Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 9. CHAPTER NINE (continued)

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. The fact was that though Sotillo did never for a
moment believe his story--he could not believe it; nobody could
believe such nonsense--yet those accents of despairing truth
impressed him disagreeably. They made him feel sick. And he
suspected also that the man might have gone mad with fear. A
lunatic is a hopeless subject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a
pretence. He would know how to deal with that.

He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. His
fine eyes squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a bare-footed
orderly appeared noiselessly, a corporal, with his bayonet
hanging on his thigh and a stick in his hand.

The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable Hirsch,
pushed in by several soldiers, found him frowning awfully in a
broad armchair, hat on head, knees wide apart, arms akimbo,
masterful, imposing, irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible.

Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled
violently into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he
remained apparently forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor.
From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out
brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude. He
listened to threats and admonitions, and afterwards made his
usual answers to questions, with his chin sunk on his breast, his
hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front of Sotillo,
and never looking up. When he was forced to hold up his head, by
means of a bayonet-point prodding him under the chin, his eyes
had a vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big
as peas were seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches
of his white face. Then they stopped suddenly.

Sotillo looked at him in silence. "Will you depart from your
obstinacy, you rogue?" he asked. Already a rope, whose one end
was fastened to Senor Hirsch's wrists, had been thrown over a
beam, and three soldiers held the other end, waiting. He made no
answer. His heavy lower lip hung stupidly. Sotillo made a sign.
Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a yell of despair and
agony burst out in the room, filled the passage of the great
buildings, rent the air outside, caused every soldier of the camp
along the shore to look up at the windows, started some of the
officers in the hall babbling excitedly, with shining eyes;
others, setting their lips, looked gloomily at the floor.