 Part 1, Chapter 6, Section 2 of Nostromo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. Part 1, The Silver of the Mine. Chapter 6, Section 2. To be told repeatedly that one's future is blighted because of the possession of a silver mine is not at the age of 14 a matter of prime importance as to its main statement. But in its form it is calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and attention. In course of time the boy at first only puzzled by the angry Jeremiah's, but rather sorry for his dad, began to turn the matter over in his mind in such moments as he could spare from play and study. In about a year he had evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite conviction that there was a silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of Castiguana where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great many years before. There was also connected closely with that mine a thing called the Iniquitous Gold Concession, apparently written on a paper which his father desired ardently to tear and fling into the faces of presidents, members of Judicature and ministers of state. And this desire persisted, though the names of these people he noticed seldom remained the same for a whole year together. This desire, since the thing was Iniquitous, seemed quite natural to the boy though why the affair was Iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards with advancing wisdom he managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the fantastic intrusions of the old man of the sea, vampires and ghouls which had lent to his father's correspondence the flavor of a gruesome Arabian knight's tale. In the end the growing youth attained to his close and intimacy with the San Tomé mine as the old man who wrote these plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the sea. He had been made several times already to pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the mine, he reported. Besides other sums extracted from him on account of future royalties On the ground that a man with such a valuable concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial assistance to the government of the Republic. The last of his fortune was passing away from him against worthless receipts he wrote in a rage whilst he was being pointed out as an individual who had known how to secure enormous advantages from the necessities of his country. And the young man in Europe grew more and more interested in that thing which could provoke such a tumult of words and passion. He thought of it every day, but he thought of it without bitterness. It might have been an unfortunate affair for his poor dad and the whole story threw a queer light upon the social and political life of Costaguana. The view he took of it was sympathetic to his father, yet calm and reflective. His personal feelings had not been outraged and it is difficult to resent with proper and durable indignation the physical or mental anguish of another organism even if that other organism is one's own father. By the time he was 20, Charles Gold had, in his turn, fallen under the spell of the Santome Mine. But it was another form of enchantment, more suitable to his youth into whose magic formula there entered hope, vigor and self-confidence instead of weary indignation and despair. Left after he was 20 to his own guidance, except for the severe injunction not to return to Costaguana he had pursued his studies in Belgium and France with the idea of qualifying for a mining engineer. But this scientific aspect of his labors remained vague and imperfect in his mind. Mines had acquired for him a dramatic interest. He studied their peculiarities from a personal point of view too as one would study the varied characters of men. He visited them as one goes with curiosity to call upon remarkable persons. He visited mines in Germany, in Spain and Cornwall abandoned workings had for him strong fascination. Their desolation appealed to him like the sight of human misery whose causes are varied and profound. They might have been worthless, but also they might have been misunderstood. His future wife was the first and perhaps the only person to detect the secret mood which governed the profoundly sensible almost voiceless attitude of this man towards the world of material things. At once her delight in him, lingering with half open wings like those birds that cannot rise easily from a flat level found a pinnacle from which to soar up into the skies. They had become acquainted in Italy where the future Mrs. Gold was staying with an old and pale aunt who years before had married a middle-aged impoverished Italian Marquis. She now mourned that man who had known how to give up his life to the independence and unity of his country who had known how to be as enthusiastic in his generosity as the youngest of those who fell for that very cause of which old Giorgio Viola was a drifting relic as a broken spar is suffered to float away disregarded after a naval victory. The Marchesa led a still whispering existence none like in her black robes and a white band over the forehead. In a corner of the first floor of an ancient and ruinous palace whose big empty halls downstairs sheltered under their painted ceilings the harvest, the fowls and even the cattle together with the whole family of the tenant farmer. The two young people had met in Luca. After that meeting Charles Gold visited no mines and went together in a carriage once to see some marble quarries where the work resembled mining insofar that it also was the deterring of the raw material of treasure from the earth. Charles Gold did not open his heart to her in any set speeches. He simply went on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true method of sincerity. One of his frequent remarks was I think sometimes that poor father takes a wrong view of that Santome business and they discussed that opinion long and earnestly as if they could influence a mind across half the globe but in reality they discussed it because the sentiment of love can enter into any subject and live ardently in remote phrases. For this natural reason these discussions were precious to Mrs. Gold in her engaged state. Charles feared that Mr. Gold, Sr. was wasting his strength and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid of the concession. He can't see that this is not the kind of handling it requires, he mused aloud, as if to himself. And when she wondered frankly that a man of character should devote his energies to plotting and intrigues Charles would remark with a gentle concern that understood her wonder you must not forget that he was born there. She would set her quick mind to work upon that and then make the inconsequent retort which he accepted as perfectly sagacious because in fact it was so. Well, and you, you were born there too. He knew his answer. That's different, I've been away ten years. Dad never had such a long spell and it was more than thirty years ago. She was the first person to whom he opened his lips after receiving the news of his father's death. It has killed him, he said. He had walked straight out of town with the news, straight out before him in the noonday sun on the white road and his feet had brought him face to face with her in the hall of the ruined palazzo, a room magnificent and naked with here and there a long strip of damask, black with dampen age, hanging down on a bare panel of the wall. It was furnished with exactly one gilt armchair with a broken back and an octagon columnner stand bearing heavy marble vase ornamented with sculptured masks and garlands of flowers and cracked from top to bottom. Charles Gould was dusty with the white dust of the road lying on his boots, on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks, water dripped from under it all over his face and he grasped a thick oak and cudgel in his bare right hand. She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat, gloved, swinging a clear sunshade. Caught just as she was going out to meet him at the bottom of the hill where three poplars stand near the wall of the vineyard. It has killed him, he repeated. He ought to have had many years yet. We are a long-lived family. She was too startled to say anything. He was contemplating with a penetrating and motionless stare the cracked marble urn as though he had resolved to fix its shape forever in his memory. It was only when turning suddenly to her he blurted out twice, I've come to you, I've come straight to you. Without being able to finish his phrase that the great pitifulness of that lonely and tormented death in Costa Guana came to her with the full force of its misery. He caught hold of her hand, raised it to his lips and at that she dropped her parasol to pat him on the cheek, murmured poor boy, and began to dry her eyes under the downward curve of her hat brim, very small in her simple white frock, almost like a lost child crying in the degraded grandeur of the noble hall, while he stood by her again perfectly motionless in the contemplation of the marble urn. Afterwards they went out for a long walk, which was silent till he exclaimed suddenly, yes, but if he had only grappled with it in a proper way, and then they stopped. Everywhere there were long shadows lying on the hills, on the roads, on the enclosed fields of olive trees, the shadows of poplars, of wide chestnuts, of farm buildings, of stone walls, and in midair the sound of a bell, thin and alert, was like the throbbing pulse of the sunset glow. Her lips were slightly parted as though in surprise that he should not be looking at her with his usual expression. His usual expression was unconditionally approving and attentive. He was in his talks with her, the most anxious and deferential of dictators, an attitude that pleased her immensely. It affirmed her power without detracting from his dignity, that slight girl with her little feet, little hands, little face, attractively over-weighted by great coils of hair, with a rather large mouth, whose mere parting seemed to breathe upon you the fragrance of frankness and generosity, had the fastidious soul of an experienced woman. She was, before all things and all flatteries, careful of her pride in the object of her choice. But now he was actually not looking at her at all, and his expression was tense and irrational, as is natural in a man who elects to stare at nothing past a young girl's head. Well, yes, it was iniquitous. They corrupted him thoroughly, the poor old boy. Oh, why wouldn't he let me go back to him? But now I shall know how to grapple with this. After pronouncing these words with immense assurance, he glanced down at her and at once fell a prey to distress, insertitude and fear. The only thing he wanted to know now, he said, was whether she did love him enough, whether she would have the courage to go with him so far away? He put these questions to her in a voice that trembled with anxiety, for he was a determined man. She did. She would. And immediately the future hostess of all the Europeans in Sulaco had the physical experience of the earth falling away from under her. It vanished completely, even to the very sound of the bell. When her feet touched the ground again, the bell was still ringing in the valley. She put her hands up to her hair, breathing quickly, and glanced up and down the stony lane. It was reassuringly empty. Meantime, Charles, stepping with one foot into a dry and dusty ditch, picked up the open parasol, which had bounded away from them with a martial sound of drum taps. He handed it to her soberly, a little crestfallen. They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand on his arm, the first words he pronounced were, It's lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast town. You've heard its name. It is Sulaco. I'm so glad Poor Father did get that house. He bought a big house there years ago, in order that there should always be a casa gold in the principal town of what used to be called the Occidental Province. I lived there once as a small boy with my dear mother for a whole year, while Poor Father was away in the United States on business. You shall be the new mistress of the casa gold. And later, in the inhabited corner of the palazzo above the vineyards, the marble hills, the pines and the olives of Luca, he also said, The name of gold has been always highly respected in Sulaco. My uncle Harry was chief of the state for some time, and has left a great name amongst the first families. By this I mean the pure Creole families, who take no part in the miserable farce of governments. Uncle Harry was no adventurer. In Castiguana we golds are no adventurers. He was of the country and he loved it, but he remained essentially an Englishman in his ideas. He made use of the political cry of his time. It was federation. But he was no politician. He simply stood up for social order out of pure love for rational liberty and from his hate of oppression. There was no nonsense about him. He went to work in his own way because it seemed right, just as I feel I must lay hold of that mine. In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full of the country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that girl, and his mind of the Santome concession. He added that he would have to leave her for a few days to find an American, a man from San Francisco, who is still somewhere in Europe. A few months before he had made his acquaintance in an old historic German town situated in a mining district. The American had his womankind with him, but seemed lonely while they were sketching all day long the old doorways in the turreted corners of the medieval houses. Charles Gold had with him the inseparable companionship of the mine. The other man was interested in mining enterprises, knew something of Costiguana, and was no stranger to the name of Gold. They had talked together with some intimacy, but it was made possible by the difference of their ages. Charles wanted now to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible character. His father's fortune in Costiguana, which he had supposed to be still considerable, seemed to have melted in the rascally crucible of revolutions. Apart from some 10,000 pounds deposited in England, there appeared to be nothing left except the house in Sulaco, a vague right of forest exploitation in a remote and savage district, and the Santa May concession, which had attended his poor father to the very brink of the grave. He explained those things. It was late when they parted. She had never before given him such a fascinating vision of herself, all the eagerness of youth for a strange life, for great distances, for a future in which there was an air of adventure, of combat. A subtle thought of redress and conquest had filled her with intense excitement, and she returned to the giver with a more open and exquisite display of tenderness. He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he found himself alone. He became sober. That irreparable change a death makes in the course of our daily thoughts can be felt in a vague and poignant discomfort of mind. It hurt Charles Gold to feel that, nevermore, by no effort of will, would he be able to think of his father in the same way he used to think of him when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was no longer in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his own identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action. In this his instinct was unerring. Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the fates. For his action, the mind was obviously the only field. It was imperative sometimes to know how to disobey the solemn wishes of the dead. He resolved firmly to make his disobedience as thorough by way of atonement as it well could be. The mind had been the cause of an absurd moral disaster. Its working must be made with serious and moral success. He owed it to the dead man's memory. Such were the, properly speaking, emotions of Charles Gold. His thoughts ran upon the means of raising a large amount of capital in San Francisco or elsewhere. And incidentally, there occurred to him also the general reflection that the Council of the Departed must be an unsound guide. Not one of them could be aware beforehand what enormous changes the death of any given individual may produce in the very aspect of the world. The latest phase in the history of the mind Mrs. Gold knew from personal experience. It was in essence the history of her married life. The mantle of the Gold's hereditary position in Sulaco had descended amply upon her little person, but she would not allow the peculiarities of the strange garment to weigh down the vivacity of her character, which was the sign of no mere mechanical sprightliness, but of an eager intelligence. It must not be supposed that Mrs. Gold's mind was masculine. A woman with a masculine mind is not a being of superior efficiency. She is simply a phenomenon of imperfect differentiation, interestingly barren and without importance. Donna Amelia's intelligence, being feminine, led her to achieve the conquest of Sulaco simply by lighting the way for her unselfishness and sympathy. She could converse charmingly, but she was not talkative. The wisdom of the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition of theories any more than with the defense of prejudices has no random words at its command. The words it pronounces have the value of acts of integrity, tolerance, and compassion. A woman's true tenderness, like the true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind. The ladies of Sulaco adored Mrs. Gold. They still look upon me as something of a monster, Mrs. Gold had said pleasantly to one of the three gentlemen from San Francisco she had to entertain in her new Sulaco house just about a year after her marriage. They were her first visitors from abroad, and they had come to look at the San Tome Mine. She gested most agreeably, they thought. And Charles Gold, besides knowing thoroughly what he was about, had shown himself a real hustler. These facts caused them to be well-disposed towards his wife. An unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by a slight favour of irony, made her talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and provoked them to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good deal of deference. Perhaps they had known how much she was inspired by an idealistic view of success. They would have been amazed at the state of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had been amazed at the tireless activity of her body. She would, in her own words, have been for them something of a monster. However, the Golds were an essentials, a reticent couple, and their guests departed without the suspicion of any other purpose, but simple profit in the working of a silver mine. Mrs. Gold had out her own carriage with two white mules to drive them down to the harbor, once the series was to carry them off into the Olympus of Plutocrats. Captain Mitchell had snatched at the occasion of leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gold in a low-confidential mutter, this marks an epoch. Mrs. Gold loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broad flight of stone steps was overlooked silently from a niche in the wall by a Madonna in blue robes with the crowned child sitting on her arm. Subdued voices ascended in the early mornings a paved well of the quadrangle with a stamping of horses and mules let out in pairs to drink at the cistern. A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow, blade-like leaves over the square pool of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled up on the edge, holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand, barefooted servants passed to and fro issuing from dark, low doorways below, two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen, the baker with a tray of bread made for the day, Leonardo, her own Camarista, bearing high up, swung from her hand raised above her raven black head a bunch of starched underskirts dazzlingly white in the slant of sunshine. Then the old porter would hobble in, sweeping the flagstones, and the house was ready for the day. All the lofty rooms on three sides of the quadrangle opened into each other and into the corridor, with its wrought-iron railings and a border of flowers wence like the Lady of the Medieval Castle. She could witness from above all the departures and arrivals of the Casa, to which the sonorous arched gateway lent an air of stately importance. End of Part 1, Chapter 6, Section 2. Part 1, Chapter 6, Part 3 of Nostromo. This is a liberal box recording. All liberal box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Mario Pineda. Nostromo, by Joseph Contra. Part 1, Chapter 6, Part 3. She had watched her carriage roll away with the three guests from the north. She smiled. Their three arms went up simultaneously to their three hats. Captain Mitchell, the fort in attendance, had already begun a pompous discourse. Then, she lingered. She lingered, approaching her face to the clusters of flowers here and there, as if to give time to her thoughts to catch up with her slow footsteps along the straight pista of the corridor. A fringe Indian hammock from Aroha, gay with colour, fair work, had been swung judiciously in a corner that caught the early sun, for the mornings are cool in Sulaco. The cluster of Flor de Noche Buena was placed in great masses before the open-glass doors of the reception rooms. A big green parrot, brilliantly unlike an emerald in a cage that flashed like gold, screamed out ferociously, Beba costaguana, then called twice, millifluously, Leonardo, Leonardo, in imitation of Mr. Gould's boys, and suddenly took refuge in immobility and silence. Mr. Gould reached the end of the gallery and put her head through the door of her husband's room. Charles Gould, with one foot on a low wooden stool, was already strapping his spurs. He wanted to hurry back to the mine. Mr. Gould, without coming in, glanced about the room. One tall broad bootcase with glass doors was full of books, but in the order, without shelves and lined with red base, better range for our arms. Winchester carbines, revolvers, a couple of shotguns, figures of double-barreled holster pistols. Between them, by itself, upon a strip of scarlet velvet, hung an old cavalry sabre, once the property of Don Enrique Gould, the hero of the Occidental province, presented by Don José Avellanos, the hereditary friend of the family. Otherwise, the plaster white walls were completely bare, except for the water-cooler sketch of the Santame Mountain, the work of Donia Emilia herself. In the middle of the red tile floor stood two long tables littered with plans and papers, a few chairs, and a glass showcase containing specimens of ore from the mine. Mr. Gould, looking at all these things in turn, wondered aloud why the talk of these wealthy and enterprising men discussing the prospects, the working and the safety of the mine, rendered her so impatient and uneasy, whereas she could talk of the mine by the hour with her husband with unweared interest and satisfaction. And dropping her eyelids expressively, she added, What do you feel about it, Charlie? Then, surprised for her husband's silence, she raised her eyes, up and wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He had done with his purse and, twisting his moustache with both hands horizontally, he contemplated her from the height of his long legs with a visible appreciation of her appearance. The consciousness of being thus contemplated, please, Mr. Gould. They are considerable men, he said. I know, but have you listened to their conversation? They don't seem to have understood anything they have seen here. They have seen the mine. They have understood that to some purpose, Charles Gould interjected in defense of his visitors. And then, his wife mentioned the name with the most considerable of the three. He was considerable in finance and in industry. His name was familiar to many millions of people. He was so considerable that he would never have trouble so far away from the center of his activity if the doctors had not insisted on buying menaces on his taken-along holiday. Mr. Holroy's sense of religion, Mr. Gould pursued, was shocked and disgusted at the tolerance of the dress-top saints in the cathedral, the worship he called it, of Gould and Tinsel. But it seemed to me that he looked upon his own god as a sort of influential partner who gets his share of profits in the endowment of churches. That's a sort of idolatry. He told me he endured churches every year, Charlie. And then, said Mr. Gould, marveling inwardly at the mobility of her physiognomy. All over the country. He's famous for that sort of munificence. Oh, he didn't boast, Mr. Gould declared scrupulously. I believe he's a really mood man. But so stupid. A poor chulo who offers a little silver armor leg to thank his god for a cure is as rational and more touching. He's at the head of a man's silver and iron interest, Charles Gould observed. He's a religion of silver and iron. He's a very civil man, though he looked awfully solemn when he first saw the Madonna on the staircase, whose only good in paint. But he said nothing to me. My dear Charlie, I heard those men talk among themselves. Can it be that they really wish to become for an immense consideration drawers of water and hewers of wood to all the countries and nations of the earth? A man must work to some end, Charles Gould said vaguely. Mr. Gould, frowning, serving him from head to foot. With his riding breeches, leather leggings and article of apparel never before seen in Costa Guana, and Norfolk coat of gray flannel and those gray flaming mustaches, he suggested an officer of a cavalry turned gentleman farmer. This combination was gratifying to Mr. Gould's tastes. How thin the poor boy is, she thought. He overworked himself. But there was no denying that his fine drone, and his whole, long-limbed, lank person had an arrow breathing and distinction. And Mr. Gould relented. I only wonder when you felt. She murmured more gently. During the last few days, as it happened, Charles Gould had been kept too busy thinking twice before he spoke to have paid much attention to the state of his feelings. But theirs was a successful match and he had no difficulty in finding his answer. The best of my feelings are in your keeping, my dear, he said, lightly. And there was so much truth in that obscure phrase, that he experienced over her at the moment a great increase of gratitude and tenderness. Mr. Gould, however, did not seem to find this answer in the least obscure. She brightened up delicately. Already he had changed his tone. But there are facts. The worth of the mine, as a mine, is beyond that. It shall make us very wealthy. The mere working of it is a matter of technical knowledge which I have, which ten thousand other men in the world have, but its safety, its continued existence as an enterprise, given a return to men, to strangers, comparative strangers, who invest money in it, is left altogether in my hands. I have inspired confidence in the man of wealth and position. You seem to think this perfectly natural, do you? Well, I don't know. I don't know why I have, but it is a fact. This fact makes everything possible, because without it, I would never have thought of this regarding my father's wishes. I would never have disposed of the concession as a speculator disposes of a valuable right to a company, for cash and shares, to grow rich eventually if possible, but at any rate to put some money at once in his pocket. No, even if he had been visible, which I doubt, I would not have done so. Poor father did not understand. He was afraid I would hang on to the ruin of this thing, waiting for just some such chance and waste my life miserably. That was the true sense of his prohibition, which we have deliberately set aside. They were walking up and down the corridor. Her head just reached to his shoulder. His arm extended downwards, was about her waist. His spruce jingled slightly. He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know me. He parted from me for my sake, and he would never let me come back. He was always talking in his letters of leaving Costa Havana, of abandoning everything and making his escape, but he was too valuable a prey. He was taken into one of the prisons at the first suspicion. His spruce fit claimed slowly. He was bending over his wife as I walked. The big parrot, turning its head as cute, followed their pacing figures with a round, unblinking eye. He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years old, he used to talk to me as if I had been grown up. When I was in Europe, he wrote to me every month. Ten, twelve pages every month of my life for ten years. Ten whole years away, the years I was growing up into a man, he could not know me. Do you think he could? Mr. Good shook her head negatively, which was just what her husband had expected from the strength of her argument. Well, she shook her head negatively only because she thought that no one could know her Charles. Really know him for what he was, but herself. The thing was obvious. It could be felt. It required no argument. And poor Mr. Good, Sr., too soon to ever hear of their engagement, remained too shadowy a figure for her to be credited with knowledge of any sort whatever. No, he did not understand. In my view, this mind could never have been a thing to sell. Never. After all his misery, I simply could not have touched it for money alone. Charles could pursue, and she pressed her head to his shoulder, approvingly. These two young people remembered life which had ended rightfully just when their own lives had come together in that splendor of hopeful love which, to the most sensible minds, appears like a triumph of good over all the evils of the earth. A big idea of rehabilitation had entered the plan of their life. That it was so big as to elude the support of argument made it only the stronger. It had presented itself to them at the instant when the woman's instinct of devotion and the man's instinct of activity received from the strongest of illusions their most souls. The very prohibition imposed the necessity of success. It was as if they had been morally bound to make good their vigorous view of life against the unnatural error of wariness and despair. If the idea of wealth was present to them, it was only insofar as it was bound with that other success. Mr. Scoot and Orphan from Early Childhood and Without Fortune brought up in an atmosphere of intellectual interests had never considered the aspects of great wealth. They were too remote and she had not learned that they were desirable. On the other hand, she had not known anything of absolute want. Even the very poverty of her aunt, the Marquesa, had nothing intolerable to her refined mind. It seemed in accord with a great grief. It had the austerity of a sacrifice offered to a noble ideal. Those, even the most legitimate touch of materialism, was wanting in Mr. Scoot's character. The then man of whom she thought with tenderness because he was Charlie's fatter and with some impatient because he had been weak must be put completely in the wrong. Nothing else would do to keep their prosperity without a stain on its only real, on its immaterial side. Charles Goode, on his part, had been obliged to keep the idea of wealth well to the fore. But he brought it forward as a means, not as an end. Unless the mind was good business, it could not be touched. He had to insist on that aspect of the enterprise. It was his lever to move men who had capital. And Charles Goode believed in the mind. He knew everything that could be known of it. His faith in the mind was contagious, though it was not served by a great eloquence. But businessmen are frequently as sanguine and imaginative as lovers. They are affected by a personality much oftener than people would and Charles Goode, in his unshaken assurance, was absolutely convincing. Besides, it was a matter of common knowledge to demand to whom he addressed himself that Mining in Costa Havana was a game that could be made considerably more than worth the candle. The men of affairs knew that very well. The real difficulty in touching it was elsewhere. Against that, there was an implication of calm and implacable resolution in Charles Goode's very voice. Men of affairs venture sometimes on acts that the common judgment of the world would pronounce absurd. They make their decision unapparently impulsive in human grounds. Very well had said the considerable personage to whom Charles Goode on his way out of true San Francisco had lazily exposed his point of view. Let us suppose that the Mining of Affairs in Sulaco are taken in hand. There would then be in it first, the House of Hallwright which is all right, then Mr. Charles Goode, a citizen of Costa Havana who is also all right and lastly the Government of the Republic. So far, this resembles the first start of the Atacama Night Trade Fields where there was a financing house, a gentleman of the name of Edwards, and a government or rather two governments. Two South American governments. And you know what came of it. War came of it. The Bastadian and prolonged war came of it, Mr. Goode. However, here we possess the advantage of having only one South American government hanging around the plunder out of the deal. It is an advantage, but then there are degrees of badness and that government is the Costa Havana Government. Those spoke the considerable personage, the millionaire and hour of churches on a scale befitting the greatness of his native land. The same to whom the doctors used the language of horrid and bile menaces. He was a big limped, deliberate man whose quiet burliness lent to an ample silk face frock coat a superfine dignity. His hair was iron gray, his eyebrows were still black, and his massive profile was the profile of his sister's head on an old Roman coin. But his parentage was German and Scotian English, with remote strains of Danish and French blood, giving him the temperament of a Puritan and an insatiable imagination of conquest. He was completely abandoned to his visitor because of the warm introduction the visitor had brought and because of an irrational liking for earnestness and determination wherever met to whatever end directed. The Costa Havana Government shall play its hand for all its worth and don't you forget it, Mr. Good. Now, what is Costa Havana? Is it the bottomless pit of 10% loans and order full investments? European capital has been flowing into it with both hands for years, not ours though. We in this country know just about enough to keep our brains. We can sit and watch. Of course, someday we shall step in. We are bound to. But there is no hurry. Time itself has got to wait on the greatest country in the whole of God's universe. We shall be given the word for everything. Industry, trade, law, journalism, art, politics, and religion. From Cape Horn, clear over to Smith Sound and Bejaunt 2, if anything worth taking hold of turns up in the North Pole. And then we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying islands and continents of the Earth. We shall run the world's business whether the world likes it or not. The world can help it, and neither can we, I guess. By these, he meant to express his faith in destiny worse suitable to his intelligence, which was unskilled in the representation of general ideas. His intelligence was nourished on facts and Charles Good, whose imagination had been permanently affected by the fact of a silver mine, had no objection to this theory or the world's future. If he had seemed distasteful for the moment, it was because the sudden statement on such passive actualities dwarfed almost to nothingness the actual matter in hand. He and his plans on all the mineral wealth of the occidental province appeared suddenly roved of every best dish of magnitude. The sensation was disagreeable, but Charles Good was not dull. Already he felt that he was producing a favorable impression. The consciousness of that flattery in fact helped him to a big smile which his big interlocutor took for his mild discreet and admiring an ascent. He smiled quietly too, and immediately Charles Good, with a mental agility mankind would display in defense of a cherished hop, reflected that the very apparent insignificance of his aim would help him to success. His personality and his mind would be taken up because it was a matter of no great consequence, one way or another, to a man who would refer his action to such a prodigious destiny. And Charles Good was not humiliated by this consideration because the thing remained as big as ever for him. Nobody else's past conceptions of destiny could diminish the aspect of his desire for the redemption of the sun to may mine. In comparison to the correctness of his aim, definite in space and absolutely attainable within a limited time the other man appeared for an instant as a dreamy idealist of no importance. End of Part 1 Chapter 6 Part 3 Part 1 Chapter 6 Part 4 of Nostromo This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org Recording by Mario Pineda Nostromo by Joseph Conrad Part 1 Chapter 6 Part 4 The great man, Massif and Benignet had been looking at him thoughtfully. When he brought the short silence it was to remark that concessions flew about thick in the air of Castawana. Any simple soul that just turned to be taken in could bring down a concession at the first shot. Our consuls get their mouths stopped with them he continued with a twinkle of genials corning his eyes, but in a moment he became grave. A conscientious upright man that cares nothing for bottle and keeps clear of their intrigues, conspiracies and factions soon gets his passports. See that, Mr. Good? Persona non grata. That's the reason our government is never properly informed. On the other hand, Europe must be kept out of this continent and for proper reference on our part, the time is not yet ripe, I dare say. But we here, we are not this country's government, neither are we simple souls. Your affair is alright. The main question for us is whether the second partner and that's you, is the right sort to hold his own against the third and unwelcome partner, which is one or another of the high and mighty rubber gangs that run the Castawana government. What do you think, Mr. Good? Huh? As far as the knowledge of this man, in their methods and their politics is concerned, I can't answer for myself. I have been fed on that sort of knowledge since I was a boy. I am not likely to fall into mistakes from excess of optimism. Not likely, huh? That's alright. Tackling a stiff upper lip is what you'll want, Mr. Good. I am not likely to fall into mistakes from excess of optimism. Not likely, huh? That's alright. Tackling a stiff upper lip is what you'll want and you could bluff a little on the strength of your bagging. Not too much, though. We will go with you as long as the thing runs straight, but we won't be drawn into any large trouble. This is the experiment which I am willing to make. There is some risk and we will take it, but if you can't keep up on your end, we will stand our loss, of course, and then we'll let the thing go. This mind can wait. It has been shut up before, as you know. I understand that under no circumstances we will consent to throw good money after bad. Those, the great person I just had spoken then in his own private office, in a great city where other men, very considerable in the eyes of a bane populace, waited with a lackrity upon a wave of his hand. And rather more than a year later, during his unexpected appearance in Sulaco, he had emphasized his uncompromising attitude with the freedom of sincerity permitted to his wealth and influence. With the less reserved, perhaps, because the inspection of what had been done and more so the way in which successive steps had been taken, had impressed him with the conviction that Charles Goode was perfectly capable of keeping up his end. This young fellow, he thought to himself, might yet become a power in the land. This thought flattered him, for he, or two, the only account of this young man he could give to his intimates was. My brother-in-law met him in one of these one horse old German towns, near some mines, and sent him on to me with a letter. He is one of the Costawana goods, pure brand Englishmen, but all born in the country. His uncle went into politics, was the last provincial president of Sulaco and got shot after a battle. His father was a prominent businessman in Santa Marta, tried to keep clear of their politics and died ruined after a lot of revolutions. And that's your Costawana in a nutshell. Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as to his motives, even by his intimates. The outside world was at liberty to wander respectfully at the hidden meaning of his actions. He was so great a man that his lavish patronage of the pure forms of Christianity, which in its naive form of church-building amused Mr. Scoot, was looked upon by his fellow citizens as a manifestation of a pious and humble spirit. But in his own circles of the financial world, they taken up such a thing as the sentiment mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather as a subject for discrete jugularity. It was a great man's caprice. In the great Holroyd building an enormous pile of iron, glass and blocks of stone at the corner of two streets, cobweb deloft by the radiation of telegraph wires, the heads of principal departments exchanged humorous glances, which meant that they were not led into the secrets of the Santa May business. The Costawana male, he was never large, one fairly heavy envelope, taken unopened straight into the great man's room, and no instructions dealing with it had ever been issued thence. The office whispered that he answered personally, and not by dictation either, but actually writing in his own hand with pen and ink, and, he was to be supposed, taking a copy of his own private press copybook inaccessible to profane eyes. Some scornful young men, in significant pieces of minor machinery in that 11-story high workshop of great affairs, expressed frankly their private opinion that the great chief had done at last something silly and was ashamed of his folly. Others, elderly and insignificant, but fully of romantic reverence for the business that had devoured their best years, used to murder darkly and knowingly that this was important to sign, that the Holroy connection meant by and by to get hold of the whole republic of Costawana, lock, stock and barrel. But in fact, the hobby theory was the right one. It interested the great man to attend personally to the center of my mind. It interested him so much that he allowed this hobby to give a direction to the first complete holiday he had taken for quite a startling number of years. He was not running a great enterprise there, no mere railway board or industrial corporation. He was running a man. A success would have pleased him very much on reflectionally noble grounds, but on the other side of the same feeling he was incumbent upon him to cast it off utterly at the first sign of failure. And man might be thrown off. The papers had unfortunately trumpeted all over the land his journey to Costawana. If he was pleased at the way Charles Goode was going on, he infused an added grimness into his assurances of support. Even at the very last interview, half an hour or so before he rolled out of the patio, hat in hand, behind Mr. Goode's white mules, he had said in Charles's room, I shall know how to help you as long as you hold your own, but you might rest assured that in any given case, we shall know how to drop you in time. To this, Charles Goode's answer had been, you may begin sending out the machinery as soon as you like. And the great man had liked this imperative verbal assurance. The secret of it was that Charles Goode's mind, these uncompromising terms were agreeable. Like this, the mind preserves identity with which he hadn't doubted as a boy, and then remained dependent on himself alone. It was a serious affair, and he too took it grimly. Of course, he said to his wife, alluding to this last conversation with the departed guest, while they walked a sloppy up and down the corridor followed by the irritated eye of the pirate. Of course, a man of that sort can take up a thing or drop it when he likes. He will suffer from no sense of defeat. He might have to give in, or he might tomorrow, but the great silver and iron interests will survive, and some day we'll get hold of Costawana alone with the rest of the world. They had to stop near the cage. The pirate, catching the sound of a war belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere. Pirates are very human. Be by Costawana, he shrieked with intense self-assertion and instantly roughly nabbed his feathers, assumed an air of puffed up somnolence behind his glittering wires. And do you believe that, Charlie? Mrs. Goers asked. This seems to be the most awful materialism and, uh, my dear, it's nothing to me, interrupted her husband in a reasonable tone. I make use of what I see. What's it to me whether his talk is the voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There is a good deal of eloquence of one sort of an auto-produce in both Americas. The air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have you forgotten how dear Abelianus can haul forth for hours here? Oh, but that's different, I protested Mr. Goode almost shocked. The illusion was not to the point. Don José was a dear good man who talked very well and was enthusiastic about the greatness of this item in my mind. How can you compare them, Charles? She exclaimed, reproachfully he has suffered and yet he helps. The working competence of men, which she never questioned, was very surprising to Mr. Goode because, upon so many obvious issues, they showed themselves strangely model-headed. Charles Goode, with a care-worn calmness which secured for him at once his wife's auspicious sympathy assured her that he was not comparing. He was an American himself after all and perhaps he could understand both kinds of eloquence. If it were worth while to try he added grimly. But he had breathed the air of England longer than any of his people had done for three generations and really begged to be excused. His poor father could be eloquent too and he asked his wife whether she remembered a passage in one of his father's last letters where Mr. Goode had expressed the conviction that God looked roughly at these countries or else. He would let some ray of hope fall through a rift in the appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed and crime that hung over the queen of continents. Mr. Goode had not forgotten you're ready to meet Charlie, she murmured. It was a striking pronouncement. How deeply your father most have felt his terrible sadness. He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him, said Charles Goode. But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here is law, good faith, order, security. Anyone can claim about these things. But I pin my faith to material interests. Only let the material interests once get a firm footing and they are bound to impose the conditions along they can continue to exist. That's how your moneymaking is justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified because the security which it demands must be shared with unoppressed people. A better justice will come afterwards. That's your ray of hope. His arm pressed her slight form closer to his eye for a moment. And who knows whether in that sense even the sentiment of mine may not become that little rift in the darkness which poor fighter despaired of ever seeing. She glanced up at them with admiration. He was competent. He had given a vast shape to the brightness of her unselfish ambition. Charlie, she said, you are splendidly disobedient. He left her suddenly in the corridor to go and get his hat. A soft gray sombrero, an article of national costume which combined unexpectedly well with his English get-up. He came back, a writing whip under his arm buttoning up a dogskin glove. His face reflected the resolute nature of his thoughts. His wife had waited for him at the head of the stairs and before he gave her the parting keys he finished the conversation. What should be perfectly clear to us, he said, is the fact that there is no going back. Where could we begin life afresh? We are in now for all that there is in us. He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully. Charles Good was competent because he had no illusions. The Good concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be final ones in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment he felt as if the silver mine which had killed his fatter had decoyed him further than he meant to go and with the run about logic of emotions he felt that the wardeness of his life was blown down with success. There was no going back. End of part 1 Chapter 6 Part 4 Part 1 Chapter 7 of Nostromo This is a LibriBox recording. All LibriBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriBox.org Recording by Mario Pineda Nostromo by Joseph Conrad Part 1 Chapter 7 Mr. Good was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that feeling. It made life exciting and she was too much of a woman not to like excitement. But it frightened her too a little and when Don Jose Avellanos rocking in the American chair would go so far as to say even my dear Carlos even if someone toward event were yet to destroy your work which God forbid Mr. Good would look up from the tea table profoundly at her moved husband staring this spoon in the cup as though he had not heard a word. Not that Don Josea dissipated anything of the sort. He could not praise enough near Carlos' tact and courage. His English rock-like quality of character was his best safeguard