Page 535 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

swarthy men, and Europeans or North Americans of supe-
rior standing, whose faces looked very white amongst the
majority of dark complexions and black, glistening eyes.
Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting
around looks of satisfaction, and tender over the table a
case full of thick cigars.
‘Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The black
coffee you get at the Amarilla, sir, you don’t meet anywhere
in the world. We get the bean from a famous cafeteria in
the foot-hills, whose owner sends three sacks every year as
a present to his fellow members in remembrance of the fight
against Gamacho’s Nationals, carried on from these very
windows by the caballeros. He was in town at the time, and
took part, sir, to the bitter end. It arrives on three mules—
not in the common way, by rail; no fear!—right into the
patio, escorted by mounted peons, in charge of the Mayoral
of his estate, who walks upstairs, booted and spurred, and
delivers it to our committee formally with the words, ‘For
the sake of those fallen on the third of May.’ We call it Tres
de Mayo coffee. Taste it.’
Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making
ready to hear a sermon in a church, would lift the tiny cup
to his lips. And the nectar would be sipped to the bottom
during a restful silence in a cloud of cigar smoke.
‘Look at this man in black just going out,’ he would be-
gin, leaning forward hastily. ‘This is the famous Hernandez,
Minister of War. The Times’ special correspondent, who
wrote that striking series of letters calling the Occidental
Republic the ‘Treasure House of the World,’ gave a whole ar-

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard