Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

Don Pepe, when "down from the mountain," as the phrase, often
heard in Sulaco, went, could also be seen in the drawing-room of
the Casa Gould. He sat with modest assurance at some distance
from the tea-table. With his knees close together, and a kindly
twinkle of drollery in his deep-set eyes, he would throw his
small and ironic pleasantries into the current of conversation.
There was in that man a sort of sane, humorous shrewdness, and a
vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple old soldiers of
proved courage who have seen much desperate service. Of course he
knew nothing whatever of mining, but his employment was of a
special kind. He was in charge of the whole population in the
territory of the mine, which extended from the head of the gorge
to where the cart track from the foot of the mountain enters the
plain, crossing a stream over a little wooden bridge painted
green--green, the colour of hope, being also the colour of the
mine.

It was reported in Sulaco that up there "at the mountain" Don
Pepe walked about precipitous paths, girt with a great sword and
in a shabby uniform with tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior
major. Most miners being Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed
him as Taita (father), as these barefooted people of Costaguana
will address anybody who wears shoes; but it was Basilio, Mr.
Gould's own mozo and the head servant of the Casa, who, in all
good faith and from a sense of propriety, announced him once in
the solemn words, "El Senor Gobernador has arrived."

Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was delighted
beyond measure at the aptness of the title, with which he greeted
the old major banteringly as soon as the latter's soldierly
figure appeared in the doorway. Don Pepe only smiled in his long
moustaches, as much as to say, "You might have found a worse name
for an old soldier."

And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his small jokes
upon his function and upon his domain, where he affirmed with
humorous exaggeration to Mrs. Gould--

"No two stones could come together anywhere without the
Gobernador hearing the click, senora."