Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


"His wife has understood it, too. That is why she is such a good ally
of mine. She seizes upon all my suggestions with a sure instinct that in
the end they make for the safety of the Gould Concession. And he defers
to her because he trusts her perhaps, but I fancy rather as if he wished
to make up for some subtle wrong, for that sentimental unfaithfulness
which surrenders her happiness, her life, to the seduction of an idea.
The little woman has discovered that he lives for the mine rather
than for her. But let them be. To each his fate, shaped by passion or
sentiment. The principal thing is that she has backed up my advice to
get the silver out of the town, out of the country, at once, at any
cost, at any risk. Don Carlos' mission is to preserve unstained the fair
fame of his mine; Mrs. Gould's mission is to save him from the effects
of that cold and overmastering passion, which she dreads more than if it
were an infatuation for another woman. Nostromo's mission is to save
the silver. The plan is to load it into the largest of the Company's
lighters, and send it across the gulf to a small port out of Costaguana
territory just on the other side the Azuera, where the first northbound
steamer will get orders to pick it up. The waters here are calm. We
shall slip away into the darkness of the gulf before the Esmeralda
rebels arrive; and by the time the day breaks over the ocean we shall be
out of sight, invisible, hidden by Azuera, which itself looks from the
Sulaco shore like a faint blue cloud on the horizon.

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