THE next day was quiet in the morning, except for the faint sound of firing to the northward¹, in the direction of Los Hatos. Captain Mitchell had listened to it from his balcony anxiously. The phrase, “In my delicate position as the only consular² agent then in the port, everything, sir, everything was a just cause for anxiety,” had its place in the more or less stereotyped³ relation of the “historical events” which for the next few years was at the service of distinguished⁴ strangers visiting Sulaco. The mention of the dignity and neutrality of the flag, so difficult to preserve in his position, “right in the thick of these events between the lawlessness of that piratical villain⁵ Sotillo and the more regularly established but scarcely less atrocious tyranny of his Excellency Don Pedro Montero,” came next in order. Captain Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere⁶ dangers much. But he insisted that it was a memorable⁷ day. On that day, towards dusk, he had seen “that poor fellow of mine — Nostromo. The sailor whom I discovered, and, I may say, made, sir. The man of the famous ride to Cayta, sir. An historical event, sir!”

Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and faithful servant, Captain Mitchell was allowed to attain⁸ the term of his usefulness in ease and dignity at the head of the enormously extended service. The augmentation of the establishment, with its crowds of clerks, an office in town, the old office in the harbour, the division into departments — passenger, cargo⁹, lighterage, and so on — secured a greater leisure for his last years in the

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