Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
again, sprang abruptly to his feet and stood still. He must go. But where?
"There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage us as if we were dogs born to fight and hunt for them. The vecchio is right," he said, slowly and scathingly. He remembered old Giorgio taking his pipe out of his mouth to throw these words over his shoulder at the café full of engine-drivers and fitters from the railway workshops. This image fixed his wavering purpose. He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God knows what might have happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped again and shook his head. To the left and right, in front and behind him, the scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.
"Teresa was right, too," he added, in a low tone touched with awe. He wondered whether she were dead in her anger with him or still alive. As if in answer to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with a soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling cry—"Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo!" (It is finished! It is finished!)—announces calamity and death in the popular belief, drifted vaguely, like a large dark ball, across his path. In the downfall of all the realities that made his force, he was affected by the superstition and shuddered slightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It could mean nothing else. The cry of the ill-omened bird, the first sound he was to hear on his return, was a fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The unseen powers which he had offended by refusing to bring a priest to a dying woman were lifting up their voice against him. She was dead- With admirable and human consist-
468
