Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
merchants in jackets, officers in uniform, middle-aged caballeros from the Campo—sallow, little, nervous men, and fat, placid, swarthy men, and Europeans or North Americans of superior standing, whose faces looked very white among the majority of dark complexions and black, glistening eyes.
Captain Mitchell would lay back in the chair, casting around looks of satisfaction, and tender over the table a case full of thick cigars.
"Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The black coffee you get at the Amarilla, sir, you don't meet anywhere in the world. We get the bean from a famous cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose owner sends three sacks every year as a present to his fellow-members, in remembrance of the fight against Gamacho's Nationals, carried on from this very window by the caballeros. He was in town at the time, and took part, sir, to the bitter end. It arrives on three mules—not in the common way, by rail; no fear!—right into the patio, escorted by mounted peons in charge of the mayoral of his estate, who walks up-stairs, booted and spurred, and delivers it to our committee formally with the words, 'For the sake of those fallen on the 3d of May.' We call it Très de Mayo coffee. Taste it."
Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making ready to hear a sermon in a church, would lift the tiny cup to his lips. And the nectar would be sipped to the bottom during a restful silence in a cloud of cigar-smoke.
"Look at this man in black just going out," he would begin, leaning forward hastily. "This is the famous
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