Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

A voice remarked loudly, "Behold a man who will never speak
again." And another, from the back row of faces, timid and
pressing, cried out--

"Why did you kill him, mi colonel?"

"Because he has confessed everything," answered Sotillo, with the
hardihood of desperation. He felt himself cornered. He brazened
it out on the strength of his reputation with very fair success.
His hearers thought him very capable of such an act. They were
disposed to believe his flattering tale. There is no credulity so
eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its
universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual
destitution of mankind. Ah! he had confessed everything, this
fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer wanted. A
sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain--a
big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat cheeks
which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged
like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch,
muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this
there was no need to guard against any future treacheries of that
scoundrel. The others stared, shifting from foot to foot, and
whispering short remarks to each other.

Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremptory orders to
hasten the retirement decided upon in the afternoon. Sinister,
impressive, his sombrero pulled right down upon his eyebrows, he
marched first through the door in such disorder of mind that he
forgot utterly to provide for Dr. Monygham's possible return. As
the officers trooped out after him, one or two looked back
hastily at the late Senor Hirsch, merchant from Esmeralda, left
swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the two burning candles. In
the emptiness of the room the burly shadow of head and shoulders
on the wall had an air of life.

Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by companies
without drum or trumpet. The old scarecrow major commanded the
rearguard; but the party he left behind with orders to fire the
Custom House (and "burn the carcass of the treacherous Jew where
it hung") failed somehow in their haste to set the staircase
properly alight. The body of the late Senor Hirsch dwelt alone
for a time in the dismal solitude of the unfinished building,
resounding weirdly with sudden slams and clicks of doors and
latches, with rustling scurries of torn papers, and the tremulous
sighs that at each gust of wind passed under the high roof. The
light of the two candles burning before the perpendicular and
breathless immobility of the late Senor Hirsch threw a gleam afar
over land and water, like a signal in the night. He remained to
startle Nostromo by his presence, and to puzzle Dr. Monygham by
the mystery of his atrocious end.