Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

But, as if by a refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham was left for
months to decay slowly in the darkness of his grave-like prison.
It was no doubt hoped that it would finish him off without the
trouble of an execution; but Dr. Monygham had an iron
constitution. It was Guzman Bento who died, not by the knife
thrust of a conspirator, but from a stroke of apoplexy, and Dr.
Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters were struck off by
the light of a candle, which, after months of gloom, hurt his
eyes so much that he had to cover his face with his hands. He was
raised up. His heart was beating violently with the fear of this
liberty. When he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his
feet made him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were thrust
into his hands, and he was pushed out of the passage. It was
dusk; candles glimmered already in the windows of the officers'
quarters round the courtyard; but the twilight sky dazed him by
its enormous and overwhelming brilliance. A thin poncho hung over
his naked, bony shoulders; the rags of his trousers came down no
lower than his knees; an eighteen months' growth of hair fell in
dirty grey locks on each side of his sharp cheek-bones. As he
dragged himself past the guard-room door, one of the soldiers,
lolling outside, moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward
with a strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on his
head. And Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, continued on his
way. He advanced one stick, then one maimed foot, then the other
stick; the other foot followed only a very short distance along
the ground, toilfully, as though it were almost too heavy to be
moved at all; and yet his legs under the hanging angles of the
poncho appeared no thicker than the two sticks in his hands. A
ceaseless trembling agitated his bent body, all his wasted limbs,
his bony head, the conical, ragged crown of the sombrero, whose
ample flat rim rested on his shoulders.