He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a one-o’clock dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N. Company on board the Juno after the function on shore. Captain Mitchell had himself steered5 the cargo6 lighter7, all draped with flags, which, in tow of the Juno’s steam launch, took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the ship. Everybody of note in Sulaco had been invited — the one or two foreign merchants, all the representatives of the old Spanish families then in town, the great owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous8, simple men, caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and feet, conservative, hospitable9, and kind. The Occidental Province was their stronghold; their Blanco party had triumphed now; it was their President-Dictator, a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat smiling urbanely10 between the representatives of two friendly foreign powers. They had come with him from Sta. Marta to countenance11 by their presence the enterprise in which the capital of their countries was engaged. The only lady of that company was Mrs. Gould, the wife of Don Carlos, the administrator12 of the San Tome silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced enough to take part in the public life to that extent. They had come out strongly at the great ball at the Intendencia the evening before, but Mrs. Gould alone had appeared, a bright spot in the group of black coats behind the President-Dictator, on the crimson13 cloth-covered stage erected14 under a shady tree on the shore of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning the first sod had taken place. She had come off in the cargo lighter, full of notabilities, sitting under the flutter of gay flags, in the place of honour by the side of Captain Mitchell, who steered, and her clear dress gave the only truly festive15 note to the sombre gathering16 in the long, gorgeous saloon of the Juno.
The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London), handsome and pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped beard, hovered17 near her shoulder attentive18, smiling, and fatigued19. The journey from London to Sta. Marta in mail boats and the special carriages of the Sta. Marta coast-line (the only railway so far) had been tolerable — even pleasant — quite tolerable. But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was another sort of experience, in an old diligencia over impassable roads skirting awful precipices20.
“We have been upset twice in one day on the brink21 of very deep ravines,” he was telling Mrs. Gould in an undertone. “And when we arrived here at last I don’t know what we should have done without your hospitality. What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco is! — and for a harbour, too! Astonishing!”
“Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be historically important. The highest ecclesiastical court for two viceroyalties, sat here in the olden time,” she instructed him with animation22.
“I am impressed. I didn’t mean to be disparaging23. You seem very patriotic.”
“The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you don’t know what an old resident I am.”
“How old, I wonder,” he murmured, looking at her with a slight smile. Mrs. Gould’s appearance was made youthful by the mobile intelligence of her face. “We can’t give you your ecclesiastical court back again; but you shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable — a future in the great world which is worth infinitely24 more than any amount of ecclesiastical past. You shall be brought in touch with something greater than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on a sea-coast could remain so isolated25 from the world. If it had been a thousand miles inland now — most remarkable26! Has anything ever happened here for a hundred years before to-day?”
While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept her little smile. Agreeing ironically, she assured him that certainly not — nothing ever happened in Sulaco. Even the revolutions, of which there had been two in her time, had respected the repose27 of the place. Their course ran in the more populous28 southern parts of the Republic, and the great valley of Sta. Marta, which was like one great battlefield of the parties, with the possession of the capital for a prize and an outlet29 to another ocean. They were more advanced over there. Here in Sulaco they heard only the echoes of these great questions, and, of course, their official world changed each time, coming to them over their rampart of mountains which he himself had traversed in an old diligencia, with such a risk to life and limb.
The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitality for several days, and he was really grateful for it. It was only since he had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly30 lost touch with the feeling of European life on the background of his exotic surroundings. In the capital he had been the guest of the Legation, and had been kept busy negotiating with the members of Don Vincente’s Government — cultured men, men to whom the conditions of civilized31 business were not unknown.
