Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 7. CHAPTER SEVEN (continued)

"'And here, in this boudoir,' I said, 'you behold the inner
cabinet of the Occidental Republic that is to be.'

"He was so preoccupied that he didn't smile at that, he didn't
even look surprised.

"He told us that he was attending to the general dispositions for
the defence of the railway property at the railway yards when he
was sent for to go into the railway telegraph office. The
engineer of the railhead, at the foot of the mountains, wanted to
talk to him from his end of the wire. There was nobody in the
office but himself and the operator of the railway telegraph, who
read off the clicks aloud as the tape coiled its length upon the
floor. And the purport of that talk, clicked nervously from a
wooden shed in the depths of the forests, had informed the chief
that President Ribiera had been, or was being, pursued. This was
news, indeed, to all of us in Sulaco. Ribiera himself, when
rescued, revived, and soothed by us, had been inclined to think
that he had not been pursued.

"Ribiera had yielded to the urgent solicitations of his friends,
and had left the headquarters of his discomfited army alone,
under the guidance of Bonifacio, the muleteer, who had been
willing to take the responsibility with the risk. He had departed
at daybreak of the third day. His remaining forces had melted
away during the night. Bonifacio and he rode hard on horses
towards the Cordillera; then they obtained mules, entered the
passes, and crossed the Paramo of Ivie just before a freezing
blast swept over that stony plateau, burying in a drift of snow
the little shelter-hut of stones in which they had spent the
night. Afterwards poor Ribiera had many adventures, got
separated from his guide, lost his mount, struggled down to the
Campo on foot, and if he had not thrown himself on the mercy of a
ranchero would have perished a long way from Sulaco. That man,
who, as a matter of fact, recognized him at once, let him have a
fresh mule, which the fugitive, heavy and unskilful, had ridden
to death. And it was true he had been pursued by a party
commanded by no less a person than Pedro Montero, the brother of
the general. The cold wind of the Paramo luckily caught the
pursuers on the top of the pass. Some few men, and all the
animals, perished in the icy blast. The stragglers died, but the
main body kept on. They found poor Bonifacio lying half-dead at
the foot of a snow slope, and bayoneted him promptly in the true
Civil War style. They would have had Ribiera, too, if they had
not, for some reason or other, turned off the track of the old
Camino Real, only to lose their way in the forests at the foot of
the lower slopes. And there they were at last, having stumbled
in unexpectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer at the
railhead told his chief by wire that he had Pedro Montero
absolutely there, in the very office, listening to the clicks. He
was going to take possession of Sulaco in the name of the
Democracy. He was very overbearing. His men slaughtered some of
the Railway Company's cattle without asking leave, and went to
work broiling the meat on the embers. Pedrito made many pointed
inquiries as to the silver mine, and what had become of the
product of the last six months' working. He had said
peremptorily, "Ask your chief up there by wire, he ought to know;
tell him that Don Pedro Montero, Chief of the Campo and Minister
of the Interior of the new Government, desires to be correctly
informed.'