him his wretched life. It is
nothing but fear. Your compassion saved him then, Don Martin, and now it is too
late. It couldn't be done without noise.«
    In the steamer they were keeping a perfect silence, and the stillness was so
profound that Decoud felt as if the slightest sound conceivable must travel
unchecked and audible to the end of the world. What if Hirsch coughed or
sneezed? To feel himself at the mercy of such an idiotic contingency was too
exasperating to be looked upon with irony. Nostromo, too, seemed to be getting
restless. Was it possible, he asked himself, that the steamer, finding the night
too dark altogether, intended to remain stopped where she was till daylight? He
began to think that this, after all, was the real danger. He was afraid that the
darkness, which was his protection, would, in the end, cause his undoing.
    Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command on board the transport.
The events of the last forty-eight hours in Sulaco were not known to him;
neither was he aware that the telegraphist in Esmeralda had managed to warn his
colleague in Sulaco. Like a good many officers of the troops garrisoning the
province, Sotillo had been influenced in his adoption of the Ribierist cause by
the belief that it had the enormous wealth of the Gould Concession on its side.
He had been one of the frequenters of the Casa Gould, where he had aired his
Blanco convictions and his ardour for reform before Don José Avellanos, casting
frank, honest glances towards Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He was known to
belong to a good family persecuted and impoverished during the tyranny of Guzman
Bento. The opinions he expressed appeared eminently natural and proper in a man
of his parentage and antecedents. And he was not a deceiver; it was perfectly
natural for him to express elevated sentiments while his whole faculties were
taken up with what seemed then a solid and practical notion - the notion that
the husband of Antonia Avellanos would be, naturally, the intimate friend of the
Gould Concession. He even pointed this out to Anzani once, when negotiating the
sixth or seventh small loan in the gloomy, damp apartment with enormous iron
bars, behind the principal shop in the whole row under the Arcades. He hinted to
the universal shopkeeper at the excellent terms he was on with the emancipated
señorita, who was like a sister to the Englishwoman. He would advance one leg
and put his arms akimbo, posing for Anzani's inspection, and fixing him with a
haughty stare.
    »Look, miserable