________________________________________________
_ THE next day was quiet in the morning, except for the faint sound
of firing to the northward, in the direction of Los Hatos.
Captain Mitchell had listened to it from his balcony anxiously.
The phrase, "In my delicate position as the only consular agent
then in the port, everything, sir, everything was a just cause
for anxiety," had its place in the more or less stereotyped
relation of the "historical events" which for the next few years
was at the service of distinguished strangers visiting Sulaco.
The mention of the dignity and neutrality of the flag, so
difficult to preserve in his position, "right in the thick of
these events between the lawlessness of that piratical villain
Sotillo and the more regularly established but scarcely less
atrocious tyranny of his Excellency Don Pedro Montero," came next
in order. Captain Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere
dangers much. But he insisted that it was a memorable day. On
that day, towards dusk, he had seen "that poor fellow of
mine--Nostromo. The sailor whom I discovered, and, I may say,
made, sir. The man of the famous ride to Cayta, sir. An
historical event, sir!"
Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and faithful servant,
Captain Mitchell was allowed to attain the term of his usefulness
in ease and dignity at the head of the enormously extended
service. The augmentation of the establishment, with its crowds
of clerks, an office in town, the old office in the harbour, the
division into departments--passenger, cargo, lighterage, and so
on--secured a greater leisure for his last years in the
regenerated Sulaco, the capital of the Occidental Republic.
Liked by the natives for his good nature and the formality of his
manner, self-important and simple, known for years as a "friend
of our country," he felt himself a personality of mark in the
town. Getting up early for a turn in the market-place while the
gigantic shadow of Higuerota was still lying upon the fruit and
flower stalls piled up with masses of gorgeous colouring,
attending easily to current affairs, welcomed in houses, greeted
by ladies on the Alameda, with his entry into all the clubs and a
footing in the Casa Gould, he led his privileged old bachelor,
man-about-town existence with great comfort and solemnity. But on
mail-boat days he was down at the Harbour Office at an early
hour, with his own gig, manned by a smart crew in white and blue,
ready to dash off and board the ship directly she showed her bows
between the harbour heads.
It would be into the Harbour Office that he would lead some
privileged passenger he had brought off in his own boat, and
invite him to take a seat for a moment while he signed a few
papers. And Captain Mitchell, seating himself at his desk, would
keep on talking hospitably--
"There isn't much time if you are to see everything in a day. We
shall be off in a moment. We'll have lunch at the Amarilla
Club--though I belong also to the Anglo-American--mining
engineers and business men, don't you know--and to the
Mirliflores as well, a new club--English, French, Italians, all
sorts--lively young fellows mostly, who wanted to pay a
compliment to an old resident, sir. But we'll lunch at the
Amarilla. Interest you, I fancy. Real thing of the country. Men
of the first families. The President of the Occidental Republic
himself belongs to it, sir. Fine old bishop with a broken nose in
the patio. Remarkable piece of statuary, I believe. Cavaliere
Parrochetti--you know Parrochetti, the famous Italian
sculptor--was working here for two years--thought very highly of
our old bishop. . . . There! I am very much at your service now."
Proud of his experience, penetrated by the sense of historical
importance of men, events, and buildings, he talked pompously in
jerky periods, with slight sweeps of his short, thick arm,
letting nothing "escape the attention" of his privileged captive.
"Lot of building going on, as you observe. Before the Separation
it was a plain of burnt grass smothered in clouds of dust, with
an ox-cart track to our Jetty. Nothing more. This is the Harbour
Gate. Picturesque, is it not? Formerly the town stopped short
there. We enter now the Calle de la Constitucion. Observe the
old Spanish houses. Great dignity. Eh? I suppose it's just as it
was in the time of the Viceroys, except for the pavement. Wood
blocks now. Sulaco National Bank there, with the sentry boxes
each side of the gate. Casa Avellanos this side, with all the
ground-floor windows shuttered. A wonderful woman lives
there--Miss Avellanos--the beautiful Antonia. A character, sir!
A historical woman! Opposite--Casa Gould. Noble gateway. Yes,
the Goulds of the original Gould Concession, that all the world
knows of now. I hold seventeen of the thousand-dollar shares in
the Consolidated San Tome mines. All the poor savings of my
lifetime, sir, and it will be enough to keep me in comfort to the
end of my days at home when I retire. I got in on the
ground-floor, you see. Don Carlos, great friend of mine.
Seventeen shares--quite a little fortune to leave behind one,
too. I have a niece--married a parson--most worthy man, incumbent
of a small parish in Sussex; no end of children. I was never
married myself. A sailor should exercise self-denial. Standing
under that very gateway, sir, with some young engineer-fellows,
ready to defend that house where we had received so much kindness
and hospitality, I saw the first and last charge of Pedrito's
horsemen upon Barrios's troops, who had just taken the Harbour
Gate. They could not stand the new rifles brought out by that
poor Decoud. It was a murderous fire. In a moment the street
became blocked with a mass of dead men and horses. They never
came on again."
And all day Captain Mitchell would talk like this to his more or
less willing victim--
"The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area of Trafalgar
Square."
