Page 540 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

the land gate, was not able to oppose the landing. He had
been sending messages to Sotillo for a week to join him.
Had Sotillo done so there would have been massacres and
proscription that would have left no man or woman of posi-
tion alive. But that’s where Dr. Monygham comes in. Sotillo,
blind and deaf to everything, stuck on board his steamer
watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to be
sunk at the bottom of the harbour. They say that for the last
three days he was out of his mind raving and foaming with
disappointment at getting nothing, flying about the deck,
and yelling curses at the boats with the drags, ordering
them in, and then suddenly stamping his foot and crying
out, ‘And yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!’
‘He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he had
on board) at the end of the after-derrick, when the first of
Barrios’s transports, one of our own ships at that, steamed
right in, and ranging close alongside opened a small-arm
fire without as much preliminaries as a hail. It was the com-
pletest surprise in the world, sir. They were too astounded
at first to bolt below. Men were falling right and left like
ninepins. It’s a miracle that Monygham, standing on the
after-hatch with the rope already round his neck, escaped
being riddled through and through like a sieve. He told me
since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on yell-
ing with all the strength of his lungs: ‘Hoist a white flag!
Hoist a white flag!’ Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda
regiment, standing by, unsheathed his sword with a shriek:
‘Die, perjured traitor!’ and ran Sotillo clean through the
body, just before he fell himself shot through the head.’