Page 33 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

der his white moustache, and his eyes began to roll fiercely.
Several bullets struck the end of the wall together; pieces
of plaster could be heard falling outside; a voice screamed
‘Here they come!’ and after a moment of uneasy silence
there was a rush of running feet along the front.
Then the tension of old Giorgio’s attitude relaxed, and a
smile of contemptuous relief came upon his lips of an old
fighter with a leonine face. These were not a people striv-
ing for justice, but thieves. Even to defend his life against
them was a sort of degradation for a man who had been one
of Garibaldi’s immortal thousand in the conquest of Sicily.
He had an immense scorn for this outbreak of scoundrels
and leperos, who did not know the meaning of the word
‘liberty.’
He grounded his old gun, and, turning his head, glanced
at the coloured lithograph of Garibaldi in a black frame on
the white wall; a thread of strong sunshine cut it perpendic-
ularly. His eyes, accustomed to the luminous twilight, made
out the high colouring of the face, the red of the shirt, the
outlines of the square shoulders, the black patch of the Ber-
sagliere hat with cock’s feathers curling over the crown. An
immortal hero! This was your liberty; it gave you not only
life, but immortality as well!
For that one man his fanaticism had suffered no dimi-
nution. In the moment of relief from the apprehension of
the greatest danger, perhaps, his family had been exposed
to in all their wanderings, he had turned to the picture of
his old chief, first and only, then laid his hand on his wife’s
shoulder.

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard