The "yet black sky" likely stands for the period before the dawning of a labour consciousness. Despite the nostalgic tone of this passage, the cargadores are seen to live in a state of unspeakable squalor. The presence of Higuerota (symbolizing the Ideal) in this night makes the image more complex. It might symbolize the ideal of progress, the "pale" taskmaster whom these laborers serve. But it might also symbolize the workers' own ideal, in a simpler time when the goal of the worker was merely to work, an ideal unclouded as yet by the grand idealism of labour consciousness.

At any rate, this scene of Nostromo marshalling the workers into service forms a bookend with the scene at the end of the chapter, in which Nostromo questions that service.