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

them had run out in the corredor to ask the servant whethersomething to eat couldn’t be sent in. The first words theengineer-in-chief said as he came into the boudoir were,‘What is your house, dear Mrs. Gould? A war hospital below,and apparently a restaurant above. I saw them carryingtrays full of good things into the sala.’‘And here, in this boudoir,’ I said, ‘you behold the innercabinet of the Occidental Republic that is to be.’‘He was so preoccupied that he didn’t smile at that, hedidn’t even look surprised.‘He told us that he was attending to the general dispositionsfor the defence of the railway property at the railwayyards when he was sent for to go into the railway telegraphoffice. The engineer of the railhead, at the foot of the mountains,wanted to talk to him from his end of the wire. Therewas nobody in the office but himself and the operator of therailway telegraph, who read off the clicks aloud as the tapecoiled its length upon the floor. And the purport of that talk,clicked nervously from a wooden shed in the depths of theforests, had informed the chief that President Ribiera hadbeen, or was being, pursued. This was news, indeed, to allof us in Sulaco. Ribiera himself, when rescued, revived, andsoothed by us, had been inclined to think that he had notbeen pursued.‘Ribiera had yielded to the urgent solicitations of hisfriends, and had left the headquarters of his discomfitedarmy alone, under the guidance of Bonifacio, the muleteer,who had been willing to take the responsibility withthe risk. He had departed at daybreak of the third day. His