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.