“I thank you, Señor, for your condescension. For your own interests I ask you in the future to forget me, and never to recognize me in whatever place you may meet me.”
And saying this, he turned his banca and rowed in the direction of a dense thicket on the beach. He seemed to observe only the millions of diamonds which his paddle lifted and which fell back into the lake, where they soon disappeared in the mystery of the blue waves.
Finally, he arrived at the place toward which he had been rowing. A man came out of the thicket and approached him:
“What shall I tell the captain?” he asked.
“Tell him that Elias, if he does not die before, will fulfill his word,” he replied gloomily.
“Then when will you meet us?”
“When your captain thinks that the hour of danger has come.”
“All right. Good-bye!”