and turned to Mr. Good. As to you Emilia my soul he would address her with you are as true a patron as though you had been born in our midst. This might have been less or more than the truth. Mr. Good accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for labor had seen the land with a deeper glance that the true born Constagionera could have done. In her troubled war and riding habit her face powder white like a plaster cast with a further protection of a small silk mask during the heat of the day she rode on a well-shaped pony in the center of a little cavalcade. Two Mosos de Campo picked her up in great hats with the spurred bare heels in white embroidery calcuneras leather jackets and striped punches rode ahead with carbines across their shoulders swinging unison to the pace of the horses. A torpedo pack mules brought up the rear in charge of a thin brown military sitting his long-eared best very near the tail legs thrust far forward of his head set far back making a sort of halo for his head. An old Costawana officer a retired senior major of humble origin but patronizing by the first families on account of his blank co-opinions had been recommended by Don Josef for commissary and organizer of that expedition. The points of his great mustache hung far below his chin and, riding on Mr. Good's left hand, he looked about with kindly eyes pointing out the waters of the country telling the names of the little pueblos and of the states of these smooth walled asindas like foam fortresses crowning the knolls above the level of the Sulaco Valley. It unrolled itself with green-john crops, plains, woodland and gleams of water part-like from the blue vapor of the distanciera to an immense quivering horizon of grass and sky where big white clouds seemed to fall slowly into the darkness of their own shadows. Men ploofed with wooden plows and joked oxen small on a boundless expanse as if attacking in men's city itself. The mounted figures of baqueros galloped in the distance and the great herds fed with all their horned heads on one way in one single wavering line as far as the eye could reach across the broad portraitros. A spreading cotton-wooltree shaded a tatch ranch by the road the torching files of burdened Indians taking off their hats would lift sad, mute eyes racing the dost of the crumbling Camino Real made by the hands of their enslaved forefathers. And Mr. Scoot, with each day's journey seemed to come nearer to the soul of the land in the tremendous disclosure of this inferior unaffected by his light European veneer of the costowns, a great line of plain and mountainan people suffering and mute waiting for the future in a pathetic immobility of patience. She knew its sights on his hospitality with a sort of slumberous dignity in those great houses presenting long, blind walls and heavy portals to the windswept pastures. She was given the head of the tables where masters and dependents sat in a simple and patriarchal state. The ladies of the house would duck softly in the moonlight under the orange trees of the courgettes, impression upon her the sweetness of their voices and the something mysterious in the quiet of their lives. In the morning the gentleman well-mounted the ravers and embroidered riding suits with much silk around the trappings of their horses would ride forth to escort the departing guests before committing them with grave good-byes to the care of God at the boundary pillars of their states. In all these households she could hear stories of political outrage, friends, relatives, ruined, imprisoned, killed in the battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously executed infarious prescriptions as though the government of the country was in a struggle of loss between bands of absurd devils let loose upon land with sabers and uniforms and grand eloquent phrases. And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace the dread of officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administration without law without security and without justice. She bore a whole two mouths of wondering very well. She had that power of resistance to fatigue which one discovers here and there in some quite frail-looking women with surprise, like a state of possession by a remarkably stubborn spirit. Dom Pepe, the old Costawana major after much display of solicitude for the delicate lady had ended by conferring upon her the name of the Never Tire Senora. Mr. Scoot was indeed becoming a Costawanera. Having acquired in Southern Europe a knowledge of truth peasantry she was able to appreciate the great worth of the people. She saw the man under the silent sad-eye a beast of burden. She saw them on the road carrying loose, lonely figures upon the plane toiling under great straw hats with their white clotting flapping about their limbs in the wind. She remembered the villages by some group of Indian women at the fountain impressed upon her memory by the face of some young Indian girl with a melancholy of an sensual profile racing an earthenware vessel of cool water at the door of a dark hut with a wooden porch covered with great brown jars. The solid wooden wheels of an ox cart halted with its shafts in the dust showed the strokes of the axe. On a party of charcoal carriers with each man's load resting above his head on the top of the low mud wall slept a stretch in a row within the strip of shade. The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left by the conquerors proclaimed disregard of human labor the tribute labor of banished nations. The power of king and church was gone. But at the sight of some heavy ruinous pile overtopping from a knoll the low mud walls of a pillage Dompepe would interrupt the tale of his campaigns to exclaim Poor Costa Juana before it was everything for the paltries nothing for the people and now it is everything for those great politicos in Santa Marta for negroes and thieves Charles talked with the alcaldes with the fiscales with the principal people in towns and with the caballeros on the states The comandantes of the districts offered him escorts for he could show an authorization from the Sulaco political chief of the day how much the document had cost him in gold, twenty dollar pieces was a secret between himself a great man in the united states who condescended to answer the Sulaco mail with his own hand and a great man of another sort with a dark olive complexion and shifty eyes inhabiting then a condensia in Sulaco and who picked himself in his culture and europeanism generally in a rather french style because he had lived in Europe for some years in exile he said however it was pretty well known that just before this exile he had unconsciously gambled away all the cash in the custom house of a small port where the friend in power had procured for him the post of subcollector that youthful indiscretion hand amongst other inconveniences obliged him to earn his living for a time as a cafe waiter in Madrid but his talents must have been great after all since they had enabled him to retrieve his political fortunes so splendidly Charles Goode exposing his business with an imperturbable steadiness called him Excellency the Provincial Excellency assumed a wary superiority tilting his chair far back near an open window in the true coast of one manner and the band appeared to the brain operatic selections on the plaza just then and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to listen to a favorite passage exquisite, delicious, he murmured while Charles Goode waited standing by with inscrutable patience Lucia, Lucia de la mermur I am passionate for music it transports me, ha the divine, ha, mozart see, divine what is it you are saying? of course rumors had reached him already of the newcomer's intentions besides he had received an official warning from Santa Marta his manner was intended simply to conceal his curiosity and impress his visitor but after he had locked up something valuable in the drawer of a large writing desk in a distant part of the room he became very affable and walked back to his chair smartly if you intend to build villages and assemble a population near the mine the decree of the minister of the interior for that he suggested in a business-like manner I have already sent the memorials said Charles Goode steadily and I reckon now confidently upon your excellence his favorable conclusions the Excellency was a man of many moods with the receipt of the money a great malowness had descended upon his simple soul unexpectedly he fetched a deep sigh ah, Don Carlos what we want is advanced men like you and the province the lethargy the lethargy of these aristocrats they want a public spirit the absence of all enterprise I with my profound studies in Europe you understand with one hand thrust into his swelling bosom he rose and fell on his toes and for ten minutes almost without drawing breath went unhurling himself intellectually to the assault of Charles Goode's polite silence and when stopping abruptly he fell back into his chair it was as though he had been bitten off from a fortress to save his dignity he hastened to dismiss this silent man with a solemn inclination of the head and the words pronounced with moody fatigue condensation you may depend upon my enlightened goodwill as long as your conduct as a good citizen deserves it he took up a paper fan and began to call himself with a consequential air while Charles Goode bowed and withdrew then he dropped the fan at once and stared with an appearance of wonder and perplexity at the closed door for quite a long time at last he shrugged his shoulders as if to assure himself of his disdain called Dull no intellectuality red hair, a true Englishman he despised him his face darkened what meant this unimpressed and frigid behavior he was the first of the successive politicians sent out from the capital to rule the occidental province whom the manner of Charles Goode in official intercourse was to strike as offensively independent Charles Goode assumed that if the appearance of listening to the plurable Balderdash most firm part of the price he had to pay for being left un molested the obligation of uttering Balderdash personally was by no means included in the bargain he drew the line there to these provincial autocrats before whom the peaceable population of all classes had been accustomed to tremble the reserve of that English-looking engineer cost an uneasiness which swung between cringing and trickling gradually all of them discovered that no matter what party was in power that man remained in most effective touch with the higher authorities in Santa Marta this was a fact and it accounted perfectly for the Goodes being by no means so wealthy as the engineering chief on the new railway could legitimately to poofs following the advice of Don José Aballanos who was a man of Goode consul though rendered timid by his horrible experiences at the time Charles Goode had kept clear of the capital but in the current gossip of the foreign residents there he was known with a good deal of seriousness underlying the irony by the nickname of King of Sulaco an advocate of the Costa Buena Bar a man of reputed ability and good character member of the distinguished Moraga family possess an extensible state in the Sulaco Valley was pointed out to strangers with a shade of mystery and respect as the agent of the Santa May Mine political, you know he was tall, black, whiskered and discreet he was known that he had easy access to ministers and that the numerous Costa Buena generals were always anxious to dine at his house presidents granted him audience with facility he corresponded actively with his maternal uncle Don José Aballanos but his letters, unless those expressing formally his dutiful affection were seldom entrusted to the Costa Buena post office there the envelopes are open indiscriminately with the fragments of a brazen and childish imprudence characteristic of some Spanish-American governments but it must be noted that at about the time of the reopening of the Santa May Mine the moliteer who had been employed by Charles Gooding his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain passes between the Santa Marta upland and the valley of Sulaco there are no travelers by the arduous and unsafe road unless under very exceptional circumstances and the state of inland trade did not visibly require additional transfer facilities but the man seemed to find his account in it a few packages were always fun for him whenever he took