noon
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 . After landing from his swim Nostromo had scrambled up , all dripping , into the main quadrangle of the old fort ; and there , amongst ruined bits of walls and rotting remnants of roofs and sheds , he had slept the day through . He had slept in the shadow of the mountains , in the white blaze of noon , in the stillness and solitude of that overgrown piece of land between the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle of the gulf . He lay as if dead . A rey-zamuro , appearing like a tiny black speck in the blue , stooped , circling prudently with a stealthiness of flight startling in a bird of that great size . The shadow of his pearly-white body , of his black-tipped wings , fell on the grass no more silently than he alighted himself on a hillock of rubbish within three yards of that man , lying as still as a corpse .