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edge of the water. The repulsed mob devoted its energies to an attack
upon the Custom House, a dreary, unfinished-looking structure with many
windows two hundred yards away from the O.S.N. Offices, and the only
other building near the harbour. Captain Mitchell, after directing the
commander of the Minerva to land "these gentlemen" in the first port of
call outside Costaguana, went back in his gig to see what could be done
for the protection of the Company's property. That and the property
of the railway were preserved by the European residents; that is, by
Captain Mitchell himself and the staff of engineers building the road,
aided by the Italian and Basque workmen who rallied faithfully round
their English chiefs. The Company's lightermen, too, natives of the
Republic, behaved very well under their Capataz. An outcast lot of
very mixed blood, mainly negroes, everlastingly at feud with the other
customers of low grog shops in the town, they embraced with delight
this opportunity to settle their personal scores under such favourable
auspices. There was not one of them that had not, at some time or other,
looked with terror at Nostromo's revolver poked very close at his face,
or been otherwise daunted by Nostromo's resolution. He was "much of a
man," their Capataz was, they said, too scornful in his temper ever to
utter abuse, a tireless taskmaster, and the more to be feared because
of his aloofness. And behold! there he was that day, at their head,
condescending to make jocular remarks to this man or the other.
Such leadership was inspiriting, and in truth all the harm the
mob managed to achieve was to set fire to one--only one--stack of
railway-sleepers, which, being creosoted, burned well. The main attack
on the railway yards, on the O.S.N. Offices, and especially on the
Custom House, whose strong room, it was well known, contained a large
treasure in silver ingots, failed completely. Even the little hotel kept
by old Giorgio, standing alone halfway between the harbour and the town,
escaped looting and destruction, not by a miracle, but because with the
safes in view they had neglected it at first, and afterwards found no
leisure to stop. Nostromo, with his Cargadores, was pressing them too
hard then.
CHAPTER THREE
It might have been said that there he was only protecting his own. From
the first he had been admitted to live in the intimacy of the family
of the hotel-keeper who was a countryman of his. Old Giorgio Viola,
a Genoese with a shaggy white leonine head--often called simply "the
Garibaldino" (as Mohammedans are called after their prophet)--was, to
use Captain Mitchell's own words, the "respectable married friend" by
whose advice Nostromo had left his ship to try for a run of shore luck
in Costaguana.
The old man, full of scorn for the populace, as your austere republican
so often is, had disregarded the preliminary sounds of trouble. He
went on that day as usual pottering about the "casa" in his slippers,
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