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+#10 in our series by Joseph Conrad
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+An Outcast of the Islands
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+by Joseph Conrad
+
+August, 1996 [Etext 638]
+
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+
+
+
+
+An Outcast of the Islands
+
+by Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+
+
+Pues el delito mayor
+Del hombre es haber nacito
+CALDERON
+
+
+
+TO
+EDWARD LANCELOT SANDERSON
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+"An Outcast of the Islands" is my second novel in the absolute
+sense of the word; second in conception, second in execution,
+second as it were in its essence. There was no hesitation,
+half-formed plan, vague idea, or the vaguest reverie of anything
+else between it and "Almayer's Folly." The only doubt I suffered
+from, after the publication of "Almayer's Folly," was whether I
+should write another line for print. Those days, now grown so
+dim, had their poignant moments. Neither in my mind nor in my
+heart had I then given up the sea. In truth I was clinging to it
+desperately, all the more desperately because, against my will, I
+could not help feeling that there was something changed in my
+relation to it. "Almayer's Folly," had been finished and done
+with. The mood itself was gone. But it had left the memory of
+an experience that, both in thought and emotion was unconnected
+with the sea, and I suppose that part of my moral being which is
+rooted in consistency was badly shaken. I was a victim of
+contrary stresses which produced a state of immobility. I gave
+myself up to indolence. Since it was impossible for me to face
+both ways I had elected to face nothing. The discovery of new
+values in life is a very chaotic experience; there is a
+tremendous amount of jostling and confusion and a momentary
+feeling of darkness. I let my spirit float supine over that
+chaos.
+
+A phrase of Edward Garnett's is, as a matter of fact, responsible
+for this book. The first of the friends I made for myself by my
+pen it was but natural that he should be the recipient, at that
+time, of my confidences. One evening when we had dined together
+and he had listened to the account of my perplexities (I fear he
+must have been growing a little tired of them) he pointed out
+that there was no need to determine my future absolutely. Then
+he added: "You have the style, you have the temperament; why not
+write another?" I believe that as far as one man may wish to
+influence another man's life Edward Garnett had a great desire
+that I should go on writing. At that time, and I may say, ever
+afterwards, he was always very patient and gentle with me. What
+strikes me most however in the phrase quoted above which was
+offered to me in a tone of detachment is not its gentleness but
+its effective wisdom. Had he said, "Why not go on writing," it
+is very probable he would have scared me away from pen and ink
+for ever; but there was nothing either to frighten one or arouse
+one's antagonism in the mere suggestion to "write another." And
+thus a dead point in the revolution of my affairs was insidiously
+got over. The word "another" did it. At about eleven o'clock of
+a nice London night, Edward and I walked along interminable
+streets talking of many things, and I remember that on getting
+home I sat down and wrote about half a page of "An Outcast of the
+Islands" before I slept. This was committing myself definitely,
+I won't say to another life, but to another book. There is
+apparently something in my character which will not allow me to
+abandon for good any piece of work I have begun. I have laid
+aside many beginnings. I have laid them aside with sorrow, with
+disgust, with rage, with melancholy and even with self-contempt;
+but even at the worst I had an uneasy consciousness that I would
+have to go back to them.
+
+"An Outcast of the Islands" belongs to those novels of mine that
+were never laid aside; and though it brought me the qualification
+of "exotic writer" I don't think the charge was at all justified.
+
+For the life of me I don't see that there is the slightest exotic
+spirit in the conception or style of that novel. It is certainly
+the most TROPICAL of my eastern tales. The mere scenery got a
+great hold on me as I went on, perhaps because (I may just as
+well confess that) the story itself was never very near my heart.
+
+It engaged my imagination much more than my affection. As to my
+feeling for Willems it was but the regard one cannot help having
+for one's own creation. Obviously I could not be indifferent to
+a man on whose head I had brought so much evil simply by
+imagining him such as he appears in the novel--and that, too, on
+a very slight foundation.
+
+The man who suggested Willems to me was not particularly
+interesting in himself. My interest was aroused by his dependent
+position, his strange, dubious status of a mistrusted, disliked,
+worn-out European living on the reluctant toleration of that
+Settlement hidden in the heart of the forest-land, up that sombre
+stream which our ship was the only white men's ship to visit.
+With his hollow, clean-shaved cheeks, a heavy grey moustache and
+eyes without any expression whatever, clad always in a spotless
+sleeping suit much be-frogged in front, which left his lean neck
+wholly uncovered, and with his bare feet in a pair of straw
+slippers, he wandered silently amongst the houses in daylight,
+almost as dumb as an animal and apparently much more homeless. I
+don't know what he did with himself at night. He must have had a
+place, a hut, a palm-leaf shed, some sort of hovel where he kept
+his razor and his change of sleeping suits. An air of futile
+mystery hung over him, something not exactly dark but obviously
+ugly. The only definite statement I could extract from anybody
+was that it was he who had "brought the Arabs into the river."
+That must have happened many years before. But how did he bring
+them into the river? He could hardly have done it in his arms
+like a lot of kittens. I knew that Almayer founded the
+chronology of all his misfortunes on the date of that fateful
+advent; and yet the very first time we dined with Almayer there
+was Willems sitting at table with us in the manner of the
+skeleton at the feast, obviously shunned by everybody, never
+addressed by any one, and for all recognition of his existence
+getting now and then from Almayer a venomous glance which I
+observed with great surprise. In the course of the whole evening
+he ventured one single remark which I didn't catch because his
+articulation was imperfect, as of a man who had forgotten how to
+speak. I was the only person who seemed aware of the sound.
+Willems subsided. Presently he retired, pointedly
+unnoticed--into the forest maybe? Its immensity was there,
+within three hundred yards of the verandah, ready to swallow up
+anything. Almayer conversing with my captain did not stop talking
+while he glared angrily at the retreating back. Didn't that
+fellow bring the Arabs into the river! Nevertheless Willems
+turned up next morning on Almayer's verandah. From the bridge of
+the steamer I could see plainly these two, breakfasting together,
+tete a tete and, I suppose, in dead silence, one with his air of
+being no longer interested in this world and the other raising
+his eyes now and then with intense dislike.
+
+It was clear that in those days Willems lived on Almayer's
+charity. Yet on returning two months later to Sambir I heard
+that he had gone on an expedition up the river in charge of a
+steam-launch belonging to the Arabs, to make some discovery or
+other. On account of the strange reluctance that everyone
+manifested to talk about Willems it was impossible for me to get
+at the rights of that transaction. Moreover, I was a newcomer,
+the youngest of the company, and, I suspect, not judged quite fit
+as yet for a full confidence. I was not much concerned about
+that exclusion. The faint suggestion of plots and mysteries
+pertaining to all matters touching Almayer's affairs amused me
+vastly. Almayer was obviously very much affected. I believe he
+missed Willems immensely. He wore an air of sinister
+preoccupation and talked confidentially with my captain. I could
+catch only snatches of mumbled sentences. Then one morning as I
+came along the deck to take my place at the breakfast table
+Almayer checked himself in his low-toned discourse. My captain's
+face was perfectly impenetrable. There was a moment of profound
+silence and then as if unable to contain himself Almayer burst
+out in a loud vicious tone:
+
+"One thing's certain; if he finds anything worth having up there
+they will poison him like a dog."
+
+Disconnected though it was, that phrase, as food for thought, was
+distinctly worth hearing. We left the river three days
+afterwards and I never returned to Sambir; but whatever happened
+to the protagonist of my Willems nobody can deny that I have
+recorded for him a less squalid fate.
+
+J. C.
+1919.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar
+honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve
+to fall back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue
+as soon as his little excursion into the wayside quagmires had
+produced the desired effect. It was going to be a short
+episode--a sentence in brackets, so to speak--in the flowing tale
+of his life: a thing of no moment, to be done unwillingly, yet
+neatly, and to be quickly forgotten. He imagined that he could
+go on afterwards looking at the sunshine, enjoying the shade,
+breathing in the perfume of flowers in the small garden before
+his house. He fancied that nothing would be changed, that he
+would be able as heretofore to tyrannize good-humouredly over his
+half-caste wife, to notice with tender contempt his pale yellow
+child, to patronize loftily his dark-skinned brother-in-law, who
+loved pink neckties and wore patent-leather boots on his little
+feet, and was so humble before the white husband of the lucky
+sister. Those were the delights of his life, and he was unable to
+conceive that the moral significance of any act of his could
+interfere with the very nature of things, could dim the light of
+the sun, could destroy the perfume of the flowers, the submission
+of his wife, the smile of his child, the awe-struck respect of
+Leonard da Souza and of all the Da Souza family. That family's
+admiration was the great luxury of his life. It rounded and
+completed his existence in a perpetual assurance of
+unquestionable superiority. He loved to breathe the coarse
+incense they offered before the shrine of the successful white
+man; the man that had done them the honour to marry their
+daughter, sister, cousin; the rising man sure to climb very high;
+the confidential clerk of Hudig & Co. They were a numerous and
+an unclean crowd, living in ruined bamboo houses, surrounded by
+neglected compounds, on the outskirts of Macassar. He kept them
+at arm's length and even further off, perhaps, having no
+illusions as to their worth. They were a half-caste, lazy lot,
+and he saw them as they were--ragged, lean, unwashed, undersized
+men of various ages, shuffling about aimlessly in slippers;
+motionless old women who looked like monstrous bags of pink
+calico stuffed with shapeless lumps of fat, and deposited askew
+upon decaying rattan chairs in shady corners of dusty verandahs;
+young women, slim and yellow, big-eyed, long-haired, moving
+languidly amongst the dirt and rubbish of their dwellings as if
+every step they took was going to be their very last. He heard
+their shrill quarrellings, the squalling of their children, the
+grunting of their pigs; he smelt the odours of the heaps of
+garbage in their courtyards: and he was greatly disgusted. But
+he fed and clothed that shabby multitude; those degenerate
+descendants of Portuguese conquerors; he was their providence; he
+kept them singing his praises in the midst of their laziness, of
+their dirt, of their immense and hopeless squalor: and he was
+greatly delighted. They wanted much, but he could give them all
+they wanted without ruining himself. In exchange he had their
+silent fear, their loquacious love, their noisy veneration. It
+is a fine thing to be a providence, and to be told so on every
+day of one's life. It gives one a feeling of enormously remote
+superiority, and Willems revelled in it. He did not analyze the
+state of his mind, but probably his greatest delight lay in the
+unexpressed but intimate conviction that, should he close his
+hand, all those admiring human beings would starve. His
+munificence had demoralized them. An easy task. Since he
+descended amongst them and married Joanna they had lost the
+little aptitude and strength for work they might have had to put
+forth under the stress of extreme necessity. They lived now by
+the grace of his will. This was power. Willems loved it.
+In another, and perhaps a lower plane, his days did not want for
+their less complex but more obvious pleasures. He liked the
+simple games of skill--billiards; also games not so simple, and
+calling for quite another kind of skill--poker. He had been the
+aptest pupil of a steady-eyed, sententious American, who had
+drifted mysteriously into Macassar from the wastes of the
+Pacific, and, after knocking about for a time in the eddies of
+town life, had drifted out enigmatically into the sunny solitudes
+of the Indian Ocean. The memory of the Californian stranger was
+perpetuated in the game of poker--which became popular in the
+capital of Celebes from that time--and in a powerful cocktail,
+the recipe for which is transmitted--in the Kwang-tung
+dialect--from head boy to head boy of the Chinese servants in the
+Sunda Hotel even to this day. Willems was a connoisseur in the
+drink and an adept at the game. Of those accomplishments he was
+moderately proud. Of the confidence reposed in him by Hudig--the
+master--he was boastfully and obtrusively proud. This arose from
+his great benevolence, and from an exalted sense of his duty to
+himself and the world at large. He experienced that irresistible
+impulse to impart information which is inseparable from gross
+ignorance. There is always some one thing which the ignorant man
+knows, and that thing is the only thing worth knowing; it fills
+the ignorant man's universe. Willems knew all about himself. On
+the day when, with many misgivings, he ran away from a Dutch
+East-Indiaman in Samarang roads, he had commenced that study of
+himself, of his own ways, of his own abilities, of those
+fate-compelling qualities of his which led him toward that
+lucrative position which he now filled. Being of a modest and
+diffident nature, his successes amazed, almost frightened him,
+and ended--as he got over the succeeding shocks of surprise--by
+making him ferociously conceited. He believed in his genius and
+in his knowledge of the world. Others should know of it also;
+for their own good and for his greater glory. All those friendly
+men who slapped him on the back and greeted him noisily should
+have the benefit of his example. For that he must talk. He
+talked to them conscientiously. In the afternoon he expounded his
+theory of success over the little tables, dipping now and then
+his moustache in the crushed ice of the cocktails; in the evening
+he would often hold forth, cue in hand, to a young listener
+across the billiard table. The billiard balls stood still as if
+listening also, under the vivid brilliance of the shaded oil
+lamps hung low over the cloth; while away in the shadows of the
+big room the Chinaman marker would lean wearily against the wall,
+the blank mask of his face looking pale under the mahogany
+marking-board; his eyelids dropped in the drowsy fatigue of late
+hours and in the buzzing monotony of the unintelligible stream of
+words poured out by the white man. In a sudden pause of the talk
+the game would recommence with a sharp click and go on for a time
+in the flowing soft whirr and the subdued thuds as the balls
+rolled zig-zagging towards the inevitably successful cannon.
+Through the big windows and the open doors the salt dampness of
+the sea, the vague smell of mould and flowers from the garden of
+the hotel drifted in and mingled with the odour of lamp oil,
+growing heavier as the night advanced. The players' heads dived
+into the light as they bent down for the stroke, springing back
+again smartly into the greenish gloom of broad lamp-shades; the
+clock ticked methodically; the unmoved Chinaman continuously
+repeated the score in a lifeless voice, like a big talking
+doll--and Willems would win the game. With a remark that it was
+getting late, and that he was a married man, he would say a
+patronizing good-night and step out into the long, empty street.
+At that hour its white dust was like a dazzling streak of
+moonlight where the eye sought repose in the dimmer gleam of rare
+oil lamps. Willems walked homewards, following the line of walls
+overtopped by the luxuriant vegetation of the front gardens. The
+houses right and left were hidden behind the black masses of
+flowering shrubs. Willems had the street to himself. He would
+walk in the middle, his shadow gliding obsequiously before him.
+He looked down on it complacently. The shadow of a successful
+man! He would be slightly dizzy with the cocktails and with the
+intoxication of his own glory. As he often told people, he came
+east fourteen years ago--a cabin boy. A small boy. His shadow
+must have been very small at that time; he thought with a smile
+that he was not aware then he had anything--even a shadow--which
+he dared call his own. And now he was looking at the shadow of
+the confidential clerk of Hudig & Co. going home. How glorious!
+How good was life for those that were on the winning side! He
+had won the game of life; also the game of billiards. He walked
+faster, jingling his winnings, and thinking of the white stone
+days that had marked the path of his existence. He thought of the
+trip to Lombok for ponies--that first important transaction
+confided to him by Hudig; then he reviewed the more important
+affairs: the quiet deal in opium; the illegal traffic in
+gunpowder; the great affair of smuggled firearms, the difficult
+business of the Rajah of Goak. He carried that last through by
+sheer pluck; he had bearded the savage old ruler in his council
+room; he had bribed him with a gilt glass coach, which, rumour
+said, was used as a hen-coop now; he had over-persuaded him; he
+had bested him in every way. That was the way to get on. He
+disapproved of the elementary dishonesty that dips the hand in
+the cash-box, but one could evade the laws and push the
+principles of trade to their furthest consequences. Some call
+that cheating. Those are the fools, the weak, the contemptible.
+The wise, the strong, the respected, have no scruples. Where
+there are scruples there can be no power. On that text he
+preached often to the young men. It was his doctrine, and he,
+himself, was a shining example of its truth.
+
+Night after night he went home thus, after a day of toil and
+pleasure, drunk with the sound of his own voice celebrating his
+own prosperity. On his thirtieth birthday he went home thus. He
+had spent in good company a nice, noisy evening, and, as he
+walked along the empty street, the feeling of his own greatness
+grew upon him, lifted him above the white dust of the road, and
+filled him with exultation and regrets. He had not done himself
+justice over there in the hotel, he had not talked enough about
+himself, he had not impressed his hearers enough. Never mind.
+Some other time. Now he would go home and make his wife get up
+and listen to him. Why should she not get up?--and mix a
+cocktail for him--and listen patiently. Just so. She shall. If
+he wanted he could make all the Da Souza family get up. He had
+only to say a word and they would all come and sit silently in
+their night vestments on the hard, cold ground of his compound
+and listen, as long as he wished to go on explaining to them from
+the top of the stairs, how great and good he was. They would.
+However, his wife would do--for to-night.
+
+His wife! He winced inwardly. A dismal woman with startled eyes
+and dolorously drooping mouth, that would listen to him in pained
+wonder and mute stillness. She was used to those night-discourses
+now. She had rebelled once--at the beginning. Only once. Now,
+while he sprawled in the long chair and drank and talked, she
+would stand at the further end of the table, her hands resting on
+the edge, her frightened eyes watching his lips, without a sound,
+without a stir, hardly breathing, till he dismissed her with a
+contemptuous: "Go to bed, dummy." She would draw a long breath
+then and trail out of the room, relieved but unmoved. Nothing
+could startle her, make her scold or make her cry. She did not
+complain, she did not rebel. That first difference of theirs was
+decisive. Too decisive, thought Willems, discontentedly. It had
+frightened the soul out of her body apparently. A dismal woman!
+A damn'd business altogether! What the devil did he want to go
+and saddle himself. . . . Ah! Well! he wanted a home, and the
+match seemed to please Hudig, and Hudig gave him the bungalow,
+that flower-bowered house to which he was wending his way in the
+cool moonlight. And he had the worship of the Da Souza tribe. A
+man of his stamp could carry off anything, do anything, aspire to
+anything. In another five years those white people who attended
+the Sunday card-parties of the Governor would accept
+him--half-caste wife and all! Hooray! He saw his shadow dart
+forward and wave a hat, as big as a rum barrel, at the end of an
+arm several yards long. . . . Who shouted hooray? . . . He
+smiled shamefacedly to himself, and, pushing his hands deep into
+his pockets, walked faster with a suddenly grave face.
+Behind him--to the left--a cigar end glowed in the gateway of Mr.
+Vinck's front yard. Leaning against one of the brick pillars,
+Mr. Vinck, the cashier of Hudig & Co., smoked the last cheroot of
+the evening. Amongst the shadows of the trimmed bushes Mrs.
+Vinck crunched slowly, with measured steps, the gravel of the
+circular path before the house.
+
+"There's Willems going home on foot--and drunk I fancy," said Mr.
+Vinck over his shoulder. "I saw him jump and wave his hat."
+
+The crunching of the gravel stopped.
+
+"Horrid man," said Mrs. Vinck, calmly. "I have heard he beats
+his wife."
+
+"Oh no, my dear, no," muttered absently Mr. Vinck, with a vague
+gesture. The aspect of Willems as a wife-beater presented to him
+no interest. How women do misjudge! If Willems wanted to
+torture his wife he would have recourse to less primitive
+methods. Mr. Vinck knew Willems well, and believed him to be
+very able, very smart--objectionably so. As he took the last
+quick draws at the stump of his cheroot, Mr. Vinck reflected that
+the confidence accorded by Hudig to Willems was open, under the
+circumstances, to loyal criticism from Hudig's cashier.
+
+"He is becoming dangerous; he knows too much. He will have to be
+got rid of," said Mr. Vinck aloud. But Mrs. Vinck had gone in
+already, and after shaking his head he threw away his cheroot and
+followed her slowly.
+
+Willems walked on homeward weaving the splendid web of his
+future. The road to greatness lay plainly before his eyes,
+straight and shining, without any obstacle that he could see. He
+had stepped off the path of honesty, as he understood it, but he
+would soon regain it, never to leave it any more! It was a very
+small matter. He would soon put it right again. Meantime his
+duty was not to be found out, and he trusted in his skill, in his
+luck, in his well-established reputation that would disarm
+suspicion if anybody dared to suspect. But nobody would dare!
+True, he was conscious of a slight deterioration. He had
+appropriated temporarily some of Hudig's money. A deplorable
+necessity. But he judged himself with the indulgence that should
+be extended to the weaknesses of genius. He would make
+reparation and all would be as before; nobody would be the loser
+for it, and he would go on unchecked toward the brilliant goal of
+his ambition.
+
+Hudig's partner!
+
+Before going up the steps of his house he stood for awhile, his
+feet well apart, chin in hand, contemplating mentally Hudig's
+future partner. A glorious occupation. He saw him quite safe;
+solid as the hills; deep--deep as an abyss; discreet as the
+grave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+
+The sea, perhaps because of its saltness, roughens the outside
+but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants' soul. The old sea;
+the sea of many years ago, whose servants were devoted slaves and
+went from youth to age or to a sudden grave without needing to
+open the book of life, because they could look at eternity
+reflected on the element that gave the life and dealt the death.
+Like a beautiful and unscrupulous woman, the sea of the past was
+glorious in its smiles, irresistible in its anger, capricious,
+enticing, illogical, irresponsible; a thing to love, a thing to
+fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it lulled gently into
+boundless faith; then with quick and causeless anger it killed.
+But its cruelty was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable
+mystery, by the immensity of its promise, by the supreme witchery
+of its possible favour. Strong men with childlike hearts were
+faithful to it, were content to live by its grace--to die by its
+will. That was the sea before the time when the French mind set
+the Egyptian muscle in motion and produced a dismal but
+profitable ditch. Then a great pall of smoke sent out by
+countless steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the
+Infinite. The hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the
+terrible beauty in order that greedy and faithless landlubbers
+might pocket dividends. The mystery was destroyed. Like all
+mysteries, it lived only in the hearts of its worshippers. The
+hearts changed; the men changed. The once loving and devoted
+servants went out armed with fire and iron, and conquering the
+fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and
+exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably
+beautiful mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and
+promising eyes. The sea of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled
+and defaced by the churned-up wakes of brutal propellers, robbed
+of the enslaving charm of its vastness, stripped of its beauty,
+of its mystery and of its promise.
+
+Tom Lingard was a master, a lover, a servant of the sea. The sea
+took him young, fashioned him body and soul; gave him his fierce
+aspect, his loud voice, his fearless eyes, his stupidly guileless
+heart. Generously it gave him his absurd faith in himself, his
+universal love of creation, his wide indulgence, his contemptuous
+severity, his straightforward simplicity of motive and honesty of
+aim. Having made him what he was, womanlike, the sea served him
+humbly and let him bask unharmed in the sunshine of its terribly
+uncertain favour. Tom Lingard grew rich on the sea and by the
+sea. He loved it with the ardent affection of a lover, he made
+light of it with the assurance of perfect mastery, he feared it
+with the wise fear of a brave man, and he took liberties with it
+as a spoiled child might do with a paternal and good-natured
+ogre. He was grateful to it, with the gratitude of an honest
+heart. His greatest pride lay in his profound conviction of its
+faithfulness--in the deep sense of his unerring knowledge of its
+treachery.
+
+The little brig Flash was the instrument of Lingard's fortune.
+They came north together--both young--out of an Australian port,
+and after a very few years there was not a white man in the
+islands, from Palembang to Ternate, from Ombawa to Palawan, that
+did not know Captain Tom and his lucky craft. He was liked for
+his reckless generosity, for his unswerving honesty, and at first
+was a little feared on account of his violent temper. Very soon,
+however, they found him out, and the word went round that Captain
+Tom's fury was less dangerous than many a man's smile. He
+prospered greatly. After his first--and successful--fight with
+the sea robbers, when he rescued, as rumour had it, the yacht of
+some big wig from home, somewhere down Carimata way, his great
+popularity began. As years went on it grew apace. Always
+visiting out-of-the-way places of that part of the world, always
+in search of new markets for his cargoes--not so much for profit
+as for the pleasure of finding them--he soon became known to the
+Malays, and by his successful recklessness in several encounters
+with pirates, established the terror of his name. Those white
+men with whom he had business, and who naturally were on the
+look-out for his weaknesses, could easily see that it was enough
+to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly. So when there
+was anything to be gained by it, and sometimes out of pure and
+unprofitable good nature, they would drop the ceremonious
+"Captain Lingard" and address him half seriously as Rajah
+Laut--the King of the Sea.
+
+He carried the name bravely on his broad shoulders. He had
+carried it many years already when the boy Willems ran barefooted
+on the deck of the ship Kosmopoliet IV. in Samarang roads,
+looking with innocent eyes on the strange shore and objurgating
+his immediate surroundings with blasphemous lips, while his
+childish brain worked upon the heroic idea of running away. From
+the poop of the Flash Lingard saw in the early morning the Dutch
+ship get lumberingly under weigh, bound for the eastern ports.
+Very late in the evening of the same day he stood on the quay of
+the landing canal, ready to go on board of his brig. The night
+was starry and clear; the little custom-house building was shut
+up, and as the gharry that brought him down disappeared up the
+long avenue of dusty trees leading to the town, Lingard thought
+himself alone on the quay. He roused up his sleeping boat-crew
+and stood waiting for them to get ready, when he felt a tug at
+his coat and a thin voice said, very distinctly--
+
+"English captain."
+
+Lingard turned round quickly, and what seemed to be a very lean
+boy jumped back with commendable activity.
+
+"Who are you? Where do you spring from?" asked Lingard, in
+startled surprise.
+
+From a safe distance the boy pointed toward a cargo lighter
+moored to the quay.
+
+"Been hiding there, have you?" said Lingard. "Well, what do you
+want? Speak out, confound you. You did not come here to scare
+me to death, for fun, did you?"
+
+The boy tried to explain in imperfect English, but very soon
+Lingard interrupted him.
+
+"I see," he exclaimed, "you ran away from the big ship that
+sailed this morning. Well, why don't you go to your countrymen
+here?"
+
+"Ship gone only a little way--to Sourabaya. Make me go back to
+the ship," explained the boy.
+
+"Best thing for you," affirmed Lingard with conviction.
+
+"No," retorted the boy; "me want stop here; not want go home.
+Get money here; home no good."
+
+"This beats all my going a-fishing," commented the astonished
+Lingard. "It's money you want? Well! well! And you were not
+afraid to run away, you bag of bones, you!"
+
+The boy intimated that he was frightened of nothing but of being
+sent back to the ship. Lingard looked at him in meditative
+silence.
+
+"Come closer," he said at last. He took the boy by the chin, and
+turning up his face gave him a searching look. "How old are
+you?"
+
+"Seventeen."
+
+"There's not much of you for seventeen. Are you hungry?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"Will you come with me, in that brig there?"
+
+The boy moved without a word towards the boat and scrambled into
+the bows.
+
+"Knows his place," muttered Lingard to himself as he stepped
+heavily into the stern sheets and took up the yoke lines. "Give
+way there."
+
+The Malay boat crew lay back together, and the gig sprang away
+from the quay heading towards the brig's riding light.
+
+Such was the beginning of Willems' career.
