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"

There was also another curious point about the man. Once in the course
of some quarrel the sailor threatened him: "What's to prevent me
reporting ashore what you have told me about that silver?"

The cynical ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He actually laughed.
"You fool, if you dare talk like that on shore about me you will get a
knife stuck in your back. Every man, woman, and child in that port is
my friend. And who's to prove the lighter wasn't sunk? I didn't show you
where the silver is hidden. Did I? So you know nothing. And suppose I
lied? Eh?"

Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid meanness of that
impenitent thief, deserted from the schooner. The whole episode takes
about three pages of his autobiography. Nothing to speak of; but as I
looked them over, the curious confirmation of the few casual words
heard in my early youth evoked the memories of that distant time when
everything was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting;
bits of strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the
sunshine, men's passions in the dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown
dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world something to
write about. Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A
rascal steals a large parcel of a valuable commodity--so people say.
It's either true or untrue; and in any case it has no value in itself.
To invent a circumstantial account of the robbery did not appeal to me,
because my talents not running that way I did not think that the game
was worth the candle. It was only when it dawned upon me that the
purloiner of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue,
that he could be even a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim
in the changing scenes of a revolution, it was only then that I had the
first vision of a twilight country which was to become the province
of Sulaco, with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty Campo for mute
witnesses of events flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in
good and evil.

Such are in very truth the obscure origins of "Nostromo"--the book. From
that moment, I suppose, it had to be. Yet even then I hesitated, as if
warned by the instinct of self-preservation from venturing on a distant
and toilsome journey into a land full of intrigues and revolutions. But
it had to be done.

It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with many intervals
of renewed hesitation, lest I should lose myself in the ever-enlarging
vistas opening before me as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the
country. Often, also, when I had thought myself to a standstill over the
tangled-up affairs of the Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack
my bag, rush away from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages
of the "Mirror of the Sea." But generally, as I've said before, my
sojourn on the Continent of Latin America, famed for its hospitality,
lasted for about two years. On my return I found (speaking somewhat in

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