Section 29

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“Lie still there! Do not move a limb. If I hear — as much as a loud breath from you I shall come over there and put a bullet through your head.”
The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of treachery into a dangerous situa- tion. Nostromo’s nervous impatience passed into gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as if speaking to himself, remarked that, after all, this bizarre event made no great difference. He could not conceive what harm the man could do. At most he would be in the way, like an inanimate and useless object—like a block of wood, for instance.
“T would think twice before getting rid of a piece of wood,” said Nostromo, calmly. “Something may — happen unexpectedly where you could make use of it. But in an affair like ours a man like this ought to be thrown overboard. Even if he were as brave as a lion we would not want him here. We are not running away for our lives. Sefior, there is no harm in a brave man trying to save himself with ingenuity and courage; but you have heard his tale, Don Martin. His being here is a miracle of fear——”’’ Nostromo paused. “There is no room for fear in this lighter,’ he added through his teeth.
Decoud had no answer to make. It was not a posi- tion for argument, for a display of scruples or feelings. There were a thousand ways in which a panic-stricken man could make himself dangerous. It was evident that Hirsch could not be spoken to, reasoned with, or persuaded into a rational line of conduct. The story of his own escape demonstrated that clearly enough. Decoud thought that it was a thousand pities the wretch had not died of fright. Nature, who had made him what he was, seemed to have calculated cruelly how much he could bear in the way of atrocious anguish
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without actually expiring. Some compassion was due to so much terror. Decoud, though imaginative enough for sympathy, resolved not to interfere with any action that Nostromo would take. But Nostromo did noth- ing. And the fate of Sefior Hirsch remained sus- pended in the darkness of the gulf at the mercy of events which could not be foreseen.
The Capataz, extending his hand, put out the candle suddenly. It was to Decoud as if his companion had destroyed, by a single touch, the world of affairs, of loves, of revolution, where his complacent superiority analyzed fearlessly all motives and all passions, in- cluding his own. ’
He gasped a little. Decoud was affected by the novelty of his position. Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from being deprived of the only weapon he could use with effect. No intelligence could penetrate the darkness of the Placid Gulf. There remained only one thing he was certain of, and that was the over- weening vanity of his companion. It was direct, un- complicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been making use of him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He had discovered a complete singleness of motive behind the varied manifestations of a consistent character. This was why the man re- mained so astonishingly simple in the jealous greatness of his conceit. And now there was a complication. It was evident that he resented having been given a task in which there were so many chances of failure. “I wonder,” thought Decoud, “how he would behave if I were not here.”
He heard Nostromo mutter again, “No! there is no room for fear on this lighter. Courage itself does not seem good enough. I have a good eye and a steady hand; no man can say he ever saw me tired or uncer-
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tain what to do; but por Dios, Don Martin, I have been — sent out into this black calm on a business where neither — a good eye, nor a steady hand, nor judgment are any use. . . .” He swore a string of oaths in Spanish and Italian under his breath. ‘Nothing but sheer desperation will do for this affair.”
These words were in strange contrast to the pre- vailing peace—to this almost solid stillness of the gulf. A shower fell with an abrupt whispering sound all round the boat, and Decoud took off his hat, and, letting his head get wet, felt greatly refreshed. Presently a steady little draught of air caressed his cheek. ‘The lighter began to move, but the shower distanced it. The drops ceased to fall upon his head and hands, the whis- _ pering died out in the distance. Nostromo emitted a grunt of satisfaction, and grasping the tiller, chirruped softly, as sailors do, to encourage the wind. Never for the last.three days had Decoud felt less the need for what the Capataz would call desperation.
“T fancy I hear another shower on the water,”’ he ob- served in a tone of quiet content. “I hope it will catch us up.”
Nostromo ceased chirruping at once. “You hear another shower?” he said, doubtfully. A sort of thin- ning of the darkness seemed to have taken place, and Decoud could see now the outline of his companion’s figure, and even the sail came out of the night like a square block of dense snow.
The sound which Decoud had detected came along the water harshly. Nostromo recognized that noise partaking of a hiss and a rustle which spreads out on all sides of a steamer making her way through a smooth water on a quiet night. It could be nothing else but the captured transport with troops from Esmeralda, She carried no lights. The noise of her steaming, grow-
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ing louder every minute, would stop at times altogether, and then begin again abruptly, and sound startlingly nearer, as if that invisible vessel, whose position could not be precisely guessed, were making straight for the lighter. Meantime, that last kept on sailing slowly and noiselessly before a breeze so faint that it was only by leaning over the side and feeling the water slip through his fingers that Decoud convinced himself they were moving at all. His drowsy feeling had departed. He was glad to know that the lighter was moving. After so much stillness the noise of the steamer seemed up- roarious and distracting. ‘There was a weirdness in not being able to see her. Suddenly all was still. She had ~ stopped, but so close to them that the steam, blowing off, sent its rumbling vibration right over their heads.
“They are trying to make out where they are,” said Decoud in a whisper. Again he leaned over and put his fingers into the water. “We are moving quite smartly,” he informed Nostromo. |
“We seem to be crossing her bows,” said the Capataz in a cautious tone. “But this is a blind game with death. Moving on is of no use. We mustn’t be seen or heard.”
His whisper was hoarse with excitement. Of all his face there was nothing visible but a gleam of white eye- balls. His fingers gripped Decoud’s shoulder. “That is the only way to save this treasure from this steamer full of soldiers. Any other would have carried lights. But you observe there is not a gleam to show us where she is.”
Decoud stood as if paralyzed; only his thoughts were wildly active. In the space of a second he remembered the desolate glance of Antoniaas he left her at the bedside of her father in the gloomy house of Avellanos, with shuttered windows, but all the doors standing open, and
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deserted by all the servants except an old negro at the gate. Heremembered the Casa Gould on his last visit. the arguments, the tones of his voice, the impenetrable attitude of Charles, Mrs. Gould’s face so blanched with anxiety and fatigue that her eyes seemed to have changed colour, appearing nearly black by contrast. Even whole sentences of the proclamation which he meant to make Barrios issue from his headquarters at Cayta as soon as he got there passed through his mind; the very germ of the new State, the Separationist procla- mation which he had tried before he left to read hur- riedly to Don José, stretched out on his bed under the fixed gaze of his daughter. God knows whether the old
statesman had understood it; he was unable to speak, _
but he had certainly lifted his arm off the coverlet; his hand had moved as if to make the sign of the cross in the air, a gesture of blessing, of consent. Decoud had that very draft in his pocket, written in pencil on several loose sheets of paper, with the heavily-printed heading, ‘“‘ Administration of the San Tomé Silver Mine. Sulaco. Republic of Costaguana.”” He had written it furiously, snatching page after page on Charles Gould’s table. Mrs. Gould had looked several times over his shoulder as he wrote; but the Sefior Administrador, standing straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was finished. He had waved it away firmly. It must have been scorn, and not caution, sirce he never made a remark about the use of the Administration’s paper for such a compromising document. And that showed his disdain, the true English disdain of common pru- dence, as if everything outside the range of their own thoughts and feelings were unworthy of serious recog- nition. Decoud had the time in a second or two to be- come furiously angry with Charles Gould, and even re- sentful against Mrs. Gould, in whose care, tacitly it
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is true, he had left the safety of Antonia. Better perish a thousand times than owe your preservation to such people, he exclaimed mentally. The grip of Nostromo’s fingers never removed from his shoulder, tightening fiercely, recalled him to himself.
“The darkness is our friend,” the Capataz murmured into his ear. “I am going to lower the sail, and trust our escape to this black gulf. No eyes could make us out lying silent with a naked mast. T will do it now, be- fore this steamer closes still more upon us. The faint creak of a block would betray us and the San Tomé treasure into the hands of those thieves.”
He moved about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard no sound; and it was only by the disappearance of the square blotch of darkness that he knew the yard had come down, lowered as carefully as if it had been made of glass. Next moment he heard Nostromo’s quiet breathing by his side.
“You had better not move at all from where you are, Don Martin,” advised the Capataz, earnestly. ‘“‘ You might stumble or displace something which would make a noise. ‘The sweeps and the punting poles are lying about. Move not for your life. Por Dios, Don Martin,” he went on in a keen but friendly whisper, “I am so desperate that if I didn’t know your worship to be a man of courage, capable of standing stock still whatever happens, I would drive my knife into your heart.”
A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was difficult to believe that there was near a steamer full of men with many pairs of eyes peering from her bridge for some hint of land in the night. Her steam had ceased blowing off, and she remained stopped too far off ap- parently for any other sound to reach the lighter. _
“Perhaps you would, Gapataz,” Decoud began in a whisper. “However, you need not trouble. There
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are other things than the fear of your knife to keep my heart steady. Itshall not betray you. Only, have you forgotten ae
“TI spoke to you openly as to a man as desperate as myself,” explained the Capataz. ‘The silver must be saved from the Monterists. I told Captain Mitchell three times that I preferred to go alone. I told Don Carlos Gould, too. It was in the Casa Gould. They had sent for me. The ladies were there; and when I tried to explain why I did not wish to have you with me, they promised me, both of them, great rewards for your safety. A strange way to talk to a man you are sending out to an almost certain death. Those gentlefolk do not seem to have sense enough to understand what they are giving one to do. I told them I could do nothing for you. You would have been safer with the bandit Hernandez. It would have been possible to ride out of the town with no greater risk than a chance shot sent after you in the dark. But it was as if they had been deaf. I had to promise I would wait for you under the harbour gate. Idid wait. And now because you are a brave man you are as safe as the silver. Neither more nor less.”
