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.