What concerned him most at the time was the acquisition of land for the railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where there was already one line in existence, the people were tractable32, and it was only a matter of price. A commission had been nominated to fix the values, and the difficulty resolved itself into the judicious33 influencing of the Commissioners34. But in Sulaco — the Occidental Province for whose very development the railway was intended — there had been trouble. It had been lying for ages ensconced behind its natural barriers, repelling35 modern enterprise by the precipices of its mountain range, by its shallow harbour opening into the everlasting36 calms of a gulf37 full of clouds, by the benighted38 state of mind of the owners of its fertile territory — all these aristocratic old Spanish families, all those Don Ambrosios this and Don Fernandos that, who seemed actually to dislike and distrust the coming of the railway over their lands. It had happened that some of the surveying parties scattered39 all over the province had been warned off with threats of violence. In other cases outrageous40 pretensions41 as to price had been raised. But the man of railways prided himself on being equal to every emergency. Since he was met by the inimical sentiment of blind conservatism in Sulaco he would meet it by sentiment, too, before taking his stand on his right alone. The Government was bound to carry out its part of the contract with the board of the new railway company, even if it had to use force for the purpose. But he desired nothing less than an armed disturbance42 in the smooth working of his plans. They were much too vast and far-reaching, and too promising43 to leave a stone unturned; and so he imagined to get the President-Dictator over there on a tour of ceremonies and speeches, culminating in a great function at the turning of the first sod by the harbour shore. After all he was their own creature — that Don Vincente. He was the embodied44 triumph of the best elements in the State. These were facts, and, unless facts meant nothing, Sir John argued to himself, such a man’s influence must be real, and his personal action would produce the conciliatory effect he required. He had succeeded in arranging the trip with the help of a very clever advocate, who was known in Sta. Marta as the agent of the Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in Sulaco, and even in the whole Republic. It was indeed a fabulously45 rich mine. Its so-called agent, evidently a man of culture and ability, seemed, without official position, to possess an extraordinary influence in the highest Government spheres. He was able to assure Sir John that the President-Dictator would make the journey. He regretted, however, in the course of the same conversation, that General Montero insisted upon going, too.
General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle had found an obscure army captain employed on the wild eastern frontier of the State, had thrown in his lot with the Ribiera party at a moment when special circumstances had given that small adhesion a fortuitous importance. The fortunes of war served him marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco (after a day of desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the end he emerged General, Minister of War, and the military head of the Blanco party, although there was nothing aristocratic in his descent. Indeed, it was said that he and his brother, orphans46, had been brought up by the munificence47 of a famous European traveller, in whose service their father had lost his life. Another story was that their father had been nothing but a charcoal48 burner in the woods, and their mother a baptised Indian woman from the far interior.
However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in the habit of styling Montero’s forest march from his commandancia to join the Blanco forces at the beginning of the troubles, the “most heroic military exploit of modern times.” About the same time, too, his brother had turned up from Europe, where he had gone apparently49 as secretary to a consul50. Having, however, collected a small band of outlaws51, he showed some talent as guerilla chief and had been rewarded at the pacification52 by the post of Military Commandant of the capital.
The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator. The board of the O.S.N. Company, working hand-in-hand with the railway people for the good of the Republic, had on this important occasion instructed Captain Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at the disposal of the distinguished53 party. Don Vincente, journeying south from Sta. Marta, had embarked54 at Cayta, the principal port of Costaguana, and came to Sulaco by sea. But the chairman of the railway company had courageously55 crossed the mountains in a ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting his engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the road.
For all the indifference56 of a man of affairs to nature, whose hostility57 can always be overcome by the resources of finance, he could not help being impressed by his surroundings during his halt at the surveying camp established at the highest point his railway was to reach. He spent the night there, arriving just too late to see the last dying glow of sunlight upon the snowy flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt framed like an open portal a portion of the white field lying aslant58 against the west. In the transparent59 air of the high altitudes everything seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable liquid; and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of the expected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the door of a hut of rough stones, had contemplated60 the changing hues61 on the enormous side of the mountain, thinking that in this sight, as in a piece of inspired music, there could be found together the utmost delicacy62 of shaded expression and a stupendous magnificence of effect.
Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and inaudible strain sung by the sunset amongst the high peaks of the Sierra. It had sung itself out into the breathless pause of deep dusk before, climbing down the fore2 wheel of the diligencia with stiff limbs, he shook hands with the engineer.
They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical boulder63, with no door or windows in its two openings; a bright fire of sticks (brought on muleback from the first valley below) burning outside, sent in a wavering glare; and two candles in tin candlesticks — lighted, it was explained to him, in his honour — stood on a sort of rough camp table, at which he sat on the right hand of the chief. He knew how to be amiable65; and the young men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of the railway track had the glamour66 of the first steps on the path of life, sat there, too, listening modestly, with their smooth faces tanned by the weather, and very pleased to witness so much affability in so great a man.
Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside, he had a long talk with his chief engineer. He knew him well of old. This was not the first undertaking in which their gifts, as elementally different as fire and water, had worked in conjunction. From the contact of these two personalities67, who had not the same vision of the world, there was generated a power for the world’s service — a subtle force that could set in motion mighty68 machines, men’s muscles, and awaken69 also in human breasts an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the young fellows at the table, to whom the survey of the track was like the tracing of the path of life, more than one would be called to meet death before the work was done. But the work would be done: the force would be almost as strong as a faith. Not quite, however. In the silence of the sleeping camp upon the moonlit plateau forming the top of the pass like the floor of a vast arena70 surrounded by the basalt walls of precipices, two strolling figures in thick ulsters stood still, and the voice of the engineer pronounced distinctly the words —
“We can’t move mountains!”
Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing gesture, felt the full force of the words. The white Higuerota soared out of the shadows of rock and earth like a frozen bubble under the moon. All was still, till near by, behind the wall of a corral for the camp animals, built roughly of loose stones in the form of a circle, a pack mule64 stamped his forefoot and blew heavily twice.
The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer to the chairman’s tentative suggestion that the tracing of the line could, perhaps, be altered in deference71 to the prejudices of the Sulaco landowners. The chief engineer believed that the obstinacy72 of men was the lesser73 obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had the great influence of Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under Higuerota would have been a colossal74 undertaking.
“Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?”
Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta. Marta, and wanted to know more. The engineer-in-chief assured him that the administrator of the San Tome silver mine had an immense influence over all these Spanish Dons. He had also one of the best houses in Sulaco, and the Gould hospitality was beyond all praise.
“They received me as if they had known me for years,” he said. “The little lady is kindness personified. I stayed with them for a month. He helped me to organize the surveying parties. His practical ownership of the San Tome silver mine gives him a special position. He seems to have the ear of every provincial75 authority apparently, and, as I said, he can wind all the hidalgos of the province round his little finger. If you follow his advice the difficulties will fall away, because he wants the railway. Of course, you must be careful in what you say. He’s English, and besides he must be immensely wealthy. The Holroyd house is in with him in that mine, so you may imagine —”
He interrupted himself as, from before one of the little fires burning outside the low wall of the corral, arose the figure of a man wrapped in a poncho76 up to the neck. The saddle which he had been using for a pillow made a dark patch on the ground against the red glow of embers.
“I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through the States,” said Sir John. “I’ve ascertained77 that he, too, wants the railway.”
The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity78 of the voices, had arisen from the ground, struck a match to light a cigarette. The flame showed a bronzed, black-whiskered face, a pair of eyes gazing straight; then, rearranging his wrappings, he sank full length and laid his head again on the saddle.
“That’s our camp-master, whom I must send back to Sulaco now we are going to carry our survey into the Sta. Marta Valley,” said the engineer. “A most useful fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell of the O.S.N. Company. It was very good of Mitchell. Charles Gould told me I couldn’t do better than take advantage of the offer. He seems to know how to rule all these muleteers and peons. We had not the slightest trouble with our people. He shall escort your diligencia right into Sulaco with some of our railway peons. The road is bad. To have him at hand may save you an upset or two. He promised me to take care of your person all the way down as if you were his father.”
This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell’s mispronunciation, were in the habit of calling Nostromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the road, as Sir John himself acknowledged to Mrs. Gould afterwards.
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1
vindicated
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| v.澄清（某人/某事物）受到的责难或嫌疑( vindicate的过去式和过去分词 )；表明或证明（所争辩的事物）属实、正当、有效等；维护 | |
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fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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urbanely
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| adv.都市化地，彬彬有礼地，温文尔雅地 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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administrator
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| n.经营管理者，行政官员 | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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festive
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| adj.欢宴的，节日的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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fatigued
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| adj. 疲乏的 | |
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precipices
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| n.悬崖，峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
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brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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disparaging
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| adj.轻蔑的，毁谤的v.轻视( disparage的现在分词 )；贬低；批评；非难 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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tractable
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| adj.易驾驭的；温顺的 | |
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judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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repelling
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| v.击退( repel的现在分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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41
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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43
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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44
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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fabulously
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| 难以置信地，惊人地 | |
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orphans
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| 孤儿( orphan的名词复数 ) | |
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47
munificence
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| n.宽宏大量，慷慨给与 | |
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48
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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50
consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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51
outlaws
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| 歹徒，亡命之徒( outlaw的名词复数 )； 逃犯 | |
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52
pacification
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| n. 讲和，绥靖，平定 | |
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53
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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54
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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55
courageously
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| ad.勇敢地，无畏地 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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57
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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aslant
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| adv.倾斜地；adj.斜的 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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60
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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61
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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72
obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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73
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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74
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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75
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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76
poncho
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| n.斗篷，雨衣 | |
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77
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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