“Well, well!” he muttered to himself, but he had not the heart to voice his thoughts. They were swept away by others full of astonishment and regret. A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed him: the loss of the silver, the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a blow to his sensibilities, because he had become attached to his Capataz as people get attached to their inferiors from love of ease and almost unconscious gratitude. And when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his sensibility was almost overcome by this miserable end. What a heavy blow for that poor young woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the species of crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young men paying attentions to young women. It seemed to him a natural and proper thing. Proper especially. As to sailors, it was different; it was not their place to marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as a matter of self-denial, for, he explained, life on board ship is not fit for a woman even at best, and if you leave her on shore, first of all it is not fair, and next she either suffers from it or doesn’t care a bit, which, in both cases, is bad. He couldn’t have told what upset him most--Charles Gould’s immense material loss, the death of Nostromo, which was a heavy loss to himself, or the idea of that beautiful and accomplished young woman being plunged into mourning. “Yes,” the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began again, “he believed me right enough. I thought he would have hugged me. ‘Si, si,’ he said, ‘he will write to that partner of his, the rich Americano in San Francisco, that it is all lost. Why not? There is enough to share with many people.’” “But this is perfectly imbecile!” cried Captain Mitchell. The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and that his imbecility was ingenious enough to lead him completely astray. He had helped him only but a little way. “I mentioned,” the doctor said, “in a sort of casual way, that treasure is generally buried in the earth rather than set afloat upon the sea. At this my Sotillo slapped his forehead. ‘Por Dios, yes,’ he said; ‘they must have buried it on the shores of this harbour somewhere before they sailed out.’” “Heavens and earth!” muttered Captain Mitchell, “I should not have believed that anybody could be ass enough--” He paused, then went on mournfully: “But what’s the good of all this? It would have been a clever enough lie if the lighter had been still afloat. It would have kept that inconceivable idiot perhaps from sending out the steamer to cruise in the gulf. That was the danger that worried me no end.” Captain Mitchell sighed profoundly. “I had an object,” the doctor pronounced, slowly.