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appointing Hernandez a general, and calling upon him offi-
cially in this new capacity to preserve order in the town. The
fact is that the political chief, seeing the situation desperate,
did not care what he signed. It was the last official docu-
ment he signed before he left the palace of the Intendencia
for the refuge of the O.S.N. Company’s office. But even had
he meant his act to be effective it was already too late. The
riot which he feared and expected broke out in less than
an hour after Father Corbelan had left him. Indeed, Father
Corbelan, who had appointed a meeting with Nostromo in
the Dominican Convent, where he had his residence in one
of the cells, never managed to reach the place. From the In-
tendencia he had gone straight on to the Avellanos’s house
to tell his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there no
more than half an hour he had found himself cut off from
his ascetic abode. Nostromo, after waiting there for some
time, watching uneasily the increasing uproar in the street,
had made his way to the offices of the Porvenir, and stayed
there till daylight, as Decoud had mentioned in the letter to
his sister. Thus the Capataz, instead of riding towards the
Los Hatos woods as bearer of Hernandez’s nomination, had
remained in town to save the life of the President Dictator,
to assist in repressing the outbreak of the mob, and at last to
sail out with the silver of the mine.
But Father Corbelan, escaping to Hernandez, had the
document in his pocket, a piece of official writing turning
a bandit into a general in a memorable last official act of
the Ribierist party, whose watchwords were honesty, peace,
and progress. Probably neither the priest nor the bandit

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard