Page 427 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

fully eat the paper? The Capataz de Cargadores would have
been just such a man. But the Capataz of the Cargadores
was no more.
And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the wall,
said gently, ‘That Hirsch! What an extraordinary thing!
Saved himself by clinging to the anchor, did he? I had no
idea that he was still in Sulaco. I thought he had gone back
overland to Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came here
once to talk to me about his hide business and some other
things. I made it clear to him that nothing could be done.’
‘He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez be-
ing about,’ remarked the doctor.
‘And but for him we might not have known anything of
what has happened,’ marvelled Charles Gould.
Mrs. Gould cried out—
‘Antonia must not know! She must not be told. Not now.’
‘Nobody’s likely to carry the news,’ remarked the doc-
tor. ‘It’s no one’s interest. Moreover, the people here are
afraid of Hernandez as if he were the devil.’ He turned to
Charles Gould. ‘It’s even awkward, because if you wanted to
communicate with the refugees you could find no messen-
ger. When Hernandez was ranging hundreds of miles away
from here the Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales
of him roasting his prisoners alive.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Charles Gould; ‘Captain Mitchell’s
Capataz was the only man in the town who had seen Her-
nandez eye to eye. Father Corbelan employed him. He
opened the communications first. It is a pity that—‘
His voice was covered by the booming of the great bell of

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard