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

ment. From the heavy family coaches full of stately senorasand black-eyed senoritas rolling solemnly in the shaded alleywhite hands were waved towards her with animationin a flutter of greetings. Dona Emilia was ‘down from themountain.’But not for long. Dona Emilia would be gone ‘up to themountain’ in a day or two, and her sleek carriage muleswould have an easy time of it for another long spell. Shehad watched the erection of the first frame-house put upon the lower mesa for an office and Don Pepe’s quarters;she heard with a thrill of thankful emotion the first wagonload of ore rattle down the then only shoot; she had stoodby her husband’s side perfectly silent, and gone cold allover with excitement at the instant when the first batteryof only fifteen stamps was put in motion for the first time.On the occasion when the fires under the first set of retortsin their shed had glowed far into the night she did not retireto rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yetbare frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lumpof silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the darkdepths of the Gould Concession; she had laid her unmercenaryhands, with an eagerness that made them tremble,upon the first silver ingot turned out still warm from themould; and by her imaginative estimate of its power she endowedthat lump of metal with a justificative conception, asthough it were not a mere fact, but something far-reachingand impalpable, like the true expression of an emotion orthe emergence of a principle.Don Pepe, extremely interested, too, looked over her