ould be no question of stopping to pick up that thing. Every
minute of time was momentous with the lives and futures of a whole town.
The head of the leading ship, with the General on board, fell off to her
course. Behind her, the fleet of transports, scattered haphazard over a
mile or so in the offing, like the finish of an ocean race, pressed on,
all black and smoking on the western sky.

"Mi General," Nostromo's voice rang out loud, but quiet, from behind a
group of officers, "I should like to save that little boat. Por Dios, I
know her. She belongs to my Company."

"And, por Dios," guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, good-humoured voice, "you
belong to me. I am going to make you a captain of cavalry directly we
get within sight of a horse again."

"I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General," cried Nostromo,
pushing through to the rail with a set stare in his eyes. "Let me----"

"Let you? What a conceited fellow that is," bantered the General,
jovially, without even looking at him. "Let him go! Ha! ha! ha! He wants
me to admit that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha! ha! ha! Would
you like to swim off to her, my son?"

A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the other stopped his
guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard; and his black head bobbed up far
away already from the ship. The General muttered an appalled "Cielo!
Sinner that I am!" in a thunderstruck tone. One anxious glance was
enough to show him that Nostromo was swimming with perfect ease; and
then he thundered terribly, "No! no! We shall not stop to pick up this
impertinent fellow. Let him drown--that mad Capataz."

Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo from leaping
overboard. That empty boat, coming out to meet him mysteriously, as if
rowed by an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of some sign,
of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling and enigmatic way the
persistent thought of a treasure and of a man's fate. He would have
leaped if there had been death in that half-mile of water. It was as
smooth as a pond, and for some reason sharks are unknown in the Placid
Gulf, though on the other side of the Punta Mala the coastline swarms
with them.

The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with force. A queer, faint
feeling had come over him while he swam. He had got rid of his boots and
coat in the water. He hung on for a time, regaining his breath. In
the distance the transports, more in a bunch now, held on