Page 248 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

do no harm. And it was quite possible, also, that the rumour
was false.
‘You have some sort of a plan,’ she said.
‘Simplicity itself. Barrios has started, let him go on then;
he will hold Cayta, which is the door of the sea route to
Sulaco. They cannot send a sufficient force over the moun-
tains. No; not even to cope with the band of Hernandez.
Meantime we shall organize our resistance here. And for
that, this very Hernandez will be useful. He has defeated
troops as a bandit; he will no doubt accomplish the same
thing if he is made a colonel or even a general. You know the
country well enough not to be shocked by what I say, Mrs.
Gould. I have heard you assert that this poor bandit was the
living,breathing example of cruelty, injustice, stupidity, and
oppression, that ruin men’s souls as well as their fortunes in
this country. Well, there would be some poetical retribution
in that man arising to crush the evils which had driven an
honest ranchero into a life of crime. A fine idea of retribu-
tion in that, isn’t there?’
Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he spoke
with precision, very correctly, but with too many z sounds.
‘Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your
ailing mothers and feeble old men, of all that population
which you and your husband have brought into the rocky
gorge of San Tome. Are you not responsible to your con-
science for all these people? Is it not worth while to make
another effort, which is not at all so desperate as it looks,
rather than—‘
Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the