Page 126 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge,
and sent upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasadero
in Rincon swore that on calm nights, by listening intently,
he could catch the sound in his doorway as of a storm in the
mountains.
To Charles Gould’s fancy it seemed that the sound must
reach the uttermost limits of the province. Riding at night
towards the mine, it would meet him at the edge of a lit-
tle wood just beyond Rincon. There was no mistaking the
growling mutter of the mountain pouring its stream of
treasure under the stamps; and it came to his heart with the
peculiar force of a proclamation thundered forth over the
land and the marvellousness of an accomplished fact fulfill-
ing an audacious desire. He had heard this very sound in his
imagination on that far-off evening when his wife and him-
self, after a tortuous ride through a strip of forest, had reined
in their horses near the stream, and had gazed for the first
time upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. The head
of a palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round the
corner of the San Tome mountain (which is square like a
blockhouse) the thread of a slender waterfall flashed bright
and glassy through the dark green of the heavy fronds of
tree-ferns. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and, stretch-
ing his arm up the gorge, had declared with mock solemnity,
‘Behold the very paradise of snakes, senora.’
And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back
to sleep that night at Rincon. The alcalde—an old, skinny
Moreno, a sergeant of Guzman Bento’s time—had cleared
respectfully out of his house with his three pretty daughters,

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