Page 146 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don
Jose Avellanos was very silent. Even in the Gould carriage
he did not open his lips for a long time. The mules trotted
slowly away from the wharf between the extended hands
of the beggars, who for that day seemed to have abandoned
in a body the portals of churches. Charles Gould sat on the
back seat and looked away upon the plain. A multitude of
booths made of green boughs, of rushes, of odd pieces of
plank eked out with bits of canvas had been erected all over
it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit, of cigars. Over lit-
tle heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting on
mats, cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the wa-
ter for the mate gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing
voices to the country people. A racecourse had been staked
out for the vaqueros; and away to the left, from where the
crowd was massed thickly about a huge temporary erection,
like a circus tent of wood with a conical grass roof, came the
resonant twanging of harp strings, the sharp ping of guitars,
with the grave drumming throb of an Indian gombo pulsat-
ing steadily through the shrill choruses of the dancers.
Charles Gould said presently—
‘All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Com-
pany. There will be no more popular feasts held here.’
Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this
opportunity to mention how she had just obtained from Sir
John the promise that the house occupied by Giorgio Vi-
ola should not be interfered with. She declared she could
never understand why the survey engineers ever talked of
demolishing that old building. It was not in the way of the

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