Page 190 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

bars of a strong wooden cage. Si, senores! Fear nothing, de-
velop the country, work, work!’
The little group of engineers received this exhortation
without a word, and after waving his hand at them loftily,
he addressed himself again to Mrs. Gould—
‘That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enterprising!
Work! Grow rich! To put Montero in a cage is my work; and
when that insignificant piece of business is done, then, as
Don Jose wishes us, we shall grow rich, one and all, like so
many Englishmen, because it is money that saves a country,
and—‘
But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying
up from the direction of the jetty, interrupted his inter-
pretation of Senor Avellanos’s ideals. The general made a
movement of impatience; the other went on talking to him
insistently, with an air of respect. The horses of the Staff
had been embarked, the steamer’s gig was awaiting the gen-
eral at the boat steps; and Barrios, after a fierce stare of his
one eye, began to take leave. Don Jose roused himself for an
appropriate phrase pronounced mechanically. The terrible
strain of hope and fear was telling on him, and he seemed
to husband the last sparks of his fire for those oratorical
efforts of which even the distant Europe was to hear. Anto-
nia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head behind the
raised fan; and young Decoud, though he felt the girl’s eyes
upon him, gazed away persistently, hooked on his elbow,
with a scornful and complete detachment. Mrs. Gould he-
roically concealed her dismay at the appearance of men and
events so remote from her racial conventions, dismay too

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