Page 477 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

him that anybody should suggest such a thing. It angered
him to be disarmed and skulking and in danger because of
the accursed treasure, which was of so little account to the
people who had tied it round his neck. He could not shake
off the worry of it. To Nostromo the doctor represented all
these people…. And he had never even asked after it. Not a
word of inquiry about the most desperate undertaking of
his life.
Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again
through the cavernous hall, where the smoke was consider-
ably thinned, and went up the stairs, not so warm to his feet
now, towards the streak of light at the top. The doctor ap-
peared in it for a moment, agitated and impatient.
‘Come up! Come up!’
At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz ex-
perienced a shock of surprise. The man had not moved. He
saw his shadow in the same place. He started, then stepped
in with a feeling of being about to solve a mystery.
It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of a sec-
ond, against the light of two flaring and guttering candles,
through a blue, pungent, thin haze which made his eyes
smart, he saw the man standing, as he had imagined him,
with his back to the door, casting an enormous and distort-
ed shadow upon the wall. Swifter than a flash of lightning
followed the impression of his constrained, toppling atti-
tude—the shoulders projecting forward, the head sunk low
upon the breast. Then he distinguished the arms behind his
back, and wrenched so terribly that the two clenched fists,
lashed together, had been forced up higher than the shoul-

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard