He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended into the gully to
spend the night by the side of the silver. If Nostromo returned--as he
might have done at any moment--it was there that he would look first;
and night would, of course, be the proper time for an attempt to
communicate. He remembered with profound indifference that he had not
eaten anything yet since he had been left alone on the island.
He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day broke he ate something
with the same indifference. The brilliant "Son Decoud," the spoiled
darling of the family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of Sulaco,
was not fit to grapple with himself single-handed. Solitude from mere
outward condition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in
which the affectations of irony and scepticism have no place. It takes
possession of the mind, and drives forth the thought into the exile of
utter unbelief. After three days of waiting for the sight of some
human face, Decoud caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own
individuality. It had merged into the world of cloud and water, of
natural forces and forms of nature. In our activity alone do we find
the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the
whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part. Decoud lost all
belief in the reality of his action past and to come. On the fifth day
an immense melancholy descended upon him palpably. He resolved not to
give himself up to these people in Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and
terrible, like jibbering and obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling
feebly in their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an
allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his weakness.
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