Page 121 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the two shifts,
stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps, mingled
together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered
picks, swinging lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet
on the open plateau before the entrance of the main tunnel.
It was a time of pause. The Indian boys leaned idly against
the long line of little cradle wagons standing empty; the
screeners and ore-breakers squatted on their heels smok-
ing long cigars; the great wooden shoots slanting over the
edge of the tunnel plateau were silent; and only the cease-
less, violent rush of water in the open flumes could be heard,
murmuring fiercely, with the splash and rumble of revolv-
ing turbine-wheels, and the thudding march of the stamps
pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau below.
The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals hanging
on their bare breasts, marshalled their squads; and at last
the mountain would swallow one-half of the silent crowd,
while the other half would move off in long files down the
zigzag paths leading to the bottom of the gorge. It was deep;
and, far below, a thread of vegetation winding between the
blazing rock faces resembled a slender green cord, in which
three lumpy knots of banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and
shady trees marked the Village One, Village Two, Village
Three, housing the miners of the Gould Concession.
Whole families had been moving from the first towards
the spot in the Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work
and safety had spread over the pastoral Campo, forcing its
way also, even as the waters of a high flood, into the nooks
and crannies of the distant blue walls of the Sierras. Father

1 0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard