Page:Nostromo (1904).djvu/278

 Steel and Silver King) in such a manner as to secure his financial support. At that time last night, just twenty-four hours ago, we thought the silver of the mine safe in the custom-house vaults till the north- bound steamer came to take it away. And as long as the treasure flowed north, without a break, that utter sentimentalist, Holroyd, would not drop his idea of introducing, not only justice, industry, peace, to the benighted continents, but also that pet dream of his of a purer form of Christianity. Later on, the principal European really in Sulaco, the engineer-in-chief of the railway, came riding up the calle from the harbor, and was admitted to our conclave. Meantime, the Junta of the Notables in the great sala was still deliberating; only, one of them had run out in the corridor to ask the servmt whether something to eat couldn't be sent in. The first words the engineer-in-chief said as he came into the boudoir were, 'What is your house, dear Mrs. Gould? A war hospital be- low, and apparently a restaurant above. I see them carrying trays full of good things into the sala.'

"And here, in this boudoir,' I said, 'you behold the inner cabinet of the Occidental Republic that is to be.'

"He was so preoccupied that he didn't smile at that; he didn't even look surprised.

"He told us that he was attending to the general dispositions for the defence of the railway property at the railway-yards when he was sent for to go into the railway telegraph-office. The engineer at the rail-head, at the foot of the mountains, wanted to talk to him from his end of the wire. There was nobody in