Tierra del Fuego by Francisco Coloane Page B

slowly but so copiously that no one was going to go looking for coffins by the side of the road that day. Neither that day nor the days after that, with the snow hardening into a thick crust of ice . . .
    It was as if the helmsman Martín had returned to sea after his death, like the souls of those who have died in shipwrecks and who follow the wake of what were their ships or the trail of those who tormented them in life or at the hour of their death.
    Around mid-morning on that first day, Don Erico, the owner of the Bar Hamburg, started cleaning his establishment, and to his surprise, found an old gray-haired sailor sleeping it off behind some barrels in a room adjoining the toilets that served as a storeroom.
    â€œWho are you?” he said, prodding him awake with his foot.
    â€œMe?” Foster stammered. “I’m from the Gastelu . . .” He got to his feet, rubbing his eyes, still not quite realizing where he was.
    â€œThe ship that was calling her crew all night?”
    â€œYes . . . What about . . . my shipmates?” he stammered. “Did they go . . . Did they leave me?”
    â€œNow that I come to think of it, they were asking after someone called Foster. Are you Foster?”
    â€œYes, I’m Foster!”
    â€œI told them you’d gone with the others . . . looking for women!” Don Erico said, and laughed uproariously.
    â€œAnd what about the ship?”
    â€œShe’ll be long gone by now! No ship waits for a sailor!”
    â€œGive me a gin!” Foster muttered, feeling in his pockets for money.
    They went into the bar, where Don Erico poured him a large glass of gin.
    â€œI used to be a sailor, too!” he said. “I sailed on the Hapag for years. Many’s the time the ship left without me, and I had to get on another!”
    Foster was stiff with cold after the night he had spent on the storeroom floor, but the gin stopped his teeth chattering, so he steadied himself with another glass before heading for the door.
    â€œDon’t go out,” Don Erico warned him. “It’s snowing hard!”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter, the ship may still be there!” he replied.
    â€œThey would have sounded the siren again!” the bar owner retorted.
    Foster went down to the quay anyway and peered out at the mist-shrouded bay, but there were only a few old hulks moored there, along with some small craft that plied the coast and the odd wool-carrying ship that had been late getting out. The Gastelu was nowhere to be seen. By now she must be emerging from the eastern mouth of the straits, en route for Africa, and then Europe, the Mediterranean. From what he had heard, this was her last voyage. She was too old and had been forbidden to sail anymore. Some ship owner was sure to buy her, break her up, and sell the scrap at a profit. His hard heart cracked, as if a knife had gone through it . . . If he couldn’t find the Gastelu again in any other port in the world, or if they broke her up for scrap, how would he ever find the money that Martín had hidden under a lantern near the top of the foremast? Who would be the lucky person to discover that treasure, for the sake of which he had committed the foulest act of his life—not giving his dying friend a glass of water with his medicine?
    It was soon after crossing the Paso del Abismo, when they were in the channels, that Martín fell sick and called him over to reveal the place where he had hidden his savings from his years of sailing on the cargo ship Gastelu . He had planned to use that money to retire to his native village, in the province of Pontevedra, where his old mother still lived—the savings would be for her now. They already knew her well in the harbormaster’s office at Vigo because of the money he sent her every month. Foster could leave the savings there for her, but if he had time, he’d prefer it if he could go to the village and give it to her personally. It was