another reason for coming on the island.
+
+Linda had gone straight to the tower. It was time to light up. She
+unlocked the little door, and went heavily up the spiral staircase,
+carrying her love for the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores like an
+ever-increasing load of shameful fetters. No; she could not throw it
+off. No; let Heaven dispose of these two. And moving about the lantern,
+filled with twilight and the sheen of the moon, with careful movements
+she lighted the lamp. Then her arms fell along her body.
+
+"And with our mother looking on," she murmured. "My own sister--the
+Chica!"
+
+The whole refracting apparatus, with its brass fittings and rings of
+prisms, glittered and sparkled like a domeshaped shrine of diamonds,
+containing not a lamp, but some sacred flame, dominating the sea. And
+Linda, the keeper, in black, with a pale face, drooped low in a wooden
+chair, alone with her jealousy, far above the shames and passions of the
+earth. A strange, dragging pain as if somebody were pulling her about
+brutally by her dark hair with bronze glints, made her put her hands up
+to her temples. They would meet. They would meet. And she knew where,
+too. At the window. The sweat of torture fell in drops on her cheeks,
+while the moonlight in the offing closed as if with a colossal bar of
+silver the entrance of the Placid Gulf--the sombre cavern of clouds and
+stillness in the surf-fretted seaboard.
+
+Linda Viola stood up suddenly with a finger on her lip. He loved neither
+her nor her sister. The whole thing seemed so objectless as to frighten
+her, and also give her some hope. Why did he not carry her off? What
+prevented him? He was incomprehensible. What were they waiting for? For
+what end were these two lying and deceiving? Not for the ends of their
+love. There was no such thing. The hope of regaining him for herself
+made her break her vow of not leaving the tower that night. She must
+talk at once to her father, who was wise, and would understand. She ran
+down the spiral stairs. At the moment of opening the door at the bottom
+she heard the sound of the first shot ever fired on the Great Isabel.
+
+She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her breast. She ran on
+without pausing. The cottage was dark. She cried at the door, "Giselle!
+Giselle!" then dashed round the corner and screamed her sister's name
+at the open window, without getting an answer; but as she was rushing,
+distracted, round the house, Giselle came out of the door, and darted
+past her, running silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring
+straight ahead. She seemed to skim along the grass as if on tiptoe, and
+vanished.
+
+Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out before her. All
+was still on the island; she did not know where she was going. The tree
+under which Martin Decoud spent his last days, beholding life like a
+succession of senseless images, threw a large blotch of black shade upon
+the grass. Suddenly she saw her father, standing quietly all alone in
+the moonlight.
+
+The Garibaldino--big, erect, with his snow-white hair and beard--had a
+monumental repose in his immobility, leaning upon a rifle. She put her
+hand upon his arm lightly. He never stirred.
+
+"What have you done?" she asked, in her ordinary voice.
+
+"I have shot Ramirez--infame!" he answered, with his eyes directed to
+where the shade was blackest. "Like a thief he came, and like a thief he
+fell. The child had to be protected."
+
+He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single step. He stood
+there, rugged and unstirring, like a statue of an old man guarding the
+honour of his house. Linda removed her trembling hand from his arm,
+firm and steady like an arm of stone, and, without a word, entered the
+blackness of the shade. She saw a stir of formless shapes on the ground,
+and stopped short. A murmur of despair and tears grew louder to her
+strained hearing.
+
+"I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my Giovanni! And you
+promised. Oh! Why--why did you come, Giovanni?"
+
+It was her sister's voice. It broke on a heartrending sob. And the voice
+of the resourceful Capataz de Cargadores, master and slave of the
+San Tome treasure, who had been caught unawares by old Giorgio while
+stealing across the open towards the ravine to get some more silver,
+answered careless and cool, but sounding startlingly weak from the
+ground.
+
+"It seemed as though I could not live through the night without seeing
+thee once more--my star, my little flower."
+
+* * * * *
+
+The brilliant tertulia was just over, the last guests had departed, and
+the Senor Administrador had gone to his room already, when Dr. Monygham,
+who had been expected in the evening but had not turned up, arrived
+driving along the wood-block pavement under the electric-lamps of the
+deserted Calle de la Constitucion, and found the great gateway of the
+Casa still open.
+
+He limped in, stumped up the stairs, and found the fat and sleek Basilio
+on the point of turning off the lights in the sala. The prosperous
+majordomo remained open-mouthed at this late invasion.
+
+"Don't put out the lights," commanded the doctor. "I want to see the
+senora."
+
+"The senora is in the Senor Adminstrador's cancillaria," said Basilio,
+in an unctuous voice. "The Senor Administrador starts for the mountain
+in an hour. There is some trouble with the workmen to be feared, it
+appears. A shameless people without reason and decency. And idle, senor.
+Idle."
+
+"You are shamelessly lazy and imbecile yourself," said the doctor,
+with that faculty for exasperation which made him so generally beloved.
+"Don't put the lights out."
+
+Basilio retired with dignity. Dr. Monygham, waiting in the brilliantly
+lighted sala, heard presently a door close at the further end of the
+house. A jingle of spurs died out. The Senor Administrador was off to
+the mountain.
+
+With a measured swish of her long train, flashing with jewels and the
+shimmer of silk, her delicate head bowed as if under the weight of a
+mass of fair hair, in which the silver threads were lost, the "first
+lady of Sulaco," as Captain Mitchell used to describe her, moved along
+the lighted corredor, wealthy beyond great dreams of wealth, considered,
+loved, respected, honoured, and as solitary as any human being had ever
+been, perhaps, on this earth.
+
+The doctor's "Mrs. Gould! One minute!" stopped her with a start at the
+door of the lighted and empty sala. From the similarity of mood and
+circumstance, the sight of the doctor, standing there all alone amongst
+the groups of furniture, recalled to her emotional memory her unexpected
+meeting with Martin Decoud; she seemed to hear in the silence the voice
+of that man, dead miserably so many years ago, pronounce the words,
+"Antonia left her fan here." But it was the doctor's voice that spoke, a
+little altered by his excitement. She remarked his shining eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Gould, you are wanted. Do you know what has happened? You remember
+what I told you yesterday about Nostromo. Well, it seems that a lancha,
+a decked boat, coming from Zapiga, with four negroes in her, passing
+close to the Great Isabel, was hailed from the cliff by a woman's
+voice--Linda's, as a matter of fact--commanding them (it's a moonlight
+night) to go round to the beach and take up a wounded man to the town.
+The patron (from whom I've heard all this), of course, did so at once.
+He told me that when they got round to the low side of the Great Isabel,
+they found Linda Viola waiting for them. They followed her: she led them
+under a tree not far from the cottage. There they found Nostromo lying
+on the ground with his head in the younger girl's lap, and father Viola
+standing some distance off leaning on his gun. Under Linda's direction
+they got a table out of the cottage for a stretcher, after breaking off
+the legs. They are here, Mrs. Gould. I mean Nostromo and--and Giselle.
+The negroes brought him in to the first-aid hospital near the harbour.
+He made the attendant send for me. But it was not me he wanted to
+see--it was you, Mrs. Gould! It was you."
+
+"Me?" whispered Mrs. Gould, shrinking a little.
+
+"Yes, you!" the doctor burst out. "He begged me--his enemy, as he
+thinks--to bring you to him at once. It seems he has something to say to
+you alone."
+
+"Impossible!" murmured Mrs. Gould.
+
+"He said to me, 'Remind her that I have done something to keep a roof
+over her head.' . . . Mrs. Gould," the doctor pursued, in the greatest
+excitement. "Do you remember the silver? The silver in the lighter--that
+was lost?"
+
+Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she hated the mere mention of
+that silver. Frankness personified, she remembered with an exaggerated
+horror that for the first and last time of her life she had concealed
+the truth from her husband about that very silver. She had been
+corrupted by her fears at that time, and she had never forgiven herself.
+Moreover, that silver, which would never have come down if her husband
+had been made acquainted with the news brought by Decoud, had been in
+a roundabout way nearly the cause of Dr. Monygham's death. And these
+things appeared to her very dreadful.
+
+"Was it lost, though?" the doctor exclaimed. "I've always felt that
+there was a mystery about our Nostromo ever since. I do believe he wants
+now, at the point of death----"
+
+"The point of death?" repeated Mrs. Gould.
+
+"Yes. Yes. . . . He wants perhaps to tell you something concerning that
+silver which----"
+
+"Oh, no! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low voice. "Isn't it lost and
+done with? Isn't there enough treasure without it to make everybody in
+the world miserable?"
+
+The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed silence. At
+last he ventured, very low--
+
+"And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are we to do? It looks as
+though father and sister had----"
+
+Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to do her best for these
+girls.
+
+"I have a volante here," the doctor said. "If you don't mind getting
+into that----"
+
+He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reappeared, having thrown
+over her dress a grey cloak with a deep hood.
+
+It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded over her evening
+costume, this woman, full of endurance and compassion, stood by the side
+of the bed on which the splendid Capataz de Cargadores lay stretched
+out motionless on his back. The whiteness of sheets and pillows gave a
+sombre and energetic relief to his bronzed face, to the dark, nervous
+hands, so good on a tiller, upon a bridle and on a trigger, lying open
+and idle upon a white coverlet.
+
+"She is innocent," the Capataz was saying in a deep and level voice, as
+though afraid that a louder word would break the slender hold his
+spirit still kept upon his body. "She is innocent. It is I alone. But no
+matter. For these things I would answer to no man or woman alive."
+
+He paused. Mrs. Gould's face, very white within the shadow of the hood,
+bent over him with an invincible and dreary sadness. And the low sobs
+of Giselle Viola, kneeling at the end of the bed, her gold hair with
+coppery gleams loose and scattered over the Capataz's feet, hardly
+troubled the silence of the room.
+
+"Ha! Old Giorgio--the guardian of thine honour! Fancy the Vecchio coming
+upon me so light of foot, so steady of aim. I myself could have done no
+better. But the price of a charge of powder might have been saved. The
+honour was safe. . . . Senora, she would have followed to the end of
+the world Nostromo the thief. . . . I have said the word. The spell is
+broken!"
+
+A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes down.
+
+"I cannot see her. . . . No matter," he went on, with the shadow of the
+old magnificent carelessness in his voice. "One kiss is enough, if
+there is no time for more. An airy soul, senora! Bright and warm, like
+sunshine--soon clouded, and soon serene. They would crush it there
+between them. Senora, cast on her the eye of your compassion, as famed
+from one end of the land to the other as the courage and daring of
+the man who speaks to you. She will console herself in time. And even
+Ramirez is not a bad fellow. I am not angry. No! It is not Ramirez
+who overcame the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores." He paused, made an
+effort, and in louder voice, a little wildly, declared--
+
+"I die betrayed--betrayed by----"
+
+But he did not say by whom or by what he was dying betrayed.
+
+"She would not have betrayed me," he began again, opening his eyes very
+wide. "She was faithful. We were going very far--very soon. I could have
+torn myself away from that accursed treasure for her. For that child I
+would have left boxes and boxes of it--full. And Decoud took four. Four
+ingots. Why? Picardia! To betray me? How could I give back the treasure
+with four ingots missing? They would have said I had purloined them. The
+doctor would have said that. Alas! it holds me yet!"
+
+Mrs. Gould bent low, fascinated--cold with apprehension.
+
+"What became of Don Martin on that night, Nostromo?"
+
+"Who knows? I wondered what would become of me. Now I know. Death was
+to come upon me unawares. He went away! He betrayed me. And you think
+I have killed him! You are all alike, you fine people. The silver has
+killed me. It has held me. It holds me yet. Nobody knows where it is.
+But you are the wife of Don Carlos, who put it into my hands and said,
+'Save it on your life.' And when I returned, and you all thought it
+was lost, what do I hear? 'It was nothing of importance. Let it go. Up,
+Nostromo, the faithful, and ride away to save us, for dear life!'"
+
+"Nostromo!" Mrs. Gould whispered, bending very low. "I, too, have hated
+the idea of that silver from the bottom of my heart."
+
+"Marvellous!--that one of you should hate the wealth that you know so
+well how to take from the hands of the poor. The world rests upon the
+poor, as old Giorgio says. You have been always good to the poor. But
+there is something accursed in wealth. Senora, shall I tell you where
+the treasure is? To you alone. . . . Shining! Incorruptible!"
+
+A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone, in his eyes,
+plain to the woman with the genius of sympathetic intuition. She averted
+her glance from the miserable subjection of the dying man, appalled,
+wishing to hear no more of the silver.
+
+"No, Capataz," she said. "No one misses it now. Let it be lost for
+ever."
+
+After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes, uttered no word,
+made no movement. Outside the door of the sick-room Dr. Monygham,
+excited to the highest pitch, his eyes shining with eagerness, came up
+to the two women.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Gould," he said, almost brutally in his impatience, "tell me,
+was I right? There is a mystery. You have got the word of it, have you
+not? He told you----"
+
+"He told me nothing," said Mrs. Gould, steadily.
+
+The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo went out of Dr.
+Monygham's eyes. He stepped back submissively. He did not believe Mrs.
+Gould. But her word was law. He accepted her denial like an inexplicable
+fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo's genius over his own. Even
+before that woman, whom he loved with secret devotion, he had been
+defeated by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, the man who had lived
+his own life on the assumption of unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and
+courage!
+
+"Pray send at once somebody for my carriage," spoke Mrs. Gould from
+within her hood. Then, turning to Giselle Viola, "Come nearer me, child;
+come closer. We will wait here."
+
+Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face veiled in her falling
+hair, crept up to her side. Mrs. Gould slipped her hand through the arm
+of the unworthy daughter of old Viola, the immaculate republican, the
+hero without a stain. Slowly, gradually, as a withered flower droops,
+the head of the girl, who would have followed a thief to the end of the
+world, rested on the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady of Sulaco,
+the wife of the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. And Mrs.
+Gould, feeling her suppressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the
+first and only moment of bitterness in her life. It was worthy of Dr.
+Monygham himself.
+
+"Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgotten you for his
+treasure."
+
+"Senora, he loved me. He loved me," Giselle whispered, despairingly. "He
+loved me as no one had ever been loved before."
+
+"I have been loved, too," Mrs. Gould said in a severe tone.
+
+Giselle clung to her convulsively. "Oh, senora, but you shall live
+adored to the end of your life," she sobbed out.
+
+Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage arrived. She
+helped in the half-fainting girl. After the doctor had shut the door of
+the landau, she leaned over to him.
+
+"You can do nothing?" she whispered.
+
+"No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won't let us touch him. It does not
+matter. I just had one look. . . . Useless."
+
+But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl that very night. He
+could get the police-boat to take him off to the island. He remained
+in the street, looking after the landau rolling away slowly behind the
+white mules.
+
+The rumour of some accident--an accident to Captain Fidanza--had been
+spreading along the new quays with their rows of lamps and the dark
+shapes of towering cranes. A knot of night prowlers--the poorest of the
+poor--hung about the door of the first-aid hospital, whispering in the
+moonlight of the empty street.
+
+There was no one with the wounded man but the pale photographer, small,
+frail, bloodthirsty, the hater of capitalists, perched on a high stool
+near the head of the bed with his knees up and his chin in his hands. He
+had been fetched by a comrade who, working late on the wharf, had
+heard from a negro belonging to a lancha, that Captain Fidanza had been
+brought ashore mortally wounded.
+
+"Have you any dispositions to make, comrade?" he asked, anxiously. "Do
+not forget that we want money for our work. The rich must be fought with
+their own weapons."
+
+Nostromo made no answer. The other did not insist, remaining huddled
+up on the stool, shock-headed, wildly hairy, like a hunchbacked monkey.
+Then, after a long silence--
+
+"Comrade Fidanza," he began, solemnly, "you have refused all aid from
+that doctor. Is he really a dangerous enemy of the people?"
+
+In the dimly lit room Nostromo rolled his head slowly on the pillow and
+opened his eyes, directing at the weird figure perched by his bedside a
+glance of enigmatic and profound inquiry. Then his head rolled back, his
+eyelids fell, and the Capataz de Cargadores died without a word or moan
+after an hour of immobility, broken by short shudders testifying to the
+most atrocious sufferings.
+
+Dr. Monygham, going out in the police-galley to the islands, beheld the
+glitter of the moon upon the gulf and the high black shape of the Great
+Isabel sending a shaft of light afar, from under the canopy of clouds.
+
+"Pull easy," he said, wondering what he would find there. He tried to
+imagine Linda and her father, and discovered a strange reluctance within
+himself. "Pull easy," he repeated.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour, Giorgio Viola had
+not stirred from the spot. He stood, his old gun grounded, his hand
+grasping the barrel near the muzzle. After the lancha carrying off
+Nostromo for ever from her had left the shore, Linda, coming up, stopped
+before him. He did not seem to be aware of her presence, but when,
+losing her forced calmness, she cried out--
+
+"Do you know whom you have killed?" he answered--
+
+"Ramirez the vagabond."
+
+White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda laughed in his face.
+After a time he joined her faintly in a deep-toned and distant echo of
+her peals. Then she stopped, and the old man spoke as if startled--
+
+"He cried out in son Gian' Battista's voice."
+
+The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained extended for a
+moment as if still supported. Linda seized it roughly.
+
+"You are too old to understand. Come into the house."
+
+He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled heavily, nearly coming
+to the ground together with his daughter. His excitement, his activity
+of the last few days, had been like the flare of a dying lamp. He caught
+at the back of his chair.
+
+"In son Gian' Battista's voice," he repeated in a severe tone. "I heard
+him--Ramirez--the miserable----"
+
+Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, hissed into his ear--
+
+"You have killed Gian' Battista."
+
+The old man smiled under his thick moustache. Women had strange fancies.
+
+"Where is the child?" he asked, surprised at the penetrating chilliness
+of the air and the unwonted dimness of the lamp by which he used to sit
+up half the night with the open Bible before him.
+
+Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.
+
+"She is asleep," she said. "We shall talk of her tomorrow."
+
+She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and with an
+almost unbearable feeling of pity. She had observed the change that came
+over him. He would never understand what he had done; and even to her
+the whole thing remained incomprehensible. He said with difficulty--
+
+"Give me the book."
+
+Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn leather cover, the
+Bible given him ages ago by an Englishman in Palermo.
+
+"The child had to be protected," he said, in a strange, mournful voice.
+
+Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying without noise. Suddenly
+she started for the door. He heard her move.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked.
+
+"To the light," she answered, turning round to look at him balefully.
+
+"The light! Si--duty."
+
+Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed quietness,
+he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the spectacles given him by
+Dona Emilia. He put them on. After a long period of immobility he opened
+the book, and from on high looked through the glasses at the small print
+in double columns. A rigid, stern expression settled upon his features
+with a slight frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought or
+unpleasant sensation. But he never detached his eyes from the book while
+he swayed forward, gently, gradually, till his snow-white head
+rested upon the open pages. A wooden clock ticked methodically on the
+white-washed wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay alone,
+rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by a treacherous gust of
+wind.
+
+The light of the Great Isabel burned unfailing above the lost treasure
+of the San Tome mine. Into the bluish sheen of a night without stars
+the lantern sent out a yellow beam towards the far horizon. Like a black
+speck upon the shining panes, Linda, crouching in the outer gallery,
+rested her head on the rail. The moon, drooping in the western board,
+looked at her radiantly.
+
+Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of oars from a
+passing boat ceased, and Dr. Monygham stood up in the stern sheets.
+
+"Linda!" he shouted, throwing back his head. "Linda!"
+
+Linda stood up. She had recognized the voice.
+
+"Is he dead?" she cried, bending over.
+
+"Yes, my poor girl. I am coming round," the doctor answered from below.
+"Pull to the beach," he said to the rowers.
+
+Linda's black figure detached itself upright on the light of the lantern
+with her arms raised above her head as though she were going to throw
+herself over.
+
+"It is I who loved you," she whispered, with a face as set and white
+as marble in the moonlight. "I! Only I! She will forget thee, killed
+miserably for her pretty face. I cannot understand. I cannot understand.
+But I shall never forget thee. Never!"
+
+She stood silent and still, collecting her strength to throw all her
+fidelity, her pain, bewilderment, and despair into one great cry.
+
+"Never! Gian' Battista!"
+
+Dr. Monygham, pulling round in the police-galley, heard the name pass
+over his head. It was another of Nostromo's triumphs, the greatest, the
+most enviable, the most sinister of all. In that true cry of undying
+passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to
+the bright line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining
+like a mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de
+Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure
+and love.
+
+
+
+
+
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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad***
+#24 in our series by Joseph Conrad
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+Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
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+
+
+This etext was prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, NE
+
+
+
+
+
+NOSTROMO
+A TALE OF THE SEABOARD
+
+BY
+JOSEPH CONRAD
+
+
+
+
+"So foul a sky clears not without a storm."
+                        - SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+
+TO
+JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+
+"NOSTROMO" is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels
+which belong to the period following upon the publication of the
+"Typhoon" volume of short stories.
+
+I don't mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending
+change in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my
+writing life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in
+that mysterious, extraneous thing which has nothing to do with
+the theories of art; a subtle change in the nature of the
+inspiration; a phenomenon for which I can not in any way be held
+responsible. What, however, did cause me some concern was that
+after finishing the last story of the "Typhoon" volume it seemed
+somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about.
+
+This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little
+time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint
+for "Nostromo" came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote
+completely destitute of valuable details.
+
+As a matter of fact in 1875 or '6, when very young, in the West
+Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land
+were short, few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who
+was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of
+silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the
+troubles of a revolution.
+
+On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no
+details, and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I
+was not likely to keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till
+twenty-six or seven years afterwards I came upon the very thing
+in a shabby volume picked up outside a second-hand book-shop. It
+was the life story of an American seaman written by himself with
+the assistance of a journalist. In the course of his wanderings
+that American sailor worked for some months on board a schooner,
+the master and owner of which was the thief of whom I had heard
+in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there
+could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the
+same part of the world and both connected with a South American
+revolution.
+
+The fellow had actually managed to steal a lighter with silver,
+and this, it seems, only because he was implicitly trusted by his
+employers, who must have been singularly poor judges of
+character. In the sailor's story he is represented as an
+unmitigated rascal, a small cheat, stupidly ferocious, morose, of
+mean appearance, and altogether unworthy of the greatness this
+opportunity had thrust upon him. What was interesting was that he
+would boast of it openly.
+
+He used to say: "People think I make a lot of money in this
+schooner of mine. But that is nothing.  I don't care for that.
+Now and then I go away quietly and lift a bar of silver. I must
+get rich slowly--you understand."
+
+There was also another curious point about the man.  Once in the
+course of some quarrel the sailor threatened him: "What's to
+prevent me reporting ashore what you have told me about that
+silver?"
+
+The cynical ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He actually
+laughed. "You fool, if you dare talk like that on shore about me
+you will get a knife stuck in your back. Every man, woman, and
+child in that port is my friend. And who's to prove the lighter
+wasn't sunk? I didn't show you where the silver is hidden.  Did
+I? So you know nothing. And suppose I lied? Eh?"
+
+Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid meanness of that
+impenitent thief, deserted from the schooner.  The whole episode
+takes about three pages of his autobiography. Nothing to speak
+of; but as I looked them over, the curious confirmation of the
+few casual words heard in my early youth evoked the memories of
+that distant time when everything was so fresh, so surprising, so
+venturesome, so interesting; bits of strange coasts under the
+stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, men's passions in the
+dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown dim. . . . Perhaps,
+perhaps, there still was in the world something to write about.
+Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A rascal
+steals a large parcel of a valuable commodity--so people say.
+It's either true or untrue; and in any case it has no value in
+itself. To invent a circumstantial account of the robbery did not
+appeal to me, because my talents not running that way I did not
+think that the game was worth the candle. It was only when it
+dawned upon me that the purloiner of the treasure need not
+necessarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could be even a man of
+character, an actor and possibly a victim in the changing scenes
+of a revolution, it was only then that I had the first vision of
+a twilight country which was to become the province of Sulaco,
+with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty Campo for mute
+witnesses of events flowing from the passions of men
+short-sighted in good and evil.
+
+Such are in very truth the obscure origins of "Nostromo"--the
+book. From that moment, I suppose, it had to be. Yet even then I
+hesitated, as if warned by the instinct of self-preservation from
+venturing on a distant and toilsome journey into a land full of
+intrigues and revolutions. But it had to be done.
+
+It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with many
+intervals of renewed hesitation, lest I should lose myself in the
+ever-enlarging vistas opening before me as I progressed deeper in
+my knowledge of the country.  Often, also, when I had thought
+myself to a standstill over the tangled-up affairs of the
+Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack my bag, rush away
+from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages of the
+"Mirror of the Sea." But generally, as I've said before, my
+sojourn on the Continent of Latin America, famed for its
+hospitality, lasted for about two years.  On my return I found
+(speaking somewhat in the style of Captain Gulliver) my family
+all well, my wife heartily glad to learn that the fuss was all
+over, and our small boy considerably grown during my absence.
+
+My principal authority for the history of Costaguana is, of
+course, my venerated friend, the late Don Jose Avellanos,
+Minister to the Courts of England and Spain, etc., etc., in his
+impartial and eloquent "History of Fifty Years of Misrule." That
+work was never published--the reader will discover why--and I am
+in fact the only person in the world possessed of its contents. I
+have mastered them in not a few hours of earnest meditation, and
+I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In justice to myself,
+and to allay the fears of prospective readers, I beg to point out
+that the few historical allusions are never dragged in for the
+sake of parading my unique erudition, but that each of them is
+closely related to actuality; either throwing a light on the
+nature of current events or affecting directly the fortunes of
+the people of whom I speak.
+
+As to their own histories I have tried to set them down,
+Aristocracy and People, men and women, Latin and Anglo-Saxon,
+bandit and politician, with as cool a hand as was possible in the
+heat and clash of my own conflicting emotions. And after all this
+is also the story of their conflicts. It is for the reader to say
+how far they are deserving of interest in their actions and in
+the secret purposes of their hearts revealed in the bitter
+necessities of the time. I confess that, for me, that time is the
+time of firm friendships and unforgotten hospitalities. And in my
+gratitude I must mention here Mrs. Gould, "the first lady of
+Sulaco," whom we may safely leave to the secret devotion of Dr.
+Monygham, and Charles Gould, the Idealist-creator of Material
+Interests whom we must leave to his Mine--from which there is no
+escape in this world.
+
+About Nostromo, the second of the two racially and socially
+contrasted men, both captured by the silver of the San Tome Mine,
+I feel bound to say something more.
+
+I did not hesitate to make that central figure an Italian.  First
+of all the thing is perfectly credible: Italians were swarming
+into the Occidental Province at the time, as anybody who will
+read further can see; and secondly, there was no one who could
+stand so well by the side of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the
+Idealist of the old, humanitarian revolutions. For myself I
+needed there a Man of the People as free as possible from his
+class-conventions and all settled modes of thinking. This is not
+a side snarl at conventions. My reasons were not moral but
+artistic. Had he been an Anglo-Saxon he would have tried to get
+into local politics.  But Nostromo does not aspire to be a leader
+in a personal game. He does not want to raise himself above the
+mass. He is content to feel himself a power--within the People.
+
+But mainly Nostromo is what he is because I received the
+inspiration for him in my early days from a Mediterranean sailor.
+Those who have read certain pages of mine will see at once what I
+mean when I say that Dominic, the padrone of the Tremolino, might
+under given circumstances have been a Nostromo. At any rate
+Dominic would have understood the younger man perfectly--if
+scornfully. He and I were engaged together in a rather absurd
+adventure, but the absurdity does not matter. It is a real
+satisfaction to think that in my very young days there must,
+after all, have been something in me worthy to command that man's
+half-bitter fidelity, his half-ironic devotion. Many of
+Nostromo's speeches I have heard first in Dominic's voice.  His
+hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the horizon from
+within the monkish hood shadowing his face, he would utter the
+usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "Vous autres
+gentilhommes!" in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like
+Nostromo!  "You hombres finos!" Very much like Nostromo.  But
+Dominic the Corsican nursed a certain pride of ancestry from
+which my Nostromo is free; for Nostromo's lineage had to be more
+ancient still. He is a man with the weight of countless
+generations behind him and no parentage to boast of. . . . Like
+the People.
+
+In his firm grip on the earth he inherits, in his improvidence
+and generosity, in his lavishness with his gifts, in his manly
+vanity, in the obscure sense of his greatness and in his faithful
+devotion with something despairing as well as desperate in its
+impulses, he is a Man of the People, their very own unenvious
+force, disdaining to lead but ruling from within. Years
+afterwards, grown older as the famous Captain Fidanza, with a
+stake in the country, going about his many affairs followed by
+respectful glances in the modernized streets of Sulaco, calling
+on the widow of the cargador, attending the Lodge, listening in
+unmoved silence to anarchist speeches at the meeting, the
+enigmatical patron of the new revolutionary agitation, the
+trusted, the wealthy comrade Fidanza with the knowledge of his
+moral ruin locked up in his breast, he remains essentially a Man
+of the People. In his mingled love and scorn of life and in the
+bewildered conviction of having been betrayed, of dying betrayed
+he hardly knows by what or by whom, he is still of the People,
+their undoubted Great Man--with a private history of his own.
+
+One more figure of those stirring times I would like to mention:
+and that is Antonia Avellanos--the "beautiful Antonia." Whether
+she is a possible variation of Latin-American girlhood I wouldn't
+dare to affirm. But, for me, she is. Always a little in the
+background by the side of her father (my venerated friend) I hope
+she has yet relief enough to make intelligible what I am going to
+say. Of all the people who had seen with me the birth of the
+Occidental Republic, she is the only one who has kept in my
+memory the aspect of continued life. Antonia the Aristocrat and
+Nostromo the Man of the People are the artisans of the New Era,
+the true creators of the New State; he by his legendary and
+daring feat, she, like a woman, simply by the force of what she
+is: the only being capable of inspiring a sincere passion in the
+heart of a trifler.
+
+If anything could induce me to revisit Sulaco (I should hate to
+see all these changes) it would be Antonia.  And the true reason
+for that--why not be frank about it?--the true reason is that I
+have modelled her on my first love. How we, a band of tallish
+schoolboys, the chums of her two brothers, how we used to look up
+to that girl just out of the schoolroom herself, as the
+standard-bearer of a faith to which we all were born but which
+she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching hope! She
+had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia,
+but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint
+of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only
+one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her
+scathing criticism of my levities--very much like poor Decoud--or
+stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did
+not quite understand--but never mind. That afternoon when I came
+in, a shrinking yet defiant sinner, to say the final good-bye I
+received a hand-squeeze that made my heart leap and saw a tear
+that took my breath away. She was softened at the last as though
+she had suddenly perceived (we were such children still!) that I
+was really going away for good, going very far away--even as far
+as Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes in the darkness of
+the Placid Gulf.
+
+That's why I long sometimes for another glimpse of the "beautiful
+Antonia" (or can it be the Other?) moving in the dimness of the
+great cathedral, saying a short prayer at the tomb of the first
+and last Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco, standing absorbed in
+filial devotion before the monument of Don Jose Avellanos, and,
+with a lingering, tender, faithful glance at the
+medallion-memorial to Martin Decoud, going out serenely into the
+sunshine of the Plaza with her upright carriage and her white
+head; a relic of the past disregarded by men awaiting impatiently
+the Dawns of other New Eras, the coming of more Revolutions.
+
+But this is the idlest of dreams; for I did understand perfectly
+well at the time that the moment the breath left the body of the
+Magnificent Capataz, the Man of the People, freed at last from
+the toils of love and wealth, there was nothing more for me to do
+in Sulaco.
+
+
+J. C.
+
+October, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART FIRST
+
+THE SILVER OF THE MINE
+
+PART SECOND
+
+THE ISABELS
+
+PART THIRD
+
+THE LIGHTHOUSE
+
+
+
+
+NOSTROMO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+IN THE time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the
+town of Sulaco--the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears
+witness to its antiquity--had never been commercially anything
+more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local
+trade in ox-hides and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the
+conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie
+becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges
+ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of
+Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some harbours of
+the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery of sunken
+rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an
+inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in
+the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an
+enormous semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean,
+with its walls of lofty mountains hung with the mourning
+draperies of cloud.
+
+On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard of the
+Republic of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an
+insignificant cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of
+the gulf the point of the land itself is not visible at all; but
+the shoulder of a steep hill at the back can be made out faintly
+like a shadow on the sky.
+
+On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue
+mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon.  This is the
+peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels
+cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a
+rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end
+of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub.
+Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides
+into the sea, it has not soil enough--it is said--to grow a
+single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse.  The
+poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas
+of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of
+its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood,
+peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame
+Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a
+basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps
+of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving
+the stony levels of Azuera.  Tradition has it that many
+adventurers of olden time had perished in the search. The story
+goes also that within men's memory two wandering sailors--
+Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for certain--talked
+over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three stole a
+donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin,
+and provisions enough to last a few days.  Thus accompanied, and
+with revolvers at their belts, they had started to chop their way
+with machetes through the thorny scrub on the neck of the
+peninsula.
+
+On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it could only
+have been from their camp-fire) was seen for the first time
+within memory of man standing up faintly upon the sky above a
+razor-backed ridge on the stony head. The crew of a coasting
+schooner, lying becalmed three miles off the shore, stared at it
+with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman, living in a lonely
+hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the
+lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the sun was
+about to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy,
+incredulity, and awe.
+
+The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the
+Indian, and the stolen burro were never seen again. As to the
+mozo, a Sulaco man--his wife paid for some masses, and the poor
+four-footed beast, being without sin, had been probably permitted
+to die; but the two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to
+be dwelling to this day amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell
+of their success. Their souls cannot tear themselves away from
+their bodies mounting guard over the discovered treasure. They
+are now rich and hungry and thirsty--a strange theory of
+tenacious gringo ghosts suffering in their starved and parched
+flesh of defiant heretics, where a Christian would have renounced
+and been released.
+
+These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera guarding its
+forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the sky on one side with the
+round patch of blue haze blurring the bright skirt of the horizon
+on the other, mark the two outermost points of the bend which
+bears the name of Golfo Placido, because never a strong wind had
+been known to blow upon its waters.
+
+On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta Mala to Azuera
+the ships from Europe bound to Sulaco lose at once the strong
+breezes of the ocean. They become the prey of capricious airs
+that play with them for thirty hours at a stretch sometimes.
+Before them the head of the calm gulf is filled on most days of
+the year by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds. On the
+rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the
+gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall
+of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their
+steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very
+edge of the shore.  Amongst them the white head of Higuerota
+rises majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks
+sprinkle with tiny black dots the smooth dome of snow.
+
+Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf the shadow of the
+mountains, the clouds begin to roll out of the lower valleys.
+They swathe in sombre tatters the naked crags of precipices above
+the wooded slopes, hide the peaks, smoke in stormy trails across
+the snows of Higuerota. The Cordillera is gone from you as if it
+had dissolved itself into great piles of grey and black vapours
+that travel out slowly to seaward and vanish into thin air all
+along the front before the blazing heat of the day. The wasting
+edge of the cloud-bank always strives for, but seldom wins, the
+middle of the gulf. The sun--as the sailors say--is eating it up.
+Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away from the main
+body to career all over the gulf till it escapes into the offing
+beyond Azuera, where it bursts suddenly into flame and crashes
+like a sinster pirate-ship of the air, hove-to above the horizon,
+engaging the sea.
+
+At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the sky smothers
+the whole quiet gulf below with an impenetrable darkness, in
+which the sound of the falling showers can be heard beginning and
+ceasing abruptly--now here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy
+nights are proverbial with the seamen along the whole west coast
+of a great continent. Sky, land, and sea disappear together out
+of the world when the Placido--as the saying is--goes to sleep
+under its black poncho. The few stars left below the seaward
+frown of the vault shine feebly as into the mouth of a black
+cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet,
+her sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God
+Himself--they add with grim profanity--could not find out what
+work a man's hand is doing in there; and you would be free to
+call the devil to your aid with impunity if even his malice were
+not defeated by such a blind darkness.
+
+The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three uninhabited
+islets basking in the sunshine just outside the cloud veil, and
+opposite the entrance to the harbour of Sulaco, bear the name of
+"The Isabels."
+
+There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, which is round; and
+Hermosa, which is the smallest.
+
+That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven paces
+across, a mere flat top of a grey rock which smokes like a hot
+cinder after a shower, and where no man would care to venture a
+naked sole before sunset. On the Little Isabel an old ragged
+palm, with a thick bulging trunk rough with spines, a very witch
+amongst palm trees, rustles a dismal bunch of dead leaves above
+the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has a spring of fresh water
+issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine.  Resembling an
+emerald green wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat upon the
+sea, it bears two forest trees standing close together, with a
+wide spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine
+extending the whole length of the island is full of bushes; and
+presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high side spreads itself
+out on the other into a shallow depression abutting on a small
+strip of sandy shore.
+
+From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an
+opening two miles away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out
+of the regular sweep of the coast, right into the harbour of
+Sulaco. It is an oblong, lake-like piece of water. On one side
+the short wooded spurs and valleys of the Cordillera come down at
+right angles to the very strand; on the other the open view of
+the great Sulaco plain passes into the opal mystery of great
+distances overhung by dry haze. The town of Sulaco itself--tops
+of walls, a great cupola, gleams of white miradors in a vast
+grove of orange trees--lies between the mountains and the plain,
+at some little distance from its harbour and out of the direct
+line of sight from the sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+THE only sign of commercial activity within the harbour, visible
+from the beach of the Great Isabel, is the square blunt end of
+the wooden jetty which the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (the
+O.S.N. of familiar speech) had thrown over the shallow part of
+the bay soon after they had resolved to make of Sulaco one of
+their ports of call for the Republic of Costaguana.  The State
+possesses several harbours on its long seaboard, but except
+Cayta, an important place, all are either small and inconvenient
+inlets in an iron-bound coast--like Esmeralda, for instance,
+sixty miles to the south--or else mere open roadsteads exposed to
+the winds and fretted by the surf.
+
+Perhaps the very atmospheric conditions which had kept away the
+merchant fleets of bygone ages induced the O.S.N. Company to
+violate the sanctuary of peace sheltering the calm existence of
+Sulaco. The variable airs sporting lightly with the vast
+semicircle of waters within the head of Azuera could not baffle
+the steam power of their excellent fleet. Year after year the
+black hulls of their ships had gone up and down the coast, in and
+out, past Azuera, past the Isabels, past Punta Mala--disregarding
+everything but the tyranny of time. Their names, the names of all
+mythology, became the household words of a coast that had never
+been ruled by the gods of Olympus. The Juno was known only for
+her comfortable cabins amidships, the Saturn for the geniality of
+her captain and the painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon,
+whereas the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for cattle transport,
+and to be avoided by coastwise passengers. The humblest Indian in
+the obscurest village on the coast was familiar with the
+Cerberus, a little black puffer without charm or living
+accommodation to speak of, whose mission was to creep inshore
+along the wooded beaches close to mighty ugly rocks, stopping
+obligingly before every cluster of huts to collect produce, down
+to three-pound parcels of indiarubber bound in a wrapper of dry
+grass.
+
+And as they seldom failed to account for the smallest package,
+rarely lost a bullock, and had never drowned a single passenger,
+the name of the O.S.N. stood very high for trustworthiness.
+People declared that under the Company's care their lives and
+property were safer on the water than in their own houses on
+shore.
+
+The O.S.N.'s superintendent in Sulaco for the whole Costaguana
+section of the service was very proud of his Company's standing.
+He resumed it in a saying which was very often on his lips, "We
+never make mistakes." To the Company's officers it took the form
+of a severe injunction, "We must make no mistakes. I'll have no
+mistakes here, no matter what Smith may do at his end."
+
+Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was the other
+superintendent of the service, quartered some fifteen hundred
+miles away from Sulaco. "Don't talk to me of your Smith."
+
+Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the subject with
+studied negligence.
+
+"Smith knows no more of this continent than a baby."
+
+"Our excellent Senor Mitchell" for the business and official
+world of Sulaco; "Fussy Joe" for the commanders of the Company's
+ships, Captain Joseph Mitchell prided himself on his profound
+knowledge of men and things in the country--cosas de Costaguana.
+Amongst these last he accounted as most unfavourable to the
+orderly working of his Company the frequent changes of government
+brought about by revolutions of the military type.
+
+The political atmosphere of the Republic was generally stormy in
+these days. The fugitive patriots of the defeated party had the
+knack of turning up again on the coast with half a steamer's load
+of small arms and ammunition. Such resourcefulness Captain
+Mitchell considered as perfectly wonderful in view of their utter
+destitution at the time of flight. He had observed that "they
+never seemed to have enough change about them to pay for their
+passage ticket out of the country." And he could speak with
+knowledge; for on a memorable occasion he had been called upon to
+save the life of a dictator, together with the lives of a few
+Sulaco officials--the political chief, the director of the
+customs, and the head of police--belonging to an overturned
+government. Poor Senor Ribiera (such was the dictator's name) had
+come pelting eighty miles over mountain tracks after the lost
+battle of Socorro, in the hope of out-distancing the fatal
+news--which, of course, he could not manage to do on a lame mule.
+The animal, moreover, expired under him at the end of the
+Alameda, where the military band plays sometimes in the evenings
+between the revolutions. "Sir," Captain Mitchell would pursue
+with portentous gravity, "the ill-timed end of that mule
+attracted attention to the unfortunate rider. His features were
+recognized by several deserters from the Dictatorial army amongst
+the rascally mob already engaged in smashing the windows of the
+Intendencia."
+
+Early on the morning of that day the local authorities of Sulaco
+had fled for refuge to the O.S.N. Company's offices, a strong
+building near the shore end of the jetty, leaving the town to the
+mercies of a revolutionary rabble; and as the Dictator was
+execrated by the populace on account of the severe recruitment
+law his necessities had compelled him to enforce during the
+struggle, he stood a good chance of being torn to pieces.
+Providentially, Nostromo--invaluable fellow--with some Italian
+workmen, imported to work upon the National Central Railway, was
+at hand, and managed to snatch him away--for the time at least.
+Ultimately, Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in
+his own gig to one of the Company's steamers--it was the
+Minerva--just then, as luck would have it, entering the harbour.
+
+He had to lower these gentlemen at the end of a rope out of a
+hole in the wall at the back, while the mob which, pouring out of
+the town, had spread itself all along the shore, howled and
+foamed at the foot of the building in front. He had to hurry them
+then the whole length of the jetty; it had been a desperate dash,
+neck or nothing--and again it was Nostromo, a fellow in a
+thousand, who, at the head, this time, of the Company's body of
+lightermen, held the jetty against the rushes of the rabble, thus
+giving the fugitives time to reach the gig lying ready for them
+at the other end with the Company's flag at the stern. Sticks,
+stones, shots flew; knives, too, were thrown. Captain Mitchell
+exhibited willingly the long cicatrice of a cut over his left ear
+and temple, made by a razor-blade fastened to a stick--a weapon,
+he explained, very much in favour with the "worst kind of nigger
+out here."
+
+Captain Mitchell was a thick, elderly man, wearing high, pointed
+collars and short side-whiskers, partial to white waistcoats, and
+really very communicative under his air of pompous reserve.
+
+"These gentlemen," he would say, staring with great solemnity,
+"had to run like rabbits, sir. I ran like a rabbit myself.
+Certain forms of death are--er--distasteful to
+a--a--er--respectable man. They would have pounded me to death,
+too. A crazy mob, sir, does not discriminate. Under providence we
+owed our preservation to my Capataz de Cargadores, as they called
+him in the town, a man who, when I discovered his value, sir, was
+just the bos'n of an Italian ship, a big Genoese ship, one of the
+few European ships that ever came to Sulaco with a general cargo
+before the building of the National Central. He left her on
+account of some very respectable friends he made here, his own
+countrymen, but also, I suppose, to better himself.  Sir, I am a
+pretty good judge of character. I engaged him to be the foreman
+of our lightermen, and caretaker of our jetty. That's all that he
+was. But without him Senor Ribiera would have been a dead man.
+This Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above reproach, became the
+terror of all the thieves in the town. We were infested,
+infested, overrun, sir, here at that time by ladrones and
+matreros, thieves and murderers from the whole province. On this
+occasion they had been flocking into Sulaco for a week past.
+They had scented the end, sir. Fifty per cent. of that murdering
+mob were professional bandits from the Campo, sir, but there
+wasn't one that hadn't heard of Nostromo. As to the town leperos,
+sir, the sight of his black whiskers and white teeth was enough
+for them.  They quailed before him, sir. That's what the force of
+character will do for you."
+
+It could very well be said that it was Nostromo alone who saved
+the lives of these gentlemen. Captain Mitchell, on his part,
+never left them till he had seen them collapse, panting,
+terrified, and exasperated, but safe, on the luxuriant velvet
+sofas in the first-class saloon of the Minerva. To the very last
+he had been careful to address the ex-Dictator as "Your
+Excellency."
+
+"Sir, I could do no other. The man was down--ghastly, livid, one
+mass of scratches."
+
+The Minerva never let go her anchor that call. The superintendent
+ordered her out of the harbour at once.  No cargo could be
+landed, of course, and the passengers for Sulaco naturally
+refused to go ashore. They could hear the firing and see plainly
+the fight going on at the edge of the water. The repulsed mob
+devoted its energies to an attack upon the Custom House, a
+dreary, unfinished-looking structure with many windows two
+hundred yards away from the O.S.N. Offices, and the only other
+building near the harbour. Captain Mitchell, after directing the
+commander of the Minerva to land "these gentlemen" in the first
+port of call outside Costaguana, went back in his gig to see what
+could be done for the protection of the Company's property.  That
+and the property of the railway were preserved by the European
+residents; that is, by Captain Mitchell himself and the staff of
+engineers building the road, aided by the Italian and Basque
+workmen who rallied faithfully round their English chiefs. The
+Company's lightermen, too, natives of the Republic, behaved very
+well under their Capataz. An outcast lot of very mixed blood,
+mainly negroes, everlastingly at feud with the other customers of
+low grog shops in the town, they embraced with delight this
+opportunity to settle their personal scores under such favourable
+auspices. There was not one of them that had not, at some time or
+other, looked with terror at Nostromo's revolver poked very close
+at his face, or been otherwise daunted by Nostromo's resolution.
+He was "much of a man," their Capataz was, they said, too
+scornful in his temper ever to utter abuse, a tireless
+taskmaster, and the more to be feared because of his aloofness.
+And behold!  there he was that day, at their head, condescending
+to make jocular remarks to this man or the other.
+
+Such leadership was inspiriting, and in truth all the harm the
+mob managed to achieve was to set fire to one--only one--stack
+of railway-sleepers, which, being creosoted, burned well. The
+main attack on the railway yards, on the O.S.N. Offices, and
+especially on the Custom House, whose strong room, it was well
+known, contained a large treasure in silver ingots, failed
+completely.  Even the little hotel kept by old Giorgio, standing
+alone halfway between the harbour and the town, escaped looting
+and destruction, not by a miracle, but because with the safes in
+view they had neglected it at first, and afterwards found no
+leisure to stop. Nostromo, with his Cargadores, was pressing them
+too hard then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+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.
+It was too late then to remove his family, and, indeed, where
+could he have run to with the portly Signora Teresa and two
+little girls on that great plain?  So, barricading every opening,
+the old man sat down sternly in the middle of the darkened cafe
+with an old shot-gun on his knees. His wife sat on another chair
+by his side, muttering pious invocations to all the saints of the
+calendar.
+
+The old republican did not believe in saints, or in prayers, or
+in what he called "priest's religion." Liberty and Garibaldi were
+his divinities; but he tolerated "superstition" in women,
+preserving in these matters a lofty and silent attitude.
+
+His two girls, the eldest fourteen, and the other two years
+younger, crouched on the sanded floor, on each side of the
+Signora Teresa, with their heads on their mother's lap, both
+scared, but each in her own way, the dark-haired Linda indignant
+and angry, the fair Giselle, the younger, bewildered and
+resigned. The Patrona removed her arms, which embraced her
+daughters, for a moment to cross herself and wring her hands
+hurriedly.  She moaned a little louder.
+
+"Oh! Gian' Battista, why art thou not here? Oh!  why art thou not
+here?"
+
+She was not then invoking the saint himself, but calling upon
+Nostromo, whose patron he was. And Giorgio, motionless on the
+chair by her side, would be provoked by these reproachful and
+distracted appeals.
+
+"Peace, woman! Where's the sense of it? There's his duty," he
+murmured in the dark; and she would retort, panting--
+
+"Eh! I have no patience. Duty! What of the woman who has been
+like a mother to him? I bent my knee to him this morning; don't
+you go out, Gian' Battista--stop in the house, Battistino--look
+at those two little innocent children!"
+
+Mrs. Viola was an Italian, too, a native of Spezzia, and though
+considerably younger than her husband, already middle-aged. She
+had a handsome face, whose complexion had turned yellow because
+the climate of Sulaco did not suit her at all. Her voice was a
+rich contralto. When, with her arms folded tight under her ample
+bosom, she scolded the squat, thick-legged China girls handling
+linen, plucking fowls, pounding corn in wooden mortars amongst
+the mud outbuildings at the back of the house, she could bring
+out such an impassioned, vibrating, sepulchral note that the
+chained watch-dog bolted into his kennel with a great rattle.
+Luis, a cinnamon-coloured mulatto with a sprouting moustache and
+thick, dark lips, would stop sweeping the cafe with a broom of
+palm-leaves to let a gentle shudder run down his spine. His
+languishing almond eyes would remain closed for a long time.
+
+This was the staff of the Casa Viola, but all these people had
+fled early that morning at the first sounds of the riot,
+preferring to hide on the plain rather than trust themselves in
+the house; a preference for which they were in no way to blame,
+since, whether true or not, it was generally believed in the town
+that the Garibaldino had some money buried under the clay floor
+of the kitchen. The dog, an irritable, shaggy brute, barked
+violently and whined plaintively in turns at the back, running in
+and out of his kennel as rage or fear prompted him.
+
+Bursts of great shouting rose and died away, like wild gusts of
+wind on the plain round the barricaded house; the fitful popping
+of shots grew louder above the yelling.  Sometimes there were
+intervals of unaccountable stillness outside, and nothing could
+have been more gaily peaceful than the narrow bright lines of
+sunlight from the cracks in the shutters, ruled straight across
+the cafe over the disarranged chairs and tables to the wall
+opposite. Old Giorgio had chosen that bare, whitewashed room for
+a retreat. It had only one window, and its only door swung out
+upon the track of thick dust fenced by aloe hedges between the
+harbour and the town, where clumsy carts used to creak along
+behind slow yokes of oxen guided by boys on horseback.
+
+In a pause of stillness Giorgio cocked his gun. The ominous sound
+wrung a low moan from the rigid figure of the woman sitting by
+his side. A sudden outbreak of defiant yelling quite near the
+house sank all at once to a confused murmur of growls. Somebody
+ran along; the loud catching of his breath was heard for an
+instant passing the door; there were hoarse mutters and footsteps
+near the wall; a shoulder rubbed against the shutter, effacing
+the bright lines of sunshine pencilled across the whole breadth
+of the room. Signora Teresa's arms thrown about the kneeling
+forms of her daughters embraced them closer with a convulsive
+pressure.
+
+The mob, driven away from the Custom House, had broken up into
+several bands, retreating across the plain in the direction of
+the town. The subdued crash of irregular volleys fired in the
+distance was answered by faint yells far away. In the intervals
+the single shots rang feebly, and the low, long, white building
+blinded in every window seemed to be the centre of a turmoil
+widening in a great circle about its closed-up silence.  But the
+cautious movements and whispers of a routed party seeking a
+momentary shelter behind the wall made the darkness of the room,
+striped by threads of quiet sunlight, alight with evil, stealthy
+sounds. The Violas had them in their ears as though invisible
+ghosts hovering about their chairs had consulted in mutters as to
+the advisability of setting fire to this foreigner's casa.
+
+It was trying to the nerves. Old Viola had risen slowly, gun in
+hand, irresolute, for he did not see how he could prevent them.
+Already voices could be heard talking at the back. Signora Teresa
+was beside herself with terror.
+
+"Ah! the traitor! the traitor!" she mumbled, almost inaudibly.
+"Now we are going to be burnt; and I bent my knee to him. No! he
+must run at the heels of his English."
+
+She seemed to think that Nostromo's mere presence in the house
+would have made it perfectly safe. So far, she, too, was under
+the spell of that reputation the Capataz de Cargadores had made
+for himself by the waterside, along the railway line, with the
+English and with the populace of Sulaco. To his face, and even
+against her husband, she invariably affected to laugh it to
+scorn, sometimes good-naturedly, more often with a curious
+bitterness. But then women are unreasonable in their opinions, as
+Giorgio used to remark calmly on fitting occasions. On this
+occasion, with his gun held at ready before him, he stooped down
+to his wife's head, and, keeping his eyes steadfastly on the
+barricaded door, he breathed out into her ear that Nostromo would
+have been powerless to help. What could two men shut up in a
+house do against twenty or more bent upon setting fire to the
+roof? Gian' Battista was thinking of the casa all the time, he
+was sure.
+
+"He think of the casa! He!" gasped Signora Viola, crazily. She
+struck her breast with her open hands.  "I know him. He thinks of
+nobody but himself."
+
+A discharge of firearms near by made her throw her head back and
+close her eyes. Old Giorgio set his teeth hard under his white
+moustache, and his eyes began to roll fiercely. Several bullets
+struck the end of the wall together; pieces of plaster could be
+heard falling outside; a voice screamed "Here they come!" and
+after a moment of uneasy silence there was a rush of running feet
+along the front.
+
+Then the tension of old Giorgio's attitude relaxed, and a smile
+of contemptuous relief came upon his lips of an old fighter with
+a leonine face. These were not a people striving for justice, but
+thieves. Even to defend his life against them was a sort of
+degradation for a man who had been one of Garibaldi's immortal
+thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He had an immense scorn for
+this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, who did not know the
+meaning of the word "liberty."
+
+He grounded his old gun, and, turning his head, glanced at the
+coloured lithograph of Garibaldi in a black frame on the white
+wall; a thread of strong sunshine cut it perpendicularly. His
+eyes, accustomed to the luminous twilight, made out the high
+colouring of the face, the red of the shirt, the outlines of the
+square shoulders, the black patch of the Bersagliere hat with
+cock's feathers curling over the crown. An immortal hero! This
+was your liberty; it gave you not only life, but immortality as
+well!
+
+For that one man his fanaticism had suffered no diminution. In
+the moment of relief from the apprehension of the greatest
+danger, perhaps, his family had been exposed to in all their
+wanderings, he had turned to the picture of his old chief, first
+and only, then laid his hand on his wife's shoulder.
+
+The children kneeling on the floor had not moved.  Signora Teresa
+opened her eyes a little, as though he had awakened her from a
+very deep and dreamless slumber. Before he had time in his
+deliberate way to say a reassuring word she jumped up, with the
+children clinging to her, one on each side, gasped for breath,
+and let out a hoarse shriek.
+
+It was simultaneous with the bang of a violent blow struck on the
+outside of the shutter. They could hear suddenly the snorting of
+a horse, the restive tramping of hoofs on the narrow, hard path
+in front of the house; the toe of a boot struck at the shutter
+again; a spur jingled at every blow, and an excited voice
+shouted, "Hola!  hola, in there!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+ALL the morning Nostromo had kept his eye from afar on the Casa
+Viola, even in the thick of the hottest scrimmage near the Custom
+House. "If I see smoke rising over there," he thought to himself,
+"they are lost." Directly the mob had broken he pressed with a
+small band of Italian workmen in that direction, which, indeed,
+was the shortest line towards the town. That part of the rabble
+he was pursuing seemed to think of making a stand under the
+house; a volley fired by his followers from behind an aloe hedge
+made the rascals fly. In a gap chopped out for the rails of the
+harbour branch line Nostromo appeared, mounted on his silver-grey
+mare. He shouted, sent after them one shot from his revolver, and
+galloped up to the cafe window. He had an idea that old Giorgio
+would choose that part of the house for a refuge.
+
+His voice had penetrated to them, sounding breathlessly hurried:
+"Hola! Vecchio! O, Vecchio! Is it all well with you in there?"
+
+"You see--" murmured old Viola to his wife.  Signora Teresa was
+silent now. Outside Nostromo laughed.
+
+"I can hear the padrona is not dead."
+
+"You have done your best to kill me with fear," cried Signora
+Teresa. She wanted to say something more, but her voice failed
+her.
+
+Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but old Giorgio
+shouted apologetically--
+
+"She is a little upset."
+
+Outside Nostromo shouted back with another laugh--
+
+"She cannot upset me."
+
+Signora Teresa found her voice.
+
+"It is what I say. You have no heart--and you have no conscience,
+Gian' Battista--"
+
+They heard him wheel his horse away from the shutters. The party
+he led were babbling excitedly in Italian and Spanish, inciting
+each other to the pursuit.  He put himself at their head, crying,
+"Avanti!"
+
+"He has not stopped very long with us. There is no praise from
+strangers to be got here," Signora Teresa said tragically.
+"Avanti! Yes! That is all he cares for. To be first
+somewhere--somehow--to be first with these English. They will be
+showing him to everybody. 'This is our Nostromo!'" She laughed
+ominously. "What a name! What is that? Nostromo? He would take a
+name that is properly no word from them."
+
+Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had been unfastening
+the door; the flood of light fell on Signora Teresa, with her two
+girls gathered to her side, a picturesque woman in a pose of
+maternal exaltation.  Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white,
+and the crude colours of the Garibaldi lithograph paled in the
+sunshine.
+
+Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if referring all
+his quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture of his old chief on
+the wall. Even when he was cooking for the "Signori Inglesi"--the
+engineers (he was a famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark
+place)--he was, as it were, under the eye of the great man who
+had led him in a glorious struggle where, under the walls of
+Gaeta, tyranny would have expired for ever had it not been for
+that accursed Piedmontese race of kings and ministers. When
+sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate operation
+with some shredded onions, and the old man was seen backing out
+of the doorway, swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud
+of smoke, the name of Cavour--the arch intriguer sold to kings
+and tyrants--could be heard involved in imprecations against the
+China girls, cooking in general, and the brute of a country where
+he was reduced to live for the love of liberty that traitor had
+strangled.
+
+Then Signora Teresa, all in black, issuing from another door,
+advanced, portly and anxious, inclining her fine, black-browed
+head, opening her arms, and crying in a profound tone--
+
+"Giorgio! thou passionate man!   Misericordia Divina! In the sun
+like this! He will make himself ill."
+
+At her feet the hens made off in all directions, with immense
+strides; if there were any engineers from up the line staying in
+Sulaco, a young English face or two would appear at the
+billiard-room occupying one end of the house; but at the other
+end, in the cafe, Luis, the mulatto, took good care not to show
+himself. The Indian girls, with hair like flowing black manes,
+and dressed only in a shift and short petticoat, stared dully
+from under the square-cut fringes on their foreheads; the noisy
+frizzling of fat had stopped, the fumes floated upwards in
+sunshine, a strong smell of burnt onions hung in the drowsy heat,
+enveloping the house; and the eye lost itself in a vast flat
+expanse of grass to the west, as if the plain between the Sierra
+overtopping Sulaco and the coast range away there towards
+Esmeralda had been as big as half the world.
+
+Signora Teresa, after an impressive pause, remonstrated--
+
+"Eh, Giorgio! Leave Cavour alone and take care of yourself now we
+are lost in this country all alone with the two children, because
+you cannot live under a king."
+
+And while she looked at him she would sometimes put her hand
+hastily to her side with a short twitch of her fine lips and a
+knitting of her black, straight eyebrows like a flicker of angry
+pain or an angry thought on her handsome, regular features.
+
+It was pain; she suppressed the twinge. It had come to her first
+a few years after they had left Italy to emigrate to America and
+settle at last in Sulaco after wandering from town to town,
+trying shopkeeping in a small way here and there; and once an
+organized enterprise of fishing--in Maldonado--for Giorgio, like
+the great Garibaldi, had been a sailor in his time.
+
+Sometimes she had no patience with pain. For years its gnawing
+had been part of the landscape embracing the glitter of the
+harbour under the wooded spurs of the range; and the sunshine
+itself was heavy and dull--heavy with pain--not like the
+sunshine of her girlhood, in which middle-aged Giorgio had wooed
+her gravely and passionately on the shores of the gulf of
+Spezzia.
+
+"You go in at once, Giorgio," she directed. "One would think you
+do not wish to have any pity on me--with four Signori Inglesi
+staying in the house." "Va bene, va bene," Giorgio would mutter.
+He obeyed. The Signori Inglesi would require their midday meal
+presently.  He had been one of the immortal and invincible band
+of liberators who had made the mercenaries of tyranny fly like
+chaff before a hurricane, "un uragano terribile." But that was
+before he was married and had children; and before tyranny had
+reared its head again amongst the traitors who had imprisoned
+Garibaldi, his hero.
+
+There were three doors in the front of the house, and each
+afternoon the Garibaldino could be seen at one or another of them
+with his big bush of white hair, his arms folded, his legs
+crossed, leaning back his leonine head against the side, and
+looking up the wooded slopes of the foothills at the snowy dome
+of Higuerota.  The front of his house threw off a black long
+rectangle of shade, broadening slowly over the soft ox-cart
+track.  Through the gaps, chopped out in the oleander hedges, the
+harbour branch railway, laid out temporarily on the level of the
+plain, curved away its shining parallel ribbons on a belt of
+scorched and withered grass within sixty yards of the end of the
+house. In the evening the empty material trains of flat cars
+circled round the dark green grove of Sulaco, and ran, undulating
+slightly with white jets of steam, over the plain towards the
+Casa Viola, on their way to the railway yards by the harbour. The
+Italian drivers saluted him from the foot-plate with raised hand,
+while the negro brakesmen sat carelessly on the brakes, looking
+straight forward, with the rims of their big hats flapping in the
+wind. In return Giorgio would give a slight sideways jerk of the
+head, without unfolding his arms.
+
+On this memorable day of the riot his arms were not folded on his
+chest. His hand grasped the barrel of the gun grounded on the
+threshold; he did not look up once at the white dome of
+Higuerota, whose cool purity seemed to hold itself aloof from a
+hot earth. His eyes examined the plain curiously. Tall trails of
+dust subsided here and there. In a speckless sky the sun hung
+clear and blinding. Knots of men ran headlong; others made a
+stand; and the irregular rattle of firearms came rippling to his
+ears in the fiery, still air. Single figures on foot raced
+desperately. Horsemen galloped towards each other, wheeled round
+together, separated at speed. Giorgio saw one fall, rider and
+horse disappearing as if they had galloped into a chasm, and the
+movements of the animated scene were like the passages of a
+violent game played upon the plain by dwarfs mounted and on foot,
+yelling with tiny throats, under the mountain that seemed a
+colossal embodiment of silence. Never before had Giorgio seen
+this bit of plain so full of active life; his gaze could not take
+in all its details at once; he shaded his eyes with his hand,
+till suddenly the thundering of many hoofs near by startled him.
+
+A troop of horses had broken out of the fenced paddock of the
+Railway Company. They came on like a whirlwind, and dashed over
+the line snorting, kicking, squealing in a compact, piebald,
+tossing mob of bay, brown, grey backs, eyes staring, necks
+extended, nostrils red, long tails streaming. As soon as they had
+leaped upon the road the thick dust flew upwards from under their
+hoofs, and within six yards of Giorgio only a brown cloud with
+vague forms of necks and cruppers rolled by, making the soil
+tremble on its passage.
+
+Viola coughed, turning his face away from the dust, and shaking
+his head slightly.
+
+"There will be some horse-catching to be done before to-night,"
+he muttered.
+
+In the square of sunlight falling through the door Signora
+Teresa, kneeling before the chair, had bowed her head, heavy with
+a twisted mass of ebony hair streaked with silver, into the palm
+of her hands. The black lace shawl she used to drape about her
+face had dropped to the ground by her side. The two girls had got
+up, hand-in-hand, in short skirts, their loose hair falling in
+disorder. The younger had thrown her arm across her eyes, as if
+afraid to face the light. Linda, with her hand on the other's
+shoulder, stared fearlessly.  Viola looked at his children.  The
+sun brought out the deep lines on his face, and, energetic in
+expression, it had the immobility of a carving. It was impossible
+to discover what he thought.  Bushy grey eyebrows shaded his dark
+glance.
+
+"Well! And do you not pray like your mother?"
+
+Linda pouted, advancing her red lips, which were almost too red;
+but she had admirable eyes, brown, with a sparkle of gold in the
+irises, full of intelligence and meaning, and so clear that they
+seemed to throw a glow upon her thin, colourless face. There were
+bronze glints in the sombre clusters of her hair, and the
+eyelashes, long and coal black, made her complexion appear still
+more pale.
+
+"Mother is going to offer up a lot of candles in the church. She
+always does when Nostromo has been away fighting. I shall have
+some to carry up to the Chapel of the Madonna in the Cathedral."
+
+She said all this quickly, with great assurance, in an animated,
+penetrating voice. Then, giving her sister's shoulder a slight
+shake, she added--
+
+"And she will be made to carry one, too!"
+
+"Why made?" inquired Giorgio, gravely. "Does she not want to?"
+
+"She is timid," said Linda, with a little burst of laughter.
+"People notice her fair hair as she goes along with us. They call
+out after her, 'Look at the Rubia!  Look at the Rubiacita!' They
+call out in the streets.  She is timid."
+
+"And you? You are not timid--eh?" the father pronounced, slowly.
+
+She tossed back all her dark hair.
+
+"Nobody calls out after me."
+
+Old Giorgio contemplated his children thoughtfully.  There was
+two years difference between them. They had been born to him
+late, years after the boy had died.  Had he lived he would have
+been nearly as old as Gian' Battista--he whom the English called
+Nostromo; but as to his daughters, the severity of his temper,
+his advancing age, his absorption in his memories, had prevented
+his taking much notice of them.  He loved his children, but girls
+belong more to the mother, and much of his affection had been
+expended in the worship and service of liberty.
+
+When quite a youth he had deserted from a ship trading to La
+Plata, to enlist in the navy of Montevideo, then under the
+command of Garibaldi. Afterwards, in the Italian legion of the
+Republic struggling against the encroaching tyranny of Rosas, he
+had taken part, on great plains, on the banks of immense rivers,
+in the fiercest fighting perhaps the world had ever known.  He
+had lived amongst men who had declaimed about liberty, suffered
+for liberty, died for liberty, with a desperate exaltation, and
+with their eyes turned towards an oppressed Italy. His own
+enthusiasm had been fed on scenes of carnage, on the examples of
+lofty devotion, on the din of armed struggle, on the inflamed
+language of proclamations. He had never parted from the chief of
+his choice--the fiery apostle of independence--keeping by his
+side in America and in Italy till after the fatal day of
+Aspromonte, when the treachery of kings, emperors, and ministers
+had been revealed to the world in the wounding and imprisonment
+of his hero--a catastrophe that had instilled into him a gloomy
+doubt of ever being able to understand the ways of Divine
+justice.
+
+He did not deny it, however. It required patience, he would say.
+Though he disliked priests, and would not put his foot inside a
+church for anything, he believed in God. Were not the
+proclamations against tyrants addressed to the peoples in the
+name of God and liberty?  "God for men--religions for women," he
+muttered sometimes. In Sicily, an Englishman who had turned up in
+Palermo after its evacuation by the army of the king, had given
+him a Bible in Italian--the publication of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society, bound in a dark leather cover. In periods
+of political adversity, in the pauses of silence when the
+revolutionists issued no proclamations, Giorgio earned his living
+with the first work that came to hand--as sailor, as dock
+labourer on the quays of Genoa, once as a hand on a farm in the
+hills above Spezzia--and in his spare time he studied the thick
+volume. He carried it with him into battles. Now it was his only
+reading, and in order not to be deprived of it (the print was
+small) he had consented to accept the present of a pair of
+silver-mounted spectacles from Senora Emilia Gould, the wife of
+the Englishman who managed the silver mine in the mountains three
+leagues from the town. She was the only Englishwoman in Sulaco.
+
+Giorgio Viola had a great consideration for the English. This
+feeling, born on the battlefields of Uruguay, was forty years old
+at the very least. Several of them had poured their blood for the
+cause of freedom in America, and the first he had ever known he
+remembered by the name of Samuel; he commanded a negro company
+under Garibaldi, during the famous siege of Montevideo, and died
+heroically with his negroes at the fording of the Boyana. He,
+Giorgio, had reached the rank of ensign-alferez-and cooked for
+the general. Later, in Italy, he, with the rank of lieutenant,
+rode with the staff and still cooked for the general. He had
+cooked for him in Lombardy through the whole campaign; on the
+march to Rome he had lassoed his beef in the Campagna after the
+American manner; he had been wounded in the defence of the Roman
+Republic; he was one of the four fugitives who, with the general,
+carried out of the woods the inanimate body of the general's wife
+into the farmhouse where she died, exhausted by the hardships of
+that terrible retreat.  He had survived that disastrous time to
+attend his general in Palermo when the Neapolitan shells from the
+castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked for him on the field
+of Volturno after fighting all day. And everywhere he had seen
+Englishmen in the front rank of the army of freedom. He respected
+their nation because they loved Garibaldi. Their very countesses
+and princesses had kissed the general's hands in London, it was
+said. He could well believe it; for the nation was noble, and the
+man was a saint. It was enough to look once at his face to see
+the divine force of faith in him and his great pity for all that
+was poor, suffering, and oppressed in this world.
+
+The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to a vast
+humanitarian idea which inspired the thought and stress of that
+revolutionary time, had left its mark upon Giorgio in a sort of
+austere contempt for all personal advantage. This man, whom the
+lowest class in Sulaco suspected of having a buried hoard in his
+kitchen, had all his life despised money. The leaders of his
+youth had lived poor, had died poor. It had been a habit of his
+mind to disregard to-morrow. It was engendered partly by an
+existence of excitement, adventure, and wild warfare. But mostly
+it was a matter of principle. It did not resemble the
+carelessness of a condottiere, it was a puritanism of conduct,
+born of stern enthusiasm like the puritanism of religion.
+
+This stern devotion to a cause had cast a gloom upon Giorgio's
+old age. It cast a gloom because the cause seemed lost. Too many
+kings and emperors flourished yet in the world which God had
+meant for the people.  He was sad because of his simplicity.
+Though always ready to help his countrymen, and greatly respected
+by the Italian emigrants wherever he lived (in his exile he
+called it), he could not conceal from himself that they cared
+nothing for the wrongs of down-trodden nations.  They listened to
+his tales of war readily, but seemed to ask themselves what he
+had got out of it after all.  There was nothing that they could
+see. "We wanted nothing, we suffered for the love of all
+humanity!" he cried out furiously sometimes, and the powerful
+voice, the blazing eyes, the shaking of the white mane, the
+brown, sinewy hand pointing upwards as if to call heaven to
+witness, impressed his hearers. After the old man hadbroken off
+abruptly with a jerk of the head and a movement of the arm,
+meaning clearly, "But what's the good of talking to you?" they
+nudged each other.  There was in old Giorgio an energy of
+feeling, a personal quality of conviction, something they called
+"terribilita"--"an old lion," they used to say of him. Some
+slight incident, a chance word would set him off talking on the
+beach to the Italian fishermen of Maldonado, in the little shop
+he kept afterwards (in Valparaiso) to his countrymen customers;
+of an evening, suddenly, in the cafe at one end of the Casa Viola
+(the other was reserved for the English engineers) to the select
+clientele of engine-drivers and foremen of the railway shops.
+
+With their handsome, bronzed, lean faces, shiny black ringlets,
+glistening eyes, broad-chested, bearded, sometimes a tiny gold
+ring in the lobe of the ear, the aristocracy of the railway works
+listened to him, turning away from their cards or dominoes. Here
+and there a fair-haired Basque studied his hand meantime, waiting
+without protest. No native of Costaguana intruded there. This was
+the Italian stronghold. Even the Sulaco policemen on a night
+patrol let their horses pace softly by, bending low in the saddle
+to glance through the window at the heads in a fog of smoke; and
+the drone of old Giorgio's declamatory narrative seemed to sink
+behind them into the plain.  Only now and then the assistant of
+the chief of police, some broad-faced, brown little gentleman,
+with a great deal of Indian in him, would put in an appearance.
+Leaving his man outside with the horses he advanced with a
+confident, sly smile, and without a word up to the long trestle
+table. He pointed to one of the bottles on the shelf; Giorgio,
+thrusting his pipe into his mouth abruptly, served him in person.
+Nothing would be heard but the slight jingle of the spurs. His
+glass emptied, he would take a leisurely, scrutinizing look all
+round the room, go out, and ride away slowly, circling towards
+the town.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+IN THIS way only was the power of the local authorities
+vindicated amongst the great body of strong-limbed foreigners who
+dug the earth, blasted the rocks, drove the engines for the
+"progressive and patriotic undertaking." In these very words
+eighteen months before the Excellentissimo Senor don Vincente
+Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana, had described the National
+Central Railway in his great speech at the turning of the first
+sod.
+
+He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a one-o'clock
+dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N.  Company on board
+the Juno after the function on shore.  Captain Mitchell had
+himself steered the cargo lighter, all draped with flags, which,
+in tow of the Juno's steam launch, took the Excellentissimo from
+the jetty to the ship. Everybody of note in Sulaco had been
+invited--the one or two foreign merchants, all the
+representatives of the old Spanish families then in town, the
+great owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple
+men, caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and feet,
+conservative, hospitable, and kind. The Occidental Province was
+their stronghold; their Blanco party had triumphed now; it was
+their President-Dictator, a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat
+smiling urbanely between the representatives of two friendly
+foreign powers. They had come with him from Sta.  Marta to
+countenance by their presence the enterprise in which the capital
+of their countries was engaged.  The only lady of that company
+was Mrs. Gould, the wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the
+San Tome silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced
+enough to take part in the public life to that extent.  They had
+come out strongly at the great ball at the Intendencia the
+evening before, but Mrs. Gould alone had appeared, a bright spot
+in the group of black coats behind the President-Dictator, on the
+crimson cloth-covered stage erected under a shady tree on the
+shore of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning the first sod
+had taken place. She had come off in the cargo lighter, full of
+notabilities, sitting under the flutter of gay flags, in the
+place of honour by the side of Captain Mitchell, who steered, and
+her clear dress gave the only truly festive note to the sombre
+gathering in the long, gorgeous saloon of the Juno.
+
+The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London),
+handsome and pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped
+beard, hovered near her shoulder attentive, smiling, and
+fatigued. The journey from London to Sta. Marta in mail boats and
+the special carriages of the Sta. Marta coast-line (the only
+railway so far) had been tolerable--even pleasant--quite
+tolerable.  But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was another
+sort of experience, in an old diligencia over impassable roads
+skirting awful precipices.
+
+"We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of very deep
+ravines," he was telling Mrs. Gould in an undertone. "And when we
+arrived here at last I don't know what we should have done
+without your hospitality.  What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco
+is!--and for a harbour, too! Astonishing!"
+
+"Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be historically
+important. The highest ecclesiastical court for two
+viceroyalties, sat here in the olden time," she instructed him
+with animation.
+
+"I am impressed. I didn't mean to be disparaging.  You seem very
+patriotic."
+
+"The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you
+don't know what an old resident I am."
+
+"How old, I wonder," he murmured, looking at her with a slight
+smile. Mrs. Gould's appearance was made youthful by the mobile
+intelligence of her face.  "We can't give you your ecclesiastical
+court back again; but you shall have more steamers, a railway, a
+telegraph-cable--a future in the great world which is worth
+infinitely more than any amount of ecclesiastical past.  You
+shall be brought in touch with something greater than two
+viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on a sea-coast
+could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a
+thousand miles inland now--most remarkable! Has anything ever
+happened here for a hundred years before to-day?"
+
+While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept her little
+smile. Agreeing ironically, she assured him that certainly
+not--nothing ever happened in Sulaco.  Even the revolutions, of
+which there had been two in her time, had respected the repose of
+the place.  Their course ran in the more populous southern parts
+of the Republic, and the great valley of Sta. Marta, which was
+like one great battlefield of the parties, with the possession of
+the capital for a prize and an outlet to another ocean. They were
+more advanced over there.   Here in Sulaco they heard only the
+echoes of these great questions, and, of course, their official
+world changed each time, coming to them over their rampart of
+mountains which he himself had traversed in an old diligencia,
+with such a risk to life and limb.
+
+The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitality for
+several days, and he was really grateful for it. It was only
+since he had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly lost touch with
+the feeling of European life on the background of his exotic
+surroundings. In the capital he had been the guest of the
+Legation, and had been kept busy negotiating with the members of
+Don Vincente's Government--cultured men, men to whom the
+conditions of civilized business were not unknown.
+
+What concerned him most at the time was the acquisition of land
+for the railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where there was
+already one line in existence, the people were tractable, and it
+was only a matter of price. A commission had been nominated to
+fix the values, and the difficulty resolved itself into the
+judicious influencing of the Commissioners. But in Sulaco--the
+Occidental Province for whose very development the railway was
+intended--there had been trouble. It had been lying for ages
+ensconced behind its natural barriers, repelling modern
+enterprise by the precipices of its mountain range, by its
+shallow harbour opening into the everlasting calms of a gulf full
+of clouds, by the benighted state of mind of the owners of its
+fertile territory--all these aristocratic old Spanish families,
+all those Don Ambrosios this and Don Fernandos that, who seemed
+actually to dislike and distrust the coming of the railway over
+their lands. It had happened that some of the surveying parties
+scattered all over the province had been warned off with threats
+of violence. In other cases outrageous pretensions as to price
+had been raised.  But the man of railways prided himself on being
+equal to every emergency. Since he was met by the inimical
+sentiment of blind conservatism in Sulaco he would meet it by
+sentiment, too, before taking his stand on his right alone. The
+Government was bound to carry out its part of the contract with
+the board of the new railway company, even if it had to use force
+for the purpose. But he desired nothing less than an armed
+disturbance in the smooth working of his plans. They were much
+too vast and far-reaching, and too promising to leave a stone
+unturned; and so he imagined to get the President-Dictator over
+there on a tour of ceremonies and speeches, culminating in a
+great function at the turning of the first sod by the harbour
+shore.  After all he was their own creature--that Don Vincente.
+He was the embodied triumph of the best elements in the State.
+These were facts, and, unless facts meant nothing, Sir John
+argued to himself, such a man's influence must be real, and his
+personal action would produce the conciliatory effect he
+required. He had succeeded in arranging the trip with the help of
+a very clever advocate, who was known in Sta. Marta as the agent
+of the Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in Sulaco, and even
+in the whole Republic. It was indeed a fabulously rich mine. Its
+so-called agent, evidently a man of culture and ability, seemed,
+without official position, to possess an extraordinary influence
+in the highest Government spheres. He was able to assure Sir John
+that the President-Dictator would make the journey. He regretted,
+however, in the course of the same conversation, that General
+Montero insisted upon going, too.
+
+General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle had found an
+obscure army captain employed on the wild eastern frontier of the
+State, had thrown in his lot with the Ribiera party at a moment
+when special circumstances had given that small adhesion a
+fortuitous importance. The fortunes of war served him
+marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco (after a day of
+desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the end he
+emerged General, Minister of War, and the military head of the
+Blanco party, although there was nothing aristocratic in his
+descent. Indeed, it was said that he and his brother, orphans,
+had been brought up by the munificence of a famous European
+traveller, in whose service their father had lost his life.
+Another story was that their father had been nothing but a
+charcoal burner in the woods, and their mother a baptised Indian
+woman from the far interior.
+
+However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in the habit of
+styling Montero's forest march from his commandancia to join the
+Blanco forces at the beginning of the troubles, the "most heroic
+military exploit of modern times." About the same time, too, his
+brother had turned up from Europe, where he had gone apparently
+as secretary to a consul. Having, however, collected a small band
+of outlaws, he showed some talent as guerilla chief and had been
+rewarded at the pacification by the post of Military Commandant
+of the capital.
+
+The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator.  The board
+of the O.S.N. Company, working hand-in-hand with the railway
+people for the good of the Republic, had on this important
+occasion instructed Captain Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at
+the disposal of the distinguished party. Don Vincente, journeying
+south from Sta. Marta, had embarked at Cayta, the principal port
+of Costaguana, and came to Sulaco by sea. But the chairman of the
+railway company had courageously crossed the mountains in a
+ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting his
+engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the road.
+
+For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature, whose
+hostility can always be overcome by the resources of finance, he
+could not help being impressed by his surroundings during his
+halt at the surveying camp established at the highest point his
+railway was to reach. He spent the night there, arriving just too
+late to see the last dying glow of sunlight upon the snowy flank
+of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt framed like an open
+portal a portion of the white field lying aslant against the
+west. In the transparent air of the high altitudes everything
+seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an
+imponderable liquid; and with his ear ready to catch the first
+sound of the expected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the
+door of a hut of rough stones, had contemplated the changing hues
+on the enormous side of the mountain, thinking that in this
+sight, as in a piece of inspired music, there could be found
+together the utmost delicacy of shaded expression and a
+stupendous magnificence of effect.
+
+Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and inaudible
+strain sung by the sunset amongst the high peaks of the Sierra.
+It had sung itself out into the breathless pause of deep dusk
+before, climbing down the fore wheel of the diligencia with stiff
+limbs, he shook hands with the engineer.
+
+They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical boulder,
+with no door or windows in its two openings; a bright fire of
+sticks (brought on muleback from the first valley below) burning
+outside, sent in a wavering glare; and two candles in tin
+candlesticks--lighted, it was explained to him, in his
+honour--stood on a sort of rough camp table, at which he sat on
+the right hand of the chief. He knew how to be amiable; and the
+young men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of the
+railway track had the glamour of the first steps on the path of
+life, sat there, too, listening modestly, with their smooth faces
+tanned by the weather, and very pleased to witness so much
+affability in so great a man.
+
+Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside, he had a
+long talk with his chief engineer. He knew him well of old. This
+was not the first undertaking in which their gifts, as
+elementally different as fire and water, had worked in
+conjunction. From the contact of these two personalities, who had
+not the same vision of the world, there was generated a power for
+the world's service--a subtle force that could set in motion
+mighty machines, men's muscles, and awaken also in human breasts
+an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the young fellows at the
+table, to whom the survey of the track was like the tracing of
+the path of life, more than one would be called to meet death
+before the work was done. But the work would be done: the force
+would be almost as strong as a faith. Not quite, however. In the
+silence of the sleeping camp upon the moonlit plateau forming the
+top of the pass like the floor of a vast arena surrounded by the
+basalt walls of precipices, two strolling figures in thick
+ulsters stood still, and the voice of the engineer pronounced
+distinctly the words--
+
+"We can't move mountains!"
+
+Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing gesture, felt
+the full force of the words. The white Higuerota soared out of
+the shadows of rock and earth like a frozen bubble under the
+moon. All was still, till near by, behind the wall of a corral
+for the camp animals, built roughly of loose stones in the form
+of a circle, a pack mule stamped his forefoot and blew heavily
+twice.
+
+The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer to the
+chairman's tentative suggestion that the tracing of the line
+could, perhaps, be altered in deference to the prejudices of the
+Sulaco landowners. The chief engineer believed that the obstinacy
+of men was the lesser obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had
+the great influence of Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under
+Higuerota would have been a colossal undertaking.
+
+"Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?"
+
+Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta.  Marta, and
+wanted to know more. The engineer-in-chief assured him that the
+administrator of the San Tome silver mine had an immense
+influence over all these Spanish Dons. He had also one of the
+best houses in Sulaco, and the Gould hospitality was beyond all
+praise.
+
+"They received me as if they had known me for years," he said.
+"The little lady is kindness personified.  I stayed with them for
+a month. He helped me to organize the surveying parties. His
+practical ownership of the San Tome silver mine gives him a
+special position. He seems to have the ear of every provincial
+authority apparently, and, as I said, he can wind all the
+hidalgos of the province round his little finger. If you follow
+his advice the difficulties will fall away, because he wants the
+railway. Of course, you must be careful in what you say. He's
+English, and besides he must be immensely wealthy. The Holroyd
+house is in with him in that mine, so you may imagine--"
+
+He interrupted himself as, from before one of the little fires
+burning outside the low wall of the corral, arose the figure of a
+man wrapped in a poncho up to the neck. The saddle which he had
+been using for a pillow made a dark patch on the ground against
+the red glow of embers.
+
+"I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through the States,"
+said Sir John. "I've ascertained that he, too, wants the
+railway."
+
+The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity of the voices,
+had arisen from the ground, struck a match to light a cigarette.
+The flame showed a bronzed, black-whiskered face, a pair of eyes
+gazing straight; then, rearranging his wrappings, he sank full
+length and laid his head again on the saddle.
+
+"That's our camp-master, whom I must send back to Sulaco now we
+are going to carry our survey into the Sta. Marta Valley," said
+the engineer. "A most useful fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell
+of the O.S.N.  Company. It was very good of Mitchell. Charles
+Gould told me I couldn't do better than take advantage of the
+offer. He seems to know how to rule all these muleteers and
+peons. We had not the slightest trouble with our people. He shall
+escort your diligencia right into Sulaco with some of our railway
+peons. The road is bad. To have him at hand may save you an upset
+or two. He promised me to take care of your person all the way
+down as if you were his father."
+
+This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in
+Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell's mispronunciation, were in
+the habit of calling Nostromo.  And indeed, taciturn and ready,
+he did take excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the
+road, as Sir John himself acknowledged to Mrs. Gould afterwards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+AT THAT time Nostromo had been already long enough in the country
+to raise to the highest pitch Captain Mitchell's opinion of the
+extraordinary value of his discovery. Clearly he was one of those
+invaluable subordinates whom to possess is a legitimate cause of
+boasting. Captain Mitchell plumed himself upon his eye for
+men--but he was not selfish--and in the innocence of his pride
+was already developing that mania for "lending you my Capataz de
+Cargadores" which was to bring Nostromo into personal contact,
+sooner or later, with every European in Sulaco, as a sort of
+universal factotum--a prodigy of efficiency in his own sphere of
+life.
+
+"The fellow is devoted to me, body and soul!" Captain Mitchell
+was given to affirm; and though nobody, perhaps, could have
+explained why it should be so, it was impossible on a survey of
+their relation to throw doubt on that statement, unless, indeed,
+one were a bitter, eccentric character like Dr. Monygham--for
+instance--whose short, hopeless laugh expressed somehow an
+immense mistrust of mankind. Not that Dr. Monygham was a prodigal
+either of laughter or of words. He was bitterly taciturn when at
+his best. At his worst people feared the open scornfulness of his
+tongue. Only Mrs. Gould could keep his unbelief in men's motives
+within due bounds; but even to her (on an occasion not connected
+with Nostromo, and in a tone which for him was gentle), even to
+her, he had said once, "Really, it is most unreasonable to demand
+that a man should think of other people so much better than he is
+able to think of himself."
+
+And Mrs. Gould had hastened to drop the subject.  There were
+strange rumours of the English doctor.  Years ago, in the time of
+Guzman Bento, he had been mixed up, it was whispered, in a
+conspiracy which was betrayed and, as people expressed it,
+drowned in blood.  His hair had turned grey, his hairless, seamed
+face was of a brick-dust colour; the large check pattern of his
+flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat were an established
+defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco.  Had it not been for
+the immaculate cleanliness of his apparel he might have been
+taken for one of those shiftless Europeans that are a moral
+eyesore to the respectability of a foreign colony in almost every
+exotic part of the world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorning
+with clusters of pretty faces the balconies along the Street of
+the Constitution, when they saw him pass, with his limping gait
+and bowed head, a short linen jacket drawn on carelessly over the
+flannel check shirt, would remark to each other, "Here is the
+Senor doctor going to call on Dona Emilia. He has got his little
+coat on." The inference was true. Its deeper meaning was hidden
+from their simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no store
+of thought on the doctor. He was old, ugly, learned--and a little
+"loco"--mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people
+suspected him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a
+concession to Mrs. Gould's humanizing influence. The doctor, with
+his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of
+showing his profound respect for the character of the woman who
+was known in the country as the English Senora. He presented this
+tribute very seriously indeed; it was no trifle for a man of his
+habits. Mrs. Gould felt that, too, perfectly.  She would never
+have thought of imposing upon him this marked show of deference.
+
+She kept her old Spanish house (one of the finest specimens in
+Sulaco) open for the dispensation of the small graces of
+existence. She dispensed them with simplicity and charm because
+she was guided by an alert perception of values. She was highly
+gifted in the art of human intercourse which consists in delicate
+shades of self-forgetfulness and in the suggestion of universal
+comprehension. Charles Gould (the Gould family, established in
+Costaguana for three generations, always went to England for
+their education and for their wives) imagined that he had fallen
+in love with a girl's sound common sense like any other man, but
+these were not exactly the reasons why, for instance, the whole
+surveying camp, from the youngest of the young men to their
+mature chief, should have found occasion to allude to Mrs.
+Gould's house so frequently amongst the high peaks of the Sierra.
+She would have protested that she had done nothing for them, with
+a low laugh and a surprised widening of her grey eyes, had
+anybody told her how convincingly she was remembered on the edge
+of the snow-line above Sulaco. But directly, with a little
+capable air of setting her wits to work, she would have found an
+explanation. "Of course, it was such a surprise for these boys to
+find any sort of welcome here. And I suppose they are homesick.
+I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick."
+
+She was always sorry for homesick people.
+
+Born in the country, as his father before him, spare and tall,
+with a flaming moustache, a neat chin, clear blue eyes, auburn
+hair, and a thin, fresh, red face, Charles Gould looked like a
+new arrival from over the sea. His grandfather had fought in the
+cause of independence under Bolivar, in that famous English
+legion which on the battlefield of Carabobo had been saluted by
+the great Liberator as Saviours of his country. One of Charles
+Gould's uncles had been the elected President of that very
+province of Sulaco (then called a State) in the days of
+Federation, and afterwards had been put up against the wall of a
+church and shot by the order of the barbarous Unionist general,
+Guzman Bento. It was the same Guzman Bento who, becoming later
+Perpetual President, famed for his ruthless and cruel tyranny,
+readied his apotheosis in the popular legend of a sanguinary
+land-haunting spectre whose body had been carried off by the
+devil in person from the brick mausoleum in the nave of the
+Church of Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests
+explained its disappearance to the barefooted multitude that
+streamed in, awestruck, to gaze at the hole in the side of the
+ugly box of bricks before the great altar.
+
+Guzman Bento of cruel memory had put to death great numbers of
+people besides Charles Gould's uncle; but with a relative
+martyred in the cause of aristocracy, the Sulaco Oligarchs (this
+was the phraseology of Guzman Bento's time; now they were called
+Blancos, and had given up the federal idea), which meant the
+families of pure Spanish descent, considered Charles as one of
+themselves. With such a family record, no one could be more of a
+Costaguanero than Don Carlos Gould; but his aspect was so
+characteristic that in the talk of common people he was just the
+Inglez--the Englishman of Sulaco. He looked more English than a
+casual tourist, a sort of heretic pilgrim, however, quite unknown
+in Sulaco. He looked more English than the last arrived batch of
+young railway engineers, than anybody out of the hunting-field
+pictures in the numbers of Punch reaching his wife's drawing-room
+two months or so after date. It astonished you to hear him talk
+Spanish (Castillan, as the natives say) or the Indian dialect of
+the country-people so naturally. His accent had never been
+English; but there was something so indelible in all these
+ancestral Goulds--liberators, explorers, coffee planters,
+merchants, revolutionists--of Costaguana, that he, the only
+representative of the third generation in a continent possessing
+its own style of horsemanship, went on looking thoroughly English
+even on horseback. This is not said of him in the mocking spirit
+of the Llaneros--men of the great plains--who think that no one
+in the world knows how to sit a horse but themselves. Charles
+Gould, to use the suitably lofty phrase, rode like a centaur.
+Riding for him was not a special form of exercise; it was a
+natural faculty, as walking straight is to all men sound of mind
+and limb; but, all the same, when cantering beside the rutty
+ox-cart track to the mine he looked in his English clothes and
+with his imported saddlery as though he had come this moment to
+Costaguana at his easy swift pasotrote, straight out of some
+green meadow at the other side of the world.
+
+His way would lie along the old Spanish road--the Camino Real of
+popular speech--the only remaining vestige of a fact and name
+left by that royalty old Giorgio Viola hated, and whose very
+shadow had departed from the land; for the big equestrian statue
+of Charles IV at the entrance of the Alameda, towering white
+against the trees, was only known to the folk from the country
+and to the beggars of the town that slept on the steps around the
+pedestal, as the Horse of Stone. The other Carlos, turning off to
+the left with a rapid clatter of hoofs on the disjointed pavement
+--Don Carlos Gould, in his English clothes, looked as
+incongruous, but much more at home than the kingly cavalier
+reining in his steed on the pedestal above the sleeping leperos,
+with his marble arm raised towards the marble rim of a plumed
+hat.
+
+The weather-stained effigy of the mounted king, with its vague
+suggestion of a saluting gesture, seemed to present an
+inscrutable breast to the political changes which had robbed it
+of its very name; but neither did the other horseman, well known
+to the people, keen and alive on his well-shaped, slate-coloured
+beast with a white eye, wear his heart on the sleeve of his
+English coat. His mind preserved its steady poise as if sheltered
+in the passionless stability of private and public decencies at
+home in Europe. He accepted with a like calm the shocking manner
+in which the Sulaco ladies smothered their faces with pearl
+powder till they looked like white plaster casts with beautiful
+living eyes, the peculiar gossip of the town, and the continuous
+political changes, the constant "saving of the country," which to
+his wife seemed a puerile and bloodthirsty game of murder and
+rapine played with terrible earnestness by depraved children. In
+the early days of her Costaguana life, the little lady used to
+clench her hands with exasperation at not being able to take the
+public affairs of the country as seriously as the incidental
+atrocity of methods deserved. She saw in them a comedy of naive
+pretences, but hardly anything genuine except her own appalled
+indignation. Charles, very quiet and twisting his long
+moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all. Once, however,
+he observed to her gently--
+
+"My dear, you seem to forget that I was born here." These few
+words made her pause as if they had been a sudden revelation.
+Perhaps the mere fact of being born in the country did make a
+difference. She had a great confidence in her husband; it had
+always been very great. He had struck her imagination from the
+first by his unsentimentalism, by that very quietude of mind
+which she had erected in her thought for a sign of perfect
+competency in the business of living. Don Jose Avellanos, their
+neighbour across the street, a statesman, a poet, a man of
+culture, who had represented his country at several European
+Courts (and had suffered untold indignities as a state prisoner
+in the time of the tyrant Guzman Bento), used to declare in Dona
+Emilia's drawing-room that Carlos had all the English qualities
+of character with a truly patriotic heart.
+
+Mrs. Gould, raising her eyes to her husband's thin, red and tan
+face, could not detect the slightest quiver of a feature at what
+he must have heard said of his patriotism. Perhaps he had just
+dismounted on his return from the mine; he was English enough to
+disregard the hottest hours of the day. Basilio, in a livery of
+white linen and a red sash, had squatted for a moment behind his
+heels to unstrap the heavy, blunt spurs in the patio; and then
+the Senor Administrator would go up the staircase into the
+gallery. Rows of plants in pots, ranged on the balustrade between
+the pilasters of the arches, screened the corredor with their
+leaves and flowers from the quadrangle below, whose paved space
+is the true hearthstone of a South American house, where the
+quiet hours of domestic life are marked by the shifting of light
+and shadow on the flagstones.
+
+Senor Avellanos was in the habit of crossing the patio at five
+o'clock almost every day. Don Jose chose to come over at tea-time
+because the English rite at Dona Emilia's house reminded him of
+the time he lived in London as Minister Plenipotentiary to the
+Court of St. James. He did not like tea; and, usually, rocking
+his American chair, his neat little shiny boots crossed on the
+foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a sort of complacent
+virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he held the cup
+in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was
+perfectly white; his eyes coalblack.
+
+On seeing Charles Gould step into the sala he would nod
+provisionally and go on to the end of the oratorial period. Only
+then he would say--
+
+"Carlos, my friend, you have ridden from San Tome in the heat of
+the day. Always the true English activity.  No? What?"
+
+He drank up all the tea at once in one draught. This performance
+was invariably followed by a slight shudder and a low,
+involuntary "br-r-r-r," which was not covered by the hasty
+exclamation, "Excellent!"
+
+Then giving up the empty cup into his young friend's hand,
+extended with a smile, he continued to expatiate upon the
+patriotic nature of the San Tome mine for the simple pleasure of
+talking fluently, it seemed, while his reclining body jerked
+backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair of the sort exported
+from the United States. The ceiling of the largest drawing-room
+of the Casa Gould extended its white level far above his head.
+The loftiness dwarfed the mixture of heavy, straight-backed
+Spanish chairs of brown wood with leathern seats, and European
+furniture, low, and cushioned all over, like squat little
+monsters gorged to bursting with steel springs and horsehair.
+There were knick-knacks on little tables, mirrors let into the
+wall above marble consoles, square spaces of carpet under the two
+groups of armchairs, each presided over by a deep sofa; smaller
+rugs scattered all over the floor of red tiles; three windows
+from the ceiling down to the ground, opening on a balcony, and
+flanked by the perpendicular folds of the dark hangings. The
+stateliness of ancient days lingered between the four high,
+smooth walls, tinted a delicate primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould,
+with her little head and shining coils of hair, sitting in a
+cloud of muslin and lace before a slender mahogany table,
+resembled a fairy posed lightly before dainty philtres dispensed
+out of vessels of silver and porcelain.
+
+Mrs. Gould knew the history of the San Tome mine.  Worked in the
+early days mostly by means of lashes on the backs of slaves, its
+yield had been paid for in its own weight of human bones. Whole
+tribes of Indians had perished in the exploitation; and then the
+mine was abandoned, since with this primitive method it had
+ceased to make a profitable return, no matter how many corpses
+were thrown into its maw. Then it became forgotten.  It was
+rediscovered after the War of Independence.  An English company
+obtained the right to work it, and found so rich a vein that
+neither the exactions of successive governments, nor the
+periodical raids of recruiting officers upon the population of
+paid miners they had created, could discourage their
+perseverance.  But in the end, during the long turmoil of
+pronunciamentos that followed the death of the famous Guzman
+Bento, the native miners, incited to revolt by the emissaries
+sent out from the capital, had risen upon their English chiefs
+and murdered them to a man. The decree of confiscation which
+appeared immediately afterwards in the Diario Official, published
+in Sta.  Marta, began with the words: "Justly incensed at the
+grinding oppression of foreigners, actuated by sordid motives of
+gain rather than by love for a country where they come
+impoverished to seek their fortunes, the mining population of San
+Tome, etc. . . ." and ended with the declaration: "The chief of
+the State has resolved to exercise to the full his power of
+clemency.  The mine, which by every law, international, human,
+and divine, reverts now to the Government as national property,
+shall remain closed till the sword drawn for the sacred defence
+of liberal principles has accomplished its mission of securing
+the happiness of our beloved country."
+
+And for many years this was the last of the San Tome mine. What
+advantage that Government had expected from the spoliation, it is
+impossible to tell now.  Costaguana was made with difficulty to
+pay a beggarly money compensation to the families of the victims,
+and then the matter dropped out of diplomatic despatches.  But
+afterwards another Government bethought itself of that valuable
+asset. It was an ordinary Costaguana Government--the fourth in
+six years--but it judged of its opportunities sanely. It
+remembered the San Tome mine with a secret conviction of its
+worthlessness in their own hands, but with an ingenious insight
+into the various uses a silver mine can be put to, apart from the
+sordid process of extracting the metal from under the ground. The
+father of Charles Gould, for a long time one of the most wealthy
+merchants of Costaguana, had already lost a considerable part of
+his fortune in forced loans to the successive Governments. He was
+a man of calm judgment, who never dreamed of pressing his claims;
+and when, suddenly, the perpetual concession of the San Tome mine
+was offered to him in full settlement, his alarm became extreme.
+He was versed in the ways of Governments. Indeed, the intention
+of this affair, though no doubt deeply meditated in the closet,
+lay open on the surface of the document presented urgently for
+his signature. The third and most important clause stipulated
+that the concession-holder should pay at once to the Government
+five years' royalties on the estimated output of the mine.
+
+Mr. Gould, senior, defended himself from this fatal favour with
+many arguments and entreaties, but without success. He knew
+nothing of mining; he had no means to put his concession on the
+European market; the mine as a working concern did not exist. The
+buildings had been burnt down, the mining plant had been
+destroyed, the mining population had disappeared from the
+neighbourhood years and years ago; the very road had vanished
+under a flood of tropical vegetation as effectually as if
+swallowed by the sea; and the main gallery had fallen in within a
+hundred yards from the entrance. It was no longer an abandoned
+mine; it was a wild, inaccessible, and rocky gorge of the Sierra,
+where vestiges of charred timber, some heaps of smashed bricks,
+and a few shapeless pieces of rusty iron could have been found
+under the matted mass of thorny creepers covering the ground. Mr.
+Gould, senior, did not desire the perpetual possession of that
+desolate locality; in fact, the mere vision of it arising before
+his mind in the still watches of the night had the power to
+exasperate him into hours of hot and agitated insomnia.
+
+It so happened, however, that the Finance Minister of the time
+was a man to whom, in years gone by, Mr.  Gould had,
+unfortunately, declined to grant some small pecuniary assistance,
+basing his refusal on the ground that the applicant was a
+notorious gambler and cheat, besides being more than half
+suspected of a robbery with violence on a wealthy ranchero in a
+remote country district, where he was actually exercising the
+function of a judge. Now, after reaching his exalted position,
+that politician had proclaimed his intention to repay evil with
+good to Senor Gould--the poor man. He affirmed and reaffirmed
+this resolution in the drawing-rooms of Sta. Marta, in a soft and
+implacable voice, and with such malicious glances that Mr.
+Gould's best friends advised him earnestly to attempt no bribery
+to get the matter dropped. It would have been useless.  Indeed,
+it would not have been a very safe proceeding.  Such was also the
+opinion of a stout, loud-voiced lady of French extraction, the
+daughter, she said, of an officer of high rank (officier
+superieur de l'armee), who was accommodated with lodgings within
+the walls of a secularized convent next door to the Ministry of
+Finance. That florid person, when approached on behalf of Mr.
+Gould in a proper manner, and with a suitable present, shook her
+head despondently. She was good-natured, and her despondency was
+genuine.  She imagined she could not take money in consideration
+of something she could not accomplish. The friend of Mr. Gould,
+charged with the delicate mission, used to say afterwards that
+she was the only honest person closely or remotely connected with
+the Government he had ever met. "No go," she had said with a
+cavalier, husky intonation which was natural to her, and using
+turns of expression more suitable to a child of parents unknown
+than to the orphaned daughter of a general officer. "No; it's no
+go. Pas moyen, mon garcon.  C'est dommage, tout de meme. Ah! zut!
+Je ne vole pas mon monde. Je ne suis pas ministre--moi! Vous
+pouvez emporter votre petit sac."
