Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
humored voice, "you belong to me. I am going to make a captain of cavalry out of you directly we get within sight of a horse again."
"I can swim far better than I can ride, mi general," cried Nostromo, pushing through to the rail with a set stare in his eyes. "Let me—"
"Let you? What a conceited fellow that is," bantered the general, jovially, without even looking at him. "Let him go! Ha! ha! ha! He wants me to admit that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha! ha! ha! Would you like to swim off to her, my son?'
A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other stopped his guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and his black head bobbed up faraway already from the ship. The general muttered an appalled "Cielo! Sinner that I am!" in a thunderstruck tone. One anxious glance was enough to show him that Nostromo was swimming with perfect ease; and then he thundered terribly, "No! no! We shall not stop to pick up this impertinent fellow. Let him drown—that mad capataz!"
Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo from leaping overboard. That empty boat, coming out to meet him mysteriously, as if rowed by an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of some sign, of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling and enigmatic way the persistent thought of a treasure and of a man's fate. He would have leaped if there had been death in that half-mile of water. It was as smooth as a pond, and for some reason sharks are unknown in the Placid Gulf, though on the other
side of the Punta Mala the coast-line swarms with them.
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