Page 543 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

remaining open so late because of the steamer. Nearly—but
not quite.
‘Ten o’clock. Your ship won’t be ready to leave till half-
past twelve, if by then. Come in for a brandy-and-soda and
one more cigar.’
And in the superintendent’s private room the privileged
passenger by the Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as
it were annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit of sights,
sounds, names, facts, and complicated information imper-
fectly apprehended, would listen like a tired child to a fairy
tale; would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its pomp-
ousness, tell him, as if from another world, how there was
‘in this very harbour’ an international naval demonstration,
which put an end to the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the
United States cruiser, Powhattan, was the first to salute the
Occidental flag—white, with a wreath of green laurel in the
middle encircling a yellow amarilla flower. Would hear how
General Montero, in less than a month after proclaiming
himself Emperor of Costaguana, was shot dead (during a
solemn and public distribution of orders and crosses) by a
young artillery officer, the brother of his then mistress.
‘The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country,’ the voice
would say. And it would continue: ‘A captain of one of our
ships told me lately that he recognized Pedrito the Guerril-
lero, arrayed in purple slippers and a velvet smoking-cap
with a gold tassel, keeping a disorderly house in one of the
southern ports.’
‘Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?’ would
wonder the distinguished bird of passage hovering on the

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard