Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


"He joined me on the harbour road after I had passed them under the dark
archway without stopping. It was a woman in trouble he had been talking
to. Through discretion I kept silent while he walked by my side. After
a time he began to talk himself. It was not what I expected. It was
only an old woman, an old lace-maker, in search of her son, one of the
street-sweepers employed by the municipality. Friends had come the day
before at daybreak to the door of their hovel calling him out. He had
gone with them, and she had not seen him since; so she had left the food
she had been preparing half-cooked on the extinct embers and had crawled
out as far as the harbour, where she had heard that some town mozos had
been killed on the morning of the riot. One of the Cargadores guarding
the Custom House had brought out a lantern, and had helped her to look
at the few dead left lying about there. Now she was creeping back,
having failed in her search. So she sat down on the stone seat under the
arch, moaning, because she was very tired. The Capataz had questioned
her, and after hearing her broken and groaning tale had advised her to
go and look amongst the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould. He had
also given her a quarter dollar, he mentioned carelessly."

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.