Page 544 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

confines of waking and sleep with resolutely open eyes and
a faint but amiable curl upon his lips, from between which
stuck out the eighteenth or twentieth cigar of that memo-
rable day.
‘He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting
ghost, sir’—Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo
with true warmth of feeling and a touch of wistful pride.
‘You may imagine, sir, what an effect it produced on me. He
had come round by sea with Barrios, of course. And the
first thing he told me after I became fit to hear him was
that he had picked up the lighter’s boat floating in the gulf!
He seemed quite overcome by the circumstance. And a re-
markable enough circumstance it was, when you remember
that it was then sixteen days since the sinking of the silver.
At once I could see he was another man. He stared at the
wall, sir, as if there had been a spider or something running
about there. The loss of the silver preyed on his mind. The
first thing he asked me about was whether Dona Antonia
had heard yet of Decoud’s death. His voice trembled. I had
to tell him that Dona Antonia, as a matter of fact, was not
back in town yet. Poor girl! And just as I was making ready
to ask him a thousand questions, with a sudden, ‘Pardon
me, senor,’ he cleared out of the office altogether. I did not
see him again for three days. I was terribly busy, you know.
It seems that he wandered about in and out of the town, and
on two nights turned up to sleep in the baracoons of the
railway people. He seemed absolutely indifferent to what
went on. I asked him on the wharf, ‘When are you going to
take hold again, Nostromo? There will be plenty of work for