Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

the Custom House, appeared lonely, hopping amongst thedark bushes like a tall bird with a broken wing.Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in theclear water of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straightas a wall, with the grass-grown ruins of the fort making asort of rounded green mound, plainly visible from the innershore, closed its circuit; while beyond the Placid Gulf repeatedthose splendours of colouring on a greater scale andwith a more sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloudfilling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst itsconvoluted folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantlestained with blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed andclear cut in a great smoothness confounding the sea andsky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the air. The littlewavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks upon thesandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along the horizongave out a fiery red glow, as if fire and water had been mingledtogether in the vast bed of the ocean.At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embracedand still in a flaming contact upon the edge of the world,went out. The red sparks in the water vanished togetherwith the stains of blood in the black mantle draping thesombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang upand died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes onthe ruined earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from afourteen hours’ sleep, and arose full length from his lair inthe long grass. He stood knee deep amongst the whisperingundulations of the green blades with the lost air of a manjust born into the world. Handsome, robust, and supple, he