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

ution meted out to intellectual audacity, the brilliant DonMartin Decoud, weighted by the bars of San Tome silver,disappeared without a trace, swallowed up in the immenseindifference of things. His sleepless, crouching figure wasgone from the side of the San Tome silver; and for a timethe spirits of good and evil that hover near every concealedtreasure of the earth might have thought that this one hadbeen forgotten by all mankind. Then, after a few days, anotherform appeared striding away from the setting sunto sit motionless and awake in the narrow black gully allthrough the night, in nearly the same pose, in the sameplace in which had sat that other sleepless man who hadgone away for ever so quietly in a small boat, about the timeof sunset. And the spirits of good and evil that hover abouta forbidden treasure understood well that the silver of SanTome was provided now with a faithful and lifelong slave.The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of thedisenchanted vanity which is the reward of audacious action,sat in the weary pose of a hunted outcast through anight of sleeplessness as tormenting as any known to Decoud,his companion in the most desperate affair of hislife. And he wondered how Decoud had died. But he knewthe part he had played himself. First a woman, then a man,abandoned both in their last extremity, for the sake of thisaccursed treasure. It was paid for by a soul lost and by avanished life. The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by agust of immense pride. There was no one in the world butGian’ Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptibleand faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price.