Nostromo | Page 8

The few stars left below the seaward frown of the vault
shine feebly as into the mouth of a black cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen
under your feet, her sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself--they
add with grim profanity--could not find out what work a man's hand is doing in there; and
you would be free to call the devil to your aid with impunity if even his malice were not
defeated by such a blind darkness.
The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three uninhabited islets basking in the
sunshine just outside the cloud veil, and opposite the entrance to the harbour of Sulaco,
bear the name of "The Isabels."

There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, which is round; and Hermosa, which is the
smallest.
That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven paces across, a mere flat top of a
grey rock which smokes like a hot cinder after a shower, and where no man would care to
venture a naked sole before sunset. On the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick
bulging trunk rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles a dismal bunch
of dead leaves above the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has a spring of fresh water issuing
from the overgrown side of a ravine. Resembling an emerald green wedge of land a mile
long, and laid flat upon the sea, it bears two forest trees standing close together, with a
wide spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine extending the whole
length of the island is full of bushes; and presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high side
spreads itself out on the other into a shallow depression abutting on a small strip of sandy
shore.
From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an opening two miles
away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out of the regular sweep of the coast, right into
the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong, lake-like piece of water. On one side the short
wooded spurs and valleys of the Cordillera come down at right angles to the very strand;
on the other the open view of the great Sulaco plain passes into the opal mystery of great
distances overhung by dry haze. The town of Sulaco itself--tops of walls, a great cupola,
gleams of white miradors in a vast grove of orange trees--lies between the mountains and
the plain, at some little distance from its harbour and out of the direct line of sight from
the sea.


CHAPTER TWO
THE only sign of commercial activity within the harbour, visible from the beach of the
Great Isabel, is the square blunt end of the wooden jetty which the Oceanic Steam
Navigation Company (the O.S.N. of familiar speech) had thrown over the shallow part of
the bay soon after they had resolved to make of Sulaco one of their ports of call for the
Republic of Costaguana. The State possesses several harbours on its long seaboard, but
except Cayta, an important place, all are either small and inconvenient inlets in an
iron-bound coast--like Esmeralda, for instance, sixty miles to the south--or else mere
open roadsteads exposed to the winds and fretted by the surf.
Perhaps the very atmospheric conditions which had kept away the merchant fleets of
bygone ages induced the O.S.N. Company to violate the sanctuary of peace sheltering the
calm existence of Sulaco. The variable airs sporting lightly with the vast semicircle of
waters within the head of Azuera could not baffle the steam power of their excellent fleet.
Year after year the black hulls of their ships had gone up and down the coast, in and out,
past Azuera, past the Isabels, past Punta Mala--disregarding everything but the tyranny of
time. Their names, the names of all mythology, became the household words of a coast

that had never been ruled by the gods of Olympus. The Juno was known only for her
comfortable cabins amidships, the Saturn for the geniality of her captain and the painted
and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for
cattle transport, and to be avoided by coastwise passengers. The humblest Indian in the
obscurest village on the coast was familiar with the Cerberus, a little black puffer without
charm or living accommodation to speak of, whose mission was to creep inshore along
the wooded beaches close to mighty ugly rocks, stopping obligingly before every cluster
of huts to collect produce, down to three-pound parcels of indiarubber bound in a
wrapper of dry grass.
And as they seldom failed to account for the smallest package, rarely lost a bullock, and