Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
his idea by an ever-lamented accident. But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this earth, and whom only the sinij of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanero of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.
For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human comprehension, the sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels. The rocky head of Azaera is their haunt, whose stony levels and chasms resound with their wild and tumultuous clamor, as if they were forever quarrelling over the legendary treasure.
At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, Decoud, turning in his lair of coarse grass, under the shade of a tree, said to himself:
"I have not seen as much as one single bird all day."
And he had not heard a sound, either, all day, but that one now of his own muttering voice. It had been a day of absolute silence—the first he had known in his life. And he had not slept a wink. Not for all these wakeful nights and the days of fighting, planning, talking; not for all that last night of danger and hard physical toil upon the gulf, had he been able to close his eyes for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset he had been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on his face.
He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended into the gully to spend the night by the side of the silver. If Nostromo returned—as he may have done at any moment—it was there that he would look first: and night would, of course, be the proper time for an attempt to communicate. He remembered with pro-
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