Page 548 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Ha! ha! ha! He wants me to admit that we cannot take Su-
laco without him! Ha! ha! ha! Would you like to swim off
to her, my son?’
A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other
stopped his guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and
his black head bobbed up far away already from the ship.
The General muttered an appalled ‘Cielo! Sinner that I am!’
in a thunderstruck tone. One anxious glance was enough to
show him that Nostromo was swimming with perfect ease;
and then he thundered terribly, ‘No! no! We shall not stop
to pick up this impertinent fellow. Let him drown—that
mad Capataz.’
Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo
from leaping overboard. That empty boat, coming out to
meet him mysteriously, as if rowed by an invisible spectre,
exercised the fascination of some sign, of some warning,
seemed to answer in a startling and enigmatic way the per-
sistent thought of a treasure and of a man’s fate. He would
have leaped if there had been death in that half-mile of wa-
ter. It was as smooth as a pond, and for some reason sharks
are unknown in the Placid Gulf, though on the other side of
the Punta Mala the coastline swarms with them.
The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with force.
A queer, faint feeling had come over him while he swam. He
had got rid of his boots and coat in the water. He hung on for
a time, regaining his breath. In the distance the transports,
more in a bunch now, held on straight for Sulaco, with their
air of friendly contest, of nautical sport, of a regatta; and the
united smoke of their funnels drove like a thin, sulphurous