Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 1. CHAPTER ONE (continued)

On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it could only
have been from their camp-fire) was seen for the first time
within memory of man standing up faintly upon the sky above a
razor-backed ridge on the stony head. The crew of a coasting
schooner, lying becalmed three miles off the shore, stared at it
with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman, living in a lonely
hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the
lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the sun was
about to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy,
incredulity, and awe.

The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the
Indian, and the stolen burro were never seen again. As to the
mozo, a Sulaco man--his wife paid for some masses, and the poor
four-footed beast, being without sin, had been probably permitted
to die; but the two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to
be dwelling to this day amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell
of their success. Their souls cannot tear themselves away from
their bodies mounting guard over the discovered treasure. They
are now rich and hungry and thirsty--a strange theory of
tenacious gringo ghosts suffering in their starved and parched
flesh of defiant heretics, where a Christian would have renounced
and been released.

These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera guarding its
forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the sky on one side with the
round patch of blue haze blurring the bright skirt of the horizon
on the other, mark the two outermost points of the bend which
bears the name of Golfo Placido, because never a strong wind had
been known to blow upon its waters.

On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta Mala to Azuera
the ships from Europe bound to Sulaco lose at once the strong
breezes of the ocean. They become the prey of capricious airs
that play with them for thirty hours at a stretch sometimes.
Before them the head of the calm gulf is filled on most days of
the year by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds. On the
rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the
gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall
of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their
steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very
edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota
rises majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks
sprinkle with tiny black dots the smooth dome of snow.