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

the land gate, was not able to oppose the landing. He hadbeen sending messages to Sotillo for a week to join him.Had Sotillo done so there would have been massacres andproscription that would have left no man or woman of positionalive. But that’s where Dr. Monygham comes in. Sotillo,blind and deaf to everything, stuck on board his steamerwatching the dragging for silver, which he believed to besunk at the bottom of the harbour. They say that for the lastthree days he was out of his mind raving and foaming withdisappointment at getting nothing, flying about the deck,and yelling curses at the boats with the drags, orderingthem in, and then suddenly stamping his foot and cryingout, ‘And yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!’‘He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he hadon board) at the end of the after-derrick, when the first ofBarrios’s transports, one of our own ships at that, steamedright in, and ranging close alongside opened a small-armfire without as much preliminaries as a hail. It was the completestsurprise in the world, sir. They were too astoundedat first to bolt below. Men were falling right and left likeninepins. It’s a miracle that Monygham, standing on theafter-hatch with the rope already round his neck, escapedbeing riddled through and through like a sieve. He told mesince that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on yellingwith all the strength of his lungs: ‘Hoist a white flag!Hoist a white flag!’ Suddenly an old major of the Esmeraldaregiment, standing by, unsheathed his sword with a shriek:‘Die, perjured traitor!’ and ran Sotillo clean through thebody, just before he fell himself shot through the head.’