me was provided now with a faithful and lifelong
slave.

The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of the disenchanted vanity
which is the reward of audacious action, sat in the weary pose of a
hunted outcast through a night of sleeplessness as tormenting as any
known to Decoud, his companion in the most desperate affair of his life.
And he wondered how Decoud had died. But he knew the part he had
played himself. First a woman, then a man, abandoned both in their last
extremity, for the sake of this accursed treasure. It was paid for by
a soul lost and by a vanished life. The blank stillness of awe was
succeeded by a gust of immense pride. There was no one in the world but
Gian' Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the incorruptible and
faithful Nostromo, to pay such a price.

He had made up his mind that nothing should be allowed now to rob him of
his bargain. Nothing. Decoud had died. But how? That he was dead he had
not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . . What for? Did he mean to
come for more--some other time?

The treasure was putting forth its latent power. It troubled the clear
mind of the man who had paid the price. He was sure that Decoud was
dead. The island seemed full of that whisper. Dead! Gone! And he
caught himself listening for the swish of bushes and the splash of the
footfalls in the bed of the brook. Dead! The talker, the novio of Dona
Antonia!

"Ha!" he murmured, with his head on his knees, under the livid clouded
dawn breaking over the liberated Sulaco and upon the gulf as gray as
ashes. "It is to her that he will fly. To her that he will fly!"

And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to cast a spell, like the
angry woman who had prophesied remorse and failure, and yet had laid
upon him the task of saving the children? Well, he had saved the
children. He had defeated the spell of poverty and starvation. He had
done it all alone--or perhaps helped by the devil. Who cared? He had
done it, betrayed as he was, and saving by the same stroke the San Tome
mine, which appeared to him hateful and immense, lording it by its vast
wealth over the valour, the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and
peace, over the labours of the town, the sea, and the Campo.

The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cordillera. The Capataz
looked down for a time upon the fall of loose earth, stones, and smashed
bushes, concealing the hiding-place of the silver.

"I must grow rich very slo