 Part 2, Chapter 7, Part 1 of Nostromo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bologna Times. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. Part 2, Chapter 7, Part 1. It was part of what Dekod would have called his sane materialism that he did not believe in the possibility of friendship between man and woman. The one exception he allowed confirmed he maintained that absolute rule. Friendship was possible between brother and sister, meaning by friendship the frank unreserved as before another human being of thoughts and sensations. All the objectless and necessary sincerity of one's innermost life trying to react upon the profound sympathies of another existence. His favorite sister, the handsome slightly arbitrary and resolute angel, rolling the father and mother, Dekod in the first floor apartments of a very fine Parisian house, was the recipient of Martin Dekod's confidences as to his thoughts, actions, purposes, doubts, and even failures. Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of another South American Republic. One more or less, what doesn't matter. They may come into this world like evil flowers on a hotbed of rotten institutions, but the seed of this one has germinated in your brother's brain, and that will be enough for your devoted ascent. I am writing this to you by the light of a single candle, in a sort of inn near the harbor, kept by an Italian called Viola, a protege of Mrs. Gould. The whole building, which, for all I know, may have been contrived by a conquistador farmer of the pearl fishery three hundred years ago, is perfectly silent. So is the plan between the town and the harbor, silent but not so dark as the house, because the pickets of Italian workmen guarding the railway have lighted little fires all along the line. It was not so quiet around here yesterday. We had an awful riot, a sudden outbreak of the populace, which was not suppressed till late today. Its object, no doubt, was loot, and that was defeated, as you may have learned already from the cable-grams sent via San Francisco and New York last night, when the cables were still open. You have read already there that the energetic action of the Europeans of the railway has saved the town from destruction, and you may believe that. I wrote out the cable myself. We have no Reuters agency man here. I have also fired at the mob from the windows of the club and company with some other young men of position. Our object was to keep the Caledé constitution clear for the exodus of the ladies and children, who have taken refuge on board a couple of cargo ships now in the harbor here. That was yesterday. You should also have learned from the cable that the missing President Rebiera, who had disappeared after the battle of Santa Marta, has turned up here in Sulaco by one of those strange coincidences that are almost incredible, riding on a lame mule into the very midst of the street fighting. It appears that he had fled in the company of a mule-tear called Bonifacio across the mountains from the threats of Montero into the arms of an enraged mob. The capitas of Cargadores, that Italian sailor of whom I have written to you before, just saved him from an ignoble death. That man seems to have a particular talent for being on the spot whenever there is something picturesque to be done. He was with me at four o'clock in the morning at the offices of the poor veneer where he had turned up so early in order to warn me of the coming trouble and also to assure me that he would keep his Cargadores on the side of order. The full daylight came, we were looking together at the crowd on foot and on horseback, demonstrating on the plaza and shying stones at the windows of the Intendencia, Nostromo, that is the name they call him by here, was pointing out to me his Cargadores interspersed in the mob. The sun shines late upon Sulaco, for it has first to climb above the mountains. In that clear morning light, brighter than twilight, Nostromo saw right across the vast plaza at the end of the street, beyond the cathedral, a mounted man apparently in difficulties with a yelling knot of laperos. And once he said to me, that's a stranger. What is it they are doing to him? Then he took out the silver whistle he is in the habit of using on the wharf. This man seems to disdain the use of any metal, less precious than silver, and blew into it twice, evidently a preconcerted signal for his Cargadores. He ran out immediately, and they rallied round him. I ran out too, but was too late to follow them, and help in the rescue of the stranger whose animal had fallen. I was set upon it once as a hated aristocrat, and it was only too glad to get into the club, where Don Jaime Berges, you may remember him visiting at our house in Paris some three years ago, thrust a sporting gun into my hands. They were already firing from the windows. There were little heaps of cartridges lying about on the open card tables. I remember a couple of overturned chairs, some bottles rolling on the floor amongst the packs of cards scattered suddenly as the Caballeros rose from their game to open fire upon the mob. Most of the young men had spent the night at the club in the expectation of some such disturbance. In two of the candelabra on the consuls the candles were burning down in their sockets. A large iron nut, probably stolen from the railway workshops, flew in from the street as I entered, and broke one of the large mirrors set in the wall. I noticed also one of the club servants tied up hand and foot with the cords of the curtain and flung in a corner. I have a vague recollection of Don Jaime assuring me hastily that the fellow had been detected putting poison into the dishes at supper, but I remember distinctly he was shrieking for mercy without stopping at all, continuously and so absolutely disregarded that nobody even took the trouble to gag him. The noise he made was so disagreeable that I had half a mind to do it myself, but there was no time to waste on such trifles. I took my place at one of the windows and began firing. I didn't learn until later in the afternoon, whom it was that Nostromo, with his cargadores and some Italian workmen as well, had managed to save from those drunken rascals. That man has a peculiar talent when anything striking to the imagination has to be done. I made that remark to him afterwards when we met after some sort of order had been restored in the town. And the answer he made rather surprised me. He said quite moodily, and how much do I get for that, senor? Then it dawned upon me that perhaps this man's vanity had been satiated by the adulation of the common people and the confidence of his superiors. Decaux paused to light a cigarette. Then with his head still over his writing he blew a cloud of smoke, which seemed to rebound from the paper. He took up the pencil again. That was yesterday evening on the plaza, when he sat on the steps of the cathedral, his hands between his knees, holding the bridle of his famous silver-gray mare. He had led his body of cargadores splendidly all day long. He looked fatigued. I don't know how I looked. Very dirty, I suppose. But I suppose I also looked pleased. From the time the fugitive president had been got off to the SS Minerva, the tide of success had turned against the mob. They had been driven off the harbor and out of the better streets of the town into their own maze of ruins and todarias. You must understand that this riot, whose primary object was undoubtedly the getting-hold of the Santo May Silver stored in the lower rooms of the Custom House, besides the general looting of the ricos, had acquired a political coloring from the fact of two deputies to the Provincial Assembly, Senores Garmacho and Fuentes, both from Bolson, putting themselves at the head of it. Late in the afternoon, it is true, when the mob, disappointed in their hopes of loot, made a stand in the narrow streets to the cries of Viva la Libertad, down with feudalism. I wonder what they imagined feudalism to be. Down with the Goths and paralytics, I suppose the Senores Garmacho and Fuentes knew what they were doing. They are prudent gentlemen, and in the assembly they called themselves moderates, and opposed every energetic measure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the first rumors of Montero's victory, they showed a subtle change of the pensive temper, and began to defy poor Don Just Lopez and his presidential tribune with an effrontery to which the poor man could only respond by a day's smoothing of his beard and the ringing of the presidential bell. Then when the downfall of the Rubiaris cause became confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt, they have blossomed into convinced liberals, acting together as if they were Siamese twins, and ultimately taking charge, as it were, of the riot in the name of Montero's principles. The last move of 8 o'clock last night was to organize themselves into a Montero's committee which sits, as far as I know, in a postada kept by a retired Mexican bullfighter, a great politician too, whose name I have forgotten. Thence they have issued a communication to us, the Goths and paralytics of the Amarilla Club, who have our own committee, inviting us to come to some provisional understanding for a truce in order. They have the impudence to say that the noble cause of liberty should not be stand by the criminal excesses of conservative selfishness. As they came out to sit with Nostromo on the cathedral steps, the club was busy considering a proper reply in the principal room, littered with exploded cartridges, with a lot of broken glass, blood smears, candlesticks, and all sorts of wreckage on the floor. Despite all this nonsense, nobody in the town has any real power except the railway engineers, whose men occupy the dismantled houses acquired by the company for their town station on one side of the plaza, and Nostromo, whose carcarors were sleeping under the arcades along the front of Anzani's shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the Intendencia saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the plaza, and a high flame swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. The dead body of a man was lying on the steps of the pedestal, his arms thrown wide open, and his sombrero covering his face, the attention of some friend, perhaps. The light of the flames touched the foliage of the first trees on the Alameda, and played on the end of a side street nearby, blocked up by a jumble of ox carts and dead bullocks. Lying on one of the carcasses, a lapero muffled up, smoked a cigarette. It was a truce, you understand. The only other living being on the plaza, besides ourselves, was a cargador walking to and fro with a long bare knife in his hand, like a sentry before the arcades, where his friends were sleeping, and the only other spot of light in the dark town where they lighted windows at the club at the corner of the Calais. After having written so far Don Martin de Cod, the exotic dandy of the Parisian boulevard, got up and walked across the sanded floor of the café at one end of the albergue of United Italy, kept by Giorgio Viola, the old companion of Garibaldi. The highly colored lithograph of the faithful hero seemed to look dimly in the light of one candle, at the man with no faith and anything except the truth of his own sensations. Walking out of the window, de Cod was met by a darkness so impenetrable that he could see neither the mountains nor the town, nor yet the buildings nor the harbor, and there was not a sound, as if the tremendous obscurity of the placid gulf, spreading from the waters over the land, had made it dumb as well as blind. Presently de Cod felt a light tremor of the floor and a distant clank of iron. A bright white light appeared, deep in the darkness, growing bigger with a thundering noise. The rolling stock, usually kept on the sidings in Recon, was being run back to the yards for safekeeping. Like a mysterious stirring of the darkness behind the headlight of the engine, the train passed in a gust of hollow uproar by the end of the house which seemed to vibrate all over in response, and nothing was clearly visible but on the end of the last flat car, a negro in white trousers and naked to the waist, swinging a blazing torch basket incessantly with a circular movement of his bare arm. De Cod did not stir. Behind him, on the back of the chair from which he had risen, hung his elegant Parisian overcoat with a pearl grey silk lining. But when he turned back to come to the table, the candlelight fell upon a face that was grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat. The smoke of gunpowder, dirt and rust tarnished the luster of his short beard. His shirt-collar and cuffs were crumpled. The blue silk and tie hung down his breast like a rag. A greasy smudge crossed his white brow. He had not taken off his clothing nor used water except to snatch a hasty drink gridly for some forty hours. An awful restlessness had made him its own, had marked him with all the signs of desperate strife, and put a dry, sleepless stare into his eyes. He murmured to himself, in a hoarse voice, I wonder if there's any bread here. Looked vaguely about him, then dropped into the chair and took the pencil up again. He became aware he had not eaten anything for many hours. CHAPTER XII It occurred to him that no one could understand him so well as his sister. In the most skeptical heart there lurks at such moments, when the chances of existence are involved, a desire to leave a correct impression of the feelings, like a light by which the action may be seen when personality is gone, gone where no light of investigation can ever reach the truth which every death takes out of the world. Therefore, instead of looking for something to eat or trying to snatch an hour or so of sleep, Decode was filling the pages of a large pocket-book with a letter to his sister. In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his weariness, his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily sensations. He began again as if he were talking to her, with almost an illusion of her presence. He wrote the phrase, I am very hungry. I have the feeling of a great solitude around me, he continued. Is it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea in his head, in the complete collapse of every resolve, intention, and hope about me? But the solitude is also very real. All the engineers are out, and have been, for two days, looking after the property of the National Central Railway, of that great Costaguenna undertaking, which is to put money into the pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, and God knows who else. The silence about me is ominous. There is, above the middle part of this house, a sort of first floor, with narrow openings like loopholes for windows, probably used in old times for the better defence against the savages, when the persistent barbarism of our native continent did not wear the black coats of politicians, but went about yelling, half naked, with bows and arrows in its hands. The woman of the house is dying up there, I believe, all alone with her old husband. There is a narrow staircase. The sort of staircase one man could easily defend against a bob, leading up there, and I have just heard, through the thickness of the wall, the old fellow going down into their kitchen for something or other. It was a sort of noise a mouse might make behind the plaster of a wall. All the servants they had ran away yesterday and have not returned yet, if ever they do. For the rest there are only two children here, two girls. The father has sent them downstairs, and they have crept into this café, perhaps because I am here. They huddled together in a corner, in each other's arms. I just noticed them a few minutes ago, and I feel more lonely than ever. The child turned half round in his chair, and asked, Is there any bread here? Linda's dark head was shaken negatively in response, above the fair head of her sister, nestling on her breast. You couldn't get me some bread? insisted to code. The child did not move. He saw her large eyes stare at him, very dark, from the corner. You're not afraid of me? he said. No, said Linda, we are not afraid of you. You came here with John Battista. You mean Nostromo? said Decode. The English called him so, but that is no name either for man or beast, said the girl, passing her hand gently over her sister's hair. But he lets people call him so, remarked Decode. Not in this house, retorted the child. Ah, well, I shall call him the Capitaz, then. Decode gave up the point, and, after writing steadily for a while, turned round again. When do you expect him back? he asked. After he brought you here, he rode off to fetch the senior doctor from the town for mother. He will be back soon. He stands a good chance of getting shot somewhere on the road, Decode murmured to himself audibly, and Linda declared in her high-pitched voice, no one would dare to fire a shot at John Battista. You believe that, asked Decode, do you? I know it, said the child with conviction. There is no one in this place brave enough to attack John Battista. It doesn't require much bravery to pull a trigger behind a bush, muttered Decode to himself. Fortunately, the night is dark, or there would be but little chance of saving the silver of the mine. He turned again to his pocket-book, glanced back through the pages, and again started his pencil. That was the position yesterday, after the manurva with the fugitive president had gone out of harbour, and the rioters had been driven back into the side lanes of the town. I sat on the steps of the cathedral with Nostromo after sending out the cable message for the information of a more or less attentive world. Strangely enough, though the offices of the cable company are in the same building as the porvenir, the mob, which had thrown my presses out of the window and scattered the type all over the plaza, has been kept from interfering with the instruments on the other side of the courtyard. As I sat talking with Nostromo, Bernhardt, the telegraphist, came out from under the arcades with a piece of paper in his hand. The little man had tied himself up to an enormous sword, and was hung all over with revolvers. He is ridiculous, but the bravest German of his size that had ever tapped the key of a Morse transmitter. He had received the message from Keita, reporting the transports with Barrio's army just entering the port, and entering, with the words, the greatest enthusiasm prevails. I walked off to drink some water at the fountain, and I was shot at from the Alameda by somebody hiding behind a tree. But I drank, and didn't care. With Barrio's and Keita and the great Cordillera between us and Montero's victorious army I seemed notwithstanding messengers Gamacho and Fuentes to hold my new state in the hollow of my hand. I was ready to sleep, but when I got as far as the Casa Gold I found the patio full of wounded, laid out on straw. Lights were burning, and in that enclosed courtyard on that hot night a faint odor of chloroform and blood hung about. At one end Dr. Moneham, the doctor of the mine, was dressing the wounds. At the other, near the stairs, Father Corpilan, kneeling, listened to the confession of a dying Cargador. Mrs. Gold was walking about through these shambles with a large bottle in one hand, and a lot of cotton wool in the other. She just looked at me and never even winked. Her Camaristo was following her, also holding a bottle and sobbing gently to herself. I busied myself for some time, infetching water from the cistern for the wounded. Afterwards I wandered upstairs, meeting some of the first ladies of Sulaco, paler than I had ever seen them before, with bandages over their arms. Not all of them had fled to the ships. A good many had taken refuge for the day, and the Casa Gold. On the landing a girl, with her hair half down, was kneeling against the wall under the niche, where stands a Madonna in blue robes and a gilt crown on her head. I think it was the eldest Miss Lopez. I couldn't see her face, but I remember looking at the high French heel of her little shoe. She did not make a sound. She did not stir. She was not sobbing. She remained there, perfectly still, all black against the white wall. A silent figure of passionate piety. I am sure she was no more frightened than the other white-faced ladies I met carrying bandages. One was sitting on the top step, tearing a piece of linen hastily into strips. The young wife of an elderly man of fortune here. She interrupted herself to wave her hand to my bow, as though she were in her carriage on the Alameda. The women of our country are worth looking at during a revolution. The rouge and pearl powder fall off, together with that passive attitude towards the outer world which education, tradition, custom impose upon them from the earliest infancy. I thought of your face which