Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 2. CHAPTER TWO (continued)

The O.S.N.'s superintendent in Sulaco for the whole Costaguana
section of the service was very proud of his Company's standing.
He resumed it in a saying which was very often on his lips, "We
never make mistakes." To the Company's officers it took the form
of a severe injunction, "We must make no mistakes. I'll have no
mistakes here, no matter what Smith may do at his end."

Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was the other
superintendent of the service, quartered some fifteen hundred
miles away from Sulaco. "Don't talk to me of your Smith."

Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the subject with
studied negligence.

"Smith knows no more of this continent than a baby."

"Our excellent Senor Mitchell" for the business and official
world of Sulaco; "Fussy Joe" for the commanders of the Company's
ships, Captain Joseph Mitchell prided himself on his profound
knowledge of men and things in the country--cosas de Costaguana.
Amongst these last he accounted as most unfavourable to the
orderly working of his Company the frequent changes of government
brought about by revolutions of the military type.

The political atmosphere of the Republic was generally stormy in
these days. The fugitive patriots of the defeated party had the
knack of turning up again on the coast with half a steamer's load
of small arms and ammunition. Such resourcefulness Captain
Mitchell considered as perfectly wonderful in view of their utter
destitution at the time of flight. He had observed that "they
never seemed to have enough change about them to pay for their
passage ticket out of the country." And he could speak with
knowledge; for on a memorable occasion he had been called upon to
save the life of a dictator, together with the lives of a few
Sulaco officials--the political chief, the director of the
customs, and the head of police--belonging to an overturned
government. Poor Senor Ribiera (such was the dictator's name) had
come pelting eighty miles over mountain tracks after the lost
battle of Socorro, in the hope of out-distancing the fatal
news--which, of course, he could not manage to do on a lame mule.
The animal, moreover, expired under him at the end of the
Alameda, where the military band plays sometimes in the evenings
between the revolutions. "Sir," Captain Mitchell would pursue
with portentous gravity, "the ill-timed end of that mule
attracted attention to the unfortunate rider. His features were
recognized by several deserters from the Dictatorial army amongst
the rascally mob already engaged in smashing the windows of the
Intendencia."