Page 150 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

murs of recognition and obsequious greetings, towards the
huge circus-like erection. The throng thickened; the guitars
tinkled louder; other horsemen sat motionless, smoking
calmly above the heads of the crowd; it eddied and pushed
before the doors of the high-roofed building, whence issued
a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance music
vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung
by the tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo.
The barbarous and imposing noise of the big drum, that
can madden a crowd, and that even Europeans cannot hear
without a strange emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo on to
its source, while a man, wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho,
walked by his stirrup, and, buffeted right and left, begged
‘his worship’ insistently for employment on the wharf. He
whined, offering the Senor Capataz half his daily pay for
the privilege of being admitted to the swaggering fraternity
of Cargadores; the other half would be enough for him, he
protested. But Captain Mitchell’s right-hand man—‘invalu-
able for our work—a perfectly incorruptible fellow’—after
looking down critically at the ragged mozo, shook his head
without a word in the uproar going on around.
The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had
to pull up. From the doors of the dance hall men and wom-
en emerged tottering, streaming with sweat, trembling in
every limb, to lean, panting, with staring eyes and part-
ed lips, against the wall of the structure, where the harps
and guitars played on with mad speed in an incessant roll
of thunder. Hundreds of hands clapped in there; voices
shrieked, and then all at once would sink low, chanting in

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