Section 3

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 Mit- chell, after directing the commander of the Minerva . to land “these gentlemen” in the first port of call out- side 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 ot 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
THE SILVER OF THE MINE 15
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 com- pletely. 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. Nos- tromo, with his Cargadores, was pressing them too hard then. ;
- CHAPTER THREE
Ir micut have been said that there he was only pro- tecting his own. From the first he had been admitted to live in the intimacy of the family of the hotel-keeper who was a countryman of his. Old Giorgio Viola, a Genoese with a shaggy white leonine head—often called simply “the Garibaldino” (as Mohammedans are called after their prophet)—was, to use Captain Mit- chell’s own words, the “respectable married friend” by whose advice Nostromo had left his ship to try for a run of shore luck in Costaguana.
The old man, full of scorn for the populace, as your austere republican so often is, had disregarded the preliminary sounds of trouble. He went on that day as usual pottering about the “casa” in his slippers, muttering angrily to himself his contempt of the non- political nature of the riot, and shrugging his shoulders. In the end he was taken unawares by the out-rush of the rabble. It was too late then to remove his family. and, indeed, where could he have run to with the portly Signora Teresa and two little girls on that great plain? So, barricading every opening, the old man sat down sternly in the middle of the darkened café with an old shot-gun on his knees. His wife sat on another chair by his side, muttering pious invocations to all the saints of the calendar.
The old republican did not believe in saints, or in prayers, or in what he called “priest’s religion.” Liberty and Garibaldi were his divinities; but he
16
-
i A nie tte Dietetic
THE SILVER OF THE MINE 17
tolerated “superstition” in women, preserving in these matters a lofty and silent attitude.
His two girls, the eldest fourteen, and the other two years younger, crouched on the sanded floor, on each side of the Signora Teresa, with their heads on their ‘mother’s lap, both scared, but each in her own way, the dark-haired Linda indignant and angry, the fair Giselle, the younger, bewildered and resigned. The Patrona. removed her arms, which embraced her daughters, for a moment to cross herself and wring her hands hurriedly. She moaned a little louder.
“Qh! Gian’ Battista, why art thou not here? Oh! why art thou not here?”
She was not then invoking the saint himself, but calling upon Nostromo, whose patron he was. And Giorgio, motionless on the chair by her side, would be provoked by these reproachful and distracted appeals.
“Peace, woman! Where’s the sense of it? T here’s his duty,” he murmured in the dark; and she would retort, panting—
“Fh! I have no patience. Duty! What of the woman who has been like a mother to him? Ibent my knee to him this morning; don’t you go out, Gian’ Battista—stop in the house, Battistino—look at those two little innocent children!”
Mrs. Viola was an Italian, too, a native of Spezzia, and though considerably younger than her husband,
already middle-aged. She had a handsome face, whose complexion had turned yellow because the climate of Sulaco did not suit her at all. Her voice was a rich contralto. When, with her arms folded tight under her ample bosom, she scolded the squat, thick-legged China girls handling linen, plucking fowls, pounding corn in wooden mortars amongst the mud outbuildings at the back of the house, she could bring out such an im~
18 NOSTROMO >
passioned, vibrating, sepulchral note that the chained watch-dog bolted into his kennel with a great rattle. Luis, a cinnamon-coloured mulatto with a sprouting moustache and thick, dark lips, would stop sweeping the café with a broom of palm-leaves to let a gentle shudder run down his spine. His languishing almond eyes would remain closed for a long time.
This was the staff of the Casa Viola, but all these people had fled early that morning at the first sounds of the riot, preferring to hide on the plain rather than trust themselves in the house; a preference for which they were in no way to blame, since, whether true or not, it was generally believed in the town that the Garibal- dino had some money buried under the clay floor of the kitchen. The dog, an irritable, shaggy brute, barked violently and whined plaintively in turns at the back, running in and out of his kennel as rage or fear prompted him.
Bursts of great shouting rose and died away, like wild gusts of wind on the plain round the barricaded house; the fitful popping of shots grew louder abovethe yelling. Sometimes there were intervals of unaccountable still- ness outside, and nothing could have been more gaily peaceful than the narrow bright lines of sunlight from the cracks in the shutters, ruled straight across the café over the disarranged chairs and tables to the wall opposite. Old Giorgio had chosen that bare, white- washed room for a retreat. It had only one window, and its only door Swung out upon the track of thick dust fenced by aloe hedges between the harbour and the town, where clumsy carts used to creak along behind slow yokes of oxen guided by boys on horseback.
In a pause of stillness Giorgio cocked his gun. The ominous sound wrung a low moan from the rigid figure of the woman sitting by his side. A sudden outbreak
= STC, ee eo er
g
~~
THE SILVER OF THE MINE 19
of defiant yelling quite near the house sank all at once
to a confused murmur of growls. Somebody ran along; the loud catching of his breath was heard for an instant passing the door; there were hoarse mutters and foot- steps near the wall; a shoulder rubbed against the shutter, effacing the bright lines of sunshine pencilled across the whole breadth of the room. Signora Teresa’s arms thrown about the kneeling forms of her daughters embraced them closer with a convulsive pressure.
The mob, driven away from the Custom House, had broken up into several bands, retreating across the plain in the direction of the town. The subdued crash of irregular volleys fired in the distance was answered by faint yells far away. In the intervals the single shots rang feebly, and the low, long, white building blinded in every window seemed to be the centre of a turmoil widening in a great circle about its closed-up silence. But the cautious movements and whispers of a routed party seeking a momentary shelter behind the wall made the darkness of the room, striped by threads of quiet sunlight, alight with evil, stealthy sounds. The Violas had them in their ears as though invisible ghosts hovering about their chairs had consulted in mutters as to the advisability of setting fire to this foreigner’s casa.
It was trying to the nerves. Old Viola had risen slowly, gun in hand, irresolute, for he did not see how he could prevent them. Already voices could be heard talking at the back. Signora Teresa was beside herself with terror.
“Ah! the traitor! the traitor!”’ she mumbled, almost inaudibly. “Now we are going to be burnt; and I bent my knee to him. No! he must run at the heels of his English.”
She seemed to think that Nostromo’s mere presence
20 NOSTROMO
in the house would have made it perfectly safe. So far, she, too, was under the spell of that reputation the Capa- taz de Cargadores had made for himself by the water- side, along the railway line, with the English and with the populace of Sulaco. To his face, and even against her husband, she invariably affected to laugh it to scorn, sometimes good-naturedly, more often with a curious bitterness. But then women are unreasonable in their opinions, as Giorgio used to remark calmly on fitting occasions. On this occasion, with his gun held at ready before him, he stooped down to his wife’s head, and, keeping his eyes steadfastly on the barricaded door, he breathed out into her ear that N ostromo would have been powerless to help. What could two men shut up in a house do against twenty or more bent upon setting fire to the roof? Gian’ Battista was thinking of the casa all the time, he was sure.
“He think of the casa! He!” gasped Signora Viola, crazily. She struck her breast with her open hands. “T know him. He thinks of nobody but himself.’
A discharge of firearms near by made her throw her head back and close her eyes. Old Giorgio set his teeth hard under his white moustache, and his eyes be- gan to roll fiercely. Several bullets struck the end of the wall together; pieces of plaster could be heard falling outside; a voice screamed “Here they come!” and after a moment of uneasy silence there was a rush of running feet along the front.
Then the tension of old Giorgio’s attitude relaxed, and a smile of contemptuous relief came upon his lips of an old fighter with a leonine face. These were not a people striving for justice, but thieves. Even to de- fend his life against them was a sort of degradation for a man who had been one of Garibaldi’s immortal thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He had an im-
THE SILVER OF THE MINE 21
mense scorn for this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, who did not know the meaning of the word “liberty.”
He grounded his old gun, and, turning his head, glanced at the coloured lithograph of Garibaldi in a black frame on the white wall; a thread of strong sun- shine cut it perpendicularly. His eyes, accustomed to the luminous twilight, made out the high colouring of the face, the red of the shirt, the outlines of the square shoulders, the black patch of the Bersagliere hat with cock’s feathers curling over the crown. An immortal hero! This was your liberty; it gave you not only life, but immortality as well!
For that one man his fanaticism had suffered no diminution. In the moment of relief from the ap- prehension of the greatest danger, perhaps, his family had been exposed to in all their wanderings, he had turned to the picture of his old chief, first and only, then laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
The children kneeling on the floor had not moved. Signora Teresa opened her eyes a little, as though he had awakened her from a very deep and dreamless slumber. Before he had time in his deliberate way to say a reassuring word she jumped up, with the children clinging to her, one on each side, gasped for breath, and let out a hoarse shriek.
It was simultaneous with the bang of a violent blow struck on the outside of the shutter. They could hear suddenly the snorting of a horse, the restive tramping of hoofs on the narrow, hard path in front of the house; the toe of a boot struck at the shutter again; a spur jingled at every blow, and an excited voice shouted, “Hola! hola, in there!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Au the morning Nostromo had kept his eye from afar on the Casa Viola, even in the thick of the hottest scrim- mage near the Custom House. “If I see smoke rising over there,” he thought to himself, “they are lost.” Directly the mob had broken he pressed with a small band of Italian workmen in that direction, which, in- deed, was the shortest line towards the town. That part of the rabble he was pursuing seemed to think of making a stand under the house; a volley fired by his followers from behind an aloe hedge made the rascals fly. In a gap chopped out for the rails of the harbour branch line Nostromo appeared, mounted on _ his silver-grey mare. He shouted, sent after them one shot from his revolver, and galloped up to the café window. He had an idea that old Giorgio would choose that part of the house for a refuge.
His voice had penetrated to them, sounding breath- lessly hurried: “Hola! Vecchio! O, Vecchio! Is it all well with you in there?”
“You see——” murmured old Viola to his wife.
Signora Teresa was silent now. Outside N ostromo laughed.
“I can hear the padrona is not dead.”
“You have done your best to kill me with fear,” cried Signora Teresa. She wanted to say something more, but her voice failed her.
Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but old Giorgio shouted apologetically—
“She is a little upset.”
22
3
THE SILVER OF THE MINE 23
Outside Nostromo shouted back with another laugh—
“She cannot upset me.”
Signora Teresa found her voice.
“Tt is what I say. You have no heart—and you have no conscience, Gian’ Battista x
They heard him wheel his horse away from the
_ shutters. The party he led were babbling excitedly in
Italian and Spanish, inciting each other to the pursuit. He put himself at their head, crying, “Avanti!”
“He has not stopped very long with us. There is no. praise from strangers to be got here,” Signora Teresa said, tragically. “Avanti! Yes! That is all he cares , for. To be first somewhere—somehow—to be first with these English. They will be showing him to ~ everybody. ‘This is our Nostromo!” She laughed ominously. “What a name! What is that? Nos-. tromo? He would take a name that is properly no word from them.”
Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had- been unfastening the door; the flood of light fell on: Signora Teresa, with her two girls gathered to her side, , a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal exaltation. Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white, and the crude colours of the Garibaldi lithograph paled in the’ sunshine. 3
Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if referring all his quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture of his old chiet on the wall. Even when he was cooking . for the “Signori Inglesi”—the engineers (he was a famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark place)—he was, as it were, under the eye of the great man who had led him in a glorious struggle where, under the walls of Gaeta, tyranny would have expired for ever had it not heen for that accursed Piedmontese race of kings and
24 NOSTROMO
ministers. When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate operation with some shredded onions, and the old man was seen backing out of the doorway, swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud of smoke, the name of Cavour—the arch intriguer sold te kings and tyrants—could be heard involved in im- precations against the China girls, cooking in general, and the brute of a country where he was reduced to live for the love of liberty that traitor had strangled.
Then Signora Teresa, all in black, issuing from another door, advanced, portly and anxious, inclining her fine, black-browed head, opening her arms, and crying in a profound tone—
“Giorgio!, thou passionate man! Misericordia
Divina! In the sun like this!’ He will make himself ill.”’ ' At her feet the hens made off in all directions, with immense strides; if there were any engineers from up the line staying in Sulaco, a young English face or two would appear at the billiard-room occupying one end of the house; but at the other end, in the café, Luis, the mulatto, took good care not to show himself. The Indian girls, with hair like flowing black manes, and dressed only in a shift and short petticoat, stared dully from under the square-cut fringes on their foreheads; the noisy frizzling of fat had stopped, the fumes floated upwards in sunshine, a strong smell of burnt onions hung in the drowsy heat, enveloping the house; and the eye lost itself in a vast flat expanse of grass to the west, as if the plain between the Sierra overtopping Sulaco and the coast range away there towards Esmeralda had been as big as half the world.