Page 499 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

They made him feel sick. And he suspected also that the
man might have gone mad with fear. A lunatic is a hopeless
subject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence. He would
know how to deal with that.
He was working himself up to the right pitch of feroc-
ity. His fine eyes squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a
bare-footed orderly appeared noiselessly, a corporal, with
his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a stick in his hand.
The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable
Hirsch, pushed in by several soldiers, found him frowning
awfully in a broad armchair, hat on head, knees wide apart,
arms akimbo, masterful, imposing, irresistible, haughty,
sublime, terrible.
Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been
bundled violently into one of the smaller rooms. For many
hours he remained apparently forgotten, stretched lifelessly
on the floor. From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he
was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in
hebetude. He listened to threats and admonitions, and af-
terwards made his usual answers to questions, with his chin
sunk on his breast, his hands tied behind his back, swaying
a little in front of Sotillo, and never looking up. When he
was forced to hold up his head, by means of a bayonet-point
prodding him under the chin, his eyes had a vacant, trance-
like stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were seen
hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of his white
face. Then they stopped suddenly.
Sotillo looked at him in silence. ‘Will you depart from
your obstinacy, you rogue?’ he asked. Already a rope,

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard