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

endary treasure.At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, Decoud,turning in his lair of coarse grass, under the shade of a tree,said to himself—‘I have not seen as much as one single bird all day.’And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that onenow of his own muttering voice. It had been a day of absolutesilence—the first he had known in his life. And he hadnot slept a wink. Not for all these wakeful nights and thedays of fighting, planning, talking; not for all that last nightof danger and hard physical toil upon the gulf, had he beenable to close his eyes for a moment. And yet from sunrise tosunset he had been lying prone on the ground, either on hisback or on his face.He stretched himself, and with slow steps descendedinto the gully to spend the night by the side of the silver.If Nostromo returned—as he might have done at anymoment—it was there that he would look first; and nightwould, of course, be the proper time for an attempt to communicate.He remembered with profound indifference thathe had not eaten anything yet since he had been left aloneon the island.He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day brokehe ate something with the same indifference. The brilliant‘Son Decoud,’ the spoiled darling of the family, the loverof Antonia and journalist of Sulaco, was not fit to grapplewith himself single-handed. Solitude from mere outwardcondition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soulin which the affectations of irony and scepticism have no