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People began to yawn. And, as if by command, everyone suddenly stopped talking and laughing. There was a sense of tiredness and depression about us.
    'You'll never make me understand why they should cement at twelve hundred feet.' The pump-master brought up the question once more. To me it seemed that now he was not at all interested in what the oilmen were doing here or anywhere else in the world and that he was talking only to break that strange silence which was spreading around us.
    None in our group accepted the pump-master's invitation to talk. The air was heavy, burdened as it is just before the break of a thunderstorm.
    And then, when everybody was on the verge of opening his mouth to say something to end that horrible silence, there came the sound of a heavy splash from the river, which during the last fifteen minutes had been so quiet that not even the softest gurgle could be heard.
    That plunge was very short, but distinctively characteristic in its peculiar sound. Yet nobody seemed to have noticed it. Nobody paid any attention to it. It was the sort of splash that occurred perhaps a dozen times every day.
    I, however, felt as though the river had cried out: 'Don't forget me, folks. I am still here and I shall survive all of you!'
    I looked Sleigh straight in the face. He looked at me in the same manner. I knew he was thinking something and I wondered whether he might not be thinking the same thing I was. He had heard the plunge, but he tried to give the impression that he was paying as little attention to it as the others.
    Now let me think. What was that sound? Could it be that one of the boys sitting on the bridge had jumped into the river just for fun? No, it was not that. I would have heard somebody swimming or paddling through the water. Yet there was no such sound after the big splash, nor was there any of the laughing or howling with which the other boys would inevitably have greeted such a plunge.
    Perhaps it was a stone or a log thrown into the river by someone.
    Garcia was fiddling again. His fingers must have been tired by now, but he fiddled on.
    Perhaps it was a big fish jumping out of the water to catch a mouthful of mosquitoes. No, it was no fish. The sound was entirely different. If I could only find a simile for it! But I simply could not place it.
    'Why are they going to cement?' Ignacio now said. 'I'll tell you. They have already cemented two holes deeper in the jungle. You see, here's the way they work, those gringos. What they are actually doing is robbing our poor country, leaving us poorer still and making themselves a thousand times richer than they are already. They drill until they reach oil. No sooner do they get in than they right away cement the hole tight to keep the oil inside. Once they have it under control and locked up, then they come out and say that they have not found one drop, not even a noseful of gas. That's what they are doing, these damned foreigners of Americanos.'
    The pump-master shook his head. 'No, that's something the gringos won't do. I know them too well. If they get to the oil, then they take it out, to the last crippled drop; they even dig out the mud and filter it for the oil left in it. What do you think, Don Nacho, how much does it cost them to drill a hole two thousand feet or perhaps deeper? That will cost them at least around thirty thousand dollars, and good American money too. Some holes cost them still more, up to fifty thousand dollars Americanos. Do you think they would throw their good money away? If their money were pesos, maybe they would. But believe me, their money is good money, all dollars. So that's all squash about them drilling a hole and cementing it tight after they find oil.'
    Perhaps it was a dog. No, the dog is out. A dog would make lots of noise in the water. The boys would holler after him from all sides to make it tough for the animal, confuse him as to the shortest way to the bank. Yet there was not even the slightest noise after the