_soeur cherie_, is my companion in the great escape for the sake
of the great cause. He is more naive than shrewd, more masterful than
crafty, more generous with his personality than the people who make use
of him are with their money. At least, that is what he thinks himself
with more pride than sentiment. I am glad I have made friends with him.
As a companion he acquires more importance than he ever had as a sort of
minor genius in his way--as an original Italian sailor whom I allowed
to come in in the small hours and talk familiarly to the editor of the
Porvenir while the paper was going through the press. And it is curious
to have met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in
personal prestige.

"I am waiting for him here now. On arriving at the posada kept by Viola
we found the children alone down below, and the old Genoese shouted to
his countryman to go and fetch the doctor. Otherwise we would have gone
on to the wharf, where it appears Captain Mitchell with some volunteer
Europeans and a few picked Cargadores are loading the lighter with the
silver that must be saved from Montero's clutches in order to be used
for Montero's defeat. Nostromo galloped furiously back towards the town.
He has been long gone already. This delay gives me time to talk to you.
By the time this pocket-book reaches your hands much will have happened.
But now it is a pause under the hovering wing of death in this silent
house buried in the black night, with this dying woman, the two children
crouching without a sound, and that old man whom I can hear through the
thickness of the wall passing up and down with a light rubbing noise no
louder than a mouse. And I, the only other with them, don't really know
whether to count myself with the living or with the dead. 'Quien sabe?'
as the people here are prone to say in answer to every question. But no!
feeling for you is certainly not dead, and the whole thing, the house,
the dark night, the silent children in this dim room, my very presence
here--all this is life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream."

With the writing of the last line there came upon Decoud a moment of
sudden and complete oblivion. He swayed over the table as if struck by
a bullet. The next moment he sat up, confused, with the idea that he had
heard his pencil roll on the floor. The low door of the cafe, wide open,
was filled with the glare of a torch in which was visible half of a
horse, switching its tai