Page 503 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

with astonishment and wonder. But since they did not im-
mediately proceed to plunge their swords into his breast,
the brazen side of his character asserted itself. Passing the
sleeve of his uniform over his face he pulled himself to-
gether, His truculent glance turned slowly here and there,
checked the noise where it fell; and the stiff body of the late
Senor Hirsch, merchant, after swaying imperceptibly, made
a half turn, and came to a rest in the midst of awed mur-
murs and uneasy shuffling.
A voice remarked loudly, ‘Behold a man who will nev-
er speak again.’ And another, from the back row of faces,
timid and pressing, cried out—
‘Why did you kill him, mi colonel?’
‘Because he has confessed everything,’ answered Sotillo,
with the hardihood of desperation. He felt himself cornered.
He brazened it out on the strength of his reputation with
very fair success. His hearers thought him very capable of
such an act. They were disposed to believe his flattering
tale. There is no credulity so eager and blind as the creduli-
ty of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures
the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of man-
kind. Ah! he had confessed everything, this fractious Jew,
this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer wanted. A sud-
den dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain—a
big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat
cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantasti-
cally ragged like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the
late Senor Hirsch, muttering to himself with ineffable com-
placency that like this there was no need to guard against

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard