Page 501 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

times he had entered the torture-chamber where his sword,
horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass were lying on the ta-
ble, to ask with forced calmness, ‘Will you speak the truth
now? No? I can wait.’ But he could not afford to wait much
longer. That was just it. Every time he went in and came
out with a slam of the door, the sentry on the landing pre-
sented arms, and got in return a black, venomous, unsteady
glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being merely
the reflection of the soul within—a soul of gloomy hatred,
irresolution, avarice, and fury.
The sun had set when he went in once more. A soldier
carried in two lighted candles and slunk out, shutting the
door without noise.
‘Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver! The
silver, I say! Where is it? Where have you foreign rogues
hidden it? Confess or—‘
A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked
limbs, but the body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising business
man from Esmeralda, hung under the heavy beam perpen-
dicular and silent, facing the colonel awfully. The inflow
of the night air, cooled by the snows of the Sierra, spread
gradually a delicious freshness through the close heat of the
room.
‘Speak—thief—scoundrel—picaro—or—‘
Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his
arm lifted up. For a word, for one little word, he felt he
would have knelt, cringed, grovelled on the floor before the
drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed eyeballs starting out
of the grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very still with

00 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard