For a word, for one little word, he felt he would have knelt, cringed,
grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed
eyeballs starting out of the grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very
still with its mouth closed askew. The colonel ground his teeth with
rage and struck. The rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long
string of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging motion was
imparted to the body of Senor Hirsch, the well-known hide merchant on
the coast. With a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a
few inches, curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. Senor
Hirsch's head was flung back on his straining throat; his chin trembled.
For a moment the rattle of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast,
shadowy room, where the candles made a patch of light round the two
flames burning side by side. And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand,
waited for him to speak, with the sudden flash of a grin and a straining
forward of the wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his face.
The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with a low cry of
dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom.
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