+
+Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems'
+commonplace story. Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in
+Rotterdam; mother dead. The boy quick in learning, but idle in
+school. The straitened circumstances in the house filled with
+small brothers and sisters, sufficiently clothed and fed but
+otherwise running wild, while the disconsolate widower tramped
+about all day in a shabby overcoat and imperfect boots on the
+muddy quays, and in the evening piloted wearily the
+half-intoxicated foreign skippers amongst the places of cheap
+delights, returning home late, sick with too much smoking and
+drinking--for company's sake--with these men, who expected such
+attentions in the way of business. Then the offer of the
+good-natured captain of Kosmopoliet IV., who was pleased to do
+something for the patient and obliging fellow; young Willems'
+great joy, his still greater disappointment with the sea that
+looked so charming from afar, but proved so hard and exacting on
+closer acquaintance--and then this running away by a sudden
+impulse. The boy was hopelessly at variance with the spirit of
+the sea. He had an instinctive contempt for the honest
+simplicity of that work which led to nothing he cared for.
+Lingard soon found this out. He offered to send him home in an
+English ship, but the boy begged hard to be permitted to remain.
+He wrote a beautiful hand, became soon perfect in English, was
+quick at figures; and Lingard made him useful in that way. As he
+grew older his trading instincts developed themselves
+astonishingly, and Lingard left him often to trade in one island
+or another while he, himself, made an intermediate trip to some
+out-of-the-way place. On Willems expressing a wish to that
+effect, Lingard let him enter Hudig's service. He felt a little
+sore at that abandonment because he had attached himself, in a
+way, to his protege. Still he was proud of him, and spoke up for
+him loyally. At first it was, "Smart boy that--never make a
+seaman though." Then when Willems was helping in the trading he
+referred to him as "that clever young fellow." Later when
+Willems became the confidential agent of Hudig, employed in many
+a delicate affair, the simple-hearted old seaman would point an
+admiring finger at his back and whisper to whoever stood near at
+the moment, "Long-headed chap that; deuced long-headed chap.
+Look at him. Confidential man of old Hudig. I picked him up in
+a ditch, you may say, like a starved cat. Skin and bone. 'Pon my
+word I did. And now he knows more than I do about island
+trading. Fact. I am not joking. More than I do," he would
+repeat, seriously, with innocent pride in his honest eyes.
+
+From the safe elevation of his commercial successes Willems
+patronized Lingard. He had a liking for his benefactor, not
+unmixed with some disdain for the crude directness of the old
+fellow's methods of conduct. There were, however, certain sides
+of Lingard's character for which Willems felt a qualified
+respect. The talkative seaman knew how to be silent on certain
+matters that to Willems were very interesting. Besides, Lingard
+was rich, and that in itself was enough to compel Willems'
+unwilling admiration. In his confidential chats with Hudig,
+Willems generally alluded to the benevolent Englishman as the
+"lucky old fool" in a very distinct tone of vexation; Hudig would
+grunt an unqualified assent, and then the two would look at each
+other in a sudden immobility of pupils fixed by a stare of
+unexpressed thought.
+
+"You can't find out where he gets all that india-rubber, hey
+Willems?" Hudig would ask at last, turning away and bending over
+the papers on his desk.
+
+"No, Mr. Hudig. Not yet. But I am trying," was Willems'
+invariable reply, delivered with a ring of regretful deprecation.
+
+"Try! Always try! You may try! You think yourself clever
+perhaps," rumbled on Hudig, without looking up. "I have been
+trading with him twenty--thirty years now. The old fox. And I
+have tried. Bah!"
+
+He stretched out a short, podgy leg and contemplated the bare
+instep and the grass slipper hanging by the toes. "You can't
+make him drunk?" he would add, after a pause of stertorous
+breathing.
+
+"No, Mr. Hudig, I can't really," protested Willems, earnestly.
+
+"Well, don't try. I know him. Don't try," advised the master,
+and, bending again over his desk, his staring bloodshot eyes
+close to the paper, he would go on tracing laboriously with his
+thick fingers the slim unsteady letters of his correspondence,
+while Willems waited respectfully for his further good pleasure
+before asking, with great deference--
+
+"Any orders, Mr. Hudig?"
+
+"Hm! yes. Go to Bun-Hin yourself and see the dollars of that
+payment counted and packed, and have them put on board the
+mail-boat for Ternate. She's due here this afternoon."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hudig."
+
+"And, look here. If the boat is late, leave the case in
+Bun-Hin's godown till to-morrow. Seal it up. Eight seals as
+usual. Don't take it away till the boat is here."
+
+"No, Mr. Hudig."
+
+"And don't forget about these opium cases. It's for to-night.
+Use my own boatmen. Transship them from the Caroline to the Arab
+barque," went on the master in his hoarse undertone. "And don't
+you come to me with another story of a case dropped overboard
+like last time," he added, with sudden ferocity, looking up at
+his confidential clerk.
