It was on the pontoon in Horta that we met; and I tried to induce him to leave the launch
moored where she was and follow me to Europe there and then. It would have been
delightful to think of the excellent manager's surprise and disgust at the poor fellow's
escape. But he refused with unconquerable obstinacy.
"Surely you don't mean to live always here!" I cried. He shook his head.
"I shall die here," he said. Then added moodily, "Away from them."
Sometimes I think of him lying open-eyed on his horseman's gear in the low shed full of
tools and scraps of iron--the anarchist slave of the Maranon estate, waiting with
resignation for that sleep which "fled" from him, as he used to say, in such an
unaccountable manner.
