Gaspare lay down in the bottom of the boat, buried his face in his arms, and gave himself again to sleep. Salvatore looked at him, and then at Maurice, and smiled with a fine irony.
"He thought he would win, signore."
"Cosa?" said Maurice, startled by the sound of a voice.
"He thought that he could play better than I, signore."
Salvatore closed one eye, and stuck his tongue a little out of the left side of his mouth, then drew it in with a clicking noise.
"No one gets the better of me," he said. "They may try. Many have tried, but in the end—"
He shook his head, took his right hand from the oar and flapped it up and down, then brought it downward with force, as if beating some one, or something, to his feet.
"I see," Maurice said, dully. "I see."
He thought to himself that he had been cleverer than Salvatore the preceding night, but he felt no sense of triumph. He had divined the fisherman's passion and turned it to his purpose. But what of that? Let the man rejoice, if he could, in this dream. Let all men do what they wished to do so long as he could be undisturbed. He looked again at the sea, dropped his hand into it once more.
"Shall I let down a line, signore?"