His arm went up.
"The equestrian statue that used to stand on the pedestal over there
has been removed. It was an anachronism," Captain Mitchell commented,
obscurely. "There is some talk of replacing it by a marble shaft
commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at the four corners,
and bronze Justice holding an even balance, all gilt, on the top.
Cavaliere Parrochetti was asked to make a design, which you can see
framed under glass in the Municipal Sala. Names are to be engraved all
round the base. Well! They could do no better than begin with the name
of Nostromo. He has done for Separation as much as anybody else, and,"
added Captain Mitchell, "has got less than many others by it--when it
comes to that." He dropped on to a stone seat under a tree, and tapped
invitingly at the place by his side. "He carried to Barrios the letters
from Sulaco which decided the General to abandon Cayta for a time, and
come back to our help here by sea. The transports were still in harbour
fortunately. Sir, I did not even know that my Capataz de Cargadores was
alive. I had no idea. It was Dr. Monygham who came upon him, by chance,
in the Custom House, evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched
Sotillo. I was never told; never given a hint, nothing--as if I were
unworthy of confidence. Monygham arranged it all. He went to the railway
yards, and got admission to the engineer-in-chief, who, for the sake of
the Goulds as much as for anything else, consented to let an engine
make a dash down the line, one hundred and eighty miles, with Nostromo
aboard. It was the only way to get him off. In the Construction Camp
at the railhead, he obtained a horse, arms, some clothing, and started
alone on that marvellous ride--four hundred miles in six days, through
a disturbed country, ending by the feat of passing through the Monterist
lines outside Cayta. The history of that ride, sir, would make a
most exciting book. He carried all our lives in his pocket. Devotion,
courage, fidelity, intelligence were not enough. Of course, he was
perfectly fearless and incorruptible. But a man was wanted that would
know how to succeed. He was that man, sir. On the fifth of May, being
practically a prisoner in the Harbour Office of my Company, I suddenly
heard the whistle of an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of a mile
away. I could not believe my ears. I made one jump on to the balcony,
and beheld a locomotive under a great head of steam run out of the yard
gates, screeching like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and then, just
abreast of old Viola's inn, check almost to a standstill. I made out,
sir, a man--I couldn't tell who--dash out of the Albergo d'ltalia Una,
climb into the cab, and then, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap
clear of the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. As you blow
a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate driver on the foot-plate, sir,
I can tell you. They were fired heavily upon by the National Guards in
Rincon and one other place. Fortunately the line had not been torn
up. In four hours they reached the Construction Camp. Nostromo had his
start. . . . The rest you know. You've got only to look round you. There
are people on this Alameda that ride in their carriages, or even are
alive at all to-day, because years ago I engaged a runaway Italian
sailor for a foreman of our wharf simply on the strength of his looks.
And that's a fact. You can't get over it, sir. On the seventeenth of
May, just twelve days after I saw the man from the Casa Viola get on the
engine, and wondered what it meant, Barrios's transports were entering
this harbour, and the 'Treasure House of the World,' as The Times man
calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact for civilization--for a
great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandez on the west, and the San Tome
miners pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose the landing. He
had been sending messages to Sotillo for a week to join him. Had Sotillo
done so there would have been massacres and proscription that would have
left no man or woman of position alive. But that's where Dr. Monygham
comes in. Sotillo, blind and deaf to everything, stuck on board his
steamer watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to be sunk
at the bottom of the harbour. They say that for the last three days he
was out of his mind raving and foaming with disappointment at getting
nothing, flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats with the
drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly stamping his foot and crying
out, 'And yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!'
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