Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
of timber from Puget Sound for the railway. He knew her men; in his quality of foreman of all the work done in the harbor he had been able to oblige her captain in some small matter relating to the filling of his water-tanks. Bronzed, black-whiskered, and stately, with the impressive gravity of a man too powerful to unbend, he had been invited more than once to drink a glass of Italian vermouth in her cabin. It was well known among ship-masters trading along the seaboard that, as a matter of sound policy, the capataz of the cargadores in Sulaco should be propitiated by small civilities, which he seemed to expect as his due. For in truth, being implicitly trusted by Captain Mitchell, he had, as somebody said, the whole harbor in his pocket. For the rest, an excellent fellow, quite straightforward, everybody agreed.
Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was the feeling of his waking), the idea of leaving the country altogether had presented itself to Nostromo. In that ship they would have given him shelter and a passage, and have landed him in Italy ultimately. At that thought he had seen, like the beginning of another dream, a vision of steep and tideless shores, with dark pines on the heights and white houses low down near a very blue sea. He saw the quays of a big port where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen-sails outspread like motionless wings, enter, gliding silently between the end of long moles of squared blocks that project angularly towards each other, hugging a cluster of shipping, to the superb bosom of a hill covered with palaces. He remembered these sights not without some filial emotion, though he had been habitually and
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