Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
without noise. Suddenly she started for the door. He heard her move.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To the light," she answered, turning round to look at him balefully.
"The light!—Si duty."
Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the spectacles given him by Dona Emilia. He put them on. After a long period of immobility he opened the book, and from on high looked through the glasses at the small print in double columns. A rigid, stern expression settled upon his features with a slight frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought of unpleasant sensation. But he never detached his from the book while he swayed forward, gently, gradually, till his snow-white head rested upon the open pages. A wooden clock ticked methodically on the whitewashed wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay alone, rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by a treacherous gust of wind.
The light of the Great Isabel burned peacefully above the lost treasure of the San Tomd mine. Into the bluish sheen of a night without stars the lantern sent out a beam of yellow light towards the far horizon. Like a black speck upon the shining panes, Linda, crouching in the outer gallery, rested her head on the rail. The moon, drooping in the western board, looked at her radiantly.
Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of from a passing boat ceased, and Dr. Monygham stood up in the stern-sheets.
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