Page 616 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

stairs. At the moment of opening the door at the bottom
she heard the sound of the first shot ever fired on the Great
Isabel.
She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her
breast. She ran on without pausing. The cottage was dark.
She cried at the door, ‘Giselle! Giselle!’ then dashed round
the corner and screamed her sister’s name at the open win-
dow, without getting an answer; but as she was rushing,
distracted, round the house, Giselle came out of the door,
and darted past her, running silently, her hair loose, and her
eyes staring straight ahead. She seemed to skim along the
grass as if on tiptoe, and vanished.
Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out be-
fore her. All was still on the island; she did not know where
she was going. The tree under which Martin Decoud spent
his last days, beholding life like a succession of senseless
images, threw a large blotch of black shade upon the grass.
Suddenly she saw her father, standing quietly all alone in
the moonlight.
The Garibaldino—big, erect, with his snow-white hair
and beard—had a monumental repose in his immobility,
leaning upon a rifle. She put her hand upon his arm lightly.
He never stirred.
‘What have you done?’ she asked, in her ordinary voice.
‘I have shot Ramirez—infame!’ he answered, with his
eyes directed to where the shade was blackest. ‘Like a thief
he came, and like a thief he fell. The child had to be pro-
tected.’
He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single step.

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