Page 231 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

laco now. Go you with God.’ What would you? We went on.
There was no resisting him. He might have been Hernan-
dez himself; though my servant, who has been many times
to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he had recognized him
very well for the Capataz of the Steamship Company’s Car-
gadores. Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the
corner of the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood
by the stirrup with her hand on the grey horse’s mane.’
‘I assure you, Senor Hirsch,’ murmured Charles Gould,
‘that you ran no risk on this occasion.’
‘That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most fierce
man—to look at. And what does it mean? A person employed
by the Steamship Company talking with salteadores—no
less, senor; the other horsemen were salteadores—in a
lonely place, and behaving like a robber himself! A cigar is
nothing, but what was there to prevent him asking me for
my purse?’
‘No, no, Senor Hirsch,’ Charles Gould murmured, letting
his glance stray away a little vacantly from the round face,
with its hooked beak upturned towards him in an almost
childlike appeal. ‘If it was the Capataz de Cargadores you
met—and there is no doubt, is there? —you were perfectly
safe.’
‘Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-looking
man, Don Carlos. He asked me for a cigar in a most famil-
iar manner. What would have happened if I had not had
a cigar? I shudder yet. What business had he to be talking
with robbers in a lonely place?’
But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave not a

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