Page 124 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of the
forests, to hear the last confession with the smell of gun-
powder smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum
and spatter of bullets in his ears. And where was the harm
if, at the presbytery, they had a game with a pack of greasy
cards in the early evening, before Don Pepe went his last
rounds to see that all the watchmen of the mine—a body or-
ganized by himself—were at their posts? For that last duty
before he slept Don Pepe did actually gird his old sword
on the verandah of an unmistakable American white frame
house, which Father Roman called the presbytery. Near by,
a long, low, dark building, steeple-roofed, like a vast barn
with a wooden cross over the gable, was the miners’ chapel.
There Father Roman said Mass every day before a sombre
altar-piece representing the Resurrection, the grey slab of
the tombstone balanced on one corner, a figure soaring up-
wards, long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light, and
a helmeted brown legionary smitten down, right across the
bituminous foreground. ‘This picture, my children, muy
linda e maravillosa,’ Father Roman would say to some of
his flock, ‘which you behold here through the munificence
of the wife of our Senor Administrador, has been painted in
Europe, a country of saints and miracles, and much greater
than our Costaguana.’ And he would take a pinch of snuff
with unction. But when once an inquisitive spirit desired to
know in what direction this Europe was situated, whether
up or down the coast, Father Roman, to conceal his per-
plexity, became very reserved and severe. ‘No doubt it is
extremely far away. But ignorant sinners like you of the San

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