Nostromo : A Tale of the Seaboard
high up and outside the dim parallelogram of light falling on, the road through the open door.
With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro Montero from the other, the engineer-in-chiefs only anxiety now was to avoid a collision with either. Sulaco, for him, was a railway station, a terminus, workshops, a great accumulation of stores. As against the mob the railway defended its property, but politically the railway was neutral. He was a brave man, and in that spirit of neutrality he had carried proposals of truce to the self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the deputies Fuentes and Ga- macho. Bullets were still flying about when he had crossed the plaza on that mission, waving above his head a white napkin belonging to the table-linen of the Amarilla Club.
He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting that the doctor, busy all day with the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould, had not had time to hear the news, he began a succinct narrative. He had communicated to them the intelligence from the construction-camp as to Pedro Montero. The brother of the victorious general, he had assured them, could be expected at Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he anticipated), when shouted out of the window by Señor Gamacho, induced a rush of the mob along the Campo road towards Rincon. The two deputies, also, after shaking hands with him effusively, mounted and galloped off to meet the great man.
"I have misled them a little as to the time," the chief-engineer confessed. "However hard he rides, he can scarcely get here before the morning. But my
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