Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. Decoud followed
out the brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in
the vast empty sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a
heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man, with a drooping moustache, a hide
merchant from Esmeralda, who had come overland to Sulaco, riding
with a few peons across the coast range. He was very full of his
journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose of seeing the Senor
Administrador of San Tome in relation to some assistance he
required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to enlarge it
greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was
going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a
strange, anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language,
which he pattered rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A
plain man could carry on his little business now in the country,
and even think of enlarging it--with safety. Was it not so? He
seemed to beg Charles Gould for a confirmatory word, a grunt of
assent, a simple nod even.

He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he
would dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he
would branch off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his
journey. The audacious Hernandez, leaving his usual haunts, had
crossed the Campo of Sulaco, and was known to be lurking in the
ravines of the coast range. Yesterday, when distant only a few
hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant and his servants had seen
three men on the road arrested suspiciously, with their horses'
heads together. Two of these rode off at once and disappeared in
a shallow quebrada to the left. "We stopped," continued the man
from Esmeralda, "and I tried to hide behind a small bush. But
none of my mozos would go forward to find out what it meant, and
the third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was
no use. We had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling. He
let us pass--a man on a grey horse with his hat down on his
eyes--without a word of greeting; but by-and-by we heard him
galloping after us. We faced about, but that did not seem to
intimidate him. He rode up at speed, and touching my foot with
the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling
laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand back to
reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his
waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and
as he did not offer to go on we dared not move. At last, blowing
the smoke of my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said,
'Senor, it would be perhaps better for you if I rode behind your
party. You are not very far from Sulaco now. Go you with God.'
What would you? We went on. There was no resisting him. He might
have been Hernandez himself; though my servant, who has been many
times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he had recognized him
very well for the Capataz of the Steamship Company's Cargadores.
Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the corner of
the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup
with her hand on the grey horse's mane."