d the fair
fame of his mine; Mrs. Gould's mission is to save him from the effects
of that cold and overmastering passion, which she dreads more than if it
were an infatuation for another woman. Nostromo's mission is to save
the silver. The plan is to load it into the largest of the Company's
lighters, and send it across the gulf to a small port out of Costaguana
territory just on the other side the Azuera, where the first northbound
steamer will get orders to pick it up. The waters here are calm. We
shall slip away into the darkness of the gulf before the Esmeralda
rebels arrive; and by the time the day breaks over the ocean we shall be
out of sight, invisible, hidden by Azuera, which itself looks from the
Sulaco shore like a faint blue cloud on the horizon.

"The incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores is the man for that work;
and I, the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go with him to
return--to play my part in the farce to the end, and, if successful, to
receive my reward, which no one but Antonia can give me.

"I shall not see her again now before I depart. I left her, as I have
said, by Don Jose's bedside. The street was dark, the houses shut up,
and I walked out of the town in the night. Not a single street-lamp had
been lit for two days, and the archway of the gate was only a mass of
darkness in the vague form of a tower, in which I heard low, dismal
groans, that seemed to answer the murmurs of a man's voice.

"I recognized something impassive and careless in its tone,
characteristic of that Genoese sailor who, like me, has come casually
here to be drawn into the events for which his scepticism as well as
mine seems to entertain a sort of passive contempt. The only thing he
seems to care for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well
spoken of. An ambition fit for noble souls, but also a profitable one
for an exceptionally intelligent scoundrel. Yes. His very words, 'To
be well spoken of. Si, senor.' He does not seem to make any difference
between speaking and thinking. Is it sheer naiveness or the practical
point of view, I wonder? Exceptional individualities always interest me,
because they are true to the general formula expressing the moral state
of humanity.

"He joined me on the harbour road after I had passed them under the dark
archway without stopping. It was a woman in trouble he had been talking
to. Through discretion I kept silent while he walked by my side. After
a time he beg