From the very centre, in the blazing sunshine, he pointed out the
buildings--
"The Intendencia, now President's Palace--Cabildo, where the
Lower Chamber of Parliament sits. You notice the new houses on
that side of the Plaza? Compania Anzani, a great general store,
like those cooperative things at home. Old Anzani was murdered by
the National Guards in front of his safe. It was even for that
specific crime that the deputy Gamacho, commanding the Nationals,
a bloodthirsty and savage brute, was executed publicly by
garrotte upon the sentence of a court-martial ordered by Barrios.
Anzani's nephews converted the business into a company. All that
side of the Plaza had been burnt; used to be colonnaded before. A
terrible fire, by the light of which I saw the last of the
fighting, the llaneros flying, the Nationals throwing their arms
down, and the miners of San Tome, all Indians from the Sierra,
rolling by like a torrent to the sound of pipes and cymbals,
green flags flying, a wild mass of men in white ponchos and green
hats, on foot, on mules, on donkeys. Such a sight, sir, will
never be seen again. The miners, sir, had marched upon the town,
Don Pepe leading on his black horse, and their very wives in the
rear on burros, screaming encouragement, sir, and beating
tambourines. I remember one of these women had a green parrot
seated on her shoulder, as calm as a bird of stone. They had just
saved their Senor Administrador; for Barrios, though he ordered
the assault at once, at night, too, would have been too late.
Pedrito Montero had Don Carlos led out to be shot--like his uncle
many years ago--and then, as Barrios said afterwards, 'Sulaco
would not have been worth fighting for.' Sulaco without the
Concession was nothing; and there were tons and tons of dynamite
distributed all over the mountain with detonators arranged, and
an old priest, Father Roman, standing by to annihilate the San
Tome mine at the first news of failure. Don Carlos had made up
his mind not to leave it behind, and he had the right men to see
to it, too."
Thus Captain Mitchell would talk in the middle of the Plaza,
holding over his head a white umbrella with a green lining; but
inside the cathedral, in the dim light, with a faint scent of
incense floating in the cool atmosphere, and here and there a
kneeling female figure, black or all white, with a veiled head,
his lowered voice became solemn and impressive.
"Here," he would say, pointing to a niche in the wall of the
dusky aisle, "you see the bust of Don Jose Avellanos, 'Patriot
and Statesman,' as the inscription says, 'Minister to Courts of
England and Spain, etc., etc., died in the woods of Los Hatos
worn out with his lifelong struggle for Right and Justice at the
dawn of the New Era.' A fair likeness. Parrochetti's work from
some old photographs and a pencil sketch by Mrs. Gould. I was
well acquainted with that distinguished Spanish-American of the
old school, a true Hidalgo, beloved by everybody who knew him.
The marble medallion in the wall, in the antique style,
representing a veiled woman seated with her hands clasped loosely
over her knees, commemorates that unfortunate young gentleman who
sailed out with Nostromo on that fatal night, sir. See, 'To the
memory of Martin Decoud, his betrothed Antonia Avellanos.' Frank,
simple, noble. There you have that lady, sir, as she is. An
exceptional woman. Those who thought she would give way to
despair were mistaken, sir. She has been blamed in many quarters
for not having taken the veil. It was expected of her. But Dona
Antonia is not the stuff they make nuns of. Bishop Corbelan, her
uncle, lives with her in the Corbelan town house. He is a fierce
sort of priest, everlastingly worrying the Government about the
old Church lands and convents. I believe they think a lot of him
in Rome. Now let us go to the Amarilla Club, just across the
Plaza, to get some lunch."
Directly outside the cathedral on the very top of the noble
flight of steps, his voice rose pompously, his arm found again
its sweeping gesture.
"Porvenir, over there on that first floor, above those French
plate-glass shop-fronts; our biggest daily. Conservative, or,
rather, I should say, Parliamentary. We have the Parliamentary
party here of which the actual Chief of the State, Don Juste
Lopez, is the head; a very sagacious man, I think. A first-rate
intellect, sir. The Democratic party in opposition rests mostly,
I am sorry to say, on these socialistic Italians, sir, with their
secret societies, camorras, and such-like. There are lots of
Italians settled here on the railway lands, dismissed navvies,
mechanics, and so on, all along the trunk line. There are whole
villages of Italians on the Campo. And the natives, too, are
being drawn into these ways . . . American bar? Yes. And over
there you can see another. New Yorkers mostly frequent that
one----Here we are at the Amarilla. Observe the bishop at the
foot of the stairs to the right as we go in."
And the lunch would begin and terminate its lavish and leisurely
course at a little table in the gallery, Captain Mitchell
nodding, bowing, getting up to speak for a moment to different
officials in black clothes, merchants in jackets, officers in
uniform, middle-aged caballeros from the Campo--sallow, little,
nervous men, and fat, placid, swarthy men, and Europeans or North
Americans of superior standing, whose faces looked very white
amongst the majority of dark complexions and black, glistening
eyes.
Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting around
looks of satisfaction, and tender over the table a case full of
thick cigars.
"Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The black coffee you
get at the Amarilla, sir, you don't meet anywhere in the world.
We get the bean from a famous cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose
owner sends three sacks every year as a present to his fellow
members in remembrance of the fight against Gamacho's Nationals,
carried on from these very windows by the caballeros. He was in
town at the time, and took part, sir, to the bitter end. It
arrives on three mules--not in the common way, by rail; no
fear!--right into the patio, escorted by mounted peons, in charge
of the Mayoral of his estate, who walks upstairs, booted and
spurred, and delivers it to our committee formally with the
words, 'For the sake of those fallen on the third of May.' We
call it Tres de Mayo coffee. Taste it."
Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making ready to
hear a sermon in a church, would lift the tiny cup to his lips.
And the nectar would be sipped to the bottom during a restful
silence in a cloud of cigar smoke.
"Look at this man in black just going out," he would begin,
leaning forward hastily. "This is the famous Hernandez, Minister
of War. The Times' special correspondent, who wrote that striking
series of letters calling the Occidental Republic the 'Treasure
House of the World,' gave a whole article to him and the force he
has organized--the renowned Carabineers of the Campo."
Captain Mitchell's guest, staring curiously, would see a figure
in a long-tailed black coat walking gravely, with downcast
eyelids in a long, composed face, a brow furrowed horizontally, a
pointed head, whose grey hair, thin at the top, combed down
carefully on all sides and rolled at the ends, fell low on the
neck and shoulders. This, then, was the famous bandit of whom
Europe had heard with interest. He put on a high-crowned sombrero
with a wide flat brim; a rosary of wooden beads was twisted about
his right wrist. And Captain Mitchell would proceed--
"The protector of the Sulaco refugees from the rage of Pedrito.
As general of cavalry with Barrios he distinguished himself at
the storming of Tonoro, where Senor Fuentes was killed with the
last remnant of the Monterists. He is the friend and humble
servant of Bishop Corbelan. Hears three Masses every day. I bet
you he will step into the cathedral to say a prayer or two on his
way home to his siesta."
He took several puffs at his cigar in silence; then, in his most
important manner, pronounced:
"The Spanish race, sir, is prolific of remarkable characters in
every rank of life. . . . I propose we go now into the
billiard-room, which is cool, for a quiet chat. There's never
anybody there till after five. I could tell you episodes of the
Separationist revolution that would astonish you. When the great
heat's over, we'll take a turn on the Alameda."
The programme went on relentless, like a law of Nature. The turn
on the Alameda was taken with slow steps and stately remarks.
"All the great world of Sulaco here, sir." Captain Mitchell bowed
right and left with no end of formality; then with animation,
"Dona Emilia, Mrs. Gould's carriage. Look. Always white mules.
The kindest, most gracious woman the sun ever shone upon. A great
position, sir. A great position. First lady in Sulaco--far before
the President's wife. And worthy of it." He took off his hat;
then, with a studied change of tone, added, negligently, that the
man in black by her side, with a high white collar and a scarred,
snarly face, was Dr. Monygham, Inspector of State Hospitals,
chief medical officer of the Consolidated San Tome mines. "A
familiar of the house. Everlastingly there. No wonder. The Goulds
made him. Very clever man and all that, but I never liked him.
Nobody does. I can recollect him limping about the streets in a
check shirt and native sandals with a watermelon under his
arm--all he would get to eat for the day. A big-wig now, sir, and
as nasty as ever. However . . . There's no doubt he played his
part fairly well at the time. He saved us all from the deadly
incubus of Sotillo, where a more particular man might have
failed----"
His arm went up.
"The equestrian statue that used to stand on the pedestal over
there has been removed. It was an anachronism," Captain Mitchell
commented, obscurely. "There is some talk of replacing it by a
marble shaft commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at
the four corners, and bronze Justice holding an even balance, all
gilt, on the top. Cavaliere Parrochetti was asked to make a
design, which you can see framed under glass in the Municipal
Sala. Names are to be engraved all round the base. Well! They
could do no better than begin with the name of Nostromo. He has
done for Separation as much as anybody else, and," added Captain
Mitchell, "has got less than many others by it--when it comes to
that." He dropped on to a stone seat under a tree, and tapped
invitingly at the place by his side. "He carried to Barrios the
letters from Sulaco which decided the General to abandon Cayta
for a time, and come back to our help here by sea. The
transports were still in harbour fortunately. Sir, I did not even
know that my Capataz de Cargadores was alive. I had no idea. It
was Dr. Monygham who came upon him, by chance, in the Custom
House, evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched Sotillo.
I was never told; never given a hint, nothing--as if I were
unworthy of confidence. Monygham arranged it all. He went to the
railway yards, and got admission to the engineer-in-chief, who,
for the sake of the Goulds as much as for anything else,
consented to let an engine make a dash down the line, one hundred
and eighty miles, with Nostromo aboard. It was the only way to
get him off. In the Construction Camp at the railhead, he
obtained a horse, arms, some clothing, and started alone on that
marvellous ride--four hundred miles in six days, through a
disturbed country, ending by the feat of passing through the
Monterist lines outside Cayta. The history of that ride, sir,
would make a most exciting book. He carried all our lives in his
pocket. Devotion, courage, fidelity, intelligence were not
enough. Of course, he was perfectly fearless and incorruptible.
But a man was wanted that would know how to succeed. He was that
man, sir. On the fifth of May, being practically a prisoner in
the Harbour Office of my Company, I suddenly heard the whistle of
an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of a mile away. I could
not believe my ears. I made one jump on to the balcony, and
beheld a locomotive under a great head of steam run out of the
yard gates, screeching like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and
then, just abreast of old Viola's inn, check almost to a
standstill. I made out, sir, a man--I couldn't tell who--dash
out of the Albergo d'ltalia Una, climb into the cab, and then,
sir, that engine seemed positively to leap clear of the house,
and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. As you blow a candle
out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the foot-plate, sir, I
can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the National Guards
in Rincon and one other place. Fortunately the line had not been
torn up. In four hours they reached the Construction Camp.
