Page 559 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

bution meted out to intellectual audacity, the brilliant Don
Martin Decoud, weighted by the bars of San Tome silver,
disappeared without a trace, swallowed up in the immense
indifference of things. His sleepless, crouching figure was
gone from the side of the San Tome silver; and for a time
the spirits of good and evil that hover near every concealed
treasure of the earth might have thought that this one had
been forgotten by all mankind. Then, after a few days, an-
other form appeared striding away from the setting sun
to sit motionless and awake in the narrow black gully all
through the night, in nearly the same pose, in the same
place in which had sat that other sleepless man who had
gone away for ever so quietly in a small boat, about the time
of sunset. And the spirits of good and evil that hover about
a forbidden treasure understood well that the silver of San
Tome was provided now with a faithful and lifelong slave.
The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of the
disenchanted vanity which is the reward of audacious ac-
tion, sat in the weary pose of a hunted outcast through a
night of sleeplessness as tormenting as any known to De-
coud, his companion in the most desperate affair of his
life. And he wondered how Decoud had died. But he knew
the part he had played himself. First a woman, then a man,
abandoned both in their last extremity, for the sake of this
accursed treasure. It was paid for by a soul lost and by a
vanished life. The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by a
gust of immense pride. There was no one in the world but
Gian’ Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incor-
ruptible and faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price.

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard