Nostromo | Page 9

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 Senor 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 Senor 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.