Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
for a while morose and reluctant before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister droop of beak and claws.
Long after he had vanished the capataz of the cargadores, lifting his eyes up to the sky, muttered, "I am not dead yet."
Nostromo was some time, in regaining his hold on the world. It had slipped from him completely in the deep slumber of more than twelve hours. It had been like a break of continuity in the chain of experience; he had to find himself in time and space, to think of the hour and the place of his return. It was a novelty. He was one of those efficient sailors who generally wake up from a dead sleep with their wits in complete working order. The capataz of the cargadores had been a good man on board ship. He had been a good foremast-hand and a first-rate boatswain. From the conditions of sea-life that sort of excellence brings no prize but an exaggerated consciousness of one's value and the confidence of one's superiors. The captain of the Genoese ship from which he had deserted had gone about tearing his gray hairs with grief and exasperation. He did it very publicly, being an Italian and unashamed of genuine emotions. He mingled imprecations against ingratitude with words of regret at his loss before the people on the wharf, before the lightermen discharging the cargo; in the O.S.N. office before Captain Mitchell, who was sympathetic in a way, but considered him in the end an awful and ridiculous nuisance and was glad to see his back for the last time.
Nostromo, in close hiding in a back room of a pulperia for the three days before the ship sailed, heard of
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