Nostromo : A Tale of the Seaboard
downward on the bridge and refused to rise. "Put an end to me at once," he repeated, in a stifled voice. Sotillo had to interfere.
The uproar and confusion on the bridge became so great that the helmsman fled from the wheel. He took refuge in the engine-room and alarmed the engineers, who, disregarding the threats of the soldiers set on guard over them, stopped the engines, protesting that they would rather be shot than run the risk of being drowned down below.
This was the first time Nostromo and Decoud heard the steamer stop. After order had been restored and the binnacle lamp relighted she went ahead again, passing wide of the lighter in her search for the Isabels. The group could not be made out, and, at the pitiful entreaties of the captain, Sotillo allowed the engines to be stopped again, to wait for one of those periodical lightenings of darkness caused by the shifting of the cloud-canopy spread above the waters of the gulf.
Sotillo, on the bridge, muttered from time to time angrily to the captain. The other, in an apologetic and cringing tone, begged su merced the colonel to take into consideration the limitations put upon human faculties by the darkness of the night. Sotillo swelled with rage and impatience. It was the chance of a lifetime.
"If your eyes are of no more use to you than this I shall have them put out," he burst out. The captain of the steamer made no answer, for just then the mass of the Great Isabel loomed up darkly after a passing shower, then vanished, as if swept away by a wave of greater obscurity preceding another downpour.
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