Page 550 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

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 men-
tion 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, Barri-
os, talking with Nostromo, assumed that both Don Martin
Decoud and the ingots of San Tome were lost together, and
Nostromo, not questioned directly, had kept silent, under
the influence of some indefinable form of resentment and
distrust. Let Don Martin speak of everything with his own
lips—was what he told himself mentally.
And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel
thrown thus in his way at the earliest possible moment,
his excitement had departed, as when the soul takes flight
leaving the body inert upon an earth it knows no more.
Nostromo did not seem to know the gulf. For a long time
even his eyelids did not flutter once upon the glazed empti-
ness of his stare. Then slowly, without a limb having stirred,
without a twitch of muscle or quiver of an eyelash, an ex-
pression, a living expression came upon the still features,
deep thought crept into the empty stare—as if an outcast
soul, a quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted body
in its way, had come in stealthily to take possession.
The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness of
sea, islands, and coast, of cloud forms on the sky and trails