Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

Don Martin's soft hands suffered cruelly, tugging at the thick
handle of the enormous oar. He stuck to it manfully, setting his
teeth. He, too, was in the toils of an imaginative existence, and
that strange work of pulling a lighter seemed to belong naturally
to the inception of a new state, acquired an ideal meaning from
his love for Antonia. For all their efforts, the heavily laden
lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could be heard swearing to himself
between the regular splashes of the sweeps. "We are making a
crooked path," he muttered to himself. "I wish I could see the
islands."

In his unskilfulness Don Martin over-exerted himself. Now and
then a sort of muscular faintness would run from the tips of his
aching fingers through every fibre of his body, and pass off in a
flush of heat. He had fought, talked, suffered mentally and
physically, exerting his mind and body for the last forty-eight
hours without intermission. He had had no rest, very little food,
no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his feelings. Even his
love for Antonia, whence he drew his strength and his
inspiration, had reached the point of tragic tension during their
hurried interview by Don Jose's bedside. And now, suddenly, he
was thrown out of all this into a dark gulf, whose very gloom,
silence, and breathless peace added a torment to the necessity
for physical exertion. He imagined the lighter sinking to the
bottom with an extraordinary shudder of delight. "I am on the
verge of delirium," he thought. He mastered the trembling of all
his limbs, of his breast, the inward trembling of all his body
exhausted of its nervous force.

"Shall we rest, Capataz?" he proposed in a careless tone. "There
are many hours of night yet before us."

"True. It is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your arms, senor,
if that is what you mean. You will find no other sort of rest, I
can promise you, since you let yourself be bound to this treasure
whose loss would make no poor man poorer. No, senor; there is no
rest till we find a north-bound steamer, or else some ship finds
us drifting about stretched out dead upon the Englishman's
silver. Or rather--no; por Dios! I shall cut down the gunwale
with the axe right to the water's edge before thirst and hunger
rob me of my strength. By all the saints and devils I shall let
the sea have the treasure rather than give it up to any stranger.
Since it was the good pleasure of the Caballeros to send me off
on such an errand, they shall learn I am just the man they take
me for."