the road Barry Brown and Wooding in goat skin breeches with the hair outside he sat near the tail of his own smart mule his great hat turned against the sun an expression of blissful back and see on his long face coming day after day a love song in a plaintive key or without a change of expression letting out a gel at his small tropilla in front a round little guitar hunged high up on his back and there was a place scooped out artistically in the wood of one of his packed settles where a tightly rolled piece of paper could be slipped in the wooden plug replaced and the coarse canvas nailed on again when in Sulaco it was his practice to smoke on those all day long he had no care in the world on a strong bench outside the doorway of the Casa Good and facing the windows of the Avellanos house years and years ago his mother had been chief laundry woman in that family Barry accomplished in the matter of clear starching he himself had been born on one of their hasiendas his name was Bonifacio and Don José crossing the street about five o'clock to call on Donia Emilia always acknowledged his humblest salute by some movement of hand or head the porters of both houses converse lazily with him in tones of grave intimacy his evenings he devoted to gambling and to calls in the spirit of generous festivity upon the pain of girls in the more remote side streets of the town but he too was a discreet man end of part one chapter seven part one of chapter eight of Nostromo this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Bologna Times Nostromo by Joseph Conrad part one chapter eight those of us whom business or curiosity took to Sulaco in these years before the first advent of the railway can remember the studying effect of the centome mine on the life of that remote province the outward appearances had not changed then as they have changed since as I am told with cable cars running along the streets of the constitution and carriage roads far into the country to Rincon and other villages where the foreign merchants and the ricos generally have their modern villas and a vast railway goods yard by the harbour which has a long range of warehouses and quite serious organised labour troubles of its own nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then the cargo doors of the port formed indeed an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of scum with a patron saint of their own they went on strike regularly every bullfight day a form of trouble that even Nostromo at the height of his prestige could never cope with efficiently the morning after each fiesta before the indian market women had opened their matte parasols on the plaza when the snow's iguerrota glimped pale over the town on a yet black sky the appearance of a phantom-like horseman mounted on a silver grey mirror solved the problem of labour without fail his steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown enclosures within the old ramparts between the black, lightless cluster of huts like cow-buyers, like dog kennels the horseman hammered with the butt of a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias of obscene, lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble wall at the wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound of snores and sleepy mutters within could be heard in the pauses of his blouse he called up men's names menacingly from the saddle once, twice the drowsy answers grumpy, conciliating, savage jocular or deprecating came out into the silent darkness in which the horseman sat still and presently a dark figure would flit out coughing in the still air sometimes a low-toned woman cried through the window-hole softly he's coming directly, senior and the horseman waited silent on a motionless horse but if perchance he had to dismount then, after a while from the door of that hovel or of that pulporea with a ferocious scuffle and stifled implications a cargo door would fly out head-first and hands abroad to sprawl under the four legs of the silver-grey mare toward her sharp little ears she was used to that work and the man, picking himself up would walk away hastily from Nostromo's revolver reeling a little along the street and snarling low curses at sunrise, Captain Mitchell coming out anxiously in his night attire on to the wooden balcony running the whole length of the OSN companies lonely building by the shore on the way figures moving busily about the cargo cranes perhaps hear the invaluable Nostromo now dismounted and in the checked shirt and red sash of a Mediterranean sailor bawling orders from the end of the jetty in a stentorian voice a fellow in a thousand the material apparatus of perfected civilization which obliterates the individuality of the stereotyped conveniences of modern life had not intruded as yet but over the worn-out antiquity of Sulaco so characteristic with its stuccoed houses and barred windows with the great yellowy white walls of abandoned convents behind the rows of sombre green cypresses that fact very modern in its spirit the San Tomé mine had already thrown its subtle influence and it had altered to the outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before the open portal of the cathedral by the number of white ponchos with a green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tomé minors they had also adopted white hats with green cord and braid articles of good quality which could be obtained in the storehouse of the administration for very little money wearing these colors unusual and cost guana was somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his life on a charge of disrespect to the town police neither ran he much risk of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting party of Lanceros a method of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost legal in the republic whole villages were known to have volunteered for the army in that way but as Don Pepe would say with a hopeless shrug to Mrs. Gold what would you poor people pobrecitos but the state must have its soldiers thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter with pendant mustaches a nut-brown lean face and a clean run of a cast iron jaw suggesting the type of cattle-herd horsemen from the great Lanos of the south if you will listen to an old officer of Pe's senores was the exhortium of all his speeches in the aristocratic club of Sulaco where he was admitted on account of his past services to the extinct cause of federation the club dating from the days of the proclamation of costiguanas independence boasted many names of liberators amongst its first founders suppressed arbitrarily innumerable times by various governments with memories of prescriptions and of at least one wholesale massacre of its members sadly assembled for a banquet by the order of a zealous military commandante their bodies were afterwards stripped naked and flung into the plaza out of the windows by the lowest scum of the populace it was again flourishing at that period peacefully it extended to strangers the large hospitality of the cool big rooms of its historic quarters in the front of a house once the residence of a high official of the holy office the two wings shut up crumbled behind the nailed doors and what may be described as a grove of young orange trees grown in the unpaved patio concealed the utter ruin of the back part facing the gate you turned in from the street as if entering a secluded orchard where you came upon the foot of a disjointed staircase guarded by a moss-stained effigy of some saintly bishop mitered and staffed and bearing the indignity of a broken nose meekly with his fine stone hands crossed on his breast the chocolate-colored faces of servants with mops of black hair peeped at you from above your beard balls came to your ears and ascending the steps you would perhaps see in the first sala very stiff upon a straight back chair in a good light Don Pepe moving his long mustaches as he spelt his way at arms length through an old Santa Marta newspaper his horse a stony-hearted but persevering black brute with a hammer head you would have seen in the street motionless under an immense saddle with its nose almost touching the curb-stone of the sidewalk Don Pepe, when down from the mountain as the phrase often heard in Silaco went could also be seen in the drawing-room of the Cossack Gold he sat with modest assurance at some distance from the tea-table with his knees close together and a kindly twinkle of drullery in his deep-set eyes and his small and ironic pleasantries into the current of conversation there was in that man a sort of sane, humorous shrewdness and a vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple old soldiers of proved courage who had seen much desperate service of course he knew nothing whatever of mining but his employment was of a special kind he was in charge of the whole population in the territory of the mine which extended from the head of the gorge to where the cart-track from the foot of the mountain enters the plain crossing a stream over a little wooden bridge painted green green, the color of hope being also the color of the mine it was reported in Silaco that up there at the mountain Don Pepe walked about precipitous paths girt with a great sword and in a shabby uniform he searched bullion epaulots of a senior major most miners being Indians with big wild eyes addressed him as Taita father as these barefooted people of Costuana will address anyone who wears shoes but it was Basilio Mr. Gold's own Mosul and the head servant of the Casa who in all good faith addressed him once and the solemn words El Señor Gobernador has arrived Don José Avelanos then in the drawing room was delighted beyond measure at the aptness of the title with which he greeted the old major banteringly as soon as the latter's soldierly figure appeared in the doorway Don Pepe only smiled in his long mustaches as much as to say for an old soldier and El Señor Gobernador he had remained with his small jokes upon his function and upon his domain where he affirmed with humorous exaggeration to Mrs. Gold no two stones could come together anywhere without Gobernador hearing the click Senora and he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger knowingly even when the number of the miners over six hundred he seemed to know each of them individually all the innumerable José Manuel's Ignacios from the villages Primero Segondo or Ticero there were three mining villages under his government he could distinguish them not only by their flat joyless faces which to Mrs. Gold looked all alike as if run into the same ancestral mold of suffering and patience but apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of reddish brown of blackish brown of coppery brown backs as the two shifts stripped to linen drawers and leather skull caps mingled together with a confusion of naked limbs of shouldered picks swinging lamps in a great shuffle of sandaled feet on the open plateau before the entrance of the main tunnel it was a time of pause the Indian boys leaned idly against the long line of little cradle wagons standing empty the screeners and ore breakers squattered on their heels smoking long cigars the great wooden chutes slanting over the edge of the tunnel plateau were silent and only the ceaseless violent rush of water in the open flumes could be heard murmuring fiercely with the splash and rumble of revolving turbine wheels in the march of the stamps pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau below the heads of gangs distinguished by brass medals hanging on their bare breasts marshalled their squads and at last the mountain would swallow one half of the silent crowd while the other half would move off in long files down the zigzag paths leading to the bottom of the gorge it was deep and far below a thread of vegetation winding rock faces resembled a slender green cord in which three lumpy knots of banana patches palm leaf roots and shady trees marked the village one village two village three housing the miners of the gold concession whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in the Higueroa range once the rumor of work and safety had spread over the pastoral campbell forcing its way also even as the waters of a high flood into the nooks and crannies of the distant blue walls of the sierras father first in a pointed straw hat then the mother with the bigger children generally also a diminutive donkey all under burdens except the leader himself or perhaps some