with him. From under the seaward gate, across the dusty, arid
plain, interspersed with low bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the
ugly enormity of the Custom House, and the two or three other buildings
which at that time constituted the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to the
south groves of palm trees edged the curve of the harbour shore. The
distant peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of clearcut
shapes in the steadily deepening blue of the eastern sky. The doctor
walked briskly. A darkling shadow seemed to fall upon him from the
zenith. The sun had set. For a time the snows of Higuerota continued
to glow with the reflected glory of the west. The doctor, holding a
straight course for the Custom House, appeared lonely, hopping amongst
the dark bushes like a tall bird with a broken wing.

Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the clear water
of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight as a wall, with the
grass-grown ruins of the fort making a sort of rounded green mound,
plainly visible from the inner shore, closed its circuit; while beyond
the Placid Gulf repeated those splendours of colouring on a greater
scale and with a more sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloud
filling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted
folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained with blood.
The three Isabels, overshadowed and clear cut in a great smoothness
confounding the sea and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the
air. The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks upon the
sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along the horizon gave out a
fiery red glow, as if fire and water had been mingled together in the
vast bed of the ocean.

At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced and still in a
flaming contact upon the edge of the world, went out. The red sparks in
the water vanished together with the stains of blood in the black mantle
draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up
and died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined
earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours' sleep,
and arose full length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee
deep amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the
lost air of a man just born into the world. Handsome, robust, and
supple, he threw back his head, flung his arms open, and stretched
himself with a slow twist o