le and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first
and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare,
who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that
work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from
Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along the street and snarling low
curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell, coming out anxiously in his night
attire on to the wooden balcony running the whole length of the O.S.N.
Company's lonely building by the shore, would see the lighters already
under way, figures moving busily about the cargo cranes, perhaps hear
the invaluable Nostromo, now dismounted and in the checked shirt and red
sash of a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders from the end of the jetty
in a stentorian voice. A fellow in a thousand!

The material apparatus of perfected civilization which obliterates the
individuality of old towns under the stereotyped conveniences of modern
life had not intruded as yet; but over the worn-out antiquity of Sulaco,
so characteristic with its stuccoed houses and barred windows, with
the great yellowy-white walls of abandoned convents behind the rows of
sombre green cypresses, that fact--very modern in its spirit--the San
Tome mine had already thrown its subtle influence. It had altered, too,
the outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before
the open portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos with a
green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome miners. They had
also adopted white hats with green cord and braid--articles of good
quality, which could be obtained in the storehouse of the administration
for very little money. A peaceable Cholo wearing these colours (unusual
in Costaguana) was somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his
life on a charge of disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much
risk of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting party of
lanceros--a method of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost legal
in the Republic. Whole villages were known to have volunteered for the
army in that way; but, as Don Pepe would say with a hopeless shrug to
Mrs. Gould, "What would you! Poor people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But
the State must have its soldiers."

Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with pendent
moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a clean run of a cast-iron jaw,
suggesting the type of a cattle-herd horseman from the