Page 415 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

battle upon some recondite pretext. The whole lot of ingots
might have been concealed somewhere where they could
have been got at for the purpose of staving off the dangers
which were menacing the security of the Gould Concession.
The Administrador had acted as if the immense and power-
ful prosperity of the mine had been founded on methods of
probity, on the sense of usefulness. And it was nothing of
the kind. The method followed had been the only one pos-
sible. The Gould Concession had ransomed its way through
all those years. It was a nauseous process. He quite under-
stood that Charles Gould had got sick of it and had left the
old path to back up that hopeless attempt at reform. The
doctor did not believe in the reform of Costaguana. And
now the mine was back again in its old path, with the dis-
advantage that henceforth it had to deal not only with the
greed provoked by its wealth, but with the resentment
awakened by the attempt to free itself from its bondage to
moral corruption. That was the penalty of failure. What
made him uneasy was that Charles Gould seemed to him
to have weakened at the decisive moment when a frank re-
turn to the old methods was the only chance. Listening to
Decoud’s wild scheme had been a weakness.
The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, ‘Decoud! De-
coud!’ He hobbled about the room with slight, angry laughs.
Many years ago both his ankles had been seriously damaged
in the course of a certain investigation conducted in the
castle of Sta. Marta by a commission composed of military
men. Their nomination had been signified to them unex-
pectedly at the dead of night, with scowling brow, flashing

1 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard