Page 369 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

came so mixed up with German that the better half of his
statements remained incomprehensible. He tried to propiti-
ate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which
in itself sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not
to trifle he repeated his entreaties and protestations of loy-
alty and innocence again in German, obstinately, because
he was not aware in what language he was speaking. His
identity, of course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant of
Esmeralda, but this made the matter no clearer. As he kept
on forgetting Decoud’s name, mixing him up with several
other people he had seen in the Casa Gould, it looked as if
they all had been in the lighter together; and for a moment
Sotillo thought that he had drowned every prominent Ri-
bierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw a
doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or
playing a part—pretending fear and distraction on the spur
of the moment to cover the truth. Sotillo’s rapacity, excited
to the highest pitch by the prospect of an immense booty,
could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew might have been
very much frightened by the accident, but he knew where
the silver was concealed, and had invented this story, with
his Jewish cunning, to put him entirely off the track as to
what had been done.
Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor in
a vast apartment with heavy black beams. But there was
no ceiling, and the eye lost itself in the darkness under the
high pitch of the roof. The thick shutters stood open. On
a long table could be seen a large inkstand, some stumpy,
inky quill pens, and two square wooden boxes, each hold-

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard