  
                                 Joseph Conrad

                                    Nostromo

                             A Tale of the Seaboard

 »so foul a sky
 clears not
 without a storm«
                                                                     Shakespeare
 

                                 Author's Note

»Nostromo« is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels which belong to
the period following upon the publication of the »Typhoon« volume of short
stories.
    I don't mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change in
my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing life. And
perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious, extraneous thing
which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a subtle change in the nature
of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I can not in any way be held
responsible. What, however, did cause me some concern was that after finishing
the last story of the »Typhoon« volume it seemed somehow that there was nothing
more in the world to write about.
    This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little time; and
then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for »Nostromo« came to
me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely destitute of valuable details.
    As a matter of fact in 1875 or '6, when very young, in the West Indies or
rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few, and
fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen
single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme
seaboard during the troubles of a revolution.
    On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no details, and
having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to keep that
one in my my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven years afterwards I
came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked up outside a second-hand
book-shop. It was the life story of an American seaman written by himself with
the assistance of a journalist. In the course of his wanderings that American
sailor worked for some months on board a schooner, the master and owner of which
was the thief of whom I had heard in my very young days. I have no doubt of that
because there could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the
same part of the world and both connected with a South American revolution.
    The fellow had actually managed to steal a lighter with silver, and this, it
seems, only because he was implicitly trusted by his employers, who must have
been singularly poor judges of character. In the
