Page 372 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

and had been dragged along for some distance before he
could regain his stride. With his recovered breath his in-
dignation seemed to madden him. He jumped up, crimson,
all his white hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and
shook violently the flaps of his ruined waistcoat before the
disconcerted Sotillo. ‘Look! Those uniformed thieves of
yours downstairs have robbed me of my watch.’
The old sailor’s aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw
himself cut off from the table on which his sabre and re-
volver were lying.
‘I demand restitution and apologies,’ Mitchell thundered
at him, quite beside himself. ‘From you! Yes, from you!’
For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a
perfectly stony expression of face; then, as Captain Mitch-
ell flung out an arm towards the table as if to snatch up the
revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm, bounded to the door
and was gone in a flash, slamming it after him. Surprise
calmed Captain Mitchell’s fury. Behind the closed door So-
tillo shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of
feet on the wooden staircase.
‘Disarm him! Bind him!’ the colonel could be heard vo-
ciferating.
Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the
windows, with three perpendicular bars of iron each and
some twenty feet from the ground, as he well knew, be-
fore the door flew open and the rush upon him took place.
In an incredibly short time he found himself bound with
many turns of a hide rope to a high-backed chair, so that
his head alone remained free. Not till then did Sotillo, who

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