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

Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, withpendent moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a cleanrun of a cast-iron jaw, suggesting the type of a cattle-herdhorseman from the great Llanos of the South. ‘If you willlisten to an old officer of Paez, senores,’ was the exordium ofall his speeches in the Aristocratic Club of Sulaco, where hewas admitted on account of his past services to the extinctcause of Federation. The club, dating from the days of theproclamation of Costaguana’s independence, boasted manynames of liberators amongst its first founders. Suppressedarbitrarily innumerable times by various Governments,with memories of proscriptions and of at least one wholesalemassacre of its members, sadly assembled for a banquetby the order of a zealous military commandante (their bodieswere afterwards stripped naked and flung into the plazaout of the windows by the lowest scum of the populace), itwas again flourishing, at that period, peacefully. It extendedto strangers the large hospitality of the cool, big roomsof its historic quarters in the front part of a house, oncethe residence of a high official of the Holy Office. The twowings, shut up, crumbled behind the nailed doors, and whatmay be described as a grove of young orange trees grown inthe unpaved patio concealed the utter ruin of the back partfacing the gate. You turned in from the street, as if enteringa secluded orchard, where you came upon the foot ofa disjointed staircase, guarded by a moss-stained effigy ofsome saintly bishop, mitred and staffed, and bearing the indignityof a broken nose meekly, with his fine stone handscrossed on his breast. The chocolate-coloured faces of ser-