grown girl the pride of the family stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow the shades of raven hair a thick, haughty profile and no load to carry but the small guitar of the country and a pair of soft leather sandals tied together on her back at the sight of such parties strung out on the cross trails between the pastures or camped by the side of the royal road travelers on horseback would remark to each other more people going to the sand to my mind we shall see others tomorrow spurring on in the dusk they would discuss the great news of the province the news of the sand to my mind a rich Englishman was going to work it and perhaps not an Englishman can't sabe a foreigner with much money oh yes it had begun a party of men who had been to Sulaco with a herd of black bulls for the next Corridor had reported that from the porch of the Posada and Rankon only a shortleague from the town the lights on the mountain were visible twinkling above the trees and there was a woman seen riding a horse sideways not in the chair seat but upon a sort of saddle and a man's hat on her head she walked about two on foot up the mountain pass a woman engineer it seemed she was what an absurdity impossible senor si si uno americano seno marte ah well if your worship is informed uno americano it need be something of that sort and they would laugh a level with astonishment and scorn keeping a wary eye on the shadows of the road for one is liable to meet bad men when travelling late on the campo and it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well but he seemed able with one attentive thoughtful glance at each woman, girl or growing youth of his domain it was only the small fry that puzzled him sometimes he and the Padre could be seen frequently side by side meditative and gazing across the street of a village at a lot of sedate brown children trying to sort them out as it were in low consulting tones or else they would together put searching questions as the parentage of some small staid urchin met wandering, naked in grave along the road with a cigar in his baby mouth and perhaps his mother's rosary perloined for purposes of ornamentation hanging in a loop of beads low down on his rotund little stomach the spiritual and temporal pastors of the mind flock were very good friends with Dr. Moneyham the medical pastor who had accepted the charge for Mrs. Gould and lived in the hospital building they were on not so intimate terms but no one could be on intimate terms with El Senor doctor who with his twisted shoulders drooping head, sardonic mouth and side long bitter glance was mysterious and uncanny the other two authorities worked in harmony Father Roman, dried up small, alert, wrinkled with big round eyes, a sharp chin the great snuff taker was an old campaigner too he had shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of the republic kneeling by the dying on hillsides in the long grass in the gloom of the forests to hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils the rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter of bullets in his ears and where was the harm if at the presbytery there were many cards in the early evening before Don Pepe went his last rounds to see that all the watchmen of the mine, a body organized by himself, were at their posts for that last duty before he slept Don Pepe did actually gird his old sword on the veranda of an unmistakable American white frame house which Father Roman called the Presbytery nearby a long, low dark building steeple-roofed like a vast barn with a wooden cross over the gable was the miner's chapel there Father Roman said mass every day before a somber altarpiece representing the resurrection the gray slab of the tombstone balanced on one corner a figure soaring upwards long-limbed and livid in an oval of pallid light and a helmeted brown legionary smitten down right across the betelmaness foreground my children Father Roman would say to some of his flock, which you behold here through the magnificence of the wife of our senior administrator has been painted in Europe a country of saints and miracles and much greater than our Costaguana and he would take a pinch of snuff with unction but when once an inquisitive spirit desired to know in what direction it was situated, whether up or down the coast, Father Roman to conceal his perplexity became very reserved and severe. No doubt it is extremely far away but ignorant centers like you of the Santa May mine should think earnestly of everlasting punishment instead of inquiring into the magnitude of the earth with its countries and populations altogether beyond your understanding. With a good night Padre done pepe, the gubernador would go off holding up his saber against his side his body bent forward with a long plotting stride in the dark the jocularity proper to an innocent card game for a few cigars or a bundle of yerba was replaced at once by the stern-duty mood of an officer setting out to visit the outposts of an encamped army one loud blast of the whistle that hummed from his neck provoked instantly a great shrilling of responding whistles, mingled with the barking of dogs that would calm down slowly at last a way up at the head of the gorge and in the stillness two serinos on guard by the bridge would appear walking noiselessly towards him. On one side of the road a long frame building the store would be closed and barricaded from end to end facing it another white frame house still longer and with a veranda the hospital would have lights in the two rooms of Dr. Moneyham's quarters even the delicate foliage of a clump of pepper trees did not stir so breathless would be the darkness warmed by the radiation of the overheated rocks Don Pepe would stand still for a moment with the two motionless serinos before him and abruptly high up on the other face of the mountain dotted with single torches like drops of fire fallen from the two great blazing clusters of lights above. The orchutes would begin to rattle the great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering speed and weight would be caught up by the walls of the gorge and sent upon the plain in a growl of thunder The Pasadero and Rincon swore that on calm nights by listening intently in his doorway as of a storm in the mountains End of Part 1, Chapter 8 Part 2, Chapter 8 of Nostromo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Bologna Times Nostromo by Joseph Conrad Part 2, Chapter 8 To Charles Gould's fancy it seemed that the sound must reach the uttermost limits of the province. Riding at night towards the mine it would meet him at the edge of a little wood just beyond Rincon. There was no mistaking the growing mutter of the mountain pouring its stream of treasure under the stamps and it came to his heart with the peculiar force of a proclamation of both over the land and the marvellousness of an accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious desire. He had heard this very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening when his wife and himself after a tortuous ride through a strip of forest had rained in their horses near the stream and had gazed for the first time upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up and, stretching his arm up the gorge, had declared with mock solemnity, behold the very paradise of snakes senora. In a high ravine round the corner of the Saint-Thomé mountain which is square like a blockhouse the thread of a slender waterfall flashed bright and glassy through the dark green of the heavy fronds of tree-ferns. And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back to sleep that night at Rincon. The arcade, an old skinny marino, a sergeant of Guzmán Bento's time, had cleared respectfully out of his house with his three pretty daughters to make room for the foreign senora and their worships, the caballeros. All he asked Charles Gould whom he took for a mysterious and official person to do for him was to remind the supreme government el gobiano supreme of a pension amounting to about a dollar a month to which he believed himself entitled. It had been promised to him, he affirmed, straightening his bent back marshally many years ago for my valor in the wars with the wild indios when a young man, señor. The waterfall existed no longer. The tree-ferns that had luxuriated in its spray had died around the dried-up pool and the high ravine was only a big trench half filled up with the refuse of excavations and tailings. The torrent, dammed up above, sent its water rushing along the open floams of scooped tree trunks striding on trestle legs of the turbines working the stamps on the lower plateau the Mesa Grande of the Santamé mountain. Only the memory of the waterfall with its amazing fernary like a hanging garden above the rocks of the gorge was preserved in Mrs. Gould's watercolour sketch. She had made it hastily one day from a cleared patch in the bushes sitting in the shade of a roof of straw erected for her under Don Pepe's direction. Mrs. Gould had seen it all from the beginning. The clearing of the wilderness, the making of the road, the cutting of new paths up the cliff-face of Santamé. For weeks together she had lived on the spot with her husband. And she was so little in Sulaco during that year that the appearance of the gold carriage on the Alameda would cause a lot. From the heavy family coaches full of stately senoras and black-eyed senoritas rolling solemnly in the shaded alley white hands were waved towards her with animation in a flutter of greetings. Donia Emilia was done from the mountain. But not for long. Donia Emilia would be gone up the mountain in a day or two and the carriage mules would have an easy time of it for another long spell. She had watched the erection of the first frame-house put up on the lower mesa for an office and Don Pepe's quarters. She heard with a thrill of thankful emotion the first wagon-load of ore rattled down the then-only chute. She had stood by her husband's side perfectly silent and gone cold all over with excitement at the instant when the first battery of only fifteen steps was put in motion for the first time. On the occasion when the fires under the first set of retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did not retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the, as yet, bear-frame house. Till she had seen the first spongy lump silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the dark depths of the gold concession. She had laid her unmercenary hands with an eagerness that made them tremble. Upon the first silver ingot turned out still warm from the mould and by her imaginative estimate of its power she endowed that lump of metal with a justificative conception as though it were not a mere fact but something far-reaching and impalpable, like the true expression of an emotion or the emergence of a principle. Don Pepe extremely interested too looked over her shoulder with a smile that making longitudinal folds on his face caused it to resemble a leathered mask with a benignly diabolic expression. Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get hold of its insignificant object that looks por dios very much like a piece of tin? he remarked, jocularly. Hernandez the robber had been an inoffensive small ranchero kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home during one of the civil wars and forced to serve in the army. There his conduct as soldier was exemplary till watching his chance he killed his colonel and managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters who chose him for their chief he had taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless bolsondate tonnero. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses. Extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from capture. He used to ride single-handed into the villages and the little towns on the campo driving a pack mule before him with two revolvers in his belt. Go straight to the shop or store select what he wanted and ride away unopposed because of the terror his exploits and his audacity inspired. Poor country people he usually left alone. The upper class were often stopped on the roads and robbed any unlucky official that fell into his hands was sure to get a severe flogging. The army officers did not like his name to be mentioned in their presence. His followers mounted on stolen horses laughed at the pursuit of the regular cavalry sent to hunt them down and whom they took pleasure to ambush most scientifically in the broken ground of their own fastness. Expeditions had been fitted out. A price had been put upon his head. Even attempts had been made treacherously of course to open negotiations with him without in the slightest way affecting the even tenor of his career. At last in true Costaguenna fashion the fiscal of Tenoro who was ambitious of the glory of having reduced the famous Hernandez offered him a sum of money and a safe conduct out of the country for the betrayal of his band. But Hernandez evidently was not of the stuff of which the distinguished military politicians and conspirators of Costaguenna are made. This clever but common device which frequently works like a charm in putting down revolutions failed with the chief of Volgar Saltia Dors. It promised well for the fiscal at first but ended very badly for the squadron of Lanceros, posted by the fiscal's directions in a fold of the ground into which Hernandez had promised to lead his unsuspecting followers. They came, indeed, at the appointed time, but creeping on their hands and knees through the bush and only let the presence be known by a general discharge of firearms which emptied many saddles. The troopers who escaped came riding very hard into Tanaro. It is said that their commending officer who, being better mounted, rode far ahead of the rest afterwards got into a state of despairing intoxication and beat the ambitious fiscal severely with a flat of his saber in the presence of his wife and daughters for bringing this disgrace upon the national army. The highest civil official of Tanaro falling to the ground in a swoon was further kicked all over the body and rolled with sharp spurs about the neck and face because of the great sensitiveness of his military colleague. This gossip of the inland compo so characteristic of the rulers of the country with its story of oppression inefficiency, fatuous methods treachery, and savage brutality was perfectly none to Mrs. Gold. That it should be accepted with no indignant comment by people of intelligence, refinement, and character as something inherent in the nature of things was one of the symptoms of degradation that had the power to exasperate her almost to the verge of despair. Still, looking at the ingot of silver, she shook her head at Don Pepe's remark, if it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your government, Don Pepe, many an outlaw now with herlanders would be living peaceably and happy by the honest work of his hands. Senora cried Don Pepe with enthusiasm, it is true it is as if God had given you the power to look into the very breasts of people you have seen them working around you, Donia, Emilia, Meek as lambs, patient with their own burrows, brave like lions. I have led them to the very muzzles of guns. I, who stand here before you, Senora, in the time of pace who was full of generosity and in courage only approached by the uncle of Don Carlos here. As far as I know, no wonder there are bandits in the Campo when there are none but thieves, swindlers, and sanguinary macaques to rule us in Santa Marta. However, all the same a bandit is a bandit and we shall have a dozen good straight winchesters to ride with the silver down to Solaco. Mrs. Gould's ride with the first silver escort to Solaco was the closing episode of what she called my camp life before she settled in her townhouse permanently as was proper necessary for the wife of the administrator of such an important institution as the Santome Mine. For the Santome Mine was to become an institution a rallying point for everything in the province that needed order and stability to live. Securities seemed to flow upon this land from the mountain gorge. The authorities of Solaco had learned that the Santome Mine could make it worth their while to leave things and people alone. This was the nearest approach to the rule of common sense and justice. Charles Gould felt it possible to secure at first. In fact the mine, with its organization its population growing fiercely attached to their position of privileged safety with its armory, with its Don Pepe, with its armed body of Sareños where it was said that many an outlaw and deserter and even some members of Hernandez's band had found a place. The mine was a power in the land as a certain prominent man in Santa Marta had exclaimed with a hollow laugh once when discussing the line of action taken by the Solaco authorities at a time of political crisis. You call these men government today? Never! They are officials of the mine officials of the concession I tell you. The prominent man who was then a person in power with a lemon-coloured face and a very short and curly not to say woolly, head of hair went so far in his temporary discontent as to shake his yellow fist under the nose of his interlocutor and shriek, yes all I tell you the political Jeffy the chief of the police the chief of the customs the general all all are the officials of that gold there upon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow on for a space in the ministerial cabinet and the prominent man's passion would end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders after all, he seemed to say what did it matter as long as the minister himself was not forgotten during his brief day of authority but all the same the unofficial agent of the Santo May mine working for a good cause had his moments of anxiety which were reflected in his letters to Don José Avelanos his maternal uncle was put on that part of Costa Guana which lies beyond the Santo May bridge Don Pepe used to assure Mrs. Gold except of course as an honored guest for our senior administrator is a deep political but to Charles Gold in his own room the old major would remark with a grim and soldierly cheeriness we are all playing our heads at this game Don José Avelanos would murder Imperium in Imperio Emilia my soul with an air of profound self-satisfaction which somehow in a curious way seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily discomfort but that perhaps could only be visible to the initiated and for the initiated it was a wonderful place this drawing room with the Casa Gold with its momentary glimpses of the master el señor administrator older, harder mysteriously silent with the lines deepened on his English ruddy out-of-doors complexion flitting on his then cavalryman's legs across the doorways either just back from the mountain or with jingling spurs and riding whip under his arm on the point of starting for the mountain then Don Pepe modestly marshal in his chair the lanero who seemed somehow to have found his martial jocularity his knowledge of the world and his manner perfect for his station in the midst of savage armed contests with his kind Avelanos polished and familiar the diplomatist with his loquacity covering much caution and delicate advice with his manuscript of a historical work on Costeglena entitled 50 years of misrule which at present he thought it was not prudent if it were possible to give to the world these three and also Donia Emilia among them gracious, small and fairy like before the glittering tea set with one common master thought in their heads with one common feeling of a tense situation with one ever present aim to preserve the inviolable character of the mine at every cost and there was also to be seen Captain Mitchell a little apart near one of the long windows with an air of old fashioned neat old bachelorhood about him slightly pompous in a white waist cut a little disregarded and unconscious of it dark and imagining himself to be in the thick of things the good man having spent a clear 30 years of his life on the high seas before getting what he called a shore billet was astonished at the importance of transactions other than related to shipping which take place on dry land almost every event out of the usual daily course marked an epoch for him or else was history unless with his pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of his Rubicon rather handsome face set off by snow-white close hair and short whiskers he would mutter ah that that sir was a mistake the reception at the first consignment of San Tomé Silver for shipment to San Francisco and other American companies mail boats had of course marked an epoch for Captain Mitchell the ingots packed in boxes of stiff ox hide with plated handles small enough to be carried easily by two men were brought down by the serenios of the mine walking in careful couples along the half mile or so of steep zigzag paths to the foot of the mountain and into a string of two-wheeled carts resembling roomy coffers with a door at the back and harnessed tandem with two mules each waiting under the guard of armed and mounted serenios Don Pepe padlocked each door in succession and at the signal of his whistle the string of carts would move off closely surrounded by the clank of spur and carbine with jolts and cracking of whips with a sudden deep rumble over the boundary bridge into the land of thieves and sanguinary macaques Don Pepe defined that crossing hats bobbing in the first light of the dawn on the heads of cloaked figures winch-husters on hip bridal hands protruding lean and brown from under the falling folds of the ponchos the convoy skirting a little wood along the mine trail mud huts and low walls of rencon increased its pace on the Camino Real mules urged to speed escort galloping Don Carlos riding alone ahead of a dust storm affording a vague vision of long ears and mules of fluttering little green and white flags stuck upon each cart of raised arms and a mob of sombreros with the white gleam of ranging eyes and Don Pepe hardly visible in the rear of that rattling dust trail with a stiff seat and impassive face rising and falling rhythmically on an eunect silver-bitted black brute with a hammer head the sleepy people in the little clusters of huts in the small ranches near the road recognized by the headlong sound the charge of the santo mate silver escort towards the crumbling wall of the city on the Campo side they came to the doors to see it dashed by over ruts and stones with a clutter and clink and cracking of whips with a reckless rush and precise driving of a field battery hurrying into action and the solitary English figure of a senior administrator riding far ahead in the lead in the fenced roadside paddocks loose horses galloped wildly for a while the heavy cattle stood up breast deep in the grass lowing mutteringly at the flying noise a meek Indian villager would glance back once and hasten to shove his loaded little donkey bodily against a wall out of the way of the santo mate's silver escort going to the sea a small knot of chilly leperos under the stone horse of the Alameda would mutter caramba once seeing it take a wide curve at a gallop and dart into the empty street of the constitution for it was considered the correct thing the only proper style by the meal drivers of the santo mate wine to go through the waking town from end to end without a chuck in the speed as if chased by a devil the early sunshine glowed on the delicate primbros pale pink pale blue fronts of the big houses with all their gates shut yet and no face behind the iron bars of the windows in the whole sunlit range of empty balconies along the street only one white figure would be visible high up above the clear pavement the wife of the senior administrative order leaning over to see the escort go by to the harbour a mass of heavy fair hair twisted up negligently on her little head and a lot of lace about the neck of her muslin wrapper with a smile to her husband's single quick upward glance she would watch the whole thing stream past below her feet with an orderly uproar till she answered by a friendly sign the salute of the galloping Don Pepe the stiff deferential inclination with a sweep of the hat below the knee the string of padlocked carts lengthened the size of the escort grew bigger as the years went on every three months an increasing stream of treasure swept through the streets of Sulaco on its way to the strong room and the OSN companies building by the harbour there to await shipment for the north increasing in volume and of immense value also for as Charles Gold told his wife once with some exultation there had never been seen anything in the world who approached the vein of the Gold concession for them both each passing of the escort under the balconies of the Casa Gold was like another victory gained in the conquest of peace for Sulaco End of Part 2 Chapter 8