University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER FIVE

IN THIS way only was the power of the local authorities
vindicated amongst the great body of strong-
limbed foreigners who dug the earth, blasted the
rocks, drove the engines for the "progressive and
patriotic undertaking." In these very words eighteen
months before the Excellentissimo Señor don Vincente
Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana, had described the
National Central Railway in his great speech at the
turning of the first sod.

He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a
one-o'clock dinner-party, a convité offered by the O.S.N.
Company on board the Juno after the function on shore.
Captain Mitchell had himself steered the cargo lighter,
all draped with flags, which, in tow of the Juno's steam
launch, took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the
ship. Everybody of note in Sulaco had been invited —
the one or two foreign merchants, all the representatives
of the old Spanish families then in town, the great
owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple
men, caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and
feet, conservative, hospitable, and kind. The Occidental
Province was their stronghold; their Blanco
party had triumphed now; it was their President-
Dictator, a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat smiling
urbanely between the representatives of two friendly
foreign powers. They had come with him from Sta.
Marta to countenance by their presence the enterprise
in which the capital of their countries was engaged.
The only lady of that company was Mrs. Gould, the

wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the San Tomé
silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced
enough to take part in the public life to that extent.
They had come out strongly at the great ball at the
Intendencia the evening before, but Mrs. Gould alone
had appeared, a bright spot in the group of black coats
behind the President-Dictator, on the crimson cloth-
covered stage erected under a shady tree on the shore
of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning the first
sod had taken place. She had come off in the cargo
lighter, full of notabilities, sitting under the flutter of
gay flags, in the place of honour by the side of Captain
Mitchell, who steered, and her clear dress gave the only
truly festive note to the sombre gathering in the long,
gorgeous saloon of the Juno.

The head of the chairman of the railway board (from
London), handsome and pale in a silvery mist of white
hair and clipped beard, hovered near her shoulder
attentive, smiling, and fatigued. The journey from
London to Sta. Marta in mail boats and the special
carriages of the Sta. Marta coast-line (the only railway
so far) had been tolerable — even pleasant — quite tolerable.
But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was
another sort of experience, in an old diligencia over impassable
roads skirting awful precipices.

"We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of
very deep ravines," he was telling Mrs. Gould in an
undertone. "And when we arrived here at last I don't
know what we should have done without your hospitality.
What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco is! —
and for a harbour, too! Astonishing!"

"Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be
historically important. The highest ecclesiastical court
for two viceroyalties, sat here in the olden time," she
instructed him with animation.

"I am impressed. I didn't mean to be disparaging.
You seem very patriotic."

"The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps
you don't know what an old resident I am."

"How old, I wonder," he murmured, looking at her
with a slight smile. Mrs. Gould's appearance was
made youthful by the mobile intelligence of her face.
"We can't give you your ecclesiastical court back again;
but you shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable
— a future in the great world which is worth
infinitely more than any amount of ecclesiastical past.
You shall be brought in touch with something greater
than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a
place on a sea-coast could remain so isolated from the
world. If it had been a thousand miles inland now — most
remarkable! Has anything ever happened here for a
hundred years before to-day?"

While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept
her little smile. Agreeing ironically, she assured him
that certainly not — nothing ever happened in Sulaco.
Even the revolutions, of which there had been two
in her time, had respected the repose of the place.
Their course ran in the more populous southern parts
of the Republic, and the great valley of Sta. Marta,
which was like one great battlefield of the parties,
with the possession of the capital for a prize and
an outlet to another ocean. They were more advanced
over there. Here in Sulaco they heard only the echoes
of these great questions, and, of course, their official
world changed each time, coming to them over their
rampart of mountains which he himself had traversed
in an old diligencia, with such a risk to life and limb.

The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her
hospitality for several days, and he was really grateful
for it. It was only since he had left Sta. Marta that he

had utterly lost touch with the feeling of European life
on the background of his exotic surroundings. In the
capital he had been the guest of the Legation, and had
been kept busy negotiating with the members of Don
Vincente's Government — cultured men, men to whom
the conditions of civilized business were not unknown.

