e face. But he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought
that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace,
the shame going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine
himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own
existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to grasp the
notion of finality. The earth goes on for ever.

And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it was as good
for his purposes as the other kind. He sailed close to the cliff of the
Great Isabel, throwing a penetrating glance from the deck at the mouth
of the ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth of bushes. He sailed
close enough to exchange hails with the workmen, shading their eyes on
the edge of the sheer drop of the cliff overhung by the jib-head of a
powerful crane. He perceived that none of them had any occasion even to
approach the ravine where the silver lay hidden; let alone to enter it.
In the harbour he learned that no one slept on the island. The labouring
gangs returned to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the empty
lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the moment he had nothing to fear.

But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper came to live in
the cottage that was being built some hundred and fifty yards back from
the low lighttower, and four hundred or so from the dark, shaded, jungly
ravine, containing the secret of his safety, of his influence, of his
magnificence, of his power over the future, of his defiance of ill-luck,
of every possible betrayal from rich and poor alike--what then? He could
never shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater than that of other
men, had welded that vein of silver into his life. And the feeling
of fearful and ardent subjection, the feeling of his slavery--so
irremediable and profound that often, in his thoughts, he compared
himself to the legendary Gringos, neither dead nor alive, bound down
to their conquest of unlawful wealth on Azuera--weighed heavily on the
independent Captain Fidanza, owner and master of a coasting schooner,
whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well
known along the western seaboard of a vast continent.

Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in his walk, the
vigour and symmetry of his powerful limbs lost in the vulgarity of a
brown tweed suit, made by Jews in the slums of London, and sold by the
clothing department of the Compania Anza