Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

dismantled houses acquired by the Company for their townstation on one side of the Plaza, and Nostromo, whose Cargadoreswere sleeping under the arcades along the front ofAnzani’s shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the Intendenciasaloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the Plaza, in ahigh flame swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. Thedead body of a man was lying on the steps of the pedestal,his arms thrown wide open, and his sombrero covering hisface—the attention of some friend, perhaps. The light of theflames touched the foliage of the first trees on the Alameda,and played on the end of a side street near by, blocked up bya jumble of ox-carts and dead bullocks. Sitting on one of thecarcasses, a lepero, muffled up, smoked a cigarette. It was atruce, you understand. The only other living being on thePlaza besides ourselves was a Cargador walking to and fro,with a long, bare knife in his hand, like a sentry before theArcades, where his friends were sleeping. And the only otherspot of light in the dark town were the lighted windowsof the club, at the corner of the Calle.’After having written so far, Don Martin Decoud, the exoticdandy of the Parisian boulevard, got up and walkedacross the sanded floor of the cafe at one end of the Albergoof United Italy, kept by Giorgio Viola, the old companionof Garibaldi. The highly coloured lithograph of the FaithfulHero seemed to look dimly, in the light of one candle, atthe man with no faith in anything except the truth of hisown sensations. Looking out of the window, Decoud wasmet by a darkness so impenetrable that he could see neitherthe mountains nor the town, nor yet the buildings near the