Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
feet. The narrow strand gleamed far ahead in a long curve, defining the outline of this wild side of the harbor. He flitted along the shore like a pursued shadow, between the sombre palm-groves and the sheet of water lying as still as death on his right hand. He strode with headlong haste in the silence and solitude as though he had forgotten all prudence and caution. But he knew that on this side of the water he ran no risk of discovery. The only inhabitant was a lonely, silent, apathetic Indian in charge of the palmaries, who brought sometimes a load of cocoa-nuts to the town for sale. He lived without a woman in an open shed, with a perpetual fire of dry sticks smouldering in front, near an old canoe lying bottom up on the beach. He could be easily avoided.
The barking of the dogs about that man's rancho was the first thing that checked his speed. He had forgotten the dogs. He swerved sharply and plunged into the palm-grove as into a wilderness of columns in an immense hall, whose dense obscurity seemed to whisper and rustle faintly high above his head. He traversed it, entered a ravine, climbed to the top of a steep ridge free of trees and bushes.
From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw the plain between the town and the harbor. In the woods above some night-bird made a strange drumming noise. Below, beyond the palmaria on the beach, the Indian's dogs continued to bark uproariously. He wondered what had upset them so much, and peering down from his elevation was surprised to detect unaccountable movements of the ground below, as if several oblong pieces of the plain had been in
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