Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
Up-stairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move
for a long time. The audacity of the fellow appalled
him. What were his officers saying below? They
were saying nothing. Complete silence. He quaked.
It was not thus that he had imagined himself at that
stage of the expedition. He had seen himself triumphant, unquestioned, appeased, the idol of the soldiers,
weighing in secret complacency the agreeable alternatives of power and wealth open to his choice. Alas!
how different! Distracted, restless, supine, burning
with fury or frozen with terror, he felt a dread as
fathomless as the sea creep upon him from every side.
That rogue of a doctor had to come out with his information. That was clear. It would be of no use to him—alone. He could do nothing with it. Malediction!The doctor would never come out. He was probably under arrest already, shut up together with Don Carlos.
He laughed aloud insanely. Ha! ha! ha! ha! It was
Pedrito Montero who would get the information. Ha!
ha! ha! ha!—and the silver. Ha!
All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became motionless and silent as if turned into stone. He, too, had a prisoner. A prisoner who must, must know the real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And Sotillo, who all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch, felt an inexplicable reluctance at the notion of proceeding to extremities.
He felt a reluctance—part of that unfathomable dread that crept on all sides upon him. He remembered reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of the hide-merchant, his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility.
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