+
+For a moment, biting her carmine lip, she deplored inwardly the
+tyranny of the rigid principles governing the sale of her
+influence in high places. Then, significantly, and with a touch
+of impatience, "Allez," she added, "et dites bien a votre
+bonhomme--entendez-vous?--qu'il faut avaler la pilule."
+
+After such a warning there was nothing for it but to sign and
+pay. Mr. Gould had swallowed the pill, and it was as though it
+had been compounded of some subtle poison that acted directly on
+his brain. He became at once mine-ridden, and as he was well read
+in light literature it took to his mind the form of the Old Man
+of the Sea fastened upon his shoulders. He also began to dream of
+vampires. Mr. Gould exaggerated to himself the disadvantages of
+his new position, because he viewed it emotionally. His position
+in Costaguana was no worse than before. But man is a desperately
+conservative creature, and the extravagant novelty of this
+outrage upon his purse distressed his sensibilities.  Everybody
+around him was being robbed by the grotesque and murderous bands
+that played their game of governments and revolutions after the
+death of Guzman Bento. His experience had taught him that,
+however short the plunder might fall of their legitimate
+expectations, no gang in possession of the Presidential Palace
+would be so incompetent as to suffer itself to be baffled by the
+want of a pretext. The first casual colonel of the barefooted
+army of scarecrows that came along was able to expose with force
+and precision to any mere civilian his titles to a sum of 10,000
+dollars; the while his hope would be immutably fixed upon a
+gratuity, at any rate, of no less than a thousand. Mr.  Gould
+knew that very well, and, armed with resignation, had waited for
+better times. But to be robbed under the forms of legality and
+business was intolerable to his imagination. Mr. Gould, the
+father, had one fault in his sagacious and honourable character:
+he attached too much importance to form. It is a failing common
+to mankind, whose views are tinged by prejudices.  There was for
+him in that affair a malignancy of perverted justice which, by
+means of a moral shock, attacked his vigorous physique. "It will
+end by killing me," he used to affirm many times a day. And, in
+fact, since that time he began to suffer from fever, from liver
+pains, and mostly from a worrying inability to think of anything
+else. The Finance Minister could have formed no conception of the
+profound subtlety of his revenge. Even Mr. Gould's letters to his
+fourteen-year-old boy Charles, then away in England for his
+education, came at last to talk of practically nothing but the
+mine. He groaned over the injustice, the persecution, the outrage
+of that mine; he occupied whole pages in the exposition of the
+fatal consequences attaching to the possession of that mine from
+every point of view, with every dismal inference, with words of
+horror at the apparently eternal character of that curse. For the
+Concession had been granted to him and his descendants for ever.
+He implored his son never to return to Costaguana, never to claim
+any part of his inheritance there, because it was tainted by the
+infamous Concession; never to touch it, never to approach it, to
+forget that America existed, and pursue a mercantile career in
+Europe. And each letter ended with bitter self-reproaches for
+having stayed too long in that cavern of thieves, intriguers, and
+brigands.
+
+To be told repeatedly that one's future is blighted because of
+the possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a
+matter of prime importance as to its main statement; but in its
+form it is calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and
+attention. In course of time the boy, at first only puzzled by
+the angry jeremiads, but rather sorry for his dad, began to turn
+the matter over in his mind in such moments as he could spare
+from play and study. In about a year he had evolved from the
+lecture of the letters a definite conviction that there was a
+silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of Costaguana,
+where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great many
+years before. There was also connected closely with that mine a
+thing called the "iniquitous Gould Concession," apparently
+written on a paper which his father desired ardently to "tear and
+fling into the faces" of presidents, members of judicature, and
+ministers of State. And this desire persisted, though the names
+of these people, he noticed, seldom remained the same for a whole
+year together. This desire (since the thing was iniquitous)
+seemed quite natural to the boy, though why the affair was
+iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards, with advancing wisdom, he
+managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the
+fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, and
+ghouls, which had lent to his father's correspondence the flavour
+of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale.  In the end, the growing youth
+attained to as close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the
+old man who wrote these plaintive and enraged letters on the
+other side of the sea. He had been made several times already to
+pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the mine, he reported,
+besides other sums extracted from him on account of future
+royalties, on the ground that a man with such a valuable
+concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial
+assistance to the Government of the Republic. The last of his
+fortune was passing away from him against worthless receipts, he
+wrote, in a rage, whilst he was being pointed out as an
+individual who had known how to secure enormous advantages from
+the necessities of his country. And the young man in Europe grew
+more and more interested in that thing which could provoke such a
+tumult of words and passion.
+
+He thought of it every day; but he thought of it without
+bitterness. It might have been an unfortunate affair for his poor
+dad, and the whole story threw a queer light upon the social and
+political life of Costaguana.  The view he took of it was
+sympathetic to his father, yet calm and reflective. His personal
+feelings had not been outraged, and it is difficult to resent
+with proper and durable indignation the physical or mental
+anguish of another organism, even if that other organism is one's
+own father. By the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his
+turn, fallen under the spell of the San Tome mine. But it was
+another form of enchantment, more suitable to his youth, into
+whose magic formula there entered hope, vigour, and
+self-confidence, instead of weary indignation and despair.  Left
+after he was twenty to his own guidance (except for the severe
+injunction not to return to Costaguana), he had pursued his
+studies in Belgium and France with the idea of qualifying for a
+mining engineer. But this scientific aspect of his labours
+remained vague and imperfect in his mind. Mines had acquired for
+him a dramatic interest. He studied their peculiarities from a
+personal point of view, too, as one would study the varied
+characters of men.   He visited them as one goes with curiosity
+to call upon remarkable persons.  He visited mines in Germany, in
+Spain, in Cornwall.  Abandoned workings had for him strong
+fascination.  Their desolation appealed to him like the sight of
+human misery, whose causes are varied and profound.  They might
+have been worthless, but also they might have been misunderstood.
+His future wife was the first, and perhaps the only person to
+detect this secret mood which governed the profoundly sensible,
+almost voiceless attitude of this man towards the world of
+material things. And at once her delight in him, lingering with
+half-open wings like those birds that cannot rise easily from a
+flat level, found a pinnacle from which to soar up into the
+skies.
+
+They had become acquainted in Italy, where the future Mrs. Gould
+was staying with an old and pale aunt who, years before, had
+married a middle-aged, impoverished Italian marquis. She now
+mourned that man, who had known how to give up his life to the
+independence and unity of his country, who had known how to be as
+enthusiastic in his generosity as the youngest of those who fell
+for that very cause of which old Giorgio Viola was a drifting
+relic, as a broken spar is suffered to float away disregarded
+after a naval victory.  The Marchesa led a still, whispering
+existence, nun-like in her black robes and a white band over the
+forehead, in a corner of the first floor of an ancient and
+ruinous palace, whose big, empty halls downstairs sheltered under
+their painted ceilings the harvests, the fowls, and even the
+cattle, together with the whole family of the tenant farmer.
+
+The two young people had met in Lucca. After that meeting Charles
+Gould visited no mines, though they went together in a carriage,
+once, to see some marble quarries, where the work resembled
+mining in so far that it also was the tearing of the raw material
+of treasure from the earth. Charles Gould did not open his heart
+to her in any set speeches. He simply went on acting and thinking
+in her sight. This is the true method of sincerity. One of his
+frequent remarks was, "I think sometimes that poor father takes a
+wrong view of that San Tome business." And they discussed that
+opinion long and earnestly, as if they could influence a mind
+across half the globe; but in reality they discussed it because
+the sentiment of love can enter into any subject and live
+ardently in remote phrases. For this natural reason these
+discussions were precious to Mrs. Gould in her engaged state.
+Charles feared that Mr. Gould, senior, was wasting his strength
+and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid of the
+Concession. "I fancy that this is not the kind of handling it
+requires," he mused aloud, as if to himself.  And when she
+wondered frankly that a man of character should devote his
+energies to plotting and intrigues, Charles would remark, with a
+gentle concern that understood her wonder, "You must not forget
+that he was born there."
+
+She would set her quick mind to work upon that, and then make the
+inconsequent retort, which he accepted as perfectly sagacious,
+because, in fact, it was so--
+
+"Well, and you? You were born there, too."
+
+He knew his answer.
+
+"That's different. I've been away ten years. Dad never had such a
+long spell; and it was more than thirty years ago."
+
+She was the first person to whom he opened his lips after
+receiving the news of his father's death.
+
+"It has killed him!" he said.
+
+He had walked straight out of town with the news, straight out
+before him in the noonday sun on the white road, and his feet had
+brought him face to face with her in the hall of the ruined
+palazzo, a room magnificent and naked, with here and there a long
+strip of damask, black with damp and age, hanging down on a bare
+panel of the wall. It was furnished with exactly one gilt
+armchair, with a broken back, and an octagon columnar stand
+bearing a heavy marble vase ornamented with sculptured masks and
+garlands of flowers, and cracked from top to bottom. Charles
+Gould was dusty with the white dust of the road lying on his
+boots, on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks. Water dripped
+from under it all over his face, and he grasped a thick oaken
+cudgel in his bare right hand.
+
+She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat, gloved,
+swinging a clear sunshade, caught just as she was going out to
+meet him at the bottom of the hill, where three poplars stand
+near the wall of a vineyard.
+
+"It has killed him!" he repeated. "He ought to have had many
+years yet. We are a long-lived family."
+
+She was too startled to say anything; he was contemplating with a
+penetrating and motionless stare the cracked marble urn as though
+he had resolved to fix its shape for ever in his memory. It was
+only when, turning suddenly to her, he blurted out twice, "I've
+come to you--I've come straight to you--," without being able to
+finish his phrase, that the great pitifulness of that lonely and
+tormented death in Costaguana came to her with the full force of
+its misery. He caught hold of her hand, raised it to his lips,
+and at that she dropped her parasol to pat him on the cheek,
+murmured "Poor boy," and began to dry her eyes under the downward
+curve of her hat-brim, very small in her simple, white frock,
+almost like a lost child crying in the degraded grandeur of the
+noble hall, while he stood by her, again perfectly motionless in
+the contemplation of the marble urn.
+
+Afterwards they went out for a long walk, which was silent till
+he exclaimed suddenly--
+
+"Yes. But if he had only grappled with it in a proper way!"
+
+And then they stopped. Everywhere there were long shadows lying
+on the hills, on the roads, on the enclosed fields of olive
+trees; the shadows of poplars, of wide chestnuts, of farm
+buildings, of stone walls; and in mid-air the sound of a bell,
+thin and alert, was like the throbbing pulse of the sunset glow.
+Her lips were slightly parted as though in surprise that he
+should not be looking at her with his usual expression. His usual
+expression was unconditionally approving and attentive.  He was
+in his talks with her the most anxious and deferential of
+dictators, an attitude that pleased her immensely. It affirmed
+her power without detracting from his dignity. That slight girl,
+with her little feet, little hands, little face attractively
+overweighted by great coils of hair; with a rather large mouth,
+whose mere parting seemed to breathe upon you the fragrance of
+frankness and generosity, had the fastidious soul of an
+experienced woman. She was, before all things and all flatteries,
+careful of her pride in the object of her choice. But now he was
+actually not looking at her at all; and his expression was tense
+and irrational, as is natural in a man who elects to stare at
+nothing past a young girl's head.
+
+"Well, yes. It was iniquitous. They corrupted him thoroughly, the
+poor old boy. Oh! why wouldn't he let me go back to him? But now
+I shall know how to grapple with this."
+
+After pronouncing these words with immense assurance, he glanced
+down at her, and at once fell a prey to distress, incertitude,
+and fear.
+
+The only thing he wanted to know now, he said, was whether she
+did love him enough--whether she would have the courage to go
+with him so far away? He put these questions to her in a voice
+that trembled with anxiety--for he was a determined man.
+
+She did. She would. And immediately the future hostess of all the
+Europeans in Sulaco had the physical experience of the earth
+falling away from under her. It vanished completely, even to the
+very sound of the bell.  When her feet touched the ground again,
+the bell was still ringing in the valley; she put her hands up to
+her hair, breathing quickly, and glanced up and down the stony
+lane. It was reassuringly empty. Meantime, Charles, stepping with
+one foot into a dry and dusty ditch, picked up the open parasol,
+which had bounded away from them with a martial sound of drum
+taps.  He handed it to her soberly, a little crestfallen.
+
+They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand on his arm,
+the first words he pronounced were--
+
+"It's lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast town.
+You've heard its name. It is Sulaco. I am so glad poor father did
+get that house. He bought a big house there years ago, in order
+that there should always be a Casa Gould in the principal town of
+what used to be called the Occidental Province. I lived there
+once, as a small boy, with my dear mother, for a whole year,
+while poor father was away in the United States on business.  You
+shall be the new mistress of the Casa Gould."
+
+And later, in the inhabited corner of the Palazzo above the
+vineyards, the marble hills, the pines and olives of Lucca, he
+also said--
+
+"The name of Gould has been always highly respected in Sulaco. My
+uncle Harry was chief of the State for some time, and has left a
+great name amongst the first families. By this I mean the pure
+Creole families, who take no part in the miserable farce of
+governments. Uncle Harry was no adventurer. In Costaguana we
+Goulds are no adventurers. He was of the country, and he loved
+it, but he remained essentially an Englishman in his ideas. He
+made use of the political cry of his time. It was Federation. But
+he was no politician. He simply stood up for social order out of
+pure love for rational liberty and from his hate of oppression.
+There was no nonsense about him. He went to work in his own way
+because it seemed right, just as I feel I must lay hold of that
+mine."
+
+In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full
+of the country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that
+girl, and his mind of the San Tome Concession. He added that he
+would have to leave her for a few days to find an American, a man
+from San Francisco, who was still somewhere in Europe. A few
+months before he had made his acquaintance in an old historic
+German town, situated in a mining district.  The American had his
+womankind with him, but seemed lonely while they were sketching
+all day long the old doorways and the turreted corners of the
+mediaeval houses. Charles Gould had with him the inseparable
+companionship of the mine. The other man was interested in mining
+enterprises, knew something of Costaguana, and was no stranger to
+the name of Gould.  They had talked together with some intimacy
+which was made possible by the difference of their ages. Charles
+wanted now to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible
+character. His father's fortune in Costaguana, which he had
+supposed to be still considerable, seemed to have melted in the
+rascally crucible of revolutions. Apart from some ten thousand
+pounds deposited in England, there appeared to be nothing left
+except the house in Sulaco, a vague right of forest exploitation
+in a remote and savage district, and the San Tome Concession,
+which had attended his poor father to the very brink of the
+grave.
+
+He explained those things. It was late when they parted. She had
+never before given him such a fascinating vision of herself. All
+the eagerness of youth for a strange life, for great distances,
+for a future in which there was an air of adventure, of combat--a
+subtle thought of redress and conquest, had filled her with an
+intense excitement, which she returned to the giver with a more
+open and exquisite display of tenderness.
+
+He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he found himself
+alone he became sober. That irreparable change a death makes in
+the course of our daily thoughts can be felt in a vague and
+poignant discomfort of mind.  It hurt Charles Gould to feel that
+never more, by no effort of will, would he be able to think of
+his father in the same way he used to think of him when the poor
+man was alive. His breathing image was no longer in his power.
+This consideration, closely affecting his own identity, filled
+his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action. In this
+his instinct was unerring.  Action is consolatory. It is the
+enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in
+the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over
+the Fates. For his action, the mine was obviously the only field.
+It was imperative sometimes to know how to disobey the solemn
+wishes of the dead. He resolved firmly to make his disobedience
+as thorough (by way of atonement) as it well could be. The mine
+had been the cause of an absurd moral disaster; its working must
+be made a serious and moral success. He owed it to the dead man's
+memory. Such were the--properly speaking--emotions of Charles
+Gould. His thoughts ran upon the means of raising a large amount
+of capital in San Francisco or elsewhere; and incidentally there
+occurred to him also the general reflection that the counsel of
+the departed must be an unsound guide.  Not one of them could be
+aware beforehand what enormous changes the death of any given
+individual may produce in the very aspect of the world.
+
+The latest phase in the history of the mine Mrs.  Gould knew from
+personal experience. It was in essence the history of her married
+life. The mantle of the Goulds' hereditary position in Sulaco had
+descended amply upon her little person; but she would not allow
+the peculiarities of the strange garment to weigh down the
+vivacity of her character, which was the sign of no mere
+mechanical sprightliness, but of an eager intelligence.  It must
+not be supposed that Mrs. Gould's mind was masculine. A woman
+with a masculine mind is not a being of superior efficiency; she
+is simply a phenomenon of imperfect
+differentiation--interestingly barren and without importance.
+Dona Emilia's intelligence being feminine led her to achieve the
+conquest of Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her
+unselfishness and sympathy. She could converse charmingly, but
+she was not talkative. The wisdom of the heart having no concern
+with the erection or demolition of theories any more than with
+the defence of prejudices, has no random words at its command.
+The words it pronounces have the value of acts of integrity,
+tolerance, and compassion. A woman's true tenderness, like the
+true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering
+kind. The ladies of Sulaco adored Mrs. Gould. "They still look
+upon me as something of a monster," Mrs. Gould had said
+pleasantly to one of the three gentlemen from San Francisco she
+had to entertain in her new Sulaco house just about a year after
+her marriage.
+
+They were her first visitors from abroad, and they had come to
+look at the San Tome mine. She jested most agreeably, they
+thought; and Charles Gould, besides knowing thoroughly what he
+was about, had shown himself a real hustler. These facts caused
+them to be well disposed towards his wife. An unmistakable
+enthusiasm, pointed by a slight flavour of irony, made her talk
+of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and provoked
+them to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good deal
+of deference.  Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired
+by an idealistic view of success they would have been amazed at
+the state of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had been
+amazed at the tireless activity of her body. She would--in her
+own words--have been for them "something of a monster." However,
+the Goulds were in essentials a reticent couple, and their guests
+departed without the suspicion of any other purpose but simple
+profit in the working of a silver mine.  Mrs. Gould had out her
+own carriage, with two white mules, to drive them down to the
+harbour, whence the Ceres was to carry them off into the Olympus
+of plutocrats.  Captain Mitchell had snatched at the occasion of
+leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, confidential
+mutter, "This marks an epoch."
+
+Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broad flight
+of stone steps was overlooked silently from a niche in the wall
+by a Madonna in blue robes with the crowned child sitting on her
+arm. Subdued voices ascended in the early mornings from the paved
+well of the quadrangle, with the stamping of horses and mules led
+out in pairs to drink at the cistern. A tangle of slender bamboo
+stems drooped its narrow, blade-like leaves over the square pool
+of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled up on the edge,
+holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand. Barefooted
+servants passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways
+below; two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker
+with the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda--her own
+camerista--bearing high up, swung from her hand raised above her
+raven black head, a bunch of starched under-skirts dazzlingly
+white in the slant of sunshine. Then the old porter would hobble
+in, sweeping the flagstones, and the house was ready for the day.
+All the lofty rooms on three sides of the quadrangle opened into
+each other and into the corredor, with its wrought-iron railings
+and a border of flowers, whence, like the lady of the mediaeval
+castle, she could witness from above all the departures and
+arrivals of the Casa, to which the sonorous arched gateway lent
+an air of stately importance.
+
+She had watched her carriage roll away with the three guests from
+the north. She smiled. Their three arms went up simultaneously to
+their three hats. Captain Mitchell, the fourth, in attendance,
+had already begun a pompous discourse. Then she lingered. She
+lingered, approaching her face to the clusters of flowers here
+and there as if to give time to her thoughts to catch up with her
+slow footsteps along the straight vista of the corredor.
+
+A fringed Indian hammock from Aroa, gay with coloured
+featherwork, had been swung judiciously in a corner that caught
+the early sun; for the mornings are cool in Sulaco. The cluster
+of flor de noche buena blazed in great masses before the open
+glass doors of the reception rooms. A big green parrot, brilliant
+like an emerald in a cage that flashed like gold, screamed out
+ferociously, "Viva Costaguana!" then called twice mellifluously,
+"Leonarda! Leonarda!" in imitation of Mrs. Gould's voice, and
+suddenly took refuge in immobility and silence. Mrs. Gould
+reached the end of the gallery and put her head through the door
+of her husband's room.
+
+Charles Gould, with one foot on a low wooden stool, was already
+strapping his spurs. He wanted to hurry back to the mine. Mrs.
+Gould, without coming in, glanced about the room. One tall, broad
+bookcase, with glass doors, was full of books; but in the other,
+without shelves, and lined with red baize, were arranged
+firearms: Winchester carbines, revolvers, a couple of shot-guns,
+and even two pairs of double-barrelled holster pistols. Between
+them, by itself, upon a strip of scarlet velvet, hung an old
+cavalry sabre, once the property of Don Enrique Gould, the hero
+of the Occidental Province, presented by Don Jose Avellanos, the
+hereditary friend of the family.
+
+Otherwise, the plastered white walls were completely bare, except
+for a water-colour sketch of the San Tome mountain--the work of
+Dona Emilia herself. In the middle of the red-tiled floor stood
+two long tables littered with plans and papers, a few chairs, and
+a glass show-case containing specimens of ore from the mine.
+Mrs. Gould, looking at all these things in turn, wondered aloud
+why the talk of these wealthy and enterprising men discussing the
+prospects, the working, and the safety of the mine rendered her
+so impatient and uneasy, whereas she could talk of the mine by
+the hour with her husband with unwearied interest and
+satisfaction.  And dropping her eyelids expressively, she added--
+
+"What do you feel about it, Charley?"
+
+Then, surprised at her husband's silence, she raised her eyes,
+opened wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He had done with the
+spurs, and, twisting his moustache with both hands, horizontally,
+he contemplated her from the height of his long legs with a
+visible appreciation of her appearance. The consciousness of
+being thus contemplated pleased Mrs. Gould.
+
+"They are considerable men," he said.
+
+"I know. But have you listened to their conversation?  They don't
+seem to have understood anything they have seen here."
+
+"They have seen the mine. They have understood that to some
+purpose," Charles Gould interjected, in defence of the visitors;
+and then his wife mentioned the name of the most considerable of
+the three. He was considerable in finance and in industry. His
+name was familiar to many millions of people. He was so
+considerable that he would never have travelled so far away from
+the centre of his activity if the doctors had not insisted, with
+veiled menaces, on his taking a long holiday.
+
+"Mr. Holroyd's sense of religion," Mrs. Gould pursued, "was
+shocked and disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-up saints
+in the cathedral--the worship, he called it, of wood and tinsel.
+But it seemed to me that he looked upon his own God as a sort of
+influential partner, who gets his share of profits in the
+endowment of churches. That's a sort of idolatry. He told me he
+endowed churches every year, Charley."
+
+"No end of them," said Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at the
+mobility of her physiognomy. "All over the country. He's famous
+for that sort of munificence." "Oh, he didn't boast," Mrs. Gould
+declared, scrupulously.  "I believe he's really a good man, but
+so stupid!  A poor Chulo who offers a little silver arm or leg to
+thank his god for a cure is as rational and more touching."
+
+"He's at the head of immense silver and iron interests," Charles
+Gould observed.
+
+"Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He's a very civil man,
+though he looked awfully solemn when he first saw the Madonna on
+the staircase, who's only wood and paint; but he said nothing to
+me. My dear Charley, I heard those men talk among themselves.
+Can it be that they really wish to become, for an immense
+consideration, drawers of water and hewers of wood to all the
+countries and nations of the earth?"
+
+"A man must work to some end," Charles Gould said, vaguely.
+
+Mrs. Gould, frowning, surveyed him from head to foot. With his
+riding breeches, leather leggings (an article of apparel never
+before seen in Costaguana), a Norfolk coat of grey flannel, and
+those great flaming moustaches, he suggested an officer of
+cavalry turned gentleman farmer. This combination was gratifying
+to Mrs. Gould's tastes. "How thin the poor boy is!" she thought.
+"He overworks himself." But there was no denying that his
+fine-drawn, keen red face, and his whole, long-limbed, lank
+person had an air of breeding and distinction. And Mrs. Gould
+relented.
+
+"I only wondered what you felt," she murmured, gently.
+
+During the last few days, as it happened, Charles Gould had been
+kept too busy thinking twice before he spoke to have paid much
+attention to the state of his feelings. But theirs was a
+successful match, and he had no difficulty in finding his answer.
+
+"The best of my feelings are in your keeping, my dear," he said,
+lightly; and there was so much truth in that obscure phrase that
+he experienced towards her at the moment a great increase of
+gratitude and tenderness.
+
+Mrs. Gould, however, did not seem to find this answer in the
+least obscure. She brightened up delicately; already he had
+changed his tone.
+
+"But there are facts. The worth of the mine--as a mine--is beyond
+doubt. It shall make us very wealthy.  The mere working of it is
+a matter of technical knowledge, which I have--which ten thousand
+other men in the world have. But its safety, its continued
+existence as an enterprise, giving a return to men--to strangers,
+comparative strangers--who invest money in it, is left altogether
+in my hands. I have inspired confidence in a man of wealth and
+position. You seem to think this perfectly natural--do you? Well,
+I don't know. I don't know why I have; but it is a fact. This
+fact makes everything possible, because without it I would never
+have thought of disregarding my father's wishes.  I would never
+have disposed of the Concession as a speculator disposes of a
+valuable right to a company--for cash and shares, to grow rich
+eventually if possible, but at any rate to put some money at once
+in his pocket.  No. Even if it had been feasible--which I
+doubt--I would not have done so. Poor father did not understand.
+He was afraid I would hang on to the ruinous thing, waiting for
+just some such chance, and waste my life miserably. That was the
+true sense of his prohibition, which we have deliberately set
+aside."
+
+They were walking up and down the corredor. Her head just reached
+to his shoulder. His arm, extended downwards, was about her
+waist. His spurs jingled slightly.
+
+"He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know me. He parted
+from me for my sake, and he would never let me come back. He was
+always talking in his letters of leaving Costaguana, of
+abandoning everything and making his escape. But he was too
+valuable a prey. They would have thrown him into one of their
+prisons at the first suspicion."
+
+His spurred feet clinked slowly. He was bending over his wife as
+they walked. The big parrot, turning its head askew, followed
+their pacing figures with a round, unblinking eye.
+
+"He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years old he used to
+talk to me as if I had been grown up.  When I was in Europe he
+wrote to me every month.  Ten, twelve pages every month of my
+life for ten years.  And, after all, he did not know me! Just
+think of it--ten whole years away; the years I was growing up
+into a man. He could not know me. Do you think he could?"
+
+Mrs. Gould shook her head negatively; which was just what her
+husband had expected from the strength of the argument. But she
+shook her head negatively only because she thought that no one
+could know her Charles--really know him for what he was but
+herself. The thing was obvious. It could be felt. It required no
+argument. And poor Mr. Gould, senior, who had died too soon to
+ever hear of their engagement, remained too shadowy a figure for
+her to be credited with knowledge of any sort whatever.
+
+"No, he did not understand. In my view this mine could never have
+been a thing to sell. Never! After all his misery I simply could
+not have touched it for money alone," Charles Gould pursued: and
+she pressed her head to his shoulder approvingly.
+
+These two young people remembered the life which had ended
+wretchedly just when their own lives had come together in that
+splendour of hopeful love, which to the most sensible minds
+appears like a triumph of good over all the evils of the earth. A
+vague idea of rehabilitation had entered the plan of their life.
+That it was so vague as to elude the support of argument made it
+only the stronger. It had presented itself to them at the instant
+when the woman's instinct of devotion and the man's instinct of
+activity receive from the strongest of illusions their most
+powerful impulse.  The very prohibition imposed the necessity of
+success.  It was as if they had been morally bound to make good
+their vigorous view of life against the unnatural error of
+weariness and despair. If the idea of wealth was present to them
+it was only in so far as it was bound with that other success.
+Mrs. Gould, an orphan from early childhood and without fortune,
+brought up in an atmosphere of intellectual interests, had never
+considered the aspects of great wealth. They were too remote, and
+she had not learned that they were desirable.  On the other hand,
+she had not known anything of absolute want. Even the very
+poverty of her aunt, the Marchesa, had nothing intolerable to a
+refined mind; it seemed in accord with a great grief: it had the
+austerity of a sacrifice offered to a noble ideal.  Thus even the
+most legitimate touch of materialism was wanting in Mrs. Gould's
+character. The dead man of whom she thought with tenderness
+(because he was Charley's father) and with some impatience
+(because he had been weak), must be put completely in the wrong.
+Nothing else would do to keep their prosperity without a stain on
+its only real, on its immaterial side!
+
+Charles Gould, on his part, had been obliged to keep the idea of
+wealth well to the fore; but he brought it forward as a means,
+not as an end. Unless the mine was good business it could not be
+touched. He had to insist on that aspect of the enterprise. It
+was his lever to move men who had capital. And Charles Gould
+believed in the mine. He knew everything that could be known of
+it. His faith in the mine was contagious, though it was not
+served by a great eloquence; but business men are frequently as
+sanguine and imaginative as lovers. They are affected by a
+personality much oftener than people would suppose; and Charles
+Gould, in his unshaken assurance, was absolutely convincing.
+Besides, it was a matter of common knowledge to the men to whom
+he addressed himself that mining in Costaguana was a game that
+could be made considably more than worth the candle. The men of
+affairs knew that very well. The real difficulty in touching it
+was elsewhere. Against that there was an implication of calm and
+implacable resolution in Charles Gould's very voice. Men of
+affairs venture sometimes on acts that the common judgment of the
+world would pronounce absurd; they make their decisions on
+apparently impulsive and human grounds. "Very well," had said the
+considerable personage to whom Charles Gould on his way out
+through San Francisco had lucidly exposed his point of view. "Let
+us suppose that the mining affairs of Sulaco are taken in hand.
+There would then be in it: first, the house of Holroyd, which is
+all right; then, Mr. Charles Gould, a citizen of Costaguana, who
+is also all right; and, lastly, the Government of the Republic.
+So far this resembles the first start of the Atacama nitrate
+fields, where there was a financing house, a gentleman of the
+name of Edwards, and--a Government; or, rather, two
+Governments--two South American Governments. And you know what
+came of it. War came of it; devastating and prolonged war came of
+it, Mr. Gould. However, here we possess the advantage of having
+only one South American Government hanging around for plunder out
+of the deal. It is an advantage; but then there are degrees of
+badness, and that Government is the Costaguana Government."
+
+Thus spoke the considerable personage, the millionaire endower of
+churches on a scale befitting the greatness of his native
+land--the same to whom the doctors used the language of horrid
+and veiled menaces. He was a big-limbed, deliberate man, whose
+quiet burliness lent to an ample silk-faced frock-coat a
+superfine dignity. His hair was iron grey, his eyebrows were
+still black, and his massive profile was the profile of a
+Caesar's head on an old Roman coin. But his parentage was German
+and Scotch and English, with remote strains of Danish and French
+blood, giving him the temperament of a Puritan and an insatiable
+imagination of conquest. He was completely unbending to his
+visitor, because of the warm introduction the visitor had brought
+from Europe, and because of an irrational liking for earnestness
+and determination wherever met, to whatever end directed.
+
+"The Costaguana Government shall play its hand for all it's
+worth--and don't you forget it, Mr. Gould.  Now, what is
+Costaguana? It is the bottomless pit of 10 per cent. loans and
+other fool investments. European capital has been flung into it
+with both hands for years. Not ours, though. We in this country
+know just about enough to keep indoors when it rains. We can sit
+and watch. Of course, some day we shall step in. We are bound to.
+But there's no hurry. Time itself has got to wait on the greatest
+country in the whole of God's Universe. We shall be giving the
+word for everything: industry, trade, law, journalism, art,
+politics, and religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith's
+Sound, and beyond, too, if anything worth taking hold of turns up
+at the North Pole. And then we shall have the leisure to take in
+hand the outlying islands and continents of the earth. We shall
+run the world's business whether the world likes it or not. The
+world can't help it--and neither can we, I guess."
+
+By this he meant to express his faith in destiny in words
+suitable to his intelligence, which was unskilled in the
+presentation of general ideas. His intelligence was nourished on
+facts; and Charles Gould, whose imagination had been permanently
+affected by the one great fact of a silver mine, had no objection
+to this theory of the world's future. If it had seemed
+distasteful for a moment it was because the sudden statement of
+such vast eventualities dwarfed almost to nothingness the actual
+matter in hand. He and his plans and all the mineral wealth of
+the Occidental Province appeared suddenly robbed of every vestige
+of magnitude. The sensation was disagreeable; but Charles Gould
+was not dull. Already he felt that he was producing a favourable
+impression; the consciousness of that flattering fact helped him
+to a vague smile, which his big interlocutor took for a smile of
+discreet and admiring assent. He smiled quietly, too; and
+immediately Charles Gould, with that mental agility mankind will
+display in defence of a cherished hope, reflected that the very
+apparent insignificance of his aim would help him to success. His
+personality and his mine would be taken up because it was a
+matter of no great consequence, one way or another, to a man who
+referred his action to such a prodigious destiny. And Charles
+Gould was not humiliated by this consideration, because the thing
+remained as big as ever for him. Nobody else's vast conceptions
+of destiny could diminish the aspect of his desire for the
+redemption of the San Tome mine. In comparison to the correctness
+of his aim, definite in space and absolutely attainable within a
+limited time, the other man appeared for an instant as a dreamy
+idealist of no importance.
+
+The great man, massive and benignant, had been looking at him
+thoughtfully; when he broke the short silence it was to remark
+that concessions flew about thick in the air of Costaguana. Any
+simple soul that just yearned to be taken in could bring down a
+concession at the first shot.
+
+"Our consuls get their mouths stopped with them," he continued,
+with a twinkle of genial scorn in his eyes.  But in a moment he
+became grave. "A conscientious, upright man, that cares nothing
+for boodle, and keeps clear of their intrigues, conspiracies, and
+factions, soon gets his passports. See that, Mr. Gould? Persona
+non grata. That's the reason our Government is never properly
+informed. On the other hand, Europe must be kept out of this
+continent, and for proper interference on our part the time is
+not yet ripe, I dare say.  But we here--we are not this country's
+Government, neither are we simple souls. Your affair is all
+right.  The main question for us is whether the second partner,
+and that's you, is the right sort to hold his own against the
+third and unwelcome partner, which is one or another of the high
+and mighty robber gangs that run the Costaguana Government. What
+do you think, Mr. Gould, eh?"
+
+He bent forward to look steadily into the unflinching eyes of
+Charles Gould, who, remembering the large box full of his
+father's letters, put the accumulated scorn and bitterness of
+many years into the tone of his answer--
+
+"As far as the knowledge of these men and their methods and their
+politics is concerned, I can answer for myself. I have been fed
+on that sort of knowledge since I was a boy. I am not likely to
+fall into mistakes from excess of optimism."
+
+"Not likely, eh? That's all right. Tact and a stiff upper lip is
+what you'll want; and you could bluff a little on the strength of
+your backing. Not too much, though. We will go with you as long
+as the thing runs straight. But we won't be drawn into any large
+trouble. This is the experiment which I am willing to make. There
+is some risk, and we will take it; but if you can't keep up your
+end, we will stand our loss, of course, and then--we'll let the
+thing go. This mine can wait; it has been shut up before, as you
+know. You must understand that under no circumstances will we
+consent to throw good money after bad."
+
+Thus the great personage had spoken then, in his own private
+office, in a great city where other men (very considerable in the
+eyes of a vain populace) waited with alacrity upon a wave of his
+hand. And rather more than a year later, during his unexpected
+appearance in Sulaco, he had emphasized his uncompromising
+attitude with a freedom of sincerity permitted to his wealth and
+influence. He did this with the less reserve, perhaps, because
+the inspection of what had been done, and more still the way in
+which successive steps had been taken, had impressed him with the
+conviction that Charles Gould was perfectly capable of keeping up
+his end.
+
+"This young fellow," he thought to himself, "may yet become a
+power in the land."
+
+This thought flattered him, for hitherto the only account of this
+young man he could give to his intimates was--
+
+"My brother-in-law met him in one of these one-horse old German
+towns, near some mines, and sent him on to me with a letter. He's
+one of the Costaguana Goulds, pure-bred Englishmen, but all born
+in the country. His uncle went into politics, was the last
+Provincial President of Sulaco, and got shot after a battle. His
+father was a prominent business man in Sta. Marta, tried to keep
+clear of their politics, and died ruined after a lot of
+revolutions. And that's your Costaguana in a nutshell."
+
+Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as to his
+motives, even by his intimates. The outside world was at liberty
+to wonder respectfully at the hidden meaning of his actions. He
+was so great a man that his lavish patronage of the "purer forms
+of Christianity" (which in its naive form of church-building
+amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by his fellow-citizens as the
+manifestation of a pious and humble spirit. But in his own
+circles of the financial world the taking up of such a thing as
+the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather
+as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man's
+caprice.  In the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of
+iron, glass, and blocks of stone at the corner of two streets,
+cobwebbed aloft by the radiation of telegraph wires) the heads of
+principal departments exchanged humorous glances, which meant
+that they were not let into the secrets of the San Tome business.
+The Costaguana mail (it was never large--one fairly heavy
+envelope) was taken unopened straight into the great man's room,
+and no instructions dealing with it had ever been issued thence.
+The office whispered that he answered personally--and not by
+dictation either, but actually writing in his own hand, with pen
+and ink, and, it was to be supposed, taking a copy in his own
+private press copy-book, inaccessible to profane eyes.  Some
+scornful young men, insignificant pieces of minor machinery in
+that eleven-storey-high workshop of great affairs, expressed
+frankly their private opinion that the great chief had done at
+last something silly, and was ashamed of his folly; others,
+elderly and insignificant, but full of romantic reverence for the
+business that had devoured their best years, used to mutter
+darkly and knowingly that this was a portentous sign; that the
+Holroyd connection meant by-and-by to get hold of the whole
+Republic of Costaguana, lock, stock, and barrel.  But, in fact,
+the hobby theory was the right one. It interested the great man
+to attend personally to the San Tome mine; it interested him so
+much that he allowed this hobby to give a direction to the first
+complete holiday he had taken for quite a startling number of
+years. He was not running a great enterprise there; no mere
+railway board or industrial corporation. He was running a man! A
+success would have pleased him very much on refreshingly novel
+grounds; but, on the other side of the same feeling, it was
+incumbent upon him to cast it off utterly at the first sign of
+failure. A man may be thrown off. The papers had unfortunately
+trumpeted all over the land his journey to Costaguana.  If he was
+pleased at the way Charles Gould was going on, he infused an
+added grimness into his assurances of support. Even at the very
+last interview, half an hour or so before he rolled out of the
+patio, hat in hand, behind Mrs. Gould's white mules, he had said
+in Charles's room--
+
+"You go ahead in your own way, and I shall know how to help you
+as long as you hold your own. But you may rest assured that in a
+given case we shall know how to drop you in time."
+
+To this Charles Gould's only answer had been: "You may begin
+sending out the machinery as soon as you like."
+
+And the great man had liked this imperturbable assurance. The
+secret of it was that to Charles Gould's mind these
+uncompromising terms were agreeable.  Like this the mine
+preserved its identity, with which he had endowed it as a boy;
+and it remained dependent on himself alone. It was a serious
+affair, and he, too, took it grimly.
+
+"Of course," he said to his wife, alluding to this last
+conversation with the departed guest, while they walked slowly up
+and down the corredor, followed by the irritated eye of the
+parrot--"of course, a man of that sort can take up a thing or
+drop it when he likes.  He will suffer from no sense of defeat.
+He may have to give in, or he may have to die to-morrow, but the
+great silver and iron interests will survive, and some day will
+get hold of Costaguana along with the rest of the world."
+
+They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching the sound of
+a word belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere.
+Parrots are very human.
+
+"Viva Costaguana!" he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and,
+instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up
+somnolence behind the glittering wires.
+
+"And do you believe that, Charley?" Mrs. Gould asked. "This seems
+to me most awful materialism, and--"
+
+"My dear, it's nothing to me," interrupted her husband, in a
+reasonable tone. "I make use of what I see.  What's it to me
+whether his talk is the voice of destiny or simply a bit of
+clap-trap eloquence? There's a good deal of eloquence of one sort
+or another produced in both Americas. The air of the New World
+seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have you forgotten
+how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours here--?"
+
+"Oh, but that's different," protested Mrs. Gould, almost shocked.
+The allusion was not to the point.  Don Jose was a dear good man,
+who talked very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of
+the San Tome mine. "How can you compare them, Charles?" she
+exclaimed, reproachfully. "He has suffered--and yet he hopes."
+
+The working competence of men--which she never questioned--was
+very surprising to Mrs. Gould, because upon so many obvious
+issues they showed themselves strangely muddle-headed.
+
+Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which secured for him at
+once his wife's anxious sympathy, assured her that he was not
+comparing. He was an American himself, after all, and perhaps he
+could understand both kinds of eloquence--"if it were worth while
+to try," he added, grimly. But he had breathed the air of England
+longer than any of his people had done for three generations, and
+really he begged to be excused.  His poor father could be
+eloquent, too. And he asked his wife whether she remembered a
+passage in one of his father's last letters where Mr. Gould had
+expressed the conviction that "God looked wrathfully at these
+countries, or else He would let some ray of hope fall through a
+rift in the appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime
+that hung over the Queen of Continents."
+
+Mrs. Gould had not forgotten. "You read it to me, Charley," she
+murmured. "It was a striking pronouncement.  How deeply your
+father must have felt its terrible sadness!"
+
+"He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him," said Charles
+Gould. "But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here
+is law, good faith, order, security. Any one can declaim about
+these things, but I pin my faith to material interests. Only let
+the material interests once get a firm footing, and they are
+bound to impose the conditions on which alone they can continue
+to exist. That's how your money-making is justified here in the
+face of lawlessness and disorder.  It is justified because the
+security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed
+people. A better justice will come afterwards. That's your ray of
+hope." His arm pressed her slight form closer to his side for a
+moment. "And who knows whether in that sense even the San Tome
+mine may not become that little rift in the darkness which poor
+father despaired of ever seeing?"
+
+She glanced up at him with admiration. He was competent; he had
+given a vast shape to the vagueness of her unselfish ambitions.
+
+"Charley," she said, "you are splendidly disobedient."
+
+He left her suddenly in the corredor to go and get his hat, a
+soft, grey sombrero, an article of national costume which
+combined unexpectedly well with his English get-up. He came back,
+a riding-whip under his arm, buttoning up a dogskin glove; his
+face reflected the resolute nature of his thoughts. His wife had
+waited for him at the head of the stairs, and before he gave her
+the parting kiss he finished the conversation--
+
+"What should be perfectly clear to us," he said, "is the fact
+that there is no going back. Where could we begin life afresh? We
+are in now for all that there is in us."
+
+He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little
+remorsefully. Charles Gould was competent because he had no
+illusions. The Gould Concession had to fight for life with such
+weapons as could be found at once in the mire of a corruption
+that was so universal as almost to lose its significance. He was
+prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment he felt as if the
+silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed him further
+than he meant to go; and with the roundabout logic of emotions,
+he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with
+success. There was no going back.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+"MRS. GOULD was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that
+feeling. It made life exciting, and she was too much of a woman
+not to like excitement. But it frightened her, too, a little; and
+when Don Jose Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go
+so far as to say, "Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; even
+if some untoward event were yet to destroy your work--which God
+forbid!--you would have deserved well of your country," Mrs.
+Gould would look up from the tea-table profoundly at her unmoved
+husband stirring the spoon in the cup as though he had not heard
+a word.
+
+Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort.  He could not
+praise enough dear Carlos's tact and courage. His English,
+rock-like quality of character was his best safeguard, Don Jose
+affirmed; and, turning to Mrs. Gould, "As to you, Emilia, my
+soul"--he would address her with the familiarity of his age and
+old friendship--"you are as true a patriot as though you had been
+born in our midst."
+
+This might have been less or more than the truth.  Mrs. Gould,
+accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for
+labour, had seen the land with a deeper glance than a trueborn
+Costaguanera could have done. In her travel-worn riding habit,
+her face powdered white like a plaster cast, with a further
+protection of a small silk mask during the heat of the day, she
+rode on a well-shaped, light-footed pony in the centre of a
+little cavalcade. Two mozos de campo, picturesque in great hats,
+with spurred bare heels, in white embroidered calzoneras, leather
+jackets and striped ponchos, rode ahead with carbines across
+their shoulders, swaying in unison to the pace of the horses.  A
+tropilla of pack mules brought up the rear in charge of a thin
+brown muleteer, sitting his long-eared beast very near the tail,
+legs thrust far forward, the wide brim of his hat set far back,
+making a sort of halo for his head.  An old Costaguana officer, a
+retired senior major of humble origin, but patronized by the
+first families on account of his Blanco opinions, had been
+recommended by Don Jose for commissary and organizer of that
+expedition. The points of his grey moustache hung far below his
+chin, and, riding on Mrs. Gould's left hand, he looked about with
+kindly eyes, pointing out the features of the country, telling
+the names of the little pueblos and of the estates, of the
+smooth-walled haciendas like long fortresses crowning the knolls
+above the level of the Sulaco Valley. It unrolled itself, with
+green young crops, plains, woodland, and gleams of water,
+park-like, from the blue vapour of the distant sierra to an
+immense quivering horizon of grass and sky, where big white
+clouds seemed to fall slowly into the darkness of their own
+shadows.
+
+Men ploughed with wooden ploughs and yoked oxen, small on a
+boundless expanse, as if attacking immensity itself. The mounted
+figures of vaqueros galloped in the distance, and the great herds
+fed with all their horned heads one way, in one single wavering
+line as far as eye could reach across the broad potreros. A
+spreading cotton-wool tree shaded a thatched ranche by the road;
+the trudging files of burdened Indians taking off their hats,
+would lift sad, mute eyes to the cavalcade raising the dust of
+the crumbling camino real made by the hands of their enslaved
+forefathers. And Mrs.  Gould, with each day's journey, seemed to
+come nearer to the soul of the land in the tremendous disclosure
+of this interior unaffected by the slight European veneer of the
+coast towns, a great land of plain and mountain and people,
+suffering and mute, waiting for the future in a pathetic
+immobility of patience.
+
+She knew its sights and its hospitality, dispensed with a sort of
+slumbrous dignity in those great houses presenting long, blind
+walls and heavy portals to the wind-swept pastures. She was given
+the head of the tables, where masters and dependants sat in a
+simple and patriarchal state. The ladies of the house would talk
+softly in the moonlight under the orange trees of the courtyards,
+impressing upon her the sweetness of their voices and the
+something mysterious in the quietude of their lives. In the
+morning the gentlemen, well mounted in braided sombreros and
+embroidered riding suits, with much silver on the trappings of
+their horses, would ride forth to escort the departing guests
+before committing them, with grave good-byes, to the care of God
+at the boundary pillars of their estates. In all these households
+she could hear stories of political outrage; friends, relatives,
+ruined, imprisoned, killed in the battles of senseless civil
+wars, barbarously executed in ferocious proscriptions, as though
+the government of the country had been a struggle of lust between
+bands of absurd devils let loose upon the land with sabres and
+uniforms and grandiloquent phrases. And on all the lips she found
+a weary desire for peace, the dread of officialdom with its
+nightmarish parody of administration without law, without
+security, and without justice.
+
+She bore a whole two months of wandering very well; she had that
+power of resistance to fatigue which one discovers here and there
+in some quite frail-looking women with surprise--like a state of
+possession by a remarkably stubborn spirit. Don Pepe--the old
+Costaguana major--after much display of solicitude for the
+delicate lady, had ended by conferring upon her the name of the
+"Never-tired Senora." Mrs. Gould was indeed becoming a
+Costaguanera. Having acquired in Southern Europe a knowledge of
+true peasantry, she was able to appreciate the great worth of the
+people. She saw the man under the silent, sad-eyed beast of
+burden.  She saw them on the road carrying loads, lonely figures
+upon the plain, toiling under great straw hats, with their white
+clothing flapping about their limbs in the wind; she remembered
+the villages by some group of Indian women at the fountain
+impressed upon her memory, by the face of some young Indian girl
+with a melancholy and sensual profile, raising an earthenware
+vessel of cool water at the door of a dark hut with a wooden
+porch cumbered with great brown jars. The solid wooden wheels of
+an ox-cart, halted with its shafts in the dust, showed the
+strokes of the axe; and a party of charcoal carriers, with each
+man's load resting above his head on the top of the low mud wall,
+slept stretched in a row within the strip of shade.
+
+The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left by the
+conquerors proclaimed the disregard of human labour, the
+tribute-labour of vanished nations. The power of king and church
+was gone, but at the sight of some heavy ruinous pile overtopping
+from a knoll the low mud walls of a village, Don Pepe would
+interrupt the tale of his campaigns to exclaim--
+
+"Poor Costaguana! Before, it was everything for the Padres,
+nothing for the people; and now it is everything for those great
+politicos in Sta. Marta, for negroes and thieves."
+
+Charles talked with the alcaldes, with the fiscales, with the
+principal people in towns, and with the caballeros on the
+estates. The commandantes of the districts offered him
+escorts--for he could show an authorization from the Sulaco
+political chief of the day.  How much the document had cost him
+in gold twenty-dollar pieces was a secret between himself, a
+great man in the United States (who condescended to answer the
+Sulaco mail with his own hand), and a great man of another sort,
+with a dark olive complexion and shifty eyes, inhabiting then the
+Palace of the Intendencia in Sulaco, and who piqued himself on
+his culture and Europeanism generally in a rather French style
+because he had lived in Europe for some years--in exile, he said.
+However, it was pretty well known that just before this exile he
+had incautiously gambled away all the cash in the Custom House of
+a small port where a friend in power had procured for him the
+post of subcollector.  That youthful indiscretion had, amongst
+other inconveniences, obliged him to earn his living for a time
+as a cafe waiter in Madrid; but his talents must have been great,
+after all, since they had enabled him to retrieve his political
+fortunes so splendidly.  Charles Gould, exposing his business
+with an imperturbable steadiness, called him Excellency.
+
+The provincial Excellency assumed a weary superiority, tilting
+his chair far back near an open window in the true Costaguana
+manner. The military band happened to be braying operatic
+selections on the plaza just then, and twice he raised his hand
+imperatively for silence in order to listen to a favourite
+passage.
+
+"Exquisite, delicious!" he murmured; while Charles Gould waited,
+standing by with inscrutable patience.  "Lucia, Lucia di
+Lammermoor! I am passionate for music. It transports me. Ha! the
+divine--ha!--Mozart. Si! divine . . . What is it you were
+saying?"
+
+Of course, rumours had reached him already of the newcomer's
+intentions. Besides, he had received an official warning from
+Sta. Marta. His manner was intended simply to conceal his
+curiosity and impress his visitor. But after he had locked up
+something valuable in the drawer of a large writing-desk in a
+distant part of the room, he became very affable, and walked back
+to his chair smartly.
+
+"If you intend to build villages and assemble a population near
+the mine, you shall require a decree of the Minister of the
+Interior for that," he suggested in a business-like manner.
+
+"I have already sent a memorial," said Charles Gould, steadily,
+"and I reckon now confidently upon your Excellency's favourable
+conclusions."
+
+The Excellency was a man of many moods. With the receipt of the
+money a great mellowness had descended upon his simple soul.
+Unexpectedly he fetched a deep sigh.
+
+"Ah, Don Carlos! What we want is advanced men like you in the
+province. The lethargy--the lethargy of these aristocrats! The
+want of public spirit! The absence of all enterprise! I, with my
+profound studies in Europe, you understand--"
+
+With one hand thrust into his swelling bosom, he rose and fell on
+his toes, and for ten minutes, almost without drawing breath,
+went on hurling himself intellectually to the assault of Charles
+Gould's polite silence; and when, stopping abruptly, he fell back
+into his chair, it was as though he had been beaten off from a
+fortress. To save his dignity he hastened to dismiss this silent
+man with a solemn inclination of the head and the words,
+pronounced with moody, fatigued condescension--
+
+"You may depend upon my enlightened goodwill as long as your
+conduct as a good citizen deserves it."
+
+He took up a paper fan and began to cool himself with a
+consequential air, while Charles Gould bowed and withdrew. Then
+he dropped the fan at once, and stared with an appearance of
+wonder and perplexity at the closed door for quite a long time.
+At last he shrugged his shoulders as if to assure himself of his
+disdain.  Cold, dull. No intellectuality. Red hair. A true
+Englishman. He despised him.
+
+His face darkened. What meant this unimpressed and frigid
+behaviour? He was the first of the successive politicians sent
+out from the capital to rule the Occidental Province whom the
+manner of Charles Gould in official intercourse was to strike as
+offensively independent.
+
+Charles Gould assumed that if the appearance of listening to
+deplorable balderdash must form part of the price he had to pay
+for being left unmolested, the obligation of uttering balderdash
+personally was by no means included in the bargain. He drew the
+line there. To these provincial autocrats, before whom the
+peaceable population of all classes had been accustomed to
+tremble, the reserve of that English-looking engineer caused an
+uneasiness which swung to and fro between cringing and
+truculence. Gradually all of them discovered that, no matter what
+party was in power, that man remained in most effective touch
+with the higher authorities in Sta. Marta.
+
+This was a fact, and it accounted perfectly for the Goulds being
+by no means so wealthy as the engineer-in-chief on the new
+railway could legitimately suppose.  Following the advice of Don
+Jose Avellanos, who was a man of good counsel (though rendered
+timid by his horrible experiences of Guzman Bento's time),
+Charles Gould had kept clear of the capital; but in the current
+gossip of the foreign residents there he was known (with a good
+deal of seriousness underlying the irony) by the nickname of
+"King of Sulaco." An advocate of the Costaguana Bar, a man of
+reputed ability and good character, member of the distinguished
+Moraga family possessing extensive estates in the Sulaco Valley,
+was pointed out to strangers, with a shade of mystery and
+respect, as the agent of the San Tome mine--"political, you
+know." He was tall, black-whiskered, and discreet.  It was known
+that he had easy access to ministers, and that the numerous
+Costaguana generals were always anxious to dine at his house.
+Presidents granted him audience with facility. He corresponded
+actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose Avellanos; but his
+letters--unless those expressing formally his dutiful
+affection--were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post Office.
+There the envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the
+frankness of a brazen and childish impudence characteristic of
+some Spanish-American Governments. But it must be noted that at
+about the time of the re-opening of the San Tome mine the
+muleteer who had been employed by Charles Gould in his
+preliminary travels on the Campo added his small train of animals
+to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain passes
+between the Sta. Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco. There are
+no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very
+exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not
+visibly require additional transport facilities; but the man
+seemed to find his account in it.  A few packages were always
+found for him whenever he took the road. Very brown and wooden,
+in goatskin breeches with the hair outside, he sat near the tail
+of his own smart mule, his great hat turned against the sun, an
+expression of blissful vacancy on his long face, humming day
+after day a love-song in a plaintive key, or, without a change of
+expression, letting out a yell at his small tropilla in front. A
+round little guitar hung high up on his back; and there was a
+place scooped out artistically in the wood of one of his
+pack-saddles where a tightly rolled piece of paper could be
+slipped in, the wooden plug replaced, and the coarse canvas
+nailed on again. When in Sulaco it was his practice to smoke and
+doze all day long (as though he had no care in the world) on a
+stone bench outside the doorway of the Casa Gould and facing the
+windows of the Avellanos house.  Years and years ago his mother
+had been chief laundry-woman in that family--very accomplished in
+the matter of clear-starching. He himself had been born on one of
+their haciendas. His name was Bonifacio, and Don Jose, crossing
+the street about five o'clock to call on Dona Emilia, always
+acknowledged his humble salute by some movement of hand or head.
+The porters of both houses conversed lazily with him in tones of
+grave intimacy. His evenings he devoted to gambling and to calls
+in a spirit of generous festivity upon the peyne d'oro girls in
+the more remote side-streets of the town.  But he, too, was a
+discreet man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+THOSE of us whom business or curiosity took to Sulaco in these
+years before the first advent of the railway can remember the
+steadying effect of the San Tome mine upon the life of that
+remote province. The outward appearances had not changed then as
+they have changed since, as I am told, with cable cars running
+along the streets of the Constitution, and carriage roads far
+into the country, to Rincon and other villages, where the foreign
+merchants and the Ricos generally have their modern villas, and a
+vast railway goods yard by the harbour, which has a quay-side, a
+long range of warehouses, and quite serious, organized labour
+troubles of its own.
+
+Nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of
+the port formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of
+scum, with a patron saint of their own. They went on strike
+regularly (every bull-fight day), a form of trouble that even
+Nostromo at the height of his prestige could never cope with
+efficiently; but the morning after each fiesta, before the Indian
+market-women had opened their mat parasols on the plaza, when the
+snows of Higuerota gleamed pale over the town on a yet black sky,
+the appearance of a phantom-like horseman mounted on a
+silver-grey mare solved the problem of labour without fail. His
+steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown enclosures
+within the old ramparts, between the black, lightless cluster of
+huts, like cow-byres, like dog-kennels.  The horseman hammered
+with the butt of a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias,
+of obscene lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down piece of
+a noble wall, at the wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the
+sound of snores and sleepy mutters within could be heard in the
+pauses of the thundering clatter of his blows. He called out
+men's names menacingly from the saddle, once, twice. The drowsy
+answers--grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, or
+deprecating--came out into the silent darkness in which the
+horseman sat still, and presently a dark figure would flit out
+coughing in the still air. Sometimes a low-toned woman cried
+through the window-hole softly, "He's coming directly, senor,"
+and the horseman waited silent on a motionless horse. But if
+perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door
+of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and
+stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first and
+hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey
+mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was
+used to that work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk
+away hastily from Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along the
+street and snarling low curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell,
+coming out anxiously in his night attire on to the wooden balcony
+running the whole length of the O.S.N.  Company's lonely building
+by the shore, would see the lighters already under way, figures
+moving busily about the cargo cranes, perhaps hear the invaluable
+Nostromo, now dismounted and in the checked shirt and red sash of
+a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders from the end of the jetty
+in a stentorian voice. A fellow in a thousand!
+
+The material apparatus of perfected civilization which
+obliterates the individuality of old towns under the stereotyped
+conveniences of modern life had not intruded as yet; but over the
+worn-out antiquity of Sulaco, so characteristic with its stuccoed
+houses and barred windows, with the great yellowy-white walls of
+abandoned convents behind the rows of sombre green cypresses,
+that fact--very modern in its spirit--the San Tome mine had
+already thrown its subtle influence.  It had altered, too, the
+outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before
+the open portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos
+with a green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome
+miners. They had also adopted white hats with green cord and
+braid--articles of good quality, which could be obtained in the
+storehouse of the administration for very little money. A
+peaceable Cholo wearing these colours (unusual in Costaguana) was
+somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his life on a
+charge of disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much risk
+of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting party of
+lanceros--a method of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost
+legal in the Republic. Whole villages were known to have
+volunteered for the army in that way; but, as Don Pepe would say
+with a hopeless shrug to Mrs. Gould, "What would you! Poor
+people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But the State must have its
+soldiers."
+
+Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with pendent
+moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a clean run of a
+cast-iron jaw, suggesting the type of a cattle-herd horseman from
+the great Llanos of the South. "If you will listen to an old
+officer of Paez, senores," was the exordium of all his speeches
+in the Aristocratic Club of Sulaco, where he was admitted on
+account of his past services to the extinct cause of Federation.
+The club, dating from the days of the proclamation of
+Costaguana's independence, boasted many names of liberators
+amongst its first founders.  Suppressed arbitrarily innumerable
+times by various Governments, with memories of proscriptions and
+of at least one wholesale massacre of its members, sadly
+assembled for a banquet by the order of a zealous military
+commandante (their bodies were afterwards stripped naked and
+flung into the plaza out of the windows by the lowest scum of the
+populace), it was again flourishing, at that period, peacefully.
+It extended to strangers the large hospitality of the cool, big
+rooms of its historic quarters in the front part of a house, once
+the residence of a high official of the Holy Office. The two
+wings, shut up, crumbled behind the nailed doors, and what may be
+described as a grove of young orange trees grown in the unpaved
+patio concealed the utter ruin of the back part facing the gate.
+You turned in from the street, as if entering a secluded orchard,
+where you came upon the foot of a disjointed staircase, guarded
+by a moss-stained effigy of some saintly bishop, mitred and
+staffed, and bearing the indignity of a broken nose meekly, with
+his fine stone hands crossed on his breast.  The
+chocolate-coloured faces of servants with mops of black hair
+peeped at you from above; the click of billiard balls came to
+your ears, and ascending the steps, you would perhaps see in the
+first sala, very stiff upon a straight-backed chair, in a good
+light, Don Pepe moving his long moustaches as he spelt his way,
+at arm's length, through an old Sta. Marta newspaper. His
+horse--a stony-hearted but persevering black brute with a hammer
+head--you would have seen in the street dozing motionless under
+an immense saddle, with its nose almost touching the curbstone of
+the sidewalk.
+
+Don Pepe, when "down from the mountain," as the phrase, often
+heard in Sulaco, went, could also be seen in the drawing-room of
+the Casa Gould. He sat with modest assurance at some distance
+from the tea-table.  With his knees close together, and a kindly
+twinkle of drollery in his deep-set eyes, he would throw his
+small and ironic pleasantries into the current of conversation.
+There was in that man a sort of sane, humorous shrewdness, and a
+vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple old soldiers of
+proved courage who have seen much desperate service. Of course he
+knew nothing whatever of mining, but his employment was of a
+special kind. He was in charge of the whole population in the
+territory of the mine, which extended from the head of the gorge
+to where the cart track from the foot of the mountain enters the
+plain, crossing a stream over a little wooden bridge painted
+green--green, the colour of hope, being also the colour of the
+mine.
+
+It was reported in Sulaco that up there "at the mountain" Don
+Pepe walked about precipitous paths, girt with a great sword and
+in a shabby uniform with tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior
+major. Most miners being Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed
+him as Taita (father), as these barefooted people of Costaguana
+will address anybody who wears shoes; but it was Basilio, Mr.
+Gould's own mozo and the head servant of the Casa, who, in all
+good faith and from a sense of propriety, announced him once in
+the solemn words, "El Senor Gobernador has arrived."
+
+Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was delighted
+beyond measure at the aptness of the title, with which he greeted
+the old major banteringly as soon as the latter's soldierly
+figure appeared in the doorway.  Don Pepe only smiled in his long
+moustaches, as much as to say, "You might have found a worse name
+for an old soldier."
+
+And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his small jokes
+upon his function and upon his domain, where he affirmed with
+humorous exaggeration to Mrs.  Gould--
+
+"No two stones could come together anywhere without the
+Gobernador hearing the click, senora."
+
+And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger
+knowingly. Even when the number of the miners alone rose to over
+six hundred he seemed to know each of them individually, all the
+innumerable Joses, Manuels, Ignacios, from the villages
+primero--segundo--or tercero (there were three mining villages)
+under his government. He could distinguish them not only by their
+flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked all alike, as if
+run into the same ancestral mould of suffering and patience, but
+apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of
+reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the
+two shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps,
+mingled together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered
+picks, swinging lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet on
+the open plateau before the entrance of the main tunnel. It was a
+time of pause. The Indian boys leaned idly against the long line
+of little cradle wagons standing empty; the screeners and
+ore-breakers squatted on their heels smoking long cigars; the
+great wooden shoots slanting over the edge of the tunnel plateau
+were silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of water in the
+open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, with the splash
+and rumble of revolving turbine-wheels, and the thudding march of
+the stamps pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau
+below.  The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals hanging
+on their bare breasts, marshalled their squads; and at last the
+mountain would swallow one-half of the silent crowd, while the
+other half would move off in long files down the zigzag paths
+leading to the bottom of the gorge. It was deep; and, far below,
+a thread of vegetation winding between the blazing rock faces
+resembled a slender green cord, in which three lumpy knots of
+banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees marked the
+Village One, Village Two, Village Three, housing the miners of
+the Gould Concession.
+
+Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in
+the Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had
+spread over the pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the
+waters of a high flood, into the nooks and crannies of the
+distant blue walls of the Sierras. Father first, in a pointed
+straw hat, then the mother with the bigger children, generally
+also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens, except the leader
+himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the family,
+stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of
+raven hair, a thick, haughty profile, and no load to carry but
+the small guitar of the country and a pair of soft leather
+sandals tied together on her back. At the sight of such parties
+strung out on the cross trails between the pastures, or camped by
+the side of the royal road, travellers on horseback would remark
+to each other--
+
+"More people going to the San Tome mine. We shall see others
+to-morrow."
+
+And spurring on in the dusk they would discuss the great news of
+the province, the news of the San Tome mine. A rich Englishman
+was going to work it--and perhaps not an Englishman, Quien sabe!
+A foreigner with much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of
+men who had been to Sulaco with a herd of black bulls for the
+next corrida had reported that from the porch of the posada in
+Rincon, only a short league from the town, the lights on the
+mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees. And there was a
+woman seen riding a horse sideways, not in the chair seat, but
+upon a sort of saddle, and a man's hat on her head. She walked
+about, too, on foot up the mountain paths. A woman engineer, it
+seemed she was.
+
+"What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!"
+
+"Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte."
+
+"Ah, well! if your worship is informed. Una Americana; it need be
+something of that sort."
+
+And they would laugh a little with astonishment and scorn,
+keeping a wary eye on the shadows of the road, for one is liable
+to meet bad men when travelling late on the Campo.
+
+And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well, but he
+seemed able, with one attentive, thoughtful glance, to classify
+each woman, girl, or growing youth of his domain. It was only the
+small fry that puzzled him sometimes. He and the padre could be
+seen frequently side by side, meditative and gazing across the
+street of a village at a lot of sedate brown children, trying to
+sort them out, as it were, in low, consulting tones, or else they
+would together put searching questions as to the parentage of
+some small, staid urchin met wandering, naked and grave, along
+the road with a cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his mother's
+rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hanging in a
+loop of beads low down on his rotund little stomach. The
+spiritual and temporal pastors of the mine flock were very good
+friends. With Dr. Monygham, the medical pastor, who had accepted
+the charge from Mrs. Gould, and lived in the hospital building,
+they were on not so intimate terms. But no one could be on
+intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who, with his twisted
+shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long bitter
+glance, was mysterious and uncanny.  The other two authorities
+worked in harmony.  Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert,
+wrinkled, with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great
+snuff-taker, was an old campaigner, too; he had shriven many
+simple souls on the battlefields of the Republic, kneeling by the
+dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of the
+forests, to hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowder
+smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter
+of bullets in his ears. And where was the harm if, at the
+presbytery, they had a game with a pack of greasy cards in the
+early evening, before Don Pepe went his last rounds to see that
+all the watchmen of the mine--a body organized by himself--were
+at their posts? For that last duty before he slept Don Pepe did
+actually gird his old sword on the verandah of an unmistakable
+American white frame house, which Father Roman called the
+presbytery. Near by, a long, low, dark building, steeple-roofed,
+like a vast barn with a wooden cross over the gable, was the
+miners' chapel. There Father Roman said Mass every day before a
+sombre altar-piece representing the Resurrection, the grey slab
+of the tombstone balanced on one corner, a figure soaring
+upwards, long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light, and a
+helmeted brown legionary smitten down, right across the
+bituminous foreground. "This picture, my children, muy linda e
+maravillosa," Father Roman would say to some of his flock, "which
+you behold here through the munificence of the wife of our Senor
+Administrador, has been painted in Europe, a country of saints
+and miracles, and much greater than our Costaguana." And he would
+take a pinch of snuff with unction. But when once an inquisitive
+spirit desired to know in what direction this Europe was
+situated, whether up or down the coast, Father Roman, to conceal
+his perplexity, became very reserved and severe. "No doubt it is
+extremely far away. But ignorant sinners like you of the San Tome
+mine should think earnestly of everlasting punishment instead of
+inquiring into the magnitude of the earth, with its countries and
+populations altogether beyond your understanding."
+
+With a "Good-night, Padre," "Good-night, Don Pepe," the
+Gobernador would go off, holding up his sabre against his side,
+his body bent forward, with a long, plodding stride in the dark.
+The jocularity proper to an innocent card game for a few cigars
+or a bundle of yerba was replaced at once by the stern duty mood
+of an officer setting out to visit the outposts of an encamped
+army. One loud blast of the whistle that hung from his neck
+provoked instantly a great shrilling of responding whistles,
+mingled with the barking of dogs, that would calm down slowly at
+last, away up at the head of the gorge; and in the stillness two
+serenos, on guard by the bridge, would appear walking noiselessly
+towards him. On one side of the road a long frame building--the
+store--would be closed and barricaded from end to end; facing it
+another white frame house, still longer, and with a verandah--the
+hospital--would have lights in the two windows of Dr. Monygham's
+quarters. Even the delicate foliage of a clump of pepper trees
+did not stir, so breathless would be the darkness warmed by the
+radiation of the over-heated rocks. Don Pepe would stand still
+for a moment with the two motionless serenos before him, and,
+abruptly, high up on the sheer face of the mountain, dotted with
+single torches, like drops of fire fallen from the two great
+blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots would begin to
+rattle. The great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering speed
+and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge, and
+sent upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasadero in Rincon
+swore that on calm nights, by listening intently, he could catch
+the sound in his doorway as of a storm in the mountains.
+
+To Charles Gould's fancy it seemed that the sound must reach the
+uttermost limits of the province. Riding at night towards the
+mine, it would meet him at the edge of a little wood just beyond
+Rincon. There was no mistaking the growling mutter of the
+mountain pouring its stream of treasure under the stamps; and it
+came to his heart with the peculiar force of a proclamation
+thundered forth over the land and the marvellousness of an
+accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious desire. He had heard
+this very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening when
+his wife and himself, after a tortuous ride through a strip of
+forest, had reined in their horses near the stream, and had gazed
+for the first time upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge.
+The head of a palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round
+the corner of the San Tome mountain (which is square like a
+blockhouse) the thread of a slender waterfall flashed bright and
+glassy through the dark green of the heavy fronds of tree-ferns.
+Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and, stretching his arm up the
+gorge, had declared with mock solemnity, "Behold the very
+paradise of snakes, senora."
+
+And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back to sleep
+that night at Rincon. The alcalde--an old, skinny Moreno, a
+sergeant of Guzman Bento's time--had cleared respectfully out of
+his house with his three pretty daughters, to make room for the
+foreign senora and their worships the Caballeros. All he asked
+Charles Gould (whom he took for a mysterious and official person)
+to do for him was to remind the supreme Government--El Gobierno
+supreme--of a pension (amounting to about a dollar a month) to
+which he believed himself entitled. It had been promised to him,
+he affirmed, straightening his bent back martially, "many years
+ago, for my valour in the wars with the wild Indios when a young
+man, senor."
+
+The waterfall existed no longer. The tree-ferns that had
+luxuriated in its spray had died around the dried-up pool, and
+the high ravine was only a big trench half filled up with the
+refuse of excavations and tailings.  The torrent, dammed up
+above, sent its water rushing along the open flumes of scooped
+tree trunks striding on trestle-legs to the turbines working the
+stamps on the lower plateau--the mesa grande of the San Tome
+mountain. Only the memory of the waterfall, with its amazing
+fernery, like a hanging garden above the rocks of the gorge, was
+preserved in Mrs. Gould's water-colour sketch; she had made it
+hastily one day from a cleared patch in the bushes, sitting in
+the shade of a roof of straw erected for her on three rough poles
+under Don Pepe's direction.
+
+Mrs. Gould had seen it all from the beginning: the clearing of
+the wilderness, the making of the road, the cutting of new paths
+up the cliff face of San Tome. For weeks together she had lived
+on the spot with her husband; and she was so little in Sulaco
+during that year that the appearance of the Gould carriage on the
+Alameda would cause a social excitement. From the heavy family
+coaches full of stately senoras and black-eyed senoritas rolling
+solemnly in the shaded alley white hands were waved towards her
+with animation in a flutter of greetings. Dona Emilia was "down
+from the mountain."
+
+But not for long. Dona Emilia would be gone "up to the mountain"
+in a day or two, and her sleek carriage mules would have an easy
+time of it for another long spell. She had watched the erection
+of the first frame-house put up on the lower mesa for an office
+and Don Pepe's quarters; she heard with a thrill of thankful
+emotion the first wagon load of ore rattle down the then only
+shoot; she had stood by her husband's side perfectly silent, and
+gone cold all over with excitement at the instant when the first
+battery of only fifteen stamps was put in motion for the first
+time. On the occasion when the fires under the first set of
+retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did not
+retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet
+bare frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lump of
+silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the dark depths of
+the Gould Concession; she had laid her unmercenary hands, with an
+eagerness that made them tremble, upon the first silver ingot
+turned out still warm from the mould; and by her imaginative
+estimate of its power she endowed that lump of metal with a
+justificative conception, as though it were not a mere fact, but
+something far-reaching and impalpable, like the true expression
+of an emotion or the emergence of a principle.
+
+Don Pepe, extremely interested, too, looked over her shoulder
+with a smile that, making longitudinal folds on his face, caused
+it to resemble a leathern mask with a benignantly diabolic
+expression.
+
+"Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get hold of this
+insignificant object, that looks, por Dios, very much like a
+piece of tin?" he remarked, jocularly.
+
+Hernandez, the robber, had been an inoffensive, small ranchero,
+kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home
+during one of the civil wars, and forced to serve in the army.
+There his conduct as soldier was exemplary, till, watching his
+chance, he killed his colonel, and managed to get clear away.
+With a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had
+taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The
+haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses; extraordinary
+stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from
+capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the villages and
+the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before him,
+with two revolvers in his belt, go straight to the shop or store,
+select what he wanted, and ride away unopposed because of the
+terror his exploits and his audacity inspired.  Poor country
+people he usually left alone; the upper class were often stopped
+on the roads and robbed; but any unlucky official that fell into
+his hands was sure to get a severe flogging. The army officers
+did not like his name to be mentioned in their presence. His
+followers, mounted on stolen horses, laughed at the pursuit of
+the regular cavalry sent to hunt them down, and whom they took
+pleasure to ambush most scientifically in the broken ground of
+their own fastness. Expeditions had been fitted out; a price had
+been put upon his head; even attempts had been made,
+treacherously of course, to open negotiations with him, without
+in the slightest way affecting the even tenor of his career. At
+last, in true Costaguana fashion, the Fiscal of Tonoro, who was
+ambitious of the glory of having reduced the famous Hernandez,
+offered him a sum of money and a safe conduct out of the country
+for the betrayal of his band. But Hernandez evidently was not of
+the stuff of which the distinguished military politicians and
+conspirators of Costaguana are made. This clever but common
+device (which frequently works like a charm in putting down
+revolutions) failed with the chief of vulgar Salteadores. It
+promised well for the Fiscal at first, but ended very badly for
+the squadron of lanceros posted (by the Fiscal's directions) in a
+fold of the ground into which Hernandez had promised to lead his
+unsuspecting followers  They came, indeed, at the appointed time,
+but creeping on their hands and knees through the bush, and only
+let their presence be known by a general discharge of firearms,
+which emptied many saddles. The troopers who escaped came riding
+very hard into Tonoro. It is said that their commanding officer
+(who, being better mounted, rode far ahead of the rest)
+afterwards got into a state of despairing intoxication and beat
+the ambitious Fiscal severely with the flat of his sabre in the
+presence of his wife and daughters, for bringing this disgrace
+upon the National Army. The highest civil official of Tonoro,
+falling to the ground in a swoon, was further kicked all over the
+body and rowelled with sharp spurs about the neck and face
+because of the great sensitiveness of his military colleague.
+This gossip of the inland Campo, so characteristic of the rulers
+of the country with its story of oppression, inefficiency,
+fatuous methods, treachery, and savage brutality, was perfectly
+known to Mrs. Gould. That it should be accepted with no indignant
+comment by people of intelligence, refinement, and character as
+something inherent in the nature of things was one of the
+symptoms of degradation that had the power to exasperate her
+almost to the verge of despair. Still looking at the ingot of
+silver, she shook her head at Don Pepe's remark--
+
+"If it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your Government,
+Don Pepe, many an outlaw now with Hernandez would be living
+peaceably and happy by the honest work of his hands."
+
+"Senora," cried Don Pepe, with enthusiasm, "it is true! It is as
+if God had given you the power to look into the very breasts of
+people. You have seen them working round you, Dona Emilia--meek
+as lambs, patient like their own burros, brave like lions. I have
+led them to the very muzzles of guns--I, who stand here before
+you, senora--in the time of Paez, who was full of generosity, and
+in courage only approached by the uncle of Don Carlos here, as
+far as I know. No wonder there are bandits in the Campo when
+there are none but thieves, swindlers, and sanguinary macaques to
+rule us in Sta. Marta. However, all the same, a bandit is a
+bandit, and we shall have a dozen good straight Winchesters to
+ride with the silver down to Sulaco."
+
+Mrs. Gould's ride with the first silver escort to Sulaco was the
+closing episode of what she called "my camp life" before she had
+settled in her town-house permanently, as was proper and even
+necessary for the wife of the administrator of such an important
+institution as the San Tome mine. For the San Tome mine was to
+become an institution, a rallying point for everything in the
+province that needed order and stability to live.  Security
+seemed to flow upon this land from the mountain-gorge. The
+authorities of Sulaco had learned that the San Tome mine could
+make it worth their while to leave things and people alone. This
+was the nearest approach to the rule of common-sense and justice
+Charles Gould felt it possible to secure at first. In fact, the
+mine, with its organization, its population growing fiercely
+attached to their position of privileged safety, with its
+armoury, with its Don Pepe, with its armed body of serenos
+(where, it was said, many an outlaw and deserter--and even some
+members of Hernandez's band--had found a place), the mine was a
+power in the land. As a certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had
+exclaimed with a hollow laugh, once, when discussing the line of
+action taken by the Sulaco authorities at a time of political
+crisis--
+
+"You call these men Government officials? They?  Never! They are
+officials of the mine--officials of the Concession--I tell you."
+
+The prominent man (who was then a person in power, with a
+lemon-coloured face and a very short and curly, not to say
+woolly, head of hair) went so far in his temporary discontent as
+to shake his yellow fist under the nose of his interlocutor, and
+shriek--
+
+"Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Gefe, the
+chief of the police, the chief of the customs, the general, all,
+all, are the officials of that Gould."
+
+Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow
+on for a space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent
+man's passion would end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders.
+After all, he seemed to say, what did it matter as long as the
+minister himself was not forgotten during his brief day of
+authority?  But all the same, the unofficial agent of the San
+Tome mine, working for a good cause, had his moments of anxiety,
+which were reflected in his letters to Don Jose Avellanos, his
+maternal uncle.
+
+"No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set foot on that
+part of Costaguana which lies beyond the San Tome bridge," Don
+Pepe used to assure Mrs.  Gould. "Except, of course, as an
+honoured guest--for our Senor Administrador is a deep politico."
+But to Charles Gould, in his own room, the old Major would remark
+with a grim and soldierly cheeriness, "We are all playing our
+heads at this game."
+
+Don Jose Avellanos would mutter "Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my
+soul," with an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow,
+in a curious way, seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily
+discomfort.  But that, perhaps, could only be visible to the
+initiated.  And for the initiated it was a wonderful place, this
+drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its momentary glimpses of
+the master--El Senor Administrador--older, harder, mysteriously
+silent, with the lines deepened on his English, ruddy,
+out-of-doors complexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman's legs
+across the doorways, either just "back from the mountain" or with
+jingling spurs and riding-whip under his arm, on the point of
+starting "for the mountain."   Then Don Pepe, modestly martial in
+his chair, the llanero who seemed somehow to have found his
+martial jocularity, his knowledge of the world, and his manner
+perfect for his station, in the midst of savage armed contests
+with his kind; Avellanos, polished and familiar, the diplomatist
+with his loquacity covering much caution and wisdom in delicate
+advice, with his manuscript of a historical work on Costaguana,
+entitled "Fifty Years of Misrule," which, at present, he thought
+it was not prudent (even if it were possible) "to give to the
+world"; these three, and also Dona Emilia amongst them, gracious,
+small, and fairy-like, before the glittering tea-set, with one
+common master-thought in their heads, with one common feeling of
+a tense situation, with one ever-present aim to preserve the
+inviolable character of the mine at every cost.  And there was
+also to be seen Captain Mitchell, a little apart, near one of the
+long windows, with an air of old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood
+about him, slightly pompous, in a white waistcoat, a little
+disregarded and unconscious of it; utterly in the dark, and
+imagining himself to be in the thick of things. The good man,
+having spent a clear thirty years of his life on the high seas
+before getting what he called a "shore billet," was astonished at
+the importance of transactions (other than relating to shipping)
+which take place on dry land. Almost every event out of the usual
+daily course "marked an epoch" for him or else was "history";
+unless with his pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of
+his rubicund, rather handsome face, set off by snow-white close
+hair and short whiskers, he would mutter--
+
+"Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake."
+
+The reception of the first consignment of San Tome silver for
+shipment to San Francisco in one of the O.S.N.  Co.'s mail-boats
+had, of course, "marked an epoch" for Captain Mitchell. The
+ingots packed in boxes of stiff ox-hide with plaited handles,
+small enough to be carried easily by two men, were brought down
+by the serenos of the mine walking in careful couples along the
+half-mile or so of steep, zigzag paths to the foot of the
+mountain. There they would be loaded into a string of two-wheeled
+carts, resembling roomy coffers with a door at the back, and
+harnessed tandem with two mules each, waiting under the guard of
+armed and mounted serenos. Don Pepe padlocked each door in
+succession, and at the signal of his whistle the string of carts
+would move off, closely surrounded by the clank of spur and
+carbine, with jolts and cracking of whips, with a sudden deep
+rumble over the boundary bridge ("into the land of thieves and
+sanguinary macaques," Don Pepe defined that crossing); hats
+bobbing in the first light of the dawn, on the heads of cloaked
+figures; Winchesters on hip; bridle hands protruding lean and
+brown from under the falling folds of the ponchos. The convoy
+skirting a little wood, along the mine trail, between the mud
+huts and low walls of Rincon, increased its pace on the camino
+real, mules urged to speed, escort galloping, Don Carlos riding
+alone ahead of a dust storm affording a vague vision of long ears
+of mules, of fluttering little green and white flags stuck upon
+each cart; of raised arms in a mob of sombreros with the white
+gleam of ranging eyes; and Don Pepe, hardly visible in the rear
+of that rattling dust trail, with a stiff seat and impassive
+face, rising and falling rhythmically on an ewe-necked
+silver-bitted black brute with a hammer head.
+
+The sleepy people in the little clusters of huts, in the small
+ranches near the road, recognized by the headlong sound the
+charge of the San Tome silver escort towards the crumbling wall
+of the city on the Campo side.  They came to the doors to see it
+dash by over ruts and stones, with a clatter and clank and
+cracking of whips, with the reckless rush and precise driving of
+a field battery hurrying into action, and the solitary English
+figure of the Senor Administrador riding far ahead in the lead.
+
+In the fenced roadside paddocks loose horses galloped wildly for
+a while; the heavy cattle stood up breast deep in the grass,
+lowing mutteringly at the flying noise; a meek Indian villager
+would glance back once and hasten to shove his loaded little
+donkey bodily against a wall, out of the way of the San Tome
+silver escort going to the sea; a small knot of chilly leperos
+under the Stone Horse of the Alameda would mutter: "Caramba!" on
+seeing it take a wide curve at a gallop and dart into the empty
+Street of the Constitution; for it was considered the correct
+thing, the only proper style by the mule-drivers of the San Tome
+mine to go through the waking town from end to end without a
+check in the speed as if chased by a devil.
+
+The early sunshine glowed on the delicate primrose, pale pink,
+pale blue fronts of the big houses with all their gates shut yet,
+and no face behind the iron bars of the windows. In the whole
+sunlit range of empty balconies along the street only one white
+figure would be visible high up above the clear pavement--the
+wife of the Senor Administrador--leaning over to see the escort
+go by to the harbour, a mass of heavy, fair hair twisted up
+negligently on her little head, and a lot of lace about the neck
+of her muslin wrapper. With a smile to her husband's single,
+quick, upward glance, she would watch the whole thing stream past
+below her feet with an orderly uproar, till she answered by a
+friendly sign the salute of the galloping Don Pepe, the stiff,
+deferential inclination with a sweep of the hat below the knee.
+
+The string of padlocked carts lengthened, the size of the escort
+grew bigger as the years went on. Every three months an
+increasing stream of treasure swept through the streets of Sulaco
+on its way to the strong room in the O.S.N. Co.'s building by the
+harbour, there to await shipment for the North. Increasing in
+volume, and of immense value also; for, as Charles Gould told his
+wife once with some exultation, there had never been seen
+anything in the world to approach the vein of the Gould
+Concession. For them both, each passing of the escort under the
+balconies of the Casa Gould was like another victory gained in
+the conquest of peace for Sulaco.
+
+No doubt the initial action of Charles Gould had been helped at
+the beginning by a period of comparative peace which occurred
+just about that time; and also by the general softening of
+manners as compared with the epoch of civil wars whence had
+emerged the iron tyranny of Guzman Bento of fearful memory. In
+the contests that broke out at the end of his rule (which had
+kept peace in the country for a whole fifteen years) there was
+more fatuous imbecility, plenty of cruelty and suffering still,
+but much less of the old-time fierce and blindly ferocious
+political fanaticism. It was all more vile, more base, more
+contemptible, and infinitely more manageable in the very
+outspoken cynicism of motives.  It was more clearly a
+brazen-faced scramble for a constantly diminishing quantity of
+booty; since all enterprise had been stupidly killed in the land.
+Thus it came to pass that the province of Sulaco, once the field
+of cruel party vengeances, had become in a way one of the
+considerable prizes of political career. The great of the earth
+(in Sta. Marta) reserved the posts in the old Occidental State to
+those nearest and dearest to them:  nephews, brothers, husbands
+of favourite sisters, bosom friends, trusty supporters--or
+prominent supporters of whom perhaps they were afraid. It was the
+blessed province of great opportunities and of largest salaries;
+for the San Tome mine had its own unofficial pay list, whose
+items and amounts, fixed in consultation by Charles Gould and
+Senor Avellanos, were known to a prominent business man in the
+United States, who for twenty minutes or so in every month gave
+his undivided attention to Sulaco affairs. At the same time the
+material interests of all sorts, backed up by the influence of
+the San Tome mine, were quietly gathering substance in that part
+of the Republic. If, for instance, the Sulaco Collectorship was
+generally understood, in the political world of the capital, to
+open the way to the Ministry of Finance, and so on for every
+official post, then, on the other hand, the despondent business
+circles of the Republic had come to consider the Occidental
+Province as the promised land of safety, especially if a man
+managed to get on good terms with the administration of the mine.
+"Charles Gould; excellent fellow!  Absolutely necessary to make
+sure of him before taking a single step. Get an introduction to
+him from Moraga if you can--the agent of the King of Sulaco,
+don't you know."
+
+No wonder, then, that Sir John, coming from Europe to smooth the
+path for his railway, had been meeting the name (and even the
+nickname) of Charles Gould at every turn in Costaguana. The agent
+of the San Tome Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished,
+well-informed gentleman, Sir John thought him) had certainly
+helped so greatly in bringing about the presidential tour that he
+began to think that there was something in the faint whispers
+hinting at the immense occult influence of the Gould Concession.
+What was currently whispered was this--that the San Tome
+Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last
+revolution, which had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don
+Vincente Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character,
+invested with a mandate of reform by the best elements of the
+State. Serious, well-informed men seemed to believe the fact, to
+hope for better things, for the establishment of legality, of
+good faith and order in public life. So much the better, then,
+thought Sir John.  He worked always on a great scale; there was a
+loan to the State, and a project for systematic colonization of
+the Occidental Province, involved in one vast scheme with the
+construction of the National Central Railway.  Good faith, order,
+honesty, peace, were badly wanted for this great development of
+material interests. Anybody on the side of these things, and
+especially if able to help, had an importance in Sir John's eyes.
+He had not been disappointed in the "King of Sulaco." The local
+difficulties had fallen away, as the engineer-in-chief had
+foretold they would, before Charles Gould's mediation.  Sir John
+had been extremely feted in Sulaco, next to the
+President-Dictator, a fact which might have accounted for the
+evident ill-humour General Montero displayed at lunch given on
+board the Juno just before she was to sail, taking away from
+Sulaco the President-Dictator and the distinguished foreign guests
+in his train.
+
+The Excellentissimo ("the hope of honest men," as Don Jose had
+addressed him in a public speech delivered in the name of the
+Provincial Assembly of Sulaco) sat at the head of the long table;
+Captain Mitchell, positively stony-eyed and purple in the face
+with the solemnity of this "historical event," occupied the foot
+as the representative of the O.S.N. Company in Sulaco, the hosts
+of that informal function, with the captain of the ship and some
+minor officials from the shore around him. Those cheery, swarthy
+little gentlemen cast jovial side-glances at the bottles of
+champagne beginning to pop behind the guests' backs in the hands
+of the ship's stewards.  The amber wine creamed up to the rims of
+the glasses.
+
+Charles Gould had his place next to a foreign envoy, who, in a
+listless undertone, had been talking to him fitfully of hunting
+and shooting. The well-nourished, pale face, with an eyeglass and
+drooping yellow moustache, made the Senor Administrador appear by
+contrast twice as sunbaked, more flaming red, a hundred times
+more intensely and silently alive. Don Jose Avellanos touched
+elbows with the other foreign diplomat, a dark man with a quiet,
+watchful, self-confident demeanour, and a touch of reserve. All
+etiquette being laid aside on the occasion, General Montero was
+the only one there in full uniform, so stiff with embroideries in
+front that his broad chest seemed protected by a cuirass of gold.
+Sir John at the beginning had got away from high places for the
+sake of sitting near Mrs.  Gould.
+
+The great financier was trying to express to her his grateful
+sense of her hospitality and of his obligation to her husband's
+"enormous influence in this part of the country," when she
+interrupted him by a low "Hush!" The President was going to make
+an informal pronouncement.
+
+The Excellentissimo was on his legs. He said only a few words,
+evidently deeply felt, and meant perhaps mostly for
+Avellanos--his old friend--as to the necessity of unremitting
+effort to secure the lasting welfare of the country emerging
+after this last struggle, he hoped, into a period of peace and
+material prosperity.
+
+Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice,
+looking at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body,
+obese to the point of infirmity, thought that this man of
+delicate and melancholy mind, physically almost a cripple, coming
+out of his retirement into a dangerous strife at the call of his
+fellows, had the right to speak with the authority of his
+self-sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He was more pathetic
+than promising, this first civilian Chief of the State Costaguana
+had ever known, pronouncing, glass in hand, his simple watchwords
+of honesty, peace, respect for law, political good faith abroad
+and at home--the safeguards of national honour.
+
+He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices
+that followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy,
+drooping eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy
+dullness from face to face. The military backwoods hero of the
+party, though secretly impressed by the sudden novelties and
+splendours of his position (he had never been on board a ship
+before, and had hardly ever seen the sea except from a distance),
+understood by a sort of instinct the advantage his surly,
+unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all
+these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was
+looking at him? he wondered to himself angrily. He was able to
+spell out the print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed
+the "greatest military exploit of modern times."
+
+"My husband wanted the railway," Mrs. Gould said to Sir John in
+the general murmur of resumed conversations.  "All this brings
+nearer the sort of future we desire for the country, which has
+waited for it in sorrow long enough, God knows. But I will
+confess that the other day, during my afternoon drive when I
+suddenly saw an Indian boy ride out of a wood with the red flag
+of a surveying party in his hand, I felt something of a shock.
+The future means change--an utter change.  And yet even here
+there are simple and picturesque things that one would like to
+preserve."
+
+Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now to hush Mrs.
+Gould.
+
+"General Montero is going to speak," he whispered, and almost
+immediately added, in comic alarm, "Heavens!  he's going to
+propose my own health, I believe."
+
+General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a
+ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy
+sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In
+this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose
+flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked
+like a disguised and sinister vaquero. The drone of his voice had
+a strangely rasping, soulless ring. He floundered, lowering,
+through a few vague sentences; then suddenly raising his big head
+and his voice together, burst out harshly--
+
+"The honour of the country is in the hands of the army. I assure
+you I shall be faithful to it." He hesitated till his roaming
+eyes met Sir John's face upon which he fixed a lurid, sleepy
+glance; and the figure of the lately negotiated loan came into
+his mind. He lifted his glass. "I drink to the health of the man
+who brings us a million and a half of pounds."
+
+He tossed off his champagne, and sat down heavily with a
+half-surprised, half-bullying look all round the faces in the
+profound, as if appalled, silence which succeeded the felicitous
+toast. Sir John did not move.
+
+"I don't think I am called upon to rise," he murmured to Mrs.
+Gould. "That sort of thing speaks for itself." But Don Jose
+Avellanos came to the rescue with a short oration, in which he
+alluded pointedly to England's goodwill towards Costaguana--"a
+goodwill," he continued, significantly, "of which I, having been
+in my time accredited to the Court of St. James, am able to speak
+with some knowledge."
+
+Only then Sir John thought fit to respond, which he did
+gracefully in bad French, punctuated by bursts of applause and
+the "Hear! Hears!" of Captain Mitchell, who was able to
+understand a word now and then.  Directly he had done, the
+financier of railways turned to Mrs. Gould--
+
+"You were good enough to say that you intended to ask me for
+something," he reminded her, gallantly.  "What is it? Be assured
+that any request from you would be considered in the light of a
+favour to myself."
+
+She thanked him by a gracious smile. Everybody was rising from
+the table.
+
+"Let us go on deck," she proposed, "where I'll be able to point
+out to you the very object of my request."
+
+An enormous national flag of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow,
+with two green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the
+mainmast head of the Juno. A multitude of fireworks being let off
+in their thousands at the water's edge in honour of the President
+kept up a mysterious crepitating noise half round the harbour.
+Now and then a lot of rockets, swishing upwards invisibly,
+detonated overhead with only a puff of smoke in the bright sky.
+Crowds of people could be seen between the town gate and the
+harbour, under the bunches of multicoloured flags fluttering on
+tall poles.  Faint bursts of military music would be heard
+suddenly, and the remote sound of shouting. A knot of ragged
+negroes at the end of the wharf kept on loading and firing a
+small iron cannon time after time. A greyish haze of dust hung
+thin and motionless against the sun.
+
+Don Vincente Ribiera made a few steps under the deck-awning,
+leaning on the arm of Senor Avellanos; a wide circle was formed
+round him, where the mirthless smile of his dark lips and the
+sightless glitter of his spectacles could be seen turning amiably
+from side to side. The informal function arranged on purpose on
+board the Juno to give the President-Dictator an opportunity to
+meet intimately some of his most notable adherents in Sulaco was
+drawing to an end. On one side, General Montero, his bald head
+covered now by a plumed cocked hat, remained motionless on a
+skylight seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded on the hilt
+of the sabre standing upright between his legs. The white plume,
+the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the
+moustaches under the curved beak, the mass of gold on sleeves and
+breast, the high shining boots with enormous spurs, the working
+nostrils, the imbecile and domineering stare of the glorious
+victor of Rio Seco had in them something ominous and incredible;
+the exaggeration of a cruel caricature, the fatuity of solemn
+masquerading, the atrocious grotesqueness of some military idol
+of Aztec conception and European bedecking, awaiting the homage
+of worshippers.  Don Jose approached diplomatically this weird
+and inscrutable portent, and Mrs. Gould turned her fascinated
+eyes away at last.
+
+Charles, coming up to take leave of Sir John, heard him say, as
+he bent over his wife's hand, "Certainly.  Of course, my dear
+Mrs. Gould, for a protege of yours!  Not the slightest
+difficulty. Consider it done."
+
+Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don Jose Avellanos
+was very silent. Even in the Gould carriage he did not open his
+lips for a long time. The mules trotted slowly away from the
+wharf between the extended hands of the beggars, who for that day
+seemed to have abandoned in a body the portals of churches.
+Charles Gould sat on the back seat and looked away upon the
+plain. A multitude of booths made of green boughs, of rushes, of
+odd pieces of plank eked out with bits of canvas had been erected
+all over it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit, of cigars.
+Over little heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting on
+mats, cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water for
+the mate gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing voices to
+the country people. A racecourse had been staked out for the
+vaqueros; and away to the left, from where the crowd was massed
+thickly about a huge temporary erection, like a circus tent of
+wood with a conical grass roof, came the resonant twanging of
+harp strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the grave drumming
+throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily through the shrill
+choruses of the dancers.
+
+Charles Gould said presently--
+
+"All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Company. There
+will be no more popular feasts held here."
+
+Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this
+opportunity to mention how she had just obtained from Sir John
+the promise that the house occupied by Giorgio Viola should not
+be interfered with. She declared she could never understand why
+the survey engineers ever talked of demolishing that old
+building.  It was not in the way of the projected harbour branch
+of the line in the least.
+
+She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at once the
+old Genoese, who came out bare-headed and stood by the carriage
+step. She talked to him in Italian, of course, and he thanked her
+with calm dignity.  An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from
+the bottom of his heart for keeping the roof over the heads of
+his wife and children. He was too old to wander any more.
+
+"And is it for ever, signora?" he asked.
+
+"For as long as you like."
+
+"Bene. Then the place must be named, It was not worth while
+before."
+
+He smiled ruggedly, with a running together of wrinkles at the
+corners of his eyes. "I shall set about the painting of the name
+to-morrow."
+
+"And what is it going to be, Giorgio?"
+
+"Albergo d'Italia Una," said the old Garibaldino, looking away
+for a moment. "More in memory of those who have died," he added,
+"than for the country stolen from us soldiers of liberty by the
+craft of that accursed Piedmontese race of kings and ministers."
+
+Mrs. Gould smiled slightly, and, bending over a little, began to
+inquire about his wife and children. He had sent them into town
+on that day. The padrona was better in health; many thanks to the
+signora for inquiring.
+
+People were passing in twos and threes, in whole parties of men
+and women attended by trotting children.  A horseman mounted on a
+silver-grey mare drew rein quietly in the shade of the house
+after taking off his hat to the party in the carriage, who
+returned smiles and familiar nods. Old Viola, evidently very
+pleased with the news he had just heard, interrupted himself for
+a moment to tell him rapidly that the house was secured, by the
+kindness of the English signora, for as long as he liked to keep
+it. The other listened attentively, but made no response.
+
+When the carriage moved on he took off his hat again, a grey
+sombrero with a silver cord and tassels. The bright colours of a
+Mexican serape twisted on the cantle, the enormous silver buttons
+on the embroidered leather jacket, the row of tiny silver buttons
+down the seam of the trousers, the snowy linen, a silk sash with
+embroidered ends, the silver plates on headstall and saddle,
+proclaimed the unapproachable style of the famous Capataz de
+Cargadores--a Mediterranean sailor--got up with more finished
+splendour than any well-to-do young ranchero of the Campo had
+ever displayed on a high holiday.
+
+"It is a great thing for me," murmured old Giorgio, still
+thinking of the house, for now he had grown weary of change. "The
+signora just said a word to the Englishman."
+
+"The old Englishman who has enough money to pay for a railway? He
+is going off in an hour," remarked Nostromo, carelessly.   "Buon
+viaggio, then.  I've guarded his bones all the way from the
+Entrada pass down to the plain and into Sulaco, as though he had
+been my own father."
+
+Old Giorgio only moved his head sideways absently.  Nostromo
+pointed after the Goulds' carriage, nearing the grass-grown gate
+in the old town wall that was like a wall of matted jungle.
+
+"And I have sat alone at night with my revolver in the Company's
+warehouse time and again by the side of that other Englishman's
+heap of silver, guarding it as though it had been my own."
+
+Viola seemed lost in thought. "It is a great thing for me," he
+repeated again, as if to himself.
+
+"It is," agreed the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, calmly.
+"Listen, Vecchio--go in and bring me, out a cigar, but don't look
+for it in my room. There's nothing there."
+
+Viola stepped into the cafe and came out directly, still absorbed
+in his idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in
+his moustache, "Children growing up--and girls, too! Girls!" He
+sighed and fell silent.
+
+"What, only one?" remarked Nostromo, looking down with a sort of
+comic inquisitiveness at the unconscious old man. "No matter," he
+added, with lofty negligence; "one is enough till another is
+wanted."
+
+He lit it and let the match drop from his passive fingers.
+Giorgio Viola looked up, and said abruptly--
+
+"My son would have been just such a fine young man as you, Gian'
+Battista, if he had lived."
+
+"What? Your son? But you are right, padrone.  If he had been like
+me he would have been a man."
+
+He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the booths,
+checking the mare almost to a standstill now and then for
+children, for the groups of people from the distant Campo, who
+stared after him with admiration.  The Company's lightermen
+saluted him from afar; and the greatly envied Capataz de
+Cargadores advanced, amongst murmurs of recognition and
+obsequious greetings, towards the huge circus-like erection. The
+throng thickened; the guitars tinkled louder; other horsemen sat
+motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the crowd; it
+eddied and pushed before the doors of the high-roofed building,
+whence issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance
+music vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by
+the tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The
+barbarous and imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a
+crowd, and that even Europeans cannot hear without a strange
+emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo on to its source, while a man,
+wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho, walked by his stirrup, and,
+buffeted right and left, begged "his worship" insistently for
+employment on the wharf. He whined, offering the Senor Capataz
+half his daily pay for the privilege of being admitted to the
+swaggering fraternity of Cargadores; the other half would be
+enough for him, he protested. But Captain Mitchell's right-hand
+man--"invaluable for our work--a perfectly incorruptible
+fellow"--after looking down critically at the ragged mozo, shook
+his head without a word in the uproar going on around.
+
+The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had to pull
+up. From the doors of the dance hall men and women emerged
+tottering, streaming with sweat, trembling in every limb, to
+lean, panting, with staring eyes and parted lips, against the
+wall of the structure, where the harps and guitars played on with
+mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder. Hundreds of hands
+clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at once would
+sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with a
+dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in
+the crowd, struck the resplendent Capataz on the cheek.
+
+He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did not turn
+his head. When at last he condescended to look round, the throng
+near him had parted to make way for a pretty Morenita, her hair
+held up by a small golden comb, who was walking towards him in
+the open space.
+
+Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a snowy chemisette;
+the blue woollen skirt, with all the fullness gathered in front,
+scanty on the hips and tight across the back, disclosed the
+provoking action of her walk. She came straight on and laid her
+hand on the mare's neck with a timid, coquettish look upwards out
+of the corner of her eyes.
+
+"Querido," she murmured, caressingly, "why do you pretend not to
+see me when I pass?"
+
+"Because I don't love thee any more," said Nostromo,
+deliberately, after a moment of reflective silence.
+
+The hand on the mare's neck trembled suddenly.  She dropped her
+head before all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the
+generous, the terrible, the inconstant Capataz de Cargadores, and
+his Morenita.
+
+Nostromo, looking down, saw tears beginning to fall down her
+face.
+
+"Has it come, then, ever beloved of my heart?" she whispered. "Is
+it true?"
+
+"No," said Nostromo, looking away carelessly. "It was a lie. I
+love thee as much as ever."
+
+"Is that true?" she cooed, joyously, her cheeks still wet with
+tears.
+
+"It is true."
+
+"True on the life?"
+
+"As true as that; but thou must not ask me to swear it on the
+Madonna that stands in thy room." And the Capataz laughed a
+little in response to the grins of the crowd.
+
+She pouted--very pretty--a little uneasy.
+
+"No, I will not ask for that. I can see love in your eyes." She
+laid her hand on his knee. "Why are you trembling like this? From
+love?" she continued, while the cavernous thundering of the gombo
+went on without a pause. "But if you love her as much as that,
+you must give your Paquita a gold-mounted rosary of beads for the
+neck of her Madonna."
+
+"No," said Nostromo, looking into her uplifted, begging eyes,
+which suddenly turned stony with surprise.
+
+"No? Then what else will your worship give me on the day of the
+fiesta?" she asked, angrily; "so as not to shame me before all
+these people."
+
+"There is no shame for thee in getting nothing from thy lover for
+once."
+
+"True! The shame is your worship's--my poor lover's," she flared
+up, sarcastically.
+
+Laughs were heard at her anger, at her retort. What an audacious
+spitfire she was! The people aware of this scene were calling out
+urgently to others in the crowd. The circle round the silver-grey
+mare narrowed slowly.
+
+The girl went off a pace or two, confronting the mocking
+curiosity of the eyes, then flung back to the stirrup, tiptoeing,
+her enraged face turned up to Nostromo with a pair of blazing
+eyes. He bent low to her in the saddle.
+
+"Juan," she hissed, "I could stab thee to the heart!"
+
+The dreaded Capataz de Cargadores, magnificent and carelessly
+public in his amours, flung his arm round her neck and kissed her
+spluttering lips. A murmur went round.
+
+"A knife!" he demanded at large, holding her firmly by the
+shoulder.
+
+Twenty blades flashed out together in the circle. A young man in
+holiday attire, bounding in, thrust one in Nostromo's hand and
+bounded back into the ranks, very proud of himself. Nostromo had
+not even looked at him.
+
+"Stand on my foot," he commanded the girl, who, suddenly subdued,
+rose lightly, and when he had her up, encircling her waist, her
+face near to his, he pressed the knife into her little hand.
+
+"No, Morenita! You shall not put me to shame," he said. "You
+shall have your present; and so that everyone should know who is
+your lover to-day, you may cut all the silver buttons off my
+coat."
+
+There were shouts of laughter and applause at this witty freak,
+while the girl passed the keen blade, and the impassive rider
+jingled in his palm the increasing hoard of silver buttons. He
+eased her to the ground with both her hands full. After
+whispering for a while with a very strenuous face, she walked
+away, staring haughtily, and vanished into the crowd.
+
+The circle had broken up, and the lordly Capataz de Cargadores,
+the indispensable man, the tried and trusty Nostromo, the
+Mediterranean sailor come ashore casually to try his luck in
+Costaguana, rode slowly towards the harbour. The Juno was just
+then swinging round; and even as Nostromo reined up again to look
+on, a flag ran up on the improvised flagstaff erected in an
+ancient and dismantled little fort at the harbour entrance. Half
+a battery of field guns had been hurried over there from the
+Sulaco barracks for the purpose of firing the regulation salutes
+for the President-Dictator and the War Minister. As the mail-boat
+headed through the pass, the badly timed reports announced the
+end of Don Vincente Ribiera's first official visit to Sulaco, and
+for Captain Mitchell the end of another "historic occasion." Next
+time when the "Hope of honest men" was to come that way, a year
+and a half later, it was unofficially, over the mountain tracks,
+fleeing after a defeat on a lame mule, to be only just saved by
+Nostromo from an ignominious death at the hands of a mob. It was
+a very different event, of which Captain Mitchell used to say--
+
+"It was history--history, sir! And that fellow of mine, Nostromo,
+you know, was right in it. Absolutely making history, sir."
+
+But this event, creditable to Nostromo, was to lead immediately
+to another, which could not be classed either as "history" or as
+"a mistake" in Captain Mitchell's phraseology. He had another
+word for it.
+
+"Sir" he used to say afterwards, "that was no mistake.  It was a
+fatality. A misfortune, pure and simple, sir. And that poor
+fellow of mine was right in it--right in the middle of it! A
+fatality, if ever there was one--and to my mind he has never been
+the same man since."
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND
+
+THE ISABELS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+THROUGH good and evil report in the varying fortune of that
+struggle which Don Jose had characterized in the phrase, "the
+fate of national honesty trembles in the balance," the Gould
+Concession, "Imperium in Imperio," had gone on working; the
+square mountain had gone on pouring its treasure down the wooden
+shoots to the unresting batteries of stamps; the lights of San
+Tome had twinkled night after night upon the great, limitless
+shadow of the Campo; every three months the silver escort had
+gone down to the sea as if neither the war nor its consequences
+could ever affect the ancient Occidental State secluded beyond
+its high barrier of the Cordillera. All the fighting took place
+on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated peaks lorded
+over by the white dome of Higuerota and as yet unbreached by the
+railway, of which only the first part, the easy Campo part from
+Sulaco to the Ivie Valley at the foot of the pass, had been laid.
+Neither did the telegraph line cross the mountains yet; its
+poles, like slender beacons on the plain, penetrated into the
+forest fringe of the foot-hills cut by the deep avenue of the
+track; and its wire ended abruptly in the construction camp at a
+white deal table supporting a Morse apparatus, in a long hut of
+planks with a corrugated iron roof overshadowed by gigantic cedar
+trees--the quarters of the engineer in charge of the advance
+section.
+
+The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in railway material,
+and with the movements of troops along the coast. The O.S.N.
+Company found much occupation for its fleet. Costaguana had no
+navy, and, apart from a few coastguard cutters, there were no
+national ships except a couple of old merchant steamers used as
+transports.
+
+Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick of history,
+found time for an hour or so during an afternoon in the
+drawing-room of the Casa Gould, where, with a strange ignorance
+of the real forces at work around him, he professed himself
+delighted to get away from the strain of affairs. He did not know
+what he would have done without his invaluable Nostromo, he
+declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics gave him more
+work--he confided to Mrs. Gould--than he had bargained for.
+
+Don Jose Avellanos had displayed in the service of the endangered
+Ribiera Government an organizing activity and an eloquence of
+which the echoes reached even Europe. For, after the new loan to
+the Ribiera Government, Europe had become interested in
+Costaguana.  The Sala of the Provincial Assembly (in the
+Municipal Buildings of Sulaco), with its portraits of the
+Liberators on the walls and an old flag of Cortez preserved in a
+glass case above the President's chair, had heard all these
+speeches--the early one containing the impassioned declaration
+"Militarism is the enemy," the famous one of the "trembling
+balance" delivered on the occasion of the vote for the raising of
+a second Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming
+Government; and when the provinces again displayed their old
+flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento's time) there was another of
+those great orations, when Don Jose greeted these old emblems of
+the war of Independence, brought out again in the name of new
+Ideals. The old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For his part
+he did not wish to revive old political doctrines. They were
+perishable. They died. But the doctrine of political rectitude
+was immortal. The second Sulaco regiment, to whom he was
+presenting this flag, was going to show its valour in a contest
+for order, peace, progress; for the establishment of national
+self-respect without which--he declared with energy--"we are a
+reproach and a byword amongst the powers of the world."
+
+Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly
+with his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later
+story of his captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento
+was well known to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not
+been a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which
+marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the
+country with the sombre imbecility of political fanaticism. The
+power of Supreme Government had become in his dull mind an object
+of strange worship, as if it were some sort of cruel deity. It
+was incarnated in himself, and his adversaries, the Federalists,
+were the supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and fear,
+as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For years he had
+carried about at the tail of the Army of Pacification, all over
+the country, a captive band of such atrocious criminals, who
+considered themselves most unfortunate at not having been
+summarily executed.  It was a diminishing company of nearly naked
+skeletons, loaded with irons, covered with dirt, with vermin,
+with raw wounds, all men of position, of education, of wealth,
+who had learned to fight amongst themselves for scraps of rotten
+beef thrown to them by soldiers, or to beg a negro cook for a
+drink of muddy water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos,
+clanking his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in
+order to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel
+torture a human body can stand without parting with the last
+spark of life. Sometimes interrogatories, backed by some
+primitive method of torture, were administered to them by a
+commission of officers hastily assembled in a hut of sticks and
+branches, and made pitiless by the fear for their own lives. A
+lucky one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would
+perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a file of
+soldiers. Always an army chaplain--some unshaven, dirty man, girt
+with a sword and with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on
+the left breast of a lieutenant's uniform--would follow,
+cigarette in the corner of the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to
+hear the confession and give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour
+of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus officially in
+petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational clemency.
+The irregular report of the firing squad would be heard, followed
+sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud of
+smoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Army of
+Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the
+forests, crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the
+haciendas of the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns
+in the fulfilment of its patriotic mission, and leaving behind a
+united land wherein the evil taint of Federalism could no longer
+be detected in the smoke of burning houses and the smell of spilt
+blood.  Don Jose Avellanos had survived that time.  Perhaps, when
+contemptuously signifying to him his release, the Citizen Saviour
+of the Country might have thought this benighted aristocrat too
+broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer
+dangerous. Or, perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman
+Bento, usually full of fanciful fears and brooding suspicions,
+had sudden accesses of unreasonable self-confidence when he
+perceived himself elevated on a pinnacle of power and safety
+beyond the reach of mere mortal plotters. At such times he would
+impulsively command the celebration of a solemn Mass of
+thanksgiving, which would be sung in great pomp in the cathedral
+of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient Archbishop of his
+creation. He heard it sitting in a gilt armchair placed before
+the high altar, surrounded by the civil and military heads of his
+Government.  The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into
+the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of mark to
+stay away from these manifestations of presidential piety. Having
+thus acknowledged the only power he was at all disposed to
+recognize as above himself, he would scatter acts of political
+grace in a sardonic wantonness of clemency. There was no other
+way left now to enjoy his power but by seeing his crushed
+adversaries crawl impotently into the light of day out of the
+dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their harmlessness fed his
+insatiable vanity, and they could always be got hold of again. It
+was the rule for all the women of their families to present
+thanks afterwards in a special audience. The incarnation of that
+strange god, El Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked
+hat on head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter to show their
+gratitude by bringing up their children in fidelity to the
+democratic form of government, "which I have established for the
+happiness of our country." His front teeth having been knocked
+out in some accident of his former herdsman's life, his utterance
+was spluttering and indistinct. He had been working for
+Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and opposition.  Let
+it cease now lest he should become weary of forgiving!
+
+Don Jose Avellanos had known this forgiveness.
+
+He was broken in health and fortune deplorably enough to present
+a truly gratifying spectacle to the supreme chief of democratic
+institutions. He retired to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in
+that province, and she nursed him back to life out of the house
+of death and captivity. When she died, their daughter, an only
+child, was old enough to devote herself to "poor papa."
+
+Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly in England,
+was a tall, grave girl, with a self-possessed manner, a wide,
+white forehead, a wealth of rich brown hair, and blue eyes.
+
+The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her character
+and accomplishments. She was reputed to be terribly learned and
+serious. As to pride, it was well known that all the Corbelans
+were proud, and her mother was a Corbelan. Don Jose Avellanos
+depended very much upon the devotion of his beloved Antonia.  He
+accepted it in the benighted way of men, who, though made in
+God's image, are like stone idols without sense before the smoke
+of certain burnt offerings. He was ruined in every way, but a man
+possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life. Don Jose
+Avellanos desired passionately for his country: peace,
+prosperity, and (as the end of the preface to "Fifty Years of
+Misrule" has it) "an honourable place in the comity of civilized
+nations." In this last phrase the Minister Plenipotentiary,
+cruelly humiliated by the bad faith of his Government towards the
+foreign bondholders, stands disclosed in the patriot.
+
+The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the tyranny of
+Guzman Bento seemed to bring his desire to the very door of
+opportunity. He was too old to descend personally into the centre
+of the arena at Sta.  Marta. But the men who acted there sought
+his advice at every step. He himself thought that he could be
+most useful at a distance, in Sulaco. His name, his connections,
+his former position, his experience commanded the respect of his
+class. The discovery that this man, living in dignified poverty
+in the Corbelan town residence (opposite the Casa Gould), could
+dispose of material means towards the support of the cause
+increased his influence. It was his open letter of appeal that
+decided the candidature of Don Vincente Ribiera for the
+Presidency. Another of these informal State papers drawn up by
+Don Jose (this time in the shape of an address from the Province)
+induced that scrupulous constitutionalist to accept the
+extraordinary powers conferred upon him for five years by an
+overwhelming vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It was a specific
+mandate to establish the prosperity of the people on the basis of
+firm peace at home, and to redeem the national credit by the
+satisfaction of all just claims abroad.
+
+On the afternoon the news of that vote had reached Sulaco by the
+usual roundabout postal way through Cayta, and up the coast by
+steamer. Don Jose, who had been waiting for the mail in the
+Goulds' drawing-room, got out of the rocking-chair, letting his
+hat fall off his knees. He rubbed his silvery, short hair with
+both hands, speechless with the excess of joy.
+
+"Emilia, my soul," he had burst out, "let me embrace you! Let
+me--"
+
+Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an
+apt remark about the dawn of a new era; but if Don Jose thought
+something of the kind, his eloquence failed him on this occasion.
+The inspirer of that revival of the Blanco party tottered where
+he stood. Mrs. Gould moved forward quickly and, as she offered
+her cheek with a smile to her old friend, managed very cleverly
+to give him the support of her arm he really needed.
+
+Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a time he could
+do no more than murmur, "Oh, you two patriots! Oh, you two
+patriots!"--looking from one to the other. Vague plans of another
+historical work, wherein all the devotions to the regeneration of
+the country he loved would be enshrined for the reverent worship
+of posterity, flitted through his mind. The historian who had
+enough elevation of soul to write of Guzman Bento: "Yet this
+monster, imbrued in the blood of his countrymen, must not be held
+unreservedly to the execration of future years. It appears to be
+true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve
+years of peace; and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he
+was, he died poor. His worst fault, perhaps, was not his
+ferocity, but his ignorance;" the man who could write thus of a
+cruel persecutor (the passage occurs in his "History of Misrule")
+felt at the foreshadowing of success an almost boundless
+affection for his two helpers, for these two young people from
+over the sea.
+
+Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practical
+necessity, stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry
+Gould had drawn the sword, so now, the times being changed,
+Charles Gould had flung the silver of the San Tome into the fray.
+The Inglez of Sulaco, the "Costaguana Englishman" of the third
+generation, was as far from being a political intriguer as his
+uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler. Springing from the
+instinctive uprightness of their natures their action was
+reasoned. They saw an opportunity and used the weapon to hand.
+
+Charles Gould's position--a commanding position in the background
+of that attempt to retrieve the peace and the credit of the
+Republic--was very clear. At the beginning he had had to
+accommodate himself to existing circumstances of corruption so
+naively brazen as to disarm the hate of a man courageous enough
+not to be afraid of its irresponsible potency to ruin everything
+it touched. It seemed to him too contemptible for hot anger even.
+He made use of it with a cold, fearless scorn, manifested rather
+than concealed by the forms of stony courtesy which did away with
+much of the ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps, he
+suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly illusions, but
+he refused to discuss the ethical view with his wife. He trusted
+that, though a little disenchanted, she would be intelligent
+enough to understand that his character safeguarded the
+enterprise of their lives as much or more than his policy. The
+extraordinary development of the mine had put a great power into
+his hands. To feel that prosperity always at the mercy of
+unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him. To Mrs. Gould it
+was humiliating. At any rate, it was dangerous. In the
+confidential communications passing between Charles Gould, the
+King of Sulaco, and the head of the silver and steel interests
+far away in California, the conviction was growing that any
+attempt made by men of education and integrity ought to be
+discreetly supported. "You may tell your friend Avellanos that I
+think so," Mr. Holroyd had written at the proper moment from his
+inviolable sanctuary within the eleven-storey high factory of
+great affairs.  And shortly afterwards, with a credit opened by
+the Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to the Holroyd
+Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana took a practical
+shape under the eye of the administrator of the San Tome mine.
+And Don Jose, the hereditary friend of the Gould family, could
+say: "Perhaps, my dear Carlos, I shall not have believed in
+vain."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+AFTER another armed struggle, decided by Montero's victory of Rio
+Seco, had been added to the tale of civil wars, the "honest men,"
+as Don Jose called them, could breathe freely for the first time
+in half a century. The Five-Year-Mandate law became the basis of
+that regeneration, the passionate desire and hope for which had
+been like the elixir of everlasting youth for Don Jose Avellanos.
+
+And when it was suddenly--and not quite unexpectedly--endangered
+by that "brute Montero," it was a passionate indignation that
+gave him a new lease of life, as it were. Already, at the time of
+the President-Dictator's visit to Sulaco, Moraga had sounded a
+note of warning from Sta. Marta about the War Minister.  Montero
+and his brother made the subject of an earnest talk between the
+Dictator-President and the Nestor-inspirer of the party. But Don
+Vincente, a doctor of philosophy from the Cordova University,
+seemed to have an exaggerated respect for military ability, whose
+mysteriousness--since it appeared to be altogether independent of
+intellect--imposed upon his imagination.  The victor of Rio Seco
+was a popular hero. His services were so recent that the
+President-Dictator quailed before the obvious charge of political
+ingratitude.  Great regenerating transactions were being
+initiated--the fresh loan, a new railway line, a vast
+colonization scheme. Anything that could unsettle the public
+opinion in the capital was to be avoided.  Don Jose bowed to
+these arguments and tried to dismiss from his mind the gold-laced
+portent in boots, and with a sabre, made meaningless now at last,
+he hoped, in the new order of things.
+
+Less than six months after the President-Dictator's visit, Sulaco
+learned with stupefaction of the military revolt in the name of
+national honour. The Minister of War, in a barrack-square
+allocution to the officers of the artillery regiment he had been
+inspecting, had declared the national honour sold to foreigners.
+The Dictator, by his weak compliance with the demands of the
+European powers--for the settlement of long outstanding money
+claims--had showed himself unfit to rule. A letter from Moraga
+explained afterwards that the initiative, and even the very text,
+of the incendiary allocution came, in reality, from the other
+Montero, the ex-guerillero, the Commandante de Plaza. The
+energetic treatment of Dr. Monygham, sent for in haste "to the
+mountain," who came galloping three leagues in the dark, saved
+Don Jose from a dangerous attack of jaundice.
+
+After getting over the shock, Don Jose refused to let himself be
+prostrated. Indeed, better news succeeded at first. The revolt in
+the capital had been suppressed after a night of fighting in the
+streets. Unfortunately, both the Monteros had been able to make
+their escape south, to their native province of Entre-Montes. The
+hero of the forest march, the victor of Rio Seco, had been
+received with frenzied acclamations in Nicoya, the provincial
+capital. The troops in garrison there had gone to him in a body.
+The brothers were organizing an army, gathering malcontents,
+sending emissaries primed with patriotic lies to the people, and
+with promises of plunder to the wild llaneros. Even a Monterist
+press had come into existence, speaking oracularly of the secret
+promises of support given by "our great sister Republic of the
+North" against the sinister land-grabbing designs of European
+powers, cursing in every issue the "miserable Ribiera," who had
+plotted to deliver his country, bound hand and foot, for a prey
+to foreign speculators.
+
+Sulaco, pastoral and sleepy, with its opulent Campo and the rich
+silver mine, heard the din of arms fitfully in its fortunate
+isolation. It was nevertheless in the very forefront of the
+defence with men and money; but the very rumours reached it
+circuitously--from abroad even, so much was it cut off from the
+rest of the Republic, not only by natural obstacles, but also by
+the vicissitudes of the war. The Monteristos were besieging
+Cayta, an important postal link. The overland couriers ceased to
+come across the mountains, and no muleteer would consent to risk
+the journey at last; even Bonifacio on one occasion failed to
+return from Sta. Marta, either not daring to start, or perhaps
+captured by the parties of the enemy raiding the country between
+the Cordillera and the capital. Monterist publications, however,
+found their way into the province, mysteriously enough; and also
+Monterist emissaries preaching death to aristocrats in the
+villages and towns of the Campo. Very early, at the beginning of
+the trouble, Hernandez, the bandit, had proposed (through the
+agency of an old priest of a village in the wilds) to deliver two
+of them to the Ribierist authorities in Tonoro. They had come to
+offer him a free pardon and the rank of colonel from General
+Montero in consideration of joining the rebel army with his
+mounted band. No notice was taken at the time of the proposal. It
+was joined, as an evidence of good faith, to a petition praying
+the Sulaco Assembly for permission to enlist, with all his
+followers, in the forces being then raised in Sulaco for the
+defence of the Five-Year Mandate of regeneration. The petition,
+like everything else, had found its way into Don Jose's hands. He
+had showed to Mrs. Gould these pages of dirty-greyish rough paper
+(perhaps looted in some village store), covered with the crabbed,
+illiterate handwriting of the old padre, carried off from his hut
+by the side of a mud-walled church to be the secretary of the
+dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamplight of the
+Gould drawing-room over the document containing the fierce and
+yet humble appeal of the man against the blind and stupid
+barbarity turning an honest ranchero into a bandit. A postscript
+of the priest stated that, but for being deprived of his liberty
+for ten days, he had been treated with humanity and the respect
+due to his sacred calling. He had been, it appears, confessing
+and absolving the chief and most of the band, and he guaranteed
+the sincerity of their good disposition. He had distributed heavy
+penances, no doubt in the way of litanies and fasts; but he
+argued shrewdly that it would be difficult for them to make their
+peace with God durably till they had made peace with men.
+
+Never before, perhaps, had Hernandez's head been in less jeopardy
+than when he petitioned humbly for permission to buy a pardon for
+himself and his gang of deserters by armed service. He could
+range afar from the waste lands protecting his fastness,
+unchecked, because there were no troops left in the whole
+province.  The usual garrison of Sulaco had gone south to the
+war, with its brass band playing the Bolivar march on the bridge
+of one of the O.S.N. Company's steamers.  The great family
+coaches drawn up along the shore of the harbour were made to rock
+on the high leathern springs by the enthusiasm of the senoras and
+the senoritas standing up to wave their lace handkerchiefs, as
+lighter after lighter packed full of troops left the end of the
+jetty.
+
+Nostromo directed the embarkation, under the superintendendence
+of Captain Mitchell, red-faced in the sun, conspicuous in a white
+waistcoat, representing the allied and anxious goodwill of all
+the material interests of civilization. General Barrios, who
+commanded the troops, assured Don Jose on parting that in three
+weeks he would have Montero in a wooden cage drawn by three pair
+of oxen ready for a tour through all the towns of the Republic.
+
+"And then, senora," he continued, baring his curly iron-grey head
+to Mrs. Gould in her landau--"and then, senora, we shall convert
+our swords into plough-shares and grow rich. Even I, myself, as
+soon as this little business is settled, shall open a fundacion
+on some land I have on the llanos and try to make a little money
+in peace and quietness. Senora, you know, all Costaguana
+knows--what do I say?--this whole South American continent knows,
+that Pablo Barrios has had his fill of military glory."
+
+Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and patriotic
+send-off. It was not his part to see the soldiers embark. It was
+neither his part, nor his inclination, nor his policy. His part,
+his inclination, and his policy were united in one endeavour to
+keep unchecked the flow of treasure he had started single-handed
+from the re-opened scar in the flank of the mountain. As the mine
+developed he had trained for himself some native help. There were
+foremen, artificers and clerks, with Don Pepe for the gobernador
+of the mining population.  For the rest his shoulders alone
+sustained the whole weight of the "Imperium in Imperio," the
+great Gould Concession whose mere shadow had been enough to crush
+the life out of his father.
+
+Mrs. Gould had no silver mine to look after. In the general life
+of the Gould Concession she was represented by her two
+lieutenants, the doctor and the priest, but she fed her woman's
+love of excitement on events whose significance was purified to
+her by the fire of her imaginative purpose. On that day she had
+brought the Avellanos, father and daughter, down to the harbour
+with her.
+
+Amongst his other activities of that stirring time, Don Jose had
+become the chairman of a Patriotic Committee which had armed a
+great proportion of troops in the Sulaco command with an improved
+model of a military rifle. It had been just discarded for
+something still more deadly by one of the great European powers.
+How much of the market-price for second-hand weapons was covered
+by the voluntary contributions of the principal families, and how
+much came from those funds Don Jose was understood to command
+abroad, remained a secret which he alone could have disclosed;
+but the Ricos, as the populace called them, had contributed under
+the pressure of their Nestor's eloquence.  Some of the more
+enthusiastic ladies had been moved to bring offerings of jewels
+into the hands of the man who was the life and soul of the party.
+
+There were moments when both his life and his soul seemed
+overtaxed by so many years of undiscouraged belief in
+regeneration. He appeared almost inanimate, sitting rigidly by
+the side of Mrs. Gould in the landau, with his fine, old,
+clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as if modelled in yellow wax,
+shaded by a soft felt hat, the dark eyes looking out fixedly.
+Antonia, the beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avellanos was called in
+Sulaco, leaned back, facing them; and her full figure, the grave
+oval of her face with full red lips, made her look more mature
+than Mrs. Gould, with her mobile expression and small, erect
+person under a slightly swaying sunshade.
+
+Whenever possible Antonia attended her father; her recognized
+devotion weakened the shocking effect of her scorn for the rigid
+conventions regulating the life of Spanish-American girlhood.
+And, in truth, she was no longer girlish. It was said that she
+often wrote State papers from her father's dictation, and was
+allowed to read all the books in his library. At the receptions--
+where the situation was saved by the presence of a very decrepit
+old lady (a relation of the Corbelans), quite deaf and motionless
+in an armchair--Antonia could hold her own in a discussion with
+two or three men at a time. Obviously she was not the girl to be
+content with peeping through a barred window at a cloaked figure
+of a lover ensconced in a doorway opposite--which is the correct
+form of Costaguana courtship. It was generally believed that with
+her foreign upbringing and foreign ideas the learned and proud
+Antonia would never marry--unless, indeed, she married a
+foreigner from Europe or North America, now that Sulaco seemed on
+the point of being invaded by all the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+WHEN General Barrios stopped to address Mrs.  Gould, Antonia
+raised negligently her hand holding an open fan, as if to shade
+from the sun her head, wrapped in a light lace shawl. The clear
+gleam of her blue eyes gliding behind the black fringe of
+eyelashes paused for a moment upon her father, then travelled
+further to the figure of a young man of thirty at most, of medium
+height, rather thick-set, wearing a light overcoat.  Bearing down
+with the open palm of his hand upon the knob of a flexible cane,
+he had been looking on from a distance; but directly he saw
+himself noticed, he approached quietly and put his elbow over the
+door of the landau.
+
+The shirt collar, cut low in the neck, the big bow of his cravat,
+the style of his clothing, from the round hat to the varnished
+shoes, suggested an idea of French elegance; but otherwise he was
+the very type of a fair Spanish creole. The fluffy moustache and
+the short, curly, golden beard did not conceal his lips, rosy,
+fresh, almost pouting in expression. His full, round face was of
+that warm, healthy creole white which is never tanned by its
+native sunshine. Martin Decoud was seldom exposed to the
+Costaguana sun under which he was born. His people had been long
+settled in Paris, where he had studied law, had dabbled in
+literature, had hoped now and then in moments of exaltation to
+become a poet like that other foreigner of Spanish blood, Jose
+Maria Heredia. In other moments he had, to pass the time,
+condescended to write articles on European affairs for the
+Semenario, the principal newspaper in Sta. Marta, which printed
+them under the heading "From our special correspondent," though
+the authorship was an open secret. Everybody in Costaguana, where
+the tale of compatriots in Europe is jealously kept, knew that it
+was "the son Decoud," a talented young man, supposed to be moving
+in the higher spheres of Society. As a matter of fact, he was an
+idle boulevardier, in touch with some smart journalists, made
+free of a few newspaper offices, and welcomed in the pleasure
+haunts of pressmen. This life, whose dreary superficiality is
+covered by the glitter of universal blague, like the stupid
+clowning of a harlequin by the spangles of a motley costume,
+induced in him a Frenchified--but most
+un-French--cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren
+indifferentism posing as intellectual superiority. Of his own
+country he used to say to his French associates: "Imagine an
+atmosphere of opera-bouffe in which all the comic business of
+stage statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all their farcical
+stealing, intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead earnest. It is
+screamingly funny, the blood flows all the time, and the actors
+believe themselves to be influencing the fate of the universe. Of
+course, government in general, any government anywhere, is a
+thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind; but really we
+Spanish-Americans do overstep the bounds. No man of ordinary
+intelligence can take part in the intrigues of une farce macabre.
+However, these Ribierists, of whom we hear so much just now, are
+really trying in their own comical way to make the country
+habitable, and even to pay some of its debts. My friends, you had
+better write up Senor Ribiera all you can in kindness to your own
+bondholders.  Really, if what I am told in my letters is true,
+there is some chance for them at last."
+
+And he would explain with railing verve what Don Vincente Ribiera
+stood for--a mournful little man oppressed by his own good
+intentions, the significance of battles won, who Montero was (un
+grotesque vaniteux et feroce), and the manner of the new loan
+connected with railway development, and the colonization of vast
+tracts of land in one great financial scheme.
+
+And his French friends would remark that evidently this little
+fellow Decoud connaissait la question a fond.  An important
+Parisian review asked him for an article on the situation. It was
+composed in a serious tone and in a spirit of levity. Afterwards
+he asked one of his intimates--
+
+"Have you read my thing about the regeneration of Costaguana--une
+bonne blague, hein?"
+
+He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his fingers.  But far
+from being that he was in danger of remaining a sort of
+nondescript dilettante all his life. He had pushed the habit of
+universal raillery to a point where it blinded him to the genuine
+impulses of his own nature.  To be suddenly selected for the
+executive member of the patriotic small-arms committee of Sulaco
+seemed to him the height of the unexpected, one of those
+fantastic moves of which only his "dear countrymen" were capable.
+
+"It's like a tile falling on my head. I--I--executive member!
+It's the first I hear of it! What do I know of military rifles?
+C'est funambulesque!" he had exclaimed to his favourite sister;
+for the Decoud family--except the old father and mother--used
+the French language amongst themselves. "And you should see the
+explanatory and confidential letter! Eight pages of it--no less!"
+
+This letter, in Antonia's handwriting, was signed by Don Jose,
+who appealed to the "young and gifted Costaguanero" on public
+grounds, and privately opened his heart to his talented god-son,
+a man of wealth and leisure, with wide relations, and by his
+parentage and bringing-up worthy of all confidence.
+
+"Which means," Martin commented, cynically, to his sister, "that
+I am not likely to misappropriate the funds, or go blabbing to
+our Charge d'Affaires here."
+
+The whole thing was being carried out behind the back of the War
+Minister, Montero, a mistrusted member of the Ribiera Government,
+but difficult to get rid of at once. He was not to know anything
+of it till the troops under Barrios's command had the new rifle
+in their hands. The President-Dictator, whose position was very
+difficult, was alone in the secret.
+
+"How funny!" commented Martin's sister and confidante; to which
+the brother, with an air of best Parisian blague, had retorted:
+
+"It's immense! The idea of that Chief of the State engaged, with
+the help of private citizens, in digging a mine under his own
+indispensable War Minister. No!  We are unapproachable!" And he
+laughed immoderately.
+
+Afterwards his sister was surprised at the earnestness and
+ability he displayed in carrying out his mission, which
+circumstances made delicate, and his want of special knowledge
+rendered difficult. She had never seen Martin take so much
+trouble about anything in his whole life.
+
+"It amuses me," he had explained, briefly. "I am beset by a lot
+of swindlers trying to sell all sorts of gaspipe weapons. They
+are charming; they invite me to expensive luncheons; I keep up
+their hopes; it's extremely entertaining. Meanwhile, the real
+affair is being carried through in quite another quarter."
+
+When the business was concluded he declared suddenly his
+intention of seeing the precious consignment delivered safely in
+Sulaco. The whole burlesque business, he thought, was worth
+following up to the end.  He mumbled his excuses, tugging at his
+golden beard, before the acute young lady who (after the first
+wide stare of astonishment) looked at him with narrowed eyes, and
+pronounced slowly--
+
+"I believe you want to see Antonia."
+
+"What Antonia?" asked the Costaguana boulevardier, in a vexed and
+disdainful tone. He shrugged his shoulders, and spun round on his
+heel. His sister called out after him joyously--
+
+"The Antonia you used to know when she wore her hair in two
+plaits down her back."
+
+He had known her some eight years since, shortly before the
+Avellanos had left Europe for good, as a tall girl of sixteen,
+youthfully austere, and of a character already so formed that she
+ventured to treat slightingly his pose of disabused wisdom. On
+one occasion, as though she had lost all patience, she flew out
+at him about the aimlessness of his life and the levity of his
+opinions. He was twenty then, an only son, spoiled by his adoring
+family. This attack disconcerted him so greatly that he had
+faltered in his affectation of amused superiority before that
+insignificant chit of a school-girl.  But the impression left was
+so strong that ever since all the girl friends of his sisters
+recalled to him Antonia Avellanos by some faint resemblance, or
+by the great force of contrast. It was, he told himself, like a
+ridiculous fatality. And, of course, in the news the Decouds
+received regularly from Costaguana, the name of their friends,
+the Avellanos, cropped up frequently--the arrest and the
+abominable treatment of the ex-Minister, the dangers and
+hardships endured by the family, its withdrawal in poverty to
+Sulaco, the death of the mother.
+
+The Monterist pronunciamento had taken place before Martin Decoud
+reached Costaguana. He came out in a roundabout way, through
+Magellan's Straits by the main line and the West Coast Service of
+the O.S.N.  Company. His precious consignment arrived just in
+time to convert the first feelings of consternation into a mood
+of hope and resolution. Publicly he was made much of by the
+familias principales. Privately Don Jose, still shaken and weak,
+embraced him with tears in his eyes.
+
+"You have come out yourself! No less could be expected from a
+Decoud. Alas! our worst fears have been realized," he moaned,
+affectionately. And again he hugged his god-son. This was indeed
+the time for men of intellect and conscience to rally round the
+endangered cause.
+
+It was then that Martin Decoud, the adopted child of Western
+Europe, felt the absolute change of atmosphere.  He submitted to
+being embraced and talked to without a word. He was moved in
+spite of himself by that note of passion and sorrow unknown on
+the more refined stage of European politics. But when the tall
+Antonia, advancing with her light step in the dimness of the big
+bare Sala of the Avellanos house, offered him her hand (in her
+emancipated way), and murmured, "I am glad to see you here, Don
+Martin," he felt how impossible it would be to tell these two
+people that he had intended to go away by the next month's
+packet. Don Jose, meantime, continued his praises. Every
+accession added to public confidence, and, besides, what an
+example to the young men at home from the brilliant defender of
+the country's regeneration, the worthy expounder of the party's
+political faith before the world!  Everybody had read the
+magnificent article in the famous Parisian Review. The world was
+now informed:  and the author's appearance at this moment was
+like a public act of faith. Young Decoud felt overcome by a
+feeling of impatient confusion. His plan had been to return by
+way of the United States through California, visit Yellowstone
+Park, see Chicago, Niagara, have a look at Canada, perhaps make a
+short stay in New York, a longer one in Newport, use his letters
+of introduction. The pressure of Antonia's hand was so frank, the
+tone of her voice was so unexpectedly unchanged in its approving
+warmth, that all he found to say after his low bow was--
+
+"I am inexpressibly grateful for your welcome; but why need a man
+be thanked for returning to his native country? I am sure Dona
+Antonia does not think so."
+
+"Certainly not, senor," she said, with that perfectly calm
+openness of manner which characterized all her utterances. "But
+when he returns, as you return, one may be glad--for the sake of
+both."
+
+Martin Decoud said nothing of his plans. He not only never
+breathed a word of them to any one, but only a fortnight later
+asked the mistress of the Casa Gould (where he had of course
+obtained admission at once), leaning forward in his chair with an
+air of well-bred familiarity, whether she could not detect in him
+that day a marked change--an air, he explained, of more excellent
+gravity. At this Mrs. Gould turned her face full towards him with
+the silent inquiry of slightly widened eyes and the merest ghost
+of a smile, an habitual movement with her, which was very
+fascinating to men by something subtly devoted, finely
+self-forgetful in its lively readiness of attention. Because,
+Decoud continued imperturbably, he felt no longer an idle
+cumberer of the earth. She was, he assured her, actually
+beholding at that moment the Journalist of Sulaco. At once Mrs.
+Gould glanced towards Antonia, posed upright in the corner of a
+high, straight-backed Spanish sofa, a large black fan waving
+slowly against the curves of her fine figure, the tips of crossed
+feet peeping from under the hem of the black skirt.  Decoud's
+eyes also remained fixed there, while in an undertone he added
+that Miss Avellanos was quite aware of his new and unexpected
+vocation, which in Costaguana was generally the speciality of
+half-educated negroes and wholly penniless lawyers. Then,
+confronting with a sort of urbane effrontery Mrs.  Gould's gaze,
+now turned sympathetically upon himself, he breathed out the
+words, "Pro Patria!"
+
+What had happened was that he had all at once yielded to Don
+Jose's pressing entreaties to take the direction of a newspaper
+that would "voice the aspirations of the province." It had been
+Don Jose's old and cherished idea. The necessary plant (on a
+modest scale) and a large consignment of paper had been received
+from America some time before; the right man alone was wanted.
+Even Senor Moraga in Sta. Marta had not been able to find one,
+and the matter was now becoming pressing; some organ was
+absolutely needed to counteract the effect of the lies
+disseminated by the Monterist press: the atrocious calumnies, the
+appeals to the people calling upon them to rise with their knives
+in their hands and put an end once for all to the Blancos, to
+these Gothic remnants, to these sinister mummies, these impotent
+paraliticos, who plotted with foreigners for the surrender of the
+lands and the slavery of the people.
+
+The clamour of this Negro Liberalism frightened Senor Avellanos.
+A newspaper was the only remedy.  And now that the right man had
+been found in Decoud, great black letters appeared painted
+between the windows above the arcaded ground floor of a house on
+the Plaza. It was next to Anzani's great emporium of boots,
+silks, ironware, muslins, wooden toys, tiny silver arms, legs,
+heads, hearts (for ex-voto offerings), rosaries, champagne,
+women's hats, patent medicines, even a few dusty books in paper
+covers and mostly in the French language. The big black letters
+formed the words, "Offices of the Porvenir." From these offices a
+single folded sheet of Martin's journalism issued three times a
+week; and the sleek yellow Anzani prowling in a suit of ample
+black and carpet slippers, before the many doors of his
+establishment, greeted by a deep, side-long inclination of his
+body the Journalist of Sulaco going to and fro on the business of
+his august calling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+PERHAPS it was in the exercise of his calling that he had come to
+see the troops depart. The Porvenir of the day after next would
+no doubt relate the event, but its editor, leaning his side
+against the landau, seemed to look at nothing. The front rank of
+the company of infantry drawn up three deep across the shore end
+of the jetty when pressed too close would bring their bayonets to
+the charge ferociously, with an awful rattle; and then the crowd
+of spectators swayed back bodily, even under the noses of the big
+white mules. Notwithstanding the great multitude there was only a
+low, muttering noise; the dust hung in a brown haze, in which the
+horsemen, wedged in the throng here and there, towered from the
+hips upwards, gazing all one way over the heads. Almost every one
+of them had mounted a friend, who steadied himself with both
+hands grasping his shoulders from behind; and the rims of their
+hats touching, made like one disc sustaining the cones of two
+pointed crowns with a double face underneath. A hoarse mozo would
+bawl out something to an acquaintance in the ranks, or a woman
+would shriek suddenly the word Adios!  followed by the Christian
+name of a man.
+
+General Barrios, in a shabby blue tunic and white peg-top
+trousers falling upon strange red boots, kept his head uncovered
+and stooped slightly, propping himself up with a thick stick. No!
+He had earned enough military glory to satiate any man, he
+insisted to Mrs.  Gould, trying at the same time to put an air of
+gallantry into his attitude. A few jetty hairs hung sparsely from
+his upper lip, he had a salient nose, a thin, long jaw, and a
+black silk patch over one eye. His other eye, small and deep-set,
+twinkled erratically in all directions, aimlessly affable. The
+few European spectators, all men, who had naturally drifted into
+the neighbourhood of the Gould carriage, betrayed by the
+solemnity of their faces their impression that the general must
+have had too much punch (Swedish punch, imported in bottles by
+Anzani) at the Amarilla Club before he had started with his Staff
+on a furious ride to the harbour. But Mrs.  Gould bent forward,
+self-possessed, and declared her conviction that still more glory
+awaited the general in the near future.
+
+"Senora!" he remonstrated, with great feeling, "in the name of
+God, reflect! How can there be any glory for a man like me in
+overcoming that bald-headed embustero with the dyed moustaches?"
+
+Pablo Ignacio Barrios, son of a village alcalde, general of
+division, commanding in chief the Occidental Military district,
+did not frequent the higher society of the town. He preferred the
+unceremonious gatherings of men where he could tell jaguar-hunt
+stories, boast of his powers with the lasso, with which he could
+perform extremely difficult feats of the sort "no married man
+should attempt," as the saying goes amongst the llaneros; relate
+tales of extraordinary night rides, encounters with wild bulls,
+struggles with crocodiles, adventures in the great forests,
+crossings of swollen rivers. And it was not mere boastfulness
+that prompted the general's reminiscences, but a genuine love of
+that wild life which he had led in his young days before he
+turned his back for ever on the thatched roof of the parental
+tolderia in the woods. Wandering away as far as Mexico he had
+fought against the French by the side (as he said) of Juarez, and
+was the only military man of Costaguana who had ever encountered
+European troops in the field. That fact shed a great lustre upon
+his name till it became eclipsed by the rising star of Montero.
+All his life he had been an inveterate gambler.  He alluded
+himself quite openly to the current story how once, during some
+campaign (when in command of a brigade), he had gambled away his
+horses, pistols, and accoutrements, to the very epaulettes,
+playing monte with his colonels the night before the battle.
+Finally, he had sent under escort his sword (a presentation
+sword, with a gold hilt) to the town in the rear of his position
+to be immediately pledged for five hundred pesetas with a sleepy
+and frightened shop-keeper. By daybreak he had lost the last of
+that money, too, when his only remark, as he rose calmly, was,
+"Now let us go and fight to the death." From that time he had
+become aware that a general could lead his troops into battle
+very well with a simple stick in his hand. "It has been my custom
+ever since," he would say.
+
+He was always overwhelmed with debts; even during the periods of
+splendour in his varied fortunes of a Costaguana general, when he
+held high military commands, his gold-laced uniforms were almost
+always in pawn with some tradesman. And at last, to avoid the
+incessant difficulties of costume caused by the anxious lenders,
+he had assumed a disdain of military trappings, an eccentric
+fashion of shabby old tunics, which had become like a second
+nature. But the faction Barrios joined needed to fear no
+political betrayal. He was too much of a real soldier for the
+ignoble traffic of buying and selling victories. A member of the
+foreign diplomatic body in Sta. Marta had once passed a judgment
+upon him: "Barrios is a man of perfect honesty and even of some
+talent for war, mais il manque de tenue." After the triumph of
+the Ribierists he had obtained the reputedly lucrative Occidental
+command, mainly through the exertions of his creditors (the Sta.
+Marta shopkeepers, all great politicians), who moved heaven and
+earth in his interest publicly, and privately besieged Senor
+Moraga, the influential agent of the San Tome mine, with the
+exaggerated lamentations that if the general were passed over,
+"We shall all be ruined." An incidental but favourable mention of
+his name in Mr. Gould senior's long correspondence with his son
+had something to do with his appointment, too; but most of all
+undoubtedly his established political honesty. No one questioned
+the personal bravery of the Tiger-killer, as the populace called
+him. He was, however, said to be unlucky in the field--but this
+was to be the beginning of an era of peace. The soldiers liked
+him for his humane temper, which was like a strange and precious
+flower unexpectedly blooming on the hotbed of corrupt
+revolutions; and when he rode slowly through the streets during
+some military display, the contemptuous good humour of his
+solitary eye roaming over the crowds extorted the acclamations of
+the populace. The women of that class especially seemed
+positively fascinated by the long drooping nose, the peaked chin,
+the heavy lower lip, the black silk eyepatch and band slanting
+rakishly over the forehead.  His high rank always procured an
+audience of Caballeros for his sporting stories, which he
+detailed very well with a simple, grave enjoyment. As to the
+society of ladies, it was irksome by the restraints it imposed
+without any equivalent, as far as he could see. He had not,
+perhaps, spoken three times on the whole to Mrs.  Gould since he
+had taken up his high command; but he had observed her frequently
+riding with the Senor Administrador, and had pronounced that
+there was more sense in her little bridle-hand than in all the
+female heads in Sulaco. His impulse had been to be very civil on
+parting to a woman who did not wobble in the saddle, and happened
+to be the wife of a personality very important to a man always
+short of money. He even pushed his attentions so far as to desire
+the aide-de-camp at his side (a thick-set, short captain with a
+Tartar physiognomy) to bring along a corporal with a file of men
+in front of the carriage, lest the crowd in its backward surges
+should "incommode the mules of the senora." Then, turning to the
+small knot of silent Europeans looking on within earshot, he
+raised his voice protectingly--
+
+"Senores, have no apprehension. Go on quietly making your Ferro
+Carril--your railways, your telegraphs.  Your--There's enough
+wealth in Costaguana to pay for everything--or else you would not
+be here. Ha! ha! Don't mind this little picardia of my friend
+Montero. In a little while you shall behold his dyed moustaches
+through the bars of a strong wooden cage. Si, senores! Fear
+nothing, develop the country, work, work!"
+
+The little group of engineers received this exhortation without a
+word, and after waving his hand at them loftily, he addressed
+himself again to Mrs. Gould--
+
+"That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enterprising!  Work!
+Grow rich! To put Montero in a cage is my work; and when that
+insignificant piece of business is done, then, as Don Jose wishes
+us, we shall grow rich, one and all, like so many Englishmen,
+because it is money that saves a country, and--"
+
+But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying up from the
+direction of the jetty, interrupted his interpretation of Senor
+Avellanos's ideals. The general made a movement of impatience;
+the other went on talking to him insistently, with an air of
+respect. The horses of the Staff had been embarked, the steamer's
+gig was awaiting the general at the boat steps; and Barrios,
+after a fierce stare of his one eye, began to take leave. Don
+Jose roused himself for an appropriate phrase pronounced
+mechanically. The terrible strain of hope and fear was telling on
+him, and he seemed to husband the last sparks of his fire for
+those oratorical efforts of which even the distant Europe was to
+hear.  Antonia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head
+behind the raised fan; and young Decoud, though he felt the
+girl's eyes upon him, gazed away persistently, hooked on his
+elbow, with a scornful and complete detachment.  Mrs. Gould
+heroically concealed her dismay at the appearance of men and
+events so remote from her racial conventions, dismay too deep to
+be uttered in words even to her husband. She understood his
+voiceless reserve better now. Their confidential intercourse
+fell, not in moments of privacy, but precisely in public, when
+the quick meeting of their glances would comment upon some fresh
+turn of events. She had gone to his school of uncompromising
+silence, the only one possible, since so much that seemed
+shocking, weird, and grotesque in the working out of their
+purposes had to be accepted as normal in this country.
+Decidedly, the stately Antonia looked more mature and infinitely
+calm; but she would never have known how to reconcile the sudden
+sinkings of her heart with an amiable mobility of expression.
+
+Mrs. Gould smiled a good-bye at Barrios, nodded round to the
+Europeans (who raised their hats simultaneously) with an engaging
+invitation, "I hope to see you all presently, at home"; then said
+nervously to Decoud, "Get in, Don Martin," and heard him mutter
+to himself in French, as he opened the carriage door, "Le sort en
+est jete." She heard him with a sort of exasperation. Nobody
+ought to have known better than himself that the first cast of
+dice had been already thrown long ago in a most desperate game.
+Distant acclamations, words of command yelled out, and a roll of
+drums on the jetty greeted the departing general.  Something like
+a slight faintness came over her, and she looked blankly at
+Antonia's still face, wondering what would happen to Charley if
+that absurd man failed.  "A la casa, Ignacio," she cried at the
+motionless broad back of the coachman, who gathered the reins
+without haste, mumbling to himself under his breath, "Si, la
+casa. Si, si nina."
+
+The carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft track, the shadows
+fell long on the dusty little plain interspersed with dark
+bushes, mounds of turned-up earth, low wooden buildings with iron
+roofs of the Railway Company; the sparse row of telegraph poles
+strode obliquely clear of the town, bearing a single, almost
+invisible wire far into the great campo--like a slender,
+vibrating feeler of that progress waiting outside for a moment of
+peace to enter and twine itself about the weary heart of the
+land.
+
+The cafe window of the Albergo d'ltalia Una was full of sunburnt,
+whiskered faces of railway men. But at the other end of the
+house, the end of the Signori Inglesi, old Giorgio, at the door
+with one of his girls on each side, bared his bushy head, as
+white as the snows of Higuerota. Mrs. Gould stopped the carriage.
+She seldom failed to speak to her protege; moreover, the
+excitement, the heat, and the dust had made her thirsty. She
+asked for a glass of water. Giorgio sent the children indoors for
+it, and approached with pleasure expressed in his whole rugged
+countenance. It was not often that he had occasion to see his
+benefactress, who was also an Englishwoman--another title to his
+regard. He offered some excuses for his wife. It was a bad day
+with her; her oppressions--he tapped his own broad chest. She
+could not move from her chair that day.
+
+Decoud, ensconced in the corner of his seat, observed gloomily
+Mrs. Gould's old revolutionist, then, offhand--
+
+"Well, and what do you think of it all, Garibaldino?"
+
+Old Giorgio, looking at him with some curiosity, said civilly
+that the troops had marched very well. One-eyed Barrios and his
+officers had done wonders with the recruits in a short time.
+Those Indios, only caught the other day, had gone swinging past
+in double quick time, like bersaglieri; they looked well fed,
+too, and had whole uniforms. "Uniforms!" he repeated with a
+half-smile of pity. A look of grim retrospect stole over his
+piercing, steady eyes. It had been otherwise in his time when men
+fought against tyranny, in the forests of Brazil, or on the
+plains of Uruguay, starving on half-raw beef without salt, half
+naked, with often only a knife tied to a stick for a weapon. "And
+yet we used to prevail against the oppressor," he concluded,
+proudly.
+
+His animation fell; the slight gesture of his hand expressed
+discouragement; but he added that he had asked one of the
+sergeants to show him the new rifle.  There was no such weapon in
+his fighting days; and if Barrios could not--
+
+"Yes, yes," broke in Don Jose, almost trembling with eagerness.
+"We are safe. The good Senor Viola is a man of experience.
+Extremely deadly--is it not so? You have accomplished your
+mission admirably, my dear Martin."
+
+Decoud, lolling back moodily, contemplated old Viola.
+
+"Ah! Yes. A man of experience. But who are you for, really, in
+your heart?"
+
+Mrs. Gould leaned over to the children. Linda had brought out a
+glass of water on a tray, with extreme care; Giselle presented
+her with a bunch of flowers gathered hastily.
+
+"For the people," declared old Viola, sternly.
+
+"We are all for the people--in the end."
+
+"Yes," muttered old Viola, savagely. "And meantime they fight for
+you. Blind. Esclavos!"
+
+At that moment young Scarfe of the railway staff emerged from the
+door of the part reserved for the Signori Inglesi. He had come
+down to headquarters from somewhere up the line on a light
+engine, and had had just time to get a bath and change his
+clothes. He was a nice boy, and Mrs. Gould welcomed him.
+
+"It's a delightful surprise to see you, Mrs. Gould.  I've just
+come down. Usual luck. Missed everything, of course. This show is
+just over, and I hear there has been a great dance at Don Juste
+Lopez's last night. Is it true?"
+
+"The young patricians," Decoud began suddenly in his precise
+English, "have indeed been dancing before they started off to the
+war with the Great Pompey."
+
+Young Scarfe stared, astounded. "You haven't met before," Mrs.
+Gould intervened. "Mr. Decoud--Mr. Scarfe."
+
+"Ah! But we are not going to Pharsalia," protested Don Jose, with
+nervous haste, also in English.  "You should not jest like this,
+Martin."
+
+Antonia's breast rose and fell with a deeper breath.  The young
+engineer was utterly in the dark. "Great what?" he muttered,
+vaguely.
+
+"Luckily, Montero is not a Caesar," Decoud continued.  "Not the
+two Monteros put together would make a decent parody of a
+Caesar." He crossed his arms on his breast, looking at Senor
+Avellanos, who had returned to his immobility. "It is only you,
+Don Jose, who are a genuine old Roman--vir Romanus--eloquent and
+inflexible."
+
+Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced, young Scarfe
+had been eager to express his simple feelings.  In a loud and
+youthful tone he hoped that this Montero was going to be licked
+once for all and done with. There was no saying what would happen
+to the railway if the revolution got the upper hand. Perhaps it
+would have to be abandoned. It would not be the first railway
+gone to pot in Costaguana. "You know, it's one of their so-called
+national things," he ran on, wrinkling up his nose as if the word
+had a suspicious flavour to his profound experience of South
+American affairs. And, of course, he chatted with animation, it
+had been such an immense piece of luck for him at his age to get
+appointed on the staff "of a big thing like that--don't you
+know." It would give him the pull over a lot of chaps all through
+life, he asserted. "Therefore--down with Montero! Mrs. Gould."
+His artless grin disappeared slowly before the unanimous gravity
+of the faces turned upon him from the carriage; only that "old
+chap," Don Jose, presenting a motionless, waxy profile, stared
+straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not know the Avellanos very
+well. They did not give balls, and Antonia never appeared at a
+ground-floor window, as some other young ladies used to do
+attended by elder women, to chat with the caballeros on horseback
+in the Calle. The stares of these creoles did not matter much;
+but what on earth had come to Mrs.  Gould? She said, "Go on,
+Ignacio," and gave him a slow inclination of the head. He heard a
+short laugh from that round-faced, Frenchified fellow. He
+coloured up to the eyes, and stared at Giorgio Viola, who had
+fallen back with the children, hat in hand.
+
+"I shall want a horse presently," he said with some asperity to
+the old man.
+
+"Si, senor. There are plenty of horses," murmured the
+Garibaldino, smoothing absently, with his brown hands, the two
+heads, one dark with bronze glints, the other fair with a coppery
+ripple, of the two girls by his side. The returning stream of
+sightseers raised a great dust on the road. Horsemen noticed the
+group.  "Go to your mother," he said. "They are growing up as I
+am growing older, and there is nobody--"
+
+He looked at the young engineer and stopped, as if awakened from
+a dream; then, folding his arms on his breast, took up his usual
+position, leaning back in the doorway with an upward glance
+fastened on the white shoulder of Higuerota far away.
+
+In the carriage Martin Decoud, shifting his position as though he
+could not make himself comfortable, muttered as he swayed towards
+Antonia, "I suppose you hate me." Then in a loud voice he began
+to congratulate Don Jose upon all the engineers being convinced
+Ribierists. The interest of all those foreigners was gratifying.
+"You have heard this one. He is an enlightened well-wisher. It is
+pleasant to think that the prosperity of Costaguana is of some
+use to the world."
+
+"He is very young," Mrs. Gould remarked, quietly.
+
+"And so very wise for his age," retorted Decoud.  "But here we
+have the naked truth from the mouth of that child. You are right,
+Don Jose. The natural treasures of Costaguana are of importance
+to the progressive Europe represented by this youth, just as
+three hundred years ago the wealth of our Spanish fathers was a
+serious object to the rest of Europe--as represented by the bold
+buccaneers. There is a curse of futility upon our character: Don
+Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and materialism, high-sounding
+sentiments and a supine morality, violent efforts for an idea and
+a sullen acquiescence in every form of corruption.  We convulsed
+a continent for our independence only to become the passive prey
+of a democratic parody, the helpless victims of scoundrels and
+cut-throats, our institutions a mockery, our laws a farce--a
+Guzman Bento our master! And we have sunk so low that when a man
+like you has awakened our conscience, a stupid barbarian of a
+Montero--Great Heavens! a Montero!--becomes a deadly danger, and
+an ignorant, boastful Indio, like Barrios, is our defender."
+
+But Don Jose, disregarding the general indictment as though he
+had not heard a word of it, took up the defence of Barrios. The
+man was competent enough for his special task in the plan of
+campaign. It consisted in an offensive movement, with Cayta as
+base, upon the flank of the Revolutionist forces advancing from
+the south against Sta. Marta, which was covered by another army
+with the President-Dictator in its midst. Don Jose became quite
+animated with a great flow of speech, bending forward anxiously
+under the steady eyes of his daughter. Decoud, as if silenced by
+so much ardour, did not make a sound. The bells of the city were
+striking the hour of Oracion when the carriage rolled under the
+old gateway facing the harbour like a shapeless monument of
+leaves and stones. The rumble of wheels under the sonorous arch
+was traversed by a strange, piercing shriek, and Decoud, from his
+back seat, had a view of the people behind the carriage trudging
+along the road outside, all turning their heads, in sombreros and
+rebozos, to look at a locomotive which rolled quickly out of
+sight behind Giorgio Viola's house, under a white trail of steam
+that seemed to vanish in the breathless, hysterically prolonged
+scream of warlike triumph. And it was all like a fleeting vision,
+the shrieking ghost of a railway engine fleeing across the frame
+of the archway, behind the startled movement of the people
+streaming back from a military spectacle with silent footsteps on
+the dust of the road. It was a material train returning from the
+Campo to the palisaded yards. The empty cars rolled lightly on
+the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor of the
+ground.   The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with the
+salute of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before
+entering the yard; and when the ear-splitting screech of the
+steam-whistle for the brakes had stopped, a series of hard,
+battering shocks, mingled with the clanking of chain-couplings,
+made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters under the vault of the
+gate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+THE Gould carriage was the first to return from the harbour to
+the empty town. On the ancient pavement, laid out in patterns,
+sunk into ruts and holes, the portly Ignacio, mindful of the
+springs of the Parisian-built landau, had pulled up to a walk,
+and Decoud in his corner contemplated moodily the inner aspect of
+the gate. The squat turreted sides held up between them a mass of
+masonry with bunches of grass growing at the top, and a grey,
+heavily scrolled, armorial shield of stone above the apex of the
+arch with the arms of Spain nearly smoothed out as if in
+readiness for some new device typical of the impending progress.
+
+The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to augment
+Decoud's irritation. He muttered something to himself, then began
+to talk aloud in curt, angry phrases thrown at the silence of the
+two women. They did not look at him at all; while Don Jose, with
+his semi-translucent, waxy complexion, overshadowed by the soft
+grey hat, swayed a little to the jolts of the carriage by the
+side of Mrs. Gould.
+
+"This sound puts a new edge on a very old truth."
+
+Decoud spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio on the box
+above him; the old coachman, with his broad back filling a short,
+silver-braided jacket, had a big pair of ears, whose thick rims
+stood well away from his cropped head.
+
+"Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the principle
+is old."
+
+He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began afresh with a
+sidelong glance at Antonia--
+
+"No, but just imagine our forefathers in morions and corselets
+drawn up outside this gate, and a band of adventurers just landed
+from their ships in the harbour there. Thieves, of course.
+Speculators, too. Their expeditions, each one, were the
+speculations of grave and reverend persons in England. That is
+history, as that absurd sailor Mitchell is always saying."
+
+"Mitchell's arrangements for the embarkation of the troops were
+excellent!" exclaimed Don Jose.
+
+"That!--that! oh, that's really the work of that Genoese seaman!
+But to return to my noises; there used to be in the old days the
+sound of trumpets outside that gate. War trumpets! I'm sure they
+were trumpets.  I have read somewhere that Drake, who was the
+greatest of these men, used to dine alone in his cabin on board
+ship to the sound of trumpets. In those days this town was full
+of wealth. Those men came to take it. Now the whole land is like
+a treasure-house, and all these people are breaking into it,
+whilst we are cutting each other's throats. The only thing that
+keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they'll come to an
+agreement some day--and by the time we've settled our quarrels
+and become decent and honourable, there'll be nothing left for
+us. It has always been the same. We are a wonderful people, but
+it has always been our fate to be"--he did not say "robbed," but
+added, after a pause--"exploited!"
+
+Mrs. Gould said, "Oh, this is unjust!" And Antonia interjected,
+"Don't answer him, Emilia. He is attacking me."
+
+"You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos!" Decoud
+answered.
+
+And then the carriage stopped before the door of the Casa Gould.
+The young man offered his hand to the ladies. They went in first
+together; Don Jose walked by the side of Decoud, and the gouty
+old porter tottered after them with some light wraps on his arm.
+
+Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journalist of
+Sulaco.
+
+"The Porvenir must have a long and confident article upon Barrios
+and the irresistibleness of his army of Cayta! The moral effect
+should be kept up in the country. We must cable encouraging
+extracts to Europe and the United States to maintain a favourable
+impression abroad."
+
+Decoud muttered, "Oh, yes, we must comfort our friends, the
+speculators."
+
+The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen of plants in
+vases along the balustrade, holding out motionless blossoms, and
+all the glass doors of the reception-rooms thrown open. A jingle
+of spurs died out at the further end.
+
+Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft tone to
+the passing ladies, "The Senor Administrador is just back from
+the mountain."
+
+In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish and modern
+European furniture making as if different centres under the high
+white spread of the ceiling, the silver and porcelain of the
+tea-service gleamed among a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit
+of a lady's boudoir, putting in a note of feminine and intimate
+delicacy.
+
+Don Jose in his rocking-chair placed his hat on his lap, and
+Decoud walked up and down the whole length of the room, passing
+between tables loaded with knick-knacks and almost disappearing
+behind the high backs of leathern sofas. He was thinking of the
+angry face of Antonia; he was confident that he would make his
+peace with her. He had not stayed in Sulaco to quarrel with
+Antonia.
+
+Martin Decoud was angry with himself. All he saw and heard going
+on around him exasperated the preconceived views of his European
+civilization. To contemplate revolutions from the distance of the
+Parisian Boulevards was quite another matter. Here on the spot it
+was not possible to dismiss their tragic comedy with the
+expression, "Quelle farce!"
+
+The reality of the political action, such as it was, seemed
+closer, and acquired poignancy by Antonia's belief in the cause.
+Its crudeness hurt his feelings. He was surprised at his own
+sensitiveness.
+
+"I suppose I am more of a Costaguanero than I would have believed
+possible," he thought to himself.
+
+His disdain grew like a reaction of his scepticism against the
+action into which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia.
+He soothed himself by saying he was not a patriot, but a lover.
+
+The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank low before the
+little tea-table. Antonia took up her usual place at the
+reception hour--the corner of a leathern couch, with a rigid
+grace in her pose and a fan in her hand. Decoud, swerving from
+the straight line of his march, came to lean over the high back
+of her seat.
+
+For a long time he talked into her ear from behind, softly, with
+a half smile and an air of apologetic familiarity.  Her fan lay
+half grasped on her knees. She never looked at him. His rapid
+utterance grew more and more insistent and caressing. At last he
+ventured a slight laugh.
+
+"No, really. You must forgive me. One must be serious sometimes."
+He paused. She turned her head a little; her blue eyes glided
+slowly towards him, slightly upwards, mollified and questioning.
+
+"You can't think I am serious when I call Montero a gran' bestia
+every second day in the Porvenir? That is not a serious
+occupation. No occupation is serious, not even when a bullet
+through the heart is the penalty of failure!"
+
+Her hand closed firmly on her fan.
+
+"Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense, may creep into
+thinking; some glimpse of truth. I mean some effective truth, for
+which there is no room in politics or journalism. I happen to
+have said what I thought. And you are angry! If you do me the
+kindness to think a little you will see that I spoke like a
+patriot."
+
+She opened her red lips for the first time, not unkindly.
+
+"Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used as they are. I
+suppose nobody is really disinterested, unless, perhaps, you, Don
+Martin."
+
+"God forbid! It's the last thing I should like you to believe of
+me." He spoke lightly, and paused.
+
+She began to fan herself with a slow movement without raising her
+hand. After a time he whispered passionately--
+
+"Antonia!"
+
+She smiled, and extended her hand after the English manner
+towards Charles Gould, who was bowing before her; while Decoud,
+with his elbows spread on the back of the sofa, dropped his eyes
+and murmured, "Bonjour."
+
+The Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine bent over his wife
+for a moment. They exchanged a few words, of which only the
+phrase, "The greatest enthusiasm," pronounced by Mrs. Gould,
+could be heard.
+
+"Yes," Decoud began in a murmur. "Even he!"
+
+"This is sheer calumny," said Antonia, not very severely.
+
+"You just ask him to throw his mine into the melting-pot for the
+great cause," Decoud whispered.
+
+Don Jose had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands cheerily. The
+excellent aspect of the troops and the great quantity of new
+deadly rifles on the shoulders of those brave men seemed to fill
+him with an ecstatic confidence.
+
+Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair, listened, but
+nothing could be discovered in his face except a kind and
+deferential attention.
+
+Meantime, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the room, stood
+looking out of one of the three long windows giving on the
+street. Decoud followed her. The window was thrown open, and he
+leaned against the thickness of the wall. The long folds of the
+damask curtain, falling straight from the broad brass cornice,
+hid him partly from the room. He folded his arms on his breast,
+and looked steadily at Antonia's profile.
+
+The people returning from the harbour filled the pavements; the
+shuffle of sandals and a low murmur of voices ascended to the
+window. Now and then a coach rolled slowly along the disjointed
+roadway of the Calle de la Constitucion. There were not many
+private carriages in Sulaco; at the most crowded hour on the
+Alameda they could be counted with one glance of the eye. The
+great family arks swayed on high leathern springs, full of pretty
+powdered faces in which the eyes looked intensely alive and
+black. And first Don Juste Lopez, the President of the Provincial
+Assembly, passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a
+black frock-coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a debate
+from a high tribune. Though they all raised their eyes, Antonia
+did not make the usual greeting gesture of a fluttered hand, and
+they affected not to see the two young people, Costaguaneros with
+European manners, whose eccentricities were discussed behind the
+barred windows of the first families in Sulaco. And then the
+widowed Senora Gavilaso de Valdes rolled by, handsome and
+dignified, in a great machine in which she used to travel to and
+from her country house, surrounded by an armed retinue in leather
+suits and big sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their
+saddles.  She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud,
+rich, and kind-hearted. Her second son, Jaime, had just gone off
+on the Staff of Barrios. The eldest, a worthless fellow of a
+moody disposition, filled Sulaco with the noise of his
+dissipations, and gambled heavily at the club. The two youngest
+boys, with yellow Ribierist cockades in their caps, sat on the
+front seat.  She, too, affected not to see the Senor Decoud
+talking publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention.
+And he not even her novio as far as the world knew!  Though, even
+in that case, it would have been scandal enough. But the
+dignified old lady, respected and admired by the first families,
+would have been still more shocked if she could have heard the
+words they were exchanging.
+
+"Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only one aim in the
+world."
+
+She made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head,
+still staring across the street at the Avellanos's house, grey,
+marked with decay, and with iron bars like a prison.
+
+"And it would be so easy of attainment," he continued, "this aim
+which, whether knowingly or not, I have always had in my
+heart--ever since the day when you snubbed me so horribly once in
+Paris, you remember."
+
+A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip that was on
+his side.
+
+"You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of Charlotte
+Corday in a schoolgirl's dress; a ferocious patriot. I suppose
+you would have stuck a knife into Guzman Bento?"
+
+She interrupted him. "You do me too much honour."
+
+"At any rate," he said, changing suddenly to a tone of bitter
+levity, "you would have sent me to stab him without compunction."
+
+"Ah, par exemple!" she murmured in a shocked tone.
+
+"Well," he argued, mockingly, "you do keep me here writing deadly
+nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already killed my self-respect.
+And you may imagine," he continued, his tone passing into light
+banter, "that Montero, should he be successful, would get even
+with me in the only way such a brute can get even with a man of
+intelligence who condescends to call him a gran' bestia three
+times a week. It's a sort of intellectual death; but there is the
+other one in the background for a journalist of my ability."
+
+"If he is successful!" said Antonia, thoughtfully.
+
+"You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread," Decoud
+replied, with a broad smile. "And the other Montero, the 'my
+trusted brother' of the proclamations, the guerrillero--haven't I
+written that he was taking the guests' overcoats and changing
+plates in Paris at our Legation in the intervals of spying on our
+refugees there, in the time of Rojas? He will wash out that
+sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you look annoyed? This
+is simply a bit of the biography of one of our great men. What do
+you think he will do to me? There is a certain convent wall round
+the corner of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You
+know? Opposite the door with the inscription, Intrada de la
+Sombra.' Appropriate, perhaps! That's where the uncle of our host
+gave up his Anglo-South-American soul. And, note, he might have
+run away. A man who has fought with weapons may run away. You
+might have let me go with Barrios if you had cared for me. I
+would have carried one of those rifles, in which Don Jose
+believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in the ranks of poor
+peons and Indios, that know nothing either of reason or politics.
+The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth would
+have been safer than that for which you made me stay here. When
+you make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your time in
+inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die."
+
+His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she
+stood motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down
+from her interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then--
+
+"I shall go to the wall," he said, with a sort of jocular
+desperation.
+
+Even that declaration did not make her look at him.  Her head
+remained still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avellanos,
+whose chipped pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation
+of dignity was hidden now by the gathering dusk of the street. In
+her whole figure her lips alone moved, forming the words--
+
+"Martin, you will make me cry."
+
+He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a
+sort of awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still
+stiffened about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes.
+The value of a sentence is in the personality which utters it,
+for nothing new can be said by man or woman; and those were the
+last words, it seemed to him, that could ever have been spoken by
+Antonia. He had never made it up with her so completely in all
+their intercourse of small encounters; but even before she had
+time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with a rigid
+grace, he had begun to plead--
+
+"My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is
+transported with joy. I won't say anything of my mother! Our
+mothers were like sisters. There is the mail-boat for the south
+next week--let us go.  That Moraga is a fool! A man like Montero
+is bribed. It's the practice of the country. It's tradition
+--it's politics. Read 'Fifty Years of Misrule.'"
+
+"Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes--"
+
+"I have the greatest tenderness for your father," he began,
+hurriedly. "But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has miserably
+mismanaged this business. Perhaps your father did, too; I don't
+know. Montero was bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his
+share of this famous loan for national development. Why didn't
+the stupid Sta. Marta people give him a mission to Europe, or
+something? He would have taken five years' salary in advance, and
+gone on loafing in Paris, this stupid, ferocious Indio!"
+
+"The man," she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before this
+outburst, "was intoxicated with vanity.  We had all the
+information, not from Moraga only; from others, too. There was
+his brother intriguing, too."
+
+"Oh, yes!" he said. "Of course you know. You know everything. You
+read all the correspondence, you write all the papers--all those
+State papers that are inspired here, in this room, in blind
+deference to a theory of political purity. Hadn't you Charles
+Gould before your eyes? Rey de Sulaco! He and his mine are the
+practical demonstration of what could have been done. Do you
+think he succeeded by his fidelity to a theory of virtue? And all
+those railway people, with their honest work! Of course, their
+work is honest! But what if you cannot work honestly till the
+thieves are satisfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told this
+Sir John what's-his-name that Montero had to be bought off--he
+and all his Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve?
+He ought to have been bought off with his own stupid weight of
+gold--his weight of gold, I tell you, boots, sabre, spurs, cocked
+hat, and all."
+
+She shook her head slightly. "It was impossible," she murmured.
+
+"He wanted the whole lot? What?"
+
+She was facing him now in the deep recess of the window, very
+close and motionless. Her lips moved rapidly. Decoud, leaning his
+back against the wall, listened with crossed arms and lowered
+eyelids. He drank the tones of her even voice, and watched the
+agitated life of her throat, as if waves of emotion had run from
+her heart to pass out into the air in her reasonable words. He
+also had his aspirations, he aspired to carry her away out of
+these deadly futilities of pronunciamientos and reforms. All this
+was wrong--utterly wrong; but she fascinated him, and sometimes
+the sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the charm, replace the
+fascination by a sudden unwilling thrill of interest. Some women
+hovered, as it were, on the threshold of genius, he reflected.
+They did not want to know, or think, or understand. Passion stood
+for all that, and he was ready to believe that some startlingly
+profound remark, some appreciation of character, or a judgment
+upon an event, bordered on the miraculous.  In the mature Antonia
+he could see with an extraordinary vividness the austere
+schoolgirl of the earlier days. She seduced his attention;
+sometimes he could not restrain a murmur of assent; now and then
+he advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they began to
+argue; the curtain half hid them from the people in the sala.
+
+Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of shadow between
+the houses, lit up vaguely by the glimmer of street lamps,
+ascended the evening silence of Sulaco; the silence of a town
+with few carriages, of unshod horses, and a softly sandalled
+population. The windows of the Casa Gould flung their shining
+parallelograms upon the house of the Avellanos. Now and then a
+shuffle of feet passed below with the pulsating red glow of a
+cigarette at the foot of the walls; and the night air, as if
+cooled by the snows of Higuerota, refreshed their faces.
+
+"We Occidentals," said Martin Decoud, using the usual term the
+provincials of Sulaco applied to themselves, "have been always
+distinct and separated. As long as we hold Cayta nothing can
+reach us. In all our troubles no army has marched over those
+mountains.  A revolution in the central provinces isolates us at
+once.  Look how complete it is now! The news of Barrios' movement
+will be cabled to the United States, and only in that way will it
+reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other seaboard. We have
+the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the purest blood in
+our great families, the most laborious population. The Occidental
+Province should stand alone. The early Federalism was not bad for
+us. Then came this union which Don Henrique Gould resisted. It
+opened the road to tyranny; and, ever since, the rest of
+Costaguana hangs like a millstone round our necks. The Occidental
+territory is large enough to make any man's country.  Look at the
+mountains! Nature itself seems to cry to us, 'Separate!'"
+
+She made an energetic gesture of negation. A silence fell.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know it's contrary to the doctrine laid down in the
+'History of Fifty Years' Misrule.' I am only trying to be
+sensible. But my sense seems always to give you cause for
+offence. Have I startled you very much with this perfectly
+reasonable aspiration?"
+
+She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but the idea
+shocked her early convictions. Her patriotism was larger. She had
+never considered that possibility.
+
+"It may yet be the means of saving some of your convictions," he
+said, prophetically.
+
+She did not answer. She seemed tired. They leaned side by side on
+the rail of the little balcony, very friendly, having exhausted
+politics, giving themselves up to the silent feeling of their
+nearness, in one of those profound pauses that fall upon the
+rhythm of passion.  Towards the plaza end of the street the
+glowing coals in the brazeros of the market women cooking their
+evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the pavement.  A man
+appeared without a sound in the light of a street lamp, showing
+the coloured inverted triangle of his bordered poncho, square on
+his shoulders, hanging to a point below his knees. From the
+harbour end of the Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping
+mount, gleaming silver-grey abreast each lamp under the dark
+shape of the rider.
+
+"Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores," said Decoud,
+gently, "coming in all his splendour after his work is done. The
+next great man of Sulaco after Don Carlos Gould. But he is
+good-natured, and let me make friends with him."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Antonia. "How did you make friends?"
+
+"A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular pulse, and
+this man is one of the leaders of the populace.  A journalist
+ought to know remarkable men--and this man is remarkable in his
+way."
+
+"Ah, yes!" said Antonia, thoughtfully. "It is known that this
+Italian has a great influence."
+
+The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam of dim light on
+the shining broad quarters of the grey mare, on a bright heavy
+stirrup, on a long silver spur; but the short flick of yellowish
+flame in the dusk was powerless against the muffled-up
+mysteriousness of the dark figure with an invisible face
+concealed by a great sombrero.
+
+Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the balcony, side by
+side, touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness
+of the street, and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs.
+This was a tete-a-tete of extreme impropriety; something of which
+in the whole extent of the Republic only the extraordinary
+Antonia could be capable--the poor, motherless girl, never
+accompanied, with a careless father, who had thought only of
+making her learned. Even Decoud himself seemed to feel that this
+was as much as he could expect of having her to himself
+till--till the revolution was over and he could carry her off to
+Europe, away from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly
+seemed even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one Montero
+there would be another, the lawlessness of a populace of all
+colours and races, barbarism, irremediable tyranny. As the great
+Liberator Bolivar had said in the bitterness of his spirit,
+"America is ungovernable.  Those who worked for her independence
+have ploughed the sea." He did not care, he declared boldly; he
+seized every opportunity to tell her that though she had managed
+to make a Blanco journalist of him, he was no patriot. First of
+all, the word had no sense for cultured minds, to whom the
+narrowness of every belief is odious; and secondly, in connection
+with the everlasting troubles of this unhappy country it was
+hopelessly besmirched; it had been the cry of dark barbarism, the
+cloak of lawlessness, of crimes, of rapacity, of simple thieving.
+
+He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance.  He had no
+need to drop his voice; it had been low all the time, a mere
+murmur in the silence of dark houses with their shutters closed
+early against the night air, as is the custom of Sulaco. Only the
+sala of the Casa Gould flung out defiantly the blaze of its four
+windows, the bright appeal of light in the whole dumb obscurity
+of the street. And the murmur on the little balcony went on after
+a short pause.
+
+"But we are labouring to change all that," Antonia protested. "It
+is exactly what we desire. It is our object. It is the great
+cause. And the word you despise has stood also for sacrifice, for
+courage, for constancy, for suffering. Papa, who--"
+
+"Ploughing the sea," interrupted Decoud, looking down.
+
+There was below the sound of hasty and ponderous footsteps.
+
+"Your uncle, the grand-vicar of the cathedral, has just turned
+under the gate," observed Decoud. "He said Mass for the troops in
+the Plaza this morning.  They had built for him an altar of
+drums, you know.  And they brought outside all the painted blocks
+to take the air. All the wooden saints stood militarily in a row
+at the top of the great flight of steps. They looked like a
+gorgeous escort attending the Vicar-General. I saw the great
+function from the windows of the Porvenir. He is amazing, your
+uncle, the last of the Corbelans. He glittered exceedingly in his
+vestments with a great crimson velvet cross down his back. And
+all the time our saviour Barrios sat in the Amarilla Club
+drinking punch at an open window. Esprit fort--our Barrios. I
+expected every moment your uncle to launch an excommunication
+there and then at the black eye-patch in the window across the
+Plaza. But not at all. Ultimately the troops marched off. Later
+Barrios came down with some of the officers, and stood with his
+uniform all unbuttoned, discoursing at the edge of the pavement.
+Suddenly your uncle appeared, no longer glittering, but all
+black, at the cathedral door with that threatening aspect he
+has--you know, like a sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look,
+strides over straight at the group of uniforms, and leads away
+the general by the elbow. He walked him for a quarter of an hour
+in the shade of a wall. Never let go his elbow for a moment,
+talking all the time with exaltation, and gesticulating with a
+long black arm. It was a curious scene. The officers seemed
+struck with astonishment.  Remarkable man, your missionary uncle.
+He hates an infidel much less than a heretic, and prefers a
+heathen many times to an infidel. He condescends graciously to
+call me a heathen, sometimes, you know."
+
+Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade, opening and
+shutting the fan gently; and Decoud talked a little nervously, as
+if afraid that she would leave him at the first pause. Their
+comparative isolation, the precious sense of intimacy, the slight
+contact of their arms, affected him softly; for now and then a
+tender inflection crept into the flow of his ironic murmurs.
+
+"Any slight sign of favour from a relative of yours is welcome,
+Antonia. And perhaps he understands me, after all! But I know
+him, too, our Padre Corbelan.  The idea of political honour,
+justice, and honesty for him consists in the restitution of the
+confiscated Church property. Nothing else could have drawn that
+fierce converter of savage Indians out of the wilds to work for
+the Ribierist cause! Nothing else but that wild hope!  He would
+make a pronunciamiento himself for such an object against any
+Government if he could only get followers! What does Don Carlos
+Gould think of that? But, of course, with his English
+impenetrability, nobody can tell what he thinks. Probably he
+thinks of nothing apart from his mine; of his 'Imperium in
+Imperio.' As to Mrs. Gould, she thinks of her schools, of her
+hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of every sick
+old man in the three villages. If you were to turn your head now
+you would see her extracting a report from that sinister doctor
+in a check shirt--what's his name? Monygham--or else catechising
+Don Pepe or perhaps listening to Padre Roman. They are all down
+here to-day--all her ministers of state. Well, she is a sensible
+woman, and perhaps Don Carlos is a sensible man. It's a part of
+solid English sense not to think too much; to see only what may
+be of practical use at the moment. These people are not like
+ourselves.  We have no political reason; we have political
+passions--sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular view of
+our personal advantage either practical or emotional.  No one is
+a patriot for nothing. The word serves us well. But I am
+clear-sighted, and I shall not use that word to you, Antonia! I
+have no patriotic illusions. I have only the supreme illusion of
+a lover."
+
+He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly, "That can lead one
+very far, though."
+
+Behind their backs the political tide that once in every
+twenty-four hours set with a strong flood through the Gould
+drawing-room could be heard, rising higher in a hum of voices.
+Men had been dropping in singly, or in twos and threes: the
+higher officials of the province, engineers of the railway,
+sunburnt and in tweeds, with the frosted head of their chief
+smiling with slow, humorous indulgence amongst the young eager
+faces. Scarfe, the lover of fandangos, had already slipped out in
+search of some dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the
+town. Don Juste Lopez, after taking his daughters home, had
+entered solemnly, in a black creased coat buttoned up under his
+spreading brown beard. The few members of the Provincial Assembly
+present clustered at once around their President to discuss the
+news of the war and the last proclamation of the rebel Montero,
+the miserable Montero, calling in the name of "a justly incensed
+democracy" upon all the Provincial Assemblies of the Republic to
+suspend their sittings till his sword had made peace and the will
+of the people could be consulted. It was practically an
+invitation to dissolve: an unheard-of audacity of that evil
+madman.
+
+The indignation ran high in the knot of deputies behind Jose
+Avellanos. Don Jose, lifting up his voice, cried out to them over
+the high back of his chair, "Sulaco has answered by sending
+to-day an army upon his flank. If all the other provinces show
+only half as much patriotism as we Occidentals--"
+
+A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrating treble of
+the life and soul of the party. Yes! Yes!  This was true! A great
+truth! Sulaco was in the forefront, as ever! It was a boastful
+tumult, the hopefulness inspired by the event of the day breaking
+out amongst those caballeros of the Campo thinking of their
+herds, of their lands, of the safety of their families.
+Everything was at stake. . . . No! It was impossible that Montero
+should succeed! This criminal, this shameless Indio! The clamour
+continued for some time, everybody else in the room looking
+towards the group where Don Juste had put on his air of impartial
+solemnity as if presiding at a sitting of the Provincial
+Assembly. Decoud had turned round at the noise, and, leaning his
+back on the balustrade, shouted into the room with all the
+strength of his lungs, "Gran' bestia!"
+
+This unexpected cry had the effect of stilling the noise. All the
+eyes were directed to the window with an approving expectation;
+but Decoud had already turned his back upon the room, and was
+again leaning out over the quiet street.
+
+"This is the quintessence of my journalism; that is the supreme
+argument," he said to Antonia. "I have invented this definition,
+this last word on a great question. But I am no patriot. I am no
+more of a patriot than the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this
+Genoese who has done such great things for this harbour--this
+active usher-in of the material implements for our progress. You
+have heard Captain Mitchell confess over and over again that till
+he got this man he could never tell how long it would take to
+unload a ship.  That is bad for progress. You have seen him pass
+by after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls in
+some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a fortunate fellow!
+His work is an exercise of personal powers; his leisure is spent
+in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation. And he likes
+it, too. Can anybody be more fortunate? To be feared and admired
+is--"
+
+"And are these your highest aspirations, Don Martin?" interrupted
+Antonia.
+
+"I was speaking of a man of that sort," said Decoud, curtly. "The
+heroes of the world have been feared and admired. What more could
+he want?"
+
+Decoud had often felt his familiar habit of ironic thought fall
+shattered against Antonia's gravity. She irritated him as if she,
+too, had suffered from that inexplicable feminine obtuseness
+which stands so often between a man and a woman of the more
+ordinary sort.  But he overcame his vexation at once. He was very
+far from thinking Antonia ordinary, whatever verdict his
+scepticism might have pronounced upon himself.  With a touch of
+penetrating tenderness in his voice he assured her that his only
+aspiration was to a felicity so high that it seemed almost
+unrealizable on this earth.
+
+She coloured invisibly, with a warmth against which the breeze
+from the sierra seemed to have lost its cooling power in the
+sudden melting of the snows. His whisper could not have carried
+so far, though there was enough ardour in his tone to melt a
+heart of ice. Antonia turned away abruptly, as if to carry his
+whispered assurance into the room behind, full of light, noisy
+with voices.
+
+The tide of political speculation was beating high within the
+four walls of the great sala, as if driven beyond the marks by a
+great gust of hope. Don Juste's fan-shaped beard was still the
+centre of loud and animated discussions. There was a
+self-confident ring in all the voices. Even the few Europeans
+around Charles Gould--a Dane, a couple of Frenchmen, a discreet
+fat German, smiling, with down-cast eyes, the representatives of
+those material interests that had got a footing in Sulaco under
+the protecting might of the San Tome mine--had infused a lot of
+good humour into their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they
+were paying their court, was the visible sign of the stability
+that could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolutions.
+They felt hopeful about their various undertakings.  One of the
+two Frenchmen, small, black, with glittering eyes lost in an
+immense growth of bushy beard, waved his tiny brown hands and
+delicate wrists.  He had been travelling in the interior of the
+province for a syndicate of European capitalists. His forcible
+"Monsieur l' Administrateur" returning every minute shrilled
+above the steady hum of conversations. He was relating his
+discoveries. He was ecstatic. Charles Gould glanced down at him
+courteously.
+
+At a given moment of these necessary receptions it was Mrs.
+Gould's habit to withdraw quietly into a little drawing-room,
+especially her own, next to the great sala. She had risen, and,
+waiting for Antonia, listened with a slightly worried
+graciousness to the engineer-in-chief of the railway, who stooped
+over her, relating slowly, without the slightest gesture,
+something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a humorous
+twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the room to join Mrs.
+Gould, turned her head over her shoulder towards Decoud, only for
+a moment.
+
+"Why should any one of us think his aspirations unrealizable?"
+she said, rapidly.
+
+"I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia," he answered,
+through clenched teeth, then bowed very low, a little distantly.
+
+The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his amusing story.
+The humours of railway building in South America appealed to his
+keen appreciation of the absurd, and he told his instances of
+ignorant prejudice and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs.
+Gould gave him all her attention as he walked by her side
+escorting the ladies out of the room. Finally all three passed
+unnoticed through the glass doors in the gallery.  Only a tall
+priest stalking silently in the noise of the sala checked himself
+to look after them. Father Corbelan, whom Decoud had seen from
+the balcony turning into the gateway of the Casa Gould, had
+addressed no one since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane
+accentuated the tallness of his stature; he carried his powerful
+torso thrown forward; and the straight, black bar of his joined
+eyebrows, the pugnacious outline of the bony face, the white spot
+of a scar on the bluish shaven cheeks (a testimonial to his
+apostolic zeal from a party of unconverted Indians), suggested
+something unlawful behind his priesthood, the idea of a chaplain
+of bandits.
+
+He separated his bony, knotted hands clasped behind his back, to
+shake his finger at Martin.
+
+Decoud had stepped into the room after Antonia.  But he did not
+go far. He had remained just within, against the curtain, with an
+expression of not quite genuine gravity, like a grown-up person
+taking part in a game of children. He gazed quietly at the
+threatening finger.
+
+"I have watched your reverence converting General Barrios by a
+special sermon on the Plaza," he said, without making the
+slightest movement.
+
+"What miserable nonsense!" Father Corbelan's deep voice resounded
+all over the room, making all the heads turn on the shoulders.
+"The man is a drunkard.  Senores, the God of your General is a
+bottle!"
+
+His contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy suspension of
+every sound, as if the self-confidence of the gathering had been
+staggered by a blow. But nobody took up Father Corbelan's
+declaration.
+
+It was known that Father Corbelan had come out of the wilds to
+advocate the sacred rights of the Church with the same fanatical
+fearlessness with which he had gone preaching to bloodthirsty
+savages, devoid of human compassion or worship of any kind.
+Rumours of legendary proportions told of his successes as a
+missionary beyond the eye of Christian men. He had baptized whole
+nations of Indians, living with them like a savage himself. It
+was related that the padre used to ride with his Indians for
+days, half naked, carrying a bullock-hide shield, and, no doubt,
+a long lance, too--who knows?  That he had wandered clothed in
+skins, seeking for proselytes somewhere near the snow line of the
+Cordillera.  Of these exploits Padre Corbelan himself was never
+known to talk. But he made no secret of his opinion that the
+politicians of Sta. Marta had harder hearts and more corrupt
+minds than the heathen to whom he had carried the word of God.
+His injudicious zeal for the temporal welfare of the Church was
+damaging the Ribierist cause. It was common knowledge that he had
+refused to be made titular bishop of the Occidental diocese till
+justice was done to a despoiled Church. The political Gefe of
+Sulaco (the same dignitary whom Captain Mitchell saved from the
+mob afterwards) hinted with naive cynicism that doubtless their
+Excellencies the Ministers sent the padre over the mountains to
+Sulaco in the worst season of the year in the hope that he would
+be frozen to death by the icy blasts of the high paramos. Every
+year a few hardy muleteers--men inured to exposure--were known to
+perish in that way. But what would you have?  Their Excellencies
+possibly had not realized what a tough priest he was. Meantime,
+the ignorant were beginning to murmur that the Ribierist reforms
+meant simply the taking away of the land from the people.  Some
+of it was to be given to foreigners who made the railway; the
+greater part was to go to the padres.
+
+These were the results of the Grand Vicar's zeal.  Even from the
+short allocution to the troops on the Plaza (which only the first
+ranks could have heard) he had not been able to keep out his
+fixed idea of an outraged Church waiting for reparation from a
+penitent country. The political Gefe had been exasperated.  But
+he could not very well throw the brother-in-law of Don Jose into
+the prison of the Cabildo. The chief magistrate, an easy-going
+and popular official, visited the Casa Gould, walking over after
+sunset from the Intendencia, unattended, acknowledging with
+dignified courtesy the salutations of high and low alike. That
+evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gould and had hissed
+out to him that he would have liked to deport the Grand Vicar out
+of Sulaco, anywhere, to some desert island, to the Isabels, for
+instance. "The one without water preferably--eh, Don Carlos?" he
+had added in a tone between jest and earnest. This uncontrollable
+priest, who had rejected his offer of the episcopal palace for a
+residence and preferred to hang his shabby hammock amongst the
+rubble and spiders of the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had
+taken into his head to advocate an unconditional pardon for
+Hernandez the Robber! And this was not enough; he seemed to have
+entered into communication with the most audacious criminal the
+country had known for years. The Sulaco police knew, of course,
+what was going on. Padre Corbelan had got hold of that reckless
+Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores, the only man fit for such an
+errand, and had sent a message through him.  Father Corbelan had
+studied in Rome, and could speak Italian. The Capataz was known
+to visit the old Dominican Convent at night. An old woman who
+served the Grand Vicar had heard the name of Hernandez
+pronounced; and only last Saturday afternoon the Capataz had been
+observed galloping out of town.  He did not return for two days.
+The police would have laid the Italian by the heels if it had not
+been for fear of the Cargadores, a turbulent body of men, quite
+apt to raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern
+Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the money in
+the pockets of the railway workmen. The populace was made
+restless by Father Corbelan's discourses.  And the first
+magistrate explained to Charles Gould that now the province was
+stripped of troops any outbreak of lawlessness would find the
+authorities with their boots off, as it were.
+
+Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair, smoking a long,
+thin cigar, not very far from Don Jose, with whom, bending over
+sideways, he exchanged a few words from time to time. He ignored
+the entrance of the priest, and whenever Father Corbelan's voice
+was raised behind him, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
+
+Father Corbelan had remained quite motionless for a time with
+that something vengeful in his immobility which seemed to
+characterize all his attitudes. A lurid glow of strong
+convictions gave its peculiar aspect to the black figure. But its
+fierceness became softened as the padre, fixing his eyes upon
+Decoud, raised his long, black arm slowly, impressively--
+
+"And you--you are a perfect heathen," he said, in a subdued, deep
+voice.
+
+He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the young man's
+breast. Decoud, very calm, felt the wall behind the curtain with
+the back of his head. Then, with his chin tilted well up, he
+smiled.
+
+"Very well," he agreed with the slightly weary nonchalance of a
+man well used to these passages. "But is it perhaps that you have
+not discovered yet what is the God of my worship? It was an
+easier task with our Barrios."
+
+The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement.  "You believe
+neither in stick nor stone," he said.
+
+"Nor bottle," added Decoud without stirring.  "Neither does the
+other of your reverence's confidants.  I mean the Capataz of the
+Cargadores. He does not drink. Your reading of my character does
+honour to your perspicacity. But why call me a heathen?"
+
+"True," retorted the priest. "You are ten times worse. A miracle
+could not convert you."
+
+"I certainly do not believe in miracles," said Decoud, quietly.
+Father Corbelan shrugged his high, broad shoulders doubtfully.
+
+"A sort of Frenchman--godless--a materialist," he pronounced
+slowly, as if weighing the terms of a careful analysis. "Neither
+the son of his own country nor of any other," he continued,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Scarcely human, in fact," Decoud commented under his breath, his
+head at rest against the wall, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling.
+
+"The victim of this faithless age," Father Corbelan resumed in a
+deep but subdued voice.
+
+"But of some use as a journalist." Decoud changed his pose and
+spoke in a more animated tone. "Has your worship neglected to
+read the last number of the Porvenir? I assure you it is just
+like the others. On the general policy it continues to call
+Montero a gran' bestia, and stigmatize his brother, the
+guerrillero, for a combination of lackey and spy. What could be
+more effective? In local affairs it urges the Provincial
+Government to enlist bodily into the national army the band of
+Hernandez the Robber--who is apparently the protege of the
+Church--or at least of the Grand Vicar. Nothing could be more
+sound."
+
+The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his square-toed
+shoes with big steel buckles. Again, with his hands clasped
+behind his back, he paced to and fro, planting his feet firmly.
+When he swung about, the skirt of his soutane was inflated
+slightly by the brusqueness of his movements.
+
+The great sala had been emptying itself slowly.  When the Gefe
+Politico rose to go, most of those still remaining stood up
+suddenly in sign of respect, and Don Jose Avellanos stopped the
+rocking of his chair. But the good-natured First Official made a
+deprecatory gesture, waved his hand to Charles Gould, and went
+out discreetly.
+
+In the comparative peace of the room the screaming "Monsieur
+l'Administrateur" of the frail, hairy Frenchman seemed to acquire
+a preternatural shrillness. The explorer of the Capitalist
+syndicate was still enthusiastic.  "Ten million dollars' worth of
+copper practically in sight, Monsieur l'Administrateur. Ten
+millions in sight!  And a railway coming--a railway! They will
+never believe my report. C'est trop beau." He fell a prey to a
+screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely nodding heads, before
+Charles Gould's imperturbable calm.
+
+And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging round the
+skirt of his soutane at each end of his beat.  Decoud murmured to
+him ironically: "Those gentlemen talk about their gods."
+
+Father Corbelan stopped short, looked at the journalist of Sulaco
+fixedly for a moment, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and
+resumed his plodding walk of an obstinate traveller.
+
+And now the Europeans were dropping off from the group around
+Charles Gould till the Administrador of the Great Silver Mine
+could be seen in his whole lank length, from head to foot, left
+stranded by the ebbing tide of his guests on the great square of
+carpet, as it were a multi-coloured shoal of flowers and
+arabesques under his brown boots. Father Corbelan approached the
+rocking-chair of Don Jose Avellanos.
+
+"Come, brother," he said, with kindly brusqueness and a touch of
+relieved impatience a man may feel at the end of a perfectly
+useless ceremony. "A la Casa! A la Casa! This has been all talk.
+Let us now go and think and pray for guidance from Heaven."
+
+He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the frail
+diplomatist--the life and soul of the party--he seemed gigantic,
+with a gleam of fanaticism in the glance. But the voice of the
+party, or, rather, its mouthpiece, the "son Decoud" from Paris,
+turned journalist for the sake of Antonia's eyes, knew very well
+that it was not so, that he was only a strenuous priest with one
+idea, feared by the women and execrated by the men of the people.
+Martin Decoud, the dilettante in life, imagined himself to derive
+an artistic pleasure from watching the picturesque extreme of
+wrongheadedness into which an honest, almost sacred, conviction
+may drive a man. "It is like madness. It must be--because it's
+self-destructive," Decoud had said to himself often. It seemed to
+him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned
+into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to
+destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with
+the zest of a connoisseur in the art of his choice. Those two men
+got on well together, as if each had felt respectively that a
+masterful conviction, as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man
+very far on the by-paths of political action.
+
+Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand.  Decoud followed
+out the brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in
+the vast empty sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a
+heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man, with a drooping moustache, a hide
+merchant from Esmeralda, who had come overland to Sulaco, riding
+with a few peons across the coast range.  He was very full of his
+journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose of seeing the Senor
+Administrador of San Tome in relation to some assistance he
+required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to enlarge it
+greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was
+going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a
+strange, anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language,
+which he pattered rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A
+plain man could carry on his little business now in the country,
+and even think of enlarging it--with safety. Was it not so? He
+seemed to beg Charles Gould for a confirmatory word, a grunt of
+assent, a simple nod even.
+
+He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he
+would dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he
+would branch off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his
+journey. The audacious Hernandez, leaving his usual haunts, had
+crossed the Campo of Sulaco, and was known to be lurking in the
+ravines of the coast range. Yesterday, when distant only a few
+hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant and his servants had seen
+three men on the road arrested suspiciously, with their horses'
+heads together. Two of these rode off at once and disappeared in
+a shallow quebrada to the left. "We stopped," continued the man
+from Esmeralda, "and I tried to hide behind a small bush. But
+none of my mozos would go forward to find out what it meant, and
+the third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was
+no use.  We had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling.  He
+let us pass--a man on a grey horse with his hat down on his
+eyes--without a word of greeting; but by-and-by we heard him
+galloping after us. We faced about, but that did not seem to
+intimidate him. He rode up at speed, and touching my foot with
+the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling
+laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand back to
+reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his
+waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and
+as he did not offer to go on we dared not move. At last, blowing
+the smoke of my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said,
+'Senor, it would be perhaps better for you if I rode behind your
+party. You are not very far from Sulaco now. Go you with God.'
+What would you? We went on. There was no resisting him. He might
+have been Hernandez himself; though my servant, who has been many
+times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he had recognized him
+very well for the Capataz of the Steamship Company's Cargadores.
+Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the corner of
+the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup
+with her hand on the grey horse's mane."
+
+"I assure you, Senor Hirsch," murmured Charles Gould, "that you
+ran no risk on this occasion."
+
+"That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most fierce man--to
+look at. And what does it mean? A person employed by the
+Steamship Company talking with salteadores--no less, senor; the
+other horsemen were salteadores--in a lonely place, and behaving
+like a robber himself! A cigar is nothing, but what was there to
+prevent him asking me for my purse?"
+
+"No, no, Senor Hirsch," Charles Gould murmured, letting his
+glance stray away a little vacantly from the round face, with its
+hooked beak upturned towards him in an almost childlike appeal.
+"If it was the Capataz de Cargadores you met--and there is no
+doubt, is there? --you were perfectly safe."
+
+"Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-looking man, Don
+Carlos. He asked me for a cigar in a most familiar manner. What
+would have happened if I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What
+business had he to be talking with robbers in a lonely place?"
+
+But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave not a sign, made
+no sound. The impenetrability of the embodied Gould Concession
+had its surface shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction;
+but the King of Sulaco had words enough to give him all the
+mysterious weight of a taciturn force. His silences, backed by
+the power of speech, had as many shades of significance as
+uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt, of negation--even
+of simple comment. Some seemed to say plainly, "Think it over";
+others meant clearly, "Go ahead"; a simple, low "I see," with an
+affirmative nod, at the end of a patient listening half-hour was
+the equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned to
+trust implicitly, since behind it all there was the great San
+Tome mine, the head and front of the material interests, so
+strong that it depended on no man's goodwill in the whole length
+and breadth of the Occidental Province--that is, on no goodwill
+which it could not buy ten times over. But to the little
+hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about the export of hides,
+the silence of Charles Gould portended a failure. Evidently this
+was no time for extending a modest man's business. He enveloped
+in a swift mental malediction the whole country, with all its
+inhabitants, partisans of Ribiera and Montero alike; and there
+were incipient tears in his mute anger at the thought of the
+innumerable ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy expanse of
+the Campo, with its single palms rising like ships at sea within
+the perfect circle of the horizon, its clumps of heavy timber
+motionless like solid islands of leaves above the running waves
+of grass. There were hides there, rotting, with no profit to
+anybody--rotting where they had been dropped by men called away
+to attend the urgent necessities of political revolutions.  The
+practical, mercantile soul of Senor Hirsch rebelled against all
+that foolishness, while he was taking a respectful but
+disconcerted leave of the might and majesty of the San Tome mine
+in the person of Charles Gould. He could not restrain a
+heart-broken murmur, wrung out of his very aching heart, as it
+were.
+
+"It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this.  The
+price of hides in Hamburg is gone up--up. Of course the Ribierist
+Government will do away with all that--when it gets established
+firmly. Meantime--"
+
+He sighed.
+
+"Yes, meantime," repeated Charles Gould, inscrutably.
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not ready to go yet.
+There was a little matter he would like to mention very much if
+permitted. It appeared he had some good friends in Hamburg (he
+murmured the name of the firm) who were very anxious to do
+business, in dynamite, he explained. A contract for dynamite with
+the San Tome mine, and then, perhaps, later on, other mines,
+which were sure to--The little man from Esmeralda was ready to
+enlarge, but Charles interrupted him. It seemed as though the
+patience of the Senor Administrador was giving way at last.
+
+"Senor Hirsch," he said, "I have enough dynamite stored up at the
+mountain to send it down crashing into the valley"--his voice
+rose a little--"to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked."
+
+Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of the dealer in
+hides, who was murmuring hastily, "Just so. Just so." And now he
+was going. It was impossible to do business in explosives with an
+Administrador so well provided and so discouraging. He had
+suffered agonies in the saddle and had exposed himself to the
+atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for nothing at all. Neither
+hides nor dynamite--and the very shoulders of the enterprising
+Israelite expressed dejection.  At the door he bowed low to the
+engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio
+he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an
+attitude of meditative astonishment.
+
+"What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?" he muttered.
+"And why does he talk like this to me?"
+
+The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala,
+whence the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant
+drop, nodded familiarly to the master of the house, standing
+motionless like a tall beacon amongst the deserted shoals of
+furniture.
+
+"Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs.  The railway
+will know where to go for dynamite should we get short at any
+time. We have done cutting and chopping for a while now. We shall
+begin soon to blast our way through."
+
+"Don't come to me," said Charles Gould, with perfect serenity. "I
+shan't have an ounce to spare for anybody. Not an ounce. Not for
+my own brother, if I had a brother, and he were the
+engineer-in-chief of the most promising railway in the world."
+
+"What's that?" asked the engineer-in-chief, with equanimity.
+"Unkindness?"
+
+"No," said Charles Gould, stolidly. "Policy."
+
+"Radical, I should think," the engineer-in-chief observed from
+the doorway.
+
+"Is that the right name?" Charles Gould said, from the middle of
+the room.
+
+"I mean, going to the roots, you know," the engineer explained,
+with an air of enjoyment.
+
+"Why, yes," Charles pronounced, slowly. "The Gould Concession has
+struck such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that
+gorge of the mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be
+allowed to dislodge it from there. It's my choice. It's my last
+card to play."
+
+The engineer-in-chief whistled low. "A pretty game," he said,
+with a shade of discretion. "And have you told Holroyd of that
+extraordinary trump card you hold in your hand?"
+
+"Card only when it's played; when it falls at the end of the
+game. Till then you may call it a--a--"
+
+"Weapon," suggested the railway man.
+
+"No. You may call it rather an argument," corrected Charles
+Gould, gently. "And that's how I've presented it to Mr. Holroyd."
+
+"And what did he say to it?" asked the engineer, with undisguised
+interest.
+
+"He"--Charles Gould spoke after a slight pause--"he said
+something about holding on like grim death and putting our trust
+in God.   I should imagine he must have been rather startled. But
+then"--pursued the Administrador of the San Tome mine--"but then,
+he is very far away, you know, and, as they say in this country,
+God is very high above."
+
+The engineer's appreciative laugh died away down the stairs,
+where the Madonna with the Child on her arm seemed to look after
+his shaking broad back from her shallow niche.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+A PROFOUND stillness reigned in the Casa Gould.  The master of
+the house, walking along the corredor, opened the door of his
+room, and saw his wife sitting in a big armchair--his own smoking
+armchair--thoughtful, contemplating her little shoes. And she did
+not raise her eyes when he walked in.
+
+"Tired?" asked Charles Gould.
+
+"A little," said Mrs. Gould. Still without looking up, she added
+with feeling, "There is an awful sense of unreality about all
+this."
+
+Charles Gould, before the long table strewn with papers, on which
+lay a hunting crop and a pair of spurs, stood looking at his
+wife: "The heat and dust must have been awful this afternoon by
+the waterside," he murmured, sympathetically. "The glare on the
+water must have been simply terrible."
+
+"One could close one's eyes to the glare," said Mrs.  Gould.
+"But, my dear Charley, it is impossible for me to close my eyes
+to our position; to this awful . . ."
+
+She raised her eyes and looked at her husband's face, from which
+all sign of sympathy or any other feeling had disappeared. "Why
+don't you tell me something?" she almost wailed.
+
+"I thought you had understood me perfectly from the first,"
+Charles Gould said, slowly. "I thought we had said all there was
+to say a long time ago. There is nothing to say now. There were
+things to be done.  We have done them; we have gone on doing
+them.  There is no going back now. I don't suppose that, even
+from the first, there was really any possible way back.  And,
+what's more, we can't even afford to stand still."
+
+"Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go," said his wife.
+inwardly trembling, but in an almost playful tone.
+
+"Any distance, any length, of course," was the answer, in a
+matter-of-fact tone, which caused Mrs.  Gould to make another
+effort to repress a shudder.
+
+She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure seemed to
+be diminished still more by the heavy mass of her hair and the
+long train of her gown.
+
+"But always to success," she said, persuasively.
+
+Charles Gould, enveloping her in the steely blue glance of his
+attentive eyes, answered without hesitation--
+
+"Oh, there is no alternative."
+
+He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to the words, this
+was all that his conscience would allow him to say.
+
+Mrs. Gould's smile remained a shade too long upon her lips. She
+murmured--
+
+"I will leave you; I've a slight headache. The heat, the dust,
+were indeed--I suppose you are going back to the mine before the
+morning?"
+
+"At midnight," said Charles Gould. "We are bringing down the
+silver to-morrow. Then I shall take three whole days off in town
+with you."
+
+"Ah, you are going to meet the escort. I shall be on the balcony
+at five o'clock to see you pass. Till then, good-bye."
+
+Charles Gould walked rapidly round the table, and, seizing her
+hands, bent down, pressing them both to his lips. Before he
+straightened himself up again to his full height she had
+disengaged one to smooth his cheek with a light touch, as if he
+were a little boy.
+
+"Try to get some rest for a couple of hours," she murmured, with
+a glance at a hammock stretched in a distant part of the room.
+Her long train swished softly after her on the red tiles. At the
+door she looked back.
+
+Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in a soft and
+abundant light the four white walls of the room, with a glass
+case of arms, the brass hilt of Henry Gould's cavalry sabre on
+its square of velvet, and the water-colour sketch of the San Tome
+gorge. And Mrs.  Gould, gazing at the last in its black wooden
+frame, sighed out--
+
+"Ah, if we had left it alone, Charley!"
+
+"No," Charles Gould said, moodily; "it was impossible to leave it
+alone."
+
+"Perhaps it was impossible," Mrs. Gould admitted, slowly. Her
+lips quivered a little, but she smiled with an air of dainty
+bravado. "We have disturbed a good many snakes in that Paradise,
+Charley, haven't we?"
+
+"Yes, I remember," said Charles Gould, "it was Don Pepe who
+called the gorge the Paradise of snakes.  No doubt we have
+disturbed a great many. But remember, my dear, that it is not now
+as it was when you made that sketch." He waved his hand towards
+the small water-colour hanging alone upon the great bare wall.
+"It is no longer a Paradise of snakes. We have brought mankind
+into it, and we cannot turn our backs upon them to go and begin a
+new life elsewhere."
+
+He confronted his wife with a firm, concentrated gaze, which Mrs.
+Gould returned with a brave assumption of fearlessness before she
+went out, closing the door gently after her.
+
+In contrast with the white glaring room the dimly lit corredor
+had a restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the
+stems and the leaves of the plants ranged along the balustrade of
+the open side. In the streaks of light falling through the open
+doors of the reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and
+pale lilac, came out vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a
+stream of sunshine; and Mrs. Gould, passing on, had the vividness
+of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that chequer the
+gloom of open glades in the woods. The stones in the rings upon
+her hand pressed to her forehead glittered in the lamplight
+abreast of the door of the sala.
+
+"Who's there?" she asked, in a startled voice. "Is that you,
+Basilio?" She looked in, and saw Martin Decoud walking about,
+with an air of having lost something, amongst the chairs and
+tables.
+
+"Antonia has forgotten her fan in here," said Decoud, with a
+strange air of distraction; "so I entered to see."
+
+But, even as he said this, he had obviously given up his search,
+and walked straight towards Mrs. Gould, who looked at him with
+doubtful surprise.
+
+"Senora," he began, in a low voice.
+
+"What is it, Don Martin?" asked Mrs. Gould. And then she added,
+with a slight laugh, "I am so nervous to-day," as if to explain
+the eagerness of the question.
+
+"Nothing immediately dangerous," said Decoud, who now could not
+conceal his agitation. "Pray don't distress yourself. No, really,
+you must not distress yourself."
+
+Mrs. Gould, with her candid eyes very wide open, her lips
+composed into a smile, was steadying herself with a little
+bejewelled hand against the side of the door.
+
+"Perhaps you don't know how alarming you are, appearing like this
+unexpectedly--"
+
+"I! Alarming!" he protested, sincerely vexed and surprised. "I
+assure you that I am not in the least alarmed myself. A fan is
+lost; well, it will be found again. But I don't think it is here.
+It is a fan I am looking for. I cannot understand how Antonia
+could--Well! Have you found it, amigo?"
+
+"No, senor," said behind Mrs. Gould the soft voice of Basilio,
+the head servant of the Casa. "I don't think the senorita could
+have left it in this house at all."
+
+"Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my friend; look
+for it on the steps, under the gate; examine every flagstone;
+search for it till I come down again. . . . That fellow"--he
+addressed himself in English to Mrs. Gould--"is always stealing
+up behind one's back on his bare feet. I set him to look for that
+fan directly I came in to justify my reappearance, my sudden
+return."
+
+He paused and Mrs. Gould said, amiably, "You are always welcome."
+She paused for a second, too. "But I am waiting to learn the
+cause of your return."
+
+Decoud affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance.
+
+"I can't bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause?  Yes, there is a
+cause; there is something else that is lost besides Antonia's
+favourite fan. As I was walking home after seeing Don Jose and
+Antonia to their house, the Capataz de Cargadores, riding down
+the street, spoke to me."
+
+"Has anything happened to the Violas?" inquired Mrs. Gould.
+
+"The Violas? You mean the old Garibaldino who keeps the hotel
+where the engineers live? Nothing happened there. The Capataz
+said nothing of them; he only told me that the telegraphist of
+the Cable Company was walking on the Plaza, bareheaded, looking
+out for me. There is news from the interior, Mrs. Gould.  I
+should rather say rumours of news."
+
+"Good news?" said Mrs. Gould in a low voice.
+
+"Worthless, I should think. But if I must define them, I would
+say bad. They are to the effect that a two days' battle had been
+fought near Sta. Marta, and that the Ribierists are defeated. It
+must have happened a few days ago--perhaps a week. The rumour has
+just reached Cayta, and the man in charge of the cable station
+there has telegraphed the news to his colleague here. We might
+just as well have kept Barrios in Sulaco."
+
+"What's to be done now?" murmured Mrs. Gould.
+
+"Nothing. He's at sea with the troops. He will get to Cayta in a
+couple of days' time and learn the news there. What he will do
+then, who can say?  Hold Cayta? Offer his submission to Montero?
+Disband his army--this last most likely, and go himself in one of
+the O.S.N. Company's steamers, north or south--to Valparaiso or
+to San Francisco, no matter where. Our Barrios has a great
+practice in exiles and repatriations, which mark the points in
+the political game."
+
+Decoud, exchanging a steady stare with Mrs. Gould, added,
+tentatively, as it were, "And yet, if we had could have been
+done."
+
+"Montero victorious, completely victorious!" Mrs.  Gould breathed
+out in a tone of unbelief.
+
+"A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched in great
+numbers in such times as these. And even if it were true? Well,
+let us put things at their worst, let us say it is true."
+
+"Then everything is lost," said Mrs. Gould, with the calmness of
+despair.
+
+Suddenly she seemed to divine, she seemed to see Decoud's
+tremendous excitement under its cloak of studied carelessness. It
+was, indeed, becoming visible in his audacious and watchful
+stare, in the curve, half-reckless, half-contemptuous, of his
+lips. And a French phrase came upon them as if, for this
+Costaguanero of the Boulevard, that had been the only forcible
+language--
+
+"Non, Madame. Rien n'est perdu."
+
+It electrified Mrs. Gould out of her benumbed attitude, and she
+said, vivaciously--
+
+"What would you think of doing?"
+
+But already there was something of mockery in Decoud's suppressed
+excitement.
+
+"What would you expect a true Costaguanero to do?  Another
+revolution, of course. On my word of honour, Mrs. Gould, I
+believe I am a true hijo del pays, a true son of the country,
+whatever Father Corbelan may say.  And I'm not so much of an
+unbeliever as not to have faith in my own ideas, in my own
+remedies, in my own desires."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Gould, doubtfully.
+
+"You don't seem convinced," Decoud went on again in French. "Say,
+then, in my passions."
+
+Mrs. Gould received this addition unflinchingly. To understand it
+thoroughly she did not require to hear his muttered assurance--
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for the sake of Antonia. There
+is nothing I am not prepared to undertake.  There is no risk I am
+not ready to run."
+
+Decoud seemed to find a fresh audacity in this voicing of his
+thoughts. "You would not believe me if I were to say that it is
+the love of the country which--"
+
+She made a sort of discouraged protest with her arm, as if to
+express that she had given up expecting that motive from any one.
+
+"A Sulaco revolution," Decoud pursued in a forcible undertone.
+"The Great Cause may be served here, on the very spot of its
+inception, in the place of its birth, Mrs. Gould."
+
+Frowning, and biting her lower lip thoughtfully, she made a step
+away from the door.
+
+"You are not going to speak to your husband?" Decoud arrested her
+anxiously.
+
+"But you will need his help?"
+
+"No doubt," Decoud admitted without hesitation.  "Everything
+turns upon the San Tome mine, but I would rather he didn't know
+anything as yet of my--my hopes."
+
+A puzzled look came upon Mrs. Gould's face, and Decoud,
+approaching, explained confidentially--
+
+"Don't you see, he's such an idealist."
+
+Mrs. Gould flushed pink, and her eyes grew darker at the same
+time.
+
+"Charley an idealist!" she said, as if to herself, wonderingly.
+"What on earth do you mean?"
+
+"Yes," conceded Decoud, "it's a wonderful thing to say with the
+sight of the San Tome mine, the greatest fact in the whole of
+South America, perhaps, before our very eyes. But look even at
+that, he has idealized this fact to a point--" He paused. "Mrs.
+Gould, are you aware to what point he has idealized the
+existence, the worth, the meaning of the San Tome mine? Are you
+aware of it?"
+
+He must have known what he was talking about.
+
+The effect he expected was produced. Mrs. Gould, ready to take
+fire, gave it up suddenly with a low little sound that resembled
+a moan.
+
+"What do you know?" she asked in a feeble voice.
+
+"Nothing," answered Decoud, firmly. "But, then, don't you see,
+he's an Englishman?"
+
+"Well, what of that?" asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+"Simply that he cannot act or exist without idealizing every
+simple feeling, desire, or achievement. He could not believe his
+own motives if he did not make them first a part of some fairy
+tale. The earth is not quite good enough for him, I fear. Do you
+excuse my frankness? Besides, whether you excuse it or not, it is
+part of the truth of things which hurts the--what do you call
+them?--the Anglo-Saxon's susceptibilities, and at the present
+moment I don't feel as if I could treat seriously either his
+conception of things or--if you allow me to say so--or yet
+yours."
+
+Mrs. Gould gave no sign of being offended. "I suppose Antonia
+understands you thoroughly?"
+
+"Understands? Well, yes. But I am not sure that she approves.
+That, however, makes no difference. I am honest enough to tell
+you that, Mrs. Gould."
+
+"Your idea, of course, is separation," she said.
+
+"Separation, of course," declared Martin. "Yes; separation of the
+whole Occidental Province from the rest of the unquiet body. But
+my true idea, the only one I care for, is not to be separated
+from Antonia."
+
+"And that is all?" asked Mrs. Gould, without severity.
+
+"Absolutely. I am not deceiving myself about my motives. She
+won't leave Sulaco for my sake, therefore Sulaco must leave the
+rest of the Republic to its fate. Nothing could be clearer than
+that. I like a clearly defined situation. I cannot part with
+Antonia, therefore the one and indivisible Republic of Costaguana
+must be made to part with its western province. Fortunately it
+happens to be also a sound policy. The richest, the most fertile
+part of this land may be saved from anarchy. Personally, I care
+little, very little; but it's a fact that the establishment of
+Montero in power would mean death to me. In all the proclamations
+of general pardon which I have seen, my name, with a few others,
+is specially excepted. The brothers hate me, as you know very
+well, Mrs. Gould; and behold, here is the rumour of them having
+won a battle. You say that supposing it is true, I have plenty of
+time to run away."
+
+The slight, protesting murmur on the part of Mrs.  Gould made him
+pause for a moment, while he looked at her with a sombre and
+resolute glance.
+
+"Ah, but I would, Mrs. Gould. I would run away if it served that
+which at present is my only desire. I am courageous enough to say
+that, and to do it, too.  But women, even our women, are
+idealists. It is Antonia that won't run away. A novel sort of
+vanity."
+
+"You call it vanity," said Mrs. Gould, in a shocked voice.
+
+"Say pride, then, which. Father Corbelan would tell you, is a
+mortal sin. But I am not proud. I am simply too much in love to
+run away. At the same time I want to live. There is no love for a
+dead man. Therefore it is necessary that Sulaco should not
+recognize the victorious Montero."
+
+"And you think my husband will give you his support?"
+
+"I think he can be drawn into it, like all idealists, when he
+once sees a sentimental basis for his action.  But I wouldn't
+talk to him. Mere clear facts won't appeal to his sentiment. It
+is much better for him to convince himself in his own way. And,
+frankly, I could not, perhaps, just now pay sufficient respect to
+either his motives or even, perhaps, to yours, Mrs. Gould."
+
+It was evident that Mrs. Gould was very determined not to be
+offended. She smiled vaguely, while she seemed to think the
+matter over. As far as she could judge from the girl's
+half-confidences, Antonia understood that young man. Obviously
+there was promise of safety in his plan, or rather in his idea.
+Moreover, right or wrong, the idea could do no harm. And it was
+quite possible, also, that the rumour was false.
+
+"You have some sort of a plan," she said.
+
+"Simplicity itself. Barrios has started, let him go on then; he
+will hold Cayta, which is the door of the sea route to Sulaco.
+They cannot send a sufficient force over the mountains. No; not
+even to cope with the band of Hernandez. Meantime we shall
+organize our resistance here. And for that, this very Hernandez
+will be useful. He has defeated troops as a bandit; he will no
+doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made a colonel or even a
+general. You know the country well enough not to be shocked by
+what I say, Mrs. Gould.  I have heard you assert that this poor
+bandit was the living,breathing example of cruelty, injustice,
+stupidity, and oppression, that ruin men's souls as well as their
+fortunes in this country. Well, there would be some poetical
+retribution in that man arising to crush the evils which had
+driven an honest ranchero into a life of crime. A fine idea of
+retribution in that, isn't there?"
+
+Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he spoke with
+precision, very correctly, but with too many z sounds.
+
+"Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your ailing
+mothers and feeble old men, of all that population which you and
+your husband have brought into the rocky gorge of San Tome. Are
+you not responsible to your conscience for all these people? Is
+it not worth while to make another effort, which is not at all so
+desperate as it looks, rather than--"
+
+Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm,
+suggesting annihilation; and Mrs. Gould turned away her head with
+a look of horror.
+
+"Why don't you say all this to my husband?" she asked, without
+looking at Decoud, who stood watching the effect of his words.
+
+"Ah! But Don Carlos is so English," he began.  Mrs. Gould
+interrupted--
+
+"Leave that alone, Don Martin. He's as much a Costaguanero--No!
+He's more of a Costaguanero than yourself."
+
+"Sentimentalist, sentimentalist," Decoud almost cooed, in a tone
+of gentle and soothing deference.  "Sentimentalist, after the
+amazing manner of your people. I have been watching El Rey de
+Sulaco since I came here on a fool's errand, and perhaps impelled
+by some treason of fate lurking behind the unaccountable turns of
+a man's life. But I don't matter, I am not a sentimentalist, I
+cannot endow my personal desires with a shining robe of silk and
+jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from the
+tradition of a pretty fairy tale. No, Mrs. Gould; I am practical.
+I am not afraid of my motives. But, pardon me, I have been rather
+carried away. What I wish to say is that I have been observing. I
+won't tell you what I have discovered--"
+
+"No. That is unnecessary," whispered Mrs. Gould, once more
+averting her head.
+
+"It is. Except one little fact, that your husband does not like
+me. It's a small matter, which, in the circumstances, seems to
+acquire a perfectly ridiculous importance.  Ridiculous and
+immense; for, clearly, money is required for my plan," he
+reflected; then added, meaningly, "and we have two
+sentimentalists to deal with."
+
+"I don't know that I understand you, Don Martin," said Mrs.
+Gould, coldly, preserving the low key of their conversation.
+"But, speaking as if I did, who is the other?"
+
+"The great Holroyd in San Francisco, of course," Decoud
+whispered, lightly. "I think you understand me very well. Women
+are idealists; but then they are so perspicacious."
+
+But whatever was the reason of that remark, disparaging and
+complimentary at the same time, Mrs.  Gould seemed not to pay
+attention to it. The name of Holroyd had given a new tone to her
+anxiety.
+
+"The silver escort is coming down to the harbour tomorrow; a
+whole six months' working, Don Martin!" she cried in dismay.
+
+"Let it come down, then," breathed out Decoud, earnestly, almost
+into her ear.
+
+"But if the rumour should get about, and especially if it turned
+out true, troubles might break out in the town," objected Mrs.
+Gould.
+
+Decoud admitted that it was possible.  He knew well the town
+children of the Sulaco Campo: sullen, thievish, vindictive, and
+bloodthirsty, whatever great qualities their brothers of the
+plain might have had.  But then there was that other
+sentimentalist, who attached a strangely idealistic meaning to
+concrete facts. This stream of silver must be kept flowing north
+to return in the form of financial backing from the great house
+of Holroyd. Up at the mountain in the strong room of the mine the
+silver bars were worth less for his purpose than so much lead,
+from which at least bullets may be run. Let it come down to the
+harbour, ready for shipment.
+
+The next north-going steamer would carry it off for the very
+salvation of the San Tome mine, which had produced so much
+treasure.  And, moreover, the rumour was probably false, he
+remarked, with much conviction in his hurried tone.
+
+"Besides, senora," concluded Decoud, "we may suppress it for many
+days. I have been talking with the telegraphist in the middle of
+the Plaza Mayor; thus I am certain that we could not have been
+overheard.  There was not even a bird in the air near us. And
+also let me tell you something more. I have been making friends
+with this man called Nostromo, the Capataz.  We had a
+conversation this very evening, I walking by the side of his
+horse as he rode slowly out of the town just now. He promised me
+that if a riot took place for any reason--even for the most
+political of reasons, you understand--his Cargadores, an
+important part of the populace, you will admit, should be found
+on the side of the Europeans."
+
+"He has promised you that?" Mrs. Gould inquired, with interest.
+"What made him make that promise to you?"
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know," declared Decoud, in a slightly
+surprised tone. "He certainly promised me that, but now you ask
+me why, I could not tell you his reasons. He talked with his
+usual carelessness, which, if he had been anything else but a
+common sailor, I would call a pose or an affectation."
+
+Decoud, interrupting himself, looked at Mrs. Gould curiously.
+
+"Upon the whole," he continued, "I suppose he expects something
+to his advantage from it. You mustn't forget that he does not
+exercise his extraordinary power over the lower classes without a
+certain amount of personal risk and without a great profusion in
+spending his money. One must pay in some way or other for such a
+solid thing as individual prestige. He told me after we made
+friends at a dance, in a Posada kept by a Mexican just outside
+the walls, that he had come here to make his fortune. I suppose
+he looks upon his prestige as a sort of investment."
+
+"Perhaps he prizes it for its own sake," Mrs. Gould said in a
+tone as if she were repelling an undeserved aspersion. "Viola,
+the Garibaldino, with whom he has lived for some years, calls him
+the Incorruptible."
+
+"Ah! he belongs to the group of your proteges out there towards
+the harbour, Mrs. Gould.   Muy bien.  And Captain Mitchell calls
+him wonderful. I have heard no end of tales of his strength, his
+audacity, his fidelity. No end of fine things. H'm!
+incorruptible!  It is indeed a name of honour for the Capataz of
+the Cargadores of Sulaco. Incorruptible! Fine, but vague.
+However, I suppose he's sensible, too. And I talked to him upon
+that sane and practical assumption."
+
+"I prefer to think him disinterested, and therefore trustworthy,"
+Mrs. Gould said, with the nearest approach to curtness it was in
+her nature to assume.
+
+"Well, if so, then the silver will be still more safe.  Let it
+come down, senora. Let it come down, so that it may go north and
+return to us in the shape of credit."
+
+Mrs. Gould glanced along the corredor towards the door of her
+husband's room. Decoud, watching her as if she had his fate in
+her hands, detected an almost imperceptible nod of assent. He
+bowed with a smile, and, putting his hand into the breast pocket
+of his coat, pulled out a fan of light feathers set upon painted
+leaves of sandal-wood. "I had it in my pocket," he murmured,
+triumphantly, "for a plausible pretext." He bowed again.
+"Good-night, senora."
+
+Mrs. Gould continued along the corredor away from her husband's
+room. The fate of the San Tome mine was lying heavy upon her
+heart. It was a long time now since she had begun to fear it. It
+had been an idea. She had watched it with misgivings turning into
+a fetish, and now the fetish had grown into a monstrous and
+crushing weight. It was as if the inspiration of their early
+years had left her heart to turn into a wall of silver-bricks,
+erected by the silent work of evil spirits, between her and her
+husband. He seemed to dwell alone within a circumvallation of
+precious metal, leaving her outside with her school, her
+hospital, the sick mothers and the feeble old men, mere
+insignificant vestiges of the initial inspiration.  "Those poor
+people!" she murmured to herself.
+
+Below she heard the voice of Martin Decoud in the patio speaking
+loudly:
+
+"I have found Dona Antonia's fan, Basilio. Look.  here it is!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+IT WAS part of what Decoud would have called his sane materialism
+that he did not believe in the possibility of friendship between
+man and woman.
+
+The one exception he allowed confirmed, he maintained, that
+absolute rule. Friendship was possible between brother and
+sister, meaning by friendship the frank unreserve, as before
+another human being, of thoughts and sensations; all the
+objectless and necessary sincerity of one's innermost life trying
+to re-act upon the profound sympathies of another existence.
+
+His favourite sister, the handsome, slightly arbitrary and
+resolute angel, ruling the father and mother Decoud in the
+first-floor apartments of a very fine Parisian house, was the
+recipient of Martin Decoud's confidences as to his thoughts,
+actions, purposes, doubts, and even failures. . . .
+
+"Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of another
+South American Republic. One more or less, what does it matter?
+They may come into the world like evil flowers on a hotbed of
+rotten institutions; but the seed of this one has germinated in
+your brother's brain, and that will be enough for your devoted
+assent.  I am writing this to you by the light of a single
+candle, in a sort of inn, near the harbour, kept by an Italian
+called Viola, a protege of Mrs. Gould. The whole building, which,
+for all I know, may have been contrived by a Conquistador farmer
+of the pearl fishery three hundred years ago, is perfectly
+silent. So is the plain between the town and the harbour; silent,
+but not so dark as the house, because the pickets of Italian
+workmen guarding the railway have lighted little fires all along
+the line. It was not so quiet around here yesterday. We had an
+awful riot--a sudden outbreak of the populace, which was not
+suppressed till late today.  Its object, no doubt, was loot, and
+that was defeated, as you may have learned already from the
+cablegram sent via San Francisco and New York last night, when
+the cables were still open. You have read already there that the
+energetic action of the Europeans of the railway has saved the
+town from destruction, and you may believe that. I wrote out the
+cable myself.  We have no Reuter's agency man here. I have also
+fired at the mob from the windows of the club, in company with
+some other young men of position. Our object was to keep the
+Calle de la Constitucion clear for the exodus of the ladies and
+children, who have taken refuge on board a couple of cargo ships
+now in the harbour here. That was yesterday. You should also have
+learned from the cable that the missing President, Ribiera, who
+had disappeared after the battle of Sta.  Marta, has turned up
+here in Sulaco by one of those strange coincidences that are
+almost incredible, riding on a lame mule into the very midst of
+the street fighting.  It appears that he had fled, in company of
+a muleteer called Bonifacio, across the mountains from the
+threats of Montero into the arms of an enraged mob.
+
+"The Capataz of Cargadores, that Italian sailor of whom I have
+written to you before, has saved him from an ignoble death. That
+man seems to have a particular talent for being on the spot
+whenever there is something picturesque to be done.
+
+"He was with me at four o'clock in the morning at the offices of
+the Porvenir, where he had turned up so early in order to warn me
+of the coming trouble, and also to assure me that he would keep
+his Cargadores on the side of order. When the full daylight came
+we were looking together at the crowd on foot and on horseback,
+demonstrating on the Plaza and shying stones at the windows of
+the Intendencia. Nostromo (that is the name they call him by
+here) was pointing out to me his Cargadores interspersed in the
+mob.
+
+"The sun shines late upon Sulaco, for it has first to climb above
+the mountains. In that clear morning light, brighter than
+twilight, Nostromo saw right across the vast Plaza, at the end of
+the street beyond the cathedral, a mounted man apparently in
+difficulties with a yelling knot of leperos. At once he said to
+me, 'That's a stranger. What is it they are doing to him?' Then
+he took out the silver whistle he is in the habit of using on the
+wharf (this man seems to disdain the use of any metal less
+precious than silver) and blew into it twice, evidently a
+preconcerted signal for his Cargadores. He ran out immediately,
+and they rallied round him. I ran out, too, but was too late to
+follow them and help in the rescue of the stranger, whose animal
+had fallen.  I was set upon at once as a hated aristocrat, and
+was only too glad to get into the club, where Don Jaime Berges
+(you may remember him visiting at our house in Paris some three
+years ago) thrust a sporting gun into my hands. They were already
+firing from the windows.  There were little heaps of cartridges
+lying about on the open card-tables. I remember a couple of
+overturned chairs, some bottles rolling on the floor amongst the
+packs of cards scattered suddenly as the caballeros rose from
+their game to open fire upon the mob. Most of the young men had
+spent the night at the club in the expectation of some such
+disturbance. In two of the candelabra, on the consoles, the
+candles were burning down in their sockets. A large iron nut,
+probably stolen from the railway workshops, flew in from the
+street as I entered, and broke one of the large mirrors set in
+the wall. I noticed also one of the club servants tied up hand
+and foot with the cords of the curtain and flung in a corner. I
+have a vague recollection of Don Jaime assuring me hastily that
+the fellow had been detected putting poison into the dishes at
+supper. But I remember distinctly he was shrieking for mercy,
+without stopping at all, continuously, and so absolutely
+disregarded that nobody even took the trouble to gag him. The
+noise he made was so disagreeable that I had half a mind to do it
+myself. But there was no time to waste on such trifles. I took my
+place at one of the windows and began firing.
+
+"I didn't learn till later in the afternoon whom it was that
+Nostromo, with his Cargadores and some Italian workmen as well,
+had managed to save from those drunken rascals. That man has a
+peculiar talent when anything striking to the imagination has to
+be done. I made that remark to him afterwards when we met after
+some sort of order had been restored in the town, and the answer
+he made rather surprised me. He said quite moodily, 'And how much
+do I get for that, senor?' Then it dawned upon me that perhaps
+this man's vanity has been satiated by the adulation of the
+common people and the confidence of his superiors!"
+
+Decoud paused to light a cigarette, then, with his head still
+over his writing, he blew a cloud of smoke, which seemed to
+rebound from the paper. He took up the pencil again.
+
+"That was yesterday evening on the Plaza, while he sat on the
+steps of the cathedral, his hands between his knees, holding the
+bridle of his famous silver-grey mare.  He had led his body of
+Cargadores splendidly all day long. He looked fatigued. I don't
+know how I looked. Very dirty, I suppose. But I suppose I also
+looked pleased. From the time the fugitive President had been got
+off to the S. S. Minerva, the tide of success had turned against
+the mob. They had been driven off the harbour, and out of the
+better streets of the town, into their own maze of ruins and
+tolderias. You must understand that this riot, whose primary
+object was undoubtedly the getting hold of the San Tome silver
+stored in the lower rooms of the Custom House (besides the
+general looting of the Ricos), had acquired a political colouring
+from the fact of two Deputies to the Provincial Assembly, Senores
+Gamacho and Fuentes, both from Bolson, putting themselves at the
+head of it--late in the afternoon, it is true, when the mob,
+disappointed in their hopes of loot, made a stand in the narrow
+streets to the cries of 'Viva la Libertad! Down with Feudalism!'
+(I wonder what they imagine feudalism to be?) 'Down with the
+Goths and Paralytics.' I suppose the Senores Gamacho and Fuentes
+knew what they were doing. They are prudent gentlemen.  In the
+Assembly they called themselves Moderates, and opposed every
+energetic measure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the first
+rumours of Montero's victory, they showed a subtle change of the
+pensive temper, and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopez in his
+Presidential tribune with an effrontery to which the poor man
+could only respond by a dazed smoothing of his beard and the
+ringing of the presidential bell. Then, when the downfall of the
+Ribierist cause became confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt,
+they have blossomed into convinced Liberals, acting together as
+if they were Siamese twins, and ultimately taking charge, as it
+were, of the riot in the name of Monterist principles.
+
+"Their last move of eight o'clock last night was to organize
+themselves into a Monterist Committee which sits, as far as I
+know, in a posada kept by a retired Mexican bull-fighter, a great
+politician, too, whose name I have forgotten. Thence they have
+issued a communication to us, the Goths and Paralytics of the
+Amarilla Club (who have our own committee), inviting us to come
+to some provisional understanding for a truce, in order, they
+have the impudence to say, that the noble cause of Liberty
+'should not be stained by the criminal excesses of Conservative
+selfishness!' As I came out to sit with Nostromo on the cathedral
+steps the club was busy considering a proper reply in the
+principal room, littered with exploded cartridges, with a lot of
+broken glass, blood smears, candlesticks, and all sorts of
+wreckage on the floor. But all this is nonsense.  Nobody in the
+town has any real power except the railway engineers, whose men
+occupy the dismantled houses acquired by the Company for their
+town station on one side of the Plaza, and Nostromo, whose
+Cargadores were sleeping under the arcades along the front of
+Anzani's shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the Intendencia
+saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the Plaza, in a high flame
+swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. The dead body of a
+man was lying on the steps of the pedestal, his arms thrown wide
+open, and his sombrero covering his face--the attention of some
+friend, perhaps. The light of the flames touched the foliage of
+the first trees on the Alameda, and played on the end of a side
+street near by, blocked up by a jumble of ox-carts and dead
+bullocks. Sitting on one of the carcasses, a lepero, muffled up,
+smoked a cigarette. It was a truce, you understand. The only
+other living being on the Plaza besides ourselves was a Cargador
+walking to and fro, with a long, bare knife in his hand, like a
+sentry before the Arcades, where his friends were sleeping. And
+the only other spot of light in the dark town were the lighted
+windows of the club, at the corner of the Calle."
+
+After having written so far, Don Martin Decoud, the exotic dandy
+of the Parisian boulevard, got up and walked across the sanded
+floor of the cafe at one end of the Albergo of United Italy, kept
+by Giorgio Viola, the old companion of Garibaldi. The highly
+coloured lithograph of the Faithful Hero seemed to look dimly, in
+the light of one candle, at the man with no faith in anything
+except the truth of his own sensations. Looking out of the
+window, Decoud was met by a darkness so impenetrable that he
+could see neither the mountains nor the town, nor yet the
+buildings near the harbour; and there was not a sound, as if the
+tremendous obscurity of the Placid Gulf, spreading from the
+waters over the land, had made it dumb as well as blind.
+Presently Decoud felt a light tremor of the floor and a distant
+clank of iron. A bright white light appeared, deep in the
+darkness, growing bigger with a thundering noise. The rolling
+stock usually kept on the sidings in Rincon was being run back to
+the yards for safe keeping.  Like a mysterious stirring of the
+darkness behind the headlight of the engine, the train passed in
+a gust of hollow uproar, by the end of the house, which seemed to
+vibrate all over in response. And nothing was clearly visible
+but, on the end of the last flat car, a negro, in white trousers
+and naked to the waist, swinging a blazing torch basket
+incessantly with a circular movement of his bare arm. Decoud did
+not stir.
+
+Behind him, on the back of the chair from which he had risen,
+hung his elegant Parisian overcoat, with a pearl-grey silk
+lining. But when he turned back to come to the table the
+candlelight fell upon a face that was grimy and scratched. His
+rosy lips were blackened with heat, the smoke of gun-powder. Dirt
+and rust tarnished the lustre of his short beard. His shirt
+collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie hung down his
+breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow. He had
+not taken off his clothing nor used water, except to snatch a
+hasty drink greedily, for some forty hours. An awful restlessness
+had made him its own, had marked him with all the signs of
+desperate strife, and put a dry, sleepless stare into his eyes.
+He murmured to himself in a hoarse voice, "I wonder if there's
+any bread here," looked vaguely about him, then dropped into the
+chair and took the pencil up again.  He became aware he had not
+eaten anything for many hours.
+
+It occurred to him that no one could understand him so well as
+his sister. In the most sceptical heart there lurks at such
+moments, when the chances of existence are involved, a desire to
+leave a correct impression of the feelings, like a light by which
+the action may be seen when personality is gone, gone where no
+light of investigation can ever reach the truth which every death
+takes out of the world. Therefore, instead of looking for
+something to eat, or trying to snatch an hour or so of sleep,
+Decoud was filling the pages of a large pocket-book with a letter
+to his sister.
+
+In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his
+weariness, his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily
+sensations. He began again as if he were talking to her. With
+almost an illusion of her presence, he wrote the phrase, "I am
+very hungry."
+
+"I have the feeling of a great solitude around me," he continued.
+"Is it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea
+in his head, in the complete collapse of every resolve,
+intention, and hope about me?  But the solitude is also very
+real. All the engineers are out, and have been for two days,
+looking after the property of the National Central Railway, of
+that great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money into the
+pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, and God
+knows who else. The silence about me is ominous. There is above
+the middle part of this house a sort of first floor, with narrow
+openings like loopholes for windows, probably used in old times
+for the better defence against the savages, when the persistent
+barbarism of our native continent did not wear the black coats of
+politicians, but went about yelling, half-naked, with bows and
+arrows in its hands. The woman of the house is dying up there, I
+believe, all alone with her old husband. There is a narrow
+staircase, the sort of staircase one man could easily defend
+against a mob, leading up there, and I have just heard, through
+the thickness of the wall, the old fellow going down into their
+kitchen for something or other. It was a sort of noise a mouse
+might make behind the plaster of a wall.  All the servants they
+had ran away yesterday and have not returned yet, if ever they
+do. For the rest, there are only two children here, two girls.
+The father has sent them downstairs, and they have crept into
+this cafe, perhaps because I am here. They huddle together in a
+corner, in each other's arms; I just noticed them a few minutes
+ago, and I feel more lonely than ever."
+
+Decoud turned half round in his chair, and asked, "Is there any
+bread here?"
+
+Linda's dark head was shaken negatively in response, above the
+fair head of her sister nestling on her breast.
+
+"You couldn't get me some bread?" insisted Decoud.  The child did
+not move; he saw her large eyes stare at him very dark from the
+corner. "You're not afraid of me?" he said.
+
+"No," said Linda, "we are not afraid of you. You came here with
+Gian' Battista."
+
+"You mean Nostromo?" said Decoud.
+
+"The English call him so, but that is no name either for man or
+beast," said the girl, passing her hand gently over her sister's
+hair.
+
+"But he lets people call him so," remarked Decoud.
+
+"Not in this house," retorted the child.
+
+"Ah! well, I shall call him the Capataz then."
+
+Decoud gave up the point, and after writing steadily for a while
+turned round again.
+
+"When do you expect him back?" he asked.
+
+"After he brought you here he rode off to fetch the Senor Doctor
+from the town for mother. He will be back soon."
+
+"He stands a good chance of getting shot somewhere on the road,"
+Decoud murmured to himself audibly; and Linda declared in her
+high-pitched voice--
+
+"Nobody would dare to fire a shot at Gian' Battista."
+
+"You believe that," asked Decoud, "do you?"
+
+"I know it," said the child, with conviction. "There is no one in
+this place brave enough to attack Gian' Battista."
+
+"It doesn't require much bravery to pull a trigger behind a
+bush," muttered Decoud to himself. "Fortunately, the night is
+dark, or there would be but little chance of saving the silver of
+the mine."
+
+He turned again to his pocket-book, glanced back through the
+pages, and again started his pencil.
+
+"That was the position yesterday, after the Minerva with the
+fugitive President had gone out of harbour, and the rioters had
+been driven back into the side lanes of the town. I sat on the
+steps of the cathedral with Nostromo, after sending out the cable
+message for the information of a more or less attentive world.
+Strangely enough, though the offices of the Cable Company are in
+the same building as the Porvenir, the mob, which has thrown my
+presses out of the window and scattered the type all over the
+Plaza, has been kept from interfering with the instruments on the
+other side of the courtyard. As I sat talking with Nostromo,
+Bernhardt, the telegraphist, came out from under the Arcades with
+a piece of paper in his hand. The little man had tied himself up
+to an enormous sword and was hung all over with revolvers. He is
+ridiculous, but the bravest German of his size that ever tapped
+the key of a Morse transmitter. He had received the message from
+Cayta reporting the transports with Barrios's army just entering
+the port, and ending with the words, 'The greatest enthusiasm
+prevails.' I walked off to drink some water at the fountain, and
+I was shot at from the Alameda by somebody hiding behind a tree.
+But I drank, and didn't care; with Barrios in Cayta and the great
+Cordillera between us and Montero's victorious army I seemed,
+notwithstanding Messrs. Gamacho and Fuentes, to hold my new State
+in the hollow of my hand. I was ready to sleep, but when I got as
+far as the Casa Gould I found the patio full of wounded laid out
+on straw. Lights were burning, and in that enclosed courtyard on
+that hot night a faint odour of chloroform and blood hung about.
+At one end Doctor Monygham, the doctor of the mine, was dressing
+the wounds; at the other, near the stairs, Father Corbelan,
+kneeling, listened to the confession of a dying Cargador. Mrs.
+Gould was walking about through these shambles with a large
+bottle in one hand and a lot of cotton wool in the other. She
+just looked at me and never even winked.  Her camerista was
+following her, also holding a bottle, and sobbing gently to
+herself.
+
+"I busied myself for some time in fetching water from the cistern
+for the wounded. Afterwards I wandered upstairs, meeting some of
+the first ladies of Sulaco, paler than I had ever seen them
+before, with bandages over their arms. Not all of them had fled
+to the ships. A good many had taken refuge for the day in the
+Casa Gould. On the landing a girl, with her hair half down, was
+kneeling against the wall under the niche where stands a Madonna
+in blue robes and a gilt crown on her head. I think it was the
+eldest Miss Lopez; I couldn't see her face, but I remember
+looking at the high French heel of her little shoe. She did not
+make a sound, she did not stir, she was not sobbing; she remained
+there, perfectly still, all black against the white wall, a
+silent figure of passionate piety. I am sure she was no more
+frightened than the other white-faced ladies I met carrying
+bandages. One was sitting on the top step tearing a piece of
+linen hastily into strips--the young wife of an elderly man of
+fortune here.  She interrupted herself to wave her hand to my
+bow, as though she were in her carriage on the Alameda. The women
+of our country are worth looking at during a revolution. The
+rouge and pearl powder fall off, together with that passive
+attitude towards the outer world which education, tradition,
+custom impose upon them from the earliest infancy. I thought of
+your face, which from your infancy had the stamp of intelligence
+instead of that patient and resigned cast which appears when some
+political commotion tears down the veil of cosmetics and usage.
+
+"In the great sala upstairs a sort of Junta of Notables was
+sitting, the remnant of the vanished Provincial Assembly. Don
+Juste Lopez had had half his beard singed off at the muzzle of a
+trabuco loaded with slugs, of which every one missed him,
+providentially. And as he turned his head from side to side it
+was exactly as if there had been two men inside his frock-coat,
+one nobly whiskered and solemn, the other untidy and scared.
+
+"They raised a cry of 'Decoud! Don Martin!' at my entrance. I
+asked them, 'What are you deliberating upon, gentlemen?' There
+did not seem to be any president, though Don Jose Avellanos sat
+at the head of the table. They all answered together, 'On the
+preservation of life and property.' 'Till the new officials
+arrive,' Don Juste explained to me, with the solemn side of his
+face offered to my view. It was as if a stream of water had been
+poured upon my glowing idea of a new State. There was a hissing
+sound in my ears, and the room grew dim, as if suddenly filled
+with vapour.
+
+"I walked up to the table blindly, as though I had been drunk.
+'You are deliberating upon surrender,' I said. They all sat
+still, with their noses over the sheet of paper each had before
+him, God only knows why. Only Don Jose hid his face in his hands,
+muttering, 'Never, never!' But as I looked at him, it seemed to
+me that I could have blown him away with my breath, he looked so
+frail, so weak, so worn out.  Whatever happens, he will not
+survive. The deception is too great for a man of his age; and
+hasn't he seen the sheets of 'Fifty Years of Misrule,' which we
+have begun printing on the presses of the Porvenir, littering the
+Plaza, floating in the gutters, fired out as wads for trabucos
+loaded with handfuls of type, blown in the wind, trampled in the
+mud? I have seen pages floating upon the very waters of the
+harbour. It would be unreasonable to expect him to survive. It
+would be cruel.
+
+"'Do you know,' I cried, 'what surrender means to you, to your
+women, to your children, to your property?'
+
+"I declaimed for five minutes without drawing breath, it seems to
+me, harping on our best chances, on the ferocity of Montero, whom
+I made out to be as great a beast as I have no doubt he would
+like to be if he had intelligence enough to conceive a systematic
+reign of terror. And then for another five minutes or more I
+poured out an impassioned appeal to their courage and manliness,
+with all the passion of my love for Antonia. For if ever man
+spoke well, it would be from a personal feeling, denouncing an
+enemy, defending himself, or pleading for what really may be
+dearer than life. My dear girl, I absolutely thundered at them.
+It seemed as if my voice would burst the walls asunder, and when
+I stopped I saw all their scared eyes looking at me dubiously.
+And that was all the effect I had produced! Only Don Jose's head
+had sunk lower and lower on his breast. I bent my ear to his
+withered lips, and made out his whisper, something like, 'In
+God's name, then, Martin, my son!' I don't know exactly.  There
+was the name of God in it, I am certain. It seems to me I have
+caught his last breath--the breath of his departing soul on his
+lips.
+
+"He lives yet, it is true. I have seen him since; but it was only
+a senile body, lying on its back, covered to the chin, with open
+eyes, and so still that you might have said it was breathing no
+longer. I left him thus, with Antonia kneeling by the side of the
+bed, just before I came to this Italian's posada, where the
+ubiquitous death is also waiting. But I know that Don Jose has
+really died there, in the Casa Gould, with that whisper urging me
+to attempt what no doubt his soul, wrapped up in the sanctity of
+diplomatic treaties and solemn declarations, must have abhorred.
+I had exclaimed very loud, 'There is never any God in a country
+where men will not help themselves.'
+
+"Meanwhile, Don Juste had begun a pondered oration whose solemn
+effect was spoiled by the ridiculous disaster to his beard. I did
+not wait to make it out.  He seemed to argue that Montero's (he
+called him The General) intentions were probably not evil,
+though, he went on, 'that distinguished man' (only a week ago we
+used to call him a gran' bestia) 'was perhaps mistaken as to the
+true means.' As you may imagine, I didn't stay to hear the rest.
+I know the intentions of Montero's brother, Pedrito, the
+guerrillero, whom I exposed in Paris, some years ago, in a cafe
+frequented by South American students, where he tried to pass
+himself off for a Secretary of Legation. He used to come in and
+talk for hours, twisting his felt hat in his hairy paws, and his
+ambition seemed to become a sort of Duc de Morny to a sort of
+Napoleon. Already, then, he used to talk of his brother in
+inflated terms. He seemed fairly safe from being found out,
+because the students, all of the Blanco families, did not, as you
+may imagine, frequent the Legation. It was only Decoud, a man
+without faith and principles, as they used to say, that went in
+there sometimes for the sake of the fun, as it were to an
+assembly of trained monkeys. I know his intentions. I have seen
+him change the plates at table.  Whoever is allowed to live on in
+terror, I must die the death.
+
+"No, I didn't stay to the end to hear Don Juste Lopez trying to
+persuade himself in a grave oration of the clemency and justice,
+and honesty, and purity of the brothers Montero. I went out
+abruptly to seek Antonia. I saw her in the gallery. As I opened
+the door, she extended to me her clasped hands.
+
+"'What are they doing in there?' she asked.
+
+"'Talking,' I said, with my eyes looking into hers.
+
+"'Yes, yes, but--'
+
+"'Empty speeches,' I interrupted her. 'Hiding their fears behind
+imbecile hopes. They are all great Parliamentarians there--on the
+English model, as you know.' I was so furious that I could hardly
+speak.  She made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Through the door I held a little ajar behind me, we heard Dun
+Juste's measured mouthing monotone go on from phrase to phrase,
+like a sort of awful and solemn madness.
+
+"'After all, the Democratic aspirations have, perhaps, their
+legitimacy. The ways of human progress are inscrutable, and if
+the fate of the country is in the hand of Montero, we ought--'
+
+"I crashed the door to on that; it was enough; it was too much.
+There was never a beautiful face expressing more horror and
+despair than the face of Antonia. I couldn't bear it; I seized
+her wrists.
+
+"'Have they killed my father in there?' she asked.
+
+"Her eyes blazed with indignation, but as I looked on,
+fascinated, the light in them went out.
+
+"'It is a surrender,' I said. And I remember I was shaking her
+wrists I held apart in my hands. 'But it's more than talk. Your
+father told me to go on in God's name.'
+
+"My dear girl, there is that in Antonia which would make me
+believe in the feasibility of anything. One look at her face is
+enough to set my brain on fire. And yet I love her as any other
+man would--with the heart, and with that alone. She is more to me
+than his Church to Father Corbelan (the Grand Vicar disappeared
+last night from the town; perhaps gone to join the band of
+Hernandez). She is more to me than his precious mine to that
+sentimental Englishman. I won't speak of his wife. She may have
+been sentimental once.  The San Tome mine stands now between
+those two people.  'Your father himself, Antonia,' I repeated;
+'your father, do you understand? has told me to go on.'
+
+"She averted her face, and in a pained voice--
+
+"'He has?' she cried. 'Then, indeed, I fear he will never speak
+again.'
+
+"She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to cry in her
+handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather see her
+miserable than not see her at all, never any more; for whether I
+escaped or stayed to die, there was for us no coming together, no
+future. And that being so, I had no pity to waste upon the
+passing moments of her sorrow. I sent her off in tears to fetch
+Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their sentiment was necessary to
+the very life of my plan; the sentimentalism of the people that
+will never do anything for the sake of their passionate desire,
+unless it comes to them clothed in the fair robes of an idea.
+
+"Late at night we formed a small junta of four--the two women,
+Don Carlos, and myself--in Mrs. Gould's blue-and-white boudoir.
+
+"El Rey de Sulaco thinks himself, no doubt, a very honest man.
+And so he is, if one could look behind his taciturnity. Perhaps
+he thinks that this alone makes his honesty unstained. Those
+Englishmen live on illusions which somehow or other help them to
+get a firm hold of the substance. When he speaks it is by a rare
+'yes' or 'no' that seems as impersonal as the words of an oracle.
+But he could not impose on me by his dumb reserve. I knew what he
+had in his head; he has his mine in his head; and his wife had
+nothing in her head but his precious person, which he has bound
+up with the Gould Concession and tied up to that little woman's
+neck. No matter. The thing was to make him present the affair to
+Holroyd (the Steel and Silver King) in such a manner as to secure
+his financial support.  At that time last night, just twenty-four
+hours ago, we thought the silver of the mine safe in the Custom
+House vaults till the north-bound steamer came to take it away.
+And as long as the treasure flowed north, without a break, that
+utter sentimentalist, Holroyd, would not drop his idea of
+introducing, not only justice, industry, peace, to the benighted
+continents, but also that pet dream of his of a purer form of
+Christianity. Later on, the principal European really in Sulaco,
+the engineer-in-chief of the railway, came riding up the Calle,
+from the harbour, and was admitted to our conclave. Meantime, the
+Junta of the Notables in the great sala was still deliberating;
+only, one of them had run out in the corredor to ask the servant
+whether something to eat couldn't be sent in. The first words the
+engineer-in-chief said as he came into the boudoir were, 'What is
+your house, dear Mrs. Gould? A war hospital below, and apparently
+a restaurant above.  I saw them carrying trays full of good
+things into the sala.'
+
+"'And here, in this boudoir,' I said, 'you behold the inner
+cabinet of the Occidental Republic that is to be.'
+
+"He was so preoccupied that he didn't smile at that, he didn't
+even look surprised.
+
+"He told us that he was attending to the general dispositions for
+the defence of the railway property at the railway yards when he
+was sent for to go into the railway telegraph office.  The
+engineer of the railhead, at the foot of the mountains, wanted to
+talk to him from his end of the wire. There was nobody in the
+office but himself and the operator of the railway telegraph, who
+read off the clicks aloud as the tape coiled its length upon the
+floor. And the purport of that talk, clicked nervously from a
+wooden shed in the depths of the forests, had informed the chief
+that President Ribiera had been, or was being, pursued. This was
+news, indeed, to all of us in Sulaco. Ribiera himself, when
+rescued, revived, and soothed by us, had been inclined to think
+that he had not been pursued.
+
+"Ribiera had yielded to the urgent solicitations of his friends,
+and had left the headquarters of his discomfited army alone,
+under the guidance of Bonifacio, the muleteer, who had been
+willing to take the responsibility with the risk. He had departed
+at daybreak of the third day. His remaining forces had melted
+away during the night. Bonifacio and he rode hard on horses
+towards the Cordillera; then they obtained mules, entered the
+passes, and crossed the Paramo of Ivie just before a freezing
+blast swept over that stony plateau, burying in a drift of snow
+the little shelter-hut of stones in which they had spent the
+night.  Afterwards poor Ribiera had many adventures, got
+separated from his guide, lost his mount, struggled down to the
+Campo on foot, and if he had not thrown himself on the mercy of a
+ranchero would have perished a long way from Sulaco. That man,
+who, as a matter of fact, recognized him at once, let him have a
+fresh mule, which the fugitive, heavy and unskilful, had ridden
+to death.  And it was true he had been pursued by a party
+commanded by no less a person than Pedro Montero, the brother of
+the general. The cold wind of the Paramo luckily caught the
+pursuers on the top of the pass.  Some few men, and all the
+animals, perished in the icy blast. The stragglers died, but the
+main body kept on.  They found poor Bonifacio lying half-dead at
+the foot of a snow slope, and bayoneted him promptly in the true
+Civil War style. They would have had Ribiera, too, if they had
+not, for some reason or other, turned off the track of the old
+Camino Real, only to lose their way in the forests at the foot of
+the lower slopes.  And there they were at last, having stumbled
+in unexpectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer at the
+railhead told his chief by wire that he had Pedro Montero
+absolutely there, in the very office, listening to the clicks. He
+was going to take possession of Sulaco in the name of the
+Democracy. He was very overbearing.  His men slaughtered some of
+the Railway Company's cattle without asking leave, and went to
+work broiling the meat on the embers. Pedrito made many pointed
+inquiries as to the silver mine, and what had become of the
+product of the last six months' working.  He had said
+peremptorily, "Ask your chief up there by wire, he ought to know;
+tell him that Don Pedro Montero, Chief of the Campo and Minister
+of the Interior of the new Government, desires to be correctly
+informed.'
+
+"He had his feet wrapped up in blood-stained rags, a lean,
+haggard face, ragged beard and hair, and had walked in limping,
+with a crooked branch of a tree for a staff. His followers were
+perhaps in a worse plight, but apparently they had not thrown
+away their arms, and, at any rate, not all their ammunition.
+Their lean faces filled the door and the windows of the telegraph
+hut. As it was at the same time the bedroom of the
+engineer-in-charge there, Montero had thrown himself on his clean
+blankets and lay there shivering and dictating requisitions to be
+transmitted by wire to Sulaco.  He demanded a train of cars to be
+sent down at once to transport his men up.
+
+"'To this I answered from my end,' the engineer-in-chief related
+to us, 'that I dared not risk the rolling-stock in the interior,
+as there had been attempts to wreck trains all along the line
+several times. I did that for your sake, Gould,' said the chief
+engineer. 'The answer to this was, in the words of my
+subordinate, "The filthy brute on my bed said, 'Suppose I were to
+have you shot?'" To which my subordinate, who, it appears, was
+himself operating, remarked that it would not bring the cars up.
+Upon that, the other, yawning, said, "Never mind, there is no
+lack of horses on the Campo." And, turning over, went to sleep on
+Harris's bed.'
+
+"This is why, my dear girl, I am a fugitive to-night.  The last
+wire from railhead says that Pedro Montero and his men left at
+daybreak, after feeding on asado beef all night. They took all
+the horses; they will find more on the road; they'll be here in
+less than thirty hours, and thus Sulaco is no place either for me
+or the great store of silver belonging to the Gould Concession.
+
+"But that is not the worst. The garrison of Esmeralda has gone
+over to the victorious party. We have heard this by means of the
+telegraphist of the Cable Company, who came to the Casa Gould in
+the early morning with the news. In fact, it was so early that
+the day had not yet quite broken over Sulaco. His colleague in
+Esmeralda had called him up to say that the garrison, after
+shooting some of their officers, had taken possession of a
+Government steamer laid up in the harbour. It is really a heavy
+blow for me. I thought I could depend on every man in this
+province.  It was a mistake. It was a Monterist Revolution in
+Esmeralda, just such as was attempted in Sulaco, only that that
+one came off. The telegraphist was signalling to Bernhardt all
+the time, and his last transmitted words were, 'They are bursting
+in the door, and taking possession of the cable office. You are
+cut off. Can do no more.'
+
+"But, as a matter of fact, he managed somehow to escape the
+vigilance of his captors, who had tried to stop the communication
+with the outer world. He did manage it. How it was done I don't
+know, but a few hours afterwards he called up Sulaco again, and
+what he said was, 'The insurgent army has taken possession of the
+Government transport in the bay and are filling her with troops,
+with the intention of going round the coast to Sulaco. Therefore
+look out for yourselves.  They will be ready to start in a few
+hours, and may be upon you before daybreak.'
+
+"This is all he could say. They drove him away from his
+instrument this time for good, because Bernhardt has been calling
+up Esmeralda ever since without getting an answer."
+
+After setting these words down in the pocket-book which he was
+filling up for the benefit of his sister, Decoud lifted his head
+to listen. But there were no sounds, neither in the room nor in
+the house, except the drip of the water from the filter into the
+vast earthenware jar under the wooden stand. And outside the
+house there was a great silence. Decoud lowered his head again
+over the pocket-book.
+
+"I am not running away, you understand," he wrote on. "I am
+simply going away with that great treasure of silver which must
+be saved at all costs. Pedro Montero from the Campo and the
+revolted garrison of Esmeralda from the sea are converging upon
+it. That it is there lying ready for them is only an accident.
+The real objective is the San Tome mine itself, as you may well
+imagine; otherwise the Occidental Province would have been, no
+doubt, left alone for many weeks, to be gathered at leisure into
+the arms of the victorious party.  Don Carlos Gould will have
+enough to do to save his mine, with its organization and its
+people; this 'Imperium in Imperio,' this wealth-producing thing,
+to which his sentimentalism attaches a strange idea of justice.
+He holds to it as some men hold to the idea of love or revenge.
+Unless I am much mistaken in the man, it must remain inviolate or
+perish by an act of his will alone. A passion has crept into his
+cold and idealistic life. A passion which I can only comprehend
+intellectually. A passion that is not like the passions we know,
+we men of another blood. But it is as dangerous as any of ours.
+
+"His wife has understood it, too. That is why she is such a good
+ally of mine. She seizes upon all my suggestions with a sure
+instinct that in the end they make for the safety of the Gould
+Concession. And he defers to her because he trusts her perhaps,
+but I fancy rather as if he wished to make up for some subtle
+wrong, for that sentimental unfaithfulness which surrenders her
+happiness, her life, to the seduction of an idea. The little
+woman has discovered that he lives for the mine rather than for
+her. But let them be. To each his fate, shaped by passion or
+sentiment. The principal thing is that she has backed up my
+advice to get the silver out of the town, out of the country, at
+once, at any cost, at any risk. Don Carlos' mission is to
+preserve unstained the fair fame of his mine; Mrs. Gould's
+mission is to save him from the effects of that cold and
+overmastering passion, which she dreads more than if it were an
+infatuation for another woman. Nostromo's mission is to save the
+silver. The plan is to load it into the largest of the Company's
+lighters, and send it across the gulf to a small port out of
+Costaguana territory just on the other side the Azuera, where the
+first northbound steamer will get orders to pick it up. The
+waters here are calm. We shall slip away into the darkness of the
+gulf before the Esmeralda rebels arrive; and by the time the day
+breaks over the ocean we shall be out of sight, invisible, hidden
+by Azuera, which itself looks from the Sulaco shore like a faint
+blue cloud on the horizon.
+
+"The incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores is the man for that
+work; and I, the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go
+with him to return--to play my part in the farce to the end, and,
+if successful, to receive my reward, which no one but Antonia can
+give me.
+
+"I shall not see her again now before I depart. I left her, as I
+have said, by Don Jose's bedside. The street was dark, the houses
+shut up, and I walked out of the town in the night. Not a single
+street-lamp had been lit for two days, and the archway of the
+gate was only a mass of darkness in the vague form of a tower, in
+which I heard low, dismal groans, that seemed to answer the
+murmurs of a man's voice.
+
+"I recognized something impassive and careless in its tone,
+characteristic of that Genoese sailor who, like me, has come
+casually here to be drawn into the events for which his
+scepticism as well as mine seems to entertain a sort of passive
+contempt. The only thing he seems to care for, as far as I have
+been able to discover, is to be well spoken of. An ambition fit
+for noble souls, but also a profitable one for an exceptionally
+intelligent scoundrel. Yes. His very words, 'To be well spoken
+of. Si, senor.' He does not seem to make any difference between
+speaking and thinking. Is it sheer naiveness or the practical
+point of view, I wonder?  Exceptional individualities always
+interest me, because they are true to the general formula
+expressing the moral state of humanity.
+
+"He joined me on the harbour road after I had passed them under
+the dark archway without stopping.  It was a woman in trouble he
+had been talking to.  Through discretion I kept silent while he
+walked by my side. After a time he began to talk himself. It was
+not what I expected. It was only an old woman, an old lace-maker,
+in search of her son, one of the street-sweepers employed by the
+municipality. Friends had come the day before at daybreak to the
+door of their hovel calling him out. He had gone with them, and
+she had not seen him since; so she had left the food she had been
+preparing half-cooked on the extinct embers and had crawled out
+as far as the harbour, where she had heard that some town mozos
+had been killed on the morning of the riot. One of the Cargadores
+guarding the Custom House had brought out a lantern, and had
+helped her to look at the few dead left lying about there.  Now
+she was creeping back, having failed in her search.  So she sat
+down on the stone seat under the arch, moaning, because she was
+very tired. The Capataz had questioned her, and after hearing her
+broken and groaning tale had advised her to go and look amongst
+the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould. He had also given her
+a quarter dollar, he mentioned carelessly."
+
+"'Why did you do that?' I asked. 'Do you know her?'
+
+"'No, senor. I don't suppose I have ever seen her before. How
+should I? She has not probably been out in the streets for years.
+She is one of those old women that you find in this country at
+the back of huts, crouching over fireplaces, with a stick on the
+ground by their side, and almost too feeble to drive away the
+stray dogs from their cooking-pots. Caramba! I could tell by her
+voice that death had forgotten her.  But, old or young, they like
+money, and will speak well of the man who gives it to them.' He
+laughed a little.  'Senor, you should have felt the clutch of her
+paw as I put the piece in her palm.' He paused. 'My last, too,'
+he added.
+
+"I made no comment. He's known for his liberality and his bad
+luck at the game of monte, which keeps him as poor as when he
+first came here.
+
+"'I suppose, Don Martin,' he began, in a thoughtful, speculative
+tone, 'that the Senor Administrador of San Tome will reward me
+some day if I save his silver?'
+
+"I said that it could not be otherwise, surely. He walked on,
+muttering to himself. 'Si, si, without doubt, without doubt; and,
+look you, Senor Martin, what it is to be well spoken of! There is
+not another man that could have been even thought of for such a
+thing. I shall get something great for it some day. And let it
+come soon,' he mumbled. 'Time passes in this country as quick as
+anywhere else.'
+
+"This, soeur cherie, is my companion in the great escape for the
+sake of the great cause. He is more naive than shrewd, more
+masterful than crafty, more generous with his personality than
+the people who make use of him are with their money. At least,
+that is what he thinks himself with more pride than sentiment. I
+am glad I have made friends with him. As a companion he acquires
+more importance than he ever had as a sort of minor genius in his
+way--as an original Italian sailor whom I allowed to come in in
+the small hours and talk familiarly to the editor of the Porvenir
+while the paper was going through the press. And it is curious to
+have met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in
+personal prestige.
+
+"I am waiting for him here now. On arriving at the posada kept by
+Viola we found the children alone down below, and the old Genoese
+shouted to his countryman to go and fetch the doctor. Otherwise
+we would have gone on to the wharf, where it appears Captain
+Mitchell with some volunteer Europeans and a few picked
+Cargadores are loading the lighter with the silver that must be
+saved from Montero's clutches in order to be used for Montero's
+defeat. Nostromo galloped furiously back towards the town. He has
+been long gone already. This delay gives me time to talk to you.
+By the time this pocket-book reaches your hands much will have
+happened. But now it is a pause under the hovering wing of death
+in this silent house buried in the black night, with this dying
+woman, the two children crouching without a sound, and that old
+man whom I can hear through the thickness of the wall passing up
+and down with a light rubbing noise no louder than a mouse. And
+I, the only other with them, don't really know whether to count
+myself with the living or with the dead. 'Quien sabe?' as the
+people here are prone to say in answer to every question. But no!
+feeling for you is certainly not dead, and the whole thing, the
+house, the dark night, the silent children in this dim room, my
+very presence here--all this is life, must be life, since it is
+so much like a dream."
+
+With the writing of the last line there came upon Decoud a moment
+of sudden and complete oblivion.  He swayed over the table as if
+struck by a bullet. The next moment he sat up, confused, with the
+idea that he had heard his pencil roll on the floor. The low door
+of the cafe, wide open, was filled with the glare of a torch in
+which was visible half of a horse, switching its tail against the
+leg of a rider with a long iron spur strapped to the naked heel.
+The two girls were gone, and Nostromo, standing in the middle of
+the room, looked at him from under the round brim of the sombrero
+low down over his brow.
+
+"I have brought that sour-faced English doctor in Senora Gould's
+carriage," said Nostromo. "I doubt if, with all his wisdom, he
+can save the Padrona this time.  They have sent for the children.
+A bad sign that."
+
+He sat down on the end of a bench. "She wants to give them her
+blessing, I suppose."
+
+Dazedly Decoud observed that he must have fallen sound asleep,
+and Nostromo said, with a vague smile, that he had looked in at
+the window and had seen him lying still across the table with his
+head on his arms.  The English senora had also come in the
+carriage, and went upstairs at once with the doctor. She had told
+him not to wake up Don Martin yet; but when they sent for the
+children he had come into the cafe.
+
+The half of the horse with its half of the rider swung round
+outside the door; the torch of tow and resin in the iron basket
+which was carried on a stick at the saddle-bow flared right into
+the room for a moment, and Mrs.  Gould entered hastily with a
+very white, tired face.  The hood of her dark, blue cloak had
+fallen back. Both men rose.
+
+"Teresa wants to see you, Nostromo," she said.  The Capataz did
+not move. Decoud, with his back to the table, began to button up
+his coat.
+
+"The silver, Mrs. Gould, the silver," he murmured in English.
+"Don't forget that the Esmeralda garrison have got a steamer.
+They may appear at any moment at the harbour entrance."
+
+"The doctor says there is no hope," Mrs. Gould spoke rapidly,
+also in English. "I shall take you down to the wharf in my
+carriage and then come back to fetch away the girls." She changed
+swiftly into Spanish to address Nostromo. "Why are you wasting
+time? Old Giorgio's wife wishes to see you."
+
+"I am going to her, senora," muttered the Capataz.  Dr. Monygham
+now showed himself, bringing back the children. To Mrs. Gould's
+inquiring glance he only shook his head and went outside at once,
+followed by Nostromo.
+
+The horse of the torch-bearer, motionless, hung his head low, and
+the rider had dropped the reins to light a cigarette. The glare
+of the torch played on the front of the house crossed by the big
+black letters of its inscription in which only the word ITALIA
+was lighted fully. The patch of wavering glare reached as far as
+Mrs. Gould's carriage waiting on the road, with the yellow-faced,
+portly Ignacio apparently dozing on the box. By his side Basilio,
+dark and skinny, held a Winchester carbine in front of him, with
+both hands, and peered fearfully into the darkness. Nostromo
+touched lightly the doctor's shoulder.
+
+"Is she really dying, senor doctor?"
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, with a strange twitch of his scarred
+cheek. "And why she wants to see you I cannot imagine."
+
+"She has been like that before," suggested Nostromo, looking
+away.
+
+"Well, Capataz, I can assure you she will never be like that
+again," snarled Dr. Monygham. "You may go to her or stay away.
+There is very little to be got from talking to the dying. But she
+told Dona Emilia in my hearing that she has been like a mother to
+you ever since you first set foot ashore here."
+
+"Si! And she never had a good word to say for me to anybody. It
+is more as if she could not forgive me for being alive, and such
+a man, too, as she would have liked her son to be."
+
+"Maybe!" exclaimed a mournful deep voice near them. "Women have
+their own ways of tormenting themselves." Giorgio Viola had come
+out of the house.  He threw a heavy black shadow in the
+torchlight, and the glare fell on his big face, on the great
+bushy head of white hair. He motioned the Capataz indoors with
+his extended arm.
+
+Dr. Monygham, after busying himself with a little medicament box
+of polished wood on the seat of the landau, turned to old Giorgio
+and thrust into his big, trembling hand one of the
+glass-stoppered bottles out of the case.
+
+"Give her a spoonful of this now and then, in water," he said.
+"It will make her easier."
+
+"And there is nothing more for her?" asked the old man,
+patiently.
+
+"No. Not on earth," said the doctor, with his back to him,
+clicking the lock of the medicine case.
+
+Nostromo slowly crossed the large kitchen, all dark but for the
+glow of a heap of charcoal under the heavy mantel of the
+cooking-range, where water was boiling in an iron pot with a loud
+bubbling sound. Between the two walls of a narrow staircase a
+bright light streamed from the sick-room above; and the
+magnificent Capataz de Cargadores stepping noiselessly in soft
+leather sandals, bushy whiskered, his muscular neck and bronzed
+chest bare in the open check shirt, resembled a Mediterranean
+sailor just come ashore from some wine or fruit-laden felucca. At
+the top he paused, broad shouldered, narrow hipped and supple,
+looking at the large bed, like a white couch of state, with a
+profusion of snowy linen, amongst which the Padrona sat unpropped
+and bowed, her handsome, black-browed face bent over her chest. A
+mass of raven hair with only a few white threads in it covered
+her shoulders; one thick strand fallen forward half veiled her
+cheek.  Perfectly motionless in that pose, expressing physical
+anxiety and unrest, she turned her eyes alone towards Nostromo.
+
+The Capataz had a red sash wound many times round his waist, and
+a heavy silver ring on the forefinger of the hand he raised to
+give a twist to his moustache.
+
+"Their revolutions, their revolutions," gasped Senora Teresa.
+"Look, Gian' Battista, it has killed me at last!"
+
+Nostromo said nothing, and the sick woman with an upward glance
+insisted. "Look, this one has killed me, while you were away
+fighting for what did not concern you, foolish man."
+
+"Why talk like this?" mumbled the Capataz between his teeth.
+"Will you never believe in my good sense?  It concerns me to keep
+on being what I am: every day alike."
+
+"You never change, indeed," she said, bitterly. "Always thinking
+of yourself and taking your pay out in fine words from those who
+care nothing for you."
+
+There was between them an intimacy of antagonism as close in its
+way as the intimacy of accord and affection.  He had not walked
+along the way of Teresa's expectations. It was she who had
+encouraged him to leave his ship, in the hope of securing a
+friend and defender for the girls. The wife of old Giorgio was
+aware of her precarious health, and was haunted by the fear of
+her aged husband's loneliness and the unprotected state of the
+children. She had wanted to annex that apparently quiet and
+steady young man, affectionate and pliable, an orphan from his
+tenderest age, as he had told her, with no ties in Italy except
+an uncle, owner and master of a felucca, from whose ill-usage he
+had run away before he was fourteen. He had seemed to her
+courageous, a hard worker, determined to make his way in the
+world. From gratitude and the ties of habit he would become like
+a son to herself and Giorgio; and then, who knows, when Linda had
+grown up. . . .  Ten years' difference between husband and wife
+was not so much. Her own great man was nearly twenty years older
+than herself. Gian' Battista was an attractive young fellow,
+besides; attractive to men, women, and children, just by that
+profound quietness of personality which, like a serene twilight,
+rendered more seductive the promise of his vigorous form and the
+resolution of his conduct.
+
+Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife's views and hopes,
+had a great regard for his young countryman.  "A man ought not to
+be tame," he used to tell her, quoting the Spanish proverb in
+defence of the splendid Capataz. She was growing jealous of his
+success. He was escaping from her, she feared. She was practical,
+and he seemed to her to be an absurd spendthrift of these
+qualities which made him so valuable. He got too little for them.
+He scattered them with both hands amongst too many people, she
+thought. He laid no money by. She railed at his poverty, his
+exploits, his adventures, his loves and his reputation; but in
+her heart she had never given him up, as though, indeed, he had
+been her son.
+
+Even now, ill as she was, ill enough to feel the chill, black
+breath of the approaching end, she had wished to see him. It was
+like putting out her benumbed hand to regain her hold. But she
+had presumed too much on her strength. She could not command her
+thoughts; they had become dim, like her vision. The words
+faltered on her lips, and only the paramount anxiety and desire
+of her life seemed to be too strong for death.
+
+The Capataz said, "I have heard these things many times. You are
+unjust, but it does not hurt me. Only now you do not seem to have
+much strength to talk, and I have but little time to listen. I am
+engaged in a work of very great moment."
+
+She made an effort to ask him whether it was true that he had
+found time to go and fetch a doctor for her.  Nostromo nodded
+affirmatively.
+
+She was pleased: it relieved her sufferings to know that the man
+had condescended to do so much for those who really wanted his
+help. It was a proof of his friendship. Her voice become
+stronger.
+
+"I want a priest more than a doctor," she said, pathetically. She
+did not move her head; only her eyes ran into the corners to
+watch the Capataz standing by the side of her bed. "Would you go
+to fetch a priest for me now? Think! A dying woman asks you!"
+
+Nostromo shook his head resolutely. He did not believe in priests
+in their sacerdotal character. A doctor was an efficacious
+person; but a priest, as priest, was nothing, incapable of doing
+either good or harm.  Nostromo did not even dislike the sight of
+them as old Giorgio did. The utter uselessness of the errand was
+what struck him most.
+
+"Padrona," he said, "you have been like this before, and got
+better after a few days. I have given you already the very last
+moments I can spare. Ask Senora Gould to send you one."
+
+He was feeling uneasy at the impiety of this refusal.  The
+Padrona believed in priests, and confessed herself to them. But
+all women did that. It could not be of much consequence. And yet
+his heart felt oppressed for a moment--at the thought what
+absolution would mean to her if she believed in it only ever so
+little. No matter. It was quite true that he had given her
+already the very last moment he could spare.
+
+"You refuse to go?" she gasped. "Ah! you are always yourself,
+indeed."
+
+"Listen to reason, Padrona," he said. "I am needed to save the
+silver of the mine. Do you hear? A greater treasure than the one
+which they say is guarded by ghosts and devils on Azuera. It is
+true. I am resolved to make this the most desperate affair I was
+ever engaged on in my whole life."
+
+She felt a despairing indignation. The supreme test had failed.
+Standing above her, Nostromo did not see the distorted features
+of her face, distorted by a paroxysm of pain and anger. Only she
+began to tremble all over. Her bowed head shook. The broad
+shoulders quivered.
+
+"Then God, perhaps, will have mercy upon me!  But do you look to
+it, man, that you get something for yourself out of it, besides
+the remorse that shall overtake you some day."
+
+She laughed feebly. "Get riches at least for once, you
+indispensable, admired Gian' Battista, to whom the peace of a
+dying woman is less than the praise of people who have given you
+a silly name--and nothing besides--in exchange for your soul and
+body."
+
+The Capataz de Cargadores swore to himself under his breath.
+
+"Leave my soul alone, Padrona, and I shall know how to take care
+of my body. Where is the harm of people having need of me? What
+are you envying me that I have robbed you and the children of?
+Those very people you are throwing in my teeth have done more for
+old Giorgio than they ever thought of doing for me."
+
+He struck his breast with his open palm; his voice had remained
+low though he had spoken in a forcible tone. He twisted his
+moustaches one after another, and his eyes wandered a little
+about the room.
+
+"Is it my fault that I am the only man for their purposes?  What
+angry nonsense are you talking, mother?  Would you rather have me
+timid and foolish, selling water-melons on the market-place or
+rowing a boat for passengers along the harbour, like a soft
+Neapolitan without courage or reputation? Would you have a young
+man live like a monk? I do not believe it. Would you want a monk
+for your eldest girl? Let her grow. What are you afraid of? You
+have been angry with me for everything I did for years; ever
+since you first spoke to me, in secret from old Giorgio, about
+your Linda. Husband to one and brother to the other, did you say?
+Well, why not! I like the little ones, and a man must marry some
+time. But ever since that time you have been making little of me
+to everyone. Why? Did you think you could put a collar and chain
+on me as if I were one of the watch-dogs they keep over there in
+the railway yards? Look here, Padrona, I am the same man who came
+ashore one evening and sat down in the thatched ranche you lived
+in at that time on the other side of the town and told you all
+about himself. You were not unjust to me then. What has happened
+since?  I am no longer an insignificant youth. A good name,
+Giorgio says, is a treasure, Padrona."
+
+"They have turned your head with their praises," gasped the sick
+woman. "They have been paying you with words. Your folly shall
+betray you into poverty, misery, starvation. The very leperos
+shall laugh at you--the great Capataz."
+
+Nostromo stood for a time as if struck dumb. She never looked at
+him. A self-confident, mirthless smile passed quickly from his
+lips, and then he backed away.  His disregarded figure sank down
+beyond the doorway.  He descended the stairs backwards, with the
+usual sense of having been somehow baffled by this woman's
+disparagement of this reputation he had obtained and desired to
+keep.
+
+Downstairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, surrounded by
+the shadows of the walls, of the ceiling, but no ruddy glare
+filled the open square of the outer door. The carriage with Mrs.
+Gould and Don Martin, preceded by the horseman bearing the torch,
+had gone on to the jetty. Dr. Monygham, who had remained, sat on
+the corner of a hard wood table near the candlestick, his seamed,
+shaven face inclined sideways, his arms crossed on his breast,
+his lips pursed up, and his prominent eyes glaring stonily upon
+the floor of black earth. Near the overhanging mantel of the
+fireplace, where the pot of water was still boiling violently,
+old Giorgio held his chin in his hand, one foot advanced, as if
+arrested by a sudden thought.
+
+"Adios, viejo," said Nostromo, feeling the handle of his revolver
+in the belt and loosening his knife in its sheath. He picked up a
+blue poncho lined with red from the table, and put it over his
+head. "Adios, look after the things in my sleeping-room, and if
+you hear from me no more, give up the box to Paquita. There is
+not much of value there, except my new serape from Mexico, and a
+few silver buttons on my best jacket.  No matter!  The things
+will look well enough on the next lover she gets, and the man
+need not be afraid I shall linger on earth after I am dead, like
+those Gringos that haunt the Azuera."
+
+Dr. Monygham twisted his lips into a bitter smile.  After old
+Giorgio, with an almost imperceptible nod and without a word, had
+gone up the narrow stairs, he said--
+
+"Why, Capataz! I thought you could never fail in anything."
+
+Nostromo, glancing contemptuously at the doctor, lingered in the
+doorway rolling a cigarette, then struck a match, and, after
+lighting it, held the burning piece of wood above his head till
+the flame nearly touched his fingers.
+
+"No wind!" he muttered to himself. "Look here, senor--do you know
+the nature of my undertaking?"
+
+Dr. Monygham nodded sourly.
+
+"It is as if I were taking up a curse upon me, senor doctor. A
+man with a treasure on this coast will have every knife raised
+against him in every place upon the shore. You see that, senor
+doctor? I shall float along with a spell upon my life till I meet
+somewhere the north-bound steamer of the Company, and then indeed
+they will talk about the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores from
+one end of America to another."
+
+Dr. Monygham laughed his short, throaty laugh.  Nostromo turned
+round in the doorway.
+
+"But if your worship can find any other man ready and fit for
+such business I will stand back. I am not exactly tired of my
+life, though I am so poor that I can carry all I have with myself
+on my horse's back."
+
+"You gamble too much, and never say 'no' to a pretty face,
+Capataz," said Dr. Monygham, with sly simplicity.  "That's not
+the way to make a fortune. But nobody that I know ever suspected
+you of being poor.  I hope you have made a good bargain in case
+you come back safe from this adventure."
+
+"What bargain would your worship have made?" asked Nostromo,
+blowing the smoke out of his lips through the doorway.
+
+Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a moment before he
+answered, with another of his short, abrupt laughs--
+
+"Illustrious Capataz, for taking the curse of death upon my back,
+as you call it, nothing else but the whole treasure would do."
+
+Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of discontent
+at this jeering answer. Dr. Monygham heard him gallop away.
+Nostromo rode furiously in the dark. There were lights in the
+buildings of the O.S.N. Company near the wharf, but before he got
+there he met the Gould carriage. The horseman preceded it with
+the torch, whose light showed the white mules trotting, the
+portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio with the carbine on the box.
+From the dark body of the landau Mrs. Gould's voice cried, "They
+are waiting for you, Capataz!" She was returning, chilly and
+excited, with Decoud's pocket-book still held in her hand.  He
+had confided it to her to send to his sister. "Perhaps my last
+words to her," he had said, pressing Mrs.  Gould's hand.
+
+The Capataz never checked his speed. At the head of the wharf
+vague figures with rifles leapt to the head of his horse; others
+closed upon him--cargadores of the company posted by Captain
+Mitchell on the watch. At a word from him they fell back with
+subservient murmurs, recognizing his voice. At the other end of
+the jetty, near a cargo crane, in a dark group with glowing
+cigars, his name was pronounced in a tone of relief.  Most of the
+Europeans in Sulaco were there, rallied round Charles Gould, as
+if the silver of the mine had been the emblem of a common cause,
+the symbol of the supreme importance of material interests. They
+had loaded it into the lighter with their own hands. Nostromo
+recognized Don Carlos Gould, a thin, tall shape standing a little
+apart and silent, to whom another tall shape, the
+engineer-in-chief, said aloud, "If it must be lost, it is a
+million times better that it should go to the bottom of the sea."
+
+Martin Decoud called out from the lighter, "Au revoir, messieurs,
+till we clasp hands again over the new-born Occidental Republic."
+Only a subdued murmur responded to his clear, ringing tones; and
+then it seemed to him that the wharf was floating away into the
+night; but it was Nostromo, who was already pushing against a
+pile with one of the heavy sweeps. Decoud did not move; the
+effect was that of being launched into space. After a splash or
+two there was not a sound but the thud of Nostromo's feet leaping
+about the boat.  He hoisted the big sail; a breath of wind fanned
+Decoud's cheek. Everything had vanished but the light of the
+lantern Captain Mitchell had hoisted upon the post at the end of
+the jetty to guide Nostromo out of the harbour.
+
+The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till the
+lighter, slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out between
+almost invisible headlands into the still deeper darkness of the
+gulf. For a time the lantern on the jetty shone after them. The
+wind failed, then fanned up again, but so faintly that the big,
+half-decked boat slipped along with no more noise than if she had
+been suspended in the air.
+
+"We are out in the gulf now," said the calm voice of Nostromo. A
+moment after he added, "Senor Mitchell has lowered the light."
+
+"Yes," said Decoud; "nobody can find us now."
+
+A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat. The sea in
+the gulf was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo, after
+striking a couple of matches to get a glimpse of the boat-compass
+he had with him in the lighter, steered by the feel of the wind
+on his cheek.
+
+It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysteriousness of the
+great waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their
+restlessness had been crushed by the weight of that dense night.
+The Placido was sleeping profoundly under its black poncho.
+
+The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and
+gain the middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were
+somewhere at hand. "On your left as you look forward, senor,"
+said Nostromo, suddenly. When his voice ceased, the enormous
+stillness, without light or sound, seemed to affect Decoud's
+senses like a powerful drug. He didn't even know at times whether
+he were asleep or awake. Like a man lost in slumber, he heard
+nothing, he saw nothing.  Even his hand held before his face did
+not exist for his eyes. The change from the agitation, the
+passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of the
+shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it
+not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of
+eternal peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear
+dreams of earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death
+from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook
+himself, shuddered a bit, though the air that drifted past him
+was warm. He had the strangest sensation of his soul having just
+returned into his body from the circumambient darkness in which
+land, sea, sky, the mountains, and the rocks were as if they had
+not been.
+
+Nostromo's voice was speaking, though he, at the tiller, was also
+as if he were not. "Have you been asleep, Don Martin? Caramba! If
+it were possible I would think that I, too, have dozed off.   I
+have a strange notion somehow of having dreamt that there was a
+sound of blubbering, a sound a sorrowing man could make,
+somewhere near this boat. Something between a sigh and a sob."
+
+"Strange!" muttered Decoud, stretched upon the pile of treasure
+boxes covered by many tarpaulins.  "Could it be that there is
+another boat near us in the gulf? We could not see it, you know."
+
+Nostromo laughed a little at the absurdity of the idea.  They
+dismissed it from their minds. The solitude could almost be felt.
+And when the breeze ceased, the blackness seemed to weigh upon
+Decoud like a stone.
+
+"This is overpowering," he muttered. "Do we move at all,
+Capataz?"
+
+"Not so fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the grass," answered
+Nostromo, and his voice seemed deadened by the thick veil of
+obscurity that felt warm and hopeless all about them. There were
+long periods when he made no sound, invisible and inaudible as if
+he had mysteriously stepped out of the lighter.
+
+In the featureless night Nostromo was not even certain which way
+the lighter headed after the wind had completely died out. He
+peered for the islands. There was not a hint of them to be seen,
+as if they had sunk to the bottom of the gulf. He threw himself
+down by the side of Decoud at last, and whispered into his ear
+that if daylight caught them near the Sulaco shore through want
+of wind, it would be possible to sweep the lighter behind the
+cliff at the high end of the Great Isabel, where she would lie
+concealed. Decoud was surprised at the grimness of his anxiety.
+To him the removal of the treasure was a political move. It was
+necessary for several reasons that it should not fall into the
+hands of Montero, but here was a man who took another view of
+this enterprise. The Caballeros over there did not seem to have
+the slightest idea of what they had given him to do. Nostromo, as
+if affected by the gloom around, seemed nervously resentful.
+Decoud was surprised. The Capataz, indifferent to those dangers
+that seemed obvious to his companion, allowed himself to become
+scornfully exasperated by the deadly nature of the trust put, as
+a matter of course, into his hands.  It was more dangerous,
+Nostromo said, with a laugh and a curse, than sending a man to
+get the treasure that people said was guarded by devils and
+ghosts in the deep ravines of Azuera. "Senor," he said, "we must
+catch the steamer at sea. We must keep out in the open looking
+for her till we have eaten and drunk all that has been put on
+board here. And if we miss her by some mischance, we must keep
+away from the land till we grow weak, and perhaps mad, and die,
+and drift dead, until one or another of the steamers of the
+Compania comes upon the boat with the two dead men who have saved
+the treasure. That, senor, is the only way to save it; for, don't
+you see? for us to come to the land anywhere in a hundred miles
+along this coast with this silver in our possession is to run the
+naked breast against the point of a knife. This thing has been
+given to me like a deadly disease. If men discover it I am dead,
+and you, too, senor, since you would come with me. There is
+enough silver to make a whole province rich, let alone a seaboard
+pueblo inhabited by thieves and vagabonds. Senor, they would
+think that heaven itself sent these riches into their hands, and
+would cut our throats without hesitation. I would trust no fair
+words from the best man around the shores of this wild gulf.
+Reflect that, even by giving up the treasure at the first demand,
+we would not be able to save our lives.  Do you understand this,
+or must I explain?"
+
+"No, you needn't explain," said Decoud, a little listlessly. "I
+can see it well enough myself, that the possession of this
+treasure is very much like a deadly disease for men situated as
+we are. But it had to be removed from Sulaco, and you were the
+man for the task."
+
+"I was; but I cannot believe," said Nostromo, "that its loss
+would have impoverished Don Carlos Gould very much. There is more
+wealth in the mountain. I have heard it rolling down the shoots
+on quiet nights when I used to ride to Rincon to see a certain
+girl, after my work at the harbour was done. For years the rich
+rocks have been pouring down with a noise like thunder, and the
+miners say that there is enough at the heart of the mountain to
+thunder on for years and years to come. And yet, the day before
+yesterday, we have been fighting to save it from the mob, and
+to-night I am sent out with it into this darkness, where there is
+no wind to get away with; as if it were the last lot of silver on
+earth to get bread for the hungry with. Ha!  ha! Well, I am going
+to make it the most famous and desperate affair of my life--wind
+or no wind. It shall be talked about when the little children are
+grown up and the grown men are old. Aha! the Monterists must not
+get hold of it, I am told, whatever happens to Nostromo the
+Capataz; and they shall not have it, I tell you, since it has
+been tied for safety round Nostromo's neck."
+
+"I see it," murmured Decoud. He saw, indeed, that his companion
+had his own peculiar view of this enterprise.
+
+Nostromo interrupted his reflections upon the way men's qualities
+are made use of, without any fundamental knowledge of their
+nature, by the proposal they should slip the long oars out and
+sweep the lighter in the direction of the Isabels. It wouldn't do
+for daylight to reveal the treasure floating within a mile or so
+of the harbour entrance. The denser the darkness generally, the
+smarter were the puffs of wind on which he had reckoned to make
+his way; but tonight the gulf, under its poncho of clouds,
+remained breathless, as if dead rather than asleep.
+
+Don Martin's soft hands suffered cruelly, tugging at the thick
+handle of the enormous oar. He stuck to it manfully, setting his
+teeth. He, too, was in the toils of an imaginative existence, and
+that strange work of pulling a lighter seemed to belong naturally
+to the inception of a new state, acquired an ideal meaning from
+his love for Antonia. For all their efforts, the heavily laden
+lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could be heard swearing to himself
+between the regular splashes of the sweeps. "We are making a
+crooked path," he muttered to himself. "I wish I could see the
+islands."
+
+In his unskilfulness Don Martin over-exerted himself.  Now and
+then a sort of muscular faintness would run from the tips of his
+aching fingers through every fibre of his body, and pass off in a
+flush of heat. He had fought, talked, suffered mentally and
+physically, exerting his mind and body for the last forty-eight
+hours without intermission. He had had no rest, very little food,
+no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his feelings. Even his
+love for Antonia, whence he drew his strength and his
+inspiration, had reached the point of tragic tension during their
+hurried interview by Don Jose's bedside. And now, suddenly, he
+was thrown out of all this into a dark gulf, whose very gloom,
+silence, and breathless peace added a torment to the necessity
+for physical exertion. He imagined the lighter sinking to the
+bottom with an extraordinary shudder of delight. "I am on the
+verge of delirium," he thought. He mastered the trembling of all
+his limbs, of his breast, the inward trembling of all his body
+exhausted of its nervous force.
+
+"Shall we rest, Capataz?" he proposed in a careless tone. "There
+are many hours of night yet before us."
+
+"True. It is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your arms, senor,
+if that is what you mean. You will find no other sort of rest, I
+can promise you, since you let yourself be bound to this treasure
+whose loss would make no poor man poorer. No, senor; there is no
+rest till we find a north-bound steamer, or else some ship finds
+us drifting about stretched out dead upon the Englishman's
+silver. Or rather--no; por Dios! I shall cut down the gunwale
+with the axe right to the water's edge before thirst and hunger
+rob me of my strength.  By all the saints and devils I shall let
+the sea have the treasure rather than give it up to any stranger.
+Since it was the good pleasure of the Caballeros to send me off
+on such an errand, they shall learn I am just the man they take
+me for."
+
+Decoud lay on the silver boxes panting. All his active sensations
+and feelings from as far back as he could remember seemed to him
+the maddest of dreams.  Even his passionate devotion to Antonia
+into which he had worked himself up out of the depths of his
+scepticism had lost all appearance of reality. For a moment he
+was the prey of an extremely languid but not unpleasant
+indifference.
+
+"I am sure they didn't mean you to take such a desperate view of
+this affair," he said.
+
+"What was it, then? A joke?" snarled the man, who on the
+pay-sheets of the O.S.N. Company's establishment in Sulaco was
+described as "Foreman of the wharf" against the figure of his
+wages. "Was it for a joke they woke me up from my sleep after two
+days of street fighting to make me stake my life upon a bad card?
+Everybody knows, too, that I am not a lucky gambler."
+
+"Yes, everybody knows of your good luck with women, Capataz,"
+Decoud propitiated his companion in a weary drawl.
+
+"Look here, senor," Nostromo went on. "I never even remonstrated
+about this affair. Directly I heard what was wanted I saw what a
+desperate affair it must be, and I made up my mind to see it out.
+Every minute was of importance. I had to wait for you first.
+Then, when we arrived at the Italia Una, old Giorgio shouted to
+me to go for the English doctor. Later on, that poor dying woman
+wanted to see me, as you know.  Senor, I was reluctant to go. I
+felt already this cursed silver growing heavy upon my back, and I
+was afraid that, knowing herself to be dying, she would ask me to
+ride off again for a priest. Father Corbelan, who is fearless,
+would have come at a word; but Father Corbelan is far away, safe
+with the band of Hernandez, and the populace, that would have
+liked to tear him to pieces, are much incensed against the
+priests. Not a single fat padre would have consented to put his
+head out of his hiding-place to-night to save a Christian soul,
+except, perhaps, under my protection.  That was in her mind. I
+pretended I did not believe she was going to die. Senor, I
+refused to fetch a priest for a dying woman . . ."
+
+Decoud was heard to stir.
+
+"You did, Capataz!" he exclaimed. His tone changed. "Well, you
+know--it was rather fine."
+
+"You do not believe in priests, Don Martin? Neither do I. What
+was the use of wasting time? But she--she believes in them. The
+thing sticks in my throat.  She may be dead already, and here we
+are floating helpless with no wind at all. Curse on all
+superstition.  She died thinking I deprived her of Paradise, I
+suppose.  It shall be the most desperate affair of my life."
+
+Decoud remained lost in reflection. He tried to analyze the
+sensations awaked by what he had been told. The voice of the
+Capataz was heard again:
+
+"Now, Don Martin, let us take up the sweeps and try to find the
+Isabels. It is either that or sinking the lighter if the day
+overtakes us. We must not forget that the steamer from Esmeralda
+with the soldiers may be coming along. We will pull straight on
+now. I have discovered a bit of a candle here, and we must take
+the risk of a small light to make a course by the boat compass.
+There is not enough wind to blow it out--may the curse of Heaven
+fall upon this blind gulf!"
+
+A small flame appeared burning quite straight. It showed
+fragmentarily the stout ribs and planking in the hollow, empty
+part of the lighter. Decoud could see Nostromo standing up to
+pull. He saw him as high as the red sash on his waist, with a
+gleam of a white-handled revolver and the wooden haft of a long
+knife protruding on his left side. Decoud nerved himself for the
+effort of rowing. Certainly there was not enough wind to blow the
+candle out, but its flame swayed a little to the slow movement of
+the heavy boat. It was so big that with their utmost efforts they
+could not move it quicker than about a mile an hour. This was
+sufficient, however, to sweep them amongst the Isabels long
+before daylight came. There was a good six hours of darkness
+before them, and the distance from the harbour to the Great
+Isabel did not exceed two miles.  Decoud put this heavy toil to
+the account of the Capataz's impatience. Sometimes they paused,
+and then strained their ears to hear the boat from Esmeralda.  In
+this perfect quietness a steamer moving would have been heard
+from far off. As to seeing anything it was out of the question.
+They could not see each other. Even the lighter's sail, which
+remained set, was invisible. Very often they rested.
+
+"Caramba!" said Nostromo, suddenly, during one of those intervals
+when they lolled idly against the heavy handles of the sweeps.
+"What is it? Are you distressed, Don Martin?"
+
+Decoud assured him that he was not distressed in the least.
+Nostromo for a time kept perfectly still, and then in a whisper
+invited Martin to come aft.
+
+With his lips touching Decoud's ear he declared his belief that
+there was somebody else besides themselves upon the lighter.
+Twice now he had heard the sound of stifled sobbing.
+
+"Senor," he whispered with awed wonder, "I am certain that there
+is somebody weeping in this lighter."
+
+Decoud had heard nothing. He expressed his incredulity.  However,
+it was easy to ascertain the truth of the matter.
+
+"It is most amazing," muttered Nostromo. "Could anybody have
+concealed himself on board while the lighter was lying alongside
+the wharf?"
+
+"And you say it was like sobbing?" asked Decoud, lowering his
+voice, too. "If he is weeping, whoever he is he cannot be very
+dangerous."
+
+Clambering over the precious pile in the middle, they crouched
+low on the foreside of the mast and groped under the half-deck.
+Right forward, in the narrowest part, their hands came upon the
+limbs of a man, who remained as silent as death. Too startled
+themselves to make a sound, they dragged him aft by one arm and
+the collar of his coat. He was limp--lifeless.
+
+The light of the bit of candle fell upon a round, hook-nosed face
+with black moustaches and little side-whiskers.  He was extremely
+dirty. A greasy growth of beard was sprouting on the shaven parts
+of the cheeks.  The thick lips were slightly parted, but the eyes
+remained closed. Decoud, to his immense astonishment, recognized
+Senor Hirsch, the hide merchant from Esmeralda. Nostromo, too,
+had recognized him. And they gazed at each other across the body,
+lying with its naked feet higher than its head, in an absurd
+pretence of sleep, faintness, or death.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+FOR a moment, before this extraordinary find, they forgot their
+own concerns and sensations. Senor Hirsch's sensations as he lay
+there must have been those of extreme terror. For a long time he
+refused to give a sign of life, till at last Decoud's
+objurgations, and, perhaps more, Nostromo's impatient suggestion
+that he should be thrown overboard, as he seemed to be dead,
+induced him to raise one eyelid first, and then the other.
+
+It appeared that he had never found a safe opportunity to leave
+Sulaco. He lodged with Anzani, the universal storekeeper, on the
+Plaza Mayor. But when the riot broke out he had made his escape
+from his host's house before daylight, and in such a hurry that
+he had forgotten to put on his shoes. He had run out impulsively
+in his socks, and with his hat in his hand, into the garden of
+Anzani's house. Fear gave him the necessary agility to climb over
+several low walls, and afterwards he blundered into the overgrown
+cloisters of the ruined Franciscan convent in one of the
+by-streets.  He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes
+with the recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for his
+scratched body and his torn clothing. He lay hidden there all
+day, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth with all the
+intensity of thirst engendered by heat and fear. Three times
+different bands of men invaded the place with shouts and
+imprecations, looking for Father Corbelan; but towards the
+evening, still lying on his face in the bushes, he thought he
+would die from the fear of silence. He was not very clear as to
+what had induced him to leave the place, but evidently he had got
+out and slunk successfully out of town along the deserted back
+lanes. He wandered in the darkness near the railway, so maddened
+by apprehension that he dared not even approach the fires of the
+pickets of Italian workmen guarding the line. He had a vague idea
+evidently of finding refuge in the railway yards, but the dogs
+rushed upon him, barking; men began to shout; a shot was fired at
+random. He fled away from the gates. By the merest accident, as
+it happened, he took the direction of the O.S.N. Company's
+offices.  Twice he stumbled upon the bodies of men killed during
+the day. But everything living frightened him much more. He
+crouched, crept, crawled, made dashes, guided by a sort of animal
+instinct, keeping away from every light and from every sound of
+voices. His idea was to throw himself at the feet of Captain
+Mitchell and beg for shelter in the Company's offices. It was all
+dark there as he approached on his hands and knees, but suddenly
+someone on guard challenged loudly, "Quien vive?" There were more
+dead men lying about, and he flattened himself down at once by
+the side of a cold corpse. He heard a voice saying, "Here is one
+of those wounded rascals crawling about. Shall I go and finish
+him?" And another voice objected that it was not safe to go out
+without a lantern upon such an errand; perhaps it was only some
+negro Liberal looking for a chance to stick a knife into the
+stomach of an honest man. Hirsch didn't stay to hear any more,
+but crawling away to the end of the wharf, hid himself amongst a
+lot of empty casks. After a while some people came along,
+talking, and with glowing cigarettes.  He did not stop to ask
+himself whether they would be likely to do him any harm, but
+bolted incontinently along the jetty, saw a lighter lying moored
+at the end, and threw himself into it. In his desire to find
+cover he crept right forward under the half-deck, and he had
+remained there more dead than alive, suffering agonies of hunger
+and thirst, and almost fainting with terror, when he heard
+numerous footsteps and the voices of the Europeans who came in a
+body escorting the wagonload of treasure, pushed along the rails
+by a squad of Cargadores. He understood perfectly what was being
+done from the talk, but did not disclose his presence from the
+fear that he would not be allowed to remain.  His only idea at
+the time, overpowering and masterful, was to get away from this
+terrible Sulaco. And now he regretted it very much. He had heard
+Nostromo talk to Decoud, and wished himself back on shore.  He
+did not desire to be involved in any desperate affair--in a
+situation where one could not run away. The involuntary groans of
+his anguished spirit had betrayed him to the sharp ears of the
+Capataz.
+
+They had propped him up in a sitting posture against the side of
+the lighter, and he went on with the moaning account of his
+adventures till his voice broke, his head fell forward. "Water,"
+he whispered, with difficulty.  Decoud held one of the cans to
+his lips. He revived after an extraordinarily short time, and
+scrambled up to his feet wildly. Nostromo, in an angry and
+threatening voice, ordered him forward. Hirsch was one of those
+men whom fear lashes like a whip, and he must have had an
+appalling idea of the Capataz's ferocity. He displayed an
+extraordinary agility in disappearing forward into the darkness.
+They heard him getting over the tarpaulin; then there was the
+sound of a heavy fall, followed by a weary sigh. Afterwards all
+was still in the fore-part of the lighter, as though he had
+killed himself in his headlong tumble. Nostromo shouted in a
+menacing voice--
+
+"Lie still there! Do not move a limb. If I hear as much as a loud
+breath from you I shall come over there and put a bullet through
+your head."
+
+The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element
+of treachery into a dangerous situation.  Nostromo's nervous
+impatience passed into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an
+undertone, as if speaking to himself, remarked that, after all,
+this bizarre event made no great difference. He could not
+conceive what harm the man could do. At most he would be in the
+way, like an inanimate and useless object--like a block of wood,
+for instance.
+
+"I would think twice before getting rid of a piece of wood," said
+Nostromo, calmly. "Something may happen unexpectedly where you
+could make use of it.  But in an affair like ours a man like this
+ought to be thrown overboard. Even if he were as brave as a lion
+we would not want him here. We are not running away for our
+lives. Senor, there is no harm in a brave man trying to save
+himself with ingenuity and courage; but you have heard his tale,
+Don Martin. His being here is a miracle of fear--" Nostromo
+paused.  "There is no room for fear in this lighter," he added
+through his teeth.
+
+Decoud had no answer to make. It was not a position for argument,
+for a display of scruples or feelings.  There were a thousand
+ways in which a panic-stricken man could make himself dangerous.
+It was evident that Hirsch could not be spoken to, reasoned with,
+or persuaded into a rational line of conduct. The story of his
+own escape demonstrated that clearly enough.  Decoud thought that
+it was a thousand pities the wretch had not died of fright.
+Nature, who had made him what he was, seemed to have calculated
+cruelly how much he could bear in the way of atrocious anguish
+without actually expiring. Some compassion was due to so much
+terror. Decoud, though imaginative enough for sympathy, resolved
+not to interfere with any action that Nostromo would take. But
+Nostromo did nothing.  And the fate of Senor Hirsch remained
+suspended in the darkness of the gulf at the mercy of events
+which could not be foreseen.
+
+The Capataz, extending his hand, put out the candle suddenly. It
+was to Decoud as if his companion had destroyed, by a single
+touch, the world of affairs, of loves, of revolution, where his
+complacent superiority analyzed fearlessly all motives and all
+passions, including his own.
+
+He gasped a little. Decoud was affected by the novelty of his
+position. Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from being
+deprived of the only weapon he could use with effect. No
+intelligence could penetrate the darkness of the Placid Gulf.
+There remained only one thing he was certain of, and that was the
+overweening vanity of his companion. It was direct,
+uncomplicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been making
+use of him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He had
+discovered a complete singleness of motive behind the varied
+manifestations of a consistent character. This was why the man
+remained so astonishingly simple in the jealous greatness of his
+conceit. And now there was a complication. It was evident that he
+resented having been given a task in which there were so many
+chances of failure. "I wonder," thought Decoud, "how he would
+behave if I were not here."
+
+He heard Nostromo mutter again, "No! there is no room for fear on
+this lighter. Courage itself does not seem good enough. I have a
+good eye and a steady hand; no man can say he ever saw me tired
+or uncertain what to do; but por Dios, Don Martin, I have been
+sent out into this black calm on a business where neither a good
+eye, nor a steady hand, nor judgment are any use. . . ." He swore
+a string of oaths in Spanish and Italian under his breath.
+"Nothing but sheer desperation will do for this affair."
+
+These words were in strange contrast to the prevailing peace--to
+this almost solid stillness of the gulf.  A shower fell with an
+abrupt whispering sound all round the boat, and Decoud took off
+his hat, and, letting his head get wet, felt greatly refreshed.
+Presently a steady little draught of air caressed his cheek. The
+lighter began to move, but the shower distanced it. The drops
+ceased to fall upon his head and hands, the whispering died out
+in the distance. Nostromo emitted a grunt of satisfaction, and
+grasping the tiller, chirruped softly, as sailors do, to
+encourage the wind. Never for the last three days had Decoud felt
+less the need for what the Capataz would call desperation.
+
+"I fancy I hear another shower on the water," he observed in a
+tone of quiet content. "I hope it will catch us up."
+
+Nostromo ceased chirruping at once. "You hear another shower?" he
+said, doubtfully. A sort of thinning of the darkness seemed to
+have taken place, and Decoud could see now the outline of his
+companion's figure, and even the sail came out of the night like
+a square block of dense snow.
+
+The sound which Decoud had detected came along the water harshly.
+Nostromo recognized that noise partaking of a hiss and a rustle
+which spreads out on all sides of a steamer making her way
+through a smooth water on a quiet night. It could be nothing else
+but the captured transport with troops from Esmeralda.  She
+carried no lights. The noise of her steaming, growing louder
+every minute, would stop at times altogether, and then begin
+again abruptly, and sound startlingly nearer; as if that
+invisible vessel, whose position could not be precisely guessed,
+were making straight for the lighter. Meantime, that last kept on
+sailing slowly and noiselessly before a breeze so faint that it
+was only by leaning over the side and feeling the water slip
+through his fingers that Decoud convinced himself they were
+moving at all. His drowsy feeling had departed. He was glad to
+know that the lighter was moving. After so much stillness the
+noise of the steamer seemed uproarious and distracting. There was
+a weirdness in not being able to see her. Suddenly all was still.
+She had stopped, but so close to them that the steam, blowing
+off, sent its rumbling vibration right over their heads.
+
+"They are trying to make out where they are," said Decoud in a
+whisper. Again he leaned over and put his fingers into the water.
+"We are moving quite smartly," he informed Nostromo.
+
+"We seem to be crossing her bows," said the Capataz in a cautious
+tone. "But this is a blind game with death. Moving on is of no
+use. We mustn't be seen or heard."
+
+His whisper was hoarse with excitement. Of all his face there was
+nothing visible but a gleam of white eyeballs.  His fingers
+gripped Decoud's shoulder. "That is the only way to save this
+treasure from this steamer full of soldiers.  Any other would
+have carried lights.  But you observe there is not a gleam to
+show us where she is."
+
+Decoud stood as if paralyzed; only his thoughts were wildly
+active. In the space of a second he remembered the desolate
+glance of Antonia as he left her at the bedside of her father in
+the gloomy house of Avellanos, with shuttered windows, but all
+the doors standing open, and deserted by all the servants except
+an old negro at the gate. He remembered the Casa Gould on his
+last visit, the arguments, the tones of his voice, the
+impenetrable attitude of Charles, Mrs. Gould's face so blanched
+with anxiety and fatigue that her eyes seemed to have changed
+colour, appearing nearly black by contrast.  Even whole sentences
+of the proclamation which he meant to make Barrios issue from his
+headquarters at Cayta as soon as he got there passed through his
+mind; the very germ of the new State, the Separationist
+proclamation which he had tried before he left to read hurriedly
+to Don Jose, stretched out on his bed under the fixed gaze of his
+daughter. God knows whether the old statesman had understood it;
+he was unable to speak, but he had certainly lifted his arm off
+the coverlet; his hand had moved as if to make the sign of the
+cross in the air, a gesture of blessing, of consent. Decoud had
+that very draft in his pocket, written in pencil on several loose
+sheets of paper, with the heavily-printed heading,
+"Administration of the San Tome Silver Mine. Sulaco.  Republic of
+Costaguana." He had written it furiously, snatching page after
+page on Charles Gould's table.  Mrs. Gould had looked several
+times over his shoulder as he wrote; but the Senor Administrador,
+standing straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was
+finished. He had waved it away firmly. It must have been scorn,
+and not caution, since he never made a remark about the use of
+the Administration's paper for such a compromising document. And
+that showed his disdain, the true English disdain of common
+prudence, as if everything outside the range of their own
+thoughts and feelings were unworthy of serious recognition.
+Decoud had the time in a second or two to become furiously angry
+with Charles Gould, and even resentful against Mrs. Gould, in
+whose care, tacitly it is true, he had left the safety of
+Antonia. Better perish a thousand times than owe your
+preservation to such people, he exclaimed mentally. The grip of
+Nostromo's fingers never removed from his shoulder, tightening
+fiercely, recalled him to himself.
+
+"The darkness is our friend," the Capataz murmured into his ear.
+"I am going to lower the sail, and trust our escape to this black
+gulf. No eyes could make us out lying silent with a naked mast. I
+will do it now, before this steamer closes still more upon us.
+The faint creak of a block would betray us and the San Tome
+treasure into the hands of those thieves."
+
+He moved about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard no sound; and it
+was only by the disappearance of the square blotch of darkness
+that he knew the yard had come down, lowered as carefully as if
+it had been made of glass. Next moment he heard Nostromo's quiet
+breathing by his side.
+
+"You had better not move at all from where you are, Don Martin,"
+advised the Capataz, earnestly. "You might stumble or displace
+something which would make a noise. The sweeps and the punting
+poles are lying about. Move not for your life. Por Dios, Don
+Martin," he went on in a keen but friendly whisper, "I am so
+desperate that if I didn't know your worship to be a man of
+courage, capable of standing stock still whatever happens, I
+would drive my knife into your heart."
+
+A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was difficult to
+believe that there was near a steamer full of men with many pairs
+of eyes peering from her bridge for some hint of land in the
+night. Her steam had ceased blowing off, and she remained stopped
+too far off apparently for any other sound to reach the lighter.
+
+"Perhaps you would, Capataz," Decoud began in a whisper.
+"However, you need not trouble. There are other things than the
+fear of your knife to keep my heart steady. It shall not betray
+you. Only, have you forgotten--"
+
+"I spoke to you openly as to a man as desperate as myself,"
+explained the Capataz. "The silver must be saved from the
+Monterists. I told Captain Mitchell three times that I preferred
+to go alone. I told Don Carlos Gould, too. It was in the Casa
+Gould. They had sent for me. The ladies were there; and when I
+tried to explain why I did not wish to have you with me, they
+promised me, both of them, great rewards for your safety. A
+strange way to talk to a man you are sending out to an almost
+certain death. Those gentlefolk do not seem to have sense enough
+to understand what they are giving one to do. I told them I could
+do nothing for you. You would have been safer with the bandit
+Hernandez. It would have been possible to ride out of the town
+with no greater risk than a chance shot sent after you in the
+dark. But it was as if they had been deaf. I had to promise I
+would wait for you under the harbour gate. I did wait. And now
+because you are a brave man you are as safe as the silver.
+Neither more nor less."
+
+At that moment, as if by way of comment upon Nostromo's words,
+the invisible steamer went ahead at half speed only, as could be
+judged by the leisurely beat of her propeller. The sound shifted
+its place markedly, but without coming nearer. It even grew a
+little more distant right abeam of the lighter, and then ceased
+again.
+
+"They are trying for a sight of the Isabels," muttered Nostromo,
+"in order to make for the harbour in a straight line and seize
+the Custom House with the treasure in it. Have you ever seen the
+Commandant of Esmeralda, Sotillo? A handsome fellow, with a soft
+voice. When I first came here I used to see him in the Calle
+talking to the senoritas at the windows of the houses, and
+showing his white teeth all the time. But one of my Cargadores,
+who had been a soldier, told me that he had once ordered a man to
+be flayed alive in the remote Campo, where he was sent recruiting
+amongst the people of the Estancias. It has never entered his
+head that the Compania had a man capable of baffling his game."
+
+The murmuring loquacity of the Capataz disturbed Decoud like a
+hint of weakness. And yet, talkative resolution may be as genuine
+as grim silence.
+
+"Sotillo is not baffled so far," he said. "Have you forgotten
+that crazy man forward?"
+
+Nostromo had not forgotten Senor Hirsch. He reproached himself
+bitterly for not having visited the lighter carefully before
+leaving the wharf. He reproached himself for not having stabbed
+and flung Hirsch overboard at the very moment of discovery
+without even looking at his face. That would have been consistent
+with the desperate character of the affair.  Whatever happened,
+Sotillo was already baffled. Even if that wretch, now as silent
+as death, did anything to betray the nearness of the lighter,
+Sotillo--if Sotillo it was in command of the troops on
+board--would be still baffled of his plunder.
+
+"I have an axe in my hand," Nostromo whispered, wrathfully, "that
+in three strokes would cut through the side down to the water's
+edge. Moreover, each lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know
+exactly where it is. I feel it under the sole of my foot."
+
+Decoud recognized the ring of genuine determination in the
+nervous murmurs, the vindictive excitement of the famous Capataz.
+Before the steamer, guided by a shriek or two (for there could be
+no more than that, Nostromo said, gnashing his teeth audibly),
+could find the lighter there would be plenty of time to sink this
+treasure tied up round his neck.
+
+The last words he hissed into Decoud's ear. Decoud said nothing.
+He was perfectly convinced.  The usual characteristic quietness
+of the man was gone.  It was not equal to the situation as he
+conceived it.  Something deeper, something unsuspected by
+everyone, had come to the surface. Decoud, with careful
+movements, slipped off his overcoat and divested himself of his
+boots; he did not consider himself bound in honour to sink with
+the treasure. His object was to get down to Barrios, in Cayta, as
+the Capataz knew very well; and he, too, meant, in his own way,
+to put into that attempt all the desperation of which he was
+capable. Nostromo muttered, "True, true! You are a politician,
+senor.  Rejoin the army, and start another revolution." He
+pointed out, however, that there was a little boat belonging to
+every lighter fit to carry two men, if not more.  Theirs was
+towing behind.
+
+Of that Decoud had not been aware. Of course, it was too dark to
+see, and it was only when Nostromo put his hand upon its painter
+fastened to a cleat in the stern that he experienced a full
+measure of relief. The prospect of finding himself in the water
+and swimming, overwhelmed by ignorance and darkness, probably in
+a circle, till he sank from exhaustion, was revolting. The barren
+and cruel futility of such an end intimidated his affectation of
+careless pessimism. In comparison to it, the chance of being left
+floating in a boat, exposed to thirst, hunger, discovery,
+imprisonment, execution, presented itself with an aspect of
+amenity worth securing even at the cost of some self-contempt. He
+did not accept Nostromo's proposal that he should get into the
+boat at once. "Something sudden may overwhelm us, senor," the
+Capataz remarked promising faithfully, at the same time, to let
+go the painter at the moment when the necessity became manifest.
+
+But Decoud assured him lightly that he did not mean to take to
+the boat till the very last moment, and that then he meant the
+Capataz to come along, too. The darkness of the gulf was no
+longer for him the end of all things. It was part of a living
+world since, pervading it, failure and death could be felt at
+your elbow. And at the same time it was a shelter. He exulted in
+its impenetrable obscurity. "Like a wall, like a wall," he
+muttered to himself.
+
+The only thing which checked his confidence was the thought of
+Senor Hirsch. Not to have bound and gagged him seemed to Decoud
+now the height of improvident folly. As long as the miserable
+creature had the power to raise a yell he was a constant danger.
+His abject terror was mute now, but there was no saying from what
+cause it might suddenly find vent in shrieks.
+
+This very madness of fear which both Decoud and Nostromo had seen
+in the wild and irrational glances, and in the continuous
+twitchings of his mouth, protected Senor Hirsch from the cruel
+necessities of this desperate affair. The moment of silencing him
+for ever had passed. As Nostromo remarked, in answer to Decoud's
+regrets, it was too late! It could not be done without noise,
+especially in the ignorance of the man's exact position. Wherever
+he had elected to crouch and tremble, it was too hazardous to go
+near him. He would begin probably to yell for mercy. It was much
+better to leave him quite alone since he was keeping so still.
+But to trust to his silence became every moment a greater strain
+upon Decoud's composure.
+
+"I wish, Capataz, you had not let the right moment pass," he
+murmured.
+
+"What! To silence him for ever? I thought it good to hear first
+how he came to be here. It was too strange. Who could imagine
+that it was all an accident?  Afterwards, senor, when I saw you
+giving him water to drink, I could not do it. Not after I had
+seen you holding up the can to his lips as though he were your
+brother. Senor, that sort of necessity must not be thought of too
+long. And yet it would have been no cruelty to take away from him
+his wretched life. It is nothing but fear. Your compassion saved
+him then, Don Martin, and now it is too late. It couldn't be done
+without noise."
+
+In the steamer they were keeping a perfect silence, and the
+stillness was so profound that Decoud felt as if the slightest
+sound conceivable must travel unchecked and audible to the end of
+the world. What if Hirsch coughed or sneezed? To feel himself at
+the mercy of such an idiotic contingency was too exasperating to
+be looked upon with irony. Nostromo, too, seemed to be getting
+restless. Was it possible, he asked himself, that the steamer,
+finding the night too dark altogether, intended to remain stopped
+where she was till daylight?  He began to think that this, after
+all, was the real danger.  He was afraid that the darkness, which
+was his protection, would, in the end, cause his undoing.
+
+Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command on board the
+transport. The events of the last forty-eight hours in Sulaco
+were not known to him; neither was he aware that the telegraphist
+in Esmeralda had managed to warn his colleague in Sulaco. Like a
+good many officers of the troops garrisoning the province,
+Sotillo had been influenced in his adoption of the Ribierist
+cause by the belief that it had the enormous wealth of the Gould
+Concession on its side. He had been one of the frequenters of the
+Casa Gould, where he had aired his Blanco convictions and his
+ardour for reform before Don Jose Avellanos, casting frank,
+honest glances towards Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He was
+known to belong to a good family persecuted and impoverished
+during the tyranny of Guzman Bento.  The opinions he expressed
+appeared eminently natural and proper in a man of his parentage
+and antecedents.  And he was not a deceiver; it was perfectly
+natural for him to express elevated sentiments while his whole
+faculties were taken up with what seemed then a solid and
+practical notion--the notion that the husband of Antonia
+Avellanos would be, naturally, the intimate friend of the Gould
+Concession. He even pointed this out to Anzani once, when
+negotiating the sixth or seventh small loan in the gloomy, damp
+apartment with enormous iron bars, behind the principal shop in
+the whole row under the Arcades. He hinted to the universal
+shopkeeper at the excellent terms he was on with the emancipated
+senorita, who was like a sister to the Englishwoman. He would
+advance one leg and put his arms akimbo, posing for Anzani's
+inspection, and fixing him with a haughty stare.
+
+"Look, miserable shopkeeper! How can a man like me fail with any
+woman, let alone an emancipated girl living in scandalous
+freedom?" he seemed to say.
+
+His manner in the Casa Gould was, of course, very
+different--devoid of all truculence, and even slightly mournful.
+Like most of his countrymen, he was carried away by the sound of
+fine words, especially if uttered by himself. He had no
+convictions of any sort upon anything except as to the
+irresistible power of his personal advantages. But that was so
+firm that even Decoud's appearance in Sulaco, and his intimacy
+with the Goulds and the Avellanos, did not disquiet him.  On the
+contrary, he tried to make friends with that rich Costaguanero
+from Europe in the hope of borrowing a large sum by-and-by. The
+only guiding motive of his life was to get money for the
+satisfaction of his expensive tastes, which he indulged
+recklessly, having no self-control.  He imagined himself a master
+of intrigue, but his corruption was as simple as an animal
+instinct. At times, in solitude, he had his moments of ferocity,
+and also on such occasions as, for instance, when alone in a room
+with Anzani trying to get a loan.
+
+He had talked himself into the command of the Esmeralda garrison.
+That small seaport had its importance as the station of the main
+submarine cable connecting the Occidental Provinces with the
+outer world, and the junction with it of the Sulaco branch. Don
+Jose Avellanos proposed him, and Barrios, with a rude and jeering
+guffaw, had said, "Oh, let Sotillo go. He is a very good man to
+keep guard over the cable, and the ladies of Esmeralda ought to
+have their turn." Barrios, an indubitably brave man, had no great
+opinion of Sotillo.
+
+It was through the Esmeralda cable alone that the San Tome mine
+could be kept in constant touch with the great financier, whose
+tacit approval made the strength of the Ribierist movement. This
+movement had its adversaries even there. Sotillo governed
+Esmeralda with repressive severity till the adverse course of
+events upon the distant theatre of civil war forced upon him the
+reflection that, after all, the great silver mine was fated to
+become the spoil of the victors.  But caution was necessary. He
+began by assuming a dark and mysterious attitude towards the
+faithful Ribierist municipality of Esmeralda. Later on, the
+information that the commandant was holding assemblies of
+officers in the dead of night (which had leaked out somehow)
+caused those gentlemen to neglect their civil duties altogether,
+and remain shut up in their houses. Suddenly one day all the
+letters from Sulaco by the overland courier were carried off by a
+file of soldiers from the post office to the Commandancia,
+without disguise, concealment, or apology. Sotillo had heard
+through Cayta of the final defeat of Ribiera.
+
+This was the first open sign of the change in his convictions.
+Presently notorious democrats, who had been living till then in
+constant fear of arrest, leg irons, and even floggings, could be
+observed going in and out at the great door of the Commandancia,
+where the horses of the orderlies doze under their heavy saddles,
+while the men, in ragged uniforms and pointed straw hats, lounge
+on a bench, with their naked feet stuck out beyond the strip of
+shade; and a sentry, in a red baize coat with holes at the
+elbows, stands at the top of the steps glaring haughtily at the
+common people, who uncover their heads to him as they pass.
+
+Sotillo's ideas did not soar above the care for his personal
+safety and the chance of plundering the town in his charge, but
+he feared that such a late adhesion would earn but scant
+gratitude from the victors. He had believed just a little too
+long in the power of the San Tome mine. The seized correspondence
+had confirmed his previous information of a large amount of
+silver ingots lying in the Sulaco Custom House. To gain
+possession of it would be a clear Monterist move; a sort of
+service that would have to be rewarded. With the silver in his
+hands he could make terms for himself and his soldiers. He was
+aware neither of the riots, nor of the President's escape to
+Sulaco and the close pursuit led by Montero's brother, the
+guerrillero. The game seemed in his own hands. The initial moves
+were the seizure of the cable telegraph office and the securing
+of the Government steamer lying in the narrow creek which is the
+harbour of Esmeralda. The last was effected without difficulty by
+a company of soldiers swarming with a rush over the gangways as
+she lay alongside the quay; but the lieutenant charged with the
+duty of arresting the telegraphist halted on the way before the
+only cafe in Esmeralda, where he distributed some brandy to his
+men, and refreshed himself at the expense of the owner, a known
+Ribierist. The whole party became intoxicated, and proceeded on
+their mission up the street yelling and firing random shots at
+the windows. This little festivity, which might have turned out
+dangerous to the telegraphist's life, enabled him in the end to
+send his warning to Sulaco. The lieutenant, staggering upstairs
+with a drawn sabre, was before long kissing him on both cheeks in
+one of those swift changes of mood peculiar to a state of
+drunkenness.  He clasped the telegraphist close round the neck,
+assuring him that all the officers of the Esmeralda garrison were
+going to be made colonels, while tears of happiness streamed down
+his sodden face. Thus it came about that the town major, coming
+along later, found the whole party sleeping on the stairs and in
+passages, and the telegraphist (who scorned this chance of
+escape) very busy clicking the key of the transmitter.  The major
+led him away bareheaded, with his hands tied behind his back, but
+concealed the truth from Sotillo, who remained in ignorance of
+the warning despatched to Sulaco.
+
+The colonel was not the man to let any sort of darkness stand in
+the way of the planned surprise. It appeared to him a dead
+certainty; his heart was set upon his object with an
+ungovernable, childlike impatience.  Ever since the steamer had
+rounded Punta Mala, to enter the deeper shadow of the gulf, he
+had remained on the bridge in a group of officers as excited as
+himself.  Distracted between the coaxings and menaces of Sotillo
+and his Staff, the miserable commander of the steamer kept her
+moving with as much prudence as they would let him exercise. Some
+of them had been drinking heavily, no doubt; but the prospect of
+laying hands on so much wealth made them absurdly foolhardy, and,
+at the same time, extremely anxious. The old major of the
+battalion, a stupid, suspicious man, who had never been afloat in
+his life, distinguished himself by putting out suddenly the
+binnacle light, the only one allowed on board for the necessities
+of navigation. He could not understand of what use it could be
+for finding the way. To the vehement protestations of the ship's
+captain, he stamped his foot and tapped the handle of his sword.
+"Aha! I have unmasked you," he cried, triumphantly. "You are
+tearing your hair from despair at my acuteness. Am I a child to
+believe that a light in that brass box can show you where the
+harbour is? I am an old soldier, I am. I can smell a traitor a
+league off. You wanted that gleam to betray our approach to your
+friend the Englishman. A thing like that show you the way! What a
+miserable lie!  Que picardia! You Sulaco people are all in the
+pay of those foreigners. You deserve to be run through the body
+with my sword." Other officers, crowding round, tried to calm his
+indignation, repeating persuasively, "No, no! This is an
+appliance of the mariners, major.  This is no treachery." The
+captain of the transport flung himself face downwards on the
+bridge, and refused to rise. "Put an end to me at once," he
+repeated in a stifled voice. Sotillo had to interfere.
+
+The uproar and confusion on the bridge became so great that the
+helmsman fled from the wheel. He took refuge in the engine-room,
+and alarmed the engineers, who, disregarding the threats of the
+soldiers set on guard over them, stopped the engines, protesting
+that they would rather be shot than run the risk of being drowned
+down below.
+
+This was the first time Nostromo and Decoud heard the steamer
+stop. After order had been restored, and the binnacle lamp
+relighted, she went ahead again, passing wide of the lighter in
+her search for the Isabels. The group could not be made out, and,
+at the pitiful entreaties of the captain, Sotillo allowed the
+engines to be stopped again to wait for one of those periodical
+lightenings of darkness caused by the shifting of the cloud
+canopy spread above the waters of the gulf.
+
+Sotillo, on the bridge, muttered from time to time angrily to the
+captain. The other, in an apologetic and cringing tone, begged su
+merced the colonel to take into consideration the limitations put
+upon human faculties by the darkness of the night. Sotillo
+swelled with rage and impatience. It was the chance of a
+lifetime.
+
+"If your eyes are of no more use to you than this, I shall have
+them put out," he yelled.
+
+The captain of the steamer made no answer, for just then the mass
+of the Great Isabel loomed up darkly after a passing shower, then
+vanished, as if swept away by a wave of greater obscurity
+preceding another downpour.  This was enough for him. In the
+voice of a man come back to life again, he informed Sotillo that
+in an hour he would be alongside the Sulaco wharf. The ship was
+put then full speed on the course, and a great bustle of
+preparation for landing arose among the soldiers on her deck.
+
+It was heard distinctly by Decoud and Nostromo.  The Capataz
+understood its meaning. They had made out the Isabels, and were
+going on now in a straight line for Sulaco. He judged that they
+would pass close; but believed that lying still like this, with
+the sail lowered, the lighter could not be seen. "No, not even if
+they rubbed sides with us," he muttered.
+
+The rain began to fall again; first like a wet mist, then with a
+heavier touch, thickening into a smart, perpendicular downpour;
+and the hiss and thump of the approaching steamer was coming
+extremely near. Decoud, with his eyes full of water, and lowered
+head, asked himself how long it would be before she drew past,
+when unexpectedly he felt a lurch. An inrush of foam broke
+swishing over the stern, simultaneously with a crack of timbers
+and a staggering shock. He had the impression of an angry hand
+laying hold of the lighter and dragging it along to destruction.
+The shock, of course, had knocked him down, and he found himself
+rolling in a lot of water at the bottom of the lighter. A violent
+churning went on alongside; a strange and amazed voice cried out
+something above him in the night. He heard a piercing shriek for
+help from Senor Hirsch. He kept his teeth hard set all the time.
+It was a collision!
+
+The steamer had struck the lighter obliquely, heeling her over
+till she was half swamped, starting some of her timbers, and
+swinging her head parallel to her own course with the force of
+the blow. The shock of it on board of her was hardly perceptible.
+All the violence of that collision was, as usual, felt only on
+board the smaller craft. Even Nostromo himself thought that this
+was perhaps the end of his desperate adventure.  He, too, had
+been flung away from the long tiller, which took charge in the
+lurch. Next moment the steamer would have passed on, leaving the
+lighter to sink or swim after having shouldered her thus out of
+her way, and without even getting a glimpse of her form, had it
+not been that, being deeply laden with stores and the great
+number of people on board, her anchor was low enough to hook
+itself into one of the wire shrouds of the lighter's mast. For
+the space of two or three gasping breaths that new rope held
+against the sudden strain.  It was this that gave Decoud the
+sensation of the snatching pull, dragging the lighter away to
+destruction.  The cause of it, of course, was inexplicable to
+him. The whole thing was so sudden that he had no time to think.
+But all his sensations were perfectly clear; he had kept complete
+possession of himself; in fact, he was even pleasantly aware of
+that calmness at the very moment of being pitched head first over
+the transom, to struggle on his back in a lot of water. Senor
+Hirsch's shriek he had heard and recognized while he was
+regaining his feet, always with that mysterious sensation of
+being dragged headlong through the darkness. Not a word, not a
+cry escaped him; he had no time to see anything; and following
+upon the despairing screams for help, the dragging motion ceased
+so suddenly that he staggered forward with open arms and fell
+against the pile of the treasure boxes. He clung to them
+instinctively, in the vague apprehension of being flung about
+again; and immediately he heard another lot of shrieks for help,
+prolonged and despairing, not near him at all, but unaccountably
+in the distance, away from the lighter altogether, as if some
+spirit in the night were mocking at Senor Hirsch's terror and
+despair.
+
+Then all was still--as still as when you wake up in your bed in a
+dark room from a bizarre and agitated dream. The lighter rocked
+slightly; the rain was still falling. Two groping hands took hold
+of his bruised sides from behind, and the Capataz's voice
+whispered, in his ear, "Silence, for your life! Silence! The
+steamer has stopped."
+
+Decoud listened. The gulf was dumb. He felt the water nearly up
+to his knees. "Are we sinking?" he asked in a faint breath.
+
+"I don't know," Nostromo breathed back to him.  "Senor, make not
+the slightest sound."
+
+Hirsch, when ordered forward by Nostromo, had not returned into
+his first hiding-place. He had fallen near the mast, and had no
+strength to rise; moreover, he feared to move. He had given
+himself up for dead, but not on any rational grounds. It was
+simply a cruel and terrifying feeling. Whenever he tried to think
+what would become of him his teeth would start chattering
+violently. He was too absorbed in the utter misery of his fear to
+take notice of anything.
+
+Though he was stifling under the lighter's sail which Nostromo
+had unwittingly lowered on top of him, he did not even dare to
+put out his head till the very moment of the steamer striking.
+Then, indeed, he leaped right out, spurred on to new miracles of
+bodily vigour by this new shape of danger. The inrush of water
+when the lighter heeled over unsealed his lips.  His shriek,
+"Save me!" was the first distinct warning of the collision for
+the people on board the steamer. Next moment the wire shroud
+parted, and the released anchor swept over the lighter's
+forecastle. It came against the breast of Senor Hirsch, who
+simply seized hold of it, without in the least knowing what it
+was, but curling his arms and legs upon the part above the fluke
+with an invincible, unreasonable tenacity. The lighter yawed off
+wide, and the steamer, moving on, carried him away, clinging
+hard, and shouting for help. It was some time, however, after the
+steamer had stopped that his position was discovered. His
+sustained yelping for help seemed to come from somebody swimming
+in the water. At last a couple of men went over the bows and
+hauled him on board. He was carried straight off to Sotillo on
+the bridge. His examination confirmed the impression that some
+craft had been run over and sunk, but it was impracticable on
+such a dark night to look for the positive proof of floating
+wreckage. Sotillo was more anxious than ever now to enter the
+harbour without loss of time; the idea that he had destroyed the
+principal object of his expedition was too intolerable to be
+accepted. This feeling made the story he had heard appear the
+more incredible. Senor Hirsch, after being beaten a little for
+telling lies, was thrust into the chartroom.  But he was beaten
+only a little. His tale had taken the heart out of Sotillo's
+Staff, though they all repeated round their chief, "Impossible!
+impossible!" with the exception of the old major, who triumphed
+gloomily.
+
+"I told you; I told you," he mumbled. "I could smell some
+treachery, some diableria a league off."
+
+Meantime, the steamer had kept on her way towards Sulaco, where
+only the truth of that matter could be ascertained. Decoud and
+Nostromo heard the loud churning of her propeller diminish and
+die out; and then, with no useless words, busied themselves in
+making for the Isabels. The last shower had brought with it a
+gentle but steady breeze. The danger was not over yet, and there
+was no time for talk. The lighter was leaking like a sieve. They
+splashed in the water at every step. The Capataz put into
+Decoud's hands the handle of the pump which was fitted at the
+side aft, and at once, without question or remark, Decoud began
+to pump in utter forgetfulness of every desire but that of
+keeping the treasure afloat. Nostromo hoisted the sail, flew back
+to the tiller, pulled at the sheet like mad. The short flare of a
+match (they had been kept dry in a tight tin box, though the man
+himself was completely wet), disclosed to the toiling Decoud the
+eagerness of his face, bent low over the box of the compass, and
+the attentive stare of his eyes. He knew now where he was, and he
+hoped to run the sinking lighter ashore in the shallow cove where
+the high, cliff-like end of the Great Isabel is divided in two
+equal parts by a deep and overgrown ravine.
+
+Decoud pumped without intermission. Nostromo steered without
+relaxing for a second the intense, peering effort of his stare.
+Each of them was as if utterly alone with his task. It did not
+occur to them to speak.  There was nothing in common between them
+but the knowledge that the damaged lighter must be slowly but
+surely sinking. In that knowledge, which was like the crucial
+test of their desires, they seemed to have become completely
+estranged, as if they had discovered in the very shock of the
+collision that the loss of the lighter would not mean the same
+thing to them both.  This common danger brought their differences
+in aim, in view, in character, and in position, into absolute
+prominence in the private vision of each. There was no bond of
+conviction, of common idea; they were merely two adventurers
+pursuing each his own adventure, involved in the same imminence
+of deadly peril. Therefore they had nothing to say to each other.
+But this peril, this only incontrovertible truth in which they
+shared, seemed to act as an inspiration to their mental and
+bodily powers.
+
+There was certainly something almost miraculous in the way the
+Capataz made the cove with nothing but the shadowy hint of the
+island's shape and the vague gleam of a small sandy strip for a
+guide. Where the ravine opens between the cliffs, and a slender,
+shallow rivulet meanders out of the bushes to lose itself in the
+sea, the lighter was run ashore; and the two men, with a
+taciturn, undaunted energy, began to discharge her precious
+freight, carrying each ox-hide box up the bed of the rivulet
+beyond the bushes to a hollow place which the caving in of the
+soil had made below the roots of a large tree. Its big smooth
+trunk leaned like a falling column far over the trickle of water
+running amongst the loose stones.
+
+A couple of years before Nostromo had spent a whole Sunday, all
+alone, exploring the island. He explained this to Decoud after
+their task was done, and they sat, weary in every limb, with
+their legs hanging down the low bank, and their backs against the
+tree, like a pair of blind men aware of each other and their
+surroundings by some indefinable sixth sense.
+
+"Yes," Nostromo repeated, "I never forget a place I have
+carefully looked at once." He spoke slowly, almost lazily, as if
+there had been a whole leisurely life before him, instead of the
+scanty two hours before daylight.  The existence of the treasure,
+barely concealed in this improbable spot, laid a burden of
+secrecy upon every contemplated step, upon every intention and
+plan of future conduct. He felt the partial failure of this
+desperate affair entrusted to the great reputation he had known
+how to make for himself. However, it was also a partial success.
+His vanity was half appeased. His nervous irritation had
+subsided.
+
+"You never know what may be of use," he pursued with his usual
+quietness of tone and manner. "I spent a whole miserable Sunday
+in exploring this crumb of land."
+
+"A misanthropic sort of occupation," muttered Decoud, viciously.
+"You had no money, I suppose, to gamble with, and to fling about
+amongst the girls in your usual haunts, Capataz."
+
+"e vero!" exclaimed the Capataz, surprised into the use of his
+native tongue by so much perspicacity. "I had not! Therefore I
+did not want to go amongst those beggarly people accustomed to my
+generosity. It is looked for from the Capataz of the Cargadores,
+who are the rich men, and, as it were, the Caballeros amongst the
+common people. I don't care for cards but as a pastime; and as to
+those girls that boast of having opened their doors to my knock,
+you know I wouldn't look at any one of them twice except for what
+the people would say. They are queer, the good people of Sulaco,
+and I have got much useful information simply by listening
+patiently to the talk of the women that everybody believed I was
+in love with. Poor Teresa could never understand that. On that
+particular Sunday, senor, she scolded so that I went out of the
+house swearing that I would never darken their door again unless
+to fetch away my hammock and my chest of clothes.  Senor, there
+is nothing more exasperating than to hear a woman you respect
+rail against your good reputation when you have not a single
+brass coin in your pocket.  I untied one of the small boats and
+pulled myself out of the harbour with nothing but three cigars in
+my pocket to help me spend the day on this island. But the water
+of this rivulet you hear under your feet is cool and sweet and
+good, senor, both before and after a smoke." He was silent for a
+while, then added reflectively, "That was the first Sunday after
+I brought down the white-whiskered English rico all the way down
+the mountains from the Paramo on the top of the Entrada Pass--and
+in the coach, too! No coach had gone up or down that mountain
+road within the memory of man, senor, till I brought this one
+down in charge of fifty peons working like one man with ropes,
+pickaxes, and poles under my direction. That was the rich
+Englishman who, as people say, pays for the making of this
+railway. He was very pleased with me. But my wages were not due
+till the end of the month."
+
+He slid down the bank suddenly. Decoud heard the splash of his
+feet in the brook and followed his footsteps down the ravine. His
+form was lost among the bushes till he had reached the strip of
+sand under the cliff.  As often happens in the gulf when the
+showers during the first part of the night had been frequent and
+heavy, the darkness had thinned considerably towards the morning
+though there were no signs of daylight as yet.
+
+The cargo-lighter, relieved of its precious burden, rocked
+feebly, half-afloat, with her fore-foot on the sand.  A long rope
+stretched away like a black cotton thread across the strip of
+white beach to the grapnel Nostromo had carried ashore and hooked
+to the stem of a tree-like shrub in the very opening of the
+ravine.
+
+There was nothing for Decoud but to remain on the island. He
+received from Nostromo's hands whatever food the foresight of
+Captain Mitchell had put on board the lighter and deposited it
+temporarily in the little dinghy which on their arrival they had
+hauled up out of sight amongst the bushes. It was to be left with
+him. The island was to be a hiding-place, not a prison; he could
+pull out to a passing ship. The O.S.N. Company's mail boats
+passed close to the islands when going into Sulaco from the
+north. But the Minerva, carrying off the ex-president, had taken
+the news up north of the disturbances in Sulaco. It was possible
+that the next steamer down would get instructions to miss the
+port altogether since the town, as far as the Minerva's officers
+knew, was for the time being in the hands of the rabble. This
+would mean that there would be no steamer for a month, as far as
+the mail service went; but Decoud had to take his chance of that.
+The island was his only shelter from the proscription hanging
+over his head. The Capataz was, of course, going back. The
+unloaded lighter leaked much less, and he thought that she would
+keep afloat as far as the harbour.
+
+He passed to Decoud, standing knee-deep alongside, one of the two
+spades which belonged to the equipment of each lighter for use
+when ballasting ships. By working with it carefully as soon as
+there was daylight enough to see, Decoud could loosen a mass of
+earth and stones overhanging the cavity in which they had
+deposited the treasure, so that it would look as if it had fallen
+naturally. It would cover up not only the cavity, but even all
+traces of their work, the footsteps, the displaced stones, and
+even the broken bushes.
+
+"Besides, who would think of looking either for you or the
+treasure here?" Nostromo continued, as if he could not tear
+himself away from the spot. "Nobody is ever likely to come here.
+What could any man want with this piece of earth as long as there
+is room for his feet on the mainland! The people in this country
+are not curious. There are even no fishermen here to intrude upon
+your worship. All the fishing that is done in the gulf goes on
+near Zapiga, over there. Senor, if you are forced to leave this
+island before anything can be arranged for you, do not try to
+make for Zapiga. It is a settlement of thieves and matreros,
+where they would cut your throat promptly for the sake of your
+gold watch and chain. And, senor, think twice before confiding in
+any one whatever; even in the officers of the Company's steamers,
+if you ever get on board one.  Honesty alone is not enough for
+security. You must look to discretion and prudence in a man. And
+always remember, senor, before you open your lips for a
+confidence, that this treasure may be left safely here for
+hundreds of years. Time is on its side, senor. And silver is an
+incorruptible metal that can be trusted to keep its value for
+ever. . . . An incorruptible metal," he repeated, as if the idea
+had given him a profound pleasure.
+
+"As some men are said to be," Decoud pronounced, inscrutably,
+while the Capataz, who busied himself in baling out the lighter
+with a wooden bucket, went on throwing the water over the side
+with a regular splash.  Decoud, incorrigible in his scepticism,
+reflected, not cynically, but with general satisfaction, that
+this man was made incorruptible by his enormous vanity, that
+finest form of egoism which can take on the aspect of every
+virtue.
+
+Nostromo ceased baling, and, as if struck with a sudden thought,
+dropped the bucket with a clatter into the lighter.
+
+"Have you any message?" he asked in a lowered voice. "Remember, I
+shall be asked questions."
+
+"You must find the hopeful words that ought to be spoken to the
+people in town. I trust for that your intelligence and your
+experience, Capataz. You understand?"
+
+"Si, senor. . . . For the ladies."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Decoud, hastily. "Your wonderful reputation will
+make them attach great value to your words; therefore be careful
+what you say. I am looking forward," he continued, feeling the
+fatal touch of contempt for himself to which his complex nature
+was subject, "I am looking forward to a glorious and successful
+ending to my mission. Do you hear, Capataz?  Use the words
+glorious and successful when you speak to the senorita. Your own
+mission is accomplished gloriously and successfully. You have
+indubitably saved the silver of the mine. Not only this silver,
+but probably all the silver that shall ever come out of it."
+
+Nostromo detected the ironic tone. "I dare say, Senor Don
+Martin," he said, moodily. "There are very few things that I am
+not equal to. Ask the foreign signori. I, a man of the people,
+who cannot always understand what you mean.   But as to this lot
+which I must leave here, let me tell you that I would believe it
+in greater safety if you had not been with me at all."
+
+An exclamation escaped Decoud, and a short pause followed. "Shall
+I go back with you to Sulaco?" he asked in an angry tone.
+
+"Shall I strike you dead with my knife where you stand?" retorted
+Nostromo, contemptuously. "It would be the same thing as taking
+you to Sulaco.  Come, senor. Your reputation is in your politics,
+and mine is bound up with the fate of this silver. Do you wonder
+I wish there had been no other man to share my knowledge? I
+wanted no one with me, senor."
+
+"You could not have kept the lighter afloat without me," Decoud
+almost shouted. "You would have gone to the bottom with her."
+
+"Yes," uttered Nostromo, slowly; "alone."
+
+Here was a man, Decoud reflected, that seemed as though he would
+have preferred to die rather than deface the perfect form of his
+egoism. Such a man was safe. In silence he helped the Capataz to
+get the grapnel on board.   Nostromo cleared the shelving shore
+with one push of the heavy oar, and Decoud found himself solitary
+on the beach like a man in a dream. A sudden desire to hear a
+human voice once more seized upon his heart. The lighter was
+hardly distinguishable from the black water upon which she
+floated.
+
+"What do you think has become of Hirsch?" he shouted.
+
+"Knocked overboard and drowned," cried Nostromo's voice
+confidently out of the black wastes of sky and sea around the
+islet. "Keep close in the ravine, senor. I shall try to come out
+to you in a night or two."
+
+A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was setting the
+sail. It filled all at once with a sound as of a single loud
+drum-tap. Decoud went back to the ravine. Nostromo, at the
+tiller, looked back from time to time at the vanishing mass of
+the Great Isabel, which, little by little, merged into the
+uniform texture of the night. At last, when he turned his head
+again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, like a solid wall.
+
+Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude which had
+weighed heavily on Decoud after the lighter had slipped off the
+shore. But while the man on the island was oppressed by a bizarre
+sense of unreality affecting the very ground upon which he
+walked, the mind of the Capataz of the Cargadores turned alertly
+to the problem of future conduct. Nostromo's faculties, working
+on parallel lines, enabled him to steer straight, to keep a
+look-out for Hermosa, near which he had to pass, and to try to
+imagine what would happen tomorrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or, as a
+matter of fact, to-day, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillo
+would find out in what way the treasure had gone. A gang of
+Cargadores had been employed in loading it into a railway truck
+from the Custom House store-rooms, and running the truck on to
+the wharf. There would be arrests made, and certainly before noon
+Sotillo would know in what manner the silver had left Sulaco, and
+who it was that took it out.
+
+Nostromo's intention had been to sail right into the harbour; but
+at this thought by a sudden touch of the tiller he threw the
+lighter into the wind and checked her rapid way. His
+re-appearance with the very boat would raise suspicions, would
+cause surmises, would absolutely put Sotillo on the track. He
+himself would be arrested; and once in the Calabozo there was no
+saying what they would do to him to make him speak.  He trusted
+himself, but he stood up to look round.  Near by, Hermosa showed
+low its white surface as flat as a table, with the slight run of
+the sea raised by the breeze washing over its edges noisily. The
+lighter must be sunk at once.
+
+He allowed her to drift with her sail aback. There was already a
+good deal of water in her. He allowed her to drift towards the
+harbour entrance, and, letting the tiller swing about, squatted
+down and busied himself in loosening the plug. With that out she
+would fill very quickly, and every lighter carried a little iron
+ballast--enough to make her go down when full of water. When he
+stood up again the noisy wash about the Hermosa sounded far away,
+almost inaudible; and already he could make out the shape of land
+about the harbour entrance. This was a desperate affair, and he
+was a good swimmer. A mile was nothing to him, and he knew of an
+easy place for landing just below the earthworks of the old
+abandoned fort. It occurred to him with a peculiar fascination
+that this fort was a good place in which to sleep the day through
+after so many sleepless nights.
+
+With one blow of the tiller he unshipped for the purpose, he
+knocked the plug out, but did not take the trouble to lower the
+sail. He felt the water welling up heavily about his legs before
+he leaped on to the taffrail.  There, upright and motionless, in
+his shirt and trousers only, he stood waiting. When he had felt
+her settle he sprang far away with a mighty splash.
+
+At once he turned his head. The gloomy, clouded dawn from behind
+the mountains showed him on the smooth waters the upper corner of
+the sail, a dark wet triangle of canvas waving slightly to and
+fro. He saw it vanish, as if jerked under, and then struck out
+for the shore.
+
+
+
+PART THIRD
+
+THE LIGHTHOUSE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+DIRECTLY the cargo boat had slipped away from the wharf and got
+lost in the darkness of the harbour the Europeans of Sulaco
+separated, to prepare for the coming of the Monterist regime,
+which was approaching Sulaco from the mountains, as well as from
+the sea.
+
+This bit of manual work in loading the silver was their last
+concerted action. It ended the three days of danger, during
+which, according to the newspaper press of Europe, their energy
+had preserved the town from the calamities of popular disorder.
+At the shore end of the jetty, Captain Mitchell said good-night
+and turned back. His intention was to walk the planks of the
+wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up. The engineers of
+the railway staff, collecting their Basque and Italian workmen,
+marched them away to the railway yards, leaving the Custom House,
+so well defended on the first day of the riot, standing open to
+the four winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves
+bravely and faithfully during the famous "three days" of Sulaco.
+In a great part this faithfulness and that courage had been
+exercised in self-defence rather than in the cause of those
+material interests to which Charles Gould had pinned his faith.
+Amongst the cries of the mob not the least loud had been the cry
+of death to foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky circumstance for
+Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen with the
+people of the country had been uniformly bad from the first.
+
+Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola's kitchen, observed
+this retreat marking the end of the foreign interference, this
+withdrawal of the army of material progress from the field of
+Costaguana revolutions.
+
+Algarrobe torches carried on the outskirts of the moving body
+sent their penetrating aroma into his nostrils. Their light,
+sweeping along the front of the house, made the letters of the
+inscription, "Albergo d'ltalia Una," leap out black from end to
+end of the long wall. His eyes blinked in the clear blaze.
+Several young men, mostly fair and tall, shepherding this mob of
+dark bronzed heads, surmounted by the glint of slanting rifle
+barrels, nodded to him familiarly as they went by. The doctor was
+a well-known character.  Some of them wondered what he was doing
+there.  Then, on the flank of their workmen they tramped on,
+following the line of rails.
+
+"Withdrawing your people from the harbour?" said the doctor,
+addressing himself to the chief engineer of the railway, who had
+accompanied Charles Gould so far on his way to the town, walking
+by the side of the horse, with his hand on the saddle-bow. They
+had stopped just outside the open door to let the workmen cross
+the road.
+
+"As quick as I can. We are not a political faction," answered the
+engineer, meaningly. "And we are not going to give our new rulers
+a handle against the railway.  You approve me, Gould?"
+
+"Absolutely," said Charles Gould's impassive voice, high up and
+outside the dim parallelogram of light falling on the road
+through the open door.
+
+With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro Montero from the
+other, the engineer-in-chief's only anxiety now was to avoid a
+collision with either. Sulaco, for him, was a railway station, a
+terminus, workshops, a great accumulation of stores. As against
+the mob the railway defended its property, but politically the
+railway was neutral. He was a brave man; and in that spirit of
+neutrality he had carried proposals of truce to the
+self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the deputies Fuentes
+and Gamacho. Bullets were still flying about when he had crossed
+the Plaza on that mission, waving above his head a white napkin
+belonging to the table linen of the Amarilla Club.
+
+He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting that the
+doctor, busy all day with the wounded in the patio of the Casa
+Gould, had not had time to hear the news, he began a succinct
+narrative. He had communicated to them the intelligence from the
+Construction Camp as to Pedro Montero. The brother of the
+victorious general, he had assured them, could be expected at
+Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he anticipated), when
+shouted out of the window by Senor Gamacho, induced a rush of the
+mob along the Campo Road towards Rincon. The two deputies also,
+after shaking hands with him effusively, mounted and galloped off
+to meet the great man. "I have misled them a little as to the
+time," the chief engineer confessed.  "However hard he rides, he
+can scarcely get here before the morning. But my object is
+attained.  I've secured several hours' peace for the losing
+party.  But I did not tell them anything about Sotillo, for fear
+they would take it into their heads to try to get hold of the
+harbour again, either to oppose him or welcome him--there's no
+saying which. There was Gould's silver, on which rests the
+remnant of our hopes. Decoud's retreat had to be thought of, too.
+I think the railway has done pretty well by its friends without
+compromising itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be left to
+themselves."
+
+"Costaguana for the Costaguaneros," interjected the doctor,
+sardonically. "It is a fine country, and they have raised a fine
+crop of hates, vengeance, murder, and rapine--those sons of the
+country."
+
+"Well, I am one of them," Charles Gould's voice sounded, calmly,
+"and I must be going on to see to my own crop of trouble. My wife
+has driven straight on, doctor?"
+
+"Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has taken the two
+girls with her."
+
+Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief followed the
+doctor indoors.
+
+"That man is calmness personified," he said, appreciatively,
+dropping on a bench, and stretching his well-shaped legs in
+cycling stockings nearly across the doorway.  "He must be
+extremely sure of himself."
+
+"If that's all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing," said
+the doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table.
+He nursed his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other
+sustained the elbow. "It is the last thing a man ought to be sure
+of." The candle, half-consumed and burning dimly with a long
+wick, lighted up from below his inclined face, whose expression
+affected by the drawn-in cicatrices in the cheeks, had something
+vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated remorseful bitterness. As he
+sat there he had the air of meditating upon sinister things. The
+engineer-in-chief gazed at him for a time before he protested.
+
+"I really don't see that. For me there seems to be nothing else.
+However----"
+
+He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal his contempt
+for that sort of paradox; in fact. Dr.  Monygham was not liked by
+the Europeans of Sulaco.  His outward aspect of an outcast, which
+he preserved even in Mrs. Gould's drawing-room, provoked
+unfavourable criticism. There could be no doubt of his
+intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty years in the
+country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be altogether
+ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence of their activities
+and hopes, his hearers put it to the account of some hidden
+imperfection in the man's character. It was known that many years
+before, when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento chief
+medical officer of the army. Not one of the Europeans then in the
+service of Costaguana had been so much liked and trusted by the
+fierce old Dictator.
+
+Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself amongst the
+innumerable tales of conspiracies and plots against the tyrant as
+a stream is lost in an arid belt of sandy country before it
+emerges, diminished and troubled, perhaps, on the other side. The
+doctor made no secret of it that he had lived for years in the
+wildest parts of the Republic, wandering with almost unknown
+Indian tribes in the great forests of the far interior where the
+great rivers have their sources. But it was mere aimless
+wandering; he had written nothing, collected nothing, brought
+nothing for science out of the twilight of the forests, which
+seemed to cling to his battered personality limping about Sulaco,
+where it had drifted in casually, only to get stranded on the
+shores of the sea.
+
+It was also known that he had lived in a state of destitution
+till the arrival of the Goulds from Europe.  Don Carlos and Dona
+Emilia had taken up the mad English doctor, when it became
+apparent that for all his savage independence he could be tamed
+by kindness.  Perhaps it was only hunger that had tamed him. In
+years gone by he had certainly been acquainted with Charles
+Gould's father in Sta. Marta; and now, no matter what were the
+dark passages of his history, as the medical officer of the San
+Tome mine he became a recognized personality. He was recognized,
+but not unreservedly accepted. So much defiant eccentricity and
+such an outspoken scorn for mankind seemed to point to mere
+recklessness of judgment, the bravado of guilt.  Besides, since
+he had become again of some account, vague whispers had been
+heard that years ago, when fallen into disgrace and thrown into
+prison by Guzman Bento at the time of the so-called Great
+Conspiracy, he had betrayed some of his best friends amongst the
+conspirators. Nobody pretended to believe that whisper; the whole
+story of the Great Conspiracy was hopelessly involved and
+obscure; it is admitted in Costaguana that there never had been a
+conspiracy except in the diseased imagination of the Tyrant; and,
+therefore, nothing and no one to betray; though the most
+distinguished Costaguaneros had been imprisoned and executed upon
+that accusation. The procedure had dragged on for years,
+decimating the better class like a pestilence. The mere
+expression of sorrow for the fate of executed kinsmen had been
+punished with death.  Don Jose Avellanos was perhaps the only one
+living who knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties.
+He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a shrug of the
+shoulders and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was wont to
+put away from him, as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever
+the reason, Dr.  Monygham, a personage in the administration of
+the Gould Concession, treated with reverent awe by the miners,
+and indulged in his peculiarities by Mrs.  Gould, remained
+somehow outside the pale.
+
+It was not from any liking for the doctor that the
+engineer-in-chief had lingered in the inn upon the plain.  He
+liked old Viola much better. He had come to look upon the Albergo
+d'ltalia Una as a dependence of the railway. Many of his
+subordinates had their quarters there. Mrs. Gould's interest in
+the family conferred upon it a sort of distinction.  The
+engineer-in-chief, with an army of workers under his orders,
+appreciated the moral influence of the old Garibaldino upon his
+countrymen. His austere, old-world Republicanism had a severe,
+soldier-like standard of faithfulness and duty, as if the world
+were a battlefield where men had to fight for the sake of
+universal love and brotherhood, instead of a more or less large
+share of booty.
+
+"Poor old chap!" he said, after he had heard the doctor's account
+of Teresa. "He'll never be able to keep the place going by
+himself. I shall be sorry."
+
+"He's quite alone up there," grunted Doctor Monygham, with a toss
+of his heavy head towards the narrow staircase. "Every living
+soul has cleared out, and Mrs.  Gould took the girls away just
+now. It might not be over-safe for them out here before very
+long. Of course, as a doctor I can do nothing more here; but she
+has asked me to stay with old Viola, and as I have no horse to
+get back to the mine, where I ought to be, I made no difficulty
+to stay. They can do without me in the town."
+
+"I have a good mind to remain with you, doctor, till we see
+whether anything happens to-night at the harbour," declared the
+engineer-in-chief. "He must not be molested by Sotillo's
+soldiery, who may push on as far as this at once. Sotillo used to
+be very cordial to me at the Goulds' and at the club. How that
+man'll ever dare to look any of his friends here in the face I
+can't imagine."
+
+"He'll no doubt begin by shooting some of them to get over the
+first awkwardness," said the doctor.  "Nothing in this country
+serves better your military man who has changed sides than a few
+summary executions." He spoke with a gloomy positiveness that
+left no room for protest. The engineer-in-chief did not attempt
+any. He simply nodded several times regretfully, then said--
+
+"I think we shall be able to mount you in the morning, doctor.
+Our peons have recovered some of our stampeded horses. By riding
+hard and taking a wide circuit by Los Hatos and along the edge of
+the forest, clear of Rincon altogether, you may hope to reach the
+San Tome bridge without being interfered with. The mine is just
+now, to my mind, the safest place for anybody at all compromised.
+I only wish the railway was as difficult to touch."
+
+"Am I compromised?" Doctor Monygham brought out slowly after a
+short silence.
+
+"The whole Gould Concession is compromised. It could not have
+remained for ever outside the political life of the country--if
+those convulsions may be called life. The thing is--can it be
+touched? The moment was bound to come when neutrality would
+become impossible, and Charles Gould understood this well. I
+believe he is prepared for every extremity. A man of his sort has
+never contemplated remaining indefinitely at the mercy of
+ignorance and corruption. It was like being a prisoner in a
+cavern of banditti with the price of your ransom in your pocket,
+and buying your life from day to day. Your mere safety, not your
+liberty, mind, doctor. I know what I am talking about. The image
+at which you shrug your shoulders is perfectly correct,
+especially if you conceive such a prisoner endowed with the power
+of replenishing his pocket by means as remote from the faculties
+of his captors as if they were magic.  You must have understood
+that as well as I do, doctor.  He was in the position of the
+goose with the golden eggs. I broached this matter to him as far
+back as Sir John's visit here. The prisoner of stupid and greedy
+banditti is always at the mercy of the first imbecile ruffian,
+who may blow out his brains in a fit of temper or for some
+prospect of an immediate big haul. The tale of killing the goose
+with the golden eggs has not been evolved for nothing out of the
+wisdom of mankind. It is a story that will never grow old. That
+is why Charles Gould in his deep, dumb way has countenanced the
+Ribierist Mandate, the first public act that promised him safety
+on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has failed, as everything
+merely rational fails in this country. But Gould remains logical
+in wishing to save this big lot of silver. Decoud's plan of a
+counter-revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a
+chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my experience of
+this revolutionary continent, I can hardly yet look at their
+methods seriously. Decoud has been reading to us his draft of a
+proclamation, and talking very well for two hours about his plan
+of action. He had arguments which should have appeared solid
+enough if we, members of old, stable political and national
+organizations, were not startled by the mere idea of a new State
+evolved like this out of the head of a scoffing young man fleeing
+for his life, with a proclamation in his pocket, to a rough,
+jeering, half-bred swashbuckler, who in this part of the world is
+called a general.  It sounds like a comic fairy tale--and behold,
+it may come off; because it is true to the very spirit of the
+country."
+
+"Is the silver gone off, then?" asked the doctor, moodily.
+
+The chief engineer pulled out his watch. "By Captain Mitchell's
+reckoning--and he ought to know--it has been gone long enough
+now to be some three or four miles outside the harbour; and, as
+Mitchell says, Nostromo is the sort of seaman to make the best of
+his opportunities." Here the doctor grunted so heavily that the
+other changed his tone.
+
+"You have a poor opinion of that move, doctor? But why? Charles
+Gould has got to play his game out, though he is not the man to
+formulate his conduct even to himself, perhaps, let alone to
+others. It may be that the game has been partly suggested to him
+by Holroyd; but it accords with his character, too; and that is
+why it has been so successful. Haven't they come to calling him
+'El Rey de Sulaco' in Sta. Marta? A nickname may be the best
+record of a success. That's what I call putting the face of a
+joke upon the body of a truth. My dear sir, when I first arrived
+in Sta. Marta I was struck by the way all those journalists,
+demagogues, members of Congress, and all those generals and
+judges cringed before a sleepy-eyed advocate without practice
+simply because he was the plenipotentiary of the Gould
+Concession.  Sir John when he came out was impressed, too."
+
+"A new State, with that plump dandy, Decoud, for the first
+President," mused Dr. Monygham, nursing his cheek and swinging
+his legs all the time.
+
+"Upon my word, and why not?" the chief engineer retorted in an
+unexpectedly earnest and confidential voice. It was as if
+something subtle in the air of Costaguana had inoculated him with
+the local faith in "pronunciamientos." All at once he began to
+talk, like an expert revolutionist, of the instrument ready to
+hand in the intact army at Cayta, which could be brought back in
+a few days to Sulaco if only Decoud managed to make his way at
+once down the coast. For the military chief there was Barrios,
+who had nothing but a bullet to expect from Montero, his former
+professional rival and bitter enemy. Barrios's concurrence was
+assured. As to his army, it had nothing to expect from Montero
+either; not even a month's pay. From that point of view the
+existence of the treasure was of enormous importance. The mere
+knowledge that it had been saved from the Monterists would be a
+strong inducement for the Cayta troops to embrace the cause of
+the new State.
+
+The doctor turned round and contemplated his companion for some
+time.
+
+"This Decoud, I see, is a persuasive young beggar," he remarked
+at last. "And pray is it for this, then, that Charles Gould has
+let the whole lot of ingots go out to sea in charge of that
+Nostromo?"
+
+"Charles Gould," said the engineer-in-chief, "has said no more
+about his motive than usual. You know, he doesn't talk. But we
+all here know his motive, and he has only one--the safety of the
+San Tome mine with the preservation of the Gould Concession in
+the spirit of his compact with Holroyd. Holroyd is another
+uncommon man. They understand each other's imaginative side. One
+is thirty, the other nearly sixty, and they have been made for
+each other. To be a millionaire, and such a millionaire as
+Holroyd, is like being eternally young. The audacity of youth
+reckons upon what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal;
+but a millionaire has unlimited means in his hand--which is
+better. One's time on earth is an uncertain quantity, but about
+the long reach of millions there is no doubt.  The introduction
+of a pure form of Christianity into this continent is a dream for
+a youthful enthusiast, and I have been trying to explain to you
+why Holroyd at fifty-eight is like a man on the threshold of
+life, and better, too. He's not a missionary, but the San Tome
+mine holds just that for him. I assure you, in sober truth, that
+he could not manage to keep this out of a strictly business
+conference upon the finances of Costaguana he had with Sir John a
+couple of years ago.  Sir John mentioned it with amazement in a
+letter he wrote to me here, from San Francisco, when on his way
+home. Upon my word, doctor, things seem to be worth nothing by
+what they are in themselves. I begin to believe that the only
+solid thing about them is the spiritual value which everyone
+discovers in his own form of activity----"
+
+"Bah!" interrupted the doctor, without stopping for an instant
+the idle swinging movement of his legs.  "Self-flattery. Food for
+that vanity which makes the world go round. Meantime, what do you
+think is going to happen to the treasure floating about the gulf
+with the great Capataz and the great politician?"
+
+"Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?"
+
+"I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put no spiritual
+value into my desires, or my opinions, or my actions. They have
+not enough vastness to give me room for self-flattery. Look, for
+instance, I should certainly have liked to ease the last moments
+of that poor woman. And I can't. It's impossible. Have you met
+the impossible face to face--or have you, the Napoleon of
+railways, no such word in your dictionary?"
+
+"Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?" asked the chief
+engineer, with humane concern.
+
+Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above the heavy
+hard wood beams of the kitchen. Then down the narrow opening of
+the staircase made in the thickness of the wall, and narrow
+enough to be defended by one man against twenty enemies, came the
+murmur of two voices, one faint and broken, the other deep and
+gentle answering it, and in its graver tone covering the weaker
+sound.
+
+The two men remained still and silent till the murmurs ceased,
+then the doctor shrugged his shoulders and muttered--
+
+"Yes, she's bound to. And I could do nothing if I went up now."
+
+A long period of silence above and below ensued.
+
+"I fancy," began the engineer, in a subdued voice, "that you
+mistrust Captain Mitchell's Capataz."
+
+"Mistrust him!" muttered the doctor through his teeth. "I believe
+him capable of anything--even of the most absurd fidelity. I am
+the last person he spoke to before he left the wharf, you know.
+The poor woman up there wanted to see him, and I let him go up to
+her. The dying must not be contradicted, you know. She seemed
+then fairly calm and resigned, but the scoundrel in those ten
+minutes or so has done or said something which seems to have
+driven her into despair. You know," went on the doctor,
+hesitatingly, "women are so very unaccountable in every position,
+and at all times of life, that I thought sometimes she was in a
+way, don't you see? in love with him--the Capataz. The rascal has
+his own charm indubitably, or he would not have made the conquest
+of all the populace of the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I may
+have given a wrong name to some strong sentiment for him on her
+part, to an unreasonable and simple attitude a woman is apt to
+take up emotionally towards a man. She used to abuse him to me
+frequently, which, of course, is not inconsistent with my idea.
+Not at all. It looked to me as if she were always thinking of
+him. He was something important in her life. You know, I have
+seen a lot of those people.  Whenever I came down from the mine
+Mrs. Gould used to ask me to keep my eye on them. She likes
+Italians; she has lived a long time in Italy, I believe, and she
+took a special fancy to that old Garibaldino. A remarkable chap
+enough. A rugged and dreamy character, living in the
+republicanism of his young days as if in a cloud.  He has
+encouraged much of the Capataz's confounded nonsense--the
+high-strung, exalted old beggar!"
+
+"What sort of nonsense?" wondered the chief engineer.  "I found
+the Capataz always a very shrewd and sensible fellow, absolutely
+fearless, and remarkably useful. A perfect handy man. Sir John
+was greatly impressed by his resourcefulness and attention when
+he made that overland journey from Sta. Marta. Later on, as you
+might have heard, he rendered us a service by disclosing to the
+then chief of police the presence in the town of some
+professional thieves, who came from a distance to wreck and rob
+our monthly pay train. He has certainly organized the lighterage
+service of the harbour for the O.S.N. Company with great ability.
+He knows how to make himself obeyed, foreigner though he is. It
+is true that the Cargadores are strangers here, too, for the most
+part--immigrants, Islenos."
+
+"His prestige is his fortune," muttered the doctor, sourly.
+
+"The man has proved his trustworthiness up to the hilt on
+innumerable occasions and in all sorts of ways," argued the
+engineer. "When this question of the silver arose, Captain
+Mitchell naturally was very warmly of the opinion that his
+Capataz was the only man fit for the trust. As a sailor, of
+course, I suppose so. But as a man, don't you know, Gould,
+Decoud, and myself judged that it didn't matter in the least who
+went.  Any boatman would have done just as well. Pray, what could
+a thief do with such a lot of ingots? If he ran off with them he
+would have in the end to land somewhere, and how could he conceal
+his cargo from the knowledge of the people ashore? We dismissed
+that consideration from our minds. Moreover, Decoud was going.
+There have been occasions when the Capataz has been more
+implicitly trusted."
+
+"He took a slightly different view," the doctor said.  "I heard
+him declare in this very room that it would be the most desperate
+affair of his life. He made a sort of verbal will here in my
+hearing, appointing old Viola his executor; and, by Jove! do you
+know, he--he's not grown rich by his fidelity to you good people
+of the railway and the harbour. I suppose he obtains some--how
+do you say that?--some spiritual value for his labours, or else I
+don't know why the devil he should be faithful to you, Gould,
+Mitchell, or anybody else.  He knows this country well. He knows,
+for instance, that Gamacho, the Deputy from Javira, has been
+nothing else but a 'tramposo' of the commonest sort, a petty
+pedlar of the Campo, till he managed to get enough goods on
+credit from Anzani to open a little store in the wilds, and got
+himself elected by the drunken mozos that hang about the
+Estancias and the poorest sort of rancheros who were in his debt.
+And Gamacho, who to-morrow will be probably one of our high
+officials, is a stranger, too--an Isleno. He might have been a
+Cargador on the O. S. N. wharf had he not (the posadero of Rincon
+is ready to swear it) murdered a pedlar in the woods and stolen
+his pack to begin life on. And do you think that Gamacho, then,
+would have ever become a hero with the democracy of this place,
+like our Capataz?  Of course not. He isn't half the man. No;
+decidedly, I think that Nostromo is a fool."
+
+The doctor's talk was distasteful to the builder of railways. "It
+is impossible to argue that point," he said, philosophically.
+"Each man has his gifts. You should have heard Gamacho haranguing
+his friends in the street.  He has a howling voice, and he
+shouted like mad, lifting his clenched fist right above his head,
+and throwing his body half out of the window. At every pause the
+rabble below yelled, 'Down with the Oligarchs! Viva la Libertad!'
+Fuentes inside looked extremely miserable. You know, he is the
+brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of the Interior
+for six months or so, some few years back. Of course, he has no
+conscience; but he is a man of birth and education--at one time
+the director of the Customs of Cayta.  That idiot-brute Gamacho
+fastened himself upon him with his following of the lowest
+rabble. His sickly fear of that ruffian was the most rejoicing
+sight imaginable."
+
+He got up and went to the door to look out towards the harbour.
+"All quiet," he said; "I wonder if Sotillo really means to turn
+up here?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+CAPTAIN MITCHELL, pacing the wharf, was asking himself the same
+question. There was always the doubt whether the warning of the
+Esmeralda telegraphist--a fragmentary and interrupted
+message--had been properly understood. However, the good man had
+made up his mind not to go to bed till daylight, if even then. He
+imagined himself to have rendered an enormous service to Charles
+Gould. When he thought of the saved silver he rubbed his hands
+together with satisfaction. In his simple way he was proud at
+being a party to this extremely clever expedient. It was he who
+had given it a practical shape by suggesting the possibility of
+intercepting at sea the north-bound steamer. And it was
+advantageous to his Company, too, which would have lost a
+valuable freight if the treasure had been left ashore to be
+confiscated. The pleasure of disappointing the Monterists was
+also very great. Authoritative by temperament and the long habit
+of command, Captain Mitchell was no democrat.  He even went so
+far as to profess a contempt for parliamentarism itself. "His
+Excellency Don Vincente Ribiera," he used to say, "whom I and
+that fellow of mine, Nostromo, had the honour, sir, and the
+pleasure of saving from a cruel death, deferred too much to his
+Congress. It was a mistake--a distinct mistake, sir."
+
+The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N.  service
+imagined that the last three days had exhausted every startling
+surprise the political life of Costaguana could offer. He used to
+confess afterwards that the events which followed surpassed his
+imagination. To begin with, Sulaco (because of the seizure of the
+cables and the disorganization of the steam service) remained for
+a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of the world like a
+besieged city.
+
+"One would not have believed it possible; but so it was, sir. A
+full fortnight."
+
+The account of the extraordinary things that happened during that
+time, and the powerful emotions he experienced, acquired a comic
+impressiveness from the pompous manner of his personal narrative.
+He opened it always by assuring his hearer that he was "in the
+thick of things from first to last." Then he would begin by
+describing the getting away of the silver, and his natural
+anxiety lest "his fellow" in charge of the lighter should make
+some mistake. Apart from the loss of so much precious metal, the
+life of Senor Martin Decoud, an agreeable, wealthy, and
+well-informed young gentleman, would have been jeopardized
+through his falling into the hands of his political enemies.
+Captain Mitchell also admitted that in his solitary vigil on the
+wharf he had felt a certain measure of concern for the future of
+the whole country.
+
+"A feeling, sir," he explained, "perfectly comprehensible in a
+man properly grateful for the many kindnesses received from the
+best families of merchants and other native gentlemen of
+independent means, who, barely saved by us from the excesses of
+the mob, seemed, to my mind's eye, destined to become the prey in
+person and fortune of the native soldiery, which, as is well
+known, behave with regrettable barbarity to the inhabitants
+during their civil commotions. And then, sir, there were the
+Goulds, for both of whom, man and wife, I could not but entertain
+the warmest feelings deserved by their hospitality and kindness.
+I felt, too, the dangers of the gentlemen of the Amarilla Club,
+who had made me honorary member, and had treated me with uniform
+regard and civility, both in my capacity of Consular Agent and as
+Superintendent of an important Steam Service. Miss Antonia
+Avellanos, the most beautiful and accomplished young lady whom it
+had ever been my privilege to speak to, was not a little in my
+mind, I confess. How the interests of my Company would be
+affected by the impending change of officials claimed a large
+share of my attention, too.  In short, sir, I was extremely
+anxious and very tired, as you may suppose, by the exciting and
+memorable events in which I had taken my little part. The
+Company's building containing my residence was within five
+minutes' walk, with the attraction of some supper and of my
+hammock (I always take my nightly rest in a hammock, as the most
+suitable to the climate); but somehow, sir, though evidently I
+could do nothing for any one by remaining about, I could not tear
+myself away from that wharf, where the fatigue made me stumble
+painfully at times. The night was excessively dark--the darkest
+I remember in my life; so that I began to think that the arrival
+of the transport from Esmeralda could not possibly take place
+before daylight, owing to the difficulty of navigating the gulf.
+The mosquitoes bit like fury. We have been infested here with
+mosquitoes before the late improvements; a peculiar harbour
+brand, sir, renowned for its ferocity. They were like a cloud
+about my head, and I shouldn't wonder that but for their attacks
+I would have dozed off as I walked up and down, and got a heavy
+fall. I kept on smoking cigar after cigar, more to protect myself
+from being eaten up alive than from any real relish for the weed.
+Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time I was approaching
+my watch to the lighted end in order to see the time, and
+observing with surprise that it wanted yet ten minutes to
+midnight, I heard the splash of a ship's propeller--an
+unmistakable sound to a sailor's ear on such a calm night. It was
+faint indeed, because they were advancing with precaution and
+dead slow, both on account of the darkness and from their desire
+of not revealing too soon their presence: a very unnecessary
+care, because, I verily believe, in all the enormous extent of
+this harbour I was the only living soul about. Even the usual
+staff of watchmen and others had been absent from their posts for
+several nights owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still,
+after dropping and stamping out my cigar--a circumstance highly
+agreeable, I should think, to the mosquitoes, if I may judge from
+the state of my face next morning.  But that was a trifling
+inconvenience in comparison with the brutal proceedings I became
+victim of on the part of Sotillo. Something utterly
+inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of a maniac than
+the action of a sane man, however lost to all sense of honour and
+decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of his thievish
+scheme."
+
+In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed
+infuriated. Captain Mitchell, however, had not been arrested at
+once; a vivid curiosity induced him to remain on the wharf (which
+is nearly four hundred feet long) to see, or rather hear, the
+whole process of disembarkation.  Concealed by the railway truck
+used for the silver, which had been run back afterwards to the
+shore end of the jetty, Captain Mitchell saw the small detachment
+thrown forward, pass by, taking different directions upon the
+plain. Meantime, the troops were being landed and formed into a
+column, whose head crept up gradually so close to him that he
+made it out, barring nearly the whole width of the wharf, only a
+very few yards from him. Then the low, shuffling, murmuring,
+clinking sounds ceased, and the whole mass remained for about an
+hour motionless and silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On
+land nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the
+mastiffs at the railway yards, answered by the faint barking of
+the curs infesting the outer limits of the town. A detached knot
+of dark shapes stood in front of the head of the column.
+
+Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to challenge
+in undertones single figures approaching from the plain. Those
+messengers sent back from the scouting parties flung to their
+comrades brief sentences and passed on rapidly, becoming lost in
+the great motionless mass, to make their report to the Staff. It
+occurred to Captain Mitchell that his position could become
+disagreeable and perhaps dangerous, when suddenly, at the head of
+the jetty, there was a shout of command, a bugle call, followed
+by a stir and a rattling of arms, and a murmuring noise that ran
+right up the column. Near by a loud voice directed hurriedly,
+"Push that railway car out of the way!" At the rush of bare feet
+to execute the order Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or two;
+the car, suddenly impelled by many hands, flew away from him
+along the rails, and before he knew what had happened he found
+himself surrounded and seized by his arms and the collar of his
+coat.
+
+"We have caught a man hiding here, mi teniente!" cried one of his
+captors.
+
+"Hold him on one side till the rearguard comes along," answered
+the voice. The whole column streamed past Captain Mitchell at a
+run, the thundering noise of their feet dying away suddenly on
+the shore.  His captors held him tightly, disregarding his
+declaration that he was an Englishman and his loud demands to be
+taken at once before their commanding officer.  Finally he lapsed
+into dignified silence. With a hollow rumble of wheels on the
+planks a couple of field guns, dragged by hand, rolled by. Then,
+after a small body of men had marched past escorting four or five
+figures which walked in advance, with a jingle of steel
+scabbards, he felt a tug at his arms, and was ordered to come
+along. During the passage from the wharf to the Custom House it
+is to be feared that Captain Mitchell was subjected to certain
+indignities at the hands of the soldiers--such as jerks, thumps
+on the neck, forcible application of the butt of a rifle to the
+small of his back.  Their ideas of speed were not in accord with
+his notion of his dignity. He became flustered, flushed, and
+helpless.  It was as if the world were coming to an end.
+
+The long building was surrounded by troops, which were already
+piling arms by companies and preparing to pass the night lying on
+the ground in their ponchos with their sacks under their heads.
+Corporals moved with swinging lanterns posting sentries all round
+the walls wherever there was a door or an opening. Sotillo was
+taking his measures to protect his conquest as if it had indeed
+contained the treasure. His desire to make his fortune at one
+audacious stroke of genius had overmastered his reasoning
+faculties. He would not believe in the possibility of failure;
+the mere hint of such a thing made his brain reel with rage.
+Every circumstance pointing to it appeared incredible. The
+statement of Hirsch, which was so absolutely fatal to his hopes,
+could by no means be admitted. It is true, too, that Hirsch's
+story had been told so incoherently, with such excessive signs of
+distraction, that it really looked improbable. It was extremely
+difficult, as the saying is, to make head or tail of it. On the
+bridge of the steamer, directly after his rescue, Sotillo and his
+officers, in their impatience and excitement, would not give the
+wretched man time to collect such few wits as remained to him. He
+ought to have been quieted, soothed, and reassured, whereas he
+had been roughly handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in
+menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get
+down on his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break
+away, as if he meant incontinently to jump overboard, his shrieks
+and shrinkings and cowering wild glances had filled them first
+with amazement, then with a doubt of his genuineness, as men are
+wont to suspect the sincerity of every great passion. His
+Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German that the better half
+of his statements remained incomprehensible. He tried to
+propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which in
+itself sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not to trifle
+he repeated his entreaties and protestations of loyalty and
+innocence again in German, obstinately, because he was not aware
+in what language he was speaking. His identity, of course, was
+perfectly known as an inhabitant of Esmeralda, but this made the
+matter no clearer. As he kept on forgetting Decoud's name, mixing
+him up with several other people he had seen in the Casa Gould,
+it looked as if they all had been in the lighter together; and
+for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned every prominent
+Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw a
+doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing
+a part--pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the
+moment to cover the truth. Sotillo's rapacity, excited to the
+highest pitch by the prospect of an immense booty, could believe
+in nothing adverse. This Jew might have been very much frightened
+by the accident, but he knew where the silver was concealed, and
+had invented this story, with his Jewish cunning, to put him
+entirely off the track as to what had been done.
+
+Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor in a vast
+apartment with heavy black beams. But there was no ceiling, and
+the eye lost itself in the darkness under the high pitch of the
+roof. The thick shutters stood open. On a long table could be
+seen a large inkstand, some stumpy, inky quill pens, and two
+square wooden boxes, each holding half a hundred-weight of sand.
+Sheets of grey coarse official paper bestrewed the floor. It must
+have been a room occupied by some higher official of the Customs,
+because a large leathern armchair stood behind the table, with
+other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net hammock was swung
+under one of the beams--for the official's afternoon siesta, no
+doubt. A couple of candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave
+a dim reddish light. The colonel's hat, sword, and revolver lay
+between them, and a couple of his more trusty officers lounged
+gloomily against the table. The colonel threw himself into the
+armchair, and a big negro with a sergeant's stripes on his ragged
+sleeve, kneeling down, pulled off his boots. Sotillo's ebony
+moustache contrasted violently with the livid colouring of his
+cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very far into his
+head. He seemed exhausted by his perplexities, languid with
+disappointment; but when the sentry on the landing thrust his
+head in to announce the arrival of a prisoner, he revived at
+once.
+
+"Let him be brought in," he shouted, fiercely.
+
+The door flew open, and Captain Mitchell, bareheaded, his
+waistcoat open, the bow of his tie under his ear, was hustled
+into the room.
+
+Sotillo recognized him at once. He could not have hoped for a
+more precious capture; here was a man who could tell him, if he
+chose, everything he wished to know--and directly the problem of
+how best to make him talk to the point presented itself to his
+mind. The resentment of a foreign nation had no terrors for
+Sotillo.  The might of the whole armed Europe would not have
+protected Captain Mitchell from insults and ill-usage, so well as
+the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an Englishman who
+would most likely turn obstinate under bad treatment, and become
+quite unmanageable. At all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl
+on his brow.
+
+"What! The excellent Senor Mitchell!" he cried, in affected
+dismay. The pretended anger of his swift advance and of his
+shout, "Release the caballero at once," was so effective that the
+astounded soldiers positively sprang away from their prisoner.
+Thus suddenly deprived of forcible support, Captain Mitchell
+reeled as though about to fall. Sotillo took him familiarly under
+the arm, led him to a chair, waved his hand at the room. "Go out,
+all of you," he commanded.
+
+When they had been left alone he stood looking down, irresolute
+and silent, watching till Captain Mitchell had recovered his
+power of speech.
+
+Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned in the
+removal of the silver. Sotillo's temperament was of that sort
+that he experienced an ardent desire to beat him; just as
+formerly when negotiating with difficulty a loan from the
+cautious Anzani, his fingers always itched to take the shopkeeper
+by the throat. As to Captain Mitchell, the suddenness,
+unexpectedness, and general inconceivableness of this experience
+had confused his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out of
+breath.
+
+"I've been knocked down three times between this and the wharf,"
+he gasped out at last. "Somebody shall be made to pay for this."
+He had certainly stumbled more than once, and had been dragged
+along for some distance before he could regain his stride.  With
+his recovered breath his indignation seemed to madden him. He
+jumped up, crimson, all his white hair bristling, his eyes
+glaring vengefully, and shook violently the flaps of his ruined
+waistcoat before the disconcerted Sotillo. "Look! Those uniformed
+thieves of yours downstairs have robbed me of my watch."
+
+The old sailor's aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw himself
+cut off from the table on which his sabre and revolver were
+lying.
+
+"I demand restitution and apologies," Mitchell thundered at him,
+quite beside himself. "From you!  Yes, from you!"
+
+For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a
+perfectly stony expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell
+flung out an arm towards the table as if to snatch up the
+revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm, bounded to the door and
+was gone in a flash, slamming it after him. Surprise calmed
+Captain Mitchell's fury.  Behind the closed door Sotillo shouted
+on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on the
+wooden staircase.
+
+"Disarm him! Bind him!" the colonel could be heard vociferating.
+
+Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the windows,
+with three perpendicular bars of iron each and some twenty feet
+from the ground, as he well knew, before the door flew open and
+the rush upon him took place. In an incredibly short time he
+found himself bound with many turns of a hide rope to a
+high-backed chair, so that his head alone remained free. Not till
+then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the doorway trembling
+visibly, venture again within. The soldiers, picking up from the
+floor the rifles they had dropped to grapple with the prisoner,
+filed out of the room. The officers remained leaning on their
+swords and looking on.
+
+"The watch! the watch!" raved the colonel, pacing to and fro like
+a tiger in a cage. "Give me that man's watch."
+
+It was true, that when searched for arms in the hall downstairs,
+before being taken into Sotillo's presence, Captain Mitchell had
+been relieved of his watch and chain; but at the colonel's
+clamour it was produced quickly enough, a corporal bringing it
+up, carried carefully in the palms of his joined hands. Sotillo
+snatched it, and pushed the clenched fist from which it dangled
+close to Captain Mitchell's face.
+
+"Now then! You arrogant Englishman! You dare to call the soldiers
+of the army thieves! Behold your watch."
+
+He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner's nose.
+Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously
+at the sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer, presented to him years
+ago by a Committee of Underwriters for saving a ship from total
+loss by fire. Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable
+appearance. He became silent suddenly, stepped aside to the
+table, and began a careful examination in the light of the
+candles. He had never seen anything so fine. His officers closed
+in and craned their necks behind his back.
+
+He became so interested that for an instant he forgot his
+precious prisoner. There is always something childish in the
+rapacity of the passionate, clear-minded, Southern races, wanting
+in the misty idealism of the Northerners, who at the smallest
+encouragement dream of nothing less than the conquest of the
+earth. Sotillo was fond of jewels, gold trinkets, of personal
+adornment.  After a moment he turned about, and with a commanding
+gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid down the watch
+on the table, then, negligently, pushed his hat over it.
+
+"Ha!" he began, going up very close to the chair.  "You dare call
+my valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda regiment, thieves. You dare!
+What impudence! You foreigners come here to rob our country of
+its wealth.  You never have enough! Your audacity knows no
+bounds."
+
+He looked towards the officers, amongst whom there was an
+approving murmur. The older major was moved to declare--
+
+"Si, mi colonel. They are all traitors."
+
+"I shall say nothing," continued Sotillo, fixing the motionless
+and powerless Mitchell with an angry but uneasy stare. "I shall
+say nothing of your treacherous attempt to get possession of my
+revolver to shoot me while I was trying to treat you with
+consideration you did not deserve. You have forfeited your life.
+Your only hope is in my clemency."
+
+He watched for the effect of his words, but there was no obvious
+sign of fear on Captain Mitchell's face. His white hair was full
+of dust, which covered also the rest of his helpless person. As
+if he had heard nothing, he twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a
+bit of straw which hung amongst the hairs.
+
+Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo.  "It is you,
+Mitchell," he said, emphatically, "who are the thief, not my
+soldiers!" He pointed at his prisoner a forefinger with a long,
+almond-shaped nail. "Where is the silver of the San Tome mine? I
+ask you, Mitchell, where is the silver that was deposited in this
+Custom House? Answer me that! You stole it. You were a party to
+stealing it. It was stolen from the Government.  Aha! you think I
+do not know what I say; but I am up to your foreign tricks. It is
+gone, the silver! No?  Gone in one of your lanchas, you miserable
+man! How dared you?"
+
+This time he produced his effect. "How on earth could Sotillo
+know that?" thought Mitchell. His head, the only part of his body
+that could move, betrayed his surprise by a sudden jerk.
+
+"Ha! you tremble," Sotillo shouted, suddenly. "It is a
+conspiracy. It is a crime against the State. Did you not know
+that the silver belongs to the Republic till the Government
+claims are satisfied? Where is it?  Where have you hidden it, you
+miserable thief?"
+
+At this question Captain Mitchell's sinking spirits revived.  In
+whatever incomprehensible manner Sotillo had already got his
+information about the lighter, he had not captured it. That was
+clear. In his outraged heart, Captain Mitchell had resolved that
+nothing would induce him to say a word while he remained so
+disgracefully bound, but his desire to help the escape of the
+silver made him depart from this resolution. His wits were very
+much at work. He detected in Sotillo a certain air of doubt, of
+irresolution.
+
+"That man," he said to himself, "is not certain of what he
+advances." For all his pomposity in social intercourse, Captain
+Mitchell could meet the realities of life in a resolute and ready
+spirit. Now he had got over the first shock of the abominable
+treatment he was cool and collected enough. The immense contempt
+he felt for Sotillo steadied him, and he said oracularly, "No
+doubt it is well concealed by this time."
+
+Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. "Muy bien, Mitchell," he
+said in a cold and threatening manner.  "But can you produce the
+Government receipt for the royalty and the Custom House permit of
+embarkation, hey? Can you? No. Then the silver has been removed
+illegally, and the guilty shall be made to suffer, unless it is
+produced within five days from this." He gave orders for the
+prisoner to be unbound and locked up in one of the smaller rooms
+downstairs. He walked about the room, moody and silent, till
+Captain Mitchell, with each of his arms held by a couple of men,
+stood up, shook himself, and stamped his feet.
+
+"How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell?" he asked, derisively.
+
+"It is the most incredible, abominable use of power!" Captain
+Mitchell declared in a loud voice. "And whatever your purpose,
+you shall gain nothing from it, I can promise you."
+
+The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and
+moustache, crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of the
+short, thick-set, red-faced prisoner with rumpled white hair.
+
+"That we shall see. You shall know my power a little better when
+I tie you up to a potalon outside in the sun for a whole day." He
+drew himself up haughtily, and made a sign for Captain Mitchell
+to be led away.
+
+"What about my watch?" cried Captain Mitchell, hanging back from
+the efforts of the men pulling him towards the door.
+
+Sotillo turned to his officers. "No! But only listen to this
+picaro, caballeros," he pronounced with affected scorn, and was
+answered by a chorus of derisive laughter.  "He demands his
+watch!" . . . He ran up again to Captain Mitchell, for the desire
+to relieve his feelings by inflicting blows and pain upon this
+Englishman was very strong within him. "Your watch! You are a
+prisoner in war time, Mitchell! In war time!  You have no rights
+and no property! Caramba! The very breath in your body belongs to
+me. Remember that."
+
+"Bosh!" said Captain Mitchell, concealing a disagreeable
+impression.
+
+Down below, in a great hall, with the earthen floor and with a
+tall mound thrown up by white ants in a corner, the soldiers had
+kindled a small fire with broken chairs and tables near the
+arched gateway, through which the faint murmur of the harbour
+waters on the beach could be heard. While Captain Mitchell was
+being led down the staircase, an officer passed him, running up
+to report to Sotillo the capture of more prisoners. A lot of
+smoke hung about in the vast gloomy place, the fire crackled,
+and, as if through a haze, Captain Mitchell made out, surrounded
+by short soldiers with fixed bayonets, the heads of three tall
+prisoners--the doctor, the engineer-in-chief, and the white
+leonine mane of old Viola, who stood half-turned away from the
+others with his chin on his breast and his arms crossed.
+Mitchell's astonishment knew no bounds. He cried out; the other
+two exclaimed also.  But he hurried on, diagonally, across the
+big cavern-like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises, hints of
+caution, and so on, crowded his head to distraction.
+
+"Is he actually keeping you?" shouted the chief engineer, whose
+single eyeglass glittered in the firelight.
+
+An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting urgently,
+"Bring them all up--all three."
+
+In the clamour of voices and the rattle of arms, Captain Mitchell
+made himself heard imperfectly: "By heavens! the fellow has
+stolen my watch."
+
+The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the pressure long
+enough to shout, "What? What did you say?"
+
+"My chronometer!" Captain Mitchell yelled violently at the very
+moment of being thrust head foremost through a small door into a
+sort of cell, perfectly black, and so narrow that he fetched up
+against the opposite wall. The door had been instantly slammed.
+He knew where they had put him. This was the strong room of the
+Custom House, whence the silver had been removed only a few hours
+earlier. It was almost as narrow as a corridor, with a small
+square aperture, barred by a heavy grating, at the distant end.
+Captain Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat down on the
+earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, not even a
+gleam of light from anywhere, interfered with Captain Mitchell's
+meditation. He did some hard but not very extensive thinking. It
+was not of a gloomy cast. The old sailor, with all his small
+weaknesses and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable of
+entertaining for any length of time a fear of his personal
+safety. It was not so much firmness of soul as the lack of a
+certain kind of imagination--the kind whose undue development
+caused intense suffering to Senor Hirsch; that sort of
+imagination which adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and
+of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone,
+strictly--to all the other apprehensions on which the sense of
+one's existence is based. Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not
+much penetration of any kind; characteristic, illuminating
+trifles of expression, action, or movement, escaped him
+completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of his own
+existence to observe that of others.  For instance, he could not
+believe that Sotillo had been really afraid of him, and this
+simply because it would never have entered into his head to shoot
+any one except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Anybody
+could see he was not a murdering kind of man, he reflected quite
+gravely. Then why this preposterous and insulting charge? he
+asked himself.   But his thoughts mainly clung around the
+astounding and unanswerable question: How the devil the fellow
+got to know that the silver had gone off in the lighter? It was
+obvious that he had not captured it. And, obviously, he could not
+have captured it! In this last conclusion Captain Mitchell was
+misled by the assumption drawn from his observation of the
+weather during his long vigil on the wharf. He thought that there
+had been much more wind than usual that night in the gulf;
+whereas, as a matter of fact, the reverse was the case.
+
+"How in the name of all that's marvellous did that confounded
+fellow get wind of the affair?" was the first question he asked
+directly after the bang, clatter, and flash of the open door
+(which was closed again almost before he could lift his dropped
+head) informed him that he had a companion of captivity. Dr.
+Monygham's voice stopped muttering curses in English and Spanish.
+
+"Is that you, Mitchell?" he made answer, surlily. "I struck my
+forehead against this confounded wall with enough force to fell
+an ox. Where are you?"
+
+Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could make out the
+doctor stretching out his hands blindly.
+
+"I am sitting here on the floor. Don't fall over my legs,"
+Captain Mitchell's voice announced with great dignity of tone.
+The doctor, entreated not to walk about in the dark, sank down to
+the ground, too. The two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads
+nearly touching, began to exchange confidences.
+
+"Yes," the doctor related in a low tone to Captain Mitchell's
+vehement curiosity, "we have been nabbed in old Viola's place. It
+seems that one of their pickets, commanded by an officer, pushed
+as far as the town gate. They had orders not to enter, but to
+bring along every soul they could find on the plain. We had been
+talking in there with the door open, and no doubt they saw the
+glimmer of our light. They must have been making their approaches
+for some time. The engineer laid himself on a bench in a recess
+by the fire-place, and I went upstairs to have a look. I hadn't
+heard any sound from there for a long time. Old Viola, as soon as
+he saw me come up, lifted his arm for silence. I stole in on
+tiptoe. By Jove, his wife was lying down and had gone to sleep.
+The woman had actually dropped off to sleep! 'Senor Doctor,'
+Viola whispers to me, 'it looks as if her oppression was going to
+get better.' 'Yes,' I said, very much surprised; 'your wife is a
+wonderful woman, Giorgio.' Just then a shot was fired in the
+kitchen, which made us jump and cower as if at a thunder-clap.
+It seems that the party of soldiers had stolen quite close up,
+and one of them had crept up to the door. He looked in, thought
+there was no one there, and, holding his rifle ready, entered
+quietly. The chief told me that he had just closed his eyes for a
+moment.  When he opened them, he saw the man already in the
+middle of the room peering into the dark corners. The chief was
+so startled that, without thinking, he made one leap from the
+recess right out in front of the fireplace.  The soldier, no less
+startled, up with his rifle and pulls the trigger, deafening and
+singeing the engineer, but in his flurry missing him completely.
+But, look what happens! At the noise of the report the sleeping
+woman sat up, as if moved by a spring, with a shriek, 'The
+children, Gian' Battista! Save the children!' I have it in my
+ears now. It was the truest cry of distress I ever heard. I stood
+as if paralyzed, but the old husband ran across to the bedside,
+stretching out his hands. She clung to them! I could see her eyes
+go glazed; the old fellow lowered her down on the pillows and
+then looked round at me. She was dead!  All this took less than
+five minutes, and then I ran down to see what was the matter. It
+was no use thinking of any resistance. Nothing we two could say
+availed with the officer, so I volunteered to go up with a couple
+of soldiers and fetch down old Viola. He was sitting at the foot
+of the bed, looking at his wife's face, and did not seem to hear
+what I said; but after I had pulled the sheet over her head, he
+got up and followed us downstairs quietly, in a sort of
+thoughtful way. They marched us off along the road, leaving the
+door open and the candle burning. The chief engineer strode on
+without a word, but I looked back once or twice at the feeble
+gleam. After we had gone some considerable distance, the
+Garibaldino, who was walking by my side, suddenly said, 'I have
+buried many men on battlefields on this continent. The priests
+talk of consecrated ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is
+holy; but the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests and
+tyrants, is the holiest of all. Doctor! I should like to bury her
+in the sea. No mummeries, candles, incense, no holy water mumbled
+over by priests. The spirit of liberty is upon the waters.' . . .
+Amazing old man. He was saying all this in an undertone as if
+talking to himself."
+
+"Yes, yes," interrupted Captain Mitchell, impatiently.  "Poor old
+chap! But have you any idea how that ruffian Sotillo obtained his
+information? He did not get hold of any of our Cargadores who
+helped with the truck, did he? But no, it is impossible! These
+were picked men we've had in our boats for these five years, and
+I paid them myself specially for the job, with instructions to
+keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at least. I saw them
+with my own eyes march on with the Italians to the railway yards.
+The chief promised to give them rations as long as they wanted to
+remain there."
+
+"Well," said the doctor, slowly, "I can tell you that you may say
+good-bye for ever to your best lighter, and to the Capataz of
+Cargadores."
+
+At this, Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in the excess
+of his excitement. The doctor, without giving him time to
+exclaim, stated briefly the part played by Hirsch during the
+night.
+
+Captain Mitchell was overcome. "Drowned!" he muttered, in a
+bewildered and appalled whisper.  "Drowned!" Afterwards he kept
+still, apparently listening, but too absorbed in the news of the
+catastrophe to follow the doctor's narrative with attention.
+
+The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect ignorance, till at
+last Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in to repeat the
+whole story, which was got out of him again with the greatest
+difficulty, because every moment he would break out into
+lamentations.  At last, Hirsch was led away, looking more dead
+than alive, and shut up in one of the upstairs rooms to be close
+at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his character of a man not
+admitted to the inner councils of the San Tome Administration,
+remarked that the story sounded incredible. Of course, he said,
+he couldn't tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as he
+had been exclusively occupied with his own work in looking after
+the wounded, and also in attending Don Jose Avellanos. He had
+succeeded in assuming so well a tone of impartial indifference,
+that Sotillo seemed to be completely deceived. Till then a show
+of regular inquiry had been kept up; one of the officers sitting
+at the table wrote down the questions and the answers, the
+others, lounging about the room, listened attentively, puffing at
+their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the doctor. But at
+that point Sotillo ordered everybody out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+DIRECTLY they were alone, the colonel's severe official manner
+changed. He rose and approached the doctor.  His eyes shone with
+rapacity and hope; he became confidential.  "The silver might
+have been indeed put on board the lighter, but it was not
+conceivable that it should have been taken out to sea." The
+doctor, watching every word, nodded slightly, smoking with
+apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him as a sign
+of his friendly intentions. The doctor's manner of cold
+detachment from the rest of the Europeans led Sotillo on, till,
+from conjecture to conjecture, he arrived at hinting that in his
+opinion this was a putup job on the part of Charles Gould, in
+order to get hold of that immense treasure all to himself. The
+doctor, observant and self-possessed, muttered, "He is very
+capable of that."
+
+Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement, amusement, and
+indignation, "You said that of Charles Gould!" Disgust, and even
+some suspicion, crept into his tone, for to him, too, as to other
+Europeans, there appeared to be something dubious about the
+doctor's personality.
+
+"What on earth made you say that to this watch-stealing
+scoundrel?" he asked. "What's the object of an infernal lie of
+that sort? That confounded pick-pocket was quite capable of
+believing you."
+
+He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent in the dark.
+
+"Yes, that is exactly what I did say," he uttered at last, in a
+tone which would have made it clear enough to a third party that
+the pause was not of a reluctant but of a reflective character.
+Captain Mitchell thought that he had never heard anything so
+brazenly impudent in his life.
+
+"Well, well!" he muttered to himself, but he had not the heart to
+voice his thoughts. They were swept away by others full of
+astonishment and regret. A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed
+him: the loss of the silver, the death of Nostromo, which was
+really quite a blow to his sensibilities, because he had become
+attached to his Capataz as people get attached to their inferiors
+from love of ease and almost unconscious gratitude.  And when he
+thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his sensibility was almost
+overcome by this miserable end.  What a heavy blow for that poor
+young woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the species of
+crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young men
+paying attentions to young women. It seemed to him a natural and
+proper thing. Proper especially.  As to sailors, it was
+different; it was not their place to marry, he maintained, but it
+was on moral grounds as a matter of self-denial, for, he
+explained, life on board ship is not fit for a woman even at
+best, and if you leave her on shore, first of all it is not fair,
+and next she either suffers from it or doesn't care a bit, which,
+in both cases, is bad. He couldn't have told what upset him
+most--Charles Gould's immense material loss, the death of
+Nostromo, which was a heavy loss to himself, or the idea of that
+beautiful and accomplished young woman being plunged into
+mourning.
+
+"Yes," the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began
+again, "he believed me right enough.  I thought he would have
+hugged me. 'Si, si,' he said, 'he will write to that partner of
+his, the rich Americano in San Francisco, that it is all lost.
+Why not? There is enough to share with many people.'"
+
+"But this is perfectly imbecile!" cried Captain Mitchell.
+
+The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and that his
+imbecility was ingenious enough to lead him completely astray. He
+had helped him only but a little way.
+
+"I mentioned," the doctor said, "in a sort of casual way, that
+treasure is generally buried in the earth rather than set afloat
+upon the sea. At this my Sotillo slapped his forehead. 'Por Dios,
+yes,' he said; 'they must have buried it on the shores of this
+harbour somewhere before they sailed out.'"
+
+"Heavens and earth!" muttered Captain Mitchell, "I should not
+have believed that anybody could be ass enough--" He paused, then
+went on mournfully:  "But what's the good of all this? It would
+have been a clever enough lie if the lighter had been still
+afloat. It would have kept that inconceivable idiot perhaps from
+sending out the steamer to cruise in the gulf. That was the
+danger that worried me no end." Captain Mitchell sighed
+profoundly.
+
+"I had an object," the doctor pronounced, slowly.
+
+"Had you?" muttered Captain Mitchell.  "Well, that's lucky, or
+else I would have thought that you went on fooling him for the
+fun of the thing. And perhaps that was your object. Well, I must
+say I personally wouldn't condescend to that sort of thing. It is
+not to my taste. No, no. Blackening a friend's character is not
+my idea of fun, if it were to fool the greatest blackguard on
+earth."
+
+Had it not been for Captain Mitchell's depression, caused by the
+fatal news, his disgust of Dr. Monygham would have taken a more
+outspoken shape; but he thought to himself that now it really did
+not matter what that man, whom he had never liked, would say and
+do.
+
+"I wonder," he grumbled, "why they have shut us up together, or
+why Sotillo should have shut you up at all, since it seems to me
+you have been fairly chummy up there?"
+
+"Yes, I wonder," said the doctor grimly.
+
+Captain Mitchell's heart was so heavy that he would have
+preferred for the time being a complete solitude to the best of
+company. But any company would have been preferable to the
+doctor's, at whom he had always looked askance as a sort of
+beachcomber of superior intelligence partly reclaimed from his
+abased state.  That feeling led him to ask--
+
+"What has that ruffian done with the other two?"
+
+"The chief engineer he would have let go in any case," said the
+doctor. "He wouldn't like to have a quarrel with the railway upon
+his hands. Not just yet, at any rate. I don't think, Captain
+Mitchell, that you understand exactly what Sotillo's position
+is--"
+
+"I don't see why I should bother my head about it," snarled
+Captain Mitchell.
+
+"No," assented the doctor, with the same grim composure.  "I
+don't see why you should. It wouldn't help a single human being
+in the world if you thought ever so hard upon any subject
+whatever."
+
+"No," said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with evident depression.
+"A man locked up in a confounded dark hole is not much use to
+anybody."
+
+"As to old Viola," the doctor continued, as though he had not
+heard, "Sotillo released him for the same reason he is presently
+going to release you."
+
+"Eh? What?" exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring like an owl in
+the darkness. "What is there in common between me and old Viola?
+More likely because the old chap has no watch and chain for the
+pickpocket to steal. And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham," he went
+on with rising choler, "he will find it more difficult than he
+thinks to get rid of me. He will burn his fingers over that job
+yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I won't go without my watch,
+and as to the rest--we shall see. I dare say it is no great
+matter for you to be locked up.  But Joe Mitchell is a different
+kind of man, sir. I don't mean to submit tamely to insult and
+robbery. I am a public character, sir."
+
+And then Captain Mitchell became aware that the bars of the
+opening had become visible, a black grating upon a square of
+grey. The coming of the day silenced Captain Mitchell as if by
+the reflection that now in all the future days he would be
+deprived of the invaluable services of his Capataz. He leaned
+against the wall with his arms folded on his breast, and the
+doctor walked up and down the whole length of the place with his
+peculiar hobbling gait, as if slinking about on damaged feet. At
+the end furthest from the grating he would be lost altogether in
+the darkness. Only the slight limping shuffle could be heard.
+There was an air of moody detachment in that painful prowl kept
+up without a pause. When the door of the prison was suddenly
+flung open and his name shouted out he showed no surprise. He
+swerved sharply in his walk, and passed out at once, as though
+much depended upon his speed; but Captain Mitchell remained for
+some time with his shoulders against the wall, quite undecided in
+the bitterness of his spirit whether it wouldn't be better to
+refuse to stir a limb in the way of protest. He had half a mind
+to get himself carried out, but after the officer at the door had
+shouted three or four times in tones of remonstrance and surprise
+he condescended to walk out.
+
+Sotillo's manner had changed. The colonel's off-hand civility was
+slightly irresolute, as though he were in doubt if civility were
+the proper course in this case. He observed Captain Mitchell
+attentively before he spoke from the big armchair behind the
+table in a condescending voice--
+
+"I have concluded not to detain you, Senor Mitchell.  I am of a
+forgiving disposition. I make allowances.  Let this be a lesson
+to you, however."
+
+The peculiar dawn of Sulaco, which seems to break far away to the
+westward and creep back into the shade of the mountains, mingled
+with the reddish light of the candles. Captain Mitchell, in sign
+of contempt and indifference, let his eyes roam all over the
+room, and he gave a hard stare to the doctor, perched already on
+the casement of one of the windows, with his eyelids lowered,
+careless and thoughtful--or perhaps ashamed.
+
+Sotillo, ensconced in the vast armchair, remarked, "I should have
+thought that the feelings of a caballero would have dictated to
+you an appropriate reply."
+
+He waited for it, but Captain Mitchell remaining mute, more from
+extreme resentment than from reasoned intention, Sotillo
+hesitated, glanced towards the doctor, who looked up and nodded,
+then went on with a slight effort--
+
+"Here, Senor Mitchell, is your watch. Learn how hasty and unjust
+has been your judgment of my patriotic soldiers."
+
+Lying back in his seat, he extended his arm over the table and
+pushed the watch away slightly. Captain Mitchell walked up with
+undisguised eagerness, put it to his ear, then slipped it into
+his pocket coolly.
+
+Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance.  Again he
+looked aside at the doctor, who stared at him unwinkingly.
+
+But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, without as much as a
+nod or a glance, he hastened to say--
+
+"You may go and wait downstairs for the senor doctor, whom I am
+going to liberate, too. You foreigners are insignificant, to my
+mind."
+
+He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself, while
+Captain Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him with some
+interest.
+
+"The law shall take note later on of your transgressions,"
+Sotillo hurried on. "But as for me, you can live free, unguarded,
+unobserved. Do you hear, Senor Mitchell? You may depart to your
+affairs. You are beneath my notice. My attention is claimed by
+matters of the very highest importance."
+
+Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an answer. It
+displeased him to be liberated insultingly; but want of sleep,
+prolonged anxieties, a profound disappointment with the fatal
+ending of the silver-saving business weighed upon his spirits. It
+was as much as he could do to conceal his uneasiness, not about
+himself perhaps, but about things in general.  It occurred to him
+distinctly that something underhand was going on. As he went out
+he ignored the doctor pointedly.
+
+"A brute!" said Sotillo, as the door shut.
+
+Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and, thrusting his
+hands into the pockets of the long, grey dust coat he was
+wearing, made a few steps into the room.
+
+Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way, examined
+him from head to foot.
+
+"So your countrymen do not confide in you very much, senor
+doctor. They do not love you, eh? Why is that, I wonder?"
+
+The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, lifeless stare
+and the words, "Perhaps because I have lived too long in
+Costaguana."
+
+Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black moustache.
+
+"Aha! But you love yourself," he said, encouragingly.
+
+"If you leave them alone," the doctor said, looking with the same
+lifeless stare at Sotillo's handsome face, "they will betray
+themselves very soon. Meantime, I may try to make Don Carlos
+speak?"
+
+"Ah! senor doctor," said Sotillo, wagging his head, "you are a
+man of quick intelligence. We were made to understand each
+other." He turned away. He could bear no longer that
+expressionless and motionless stare, which seemed to have a sort
+of impenetrable emptiness like the black depth of an abyss.
+
+Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there remains an
+appreciation of rascality which, being conventional, is perfectly
+clear. Sotillo thought that Dr.  Monygham, so different from all
+Europeans, was ready to sell his countrymen and Charles Gould,
+his employer, for some share of the San Tome silver. Sotillo did
+not despise him for that. The colonel's want of moral sense was
+of a profound and innocent character. It bordered upon stupidity,
+moral stupidity. Nothing that served his ends could appear to him
+really reprehensible.  Nevertheless, he despised Dr. Monygham.
+He had for him an immense and satisfactory contempt.  He despised
+him with all his heart because he did not mean to let the doctor
+have any reward at all. He despised him, not as a man without
+faith and honour, but as a fool. Dr. Monygham's insight into his
+character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore he thought
+the doctor a fool.
+
+Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel's ideas had undergone
+some modification.
+
+He no longer wished for a political career in Montero's
+administration. He had always doubted the safety of that course.
+Since he had learned from the chief engineer that at daylight
+most likely he would be confronted by Pedro Montero his
+misgivings on that point had considerably increased. The
+guerrillero brother of the general--the Pedrito of popular
+speech--had a reputation of his own. He wasn't safe to deal with.
+Sotillo had vaguely planned seizing not only the treasure but the
+town itself, and then negotiating at leisure.  But in the face of
+facts learned from the chief engineer (who had frankly disclosed
+to him the whole situation) his audacity, never of a very dashing
+kind, had been replaced by a most cautious hesitation.
+
+"An army--an army crossed the mountains under Pedrito already,"
+he had repeated, unable to hide his consternation. "If it had not
+been that I am given the news by a man of your position I would
+never have believed it. Astonishing!"
+
+"An armed force," corrected the engineer, suavely.  His aim was
+attained. It was to keep Sulaco clear of any armed occupation for
+a few hours longer, to let those whom fear impelled leave the
+town. In the general dismay there were families hopeful enough to
+fly upon the road towards Los Hatos, which was left open by the
+withdrawal of the armed rabble under Senores Fuentes and Gamacho,
+to Rincon, with their enthusiastic welcome for Pedro Montero. It
+was a hasty and risky exodus, and it was said that Hernandez,
+occupying with his band the woods about Los Hatos, was receiving
+the fugitives. That a good many people he knew were contemplating
+such a flight had been well known to the chief engineer.
+
+Father Corbelan's efforts in the cause of that most pious robber
+had not been altogether fruitless. The political chief of Sulaco
+had yielded at the last moment to the urgent entreaties of the
+priest, had signed a provisional nomination appointing Hernandez
+a general, and calling upon him officially in this new capacity
+to preserve order in the town. The fact is that the political
+chief, seeing the situation desperate, did not care what he
+signed. It was the last official document he signed before he
+left the palace of the Intendencia for the refuge of the O.S.N.
+Company's office. But even had he meant his act to be effective
+it was already too late. The riot which he feared and expected
+broke out in less than an hour after Father Corbelan had left
+him. Indeed, Father Corbelan, who had appointed a meeting with
+Nostromo in the Dominican Convent, where he had his residence in
+one of the cells, never managed to reach the place. From the
+Intendencia he had gone straight on to the Avellanos's house to
+tell his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there no more than
+half an hour he had found himself cut off from his ascetic abode.
+Nostromo, after waiting there for some time, watching uneasily
+the increasing uproar in the street, had made his way to the
+offices of the Porvenir, and stayed there till daylight, as
+Decoud had mentioned in the letter to his sister. Thus the
+Capataz, instead of riding towards the Los Hatos woods as bearer
+of Hernandez's nomination, had remained in town to save the life
+of the President Dictator, to assist in repressing the outbreak
+of the mob, and at last to sail out with the silver of the mine.
+
+But Father Corbelan, escaping to Hernandez, had the document in
+his pocket, a piece of official writing turning a bandit into a
+general in a memorable last official act of the Ribierist party,
+whose watchwords were honesty, peace, and progress. Probably
+neither the priest nor the bandit saw the irony of it. Father
+Corbelan must have found messengers to send into the town, for
+early on the second day of the disturbances there were rumours of
+Hernandez being on the road to Los Hatos ready to receive those
+who would put themselves under his protection. A strange-looking
+horseman, elderly and audacious, had appeared in the town, riding
+slowly while his eyes examined the fronts of the houses, as
+though he had never seen such high buildings before.  Before the
+cathedral he had dismounted, and, kneeling in the middle of the
+Plaza, his bridle over his arm and his hat lying in front of him
+on the ground, had bowed his head, crossing himself and beating
+his breast for some little time. Remounting his horse, with a
+fearless but not unfriendly look round the little gathering
+formed about his public devotions, he had asked for the Casa
+Avellanos. A score of hands were extended in answer, with fingers
+pointing up the Calle de la Constitucion.
+
+The horseman had gone on with only a glance of casual curiosity
+upwards to the windows of the Amarilla Club at the corner. His
+stentorian voice shouted periodically in the empty street, "Which
+is the Casa Avellanos?" till an answer came from the scared
+porter, and he disappeared under the gate. The letter he was
+bringing, written by Father Corbelan with a pencil by the
+camp-fire of Hernandez, was addressed to Don Jose, of whose
+critical state the priest was not aware. Antonia read it, and,
+after consulting Charles Gould, sent it on for the information of
+the gentlemen garrisoning the Amarilla Club. For herself, her
+mind was made up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust
+the last day--the last hours perhaps--of her father's life to the
+keeping of the bandit, whose existence was a protest against the
+irresponsible tyranny of all parties alike, against the moral
+darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos woods was
+preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band
+less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle's
+obstinate defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief
+in the man whom she loved.
+
+In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his head for
+Hernandez's fidelity. As to his power, he pointed out that he had
+remained unsubdued for so many years. In that letter Decoud's
+idea of the new Occidental State (whose flourishing and stable
+condition is a matter of common knowledge now) was for the first
+time made public and used as an argument.  Hernandez, ex-bandit
+and the last general of Ribierist creation, was confident of
+being able to hold the tract of country between the woods of Los
+Hatos and the coast range till that devoted patriot, Don Martin
+Decoud, could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco for the
+reconquest of the town.
+
+"Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side," wrote Father
+Corbelan; there was no time to reflect upon or to controvert his
+statement; and if the discussion started upon the reading of that
+letter in the Amarilla Club was violent, it was also shortlived.
+In the general bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at the
+idea with joyful astonishment as upon the amazing discovery of a
+new hope. Others became fascinated by the prospect of immediate
+personal safety for their women and children. The majority caught
+at it as a drowning man catches at a straw.   Father Corbelan was
+unexpectedly offering them a refuge from Pedrito Montero with his
+llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho with their armed
+rabble.
+
+All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discussion went
+on in the big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even those members
+posted at the windows with rifles and carbines to guard the end
+of the street in case of an offensive return of the populace
+shouted their opinions and arguments over their shoulders. As
+dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting those caballeros who were of
+his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew into the corredor,
+where at a little table in the light of two candles he busied
+himself in composing an address, or rather a solemn declaration
+to be presented to Pedrito Montero by a deputation of such
+members of Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea
+was to propitiate him in order to save the form at least of
+parliamentary institutions. Seated before a blank sheet of paper,
+a goose-quill pen in his hand and surged upon from all sides, he
+turned to the right and to the left, repeating with solemn
+insistence--
+
+"Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of silence! We ought
+to make it clear that we bow in all good faith to the
+accomplished facts."
+
+The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a melancholy
+satisfaction. The hubbub of voices round him was growing strained
+and hoarse. In the sudden pauses the excited grimacing of the
+faces would sink all at once into the stillness of profound
+dejection.
+
+Meantime, the exodus had begun. Carretas full of ladies and
+children rolled swaying across the Plaza, with men walking or
+riding by their side; mounted parties followed on mules and
+horses; the poorest were setting out on foot, men and women
+carrying bundles, clasping babies in their arms, leading old
+people, dragging along the bigger children. When Charles Gould,
+after leaving the doctor and the engineer at the Casa Viola,
+entered the town by the harbour gate, all those that had meant to
+go were gone, and the others had barricaded themselves in their
+houses. In the whole dark street there was only one spot of
+flickering lights and moving figures, where the Senor
+Administrador recognized his wife's carriage waiting at the door
+of the Avellanos's house.  He rode up, almost unnoticed, and
+looked on without a word while some of his own servants came out
+of the gate carrying Don Jose Avellanos, who, with closed eyes
+and motionless features, appeared perfectly lifeless.  His wife
+and Antonia walked on each side of the improvised stretcher,
+which was put at once into the carriage. The two women embraced;
+while from the other side of the landau Father Corbelan's
+emissary, with his ragged beard all streaked with grey, and high,
+bronzed cheek-bones, stared, sitting upright in the saddle. Then
+Antonia, dry-eyed, got in by the side of the stretcher, and,
+after making the sign of the cross rapidly, lowered a thick veil
+upon her face. The servants and the three or four neighbours who
+had come to assist, stood back, uncovering their heads. On the
+box, Ignacio, resigned now to driving all night (and to having
+perhaps his throat cut before daylight) looked back surlily over
+his shoulder.
+
+"Drive carefully," cried Mrs. Gould in a tremulous voice.
+
+"Si, carefully; si nina," he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round
+leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of
+the light.
+
+"I will see them as far as the ford," said Charles Gould to his
+wife. She stood on the edge of the sidewalk with her hands
+clasped lightly, and nodded to him as he followed after the
+carriage. And now the windows of the Amarilla Club were dark. The
+last spark of resistance had died out. Turning his head at the
+corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing over to their own
+gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of their neighbours,
+a well-known merchant and landowner of the province, followed at
+her elbow, talking with great gestures. As she passed in all the
+lights went out in the street, which remained dark and empty from
+end to end.
+
+The houses of the vast Plaza were lost in the night.  High up,
+like a star, there was a small gleam in one of the towers of the
+cathedral; and the equestrian statue gleamed pale against the
+black trees of the Alameda, like a ghost of royalty haunting the
+scenes of revolution.  The rare prowlers they met ranged
+themselves against the wall. Beyond the last houses the carriage
+rolled noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust, and with a
+greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall from the
+foliage of the trees bordering the country road.  The emissary
+from Hernandez's camp pushed his horse close to Charles Gould.
+
+"Caballero," he said in an interested voice, "you are he whom
+they call the King of Sulaco, the master of the mine? Is it not
+so?"
+
+"Yes, I am the master of the mine," answered Charles Gould.
+
+The man cantered for a time in silence, then said, "I have a
+brother, a sereno in your service in the San Tome valley. You
+have proved yourself a just man.  There has been no wrong done to
+any one since you called upon the people to work in the
+mountains. My brother says that no official of the Government, no
+oppressor of the Campo, has been seen on your side of the stream.
+Your own officials do not oppress the people in the gorge.
+Doubtless they are afraid of your severity. You are a just man
+and a powerful one," he added.
+
+He spoke in an abrupt, independent tone, but evidently he was
+communicative with a purpose. He told Charles Gould that he had
+been a ranchero in one of the lower valleys, far south, a
+neighbour of Hernandez in the old days, and godfather to his
+eldest boy; one of those who joined him in his resistance to the
+recruiting raid which was the beginning of all their misfortunes.
+It was he that, when his compadre had been carried off, had
+buried his wife and children, murdered by the soldiers.
+
+"Si, senor," he muttered, hoarsely, "I and two or three others,
+the lucky ones left at liberty, buried them all in one grave near
+the ashes of their ranch, under the tree that had shaded its
+roof."
+
+It was to him, too, that Hernandez came after he had deserted,
+three years afterwards. He had still his uniform on with the
+sergeant's stripes on the sleeve, and the blood of his colonel
+upon his hands and breast.  Three troopers followed him, of those
+who had started in pursuit but had ridden on for liberty. And he
+told Charles Gould how he and a few friends, seeing those
+soldiers, lay in ambush behind some rocks ready to pull the
+trigger on them, when he recognized his compadre and jumped up
+from cover, shouting his name, because he knew that Hernandez
+could not have been coming back on an errand of injustice and
+oppression. Those three soldiers, together with the party who lay
+behind the rocks, had formed the nucleus of the famous band, and
+he, the narrator, had been the favourite lieutenant of Hernandez
+for many, many years. He mentioned proudly that the officials had
+put a price upon his head, too; but it did not prevent it getting
+sprinkled with grey upon his shoulders. And now he had lived long
+enough to see his compadre made a general.
+
+He had a burst of muffled laughter. "And now from robbers we have
+become soldiers. But look, Caballero, at those who made us
+soldiers and him a general! Look at these people!"
+
+Ignacio shouted. The light of the carriage lamps, running along
+the nopal hedges that crowned the bank on each side, flashed upon
+the scared faces of people standing aside in the road, sunk deep,
+like an English country lane, into the soft soil of the Campo.
+They cowered; their eyes glistened very big for a second; and
+then the light, running on, fell upon the half-denuded roots of a
+big tree, on another stretch of nopal hedge, caught up another
+bunch of faces glaring back apprehensively.  Three women--of whom
+one was carrying a child--and a couple of men in civilian
+dress--one armed with a sabre and another with a gun--were
+grouped about a donkey carrying two bundles tied up in blankets.
+Further on Ignacio shouted again to pass a carreta, a long wooden
+box on two high wheels, with the door at the back swinging open.
+Some ladies in it must have recognized the white mules, because
+they screamed out, "Is it you, Dona Emilia?"
+
+At the turn of the road the glare of a big fire filled the short
+stretch vaulted over by the branches meeting overhead.  Near the
+ford of a shallow stream a roadside rancho of woven rushes and a
+roof of grass had been set on fire by accident, and the flames,
+roaring viciously, lit up an open space blocked with horses,
+mules, and a distracted, shouting crowd of people. When Ignacio
+pulled up, several ladies on foot assailed the carriage, begging
+Antonia for a seat. To their clamour she answered by pointing
+silently to her father.
+
+"I must leave you here," said Charles Gould, in the uproar. The
+flames leaped up sky-high, and in the recoil from the scorching
+heat across the road the stream of fugitives pressed against the
+carriage. A middle-aged lady dressed in black silk, but with a
+coarse manta over her head and a rough branch for a stick in her
+hand, staggered against the front wheel. Two young girls,
+frightened and silent, were clinging to her arms. Charles Gould
+knew her very well.
+
+"Misericordia! We are getting terribly bruised in this crowd!"
+she exclaimed, smiling up courageously to him. "We have started
+on foot. All our servants ran away yesterday to join the
+democrats. We are going to put ourselves under the protection of
+Father Corbelan, of your sainted uncle, Antonia. He has wrought a
+miracle in the heart of a most merciless robber. A miracle!"
+
+She raised her voice gradually up to a scream as she was borne
+along by the pressure of people getting out of the way of some
+carts coming up out of the ford at a gallop, with loud yells and
+cracking of whips. Great masses of sparks mingled with black
+smoke flew over the road; the bamboos of the walls detonated in
+the fire with the sound of an irregular fusillade. And then the
+bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving only a red dusk crowded with
+aimless dark shadows drifting in contrary directions; the noise
+of voices seemed to die away with the flame; and the tumult of
+heads, arms, quarrelling, and imprecations passed on fleeing into
+the darkness.
+
+"I must leave you now," repeated Charles Gould to Antonia. She
+turned her head slowly and uncovered her face. The emissary and
+compadre of Hernandez spurred his horse close up.
+
+"Has not the master of the mine any message to send to Hernandez,
+the master of the Campo?"
+
+The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his
+determined purpose he held the mine, and the indomitable bandit
+held the Campo by the same precarious tenure. They were equals
+before the lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to
+disentangle one's activity from its debasing contacts. A
+close-meshed net of crime and corruption lay upon the whole
+country. An immense and weary discouragement sealed his lips for
+a time.
+
+"You are a just man," urged the emissary of Hernandez.  "Look at
+those people who made my compadre a general and have turned us
+all into soldiers.  Look at those oligarchs fleeing for life,
+with only the clothes on their backs. My compadre does not think
+of that, but our followers may be wondering greatly, and I would
+speak for them to you. Listen, senor! For many months now the
+Campo has been our own. We need ask no man for anything; but
+soldiers must have their pay to live honestly when the wars are
+over. It is believed that your soul is so just that a prayer from
+you would cure the sickness of every beast, like the orison of
+the upright judge. Let me have some words from your lips that
+would act like a charm upon the doubts of our partida, where all
+are men."
+
+"Do you hear what he says?" Charles Gould said in English to
+Antonia.
+
+"Forgive us our misery!" she exclaimed, hurriedly.  "It is your
+character that is the inexhaustible treasure which may save us
+all yet; your character, Carlos, not your wealth. I entreat you
+to give this man your word that you will accept any arrangement
+my uncle may make with their chief. One word. He will want no
+more."
+
+On the site of the roadside hut there remained nothing but an
+enormous heap of embers, throwing afar a darkening red glow, in
+which Antonia's face appeared deeply flushed with excitement.
+Charles Gould, with only a short hesitation, pronounced the
+required pledge.  He was like a man who had ventured on a
+precipitous path with no room to turn, where the only chance of
+safety is to press forward. At that moment he understood it
+thoroughly as he looked down at Don Jose stretched out, hardly
+breathing, by the side of the erect Antonia, vanquished in a
+lifelong struggle with the powers of moral darkness, whose
+stagnant depths breed monstrous crimes and monstrous illusions.
+In a few words the emissary from Hernandez expressed his complete
+satisfaction. Stoically Antonia lowered her veil, resisting the
+longing to inquire about Decoud's escape.  But Ignacio leered
+morosely over his shoulder.
+
+"Take a good look at the mules, mi amo," he grumbled.  "You shall
+never see them again!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+CHARLES GOULD turned towards the town. Before him the jagged
+peaks of the Sierra came out all black in the clear dawn. Here
+and there a muffled lepero whisked round the corner of a
+grass-grown street before the ringing hoofs of his horse. Dogs
+barked behind the walls of the gardens; and with the colourless
+light the chill of the snows seemed to fall from the mountains
+upon the disjointed pavements and the shuttered houses with
+broken cornices and the plaster peeling in patches between the
+flat pilasters of the fronts. The daybreak struggled with the
+gloom under the arcades on the Plaza, with no signs of country
+people disposing their goods for the day's market, piles of
+fruit, bundles of vegetables ornamented with flowers, on low
+benches under enormous mat umbrellas; with no cheery early
+morning bustle of villagers, women, children, and loaded donkeys.
+Only a few scattered knots of revolutionists stood in the vast
+space, all looking one way from under their slouched hats for
+some sign of news from Rincon.  The largest of those groups
+turned about like one man as Charles Gould passed, and shouted,
+"Viva la libertad!" after him in a menacing tone.
+
+Charles Gould rode on, and turned into the archway of his house.
+In the patio littered with straw, a practicante, one of Dr.
+Monygham's native assistants, sat on the ground with his back
+against the rim of the fountain, fingering a guitar discreetly,
+while two girls of the lower class, standing up before him,
+shuffled their feet a little and waved their arms, humming a
+popular dance tune.
+
+Most of the wounded during the two days of rioting had been taken
+away already by their friends and relations, but several figures
+could be seen sitting up balancing their bandaged heads in time
+to the music. Charles Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out
+of the bakery door took hold of the horse's bridle; the
+practicante endeavoured to conceal his guitar hastily; the girls,
+unabashed, stepped back smiling; and Charles Gould, on his way to
+the staircase, glanced into a dark corner of the patio at another
+group, a mortally wounded Cargador with a woman kneeling by his
+side; she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the same time to
+force a piece of orange between the stiffening lips of the dying
+man.
+
+The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity and
+sufferings of that incorrigible people; the cruel futility of
+lives and of deaths thrown away in the vain endeavour to attain
+an enduring solution of the problem.  Unlike Decoud, Charles
+Gould could not play lightly a part in a tragic farce. It was
+tragic enough for him in all conscience, but he could see no
+farcical element.  He suffered too much under a conviction of
+irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and too
+idealistic to look upon its terrible humours with amusement, as
+Martin Decoud, the imaginative materialist, was able to do in the
+dry light of his scepticism.  To him, as to all of us, the
+compromises with his conscience appeared uglier than ever in the
+light of failure.  His taciturnity, assumed with a purpose, had
+prevented him from tampering openly with his thoughts; but the
+Gould Concession had insidiously corrupted his judgment.  He
+might have known, he said to himself, leaning over the balustrade
+of the corredor, that Ribierism could never come to anything. The
+mine had corrupted his judgment by making him sick of bribing and
+intriguing merely to have his work left alone from day to day.
+Like his father, he did not like to be robbed.  It exasperated
+him. He had persuaded himself that, apart from higher
+considerations, the backing up of Don Jose's hopes of reform was
+good business. He had gone forth into the senseless fray as his
+poor uncle, whose sword hung on the wall of his study, had gone
+forth--in the defence of the commonest decencies of organized
+society. Only his weapon was the wealth of the mine, more
+far-reaching and subtle than an honest blade of steel fitted into
+a simple brass guard.
+
+More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of wealth,
+double-edged with the cupidity and misery of mankind, steeped in
+all the vices of self-indulgence as in a concoction of poisonous
+roots, tainting the very cause for which it is drawn, always
+ready to turn awkwardly in the hand. There was nothing for it now
+but to go on using it. But he promised himself to see it
+shattered into small bits before he let it be wrenched from his
+grasp.
+
+After all, with his English parentage and English upbringing, he
+perceived that he was an adventurer in Costaguana, the descendant
+of adventurers enlisted in a foreign legion, of men who had
+sought fortune in a revolutionary war, who had planned
+revolutions, who had believed in revolutions. For all the
+uprightness of his character, he had something of an adventurer's
+easy morality which takes count of personal risk in the ethical
+appraising of his action. He was prepared, if need be, to blow up
+the whole San Tome mountain sky high out of the territory of the
+Republic. This resolution expressed the tenacity of his
+character, the remorse of that subtle conjugal infidelity through
+which his wife was no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts,
+something of his father's imaginative weakness, and something,
+too, of the spirit of a buccaneer throwing a lighted match into
+the magazine rather than surrender his ship.
+
+Down below in the patio the wounded Cargador had breathed his
+last. The woman cried out once, and her cry, unexpected and
+shrill, made all the wounded sit up. The practicante scrambled to
+his feet, and, guitar in hand, gazed steadily in her direction
+with elevated eyebrows. The two girls--sitting now one on each
+side of their wounded relative, with their knees drawn up and
+long cigars between their lips--nodded at each other
+significantly.
+
+Charles Gould, looking down over the balustrade, saw three men
+dressed ceremoniously in black frock-coats with white shirts, and
+wearing European round hats, enter the patio from the street. One
+of them, head and shoulders taller than the two others, advanced
+with marked gravity, leading the way. This was Don Juste Lopez,
+accompanied by two of his friends, members of Assembly, coming to
+call upon the Administrador of the San Tome mine at this early
+hour. They saw him, too, waved their hands to him urgently,
+walking up the stairs as if in procession.
+
+Don Juste, astonishingly changed by having shaved off altogether
+his damaged beard, had lost with it ninetenths of his outward
+dignity. Even at that time of serious pre-occupation Charles
+Gould could not help noting the revealed ineptitude in the aspect
+of the man.  His companions looked crestfallen and sleepy. One
+kept on passing the tip of his tongue over his parched lips; the
+other's eyes strayed dully over the tiled floor of the corredor,
+while Don Juste, standing a little in advance, harangued the
+Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. It was his firm opinion
+that forms had to be observed. A new governor is always visited
+by deputations from the Cabildo, which is the Municipal Council,
+from the Consulado, the commercial Board, and it was proper that
+the Provincial Assembly should send a deputation, too, if only to
+assert the existence of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste
+proposed that Don Carlos Gould, as the most prominent citizen of
+the province, should join the Assembly's deputation. His position
+was exceptional, his personality known through the length and
+breadth of the whole Republic. Official courtesies must not be
+neglected, if they are gone through with a bleeding heart. The
+acceptance of accomplished facts may save yet the precious
+vestiges of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste's eyes glowed
+dully; he believed in parliamentary institutions--and the
+convinced drone of his voice lost itself in the stillness of the
+house like the deep buzzing of some ponderous insect.
+
+Charles Gould had turned round to listen patiently, leaning his
+elbow on the balustrade. He shook his head a little, refusing,
+almost touched by the anxious gaze of the President of the
+Provincial Assembly. It was not Charles Gould's policy to make
+the San Tome mine a party to any formal proceedings.
+
+"My advice, senores, is that you should wait for your fate in
+your houses. There is no necessity for you to give yourselves up
+formally into Montero's hands.  Submission to the inevitable, as
+Don Juste calls it, is all very well, but when the inevitable is
+called Pedrito Montero there is no need to exhibit pointedly the
+whole extent of your surrender. The fault of this country is the
+want of measure in political life. Flat acquiescence in
+illegality, followed by sanguinary reaction--that, senores, is
+not the way to a stable and prosperous future."
+
+Charles Gould stopped before the sad bewilderment of the faces,
+the wondering, anxious glances of the eyes.  The feeling of pity
+for those men, putting all their trust into words of some sort,
+while murder and rapine stalked over the land, had betrayed him
+into what seemed empty loquacity. Don Juste murmured--
+
+"You are abandoning us, Don Carlos. . . . And yet, parliamentary
+institutions--"
+
+He could not finish from grief. For a moment he put his hand over
+his eyes. Charles Gould, in his fear of empty loquacity, made no
+answer to the charge. He returned in silence their ceremonious
+bows. His taciturnity was his refuge. He understood that what
+they sought was to get the influence of the San Tome mine on
+their side. They wanted to go on a conciliating errand to the
+victor under the wing of the Gould Concession.  Other public
+bodies--the Cabildo, the Consulado--would be coming, too,
+presently, seeking the support of the most stable, the most
+effective force they had ever known to exist in their province.
+
+The doctor, arriving with his sharp, jerky walk, found that the
+master had retired into his own room with.  orders not to be
+disturbed on any account. But Dr.  Monygham was not anxious to
+see Charles Gould at once. He spent some time in a rapid
+examination of his wounded. He gazed down upon each in turn,
+rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger; his steady
+stare met without expression their silently inquisitive look. All
+these cases were doing well; but when he came to the dead
+Cargador he stopped a little longer, surveying not the man who
+had ceased to suffer, but the woman kneeling in silent
+contemplation of the rigid face, with its pinched nostrils and a
+white gleam in the imperfectly closed eyes. She lifted her head
+slowly, and said in a dull voice--
+
+"It is not long since he had become a Cargador--only a few weeks.
+His worship the Capataz had accepted him after many entreaties."
+
+"I am not responsible for the great Capataz," muttered the
+doctor, moving off.
+
+Directing his course upstairs towards the door of Charles Gould's
+room, the doctor at the last moment hesitated; then, turning away
+from the handle with a shrug of his uneven shoulders, slunk off
+hastily along the corredor in search of Mrs. Gould's camerista.
+
+Leonardo told him that the senora had not risen yet.  The senora
+had given into her charge the girls belonging to that Italian
+posadero. She, Leonarda, had put them to bed in her own room. The
+fair girl had cried herself to sleep, but the dark one--the
+bigger--had not closed her eyes yet. She sat up in bed clutching
+the sheets right up under her chin and staring before her like a
+little witch. Leonarda did not approve of the Viola children
+being admitted to the house. She made this feeling clear by the
+indifferent tone in which she inquired whether their mother was
+dead yet. As to the senora, she must be asleep. Ever since she
+had gone into her room after seeing the departure of Dona Antonia
+with her dying father, there had been no sound behind her door.
+
+The doctor, rousing himself out of profound reflection, told her
+abruptly to call her mistress at once. He hobbled off to wait for
+Mrs. Gould in the sala. He was very tired, but too excited to sit
+down. In this great drawing-room, now empty, in which his
+withered soul had been refreshed after many arid years and his
+outcast spirit had accepted silently the toleration of many
+side-glances, he wandered haphazard amongst the chairs and tables
+till Mrs. Gould, enveloped in a morning wrapper, came in rapidly.
+
+"You know that I never approved of the silver being sent away,"
+the doctor began at once, as a preliminary to the narrative of
+his night's adventures in association with Captain Mitchell, the
+engineer-in-chief, and old Viola, at Sotillo's headquarters. To
+the doctor, with his special conception of this political crisis,
+the removal of the silver had seemed an irrational and ill-omened
+measure. It was as if a general were sending the best part of his
+troops away on the eve of battle upon some recondite pretext. The
+whole lot of ingots might have been concealed somewhere where
+they could have been got at for the purpose of staving off the
+dangers which were menacing the security of the Gould Concession.
+The Administrador had acted as if the immense and powerful
+prosperity of the mine had been founded on methods of probity, on
+the sense of usefulness. And it was nothing of the kind. The
+method followed had been the only one possible. The Gould
+Concession had ransomed its way through all those years. It was a
+nauseous process. He quite understood that Charles Gould had got
+sick of it and had left the old path to back up that hopeless
+attempt at reform. The doctor did not believe in the reform of
+Costaguana. And now the mine was back again in its old path, with
+the disadvantage that henceforth it had to deal not only with the
+greed provoked by its wealth, but with the resentment awakened by
+the attempt to free itself from its bondage to moral corruption.
+That was the penalty of failure. What made him uneasy was that
+Charles Gould seemed to him to have weakened at the decisive
+moment when a frank return to the old methods was the only
+chance. Listening to Decoud's wild scheme had been a weakness.
+
+The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, "Decoud!  Decoud!" He
+hobbled about the room with slight, angry laughs. Many years ago
+both his ankles had been seriously damaged in the course of a
+certain investigation conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a
+commission composed of military men. Their nomination had been
+signified to them unexpectedly at the dead of night, with
+scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a tempestuous voice, by
+Guzman Bento. The old tyrant, maddened by one of his sudden
+accesses of suspicion, mingled spluttering appeals to their
+fidelity with imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and
+casements of the castle on the hill had been already filled with
+prisoners. The commission was charged now with the task of
+discovering the iniquitous conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour
+of his country.
+
+Their dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into a hasty
+ferocity of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was not accustomed to
+wait. A conspiracy had to be discovered.  The courtyards of the
+castle resounded with the clanking of leg-irons, sounds of blows,
+yells of pain; and the commission of high officers laboured
+feverishly, concealing their distress and apprehensions from each
+other, and especially from their secretary, Father Beron, an army
+chaplain, at that time very much in the confidence of the
+Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big round-shouldered man, with
+an unclean-looking, overgrown tonsure on the top of his flat
+head, of a dingy, yellow complexion, softly fat, with greasy
+stains all down the front of his lieutenant's uniform, and a
+small cross embroidered in white cotton on his left breast. He
+had a heavy nose and a pendant lip. Dr. Monygham remembered him
+still. He remembered him against all the force of his will
+striving its utmost to forget. Father Beron had been adjoined to
+the commission by Guzman Bento expressly for the purpose that his
+enlightened zeal should assist them in their labours. Dr.
+Monygham could by no manner of means forget the zeal of Father
+Beron, or his face, or the pitiless, monotonous voice in which he
+pronounced the words, "Will you confess now?"
+
+This memory did not make him shudder, but it had made of him what
+he was in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of
+common decencies, something between a clever vagabond and a
+disreputable doctor.  But not all respectable people would have
+had the necessary delicacy of sentiment to understand with what
+trouble of mind and accuracy of vision Dr. Monygham, medical
+officer of the San Tome mine, remembered Father Beron, army
+chaplain, and once a secretary of a military commission. After
+all these years Dr.  Monygham, in his rooms at the end of the
+hospital building in the San Tome gorge, remembered Father Beron
+as distinctly as ever. He remembered that priest at night,
+sometimes, in his sleep. On such nights the doctor waited for
+daylight with a candle lighted, and walking the whole length of
+his rooms to and fro, staring down at his bare feet, his arms
+hugging his sides tightly. He would dream of Father Beron sitting
+at the end of a long black table, behind which, in a row,
+appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes of the military
+members, nibbling the feather of a quill pen, and listening with
+weary and impatient scorn to the protestations of some prisoner
+calling heaven to witness of his innocence, till he burst out,
+"What's the use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let
+me take him outside for a while." And Father Beron would go
+outside after the clanking prisoner, led away between two
+soldiers. Such interludes happened on many days, many times, with
+many prisoners. When the prisoner returned he was ready to make a
+full confession, Father Beron would declare, leaning forward with
+that dull, surfeited look which can be seen in the eyes of
+gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.
+
+The priest's inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from the
+want of classical apparatus of the Inquisition At no time of the
+world's history have men been at a loss how to inflict mental and
+bodily anguish upon their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to
+them in the growing complexity of their passions and the early
+refinement of their ingenuity. But it may safely be said that
+primeval man did not go to the trouble of inventing tortures. He
+was indolent and pure of heart. He brained his neighbour
+ferociously with a stone axe from necessity and without malice.
+The stupidest mind may invent a rankling phrase or brand the
+innocent with a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod;
+a few muskets in combination with a length of hide rope; or even
+a simple mallet of heavy, hard wood applied with a swing to human
+fingers or to the joints of a human body is enough for the
+infliction of the most exquisite torture. The doctor had been a
+very stubborn prisoner, and, as a natural consequence of that
+"bad disposition" (so Father Beron called it), his subjugation
+had been very crushing and very complete. That is why the limp in
+his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his cheeks
+were so pronounced. His confessions, when they came at last, were
+very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the
+floor, he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and rage, at
+the fertility of his imagination when stimulated by a sort of
+pain which makes truth, honour, selfrespect, and life itself
+matters of little moment.
+
+And he could not forget Father Beron with his monotonous phrase,
+"Will you confess now?" reaching him in an awful iteration and
+lucidity of meaning through the delirious incoherence of
+unbearable pain. He could not forget. But that was not the worst.
+Had he met Father Beron in the street after all these years Dr.
+Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him.  This
+contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was dead; but
+the sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking
+anybody in the face.
+
+Dr. Monygham. had become, in a manner, the slave of a ghost. It
+was obviously impossible to take his knowledge of Father Beron
+home to Europe. When making his extorted confessions to the
+Military Board, Dr.  Monygham was not seeking to avoid death. He
+longed for it. Sitting half-naked for hours on the wet earth of
+his prison, and so motionless that the spiders, his companions,
+attached their webs to his matted hair, he consoled the misery of
+his soul with acute reasonings that he had confessed to crimes
+enough for a sentence of death--that they had gone too far with
+him to let him live to tell the tale.
+
+But, as if by a refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham was left for
+months to decay slowly in the darkness of his grave-like prison.
+It was no doubt hoped that it would finish him off without the
+trouble of an execution; but Dr. Monygham had an iron
+constitution. It was Guzman Bento who died, not by the knife
+thrust of a conspirator, but from a stroke of apoplexy, and Dr.
+Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters were struck off by
+the light of a candle, which, after months of gloom, hurt his
+eyes so much that he had to cover his face with his hands. He was
+raised up. His heart was beating violently with the fear of this
+liberty. When he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his
+feet made him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were thrust
+into his hands, and he was pushed out of the passage. It was
+dusk; candles glimmered already in the windows of the officers'
+quarters round the courtyard; but the twilight sky dazed him by
+its enormous and overwhelming brilliance. A thin poncho hung over
+his naked, bony shoulders; the rags of his trousers came down no
+lower than his knees; an eighteen months' growth of hair fell in
+dirty grey locks on each side of his sharp cheek-bones. As he
+dragged himself past the guard-room door, one of the soldiers,
+lolling outside, moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward
+with a strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on his
+head. And Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, continued on his
+way. He advanced one stick, then one maimed foot, then the other
+stick; the other foot followed only a very short distance along
+the ground, toilfully, as though it were almost too heavy to be
+moved at all; and yet his legs under the hanging angles of the
+poncho appeared no thicker than the two sticks in his hands. A
+ceaseless trembling agitated his bent body, all his wasted limbs,
+his bony head, the conical, ragged crown of the sombrero, whose
+ample flat rim rested on his shoulders.
+
+In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr.  Monygham go
+forth to take possession of his liberty.  And these conditions
+seemed to bind him indissolubly to the land of Costaguana like an
+awful procedure of naturalization, involving him deep in the
+national life, far deeper than any amount of success and honour
+could have done. They did away with his Europeanism; for Dr.
+Monygham had made himself an ideal conception of his disgrace. It
+was a conception eminently fit and proper for an officer and a
+gentleman. Dr. Monygham, before he went out to Costaguana, had
+been surgeon in one of Her Majesty's regiments of foot. It was a
+conception which took no account of physiological facts or
+reasonable arguments; but it was not stupid for all that.  It was
+simple. A rule of conduct resting mainly on severe rejections is
+necessarily simple.  Dr. Monygham's view of what it behoved him
+to do was severe; it was an ideal view, in so much that it was
+the imaginative exaggeration of a correct feeling. It was also,
+in its force, influence, and persistency, the view of an
+eminently loyal nature.
+
+There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham's nature. He
+had settled it all on Mrs. Gould's head. He believed her worthy
+of every devotion. At the bottom of his heart he felt an angry
+uneasiness before the prosperity of the San Tome mine, because
+its growth was robbing her of all peace of mind. Costaguana was
+no place for a woman of that kind. What could Charles Gould have
+been thinking of when he brought her out there! It was
+outrageous! And the doctor had watched the course of events with
+a grim and distant reserve which, he imagined, his lamentable
+history imposed upon him.
+
+Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out of account
+the safety of her husband. The doctor had contrived to be in town
+at the critical time because he mistrusted Charles Gould. He
+considered him hopelessly infected with the madness of
+revolutions. That is why he hobbled in distress in the
+drawing-room of the Casa Gould on that morning, exclaiming,
+"Decoud, Decoud!" in a tone of mournful irritation.
+
+Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening eyes,
+looked straight before her at the sudden enormity of that
+disaster. The finger-tips on one hand rested lightly on a low
+little table by her side, and the arm trembled right up to the
+shoulder. The sun, which looks late upon Sulaco, issuing in all
+the fulness of its power high up on the sky from behind the
+dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had precipitated the delicate,
+smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which the town lies steeped
+during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of black shade and
+spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three long rectangles of sunshine
+fell through the windows of the sala; while just across the
+street the front of the Avellanos's house appeared very sombre in
+its own shadow seen through the flood of light.
+
+A voice said at the door, "What of Decoud?"
+
+It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming along the
+corredor. His glance just glided over his wife and struck full at
+the doctor.
+
+"You have brought some news, doctor?"
+
+Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough.  For some
+time after he had done, the Administrador of the San Tome mine
+remained looking at him without a word. Mrs. Gould sank into a
+low chair with her hands lying on her lap. A silence reigned
+between those three motionless persons. Then Charles Gould
+spoke--
+
+"You must want some breakfast."
+
+He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up her
+husband's hand and pressed it as she went out, raising her
+handkerchief to her eyes. The sight of her husband had brought
+Antonia's position to her mind, and she could not contain her
+tears at the thought of the poor girl. When she rejoined the two
+men in the diningroom after having bathed her face, Charles Gould
+was saying to the doctor across the table--
+
+"No, there does not seem any room for doubt."
+
+And the doctor assented.
+
+"No, I don't see myself how we could question that wretched
+Hirsch's tale. It's only too true, I fear."
+
+She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from
+one to the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their
+heads away, tried to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a
+show of being hungry; he seized his knife and fork, and began to
+eat with emphasis, as if on the stage. Charles Gould made no
+pretence of the sort; with his elbows raised squarely, he twisted
+both ends of his flaming moustaches--they were so long that his
+hands were quite away from his face.
+
+"I am not surprised," he muttered, abandoning his moustaches and
+throwing one arm over the back of his chair. His face was calm
+with that immobility of expression which betrays the intensity of
+a mental struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a
+point all the consequences involved in his line of conduct, with
+its conscious and subconscious intentions.  There must be an end
+now of this silent reserve, of that air of impenetrability behind
+which he had been safeguarding his dignity. It was the least
+ignoble form of dissembling forced upon him by that parody of
+civilized institutions which offended his intelligence, his
+uprightness, and his sense of right. He was like his father.  He
+had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the absurdities that
+prevail in this world. They hurt him in his innate gravity. He
+felt that the miserable death of that poor Decoud took from him
+his inaccessible position of a force in the background. It
+committed him openly unless he wished to throw up the game--and
+that was impossible. The material interests required from him the
+sacrifice of his aloofness--perhaps his own safety too. And he
+reflected that Decoud's separationist plan had not gone to the
+bottom with the lost silver.
+
+The only thing that was not changed was his position towards Mr.
+Holroyd. The head of silver and steel interests had entered into
+Costaguana affairs with a sort of passion. Costaguana had become
+necessary to his existence; in the San Tome mine he had found the
+imaginative satisfaction which other minds would get from drama,
+from art, or from a risky and fascinating sport.  It was a
+special form of the great man's extravagance, sanctioned by a
+moral intention, big enough to flatter his vanity. Even in this
+aberration of his genius he served the progress of the world.
+Charles Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and
+judged with the indulgence of their common passion.  Nothing now
+could surprise or startle this great man.  And Charles Gould
+imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such
+words: ". . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or
+have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end
+for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed
+inexcusably, but in the characteristic manner of this country.
+But Barrios, untouched in Cayta, remains still available. I am
+forced to take up openly the plan of a provincial revolution as
+the only way of placing the enormous material interests involved
+in the prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position of permanent
+safety. . . ." That was clear. He saw these words as if written
+in letters of fire upon the wall at which he was gazing
+abstractedly.
+
+Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It was a domestic
+and frightful phenomenon that darkened and chilled the house for
+her like a thundercloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould's
+fits of abstraction depicted the energetic concentration of a
+will haunted by a fixed idea. A man haunted by a fixed idea is
+insane. He is dangerous even if that idea is an idea of justice;
+for may he not bring the heaven down pitilessly upon a loved
+head? The eyes of Mrs. Gould, watching her husband's profile,
+filled with tears again. And again she seemed to see the despair
+of the unfortunate Antonia.
+
+"What would I have done if Charley had been drowned while we were
+engaged?" she exclaimed, mentally, with horror. Her heart turned
+to ice, while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of
+a funeral pyre consuming all her earthly affections. The tears
+burst out of her eyes.
+
+"Antonia will kill herself!" she cried out.
+
+This cry fell into the silence of the room with strangely little
+effect. Only the doctor, crumbling up a piece of bread, with his
+head inclined on one side, raised his face, and the few long
+hairs sticking out of his shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight
+frown. Dr.  Monygham thought quite sincerely that Decoud was a
+singularly unworthy object for any woman's affection.  Then he
+lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip, and his heart
+full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.
+
+"She thinks of that girl," he said to himself; "she thinks of the
+Viola children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners;
+she always thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But
+what will she do if Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal
+scrimmage those confounded Avellanos have drawn him into? No one
+seems to be thinking of her."
+
+Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections
+subtly.
+
+"I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is big enough to
+take in hand the making of a new State.  It'll please him. It'll
+reconcile him to the risk."
+
+But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he was
+inaccessible. To send off a boat to Cayta was no longer possible,
+since Sotillo was master of the harbour, and had a steamer at his
+disposal. And now, with all the democrats in the province up, and
+every Campo township in a state of disturbance, where could he
+find a man who would make his way successfully overland to Cayta
+with a message, a ten days' ride at least; a man of courage and
+resolution, who would avoid arrest or murder, and if arrested
+would faithfully eat the paper?  The Capataz de Cargadores would
+have been just such a man. But the Capataz of the Cargadores was
+no more.
+
+And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the wall, said
+gently, "That Hirsch! What an extraordinary thing! Saved himself
+by clinging to the anchor, did he? I had no idea that he was
+still in Sulaco.  I thought he had gone back overland to
+Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came here once to talk to me
+about his hide business and some other things.  I made it clear
+to him that nothing could be done."
+
+"He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez being
+about," remarked the doctor.
+
+"And but for him we might not have known anything of what has
+happened," marvelled Charles Gould.
+
+Mrs. Gould cried out--
+
+"Antonia must not know! She must not be told.  Not now."
+
+"Nobody's likely to carry the news," remarked the doctor. "It's
+no one's interest. Moreover, the people here are afraid of
+Hernandez as if he were the devil." He turned to Charles Gould.
+"It's even awkward, because if you wanted to communicate with the
+refugees you could find no messenger. When Hernandez was ranging
+hundreds of miles away from here the Sulaco populace used to
+shudder at the tales of him roasting his prisoners alive."
+
+"Yes," murmured Charles Gould; "Captain Mitchell's Capataz was
+the only man in the town who had seen Hernandez eye to eye.
+Father Corbelan employed him. He opened the communications first.
+It is a pity that--"
+
+His voice was covered by the booming of the great bell of the
+cathedral. Three single strokes, one after another, burst out
+explosively, dying away in deep and mellow vibrations. And then
+all the bells in the tower of every church, convent, or chapel in
+town, even those that had remained shut up for years, pealed out
+together with a crash. In this furious flood of metallic uproar
+there was a power of suggesting images of strife and violence
+which blanched Mrs. Gould's cheek.  Basilio, who had been waiting
+at table, shrinking within himself, clung to the sideboard with
+chattering teeth.  It was impossible to hear yourself speak.
+
+"Shut these windows!" Charles Gould yelled at him, angrily. All
+the other servants, terrified at what they took for the signal of
+a general massacre, had rushed upstairs, tumbling over each
+other, men and women, the obscure and generally invisible
+population of the ground floor on the four sides of the patio.
+The women, screaming "Misericordia!" ran right into the room,
+and, falling on their knees against the walls, began to cross
+themselves convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked the
+doorway in an instant--mozos from the stable, gardeners,
+nondescript helpers living on the crumbs of the munificent
+house--and Charles Gould beheld all the extent of his domestic
+establishment, even to the gatekeeper. This was a half-paralyzed
+old man, whose long white locks fell down to his shoulders: an
+heirloom taken up by Charles Gould's familial piety. He could
+remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a Costaguanero of the
+second generation, chief of the Sulaco province; he had been his
+personal mozo years and years ago in peace and war; had been
+allowed to attend his master in prison; had, on the fatal
+morning, followed the firing squad; and, peeping from behind one
+of the cypresses growing along the wall of the Franciscan
+Convent, had seen, with his eyes starting out of his head, Don
+Enrique throw up his hands and fall with his face in the dust.
+Charles Gould noted particularly the big patriarchal head of that
+witness in the rear of the other servants. But he was surprised
+to see a shrivelled old hag or two, of whose existence within the
+walls of his house he had not been aware. They must have been the
+mothers, or even the grandmothers of some of his people.  There
+were a few children, too, more or less naked, crying and clinging
+to the legs of their elders. He had never before noticed any sign
+of a child in his patio. Even Leonarda, the camerista, came in a
+fright, pushing through, with her spoiled, pouting face of a
+favourite maid, leading the Viola girls by the hand. The crockery
+rattled on table and sideboard, and the whole house seemed to
+sway in the deafening wave of sound.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+DURING the night the expectant populace had taken possession of
+all the belfries in the town in order to welcome Pedrito Montero,
+who was making his entry after having slept the night in Rincon.
+And first came straggling in through the land gate the armed mob
+of all colours, complexions, types, and states of raggedness,
+calling themselves the Sulaco National Guard, and commanded by
+Senor Gamacho. Through the middle of the street streamed, like a
+torrent of rubbish, a mass of straw hats, ponchos, gun-barrels,
+with an enormous green and yellow flag flapping in their midst,
+in a cloud of dust, to the furious beating of drums. The
+spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses shouting
+their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be seen the lances of the
+cavalry, the "army" of Pedro Montero.  He advanced between
+Senores Fuentes and Gamacho at the head of his llaneros, who had
+accomplished the feat of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in
+a snow-storm. They rode four abreast, mounted on confiscated
+Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous stock of roadside stores
+they had looted hurriedly in their rapid ride through the
+northern part of the province; for Pedro Montero had been in a
+great hurry to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely
+around their bare throats were glaringly new, and all the right
+sleeves of their cotton shirts had been cut off close to the
+shoulder for greater freedom in throwing the lazo. Emaciated
+greybeards rode by the side of lean dark youths, marked by all
+the hardships of campaigning, with strips of raw beef twined round
+the crowns of their hats, and huge iron spurs fastened to their
+naked heels.  Those that in the passes of the mountain had lost
+their lances had provided themselves with the goads used by the
+Campo cattlemen: slender shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with
+a lot of loose rings jingling under the ironshod point. They were
+armed with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessness
+characterized the expression of all these sun-blacked
+countenances; they glared down haughtily with their scorched eyes
+at the crowd, or, blinking upwards insolently, pointed out to
+each other some particular head amongst the women at the windows.
+When they had ridden into the Plaza and caught sight of the
+equestrian statue of the King dazzlingly white in the sunshine,
+towering enormous and motionless above the surges of the crowd,
+with its eternal gesture of saluting, a murmur of surprise ran
+through their ranks. "What is that saint in the big hat?" they
+asked each other.
+
+They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains with which
+Pedro Montero had helped so much the victorious career of his
+brother the general. The influence which that man, brought up in
+coast towns, acquired in a short time over the plainsmen of the
+Republic can be ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so
+effective a kind that it must have appeared to those violent men
+but little removed from a state of utter savagery, as the
+perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular lore of all
+nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, together with
+bodily strength, were looked upon, even more than courage, as
+heroic virtues by primitive mankind.  To overcome your adversary
+was the great affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But
+the use of intelligence awakened wonder and respect.  Stratagems,
+providing they did not fail, were honourable; the easy massacre
+of an unsuspecting enemy evoked no feelings but those of
+gladness, pride, and admiration.  Not perhaps that primitive men
+were more faithless than their descendants of to-day, but that
+they went straighter to their aim, and were more artless in their
+recognition of success as the only standard of morality.
+
+We have changed since. The use of intelligence awakens little
+wonder and less respect. But the ignorant and barbarous plainsmen
+engaging in civil strife followed willingly a leader who often
+managed to deliver their enemies bound, as it were, into their
+hands. Pedro Montero had a talent for lulling his adversaries
+into a sense of security. And as men learn wisdom with extreme
+slowness, and are always ready to believe promises that flatter
+their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful time after time.
+Whether only a servant or some inferior official in the
+Costaguana Legation in Paris, he had rushed back to his country
+directly he heard that his brother had emerged from the obscurity
+of his frontier commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his
+gift of plausibility the chiefs of the Ribierist movement in the
+capital, and even the acute agent of the San Tome mine had failed
+to understand him thoroughly.  At once he had obtained an
+enormous influence over his brother. They were very much alike in
+appearance, both bald, with bunches of crisp hair above their
+ears, arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro was
+smaller than the general, more delicate altogether, with an
+ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward signs of
+refinement and distinction, and with a parrot-like talent for
+languages. Both brothers had received some elementary instruction
+by the munificence of a great European traveller, to whom their
+father had been a body-servant during his journeys in the
+interior of the country. In General Montero's case it enabled him
+to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger, incorrigibly lazy
+and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from one coast town to
+another, hanging about counting-houses, attaching himself to
+strangers as a sort of valet-de-place, picking up an easy and
+disreputable living.  His ability to read did nothing for him but
+fill his head with absurd visions. His actions were usually
+determined by motives so improbable in themselves as to escape
+the penetration of a rational person.
+
+Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession in Sta.
+Marta had credited him with the possession of sane views, and
+even with a restraining power over the general's everlastingly
+discontented vanity. It could never have entered his head that
+Pedrito Montero, lackey or inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets
+of the various Parisian hotels where the Costaguana Legation used
+to shelter its diplomatic dignity, had been devouring the lighter
+sort of historical works in the French language, such, for
+instance as the books of Imbert de Saint Amand upon the Second
+Empire. But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a
+brilliant court, and had conceived the idea of an existence for
+himself where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the
+command of every pleasure with the conduct of political affairs
+and enjoy power supremely in every way. Nobody could have guessed
+that. And yet this was one of the immediate causes of the
+Monterist Revolution.  This will appear less incredible by the
+reflection that the fundamental causes were the same as ever,
+rooted in the political immaturity of the people, in the
+indolence of the upper classes and the mental darkness of the
+lower.
+
+Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother the road wide
+open to his wildest imaginings. This was what made the Monterist
+pronunciamiento so unpreventable.  The general himself probably
+could have been bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched
+on a diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who had
+egged him on from first to last. He wanted to become the most
+brilliant statesman of South America.  He did not desire supreme
+power. He would have been afraid of its labour and risk, in fact.
+Before all, Pedrito Montero, taught by his European experience,
+meant to acquire a serious fortune for himself. With this object
+in view he obtained from his brother, on the very morrow of the
+successful battle, the permission to push on over the mountains
+and take possession of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land of future
+prosperity, the chosen land of material progress, the only
+province in the Republic of interest to European capitalists.
+Pedrito Montero, following the example of the Duc de Morny, meant
+to have his share of this prosperity.  This is what he meant
+literally. Now his brother was master of the country, whether as
+President, Dictator, or even as Emperor--why not as an
+Emperor?--he meant to demand a share in every enterprise--in
+railways, in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land
+companies, in each and every undertaking--as the price of his
+protection. The desire to be on the spot early was the real cause
+of the celebrated ride over the mountains with some two hundred
+llaneros, an enterprise of which the dangers had not appeared at
+first clearly to his impatience. Coming from a series of
+victories, it seemed to him that a Montero had only to appear to
+be master of the situation. This illusion had betrayed him into a
+rashness of which he was becoming aware. As he rode at the head
+of his llaneros he regretted that there were so few of them. The
+enthusiasm of the populace reassured him. They yelled "Viva
+Montero! Viva Pedrito!" In order to make them still more
+enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had in
+dissembling, he dropped the reins on his horse's neck, and with a
+tremendous effect of familiarity and confidence slipped his hands
+under the arms of Senores Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture,
+with a ragged town mozo holding his horse by the bridle, he rode
+triumphantly across the Plaza to the door of the Intendencia. Its
+old gloomy walls seemed to shake in the acclamations that rent
+the air and covered the crashing peals of the cathedral bells.
+
+Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dismounted into a
+shouting and perspiring throng of enthusiasts whom the ragged
+Nationals were pushing back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he
+surveyed the large crowd gaping at him. and the bullet-speckled
+walls of the houses opposite lightly veiled by a sunny haze of
+dust. The word "PORVENIR" in immense black capitals, alternating
+with broken windows, stared at him across the vast space; and he
+thought with delight of the hour of vengeance, because he was
+very sure of laying his hands upon Decoud. On his left hand,
+Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face, uncovered a set
+of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilarity.  On his right,
+Senor Fuentes, small and lean, looked on with compressed lips.
+The crowd stared literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness,
+as though they had expected the great guerrillero, the famous
+Pedrito, to begin scattering at once some sort of visible
+largesse. What he began was a speech. He began it with the
+shouted word "Citizens!" which reached even those in the middle
+of the Plaza. Afterwards the greater part of the citizens
+remained fascinated by the orator's action alone, his tip-toeing,
+the arms flung above his head with the fists clenched, a hand
+laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of rolling eyes, the
+sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, a hand laid familiarly on
+Gamacho's shoulder; a hand waved formally towards the little
+black-coated person of Senor Fuentes, advocate and politician and
+a true friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the
+orator bursting out suddenly propagated themselves irregularly to
+the confines of the crowd, like flames running over dry grass,
+and expired in the opening of the streets. In the intervals, over
+the swarming Plaza brooded a heavy silence, in which the mouth of
+the orator went on opening and shutting, and detached
+phrases--"The happiness of the people," "Sons of the country,"
+"The entire world, el mundo entiero"--reached even the packed
+steps of the cathedral with a feeble clear ring, thin as the
+buzzing of a mosquito.  But the orator struck his breast; he
+seemed to prance between his two supporters. It was the supreme
+effort of his peroration. Then the two smaller figures
+disappeared from the public gaze and the enormous Gamacho, left
+alone, advanced, raising his hat high above his head. Then he
+covered himself proudly and yelled out, "Ciudadanos!" A dull roar
+greeted Senor Gamacho, ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of the
+National Guards.
+
+Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from one wrecked
+room of the Intendencia to another, snarling incessantly--
+
+"What stupidity! What destruction!"
+
+Senor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn disposition to
+murmur--
+
+"It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;" and then,
+inclining his head on his left shoulder, would press together his
+lips so firmly that a little hollow would appear at each corner.
+He had his nomination for Political Chief of the town in his
+pocket, and was all impatience to enter upon his functions.
+
+In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all starred by
+stones, the hangings torn down and the canopy over the platform
+at the upper end pulled to pieces, the vast, deep muttering of
+the crowd and the howling voice of Gamacho speaking just below
+reached them through the shutters as they stood idly in dimness
+and desolation.
+
+"The brute!" observed his Excellency Don Pedro Montero through
+clenched teeth. "We must contrive as quickly as possible to send
+him and his Nationals out there to fight Hernandez."
+
+The new Gefe Politico only jerked his head sideways, and took a
+puff at his cigarette in sign of his agreement with this method
+for ridding the town of Gamacho and his inconvenient rabble.
+
+Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely bare floor,
+and at the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames running round the
+room, out of which the remnants of torn and slashed canvases
+fluttered like dingy rags.
+
+"We are not barbarians," he said.
+
+This was what said his Excellency, the popular Pedrito, the
+guerrillero skilled in the art of laying ambushes, charged by his
+brother at his own demand with the organization of Sulaco on
+democratic principles. The night before, during the consultation
+with his partisans, who had come out to meet him in Rincon, he
+had opened his intentions to Senor Fuentes--
+
+"We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, confiding the
+destinies of our beloved country to the wisdom and valiance of my
+heroic brother, the invincible general.  A plebiscite. Do you
+understand?"
+
+And Senor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks, had inclined
+his head slightly to the left, letting a thin, bluish jet of
+smoke escape through his pursed lips. He had understood.
+
+His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation.  Not a single
+chair, table, sofa, etagere or console had been left in the state
+rooms of the Intendencia. His Excellency, though twitching all
+over with rage, was restrained from bursting into violence by a
+sense of his remoteness and isolation. His heroic brother was
+very far away. Meantime, how was he going to take his siesta? He
+had expected to find comfort and luxury in the Intendencia after
+a year of hard camp life, ending with the hardships and
+privations of the daring dash upon Sulaco--upon the province
+which was worth more in wealth and influence than all the rest of
+the Republic's territory.  He would get even with Gamacho
+by-and-by. And Senor Gamacho's oration, delectable to popular
+ears, went on in the heat and glare of the Plaza like the uncouth
+howlings of an inferior sort of devil cast into a white-hot
+furnace. Every moment he had to wipe his streaming face with his
+bare fore-arm; he had flung off his coat, and had turned up the
+sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but he kept on his
+head the large cocked hat with white plumes.  His ingenuousness
+cherished this sign of his rank as Commandante of the National
+Guards. Approving and grave murmurs greeted his periods. His
+opinion was that war should be declared at once against France,
+England, Germany, and the United States, who, by introducing
+railways, mining enterprises, colonization, and under such other
+shallow pretences, aimed at robbing poor people of their lands,
+and with the help of these Goths and paralytics, the aristocrats
+would convert them into toiling and miserable slaves.  And the
+leperos, flinging about the corners of their dirty white mantas,
+yelled their approbation. General Montero, Gamacho howled with
+conviction, was the only man equal to the patriotic task. They
+assented to that, too.
+
+The morning was wearing on; there were already signs of
+disruption, currents and eddies in the crowd. Some were seeking
+the shade of the walls and under the trees of the Alameda.
+Horsemen spurred through, shouting; groups of sombreros set level
+on heads against the vertical sun were drifting away into the
+streets, where the open doors of pulperias revealed an enticing
+gloom resounding with the gentle tinkling of guitars. The
+National Guards were thinking of siesta, and the eloquence of
+Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on, when, in the
+cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried to assemble again for
+further consideration of public affairs, detachments of Montero's
+cavalry camped on the Alameda charged them without parley, at
+speed, with long lances levelled at their flying backs as far as
+the ends of the streets. The National Guards of Sulaco were
+surprised by this proceeding. But they were not indignant. No
+Costaguanero had ever learned to question the eccentricities of a
+military force.  They were part of the natural order of things.
+This must be, they concluded, some kind of administrative
+measure, no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their unaided
+intelligence, and their chief and orator, Gamacho, Commandante of
+the National Guard, was lying drunk and asleep in the bosom of
+his family. His bare feet were upturned in the shadows
+repulsively, in the manner of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had
+dropped open. His youngest daughter, scratching her head with one
+hand, with the other waved a green bough over his scorched and
+peeling face.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+THE declining sun had shifted the shadows from west to east
+amongst the houses of the town. It had shifted them upon the
+whole extent of the immense Campo, with the white walls of its
+haciendas on the knolls dominating the green distances; with its
+grass-thatched ranches crouching in the folds of ground by the
+banks of streams; with the dark islands of clustered trees on a
+clear sea of grass, and the precipitous range of the Cordillera,
+immense and motionless, emerging from the billows of the lower
+forests like the barren coast of a land of giants. The sunset
+rays striking the snow-slope of Higuerota from afar gave it an
+air of rosy youth, while the serrated mass of distant peaks
+remained black, as if calcined in the fiery radiance. The
+undulating surface of the forests seemed powdered with pale gold
+dust; and away there, beyond Rincon, hidden from the town by two
+wooded spurs, the rocks of the San Tome gorge, with the flat wall
+of the mountain itself crowned by gigantic ferns, took on warm
+tones of brown and yellow, with red rusty streaks, and the dark
+green clumps of bushes rooted in crevices. From the plain the
+stamp sheds and the houses of the mine appeared dark and small,
+high up, like the nests of birds clustered on the ledges of a
+cliff. The zigzag paths resembled faint tracings scratched on the
+wall of a cyclopean blockhouse.  To the two serenos of the mine
+on patrol duty, strolling, carbine in hand, and watchful eyes, in
+the shade of the trees lining the stream near the bridge, Don
+Pepe, descending the path from the upper plateau, appeared no
+bigger than a large beetle.
+
+With his air of aimless, insect-like going to and fro upon the
+face of the rock, Don Pepe's figure kept on descending steadily,
+and, when near the bottom, sank at last behind the roofs of
+store-houses, forges, and workshops. For a time the pair of
+serenos strolled back and forth before the bridge, on which they
+had stopped a horseman holding a large white envelope in his
+hand. Then Don Pepe, emerging in the village street from amongst
+the houses, not a stone's throw from the frontier bridge,
+approached, striding in wide dark trousers tucked into boots, a
+white linen jacket, sabre at his side, and revolver at his belt.
+In this disturbed time nothing could find the Senor Gobernador
+with his boots off, as the saying is.
+
+At a slight nod from one of the serenos, the man, a messenger
+from the town, dismounted, and crossed the bridge, leading his
+horse by the bridle.
+
+Don Pepe received the letter from his other hand, slapped his
+left side and his hips in succession, feeling for his spectacle
+case. After settling the heavy silvermounted affair astride his
+nose, and adjusting it carefully behind his ears, he opened the
+envelope, holding it up at about a foot in front of his eyes. The
+paper he pulled out contained some three lines of writing. He
+looked at them for a long time. His grey moustache moved slightly
+up and down, and the wrinkles, radiating at the corners of his
+eyes, ran together. He nodded serenely. "Bueno," he said. "There
+is no answer."
+
+Then, in his quiet, kindly way, he engaged in a cautious
+conversation with the man, who was willing to talk cheerily, as
+if something lucky had happened to him recently. He had seen from
+a distance Sotillo's infantry camped along the shore of the
+harbour on each side of the Custom House. They had done no damage
+to the buildings. The foreigners of the railway remained shut up
+within the yards. They were no longer anxious to shoot poor
+people. He cursed the foreigners; then he reported Montero's
+entry and the rumours of the town. The poor were going to be made
+rich now.  That was very good. More he did not know, and,
+breaking into propitiatory smiles, he intimated that he was
+hungry and thirsty. The old major directed him to go to the
+alcalde of the first village. The man rode off, and Don Pepe,
+striding slowly in the direction of a little wooden belfry,
+looked over a hedge into a little garden, and saw Father Roman
+sitting in a white hammock slung between two orange trees in
+front of the presbytery.
+
+An enormous tamarind shaded with its dark foliage the whole white
+framehouse. A young Indian girl with long hair, big eyes, and
+small hands and feet, carried out a wooden chair, while a thin
+old woman, crabbed and vigilant, watched her all the time from
+the verandah.
+
+Don Pepe sat down in the chair and lighted a cigar; the priest
+drew in an immense quantity of snuff out of the hollow of his
+palm. On his reddish-brown face, worn, hollowed as if crumbled,
+the eyes, fresh and candid, sparkled like two black diamonds.
+
+Don Pepe, in a mild and humorous voice, informed Father Roman
+that Pedrito Montero, by the hand of Senor Fuentes, had asked him
+on what terms he would surrender the mine in proper working order
+to a legally constituted commission of patriotic citizens,
+escorted by a small military force. The priest cast his eyes up
+to heaven. However, Don Pepe continued, the mozo who brought the
+letter said that Don Carlos Gould was alive, and so far
+unmolested.
+
+Father Roman expressed in a few words his thankfulness at hearing
+of the Senor Administrador's safety.
+
+The hour of oration had gone by in the silvery ringing of a bell
+in the little belfry. The belt of forest closing the entrance of
+the valley stood like a screen between the low sun and the street
+of the village. At the other end of the rocky gorge, between the
+walls of basalt and granite, a forest-clad mountain, hiding all
+the range from the San Tome dwellers, rose steeply, lighted up
+and leafy to the very top. Three small rosy clouds hung
+motionless overhead in the great depth of blue. Knots of people
+sat in the street between the wattled huts. Before the casa of
+the alcalde, the foremen of the night-shift, already assembled to
+lead their men, squatted on the ground in a circle of leather
+skull-caps, and, bowing their bronze backs, were passing round
+the gourd of mate. The mozo from the town, having fastened his
+horse to a wooden post before the door, was telling them the news
+of Sulaco as the blackened gourd of the decoction passed from
+hand to hand. The grave alcalde himself, in a white waistcloth
+and a flowered chintz gown with sleeves, open wide upon his naked
+stout person with an effect of a gaudy bathing robe, stood by,
+wearing a rough beaver hat at the back of his head, and grasping
+a tall staff with a silver knob in his hand. These insignia of
+his dignity had been conferred upon him by the Administration of
+the mine, the fountain of honour, of prosperity, and peace. He
+had been one of the first immigrants into this valley; his sons
+and sons-in-law worked within the mountain which seemed with its
+treasures to pour down the thundering ore shoots of the upper
+mesa, the gifts of well-being, security, and justice upon the
+toilers. He listened to the news from the town with curiosity and
+indifference, as if concerning another world than his own. And it
+was true that they appeared to him so. In a very few years the
+sense of belonging to a powerful organization had been developed
+in these harassed, half-wild Indians. They were proud of, and
+attached to, the mine. It had secured their confidence and
+belief. They invested it with a protecting and invincible virtue
+as though it were a fetish made by their own hands, for they were
+ignorant, and in other respects did not differ appreciably from
+the rest of mankind which puts infinite trust in its own
+creations. It never entered the alcalde's head that the mine
+could fail in its protection and force. Politics were good enough
+for the people of the town and the Campo. His yellow, round face,
+with wide nostrils, and motionless in expression, resembled a
+fierce full moon. He listened to the excited vapourings of the
+mozo without misgivings, without surprise, without any active
+sentiment whatever.
+
+Padre Roman sat dejectedly balancing himself, his feet just
+touching the ground, his hands gripping the edge of the hammock.
+With less confidence, but as ignorant as his flock, he asked the
+major what did he think was going to happen now.
+
+Don Pepe, bolt upright in the chair, folded his hands peacefully
+on the hilt of his sword, standing perpendicular between his
+thighs, and answered that he did not know. The mine could be
+defended against any force likely to be sent to take possession.
+On the other hand, from the arid character of the valley, when
+the regular supplies from the Campo had been cut off, the
+population of the three villages could be starved into
+submission.  Don Pepe exposed these contingencies with serenity
+to Father Roman, who, as an old campaigner, was able to
+understand the reasoning of a military man.  They talked with
+simplicity and directness. Father Roman was saddened at the idea
+of his flock being scattered or else enslaved. He had no
+illusions as to their fate, not from penetration, but from long
+experience of political atrocities, which seemed to him fatal and
+unavoidable in the life of a State. The working of the usual
+public institutions presented itself to him most distinctly as a
+series of calamities overtaking private individuals and flowing
+logically from each other through hate, revenge, folly, and
+rapacity, as though they had been part of a divine dispensation.
+Father Roman's clear-sightedness was served by an uninformed
+intelligence; but his heart, preserving its tenderness amongst
+scenes of carnage, spoliation, and violence, abhorred these
+calamities the more as his association with the victims was
+closer. He entertained towards the Indians of the valley feelings
+of paternal scorn.  He had been marrying, baptizing, confessing,
+absolving, and burying the workers of the San Tome mine with
+dignity and unction for five years or more; and he believed in
+the sacredness of these ministrations, which made them his own in
+a spiritual sense. They were dear to his sacerdotal supremacy.
+Mrs. Gould's earnest interest in the concerns of these people
+enhanced their importance in the priest's eyes, because it really
+augmented his own. When talking over with her the innumerable
+Marias and Brigidas of the villages, he felt his own humanity
+expand. Padre Roman was incapable of fanaticism to an almost
+reprehensible degree.  The English senora was evidently a
+heretic; but at the same time she seemed to him wonderful and
+angelic.  Whenever that confused state of his feelings occurred
+to him, while strolling, for instance, his breviary under his
+arm, in the wide shade of the tamarind, he would stop short to
+inhale with a strong snuffling noise a large quantity of snuff,
+and shake his head profoundly. At the thought of what might
+befall the illustrious senora presently, he became gradually
+overcome with dismay.  He voiced it in an agitated murmur. Even
+Don Pepe lost his serenity for a moment. He leaned forward
+stiffly.
+
+"Listen, Padre. The very fact that those thieving macaques in
+Sulaco are trying to find out the price of my honour proves that
+Senor Don Carlos and all in the Casa Gould are safe. As to my
+honour, that also is safe, as every man, woman, and child knows.
+But the negro Liberals who have snatched the town by surprise do
+not know that. Bueno. Let them sit and wait. While they wait they
+can do no harm."
+
+And he regained his composure. He regained it easily, because
+whatever happened his honour of an old officer of Paez was safe.
+He had promised Charles Gould that at the approach of an armed
+force he would defend the gorge just long enough to give himself
+time to destroy scientifically the whole plant, buildings, and
+workshops of the mine with heavy charges of dynamite; block with
+ruins the main tunnel, break down the pathways, blow up the dam
+of the water-power, shatter the famous Gould Concession into
+fragments, flying sky high out of a horrified world. The mine had
+got hold of Charles Gould with a grip as deadly as ever it had
+laid upon his father. But this extreme resolution had seemed to
+Don Pepe the most natural thing in the world. His measures had
+been taken with judgment.  Everything was prepared with a careful
+completeness.  And Don Pepe folded his hands pacifically on his
+sword hilt, and nodded at the priest. In his excitement, Father
+Roman had flung snuff in handfuls at his face, and, all besmeared
+with tobacco, round-eyed, and beside himself, had got out of the
+hammock to walk about, uttering exclamations.
+
+Don Pepe stroked his grey and pendant moustache, whose fine ends
+hung far below the clean-cut line of his jaw, and spoke with a
+conscious pride in his reputation.
+
+"So, Padre, I don't know what will happen. But I know that as
+long as I am here Don Carlos can speak to that macaque, Pedrito
+Montero, and threaten the destruction of the mine with perfect
+assurance that he will be taken seriously. For people know me."
+
+He began to turn the cigar in his lips a little nervously, and
+went on--
+
+"But that is talk--good for the politicos. I am a military man. I
+do not know what may happen. But I know what ought to be
+done--the mine should march upon the town with guns, axes, knives
+tied up to sticks--por Dios. That is what should be done.
+Only--"
+
+His folded hands twitched on the hilt. The cigar turned faster in
+the corner of his lips.
+
+"And who should lead but I? Unfortunately--observe--I have given
+my word of honour to Don Carlos not to let the mine fall into the
+hands of these thieves.  In war--you know this, Padre--the fate
+of battles is uncertain, and whom could I leave here to act for
+me in case of defeat? The explosives are ready. But it would
+require a man of high honour, of intelligence, of judgment, of
+courage, to carry out the prepared destruction.  Somebody I can
+trust with my honour as I can trust myself. Another old officer
+of Paez, for instance.  Or--or--perhaps one of Paez's old
+chaplains would do."
+
+He got up, long, lank, upright, hard, with his martial moustache
+and the bony structure of his face, from which the glance of the
+sunken eyes seemed to transfix the priest, who stood still, an
+empty wooden snuff-box held upside down in his hand, and glared
+back, speechless, at the governor of the mine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+AT ABOUT that time, in the Intendencia of Sulaco, Charles Gould
+was assuring Pedrito Montero, who had sent a request for his
+presence there, that he would never let the mine pass out of his
+hands for the profit of a Government who had robbed him of it.
+The Gould Concession could not be resumed. His father had not
+desired it. The son would never surrender it. He would never
+surrender it alive. And once dead, where was the power capable of
+resuscitating such an enterprise in all its vigour and wealth out
+of the ashes and ruin of destruction? There was no such power in
+the country. And where was the skill and capital abroad that
+would condescend to touch such an ill-omened corpse? Charles
+Gould talked in the impassive tone which had for many years
+served to conceal his anger and contempt. He suffered. He was
+disgusted with what he had to say. It was too much like heroics.
+In him the strictly practical instinct was in profound discord
+with the almost mystic view he took of his right.  The Gould
+Concession was symbolic of abstract justice.  Let the heavens
+fall. But since the San Tome mine had developed into world-wide
+fame his threat had enough force and effectiveness to reach the
+rudimentary intelligence of Pedro Montero, wrapped up as it was
+in the futilities of historical anecdotes.  The Gould Concession
+was a serious asset in the country's finance, and, what was more,
+in the private budgets of many officials as well. It was
+traditional. It was known.  It was said. It was credible. Every
+Minister of Interior drew a salary from the San Tome mine. It was
+natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister of the Interior and
+President of the Council in his brother's Government. The Duc de
+Morny had occupied those high posts during the Second French
+Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself.
+
+A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured for His
+Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered absolutely
+necessary by the labours and the pomps of his entry into Sulaco,
+had been getting hold of the administrative machine by making
+appointments, giving orders, and signing proclamations. Alone
+with Charles Gould in the audience room, His Excellency managed
+with his well-known skill to conceal his annoyance and
+consternation.  He had begun at first to talk loftily of
+confiscation, but the want of all proper feeling and mobility in
+the Senor Administrador's features ended by affecting adversely
+his power of masterful expression. Charles Gould had repeated:
+"The Government can certainly bring about the destruction of the
+San Tome mine if it likes; but without me it can do nothing
+else." It was an alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to
+hurt the sensibilities of a politician whose mind is bent upon
+the spoils of victory. And Charles Gould said also that the
+destruction of the San Tome mine would cause the ruin of other
+undertakings, the withdrawal of European capital, the
+withholding, most probably, of the last instalment of the foreign
+loan. That stony fiend of a man said all these things (which were
+accessible to His Excellency's intelligence) in a coldblooded
+manner which made one shudder.
+
+A long course of reading historical works, light and gossipy in
+tone, carried out in garrets of Parisian hotels, sprawling on an
+untidy bed, to the neglect of his duties, menial or otherwise,
+had affected the manners of Pedro Montero. Had he seen around him
+the splendour of the old Intendencia, the magnificent hangings,
+the gilt furniture ranged along the walls; had he stood upon a
+dais on a noble square of red carpet, he would have probably been
+very dangerous from a sense of success and elevation. But in this
+sacked and devastated residence, with the three pieces of common
+furniture huddled up in the middle of the vast apartment,
+Pedrito's imagination was subdued by a feeling of insecurity and
+impermanence.   That feeling and the firm attitude of Charles
+Gould who had not once, so far, pronounced the word "Excellency,"
+diminished him in his own eyes.  He assumed the tone of an
+enlightened man of the world, and begged Charles Gould to dismiss
+from his mind every cause for alarm. He was now conversing, he
+reminded him, with the brother of the master of the country,
+charged with a reorganizing mission. The trusted brother of the
+master of the country, he repeated.  Nothing was further from the
+thoughts of that wise and patriotic hero than ideas of
+destruction.  "I entreat you, Don Carlos, not to give way to your
+anti-democratic prejudices," he cried, in a burst of
+condescending effusion.
+
+Pedrito Montero surprised one at first sight by the vast
+development of his bald forehead, a shiny yellow expanse between
+the crinkly coal-black tufts of hair without any lustre, the
+engaging form of his mouth, and an unexpectedly cultivated voice.
+But his eyes, very glistening as if freshly painted on each side
+of his hooked nose, had a round, hopeless, birdlike stare when
+opened fully. Now, however, he narrowed them agreeably, throwing
+his square chin up and speaking with closed teeth slightly
+through the nose, with what he imagined to be the manner of a
+grand seigneur.
+
+In that attitude, he declared suddenly that the highest
+expression of democracy was Caesarism: the imperial rule based
+upon the direct popular vote. Caesarism was conservative. It was
+strong. It recognized the legitimate needs of democracy which
+requires orders, titles, and distinctions. They would be showered
+upon deserving men. Caesarism was peace. It was progressive. It
+secured the prosperity of a country.  Pedrito Montero was carried
+away. Look at what the Second Empire had done for France. It was
+a regime which delighted to honour men of Don Carlos's stamp.
+The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief was devoid
+of that military genius which had raised General Montero to the
+pinnacle of fame and glory.  Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to
+help the idea of pinnacle, of fame. "We shall have many talks
+yet.  We shall understand each other thoroughly, Don Carlos!" he
+cried in a tone of fellowship. Republicanism had done its work.
+Imperial democracy was the power of the future. Pedrito, the
+guerrillero, showing his hand, lowered his voice forcibly. A man
+singled out by his fellow-citizens for the honourable nickname of
+El Rey de Sulaco could not but receive a full recognition from an
+imperial democracy as a great captain of industry and a person of
+weighty counsel, whose popular designation would be soon replaced
+by a more solid title. "Eh, Don Carlos? No! What do you say?
+Conde de Sulaco--Eh?--or marquis . . ."
+
+He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a patrol of
+cavalry rode round and round without penetrating into the
+streets, which resounded with shouts and the strumming of guitars
+issuing from the open doors of pulperias. The orders were not to
+interfere with the enjoyments of the people. And above the roofs,
+next to the perpendicular lines of the cathedral towers the snowy
+curve of Higuerota blocked a large space of darkening blue sky
+before the windows of the Intendencia.  After a time Pedrito
+Montero, thrusting his hand in the bosom of his coat, bowed his
+head with slow dignity. The audience was over.
+
+Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his forehead as
+if to disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose grotesque
+extravagance leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and
+intellectual decay.  In the passages and on the staircases of the
+old palace Montero's troopers lounged about insolently, smoking
+and making way for no one; the clanking of sabres and spurs
+resounded all over the building. Three silent groups of civilians
+in severe black waited in the main gallery, formal and helpless,
+a little huddled up, each keeping apart from the others, as if in
+the exercise of a public duty they had been overcome by a desire
+to shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations
+waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly,
+more restless and uneasy in its corporate expression, was
+overtopped by the big face of Don Juste Lopez, soft and white,
+with prominent eyelids and wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as
+if in a dense cloud. The President of the Provincial Assembly,
+coming bravely to save the last shred of parliamentary
+institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes from the
+Administrador of the San Tome mine as a dignified rebuke of his
+little faith in that only saving principle.
+
+The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect Charles
+Gould, but he was sensible to the glances of the others directed
+upon him without reproach, as if only to read their own fate upon
+his face. All of them had talked, shouted, and declaimed in the
+great sala of the Casa Gould. The feeling of compassion for those
+men, struck with a strange impotence in the toils of moral
+degradation, did not induce him to make a sign. He suffered from
+his fellowship in evil with them too much.  He crossed the Plaza
+unmolested. The Amarilla Club was full of festive ragamuffins.
+Their frowsy heads protruded from every window, and from within
+came drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging of
+harps. Broken bottles strewed the pavement below.  Charles Gould
+found the doctor still in his house.
+
+Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutter through
+which he had been watching the street.
+
+"Ah! You are back at last!" he said in a tone of relief. "I have
+been telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe, but I was
+not by any means certain that the fellow would have let you go."
+
+"Neither was I," confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat on the
+table.
+
+"You will have to take action."
+
+The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that this was the
+only course. This was as far as Charles Gould was accustomed to
+go towards expressing his intentions.
+
+"I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean to do," the
+doctor said, anxiously.
+
+"I tried to make him see that the existence of the mine was bound
+up with my personal safety," continued Charles Gould, looking
+away from the doctor, and fixing his eyes upon the water-colour
+sketch upon the wall.
+
+"He believed you?" the doctor asked, eagerly.
+
+"God knows!" said Charles Gould. "I owed it to my wife to say
+that much. He is well enough informed.  He knows that I have Don
+Pepe there. Fuentes must have told him. They know that the old
+major is perfectly capable of blowing up the San Tome mine
+without hesitation or compunction. Had it not been for that I
+don't think I'd have left the Intendencia a free man. He would
+blow everything up from loyalty and from hate--from hate of these
+Liberals, as they call themselves. Liberals! The words one knows
+so well have a nightmarish meaning in this country.  Liberty,
+democracy, patriotism, government--all of them have a flavour of
+folly and murder. Haven't they, doctor? . . . I alone can
+restrain Don Pepe.  If they were to--to do away with me, nothing
+could prevent him."
+
+"They will try to tamper with him," the doctor suggested,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"It is very possible," Charles Gould said very low, as if
+speaking to himself, and still gazing at the sketch of the San
+Tome gorge upon the wall. "Yes, I expect they will try that."
+Charles Gould looked for the first time at the doctor. "It would
+give me time," he added.
+
+"Exactly," said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his excitement.
+"Especially if Don Pepe behaves diplomatically.  Why shouldn't he
+give them some hope of success?  Eh? Otherwise you wouldn't gain
+so much time.  Couldn't he be instructed to--"
+
+Charles Gould, looking at the doctor steadily, shook his head,
+but the doctor continued with a certain amount of fire--
+
+"Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of the mine.
+It is a good notion. You would mature your plan. Of course, I
+don't ask what it is. I don't want to know. I would refuse to
+listen to you if you tried to tell me. I am not fit for
+confidences."
+
+"What nonsense!" muttered Charles Gould, with displeasure.
+
+He disapproved of the doctor's sensitiveness about that far-off
+episode of his life. So much memory shocked Charles Gould. It was
+like morbidness. And again he shook his head. He refused to
+tamper with the open rectitude of Don Pepe's conduct, both from
+taste and from policy. Instructions would have to be either
+verbal or in writing. In either case they ran the risk of being
+intercepted. It was by no means certain that a messenger could
+reach the mine; and, besides, there was no one to send. It was on
+the tip of Charles's tongue to say that only the late Capataz de
+Cargadores could have been employed with some chance of success
+and the certitude of discretion. But he did not say that. He
+pointed out to the doctor that it would have been bad policy.
+Directly Don Pepe let it be supposed that he could be bought
+over, the Administrador's personal safety and the safety of his
+friends would become endangered. For there would be then no
+reason for moderation. The incorruptibility of Don Pepe was the
+essential and restraining fact. The doctor hung his head and
+admitted that in a way it was so.
+
+He couldn't deny to himself that the reasoning was sound enough.
+Don Pepe's usefulness consisted in his unstained character. As to
+his own usefulness, he reflected bitterly it was also his own
+character. He declared to Charles Gould that he had the means of
+keeping Sotillo from joining his forces with Montero, at least
+for the present.
+
+"If you had had all this silver here," the doctor said, "or even
+if it had been known to be at the mine, you could have bribed
+Sotillo to throw off his recent Monterism.  You could have
+induced him either to go away in his steamer or even to join
+you."
+
+"Certainly not that last," Charles Gould declared, firmly. "What
+could one do with a man like that, afterwards--tell me, doctor?
+The silver is gone, and I am glad of it. It would have been an
+immediate and strong temptation. The scramble for that visible
+plunder would have precipitated a disastrous ending.  I would
+have had to defend it, too. I am glad we've removed it--even if
+it is lost. It would have been a danger and a curse."
+
+"Perhaps he is right," the doctor, an hour later, said hurriedly
+to Mrs. Gould, whom he met in the corridor.  "The thing is done,
+and the shadow of the treasure may do just as well as the
+substance. Let me try to serve you to the whole extent of my evil
+reputation. I am off now to play my game of betrayal with
+Sotillo, and keep him off the town."
+
+She put out both her hands impulsively. "Dr. Monygham, you are
+running a terrible risk," she whispered, averting from his face
+her eyes, full of tears, for a short glance at the door of her
+husband's room. She pressed both his hands, and the doctor stood
+as if rooted to the spot, looking down at her, and trying to
+twist his lips into a smile.
+
+"Oh, I know you will defend my memory," he uttered at last, and
+ran tottering down the stairs across the patio, and out of the
+house. In the street he kept up.  a great pace with his smart
+hobbling walk, a case of instruments under his arm. He was known
+for being loco.  Nobody interfered with him. From under the
+seaward gate, across the dusty, arid plain, interspersed with low
+bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the ugly enormity of the
+Custom House, and the two or three other buildings which at that
+time constituted the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to the south
+groves of palm trees edged the curve of the harbour shore. The
+distant peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of
+clearcut shapes in the steadily deepening blue of the eastern
+sky. The doctor walked briskly. A darkling shadow seemed to fall
+upon him from the zenith. The sun had set. For a time the snows
+of Higuerota continued to glow with the reflected glory of the
+west. The doctor, holding a straight course for the Custom House,
+appeared lonely, hopping amongst the dark bushes like a tall bird
+with a broken wing.
+
+Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the clear
+water of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight as a wall,
+with the grass-grown ruins of the fort making a sort of rounded
+green mound, plainly visible from the inner shore, closed its
+circuit; while beyond the Placid Gulf repeated those splendours
+of colouring on a greater scale and with a more sombre
+magnificence. The great mass of cloud filling the head of the
+gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted folds of grey and
+black, as of a floating mantle stained with blood. The three
+Isabels, overshadowed and clear cut in a great smoothness
+confounding the sea and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in
+the air.  The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red
+sparks upon the sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along
+the horizon gave out a fiery red glow, as if fire and water had
+been mingled together in the vast bed of the ocean.
+
+At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced and
+still in a flaming contact upon the edge of the world, went out.
+The red sparks in the water vanished together with the stains of
+blood in the black mantle draping the sombre head of the Placid
+Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up and died out after rustling
+heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined earthwork of the fort.
+Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours' sleep, and arose full
+length from his lair in the long grass.  He stood knee deep
+amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the
+lost air of a man just born into the world. Handsome, robust, and
+supple, he threw back his head, flung his arms open, and
+stretched himself with a slow twist of the waist and a leisurely
+growling yawn of white teeth, as natural and free from evil in
+the moment of waking as a magnificent and unconscious wild beast.
+Then, in the suddenly steadied glance fixed upon nothing from
+under a thoughtful frown, appeared the man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+AFTER landing from his swim Nostromo had scrambled up, all
+dripping, into the main quadrangle of the old fort; and there,
+amongst ruined bits of walls and rotting remnants of roofs and
+sheds, he had slept the day through. He had slept in the shadow
+of the mountains, in the white blaze of noon, in the stillness
+and solitude of that overgrown piece of land between the oval of
+the harbour and the spacious semi-circle of the gulf. He lay as
+if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing like a tiny black speck in the
+blue, stooped, circling prudently with a stealthiness of flight
+startling in a bird of that great size. The shadow of his
+pearly-white body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass
+no more silently than he alighted himself on a hillock of rubbish
+within three yards of that man, lying as still as a corpse. The
+bird stretched his bare neck, craned his bald head, loathsome in
+the brilliance of varied colouring, with an air of voracious
+anxiety towards the promising stillness of that prostrate body.
+Then, sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled
+himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nostromo's eyes fell
+on waking was this patient watcher for the signs of death and
+corruption. When the man got up the vulture hopped away in great,
+side-long, fluttering jumps. He lingered for a while, morose and
+reluctant, before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister
+droop of beak and claws.
+
+Long after he had vanished, Nostromo, lifting his eyes up to the
+sky, muttered, "I am not dead yet."
+
+The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores had lived in splendour and
+publicity up to the very moment, as it were, when he took charge
+of the lighter containing the treasure of silver ingots.
+
+The last act he had performed in Sulaco was in complete harmony
+with his vanity, and as such perfectly genuine. He had given his
+last dollar to an old woman moaning with the grief and fatigue of
+a dismal search under the arch of the ancient gate. Performed in
+obscurity and without witnesses, it had still the characteristics
+of splendour and publicity, and was in strict keeping with his
+reputation. But this awakening in solitude, except for the
+watchful vulture, amongst the ruins of the fort, had no such
+characteristics. His first confused feeling was exactly
+this--that it was not in keeping. It was more like the end of
+things. The necessity of living concealed somehow, for God knows
+how long, which assailed him on his return to consciousness, made
+everything that had gone before for years appear vain and
+foolish, like a flattering dream come suddenly to an end.
+
+He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and, putting aside
+the bushes, looked upon the harbour. He saw a couple of ships at
+anchor upon the sheet of water reflecting the last gleams of
+light, and Sotillo's steamer moored to the jetty. And behind the
+pale long front of the Custom House, there appeared the extent of
+the town like a grove of thick timber on the plain with a gateway
+in front, and the cupolas, towers, and miradors rising above the
+trees, all dark, as if surrendered already to the night. The
+thought that it was no longer open to him to ride through the
+streets, recognized by everyone, great and little, as he used to
+do every evening on his way to play monte in the posada of the
+Mexican Domingo; or to sit in the place of honour, listening to
+songs and looking at dances, made it appear to him as a town that
+had no existence.
+
+For a long time he gazed on, then let the parted bushes spring
+back, and, crossing over to the other side of the fort, surveyed
+the vaster emptiness of the great gulf. The Isabels stood out
+heavily upon the narrowing long band of red in the west, which
+gleamed low between their black shapes, and the Capataz thought
+of Decoud alone there with the treasure. That man was the only
+one who cared whether he fell into the hands of the Monterists or
+not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. And that merely would be an
+anxiety for his own sake. As to the rest, they neither knew nor
+cared. What he had heard Giorgio Viola say once was very true.
+Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept the
+people in poverty and subjection; they kept them as they kept
+dogs, to fight and hunt for their service.
+
+The darkness of the sky had descended to the line of the horizon,
+enveloping the whole gulf, the islets, and the lover of Antonia
+alone with the treasure on the Great Isabel. The Capataz, turning
+his back on these things invisible and existing, sat down and
+took his face between his fists. He felt the pinch of poverty for
+the first time in his life. To find himself without money after a
+run of bad luck at monte in the low, smoky room of Domingo's
+posada, where the fraternity of Cargadores gambled, sang, and
+danced of an evening; to remain with empty pockets after a burst
+of public generosity to some peyne d'oro girl or other (for whom
+he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitution.  He
+remained rich in glory and reputation. But since it was no longer
+possible for him to parade the streets of the town, and be hailed
+with respect in the usual haunts of his leisure, this sailor felt
+himself destitute indeed.
+
+His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and extremely
+anxious thinking, as it had never been dry before. It may be said
+that Nostromo tasted the dust and ashes of the fruit of life into
+which he had bitten deeply in his hunger for praise. Without
+removing his head from between his fists, he tried to spit before
+him--"Tfui"--and muttered a curse upon the selfishness of all the
+rich people.
+
+Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was the feeling
+of his waking), the idea of leaving the country altogether had
+presented itself to Nostromo. At that thought he had seen, like
+the beginning of another dream, a vision of steep and tideless
+shores, with dark pines on the heights and white houses low down
+near a very blue sea. He saw the quays of a big port, where the
+coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails outspread like
+motionless wings, enter gliding silently between the end of long
+moles of squared blocks that project angularly towards each
+other, hugging a cluster of shipping to the superb bosom of a
+hill covered with palaces. He remembered these sights not without
+some filial emotion, though he had been habitually and severely
+beaten as a boy on one of these feluccas by a short-necked,
+shaven Genoese, with a deliberate and distrustful manner, who (he
+firmly believed) had cheated him out of his orphan's inheritance.
+But it is mercifully decreed that the evils of the past should
+appear but faintly in retrospect. Under the sense of loneliness,
+abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to these things
+appeared tolerable. But, what? Return? With bare feet and head,
+with one check shirt and a pair of cotton calzoneros for all
+worldly possessions?
+
+The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a fist dug into
+each cheek, laughed with self-derision, as he had spat with
+disgust, straight out before him into the night. The confused and
+intimate impressions of universal dissolution which beset a
+subjective nature at any strong check to its ruling passion had a
+bitterness approaching that of death itself. He was simple. He
+was as ready to become the prey of any belief, superstition, or
+desire as a child.
+
+The facts of his situation he could appreciate like a man with a
+distinct experience of the country. He saw them clearly. He was
+as if sobered after a long bout of intoxication. His fidelity had
+been taken advantage of. He had persuaded the body of Cargadores
+to side with the Blancos against the rest of the people; he had
+had interviews with Don Jose; he had been made use of by Father
+Corbelan for negotiating with Hernandez; it was known that Don
+Martin Decoud had admitted him to a sort of intimacy, so that he
+had been free of the offices of the Porvenir. All these things
+had flattered him in the usual way. What did he care about their
+politics? Nothing at all. And at the end of it all--Nostromo
+here and Nostromo there--where is Nostromo?  Nostromo can do this
+and that--work all day and ride all night--behold! he found
+himself a marked Ribierist for any sort of vengeance Gamacho, for
+instance, would choose to take, now the Montero party, had, after
+all, mastered the town. The Europeans had given up; the
+Caballeros had given up. Don Martin had indeed explained it was
+only temporary--that he was going to bring Barrios to the
+rescue. Where was that now--with Don Martin (whose ironic manner
+of talk had always made the Capataz feel vaguely uneasy) stranded
+on the Great Isabel? Everybody had given up. Even Don Carlos had
+given up. The hurried removal of the treasure out to sea meant
+nothing else than that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a revulsion
+of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity, beheld all his
+world without faith and courage. He had been betrayed!
+
+With the boundless shadows of the sea behind him, out of his
+silence and immobility, facing the lofty shapes of the lower
+peaks crowded around the white, misty sheen of Higuerota,
+Nostromo laughed aloud again, sprang abruptly to his feet, and
+stood still. He must go. But where?
+
+"There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage us as if we were
+dogs born to fight and hunt for them.  The vecchio is right," he
+said, slowly and scathingly.  He remembered old Giorgio taking
+his pipe out of his mouth to throw these words over his shoulder
+at the cafe, full of engine-drivers and fitters from the railway
+workshops. This image fixed his wavering purpose.  He would try
+to find old Giorgio if he could. God knows what might have
+happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped again and
+shook his head.  To the left and right, in front and behind him,
+the scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.
+
+"Teresa was right, too," he added in a low tone touched with awe.
+He wondered whether she was dead in her anger with him or still
+alive. As if in answer to this thought, half of remorse and half
+of hope, with a soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose
+appalling cry: "Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo!--it is finished; it is
+finished"--announces calamity and death in the popular belief,
+drifted vaguely like a large dark ball across his path. In the
+downfall of all the realities that made his force, he was
+affected by the superstition, and shuddered slightly. Signora
+Teresa must have died, then. It could mean nothing else. The cry
+of the ill-omened bird, the first sound he was to hear on his
+return, was a fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The
+unseen powers which he had offended by refusing to bring a priest
+to a dying woman were lifting up their voice against him. She was
+dead. With admirable and human consistency he referred everything
+to himself. She had been a woman of good counsel always.  And the
+bereaved old Giorgio remained stunned by his loss just as he was
+likely to require the advice of his sagacity. The blow would
+render the dreamy old man quite stupid for a time.
+
+As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner of trusted
+subordinates, considered him as a person fitted by education
+perhaps to sign papers in an office and to give orders, but
+otherwise of no use whatever, and something of a fool. The
+necessity of winding round his little finger, almost daily, the
+pompous and testy self-importance of the old seaman had grown
+irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had given him an inward
+satisfaction. But the necessity of overcoming small obstacles
+becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality as much by the
+certitude of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted
+his superior's proneness to fussy action. That old Englishman had
+no judgment, he said to himself. It was useless to suppose that,
+acquainted with the true state of the case, he would keep it to
+himself. He would talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo
+feared him as one would fear saddling one's self with some
+persistent worry. He had no discretion.  He would betray the
+treasure. And Nostromo had made up his mind that the treasure
+should not be betrayed.
+
+The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence.  His
+imagination had seized upon the clear and simple notion of
+betrayal to account for the dazed feeling of enlightenment as to
+being done for, of having inadvertently gone out of his existence
+on an issue in which his personality had not been taken into
+account.  A man betrayed is a man destroyed. Signora Teresa (may
+God have her soul!) had been right. He had never been taken into
+account. Destroyed! Her white form sitting up bowed in bed, the
+falling black hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to him,
+the anger of her denunciations appeared to him now majestic with
+the awfulness of inspiration and of death.  For it was not for
+nothing that the evil bird had uttered its lamentable shriek over
+his head. She was dead--may God have her soul!
+
+Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses, his mind
+used the pious formula from the superficial force of habit, but
+with a deep-seated sincerity. The popular mind is incapable of
+scepticism; and that incapacity delivers their helpless strength
+to the wiles of swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of
+leaders inspired by visions of a high destiny. She was dead.  But
+would God consent to receive her soul? She had died without
+confession or absolution, because he had not been willing to
+spare her another moment of his time. His scorn of priests as
+priests remained; but after all, it was impossible to know
+whether what they affirmed was not true. Power, punishment,
+pardon, are simple and credible notions. The magnificent Capataz
+de Cargadores, deprived of certain simple realities, such as the
+admiration of women, the adulation of men, the admired publicity
+of his life, was ready to feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt
+descend upon his shoulders.
+
+Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the lingering
+warmth of the fine sand under the soles of his feet. The narrow
+strand gleamed far ahead in a long curve, defining the outline of
+this wild side of the harbour. He flitted along the shore like a
+pursued shadow between the sombre palm-groves and the sheet of
+water lying as still as death on his right hand. He strode with
+headlong haste in the silence and solitude as though he had
+forgotten all prudence and caution.  But he knew that on this
+side of the water he ran no risk of discovery. The only
+inhabitant was a lonely, silent, apathetic Indian in charge of
+the palmarias, who brought sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the
+town for sale. He lived without a woman in an open shed, with a
+perpetual fire of dry sticks smouldering near an old canoe lying
+bottom up on the beach.  He could be easily avoided.
+
+The barking of the dogs about that man's ranche was the first
+thing that checked his speed. He had forgotten the dogs. He
+swerved sharply, and plunged into the palm-grove, as into a
+wilderness of columns in an immense hall, whose dense obscurity
+seemed to whisper and rustle faintly high above his head. He
+traversed it, entered a ravine, and climbed to the top of a steep
+ridge free of trees and bushes.
+
+From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw the plain
+between the town and the harbour. In the woods above some
+night-bird made a strange drumming noise. Below beyond the
+palmaria on the beach, the Indian's dogs continued to bark
+uproariously. He wondered what had upset them so much, and,
+peering down from his elevation, was surprised to detect
+unaccountable movements of the ground below, as if several oblong
+pieces of the plain had been in motion.  Those dark, shifting
+patches, alternately catching and eluding the eye, altered their
+place always away from the harbour, with a suggestion of
+consecutive order and purpose. A light dawned upon him. It was a
+column of infantry on a night march towards the higher broken
+country at the foot of the hills. But he was too much in the dark
+about everything for wonder and speculation.
+
+The plain had resumed its shadowy immobility.  He descended the
+ridge and found himself in the open solitude, between the harbour
+and the town. Its spaciousness, extended indefinitely by an
+effect of obscurity, rendered more sensible his profound
+isolation.  His pace became slower. No one waited for him; no one
+thought of him; no one expected or wished his return.  "Betrayed!
+Betrayed!" he muttered to himself.  No one cared. He might have
+been drowned by this time. No one would have cared--unless,
+perhaps, the children, he thought to himself. But they were with
+the English signora, and not thinking of him at all.
+
+He wavered in his purpose of making straight for the Casa Viola.
+To what end? What could he expect there? His life seemed to fail
+him in all its details, even to the scornful reproaches of
+Teresa. He was aware painfully of his reluctance. Was it that
+remorse which she had prophesied with, what he saw now, was her
+last breath?
+
+Meantime, he had deviated from the straight course, inclining by
+a sort of instinct to the right, towards the jetty and the
+harbour, the scene of his daily labours.  The great length of the
+Custom House loomed up all at once like the wall of a factory.
+Not a soul challenged his approach, and his curiosity became
+excited as he passed cautiously towards the front by the
+unexpected sight of two lighted windows.
+
+They had the fascination of a lonely vigil kept by some
+mysterious watcher up there, those two windows shining dimly upon
+the harbour in the whole vast extent of the abandoned building.
+The solitude could almost be felt. A strong smell of wood smoke
+hung about in a thin haze, which was faintly perceptible to his
+raised eyes against the glitter of the stars. As he advanced in
+the profound silence, the shrilling of innumerable cicalas in the
+dry grass seemed positively deafening to his strained ears.
+Slowly, step by step, he found himself in the great hall, sombre
+and full of acrid smoke.
+
+A fire built against the staircase had burnt down impotently to a
+low heap of embers. The hard wood had failed to catch; only a few
+steps at the bottom smouldered, with a creeping glow of sparks
+defining their charred edges. At the top he saw a streak of light
+from an open door. It fell upon the vast landing, all foggy with
+a slow drift of smoke. That was the room. He climbed the stairs,
+then checked himself, because he had seen within the shadow of a
+man cast upon one of the walls. It was a shapeless,
+highshouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with lowered
+head, out of his line of sight. The Capataz, remembering that he
+was totally unarmed, stepped aside, and, effacing himself upright
+in a dark corner, waited with his eyes fixed on the door.
+
+The whole enormous ruined barrack of a place, unfinished, without
+ceilings under its lofty roof, was pervaded by the smoke swaying
+to and fro in the faint cross draughts playing in the obscurity
+of many lofty rooms and barnlike passages. Once one of the
+swinging shutters came against the wall with a single sharp
+crack, as if pushed by an impatient hand. A piece of paper
+scurried out from somewhere, rustling along the landing.  The
+man, whoever he was, did not darken the lighted doorway. Twice
+the Capataz, advancing a couple of steps out of his corner,
+craned his neck in the hope of catching sight of what he could be
+at, so quietly, in there. But every time he saw only the
+distorted shadow of broad shoulders and bowed head.  He was doing
+apparently nothing, and stirred not from the spot, as though he
+were meditating--or, perhaps, reading a paper. And not a sound
+issued from the room.
+
+Once more the Capataz stepped back. He wondered who it was--some
+Monterist? But he dreaded to show himself. To discover his
+presence on shore, unless after many days, would, he believed,
+endanger the treasure. With his own knowledge possessing his
+whole soul, it seemed impossible that anybody in Sulaco should
+fail to jump at the right surmise. After a couple of weeks or so
+it would be different. Who could tell he had not returned
+overland from some port beyond the limits of the Republic? The
+existence of the treasure confused his thoughts with a peculiar
+sort of anxiety, as though his life had become bound up with it.
+It rendered him timorous for a moment before that enigmatic,
+lighted door. Devil take the fellow! He did not want to see him.
+There would be nothing to learn from his face, known or unknown.
+He was a fool to waste his time there in waiting.
+
+Less than five minutes after entering the place the Capataz began
+his retreat. He got away down the stairs with perfect success,
+gave one upward look over his shoulder at the light on the
+landing, and ran stealthily across the hall. But at the very
+moment he was turning out of the great door, with his mind fixed
+upon escaping the notice of the man upstairs, somebody he had not
+heard coming briskly along the front ran full into him. Both
+muttered a stifled exclamation of surprise, and leaped back and
+stood still, each indistinct to the other. Nostromo was silent.
+The other man spoke first, in an amazed and deadened tone.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+Already Nostromo had seemed to recognize Dr.  Monygham. He had no
+doubt now. He hesitated the space of a second. The idea of
+bolting without a word presented itself to his mind. No use! An
+inexplicable repugnance to pronounce the name by which he was
+known kept him silent a little longer. At last he said in a low
+voice--
+
+"A Cargador."
+
+He walked up to the other. Dr. Monygham had received a shock. He
+flung his arms up and cried out his wonder aloud, forgetting
+himself before the marvel of this meeting. Nostromo angrily
+warned him to moderate his voice. The Custom House was not so
+deserted as it looked. There was somebody in the lighted room
+above.
+
+There is no more evanescent quality in an accomplished fact than
+its wonderfulness. Solicited incessantly by the considerations
+affecting its fears and desires, the human mind turns naturally
+away from the marvellous side of events. And it was in the most
+natural way possible that the doctor asked this man whom only two
+minutes before he believed to have been drowned in the gulf--
+
+"You have seen somebody up there? Have you?"
+
+"No, I have not seen him."
+
+"Then how do you know?"
+
+"I was running away from his shadow when we met."
+
+"His shadow?"
+
+"Yes. His shadow in the lighted room," said Nostromo, in a
+contemptuous tone. Leaning back with folded arms at the foot of
+the immense building, he dropped his head, biting his lips
+slightly, and not looking at the doctor. "Now," he thought to
+himself, "he will begin asking me about the treasure."
+
+But the doctor's thoughts were concerned with an event not as
+marvellous as Nostromo's appearance, but in itself much less
+clear. Why had Sotillo taken himself off with his whole command
+with this suddenness and secrecy? What did this move portend?
+However, it dawned upon the doctor that the man upstairs was one
+of the officers left behind by the disappointed colonel to
+communicate with him.
+
+"I believe he is waiting for me," he said.
+
+"It is possible."
+
+"I must see. Do not go away yet, Capataz."
+
+"Go away where?" muttered Nostromo.
+
+Already the doctor had left him. He remained leaning against the
+wall, staring at the dark water of the harbour; the shrilling of
+cicalas filled his ears. An invincible vagueness coming over his
+thoughts took from them all power to determine his will.
+
+"Capataz! Capataz!" the doctor's voice called urgently from
+above.
+
+The sense of betrayal and ruin floated upon his sombre
+indifference as upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he stepped out
+from under the wall, and, looking up, saw Dr. Monygham leaning
+out of a lighted window.
+
+"Come up and see what Sotillo has done. You need not fear the man
+up here."
+
+He answered by a slight, bitter laugh. Fear a man!  The Capataz
+of the Sulaco Cargadores fear a man!  It angered him that anybody
+should suggest such a thing. It angered him to be disarmed and
+skulking and in danger because of the accursed treasure, which
+was of so little account to the people who had tied it round his
+neck. He could not shake off the worry of it. To Nostromo the
+doctor represented all these people. . . . And he had never even
+asked after it. Not a word of inquiry about the most desperate
+undertaking of his life.
+
+Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again through the
+cavernous hall, where the smoke was considerably thinned, and
+went up the stairs, not so warm to his feet now, towards the
+streak of light at the top.  The doctor appeared in it for a
+moment, agitated and impatient.
+
+"Come up! Come up!"
+
+At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz experienced a
+shock of surprise. The man had not moved. He saw his shadow in
+the same place. He started, then stepped in with a feeling of
+being about to solve a mystery.
+
+It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second,
+against the light of two flaring and guttering candles, through a
+blue, pungent, thin haze which made his eyes smart, he saw the
+man standing, as he had imagined him, with his back to the door,
+casting an enormous and distorted shadow upon the wall. Swifter
+than a flash of lightning followed the impression of his
+constrained, toppling attitude--the shoulders projecting forward,
+the head sunk low upon the breast. Then he distinguished the arms
+behind his back, and wrenched so terribly that the two clenched
+fists, lashed together, had been forced up higher than the
+shoulder-blades.  From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous
+glance the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over a
+heavy beam and down to a staple in the wall. He did not want to
+look at the rigid legs, at the feet hanging down nervelessly,
+with their bare toes some six inches above the floor, to know
+that the man had been given the estrapade till he had swooned.
+His first impulse was to dash forward and sever the rope at one
+blow.  He felt for his knife. He had no knife--not even a knife.
+He stood quivering, and the doctor, perched on the edge of the
+table, facing thoughtfully the cruel and lamentable sight, his
+chin in his hand, uttered, without stirring--
+
+"Tortured--and shot dead through the breast--getting cold."
+
+This information calmed the Capataz. One of the candles
+flickering in the socket went out. "Who did this?" he asked.
+
+"Sotillo, I tell you. Who else? Tortured--of course.  But why
+shot?" The doctor looked fixedly at Nostromo, who shrugged his
+shoulders slightly.  "And mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is
+evident. I wish I had his secret."
+
+Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to look. "I seem to
+have seen that face somewhere," he muttered. "Who is he?"
+
+The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. "I may yet come to
+envying his fate. What do you think of that, Capataz, eh?"
+
+But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing the remaining
+light, he thrust it under the drooping head. The doctor sat
+oblivious, with a lost gaze.  Then the heavy iron candlestick, as
+if struck out of Nostromo's hand, clattered on the floor.
+
+"Hullo!" exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a start. He could
+hear the Capataz stagger against the table and gasp. In the
+sudden extinction of the light within, the dead blackness sealing
+the window-frames became alive with stars to his sight.
+
+"Of course, of course," the doctor muttered to himself in
+English. "Enough to make him jump out of his skin."
+
+Nostromo's heart seemed to force itself into his throat.  His
+head swam. Hirsch! The man was Hirsch!  He held on tight to the
+edge of the table.
+
+"But he was hiding in the lighter," he almost shouted His voice
+fell. "In the lighter, and--and--"
+
+"And Sotillo brought him in," said the doctor. "He is no more
+startling to you than you were to me. What I want to know is how
+he induced some compassionate soul to shoot him."
+
+"So Sotillo knows--" began Nostromo, in a more equable voice.
+
+"Everything!" interrupted the doctor.
+
+The Capataz was heard striking the table with his fist.
+"Everything? What are you saying, there?  Everything? Know
+everything? It is impossible!  Everything?"
+
+"Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I tell you I have
+heard this Hirsch questioned last night, here, in this very room.
+He knew your name, Decoud's name, and all about the loading of
+the silver. . . .  The lighter was cut in two. He was grovelling
+in abject terror before Sotillo, but he remembered that much.
+What do you want more? He knew least about himself.  They found
+him clinging to their anchor. He must have caught at it just as
+the lighter went to the bottom."
+
+"Went to the bottom?" repeated Nostromo, slowly.  "Sotillo
+believes that? Bueno!"
+
+The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to imagine what else
+could anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo believed that the lighter was
+sunk, and the Capataz de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud
+and perhaps one or two other political fugitives, had been
+drowned.
+
+"I told you well, senor doctor," remarked Nostromo at that point,
+"that Sotillo did not know everything."
+
+"Eh? What do you mean?"
+
+"He did not know I was not dead."
+
+"Neither did we."
+
+"And you did not care--none of you caballeros on the wharf--once
+you got off a man of flesh and blood like yourselves on a fool's
+business that could not end well."
+
+"You forget, Capataz, I was not on the wharf. And I did not think
+well of the business. So you need not taunt me. I tell you what,
+man, we had but little leisure to think of the dead. Death stands
+near behind us all. You were gone."
+
+"I went, indeed!" broke in Nostromo. "And for the sake of
+what--tell me?"
+
+"Ah! that is your own affair," the doctor said, roughly.  "Do not
+ask me."
+
+Their flowing murmurs paused in the dark. Perched on the edge of
+the table with slightly averted faces, they felt their shoulders
+touch, and their eyes remained directed towards an upright shape
+nearly lost in the obscurity of the inner part of the room, that
+with projecting head and shoulders, in ghastly immobility, seemed
+intent on catching every word.
+
+"Muy bien!" Nostromo muttered at last. "So be it.  Teresa was
+right. It is my own affair."
+
+"Teresa is dead," remarked the doctor, absently, while his mind
+followed a new line of thought suggested by what might have been
+called Nostromo's return to life. "She died, the poor woman."
+
+"Without a priest?" the Capataz asked, anxiously.
+
+"What a question! Who could have got a priest for her last
+night?"
+
+"May God keep her soul!" ejaculated Nostromo, with a gloomy and
+hopeless fervour which had no time to surprise Dr. Monygham,
+before, reverting to their previous conversation, he continued in
+a sinister tone, "Si, senor doctor. As you were saying, it is my
+own affair. A very desperate affair."
+
+"There are no two men in this part of the world that could have
+saved themselves by swimming as you have done," the doctor said,
+admiringly.
+
+And again there was silence between those two men.  They were
+both reflecting, and the diversity of their natures made their
+thoughts born from their meeting swing afar from each other. The
+doctor, impelled to risky action by his loyalty to the Goulds,
+wondered with thankfulness at the chain of accident which had
+brought that man back where he would be of the greatest use in
+the work of saving the San Tome mine. The doctor was loyal to the
+mine. It presented itself to his fifty-years' old eyes in the
+shape of a little woman in a soft dress with a long train, with a
+head attractively overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and
+the delicate preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of a gem
+and a flower, revealed in every attitude of her person. As the
+dangers thickened round the San Tome mine this illusion acquired
+force, permanency, and authority. It claimed him at last! This
+claim, exalted by a spiritual detachment from the usual sanctions
+of hope and reward, made Dr. Monygham's thinking, acting,
+individuality extremely dangerous to himself and to others, all
+his scruples vanishing in the proud feeling that his devotion was
+the only thing that stood between an admirable woman and a
+frightful disaster.
+
+It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly indifferent
+to Decoud's fate, but left his wits perfectly clear for the
+appreciation of Decoud's political idea.  It was a good idea--and
+Barrios was the only instrument of its realization. The doctor's
+soul, withered and shrunk by the shame of a moral disgrace,
+became implacable in the expansion of its tenderness. Nostromo's
+return was providential. He did not think of him humanely, as of
+a fellow-creature just escaped from the jaws of death. The
+Capataz for him was the only possible messenger to Cayta. The
+very man. The doctor's misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the
+bitterer because based on personal failure) did not lift him
+sufficiently above common weaknesses. He was under the spell of
+an established reputation. Trumpeted by Captain Mitchell, grown
+in repetition, and fixed in general assent, Nostromo's
+faithfulness had never been questioned by Dr. Monygham as a fact.
+It was not likely to be questioned now he stood in desperate need
+of it himself. Dr. Monygham was human; he accepted the popular
+conception of the Capataz's incorruptibility simply because no
+word or fact had ever contradicted a mere affirmation. It seemed
+to be a part of the man, like his whiskers or his teeth. It was
+impossible to conceive him otherwise. The question was whether he
+would consent to go on such a dangerous and desperate errand. The
+doctor was observant enough to have become aware from the first
+of something peculiar in the man's temper. He was no doubt sore
+about the loss of the silver.
+
+"It will be necessary to take him into my fullest confidence," he
+said to himself, with a certain acuteness of insight into the
+nature he had to deal with.
+
+On Nostromo's side the silence had been full of black
+irresolution, anger, and mistrust. He was the first to break it,
+however.
+
+"The swimming was no great matter," he said. "It is what went
+before--and what comes after that--"
+
+He did not quite finish what he meant to say, breaking off short,
+as though his thought had butted against a solid obstacle. The
+doctor's mind pursued its own schemes with Machiavellian
+subtlety. He said as sympathetically as he was able--
+
+"It is unfortunate, Capataz. But no one would think of blaming
+you. Very unfortunate. To begin with, the treasure ought never to
+have left the mountain.  But it was Decoud who--however, he is
+dead. There is no need to talk of him."
+
+"No," assented Nostromo, as the doctor paused, "there is no need
+to talk of dead men. But I am not dead yet."
+
+"You are all right. Only a man of your intrepidity could have
+saved himself."
+
+In this Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed highly the
+intrepidity of that man, whom he valued but little, being
+disillusioned as to mankind in general, because of the particular
+instance in which his own manhood had failed. Having had to
+encounter singlehanded during his period of eclipse many physical
+dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element common
+to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human
+littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with
+natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows. He was
+eminently fit to appreciate the mental image he made for himself
+of the Capataz, after hours of tension and anxiety, precipitated
+suddenly into an abyss of waters and darkness, without earth or
+sky, and confronting it not only with an undismayed mind, but
+with sensible success. Of course, the man was an incomparable
+swimmer, that was known, but the doctor judged that this instance
+testified to a still greater intrepidity of spirit. It was
+pleasing to him; he augured well from it for the success of the
+arduous mission with which he meant to entrust the Capataz so
+marvellously restored to usefulness.  And in a tone vaguely
+gratified, he observed--
+
+"It must have been terribly dark!"
+
+"It was the worst darkness of the Golfo," the Capataz assented,
+briefly. He was mollified by what seemed a sign of some faint
+interest in such things as had befallen him, and dropped a few
+descriptive phrases with an affected and curt nonchalance. At
+that moment he felt communicative. He expected the continuance of
+that interest which, whether accepted or rejected, would have
+restored to him his personality--the only thing lost in that
+desperate affair. But the doctor, engrossed by a desperate
+adventure of his own, was terrible in the pursuit of his idea. He
+let an exclamation of regret escape him.
+
+"I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a light."
+
+This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz by its character
+of cold-blooded atrocity. It was as much as to say, "I wish you
+had shown yourself a coward; I wish you had had your throat cut
+for your pains." Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it
+related only to the silver, being uttered simply and with many
+mental reservations. Surprise and rage rendered him speechless,
+and the doctor pursued, practically unheard by Nostromo, whose
+stirred blood was beating violently in his ears.
+
+"For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the silver would
+have turned short round and made for some small port abroad.
+Economically it would have been wasteful, but still less wasteful
+than having it sunk.  It was the next best thing to having it at
+hand in some safe place, and using part of it to buy up Sotillo.
+But I doubt whether Don Carlos would have ever made up his mind
+to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that is a fact,
+Capataz."
+
+The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a tempest in his
+ears in time to hear the name of Don Carlos. He seemed to have
+come out of it a changed man--a man who spoke thoughtfully in a
+soft and even voice.
+
+"And would Don Carlos have been content if I had surrendered this
+treasure?"
+
+"I should not wonder if they were all of that way of thinking
+now," the doctor said, grimly. "I was never consulted. Decoud had
+it his own way. Their eyes are opened by this time, I should
+think. I for one know that if that silver turned up this moment
+miraculously ashore I would give it to Sotillo. And, as things
+stand, I would be approved."
+
+"Turned up miraculously," repeated the Capataz very low; then
+raised his voice. "That, senor, would be a greater miracle than
+any saint could perform."
+
+"I believe you, Capataz," said the doctor, drily.
+
+He went on to develop his view of Sotillo's dangerous influence
+upon the situation. And the Capataz, listening as if in a dream,
+felt himself of as little account as the indistinct, motionless
+shape of the dead man whom he saw upright under the beam, with
+his air of listening also, disregarded, forgotten, like a
+terrible example of neglect.
+
+"Was it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that they came to
+me, then?" he interrupted suddenly.  "Had I not done enough for
+them to be of some account, por Dios? Is it that the hombres
+finos--the gentlemen--need not think as long as there is a man
+of the people ready to risk his body and soul? Or, perhaps, we
+have no souls--like dogs?"
+
+"There was Decoud, too, with his plan," the doctor reminded him
+again.
+
+"Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had something to do
+with that treasure, too--what do I know? No! I have heard too
+many things. It seems to me that everything is permitted to the
+rich."
+
+"I understand, Capataz," the doctor began.
+
+"What Capataz?" broke in Nostromo, in a forcible but even voice.
+"The Capataz is undone, destroyed.  There is no Capataz. Oh, no!
+You will find the Capataz no more."
+
+"Come, this is childish!" remonstrated the doctor; and the other
+calmed down suddenly.
+
+"I have been indeed like a little child," he muttered.
+
+And as his eyes met again the shape of the murdered man suspended
+in his awful immobility, which seemed the uncomplaining
+immobility of attention, he asked, wondering gently--
+
+"Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful wretch? Do
+you know? No torture could have been worse than his fear. Killing
+I can understand. His anguish was intolerable to behold. But why
+should he torment him like this? He could tell no more."
+
+"No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man would have seen
+that. He had told him everything.  But I tell you what it is,
+Capataz. Sotillo would not believe what he was told. Not
+everything."
+
+"What is it he would not believe? I cannot understand."
+
+"I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to believe that
+the treasure is lost."
+
+"What?" the Capataz cried out in a discomposed tone.
+
+"That startles you--eh?"
+
+"Am I to understand, senor," Nostromo went on in a deliberate
+and, as it were, watchful tone, "that Sotillo thinks the treasure
+has been saved by some means?"
+
+"No! no! That would be impossible," said the doctor, with
+conviction; and Nostromo emitted a grunt in the dark. "That would
+be impossible. He thinks that the silver was no longer in the
+lighter when she was sunk. He has convinced himself that the
+whole show of getting it away to sea is a mere sham got up to
+deceive Gamacho and his Nationals, Pedrito Montero, Senor
+Fuentes, our new Gefe Politico, and himself, too. Only, he says,
+he is no such fool."
+
+"But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest imbecile that ever
+called himself a colonel in this country of evil," growled
+Nostromo.
+
+"He is no more unreasonable than many sensible men," said the
+doctor. "He has convinced himself that the treasure can be found
+because he desires passionately to possess himself of it. And he
+is also afraid of his officers turning upon him and going over to
+Pedrito, whom he has not the courage either to fight or trust. Do
+you see that, Capataz? He need fear no desertion as long as some
+hope remains of that enormous plunder turning up. I have made it
+my business to keep this very hope up."
+
+"You have?" the Capataz de Cargadores repeated cautiously. "Well,
+that is wonderful. And how long do you think you are going to
+keep it up?"
+
+"As long as I can."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"I can tell you exactly. As long as I live," the doctor retorted
+in a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, he described the story
+of his arrest and the circumstances of his release. "I was going
+back to that silly scoundrel when we met," he concluded.
+
+Nostromo had listened with profound attention.  "You have made up
+your mind, then, to a speedy death," he muttered through his
+clenched teeth.
+
+"Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz," the doctor said, testily. "You
+are not the only one here who can look an ugly death in the
+face."
+
+"No doubt," mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be overheard. "There
+may be even more than two fools in this place. Who knows?"
+
+"And that is my affair," said the doctor, curtly.
+
+"As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my affair,"
+retorted Nostromo. "I see. Bueno! Each of us has his reasons. But
+you were the last man I conversed with before I started, and you
+talked to me as if I were a fool."
+
+Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor's sardonic treatment
+of his great reputation. Decoud's faintly ironic recognition used
+to make him uneasy; but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin
+was flattering, whereas the doctor was a nobody. He could
+remember him a penniless outcast, slinking about the streets of
+Sulaco, without a single friend or acquaintance, till Don Carlos
+Gould took him into the service of the mine.
+
+"You may be very wise," he went on, thoughtfully, staring into
+the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome enigma of the
+tortured and murdered Hirsch.  "But I am not such a fool as when
+I started. I have learned one thing since, and that is that you
+are a dangerous man."
+
+Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than exclaim--
+
+"What is it you say?"
+
+"If he could speak he would say the same thing," pursued
+Nostromo, with a nod of his shadowy head silhouetted against the
+starlit window.
+
+"I do not understand you," said Dr. Monygham, faintly.
+
+"No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in his madness, he
+would have been in no haste to give the estrapade to that
+miserable Hirsch."
+
+The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion, absorbing
+all his sensibilities, had left his heart steeled against remorse
+and pity. Still, for complete relief, he felt the necessity of
+repelling it loudly and contemptuously.
+
+"Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like Sotillo. I
+confess I did not give a thought to Hirsch.  If I had it would
+have been useless. Anybody can see that the luckless wretch was
+doomed from the moment he caught hold of the anchor. He was
+doomed, I tell you! Just as I myself am doomed--most probably."
+
+This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo's remark,
+which was plausible enough to prick his conscience. He was not a
+callous man. But the necessity, the magnitude, the importance of
+the task he had taken upon himself dwarfed all merely humane
+considerations. He had undertaken it in a fanatical spirit. He
+did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to circumvent even the
+basest of mankind was odious to him.  It was odious to him by
+training, instinct, and tradition.  To do these things in the
+character of a traitor was abhorrent to his nature and terrible
+to his feelings. He had made that sacrifice in a spirit of
+abasement. He had said to himself bitterly, "I am the only one
+fit for that dirty work." And he believed this. He was not
+subtle. His simplicity was such that, though he had no sort of
+heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly enough, to which
+he exposed himself, had a sustaining and comforting effect. To
+that spiritual state the fate of Hirsch presented itself as part
+of the general atrocity of things. He considered that episode
+practically.  What did it mean? Was it a sign of some dangerous
+change in Sotillo's delusion? That the man should have been
+killed like this was what the doctor could not understand.
+
+"Yes. But why shot?" he murmured to himself.
+
+Nostromo kept very still.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+DISTRACTED between doubts and hopes, dismayed by the sound of
+bells pealing out the arrival of Pedrito Montero, Sotillo had
+spent the morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to
+which he was unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the
+violence of his passions. Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear
+made a tumult, in the colonel's breast louder than the din of
+bells in the town. Nothing he had planned had come to pass.
+Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the mine had fallen into his
+hands. He had performed no military exploit to secure his
+position, and had obtained no enormous booty to make off with.
+Pedrito Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread.
+The sound of bells maddened him.
+
+Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, he had made
+his battalion stand to arms on the shore.  He walked to and fro
+all the length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the
+finger-tips of his right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed
+on the floor; then, with a sullen, repelling glance all round, he
+would resume his tramping in savage aloofness. His hat,
+horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on the table. His
+officers, crowding the window giving the view of the town gate,
+disputed amongst themselves the use of his field-glass bought
+last year on long credit from Anzani.  It passed from hand to
+hand, and the possessor for the time being was besieged by
+anxious inquiries.
+
+"There is nothing; there is nothing to see!" he would repeat
+impatiently. 
+
+There was nothing. And when the picket in the bushes near the
+Casa Viola had been ordered to fall back upon the main body, no
+stir of life appeared on the stretch of dusty and arid land
+between the town and the waters of the port. But late in the
+afternoon a horseman issuing from the gate was made out riding up
+fearlessly. It was an emissary from Senor Fuentes.  Being all
+alone he was allowed to come on. Dismounting at the great door he
+greeted the silent bystanders with cheery impudence, and begged
+to be taken up at once to the "muy valliente" colonel.
+
+Senor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Gefe Politico,
+had turned his diplomatic abilities to getting hold of the
+harbour as well as of the mine. The man he pitched upon to
+negotiate with Sotillo was a Notary Public, whom the revolution
+had found languishing in the common jail on a charge of forging
+documents.  Liberated by the mob along with the other "victims of
+Blanco tyranny," he had hastened to offer his services to the new
+Government.
+
+He set out determined to display much zeal and eloquence in
+trying to induce Sotillo to come into town alone for a conference
+with Pedrito Montero. Nothing was further from the colonel's
+intentions. The mere fleeting idea of trusting himself into the
+famous Pedrito's hands had made him feel unwell several times.
+It was out of the question--it was madness. And to put himself in
+open hostility was madness, too. It would render impossible a
+systematic search for that treasure, for that wealth of silver
+which he seemed to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere near.
+
+But where? Where? Heavens! Where? Oh! why had he allowed that
+doctor to go! Imbecile that he was.  But no! It was the only
+right course, he reflected distractedly, while the messenger
+waited downstairs chatting agreeably to the officers. It was in
+that scoundrelly doctor's true interest to return with positive
+information.  But what if anything stopped him? A general
+prohibition to leave the town, for instance! There would be
+patrols!
+
+The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in his tracks
+as if struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration
+suggested to him an expedient not unknown to European statesmen
+when they wish to delay a difficult negotiation. Booted and
+spurred, he scrambled into the hammock with undignified haste.
+His handsome face had turned yellow with the strain of weighty
+cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp; the
+audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched.  The velvety,
+caressing glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even
+decomposed; for these almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become
+inappropriately bloodshot with much sinister sleeplessness. He
+addressed the surprised envoy of Senor Fuentes in a deadened,
+exhausted voice. It came pathetically feeble from under a pile of
+ponchos, which buried his elegant person right up to the black
+moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign of bodily prostration and
+mental incapacity. Fever, fever--a heavy fever had overtaken the
+"muy valliente" colonel. A wavering wildness of expression,
+caused by the passing spasms of a slight colic which had declared
+itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic, had a
+genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a cold fit. The
+colonel explained that he was unable to think, to listen, to
+speak. With an appearance of superhuman effort the colonel gasped
+out that he was not in a state to return a suitable reply or to
+execute any of his Excellency's orders. But to-morrow!
+To-morrow! Ah! to-morrow! Let his Excellency Don Pedro be without
+uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda Regiment held the harbour,
+held--And closing his eyes, he rolled his aching head like a
+half-delirious invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy,
+who was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order to catch
+the painful and broken accents. Meantime, Colonel Sotillo trusted
+that his Excellency's humanity would permit the doctor, the
+English doctor, to come out of town with his case of foreign
+remedies to attend upon him. He begged anxiously his worship the
+caballero now present for the grace of looking in as he passed
+the Casa Gould, and informing the English doctor, who was
+probably there, that his services were immediately required by
+Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of fever in the Custom House.
+Immediately. Most urgently required. Awaited with extreme
+impatience.  A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and
+would not open them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, dumb,
+insensible, overcome, vanquished, crushed, annihilated by the
+fell disease.
+
+But as soon as the other had shut after him the door of the
+landing, the colonel leaped out with a fling of both feet in an
+avalanche of woollen coverings. His spurs having become entangled
+in a perfect welter of ponchos he nearly pitched on his head, and
+did not recover his balance till the middle of the room.
+Concealed behind the half-closed jalousies he listened to what
+went on below.
+
+The envoy had already mounted, and turning to the morose officers
+occupying the great doorway, took off his hat formally.
+
+"Caballeros," he said, in a very loud tone, "allow me to
+recommend you to take great care of your colonel. It has done me
+much honour and gratification to have seen you all, a fine body
+of men exercising the soldierly virtue of patience in this
+exposed situation, where there is much sun, and no water to speak
+of, while a town full of wine and feminine charms is ready to
+embrace you for the brave men you are. Caballeros, I have the
+honour to salute you. There will be much dancing to-night in
+Sulaco. Good-bye!"
+
+But he reined in his horse and inclined his head sideways on
+seeing the old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a
+straight narrow coat coming down to his ankles as it were the
+casing of the regimental colours rolled round their staff.
+
+The intelligent old warrior, after enunciating in a dogmatic tone
+the general proposition that the "world was full of traitors,"
+went on pronouncing deliberately a panegyric upon Sotillo. He
+ascribed to him with leisurely emphasis every virtue under
+heaven, summing it all up in an absurd colloquialism current
+amongst the lower class of Occidentals (especially about
+Esmeralda).  "And," he concluded, with a sudden rise in the
+voice, "a man of many teeth--'hombre de muchos dientes.' Si,
+senor. As to us," he pursued, portentous and impressive, "your
+worship is beholding the finest body of officers in the Republic,
+men unequalled for valour and sagacity, 'y hombres de muchos
+dientes.'"
+
+"What? All of them?" inquired the disreputable envoy of Senor
+Fuentes, with a faint, derisive smile.
+
+"Todos. Si, senor," the major affirmed, gravely, with conviction.
+"Men of many teeth."
+
+The other wheeled his horse to face the portal resembling the
+high gate of a dismal barn. He raised himself in his stirrups,
+extended one arm. He was a facetious scoundrel, entertaining for
+these stupid Occidentals a feeling of great scorn natural in a
+native from the central provinces. The folly of Esmeraldians
+especially aroused his amused contempt. He began an oration upon
+Pedro Montero, keeping a solemn countenance. He flourished his
+hand as if introducing him to their notice. And when he saw every
+face set, all the eyes fixed upon his lips, he began to shout a
+sort of catalogue of perfections: "Generous, valorous, affable,
+profound"--(he snatched off his hat enthusiastically)--"a
+statesman, an invincible chief of partisans--" He dropped his
+voice startlingly to a deep, hollow note--"and a dentist."
+
+He was off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid straddle of his
+legs, the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the rakish slant of
+the sombrero above the square, motionless set of the shoulders
+expressing an infinite, awe-inspiring impudence.
+
+Upstairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move for a long
+time. The audacity of the fellow appalled him. What were his
+officers saying below? They were saying nothing. Complete
+silence. He quaked. It was not thus that he had imagined himself
+at that stage of the expedition. He had seen himself triumphant,
+unquestioned, appeased, the idol of the soldiers, weighing in
+secret complacency the agreeable alternatives of power and wealth
+open to his choice. Alas! How different! Distracted, restless,
+supine, burning with fury, or frozen with terror, he felt a dread
+as fathomless as the sea creep upon him from every side. That
+rogue of a doctor had to come out with his information.  That was
+clear. It would be of no use to him--alone.  He could do nothing
+with it. Malediction! The doctor would never come out. He was
+probably under arrest already, shut up together with Don Carlos.
+He laughed aloud insanely. Ha! ha! ha! ha! It was Pedrito Montero
+who would get the information. Ha!  ha! ha! ha!--and the silver.
+Ha!
+
+All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became motionless and
+silent as if turned into stone. He too, had a prisoner. A
+prisoner who must, must know the real truth. He would have to be
+made to speak. And Sotillo, who all that time had not quite
+forgotten Hirsch, felt an inexplicable reluctance at the notion
+of proceeding to extremities.
+
+He felt a reluctance--part of that unfathomable dread that crept
+on all sides upon him. He remembered reluctantly, too, the
+dilated eyes of the hide merchant, his contortions, his loud sobs
+and protestations. It was not compassion or even mere nervous
+sensibility.  The fact was that though Sotillo did never for a
+moment believe his story--he could not believe it; nobody could
+believe such nonsense--yet those accents of despairing truth
+impressed him disagreeably. They made him feel sick. And he
+suspected also that the man might have gone mad with fear. A
+lunatic is a hopeless subject.  Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a
+pretence.  He would know how to deal with that.
+
+He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. His
+fine eyes squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a bare-footed
+orderly appeared noiselessly, a corporal, with his bayonet
+hanging on his thigh and a stick in his hand.
+
+The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable Hirsch,
+pushed in by several soldiers, found him frowning awfully in a
+broad armchair, hat on head, knees wide apart, arms akimbo,
+masterful, imposing, irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible.
+
+Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled
+violently into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he
+remained apparently forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor.
+From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out
+brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude. He
+listened to threats and admonitions, and afterwards made his
+usual answers to questions, with his chin sunk on his breast, his
+hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front of Sotillo,
+and never looking up. When he was forced to hold up his head, by
+means of a bayonet-point prodding him under the chin, his eyes
+had a vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big
+as peas were seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches
+of his white face. Then they stopped suddenly.
+
+Sotillo looked at him in silence. "Will you depart from your
+obstinacy, you rogue?" he asked. Already a rope, whose one end
+was fastened to Senor Hirsch's wrists, had been thrown over a
+beam, and three soldiers held the other end, waiting. He made no
+answer.  His heavy lower lip hung stupidly. Sotillo made a sign.
+Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a yell of despair and
+agony burst out in the room, filled the passage of the great
+buildings, rent the air outside, caused every soldier of the camp
+along the shore to look up at the windows, started some of the
+officers in the hall babbling excitedly, with shining eyes;
+others, setting their lips, looked gloomily at the floor.
+
+Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room.  The sentry
+on the landing presented arms. Hirsch went on screaming all alone
+behind the half-closed jalousies while the sunshine, reflected
+from the water of the harbour, made an ever-running ripple of
+light high up on the wall. He screamed with uplifted eyebrows and
+a wide-open mouth--incredibly wide, black, enormous, full of
+teeth--comical.
+
+In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he made the
+waves of his agony travel as far as the O. S. N.  Company's
+offices. Captain Mitchell on the balcony, trying to make out what
+went on generally, had heard him faintly but distinctly, and the
+feeble and appalling sound lingered in his ears after he had
+retreated indoors with blanched cheeks. He had been driven off
+the balcony several times during that afternoon.
+
+Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held
+consultations with his officers, gave contradictory orders in
+this shrill clamour pervading the whole empty edifice.  Sometimes
+there would be long and awful silences.  Several times he had
+entered the torture-chamber where his sword, horsewhip, revolver,
+and field-glass were lying on the table, to ask with forced
+calmness, "Will you speak the truth now? No? I can wait." But he
+could not afford to wait much longer. That was just it. Every
+time he went in and came out with a slam of the door, the sentry
+on the landing presented arms, and got in return a black,
+venomous, unsteady glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all,
+being merely the reflection of the soul within--a soul of gloomy
+hatred, irresolution, avarice, and fury.
+
+The sun had set when he went in once more. A soldier carried in
+two lighted candles and slunk out, shutting the door without
+noise.
+
+"Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver!  The silver,
+I say! Where is it? Where have you foreign rogues hidden it?
+Confess or--"
+
+A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked limbs,
+but the body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising business man from
+Esmeralda, hung under the heavy beam perpendicular and silent,
+facing the colonel awfully. The inflow of the night air, cooled
+by the snows of the Sierra, spread gradually a delicious
+freshness through the close heat of the room.
+
+"Speak--thief--scoundrel--picaro--or--"
+
+Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his arm lifted
+up. For a word, for one little word, he felt he would have knelt,
+cringed, grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, conscious
+stare of those fixed eyeballs starting out of the grimy,
+dishevelled head that drooped very still with its mouth closed
+askew. The colonel ground his teeth with rage and struck. The
+rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long string of a
+pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging motion was
+imparted to the body of Senor Hirsch, the well-known hide
+merchant on the coast. With a convulsive effort of the twisted
+arms it leaped up a few inches, curling upon itself like a fish
+on the end of a line.  Senor Hirsch's head was flung back on his
+straining throat; his chin trembled. For a moment the rattle of
+his chattering teeth pervaded the vast, shadowy room, where the
+candles made a patch of light round the two flames burning side
+by side. And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand, waited for him
+to speak, with the sudden flash of a grin and a straining forward
+of the wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his face.
+
+The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with a low
+cry of dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom. Quick as
+thought he snatched up his revolver, and fired twice. The report
+and the concussion of the shots seemed to throw him at once from
+ungovernable rage into idiotic stupor. He stood with drooping jaw
+and stony eyes. What had he done, Sangre de Dios! What had he
+done? He was basely appalled at his impulsive act, sealing for
+ever these lips from which so much was to be extorted. What could
+he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong flight somewhere,
+anywhere, passed through his mind; even the craven and absurd
+notion of hiding under the table occurred to his cowardice. It
+was too late; his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great
+clatter of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and wonder.
+But since they did not immediately proceed to plunge their swords
+into his breast, the brazen side of his character asserted
+itself. Passing the sleeve of his uniform over his face he pulled
+himself together, His truculent glance turned slowly here and
+there, checked the noise where it fell; and the stiff body of the
+late Senor Hirsch, merchant, after swaying imperceptibly, made a
+half turn, and came to a rest in the midst of awed murmurs and
+uneasy shuffling.
+
+A voice remarked loudly, "Behold a man who will never speak
+again." And another, from the back row of faces, timid and
+pressing, cried out--
+
+"Why did you kill him, mi colonel?"
+
+"Because he has confessed everything," answered Sotillo, with the
+hardihood of desperation. He felt himself cornered. He brazened
+it out on the strength of his reputation with very fair success.
+His hearers thought him very capable of such an act. They were
+disposed to believe his flattering tale. There is no credulity so
+eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its
+universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual
+destitution of mankind.  Ah! he had confessed everything, this
+fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer wanted. A
+sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain--a
+big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat cheeks
+which never moved.  The old major, tall and fantastically ragged
+like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch,
+muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this
+there was no need to guard against any future treacheries of that
+scoundrel. The others stared, shifting from foot to foot, and
+whispering short remarks to each other.
+
+Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremptory orders to
+hasten the retirement decided upon in the afternoon. Sinister,
+impressive, his sombrero pulled right down upon his eyebrows, he
+marched first through the door in such disorder of mind that he
+forgot utterly to provide for Dr. Monygham's possible return. As
+the officers trooped out after him, one or two looked back
+hastily at the late Senor Hirsch, merchant from Esmeralda, left
+swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the two burning candles. In
+the emptiness of the room the burly shadow of head and shoulders
+on the wall had an air of life.
+
+Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by companies
+without drum or trumpet. The old scarecrow major commanded the
+rearguard; but the party he left behind with orders to fire the
+Custom House (and "burn the carcass of the treacherous Jew where
+it hung") failed somehow in their haste to set the staircase
+properly alight. The body of the late Senor Hirsch dwelt alone
+for a time in the dismal solitude of the unfinished building,
+resounding weirdly with sudden slams and clicks of doors and
+latches, with rustling scurries of torn papers, and the tremulous
+sighs that at each gust of wind passed under the high roof. The
+light of the two candles burning before the perpendicular and
+breathless immobility of the late Senor Hirsch threw a gleam afar
+over land and water, like a signal in the night. He remained to
+startle Nostromo by his presence, and to puzzle Dr. Monygham by
+the mystery of his atrocious end.
+
+"But why shot?" the doctor again asked himself, audibly. This
+time he was answered by a dry laugh from Nostromo.
+
+"You seem much concerned at a very natural thing, senor doctor. I
+wonder why? It is very likely that before long we shall all get
+shot one after another, if not by Sotillo, then by Pedrito, or
+Fuentes, or Gamacho.  And we may even get the estrapade, too, or
+worse--quien sabe?--with your pretty tale of the silver you put
+into Sotillo's head."
+
+"It was in his head already," the doctor protested.  "I only--"
+
+"Yes. And you only nailed it there so that the devil himself--"
+
+"That is precisely what I meant to do," caught up the doctor.
+
+"That is what you meant to do. Bueno. It is as I say. You are a
+dangerous man."
+
+Their voices, which without rising had been growing quarrelsome,
+ceased suddenly. The late Senor Hirsch, erect and shadowy against
+the stars, seemed to be waiting attentive, in impartial silence.
+
+But Dr. Monygham had no mind to quarrel with Nostromo.  At this
+supremely critical point of Sulaco's fortunes it was borne upon
+him at last that this man was really indispensable, more
+indispensable than ever the infatuation of Captain Mitchell, his
+proud discoverer, could conceive; far beyond what Decoud's best
+dry raillery about "my illustrious friend, the unique Capataz de
+Cargadores," had ever intended. The fellow was unique. He was not
+"one in a thousand." He was absolutely the only one. The doctor
+surrendered.  There was something in the genius of that Genoese
+seaman which dominated the destinies of great enterprises and of
+many people, the fortunes of Charles Gould, the fate of an
+admirable woman. At this last thought the doctor had to clear his
+throat before he could speak.
+
+In a completely changed tone he pointed out to the Capataz that,
+to begin with, he personally ran no great risk. As far as
+everybody knew he was dead. It was an enormous advantage. He had
+only to keep out of sight in the Casa Viola, where the old
+Garibaldino was known to be alone--with his dead wife. The
+servants had all run away. No one would think of searching for
+him there, or anywhere else on earth, for that matter.
+
+"That would be very true," Nostromo spoke up, bitterly, "if I had
+not met you."
+
+For a time the doctor kept silent. "Do you mean to say that you
+think I may give you away?" he asked in an unsteady voice. "Why?
+Why should I do that?"
+
+"What do I know? Why not? To gain a day perhaps.  It would take
+Sotillo a day to give me the estrapade, and try some other things
+perhaps, before he puts a bullet through my heart--as he did to
+that poor wretch here. Why not?"
+
+The doctor swallowed with difficulty. His throat had gone dry in
+a moment. It was not from indignation.  The doctor, pathetically
+enough, believed that he had forfeited the right to be indignant
+with any one--for anything. It was simple dread. Had the fellow
+heard his story by some chance? If so, there was an end of his
+usefulness in that direction. The indispensable man escaped his
+influence, because of that indelible blot which made him fit for
+dirty work. A feeling as of sickness came upon the doctor. He
+would have given anything to know, but he dared not clear up the
+point. The fanaticism of his devotion, fed on the sense of his
+abasement, hardened his heart in sadness and scorn.
+
+"Why not, indeed?" he reechoed, sardonically.  "Then the safe
+thing for you is to kill me on the spot.  I would defend myself.
+But you may just as well know I am going about unarmed."
+
+"Por Dios!" said the Capataz, passionately. "You fine people are
+all alike. All dangerous. All betrayers of the poor who are your
+dogs."
+
+"You do not understand," began the doctor, slowly.
+
+"I understand you all!" cried the other with a violent movement,
+as shadowy to the doctor's eyes as the persistent immobility of
+the late Senor Hirsch. "A poor man amongst you has got to look
+after himself. I say that you do not care for those that serve
+you. Look at me! After all these years, suddenly, here I find
+myself like one of these curs that bark outside the walls
+--without a kennel or a dry bone for my teeth. (Caramba!" But he
+relented with a contemptuous fairness.  "Of course," he went on,
+quietly, "I do not suppose that you would hasten to give me up to
+Sotillo, for example. It is not that. It is that I am nothing!
+Suddenly--" He swung his arm downwards. "Nothing to any one," he
+repeated.
+
+The doctor breathed freely. "Listen, Capataz," he said,
+stretching out his arm almost affectionately towards Nostromo's
+shoulder. "I am going to tell you a very simple thing. You are
+safe because you are needed. I would not give you away for any
+conceivable reason, because I want you."
+
+In the dark Nostromo bit his lip. He had heard enough of that. He
+knew what that meant. No more of that for him. But he had to look
+after himself now, he thought. And he thought, too, that it would
+not be prudent to part in anger from his companion. The doctor,
+admitted to be a great healer, had, amongst the populace of
+Sulaco, the reputation of being an evil sort of man. It was based
+solidly on his personal appearance, which was strange, and on his
+rough ironic manner--proofs visible, sensible, and
+incontrovertible of the doctor's malevolent disposition. And
+Nostromo was of the people. So he only grunted incredulously.
+
+"You, to speak plainly, are the only man," the doctor pursued.
+"It is in your power to save this town and . . . everybody from
+the destructive rapacity of men who--"
+
+"No, senor," said Nostromo, sullenly. "It is not in my power to
+get the treasure back for you to give up to Sotillo, or Pedrito,
+or Gamacho. What do I know?"
+
+"Nobody expects the impossible," was the answer.
+
+"You have said it yourself--nobody," muttered Nostromo, in a
+gloomy, threatening tone.
+
+But Dr. Monygham, full of hope, disregarded the enigmatic words
+and the threatening tone. To their eyes, accustomed to obscurity,
+the late Senor Hirsch, growing more distinct, seemed to have come
+nearer.  And the doctor lowered his voice in exposing his scheme
+as though afraid of being overheard.
+
+He was taking the indispensable man into his fullest confidence.
+Its implied flattery and suggestion of great risks came with a
+familiar sound to the Capataz. His mind, floating in irresolution
+and discontent, recognized it with bitterness. He understood well
+that the doctor was anxious to save the San Tome mine from
+annihilation.  He would be nothing without it. It was his
+interest. Just as it had been the interest of Senor Decoud, of
+the Blancos, and of the Europeans to get his Cargadores on their
+side. His thought became arrested upon Decoud. What would happen
+to him?
+
+Nostromo's prolonged silence made the doctor uneasy.  He pointed
+out, quite unnecessarily, that though for the present he was
+safe, he could not live concealed for ever. The choice was
+between accepting the mission to Barrios, with all its dangers
+and difficulties, and leaving Sulaco by stealth, ingloriously, in
+poverty.
+
+"None of your friends could reward you and protect you just now,
+Capataz. Not even Don Carlos himself."
+
+"I would have none of your protection and none of your rewards. I
+only wish I could trust your courage and your sense. When I
+return in triumph, as you say, with Barrios, I may find you all
+destroyed. You have the knife at your throat now."
+
+It was the doctor's turn to remain silent in the contemplation of
+horrible contingencies.
+
+"Well, we would trust your courage and your sense.  And you, too,
+have a knife at your throat."
+
+"Ah! And whom am I to thank for that? What are your politics and
+your mines to me--your silver and your constitutions--your Don
+Carlos this, and Don Jose that--"
+
+"I don't know," burst out the exasperated doctor.  "There are
+innocent people in danger whose little finger is worth more than
+you or I and all the Ribierists together. I don't know. You
+should have asked yourself before you allowed Decoud to lead you
+into all this. It was your place to think like a man; but if you
+did not think then, try to act like a man now.  Did you imagine
+Decoud cared very much for what would happen to you?"
+
+"No more than you care for what will happen to me," muttered the
+other.
+
+"No; I care for what will happen to you as little as I care for
+what will happen to myself."
+
+"And all this because you are such a devoted Ribierist?" Nostromo
+said in an incredulous tone.
+
+"All this because I am such a devoted Ribierist," repeated Dr.
+Monygham, grimly.
+
+Again Nostromo, gazing abstractedly at the body of the late Senor
+Hirsch, remained silent, thinking that the doctor was a dangerous
+person in more than one sense.  It was impossible to trust him.
+
+"Do you speak in the name of Don Carlos?" he asked at last.
+
+"Yes. I do," the doctor said, loudly, without hesitation.  "He
+must come forward now. He must," he added in a mutter, which
+Nostromo did not catch.
+
+"What did you say, senor?"
+
+The doctor started. "I say that you must be true to yourself,
+Capataz. It would be worse than folly to fail now."
+
+"True to myself," repeated Nostromo. "How do you know that I
+would not be true to myself if I told you to go to the devil with
+your propositions?"
+
+"I do not know. Maybe you would," the doctor said, with a
+roughness of tone intended to hide the sinking of his heart and
+the faltering of his voice. "All I know is, that you had better
+get away from here.  Some of Sotillo's men may turn up here
+looking for me."
+
+He slipped off the table, listening intently. The Capataz, too,
+stood up.
+
+"Suppose I went to Cayta, what would you do meantime?" he asked.
+
+"I would go to Sotillo directly you had left--in the way I am
+thinking of."
+
+"A very good way--if only that engineer-in-chief consents. Remind
+him, senor, that I looked after the old rich Englishman who pays
+for the railway, and that I saved the lives of some of his people
+that time when a gang of thieves came from the south to wreck one
+of his pay-trains. It was I who discovered it all at the risk of
+my life, by pretending to enter into their plans. Just as you are
+doing with Sotillo."
+
+"Yes. Yes, of course. But I can offer him better arguments," the
+doctor said, hastily. " Leave it to me."
+
+"Ah, yes! True. I am nothing."
+
+"Not at all. You are everything."
+
+They moved a few paces towards the door. Behind them the late
+Senor Hirsch preserved the immobility of a disregarded man.
+
+"That will be all right. I know what to say to the engineer,"
+pursued the doctor, in a low tone. "My difficulty will be with
+Sotillo."
+
+And Dr. Monygham stopped short in the doorway as if intimidated
+by the difficulty. He had made the sacrifice of his life. He
+considered this a fitting opportunity.  But he did not want to
+throw his life away too soon.  In his quality of betrayer of Don
+Carlos' confidence, he would have ultimately to indicate the
+hiding-place of the treasure. That would be the end of his
+deception, and the end of himself as well, at the hands of the
+infuriated colonel. He wanted to delay him to the very last
+moment; and he had been racking his brains to invent some place
+of concealment at once plausible and difficult of access.
+
+He imparted his trouble to Nostromo, and concluded--
+
+"Do you know what, Capataz? I think that when the time comes and
+some information must be given, I shall indicate the Great
+Isabel. That is the best place I can think of. What is the
+matter?"
+
+A low exclamation had escaped Nostromo.  The doctor waited,
+surprised, and after a moment of profound silence, heard a thick
+voice stammer out, "Utter folly," and stop with a gasp.
+
+"Why folly?"
+
+"Ah! You do not see it," began Nostromo, scathingly, gathering
+scorn as he went on. "Three men in half an hour would see that no
+ground had been disturbed anywhere on that island. Do you think
+that such a treasure can be buried without leaving traces of the
+work--eh! senor doctor? Why! you would not gain half a day more
+before having your throat cut by Sotillo. The Isabel! What
+stupidity! What miserable invention! Ah! you are all alike, you
+fine men of intelligence. All you are fit for is to betray men of
+the people into undertaking deadly risks for objects that you are
+not even sure about. If it comes off you get the benefit. If not,
+then it does not matter. He is only a dog. Ah! Madre de Dios, I
+would--" He shook his fists above his head.
+
+The doctor was overwhelmed at first by this fierce, hissing
+vehemence.
+
+"Well! It seems to me on your own showing that the men of the
+people are no mean fools, too," he said, sullenly.  "No, but
+come. You are so clever. Have you a better place?"
+
+Nostromo had calmed down as quickly as he had flared up.
+
+"I am clever enough for that," he said, quietly, almost with
+indifference. "You want to tell him of a hiding-place big enough
+to take days in ransacking--a place where a treasure of silver
+ingots can be buried without leaving a sign on the surface."
+
+"And close at hand," the doctor put in.
+
+"Just so, senor. Tell him it is sunk."
+
+"This has the merit of being the truth," the doctor said,
+contemptuously. "He will not believe it."
+
+"You tell him that it is sunk where he may hope to lay his hands
+on it, and he will believe you quick enough.  Tell him it has
+been sunk in the harbour in order to be recovered afterwards by
+divers. Tell him you found out that I had orders from Don Carlos
+Gould to lower the cases quietly overboard somewhere in a line
+between the end of the jetty and the entrance. The depth is not
+too great there. He has no divers, but he has a ship, boats,
+ropes, chains, sailors--of a sort. Let him fish for the silver.
+Let him set his fools to drag backwards and forwards and
+crossways while he sits and watches till his eyes drop out of his
+head."
+
+"Really, this is an admirable idea," muttered the doctor.
+
+"Si. You tell him that, and see whether he will not believe you!
+He will spend days in rage and torment--and still he will
+believe. He will have no thought for anything else. He will not
+give up till he is driven off--why, he may even forget to kill
+you. He will neither eat nor sleep. He--"
+
+"The very thing! The very thing!" the doctor repeated in an
+excited whisper. "Capataz, I begin to believe that you are a
+great genius in your way."
+
+Nostromo had paused; then began again in a changed tone, sombre,
+speaking to himself as though he had forgotten the doctor's
+existence.
+
+"There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a man's mind.
+He will pray and blaspheme and still persevere, and will curse
+the day he ever heard of it, and will let his last hour come upon
+him unawares, still believing that he missed it only by a foot.
+He will see it every time he closes his eyes. He will never
+forget it till he is dead--and even then----Doctor, did you ever
+hear of the miserable gringos on Azuera, that cannot die? Ha! ha!
+Sailors like myself. There is no getting away from a treasure
+that once fastens upon your mind."
+
+"You are a devil of a man, Capataz. It is the most plausible
+thing."
+
+Nostromo pressed his arm.
+
+"It will be worse for him than thirst at sea or hunger in a town
+full of people. Do you know what that is?  He shall suffer
+greater torments than he inflicted upon that terrified wretch who
+had no invention. None!  none! Not like me. I could have told
+Sotillo a deadly tale for very little pain."
+
+He laughed wildly and turned in the doorway towards the body of
+the late Senor Hirsch, an opaque long blotch in the
+semi-transparent obscurity of the room between the two tall
+parallelograms of the windows full of stars.
+
+"You man of fear!" he cried. "You shall be avenged by
+me--Nostromo. Out of my way, doctor! Stand aside--or, by the
+suffering soul of a woman dead without confession, I will
+strangle you with my two hands."
+
+He bounded downwards into the black, smoky hall.  With a grunt of
+astonishment, Dr. Monygham threw himself recklessly into the
+pursuit. At the bottom of the charred stairs he had a fall,
+pitching forward on his face with a force that would have stunned
+a spirit less intent upon a task of love and devotion. He was up
+in a moment, jarred, shaken, with a queer impression of the
+terrestrial globe having been flung at his head in the dark. But
+it wanted more than that to stop Dr.  Monygham's body, possessed
+by the exaltation of self-sacrifice; a reasonable exaltation,
+determined not to lose whatever advantage chance put into its
+way. He ran with headlong, tottering swiftness, his arms going
+like a windmill in his effort to keep his balance on his crippled
+feet. He lost his hat; the tails of his open gaberdine flew
+behind him. He had no mind to lose sight of the indispensable
+man. But it was a long time, and a long way from the Custom
+House, before he managed to seize his arm from behind, roughly,
+out of breath.
+
+"Stop! Are you mad?"
+
+Already Nostromo was walking slowly, his head dropping, as if
+checked in his pace by the weariness of irresolution.
+
+"What is that to you? Ah! I forgot you want me for something.
+Always. Siempre Nostromo."
+
+"What do you mean by talking of strangling me?" panted the
+doctor.
+
+"What do I mean? I mean that the king of the devils himself has
+sent you out of this town of cowards and talkers to meet me
+to-night of all the nights of my life."
+
+Under the starry sky the Albergo d'ltalia Una emerged, black and
+low, breaking the dark level of the plain. Nostromo stopped
+altogether.
+
+"The priests say he is a tempter, do they not?" he added, through
+his clenched teeth.
+
+"My good man, you drivel. The devil has nothing to do with this.
+Neither has the town, which you may call by what name you please.
+But Don Carlos Gould is neither a coward nor an empty talker. You
+will admit that?" He waited. "Well?"
+
+"Could I see Don Carlos?"
+
+"Great heavens! No! Why? What for?" exclaimed the doctor in
+agitation. "I tell you it is madness. I will not let you go into
+the town for anything."
+
+"I must."
+
+"You must not!" hissed the doctor, fiercely, almost beside
+himself with the fear of the man doing away with his usefulness
+for an imbecile whim of some sort. "I tell you you shall not. I
+would rather----"
+
+He stopped at loss for words, feeling fagged out, powerless,
+holding on to Nostromo's sleeve, absolutely for support after his
+run.
+
+"I am betrayed!" muttered the Capataz to himself; and the doctor,
+who overheard the last word, made an effort to speak calmly.
+
+"That is exactly what would happen to you. You would be
+betrayed."
+
+He thought with a sickening dread that the man was so well known
+that he could not escape recognition.  The house of the Senor
+Administrador was beset by spies, no doubt. And even the very
+servants of the casa were not to be trusted. "Reflect, Capataz,"
+he said, impressively. . . . "What are you laughing at?"
+
+"I am laughing to think that if somebody that did not approve of
+my presence in town, for instance--you understand, senor
+doctor--if somebody were to give me up to Pedrito, it would not
+be beyond my power to make friends even with him. It is true.
+What do you think of that?"
+
+"You are a man of infinite resource, Capataz," said Dr. Monygham,
+dismally. "I recognize that. But the town is full of talk about
+you; and those few Cargadores that are not in hiding with the
+railway people have been shouting 'Viva Montero' on the Plaza all
+day."
+
+"My poor Cargadores!" muttered Nostromo. "Betrayed!  Betrayed!"
+
+"I understand that on the wharf you were pretty free in laying
+about you with a stick amongst your poor Cargadores," the doctor
+said in a grim tone, which showed that he was recovering from his
+exertions.  "Make no mistake. Pedrito is furious at Senor
+Ribiera's rescue, and at having lost the pleasure of shooting
+Decoud. Already there are rumours in the town of the treasure
+having been spirited away. To have missed that does not please
+Pedrito either; but let me tell you that if you had all that
+silver in your hand for ransom it would not save you."
+
+Turning swiftly, and catching the doctor by the shoulders,
+Nostromo thrust his face close to his.
+
+"Maladetta! You follow me speaking of the treasure.  You have
+sworn my ruin. You were the last man who looked upon me before I
+went out with it. And Sidoni the engine-driver says you have an
+evil eye."
+
+"He ought to know. I saved his broken leg for him last year," the
+doctor said, stoically. He felt on his shoulders the weight of
+these hands famed amongst the populace for snapping thick ropes
+and bending horseshoes.  "And to you I offer the best means of
+saving yourself--let me go--and of retrieving your great
+reputation.  You boasted of making the Capataz de Cargadores
+famous from one end of America to the other about this wretched
+silver. But I bring you a better opportunity--let me go, hombre!"
+
+Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor feared that the
+indispensable man would run off again.  But he did not. He walked
+on slowly. The doctor hobbled by his side till, within a stone's
+throw from the Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again.
+
+Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed to have
+changed its nature; his home appeared to repel him with an air of
+hopeless and inimical mystery. The doctor said--
+
+"You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz."
+
+"How can I go in?" Nostromo seemed to ask himself in a low,
+inward tone. "She cannot unsay what she said, and I cannot undo
+what I have done."
+
+"I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there.  I
+looked in as I came out of the town. You will be perfectly safe
+in that house till you leave it to make your name famous on the
+Campo. I am going now to arrange for your departure with the
+engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring you news here long before
+daybreak."
+
+Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to penetrate the
+meaning of Nostromo's silence, clapped him lightly on the
+shoulder, and starting off with his smart, lame walk, vanished
+utterly at the third or fourth hop in the direction of the
+railway track. Arrested between the two wooden posts for people
+to fasten their horses to, Nostromo did not move, as if he, too,
+had been planted solidly in the ground. At the end of half an
+hour he lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the
+railway yards, which had burst out suddenly, tumultuous and
+deadened as if coming from under the plain. That lame doctor with
+the evil eye had got there pretty fast.
+
+Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo d'Italia Una, which
+he had never known so lightless, so silent, before. The door, all
+black in the pale wall, stood open as he had left it twenty-four
+hours before, when he had nothing to hide from the world. He
+remained before it, irresolute, like a fugitive, like a man
+betrayed. Poverty, misery, starvation! Where had he heard these
+words? The anger of a dying woman had prophesied that fate for
+his folly. It looked as if it would come true very quickly. And
+the leperos would laugh--she had said. Yes, they would laugh if
+they knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at the mercy of the
+mad doctor whom they could remember, only a few years ago, buying
+cooked food from a stall on the Plaza for a copper coin--like one
+of themselves.
+
+At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mitchell passed
+through his mind. He glanced in the direction of the jetty and
+saw a small gleam of light in the O.S.N. Company's building. The
+thought of lighted windows was not attractive. Two lighted
+windows had decoyed him into the empty Custom House, only to fall
+into the clutches of that doctor. No! He would not go near
+lighted windows again on that night.  Captain Mitchell was there.
+And what could he be told? That doctor would worm it all out of
+him as if he were a child.
+
+On the threshold he called out "Giorgio!" in an undertone. Nobody
+answered. He stepped in. "Ola!  viejo! Are you there? . . ." In
+the impenetrable darkness his head swam with the illusion that
+the obscurity of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, and
+that the floor dipped forward like a sinking lighter.  "Ola!
+viejo!" he repeated, falteringly, swaying where he stood. His
+hand, extended to steady himself, fell upon the table. Moving a
+step forward, he shifted it, and felt a box of matches under his
+fingers. He fancied he had heard a quiet sigh. He listened for a
+moment, holding his breath; then, with trembling hands, tried to
+strike a light.
+
+The tiny piece of wood flamed up quite blindingly at the end of
+his fingers, raised above his blinking eyes.  A concentrated
+glare fell upon the leonine white head of old Giorgio against the
+black fire-place--showed him leaning forward in a chair in
+staring immobility, surrounded, overhung, by great masses of
+shadow, his legs crossed, his cheek in his hand, an empty pipe in
+the corner of his mouth. It seemed hours before he attempted to
+turn his face; at the very moment the match went out, and he
+disappeared, overwhelmed by the shadows, as if the walls and roof
+of the desolate house had collapsed upon his white head in
+ghostly silence.
+
+Nostromo heard him stir and utter dispassionately the words--
+
+"It may have been a vision."
+
+"No," he said, softly. "It is no vision, old man."
+
+A strong chest voice asked in the dark--
+
+"Is that you I hear, Giovann' Battista?"
+
+"Si, viejo. Steady. Not so loud."
+
+After his release by Sotillo, Giorgio Viola, attended to the very
+door by the good-natured engineer-in-chief, had reentered his
+house, which he had been made to leave almost at the very moment
+of his wife's death.  All was still. The lamp above was burning.
+He nearly called out to her by name; and the thought that no call
+from him would ever again evoke the answer of her voice, made him
+drop heavily into the chair with a loud groan, wrung out by the
+pain as of a keen blade piercing his breast.
+
+The rest of the night he made no sound. The darkness turned to
+grey, and on the colourless, clear, glassy dawn the jagged sierra
+stood out flat and opaque, as if cut out of paper.
+
+The enthusiastic and severe soul of Giorgio Viola, sailor,
+champion of oppressed humanity, enemy of kings, and, by the grace
+of Mrs. Gould, hotel-keeper of the Sulaco harbour, had descended
+into the open abyss of desolation amongst the shattered vestiges
+of his past.  He remembered his wooing between two campaigns, a
+single short week in the season of gathering olives.  Nothing
+approached the grave passion of that time but the deep,
+passionate sense of his bereavement. He discovered all the extent
+of his dependence upon the silenced voice of that woman. It was
+her voice that he missed. Abstracted, busy, lost in inward
+contemplation, he seldom looked at his wife in those later years.
+The thought of his girls was a matter of concern, not of
+consolation. It was her voice that he would miss.  And he
+remembered the other child--the little boy who died at sea. Ah! a
+man would have been something to lean upon. And, alas! even Gian'
+Battista--he of whom, and of Linda, his wife had spoken to him so
+anxiously before she dropped off into her last sleep on earth, he
+on whom she had called aloud to save the children, just before
+she died--even he was dead!
+
+And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, sat through
+the day in immobility and solitude. He never heard the brazen
+roar of the bells in town. When it ceased the earthenware filter
+in the corner of the kitchen kept on its swift musical drip, drip
+into the great porous jar below.
+
+Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements disappeared up
+the narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; and the rubbing of his
+shoulders made a small noise as of a mouse running behind the
+plaster of a wall. While he remained up there the house was as
+dumb as a grave.  Then, with the same faint rubbing noise, he
+descended.  He had to catch at the chairs and tables to regain
+his seat. He seized his pipe off the high mantel of the
+fire-place--but made no attempt to reach the tobacco--thrust it
+empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat down again in the
+same staring pose. The sun of Pedrito's entry into Sulaco, the
+last sun of Senor Hirsch's life, the first of Decoud's solitude
+on the Great Isabel, passed over the Albergo d'ltalia Una on its
+way to the west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had
+ceased, the lamp upstairs had burnt itself out, and the night
+beset Giorgio Viola and his dead wife with its obscurity and
+silence that seemed invincible till the Capataz de Cargadores,
+returning from the dead, put them to flight with the splutter and
+flare of a match.
+
+"Si, viejo. It is me. Wait."
+
+Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the shutters
+carefully, groped upon a shelf for a candle, and lit it.
+
+Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the dark the
+sounds made by Nostromo. The light disclosed him standing without
+support, as if the mere presence of that man who was loyal,
+brave, incorruptible, who was all his son would have been, were
+enough for the support of his decaying strength.
+
+He extended his hand grasping the briar-wood pipe, whose bowl was
+charred on the edge, and knitted his bushy eyebrows heavily at
+the light.
+
+"You have returned," he said, with shaky dignity.  "Ah! Very
+well! I----"
+
+He broke off.  Nostromo, leaning back against the table, his arms
+folded on his breast, nodded at him slightly.
+
+"You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog of the rich, of the
+aristocrats, of these fine men who can only talk and betray the
+people, is not dead yet."
+
+The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the sound of the
+well-known voice. His head moved slightly once as if in sign of
+approval; but Nostromo saw clearly that the old man understood
+nothing of the words. There was no one to understand; no one he
+could take into the confidence of Decoud's fate, of his own, into
+the secret of the silver. That doctor was an enemy of the
+people--a tempter. . . .
+
+Old Giorgio's heavy frame shook from head to foot with the effort
+to overcome his emotion at the sight of that man, who had shared
+the intimacies of his domestic life as though he had been a
+grown-up son.
+
+"She believed yon would return," he said, solemnly.
+
+Nostromo raised his head.
+
+"She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come back----?"
+
+He finished the thought mentally: "Since she has prophesied for
+me an end of poverty, misery, and starvation." These words of
+Teresa's anger, from the circumstances in which they had been
+uttered, like the cry of a soul prevented from making its peace
+with God, stirred the obscure superstition of personal fortune
+from which even the greatest genius amongst men of adventure and
+action is seldom free. They reigned over Nostromo's mind with the
+force of a potent malediction. And what a curse it was that which
+her words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned so young that
+he could remember no other woman whom he called mother.
+Henceforth there would be no enterprise in which he would not
+fail. The spell was working already. Death itself would elude him
+now. . . .  He said violently--
+
+"Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am hungry! Sangre de
+Dios! The emptiness of my belly makes me lightheaded."
+
+With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast above his folded
+arms, barefooted, watching from under a gloomy brow the movements
+of old Viola foraging amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if
+indeed fallen under a curse--a ruined and sinister Capataz.
+
+Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a word,
+emptied upon the table out of his hollowed palms a few dry crusts
+of bread and half a raw onion.
+
+While the Capataz began to devour this beggar's fare, taking up
+with stony-eyed voracity piece after piece lying by his side, the
+Garibaldino went off, and squatting down in another corner filled
+an earthenware mug with red wine out of a wicker-covered
+demijohn.  With a familiar gesture, as when serving customers in
+the cafe, he had thrust his pipe between his teeth to have his
+hands free.
+
+The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened the bronze of
+his cheek. Before him, Viola, with a turn of his white and
+massive head towards the staircase, took his empty pipe out of
+his mouth, and pronounced slowly--
+
+"After the shot was fired down here, which killed her as surely
+as if the bullet had struck her oppressed heart, she called upon
+you to save the children. Upon you, Gian' Battista."
+
+The Capataz looked up.
+
+"Did she do that, Padrone? To save the children!  They are with
+the English senora, their rich benefactress.  Hey! old man of the
+people. Thy benefactress.  . . ."
+
+"I am old," muttered Giorgio Viola. "An Englishwoman was allowed
+to give a bed to Garibaldi lying wounded in prison. The greatest
+man that ever lived.  A man of the people, too--a sailor. I may
+let another keep a roof over my head. Si . . . I am old. I may
+let her. Life lasts too long sometimes."
+
+"And she herself may not have a roof over her head before many
+days are out, unless I . . . What do you say? Am I to keep a roof
+over her head? Am I to try--and save all the Blancos together
+with her?"
+
+"You shall do it," said old Viola in a strong voice.  "You shall
+do it as my son would have. . . ."
+
+"Thy son, viejo! .. .. There never has been a man like thy son.
+Ha, I must try. . . . But what if it were only a part of the
+curse to lure me on? . . .  And so she called upon me to
+save--and then----?"
+
+"She spoke no more." The heroic follower of Garibaldi, at the
+thought of the eternal stillness and silence fallen upon the
+shrouded form stretched out on the bed upstairs, averted his face
+and raised his hand to his furrowed brow. "She was dead before I
+could seize her hands," he stammered out, pitifully.
+
+Before the wide eyes of the Capataz, staring at the doorway of
+the dark staircase, floated the shape of the Great Isabel, like a
+strange ship in distress, freighted with enormous wealth and the
+solitary life of a man.  It was impossible for him to do
+anything. He could only hold his tongue, since there was no one
+to trust.  The treasure would be lost, probably--unless Decoud.
+. . . And his thought came abruptly to an end.  He perceived that
+he could not imagine in the least what Decoud was likely to do.
+
+Old Viola had not stirred. And the motionless Capataz dropped his
+long, soft eyelashes, which gave to the upper part of his fierce,
+black-whiskered face a touch of feminine ingenuousness. The
+silence had lasted for a long time.
+
+"God rest her soul!" he murmured, gloomily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+THE next day was quiet in the morning, except for the faint sound
+of firing to the northward, in the direction of Los Hatos.
+Captain Mitchell had listened to it from his balcony anxiously.
+The phrase, "In my delicate position as the only consular agent
+then in the port, everything, sir, everything was a just cause
+for anxiety," had its place in the more or less stereotyped
+relation of the "historical events" which for the next few years
+was at the service of distinguished strangers visiting Sulaco.
+The mention of the dignity and neutrality of the flag, so
+difficult to preserve in his position, "right in the thick of
+these events between the lawlessness of that piratical villain
+Sotillo and the more regularly established but scarcely less
+atrocious tyranny of his Excellency Don Pedro Montero," came next
+in order. Captain Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere
+dangers much. But he insisted that it was a memorable day.  On
+that day, towards dusk, he had seen "that poor fellow of
+mine--Nostromo. The sailor whom I discovered, and, I may say,
+made, sir. The man of the famous ride to Cayta, sir. An
+historical event, sir!"
+
+Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and faithful servant,
+Captain Mitchell was allowed to attain the term of his usefulness
+in ease and dignity at the head of the enormously extended
+service. The augmentation of the establishment, with its crowds
+of clerks, an office in town, the old office in the harbour, the
+division into departments--passenger, cargo, lighterage, and so
+on--secured a greater leisure for his last years in the
+regenerated Sulaco, the capital of the Occidental Republic.
+Liked by the natives for his good nature and the formality of his
+manner, self-important and simple, known for years as a "friend
+of our country," he felt himself a personality of mark in the
+town. Getting up early for a turn in the market-place while the
+gigantic shadow of Higuerota was still lying upon the fruit and
+flower stalls piled up with masses of gorgeous colouring,
+attending easily to current affairs, welcomed in houses, greeted
+by ladies on the Alameda, with his entry into all the clubs and a
+footing in the Casa Gould, he led his privileged old bachelor,
+man-about-town existence with great comfort and solemnity. But on
+mail-boat days he was down at the Harbour Office at an early
+hour, with his own gig, manned by a smart crew in white and blue,
+ready to dash off and board the ship directly she showed her bows
+between the harbour heads.
+
+It would be into the Harbour Office that he would lead some
+privileged passenger he had brought off in his own boat, and
+invite him to take a seat for a moment while he signed a few
+papers. And Captain Mitchell, seating himself at his desk, would
+keep on talking hospitably--
+
+"There isn't much time if you are to see everything in a day. We
+shall be off in a moment. We'll have lunch at the Amarilla
+Club--though I belong also to the Anglo-American--mining
+engineers and business men, don't you know--and to the
+Mirliflores as well, a new club--English, French, Italians, all
+sorts--lively young fellows mostly, who wanted to pay a
+compliment to an old resident, sir. But we'll lunch at the
+Amarilla.  Interest you, I fancy. Real thing of the country. Men
+of the first families. The President of the Occidental Republic
+himself belongs to it, sir. Fine old bishop with a broken nose in
+the patio. Remarkable piece of statuary, I believe. Cavaliere
+Parrochetti--you know Parrochetti, the famous Italian
+sculptor--was working here for two years--thought very highly of
+our old bishop. . . . There! I am very much at your service now."
+
+Proud of his experience, penetrated by the sense of historical
+importance of men, events, and buildings, he talked pompously in
+jerky periods, with slight sweeps of his short, thick arm,
+letting nothing "escape the attention" of his privileged captive.
+
+"Lot of building going on, as you observe. Before the Separation
+it was a plain of burnt grass smothered in clouds of dust, with
+an ox-cart track to our Jetty.  Nothing more. This is the Harbour
+Gate. Picturesque, is it not? Formerly the town stopped short
+there.  We enter now the Calle de la Constitucion. Observe the
+old Spanish houses. Great dignity. Eh? I suppose it's just as it
+was in the time of the Viceroys, except for the pavement. Wood
+blocks now. Sulaco National Bank there, with the sentry boxes
+each side of the gate. Casa Avellanos this side, with all the
+ground-floor windows shuttered. A wonderful woman lives
+there--Miss Avellanos--the beautiful Antonia.  A character, sir!
+A historical woman! Opposite--Casa Gould. Noble gateway. Yes,
+the Goulds of the original Gould Concession, that all the world
+knows of now. I hold seventeen of the thousand-dollar shares in
+the Consolidated San Tome mines. All the poor savings of my
+lifetime, sir, and it will be enough to keep me in comfort to the
+end of my days at home when I retire. I got in on the
+ground-floor, you see.  Don Carlos, great friend of mine.
+Seventeen shares--quite a little fortune to leave behind one,
+too. I have a niece--married a parson--most worthy man, incumbent
+of a small parish in Sussex; no end of children. I was never
+married myself. A sailor should exercise self-denial. Standing
+under that very gateway, sir, with some young engineer-fellows,
+ready to defend that house where we had received so much kindness
+and hospitality, I saw the first and last charge of Pedrito's
+horsemen upon Barrios's troops, who had just taken the Harbour
+Gate. They could not stand the new rifles brought out by that
+poor Decoud. It was a murderous fire. In a moment the street
+became blocked with a mass of dead men and horses. They never
+came on again."
+
+And all day Captain Mitchell would talk like this to his more or
+less willing victim--
+
+"The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area of Trafalgar
+Square."
+
+From the very centre, in the blazing sunshine, he pointed out the
+buildings--
+
+"The Intendencia, now President's Palace--Cabildo, where the
+Lower Chamber of Parliament sits. You notice the new houses on
+that side of the Plaza? Compania Anzani, a great general store,
+like those cooperative things at home. Old Anzani was murdered by
+the National Guards in front of his safe. It was even for that
+specific crime that the deputy Gamacho, commanding the Nationals,
+a bloodthirsty and savage brute, was executed publicly by
+garrotte upon the sentence of a court-martial ordered by Barrios.
+Anzani's nephews converted the business into a company.  All that
+side of the Plaza had been burnt; used to be colonnaded before. A
+terrible fire, by the light of which I saw the last of the
+fighting, the llaneros flying, the Nationals throwing their arms
+down, and the miners of San Tome, all Indians from the Sierra,
+rolling by like a torrent to the sound of pipes and cymbals,
+green flags flying, a wild mass of men in white ponchos and green
+hats, on foot, on mules, on donkeys. Such a sight, sir, will
+never be seen again. The miners, sir, had marched upon the town,
+Don Pepe leading on his black horse, and their very wives in the
+rear on burros, screaming encouragement, sir, and beating
+tambourines. I remember one of these women had a green parrot
+seated on her shoulder, as calm as a bird of stone. They had just
+saved their Senor Administrador; for Barrios, though he ordered
+the assault at once, at night, too, would have been too late.
+Pedrito Montero had Don Carlos led out to be shot--like his uncle
+many years ago--and then, as Barrios said afterwards, 'Sulaco
+would not have been worth fighting for.' Sulaco without the
+Concession was nothing; and there were tons and tons of dynamite
+distributed all over the mountain with detonators arranged, and
+an old priest, Father Roman, standing by to annihilate the San
+Tome mine at the first news of failure. Don Carlos had made up
+his mind not to leave it behind, and he had the right men to see
+to it, too."
+
+Thus Captain Mitchell would talk in the middle of the Plaza,
+holding over his head a white umbrella with a green lining; but
+inside the cathedral, in the dim light, with a faint scent of
+incense floating in the cool atmosphere, and here and there a
+kneeling female figure, black or all white, with a veiled head,
+his lowered voice became solemn and impressive.
+
+"Here," he would say, pointing to a niche in the wall of the
+dusky aisle, "you see the bust of Don Jose Avellanos, 'Patriot
+and Statesman,' as the inscription says, 'Minister to Courts of
+England and Spain, etc., etc., died in the woods of Los Hatos
+worn out with his lifelong struggle for Right and Justice at the
+dawn of the New Era.' A fair likeness. Parrochetti's work from
+some old photographs and a pencil sketch by Mrs.  Gould. I was
+well acquainted with that distinguished Spanish-American of the
+old school, a true Hidalgo, beloved by everybody who knew him.
+The marble medallion in the wall, in the antique style,
+representing a veiled woman seated with her hands clasped loosely
+over her knees, commemorates that unfortunate young gentleman who
+sailed out with Nostromo on that fatal night, sir. See, 'To the
+memory of Martin Decoud, his betrothed Antonia Avellanos.' Frank,
+simple, noble. There you have that lady, sir, as she is. An
+exceptional woman. Those who thought she would give way to
+despair were mistaken, sir. She has been blamed in many quarters
+for not having taken the veil.  It was expected of her. But Dona
+Antonia is not the stuff they make nuns of. Bishop Corbelan, her
+uncle, lives with her in the Corbelan town house. He is a fierce
+sort of priest, everlastingly worrying the Government about the
+old Church lands and convents. I believe they think a lot of him
+in Rome. Now let us go to the Amarilla Club, just across the
+Plaza, to get some lunch."
+
+Directly outside the cathedral on the very top of the noble
+flight of steps, his voice rose pompously, his arm found again
+its sweeping gesture.
+
+"Porvenir, over there on that first floor, above those French
+plate-glass shop-fronts; our biggest daily. Conservative, or,
+rather, I should say, Parliamentary. We have the Parliamentary
+party here of which the actual Chief of the State, Don Juste
+Lopez, is the head; a very sagacious man, I think. A first-rate
+intellect, sir. The Democratic party in opposition rests mostly,
+I am sorry to say, on these socialistic Italians, sir, with their
+secret societies, camorras, and such-like. There are lots of
+Italians settled here on the railway lands, dismissed navvies,
+mechanics, and so on, all along the trunk line.  There are whole
+villages of Italians on the Campo.  And the natives, too, are
+being drawn into these ways . . . American bar? Yes. And over
+there you can see another. New Yorkers mostly frequent that
+one----Here we are at the Amarilla. Observe the bishop at the
+foot of the stairs to the right as we go in."
+
+And the lunch would begin and terminate its lavish and leisurely
+course at a little table in the gallery, Captain Mitchell
+nodding, bowing, getting up to speak for a moment to different
+officials in black clothes, merchants in jackets, officers in
+uniform, middle-aged caballeros from the Campo--sallow, little,
+nervous men, and fat, placid, swarthy men, and Europeans or North
+Americans of superior standing, whose faces looked very white
+amongst the majority of dark complexions and black, glistening
+eyes.
+
+Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting around
+looks of satisfaction, and tender over the table a case full of
+thick cigars.
+
+"Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The black coffee you
+get at the Amarilla, sir, you don't meet anywhere in the world.
+We get the bean from a famous cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose
+owner sends three sacks every year as a present to his fellow
+members in remembrance of the fight against Gamacho's Nationals,
+carried on from these very windows by the caballeros. He was in
+town at the time, and took part, sir, to the bitter end.  It
+arrives on three mules--not in the common way, by rail; no
+fear!--right into the patio, escorted by mounted peons, in charge
+of the Mayoral of his estate, who walks upstairs, booted and
+spurred, and delivers it to our committee formally with the
+words, 'For the sake of those fallen on the third of May.' We
+call it Tres de Mayo coffee. Taste it."
+
+Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making ready to
+hear a sermon in a church, would lift the tiny cup to his lips.
+And the nectar would be sipped to the bottom during a restful
+silence in a cloud of cigar smoke.
+
+"Look at this man in black just going out," he would begin,
+leaning forward hastily. "This is the famous Hernandez, Minister
+of War. The Times' special correspondent, who wrote that striking
+series of letters calling the Occidental Republic the 'Treasure
+House of the World,' gave a whole article to him and the force he
+has organized--the renowned Carabineers of the Campo."
+
+Captain Mitchell's guest, staring curiously, would see a figure
+in a long-tailed black coat walking gravely, with downcast
+eyelids in a long, composed face, a brow furrowed horizontally, a
+pointed head, whose grey hair, thin at the top, combed down
+carefully on all sides and rolled at the ends, fell low on the
+neck and shoulders. This, then, was the famous bandit of whom
+Europe had heard with interest. He put on a high-crowned sombrero
+with a wide flat brim; a rosary of wooden beads was twisted about
+his right wrist.  And Captain Mitchell would proceed--
+
+"The protector of the Sulaco refugees from the rage of Pedrito.
+As general of cavalry with Barrios he distinguished himself at
+the storming of Tonoro, where Senor Fuentes was killed with the
+last remnant of the Monterists.  He is the friend and humble
+servant of Bishop Corbelan. Hears three Masses every day. I bet
+you he will step into the cathedral to say a prayer or two on his
+way home to his siesta."
+
+He took several puffs at his cigar in silence; then, in his most
+important manner, pronounced:
+
+"The Spanish race, sir, is prolific of remarkable characters in
+every rank of life. . . . I propose we go now into the
+billiard-room, which is cool, for a quiet chat. There's never
+anybody there till after five. I could tell you episodes of the
+Separationist revolution that would astonish you. When the great
+heat's over, we'll take a turn on the Alameda."
+
+The programme went on relentless, like a law of Nature. The turn
+on the Alameda was taken with slow steps and stately remarks.
+
+"All the great world of Sulaco here, sir." Captain Mitchell bowed
+right and left with no end of formality; then with animation,
+"Dona Emilia, Mrs. Gould's carriage. Look. Always white mules.
+The kindest, most gracious woman the sun ever shone upon. A great
+position, sir. A great position. First lady in Sulaco--far before
+the President's wife. And worthy of it." He took off his hat;
+then, with a studied change of tone, added, negligently, that the
+man in black by her side, with a high white collar and a scarred,
+snarly face, was Dr. Monygham, Inspector of State Hospitals,
+chief medical officer of the Consolidated San Tome mines. "A
+familiar of the house. Everlastingly there. No wonder. The Goulds
+made him.  Very clever man and all that, but I never liked him.
+Nobody does. I can recollect him limping about the streets in a
+check shirt and native sandals with a watermelon under his
+arm--all he would get to eat for the day. A big-wig now, sir, and
+as nasty as ever. However . . . There's no doubt he played his
+part fairly well at the time. He saved us all from the deadly
+incubus of Sotillo, where a more particular man might have
+failed----"
+
+His arm went up.
+
+"The equestrian statue that used to stand on the pedestal over
+there has been removed. It was an anachronism," Captain Mitchell
+commented, obscurely.  "There is some talk of replacing it by a
+marble shaft commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at
+the four corners, and bronze Justice holding an even balance, all
+gilt, on the top. Cavaliere Parrochetti was asked to make a
+design, which you can see framed under glass in the Municipal
+Sala. Names are to be engraved all round the base. Well! They
+could do no better than begin with the name of Nostromo. He has
+done for Separation as much as anybody else, and," added Captain
+Mitchell, "has got less than many others by it--when it comes to
+that." He dropped on to a stone seat under a tree, and tapped
+invitingly at the place by his side. "He carried to Barrios the
+letters from Sulaco which decided the General to abandon Cayta
+for a time, and come back to our help here by sea.  The
+transports were still in harbour fortunately. Sir, I did not even
+know that my Capataz de Cargadores was alive. I had no idea. It
+was Dr. Monygham who came upon him, by chance, in the Custom
+House, evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched Sotillo.
+I was never told; never given a hint, nothing--as if I were
+unworthy of confidence. Monygham arranged it all. He went to the
+railway yards, and got admission to the engineer-in-chief, who,
+for the sake of the Goulds as much as for anything else,
+consented to let an engine make a dash down the line, one hundred
+and eighty miles, with Nostromo aboard. It was the only way to
+get him off. In the Construction Camp at the railhead, he
+obtained a horse, arms, some clothing, and started alone on that
+marvellous ride--four hundred miles in six days, through a
+disturbed country, ending by the feat of passing through the
+Monterist lines outside Cayta. The history of that ride, sir,
+would make a most exciting book. He carried all our lives in his
+pocket. Devotion, courage, fidelity, intelligence were not
+enough. Of course, he was perfectly fearless and incorruptible.
+But a man was wanted that would know how to succeed. He was that
+man, sir. On the fifth of May, being practically a prisoner in
+the Harbour Office of my Company, I suddenly heard the whistle of
+an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of a mile away. I could
+not believe my ears. I made one jump on to the balcony, and
+beheld a locomotive under a great head of steam run out of the
+yard gates, screeching like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and
+then, just abreast of old Viola's inn, check almost to a
+standstill.  I made out, sir, a man--I couldn't tell who--dash
+out of the Albergo d'ltalia Una, climb into the cab, and then,
+sir, that engine seemed positively to leap clear of the house,
+and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.  As you blow a candle
+out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the foot-plate, sir, I
+can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the National Guards
+in Rincon and one other place. Fortunately the line had not been
+torn up. In four hours they reached the Construction Camp.
+Nostromo had his start. . . . The rest you know. You've got only
+to look round you.  There are people on this Alameda that ride in
+their carriages, or even are alive at all to-day, because years
+ago I engaged a runaway Italian sailor for a foreman of our wharf
+simply on the strength of his looks. And that's a fact. You can't
+get over it, sir. On the seventeenth of May, just twelve days
+after I saw the man from the Casa Viola get on the engine, and
+wondered what it meant, Barrios's transports were entering this
+harbour, and the 'Treasure House of the World,' as The Times man
+calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact for civilization--for
+a great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandez on the west, and the
+San Tome miners pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose
+the landing. He had been sending messages to Sotillo for a week
+to join him. Had Sotillo done so there would have been massacres
+and proscription that would have left no man or woman of position
+alive. But that's where Dr. Monygham comes in. Sotillo, blind and
+deaf to everything, stuck on board his steamer watching the
+dragging for silver, which he believed to be sunk at the bottom
+of the harbour. They say that for the last three days he was out
+of his mind raving and foaming with disappointment at getting
+nothing, flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats
+with the drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly stamping his
+foot and crying out, 'And yet it is there!  I see it! I feel it!'
+
+"He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he had on board) at
+the end of the after-derrick, when the first of Barrios's
+transports, one of our own ships at that, steamed right in, and
+ranging close alongside opened a small-arm fire without as much
+preliminaries as a hail. It was the completest surprise in the
+world, sir. They were too astounded at first to bolt below.  Men
+were falling right and left like ninepins. It's a miracle that
+Monygham, standing on the after-hatch with the rope already round
+his neck, escaped being riddled through and through like a sieve.
+He told me since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept
+on yelling with all the strength of his lungs: 'Hoist a white
+flag! Hoist a white flag!' Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda
+regiment, standing by, unsheathed his sword with a shriek: 'Die,
+perjured traitor!' and ran Sotillo clean through the body, just
+before he fell himself shot through the head."
+
+Captain Mitchell stopped for a while.
+
+"Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours.  But it's time we
+started off to Rincon. It would not do for you to pass through
+Sulaco and not see the lights of the San Tome mine, a whole
+mountain ablaze like a lighted palace above the dark Campo. It's
+a fashionable drive. . . . But let me tell you one little
+anecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight or more later, when
+Barrios, declared Generalissimo, was gone in pursuit of Pedrito
+away south, when the Provisional Junta, with Don Juste Lopez at
+its head, had promulgated the new Constitution, and our Don
+Carlos Gould was packing up his trunks bound on a mission to San
+Francisco and Washington (the United States, sir, were the first
+great power to recognize the Occidental Republic)--a fortnight
+later, I say, when we were beginning to feel that our heads were
+safe on our shoulders, if I may express myself so, a prominent
+man, a large shipper by our line, came to see me on business,
+and, says he, the first thing: 'I say, Captain Mitchell, is that
+fellow' (meaning Nostromo) 'still the Capataz of your Cargadores
+or not?' 'What's the matter?' says I.  'Because, if he is, then I
+don't mind; I send and receive a good lot of cargo by your ships;
+but I have observed him several days loafing about the wharf, and
+just now he stopped me as cool as you please, with a request for
+a cigar. Now, you know, my cigars are rather special, and I can't
+get them so easily as all that.' 'I hope you stretched a point,'
+I said, very gently. 'Why, yes.  But it's a confounded nuisance.
+The fellow's everlastingly cadging for smokes.' Sir, I turned my
+eyes away, and then asked, 'Weren't you one of the prisoners in
+the Cabildo?' 'You know very well I was, and in chains, too,'
+says he. 'And under a fine of fifteen thousand dollars?' He
+coloured, sir, because it got about that he fainted from fright
+when they came to arrest him, and then behaved before Fuentes in
+a manner to make the very policianos, who had dragged him there
+by the hair of his head, smile at his cringing.  'Yes,' he says,
+in a sort of shy way. 'Why?' 'Oh, nothing. You stood to lose a
+tidy bit,' says I, 'even if you saved your life. . . . But what
+can I do for you?' He never even saw the point. Not he.  And
+that's how the world wags, sir."
+
+He rose a little stiffly, and the drive to Rincon would be taken
+with only one philosophical remark, uttered by the merciless
+cicerone, with his eyes fixed upon the lights of San Tome, that
+seemed suspended in the dark night between earth and heaven.
+
+"A great power, this, for good and evil, sir. A great power."
+
+And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten, excellent as to
+cooking, and leaving upon the traveller's mind an impression that
+there were in Sulaco many pleasant, able young men with salaries
+apparently too large for their discretion, and amongst them a
+few, mostly Anglo-Saxon, skilled in the art of, as the saying is,
+"taking a rise" out of his kind host.
+
+With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a twowheeled
+machine (which Captain Mitchell called a curricle) behind a fleet
+and scraggy mule beaten all the time by an obviously Neapolitan
+driver, the cycle would be nearly closed before the lighted-up
+offices of the O. S. N. Company, remaining open so late because
+of the steamer. Nearly--but not quite.
+
+"Ten o'clock. Your ship won't be ready to leave till half-past
+twelve, if by then. Come in for a brandy-and-soda and one more
+cigar."
+
+And in the superintendent's private room the privileged passenger
+by the Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were
+annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds,
+names, facts, and complicated information imperfectly
+apprehended, would listen like a tired child to a fairy tale;
+would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its pompousness,
+tell him, as if from another world, how there was "in this very
+harbour" an international naval demonstration, which put an end
+to the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United States cruiser,
+Powhattan, was the first to salute the Occidental flag--white,
+with a wreath of green laurel in the middle encircling a yellow
+amarilla flower. Would hear how General Montero, in less than a
+month after proclaiming himself Emperor of Costaguana, was shot
+dead (during a solemn and public distribution of orders and
+crosses) by a young artillery officer, the brother of his then
+mistress.
+
+"The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country," the voice would
+say. And it would continue: "A captain of one of our ships told
+me lately that he recognized Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in
+purple slippers and a velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel,
+keeping a disorderly house in one of the southern ports."
+
+"Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?" would wonder the
+distinguished bird of passage hovering on the confines of waking
+and sleep with resolutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl
+upon his lips, from between which stuck out the eighteenth or
+twentieth cigar of that memorable day.
+
+"He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting ghost,
+sir"--Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo with true
+warmth of feeling and a touch of wistful pride. "You may imagine,
+sir, what an effect it produced on me. He had come round by sea
+with Barrios, of course. And the first thing he told me after I
+became fit to hear him was that he had picked up the lighter's
+boat floating in the gulf! He seemed quite overcome by the
+circumstance. And a remarkable enough circumstance it was, when
+you remember that it was then sixteen days since the sinking of
+the silver.  At once I could see he was another man. He stared at
+the wall, sir, as if there had been a spider or something running
+about there. The loss of the silver preyed on his mind. The first
+thing he asked me about was whether Dona Antonia had heard yet of
+Decoud's death. His voice trembled. I had to tell him that Dona
+Antonia, as a matter of fact, was not back in town yet. Poor
+girl! And just as I was making ready to ask him a thousand
+questions, with a sudden, 'Pardon me, senor,' he cleared out of
+the office altogether.  I did not see him again for three days. I
+was terribly busy, you know. It seems that he wandered about in
+and out of the town, and on two nights turned up to sleep in the
+baracoons of the railway people.  He seemed absolutely
+indifferent to what went on. I asked him on the wharf, 'When are
+you going to take hold again, Nostromo? There will be plenty of
+work for the Cargadores presently.'
+
+"'Senor,' says he, looking at me in a slow, inquisitive manner,
+'would it surprise you to hear that I am too tired to work just
+yet? And what work could I do now?  How can I look my Cargadores
+in the face after losing a lighter?'
+
+"I begged him not to think any more about the silver, and he
+smiled. A smile that went to my heart, sir. 'It was no mistake,'
+I told him. 'It was a fatality. A thing that could not be
+helped.' 'Si, si!" he said, and turned away. I thought it best to
+leave him alone for a bit to get over it. Sir, it took him years
+really, to get over it. I was present at his interview with Don
+Carlos.  I must say that Gould is rather a cold man. He had to
+keep a tight hand on his feelings, dealing with thieves and
+rascals, in constant danger of ruin for himself and wife for so
+many years, that it had become a second nature. They looked at
+each other for a long time. Don Carlos asked what he could do for
+him, in his quiet, reserved way.
+
+"'My name is known from one end of Sulaco to the other,' he said,
+as quiet as the other. 'What more can you do for me?' That was
+all that passed on that occasion.  Later, however, there was a
+very fine coasting schooner for sale, and Mrs. Gould and I put
+our heads together to get her bought and presented to him.  It
+was done, but he paid all the price back within the next three
+years. Business was booming all along this seaboard, sir.
+Moreover, that man always succeeded in everything except in
+saving the silver. Poor Dona Antonia, fresh from her terrible
+experiences in the woods of Los Hatos, had an interview with him,
+too.  Wanted to hear about Decoud: what they said, what they did,
+what they thought up to the last on that fatal night. Mrs. Gould
+told me his manner was perfect for quietness and sympathy. Miss
+Avellanos burst into tears only when he told her how Decoud had
+happened to say that his plan would be a glorious success.  . . .
+And there's no doubt, sir, that it is.  It is a success."
+
+The cycle was about to close at last. And while the privileged
+passenger, shivering with the pleasant anticipations of his
+berth, forgot to ask himself, "What on earth Decoud's plan could
+be?" Captain Mitchell was saying, "Sorry we must part so soon.
+Your intelligent interest made this a pleasant day to me. I shall
+see you now on board. You had a glimpse of the 'Treasure House of
+the World.' A very good name that." And the coxswain's voice at
+the door, announcing that the gig was ready, closed the cycle.
+
+Nostromo had, indeed, found the lighter's boat, which he had left
+on the Great Isabel with Decoud, floating empty far out in the
+gulf. He was then on the bridge of the first of Barrios's
+transports, and within an hour's steaming from Sulaco. Barrios,
+always delighted with a feat of daring and a good judge of
+courage, had taken a great liking to the Capataz. During the
+passage round the coast the General kept Nostromo near his
+person, addressing him frequently in that abrupt and boisterous
+manner which was the sign of his high favour.
+
+Nostromo's eyes were the first to catch, broad on the bow, the
+tiny, elusive dark speck, which, alone with the forms of the
+Three Isabels right ahead, appeared on the flat, shimmering
+emptiness of the gulf. There are times when no fact should be
+neglected as insignificant; a small boat so far from the land
+might have had some meaning worth finding out. At a nod of
+consent from Barrios the transport swept out of her course,
+passing near enough to ascertain that no one manned the little
+cockle-shell. It was merely a common small boat gone adrift with
+her oars in her. But Nostromo, to whose mind Decoud had been
+insistently present for days, had long before recognized with
+excitement the dinghy of the lighter.
+
+There could be no question of stopping to pick up that thing.
+Every minute of time was momentous with the lives and futures of
+a whole town. The head of the leading ship, with the General on
+board, fell off to her course. Behind her, the fleet of
+transports, scattered haphazard over a mile or so in the offing,
+like the finish of an ocean race, pressed on, all black and
+smoking on the western sky.
+
+"Mi General," Nostromo's voice rang out loud, but quiet, from
+behind a group of officers, "I should like to save that little
+boat. Por Dios, I know her. She belongs to my Company."
+
+"And, por Dios," guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, goodhumoured
+voice, "you belong to me. I am going to make you a captain of
+cavalry directly we get within sight of a horse again."
+
+"I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General," cried
+Nostromo, pushing through to the rail with a set              
+stare in his eyes. "Let me----"                                  
+
+"Let you? What a conceited fellow that is," bantered the General,
+jovially, without even looking at him.  "Let him go! Ha! ha! ha!
+He wants me to admit that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha!
+ha!  ha! Would you like to swim off to her, my son?"
+
+A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other stopped
+his guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and his black head
+bobbed up far away already from the ship. The General muttered an
+appalled "Cielo! Sinner that I am!" in a thunderstruck tone.  One
+anxious glance was enough to show him that Nostromo was swimming
+with perfect ease; and then he thundered terribly, "No! no! We
+shall not stop to pick up this impertinent fellow. Let him
+drown--that mad Capataz."
+
+Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo from leaping
+overboard. That empty boat, coming out to meet him mysteriously,
+as if rowed by an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of
+some sign, of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling and
+enigmatic way the persistent thought of a treasure and of a man's
+fate. He would have leaped if there had been death in that
+half-mile of water. It was as smooth as a pond, and for some
+reason sharks are unknown in the Placid Gulf, though on the other
+side of the Punta Mala the coastline swarms with them.
+
+The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with force. A
+queer, faint feeling had come over him while he swam. He had got
+rid of his boots and coat in the water. He hung on for a time,
+regaining his breath. In the distance the transports, more in a
+bunch now, held on straight for Sulaco, with their air of
+friendly contest, of nautical sport, of a regatta; and the united
+smoke of their funnels drove like a thin, sulphurous fogbank
+right over his head. It was his daring, his courage, his act that
+had set these ships in motion upon the sea, hurrying on to save
+the lives and fortunes of the Blancos, the taskmasters of the
+people; to save the San Tome mine; to save the children.
+
+With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over the stern.
+The very boat! No doubt of it; no doubt whatever. It was the
+dinghy of the lighter No. 3--the dinghy left with Martin Decoud
+on the Great Isabel so that he should have some means to help
+himself if nothing could be done for him from the shore. And here
+she had come out to meet him empty and inexplicable.  What had
+become of Decoud? The Capataz made a minute examination. He
+looked for some scratch, for some mark, for some sign. All he
+discovered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the
+thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard with his finger.
+Then he sat down in the stern sheets, passive, with his knees
+close together and legs aslant.
+
+Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers hanging
+lank and dripping and a lustreless stare fixed upon the bottom
+boards, the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores resembled a drowned
+corpse come up from the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a
+small boat. The excitement of his adventurous ride, the
+excitement of the return in time, of achievement, of success, all
+this excitement centred round the associated ideas of the great
+treasure and of the only other man who knew of its existence, had
+departed from him.  To the very last moment he had been
+cudgelling his brains as to how he could manage to visit the
+Great Isabel without loss of time and undetected. For the idea of
+secrecy had come to be connected with the treasure so closely
+that even to Barrios himself he had refrained from mentioning the
+existence of Decoud and of the silver on the island. The letters
+he carried to the General, however, made brief mention of the
+loss of the lighter, as having its bearing upon the situation in
+Sulaco. In the circumstances, the one-eyed tiger-slayer, scenting
+battle from afar, had not wasted his time in making inquiries
+from the messenger.  In fact, Barrios, talking with Nostromo,
+assumed that both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San Tome
+were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned directly, had
+kept silent, under the influence of some indefinable form of
+resentment and distrust. Let Don Martin speak of everything with
+his own lips--was what he told himself mentally.
+
+And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel thrown thus
+in his way at the earliest possible moment, his excitement had
+departed, as when the soul takes flight leaving the body inert
+upon an earth it knows no more. Nostromo did not seem to know the
+gulf.  For a long time even his eyelids did not flutter once upon
+the glazed emptiness of his stare. Then slowly, without a limb
+having stirred, without a twitch of muscle or quiver of an
+eyelash, an expression, a living expression came upon the still
+features, deep thought crept into the empty stare--as if an
+outcast soul, a quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted
+body in its way, had come in stealthily to take possession.
+
+The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness of sea,
+islands, and coast, of cloud forms on the sky and trails of light
+upon the water, the knitting of that brow had the emphasis of a
+powerful gesture. Nothing else budged for a long time; then the
+Capataz shook his head and again surrendered himself to the
+universal repose of all visible things. Suddenly he seized the
+oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin round, head-on
+to the Great Isabel. But before he began to pull he bent once
+more over the brown stain on the gunwale.
+
+"I know that thing," he muttered to himself, with a sagacious
+jerk of the head. "That's blood."
+
+His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady. Now and then he looked
+over his shoulder at the Great Isabel, presenting its low cliff
+to his anxious gaze like an impenetrable face. At last the stem
+touched the strand.  He flung rather than dragged the boat up the
+little beach. At once, turning his back upon the sunset, he
+plunged with long strides into the ravine, making the water of
+the stream spurt and fly upwards at every step, as if spurning
+its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit with his feet. He wanted to
+save every moment of daylight.
+
+A mass of earth, grass, and smashed bushes had fallen down very
+naturally from above upon the cavity under the leaning tree.
+Decoud had attended to the concealment of the silver as
+instructed, using the spade with some intelligence. But
+Nostromo's half-smile of approval changed into a scornful curl of
+the lip by the sight of the spade itself flung there in full
+view, as if in utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving away
+the whole thing. Ah! They were all alike in their folly, these
+hombres finos that invented laws and governments and barren tasks
+for the people.
+
+The Capataz picked up the spade, and with the feel of the handle
+in his palm the desire of having a look at the horse-hide boxes
+of treasure came upon him suddenly.  In a very few strokes he
+uncovered the edges and corners of several; then, clearing away
+more earth, became aware that one of them had been slashed with a
+knife.
+
+He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and dropped on
+his knees with a look of irrational apprehension over one
+shoulder, then over the other. The stiff hide had closed, and he
+hesitated before he pushed his hand through the long slit and
+felt the ingots inside.  There they were. One, two, three. Yes,
+four gone.  Taken away. Four ingots. But who? Decoud? Nobody
+else. And why? For what purpose? For what cursed fancy? Let him
+explain. Four ingots carried off in a boat, and--blood!
+
+In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded,
+unaltered, plunged into the waters in a grave and untroubled
+mystery of self-immolation consummated far from all mortal eyes,
+with an infinite majesty of silence and peace. Four ingots
+short!--and blood!
+
+The Capataz got up slowly.
+
+"He might simply have cut his hand," he muttered.  "But,
+then----"
+
+He sat down on the soft earth, unresisting, as if he had been
+chained to the treasure, his drawn-up legs clasped in his hands
+with an air of hopeless submission, like a slave set on guard.
+Once only he lifted his head smartly: the rattle of hot musketry
+fire had reached his ears, like pouring from on high a stream of
+dry peas upon a drum. After listening for a while, he said, half
+aloud--
+
+"He will never come back to explain."
+
+And he lowered his head again.
+
+"Impossible!" he muttered, gloomily.
+
+The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great conflagration
+in Sulaco flashed up red above the coast, played on the clouds at
+the head of the gulf, seemed to touch with a ruddy and sinister
+reflection the forms of the Three Isabels. He never saw it,
+though he raised his head.
+
+"But, then, I cannot know," he pronounced, distinctly, and
+remained silent and staring for hours.
+
+He could not know. Nobody was to know. As might have been
+supposed, the end of Don Martin Decoud never became a subject of
+speculation for any one except Nostromo. Had the truth of the
+facts been known, there would always have remained the question.
+Why? Whereas the version of his death at the sinking of the
+lighter had no uncertainty of motive. The young apostle of
+Separation had died striving for his idea by an ever-lamented
+accident.  But the truth was that he died from solitude, the
+enemy known but to few on this earth, and whom only the simplest
+of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanero of the
+boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself
+and others.
+
+For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human comprehension,
+the sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels.  The rocky head of
+Azuera is their haunt, whose stony levels and chasms resound with
+their wild and tumultuous clamour as if they were for ever
+quarrelling over the legendary treasure.
+
+At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, Decoud, turning
+in his lair of coarse grass, under the shade of a tree, said to
+himself--
+
+"I have not seen as much as one single bird all day."
+
+And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that one now of
+his own muttering voice. It had been a day of absolute
+silence--the first he had known in his life. And he had not slept
+a wink. Not for all these wakeful nights and the days of
+fighting, planning, talking; not for all that last night of
+danger and hard physical toil upon the gulf, had he been able to
+close his eyes for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset he
+had been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on his
+face.
+
+He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended into the
+gully to spend the night by the side of the silver.  If Nostromo
+returned--as he might have done at any moment--it was there that
+he would look first; and night would, of course, be the proper
+time for an attempt to communicate. He remembered with profound
+indifference that he had not eaten anything yet since he had been
+left alone on the island.
+
+He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day broke he ate
+something with the same indifference.  The brilliant "Son
+Decoud," the spoiled darling of the family, the lover of Antonia
+and journalist of Sulaco, was not fit to grapple with himself
+single-handed.  Solitude from mere outward condition of existence
+becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations of
+irony and scepticism have no place. It takes possession of the
+mind, and drives forth the thought into the exile of utter
+unbelief. After three days of waiting for the sight of some human
+face, Decoud caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own
+individuality.  It had merged into the world of cloud and water,
+of natural forces and forms of nature. In our activity alone do
+we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as
+against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless
+part.  Decoud lost all belief in the reality of his action past
+and to come. On the fifth day an immense melancholy descended
+upon him palpably. He resolved not to give himself up to these
+people in Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and terrible, like
+jibbering and obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling feebly
+in their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an
+allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his
+weakness.
+
+Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared within
+the range of his vision; and, as if to escape from this solitude,
+he absorbed himself in his melancholy. The vague consciousness of
+a misdirected life given up to impulses whose memory left a
+bitter taste in his mouth was the first moral sentiment of his
+manhood. But at the same time he felt no remorse.  What should he
+regret? He had recognized no other virtue than intelligence, and
+had erected passions into duties. Both his intelligence and his
+passion were swallowed up easily in this great unbroken solitude
+of waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had robbed his will of
+all energy, for he had not slept seven hours in the seven days.
+His sadness was the sadness of a sceptical mind. He beheld the
+universe as a succession of incomprehensible images. Nostromo was
+dead. Everything had failed ignominiously. He no longer dared to
+think of Antonia. She had not survived. But if she survived he
+could not face her. And all exertion seemed senseless.
+
+On the tenth day, after a night spent without even dozing off
+once (it had occurred to him that Antonia could not possibly have
+ever loved a being so impalpable as himself), the solitude
+appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a
+tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands,
+without fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion
+whatever. Only towards the evening, in the comparative relief of
+coolness, he began to wish that this cord would snap. He imagined
+it snapping with a report as of a pistol--a sharp, full crack.
+And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that
+eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless
+nights in which the silence, remaining unbroken in the shape of a
+cord to which he hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless
+phrases, always the same but utterly incomprehensible, about
+Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an
+ironical and senseless buzzing. In the daytime he could look at
+the silence like a still cord stretched to breakingpoint, with
+his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a weight.
+
+"I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell," he asked
+himself.
+
+The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt,
+dirty, white-faced, and looked at it with his red-rimmed eyes.
+His limbs obeyed him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without
+tremor; and the effect of that physical condition gave to his
+movements an unhesitating, deliberate dignity. He acted as if
+accomplishing some sort of rite. He descended into the gully; for
+the fascination of all that silver, with its potential power,
+survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the belt with the
+revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his waist.
+The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let
+him fall and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was
+looking at the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea!
+His aspect was that of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on
+his knees slowly and went on grubbing with his fingers with
+industrious patience till he uncovered one of the boxes. Without
+a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it
+open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He
+covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the
+gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish.
+
+It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the
+dinghy near the water with an idea of rowing away somewhere, but
+had desisted partly at the whisper of lingering hope that
+Nostromo would return, partly from conviction of utter
+uselessness of all effort.  Now she wanted only a slight shove to
+be set afloat.  He had eaten a little every day after the first,
+and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up the oars
+slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that
+stood behind him warm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life,
+bathed in a rich light from head to foot as if in a radiance of
+hope and joy. He pulled straight towards the setting sun. When
+the gulf had grown dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls
+in. The hollow clatter they made in falling was the loudest noise
+he had ever heard in his life. It was a revelation. It seemed to
+recall him from far away, Actually the thought, "Perhaps I may
+sleep to-night," passed through his mind. But he did not believe
+it.  He believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on the
+thwart.
+
+The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into his unwinking
+eyes. After a clear daybreak the sun appeared splendidly above
+the peaks of the range.  The great gulf burst into a glitter all
+around the boat; and in this glory of merciless solitude the
+silence appeared again before him, stretched taut like a dark,
+thin string.
+
+His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted his seat
+from the thwart to the gunwale. They looked at it fixedly, while
+his hand, feeling about his waist, unbuttoned the flap of the
+leather case, drew the revolver, cocked it, brought it forward
+pointing at his breast, pulled the trigger, and, with convulsive
+force, sent the still-smoking weapon hurtling through the air.
+His eyes looked at it while he fell forward and hung with his
+breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his right hand hooked
+under the thwart. They looked----
+
+"It is done," he stammered out, in a sudden flow of blood. His
+last thought was: "I wonder how that Capataz died." The stiffness
+of the fingers relaxed, and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled
+overboard without having heard the cord of silence snap in the
+solitude of the Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface remained
+untroubled by the fall of his body.
+
+A victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the retribution
+meted out to intellectual audacity, the brilliant Don Martin
+Decoud, weighted by the bars of San Tome silver, disappeared
+without a trace, swallowed up in the immense indifference of
+things. His sleepless, crouching figure was gone from the side of
+the San Tome silver; and for a time the spirits of good and evil
+that hover near every concealed treasure of the earth might have
+thought that this one had been forgotten by all mankind. Then,
+after a few days, another form appeared striding away from the
+setting sun to sit motionless and awake in the narrow black gully
+all through the night, in nearly the same pose, in the same place
+in which had sat that other sleepless man who had gone away for
+ever so quietly in a small boat, about the time of sunset. And
+the spirits of good and evil that hover about a forbidden
+treasure understood well that the silver of San Tome was provided
+now with a faithful and lifelong slave.
+
+The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of the disenchanted
+vanity which is the reward of audacious action, sat in the weary
+pose of a hunted outcast through a night of sleeplessness as
+tormenting as any known to Decoud, his companion in the most
+desperate affair of his life. And he wondered how Decoud had
+died. But he knew the part he had played himself.  First a woman,
+then a man, abandoned both in their last extremity, for the sake
+of this accursed treasure.  It was paid for by a soul lost and by
+a vanished life.  The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by a
+gust of immense pride. There was no one in the world but Gian'
+Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptible and
+faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price.
+
+He had made up his mind that nothing should be allowed now to rob
+him of his bargain. Nothing. Decoud had died. But how? That he
+was dead he had not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . .
+What for? Did he mean to come for more--some other time?
+
+The treasure was putting forth its latent power.  It troubled the
+clear mind of the man who had paid the price. He was sure that
+Decoud was dead. The island seemed full of that whisper. Dead!
+Gone!  And he caught himself listening for the swish of bushes
+and the splash of the footfalls in the bed of the brook.  Dead!
+The talker, the novio of Dona Antonia!
+
+"Ha!" he murmured, with his head on his knees, under the livid
+clouded dawn breaking over the liberated Sulaco and upon the gulf
+as gray as ashes. "It is to her that he will fly. To her that he
+will fly!"
+
+And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to cast a spell,
+like the angry woman who had prophesied remorse and failure, and
+yet had laid upon him the task of saving the children? Well, he
+had saved the children. He had defeated the spell of poverty and
+starvation. He had done it all alone--or perhaps helped by the
+devil. Who cared? He had done it, betrayed as he was, and saving
+by the same stroke the San Tome mine, which appeared to him
+hateful and immense, lording it by its vast wealth over the
+valour, the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and peace,
+over the labours of the town, the sea, and the Campo.
+
+The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cordillera.  The
+Capataz looked down for a time upon the fall of loose earth,
+stones, and smashed bushes, concealing the hiding-place of the
+silver.
+
+"I must grow rich very slowly," he meditated, aloud.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+SULACO outstripped Nostromo's prudence, growing rich swiftly on
+the hidden treasures of the earth, hovered over by the anxious
+spirits of good and evil, torn out by the labouring hands of the
+people. It was like a second youth, like a new life, full of
+promise, of unrest, of toil, scattering lavishly its wealth to
+the four corners of an excited world. Material changes swept
+along in the train of material interests. And other changes more
+subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds and hearts of the
+workers. Captain Mitchell had gone home to live on his savings
+invested in the San Tome mine; and Dr. Monygham had grown older,
+with his head steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his
+face, living on the inexhaustible treasure of his devotion drawn
+upon in the secret of his heart like a store of unlawful wealth.
+
+The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose maintenance is a
+charge upon the Gould Concession), Official Adviser on Sanitation
+to the Municipality, Chief Medical Officer of the San Tome
+Consolidated Mines (whose territory, containing gold, silver,
+copper, lead, cobalt, extends for miles along the foot-hills of
+the Cordillera), had felt poverty-stricken, miserable, and
+starved during the prolonged, second visit the Goulds paid to
+Europe and the United States of America.  Intimate of the casa,
+proved friend, a bachelor without ties and without establishment
+(except of the professional sort), he had been asked to take up
+his quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months of
+their absence the familiar rooms, recalling at every glance the
+woman to whom he had given all his loyalty, had grown
+intolerable. As the day approached for the arrival of the mail
+boat Hermes (the latest addition to the O. S. N. Co.'s splendid
+fleet), the doctor hobbled about more vivaciously, snapped more
+sardonically at simple and gentle out of sheer nervousness.
+
+He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with fury, with
+enthusiasm, and saw it carried out past the old porter at the
+gate of the Casa Gould with delight, with intoxication; then, as
+the hour approached, sitting alone in the great landau behind the
+white mules, a little sideways, his drawn-in face positively
+venomous with the effort of self-control, and holding a pair of
+new gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour.
+
+His heart dilated within him so, when he saw the Goulds on the
+deck of the Hermes, that his greetings were reduced to a casual
+mutter. Driving back to town, all three were silent. And in the
+patio the doctor, in a more natural manner, said--
+
+"I'll leave you now to yourselves. I'll call to-morrow if I may?"
+
+"Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come early," said Mrs.
+Gould, in her travelling dress and her veil down, turning to look
+at him at the foot of the stairs; while at the top of the flight
+the Madonna, in blue robes and the Child on her arm, seemed to
+welcome her with an aspect of pitying tenderness.
+
+"Don't expect to find me at home," Charles Gould warned him.
+"I'll be off early to the mine."
+
+After lunch, Dona Emilia and the senor doctor came slowly through
+the inner gateway of the patio. The large gardens of the Casa
+Gould, surrounded by high walls, and the red-tile slopes of
+neighbouring roofs, lay open before them, with masses of shade
+under the trees and level surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. A
+triple row of old orange trees surrounded the whole. Barefooted,
+brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts and wide calzoneras,
+dotted the grounds, squatting over flowerbeds, passing between
+the trees, dragging slender India-rubber tubes across the gravel
+of the paths; and the fine jets of water crossed each other in
+graceful curves, sparkling in the sunshine with a slight
+pattering noise upon the bushes, and an effect of showered
+diamonds upon the grass.
+
+Dona Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress, walked by the
+side of Dr. Monygham, in a longish black coat and severe black
+bow on an immaculate shirtfront.  Under a shady clump of trees,
+where stood scattered little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs.
+Gould sat down in a low and ample seat.
+
+"Don't go yet," she said to Dr. Monygham, who was unable to tear
+himself away from the spot. His chin nestling within the points
+of his collar, he devoured her stealthily with his eyes, which,
+luckily, were round and hard like clouded marbles, and incapable
+of disclosing his sentiments. His pitying emotion at the marks of
+time upon the face of that woman, the air of frailty and weary
+fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and temples of the
+"Never-tired Senora" (as Don Pepe years ago used to call her with
+admiration), touched him almost to tears. "Don't go yet. To-day
+is all my own," Mrs. Gould urged, gently. "We are not back yet
+officially. No one will come. It's only to-morrow that the
+windows of the Casa Gould are to be lit up for a reception."
+
+The doctor dropped into a chair.
+
+"Giving a tertulia?" he said, with a detached air.
+
+"A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to come."
+
+"And only to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the mine, and so
+I----It would be good to have him to myself for one evening on
+our return to this house I love.  It has seen all my life."
+
+"Ah, yes!" snarled the doctor, suddenly. "Women count time from
+the marriage feast. Didn't you live a little before?"
+
+"Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no cares."
+
+Mrs. Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long separation,
+will revert to the most agitated period of their lives, they
+began to talk of the Sulaco Revolution.  It seemed strange to
+Mrs. Gould that people who had taken part in it seemed to forget
+its memory and its lesson.
+
+"And yet," struck in the doctor, "we who played our part in it
+had our reward. Don Pepe, though superannuated, still can sit a
+horse. Barrios is drinking himself to death in jovial company
+away somewhere on his fundacion beyond the Bolson de Tonoro. And
+the heroic Father Roman--I imagine the old padre blowing up
+systematically the San Tome mine, uttering a pious exclamation at
+every bang, and taking handfuls of snuff between the
+explosions--the heroic Padre Roman says that he is not afraid of
+the harm Holroyd's missionaries can do to his flock, as long as
+he is alive."
+
+Mrs. Gould shuddered a little at the allusion to the destruction
+that had come so near to the San Tome mine.
+
+"Ah, but you, dear friend?"
+
+"I did the work I was fit for."
+
+"You faced the most cruel dangers of all. Something more than
+death."
+
+"No, Mrs. Gould! Only death--by hanging. And I am rewarded beyond
+my deserts."
+
+Noticing Mrs. Gould's gaze fixed upon him, he dropped his eyes.
+
+"I've made my career--as you see," said the Inspector-General of
+State Hospitals, taking up lightly the lapels of his superfine
+black coat. The doctor's self-respect marked inwardly by the
+almost complete disappearance from his dreams of Father Beron
+appeared visibly in what, by contrast with former carelessness,
+seemed an immoderate cult of personal appearance.  Carried out
+within severe limits of form and colour, and in perpetual
+freshness, this change of apparel gave to Dr. Monygham an air at
+the same time professional and festive; while his gait and the
+unchanged crabbed character of his face acquired from it a
+startling force of incongruity.
+
+"Yes," he went on. "We all had our rewards--the
+engineer-in-chief, Captain Mitchell----"
+
+"We saw him," interrupted Mrs. Gould, in her charming voice. "The
+poor dear man came up from the country on purpose to call on us
+in our hotel in London. He comported himself with great dignity,
+but I fancy he regrets Sulaco. He rambled feebly about
+'historical events' till I felt I could have a cry."
+
+"H'm," grunted the doctor; "getting old, I suppose.  Even
+Nostromo is getting older--though he is not changed. And,
+speaking of that fellow, I wanted to tell you something----"
+
+For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of agitation.
+Suddenly the two gardeners, busy with rose trees at the side of
+the garden arch, fell upon their knees with bowed heads on the
+passage of Antonia Avellanos, who appeared walking beside her
+uncle.
+
+Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome, where he
+had been invited by the Propaganda, Father Corbelan, missionary
+to the wild Indians, conspirator, friend and patron of Hernandez
+the robber, advanced with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning
+forward, with his powerful hands clasped behind his back. The
+first Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco had preserved his fanatical
+and morose air; the aspect of a chaplain of bandits.  It was
+believed that his unexpected elevation to the purple was a
+counter-move to the Protestant invasion of Sulaco organized by
+the Holroyd Missionary Fund.  Antonia, the beauty of her face as
+if a little blurred, her figure slightly fuller, advanced with
+her light walk and her high serenity, smiling from a distance at
+Mrs.  Gould. She had brought her uncle over to see dear Emilia,
+without ceremony, just for a moment before the siesta.
+
+When all were seated again, Dr. Monygham, who had come to dislike
+heartily everybody who approached Mrs. Gould with any intimacy,
+kept aside, pretending to be lost in profound meditation. A
+louder phrase of Antonia made him lift his head.
+
+"How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, those who have
+been our countrymen only a few years ago, who are our countrymen
+now?" Miss Avellanos was saying.  "How can we remain blind, and
+deaf without pity to the cruel wrongs suffered by our brothers?
+There is a remedy."
+
+"Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and prosperity of
+Sulaco," snapped the doctor. "There is no other remedy."
+
+"I am convinced, senor doctor," Antonia said, with the earnest
+calm of invincible resolution, "that this was from the first poor
+Martin's intention."
+
+"Yes, but the material interests will not let you jeopardize
+their development for a mere idea of pity and justice," the
+doctor muttered grumpily. "And it is just as well perhaps."
+
+The Cardinal-Archbishop straightened up his gaunt, bony frame.
+
+"We have worked for them; we have made them, these material
+interests of the foreigners," the last of the Corbelans uttered
+in a deep, denunciatory tone.
+
+"And without them you are nothing," cried the doctor from the
+distance. "They will not let you."
+
+"Let them beware, then, lest the people, prevented from their
+aspirations, should rise and claim their share of the wealth and
+their share of the power," the popular Cardinal-Archbishop of
+Sulaco declared, significantly, menacingly.
+
+A silence ensued, during which his Eminence stared, frowning at
+the ground, and Antonia, graceful and rigid in her chair,
+breathed calmly in the strength of her convictions.  Then the
+conversation took a social turn, touching on the visit of the
+Goulds to Europe. The Cardinal-Archbishop, when in Rome, had
+suffered from neuralgia in the head all the time. It was the
+climate--the bad air.
+
+When uncle and niece had gone away, with the servants again
+falling on their knees, and the old porter, who had known Henry
+Gould, almost totally blind and impotent now, creeping up to kiss
+his Eminence's extended hand, Dr. Monygham, looking after them,
+pronounced the one word--
+
+"Incorrigible!"
+
+Mrs. Gould, with a look upwards, dropped wearily on her lap her
+white hands flashing with the gold and stones of many rings.
+
+"Conspiring. Yes!" said the doctor. "The last of the Avellanos
+and the last of the Corbelans are conspiring with the refugees
+from Sta. Marta that flock here after every revolution. The Cafe
+Lambroso at the corner of the Plaza is full of them; you can hear
+their chatter across the street like the noise of a parrothouse.
+They are conspiring for the invasion of Costaguana.  And do you
+know where they go for strength, for the necessary force? To the
+secret societies amongst immigrants and natives, where
+Nostromo--I should say Captain Fidanza--is the great man. What
+gives him that position? Who can say? Genius? He has genius. He
+is greater with the populace than ever he was before. It is as if
+he had some secret power; some mysterious means to keep up his
+influence. He holds conferences with the Archbishop, as in those
+old days which you and I remember. Barrios is useless.  But for a
+military head they have the pious Hernandez.  And they may raise
+the country with the new cry of the wealth for the people."
+
+"Will there be never any peace? Will there be no rest?" Mrs.
+Gould whispered. "I thought that we----"
+
+"No!" interrupted the doctor. "There is no peace and no rest in
+the development of material interests.  They have their law, and
+their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman;
+it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force
+that can be found only in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time
+approaches when all that the Gould Concession stands for shall
+weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism, cruelty, and
+misrule of a few years back."
+
+"How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?" she cried out, as if hurt
+in the most sensitive place of her soul.
+
+"I can say what is true," the doctor insisted, obstinately.
+"It'll weigh as heavily, and provoke resentment, bloodshed, and
+vengeance, because the men have grown different. Do you think
+that now the mine would march upon the town to save their Senor
+Administrador?  Do you think that?"
+
+She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her eyes and
+murmured hopelessly--
+
+"Is it this we have worked for, then?"
+
+The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her silent thought.
+Was it for this that her life had been robbed of all the intimate
+felicities of daily affection which her tenderness needed as the
+human body needs air to breathe? And the doctor, indignant with
+Charles Gould's blindness, hastened to change the conversation.
+
+"It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you.  Ah! that
+fellow has some continuity and force. Nothing will put an end to
+him. But never mind that.  There's something inexplicable going
+on--or perhaps only too easy to explain. You know, Linda is
+practically the lighthouse keeper of the Great Isabel light.  The
+Garibaldino is too old now. His part is to clean the lamps and to
+cook in the house; but he can't get up the stairs any longer. The
+black-eyed Linda sleeps all day and watches the light all night.
+Not all day, though. She is up towards five in the afternoon,
+when our Nostromo, whenever he is in harbour with his schooner,
+comes out on his courting visit, pulling in a small boat."
+
+"Aren't they married yet?" Mrs. Gould asked.  "The mother wished
+it, as far as I can understand, while Linda was yet quite a
+child. When I had the girls with me for a year or so during the
+War of Separation, that extraordinary Linda used to declare quite
+simply that she was going to be Gian' Battista's wife."
+
+"They are not married yet," said the doctor, curtly.  "I have
+looked after them a little."
+
+"Thank you, dear Dr. Monygham," said Mrs.  Gould; and under the
+shade of the big trees her little, even teeth gleamed in a
+youthful smile of gentle malice.  "People don't know how really
+good you are. You will not let them know, as if on purpose to
+annoy me, who have put my faith in your good heart long ago."
+
+The doctor, with a lifting up of his upper lip, as though he were
+longing to bite, bowed stiffly in his chair.  With the utter
+absorption of a man to whom love comes late, not as the most
+splendid of illusions, but like an enlightening and priceless
+misfortune, the sight of that woman (of whom he had been deprived
+for nearly a year) suggested ideas of adoration, of kissing the
+hem of her robe. And this excess of feeling translated itself
+naturally into an augmented grimness of speech.
+
+"I am afraid of being overwhelmed by too much gratitude. However,
+these people interest me. I went out several times to the Great
+Isabel light to look after old Giorgio."
+
+He did not tell Mrs. Gould that it was because he found there, in
+her absence, the relief of an atmosphere of congenial sentiment
+in old Giorgio's austere admiration for the "English signora--the
+benefactress"; in black-eyed Linda's voluble, torrential,
+passionate affection for "our Dona Emilia--that angel"; in the
+white-throated, fair Giselle's adoring upward turn of the eyes,
+which then glided towards him with a sidelong, half-arch,
+half-candid glance, which made the doctor exclaim to himself
+mentally, "If I weren't what I am, old and ugly, I would think
+the minx is making eyes at me. And perhaps she is. I dare say she
+would make eyes at anybody." Dr. Monygham said nothing of this to
+Mrs. Gould, the providence of the Viola family, but reverted to
+what he called "our great Nostromo."
+
+"What I wanted to tell you is this: Our great Nostromo did not
+take much notice of the old man and the children for some years.
+It's true, too, that he was away on his coasting voyages
+certainly ten months out of the twelve. He was making his
+fortune, as he told Captain Mitchell once. He seems to have done
+uncommonly well. It was only to be expected. He is a man full of
+resource, full of confidence in himself, ready to take chances
+and risks of every sort. I remember being in Mitchell's office
+one day, when he came in with that calm, grave air he always
+carries everywhere. He had been away trading in the Gulf of
+California, he said, looking straight past us at the wall, as his
+manner is, and was glad to see on his return that a lighthouse
+was being built on the cliff of the Great Isabel. Very glad, he
+repeated. Mitchell explained that it was the O. S. N. Co. who was
+building it, for the convenience of the mail service, on his own
+advice. Captain Fidanza was good enough to say that it was
+excellent advice. I remember him twisting up his moustaches and
+looking all round the cornice of the room before he proposed that
+old Giorgio should be made the keeper of that light."
+
+"I heard of this. I was consulted at the time," Mrs.  Gould said.
+"I doubted whether it would be good for these girls to be shut up
+on that island as if in a prison."
+
+"The proposal fell in with the old Garibaldino's humour. As to
+Linda, any place was lovely and delightful enough for her as long
+as it was Nostromo's suggestion.  She could wait for her Gian'
+Battista's good pleasure there as well as anywhere else. My
+opinion is that she was always in love with that incorruptible
+Capataz. Moreover, both father and sister were anxious to get
+Giselle away from the attentions of a certain Ramirez."
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Gould, interested. "Ramirez?  What sort of man is
+that?"
+
+"Just a mozo of the town. His father was a Cargador.  As a lanky
+boy he ran about the wharf in rags, till Nostromo took him up and
+made a man of him.  When he got a little older, he put him into a
+lighter and very soon gave him charge of the No. 3 boat--the boat
+which took the silver away, Mrs. Gould. Nostromo selected that
+lighter for the work because she was the best sailing and the
+strongest boat of all the Company's fleet. Young Ramirez was one
+of the five Cargadores entrusted with the removal of the treasure
+from the Custom House on that famous night. As the boat he had
+charge of was sunk, Nostromo, on leaving the Company's service,
+recommended him to Captain Mitchell for his successor. He had
+trained him in the routine of work perfectly, and thus Mr.
+Ramirez, from a starving waif, becomes a man and the Capataz of
+the Sulaco Cargadores."
+
+"Thanks to Nostromo," said Mrs. Gould, with warm approval.
+
+"Thanks to Nostromo," repeated Dr. Monygham.  "Upon my word, the
+fellow's power frightens me when I think of it. That our poor old
+Mitchell was only too glad to appoint somebody trained to the
+work, who saved him trouble, is not surprising. What is wonderful
+is the fact that the Sulaco Cargadores accepted Ramirez for their
+chief, simply because such was Nostromo's good pleasure. Of
+course, he is not a second Nostromo, as he fondly imagined he
+would be; but still, the position was brilliant enough. It
+emboldened him to make up to Giselle Viola, who, you know, is the
+recognized beauty of the town. The old Garibaldino, however, took
+a violent dislike to him. I don't know why. Perhaps because he
+was not a model of perfection like his Gian' Battista, the
+incarnation of the courage, the fidelity, the honour of 'the
+people.' Signor Viola does not think much of Sulaco natives. Both
+of them, the old Spartan and that white-faced Linda, with her red
+mouth and coal-black eyes, were looking rather fiercely after the
+fair one. Ramirez was warned off. Father Viola, I am told,
+threatened him with his gun once."
+
+"But what of Giselle herself?" asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+"She's a bit of a flirt, I believe," said the doctor. "I don't
+think she cared much one way or another. Of course she likes
+men's attentions. Ramirez was not the only one, let me tell you,
+Mrs. Gould. There was one engineer, at least, on the railway
+staff who got warned off with a gun, too. Old Viola does not
+allow any trifling with his honour. He has grown uneasy and
+suspicious since his wife died. He was very pleased to remove his
+youngest girl away from the town. But look what happens, Mrs.
+Gould. Ramirez, the honest, lovelorn swain, is forbidden the
+island. Very well.  He respects the prohibition, but naturally
+turns his eyes frequently towards the Great Isabel. It seems as
+though he had been in the habit of gazing late at night upon the
+light. And during these sentimental vigils he discovers that
+Nostromo, Captain Fidanza that is, returns very late from his
+visits to the Violas. As late as midnight at times."
+
+The doctor paused and stared meaningly at Mrs.  Gould.
+
+"Yes. But I don't understand," she began, looking puzzled.
+
+"Now comes the strange part," went on Dr. Monygham.  "Viola, who
+is king on his island, will allow no visitor on it after dark.
+Even Captain Fidanza has got to leave after sunset, when Linda
+has gone up to tend the light. And Nostromo goes away obediently.
+But what happens afterwards? What does he do in the gulf between
+half-past six and midnight? He has been seen more than once at
+that late hour pulling quietly into the harbour. Ramirez is
+devoured by jealousy.  He dared not approach old Viola; but he
+plucked up courage to rail at Linda about it on Sunday morning as
+she came on the mainland to hear mass and visit her mother's
+grave. There was a scene on the wharf, which, as a matter of
+fact, I witnessed. It was early morning.  He must have been
+waiting for her on purpose. I was there by the merest chance,
+having been called to an urgent consultation by the doctor of the
+German gunboat in the harbour. She poured wrath, scorn, and flame
+upon Ramirez, who seemed out of his mind. It was a strange sight,
+Mrs. Gould: the long jetty, with this raving Cargador in his
+crimson sash and the girl all in black, at the end; the early
+Sunday morning quiet of the harbour in the shade of the
+mountains; nothing but a canoe or two moving between the ships at
+anchor, and the German gunboat's gig coming to take me off. Linda
+passed me within a foot. I noticed her wild eyes. I called out to
+her. She never heard me. She never saw me. But I looked at her
+face. It was awful in its anger and wretchedness."
+
+Mrs. Gould sat up, opening her eyes very wide.
+
+"What do you mean, Dr. Monygham? Do you mean to say that you
+suspect the younger sister?"
+
+"Quien sabe! Who can tell?" said the doctor, shrugging his
+shoulders like a born Costaguanero.  "Ramirez came up to me on
+the wharf. He reeled--he looked insane. He took his head into his
+hands. He had to talk to someone--simply had to. Of course for
+all his mad state he recognized me. People know me well here. I
+have lived too long amongst them to be anything else but the
+evil-eyed doctor, who can cure all the ills of the flesh, and
+bring bad luck by a glance.  He came up to me. He tried to be
+calm. He tried to make it out that he wanted merely to warn me
+against Nostromo. It seems that Captain Fidanza at some secret
+meeting or other had mentioned me as the worst despiser of all
+the poor--of the people. It's very possible. He honours me with
+his undying dislike.  And a word from the great Fidanza may be
+quite enough to send some fool's knife into my back. The Sanitary
+Commission I preside over is not in favour with the populace.
+'Beware of him, senor doctor. Destroy him, senor doctor,' Ramirez
+hissed right into my face.  And then he broke out. 'That man,' he
+spluttered, 'has cast a spell upon both these girls.' As to
+himself, he had said too much. He must run away now--run away and
+hide somewhere. He moaned tenderly about Giselle, and then called
+her names that cannot be repeated.  If he thought she could be
+made to love him by any means, he would carry her off from the
+island.  Off into the woods. But it was no good. . . . He strode
+away, flourishing his arms above his head. Then I noticed an old
+negro, who had been sitting behind a pile of cases, fishing from
+the wharf. He wound up his lines and slunk away at once. But he
+must have heard something, and must have talked, too, because
+some of the old Garibaldino's railway friends, I suppose, warned
+him against Ramirez. At any rate, the father has been warned. But
+Ramirez has disappeared from the town."
+
+"I feel I have a duty towards these girls," said Mrs.  Gould,
+uneasily. "Is Nostromo in Sulaco now?"
+
+"He is, since last Sunday."
+
+"He ought to be spoken to--at once."
+
+"Who will dare speak to him? Even the love-mad Ramirez runs away
+from the mere shadow of Captain Fidanza."
+
+"I can. I will," Mrs. Gould declared. "A word will be enough for
+a man like Nostromo."
+
+The doctor smiled sourly.
+
+"He must end this situation which lends itself to----I can't
+believe it of that child," pursued Mrs. Gould.
+
+"He's very attractive," muttered the doctor, gloomily.
+
+"He'll see it, I am sure. He must put an end to all this by
+marrying Linda at once," pronounced the first lady of Sulaco with
+immense decision.
+
+Through the garden gate emerged Basilio, grown fat and sleek,
+with an elderly hairless face, wrinkles at the corners of his
+eyes, and his jet-black, coarse hair plastered down smoothly.
+Stooping carefully behind an ornamental clump of bushes, he put
+down with precaution a small child he had been carrying on his
+shoulder--his own and Leonarda's last born. The pouting, spoiled
+Camerista and the head mozo of the Casa Gould had been married
+for some years now.
+
+He remained squatting on his heels for a time, gazing fondly at
+his offspring, which returned his stare with imperturbable
+gravity; then, solemn and respectable, walked down the path.
+
+"What is it, Basilio?" asked Mrs. Gould.
+
+"A telephone came through from the office of the mine. The master
+remains to sleep at the mountain to-night."
+
+Dr. Monygham had got up and stood looking away.  A profound
+silence reigned for a time under the shade of the biggest trees
+in the lovely gardens of the Casa Gould.
+
+"Very well, Basilio," said Mrs. Gould. She watched him walk away
+along the path, step aside behind the flowering bush, and
+reappear with the child seated on his shoulder. He passed through
+the gateway between the garden and the patio with measured steps,
+careful of his light burden.
+
+The doctor, with his back to Mrs. Gould, contemplated a
+flower-bed away in the sunshine. People believed him scornful and
+soured. The truth of his nature consisted in his capacity for
+passion and in the sensitiveness of his temperament. What he
+lacked was the polished callousness of men of the world, the
+callousness from which springs an easy tolerance for oneself and
+others; the tolerance wide as poles asunder from true sympathy
+and human compassion. This want of callousness accounted for his
+sardonic turn of mind and his biting speeches.
+
+In profound silence, and glaring viciously at the brilliant
+flower-bed, Dr. Monygham poured mental imprecations on Charles
+Gould's head. Behind him the immobility of Mrs. Gould added to
+the grace of her seated figure the charm of art, of an attitude
+caught and interpreted for ever. Turning abruptly, the doctor
+took his leave.
+
+Mrs. Gould leaned back in the shade of the big trees planted in a
+circle. She leaned back with her eyes closed and her white hands
+lying idle on the arms of her seat. The half-light under the
+thick mass of leaves brought out the youthful prettiness of her
+face; made the clear, light fabrics and white lace of her dress
+appear luminous. Small and dainty, as if radiating a light of her
+own in the deep shade of the interlaced boughs, she resembled a
+good fairy, weary with a long career of well-doing, touched by
+the withering suspicion of the uselessness of her labours, the
+powerlessness of her magic.
+
+Had anybody asked her of what she was thinking, alone in the
+garden of the Casa, with her husband at the mine and the house
+closed to the street like an empty dwelling, her frankness would
+have had to evade the question. It had come into her mind that
+for life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the
+past and of the future in every passing moment of the present.
+Our daily work must be done to the glory of the dead, and for the
+good of those who come after. She thought that, and sighed
+without opening her eyes--without moving at all. Mrs. Gould's
+face became set and rigid for a second, as if to receive, without
+flinching, a great wave of loneliness that swept over her head.
+And it came into her mind, too, that no one would ever ask her
+with solicitude what she was thinking of. No one.  No one, but
+perhaps the man who had just gone away.  No; no one who could be
+answered with careless sincerity in the ideal perfection of
+confidence.
+
+The word "incorrigible"--a word lately pronounced by Dr.
+Monygham--floated into her still and sad immobility.
+Incorrigible in his devotion to the great silver mine was the
+Senor Administrador! Incorrigible in his hard, determined service
+of the material interests to which he had pinned his faith in the
+triumph of order and justice. Poor boy! She had a clear vision of
+the grey hairs on his temples. He was perfect--perfect.  What
+more could she have expected? It was a colossal and lasting
+success; and love was only a short moment of forgetfulness, a
+short intoxication, whose delight one remembered with a sense of
+sadness, as if it had been a deep grief lived through. There was
+something inherent in the necessities of successful action which
+carried with it the moral degradation of the idea.  She saw the
+San Tome mountain hanging over the Campo, over the whole land,
+feared, hated, wealthy; more soulless than any tyrant, more
+pitiless and autocratic than the worst Government; ready to crush
+innumerable lives in the expansion of its greatness.  He did not
+see it. He could not see it. It was not his fault. He was
+perfect, perfect; but she would never have him to herself. Never;
+not for one short hour altogether to herself in this old Spanish
+house she loved so well! Incorrigible, the last of the Corbelans,
+the last of the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw
+clearly the San Tome mine possessing, consuming, burning up the
+life of the last of the Costaguana Goulds; mastering the
+energetic spirit of the son as it had mastered the lamentable
+weakness of the father. A terrible success for the last of the
+Goulds. The last! She had hoped for a long, long time, that
+perhaps----But no!  There were to be no more. An immense
+desolation, the dread of her own continued life, descended upon
+the first lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself
+surviving alone the degradation of her young ideal of life, of
+love, of work--all alone in the Treasure House of the World. The
+profound, blind, suffering expression of a painful dream settled
+on her face with its closed eyes. In the indistinct voice of an
+unlucky sleeper.  lying passive in the grip of a merciless
+nightmare, she stammered out aimlessly the words--
+
+"Material interest."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+NOSTROMO had been growing rich very slowly. It was an effect of
+his prudence. He could command himself even when thrown off his
+balance. And to become the slave of a treasure with full
+self-knowledge is an occurrence rare and mentally disturbing. But
+it was also in a great part because of the difficulty of
+converting it into a form in which it could become available. The
+mere act of getting it away from the island piecemeal, little by
+little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the dangers of
+imminent detection. He had to visit the Great Isabel in secret,
+between his voyages along the coast, which were the ostensible
+source of his fortune.  The crew of his own schooner were to be
+feared as if they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He
+did not dare stay too long in port. When his coaster was
+unloaded, he hurried away on another trip, for he feared arousing
+suspicion even by a day's delay.  Sometimes during a week's stay,
+or more, he could only manage one visit to the treasure. And that
+was all. A couple of ingots. He suffered through his fears as
+much as through his prudence. To do things by stealth humiliated
+him. And he suffered most from the concentration of his thought
+upon the treasure.
+
+A transgression, a crime, entering a man's existence, eats it up
+like a malignant growth, consumes it like a fever. Nostromo had
+lost his peace; the genuineness of all his qualities was
+destroyed. He felt it himself, and often cursed the silver of San
+Tome. His courage, his magnificence, his leisure, his work,
+everything was as before, only everything was a sham. But the
+treasure was real. He clung to it with a more tenacious, mental
+grip. But he hated the feel of the ingots.  Sometimes, after
+putting away a couple of them in his cabin--the fruit of a secret
+night expedition to the Great Isabel--he would look fixedly at
+his fingers, as if surprised they had left no stain on his skin.
+
+He had found means of disposing of the silver bars in distant
+ports. The necessity to go far afield made his coasting voyages
+long, and caused his visits to the Viola household to be rare and
+far between. He was fated to have his wife from there. He had
+said so once to Giorgio himself. But the Garibaldino had put the
+subject aside with a majestic wave of his hand, clutching a
+smouldering black briar-root pipe. There was plenty of time; he
+was not the man to force his girls upon anybody.
+
+As time went on, Nostromo discovered his preference for the
+younger of the two. They had some profound similarities of
+nature, which must exist for complete confidence and
+understanding, no matter what outward differences of temperament
+there may be to exercise their own fascination of contrast. His
+wife would have to know his secret or else life would be
+impossible.  He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid gaze
+and white throat, pliable, silent, fond of excitement under her
+quiet indolence; whereas Linda, with her intense, passionately
+pale face, energetic, all fire and words, touched with gloom and
+scorn, a chip of the old block, true daughter of the austere
+republican, but with Teresa's voice, inspired him with a
+deep-seated mistrust.  Moreover, the poor girl could not conceal
+her love for Gian' Battista. He could see it would be violent,
+exacting, suspicious, uncompromising--like her soul.  Giselle, by
+her fair but warm beauty, by the surface placidity of her nature
+holding a promise of submissiveness, by the charm of her girlish
+mysteriousness, excited his passion and allayed his fears as to
+the future.
+
+His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning from the longest
+of them, he made out lighters loaded with blocks of stone lying
+under the cliff of the Great Isabel; cranes and scaffolding
+above; workmen's figures moving about, and a small lighthouse
+already rising from its foundations on the edge of the cliff.
+
+At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he thought
+himself lost irretrievably. What could save him from detection
+now? Nothing! He was struck with amazed dread at this turn of
+chance, that would kindle a far-reaching light upon the only
+secret spot of his life; that life whose very essence, value,
+reality, consisted in its reflection from the admiring eyes of
+men. All of it but that thing which was beyond common
+comprehension; which stood between him and the power that hears
+and gives effect to the evil intention of curses. It was dark.
+Not every man had such a darkness. And they were going to put a
+light there. A light! He saw it shining upon disgrace, poverty,
+contempt. Somebody was sure to. . . .  Perhaps somebody had
+already. . . .
+
+The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared
+Captain Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a
+republican like old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in
+another manner), was on the point of jumping overboard from the
+deck of his own schooner. That man, subjective almost to
+insanity, looked suicide deliberately in the face. But he never
+lost his head. He was checked by the thought that this was no
+escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace, the shame
+going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine
+himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his
+own existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to
+grasp the notion of finality. The earth goes on for ever.
+
+And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it was as
+good for his purposes as the other kind.  He sailed close to the
+cliff of the Great Isabel, throwing a penetrating glance from the
+deck at the mouth of the ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth
+of bushes.  He sailed close enough to exchange hails with the
+workmen, shading their eyes on the edge of the sheer drop of the
+cliff overhung by the jib-head of a powerful crane.  He perceived
+that none of them had any occasion even to approach the ravine
+where the silver lay hidden; let alone to enter it. In the
+harbour he learned that no one slept on the island. The labouring
+gangs returned to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the
+empty lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the moment he had
+nothing to fear.
+
+But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper came to
+live in the cottage that was being built some hundred and fifty
+yards back from the low lighttower, and four hundred or so from
+the dark, shaded, jungly ravine, containing the secret of his
+safety, of his influence, of his magnificence, of his power over
+the future, of his defiance of ill-luck, of every possible
+betrayal from rich and poor alike--what then? He could never
+shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater than that of other
+men, had welded that vein of silver into his life. And the
+feeling of fearful and ardent subjection, the feeling of his
+slavery--so irremediable and profound that often, in his
+thoughts, he compared himself to the legendary Gringos, neither
+dead nor alive, bound down to their conquest of unlawful wealth
+on Azuera--weighed heavily on the independent Captain Fidanza,
+owner and master of a coasting schooner, whose smart appearance
+(and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well known along the
+western seaboard of a vast continent.
+
+Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in his walk,
+the vigour and symmetry of his powerful limbs lost in the
+vulgarity of a brown tweed suit, made by Jews in the slums of
+London, and sold by the clothing department of the Compania
+Anzani, Captain Fidanza was seen in the streets of Sulaco
+attending to his business, as usual, that trip. And, as usual, he
+allowed it to get about that he had made a great profit on his
+cargo. It was a cargo of salt fish, and Lent was approaching. He
+was seen in tramcars going to and fro between the town and the
+harbour; he talked with people in a cafe or two in his measured,
+steady voice.  Captain Fidanza was seen. The generation that
+would know nothing of the famous ride to Cayta was not born yet.
+
+Nostromo, the miscalled Capataz de Cargadores, had made for
+himself, under his rightful name, another public existence, but
+modified by the new conditions, less picturesque, more difficult
+to keep up in the increased size and varied population of Sulaco,
+the progressive capital of the Occidental Republic.
+
+Captain Fidanza, unpicturesque, but always a little mysterious,
+was recognized quite sufficiently under the lofty glass and iron
+roof of the Sulaco railway station.  He took a local train, and
+got out in Rincon, where he visited the widow of the Cargador who
+had died of his wounds (at the dawn of the New Era, like Don Jose
+Avellanos) in the patio of the Casa Gould. He consented to sit
+down and drink a glass of cool lemonade in the hut, while the
+woman, standing up, poured a perfect torrent of words to which he
+did not listen.  He left some money with her, as usual. The
+orphaned children, growing up and well schooled, calling him
+uncle, clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too; and in the
+doorway paused for a moment to look at the flat face of the San
+Tome mountain with a faint frown.  This slight contraction of his
+bronzed brow casting a marked tinge of severity upon his usual
+unbending expression, was observed at the Lodge which he attended
+--but went away before the banquet. He wore it at the meeting of
+some good comrades, Italians and Occidentals, assembled in his
+honour under the presidency of an indigent, sickly, somewhat
+hunchbacked little photographer, with a white face and a
+magnanimous soul dyed crimson by a bloodthirsty hate of all
+capitalists, oppressors of the two hemispheres. The heroic
+Giorgio Viola, old revolutionist, would have understood nothing
+of his opening speech; and Captain Fidanza, lavishly generous as
+usual to some poor comrades, made no speech at all. He had
+listened, frowning, with his mind far away, and walked off
+unapproachable, silent, like a man full of cares.
+
+His frown deepened as, in the early morning, he watched the
+stone-masons go off to the Great Isabel, in lighters loaded with
+squared blocks of stone, enough to add another course to the
+squat light-tower. That was the rate of the work. One course per
+day.
+
+And Captain Fidanza meditated. The presence of strangers on the
+island would cut him completely off the treasure. It had been
+difficult and dangerous enough before. He was afraid, and he was
+angry. He thought with the resolution of a master and the cunning
+of a cowed slave. Then he went ashore.
+
+He was a man of resource and ingenuity; and, as usual, the
+expedient he found at a critical moment was effective enough to
+alter the situation radically. He had the gift of evolving safety
+out of the very danger, this incomparable Nostromo, this "fellow
+in a thousand." With Giorgio established on the Great Isabel,
+there would be no need for concealment. He would be able to go
+openly, in daylight, to see his daughters--one of his
+daughters--and stay late talking to the old Garibaldino. Then in
+the dark . . . Night after night . . . He would dare to grow rich
+quicker now. He yearned to clasp, embrace, absorb, subjugate in
+unquestioned possession this treasure, whose tyranny had weighed
+upon his mind, his actions, his very sleep.
+
+He went to see his friend Captain Mitchell--and the thing was
+done as Dr. Monygham had related to Mrs.  Gould. When the project
+was mooted to the Garibaldino, something like the faint
+reflection, the dim ghost of a very ancient smile, stole under
+the white and enormous moustaches of the old hater of kings and
+ministers.  His daughters were the object of his anxious care.
+The younger, especially. Linda, with her mother's voice, had
+taken more her mother's place. Her deep, vibrating "Eh, Padre?"
+seemed, but for the change of the word, the very echo of the
+impassioned, remonstrating "Eh, Giorgio?" of poor Signora Teresa.
+It was his fixed opinion that the town was no proper place for
+his girls. The infatuated but guileless Ramirez was the object of
+his profound aversion, as resuming the sins of the country whose
+people were blind, vile esclavos.
+
+On his return from his next voyage, Captain Fidanza found the
+Violas settled in the light-keeper's cottage.  His knowledge of
+Giorgio's idiosyncrasies had not played him false. The
+Garibaldino had refused to entertain the idea of any companion
+whatever, except his girls. And Captain Mitchell, anxious to
+please his poor Nostromo, with that felicity of inspiration which
+only true affection can give, had formally appointed Linda Viola
+as under-keeper of the Isabel's Light.
+
+"The light is private property," he used to explain.  "It belongs
+to my Company. I've the power to nominate whom I like, and Viola
+it shall be. It's about the only thing Nostromo--a man worth his
+weight in gold, mind you--has ever asked me to do for him."
+
+Directly his schooner was anchored opposite the New Custom House,
+with its sham air of a Greek temple, flatroofed, with a
+colonnade, Captain Fidanza went pulling his small boat out of the
+harbour, bound for the Great Isabel, openly in the light of a
+declining day, before all men's eyes, with a sense of having
+mastered the fates. He must establish a regular position. He
+would ask him for his daughter now. He thought of Giselle as he
+pulled. Linda loved him, perhaps, but the old man would be glad
+to keep the elder, who had his wife's voice.
+
+He did not pull for the narrow strand where he had landed with
+Decoud, and afterwards alone on his first visit to the treasure.
+He made for the beach at the other end, and walked up the regular
+and gentle slope of the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom
+he saw from afar, sitting on a bench under the front wall of the
+cottage, lifted his arm slightly to his loud hail.  He walked up.
+Neither of the girls appeared.
+
+"It is good here," said the old man, in his austere, far-away
+manner.
+
+Nostromo nodded; then, after a short silence--
+
+"You saw my schooner pass in not two hours ago?  Do you know why
+I am here before, so to speak, my anchor has fairly bitten into
+the ground of this port of Sulaco?"
+
+"You are welcome like a son," the old man declared, quietly,
+staring away upon the sea.
+
+"Ah! thy son. I know. I am what thy son would have been. It is
+well, viejo. It is a very good welcome.  Listen, I have come to
+ask you for----"
+
+A sudden dread came upon the fearless and incorruptible Nostromo.
+He dared not utter the name in his mind. The slight pause only
+imparted a marked weight and solemnity to the changed end of the
+phrase.
+
+"For my wife!" . . . His heart was beating fast." It is time
+you----"
+
+The Garibaldino arrested him with an extended arm.  "That was
+left for you to judge."
+
+He got up slowly. His beard, unclipped since Teresa's death,
+thick, snow-white, covered his powerful chest. He turned his head
+to the door, and called out in his strong voice--
+
+"Linda."
+
+Her answer came sharp and faint from within; and the appalled
+Nostromo stood up, too, but remained mute, gazing at the door. He
+was afraid. He was not afraid of being refused the girl he
+loved--no mere refusal could stand between him and a woman he
+desired--but the shining spectre of the treasure rose before him,
+claiming his allegiance in a silence that could not be gainsaid.
+He was afraid, because, neither dead nor alive, like the Gringos
+on Azuera, he belonged body and soul to the unlawfulness of his
+audacity. He was afraid of being forbidden the island. He was
+afraid, and said nothing.
+
+Seeing the two men standing up side by side to await her, Linda
+stopped in the doorway. Nothing could alter the passionate dead
+whiteness of her face; but her black eyes seemed to catch and
+concentrate all the light of the low sun in a flaming spark
+within the black depths, covered at once by the slow descent of
+heavy eyelids.
+
+"Behold thy husband, master, and benefactor." Old Viola's voice
+resounded with a force that seemed to fill the whole gulf.
+
+She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a
+sleep-walker in a beatific dream.
+
+Nostromo made a superhuman effort. "It is time, Linda, we two
+were betrothed," he said, steadily, in his level, careless,
+unbending tone.
+
+She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her head, dark
+with bronze glints, upon which her father's hand rested for a
+moment.
+
+"And so the soul of the dead is satisfied."
+
+This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking for a while of
+his dead wife; while the two, sitting side by side, never looked
+at each other. Then the old man ceased; and Linda, motionless,
+began to speak.
+
+"Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived for you
+alone, Gian' Battista. And that you knew!  You knew it . . .
+Battistino."
+
+She pronounced the name exactly with her mother's intonation. A
+gloom as of the grave covered Nostromo's heart.
+
+"Yes. I knew," he said.
+
+The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary
+head, his old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and
+violent, terrible and dreary--solitary on the earth full of men.
+
+And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, "I was yours ever
+since I can remember. I had only to think of you for the earth to
+become empty to my eyes.  When you were there, I could see no one
+else. I was yours. Nothing is changed. The world belongs to you,
+and you let me live in it." . . . She dropped her low, vibrating
+voice to a still lower note, and found other things to
+say--torturing for the man at her side.  Her murmur ran on ardent
+and voluble. She did not seem to see her sister, who came out
+with an altar-cloth she was embroidering in her hands, and passed
+in front of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a
+faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of Nostromo.
+
+The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the edge of a
+purple ocean; and the white lighthouse, livid against the
+background of clouds filling the head of the gulf, bore the
+lantern red and glowing, like a live ember kindled by the fire of
+the sky. Giselle, indolent and demure, raised the altar-cloth
+from time to time to hide nervous yawns, as of a young panther.
+
+Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her head,
+covered her face with kisses. Nostromo's brain reeled. When she
+left her, as if stunned by the violent caresses, with her hands
+lying in her lap, the slave of the treasure felt as if he could
+shoot that woman. Old Giorgio lifted his leonine head.
+
+"Where are you going, Linda?"
+
+"To the light, padre mio."
+
+"Si, si--to your duty."
+
+He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then, in a tone
+whose festive note seemed the echo of a mood lost in the night of
+ages--
+
+"I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The old man knows
+where to find a bottle of wine, too."
+
+He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere tenderness.
+
+"And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests and slaves,
+but to the God of orphans, of the oppressed, of the poor, of
+little children, to give thee a man like this one for a husband."
+
+His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo's shoulder; then
+he went in. The hopeless slave of the San Tome silver felt at
+these words the venomous fangs of jealousy biting deep into his
+heart. He was appalled by the novelty of the experience, by its
+force, by its physical intimacy. A husband! A husband for her!
+And yet it was natural that Giselle should have a husband at some
+time or other. He had never realized that before. In discovering
+that her beauty could belong to another he felt as though he
+could kill this one of old Giorgio's daughters also. He muttered
+moodily--
+
+"They say you love Ramirez."
+
+She shook her head without looking at him. Coppery glints rippled
+to and fro on the wealth of her gold hair. Her smooth forehead
+had the soft, pure sheen of a priceless pearl in the splendour of
+the sunset, mingling the gloom of starry spaces, the purple of
+the sea, and the crimson of the sky in a magnificent stillness.
+
+"No," she said, slowly. "I never loved him. I think I never . . .
+He loves me--perhaps."
+
+The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air, and her
+raised eyes remained fixed on nothing, as if indifferent and
+without thought.
+
+"Ramirez told you he loved you?" asked Nostromo, restraining
+himself.
+
+"Ah! once--one evening . . ."
+
+"The miserable . . . Ha!"
+
+He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood before her
+mute with anger.
+
+"Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian' Battista!  Poor wretch that
+I am!" she lamented in ingenuous tones. "I told Linda, and she
+scolded--she scolded.  Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this
+world? And she told father, who took down his gun and cleaned it.
+Poor Ramirez! Then you came, and she told you."
+
+He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of her
+white throat, which had the invincible charm of things young,
+palpitating, delicate, and alive.  Was this the child he had
+known? Was it possible?  It dawned upon him that in these last
+years he had really seen very little--nothing--of her.   Nothing.
+She had come into the world like a thing unknown.  She had come
+upon him unawares. She was a danger.  A frightful danger. The
+instinctive mood of fierce determination that had never failed
+him before the perils of this life added its steady force to the
+violence of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the
+song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell, continued--
+
+"And between you three you have brought me here into this
+captivity to the sky and water. Nothing else.  Sky and water. Oh,
+Sanctissima Madre. My hair shall turn grey on this tedious
+island. I could hate you, Gian' Battista!"
+
+He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a caress. She
+bemoaned her fate, spreading unconsciously, like a flower its
+perfume in the coolness of the evening, the indefinable seduction
+of her person. Was it her fault that nobody ever had admired
+Linda? Even when they were little, going out with their mother to
+Mass, she remembered that people took no notice of Linda, who was
+fearless, and chose instead to frighten her, who was timid, with
+their attention. It was her hair like gold, she supposed.
+
+He broke out--
+
+"Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips
+like the rose; your round arms, your white throat." . . .
+
+Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply
+all over to the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was
+no more self-conscious than a flower. But she was pleased. And
+perhaps even a flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced
+down, and added, impetuously--
+
+"Your little feet!"
+
+Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she
+seemed to bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only
+her lowered eyes glanced at her little feet.
+
+"And so you are going at last to marry our Linda.  She is
+terrible. Ah! now she will understand better since you have told
+her you love her. She will not be so fierce."
+
+"Chica!" said Nostromo, "I have not told her anything."
+
+"Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and tell her, so that I
+may have some peace from her scolding and--perhaps--who knows . .
+."
+
+"Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You . . ."
+
+"Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni," she said,
+unmoved.   "Who is Ramirez .  .  .  Ramirez .  .  . Who is he?"
+she repeated, dreamily, in the dusk and gloom of the clouded
+gulf, with a low red streak in the west like a hot bar of glowing
+iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a cavern,
+where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had hidden his
+conquests of love and wealth.
+
+"Listen, Giselle," he said, in measured tones; "I will tell no
+word of love to your sister. Do you want to know why?"
+
+"Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni.  Father says you
+are not like other men; that no one had ever understood you
+properly; that the rich will be surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints
+in heaven! I am weary."
+
+She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of her face,
+then let it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land
+side, but slanting away from the dark column of the lighthouse
+they could see the long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go out
+to strike the expiring glow in a horizon of purple and red.
+
+Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the
+house, her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white
+stockings and black slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to
+surrender herself, tranquil and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The
+charm of her body, the promising mysteriousness of her indolence,
+went out into the night of the Placid Gulf like a fresh and
+intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shadows, impregnating
+the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed her ambient
+seduction in the tumultuous heaving of his breast. Before leaving
+the harbour he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain
+Fidanza, for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He
+stood before her in the red sash and check shirt as he used to
+appear on the Company's wharf--a Mediterranean sailor come ashore
+to try his luck in Costaguana.  The dusk of purple and red
+enveloped him, too--close, soft, profound, as no more than fifty
+yards from that spot it had gathered evening after evening about
+the self-destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud's utter
+scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.
+
+"You have got to hear," he began at last, with perfect
+self-control. "I shall say no word of love to your sister, to
+whom I am betrothed from this evening, because it is you that I
+love. It is you!" . . .
+
+The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that
+came instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses,
+freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not
+restrain himself any longer.  While she shrank from his approach,
+her arms went out to him, abandoned and regal in the dignity of
+her languid surrender. He held her head in his two hands, and
+showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face that gleamed in the
+purple dusk. Masterful and tender, he was entering slowly upon
+the fulness of his possession.  And he perceived that she was
+crying. Then the incomparable Capataz, the man of careless loves,
+became gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a
+child. He murmured to her fondly. He sat down by her and nursed
+her fair head on his breast. He called her his star and his
+little flower.
+
+It had grown dark. From the living-room of the light-keeper's
+cottage, where Giorgio, one of the Immortal Thousand, was bending
+his leonine and heroic head over a charcoal fire, there came the
+sound of sizzling and the aroma of an artistic frittura.
+
+In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a
+cataclysm, it was in her feminine head that some gleam of reason
+survived. He was lost to the world in their embraced stillness.
+But she said, whispering into his ear--
+
+"God of mercy! What will become of me--here--now--between this
+sky and this water I hate? Linda, Linda--I see her!" . . . She
+tried to get out of his arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of
+that name. But there was no one approaching their black shapes,
+enlaced and struggling on the white background of the wall.
+"Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die of fear before my poor
+sister Linda, betrothed to-day to Giovanni--my lover! Giovanni,
+you must have been mad! I cannot understand you! You are not like
+other men! I will not give you up--never--only to God himself!
+But why have you done this blind, mad, cruel, frightful thing?"
+
+Released, she hung her head, let fall her hands. The altar-cloth,
+as if tossed by a great wind, lay far away from them, gleaming
+white on the black ground.
+
+"From fear of losing my hope of you," said Nostromo.
+
+"You knew that you had my soul! You know everything!  It was made
+for you! But what could stand between you and me? What? Tell me!"
+she repeated, without impatience, in superb assurance.
+
+"Your dead mother," he said, very low.
+
+"Ah! . . . Poor mother! She has always . . .  She is a saint in
+heaven now, and I cannot give you up to her. No, Giovanni. Only
+to God alone. You were mad--but it is done. Oh! what have you
+done?  Giovanni, my beloved, my life, my master, do not leave me
+here in this grave of clouds. You cannot leave me now. You must
+take me away--at once--this instant--in the little boat.
+Giovanni, carry me off to-night, from my fear of Linda's eyes,
+before I have to look at her again."
+
+She nestled close to him. The slave of the San Tome silver felt
+the weight as of chains upon his limbs, a pressure as of a cold
+hand upon his lips. He struggled against the spell.
+
+"I cannot," he said. "Not yet. There is something that stands
+between us two and the freedom of the world."
+
+She pressed her form closer to his side with a subtle and naive
+instinct of seduction.
+
+"You rave, Giovanni--my lover!" she whispered, engagingly. "What
+can there be? Carry me off--in thy very hands--to Dona
+Emilia--away from here.  I am not very heavy."
+
+It seemed as though she expected him to lift her up at once in
+his two palms. She had lost the notion of all impossibility.
+Anything could happen on this night of wonder. As he made no
+movement, she almost cried aloud--
+
+"I tell you I am afraid of Linda!" And still he did not move. She
+became quiet and wily. "What can there be?" she asked, coaxingly.
+
+He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the hollow of
+his arm. In the exulting consciousness of his strength, and the
+triumphant excitement of his mind, he struck out for his freedom.
+
+"A treasure," he said. All was still. She did not understand. "A
+treasure. A treasure of silver to buy a gold crown for thy brow."
+
+"A treasure?" she repeated in a faint voice, as if from the
+depths of a dream. "What is it you say?"
+
+She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked down at her,
+aware of her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimples on her
+cheeks--seeing the fascination of her person in the night of the
+gulf as if in the blaze of noonday.  Her nonchalant and seductive
+voice trembled with the excitement of admiring awe and
+ungovernable curiosity.
+
+"A treasure of silver!" she stammered out. Then pressed on
+faster: "What? Where? How did you get it, Giovanni?"
+
+He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if striking a
+heroic blow that he burst out--
+
+"Like a thief!"
+
+The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to fall upon his
+head. He could not see her now. She had vanished into a long,
+obscure abysmal silence, whence her voice came back to him after
+a time with a faint glimmer, which was her face.
+
+"I love you! I love you!"
+
+These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom; they cast a
+spell stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure; they
+changed his weary subjection to that dead thing into an exulting
+conviction of his power.  He would cherish her, he said, in a
+splendour as great as Dona Emilia's. The rich lived on wealth
+stolen from the people, but he had taken from the rich nothing
+--nothing that was not lost to them already by their folly and
+their betrayal. For he had been betrayed--he said--deceived,
+tempted. She believed him. . . .  He had kept the treasure for
+purposes of revenge; but now he cared nothing for it. He cared
+only for her.  He would put her beauty in a palace on a hill
+crowned with olive trees--a white palace above a blue sea. He
+would keep her there like a jewel in a casket. He would get land
+for her--her own land fertile with vines and corn--to set her
+little feet upon. He kissed them. . . .  He had already paid for
+it all with the soul of a woman and the life of a man. . . . The
+Capataz de Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his
+generosity.  He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her feet
+in the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the darkness
+defying--as men said--the knowledge of God and the wit of the
+devil. But she must let him grow rich first--he warned her.
+
+She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in his hair.
+He got up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as though he had
+flung his soul away.
+
+"Make haste, then," she said. "Make haste, Giovanni, my lover, my
+master, for I will give thee up to no one but God. And I am
+afraid of Linda."
+
+He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best.  He trusted
+the courage of her love. She promised to be brave in order to be
+loved always--far away in a white palace upon a hill above a blue
+sea. Then with a timid, tentative eagerness she murmured--
+
+"Where is it? Where? Tell me that, Giovanni."
+
+He opened his mouth and remained silent--thunderstruck.
+
+"Not that! Not that!" he gasped out, appalled at the spell of
+secrecy that had kept him dumb before so many people falling upon
+his lips again with unimpaired force. Not even to her. Not even
+to her. It was too dangerous. "I forbid thee to ask," he cried at
+her, deadening cautiously the anger of his voice.
+
+He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the unlawful
+treasure arose, standing by her side like a figure of silver,
+pitiless and secret, with a finger on its pale lips.  His soul
+died within him at the vision of himself creeping in presently
+along the ravine, with the smell of earth, of damp foliage in his
+nostrils--creeping in, determined in a purpose that numbed his
+breast, and creeping out again loaded with silver, with his ears
+alert to every sound. It must be done on this very night--that
+work of a craven slave!
+
+He stooped low, pressed the hem of her skirt to his lips, with a
+muttered command--
+
+"Tell him I would not stay," and was gone suddenly from her,
+silent, without as much as a footfall in the dark night.
+
+She sat still, her head resting indolently against the wall, and
+her little feet in white stockings and black slippers crossed
+over each other. Old Giorgio, coming out, did not seem to be
+surprised at the intelligence as much as she had vaguely feared.
+For she was full of inexplicable fear now--fear of everything and
+everybody except of her Giovanni and his treasure. But that was
+incredible.
+
+The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo's abrupt departure with
+a sagacious indulgence. He remembered his own feelings, and
+exhibited a masculine penetration of the true state of the case.
+
+"Va bene. Let him go. Ha! ha! No matter how fair the woman, it
+galls a little. Liberty, liberty.  There's more than one kind! He
+has said the great word, and son Gian' Battista is not tame." He
+seemed to be instructing the motionless and scared Giselle.  . .
+. "A man should not be tame," he added, dogmatically out of the
+doorway. Her stillness and silence seemed to displease him. "Do
+not give way to the enviousness of your sister's lot," he
+admonished her, very grave, in his deep voice.
+
+Presently he had to come to the door again to call in his younger
+daughter. It was late. He shouted her name three times before she
+even moved her head. Left alone, she had become the helpless prey
+of astonishment.  She walked into the bedroom she shared with
+Linda like a person profoundly asleep. That aspect was so marked
+that even old Giorgio, spectacled, raising his eyes from the
+Bible, shook his head as she shut the door behind her.
+
+She walked right across the room without looking at anything, and
+sat down at once by the open window.  Linda, stealing down from
+the tower in the exuberance of her happiness, found her with a
+lighted candle at her back, facing the black night full of
+sighing gusts of wind and the sound of distant showers--a true
+night of the gulf, too dense for the eye of God and the wiles of
+the devil. She did not turn her head at the opening of the door.
+
+There was something in that immobility which reached Linda in the
+depths of her paradise. The elder sister guessed angrily: the
+child is thinking of that wretched Ramirez. Linda longed to talk.
+She said in her arbitrary voice, "Giselle!" and was not answered
+by the slightest movement.
+
+The girl that was going to live in a palace and walk on ground of
+her own was ready to die with terror. Not for anything in the
+world would she have turned her head to face her sister. Her
+heart was beating madly.  She said with subdued haste--
+
+"Do not speak to me. I am praying."
+
+Linda, disappointed, went out quietly; and Giselle sat on
+unbelieving, lost, dazed, patient, as if waiting for the
+confirmation of the incredible. The hopeless blackness of the
+clouds seemed part of a dream, too. She waited.
+
+She did not wait in vain. The man whose soul was dead within him,
+creeping out of the ravine, weighted with silver, had seen the
+gleam of the lighted window, and could not help retracing his
+steps from the beach.
+
+On that impenetrable background, obliterating the lofty mountains
+by the seaboard, she saw the slave of the San Tome silver, as if
+by an extraordinary power of a miracle. She accepted his return
+as if henceforth the world could hold no surprise for all
+eternity.
+
+She rose, compelled and rigid, and began to speak long before the
+light from within fell upon the face of the approaching man.
+
+"You have come back to carry me off. It is well! Open thy arms,
+Giovanni, my lover. I am coming."
+
+His prudent footsteps stopped, and with his eyes glistening
+wildly, he spoke in a harsh voice:
+
+"Not yet. I must grow rich slowly." . . . A threatening note came
+into his tone. "Do not forget that you have a thief for your
+lover."
+
+"Yes! Yes!" she whispered, hastily. "Come nearer!  Listen! Do not
+give me up, Giovanni! Never, never! . . . I will be patient! . . ."
+
+Her form drooped consolingly over the low casement towards the
+slave of the unlawful treasure. The light in the room went out,
+and weighted with silver, the magnificent Capataz clasped her
+round her white neck in the darkness of the gulf as a drowning
+man clutches at a straw.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+ON THE day Mrs. Gould was going, in Dr. Monygham's words, to
+"give a tertulia," Captain Fidanza went down the side of his
+schooner lying in Sulaco harbour, calm, unbending, deliberate in
+the way he sat down in his dinghy and took up his sculls. He was
+later than usual. The afternoon was well advanced before he
+landed on the beach of the Great Isabel, and with a steady pace
+climbed the slope of the island.
+
+From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair tilted
+back against the end of the house, under the window of the girl's
+room. She had her embroidery in her hands, and held it well up to
+her eyes. The tranquillity of that girlish figure exasperated the
+feeling of perpetual struggle and strife he carried in his
+breast. He became angry. It seemed to him that she ought to hear
+the clanking of his fetters--his silver fetters, from afar.  And
+while ashore that day, he had met the doctor with the evil eye,
+who had looked at him very hard.
+
+The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in their
+flower-like freshness straight upon his heart. Then she frowned.
+It was a warning to be cautious. He stopped some distance away,
+and in a loud, indifferent tone, said--
+
+"Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?"
+
+"Yes. She is in the big room with father."
+
+He approached then, and, looking through the window into the
+bedroom for fear of being detected by Linda returning there for
+some reason, he said, moving only his lips--
+
+"You love me?"
+
+"More than my life." She went on with her embroidery under his
+contemplating gaze and continued to speak, looking at her work,
+"Or I could not live. I could not, Giovanni. For this life is
+like death. Oh, Giovanni, I shall perish if you do not take me
+away."
+
+He smiled carelessly. "I will come to the window when it's dark,"
+he said.
+
+"No, don't, Giovanni. Not-to-night. Linda and father have been
+talking together for a long time today."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I am afraid. I am
+always afraid. It is like dying a thousand times a day. Your love
+is to me like your treasure to you. It is there, but I can never
+get enough of it."
+
+He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His desire had
+grown within him. He had two masters now. But she was incapable
+of sustained emotion.  She was sincere in what she said, but she
+slept placidly at night. When she saw him she flamed up always.
+Then only an increased taciturnity marked the change in her. She
+was afraid of betraying herself. She was afraid of pain, of
+bodily harm, of sharp words, of facing anger, and witnessing
+violence. For her soul was light and tender with a pagan
+sincerity in its impulses. She murmured--
+
+"Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on the hills,
+for which we are starving our love."
+
+She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner of the
+house.
+
+Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting, and was
+amazed at her sunken eyes, at her hollow cheeks, at the air of
+illness and anguish in her face.
+
+"Have you been ill?" he asked, trying to put some concern into
+this question.
+
+Her black eyes blazed at him. "Am I thinner?" she asked.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--a little."
+
+"And older?"
+
+"Every day counts--for all of us."
+
+"I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger," she
+said, slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon him.
+
+She waited for what he would say, rolling down her turned-up
+sleeves.
+
+"No fear of that," he said, absently.
+
+She turned away as if it had been something final, and busied
+herself with household cares while Nostromo talked with her
+father. Conversation with the old Garibaldino was not easy. Age
+had left his faculties unimpaired, only they seemed to have
+withdrawn somewhere deep within him. His answers were slow in
+coming, with an effect of august gravity. But that day he was
+more animated, quicker; there seemed to be more life in the old
+lion. He was uneasy for the integrity of his honour. He believed
+Sidoni's warning as to Ramirez's designs upon his younger
+daughter. And he did not trust her. She was flighty. He said
+nothing of his cares to "Son Gian' Battista." It was a touch of
+senile vanity. He wanted to show that he was equal yet to the
+task of guarding alone the honour of his house.
+
+Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had disappeared, walking
+towards the beach, Linda stepped over the threshold and, with a
+haggard smile, sat down by the side of her father.
+
+Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and desperate Ramirez
+had waited for her on the wharf, she had no doubts whatever. The
+jealous ravings of that man were no revelation. They had only
+fixed with precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that
+sense of unreality and deception which, instead of bliss and
+security, she had found in her intercourse with her promised
+husband. She had passed on, pouring indignation and scorn upon
+Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly died of wretchedness and
+shame, lying on the carved and lettered stone of Teresa's grave,
+subscribed for by the engine-drivers and the fitters of the
+railway workshops, in sign of their respect for the hero of
+Italian Unity. Old Viola had not been able to carry out his
+desire of burying his wife in the sea; and Linda wept upon the
+stone.
+
+The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to break her
+heart--well and good. Everything was permitted to Gian' Battista.
+But why trample upon the pieces; why seek to humiliate her
+spirit? Aha! He could not break that. She dried her tears. And
+Giselle! Giselle! The little one that, ever since she could
+toddle, had always clung to her skirt for protection.  What
+duplicity! But she could not help it probably. When there was a
+man in the case the poor featherheaded wretch could not help
+herself.
+
+Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She resolved to say
+nothing. But woman-like she put passion into her stoicism.
+Giselle's short answers, prompted by fearful caution, drove her
+beside herself by their curtness that resembled disdain. One day
+she flung herself upon the chair in which her indolent sister was
+lying and impressed the mark of her teeth at the base of the
+whitest neck in Sulaco. Giselle cried out. But she had her share
+of the Viola heroism. Ready to faint with terror, she only said,
+in a lazy voice, "Madre de Dios! Are you going to eat me alive,
+Linda?" And this outburst passed off leaving no trace upon the
+situation.  "She knows nothing. She cannot know any thing,"
+reflected Giselle. "Perhaps it is not true.  It cannot be true,"
+Linda tried to persuade herself.
+
+But when she saw Captain Fidanza for the first time after her
+meeting with the distracted Ramirez, the certitude of her
+misfortune returned. She watched him from the doorway go away to
+his boat, asking herself stoically, "Will they meet to-night?"
+She made up her mind not to leave the tower for a second. When he
+had disappeared she came out and sat down by her father.
+
+The venerable Garibaldino felt, in his own words, "a young man
+yet." In one way or another a good deal of talk about Ramirez had
+reached him of late; and his contempt and dislike of that man who
+obviously was not what his son would have been, had made him
+restless.  He slept very little now; but for several nights past
+instead of reading--or only sitting, with Mrs.  Gould's silver
+spectacles on his nose, before the open Bible, he had been
+prowling actively all about the island with his old gun, on watch
+over his honour.
+
+Linda, laying her thin brown hand on his knee, tried to soothe
+his excitement. Ramirez was not in Sulaco.  Nobody knew where he
+was. He was gone. His talk of what he would do meant nothing.
+
+"No," the old man interrupted. "But son Gian' Battista told
+me--quite of himself--that the cowardly esclavo was drinking and
+gambling with the rascals of Zapiga, over there on the north side
+of the gulf. He may get some of the worst scoundrels of that
+scoundrelly town of negroes to help him in his attempt upon the
+little one. . . . But I am not so old. No!"
+
+She argued earnestly against the probability of any attempt being
+made; and at last the old man fell silent, chewing his white
+moustache.  Women had their obstinate notions which must be
+humoured--his poor wife was like that, and Linda resembled her
+mother. It was not seemly for a man to argue. "May be. May be,"
+he mumbled.
+
+She was by no means easy in her mind. She loved Nostromo. She
+turned her eyes upon Giselle, sitting at a distance, with
+something of maternal tenderness, and the jealous anguish of a
+rival outraged in her defeat.  Then she rose and walked over to
+her.
+
+"Listen--you," she said, roughly.
+
+The invincible candour of the gaze, raised up all violet and dew,
+excited her rage and admiration. She had beautiful eyes--the
+Chica--this vile thing of white flesh and black deception. She
+did not know whether she wanted to tear them out with shouts of
+vengeance or cover up their mysterious and shameless innocence
+with kisses of pity and love. And suddenly they became empty,
+gazing blankly at her, except for a little fear not quite buried
+deep enough with all the other emotions in Giselle's heart.
+
+Linda said, "Ramirez is boasting in town that he will carry you
+off from the island."
+
+"What folly!" answered the other, and in a perversity born of
+long restraint, she added: "He is not the man," in a jesting tone
+with a trembling audacity.
+
+"No?" said Linda, through her clenched teeth. "Is he not? Well,
+then, look to it; because father has been walking about with a
+loaded gun at night."
+
+"It is not good for him. You must tell him not to, Linda. He will
+not listen to me."
+
+"I shall say nothing--never any more--to anybody," cried Linda,
+passionately.
+
+This could not last, thought Giselle. Giovanni must take her away
+soon--the very next time he came. She would not suffer these
+terrors for ever so much silver.  To speak with her sister made
+her ill. But she was not uneasy at her father's watchfulness. She
+had begged Nostromo not to come to the window that night. He had
+promised to keep away for this once. And she did not know, could
+not guess or imagine, that he had another reason for coming on
+the island.
+
+Linda had gone straight to the tower. It was time to light up.
+She unlocked the little door, and went heavily up the spiral
+staircase, carrying her love for the magnificent Capataz de
+Cargadores like an ever-increasing load of shameful fetters. No;
+she could not throw it off.  No; let Heaven dispose of these two.
+And moving about the lantern, filled with twilight and the sheen
+of the moon, with careful movements she lighted the lamp.  Then
+her arms fell along her body.
+
+"And with our mother looking on," she murmured.  "My own
+sister--the Chica!"
+
+The whole refracting apparatus, with its brass fittings and rings
+of prisms, glittered and sparkled like a domeshaped shrine of
+diamonds, containing not a lamp, but some sacred flame,
+dominating the sea. And Linda, the keeper, in black, with a pale
+face, drooped low in a wooden chair, alone with her jealousy, far
+above the shames and passions of the earth. A strange, dragging
+pain as if somebody were pulling her about brutally by her dark
+hair with bronze glints, made her put her hands up to her
+temples. They would meet. They would meet. And she knew where,
+too. At the window.  The sweat of torture fell in drops on her
+cheeks, while the moonlight in the offing closed as if with a
+colossal bar of silver the entrance of the Placid Gulf--the
+sombre cavern of clouds and stillness in the surf-fretted
+seaboard.
+
+Linda Viola stood up suddenly with a finger on her lip.  He loved
+neither her nor her sister. The whole thing seemed so objectless
+as to frighten her, and also give her some hope. Why did he not
+carry her off? What prevented him? He was incomprehensible. What
+were they waiting for? For what end were these two lying and
+deceiving? Not for the ends of their love. There was no such
+thing. The hope of regaining him for herself made her break her
+vow of not leaving the tower that night. She must talk at once to
+her father, who was wise, and would understand. She ran down the
+spiral stairs. At the moment of opening the door at the bottom
+she heard the sound of the first shot ever fired on the Great
+Isabel.
+
+She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her breast. She
+ran on without pausing. The cottage was dark. She cried at the
+door, "Giselle! Giselle!" then dashed round the corner and
+screamed her sister's name at the open window, without getting an
+answer; but as she was rushing, distracted, round the house,
+Giselle came out of the door, and darted past her, running
+silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring straight ahead.
+She seemed to skim along the grass as if on tiptoe, and vanished.
+
+Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out before her.
+All was still on the island; she did not know where she was
+going. The tree under which Martin Decoud spent his last days,
+beholding life like a succession of senseless images, threw a
+large blotch of black shade upon the grass. Suddenly she saw her
+father, standing quietly all alone in the moonlight.
+
+The Garibaldino--big, erect, with his snow-white hair and
+beard--had a monumental repose in his immobility, leaning upon a
+rifle. She put her hand upon his arm lightly. He never stirred.
+
+"What have you done?" she asked, in her ordinary voice.
+
+"I have shot Ramirez--infame!" he answered, with his eyes
+directed to where the shade was blackest.  "Like a thief he came,
+and like a thief he fell. The child had to be protected."
+
+He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single step. He
+stood there, rugged and unstirring, like a statue of an old man
+guarding the honour of his house.  Linda removed her trembling
+hand from his arm, firm and steady like an arm of stone, and,
+without a word, entered the blackness of the shade. She saw a
+stir of formless shapes on the ground, and stopped short. A
+murmur of despair and tears grew louder to her strained hearing.
+
+"I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my Giovanni! And you
+promised. Oh! Why--why did you come, Giovanni?"
+
+It was her sister's voice. It broke on a heartrending sob. And
+the voice of the resourceful Capataz de Cargadores, master and
+slave of the San Tome treasure, who had been caught unawares by
+old Giorgio while stealing across the open towards the ravine to
+get some more silver, answered careless and cool, but sounding
+startlingly weak from the ground.
+
+"It seemed as though I could not live through the night without
+seeing thee once more--my star, my little flower."
+
+*         *         *         *         *
+
+The brilliant tertulia was just over, the last guests had
+departed, and the Senor Administrador had gone to his room
+already, when Dr. Monygham, who had been expected in the evening
+but had not turned up, arrived driving along the wood-block
+pavement under the electric-lamps of the deserted Calle de la
+Constitucion, and found the great gateway of the Casa still open.
+
+He limped in, stumped up the stairs, and found the fat and sleek
+Basilio on the point of turning off the lights in the sala. The
+prosperous majordomo remained open-mouthed at this late invasion.
+
+"Don't put out the lights," commanded the doctor.  "I want to see
+the senora."
+
+"The senora is in the Senor Adminstrador's cancillaria," said
+Basilio, in an unctuous voice. "The Senor Administrador starts
+for the mountain in an hour.  There is some trouble with the
+workmen to be feared, it appears. A shameless people without
+reason and decency.  And idle, senor. Idle."
+
+"You are shamelessly lazy and imbecile yourself," said the
+doctor, with that faculty for exasperation which made him so
+generally beloved. "Don't put the lights out."
+
+Basilio retired with dignity. Dr. Monygham, waiting in the
+brilliantly lighted sala, heard presently a door close at the
+further end of the house. A jingle of spurs died out. The Senor
+Administrador was off to the mountain.
+
+With a measured swish of her long train, flashing with jewels and
+the shimmer of silk, her delicate head bowed as if under the
+weight of a mass of fair hair, in which the silver threads were
+lost, the "first lady of Sulaco," as Captain Mitchell used to
+describe her, moved along the lighted corredor, wealthy beyond
+great dreams of wealth, considered, loved, respected, honoured,
+and as solitary as any human being had ever been, perhaps, on
+this earth.
+
+The doctor's "Mrs. Gould! One minute!" stopped her with a start
+at the door of the lighted and empty sala. From the similarity of
+mood and circumstance, the sight of the doctor, standing there
+all alone amongst the groups of furniture, recalled to her
+emotional memory her unexpected meeting with Martin Decoud; she
+seemed to hear in the silence the voice of that man, dead
+miserably so many years ago, pronounce the words, "Antonia left
+her fan here." But it was the doctor's voice that spoke, a little
+altered by his excitement.  She remarked his shining eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Gould, you are wanted. Do you know what has happened? You
+remember what I told you yesterday about Nostromo. Well, it seems
+that a lancha, a decked boat, coming from Zapiga, with four
+negroes in her, passing close to the Great Isabel, was hailed
+from the cliff by a woman's voice--Linda's, as a matter of
+fact--commanding them (it's a moonlight night) to go round to the
+beach and take up a wounded man to the town. The patron (from
+whom I've heard all this), of course, did so at once. He told me
+that when they got round to the low side of the Great Isabel,
+they found Linda Viola waiting for them. They followed her: she
+led them under a tree not far from the cottage.  There they found
+Nostromo lying on the ground with his head in the younger girl's
+lap, and father Viola standing some distance off leaning on his
+gun. Under Linda's direction they got a table out of the cottage
+for a stretcher, after breaking off the legs. They are here, Mrs.
+Gould. I mean Nostromo and--and Giselle.  The negroes brought him
+in to the first-aid hospital near the harbour. He made the
+attendant send for me. But it was not me he wanted to see--it was
+you, Mrs. Gould! It was you."
+
+"Me?" whispered Mrs. Gould, shrinking a little.
+
+"Yes, you!" the doctor burst out. "He begged me--his enemy, as
+he thinks--to bring you to him at once.  It seems he has
+something to say to you alone."
+
+"Impossible!" murmured Mrs. Gould.
+
+"He said to me, 'Remind her that I have done something to keep a
+roof over her head.' . . . Mrs.  Gould," the doctor pursued, in
+the greatest excitement.  "Do you remember the silver? The silver
+in the lighter--that was lost?"
+
+Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she hated the mere
+mention of that silver. Frankness personified, she remembered
+with an exaggerated horror that for the first and last time of
+her life she had concealed the truth from her husband about that
+very silver. She had been corrupted by her fears at that time,
+and she had never forgiven herself. Moreover, that silver, which
+would never have come down if her husband had been made
+acquainted with the news brought by Decoud, had been in a
+roundabout way nearly the cause of Dr. Monygham's death. And
+these things appeared to her very dreadful.
+
+"Was it lost, though?" the doctor exclaimed. "I've always felt
+that there was a mystery about our Nostromo ever since. I do
+believe he wants now, at the point of death----"
+
+"The point of death?" repeated Mrs. Gould.
+
+"Yes. Yes. . . . He wants perhaps to tell you something
+concerning that silver which----"
+
+"Oh, no! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low voice. "Isn't it
+lost and done with? Isn't there enough treasure without it to
+make everybody in the world miserable?"
+
+The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed silence.
+At last he ventured, very low--
+
+"And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are we to do? It
+looks as though father and sister had----"
+
+Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to do her best
+for these girls.
+
+"I have a volante here," the doctor said. "If you don't mind
+getting into that----"
+
+He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reappeared, having
+thrown over her dress a grey cloak with a deep hood.
+
+It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded over her
+evening costume, this woman, full of endurance and compassion,
+stood by the side of the bed on which the splendid Capataz de
+Cargadores lay stretched out motionless on his back. The
+whiteness of sheets and pillows gave a sombre and energetic
+relief to his bronzed.  face, to the dark, nervous hands, so good
+on a tiller, upon a bridle and on a trigger, lying open and idle
+upon a white coverlet.
+
+"She is innocent," the Capataz was saying in a deep and level
+voice, as though afraid that a louder word would break the
+slender hold his spirit still kept upon his body. "She is
+innocent. It is I alone. But no matter. For these things I would
+answer to no man or woman alive."
+
+He paused. Mrs. Gould's face, very white within the shadow of the
+hood, bent over him with an invincible and dreary sadness. And
+the low sobs of Giselle Viola, kneeling at the end of the bed,
+her gold hair with coppery gleams loose and scattered over the
+Capataz's feet, hardly troubled the silence of the room.
+
+"Ha! Old Giorgio--the guardian of thine honour!  Fancy the
+Vecchio coming upon me so light of foot, so steady of aim. I
+myself could have done no better.  But the price of a charge of
+powder might have been saved. The honour was safe. . . . Senora,
+she would have followed to the end of the world Nostromo the
+thief. . . . I have said the word. The spell is broken!"
+
+A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes down.
+
+"I cannot see her. . . . No matter," he went on, with the shadow
+of the old magnificent carelessness in his voice. "One kiss is
+enough, if there is no time for more. An airy soul, senora!
+Bright and warm, like sunshine--soon clouded, and soon serene.
+They would crush it there between them. Senora, cast on her the
+eye of your compassion, as famed from one end of the land to the
+other as the courage and daring of the man who speaks to you. She
+will console herself in time.  And even Ramirez is not a bad
+fellow. I am not angry.  No! It is not Ramirez who overcame the
+Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores." He paused, made an effort, and
+in louder voice, a little wildly, declared--
+
+"I die betrayed--betrayed by----"
+
+But he did not say by whom or by what he was dying betrayed.
+
+"She would not have betrayed me," he began again, opening his
+eyes very wide. "She was faithful. We were going very far--very
+soon. I could have torn myself away from that accursed treasure
+for her. For that child I would have left boxes and boxes of
+it--full.  And Decoud took four. Four ingots. Why? Picardia!  To
+betray me? How could I give back the treasure with four ingots
+missing? They would have said I had purloined them. The doctor
+would have said that.  Alas! it holds me yet!"
+
+Mrs. Gould bent low, fascinated--cold with apprehension.
+
+"What became of Don Martin on that night, Nostromo?"
+
+"Who knows? I wondered what would become of me. Now I know. Death
+was to come upon me unawares.  He went away! He betrayed me. And
+you think I have killed him! You are all alike, you fine people.
+The silver has killed me. It has held me. It holds me yet. Nobody
+knows where it is. But you are the wife of Don Carlos, who put it
+into my hands and said, 'Save it on your life.' And when I
+returned, and you all thought it was lost, what do I hear? 'It
+was nothing of importance. Let it go. Up, Nostromo, the faithful,
+and ride away to save us, for dear life!'"
+
+"Nostromo!" Mrs. Gould whispered, bending very low. "I, too, have
+hated the idea of that silver from the bottom of my heart."
+
+"Marvellous!--that one of you should hate the wealth that you
+know so well how to take from the hands of the poor. The world
+rests upon the poor, as old Giorgio says. You have been always
+good to the poor. But there is something accursed in wealth.
+Senora, shall I tell you where the treasure is? To you alone. . .
+. Shining! Incorruptible!"
+
+A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone, in his
+eyes, plain to the woman with the genius of sympathetic
+intuition. She averted her glance from the miserable subjection
+of the dying man, appalled, wishing to hear no more of the
+silver.
+
+"No, Capataz," she said. "No one misses it now.  Let it be lost
+for ever."
+
+After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes, uttered no
+word, made no movement. Outside the door of the sick-room Dr.
+Monygham, excited to the highest pitch, his eyes shining with
+eagerness, came up to the two women.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Gould," he said, almost brutally in his impatience,
+"tell me, was I right? There is a mystery.  You have got the word
+of it, have you not? He told you----"
+
+"He told me nothing," said Mrs. Gould, steadily.
+
+The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo went out of Dr.
+Monygham's eyes. He stepped back submissively. He did not believe
+Mrs. Gould. But her word was law. He accepted her denial like an
+inexplicable fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo's genius
+over his own. Even before that woman, whom he loved with secret
+devotion, he had been defeated by the magnificent Capataz de
+Cargadores, the man who had lived his own life on the assumption
+of unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and courage!
+
+"Pray send at once somebody for my carriage," spoke Mrs. Gould
+from within her hood. Then, turning to Giselle Viola, "Come
+nearer me, child; come closer. We will wait here."
+
+Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face veiled in her
+falling hair, crept up to her side. Mrs.  Gould slipped her hand
+through the arm of the unworthy daughter of old Viola, the
+immaculate republican, the hero without a stain. Slowly,
+gradually, as a withered flower droops, the head of the girl, who
+would have followed a thief to the end of the world, rested on
+the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady of Sulaco, the wife
+of the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. And Mrs. Gould,
+feeling her suppressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the
+first and only moment of bitterness in her life. It was worthy of
+Dr. Monygham himself.
+
+"Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgotten you
+for his treasure."
+
+"Senora, he loved me. He loved me," Giselle whispered,
+despairingly. "He loved me as no one had ever been loved before."
+
+"I have been loved, too," Mrs. Gould said in a severe tone.
+
+Giselle clung to her convulsively. "Oh, senora, but you shall
+live adored to the end of your life," she sobbed out.
+
+Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage arrived.
+She helped in the half-fainting girl. After the doctor had shut
+the door of the landau, she leaned over to him.
+
+"You can do nothing?" she whispered.
+
+"No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won't let us touch him. It does not
+matter. I just had one look. . . .  Useless."
+
+But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl that very
+night. He could get the police-boat to take him off to the
+island. He remained in the street, looking after the landau
+rolling away slowly behind the white mules.
+
+The rumour of some accident--an accident to Captain Fidanza--had
+been spreading along the new quays with their rows of lamps and
+the dark shapes of towering cranes. A knot of night prowlers--the
+poorest of the poor--hung about the door of the first-aid
+hospital, whispering in the moonlight of the empty street.
+
+There was no one with the wounded man but the pale photographer,
+small, frail, bloodthirsty, the hater of capitalists, perched on
+a high stool near the head of the bed with his knees up and his
+chin in his hands. He had been fetched by a comrade who, working
+late on the wharf, had heard from a negro belonging to a lancha,
+that Captain Fidanza had been brought ashore mortally wounded.
+
+"Have you any dispositions to make, comrade?" he asked,
+anxiously. "Do not forget that we want money for our work. The
+rich must be fought with their own weapons."
+
+Nostromo made no answer. The other did not insist, remaining
+huddled up on the stool, shock-headed, wildly hairy, like a
+hunchbacked monkey. Then, after a long silence--
+
+"Comrade Fidanza," he began, solemnly, "you have refused all aid
+from that doctor. Is he really a dangerous enemy of the people?"
+
+In the dimly lit room Nostromo rolled his head slowly on the
+pillow and opened his eyes, directing at the weird figure perched
+by his bedside a glance of enigmatic and profound inquiry. Then
+his head rolled back, his eyelids fell, and the Capataz de
+Cargadores died without a word or moan after an hour of
+immobility, broken by short shudders testifying to the most
+atrocious sufferings.
+
+Dr. Monygham, going out in the police-galley to the islands,
+beheld the glitter of the moon upon the gulf and the high black
+shape of the Great Isabel sending a shaft of light afar, from
+under the canopy of clouds.
+
+"Pull easy," he said, wondering what he would find there. He
+tried to imagine Linda and her father, and discovered a strange
+reluctance within himself. "Pull easy," he repeated.
+
+*        *        *        *        *        *
+
+From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour, Giorgio
+Viola had not stirred from the spot. He stood, his old gun
+grounded, his hand grasping the barrel near the muzzle. After the
+lancha carrying off Nostromo for ever from her had left the
+shore, Linda, coming up, stopped before him. He did not seem to
+be aware of her presence, but when, losing her forced calmness,
+she cried out--
+
+"Do you know whom you have killed?" he answered--
+
+"Ramirez the vagabond."
+
+White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda laughed in his
+face. After a time he joined her faintly in a deep-toned and
+distant echo of her peals. Then she stopped, and the old man
+spoke as if startled--
+
+"He cried out in son Gian' Battista's voice."
+
+The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained extended
+for a moment as if still supported.  Linda seized it roughly.
+
+"You are too old to understand. Come into the house."
+
+He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled heavily, nearly
+coming to the ground together with his daughter. His excitement,
+his activity of the last few days, had been like the flare of a
+dying lamp. He caught at the back of his chair.
+
+"In son Gian' Battista's voice," he repeated in a severe tone. "I
+heard him--Ramirez--the miserable----"
+
+Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, hissed into
+his ear--
+
+"You have killed Gian' Battista."
+
+The old man smiled under his thick moustache.  Women had strange
+fancies.
+
+"Where is the child?" he asked, surprised at the penetrating
+chilliness of the air and the unwonted dimness of the lamp by
+which he used to sit up half the night with the open Bible before
+him.
+
+Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.
+
+"She is asleep," she said. "We shall talk of her tomorrow."
+
+She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and
+with an almost unbearable feeling of pity.  She had observed the
+change that came over him. He would never understand what he had
+done; and even to her the whole thing remained incomprehensible.
+He said with difficulty--
+
+"Give me the book."
+
+Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn leather
+cover, the Bible given him ages ago by an Englishman in Palermo.
+
+"The child had to be protected," he said, in a strange, mournful
+voice.
+
+Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying without noise.
+Suddenly she started for the door. He heard her move.
+
+"Where are you going? "he asked.
+
+"To the light," she answered, turning round to look at him
+balefully.
+
+"The light! Si--duty."
+
+Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed
+quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the
+spectacles given him by Dona Emilia. He put them on. After a long
+period of immobility he opened the book, and from on high looked
+through the glasses at the small print in double columns. A
+rigid, stern expression settled upon his features with a slight
+frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought or unpleasant
+sensation. But he never detached his eyes from the book while he
+swayed forward, gently, gradually, till his snow-white head
+rested upon the open pages. A wooden clock ticked methodically on
+the white-washed wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino
+lay alone, rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by a
+treacherous gust of wind.
+
+The light of the Great Isabel burned unfailing above the lost
+treasure of the San Tome mine. Into the bluish sheen of a night
+without stars the lantern sent out a yellow beam towards the far
+horizon. Like a black speck upon the shining panes, Linda,
+crouching in the outer gallery, rested her head on the rail.  The
+moon, drooping in the western board, looked at her radiantly.
+
+Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of oars from
+a passing boat ceased, and Dr. Monygham stood up in the stern
+sheets.
+
+"Linda!" he shouted, throwing back his head.  "Linda!"
+
+Linda stood up. She had recognized the voice.
+
+"Is he dead?" she cried, bending over.
+
+"Yes, my poor girl. I am coming round," the doctor answered from
+below. "Pull to the beach," he said to the rowers.
+
+Linda's black figure detached itself upright on the light of the
+lantern with her arms raised above her head as though she were
+going to throw herself over.
+
+"It is I who loved you," she whispered, with a face as set and
+white as marble in the moonlight. "I!  Only I! She will forget
+thee, killed miserably for her pretty face. I cannot understand.
+I cannot understand.  But I shall never forget thee. Never!"
+
+She stood silent and still, collecting her strength to throw all
+her fidelity, her pain, bewilderment, and despair into one great
+cry.
+
+"Never! Gian' Battista!"
+
+Dr. Monygham, pulling round in the police-galley, heard the name
+pass over his head. It was another of Nostromo's triumphs, the
+greatest, the most enviable, the most sinister of all. In that
+true cry of undying passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta
+Mala to Azuera and away to the bright line of the horizon,
+overhung by a big white cloud shining like a mass of solid
+silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores
+dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and
+love.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Nostromo ,by Joseph Conrad
+
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