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

dark.‘Yes, that is exactly what I did say,’ he uttered at last, ina tone which would have made it clear enough to a thirdparty that the pause was not of a reluctant but of a reflectivecharacter. Captain Mitchell thought that he had neverheard anything so brazenly impudent in his life.‘Well, well!’ he muttered to himself, but he had notthe heart to voice his thoughts. They were swept away byothers full of astonishment and regret. A heavy sense of discomfiturecrushed him: the loss of the silver, the death ofNostromo, which was really quite a blow to his sensibilities,because he had become attached to his Capataz as peopleget attached to their inferiors from love of ease and almostunconscious gratitude. And when he thought of Decoudbeing drowned, too, his sensibility was almost overcome bythis miserable end. What a heavy blow for that poor youngwoman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the speciesof crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to seeyoung men paying attentions to young women. It seemedto him a natural and proper thing. Proper especially. As tosailors, it was different; it was not their place to marry, hemaintained, but it was on moral grounds as a matter of selfdenial,for, he explained, life on board ship is not fit for awoman even at best, and if you leave her on shore, first ofall it is not fair, and next she either suffers from it or doesn’tcare a bit, which, in both cases, is bad. He couldn’t have toldwhat upset him most—Charles Gould’s immense materialloss, the death of Nostromo, which was a heavy loss to himself,or the idea of that beautiful and accomplished young