Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 10. CHAPTER TEN (continued)

It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the
dinghy near the water with an idea of rowing away somewhere, but
had desisted partly at the whisper of lingering hope that
Nostromo would return, partly from conviction of utter
uselessness of all effort. Now she wanted only a slight shove to
be set afloat. He had eaten a little every day after the first,
and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up the oars
slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that
stood behind him warm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life,
bathed in a rich light from head to foot as if in a radiance of
hope and joy. He pulled straight towards the setting sun. When
the gulf had grown dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls
in. The hollow clatter they made in falling was the loudest noise
he had ever heard in his life. It was a revelation. It seemed to
recall him from far away, Actually the thought, "Perhaps I may
sleep to-night," passed through his mind. But he did not believe
it. He believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on the
thwart.

The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into his unwinking
eyes. After a clear daybreak the sun appeared splendidly above
the peaks of the range. The great gulf burst into a glitter all
around the boat; and in this glory of merciless solitude the
silence appeared again before him, stretched taut like a dark,
thin string.

His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted his seat
from the thwart to the gunwale. They looked at it fixedly, while
his hand, feeling about his waist, unbuttoned the flap of the
leather case, drew the revolver, cocked it, brought it forward
pointing at his breast, pulled the trigger, and, with convulsive
force, sent the still-smoking weapon hurtling through the air.
His eyes looked at it while he fell forward and hung with his
breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his right hand hooked
under the thwart. They looked----

"It is done," he stammered out, in a sudden flow of blood. His
last thought was: "I wonder how that Capataz died." The stiffness
of the fingers relaxed, and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled
overboard without having heard the cord of silence snap in the
solitude of the Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface remained
untroubled by the fall of his body.