Nostromo had his start. . . . The rest you know. You've got only
to look round you. There are people on this Alameda that ride in
their carriages, or even are alive at all to-day, because years
ago I engaged a runaway Italian sailor for a foreman of our wharf
simply on the strength of his looks. And that's a fact. You can't
get over it, sir. On the seventeenth of May, just twelve days
after I saw the man from the Casa Viola get on the engine, and
wondered what it meant, Barrios's transports were entering this
harbour, and the 'Treasure House of the World,' as The Times man
calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact for civilization--for
a great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandez on the west, and the
San Tome miners pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose
the landing. He had been sending messages to Sotillo for a week
to join him. Had Sotillo done so there would have been massacres
and proscription that would have left no man or woman of position
alive. But that's where Dr. Monygham comes in. Sotillo, blind and
deaf to everything, stuck on board his steamer watching the
dragging for silver, which he believed to be sunk at the bottom
of the harbour. They say that for the last three days he was out
of his mind raving and foaming with disappointment at getting
nothing, flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats
with the drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly stamping his
foot and crying out, 'And yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!'
"He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he had on board) at
the end of the after-derrick, when the first of Barrios's
transports, one of our own ships at that, steamed right in, and
ranging close alongside opened a small-arm fire without as much
preliminaries as a hail. It was the completest surprise in the
world, sir. They were too astounded at first to bolt below. Men
were falling right and left like ninepins. It's a miracle that
Monygham, standing on the after-hatch with the rope already round
his neck, escaped being riddled through and through like a sieve.
He told me since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept
on yelling with all the strength of his lungs: 'Hoist a white
flag! Hoist a white flag!' Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda
regiment, standing by, unsheathed his sword with a shriek: 'Die,
perjured traitor!' and ran Sotillo clean through the body, just
before he fell himself shot through the head."
Captain Mitchell stopped for a while.
"Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours. But it's time we
started off to Rincon. It would not do for you to pass through
Sulaco and not see the lights of the San Tome mine, a whole
mountain ablaze like a lighted palace above the dark Campo. It's
a fashionable drive. . . . But let me tell you one little
anecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight or more later, when
Barrios, declared Generalissimo, was gone in pursuit of Pedrito
away south, when the Provisional Junta, with Don Juste Lopez at
its head, had promulgated the new Constitution, and our Don
Carlos Gould was packing up his trunks bound on a mission to San
Francisco and Washington (the United States, sir, were the first
great power to recognize the Occidental Republic)--a fortnight
later, I say, when we were beginning to feel that our heads were
safe on our shoulders, if I may express myself so, a prominent
man, a large shipper by our line, came to see me on business,
and, says he, the first thing: 'I say, Captain Mitchell, is that
fellow' (meaning Nostromo) 'still the Capataz of your Cargadores
or not?' 'What's the matter?' says I. 'Because, if he is, then I
don't mind; I send and receive a good lot of cargo by your ships;
but I have observed him several days loafing about the wharf, and
just now he stopped me as cool as you please, with a request for
a cigar. Now, you know, my cigars are rather special, and I can't
get them so easily as all that.' 'I hope you stretched a point,'
I said, very gently. 'Why, yes. But it's a confounded nuisance.
The fellow's everlastingly cadging for smokes.' Sir, I turned my
eyes away, and then asked, 'Weren't you one of the prisoners in
the Cabildo?' 'You know very well I was, and in chains, too,'
says he. 'And under a fine of fifteen thousand dollars?' He
coloured, sir, because it got about that he fainted from fright
when they came to arrest him, and then behaved before Fuentes in
a manner to make the very policianos, who had dragged him there
by the hair of his head, smile at his cringing. 'Yes,' he says,
in a sort of shy way. 'Why?' 'Oh, nothing. You stood to lose a
tidy bit,' says I, 'even if you saved your life. . . . But what
can I do for you?' He never even saw the point. Not he. And
that's how the world wags, sir."
He rose a little stiffly, and the drive to Rincon would be taken
with only one philosophical remark, uttered by the merciless
cicerone, with his eyes fixed upon the lights of San Tome, that
seemed suspended in the dark night between earth and heaven.
"A great power, this, for good and evil, sir. A great power."
And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten, excellent as to
cooking, and leaving upon the traveller's mind an impression that
there were in Sulaco many pleasant, able young men with salaries
apparently too large for their discretion, and amongst them a
few, mostly Anglo-Saxon, skilled in the art of, as the saying is,
"taking a rise" out of his kind host.
With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a twowheeled
machine (which Captain Mitchell called a curricle) behind a fleet
and scraggy mule beaten all the time by an obviously Neapolitan
driver, the cycle would be nearly closed before the lighted-up
offices of the O. S. N. Company, remaining open so late because
of the steamer. Nearly--but not quite.
"Ten o'clock. Your ship won't be ready to leave till half-past
twelve, if by then. Come in for a brandy-and-soda and one more
cigar."
And in the superintendent's private room the privileged passenger
by the Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were
annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds,
names, facts, and complicated information imperfectly
apprehended, would listen like a tired child to a fairy tale;
would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its pompousness,
tell him, as if from another world, how there was "in this very
harbour" an international naval demonstration, which put an end
to the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United States cruiser,
Powhattan, was the first to salute the Occidental flag--white,
with a wreath of green laurel in the middle encircling a yellow
amarilla flower. Would hear how General Montero, in less than a
month after proclaiming himself Emperor of Costaguana, was shot
dead (during a solemn and public distribution of orders and
crosses) by a young artillery officer, the brother of his then
mistress.
"The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country," the voice would
say. And it would continue: "A captain of one of our ships told
me lately that he recognized Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in
purple slippers and a velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel,
keeping a disorderly house in one of the southern ports."
"Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?" would wonder the
distinguished bird of passage hovering on the confines of waking
and sleep with resolutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl
upon his lips, from between which stuck out the eighteenth or
twentieth cigar of that memorable day.
"He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting ghost,
sir"--Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo with true
warmth of feeling and a touch of wistful pride. "You may imagine,
sir, what an effect it produced on me. He had come round by sea
with Barrios, of course. And the first thing he told me after I
became fit to hear him was that he had picked up the lighter's
boat floating in the gulf! He seemed quite overcome by the
circumstance. And a remarkable enough circumstance it was, when
you remember that it was then sixteen days since the sinking of
the silver. At once I could see he was another man. He stared at
the wall, sir, as if there had been a spider or something running
about there. The loss of the silver preyed on his mind. The first
thing he asked me about was whether Dona Antonia had heard yet of
Decoud's death. His voice trembled. I had to tell him that Dona
Antonia, as a matter of fact, was not back in town yet. Poor
girl! And just as I was making ready to ask him a thousand
questions, with a sudden, 'Pardon me, senor,' he cleared out of
the office altogether. I did not see him again for three days. I
was terribly busy, you know. It seems that he wandered about in
and out of the town, and on two nights turned up to sleep in the
baracoons of the railway people. He seemed absolutely
indifferent to what went on. I asked him on the wharf, 'When are
you going to take hold again, Nostromo? There will be plenty of
work for the Cargadores presently.'
"'Senor,' says he, looking at me in a slow, inquisitive manner,
'would it surprise you to hear that I am too tired to work just
yet? And what work could I do now? How can I look my Cargadores
in the face after losing a lighter?'
"I begged him not to think any more about the silver, and he
smiled. A smile that went to my heart, sir. 'It was no mistake,'
I told him. 'It was a fatality. A thing that could not be
helped.' 'Si, si!" he said, and turned away. I thought it best to
leave him alone for a bit to get over it. Sir, it took him years
really, to get over it. I was present at his interview with Don
Carlos. I must say that Gould is rather a cold man. He had to
keep a tight hand on his feelings, dealing with thieves and
rascals, in constant danger of ruin for himself and wife for so
many years, that it had become a second nature. They looked at
each other for a long time. Don Carlos asked what he could do for
him, in his quiet, reserved way.
"'My name is known from one end of Sulaco to the other,' he said,
as quiet as the other. 'What more can you do for me?' That was
all that passed on that occasion. Later, however, there was a
very fine coasting schooner for sale, and Mrs. Gould and I put
our heads together to get her bought and presented to him. It
was done, but he paid all the price back within the next three
years. Business was booming all along this seaboard, sir.
Moreover, that man always succeeded in everything except in
saving the silver. Poor Dona Antonia, fresh from her terrible
experiences in the woods of Los Hatos, had an interview with him,
too. Wanted to hear about Decoud: what they said, what they did,
what they thought up to the last on that fatal night. Mrs. Gould
told me his manner was perfect for quietness and sympathy. Miss
Avellanos burst into tears only when he told her how Decoud had
happened to say that his plan would be a glorious success. . . .
And there's no doubt, sir, that it is. It is a success."
The cycle was about to close at last. And while the privileged
passenger, shivering with the pleasant anticipations of his
berth, forgot to ask himself, "What on earth Decoud's plan could
be?" Captain Mitchell was saying, "Sorry we must part so soon.
Your intelligent interest made this a pleasant day to me. I shall
see you now on board. You had a glimpse of the 'Treasure House of
the World.' A very good name that." And the coxswain's voice at
the door, announcing that the gig was ready, closed the cycle.
Nostromo had, indeed, found the lighter's boat, which he had left
on the Great Isabel with Decoud, floating empty far out in the
gulf. He was then on the bridge of the first of Barrios's
transports, and within an hour's steaming from Sulaco. Barrios,
always delighted with a feat of daring and a good judge of
courage, had taken a great liking to the Capataz. During the
passage round the coast the General kept Nostromo near his
person, addressing him frequently in that abrupt and boisterous
manner which was the sign of his high favour.
Nostromo's eyes were the first to catch, broad on the bow, the
tiny, elusive dark speck, which, alone with the forms of the
Three Isabels right ahead, appeared on the flat, shimmering
emptiness of the gulf. There are times when no fact should be
neglected as insignificant; a small boat so far from the land
might have had some meaning worth finding out. At a nod of
consent from Barrios the transport swept out of her course,
passing near enough to ascertain that no one manned the little
cockle-shell. It was merely a common small boat gone adrift with
her oars in her. But Nostromo, to whose mind Decoud had been
insistently present for days, had long before recognized with
excitement the dinghy of the lighter.
There could be no question of stopping to pick up that thing.
Every minute of time was momentous with the lives and futures of
a whole town. The head of the leading ship, with the General on
board, fell off to her course. Behind her, the fleet of
transports, scattered haphazard over a mile or so in the offing,
like the finish of an ocean race, pressed on, all black and
smoking on the western sky.
"Mi General," Nostromo's voice rang out loud, but quiet, from
behind a group of officers, "I should like to save that little
boat. Por Dios, I know her. She belongs to my Company."
"And, por Dios," guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, goodhumoured
voice, "you belong to me. I am going to make you a captain of
cavalry directly we get within sight of a horse again."
"I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General," cried
Nostromo, pushing through to the rail with a set
stare in his eyes. "Let me----"
"Let you? What a conceited fellow that is," bantered the General,
jovially, without even looking at him. "Let him go! Ha! ha! ha!
He wants me to admit that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha!
ha! ha! Would you like to swim off to her, my son?"
A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other stopped
his guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and his black head
bobbed up far away already from the ship. The General muttered an
appalled "Cielo! Sinner that I am!" in a thunderstruck tone. One
anxious glance was enough to show him that Nostromo was swimming
with perfect ease; and then he thundered terribly, "No! no! We
shall not stop to pick up this impertinent fellow. Let him
drown--that mad Capataz."
Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo from leaping
overboard. That empty boat, coming out to meet him mysteriously,
as if rowed by an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of
some sign, of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling and
enigmatic way the persistent thought of a treasure and of a man's
fate. He would have leaped if there had been death in that
half-mile of water. It was as smooth as a pond, and for some
reason sharks are unknown in the Placid Gulf, though on the other
side of the Punta Mala the coastline swarms with them.
The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with force. A
queer, faint feeling had come over him while he swam. He had got
rid of his boots and coat in the water. He hung on for a time,
regaining his breath. In the distance the transports, more in a
bunch now, held on straight for Sulaco, with their air of
friendly contest, of nautical sport, of a regatta; and the united
smoke of their funnels drove like a thin, sulphurous fogbank
right over his head. It was his daring, his courage, his act that
had set these ships in motion upon the sea, hurrying on to save
the lives and fortunes of the Blancos, the taskmasters of the
people; to save the San Tome mine; to save the children.
With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over the stern.
The very boat! No doubt of it; no doubt whatever. It was the
dinghy of the lighter No. 3--the dinghy left with Martin Decoud
on the Great Isabel so that he should have some means to help
himself if nothing could be done for him from the shore. And here
she had come out to meet him empty and inexplicable. What had
become of Decoud? The Capataz made a minute examination. He
looked for some scratch, for some mark, for some sign. All he
discovered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the
thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard with his finger.
Then he sat down in the stern sheets, passive, with his knees
close together and legs aslant.
Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers hanging
lank and dripping and a lustreless stare fixed upon the bottom
boards, the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores resembled a drowned
corpse come up from the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a
small boat. The excitement of his adventurous ride, the
excitement of the return in time, of achievement, of success, all
this excitement centred round the associated ideas of the great
treasure and of the only other man who knew of its existence, had
departed from him. To the very last moment he had been
cudgelling his brains as to how he could manage to visit the
Great Isabel without loss of time and undetected. For the idea of
secrecy had come to be connected with the treasure so closely
that even to Barrios himself he had refrained from mentioning the
existence of Decoud and of the silver on the island. The letters
he carried to the General, however, made brief mention of the
loss of the lighter, as having its bearing upon the situation in
Sulaco. In the circumstances, the one-eyed tiger-slayer, scenting
battle from afar, had not wasted his time in making inquiries
from the messenger. In fact, Barrios, talking with Nostromo,
assumed that both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San Tome
were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned directly, had
kept silent, under the influence of some indefinable form of
resentment and distrust. Let Don Martin speak of everything with
his own lips--was what he told himself mentally.
And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel thrown thus
in his way at the earliest possible moment, his excitement had
departed, as when the soul takes flight leaving the body inert
upon an earth it knows no more. Nostromo did not seem to know the
gulf. For a long time even his eyelids did not flutter once upon
the glazed emptiness of his stare. Then slowly, without a limb
having stirred, without a twitch of muscle or quiver of an
eyelash, an expression, a living expression came upon the still
features, deep thought crept into the empty stare--as if an
outcast soul, a quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted
body in its way, had come in stealthily to take possession.
The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness of sea,
islands, and coast, of cloud forms on the sky and trails of light
upon the water, the knitting of that brow had the emphasis of a
powerful gesture. Nothing else budged for a long time; then the
Capataz shook his head and again surrendered himself to the
universal repose of all visible things. Suddenly he seized the
oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin round, head-on
to the Great Isabel. But before he began to pull he bent once
more over the brown stain on the gunwale.
"I know that thing," he muttered to himself, with a sagacious
jerk of the head. "That's blood."
His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady. Now and then he looked
over his shoulder at the Great Isabel, presenting its low cliff
to his anxious gaze like an impenetrable face. At last the stem
touched the strand. He flung rather than dragged the boat up the
little beach. At once, turning his back upon the sunset, he
plunged with long strides into the ravine, making the water of
the stream spurt and fly upwards at every step, as if spurning
its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit with his feet. He wanted to
save every moment of daylight.
A mass of earth, grass, and smashed bushes had fallen down very
naturally from above upon the cavity under the leaning tree.
Decoud had attended to the concealment of the silver as
instructed, using the spade with some intelligence. But
Nostromo's half-smile of approval changed into a scornful curl of
the lip by the sight of the spade itself flung there in full
view, as if in utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving away
the whole thing. Ah! They were all alike in their folly, these
hombres finos that invented laws and governments and barren tasks
for the people.
The Capataz picked up the spade, and with the feel of the handle
in his palm the desire of having a look at the horse-hide boxes
of treasure came upon him suddenly. In a very few strokes he
uncovered the edges and corners of several; then, clearing away
more earth, became aware that one of them had been slashed with a
knife.
He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and dropped on
his knees with a look of irrational apprehension over one
shoulder, then over the other. The stiff hide had closed, and he
hesitated before he pushed his hand through the long slit and
felt the ingots inside. There they were. One, two, three. Yes,
four gone. Taken away. Four ingots. But who? Decoud? Nobody
else. And why? For what purpose? For what cursed fancy? Let him
explain. Four ingots carried off in a boat, and--blood!
In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded,
unaltered, plunged into the waters in a grave and untroubled
mystery of self-immolation consummated far from all mortal eyes,
with an infinite majesty of silence and peace. Four ingots
short!--and blood!
The Capataz got up slowly.
"He might simply have cut his hand," he muttered. "But,
then----"
He sat down on the soft earth, unresisting, as if he had been
chained to the treasure, his drawn-up legs clasped in his hands
with an air of hopeless submission, like a slave set on guard.
Once only he lifted his head smartly: the rattle of hot musketry
fire had reached his ears, like pouring from on high a stream of
dry peas upon a drum. After listening for a while, he said, half
aloud--
"He will never come back to explain."
And he lowered his head again.
"Impossible!" he muttered, gloomily.
The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great conflagration
in Sulaco flashed up red above the coast, played on the clouds at
the head of the gulf, seemed to touch with a ruddy and sinister
reflection the forms of the Three Isabels. He never saw it,
though he raised his head.
"But, then, I cannot know," he pronounced, distinctly, and
remained silent and staring for hours.
He could not know. Nobody was to know. As might have been
supposed, the end of Don Martin Decoud never became a subject of
speculation for any one except Nostromo. Had the truth of the
facts been known, there would always have remained the question.
Why? Whereas the version of his death at the sinking of the
lighter had no uncertainty of motive. The young apostle of
Separation had died striving for his idea by an ever-lamented
accident. But the truth was that he died from solitude, the
enemy known but to few on this earth, and whom only the simplest
of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanero of the
boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself
and others.
For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human comprehension,
the sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels. The rocky head of
Azuera is their haunt, whose stony levels and chasms resound with
their wild and tumultuous clamour as if they were for ever
quarrelling over the legendary treasure.
At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, Decoud, turning
in his lair of coarse grass, under the shade of a tree, said to
himself--
"I have not seen as much as one single bird all day."
And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that one now of
his own muttering voice. It had been a day of absolute
silence--the first he had known in his life. And he had not slept
a wink. Not for all these wakeful nights and the days of
fighting, planning, talking; not for all that last night of
danger and hard physical toil upon the gulf, had he been able to
close his eyes for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset he
had been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on his
face.
He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended into the
gully to spend the night by the side of the silver. If Nostromo
returned--as he might have done at any moment--it was there that
he would look first; and night would, of course, be the proper
time for an attempt to communicate. He remembered with profound
indifference that he had not eaten anything yet since he had been
left alone on the island.
He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day broke he ate
something with the same indifference. The brilliant "Son
Decoud," the spoiled darling of the family, the lover of Antonia
and journalist of Sulaco, was not fit to grapple with himself
single-handed. Solitude from mere outward condition of existence
becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations of
irony and scepticism have no place. It takes possession of the
mind, and drives forth the thought into the exile of utter
unbelief. After three days of waiting for the sight of some human
face, Decoud caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own
individuality. It had merged into the world of cloud and water,
of natural forces and forms of nature. In our activity alone do
we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as
against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless
part. Decoud lost all belief in the reality of his action past
and to come. On the fifth day an immense melancholy descended
upon him palpably. He resolved not to give himself up to these
people in Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and terrible, like
jibbering and obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling feebly
in their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an
allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his
weakness.
Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared within
the range of his vision; and, as if to escape from this solitude,
he absorbed himself in his melancholy. The vague consciousness of
a misdirected life given up to impulses whose memory left a
bitter taste in his mouth was the first moral sentiment of his
manhood. But at the same time he felt no remorse. What should he
regret? He had recognized no other virtue than intelligence, and
had erected passions into duties. Both his intelligence and his
passion were swallowed up easily in this great unbroken solitude
of waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had robbed his will of
all energy, for he had not slept seven hours in the seven days.
His sadness was the sadness of a sceptical mind. He beheld the
universe as a succession of incomprehensible images. Nostromo was
dead. Everything had failed ignominiously. He no longer dared to
think of Antonia. She had not survived. But if she survived he
could not face her. And all exertion seemed senseless.
On the tenth day, after a night spent without even dozing off
once (it had occurred to him that Antonia could not possibly have
ever loved a being so impalpable as himself), the solitude
appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a
tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands,
without fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion
whatever. Only towards the evening, in the comparative relief of
coolness, he began to wish that this cord would snap. He imagined
it snapping with a report as of a pistol--a sharp, full crack.
