A Tale of the Seaboard Joseph Conrad - Penn State University

Joseph Conrad
tom 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 of the waist
and a leisurely growling yawn of white teeth, as natural and free
from evil in the moment of waking as a magnificent and unconscious
wild beast. Then, in the suddenly steadied glance fixed upon
nothing from under a thoughtful frown, appeared the man.
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