Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 3. CHAPTER THREE (continued)

"Well, well!" he muttered to himself, but he had not the heart to
voice his thoughts. They were swept away by others full of
astonishment and regret. A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed
him: the loss of the silver, the death of Nostromo, which was
really quite a blow to his sensibilities, because he had become
attached to his Capataz as people get attached to their inferiors
from love of ease and almost unconscious gratitude. And when he
thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his sensibility was almost
overcome by this miserable end. What a heavy blow for that poor
young woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the species of
crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young men
paying attentions to young women. It seemed to him a natural and
proper thing. Proper especially. As to sailors, it was
different; it was not their place to marry, he maintained, but it
was on moral grounds as a matter of self-denial, for, he
explained, life on board ship is not fit for a woman even at
best, and if you leave her on shore, first of all it is not fair,
and next she either suffers from it or doesn't care a bit, which,
in both cases, is bad. He couldn't have told what upset him
most--Charles Gould's immense material loss, the death of
Nostromo, which was a heavy loss to himself, or the idea of that
beautiful and accomplished young woman being plunged into
mourning.

"Yes," the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began
again, "he believed me right enough. I thought he would have
hugged me. 'Si, si,' he said, 'he will write to that partner of
his, the rich Americano in San Francisco, that it is all lost.
Why not? There is enough to share with many people.'"

"But this is perfectly imbecile!" cried Captain Mitchell.

The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and that his
imbecility was ingenious enough to lead him completely astray. He
had helped him only but a little way.

"I mentioned," the doctor said, "in a sort of casual way, that
treasure is generally buried in the earth rather than set afloat
upon the sea. At this my Sotillo slapped his forehead. 'Por Dios,
yes,' he said; 'they must have buried it on the shores of this
harbour somewhere before they sailed out.'"