Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

"I wish, Capataz, you had not let the right moment pass," he
murmured.

"What! To silence him for ever? I thought it good to hear first
how he came to be here. It was too strange. Who could imagine
that it was all an accident? Afterwards, senor, when I saw you
giving him water to drink, I could not do it. Not after I had
seen you holding up the can to his lips as though he were your
brother. Senor, that sort of necessity must not be thought of too
long. And yet it would have been no cruelty to take away from him
his wretched life. It is nothing but fear. Your compassion saved
him then, Don Martin, and now it is too late. It couldn't be done
without noise."

In the steamer they were keeping a perfect silence, and the
stillness was so profound that Decoud felt as if the slightest
sound conceivable must travel unchecked and audible to the end of
the world. What if Hirsch coughed or sneezed? To feel himself at
the mercy of such an idiotic contingency was too exasperating to
be looked upon with irony. Nostromo, too, seemed to be getting
restless. Was it possible, he asked himself, that the steamer,
finding the night too dark altogether, intended to remain stopped
where she was till daylight? He began to think that this, after
all, was the real danger. He was afraid that the darkness, which
was his protection, would, in the end, cause his undoing.

Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command on board the
transport. The events of the last forty-eight hours in Sulaco
were not known to him; neither was he aware that the telegraphist
in Esmeralda had managed to warn his colleague in Sulaco. Like a
good many officers of the troops garrisoning the province,
Sotillo had been influenced in his adoption of the Ribierist
cause by the belief that it had the enormous wealth of the Gould
Concession on its side. He had been one of the frequenters of the
Casa Gould, where he had aired his Blanco convictions and his
ardour for reform before Don Jose Avellanos, casting frank,
honest glances towards Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He was
known to belong to a good family persecuted and impoverished
during the tyranny of Guzman Bento. The opinions he expressed
appeared eminently natural and proper in a man of his parentage
and antecedents. And he was not a deceiver; it was perfectly
natural for him to express elevated sentiments while his whole
faculties were taken up with what seemed then a solid and
practical notion--the notion that the husband of Antonia
Avellanos would be, naturally, the intimate friend of the Gould
Concession. He even pointed this out to Anzani once, when
negotiating the sixth or seventh small loan in the gloomy, damp
apartment with enormous iron bars, behind the principal shop in
the whole row under the Arcades. He hinted to the universal
shopkeeper at the excellent terms he was on with the emancipated
senorita, who was like a sister to the Englishwoman. He would
advance one leg and put his arms akimbo, posing for Anzani's
inspection, and fixing him with a haughty stare.