straight for
Sulaco, with their air of friendly contest, of nautical sport, of
a regatta; and the united smoke of their funnels drove like a thin,
sulphurous fogbank right over his head. It was his daring, his courage,
his act that had set these ships in motion upon the sea, hurrying on
to save the lives and fortunes of the Blancos, the taskmasters of the
people; to save the San Tome mine; to save the children.

With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over the stern. The
very boat! No doubt of it; no doubt whatever. It was the dinghy of the
lighter No. 3--the dinghy left with Martin Decoud on the Great Isabel so
that he should have some means to help himself if nothing could be done
for him from the shore. And here she had come out to meet him empty
and inexplicable. What had become of Decoud? The Capataz made a minute
examination. He looked for some scratch, for some mark, for some sign.
All he discovered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the
thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard with his finger. Then
he sat down in the stern sheets, passive, with his knees close together
and legs aslant.

Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers hanging lank
and dripping and a lustreless stare fixed upon the bottom boards, the
Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores resembled a drowned corpse come up from
the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a small boat. The excitement
of his adventurous ride, the excitement of the return in time,
of achievement, of success, all this excitement centred round the
associated ideas of the great treasure and of the only other man who
knew of its existence, had departed from him. To the very last moment
he had been cudgelling his brains as to how he could manage to visit
the Great Isabel without loss of time and undetected. For the idea of
secrecy had come to be connected with the treasure so closely that even
to Barrios himself he had refrained from mentioning the existence of
Decoud and of the silver on the island. The letters he carried to the
General, however, made brief mention of the loss of the lighter, as
having its bearing upon the situation in Sulaco. In the circumstances,
the one-eyed tiger-slayer, scenting battle from afar, had not wasted his
time in making inquiries from the messenger. In fact, Barrios, talking
with Nostromo, assumed that both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San
Tome were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned directly, ha