ce, remaining unbroken in the shape of a cord to which he
hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless phrases, always the same
but utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and
proclamations mingled into an ironical and senseless buzzing. In the
daytime he could look at the silence like a still cord stretched to
breaking-point, with his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a
weight.

"I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell," he asked himself.

The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt, dirty,
white-faced, and looked at it with his red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed
him slowly, as if full of lead, yet without tremor; and the effect
of that physical condition gave to his movements an unhesitating,
deliberate dignity. He acted as if accomplishing some sort of rite. He
descended into the gully; for the fascination of all that silver, with
its potential power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the
belt with the revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his
waist. The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let
him fall and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was looking at
the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea! His aspect was that
of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on his knees slowly and went
on grubbing with his fingers with industrious patience till he uncovered
one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing some work done many
times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his
pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out
of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish.

It was on the third day of his solitude that he had dragged the dinghy
near the water with an idea of rowing away somewhere, but had desisted
partly at the whisper of lingering hope that Nostromo would return,
partly from conviction of utter uselessness of all effort. Now she
wanted only a slight shove to be set afloat. He had eaten a little every
day after the first, and had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up
the oars slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that
stood behind him warm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life, bathed
in a rich light from head to foot as if in a radiance of hope and joy.
He pulled straight towards the setting sun. When the gulf had grown
dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls in. The hollow clatter they
made in