Page 481 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

their shoulders touch, and their eyes remained directed
towards an upright shape nearly lost in the obscurity of
the inner part of the room, that with projecting head and
shoulders, in ghastly immobility, seemed intent on catch-
ing every word.
‘Muy bien!’ Nostromo muttered at last. ‘So be it. Teresa
was right. It is my own affair.’
‘Teresa is dead,’ remarked the doctor, absently, while
his mind followed a new line of thought suggested by what
might have been called Nostromo’s return to life. ‘She died,
the poor woman.’
‘Without a priest?’ the Capataz asked, anxiously.
‘What a question! Who could have got a priest for her
last night?’
‘May God keep her soul!’ ejaculated Nostromo, with a
gloomy and hopeless fervour which had no time to surprise
Dr. Monygham, before, reverting to their previous conver-
sation, he continued in a sinister tone, ‘Si, senor doctor. As
you were saying, it is my own affair. A very desperate af-
fair.’
‘There are no two men in this part of the world that could
have saved themselves by swimming as you have done,’ the
doctor said, admiringly.
And again there was silence between those two men.
They were both reflecting, and the diversity of their na-
tures made their thoughts born from their meeting swing
afar from each other. The doctor, impelled to risky action
by his loyalty to the Goulds, wondered with thankfulness
at the chain of accident which had brought that man back

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard