University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER TWO

THE only sign of commercial activity within the
harbour, visible from the beach of the Great Isabel, is
the square blunt end of the wooden jetty which the
Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (the O.S.N. of
familiar speech) had thrown over the shallow part of the
bay soon after they had resolved to make of Sulaco one
of their ports of call for the Republic of Costaguana.
The State possesses several harbours on its long sea-
board, but except Cayta, an important place, all are
either small and inconvenient inlets in an iron-bound
coast — like Esmeralda, for instance, sixty miles to the
south — or else mere open roadsteads exposed to the
winds and fretted by the surf.

Perhaps the very atmospheric conditions which had
kept away the merchant fleets of bygone ages induced
the O.S.N. Company to violate the sanctuary of peace
sheltering the calm existence of Sulaco. The variable
airs sporting lightly with the vast semicircle of waters
within the head of Azuera could not baffle the steam
power of their excellent fleet. Year after year the
black hulls of their ships had gone up and down
the coast, in and out, past Azuera, past the Isabels,
past Punta Mala — disregarding everything but the
tyranny of time. Their names, the names of all
mythology, became the household words of a coast that
had never been ruled by the gods of Olympus. The
Juno was known only for her comfortable cabins amid-
ships, the Saturn for the geniality of her captain and
the painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas

the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for cattle transport,
and to be avoided by coastwise passengers. The
humblest Indian in the obscurest village on the coast
was familiar with the Cerberus, a little black puffer without
charm or living accommodation to speak of, whose
mission was to creep inshore along the wooded beaches
close to mighty ugly rocks, stopping obligingly before
every cluster of huts to collect produce, down to three-
pound parcels of indiarubber bound in a wrapper of dry
grass.

And as they seldom failed to account for the smallest
package, rarely lost a bullock, and had never drowned
a single passenger, the name of the O.S.N. stood
very high for trustworthiness. People declared that
under the Company's care their lives and property
were safer on the water than in their own houses on
shore.

The O.S.N.'s superintendent in Sulaco for the whole
Costaguana section of the service was very proud of his
Company's standing. He resumed it in a saying which
was very often on his lips, "We never make mistakes."
To the Company's officers it took the form of a severe
injunction, "We must make no mistakes. I'll have
no mistakes here, no matter what Smith may do at his
end."

Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was
the other superintendent of the service, quartered some
fifteen hundred miles away from Sulaco. "Don't talk
to me of your Smith."

Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the
subject with studied negligence.

"Smith knows no more of this continent than a
baby."

"Our excellent Señor Mitchell" for the business and
official world 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 out-distancing 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 per cent. 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 ordered her out of the harbour at once.
No cargo could be landed, of course, and the passengers
for Sulaco naturally refused to go ashore. They could
hear the firing and see plainly the fight going on at the
edge of the water. The repulsed mob devoted its
energies to an attack upon the Custom House, a dreary,
unfinished-looking structure with many windows two
hundred yards away from the O.S.N. Offices, and the
only other building near the harbour. Captain Mitchell,
after directing the commander of the Minerva
to land "these gentlemen" in the first port of call outside
Costaguana, went back in his gig to see what could
be done for the protection of the Company's property.
That and the property of the railway were preserved by
the European residents; that is, by Captain Mitchell
himself and the staff of engineers building the road,
aided by the Italian and Basque workmen who rallied
faithfully round their English chiefs. The Company's
lightermen, too, natives of the Republic, behaved very
well under their Capataz. An outcast lot of very mixed
blood, mainly negroes, everlastingly at feud with the
other customers of low grog shops in the town, they
embraced with delight this opportunity to settle their
personal scores under such favourable auspices. There
was not one of them that had not, at some time or
other, looked with terror at Nostromo's revolver poked
very close at his face, or been otherwise daunted by

Nostromo's resolution. He was "much of a man,"
their Capataz was, they said, too scornful in his temper
ever to utter abuse, a tireless taskmaster, and the more
to be feared because of his aloofness. And behold!
there he was that day, at their head, condescending to
make jocular remarks to this man or the other.

Such leadership was inspiriting, and in truth all the
harm the mob managed to achieve was to set fire to one
— only one — stack of railway-sleepers, which, being
creosoted, burned well. The main attack on the rail-
way yards, on the O.S.N. Offices, and especially on the
Custom House, whose strong room, it was well known,
contained a large treasure in silver ingots, failed completely.
Even the little hotel kept by old Giorgio,
standing alone halfway between the harbour and the
town, escaped looting and destruction, not by a miracle,
but because with the safes in view they had neglected it
at first, and afterwards found no leisure to stop. Nostromo,
with his Cargadores, was pressing them too hard
then.