Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
in. The soldiers, picking up from the floor the rifles they had dropped to grapple with the prisoner, filed out of the room. The officers remained leaning on their swords and looking on.
"The watch! The watch!" raved the colonel, pacing to and fro like a tiger in a cage. "Give me that man's watch."
It was true that when searched for arms in the hall downstairs, before being taken into Sotillo's presence, Captain Mitchell had been relieved of his watch and chain; but at the colonel's clamor it was produced quickly enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried carefully in the palms of his joined hands. Sotillo snatched it and pushed the clinched fist from which it dangled close to Captain Mitchell's face.
"Now, then; you arrogant Englishman! You dare to call the soldiers of the army thieves! Behold your watch."
He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner's nose. Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously at the sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer presented to him years ago by committee of underwriters for saving a ship from total loss by fire. Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable appearance. He became silent suddenly, stepped aside to the table and began a careful examination in the light of the candles. He had never anything so fine. His officers closed in and craned their necks behind his back.
He became so interested that for an instant he forgot his precious prisoner. There is always something childish in the rapacity of the passionate, clear-minded
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