from your infancy had the stamp of intelligence instead of that patient and resigned caste which appears when some political commotion tears down the veil of cosmetics and usage. In the great salla upstairs a sort of junta of notables was sitting, the remnant of the vanished provincial assembly. Don Jose Lopez had had half his beard singed off at the muzzle of a torbuco loaded with slugs of which everyone missed him providentially. And as he turned his head from side to side it was exactly as if there had been two men inside his frock coat, one nobly whiskered and solemn, the other untidy and scared. They raised a cry of Decode, Don Martin, at my entrance. I asked them, What are you deliberating upon, gentlemen? There did not seem to be any president, though Don Jose Avalanos sat at the head of the table. They all answered together, on the preservation of life and property, till the new officials arrived, Don just explained to me, with the solemn side of his face offered to my view. It was as if a stream of water had been poured upon my glowing idea of a new state. There was a hissing sound in my ears and the room grew dim as if suddenly filled with vapor. I walked up to the table blindly as though I had been drunk. You are deliberating upon surrender, I said. They all sat still, with their noses over the sheet of paper each had before him. God only knows why. Only Don Jose hit his face in his hands, muttering, Never, never. But as I looked at him it seemed to me that I could have blown him away with my breath. He looked so frail, so weak, so worn out. Whatever happens he will not survive. The deception is too great for a man of his age, and hasn't he seen the sheets of fifty years of misrule which we have begun printing on the presses of the porvenir, littering the plaza, floating in the gutters, fired out as wads for trabucos, loaded with handfuls of type, blown in the wind, trampled in the mud. I have seen pages floating upon the very waters of the harbor. It would be unreasonable to expect him to survive. It would be cruel. Do you know, I cried, what surrender means to you, to your women, to your children, to your property? I declined for five minutes without drawing breath, it seems to me, harping on our best chances on the ferocity of Montero, whom I made out to be as great a beast as I have no doubt he would like to be, if he had intelligence enough to conceive a systematic reign of terror. And then, for another five minutes or more, I poured out an impassioned appeal to their courage and manliness with all the passion of my love for Antonia. For if ever man spoke well it would be from a personal feeling, denouncing an enemy, defending himself, or pleading for what really may be dearer than life. My dear girl, I absolutely thundered at them. It seemed as if my voice would burst the walls asunder, and when I stopped I saw all their scared eyes looking at me dubiously. And that was all the effect I had produced. Only Don José's head had sunk lower and lower on his breast. I bent my ear to his withered lips, and made out his whisper, something like, in God's name, then Martin my son. I don't know exactly. There was the name of God in it, I am certain. It seems to me I have caught his last breath, the breath of his departing soul on his lips. He lives yet, it is true. I have seen him since, but it was only a senile body, lying on its back, covered to the chin, with open eyes, and so still that you might have said it was breathing no longer. I left him thus, with Antonia, kneeling by the side of the bed, just before I came to this Italian's passada, where the ubiquitous death is also waiting. But I know that Don José has really died there, in the Casa Gold, with that whisper urging me to attempt what no doubt his soul, wrapped up in the sanctity of diplomatic treaties and solemn declarations, must have abhorred. I had exclaimed very loud, there is never any God in a country where men will not help themselves. Meanwhile Don José had begun a pondered oration whose solemn effect was spoiled by the ridiculous disaster to his beard. I did not wait to make it out. He seemed to argue that Montero's, he called him the general, intentions were probably not evil, though he went on. That distinguished man, only a week ago we used to call him a grand bestia, was perhaps mistaken as to the true means. As you may imagine, I didn't stay to hear the arrest. I know the intentions of Montero's brother, Padrito, the Guerrero, whom I exposed in Paris some years ago, in a café frequented by South American students, where he tried to pass himself off for a secretary of allegation. He used to come in and talk for hours, twisting his felt hat and his hairy paws, and his ambition seemed to become a sort of duque de mornée to a sort of Napoleon. Already then he used to talk of his brother in inflated terms. He seemed fairly safe from being found out, because the students, all of the Blanco families, did not, as you may imagine, frequent the allegation. It was only decode a man without faith and principles, as they used to say, that went in there sometimes for the sake of the fun, as it were to an assembly of trained monkeys. I know his intentions. I have seen him change the plates at table. Whoever is allowed to live on in terror, I must die the death. No, I didn't stay to the end to hear Don Just Lopez trying to persuade himself in a grave oration of the clemency and justice and honesty and purity of the brother's Montero. I went out abruptly to seek Antonia. I saw her in the gallery. As I opened the door, she extended to me her clasped hands. What are they doing in there? she asked. Talking, I said, with my eyes looking into hers. Yes, yes, but— Empty speeches, I interrupted her. Hiding their fears behind imbecile hopes. They are all great parliamentarians there, on the English model, as you know. I was so furious that I could hardly speak. She made a gesture of despair. Through the door I held a little ajar behind me. We heard Don Just measured mouthing, monotone, go on from phrase to phrase, like a sort of awful and solemn madness. After all, the democratic aspirations have, perhaps the legitimacy, though ways of human progress are inscrutable, and if the fate of the country is in the end of Montero, we ought— I crashed the door, too, on that. It was enough. It was too much. There was never a beautiful face expressing more horror and despair than the face of Antonia. I couldn't bear it. I seized her wrists. Have they killed my father in there? she asked. Her eyes blazed with indignation. But as I looked on, fascinated, the fight in them went out. It is a surrender, I said, and I remember I was shaking her wrists. I held apart in my hands. But it's more than talk. Your father told me to go on, in God's name. My dear girl, there is that in Antonia, which would make me believe in the feasibility of anything. One look at her face is enough to set my brain on fire, and yet I love her as any other man would, with the heart, and with that alone. She is more to me than his church to Father Corbillan, the Grand Vicar, disappeared last night from the town, perhaps gone to join the band of Hernandez. She is more to me than his precious mine to that sentimental Englishman. I won't speak of his wife. She may have been sentimental once. The sentimental mine stands now between those two people. Your father himself, Antonia. I repeat it. Your father, to you understand, has told me to go on. She averted her face, and in a pain voice. He has? she cried. Then indeed, I fear he will never speak again. She freed her wrists from my clutch, and began to cry in her handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow. I would rather see her miserable than not see her at all, never any more. For whether I escaped or stayed to die, there was for us no coming together, no future. And that being so, I had no pity to waste upon the passing moments of her sorrow. I sent her off in tears to fetch Dona Amelia and Don Carlos, too. Their sentiment was necessary to the very life of my plan, the sentimentalism of the people that will never do anything for the sake of their passionate desire unless it comes to them clothed in the fair robes of an idea. Late at night we formed a small haunt of four, the two women, Don Carlos and myself, in Mrs. Gold's blue and white boudoir. Elred de Salaco thinks himself, no doubt, a very honest man, and so he is, if one could look behind his taciturnity. Perhaps he thinks that this alone makes his honesty unstained. Those Englishmen live on illusions which somehow or other help them to get a firm hold of this substance. When he speaks it is by a rare yes or no that seems as impersonal as the words of an oracle, but he could not impose on me by his dumb reserve. I knew what he had in his head. He had his mind in his head, and his wife had nothing in her head but his precious person, which he had bound up with the gold concession and tied up to that little woman's neck. No matter. The thing was to make him present, the affair to Hollyroyd, the steel and silver king, in such a manner as to secure his financial support. At that time last night, just twenty-four hours ago, we thought the silver of the mind safe in the custom house, false, till the northbound steamer came to take it away, and as long as the treasure flowed north without a break, that utter sentimentalist Hollyroyd would not drop his idea of introducing not only justice, industry, peace to the benighted continents, but also that pet dream of his of a pure form of Christianity. Later on, the principal European really in Sulaco, the engineer-in-chief of the railway, came riding up the Calais from the harbor, and was admitted to her conclave. Meantime the junta of the Notables in the great Sala was still deliberating. Only one of them had run out in the corridor to ask the servant whether something to eat couldn't be sent in. The first words the engineer-in-chief said as he came into the Boudoir were, What is your house, dear Mrs. Gold, a war-hospital below, and apparently a restaurant above? I saw them carrying trays full of good things into the Sala. And here, in this Boudoir, I said, you behold the inner cabinet of the Occidental Republic that is to be. He was so preoccupied that he didn't smile at that he didn't even look surprised. He told us that he was attending to the general dispositions for the defense of the railway property at the railway yards when he was sent for to go into the railway