rabble; and as the Dictator was execrated by the populace
on account of the severe recruitment law his necessities had compelled
him to enforce during the struggle, he stood a good chance of being
torn to pieces. Providentially, Nostromo--invaluable fellow--with some
Italian workmen, imported to work upon the National Central Railway,
was at hand, and managed to snatch him away--for the time at least.
Ultimately, Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in his
own gig to one of the Company's steamers--it was the Minerva--just then,
as luck would have it, entering the harbour.

He had to lower these gentlemen at the end of a rope out of a hole in
the wall at the back, while the mob which, pouring out of the town, had
spread itself all along the shore, howled and foamed at the foot of the
building in front. He had to hurry them then the whole length of the
jetty; it had been a desperate dash, neck or nothing--and again it was
Nostromo, a fellow in a thousand, who, at the head, this time, of the
Company's body of lightermen, held the jetty against the rushes of the
rabble, thus giving the fugitives time to reach the gig lying ready
for them at the other end with the Company's flag at the stern. Sticks,
stones, shots flew; knives, too, were thrown. Captain Mitchell exhibited
willingly the long cicatrice of a cut over his left ear and temple, made
by a razor-blade fastened to a stick--a weapon, he explained, very much
in favour with the "worst kind of nigger out here."

Captain Mitchell was a thick, elderly man, wearing high, pointed collars
and short side-whiskers, partial to white waistcoats, and really very
communicative under his air of pompous reserve.

"These gentlemen," he would say, staring with great solemnity, "had
to run like rabbits, sir. I ran like a rabbit myself. Certain forms of
death are--er--distasteful to a--a--er--respectable man. They would have
pounded me to death, too. A crazy mob, sir, does not discriminate. Under
providence we owed our preservation to my Capataz de Cargadores, as they
called him in the town, a man who, when I discovered his value, sir, was
just the bos'n of an Italian ship, a big Genoese ship, one of the few
European ships that ever came to Sulaco with a general cargo before the
building of the National Central. He left her on account of some very
respectable friends he made here, his own countrymen, but also, I
suppose, to better himself. Sir, I am a pretty good judge of