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

gling spurs and riding-whip under his arm, on the point ofstarting ‘for the mountain.’ Then Don Pepe, modestly martialin his chair, the llanero who seemed somehow to havefound his martial jocularity, his knowledge of the world,and his manner perfect for his station, in the midst of savagearmed contests with his kind; Avellanos, polished andfamiliar, the diplomatist with his loquacity covering muchcaution and wisdom in delicate advice, with his manuscriptof a historical work on Costaguana, entitled ‘Fifty Years ofMisrule,’ which, at present, he thought it was not prudent(even if it were possible) ‘to give to the world”; these three,and also Dona Emilia amongst them, gracious, small, andfairy-like, before the glittering tea-set, with one commonmaster-thought in their heads, with one common feelingof a tense situation, with one ever-present aim to preservethe inviolable character of the mine at every cost. Andthere was also to be seen Captain Mitchell, a little apart,near one of the long windows, with an air of old-fashionedneat old bachelorhood about him, slightly pompous, in awhite waistcoat, a little disregarded and unconscious of it;utterly in the dark, and imagining himself to be in the thickof things. The good man, having spent a clear thirty yearsof his life on the high seas before getting what he called a‘shore billet,’ was astonished at the importance of transactions(other than relating to shipping) which take place ondry land. Almost every event out of the usual daily course‘marked an epoch’ for him or else was ‘history”; unless withhis pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of hisrubicund, rather handsome face, set off by snow-white close