Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad

"Impossible!" he muttered, gloomily.

The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great conflagration in
Sulaco flashed up red above the coast, played on the clouds at the head
of the gulf, seemed to touch with a ruddy and sinister reflection the
forms of the Three Isabels. He never saw it, though he raised his head.

"But, then, I cannot know," he pronounced, distinctly, and remained
silent and staring for hours.