Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 12. CHAPTER TWELVE (continued)

The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared
Captain Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a
republican like old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in
another manner), was on the point of jumping overboard from the
deck of his own schooner. That man, subjective almost to
insanity, looked suicide deliberately in the face. But he never
lost his head. He was checked by the thought that this was no
escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace, the shame
going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine
himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his
own existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to
grasp the notion of finality. The earth goes on for ever.

And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it was as
good for his purposes as the other kind. He sailed close to the
cliff of the Great Isabel, throwing a penetrating glance from the
deck at the mouth of the ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth
of bushes. He sailed close enough to exchange hails with the
workmen, shading their eyes on the edge of the sheer drop of the
cliff overhung by the jib-head of a powerful crane. He perceived
that none of them had any occasion even to approach the ravine
where the silver lay hidden; let alone to enter it. In the
harbour he learned that no one slept on the island. The labouring
gangs returned to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the
empty lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the moment he had
nothing to fear.

But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper came to
live in the cottage that was being built some hundred and fifty
yards back from the low lighttower, and four hundred or so from
the dark, shaded, jungly ravine, containing the secret of his
safety, of his influence, of his magnificence, of his power over
the future, of his defiance of ill-luck, of every possible
betrayal from rich and poor alike--what then? He could never
shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater than that of other
men, had welded that vein of silver into his life. And the
feeling of fearful and ardent subjection, the feeling of his
slavery--so irremediable and profound that often, in his
thoughts, he compared himself to the legendary Gringos, neither
dead nor alive, bound down to their conquest of unlawful wealth
on Azuera--weighed heavily on the independent Captain Fidanza,
owner and master of a coasting schooner, whose smart appearance
(and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well known along the
western seaboard of a vast continent.