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

fore she had settled in her town-house permanently, as wasproper and even necessary for the wife of the administratorof such an important institution as the San Tome mine. Forthe San Tome mine was to become an institution, a rallyingpoint for everything in the province that needed orderand stability to live. Security seemed to flow upon this landfrom the mountain-gorge. The authorities of Sulaco hadlearned that the San Tome mine could make it worth theirwhile to leave things and people alone. This was the nearestapproach to the rule of common-sense and justice CharlesGould felt it possible to secure at first. In fact, the mine, withits organization, its population growing fiercely attached totheir position of privileged safety, with its armoury, withits Don Pepe, with its armed body of serenos (where, it wassaid, many an outlaw and deserter—and even some membersof Hernandez’s band—had found a place), the minewas a power in the land. As a certain prominent man in Sta.Marta had exclaimed with a hollow laugh, once, when discussingthe line of action taken by the Sulaco authorities ata time of political crisis—‘You call these men Government officials? They? Never!They are officials of the mine—officials of the Concession—I tell you.’The prominent man (who was then a person in power,with a lemon-coloured face and a very short and curly, notto say woolly, head of hair) went so far in his temporarydiscontent as to shake his yellow fist under the nose of hisinterlocutor, and shriek—‘Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Gefe, the