Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

enclosures within the old ramparts, between the black,lightless cluster of huts, like cow-byres, like dog-kennels.The horseman hammered with the butt of a heavy revolverat the doors of low pulperias, of obscene lean-to shedssloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble wall, atthe wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound ofsnores and sleepy mutters within could be heard in thepauses of the thundering clatter of his blows. He called outmen’s names menacingly from the saddle, once, twice. Thedrowsy answers—grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, ordeprecating—came out into the silent darkness in whichthe horseman sat still, and presently a dark figure wouldflit out coughing in the still air. Sometimes a low-tonedwoman cried through the window-hole softly, ‘He’s comingdirectly, senor,’ and the horseman waited silent on a motionlesshorse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then,after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia,with a ferocious scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargadorwould fly out head first and hands abroad, to sprawl underthe forelegs of the silver-grey mare, who only pricked forwardher sharp little ears. She was used to that work; andthe man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily fromNostromo’s revolver, reeling a little along the street andsnarling low curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell, comingout anxiously in his night attire on to the wooden balconyrunning the whole length of the O.S.N. Company’s lonelybuilding by the shore, would see the lighters already underway, figures moving busily about the cargo cranes, perhapshear the invaluable Nostromo, now dismounted and in the