Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

But Don Jose, disregarding the general indictment as though he
had not heard a word of it, took up the defence of Barrios. The
man was competent enough for his special task in the plan of
campaign. It consisted in an offensive movement, with Cayta as
base, upon the flank of the Revolutionist forces advancing from
the south against Sta. Marta, which was covered by another army
with the President-Dictator in its midst. Don Jose became quite
animated with a great flow of speech, bending forward anxiously
under the steady eyes of his daughter. Decoud, as if silenced by
so much ardour, did not make a sound. The bells of the city were
striking the hour of Oracion when the carriage rolled under the
old gateway facing the harbour like a shapeless monument of
leaves and stones. The rumble of wheels under the sonorous arch
was traversed by a strange, piercing shriek, and Decoud, from his
back seat, had a view of the people behind the carriage trudging
along the road outside, all turning their heads, in sombreros and
rebozos, to look at a locomotive which rolled quickly out of
sight behind Giorgio Viola's house, under a white trail of steam
that seemed to vanish in the breathless, hysterically prolonged
scream of warlike triumph. And it was all like a fleeting vision,
the shrieking ghost of a railway engine fleeing across the frame
of the archway, behind the startled movement of the people
streaming back from a military spectacle with silent footsteps on
the dust of the road. It was a material train returning from the
Campo to the palisaded yards. The empty cars rolled lightly on
the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor of the
ground. The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with the
salute of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before
entering the yard; and when the ear-splitting screech of the
steam-whistle for the brakes had stopped, a series of hard,
battering shocks, mingled with the clanking of chain-couplings,
made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters under the vault of the
gate.