And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that
eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless
nights in which the silence, remaining unbroken in the shape of a
cord to which he hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless
phrases, always the same but utterly incomprehensible, about
Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an
ironical and senseless buzzing. In the daytime he could look at
the silence like a still cord stretched to breakingpoint, with
his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a weight.
"I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell," he asked
himself.
The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt,
dirty, white-faced, and looked at it with his red-rimmed eyes.
His limbs obeyed him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without
tremor; and the effect of that physical condition gave to his
movements an unhesitating, deliberate dignity. He acted as if
accomplishing some sort of rite. He descended into the gully; for
the fascination of all that silver, with its potential power,
survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the belt with the
revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his waist.
The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let
him fall and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was
looking at the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea!
His aspect was that of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on
his knees slowly and went on grubbing with his fingers with
industrious patience till he uncovered one of the boxes. Without
a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it
open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He
covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the
gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish.
It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the
dinghy near the water with an idea of rowing away somewhere, but
had desisted partly at the whisper of lingering hope that
Nostromo would return, partly from conviction of utter
uselessness of all effort. Now she wanted only a slight shove to
be set afloat. He had eaten a little every day after the first,
and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up the oars
slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that
stood behind him warm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life,
bathed in a rich light from head to foot as if in a radiance of
hope and joy. He pulled straight towards the setting sun. When
the gulf had grown dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls
in. The hollow clatter they made in falling was the loudest noise
he had ever heard in his life. It was a revelation. It seemed to
recall him from far away, Actually the thought, "Perhaps I may
sleep to-night," passed through his mind. But he did not believe
it. He believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on the
thwart.
The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into his unwinking
eyes. After a clear daybreak the sun appeared splendidly above
the peaks of the range. The great gulf burst into a glitter all
around the boat; and in this glory of merciless solitude the
silence appeared again before him, stretched taut like a dark,
thin string.
His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted his seat
from the thwart to the gunwale. They looked at it fixedly, while
his hand, feeling about his waist, unbuttoned the flap of the
leather case, drew the revolver, cocked it, brought it forward
pointing at his breast, pulled the trigger, and, with convulsive
force, sent the still-smoking weapon hurtling through the air.
His eyes looked at it while he fell forward and hung with his
breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his right hand hooked
under the thwart. They looked----
"It is done," he stammered out, in a sudden flow of blood. His
last thought was: "I wonder how that Capataz died." The stiffness
of the fingers relaxed, and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled
overboard without having heard the cord of silence snap in the
solitude of the Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface remained
untroubled by the fall of his body.
A victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the retribution
meted out to intellectual audacity, the brilliant Don Martin
Decoud, weighted by the bars of San Tome silver, disappeared
without a trace, swallowed up in the immense indifference of
things. His sleepless, crouching figure was gone from the side of
the San Tome silver; and for a time the spirits of good and evil
that hover near every concealed treasure of the earth might have
thought that this one had been forgotten by all mankind. Then,
after a few days, another form appeared striding away from the
setting sun to sit motionless and awake in the narrow black gully
all through the night, in nearly the same pose, in the same place
in which had sat that other sleepless man who had gone away for
ever so quietly in a small boat, about the time of sunset. And
the spirits of good and evil that hover about a forbidden
treasure understood well that the silver of San Tome was provided
now with a faithful and lifelong slave.
The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of the disenchanted
vanity which is the reward of audacious action, sat in the weary
pose of a hunted outcast through a night of sleeplessness as
tormenting as any known to Decoud, his companion in the most
desperate affair of his life. And he wondered how Decoud had
died. But he knew the part he had played himself. First a woman,
then a man, abandoned both in their last extremity, for the sake
of this accursed treasure. It was paid for by a soul lost and by
a vanished life. The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by a
gust of immense pride. There was no one in the world but Gian'
Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptible and
faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price.
He had made up his mind that nothing should be allowed now to rob
him of his bargain. Nothing. Decoud had died. But how? That he
was dead he had not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . .
What for? Did he mean to come for more--some other time?
The treasure was putting forth its latent power. It troubled the
clear mind of the man who had paid the price. He was sure that
Decoud was dead. The island seemed full of that whisper. Dead!
Gone! And he caught himself listening for the swish of bushes
and the splash of the footfalls in the bed of the brook. Dead!
The talker, the novio of Dona Antonia!
"Ha!" he murmured, with his head on his knees, under the livid
clouded dawn breaking over the liberated Sulaco and upon the gulf
as gray as ashes. "It is to her that he will fly. To her that he
will fly!"
And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to cast a spell,
like the angry woman who had prophesied remorse and failure, and
yet had laid upon him the task of saving the children? Well, he
had saved the children. He had defeated the spell of poverty and
starvation. He had done it all alone--or perhaps helped by the
devil. Who cared? He had done it, betrayed as he was, and saving
by the same stroke the San Tome mine, which appeared to him
hateful and immense, lording it by its vast wealth over the
valour, the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and peace,
over the labours of the town, the sea, and the Campo.
The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cordillera. The
Capataz looked down for a time upon the fall of loose earth,
stones, and smashed bushes, concealing the hiding-place of the
silver.
"I must grow rich very slowly," he meditated, aloud. _
Read next: PART THIRD - THE LIGHTHOUSE: CHAPTER XI
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