Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in his tracks
as if struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration
suggested to him an expedient not unknown to European statesmen
when they wish to delay a difficult negotiation. Booted and
spurred, he scrambled into the hammock with undignified haste.
His handsome face had turned yellow with the strain of weighty
cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp; the
audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. The velvety,
caressing glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even
decomposed; for these almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become
inappropriately bloodshot with much sinister sleeplessness. He
addressed the surprised envoy of Senor Fuentes in a deadened,
exhausted voice. It came pathetically feeble from under a pile of
ponchos, which buried his elegant person right up to the black
moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign of bodily prostration and
mental incapacity. Fever, fever--a heavy fever had overtaken the
"muy valliente" colonel. A wavering wildness of expression,
caused by the passing spasms of a slight colic which had declared
itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic, had a
genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a cold fit. The
colonel explained that he was unable to think, to listen, to
speak. With an appearance of superhuman effort the colonel gasped
out that he was not in a state to return a suitable reply or to
execute any of his Excellency's orders. But to-morrow!
To-morrow! Ah! to-morrow! Let his Excellency Don Pedro be without
uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda Regiment held the harbour,
held--And closing his eyes, he rolled his aching head like a
half-delirious invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy,
who was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order to catch
the painful and broken accents. Meantime, Colonel Sotillo trusted
that his Excellency's humanity would permit the doctor, the
English doctor, to come out of town with his case of foreign
remedies to attend upon him. He begged anxiously his worship the
caballero now present for the grace of looking in as he passed
the Casa Gould, and informing the English doctor, who was
probably there, that his services were immediately required by
Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of fever in the Custom House.
Immediately. Most urgently required. Awaited with extreme
impatience. A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and
would not open them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, dumb,
insensible, overcome, vanquished, crushed, annihilated by the
fell disease.