With the discovery of Hirsch, the little society of the lighter is complete: we have the aristocrat who inaugurated the mission, the People who provide the labor for it, and the unwanted underclass. This chapter of suspense and action in the darkness of the Placid Gulf is at once the novel's most adventurous and most directly metaphorical. The Gulf represents ultimate subjectivity, the "incontrovertible truth" of fundamental human isolation, while the lighter carrying the silver represents the society that unites us. But when this 'society' is damaged, its so-called common purpose is revealed to be illusory: Nostromo and Decoud are estranged in everything but their fear of sinking in the Gulf, suggesting a world in which Fear (represented by Hirsch) is indeed the hidden passenger of every human society.

The voyage ends with the silver concealed on the Great Isabel, a symbol for the true concealed treasure of mankind: the personality of the individual. And Part Two of the novel ends with the climax of the Separatist theme in an ultimate image of human isolation: Nostromo (representing the People) swimming alone in the dark waters of the Gulf.