Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
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's 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 north-bound steamers 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.
"The incorruptible capataz de cargadores is the man for that work; and I, the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go with him to return to play my part in the farce to the end, and, if successful, to receive my reward, which no one but Antonia can give me.
"I shall not see her again now before I depart. I left her, as I have said, by Don Josh's bedside. The street was dark, the houses shut up, and I walked out
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