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

made a few steps, then stopped again and shook his head.To the left and right, in front and behind him, the scrubbybush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.‘Teresa was right, too,’ he added in a low tone touchedwith awe. He wondered whether she was dead in her angerwith him or still alive. As if in answer to this thought, halfof remorse and half of hope, with a soft flutter and obliqueflight, a big owl, whose appalling cry: ‘Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo!—it is finished; it is finished’—announces calamity and deathin the popular belief, drifted vaguely like a large dark ballacross his path. In the downfall of all the realities that madehis force, he was affected by the superstition, and shudderedslightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It could meannothing else. The cry of the ill-omened bird, the first soundhe was to hear on his return, was a fitting welcome for hisbetrayed individuality. The unseen powers which he had offendedby refusing to bring a priest to a dying woman werelifting up their voice against him. She was dead. With admirableand human consistency he referred everything tohimself. She had been a woman of good counsel always.And the bereaved old Giorgio remained stunned by his lossjust as he was likely to require the advice of his sagacity. Theblow would render the dreamy old man quite stupid for atime.As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner oftrusted subordinates, considered him as a person fitted byeducation perhaps to sign papers in an office and to giveorders, but otherwise of no use whatever, and something ofa fool. The necessity of winding round his little finger, al-