"What bargain would your worship have made?" asked Nostromo, blowing the
smoke out of his lips through the doorway.
Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a moment before he answered,
with another of his short, abrupt laughs--
"Illustrious Capataz, for taking the curse of death upon my back, as you
call it, nothing else but the whole treasure would do."
Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of discontent at
this jeering answer. Dr. Monygham heard him gallop away. Nostromo rode
furiously in the dark. There were lights in the buildings of the
O.S.N. Company near the wharf, but before he got there he met the Gould
carriage. The horseman preceded it with the torch, whose light showed
the white mules trotting, the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio with
the carbine on the box. From the dark body of the landau Mrs. Gould's
voice cried, "They are waiting for you, Capataz!" She was returning,
chilly and excited, with Decoud's pocket-book still held in her hand. He
had confided it to her to send to his sister. "Perhaps my last words to
her," he had said, pressing Mrs. Gould's hand.
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