Page 586 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

ed and feared Captain Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of
secret societies, a republican like old Giorgio, and a revolu-
tionist at heart (but in another manner), was on the point
of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner.
That man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide de-
liberately in the face. But he never lost his head. He was
checked by the thought that this was no escape. He imag-
ined himself dead, and the disgrace, the shame going on.
Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine him-
self dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his
own existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to
grasp the notion of finality. The earth goes on for ever.
And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it
was as good for his purposes as the other kind. He sailed
close to the cliff of the Great Isabel, throwing a penetrating
glance from the deck at the mouth of the ravine, tangled in
an undisturbed growth of bushes. He sailed close enough to
exchange hails with the workmen, shading their eyes on the
edge of the sheer drop of the cliff overhung by the jib-head
of a powerful crane. He perceived that none of them had
any occasion even to approach the ravine where the silver
lay hidden; let alone to enter it. In the harbour he learned
that no one slept on the island. The labouring gangs re-
turned to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the
empty lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the moment he
had nothing to fear.
But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper
came to live in the cottage that was being built some hundred
and fifty yards back from the low lighttower, and four hun-