Page 583 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER TWELVE

OSTROMO had been growing rich very slowly. It was
Nan effect of his prudence. He could command himself
even when thrown off his balance. And to become the slave
of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an occurrence rare
and mentally disturbing. But it was also in a great part be-
cause of the difficulty of converting it into a form in which
it could become available. The mere act of getting it away
from the island piecemeal, little by little, was surrounded
by difficulties, by the dangers of imminent detection. He
had to visit the Great Isabel in secret, between his voyages
along the coast, which were the ostensible source of his for-
tune. The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as if
they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He did not
dare stay too long in port. When his coaster was unload-
ed, he hurried away on another trip, for he feared arousing
suspicion even by a day’s delay. Sometimes during a week’s
stay, or more, he could only manage one visit to the treasure.
And that was all. A couple of ingots. He suffered through
his fears as much as through his prudence. To do things by
stealth humiliated him. And he suffered most from the con-
centration of his thought upon the treasure.
A transgression, a crime, entering a man’s existence,
eats it up like a malignant growth, consumes it like a fe-
ver. Nostromo had lost his peace; the genuineness of all his

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard