Nostromo by Joseph Conrad (book recommendations .txt) 📕

confiding in anyone whatever; even in the officers of the company’s steamers, if you ever get on board one. Honesty alone is not enough for security. You must look to discretion and prudence in a man. And always remember, señor, before you open your lips for a confidence, that this treasure may be left safely here for hundreds of years. Time is on its side, señor. And silver is an incorruptible metal that can be trusted to keep its value forever⁠ ⁠… An incorruptible metal,” he repeated, as if the idea had given him a profound pleasure.

“As some men are said to be,” Decoud pronounced, inscrutably, while the capataz, who busied himself in baling out the lighter with a wooden bucket, went on throwing the water over the side with a regular splash. Decoud, incorrigible in his scepticism, reflected, not cynically, but with general satisfaction, that this man was made incorruptible by his enormous vanity, that finest form of egoism which can take on the aspect of every virtue.

Nostromo ceased baling, and, as if struck with a sudden thought, dropped the bucket with a clatter into the lighter.

“Have you any message?” he asked in a lowered voice. “Remember, I shall be asked questions.”

“You must find the hopeful words that ought to be spoken to the people in town. I trust for that your intelligence and your experience, capataz. You understand?”

“Si, señor⁠ ⁠… For the ladies.”

“Yes, yes,” said Decoud, hastily. “Your wonderful reputation will make them attach great value to your words; therefore be careful what you say. I am looking forward,” he continued, feeling the fatal touch of contempt for himself to which his complex nature was subject, “I am looking forward to a glorious and successful ending to my mission. Do you hear, capataz? Use the words glorious and successful when you speak to the señorita. Your own mission is accomplished gloriously and successfully. You have indubitably saved the silver of the mine. Not only this silver, but probably all the silver that shall ever come out of it.”

Nostromo detected the ironic tone. “I dare say, señor Don Martin,” he said, moodily. “There are very few things that I am not equal to. Ask the foreign signori. I, a man of the people, who cannot always understand what you mean. But as to this lot which I must leave here, let me tell you that I would believe it in greater safety if you had not been with me at all.”

An exclamation escaped Decoud, and a short pause followed. “Shall I go back with you to Sulaco?” he asked in an angry tone.

“Shall I strike you dead with my knife where you stand?” retorted Nostromo, contemptuously. “It would be the same thing as taking you to Sulaco. Come, señor. Your reputation is in your politics, and mine is bound up with the fate of this silver. Do you wonder I wish there had been no other man to share my knowledge? I wanted no one with me, señor.”

“You could not have kept the lighter afloat without me,” Decoud almost shouted. “You would have gone to the bottom with her.”

“Yes,” uttered Nostromo, slowly; “alone.”

Here was a man, Decoud reflected, that seemed as though he would have preferred to die rather than deface the perfect form of his egoism. Such a man was safe. In silence he helped the capataz to get the grapnel on board. Nostromo cleared the shelving shore with one push of the heavy oar, and Decoud found himself solitary on the beach like a man in a dream. A sudden desire to hear a human voice once more seized upon his heart. The lighter was hardly distinguishable from the black water upon which she floated.

“What do you think has become of Hirsch?” he shouted.

“Knocked overboard and drowned,” cried Nostromo’s voice confidently out of the black wastes of sky and sea around the islet. “Keep close in the ravine, señor. I shall try to come out to you in a night or two.”

A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was setting the sail. It filled all at once with a sound as of a single loud drum-tap. Decoud went back to the ravine. Nostromo, at the tiller, looked back from time to time at the vanishing mass of the Great Isabel, which, little by little, merged into the uniform texture of the night. At last, when he turned his head again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, like a solid wall.

Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude which had weighed heavily on Decoud after the lighter had slipped off the shore. But while the man on the island was oppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality affecting the very ground upon which he walked, the mind of the capataz of the cargadores turned alertly to the problem of future conduct. Nostromo’s faculties, working on parallel lines, enabled him to steer straight, to keep a lookout for Hermosa, near which he had to pass, and to try to imagine what would happen tomorrow in Sulaco. Tomorrow, or, as a matter of fact, today, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillo would find out in what way the treasure had gone. A gang of cargadores had been employed in loading it into a railway truck from the custom house storerooms, and running the truck on to the wharf. There would be arrests made, and certainly before noon Sotillo would know in what manner the silver had left Sulaco, and who it was that took it out.

Nostromo’s intention had been to sail right into the harbour; but at this thought by a sudden touch of the tiller he threw the lighter into the wind and checked her rapid way. His reappearance with the very boat would raise suspicions, would cause surmises, would absolutely put Sotillo on the track. He himself would be arrested; and once in the calabozo there was no saying what they would do to him to make him speak. He trusted himself, but he stood