Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and gain
the middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were somewhere
at hand. "On your left as you look forward, senor," said Nostromo,
suddenly. When his voice ceased, the enormous stillness, without light
or sound, seemed to affect Decoud's senses like a powerful drug. He
didn't even know at times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man
lost in slumber, he heard nothing, he saw nothing. Even his hand
held before his face did not exist for his eyes. The change from the
agitation, the passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of
the shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it
not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal
peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of
earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty
atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, shuddered a bit,
though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had the strangest
sensation of his soul having just returned into his body from the
circumambient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the mountains, and the
rocks were as if they had not been.

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