Page 74 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

teen, a matter of prime importance as to its main statement;
but in its form it is calculated to excite a certain amount of
wonder and attention. In course of time the boy, at first only
puzzled by the angry jeremiads, but rather sorry for his dad,
began to turn the matter over in his mind in such moments
as he could spare from play and study. In about a year he
had evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite convic-
tion that there was a silver mine in the Sulaco province of
the Republic of Costaguana, where poor Uncle Harry had
been shot by soldiers a great many years before. There was
also connected closely with that mine a thing called the ‘in-
iquitous Gould Concession,’ apparently written on a paper
which his father desired ardently to ‘tear and fling into the
faces’ of presidents, members of judicature, and ministers of
State. And this desire persisted, though the names of these
people, he noticed, seldom remained the same for a whole
year together. This desire (since the thing was iniquitous)
seemed quite natural to the boy, though why the affair was
iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards, with advancing
wisdom, he managed to clear the plain truth of the busi-
ness from the fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea,
vampires, and ghouls, which had lent to his father’s corre-
spondence the flavour of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale. In
the end, the growing youth attained to as close an intimacy
with the San Tome mine as the old man who wrote these
plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the sea.
He had been made several times already to pay heavy fines
for neglecting to work the mine, he reported, besides other
sums extracted from him on account of future royalties, on