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

on high a stream of dry peas upon a drum. After listeningfor a while, he said, half aloud—‘He will never come back to explain.’And he lowered his head again.‘Impossible!’ he muttered, gloomily.The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great conflagrationin Sulaco flashed up red above the coast, playedon the clouds at the head of the gulf, seemed to touch with aruddy and sinister reflection the forms of the Three Isabels.He never saw it, though he raised his head.‘But, then, I cannot know,’ he pronounced, distinctly,and remained silent and staring for hours.He could not know. Nobody was to know. As might havebeen supposed, the end of Don Martin Decoud never becamea subject of speculation for any one except Nostromo.Had the truth of the facts been known, there would alwayshave remained the question. Why? Whereas the version ofhis death at the sinking of the lighter had no uncertainty ofmotive. The young apostle of Separation had died strivingfor his idea by an ever-lamented accident. But the truth wasthat he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few onthis earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand.The brilliant Costaguanero of the boulevards haddied from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.For some good and valid reasons beyond mere humancomprehension, the sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels.The rocky head of Azuera is their haunt, whose stony levelsand chasms resound with their wild and tumultuousclamour as if they were for ever quarrelling over the leg-