approach to the rule of common-sense and justice Charles Gould felt it
possible to secure at first. In fact, the mine, with its organization,
its population growing fiercely attached to their position of privileged
safety, with its armoury, with its Don Pepe, with its armed body of
serenos (where, it was said, many an outlaw and deserter--and even some
members of Hernandez's band--had found a place), the mine was a power in
the land. As a certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had exclaimed with
a hollow laugh, once, when discussing the line of action taken by the
Sulaco authorities at a time of political crisis--

"You call these men Government officials? They? Never! They are
officials of the mine--officials of the Concession--I tell you."

The prominent man (who was then a person in power, with a lemon-coloured
face and a very short and curly, not to say woolly, head of hair) went
so far in his temporary discontent as to shake his yellow fist under the
nose of his interlocutor, and shriek--

"Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Gefe, the chief of
the police, the chief of the customs, the general, all, all, are the
officials of that Gould."

Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow on
for a space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent man's passion
would end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders. After all, he seemed
to say, what did it matter as long as the minister himself was not
forgotten during his brief day of authority? But all the same, the
unofficial agent of the San Tome mine, working for a good cause, had
his moments of anxiety, which were reflected in his letters to Don Jose
Avellanos, his maternal uncle.