At that moment, as if by way of comment upon Nos- tromo’s words, the invisible steamer went ahead at half speed only, as could be judged by the leisurely beat of her propeller. The sound shifted its place markedly, but without coming nearer. 1t even grew a little more distant right abeam of the lighter, and then ceased again.
“They are trying for a sight of the Isabels,” muttered Nostromo, “in order to make for the harbour in a straight line and seize the Custom. House with the treasure in it. Have you ever seen the Commandant of Esmeralda, Sotillo? A handsome fellow, with a soft
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voice. When I first came here I used to see him in the Calle talking to the sefioritas at the windows of the houses, and showing his white teeth all the time. But one of my Cargadores, who had been a soldier, told me that he had once ordered a man to be flayed alive in the remote Campo, where he was sent recruiting amongst the people of the Estancias. It has never entered his head that the Compania had a man capable of baffling his game.”
The murmuring loquacity of the Capataz disturbed Decoud like a hint of weakness. And yet, talkative resolution may be as genuine as grim silence.
“Sotillo is not baffled so far,” he said. “Have you forgotten that crazy man forward?”
Nostromo had not forgotten Sefior Hirsch. He re- proached himself bitterly for not having visited the lighter carefully before leaving the wharf. He re- proached himself for not having stabbed and flung Hirsch overboard at the very moment of discovery with- out even looking at his face. That would have been consistent with the desperate character of the affair. Whatever happened, Sotillo was already baffled. Even if that wretch, now as silent as death, did anything to betray the nearness of the lighter, Sotillo—if Sotillo it was in command of the troops on board—would be still baffled of his plunder.
“T have an axe in my hand,” Nostromo whispered, wrathfully, “that in three strokes would cut through the side down to the water’s edge. Moreover, each lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know exactly where itis. I feel it under the sole of my foot.”
Decoud recognized the ring of genuine determination in the nervous murmurs, the vindictive excitement of the famous Capataz. Before the steamer, guided by a shriek or two (for there could be no more than that,
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Nostromo said, gnashing his teeth audibly), could find the lighter there would be plenty of time to sink this treasure tied up round his neck.
The last words he hissed into Decoud’s ear. Decoud said nothing. He was perfectly convinced. The usual characteristic quietness of the man was gone. It was not equal to the situation as he conceived it. Something deeper, something unsuspected by everyone, had come to the surface. Decoud, with careful move- ments, slipped off his overcoat and divested himself of his boots; he did not consider himself bound in honour to sink with the treasure. His object was to get down to Barrios, in Cayta, as the Capataz knew very well; and he, too, meant, in his own way, to put into that attempt all the desperation of which he was capable. Nostromo _ muttered, “True, true! You are a politician, sefior. Rejoin the army, and start another revolution.” He pointed out, however, that there was a little boat be- longing to every lighter fit to carry two men, if not more. Theirs was towing behind.
Of that Decoud had not been aware. Of course, it was too dark to see, and it was only when Nostromo put his hand upon its painter fastened to a cleat in the stern that he experienced a full measure of relief. The prospect of finding himself in the water and swimming, overwhelmed by ignorance and darkness, probably in a circle, till he sank from exhaustion, was revolting. The barren and cruel futility of such an end intimidated his affectation of careless pessimism. In comparison to it, the chance of being left floating in a boat, exposed to thirst, hunger, discovery, imprisonment, execution, presented itself with an aspect of amenity worth secur- ing even at the cost of some self-contempt. He did not accept Nostromo’s proposal that he should get into the boat at once. “Something sudden may overwhelm us,
wees re
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sefior,” the Capataz remarked promising faithfully, at the same time, to let go the painter at the moment when the necessity became manifest.
But Decoud assured him lightly that he did not mean to take to the boat till the very last moment, and that then he meant the Capataz to come along, too. The darkness of the gulf was no longer for him the end of all things. It was part of a living world since, pervading it, failure and death could be felt at your elbow. And at the same time it was a shelter. He exulted in its impenetrable obscurity. “Like a wall, like a wall,” he muttered to himself.