telegraph office. The engineer of the railhead at the foot of the mountains wanted to talk to him from his end of the wire. There was nobody in the office but himself and the operator of the railway telegraph, who read off the clicks aloud as the tape coiled its length upon the floor. And the purport of that talk clicked nervously from a wooden shed in the depths of the forests, had informed the chief that President Ribeira had been or was being pursued. This was news, indeed, to all of us in Salaquo. Ribeira himself, when rescued, revived, and soothed by us, had been inclined to think that he had not been pursued. Ribeira had yielded to the urgent solicitations of his friends, and had left the headquarters of his discomfited army alone, under the guidance of Bonifacio, the Miltier, who had been willing to take the responsibility with the risk. He had departed at daybreak of the third day. His remaining forces had melted away during the night. Bonifacio and he rode hard on horses toward the Cotillera. Then they obtained mules, entered the passes, and crossed the paramo of Ivy, just before a freezing blast swept over that stony plateau, burying in a drift of snow the little shelter hut of stones in which they had spent the night. Afterwards Porto Ribeira had many adventures, got separated from his guide, lost his mount, struggled down to the campo on foot, and, if he had not thrown himself on the mercy of a ranchero, would have perished a long way from Salaquo. That man, who, as a matter of fact, recognized him at once, let him have a fresh mule which the fugitive, heavy and unskillful, had ridden to death. And it is true that he had been pursued by a party commanded by no lesser person than Pedro Montero, the brother of the general. The cold wind of the paramo luckily caught the pursuers on the top of the pass. Some few men, and all the animals, perished in the icy blast. The stragglers died, but the main body kept on. They found poor Bonifacio lying half dead at the foot of a snow slope, and bayonetted him promptly in the truce of the war's style. They would have had Ribeira, too, if they had not, for some reason or other, turned off the track of the old Camino Real, only to lose their way in the forests at the foot of the lower slopes. And there they were at last, having stumbled in unexpectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer at the railhead told his chief by wire that he had Pedro Montero absolutely there, in the very office, listening to the clicks. He was going to take possession of Solaco in the name of the democracy. He was very overbearing. His men slaughtered some of the railway company's cattle without asking leave, and went to work broiling the meat on the embers. Petrito made many pointed inquiries as to the silver mine, and what had become of the product of the last six months working. He had said preemptorily, Ask your chief, up there by wire, he ought to know, tell him that Don Pedro Montero, chief of the Campo and minister of the interior of the new government, desires to be correctly informed. He had his feet wrapped up in bloodstained rags, a lean, haggard face, ragged beard, and hair, and had walked in limping with a crooked branch of a tree for a staff. His followers were perhaps in a worse plight, but apparently they had not thrown away their arms, and at any rate not all their ammunition. Their lean faces filled the door and the windows of the telegraph hut. As it was at the same time the bedroom of the engineer in charge there, Montero had thrown himself on his clean blankets and lay there shivering and dictating requisitions to be transmitted by wire to Solaco. He demanded a train of cars to be sent down at once to transport his men up. To this I answered from my end, the engineer and chief related to us, that I dared not risk the rolling stock in the interior as there had been attempts to wreck trains all along the line several times. I did that for your sake, Gould, said the chief engineer. The answer to this was, in the words of my subordinate, the filthy brute on my bed said, Suppose I were to have you shot. To which my subordinate, who it appears was himself operating, remarked that it would not bring the cars up. Upon that the other, yawning, said, Never mind, there is no lack of horses on the campo, and turning over went to sleep on Harris's bed. This is why, my dear girl, I am a fugitive tonight. The last wire from railhead says that Pedro Montero and his men left at daybreak, after feeding on asado beef all night. They took all the horses, they will find more on the road, they'll be here in less than thirty hours, and thus Salako is no place either for me or the great store of silver belonging to the gold concession. But that is not the worst. The garrison of Esmeralda has gone over to the victorious party. We have heard this by means of the telegraphists of the cable company, who came to the Casa Gold in the early morning with the news. In fact, it was so early that the day had not yet quite broken over Salako. His colleague in Esmeralda had called him up to say that the garrison, after shooting some of their officers, had taken possession of a government steamer laid up in the harbor. It is really a heavy blow for me. I thought I could depend on every man in this province. It was a mistake. It was a Monteras revolution in Esmeralda, just such as was attempted in Salako. Only that one came off. The telegraphist was signaling to Bernhardt at the time, and his last transmitted words were, They are bursting in the door and taking possession of the cable office. You are cut off. You can do no more. But as a matter of fact he managed somehow to escape the vigilance of his captors, who had tried to stop the communication with the outer world. He did manage it. How it was done I don't know. But a few hours afterwards he called up Salako again, and what he said was, The Insurgent Army has taken possession of the government transport in the bay, and are filling her with troops, with the intention of going round to the coast of Salako. Therefore look out for yourselves. They will be ready to start in a few hours, and may be upon you before daybreak. This is all he could say. They drove him away from his instrument this time for good, because Bernhardt had been calling up Esmeralda ever since without getting an answer. After setting these words down in the pocket-book, which he was filling up for the benefit of his sister, D'Cole lifted his head to listen. But there were no sounds, neither in the room nor in the house, except the drip of water from the filter into the vast earthenware jar under the wooden stand. And outside the house there was a great silence. D'Cole lowered his head again over the pocket-book. I am not running away, you understand, he wrote on. I am simply going away with that great treasure of silver which must be saved at all costs. Pedro Montero from the Campo and the revolted garrison of Esmeralda from the sea are converging upon it. That it is there lying ready for them is only an accident. The real objective is the San Tomé mine itself, as you may well imagine. Otherwise the Occidental province would have been, no doubt, left alone for many weeks to be gathered at leisure into the arms of the victorious party. Don Carlos Gold will have enough to do to save his mine with its organization and its people. This imperium, in imperial, this wealth-producing thing, to which his sentimentalism attaches a strange idea of justice. He holds to it as some men hold to the idea of love or revenge. Unless I am much mistaken in the man, it must remain inviolate or perished by an act of his will alone. A passion has crept into his cold and idealistic life, a passion which I can only comprehend intellectually. A passion that is not like the passions we know, we men of another blood, but it is as dangerous as any of ours. His wife has understood it, too. That is why she is such a good ally of mine. She seizes upon all my suggestions with a sure instinct that in the end they make for the safety of the Gold concession, and he defers to her because he trusts her, perhaps, but I fancy rather as if he wished to make up for some subtle wrong for that sentimental unfaithfulness which surrenders her happiness, her life, to the seduction of an idea. The little woman has discovered that he lives for the mine rather than for her, but let them be, to each his fate, shaped by passion or sentiment. The principal thing is that she has backed up my advice to get the silver out of the town, out of the country, at once, at any cost, at any risk. Don Carlos's mission is to preserve, unsustain the fair fame of his mine. Mrs. Gould's mission is to save him from the effects of that cold and overmastering passion, which he dreads more than if it were an infatuation for another woman. Nostromo's mission is to save the silver. The plan is to load it into the largest of the company's lighters, and send it across the gulf to a small port out of Costa Guana territory, just on the other side of the Esuera, where the first northbound steamer will get orders to pick it up. The waters here are calm. We shall slip away into the darkness of the gulf before the Esmeralda rebels arrive, and by the time the day breaks over the ocean, we shall be out of sight, invisible, hidden by Esuera, which itself looks from the Solaco shore like a faint blue cloud on the horizon. The incorruptible Capotaz de Cargadores is the man for that work, and I, the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go with him to return to play my part in the farce to the end, and, if successful, to receive my reward, which no one but Antonio can give me. I shall not see her again now before I depart. I left her, as I have said, by Don Jose's bedside. The street was dark, the houses shut up, and I walked out of the town in the night, not a single street lamp had been lit for two days, and the archway of the gate was only a mass of darkness in the vague form of a tower, in which I heard low, dismal groans that seemed to answer the murmurs of a man's voice. I recognize something impassive and careless in its tone, characteristic of that Genoese sailor who, like me, has come casually here to be drawn into the events for which his skepticism, as well as mine, seems to entertain a sort of passive contempt. The only thing he seems to care for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well spoken of. An ambition fit from noble souls, but also a profitable one, for an exceptionally intelligent scoundrel. Yes, his very words, to be well spoken of, cease in your. He does not seem to make any difference between speaking and thinking. Is it sheer naiveness, or the practical point of view, I wonder? Exceptional individualities always interest me, because they are true to the general formula expressing the moral state of humanity. He joined me on the harbour road after I had passed them under the dark archway without stopping. It was a woman in trouble he had been talking to. Through discretion I kept silent while he walked by my side. After a time he began to talk himself. It was not what I expected. It was only an old woman, an old lace-maker, in search of her son, one of the street-sweepers employed by the municipality. Friends had come the day before at daybreak to the door of their hovel, calling him out. He had gone with them, and she had not seen him since. So she had left the food she had been preparing, half-cooked, on the extinct embers, and had crawled out as far as the harbour, where she had heard that some town mosas had been killed on the morning of the riot. One of the Cargadores guarding the custom-house had brought out a lantern, and had helped her to look at the few dead left lying about there. Now she was creeping back, having felled in her search. So she sat down on the stone-seat under the arch, moaning, because she was very tired. The Capotaz had questioned her, and, after hearing her broken and groaning tale, had advised her to go and look amongst the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gold. He had also given her a quarter-dollar, he mentioned carelessly. �Why did you do that?� I asked. �Do you know her?� �No, senor. I don�t suppose I have ever seen her before. How should I?� She has not probably been out in the streets for years. She is one of those old women that you find in this country at the back of huts, crutching over fireplaces, with a stick on the ground by their side, and almost two feeble to drive away the stray dogs from their cooking-pots. Caramba! I could tell by her voice that death had forgotten her. But old or young, they like money, and will speak well of the man who gives it to them. He laughed a little. �Senor, you should have felt the clutch of her paw as I put the piece in her palm� he paused. �My last, too� he added. I made no comment. He is known for his liberality and his bad luck at the game of Monte, which keeps him as poor as when he first came here. I suppose, Don Martin, he began, in a thoughtful, speculative tone, that the senor administrator of Saint-Homé will reward me some day if I save his silver. I said that it could not be otherwise, surely. He walked on, muttering to himself. �See, see, without doubt, without doubt. And look, you, Senor Martin, what is it to be well spoken of? There is not another man that could have been even thought of for such a thing. I shall get something great for it some day. And let it come soon,� he mumbled. �Time passes in this country as quick as anywhere else.� �This, Swarshjari, is my companion in the great escape for the sake of the great cause. He is more naïve than shrewd, more masterful than crafty, more generous with his personality than the people who make use of him are with their money. At least that is what he thinks himself, with more pride than sentiment. I am glad I have made friends with him. As a companion he acquires more importance than he ever had as a sort of minor genius in his way. As an original Italian sailor, whom I allowed to come in, in the small hours, and talk familiarly to the editor of the porvenir while the paper was going through the press. And it is curious to have met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in personal prestige. I am waiting for him here now. On arriving at the busada, kept by Viola, we found the children alone down below, and the old Genoese shouted to his countrymen to go and fetch the doctor. Otherwise we would have gone on to the wharf, where it appears Captain Mitchell, with some volunteer Europeans, and a few pecked Cargadors, are loading the lighter with the silver that must be saved from Montero's clutches in order to be used for Montero's defeat. Nostromo galloped furiously back towards the town. He has been long gone already. This delay gives me time to talk to you. By the time this pocketbook reaches your hands, much will have happened. But now it is a pause under the hovering wing of death in the silent house buried in the black night with this dying woman, the two children crouching without a sound, and that old man whom I can hear through the thickness of the wall, passing up and down with a light, rubbing noise, no louder than a mouse. And I, the only other with them, don't really know whether to count myself with a living or with a dead. Can't sabe? As the people here are prone to say an answer to every question. But no, feeling for you is certainly not dead, and the whole thing, the house, the dark night, the silent children in this dim room, my very presence here. All this is life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream. End of Part 2, Chapter 7, Part 2 Part 2, Chapter 7, Section 3 of Nostromo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. Part 2, Chapter 7, Section 3. With the writing of the last line, there came upon Deku a moment of sudden and complete oblivion. He swayed over the table as if struck by a bullet. The next moment he set up, confused, with the idea that he had heard his pencil roll on the floor. The low door of the cafe, wide open, was filled with the glare of a torch, in which was visible half of a horse, switching its tail against the leg of a rider, with a long iron spur strapped to the naked heel. The two girls were gone, and Nostromo, standing in the middle of the room, looked at him from under the round brim of the sombrero, low down over his brow. I have brought that sour-faced English doctor in Senyora Gold's carriage, said Nostromo. I doubt if, with all his wisdom, he can save the Pajona this time. They have sent for the children a bad sign that. He sat down on the end of a bench. She wants to give them her blessing, I suppose. Dastley Deku observed that he must have fallen sound asleep, and Nostromo said, with a vague smile, that he had looked in at the window and had seen him lying still across the table with his head on his arms. The English Senyora had also come in the carriage and went upstairs at once with a doctor. She had told him not to wake up Don Martin yet, but when they sent for the children, he had come into the cafe. The half of the horse, with its half of the rider, swung round outside the door. The torch of toe and resin in the iron basket, which was carried on a stick at the saddle-bow, flared right into the room for a moment, and Mrs. Gold entered hastily with a very white, tired face. The hood of her dark blue cloak had fallen back. Both men rose. Teresa wants to see you, Nostromo, she said. The capitas did not move. Deku, with his back to the table, began to button up his coat. The silver, Mrs. Gold, the silver, he murmured in English, Don't forget that the Esmeralda garrison have got a steamer. They may appear at any moment at the harbour entrance. The doctor says there is no hope. Mrs. Gold spoke rapidly, also in English. I shall take you down to the wharf in my carriage and then come back to fetch away the girls. She changed swiftly into Spanish to address Nostromo. Why are you wasting time? Old Giorgio's wife wishes to see you. I am going to her, Senora, muttered the capitas. Dr. Monium now showed himself, bringing back the children. To Mrs. Gold's inquiring glance, he only shook his head and went outside at once, followed by Nostromo. The horse of the torchbearer, motionless, hung his head low, and the rider had dropped the reins to light a cigarette. The glare of the torch played on the front of the house, crossed by the big black letters of its inscription, in which only the word Italia was lighted fully. The patch of wavering glare reached as far as Mrs. Gold's carriage waiting on the road, with the yellow-faced portly Ignacio apparently dosing on the box. By his side, Basilio, dark and skinny, held a Winchester carbine in front of him, with both hands, and peered fearfully into the darkness. Nostromo touched lightly the doctor's shoulder. Is she really dying, Senor Doctor? Yes, said the doctor, with a strange twitch of his scarred cheek. And why she wants to see you, I cannot imagine. She has been like that before, suggested Nostromo, looking away. Well, Capitas, I can assure you she will never be like that again, snarled Dr. Moniam. You may go to her or stay away. There is very little to be got from talking to the dying. But she told Donna Emilia in my hearing that she has been like a mother to you, ever since you first set foot ashore here. See, and she never had a good word to say for me to anybody. It is more as if she could not forgive me for being alive, and such a man, too, as she would have liked her son to be. Maybe exclaimed a mournful, deep voice near them. Women have their own ways of tormenting themselves. Giorgio Viola had come out of the house. He threw a heavy black shadow in the torchlight, and the glare fell on his big face, on the great bushy head of white hair. He motioned the Capitas indoors with his extended arm. Dr. Moniam, after busying himself with a little medicament box of polished wood on the seat of the lando, turned to old Giorgio and thrust into his big trembling hand one of the glass-stoppered bottles out of the case. Give her a spoonful of this now and then, in water, he said. It will make her easier. And there is nothing more for her, asked the old man patiently. No, not on earth, said the doctor, with his back to him, clicking the lock of the medicine case. Nostromo slowly crossed the large kitchen, all dark but for the glow of a heap of charcoal under the heavy mantle of the cooking range, where water was boiling in an iron pot with a loud bubbling sound. Between the two walls of a narrow staircase, a bright light streamed from the sick room above, and the magnificent Capitas de Cargadores, stepping noiselessly in soft leather sandals, Busci whiskered his muscular neck and bronzed chest bare in the open check shirt, resembled a Mediterranean sailor just come ashore from some wine or fruit-laden feluca. At the top he paused, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and supple, looking at the large bed, like a white couch of state, with a profusion of snowy linen, amongst which the pajona set unpropped and bowed, her handsome black-browed face bent over her chest. A mass of raven hair, with only a few white threads in it, covered her shoulders. One thick strand fallen forward, half veiled her cheek. Perfectly motionless in that pose, expressing physical anxiety and unrest, she turned her eyes alone towards Nostromo. The Capitas had a red sash wound many times round his waist, and a heavy silver ring on the forefinger of the hand he raised to give a twist to his moustache. Their Revolutions! Their Revolutions! gasped Senora Teresa. Look, Gian Battista, it has killed me at last. Nostromo said nothing, and the sick woman with an upward glance insisted. Look, this one has killed me, while you were away fighting for what did not concern you, foolish man. Why talk like this? mumbled the Capitas between his teeth. Will you never believe in my good sense? It concerns me to keep on being what I am, every day alike. You never change, indeed, she said bitterly. Always thinking of yourself and taking your pay out in fine words from those who care nothing for you. There was between them an intimacy of antagonism, as close in its way as the intimacy of accord and affection. He had not walked along the way of Teresa's expectations. It was she who had encouraged him to leave his ship in the hope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. The wife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, and was haunted by the fear of her aged husband's loneliness and the unprotected state of the children. She had wanted to annex that apparently quiet and steady young man, affectionate and pliable, an orphan from his tenderest age, as he had told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner and master of a feluca, from whose ill usage he had run away before he was fourteen. He had seemed to her courageous, a hard worker determined to make his way in the world. From gratitude and the ties of habit, he would become like a son to herself and Giorgio. And then, who knows when Linda had grown up? Ten years difference between husband and wife was not so much. Her own great man was nearly twenty years older than herself. Jan Battista was an attractive young fellow, besides attractive to men, women and children, just by that profound quietness of personality, which, like a serene twilight, rendered more seductive the promise of his vigorous form and the resolution of his conduct. Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife's views and hopes, had a great regard for this young country man. A man ought not to be tame, he used to tell her, quoting the Spanish proverb in defense of the splendid capitas. She was growing jealous of his success. He was escaping from her, she feared. She was practical, and he seemed to her to be an absurd spent thrift of these qualities which made him so valuable. He got too little for them. He scattered them with both hands amongst too many people, she thought. He laid no money by. She railed at his poverty, his exploits, his adventures, his loves, and his reputation. But in her heart she had never given him up, as though indeed he had been her son. Even now, ill as she was, ill enough to feel the chill, black breath of the approaching end, she had wished to see him. It was like putting out her benumbed hand to regain her hold. But she had presumed too much on her strength. She could not command her thoughts. They had become dim, like her vision. The words faltered on her lips, and only the paramount anxiety and desire of her life seemed to be too strong for death. The capitas said, I have heard these things many times. You are unjust, but it does not hurt me. Only now you do not seem to have much strength to talk, and I have but little time to listen. I am engaged in a work of very great moment. She made an effort to ask him whether it was true that he had found time to go and fetch a doctor for her. Nostromo nodded affirmatively. She was pleased. It relieved her sufferings to know that the man had condescended to do so much for those who really wanted his help. It was a proof of his friendship. Her voice became stronger. I want a priest more than a doctor, she said, pathetically. She did not move her head. Only her eyes ran into the corners to watch the capitas standing by the side of her bed. Would you go to fetch a priest for me now? Think, a dying woman asks you. Nostromo shook his head resolutely. He did not believe in priests in their sacerdotal character. A doctor was an efficacious person. But a priest, as priest, was nothing, incapable of doing either good or harm. Nostromo did not even dislike the sight of them as old Giorgio did. The utter uselessness of the errand was what struck him most. Padrona, he said, you have been like this before and got better after a few days. I have given you already the very last moments I can spare. Ask Senora Gold to send you one. He was feeling uneasy at the impiety of this refusal. The Padrona believed in priests and confessed herself to them. But all women did that. It could not be of much consequence. And yet his heart felt oppressed for a moment at the thought what absolution would mean to her if she believed in it only ever so little. No matter, it was quite true that he had given her already the very last moment he could spare. You refused to go, she gasped. Ah, you are always yourself indeed. Listen to reason, Padrona, he said. I am needed to save the silver of the mine. Do you hear? A greater treasure than the one which they say is guarded by ghosts and devils on Asuera. It is true. I am resolved to make this the most desperate affair I was ever engaged in. She felt a despairing indignation. The supreme test had failed. Standing above her, Nostromo did not see the distorted features of her face. Distorted by a paroxysm of pain and anger. Only she began to tremble all over. Her bowed head shook. The broad shoulders quivered. Then God, perhaps, will have mercy upon me. But do you look to it, man, that you get something for yourself out of it, besides the remorse that shall overtake you some day? She laughed feebly. Get riches at least for once, you indispensable, admired John Batista, to whom the peace of a dying woman is less than the praise of the dead. To whom the peace of a dying woman is less than the praise of people, who have given you a silly name and nothing besides, in exchange for your soul and body. The Capotas de Corgadores swore to himself under his breath. Leave my soul alone, Padrona, and I shall know how to take care of my body. Where is the harm of people having need of me? What are you envying me that I have robbed you and the children of? Those very people you are throwing in my teeth have done more for old Giorgio than they ever thought of doing for me. He struck his breast with his open palm. His voice had remained low, though he had spoken in a forcible tone. He twisted his mustaches one after another, and his eyes wandered a little about the room. Is it my fault that I am the only man for their purposes? What angry nonsense are you talking, mother? Would you rather have me timid and foolish selling watermelons on the marketplace or rowing a boat for passengers along the harbour like a soft Neapolitan without courage or reputation? Would you have a young man live like a monk? I do not believe it. Would you want a monk for your eldest girl? Let her grow. What are you afraid of? You have been angry with me for everything I did for years. Ever since you first spoke to me in secret from old Giorgio about your linda. Husband to one and brother to the other, did you say? Well, why not? I like the little ones, and a man must marry some time. But ever since that time you have been making little of me to everyone. Why? Did you think you could put a collar and chain on me as if I were one of the watchdogs they keep over there in the railway yards? Look here, Padrona. I am the same man who came ashore one evening and sat down in the thatched ranch you lived in at that time on the other side of the town and told you all about himself. You were not unjust to me then. What has happened since? I am no longer an insignificant youth. A good name, Giorgio says, is a treasure, Padrona. They have turned your head with their praises, gasped the sick woman. They have been paying you with words. Your folly shall betray you into poverty, misery, starvation, the very leperos shall laugh at you, the great capitas. Nostromo stood for a time as if struck down. She never looked at him. A self-confident, mirthless smile passed quickly from his lips, and then he backed away. His disregarded figure sank down beyond the doorway. He descended the stairs backwards, with the usual sense of having been somehow baffled by this woman's disparagement of this reputation he had obtained and desired to keep. Downstairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, surrounded by the shadows of the walls, of the ceiling, but no ruddy glare filled the open square of the outer door. The carriage with Mrs. Gold and Don Martin preceded by the horseman, covering the torch, had gone on to the jetty. Dr. Moniam, who had remained, sat on the corner of a hardwood table near the candlestick. His seamed, shaven face inclined sideways. His arms crossed on his breast, his lips pursed up, and his prominent eyes glaring stonily upon the floor of black earth. Near the overhanging mantle of the fireplace, where the pot of water was still boiling violently, old Giorgio held his chin in his hand, one foot advanced, as if arrested by a sudden thought. Adios viejo! said Nostromo, feeling the handle of his revolver in the belt and loosening his knife in its sheath. He picked up a blue poncho lined with red from the table and put it over his head. Adios, look after the things in my sleeping room, and if you hear from me no more, give up the box to Paquita. There is not much of value there, except my new Serapi from Mexico, and a few silver buttons on my best jacket. No matter, the things will look well enough on the next lover she gets, and the man need not be afraid I shall linger on earth after I am dead, like those gringos that haunt the asuera. Dr. Monium twisted his lips into a bitter smile. After old Giorgio, with an almost imperceptible nod and without a word, had gone up the narrow stairs, he said, Why, capitas, I thought you could never fail in anything. Nostromo, glancing