# Nostromo/Part Three/Chapter 2

II
​The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N. service imagined that the last three days had exhausted every startling surprise the political life of Costaguana could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the events which followed surpassed his imagination. To begin with, Sulaco (because of the seizure of the cables and the disorganization of the steam service) remained for a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of the world like a besieged city.
"One would not have believed it possible. But so it was, sir. A full fortnight."
The account of the extraordinary things that happened during that time and the powerful emotions he experienced acquired a wearisome impressiveness from the pompous manner of his personal narrative. He opened it always by assuring his hearer that he was "in the thick of things from first to last." Then he would begin by describing the getting away of the silver and his natural anxiety lest "his fellow" in charge of the lighter should make some mistake. Apart from the loss of so much precious metal, the life of Señor Martin Decoud, an agreeable, wealthy, and well-informed young gentleman, would have been jeopardized through his falling into the hands of his political enemies. Captain Mitchell also admitted that in his solitary vigil on the wharf he had felt a certain measure of concern for the future of the whole country.
​In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed infuriated. Captain Mitchell, however, had not been arrested at once; a vivid curiosity induced him to remain on the wharf (which is nearly two hundred and fifty yards long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of disembarkation. Concealed by the railway- truck used for silver, which had been run back afterwards to the shore end of the jetty, Captain Mitchell saw the small detachment thrown forward and pass by, taking different directions upon the plain. Meantime the troops were being landed and formed into a column whose head crept up gradually so close to him that he made it out barring nearly the whole width of the wharf only a very few yards from him. Then the low, shuffling, murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the whole mass remained for about an hour motionless and silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On land nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the mastiffs at the railway-yards, answered by the faint barking of the curs infesting the outer limits of the town. A detached knot of dark shapes stood in front of the head of the column.
Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to challenge in undertones single figures approaching from the plain. Those messengers sent back from the scouting-parties flung to their comrades brief sentences and passed on rapidly, becoming lost in the great motionless mass, to make their report to the staff. It occurred to Captain Mitchell that his position could become disagreeable, and perhaps dangerous, when, suddenly, at the head of the jetty, there was a shout of command, a bugle-call, followed by a stir and a ​rattling of arms and a murmuring noise that ran right up the column. Near by a loud voice directed hurriedly, "Push that railway-car out of the way." At the rush of bare feet to execute the order, Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or two; the car, suddenly impelled by many hands, flew away from him along the rails; and before lie knew what had happened he found himself surrounded and seized, by his arms and the collar of his coat.
"We have caught a man hiding here, mi teniente!" cried one of his captors.
​ The long building was surrounded by troops, which were already piling arms by companies and preparing to pass the night lying on the ground in their ponchos with their sacks under their heads. Corporals moved with swinging lanterns, posting sentries all round the walls wherever there was a door or an opening. Sotillo was taking his measures to protect his conquest as if it had indeed contained the treasure. His desire to make his fortune at one audacious stroke of genius had overmastered his reasoning faculties. He would not believe in the possibility of failure. The mere hint of such a thing made his brain reel with rage. Every circumstance pointing to it appeared incredible. The statement of Hirsch, which was so absolutely fatal to his hopes, could by no means be admitted. It is true, too, that Hirsch's story had been told so incoherently, with such excessive signs of distraction, that it really looked improbable. It was extremely difficult, as the saying is, to make head or tail of it. On the bridge of the steamer, directly after his rescue, Sotillo and his officers, in their impatience and excitement, would not give the wretched man time to collect such few wits as remained to him. He ought to have been quieted, soothed, and reassured; whereas he had been roughly handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get down on his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break away, as if he meant incontinently to jump overboard; his shrieks and shrinkings and cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement then with a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of every great passion. His ​Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German that the better half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He tried to propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which in itself sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not to trifle he repeated his entreaties and protestations of loyalty and innocence again in German, obstinately, because he was not aware in what language he was speaking. His identity, of course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant of Esmeralda, but this made the matter no clearer. As he kept on forgetting Decoud's name, mixing him up with several other people he had seen in the Casa Gould, it looked as if they all had been in the lighter together; and for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned every prominent Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw a doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a part—pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the moment to cover the truth. Sotillo's rapacity, excited to the highest pitch by the prospect of an immense booty, could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew might have been very much frightened by the accident, but he knew where the silver was concealed, and had invented this story, with his Jewish cunning, to put him entirely off the track as to what had been done.
Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor in a vast apartment with heavy black beams. But there was no ceiling, and the eye lost itself in the darkness under the high pitch of the roof. The thick shutters stood open. On a long table could be seen a large inkstand, some stumpy, inky quill pens, and two square wooden boxes, each holding half a hundred​weight of sand. Sheets of gr rse, official paper bestrewed the floor. It must have been a room occupied by some higher official of the customs, because a qge leathern arm-chair stood behind the table, with other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net hammock was swung under one of the beams for the official's afternoon siesta, no doubt. A couple of candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a dim, reddish light. The colonel's hat, sword, and revolver lay berween them, and a couple of his more trusty officers lounged gloomily against the table. The colonel threw himself into the arm-chair, and a big negro with a sergeant's stripes on his ragged sleeve, kneeling down, pulled off his boots. Sotillo's ebony mustache contrasted violently with the livid coloring of his cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very far into his head. He seemed exhausted by his perplexities, languid with disappointment; but when the sentry on the landing thrust his head in to announce the arrival of a prisoner he revived at once.
"Let him be brought in," he shouted, fiercely. The door flew open and Captain Mitchell, bareheaded, his waistcoat open, the bow of his tie under his ear, was hustled into the room.
Sotillo recognized him at once. He could not have hoped for a more precious capture. Here was a man who could tell him, if he chose, everything he wished to know; and, directly, the problem of how best to make him talk to the point presented itself to his mind. The resentment of a foreign nation had no terrors for Sotillo. The might of the whole armed Europe would not have protected Captain Mitchell from insults and ill-usage so ​well as the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an Englishman, who would most likely turn obstinate under bad treatment and become quite unmanageable. At all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl on his brow.
"What! The excellent Señor Mitchell!" he cried, in affected dismay. The pretended anger of his swift advance and of his shout, "Release the caballero at once," was so effective that the astounded soldiers positively sprang away from their prisoner. Thus suddenly deprived of forcible support, Captain Mitchell reeled as though about to fall. Sotillo took him familiarly under the arm, led him to a chair, waved his hand at the room. "Go out, all of you," he commanded.
When they had been left alone he stood looking down, irresolute and silent, waiting till Captain Mitchell had recovered his power of speech.
Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned in the removal of the silver. Sotillo's temperament was of that sort that he experienced an ardent desire to beat him; just as formerly, when negotiating with difficulty a loan from the cautious Anzani, his fingers always itched to take the shopkeeper by the throat. As to Captain Mitchell, the suddenness, unexpectedness, and general inconceivableness of this experience had confused his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out of breath.
"I've been knocked down three times between this and the wharf," he gasped out, at last. "Somebody shall be made to pay for this. " He had certainly stumbled more than once, and had been dragged along for some distance before he could regain his stride. With ​his recovered breath his indignation seemed to madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his white hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook violently the flaps of Ins ruined waistcoat before the disconcerted Sotillo. "Look! Those uniformed thieves of yours down-stairs have robbed me of my watch."
The old sailor's aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw himself cut off from the table on which his sabre and revolver were lying.
"I demand restitution and apologies," Mitchell thundered at him, (mite beside himself. "From you! Yes, from you!"
For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a perfectly stony expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell flung out an arm towards the table as if to snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm, bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming it after him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell's fury. Behind the closed door Sotillo shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on the wooden staircase.
"Disarm him! Bind him!" the colonel could be heard vociferating.
Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the windows, with three perpendicular bars of iron each and some twenty feet from the ground, as he well knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him took place. In an incredibly short time he found himself bound with many turns of a hide rope to a high-backed chair, so that his head alone remained free. Not till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the doorway, trembling visibly, venture again with​in. The soldiers, picking up from the floor the rifles they had dropped to grapple with the prisoner, filed out of the room. The officers remained leaning on their swords and looking on.
"The watch! The watch!" raved the colonel, pacing to and fro like a tiger in a cage. "Give me that man's watch."
It was true that when searched for arms in the hall downstairs, before being taken into Sotillo's presence, Captain Mitchell had been relieved of his watch and chain; but at the colonel's clamor it was produced quickly enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried carefully in the palms of his joined hands. Sotillo snatched it and pushed the clinched fist from which it dangled close to Captain Mitchell's face.
"Now, then; you arrogant Englishman! You dare to call the soldiers of the army thieves! Behold your watch."
He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner's nose. Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously at the sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer presented to him years ago by committee of underwriters for saving a ship from total loss by fire. Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable appearance. He became silent suddenly, stepped aside to the table and began a careful examination in the light of the candles. He had never anything so fine. His officers closed in and craned their necks behind his back.
He became so interested that for an instant he forgot his precious prisoner. There is always something childish in the rapacity of the passionate, clear-minded ​southern races, wanting in the misty idealism of the irrners, who at the smallest encouragement drram of nothing less than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo was fond of jewels, gold trinkets, of personal adornment. After a moment he turned about, and with a mantling gesture made all his officers fall hark, lid down the watch on the table, then, negligently, pushed his hat over it.
"Ha!" he began, going up very close to the chair. "You dare call my valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda regiment thieves? You dare? What impudence! You foreigners come here to rob our country of its wealth. You never have enough! Your audacity knows no bounds."
He looked towards the officers, among whom there was an approving murmur. The old major was moved to declare:
"Si, mi coronel. They are all traitors."
"I shall say nothing," continued Sotillo, fixing the motionless and powerless Mitchell with an angry but uneasy stare. " I shall say nothing of your treacherous attempt to get possession of my revolver to shoot me while I was trying to treat you with a consideration you did not deserve. You have forfeited your life. Your only hope is in my clemency."
He watched for the effect of his words, but there was no obvious sign of fear on Captain Mitchell's face. Hi white hair was full of dust, which covered also the rest of his helpless person. As if he had heard nothing, he twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a bit of straw which hung among the hairs.
Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo. ​"It is you, Mitchell," he said, emphatically, "who are the thief, not my soldiers." He pointed at his prisoner a forefinger with a long, almond-shaped nail. "Where is the silver of the San Tomé mine? I ask you Mitchell, where is the silver that was deposited in this custom-house? Answer me that! You stole it. You were a party to stealing it. It is stolen from the government. Aha! you think I do not know what I say, but I am up to your foreign tricks. It is gone, the silver. No? Gone in one of your lanchas, you miserable man. How dared you?"
This time he produced his effect. "How on earth could Sotillo know that?" thought Mitchell. His head, the only part of his body that could move, betrayed his surprise by a sudden jerk.
"Ha! you tremble!" Sotillo shouted suddenly. "It is a conspiracy. It is a crime against the state. Did you not know that the silver belongs to the republic till the government claims are satisfied? Where is it? Where have you hidden it, you miserable thief?"
At this question Captain Mitchell's sinking spirits revived. In whatever incomprehensible manner Sotillo had already got his information about the lighter, he had not captured it. That was clear. In his outraged heart Captain Mitchell had resolved that nothing would induce him to say a word while he remained so disgracefully bound, but his desire to help the escape of the silver made him depart from this resolution. His wits were very much at work. He detected in Sotillo a certain air of doubt, of irresolution. "That man," he said to himself, "is not certain of what he ad​vances." For all his pomposity in social intercourse, Captain Mitchell could meet the realities of life in a resolute and ready spirit. Now he had got over the first shock of the abominable treatment he was cool and collected enough. The immense contempt he felt for Sotillo steadied him and he said, oracularly, "No doubt it is well concealed by this time."
Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. "Muy bien, Mitchell," he said, in a cold and threatening manner. "But can you produce the government receipt for the royalty, and the custom-house permit of embarkation, hey? Can you? No. Then the silver has been removed illegally, and the guilty shall be made to suffer unless it is produced within five days from this." He gave orders for the prisoner to be unbound and locked up in one of the smaller rooms down-stairs. He walked about the room, moody and silent, till Captain Mitchell, with each of his arms held by a couple of men, stood up, shook himself, and stamped his feet.
"How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell?" he asked, derisively.
"It is the most incredible, abominable use of power," Captain Mitchell declared, in a loud voice. "And whatever your purpose, you shall gain nothing from it, I can promise you."
The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and mustache, crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of the short, thick-set, red-faced prisoner with rumpled white hair.
"That we shall see. You shall know my power a little better when I tie you up to a potalon outside in the sun for a whole day." He drew himself up haugh​tily, and made a sign for- Captain Mitchell to be led away.
"What about my watch?" cried Captain Mitchell, hanging back from the efforts of the men pulling him towards the door.
Sotillo turned to his officers. "No! But only listen to this picaro, caballeros," he pronounced, with affected scorn, and was answered by a chorus of derisive laughter. "He demands his watch!" . . . He ran up again to Captain Mitchell, for the desire to relieve his feelings by inflicting blows and pain upon this Englishman was very strong within him. " Your watch! You are a prisoner in war-time, Mitchell in ar-time! You have no rights and no property. Caramba! The very breath in your body belongs to me. Remember that."
"Bosh!" said Captain Mitchell, concealing a disagreeable impression.
Down below, in a great hall with an earthen floor and with a tall mound thrown up by white ants in a corner, the soldiers had kindled a small fire with broken chairs and tables near the arched gateway, through which the faint murmur of the harbor waters on the beach could be heard. While Captain Mitchell was being led down the staircase an officer passed him, running up to report to Sotillo the capture of more prisoners. A lot of smoke hung about in the vast gloomy place, the fire crackled, and as if through a haze Captain Mitchell made out, surrounded by short soldiers with fixed bayonets, the heads of three tall prisoners: the doctor, the engineer-in-chief, and the white leonine mane of old Viola, who stood half turned ​away from the others with his chin on his breast and his arms crossed. Mitchell's astonishment knew no bounds. He cried out; the other two exclaimed also. But he was hurried on, diagonally, across the big, cavern-like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises, hints of caution, and so on, crowded his head to distraction.
"Is he actually keeping you?" shouted the chief engineer, whose single eye-glass glittered in the firelight.
An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting urgently, "Bring them all up—all three."
In the clamor of voices and the rattle of arms Captain Mitchell made himself heard imperfectly. "By Heavens! The fellow has stolen my watch!"
The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the pressure long enough to shout, "What? What did you say?"
"My chronometer!" Captain Mitchell yelled violently, at the very moment of being thrust head-foremost through a small door into a sort of cell perfectly black and so narrow that he fetched up against the opposite wall. The door had been instantly slammed. He knew where they had put him. This was the strong-room of the custom-house, whence the silver had been removed only a few hours earlier. It was almost as narrow as a corridor, with a small, square aperture barred by a heavy grating at the distant end. Captain Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat down on the earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, even a gleam of light from anywhere, interfered with Captain Mitchell's meditation. He did some hard but not very extensive thinking. It was not of a gloomy cast. The old sailor, with all his small ​weakness and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable of entertaining for any length of time a fear of his personal safety. It was not so much firmness of soul as the lack of a certain kind of imagination—the kind whose undue development caused intense suffering to Señor Hirsch; that sort of imagination which adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone, strictly, to all the other apprehensions on which the sense of one's existence is based. Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much penetration of any kind; characteristic, illuminating trifles of expression, action, or movement, escaped him completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of his own existence to observe that of others. For instance, he could not believe that Sotillo had been really afraid of him, and this simply because it would never have entered into his head to shoot any one except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Anybody could see he was not a murdering kind of man, he reflected quite gravely. Then why this preposterous and insulting charge, he asked himself. But his thoughts mainly clung around the astounding and unanswerable question: How the devil the fellow got to know that the silver had gone off in the lighter? It was obvious that he had not captured it. And, obviously, he could not have captured it. In this last conclusion Captain Mitchell was misled by the assumption drawn from his observation of the weather during his long vigil on the wharf. He thought that there had been much more wind than usual that night in the gulf; whereas, as a matter of fact, the reverse was the case.
​"How in the name of all that's marvellous did that confounded fellow got wind of the affair?" was the first ion he asked directly after the bang, clatter, and Hush of the open door (which was closed again almost before he could lift his dropped head) informed him that he had a companion of captivity. Dr. Monyg- ham's voice stopped muttering curses in English and Spanish.
"Is that you, Mitchell?" he made answer, surlily. I struck my forehead against this confounded wall with enough force to fell an ox. Where are you?"
Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could make out the doctor stretching out his hands blindly.
"I am sitting here on the floor. Don't fall over my legs," Captain Mitchell's voice announced with great dignity of tone. The doctor, entreated not to walk about in the dark, sank down to the ground, too. The two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads nearly touching, began to exchange confidences.
" Yes," the doctor related, in a low tone, to Captain Mitchell's vehement curiosity, "we have been nabbed in old Viola's place. It seems that one of their pickets commanded by an officer pushed as far as the town gate. They had orders not to enter, but to bring along every soul they could find on the plain. We had been talking in there with the door open, and no doubt they saw the glimmer of our light. They must have been making their approaches for some time. The engineer laid himself on a bench in a recess by the fireplace and I went up-stairs to have a look. I hadn't heard any sound from there for a long time. Old Viola, as soon ​as he saw me come up, lifted his arm for silence. I stole in on tiptoe. By Jove! his wife was lying down and had gone to sleep. The woman had actually dropped off to sleep! 'Señor Doctor,' Viola whispers to me, 'it looks as if her oppression was going to get better.' 'Yes,' I said, very much surprised, 'your wife is a wonderful woman, Giorgio.' Just then a shot was fired in the kitchen which made us jump and cower as if at a thunder-clap. It seems that the party of soldiers had stolen quite close up and one of them had crept up to the door. He looked in, thought there was no one there, and holding his rifle ready entered quietly. The chief told me that he had just closed his eyes for a moment: when he opened them he saw the man already in the middle of the room peering into the dark corners. The chief was so startled that, without thinking, he made one leap from the recess right out in front of the fireplace. The soldier, no less startled, up with his rifle and pulls the trigger, deafening and singeing the engineer, but in his flurry missing him completely. But look what happens! At the noise of the report the sleeping woman sat up, as if moved by a spring, with a shriek, 'The children, Gian' Battista! Save the children!' I have it in my ears now. It was the truest cry of distress I ever heard. I stood as if paralyzed, but the old husband ran across to the bedside stretching out his hands. She clung to them. I could see her eyes go glazed. The old fellow lowered her down on the pillows and then looked round at me. She was dead. All this took less than five minutes, and then I ran down to see what was the matter. It was no use thinking of ​any resistance. Nothing we two could say availed with the officer, so I volunteered to go up with a couple of soldiers and fetch down old Viola. He was sitting at the foot of the bed looking at his wife's face and did not seem to hear what I said; but after I had pulled the sheet over her head he got up and followed us down-stairs quietly, in a sort of thoughtful way. They marched us off along the road, leaving the door open and the candle burning. The chief engineer strode on without a word, but I looked back once or twice at the feeble gleam. After we had gone some considerable distance the Garibaldino, who was walking by my side, suddenly said: 'I have buried many men on battlefields on this continent. The priests talk of consecrated ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is holy; but the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests and tyrants, is the holiest of all. Doctor, I should like to bury her in the sea. No mummeries, candles, incense, no holy-water mumbled over by priests. The spirit of liberty is upon the waters.' . . . Amazing old man. He was saying all this in an undertone, as if talking to himself."
"Yes, yes," interrupted Captain Mitchell, impatiently. "Poor old chap! But have you any idea how that ruffian Sotillo obtained his information? He did not get hold of any of our cargadores who helped with the truck, did he? But no, it is impossible! These were picked men we've had in our boats for five years, and I paid them myself specially for the job, with instructions to keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at least. I saw them with my own march off with the Italians to the railway-yards. ​The chief promised to give them rations as long as they wanted to remain there."
"Well," said the doctor, slowly, "I can tell you that you may say good-bye forever to your best lighter and to the capataz of cargadores."
At this Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in the excess of his excitement. The doctor, without giving him time to exclaim, stated briefly the part played by Hirsch during the night.
Captain Mitchell was overcome. "Drowned!" he muttered, in a bewildered and appalled whisper. "Drowned!" Afterwards he kept still, apparently listening, but too absorbed in the news of the catastrophe to follow the doctor's narrative with attention.
The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect ignorance, till at last Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story, which was got out of him again with the greatest difficulty, because every moment he would break out into lamentations. At last Hirsch was led away, looking more dead than alive, and shut up in one of the up-stairs rooms to be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his character of a man not admitted to the inner councils of the San Tomé administration, remarked that the story sounded incredible. Of course, he said, he couldn't tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as he had been exclusively occupied with his own work in looking after the wounded and also in attending Don José Avellanos. He had succeeded in assuming so well a tone of impartial indifference that Sotillo seemed to be completely deceived. Till then a show of regular inquiry had been kept up—one of the officers sitting at ​the table wrote down the questions and the answers; the others, lounging about the room, listened attentively, puffing at their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the doctor. But at that point Sotillo ordered everybody out.