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"It will be necessary to take him into my fullest confidence," he said to himself, with a certain acuteness of insight into the nature he had to deal with. On Nostromo's side the silence had been full of black irresolution, anger, and mistrust. He was the first to break it, however. "The swimming was no great matter," he said. "It is what went before and what comes after that "
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. Decoud did not move; the effect was that of 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.
But Dominic the Corsican nursed a certain pride of ancestry from which my Nostromo is free; for Nostromo's lineage had to be more ancient still. He is a man with the weight of countless generations behind him and no parentage to boast of.... Like the People.
"Mi General," Nostromo's voice rang out loud, but quiet, from behind a group of officers, "I should like to save that little boat. Por Dios, I know her. She belongs to my Company." "And, por Dios," guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, good-humoured voice, "you belong to me. I am going to make you a captain of cavalry directly we get within sight of a horse again."
Old Giorgio, coming out, did not seem to be surprised at the intelligence as much as she had vaguely feared. For she was full of inexplicable fear now fear of everything and everybody except of her Giovanni and his treasure. But that was incredible. The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo's abrupt departure with a sagacious indulgence.
These words of Teresa's anger, from the circumstances in which they had been uttered, like the cry of a soul prevented from making its peace with God, stirred the obscure superstition of personal fortune from which even the greatest genius amongst men of adventure and action is seldom free. They reigned over Nostromo's mind with the force of a potent malediction.
She pronounced the name exactly with her mother's intonation. A gloom as of the grave covered Nostromo's heart. "Yes. I knew," he said. The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary head, his old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and violent, terrible and dreary solitary on the earth full of men.
The bird stretched his bare neck, craned his bald head, loathsome in the brilliance of varied colouring, with an air of voracious anxiety towards the promising stillness of that prostrate body. Then, sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nostromo's eyes fell on waking was this patient watcher for the signs of death and corruption.
Decoud had attended to the concealment of the silver as instructed, using the spade with some intelligence. But Nostromo's half-smile of approval changed into a scornful curl of the lip by the sight of the spade itself flung there in full view, as if in utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving away the whole thing. Ah!
Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of Nostromo's hand, clattered on the floor. "Hullo!" exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a start. He could hear the Capataz stagger against the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction of the light within, the dead blackness sealing the window-frames became alive with stars to his sight.
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