Page 460 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

the Custom House, appeared lonely, hopping amongst the
dark bushes like a tall bird with a broken wing.
Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the
clear water of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight
as a wall, with the grass-grown ruins of the fort making a
sort of rounded green mound, plainly visible from the inner
shore, closed its circuit; while beyond the Placid Gulf re-
peated those splendours of colouring on a greater scale and
with a more sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloud
filling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its
convoluted folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle
stained with blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed and
clear cut in a great smoothness confounding the sea and
sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the air. The lit-
tle wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks upon the
sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along the horizon
gave out a fiery red glow, as if fire and water had been min-
gled together in the vast bed of the ocean.
At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced
and still in a flaming contact upon the edge of the world,
went out. The red sparks in the water vanished together
with the stains of blood in the black mantle draping the
sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up
and died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on
the ruined earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a
fourteen hours’ sleep, and arose full length from his lair in
the long grass. He stood knee deep amongst the whispering
undulations of the green blades with the lost air of a man
just born into the world. Handsome, robust, and supple, he