Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 10. CHAPTER TEN (continued)

On the tenth day, after a night spent without even dozing off
once (it had occurred to him that Antonia could not possibly have
ever loved a being so impalpable as himself), the solitude
appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a
tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands,
without fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion
whatever. Only towards the evening, in the comparative relief of
coolness, he began to wish that this cord would snap. He imagined
it snapping with a report as of a pistol--a sharp, full crack.
And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that
eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless
nights in which the silence, remaining unbroken in the shape of a
cord to which he hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless
phrases, always the same but utterly incomprehensible, about
Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an
ironical and senseless buzzing. In the daytime he could look at
the silence like a still cord stretched to breakingpoint, with
his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a weight.

"I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell," he asked
himself.

The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt,
dirty, white-faced, and looked at it with his red-rimmed eyes.
His limbs obeyed him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without
tremor; and the effect of that physical condition gave to his
movements an unhesitating, deliberate dignity. He acted as if
accomplishing some sort of rite. He descended into the gully; for
the fascination of all that silver, with its potential power,
survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the belt with the
revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his waist.
The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let
him fall and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was
looking at the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea!
His aspect was that of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on
his knees slowly and went on grubbing with his fingers with
industrious patience till he uncovered one of the boxes. Without
a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it
open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He
covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the
gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish.