Schwartz still threw away his gold coins, and once, in one of my rare intervals of looking about me, I saw Denton picking them up.

This surprised me mildly, but I was too tired to be very curious.

Only now, when I saw Schwartz's arm sweep out in what had become a mechanical movement, I always took pains to look, and always I saw Denton search for the coin.

Sometimes he found it, and sometimes he did not.
The figures of my companions and the yellow-brown tide sand under my feet, and a consciousness of the blue and white sea to my left, are all I remember, except when we had to pull ourselves together for the purpose of cutting fishhook cactus.

I kept going, and I knew I had a good reason for doing so, but it seemed too much of an effort to recall what that reason was.
Schwartz threw away a gold piece as another man would take a stimulant.
Gradually, without really thinking about it, I came to see this, and then went on to sabe why Denton picked up the coins; and a great admiration for Denton's cleverness seeped through me like water through the sand.