Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 5. CHAPTER FIVE (continued)

"It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this. The
price of hides in Hamburg is gone up--up. Of course the Ribierist
Government will do away with all that--when it gets established
firmly. Meantime--"

He sighed.

"Yes, meantime," repeated Charles Gould, inscrutably.

The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not ready to go yet.
There was a little matter he would like to mention very much if
permitted. It appeared he had some good friends in Hamburg (he
murmured the name of the firm) who were very anxious to do
business, in dynamite, he explained. A contract for dynamite with
the San Tome mine, and then, perhaps, later on, other mines,
which were sure to--The little man from Esmeralda was ready to
enlarge, but Charles interrupted him. It seemed as though the
patience of the Senor Administrador was giving way at last.

"Senor Hirsch," he said, "I have enough dynamite stored up at the
mountain to send it down crashing into the valley"--his voice
rose a little--"to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked."

Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of the dealer in
hides, who was murmuring hastily, "Just so. Just so." And now he
was going. It was impossible to do business in explosives with an
Administrador so well provided and so discouraging. He had
suffered agonies in the saddle and had exposed himself to the
atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for nothing at all. Neither
hides nor dynamite--and the very shoulders of the enterprising
Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low to the
engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio
he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an
attitude of meditative astonishment.

"What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?" he muttered.
"And why does he talk like this to me?"

The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala,
whence the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant
drop, nodded familiarly to the master of the house, standing
motionless like a tall beacon amongst the deserted shoals of
furniture.