Page 340 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Nostromo detected the ironic tone. ‘I dare say, Senor
Don Martin,’ he said, moodily. ‘There are very few things
that I am not equal to. Ask the foreign signori. I, a man of
the people, who cannot always understand what you mean.
But as to this lot which I must leave here, let me tell you that
I would believe it in greater safety if you had not been with
me at all.’
An exclamation escaped Decoud, and a short pause fol-
lowed. ‘Shall I go back with you to Sulaco?’ he asked in an
angry tone.
‘Shall I strike you dead with my knife where you stand?’
retorted Nostromo, contemptuously. ‘It would be the same
thing as taking you to Sulaco. Come, senor. Your reputa-
tion is in your politics, and mine is bound up with the fate
of this silver. Do you wonder I wish there had been no other
man to share my knowledge? I wanted no one with me, se-
nor.’
‘You could not have kept the lighter afloat without me,’
Decoud almost shouted. ‘You would have gone to the bot-
tom with her.’
‘Yes,’ uttered Nostromo, slowly; ‘alone.’
Here was a man, Decoud reflected, that seemed as though
he would have preferred to die rather than deface the per-
fect form of his egoism. Such a man was safe. In silence he
helped the Capataz to get the grapnel on board. Nostromo
cleared the shelving shore with one push of the heavy oar,
and Decoud found himself solitary on the beach like a man
in a dream. A sudden desire to hear a human voice once
more seized upon his heart. The lighter was hardly distin-