contemptuously at the doctor, lingered in the doorway, rolling a cigarette, then struck a match, and, after lighting it, held the burning piece of wood above his head till the flame nearly touched his fingers. No wind, he muttered to himself. Look here, senor, do you know the nature of my undertaking? Dr. Monium nodded sourly. It is as if I were taking up a curse upon me, senor doctor. A man with a treasure on this coast will have every knife raised against him in every place upon the shore. You see that, senor doctor? I shall float along with a spell upon my life till I meet somewhere the northbound steamer of the company, and then indeed they will talk about the capitas of the Sulaco Cargadores from one end of America to another. Dr. Monium laughed his short, throaty laugh. Nostromo turned round in the doorway. But if your worship can find any other man ready and fit for such business, I will stand back. I am not exactly tired of my life, though I am so poor that I can carry all I have with myself on my horse's back. You gamble too much and never say no to a pretty face, capitas, said Dr. Monium with sly simplicity. That's not the way to make a fortune. But nobody that I know ever suspected you of being poor. I hope you have made a good bargain in case you come back safe from this adventure. What bargain would your worship have made? asked Nostromo, blowing the smoke out of his lips through the doorway. Dr. Monium listened up the staircase for a moment before he answered with another of his short, abrupt laughs. Illustrious capitas, for taking the curse of death upon my back, as you call it, nothing else but the whole treasure would do. Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of discontent at this jeering answer. Dr. Monium heard him gallop away. Nostromo rode furiously in the dark. There were lights in the buildings of the oars and company near the wharf. But before he got there, he met the gold carriage. The horseman preceded it with the torch, whose light showed the white mules trotting the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio with the carbine on the box. From the dark body of the lando, Mrs. Gold's voice cried, They are waiting for you, capitas. She was returning, chilly and excited, with Deku's pocketbook still held in her hand. He had confided it to her to send to his sister. Perhaps my last words to her he had said, pressing Mrs. Gold's hand. End of Part 2, Chapter 7, Section 3. Part 2, Chapter 7, Section 4 of Nostromo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad Part 2, Chapter 7, Section 4. The capitas never checked his speed. At the head of the wolf, vague figures with rifles, leapt to the head of his horse. Others closed upon him, Cargadores of the company, posted by Captain Mitchell on the watch. At a word from him, they fell back with subservient murmurs. Recognizing his voice. At the other end of the jetty, near a cargo crane, in a dark group with glowing cigars, his name was pronounced in a tone of relief. Most of the Europeans in Sulaco were there. Rarely drowned Charles Gold, as if the silver of the mine had been the emblem of a common cause. The symbol of the supreme importance of material interests. They had loaded it into the lighter with their own hands. Nostromo recognized Don Carlos Gold, a thin, tall shape standing a little apart and silent. To whom another tall shape, the engineer-in-chief, said aloud, If it must be lost, it is a million times better that it should go to the bottom of the sea. Martin Dekoux called out from the lighter, Au revoir, monsieur, till we clasp hands again over the new-born Occidental Republic. Only a subdued murmur responded to his clear-ringing tones, and then it seemed to him that the wharf was floating away into the night. But it was Nostromo who was already pushing against a pile with one of the heavy sweeps. Dekoux did not move. The effect was that it was being launched into space. After a splash or two, there was not a sound but the thud of Nostromo's feet leaping about the boat. He hoisted the big sail. A breath of wind fanned Dekoux' cheek. Everything had vanished, but the light of the lantern Captain Mitchell had hoisted upon the post at the end of the jetty to guide Nostromo out of the harbor. The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till the lighter, slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out between almost invisible headlands into the still deeper darkness of the gulf, for a time the lantern of the jetty shone after them. The wind failed. Then fanned up again, but so faintly that the big, half-decked boat slipped along with no more noise than if she had been suspended in the air. We are out in the gulf now, said the calm voice of Nostromo. A moment after he added, Senor Mitchell has lowered the light. Yes, said Dekoux, nobody can find us now. A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat. The sea in the gulf was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo, after striking a couple of matches to get a glimpse of the boat compass he had with him in the lighter, steered by the feel of the wind on his cheek. It was a new experience for Dekoux. This mysteriousness of the great waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been crushed by the weight of that dense night. The placido was sleeping profoundly under its black poncho. The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and gain the middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were somewhere at hand. On your left, as you look forward, Senor, said Nostromo suddenly. When his voice seized the enormous stillness without light or sound seemed to affect Dekoux's senses like a powerful drug. He didn't even know at times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man lost in slumber he heard nothing. He saw nothing. Even his hand held before his face did not exist for his eyes. The change from the agitation, the passions and the dangers from the sights and sounds of the shore was so complete that it would have resembled death had it not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal peace they floated vivid and light like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Dekoux shook himself, shuddered a bit, though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had the strangest sensation of his soul having just returned into his body from the circumambient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the mountains and the rocks were as if they had not been. Nostromo's voice was speaking, though he at the tiller was also as if he were not. Have you been asleep, Don Martin? Caramba! If it were possible, I would think that I, too, have dozed off. I have a strange notion somehow of having dreamt that there was a sound of blubbering, a sound a sorrowing man could make somewhere near this boat, something between a sigh and a sob. Strange, muttered Dekoux, stretched upon the pile of treasure boxes covered by many Tapolins. Could it be that there is another boat near us in the gulf? We could not see it, you know. Nostromo laughed a little at the absurdity of the idea. They dismissed it from their minds. The solitude could almost be felt, and when the breeze seized, the blackness seemed to weigh upon Dekoux like a stone. This is overpowering, he muttered. Do we move at all, Capatas? Not so fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the grass, answered Nostromo, and his voice seemed deadened by the thick veil of obscurity that felt warm and hopeless all about them. There were long periods when he made no sound, invisible and inaudible, as if he had mysteriously stepped out of the lighter. In the featureless night, Nostromo was not even certain which way the lighter headed after the wind had completely died out. He peered for the islands. There was not a hint of them to be seen, as if they had sunk to the bottom of the gulf. He threw himself down by the side of Dekoux at last and whispered into his ear that if daylight caught them near the Sulaco shore through want of wind, it would be possible to sweep the lighter behind the cliff at the high end of the great Isabel, where she would lie concealed. Dekoux was surprised at the grimness of his anxiety. To him the removal of the treasure was a political move. It was necessary for several reasons that it should not fall into the hands of Montero. But here was a man who took another view of this enterprise. The caballeros over there did not seem to have the slightest idea of what they had given him to do. Nostromo, as if affected by the gloom around, seemed nervously resentful. Dekoux was surprised. The capitas indifferent to those dangers that seemed obvious to his companion allowed himself to become scornfully exasperated by the deadly nature of the trust put as a matter of course into his hands. It was more dangerous, Nostromo said, with a laugh and a curse, than sending a man to get the treasure that people said was guarded by devils and ghosts in the deep ravines of Azuera. Senor, he said, we must catch the steamer at sea. We must keep out in the open, looking for her, till we have eaten and drunk all that has been put on board here. And if we miss her by some mischance, we must keep away from the land till we grow weak and perhaps mad and die and drift dead, until one or another of the steamers of the compagnia comes upon the boat and men who have saved the treasure. That, Senor, is the only way to save it. For, don't you see, for us to come to the land anywhere in a hundred miles along this coast with this silver in our possession is to run the naked breast against the point of a knife. This thing has been given to me like a deadly disease. If men discover it, I am dead, but you too, Senor, since you would come with me. There is enough silver to make a whole province rich, let alone a seaboard pueblo inhabited by thieves and vagabonds. Senor, they would think that heaven itself sent these riches into their hands and would cut our throats without hesitation. I would trust no fair words from the best man around the shores of this wild gulf. I would expect that even by giving up the treasure the first demand we would not be able to save our lives. Do you understand this, or must I explain? No, you needn't explain, said Deku, a little listlessly. I can see it well enough myself that the possession of this treasure is very much like a deadly disease for men situated as we are. But it had to be removed from Sulaco as we were the man for the task. I was, but I cannot believe, said Nostromo, that its loss would have impoverished Don Carlos Gold very much. There is more wealth in the mountain. I have heard it rolling down the chutes on quiet nights when I used to ride to Rincon to see a certain girl after my work at the harbour was done. For years the rich rocks have been pouring down the noise like thunder, and the miners say that there is enough at the heart of the mountain to thunder on for years and years to come. And yet, the day before yesterday, we have been fighting to save it from the mob, and tonight I am sent out with it into this darkness where there is no wind to get away with as if it were the last lot of silver on earth to get bread for the hungry with. Well, I am going to make it the most famous and desperate affair of my life. Wind or no wind. It shall be talked about when the little children are grown up and the grown men are old. Aha, the Monterests must not get hold of it, I am told. Whatever happens to Nostromo, the Capatas, and they shall not have it, I tell you, it has been tied for safety round Nostromo's neck. I see it, murmured Dekou. He saw indeed that his companion had his own peculiar view of this enterprise. Nostromo interrupted his reflections upon the way men's qualities are made use of without any fundamental knowledge of their nature by the proposal they should slip the long oars out and sweep the lighter in the direction of the Isabel's. It wouldn't do for daylight to reveal the treasure floating within a mile or so of the harbor entrance. The denser the darkness generally, the smarter were the puffs of wind on which she had reckoned to make his way. But tonight the gulf under its poncho of clouds remained breathless as if dead rather than asleep. Don Martin's soft hands suffered cruelly, tugging at the thick handle of the enormous oar. He stuck to it manfully, setting his teeth. He too was in the toils of an imaginative existence. And that strange work of pulling a lighter seemed to belong naturally to the inception of a new state, acquired an ideal meaning from his love for Antonia. For all their efforts the heavily laden lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could be heard swearing to himself between the regular splashes of the sweeps. We are making a crooked path, he muttered to himself. I wish I could see the islands. In his unskillfulness Don Martin overexerted himself. Now and then a sort of muscular faintness would run from the tips of his aching fingers through every fiber of his body, and pass off in a flush of heat. He had fought, talked, suffered mentally and physically, exerting his mind and body for the last forty-eight hours without intermission. He had had no rest, very little food, no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his feelings. Even his love for Antonia, when she drew his strength and his inspiration, had reached the point of tragic tension during their hurried interview by Don Jose's bedside. And now suddenly he was thrown out of all this into a dark gulf whose very gloom, silence and breathless peace added a torment to the necessity for physical exertion. He imagined the lighter sinking to the bottom with an extraordinary shudder of delight. I am on the verge of delirium, he thought. He mastered the trembling of all his limbs of his breast, the inward trembling of all his body exhausted of its nervous force. Shall we rest, Capitas? he proposed in a careless tone. There are many hours of night yet before us. True, it is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your arms, senor, if that is what you mean. You will find no other sort of rest, I can promise you, since you let yourself be bound to this treasure whose loss would make no poor man poorer. No, senor, there is no rest till we find a northbound steamer. Or else some ship finds us drifting about, stretched out dead upon the Englishman's silver. Or rather, no, por Dios, I shall cut down the gunnel with the axe right to the water's edge before thirst and hunger rob me of my strength. By all the saints and devils I shall let the sea and the treasure rather than give it up to any stranger. Since it was the good pleasure of the caballeros to send me off to such an errand, they shall learn I am just the man they take me for. Decou lay on the silver boxes panting. All his active sensations and feelings from as far back as he could remember seemed to him the maddest of dreams. Even his passionate devotion to Antonia to which he had worked himself up out of the depths of his scepticism had lost all appearance of reality. For a moment he was the prey of an extremely languid but not unpleasant indifference. I am sure they didn't mean you to take such a desperate view of this affair, he said. What was it then? A joke? Snarled the man, who on the pay sheets of the OSN company's establishment in Sulaco was described as four man of the wharf against the figure of his wages. Was it for a joke they woke me up from my sleep after two days of street fighting to make me stake my life upon a bad card? Everybody knows, too, that I am not a lucky gambler. Yes, everybody knows your good luck with women, Capatas, Deku propitiated his companion in a weary drawl. Look here, señor, Nostromo went on. I never even remonstrated about this affair. Directly I heard what was wanted, I saw what a desperate affair it must be and I made up my mind to see it out. Every minute was of importance. I had to wait for you first. Then we arrived at the Italiauna. Old Giorgio shouted to me to go for the English doctor. Later on that poor dying woman wanted to see me, as you know. Señor, I was reluctant to go. I felt already this cursed silver growing heavy upon my back and I was afraid that knowing herself to be dying she would ask me to ride off again for a priest. Father Corvelan, who is fearless, would have come at a word, but Father Corvelan is far away, safe with a band of Hernandes and the populace that would have liked to tear him to pieces are much incensed against the priests. Not a single fat Padre would have consented to put his head out of his hiding place tonight to save a Christian soul, except perhaps under my protection. That was in her mind. I pretended I did not believe she was going to die. Señor, I refused to fetch a priest for a dying woman. Dicou was hurt to stir. You did, Capatas, he exclaimed. His tone changed. Well, you know, it was rather fine. You do not believe in priests, Don Martin? Neither do I. What was the use of wasting time? But she, she believes in them. The thing sticks in my throat. She may be dead already and here we are floating helpless with no wind at all. Curse on all superstition. She died thinking I deprived her of paradise, I suppose. It shall be the most desperate affair of my life. Dicou remained lost in reflection. He tried to analyze the sensations awaked by what he had been told. The voice of the Capatas was heard again. Now, Don Martin, let us take up the sweeps and try to find the Isabels. It is either that or sinking the lighter if the day overtakes us. We must not forget that the steamer from Esmeralda with the soldiers may be coming along. We will pull straight on now. I have discovered a bit of a candle here and we must take the risk of a small light to make a course by the boat compass. There is not enough wind to blow it out. May the curse of heaven fall upon this blind gulf. A small flame appeared burning quite straight. It showed fragmentarily the stout ribs and planking in the hollow, empty part of the lighter. Dicou could see Nostromo standing up to pull. He saw him as high as the red sash on his waist with a gleam of a white-handled revolver and the wooden haft of a long knife protruding on his left side. Dicou nerfed himself for the effort of rowing. Certainly there was not enough wind to blow the candle out but its flame swayed a little to the slow movement of the heavy boat. It was so big that with their utmost efforts they could not move it quicker than about a mile an hour. This was sufficient, however, to sweep them amongst the Isabels long before daylight came. There was a good six hours of darkness before them and the distance from the harbour to the great Isabel did not exceed two miles. Dicou put this heavy toil to the account of the Capatasis in patience. Sometimes they paused and then strained their ears to hear the boat from Esmeralda. In this perfect quietness a steamer moving would have been heard from far off. As to seeing anything it was out of the question. They could not see each other. Even the lighter's sail which remained set was invisible. Very often they rested. Caramba! said Nostromo suddenly during one of those intervals when they lulled idly against the heavy handles of the sweeps. What is it? Are you distressed, Don Martin? Dicou assured him that he was not distressed in the least. Nostromo for a time kept perfectly still and then in a whisper invited Martin to come aft. With his lips touching Dicou's ear he declared his belief that there was somebody else besides themselves upon the lighter. Twice now he had heard the sound of stifled sobbing. Señor! he whispered with odd wonder I am certain that there is somebody weeping in this lighter. Dicou had heard nothing. He expressed his incredulity. However it was easy to ascertain the truth of the matter. It is most amazing, muttered Nostromo. Anybody have concealed himself on board while the lighter was lying alongside the wharf? And you say it was like sobbing? asked Dicou, lowering his voice too. If he is weeping, whoever he is he cannot be very dangerous. Clambering over the precious pile in the middle they crouched low on the foreside of the mast and drooped under the half-deck. Right forward in the narrowest part their hands came upon the limbs of a man who remained as silent as death. Two startled themselves to make a sound they dragged him aft by one arm and the collar of his coat. He was limp, lifeless. The light of the bit of candle fell upon a round closed face with black moustaches and little side whiskers. He was extremely dirty. A greasy growth of beard was sprouting on the shaven parts of the cheeks. The thick lips were slightly parted but the eyes remained closed. Dicou, to his immense astonishment, recognized Senor Hirsch, and merchant from Esmeralda. Nostromo too had recognized him and they gazed at each other across the body lying with its naked feet higher than its head in an absurd pretense of sleep, faintness or death.