ion, where his complacent superiority
analyzed fearlessly all motives and all passions, including 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 overweening vanity of his companion. It was
direct, uncomplicated, 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 remained
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 uncertain 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 prevailing 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 whispering 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.

"I fancy I hear another shower on the water," he observed 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 thinning of the darkness seemed to have ta