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

dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of theforests, to hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowdersmoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the humand spatter of bullets in his ears. And where was the harmif, at the presbytery, they had a game with a pack of greasycards in the early evening, before Don Pepe went his lastrounds to see that all the watchmen of the mine—a body organizedby himself—were at their posts? For that last dutybefore he slept Don Pepe did actually gird his old swordon the verandah of an unmistakable American white framehouse, which Father Roman called the presbytery. Near by,a long, low, dark building, steeple-roofed, like a vast barnwith a wooden cross over the gable, was the miners’ chapel.There Father Roman said Mass every day before a sombrealtar-piece representing the Resurrection, the grey slab ofthe tombstone balanced on one corner, a figure soaring upwards,long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light, anda helmeted brown legionary smitten down, right across thebituminous foreground. ‘This picture, my children, muylinda e maravillosa,’ Father Roman would say to some ofhis flock, ‘which you behold here through the munificenceof the wife of our Senor Administrador, has been painted inEurope, a country of saints and miracles, and much greaterthan our Costaguana.’ And he would take a pinch of snuffwith unction. But when once an inquisitive spirit desired toknow in what direction this Europe was situated, whetherup or down the coast, Father Roman, to conceal his perplexity,became very reserved and severe. ‘No doubt it isextremely far away. But ignorant sinners like you of the San