Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
his recovered breath his indignation seemed to madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his white hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook violently the flaps of Ins ruined waistcoat before the disconcerted Sotillo. "Look! Those uniformed thieves of yours down-stairs have robbed me of my watch."
The old sailor's aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw himself cut off from the table on which his sabre and revolver were lying.
"I demand restitution and apologies," Mitchell thundered at him, (mite beside himself. "From you! Yes, from you!"
For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a perfectly stony expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell flung out an arm towards the table as if to snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm, bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming it after him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell's fury. Behind the closed door Sotillo shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on the wooden staircase.
"Disarm him! Bind him!" the colonel could be heard vociferating.
Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the windows, with three perpendicular bars of iron each and some twenty feet from the ground, as he well knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him took place. In an incredibly short time he found himself bound with many turns of a hide rope to a high-backed chair, so that his head alone remained free. Not till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the doorway, trembling visibly, venture again with-
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