Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 7. CHAPTER SEVEN (continued)

"It is as if I were taking up a curse upon me, senor doctor. A
man with a treasure on this coast will have every knife raised
against him in every place upon the shore. You see that, senor
doctor? I shall float along with a spell upon my life till I meet
somewhere the north-bound steamer of the Company, and then indeed
they will talk about the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores from
one end of America to another."

Dr. Monygham laughed his short, throaty laugh. Nostromo turned
round in the doorway.

"But if your worship can find any other man ready and fit for
such business I will stand back. I am not exactly tired of my
life, though I am so poor that I can carry all I have with myself
on my horse's back."

"You gamble too much, and never say 'no' to a pretty face,
Capataz," said Dr. Monygham, with sly simplicity. "That's not
the way to make a fortune. But nobody that I know ever suspected
you of being poor. I hope you have made a good bargain in case
you come back safe from this adventure."

"What bargain would your worship have made?" asked Nostromo,
blowing the smoke out of his lips through the doorway.

Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a moment before he
answered, with another of his short, abrupt laughs--

"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.
Nostromo 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 Basilio with the carbine 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 pocket-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.