, mostly
Anglo-Saxon, skilled in the art of, as the saying is, "taking a rise"
out of his kind host.

With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a two-wheeled machine
(which Captain Mitchell called a curricle) behind a fleet and scraggy
mule beaten all the time by an obviously Neapolitan driver, the cycle
would be nearly closed before the lighted-up offices of the O. S. N.
Company, remaining open so late because of the steamer. Nearly--but not
quite.

"Ten o'clock. Your ship won't be ready to leave till half-past twelve,
if by then. Come in for a brandy-and-soda and one more cigar."

And in the superintendent's private room the privileged passenger by the
Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were annihilated mentally
by a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated
information imperfectly apprehended, would listen like a tired child
to a fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its
pompousness, tell him, as if from another world, how there was "in this
very harbour" an international naval demonstration, which put an end to
the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United States cruiser, Powhattan, was
the first to salute the Occidental flag--white, with a wreath of green
laurel in the middle encircling a yellow amarilla flower. Would hear how
General Montero, in less than a month after proclaiming himself Emperor
of Costaguana, was shot dead (during a solemn and public distribution
of orders and crosses) by a young artillery officer, the brother of his
then mistress.

"The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country," the voice would say.
And it would continue: "A captain of one of our ships told me lately
that he recognized Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in purple slippers
and a velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel, keeping a disorderly house
in one of the southern ports."

"Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?" would wonder the
distinguished bird of passage hovering on the confines of waking and
sleep with resolutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl upon his
lips, from between which stuck out the eighteenth or twentieth cigar of
that memorable day.

"He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting ghost,
sir"--Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo with true warmth of
feeling and a touch of wistful pride. "You may imagine, sir, what an
effect it produced on me. He had come round by sea with Barrios, of
course. And the first thing he told me after