ering purpose. He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God
knows what might have happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped
again and shook his head. To the left and right, in front and behind
him, the scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.

"Teresa was right, too," he added in a low tone touched with awe. He
wondered whether she was dead in her anger with him or still alive. As
if in answer to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with
a soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling cry:
"Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo!--it is finished; it is finished"--announces
calamity and death in the popular belief, drifted vaguely like a large
dark ball across his path. In the downfall of all the realities that
made his force, he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered
slightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It could mean nothing
else. The cry of the ill-omened bird, the first sound he was to hear on
his return, was a fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The
unseen powers which he had offended by refusing to bring a priest to a
dying woman were lifting up their voice against him. She was dead. With
admirable and human consistency he referred everything to himself. She
had been a woman of good counsel always. And the bereaved old Giorgio
remained stunned by his loss just as he was likely to require the advice
of his sagacity. The blow would render the dreamy old man quite stupid
for a time.

As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner of trusted
subordinates, considered him as a person fitted by education perhaps
to sign papers in an office and to give orders, but otherwise of no use
whatever, and something of a fool. The necessity of winding round his
little finger, almost daily, the pompous and testy self-importance of
the old seaman had grown irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had
given him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of overcoming small
obstacles becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality as much by
the certitude of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted
his superior's proneness to fussy action. That old Englishman had no
judgment, he said to himself. It was useless to suppose that, acquainted
with the true state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He would
talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo feared him as one
would fear saddling one's self with some persistent worry. He had no
discretion. He would be