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

guishable from the black water upon which she floated.‘What do you think has become of Hirsch?’ he shouted.‘Knocked overboard and drowned,’ cried Nostromo’svoice confidently out of the black wastes of sky and seaaround the islet. ‘Keep close in the ravine, senor. I shall tryto come out to you in a night or two.’A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was settingthe sail. It filled all at once with a sound as of a singleloud drum-tap. Decoud went back to the ravine. Nostromo,at the tiller, looked back from time to time at the vanishingmass of the Great Isabel, which, little by little, merged intothe uniform texture of the night. At last, when he turnedhis head again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, likea solid wall.Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude whichhad weighed heavily on Decoud after the lighter hadslipped off the shore. But while the man on the island wasoppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality affecting the veryground upon which he walked, the mind of the Capatazof the Cargadores turned alertly to the problem of futureconduct. Nostromo’s faculties, working on parallel lines,enabled him to steer straight, to keep a look-out for Hermosa,near which he had to pass, and to try to imagine whatwould happen tomorrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or, as a matterof fact, to-day, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillowould find out in what way the treasure had gone. A gang ofCargadores had been employed in loading it into a railwaytruck from the Custom House store-rooms, and runningthe truck on to the wharf. There would be arrests made, and