character.
I engaged him to be the foreman of our lightermen, and caretaker of our
jetty. That's all that he was. But without him Senor Ribiera would have
been a dead man. This Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above reproach,
became the terror of all the thieves in the town. We were infested,
infested, overrun, sir, here at that time by ladrones and matreros,
thieves and murderers from the whole province. On this occasion they
had been flocking into Sulaco for a week past. They had scented the end,
sir. Fifty per cent. of that murdering mob were professional bandits
from the Campo, sir, but there wasn't one that hadn't heard of Nostromo.
As to the town leperos, sir, the sight of his black whiskers and white
teeth was enough for them. They quailed before him, sir. That's what the
force of character will do for you."

It could very well be said that it was Nostromo alone who saved the
lives of these gentlemen. Captain Mitchell, on his part, never left them
till he had seen them collapse, panting, terrified, and exasperated,
but safe, on the luxuriant velvet sofas in the first-class saloon of the
Minerva. To the very last he had been careful to address the ex-Dictator
as "Your Excellency."

"Sir, I could do no other. The man was down--ghastly, livid, one mass of
scratches."

The Minerva never let go her anchor that call. The superintendent
ordered her out of the harbour at once. No cargo could be landed, of
course, and the passengers for Sulaco naturally refused to go ashore.
They could hear the firing and see plainly the fight going on at the
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