to envying
his fate. What do you think of that, Capataz, eh?"

But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing the remaining light,
he thrust it under the drooping head. The doctor sat oblivious, with
a lost gaze. Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of
Nostromo's hand, clattered on the floor.

"Hullo!" exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a start. He could hear
the Capataz stagger against the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction
of the light within, the dead blackness sealing the window-frames became
alive with stars to his sight.

"Of course, of course," the doctor muttered to himself in English.
"Enough to make him jump out of his skin."

Nostromo's heart seemed to force itself into his throat. His head swam.
Hirsch! The man was Hirsch! He held on tight to the edge of the table.

"But he was hiding in the lighter," he almost shouted His voice fell.
"In the lighter, and--and--"

"And Sotillo brought him in," said the doctor. "He is no more startling
to you than you were to me. What I want to know is how he induced some
compassionate soul to shoot him."

"So Sotillo knows--" began Nostromo, in a more equable voice.

"Everything!" interrupted the doctor.

The Capataz was heard striking the table with his fist. "Everything?
What are you saying, there? Everything? Know everything? It is
impossible! Everything?"

"Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I tell you I have heard
this Hirsch questioned last night, here, in this very room. He knew your
name, Decoud's name, and all about the loading of the silver. . . .
The lighter was cut in two. He was grovelling in abject terror before
Sotillo, but he remembered that much. What do you want more? He knew
least about himself. They found him clinging to their anchor. He must
have caught at it just as the lighter went to the bottom."

"Went to the bottom?" repeated Nostromo, slowly. "Sotillo believes that?
Bueno!"

The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to imagine what else could
anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo believed that the lighter was sunk, and
the Capataz de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud and perhaps one
or two other political fugitives, had been drowned.

"I told you well, senor doctor," remarked Nostromo at that point, "that
Sotillo did not know everything."

"Eh? What do you mean?"

"He did not know I was not dead."

"Neither did we."

"And you did not care--none of you caballeros on the wharf--once you got