What concerned him most at the time was the
acquisition of land for the railway. In the Sta. Marta
Valley, where there was already one line in existence,
the people were tractable, and it was only a matter of
price. A commission had been nominated to fix the
values, and the difficulty resolved itself into the judicious
influencing of the Commissioners. But in Sulaco —
the Occidental Province for whose very development
the railway was intended — there had been trouble. It
had been lying for ages ensconced behind its natural
barriers, repelling modern enterprise by the precipices
of its mountain range, by its shallow harbour opening
into the everlasting calms of a gulf full of clouds, by
the benighted state of mind of the owners of its fertile
territory — all these aristocratic old Spanish families, all
those Don Ambrosios this and Don Fernandos that, who
seemed actually to dislike and distrust the coming of the
railway over their lands. It had happened that some of
the surveying parties scattered all over the province had
been warned off with threats of violence. In other cases
outrageous pretensions as to price had been raised.
But the man of railways prided himself on being equal to
every emergency. Since he was met by the inimical
sentiment of blind conservatism in Sulaco he would
meet it by sentiment, too, before taking his stand on his
right alone. The Government was bound to carry out
its part of the contract with the board of the new
railway company, even if it had to use force for the
purpose. But he desired nothing less than an armed

disturbance in the smooth working of his plans. They
were much too vast and far-reaching, and too promising
to leave a stone unturned; and so he imagined to get
the President-Dictator over there on a tour of ceremonies
and speeches, culminating in a great function
at the turning of the first sod by the harbour shore.
After all he was their own creature — that Don Vincente.
He was the embodied triumph of the best elements in
the State. These were facts, and, unless facts meant
nothing, Sir John argued to himself, such a man's influence
must be real, and his personal action would
produce the conciliatory effect he required. He had
succeeded in arranging the trip with the help of a very
clever advocate, who was known in Sta. Marta as the
agent of the Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in
Sulaco, and even in the whole Republic. It was indeed
a fabulously rich mine. Its so-called agent, evidently a
man of culture and ability, seemed, without official
position, to possess an extraordinary influence in the
highest Government spheres. He was able to assure
Sir John that the President-Dictator would make the
journey. He regretted, however, in the course of the
same conversation, that General Montero insisted upon
going, too.

General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle
had found an obscure army captain employed on the
wild eastern frontier of the State, had thrown in his lot
with the Ribiera party at a moment when special
circumstances had given that small adhesion a fortuitous
importance. The fortunes of war served him
marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco (after a day
of desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the
end he emerged General, Minister of War, and the
military head of the Blanco party, although there was
nothing aristocratic in his descent. Indeed, it was said

that he and his brother, orphans, had been brought up
by the munificence of a famous European traveller, in
whose service their father had lost his life. Another
story was that their father had been nothing but a charcoal
burner in the woods, and their mother a baptised
Indian woman from the far interior.

However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in
the habit of styling Montero's forest march from his
commandancia to join the Blanco forces at the beginning
of the troubles, the "most heroic military exploit
of modern times." About the same time, too, his
brother had turned up from Europe, where he had gone
apparently as secretary to a consul. Having, however,
collected a small band of outlaws, he showed some
talent as guerilla chief and had been rewarded at the
pacification by the post of Military Commandant of the
capital.

The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator.
The board of the O.S.N. Company, working hand-
in-hand with the railway people for the good of the Republic,
had on this important occasion instructed
Captain Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at the
disposal of the distinguished party. Don Vincente,
journeying south from Sta. Marta, had embarked at
Cayta, the principal port of Costaguana, and came to
Sulaco by sea. But the chairman of the railway
company had courageously crossed the mountains in a
ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting
his engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the
road.

For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature,
whose hostility can always be overcome by the resources
of finance, he could not help being impressed
by his surroundings during his halt at the surveying
camp established at the highest point his railway was to

reach. He spent the night there, arriving just too late
to see the last dying glow of sunlight upon the snowy
flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt
framed like an open portal a portion of the white field
lying aslant against the west. In the transparent air
of the high altitudes everything seemed very near,
steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable liquid;
and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of the
expected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the door of a
hut of rough stones, had contemplated the changing
hues on the enormous side of the mountain, thinking
that in this sight, as in a piece of inspired music, there
could be found together the utmost delicacy of shaded
expression and a stupendous magnificence of effect.

Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and
inaudible strain sung by the sunset amongst the high
peaks of the Sierra. It had sung itself out into the
breathless pause of deep dusk before, climbing down the
fore wheel of the diligencia with stiff limbs, he shook
hands with the engineer.

They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical
boulder, with no door or windows in its two openings;
a bright fire of sticks (brought on muleback from the
first valley below) burning outside, sent in a wavering
glare; and two candles in tin candlesticks — lighted, it
was explained to him, in his honour — stood on a sort of
rough camp table, at which he sat on the right hand of
the chief. He knew how to be amiable; and the young
men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of
the railway track had the glamour of the first steps on
the path of life, sat there, too, listening modestly, with
their smooth faces tanned by the weather, and very
pleased to witness so much affability in so great a man.

Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside,
he had a long talk with his chief engineer. He knew

him well of old. This was not the first undertaking in
which their gifts, as elementally different as fire and
water, had worked in conjunction. From the contact
of these two personalities, who had not the same vision
of the world, there was generated a power for the world's
service — a subtle force that could set in motion mighty
machines, men's muscles, and awaken also in human
breasts an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the
young fellows at the table, to whom the survey of the
track was like the tracing of the path of life, more than
one would be called to meet death before the work was
done. But the work would be done: the force would be
almost as strong as a faith. Not quite, however. In
the silence of the sleeping camp upon the moonlit
plateau forming the top of the pass like the floor of a
vast arena surrounded by the basalt walls of precipices,
two strolling figures in thick ulsters stood still, and the
voice of the engineer pronounced distinctly the words —

"We can't move mountains!"

Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing
gesture, felt the full force of the words. The white
Higuerota soared out of the shadows of rock and earth
like a frozen bubble under the moon. All was still, till
near by, behind the wall of a corral for the camp animals,
built roughly of loose stones in the form of a
circle, a pack mule stamped his forefoot and blew
heavily twice.

The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer
to the chairman's tentative suggestion that the tracing
of the line could, perhaps, be altered in deference to the
prejudices of the Sulaco landowners. The chief engineer
believed that the obstinacy of men was the lesser
obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had the great
influence of Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under
Higuerota would have been a colossal undertaking.

"Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?"

Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta.
Marta, and wanted to know more. The engineer-in-
chief assured him that the administrator of the San
Tomé silver mine had an immense influence over all
these Spanish Dons. He had also one of the best
houses in Sulaco, and the Gould hospitality was beyond
all praise.

"They received me as if they had known me for
years," he said. "The little lady is kindness personified.
I stayed with them for a month. He helped
me to organize the surveying parties. His practical
ownership of the San Tomé silver mine gives him a
special position. He seems to have the ear of every
provincial authority apparently, and, as I said, he can
wind all the hidalgos of the province round his little
finger. If you follow his advice the difficulties will fall
away, because he wants the railway. Of course, you
must be careful in what you say. He's English, and
besides he must be immensely wealthy. The Holroyd
house is in with him in that mine, so you may imagine
—"

He interrupted himself as, from before one of the
little fires burning outside the low wall of the corral,
arose the figure of a man wrapped in a poncho up to the
neck. The saddle which he had been using for a pillow
made a dark patch on the ground against the red glow of
embers.

"I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through
the States," said Sir John. "I've ascertained that he,
too, wants the railway."

The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity of
the voices, had arisen from the ground, struck a match
to light a cigarette. The flame showed a bronzed,
black-whiskered face, a pair of eyes gazing straight;

then, rearranging his wrappings, he sank full length and
laid his head again on the saddle.

"That's our camp-master, whom I must send back to
Sulaco now we are going to carry our survey into the
Sta. Marta Valley," said the engineer. "A most useful
fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell of the O.S.N.
Company. It was very good of Mitchell. Charles
Gould told me I couldn't do better than take advantage
of the offer. He seems to know how to rule all these
muleteers and peons. We had not the slightest trouble
with our people. He shall escort your diligencia right
into Sulaco with some of our railway peons. The road
is bad. To have him at hand may save you an upset
or two. He promised me to take care of your person
all the way down as if you were his father."

This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the
Europeans in Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell's
mispronunciation, were in the habit of calling Nostromo.
And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take
excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the road,
as Sir John himself acknowledged to Mrs. Gould afterwards.