Nostromo - Joseph Conrad (books to read fiction .TXT) 📗

of Sulaco; “Fussy Joe” for the commanders of the company’s ships, Captain Joseph Mitchell prided himself on his profound knowledge of men and things in the country⁠—cosas de Costaguana. Amongst these last he accounted as most unfavourable to the orderly working of his Company the frequent changes of government brought about by revolutions of the military type.

The political atmosphere of the republic was generally stormy in these days. The fugitive patriots of the defeated party had the knack of turning up again on the coast with half a steamer’s load of small arms and ammunition. Such resourcefulness Captain Mitchell considered as perfectly wonderful in view of their utter destitution at the time of flight. He had observed that “they never seemed to have enough change about them to pay for their passage ticket out of the country.” And he could speak with knowledge; for on a memorable occasion he had been called upon to save the life of a dictator, together with the lives of a few Sulaco officials⁠—the political chief, the director of the customs, and the head of police⁠—belonging to an overturned government. Poor señor Ribiera (such was the dictator’s name) had come pelting eighty miles over mountain tracks after the lost battle of Socorro, in the hope of outdistancing the fatal news⁠—which, of course, he could not manage to do on a lame mule. The animal, moreover, expired under him at the end of the alameda, where the military band plays sometimes in the evenings between the revolutions. “Sir,” Captain Mitchell would pursue with portentous gravity, “the ill-timed end of that mule attracted attention to the unfortunate rider. His features were recognized by several deserters from the Dictatorial army amongst the rascally mob already engaged in smashing the windows of the Intendencia.”

Early on the morning of that day the local authorities of Sulaco had fled for refuge to the O.S.N. Company’s offices, a strong building near the shore end of the jetty, leaving the town to the mercies of a revolutionary rabble; and as the Dictator was execrated by the populace on account of the severe recruitment law his necessities had compelled him to enforce during the struggle, he stood a good chance of being torn to pieces. Providentially, Nostromo⁠—invaluable fellow⁠—with some Italian workmen, imported to work upon the National Central Railway, was at hand, and managed to snatch him away⁠—for the time at least. Ultimately, Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in his own gig to one of the company’s steamers⁠—it was the Minerva⁠—just then, as luck would have it, entering the harbour.

He had to lower these gentlemen at the end of a rope out of a hole in the wall at the back, while the mob which, pouring out of the town, had spread itself all along the shore, howled and foamed at the foot of the building in front. He had to hurry them then the whole length of the jetty; it had been a desperate dash, neck or nothing⁠—and again it was Nostromo, a fellow in a thousand, who, at the head, this time, of the company’s body of lightermen, held the jetty against the rushes of the rabble, thus giving the fugitives time to reach the gig lying ready for them at the other end with the Company’s flag at the stern. Sticks, stones, shots flew; knives, too, were thrown. Captain Mitchell exhibited willingly the long cicatrice of a cut over his left ear and temple, made by a razor-blade fastened to a stick⁠—a weapon, he explained, very much in favour with the “worst kind of nigger out here.”

Captain Mitchell was a thick, elderly man, wearing high, pointed collars and short side-whiskers, partial to white waistcoats, and really very communicative under his air of pompous reserve.

“These gentlemen,” he would say, staring with great solemnity, “had to run like rabbits, sir. I ran like a rabbit myself. Certain forms of death are⁠—er⁠—distasteful to a⁠—a⁠—er⁠—respectable man. They would have pounded me to death, too. A crazy mob, sir, does not discriminate. Under providence we owed our preservation to my capataz de cargadores, as they called him in the town, a man who, when I discovered his value, sir, was just the bos’n of an Italian ship, a big Genoese ship, one of the few European ships that ever came to Sulaco with a general cargo before the building of the National Central. He left her on account of some very respectable friends he made here, his own countrymen, but also, I suppose, to better himself. Sir, I am a pretty good judge of character. I engaged him to be the foreman of our lightermen, and caretaker of our jetty. That’s all that he was. But without him señor Ribiera would have been a dead man. This Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above reproach, became the terror of all the thieves in the town. We were infested⁠—infested, overrun, sir⁠—here at that time by ladrones and matreros, thieves and murderers from the whole province. On this occasion they had been flocking into Sulaco for a week past. They had scented the end, sir. Fifty percent of that murdering mob were professional bandits from the campo, sir, but there wasn’t one that hadn’t heard of Nostromo. As to the town leperos, sir, the sight of his black whiskers and white teeth was enough for them. They quailed before him, sir. That’s what the force of character will do for you.”

It could very well be said that it was Nostromo alone who saved the lives of these gentlemen. Captain Mitchell, on his part, never left them till he had seen them collapse, panting, terrified, and exasperated, but safe, on the luxuriant velvet sofas in the first-class saloon of the Minerva. To the very last he had been careful to address the ex-Dictator as “Your Excellency.”

“Sir, I could do no other. The man was down⁠—ghastly, livid, one mass of scratches.”

The Minerva never let go her anchor that call. The superintendent