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

that would know how to succeed. He was that man, sir. Onthe fifth of May, being practically a prisoner in the HarbourOffice of my Company, I suddenly heard the whistle of anengine in the railway yards, a quarter of a mile away. I couldnot believe my ears. I made one jump on to the balcony, andbeheld a locomotive under a great head of steam run out ofthe yard gates, screeching like mad, enveloped in a whitecloud, and then, just abreast of old Viola’s inn, check almostto a standstill. I made out, sir, a man—I couldn’t tell who—dash out of the Albergo d’ltalia Una, climb into the cab, andthen, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap clear of thehouse, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. As you blowa candle out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the footplate,sir, I can tell you. They were fired heavily upon bythe National Guards in Rincon and one other place. Fortunatelythe line had not been torn up. In four hours theyreached the Construction Camp. Nostromo had his start….The rest you know. You’ve got only to look round you. Thereare people on this Alameda that ride in their carriages, oreven are alive at all to-day, because years ago I engaged arunaway Italian sailor for a foreman of our wharf simplyon the strength of his looks. And that’s a fact. You can’t getover it, sir. On the seventeenth of May, just twelve days afterI saw the man from the Casa Viola get on the engine, andwondered what it meant, Barrios’s transports were enteringthis harbour, and the ‘Treasure House of the World,’ asThe Times man calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intactfor civilization—for a great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandezon the west, and the San Tome miners pressing on