Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
The fact was that though he never for a moment be- lieved 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 barefooted 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 arm-chair, 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, trancelike stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were seen hailing down the dirt, bruises,
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