, a convite offered by the O.S.N. Company on board the Juno
after the function on shore. Captain Mitchell had himself steered the
cargo lighter, all draped with flags, which, in tow of the Juno's steam
launch, took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the ship. Everybody
of note in Sulaco had been invited--the one or two foreign merchants,
all the representatives of the old Spanish families then in town, the
great owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple men,
caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and feet, conservative,
hospitable, and kind. The Occidental Province was their stronghold;
their Blanco party had triumphed now; it was their President-Dictator,
a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat smiling urbanely between the
representatives of two friendly foreign powers. They had come with him
from Sta. Marta to countenance by their presence the enterprise in
which the capital of their countries was engaged. The only lady of that
company was Mrs. Gould, the wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the
San Tome silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced enough to
take part in the public life to that extent. They had come out strongly
at the great ball at the Intendencia the evening before, but Mrs. Gould
alone had appeared, a bright spot in the group of black coats behind the
President-Dictator, on the crimson cloth-covered stage erected under a
shady tree on the shore of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning
the first sod had taken place. She had come off in the cargo lighter,
full of notabilities, sitting under the flutter of gay flags, in the
place of honour by the side of Captain Mitchell, who steered, and her
clear dress gave the only truly festive note to the sombre gathering in
the long, gorgeous saloon of the Juno.

The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London), handsome
and pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped beard, hovered near
her shoulder attentive, smiling, and fatigued. The journey from London
to Sta. Marta in mail boats and the special carriages of the Sta.
Marta coast-line (the only railway so far) had been tolerable--even
pleasant--quite tolerable. But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was
another sort of experience, in an old diligencia over impassable roads
skirting awful precipices.

"We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of very deep ravines,"
he was telling Mrs. Gould in an undertone. "And when we arrived here
at last I don't