that house till
you leave it to make your name famous on the Campo. I am going now to
arrange for your departure with the engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring
you news here long before daybreak."

Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to penetrate the meaning
of Nostromo's silence, clapped him lightly on the shoulder, and starting
off with his smart, lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth
hop in the direction of the railway track. Arrested between the two
wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to, Nostromo did not
move, as if he, too, had been planted solidly in the ground. At the end
of half an hour he lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the
railway yards, which had burst out suddenly, tumultuous and deadened as
if coming from under the plain. That lame doctor with the evil eye had
got there pretty fast.

Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo d'Italia Una, which he had
never known so lightless, so silent, before. The door, all black in the
pale wall, stood open as he had left it twenty-four hours before,
when he had nothing to hide from the world. He remained before it,
irresolute, like a fugitive, like a man betrayed. Poverty, misery,
starvation! Where had he heard these words? The anger of a dying woman
had prophesied that fate for his folly. It looked as if it would come
true very quickly. And the leperos would laugh--she had said. Yes, they
would laugh if they knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at the mercy
of the mad doctor whom they could remember, only a few years ago, buying
cooked food from a stall on the Plaza for a copper coin--like one of
themselves.

At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mitchell passed through his
mind. He glanced in the direction of the jetty and saw a small gleam of
light in the O.S.N. Company's building. The thought of lighted windows
was not attractive. Two lighted windows had decoyed him into the empty
Custom House, only to fall into the clutches of that doctor. No! He
would not go near lighted windows again on that night. Captain Mitchell
was there. And what could he be told? That doctor would worm it all out
of him as if he were a child.

On the threshold he called out "Giorgio!" in an undertone. Nobody
answered. He stepped in. "Ola! viejo! Are you there? . . ." In the
impenetrable darkness his head swam with the illusion that the obscurity
of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, and that the floor dipped
fo