Page 383 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

taz of Cargadores.’
At this, Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in the
excess of his excitement. The doctor, without giving him
time to exclaim, stated briefly the part played by Hirsch
during the night.
Captain Mitchell was overcome. ‘Drowned!’ he mut-
tered, in a bewildered and appalled whisper. ‘Drowned!’
Afterwards he kept still, apparently listening, but too ab-
sorbed in the news of the catastrophe to follow the doctor’s
narrative with attention.
The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect ignorance,
till at last Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in
to repeat the whole story, which was got out of him again
with the greatest difficulty, because every moment he would
break out into lamentations. At last, Hirsch was led away,
looking more dead than alive, and shut up in one of the up-
stairs rooms to be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping
up his character of a man not admitted to the inner coun-
cils of the San Tome Administration, remarked that the
story sounded incredible. Of course, he said, he couldn’t
tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as he had
been exclusively occupied with his own work in looking af-
ter the wounded, and also in attending Don Jose Avellanos.
He had succeeded in assuming so well a tone of impartial
indifference, that Sotillo seemed to be completely deceived.
Till then a show of regular inquiry had been kept up; one
of the officers sitting at the table wrote down the questions
and the answers, the others, lounging about the room, lis-
tened attentively, puffing at their long cigars and keeping

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard