Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard


"Yes, everybody knows of your good luck with women, Capataz," Decoud
propitiated his companion in a weary drawl.

"Look here, senor," Nostromo went on. "I never even remonstrated about
this affair. Directly I heard what was wanted I saw what a desperate
affair it must be, and I made up my mind to see it out. Every minute was
of importance. I had to wait for you first. Then, when we arrived at
the Italia Una, old Giorgio shouted to me to go for the English doctor.
Later on, that poor dying woman wanted to see me, as you know. Senor,
I was reluctant to go. I felt already this cursed silver growing heavy
upon my back, and I was afraid that, knowing herself to be dying, she
would ask me to ride off again for a priest. Father Corbelan, who is
fearless, would have come at a word; but Father Corbelan is far away,
safe with the band of Hernandez, and the populace, that would have liked
to tear him to pieces, are much incensed against the priests. Not
a single fat padre would have consented to put his head out of his
hiding-place to-night to save a Christian soul, except, perhaps, under
my protection. That was in her mind. I pretended I did not believe she
was going to die. Senor, I refused to fetch a priest for a dying
woman. . . ."

Decoud was heard to stir.

"You did, Capataz!" he exclaimed. His tone changed. "Well, you know--it
was rather fine."

"You do not believe in priests, Don Martin? Neither do I. What was the
use of wasting time? But she--she believes in them. The thing sticks in
my throat. She may be dead already, and here we are floating helpless
with no wind at all. Curse on all superstition. She died thinking I
deprived her of Paradise, I suppose. It shall be the most desperate
affair of my life."

Decoud remained lost in reflection. He tried to analyze the sensations
awaked by what he had been told. The voice of the Capataz was heard
again:

"Now, Don Martin, let us take up the sweeps and try to find the Isabels.
It is either that or sinking the lighter if the day overtakes us. We
must not forget that the steamer from Esmeralda with the soldiers may be
coming along. We will pull straight on now. I have discovered a bit of a
candle here, and we must take the risk of a small light to make a course
by the boat compass. There is not enough wind to blow it out--may the
curse of Heaven fall upon this blind gulf!"

A small flame appeared burning quite straight. It showed fragmentarily
the stout ribs and planking in the hollow, empty part of the lighter.
Decoud could see Nostromo standing up to pull. He saw him as high as the
red sash on his waist, with a gleam of a white-handled revolver and the
wooden haft of a long knife protruding on his left side. Decoud nerved
himself for the effort of rowing. Certainly there was not enough wind to
blow the candle out, but its flame swayed a little to the slow movement
of the heavy boat. It was so big that with their utmost efforts
they could not move it quicker than about a mile an hour. This was
sufficient, however, to sweep them amongst the Isabels long before
daylight came. There was a good six hours of darkness before them, and
the distance from the harbour to the Great Isabel did not exceed two
miles. Decoud put this heavy toil to the account of the Capataz's
impatience. Sometimes they paused, and then strained their ears to hear
the boat from Esmeralda. In this perfect quietness a steamer moving
would have been heard from far off. As to seeing anything it was out of
the question. They could not see each other. Even the lighter's sail,
which remained set, was invisible. Very often they rested.

"Caramba!" said Nostromo, suddenly, during one of those intervals when
they lolled idly against the heavy handles of the sweeps. "What is it?
Are you distressed, Don Martin?"

Decoud assured him that he was not distressed in the least. Nostromo
for a time kept perfectly still, and then in a whisper invited Martin to
come aft.

With his lips touching Decoud's ear he declared his belief that there
was somebody else besides themselves upon the lighter. Twice now he had
heard the sound of stifled sobbing.

"Senor," he whispered with awed wonder, "I am certain that there is
somebody weeping in this lighter."

Decoud had heard nothing. He expressed his incredulity. However, it was
easy to ascertain the truth of the matter.

"It is most amazing," muttered Nostromo. "Could anybody have concealed
himself on board while the lighter was lying alongside the wharf?"

"And you say it was like sobbing?" asked Decoud, lowering his voice,
too. "If he is weeping, whoever he is he cannot be very dangerous."

Clambering over the precious pile in the middle, they crouched low on
the foreside of the mast and groped under the half-deck. Right forward,
in the narrowest part, their hands came upon the limbs of a man, who
remained as silent as death. Too startled themselves to make a sound,
they dragged him aft by one arm and the collar of his coat. He was
limp--lifeless.

The light of the bit of candle fell upon a round, hook-nosed face with
black moustaches and little side-whiskers. He was extremely dirty. A
greasy growth of beard was sprouting on the shaven parts of the cheeks.
The thick lips were slightly parted, but the eyes remained closed.
Decoud, to his immense astonishment, recognized Senor Hirsch, the hide
merchant from Esmeralda. Nostromo, too, had recognized him. And they
gazed at each other across the body, lying with its naked feet higher
than its head, in an absurd pretence of sleep, faintness, or death.



CHAPTER EIGHT

For a moment, before this extraordinary find, they forgot their own
concerns and sensations. Senor Hirsch's sensations as he lay there must
have been those of extreme terror. For a long time he refused to give
a sign of life, till at last Decoud's objurgations, and, perhaps more,
Nostromo's impatient suggestion that he should be thrown overboard, as
he seemed to be dead, induced him to raise one eyelid first, and then
the other.

It appeared that he had never found a safe opportunity to leave Sulaco.
He lodged with Anzani, the universal storekeeper, on the Plaza Mayor.
But when the riot broke out he had made his escape from his host's house
before daylight, and in such a hurry that he had forgotten to put on his
shoes. He had run out impulsively in his socks, and with his hat in his
hand, into the garden of Anzani's house. Fear gave him the necessary
agility to climb over several low walls, and afterwards he blundered
into the overgrown cloisters of the ruined Franciscan convent in one of
the by-streets. He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes with
the recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for his scratched
body and his torn clothing. He lay hidden there all day, his tongue
cleaving to the roof of his mouth with all the intensity of thirst
engendered by heat and fear. Three times different bands of men invaded
the place with shouts and imprecations, looking for Father Corbelan; but
towards the evening, still lying on his face in the bushes, he thought
he would die from the fear of silence. He was not very clear as to what
had induced him to leave the place, but evidently he had got out
and slunk successfully out of town along the deserted back lanes. He
wandered in the darkness near the railway, so maddened by apprehension
that he dared not even approach the fires of the pickets of Italian
workmen guarding the line. He had a vague idea evidently of finding
refuge in the railway yards, but the dogs rushed upon him, barking; men
began to shout; a shot was fired at random. He fled away from the gates.
By the merest accident, as it happened, he took the direction of the
O.S.N. Company's offices. Twice he stumbled upon the bodies of men
killed during the day. But everything living frightened him much more.
He crouched, crept, crawled, made dashes, guided by a sort of animal
instinct, keeping away from every light and from every sound of voices.
His idea was to throw himself at the feet of Captain Mitchell and
beg for shelter in the Company's offices. It was all dark there as
he approached on his hands and knees, but suddenly someone on guard
challenged loudly, "Quien vive?" There were more dead men lying about,
and he flattened himself down at once by the side of a cold corpse. He
heard a voice saying, "Here is one of those wounded rascals crawling
about. Shall I go and finish him?" And another voice objected that it
was not safe to go out without a lantern upon such an errand; perhaps it
was only some negro Liberal looking for a chance to stick a knife into
the stomach of an honest man. Hirsch didn't stay to hear any more, but
crawling away to the end of the wharf, hid himself amongst a lot of
empty casks. After a while some people came along, talking, and with
glowing cigarettes. He did not stop to ask himself whether they would be
likely to do him any harm, but bolted incontinently along the jetty,
saw a lighter lying moored at the end, and threw himself into it. In his
desire to find cover he crept right forward under the half-deck, and he
had remained there more dead than alive, suffering agonies of hunger
and thirst, and almost fainting with terror, when he heard numerous
footsteps and the voices of the Europeans who came in a body escorting
the wagonload of treasure, pushed along the rails by a squad of
Cargadores. He understood perfectly what was being done from the talk,
but did not disclose his presence from the fear that he would not
be allowed to remain. His only idea at the time, overpowering and
masterful, was to get away from this terrible Sulaco. And now he
regretted it very much. He had heard Nostromo talk to Decoud, and wished
himself back on shore. He did not desire to be involved in any desperate
affair--in a situation where one could not run away. The involuntary
groans of his anguished spirit had betrayed him to the sharp ears of the
Capataz.

They had propped him up in a sitting posture against the side of the
lighter, and he went on with the moaning account of his adventures till
his voice broke, his head fell forward. "Water," he whispered, with
difficulty. Decoud held one of the cans to his lips. He revived after
an extraordinarily short time, and scrambled up to his feet wildly.
Nostromo, in an angry and threatening voice, ordered him forward. Hirsch
was one of those men whom fear lashes like a whip, and he must have
had an appalling idea of the Capataz's ferocity. He displayed an
extraordinary agility in disappearing forward into the darkness. They
heard him getting over the tarpaulin; then there was the sound of a
heavy fall, followed by a weary sigh. Afterwards all was still in
the fore-part of the lighter, as though he had killed himself in his
headlong tumble. Nostromo shouted in a menacing voice--

"Lie still there! Do not move a limb. If I hear as much as a loud breath
from you I shall come over there and put a bullet through your head."

The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of
treachery into a dangerous situation. Nostromo's nervous impatience
passed into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as if
speaking to himself, remarked that, after all, this bizarre event made
no great difference. He could not conceive what harm the man could
do. At most he would be in the way, like an inanimate and useless
object--like a block of wood, for instance.

"I would think twice before getting rid of a piece of wood," said
Nostromo, calmly. "Something may happen unexpectedly where you could
make use of it. But in an affair like ours a man like this ought to be
thrown overboard. Even if he were as brave as a lion we would not want
him here. We are not running away for our lives. Senor, there is no harm
in a brave man trying to save himself with ingenuity and courage; but
you have heard his tale, Don Martin. His being here is a miracle of
fear--" Nostromo paused. "There is no room for fear in this lighter," he
added through his teeth.

Decoud had no answer to make. It was not a position for argument, for a
display of scruples or feelings. There were a thousand ways in which
a panic-stricken man could make himself dangerous. It was evident
that Hirsch could not be spoken to, reasoned with, or persuaded into a
rational line of conduct. The story of his own escape demonstrated that
clearly enough. Decoud thought that it was a thousand pities the wretch
had not died of fright. Nature, who had made him what he was, seemed to
have calculated cruelly how much he could bear in the way of atrocious
anguish without actually expiring. Some compassion was due to so much
terror. Decoud, though imaginative enough for sympathy, resolved not
to interfere with any action that Nostromo would take. But Nostromo did
nothing. And the fate of Senor Hirsch remained suspended in the darkness
of the gulf at the mercy of events which could not be foreseen.

The Capataz, extending his hand, put out the candle suddenly. It was to
Decoud as if his companion had destroyed, by a single touch, the world
of affairs, of loves, of revolution, where his complacent superiority
analyzed fearlessly all motives and all passions, including his own.

He gasped a little. Decoud was affected by the novelty of his position.
Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from being deprived of the
only weapon he could use with effect. No intelligence could penetrate
the darkness of the Placid Gulf. There remained only one thing he was
certain of, and that was the overweening vanity of his companion. It was
direct, uncomplicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been
making use of him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He
had discovered a complete singleness of motive behind the varied
manifestations of a consistent character. This was why the man remained
so astonishingly simple in the jealous greatness of his conceit. And now
there was a complication. It was evident that he resented having been
given a task in which there were so many chances of failure. "I wonder,"
thought Decoud, "how he would behave if I were not here."

He heard Nostromo mutter again, "No! there is no room for fear on this
lighter. Courage itself does not seem good enough. I have a good eye and
a steady hand; no man can say he ever saw me tired or uncertain what to
do; but por Dios, Don Martin, I have been sent out into this black calm
on a business where neither a good eye, nor a steady hand, nor judgment
are any use. . . ." He swore a string of oaths in Spanish and Italian
under his breath. "Nothing but sheer desperation will do for this
affair."

These words were in strange contrast to the prevailing peace--to
this almost solid stillness of the gulf. A shower fell with an abrupt
whispering sound all round the boat, and Decoud took off his hat, and,
letting his head get wet, felt greatly refreshed. Presently a steady
little draught of air caressed his cheek. The lighter began to move,
but the shower distanced it. The drops ceased to fall upon his head and
hands, the whispering died out in the distance. Nostromo emitted a grunt
of satisfaction, and grasping the tiller, chirruped softly, as sailors
do, to encourage the wind. Never for the last three days had Decoud felt
less the need for what the Capataz would call desperation.

"I fancy I hear another shower on the water," he observed in a tone of
quiet content. "I hope it will catch us up."

Nostromo ceased chirruping at once. "You hear another shower?" he said,
doubtfully. A sort of thinning of the darkness seemed to have taken
place, and Decoud could see now the outline of his companion's figure,
and even the sail came out of the night like a square block of dense
snow.

The sound which Decoud had detected came along the water harshly.
Nostromo recognized that noise partaking of a hiss and a rustle which
spreads out on all sides of a steamer making her way through a smooth
water on a quiet night. It could be nothing else but the captured
transport with troops from Esmeralda. She carried no lights. The noise
of her steaming, growing louder every minute, would stop at times
altogether, and then begin again abruptly, and sound startlingly nearer;
as if that invisible vessel, whose position could not be precisely
guessed, were making straight for the lighter. Meantime, that last kept
on sailing slowly and noiselessly before a breeze so faint that it was
only by leaning over the side and feeling the water slip through his
fingers that Decoud convinced himself they were moving at all. His
drowsy feeling had departed. He was glad to know that the lighter
was moving. After so much stillness the noise of the steamer seemed
uproarious and distracting. There was a weirdness in not being able to
see her. Suddenly all was still. She had stopped, but so close to them
that the steam, blowing off, sent its rumbling vibration right over
their heads.

"They are trying to make out where they are," said Decoud in a whisper.
Again he leaned over and put his fingers into the water. "We are moving
quite smartly," he informed Nostromo.

"We seem to be crossing her bows," said the Capataz in a cautious tone.
"But this is a blind game with death. Moving on is of no use. We mustn't
be seen or heard."

His whisper was hoarse with excitement. Of all his face there was
nothing visible but a gleam of white eyeballs. His fingers gripped
Decoud's shoulder. "That is the only way to save this treasure from this
steamer full of soldiers. Any other would have carried lights. But you
observe there is not a gleam to show us where she is."

Decoud stood as if paralyzed; only his thoughts were wildly active. In
the space of a second he remembered the desolate glance of Antonia as he
left her at the bedside of her father in the gloomy house of Avellanos,
with shuttered windows, but all the doors standing open, and deserted by
all the servants except an old negro at the gate. He remembered the
Casa Gould on his last visit, the arguments, the tones of his voice,
the impenetrable attitude of Charles, Mrs. Gould's face so blanched
with anxiety and fatigue that her eyes seemed to have changed colour,
appearing nearly black by contrast. Even whole sentences of the
proclamation which he meant to make Barrios issue from his headquarters
at Cayta as soon as he got there passed through his mind; the very germ
of the new State, the Separationist proclamation which he had tried
before he left to read hurriedly to Don Jose, stretched out on his
bed under the fixed gaze of his daughter. God knows whether the
old statesman had understood it; he was unable to speak, but he had
certainly lifted his arm off the coverlet; his hand had moved as if
to make the sign of the cross in the air, a gesture of blessing, of
consent. Decoud had that very draft in his pocket, written in pencil
on several loose sheets of paper, with the heavily-printed heading,
"Administration of the San Tome Silver Mine. Sulaco. Republic of
Costaguana." He had written it furiously, snatching page after page
on Charles Gould's table. Mrs. Gould had looked several times over
his shoulder as he wrote; but the Senor Administrador, standing
straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was finished. He
had waved it away firmly. It must have been scorn, and not caution,
since he never made a remark about the use of the Administration's paper
for such a compromising document. And that showed his disdain, the true
English disdain of common prudence, as if everything outside the range
of their own thoughts and feelings were unworthy of serious recognition.
Decoud had the time in a second or two to become furiously angry with
Charles Gould, and even resentful against Mrs. Gould, in whose care,
tacitly it is true, he had left the safety of Antonia. Better perish a
thousand times than owe your preservation to such people, he exclaimed
mentally. The grip of Nostromo's fingers never removed from his
shoulder, tightening fiercely, recalled him to himself.

"The darkness is our friend," the Capataz murmured into his ear. "I am
going to lower the sail, and trust our escape to this black gulf. No
eyes could make us out lying silent with a naked mast. I will do it
now, before this steamer closes still more upon us. The faint creak of a
block would betray us and the San Tome treasure into the hands of those
thieves."

He moved about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard no sound; and it was
only by the disappearance of the square blotch of darkness that he knew
the yard had come down, lowered as carefully as if it had been made of
glass. Next moment he heard Nostromo's quiet breathing by his side.

"You had better not move at all from where you are, Don Martin," advised
the Capataz, earnestly. "You might stumble or displace something which
would make a noise. The sweeps and the punting poles are lying about.
Move not for your life. Por Dios, Don Martin," he went on in a keen but
friendly whisper, "I am so desperate that if I didn't know your worship
to be a man of courage, capable of standing stock still whatever
happens, I would drive my knife into your heart."

A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was difficult to
believe that there was near a steamer full of men with many pairs of
eyes peering from her bridge for some hint of land in the night. Her
steam had ceased blowing off, and she remained stopped too far off
apparently for any other sound to reach the lighter.

"Perhaps you would, Capataz," Decoud began in a whisper. "However, you
need not trouble. There are other things than the fear of your knife
to keep my heart steady. It shall not betray you. Only, have you
forgotten--"

"I spoke to you openly as to a man as desperate as myself," explained
the Capataz. "The silver must be saved from the Monterists. I told
Captain Mitchell three times that I preferred to go alone. I told Don
Carlos Gould, too. It was in the Casa Gould. They had sent for me. The
ladies were there; and when I tried to explain why I did not wish to
have you with me, they promised me, both of them, great rewards for your
safety. A strange way to talk to a man you are sending out to an almost
certain death. Those gentlefolk do not seem to have sense enough to
understand what they are giving one to do. I told them I could do
nothing for you. You would have been safer with the bandit Hernandez.
It would have been possible to ride out of the town with no greater risk
than a chance shot sent after you in the dark. But it was as if they had
been deaf. I had to promise I would wait for you under the harbour gate.
I did wait. And now because you are a brave man you are as safe as the
silver. Neither more nor less."

At that moment, as if by way of comment upon Nostromo's words, the
invisible steamer went ahead at half speed only, as could be judged
by the leisurely beat of her propeller. The sound shifted its place
markedly, but without coming nearer. It even grew a little more distant
right abeam of the lighter, and then ceased again.

"They are trying for a sight of the Isabels," muttered Nostromo, "in
order to make for the harbour in a straight line and seize the Custom
House with the treasure in it. Have you ever seen the Commandant of
Esmeralda, Sotillo? A handsome fellow, with a soft voice. When I first
came here I used to see him in the Calle talking to the senoritas at the
windows of the houses, and showing his white teeth all the time. But
one of my Cargadores, who had been a soldier, told me that he had once
ordered a man to be flayed alive in the remote Campo, where he was sent
recruiting amongst the people of the Estancias. It has never entered his
head that the Compania had a man capable of baffling his game."

The murmuring loquacity of the Capataz disturbed Decoud like a hint
of weakness. And yet, talkative resolution may be as genuine as grim
silence.

"Sotillo is not baffled so far," he said. "Have you forgotten that crazy
man forward?"

Nostromo had not forgotten Senor Hirsch. He reproached himself bitterly
for not having visited the lighter carefully before leaving the wharf.
He reproached himself for not having stabbed and flung Hirsch overboard
at the very moment of discovery without even looking at his face. That
would have been consistent with the desperate character of the affair.
Whatever happened, Sotillo was already baffled. Even if that wretch, now
as silent as death, did anything to betray the nearness of the lighter,
Sotillo--if Sotillo it was in command of the troops on board--would be
still baffled of his plunder.

"I have an axe in my hand," Nostromo whispered, wrathfully, "that in
three strokes would cut through the side down to the water's edge.
Moreover, each lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know exactly where
it is. I feel it under the sole of my foot."

Decoud recognized the ring of genuine determination in the nervous
murmurs, the vindictive excitement of the famous Capataz. Before the
steamer, guided by a shriek or two (for there could be no more than
that, Nostromo said, gnashing his teeth audibly), could find the lighter
there would be plenty of time to sink this treasure tied up round his
neck.