Page 489 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

ed in a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, he described
the story of his arrest and the circumstances of his release.
‘I was going back to that silly scoundrel when we met,’ he
concluded.
Nostromo had listened with profound attention. ‘You
have made up your mind, then, to a speedy death,’ he mut-
tered through his clenched teeth.
‘Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz,’ the doctor said, testily.
‘You are not the only one here who can look an ugly death
in the face.’
‘No doubt,’ mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be over-
heard. ‘There may be even more than two fools in this place.
Who knows?’
‘And that is my affair,’ said the doctor, curtly.
‘As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my affair,’ re-
torted Nostromo. ‘I see. Bueno! Each of us has his reasons.
But you were the last man I conversed with before I started,
and you talked to me as if I were a fool.’
Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor’s sardon-
ic treatment of his great reputation. Decoud’s faintly ironic
recognition used to make him uneasy; but the familiarity of
a man like Don Martin was flattering, whereas the doctor
was a nobody. He could remember him a penniless outcast,
slinking about the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend
or acquaintance, till Don Carlos Gould took him into the
service of the mine.
‘You may be very wise,’ he went on, thoughtfully, staring
into the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome
enigma of the tortured and murdered Hirsch. ‘But I am not

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard