Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

"Tortured--and shot dead through the breast--getting cold."

This information calmed the Capataz. One of the candles
flickering in the socket went out. "Who did this?" he asked.

"Sotillo, I tell you. Who else? Tortured--of course. But why
shot?" The doctor looked fixedly at Nostromo, who shrugged his
shoulders slightly. "And mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is
evident. I wish I had his secret."

Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to look. "I seem to
have seen that face somewhere," he muttered. "Who is he?"

The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. "I may yet come to
envying his fate. What do you think of that, Capataz, eh?"

But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing the remaining
light, he thrust it under the drooping head. The doctor sat
oblivious, with a lost gaze. Then the heavy iron candlestick, as
if struck out of Nostromo's hand, clattered on the floor.

"Hullo!" exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a start. He could
hear the Capataz stagger against the table and gasp. In the
sudden extinction of the light within, the dead blackness sealing
the window-frames became alive with stars to his sight.

"Of course, of course," the doctor muttered to himself in
English. "Enough to make him jump out of his skin."

Nostromo's heart seemed to force itself into his throat. His
head swam. Hirsch! The man was Hirsch! He held on tight to the
edge of the table.

"But he was hiding in the lighter," he almost shouted His voice
fell. "In the lighter, and--and--"

"And Sotillo brought him in," said the doctor. "He is no more
startling to you than you were to me. What I want to know is how
he induced some compassionate soul to shoot him."

"So Sotillo knows--" began Nostromo, in a more equable voice.