Page 500 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

whose one end was fastened to Senor Hirsch’s wrists, had
been thrown over a beam, and three soldiers held the other
end, waiting. He made no answer. His heavy lower lip hung
stupidly. Sotillo made a sign. Hirsch was jerked up off his
feet, and a yell of despair and agony burst out in the room,
filled the passage of the great buildings, rent the air outside,
caused every soldier of the camp along the shore to look up
at the windows, started some of the officers in the hall bab-
bling excitedly, with shining eyes; others, setting their lips,
looked gloomily at the floor.
Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room. The
sentry on the landing presented arms. Hirsch went on
screaming all alone behind the half-closed jalousies while
the sunshine, reflected from the water of the harbour, made
an ever-running ripple of light high up on the wall. He
screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a wide-open mouth—
incredibly wide, black, enormous, full of teeth—comical.
In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he
made the waves of his agony travel as far as the O. S. N.
Company’s offices. Captain Mitchell on the balcony, trying
to make out what went on generally, had heard him faintly
but distinctly, and the feeble and appalling sound lingered
in his ears after he had retreated indoors with blanched
cheeks. He had been driven off the balcony several times
during that afternoon.
Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held
consultations with his officers, gave contradictory orders
in this shrill clamour pervading the whole empty edifice.
Sometimes there would be long and awful silences. Several