Page 573 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

‘What I wanted to tell you is this: Our great Nostromo
did not take much notice of the old man and the children
for some years. It’s true, too, that he was away on his coast-
ing voyages certainly ten months out of the twelve. He was
making his fortune, as he told Captain Mitchell once. He
seems to have done uncommonly well. It was only to be ex-
pected. He is a man full of resource, full of confidence in
himself, ready to take chances and risks of every sort. I re-
member being in Mitchell’s office one day, when he came
in with that calm, grave air he always carries everywhere.
He had been away trading in the Gulf of California, he said,
looking straight past us at the wall, as his manner is, and
was glad to see on his return that a lighthouse was being
built on the cliff of the Great Isabel. Very glad, he repeat-
ed. Mitchell explained that it was the O. S. N. Co. who was
building it, for the convenience of the mail service, on his
own advice. Captain Fidanza was good enough to say that it
was excellent advice. I remember him twisting up his mous-
taches and looking all round the cornice of the room before
he proposed that old Giorgio should be made the keeper of
that light.’
‘I heard of this. I was consulted at the time,’ Mrs. Gould
said. ‘I doubted whether it would be good for these girls to
be shut up on that island as if in a prison.’
‘The proposal fell in with the old Garibaldino’s humour.
As to Linda, any place was lovely and delightful enough for
her as long as it was Nostromo’s suggestion. She could wait
for her Gian’ Battista’s good pleasure there as well as any-
where else. My opinion is that she was always in love with

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard