Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


But, as if by a refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham was left for months
to decay slowly in the darkness of his grave-like prison. It was no
doubt hoped that it would finish him off without the trouble of an
execution; but Dr. Monygham had an iron constitution. It was Guzman
Bento who died, not by the knife thrust of a conspirator, but from a
stroke of apoplexy, and Dr. Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters
were struck off by the light of a candle, which, after months of gloom,
hurt his eyes so much that he had to cover his face with his hands. He
was raised up. His heart was beating violently with the fear of this
liberty. When he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his feet
made him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were thrust into his hands,
and he was pushed out of the passage. It was dusk; candles glimmered
already in the windows of the officers' quarters round the courtyard;
but the twilight sky dazed him by its enormous and overwhelming
brilliance. A thin poncho hung over his naked, bony shoulders; the rags
of his trousers came down no lower than his knees; an eighteen months'
growth of hair fell in dirty grey locks on each side of his sharp
cheek-bones. As he dragged himself past the guard-room door, one of the
soldiers, lolling outside, moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward
with a strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on his head. And
Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, continued on his way. He advanced
one stick, then one maimed foot, then the other stick; the other foot
followed only a very short distance along the ground, toilfully, as
though it were almost too heavy to be moved at all; and yet his legs
under the hanging angles of the poncho appeared no thicker than the two
sticks in his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated his bent body,
all his wasted limbs, his bony head, the conical, ragged crown of the
sombrero, whose ample flat rim rested on his shoulders.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.