the same but utterly incomprehensible, about Nos-

tromo, Antonia, Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an ironical and senseless buzzing. In the day- time he could look at the silence like a still cord stretch- ed to breaking-point, with his life, his vain life, sus- i pended to it like a weight. "I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I fell," he asked himself. The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got up, gaunt, dirty, white-faced, and looked at it I with his red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed him yet slowly, as if full of lead, but without tremor; and the effect of that physical condition gave to his move- ments an unhesitating, deliberate dignity. He acted as if accomplishing some sort of rite. He descended into the gully; for the fascination of all that silver, with its potential power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked up the belt with the revolver, that was lying there, and buckled it round his waist. The cord of silence could never snap on the island. It must let him fall and sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was looking at the loose earth cover- ing the treasure. In the sea! His aspect was that of a somnambulist. He lowered himself down on his knees slowly and went on grubbing with his fingers with industrious patience till he uncovered one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it open and took four ingots which he put in his pockets. He covered up the ex- posed box again and step by step came out of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish.

It was on the third day of his solitude that he had