Explore "Long Odds" by Harold Bindloss on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Though it was, at least, as hot as it usually is at San Roque and the heavy, stagnant atmosphere made exertion of any kind impossible to a white man, Dom Erminio had not gone to sleep that afternoon, as he generally did. He had, after all, some shadowy notions of duty, and would now and then rouse himself to carry them out; that is, at least, when he stood to obtain some advantage by doing so. In this he was, perhaps, not altogether singular, since it is possible that there are other men who recognize a duty most clearly under similar circumstances. He lay in a low hung hammock where the veranda roof flung a grateful shadow over him, with a cigar in his hand, meditatively watching a row of half-naked negroes toiling in the burning sun, and the fashion in which he did so suggested that it afforded him a certain quiet satisfaction.
He had grave objections to physical exertion personally, and as a rule succeeded in avoiding it, for there are, as he recognized, advantages in being a white man, in that country, at least. Dom Erminio invariably made the most of them.