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

an ideal meaning from his love for Antonia. For all theirefforts, the heavily laden lighter hardly moved. Nostromocould be heard swearing to himself between the regularsplashes of the sweeps. ‘We are making a crooked path,’ hemuttered to himself. ‘I wish I could see the islands.’In his unskilfulness Don Martin over-exerted himself.Now and then a sort of muscular faintness would run fromthe tips of his aching fingers through every fibre of his body,and pass off in a flush of heat. He had fought, talked, sufferedmentally and physically, exerting his mind and body for thelast forty-eight hours without intermission. He had had norest, very little food, no pause in the stress of his thoughtsand his feelings. Even his love for Antonia, whence he drewhis strength and his inspiration, had reached the point oftragic tension during their hurried interview by Don Jose’sbedside. And now, suddenly, he was thrown out of all thisinto a dark gulf, whose very gloom, silence, and breathlesspeace added a torment to the necessity for physical exertion.He imagined the lighter sinking to the bottom withan extraordinary shudder of delight. ‘I am on the verge ofdelirium,’ he thought. He mastered the trembling of all hislimbs, of his breast, the inward trembling of all his body exhaustedof its nervous force.‘Shall we rest, Capataz?’ 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 sortof rest, I can promise you, since you let yourself be boundto this treasure whose loss would make no poor man poor-