Page 341 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

guishable from the black water upon which she floated.
‘What do you think has become of Hirsch?’ he shouted.
‘Knocked overboard and drowned,’ cried Nostromo’s
voice confidently out of the black wastes of sky and sea
around the islet. ‘Keep close in the ravine, senor. I shall try
to come out to you in a night or two.’
A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was set-
ting the sail. It filled all at once with a sound as of a single
loud drum-tap. Decoud went back to the ravine. Nostromo,
at the tiller, looked back from time to time at the vanishing
mass of the Great Isabel, which, little by little, merged into
the uniform texture of the night. At last, when he turned
his head again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, like
a solid wall.
Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude which
had weighed heavily on Decoud after the lighter had
slipped off the shore. But while the man on the island was
oppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality affecting the very
ground upon which he walked, the mind of the Capataz
of the Cargadores turned alertly to the problem of future
conduct. Nostromo’s faculties, working on parallel lines,
enabled him to steer straight, to keep a look-out for Her-
mosa, near which he had to pass, and to try to imagine what
would happen tomorrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or, as a mat-
ter of fact, to-day, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillo
would find out in what way the treasure had gone. A gang of
Cargadores had been employed in loading it into a railway
truck from the Custom House store-rooms, and running
the truck on to the wharf. There would be arrests made, and

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