Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 3. CHAPTER THREE (continued)

She seemed to think that Nostromo's mere presence in the house
would have made it perfectly safe. So far, she, too, was under
the spell of that reputation the Capataz de Cargadores had made
for himself by the waterside, along the railway line, with the
English and with the populace of Sulaco. To his face, and even
against her husband, she invariably affected to laugh it to
scorn, sometimes good-naturedly, more often with a curious
bitterness. But then women are unreasonable in their opinions, as
Giorgio used to remark calmly on fitting occasions. On this
occasion, with his gun held at ready before him, he stooped down
to his wife's head, and, keeping his eyes steadfastly on the
barricaded door, he breathed out into her ear that Nostromo would
have been powerless to help. What could two men shut up in a
house do against twenty or more bent upon setting fire to the
roof? Gian' Battista was thinking of the casa all the time, he
was sure.

"He think of the casa! He!" gasped Signora Viola, crazily. She
struck her breast with her open hands. "I know him. He thinks of
nobody but himself."

A discharge of firearms near by made her throw her head back and
close her eyes. Old Giorgio set his teeth hard under his white
moustache, and his eyes began to roll fiercely. Several bullets
struck the end of the wall together; pieces of plaster could be
heard falling outside; a voice screamed "Here they come!" and
after a moment of uneasy silence there was a rush of running feet
along the front.

Then the tension of old Giorgio's attitude relaxed, and a smile
of contemptuous relief came upon his lips of an old fighter with
a leonine face. These were not a people striving for justice, but
thieves. Even to defend his life against them was a sort of
degradation for a man who had been one of Garibaldi's immortal
thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He had an immense scorn for
this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, who did not know the
meaning of the word "liberty."