Page 69 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

our beloved country.’
And for many years this was the last of the San Tome
mine. What advantage that Government had expected
from the spoliation, it is impossible to tell now. Costaguana
was made with difficulty to pay a beggarly money compen-
sation to the families of the victims, and then the matter
dropped out of diplomatic despatches. But afterwards an-
other Government bethought itself of that valuable asset. It
was an ordinary Costaguana Government—the fourth in
six years—but it judged of its opportunities sanely. It re-
membered the San Tome mine with a secret conviction of its
worthlessness in their own hands, but with an ingenious in-
sight into the various uses a silver mine can be put to, apart
from the sordid process of extracting the metal from under
the ground. The father of Charles Gould, for a long time one
of the most wealthy merchants of Costaguana, had already
lost a considerable part of his fortune in forced loans to the
successive Governments. He was a man of calm judgment,
who never dreamed of pressing his claims; and when, sud-
denly, the perpetual concession of the San Tome mine was
offered to him in full settlement, his alarm became extreme.
He was versed in the ways of Governments. Indeed, the in-
tention of this affair, though no doubt deeply meditated in
the closet, lay open on the surface of the document present-
ed urgently for his signature. The third and most important
clause stipulated that the concession-holder should pay at
once to the Government five years’ royalties on the estimat-
ed output of the mine.
Mr. Gould, senior, defended himself from this fatal favour

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard