Page 420 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

fetters were struck off by the light of a candle, which, af-
ter months of gloom, hurt his eyes so much that he had to
cover his face with his hands. He was raised up. His heart
was beating violently with the fear of this liberty. When he
tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his feet made
him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were thrust into
his hands, and he was pushed out of the passage. It was
dusk; candles glimmered already in the windows of the of-
ficers’ quarters round the courtyard; but the twilight sky
dazed him by its enormous and overwhelming brilliance.
A thin poncho hung over his naked, bony shoulders; the
rags of his trousers came down no lower than his knees; an
eighteen months’ growth of hair fell in dirty grey locks on
each side of his sharp cheek-bones. As he dragged himself
past the guard-room door, one of the soldiers, lolling out-
side, moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward with
a strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on his
head. And Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, contin-
ued on his way. He advanced one stick, then one maimed
foot, then the other stick; the other foot followed only a very
short distance along the ground, toilfully, as though it were
almost too heavy to be moved at all; and yet his legs under
the hanging angles of the poncho appeared no thicker than
the two sticks in his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated
his bent body, all his wasted limbs, his bony head, the coni-
cal, ragged crown of the sombrero, whose ample flat rim
rested on his shoulders.
In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr.
Monygham go forth to take possession of his liberty. And

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