Page 549 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

fogbank right over his head. It was his daring, his courage,
his act that had set these ships in motion upon the sea, hur-
rying 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 re-
sembled 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

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard