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

and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge,and sent upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasaderoin Rincon swore that on calm nights, by listening intently,he could catch the sound in his doorway as of a storm in themountains.To Charles Gould’s fancy it seemed that the sound mustreach the uttermost limits of the province. Riding at nighttowards the mine, it would meet him at the edge of a littlewood just beyond Rincon. There was no mistaking thegrowling mutter of the mountain pouring its stream oftreasure under the stamps; and it came to his heart with thepeculiar force of a proclamation thundered forth over theland and the marvellousness of an accomplished fact fulfillingan audacious desire. He had heard this very sound in hisimagination on that far-off evening when his wife and himself,after a tortuous ride through a strip of forest, had reinedin their horses near the stream, and had gazed for the firsttime upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. The headof a palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round thecorner of the San Tome mountain (which is square like ablockhouse) the thread of a slender waterfall flashed brightand glassy through the dark green of the heavy fronds oftree-ferns. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and, stretchinghis arm up the gorge, had declared with mock solemnity,‘Behold the very paradise of snakes, senora.’And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden backto sleep that night at Rincon. The alcalde—an old, skinnyMoreno, a sergeant of Guzman Bento’s time—had clearedrespectfully out of his house with his three pretty daughters,