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

CHAPTER FOURCHARLES GOULD turned towards the town. Beforehim the jagged peaks of the Sierra came out all blackin the clear dawn. Here and there a muffled lepero whiskedround the corner of a grass-grown street before the ringinghoofs of his horse. Dogs barked behind the walls of thegardens; and with the colourless light the chill of the snowsseemed to fall from the mountains upon the disjointedpavements and the shuttered houses with broken cornicesand the plaster peeling in patches between the flat pilastersof the fronts. The daybreak struggled with the gloom underthe arcades on the Plaza, with no signs of country peopledisposing their goods for the day’s market, piles of fruit,bundles of vegetables ornamented with flowers, on lowbenches under enormous mat umbrellas; with no cheeryearly morning bustle of villagers, women, children, andloaded donkeys. Only a few scattered knots of revolutionistsstood in the vast space, all looking one way from undertheir slouched hats for some sign of news from Rincon.The largest of those groups turned about like one man asCharles Gould passed, and shouted, ‘Viva la libertad!’ afterhim in a menacing tone.Charles Gould rode on, and turned into the archway ofhis house. In the patio littered with straw, a practicante, oneof Dr. Monygham’s native assistants, sat on the ground with