Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the booths,
checking the mare almost to a standstill now and then for
children, for the groups of people from the distant Campo, who
stared after him with admiration. The Company's lightermen
saluted him from afar; and the greatly envied Capataz de
Cargadores advanced, amongst murmurs of recognition and
obsequious greetings, towards the huge circus-like erection. The
throng thickened; the guitars tinkled louder; other horsemen sat
motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the crowd; it
eddied and pushed before the doors of the high-roofed building,
whence issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance
music vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by
the tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The
barbarous and imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a
crowd, and that even Europeans cannot hear without a strange
emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo on to its source, while a man,
wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho, walked by his stirrup, and,
buffeted right and left, begged "his worship" insistently for
employment on the wharf. He whined, offering the Senor Capataz
half his daily pay for the privilege of being admitted to the
swaggering fraternity of Cargadores; the other half would be
enough for him, he protested. But Captain Mitchell's right-hand
man--"invaluable for our work--a perfectly incorruptible
fellow"--after looking down critically at the ragged mozo, shook
his head without a word in the uproar going on around.

The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had to pull
up. From the doors of the dance hall men and women emerged
tottering, streaming with sweat, trembling in every limb, to
lean, panting, with staring eyes and parted lips, against the
wall of the structure, where the harps and guitars played on with
mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder. Hundreds of hands
clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at once would
sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with a
dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in
the crowd, struck the resplendent Capataz on the cheek.

He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did not turn
his head. When at last he condescended to look round, the throng
near him had parted to make way for a pretty Morenita, her hair
held up by a small golden comb, who was walking towards him in
the open space.