Nostromo : A Tale of the Seaboard
"Illustrious capataz, for taking the curse of death upon my back, as you call it, nothing else but the whole treasure would do."
Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of discontent at this jeering answer. Dr. Monygham heard him gallop away. He rode furiously in the dark. There were lights in the buildings of the O.S.N. Company near the wharf, but before he got there he met the Gould carriage. The horseman preceded it with the torch, whose light showed the white mules trotting, the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilic with the carbine at ready on the box. From the dark body of the landau Mrs. Gould's voice cried, "They are waiting for you, capataz!" She was returning, chilly and excited, with Decoud's note-book still held in her hand. He had confided it to her to send to his sister. "Perhaps my last words to her," he had said, pressing Mrs. Gould's hand.
The capataz never checked his speed. At the head of the wharf vague figures with rifles leaped to the head of his horse; others closed upon him cargadores of the company posted by Captain Mitchell on the watch. At a word from him they fell back with subservient murmurs, recognizing his voice. At the other end of the jetty, near a cargo-crane, in a dark group with glowing cigars, his name was pronounced in a tone of relief. Most of the Europeans in Sulaco were there, rallied round Charles Gould, as if the silver of the mine had been the emblem of a common cause,
the symbol of the supreme importance of material interests. They had loaded it into the lighter with their own hands. Nostromo recognized Don Charles
288
