Nostromo : A Tale of the Seaboard
swearing to himself between the regular splashes of the sweeps. "We are making a crooked path," he muttered to himself. "I wish I could see the islands."
In his unskilfulness Don Martin overexerted himself. Now and then a sort of muscular faintness would run from the tips of his aching fingers through every fibre of his body and pass off in a flush of heat. He had fought, talked, suffered mentally and physically, exerting his mind and body for the last forty-eight hours without intermission. He had had no rest, very little food, no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his feelings. Even his love for Antonia, whence he drew his strength and his inspiration, had reached the point of tragic tension during their hurried interview by Don José's bedside. And now, suddenly, he was thrown out of all this into a dark gulf whose very gloom, silence, and breathless peace added a torment to the necessity for physical exertion. He imagined the lighter sinking to the bottom with an extraordinary shudder of delight. "I am on the verge of delirium," he thought. He mastered the trembling of all his limbs, of his breast, the inward trembling of all his body, exhausted of its nervous force.
"Shall we rest, capataz?" he proposed, in a careless tone. "There are many hours of night yet before us."
"True. It is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your arms, señor, if that is what you mean. You will find no other sort of rest, I can promise you, since you let yourself be bound to this treasure whose loss would make no poor man poorer. No, señor; there is no rest till we find a north-bound steamer, or else some ship finds us drifting about stretched out dead upon the
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