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

comfortable cabins amidships, the Saturn for the genialityof her captain and the painted and gilt luxuriousness ofher saloon, whereas the Ganymede was fitted out mainly forcattle transport, and to be avoided by coastwise passengers.The humblest Indian in the obscurest village on the coastwas familiar with the Cerberus, a little black puffer withoutcharm or living accommodation to speak of, whose missionwas to creep inshore along the wooded beaches close tomighty ugly rocks, stopping obligingly before every clusterof huts to collect produce, down to three-pound parcels ofindiarubber bound in a wrapper of dry grass.And as they seldom failed to account for the smallestpackage, rarely lost a bullock, and had never drowned a singlepassenger, the name of the O.S.N. stood very high fortrustworthiness. People declared that under the Company’scare their lives and property were safer on the water than intheir own houses on shore.The O.S.N.’s superintendent in Sulaco for the wholeCostaguana section of the service was very proud of hisCompany’s standing. He resumed it in a saying which wasvery often on his lips, ‘We never make mistakes.’ To theCompany’s officers it took the form of a severe injunction,‘We must make no mistakes. I’ll have no mistakes here, nomatter what Smith may do at his end.’Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was theother superintendent of the service, quartered some fifteenhundred miles away from Sulaco. ‘Don’t talk to me of yourSmith.’Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the sub-