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

hair and short whiskers, he would mutter—‘Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake.’The reception of the first consignment of San Tomesilver for shipment to San Francisco in one of the O.S.N.Co.’s mail-boats had, of course, ‘marked an epoch’ for CaptainMitchell. The ingots packed in boxes of stiff ox-hidewith plaited handles, small enough to be carried easily bytwo men, were brought down by the serenos of the minewalking in careful couples along the half-mile or so ofsteep, zigzag paths to the foot of the mountain. There theywould be loaded into a string of two-wheeled carts, resemblingroomy coffers with a door at the back, and harnessedtandem with two mules each, waiting under the guard ofarmed and mounted serenos. Don Pepe padlocked eachdoor in succession, and at the signal of his whistle the stringof carts would move off, closely surrounded by the clank ofspur and carbine, with jolts and cracking of whips, with asudden deep rumble over the boundary bridge (“into theland of thieves and sanguinary macaques,’ Don Pepe definedthat crossing); hats bobbing in the first light of thedawn, on the heads of cloaked figures; Winchesters onhip; bridle hands protruding lean and brown from underthe falling folds of the ponchos. The convoy skirting a littlewood, along the mine trail, between the mud huts andlow walls of Rincon, increased its pace on the camino real,mules urged to speed, escort galloping, Don Carlos ridingalone ahead of a dust storm affording a vague vision of longears of mules, of fluttering little green and white flags stuckupon each cart; of raised arms in a mob of sombreros with