+
+"No, Mr. Hudig. I will take care."
+
+"That's all. Tell that pig as you go out that if he doesn't make
+the punkah go a little better I will break every bone in his
+body," finished up Hudig, wiping his purple face with a red silk
+handkerchief nearly as big as a counterpane.
+
+Noiselessly Willems went out, shutting carefully behind him the
+little green door through which he passed to the warehouse.
+Hudig, pen in hand, listened to him bullying the punkah boy with
+profane violence, born of unbounded zeal for the master's
+comfort, before he returned to his writing amid the rustling of
+papers fluttering in the wind sent down by the punkah that waved
+in wide sweeps above his head.
+
+Willems would nod familiarly to Mr. Vinck, who had his desk close
+to the little door of the private office, and march down the
+warehouse with an important air. Mr. Vinck--extreme dislike
+lurking in every wrinkle of his gentlemanly countenance--would
+follow with his eyes the white figure flitting in the gloom
+amongst the piles of bales and cases till it passed out through
+the big archway into the glare of the street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+The opportunity and the temptation were too much for Willems, and
+under the pressure of sudden necessity he abused that trust which
+was his pride, the perpetual sign of his cleverness and a load
+too heavy for him to carry. A run of bad luck at cards, the
+failure of a small speculation undertaken on his own account, an
+unexpected demand for money from one or another member of the Da
+Souza family--and almost before he was well aware of it he was
+off the path of his peculiar honesty. It was such a faint and
+ill-defined track that it took him some time to find out how far
+he had strayed amongst the brambles of the dangerous wilderness
+he had been skirting for so many years, without any other guide
+than his own convenience and that doctrine of success which he
+had found for himself in the book of life--in those interesting
+chapters that the Devil has been permitted to write in it, to
+test the sharpness of men's eyesight and the steadfastness of
+their hearts. For one short, dark and solitary moment he was
+dismayed, but he had that courage that will not scale heights,
+yet will wade bravely through the mud--if there be no other road.
+He applied himself to the task of restitution, and devoted
+himself to the duty of not being found out. On his thirtieth
+birthday he had almost accomplished the task--and the duty had
+been faithfully and cleverly performed. He saw himself safe.
+Again he could look hopefully towards the goal of his legitimate
+ambition. Nobody would dare to suspect him, and in a few days
+there would be nothing to suspect. He was elated. He did not
+know that his prosperity had touched then its high-water mark,
+and that the tide was already on the turn.
+
+Two days afterwards he knew. Mr. Vinck, hearing the rattle of
+the door-handle, jumped up from his desk--where he had been
+tremulously listening to the loud voices in the private
+office--and buried his face in the big safe with nervous haste.
+For the last time Willems passed through the little green door
+leading to Hudig's sanctum, which, during the past half-hour,
+might have been taken--from the fiendish noise within--for the
+cavern of some wild beast. Willems' troubled eyes took in the
+quick impression of men and things as he came out from the place
+of his humiliation. He saw the scared expression of the punkah
+boy; the Chinamen tellers sitting on their heels with unmovable
+faces turned up blankly towards him while their arrested hands
+hovered over the little piles of bright guilders ranged on the
+floor; Mr. Vinck's shoulder-blades with the fleshy rims of two
+red ears above. He saw the long avenue of gin cases stretching
+from where he stood to the arched doorway beyond which he would
+be able to breathe perhaps. A thin rope's end lay across his
+path and he saw it distinctly, yet stumbled heavily over it as if
+it had been a bar of iron. Then he found himself in the street
+at last, but could not find air enough to fill his lungs. He
+walked towards his home, gasping.
+
+As the sound of Hudig's insults that lingered in his ears grew
+fainter by the lapse of time, the feeling of shame was replaced
+slowly by a passion of anger against himself and still more
+against the stupid concourse of circumstances that had driven him
+into his idiotic indiscretion. Idiotic indiscretion; that is how
+he defined his guilt to himself. Could there be anything worse
+from the point of view of his undeniable cleverness? What a
+fatal aberration of an acute mind! He did not recognize himself
+there. He must have been mad. That's it. A sudden gust of
+madness. And now the work of long years was destroyed utterly.
+What would become of him?
+
+Before he could answer that question he found himself in the
+garden before his house, Hudig's wedding gift. He looked at it
+with a vague surprise to find it there. His past was so utterly
+gone from him that the dwelling which belonged to it appeared to
+him incongruous standing there intact, neat, and cheerful in the
+sunshine of the hot afternoon. The house was a pretty little
+structure all doors and windows, surrounded on all sides by the
+deep verandah supported on slender columns clothed in the green
+foliage of creepers, which also fringed the overhanging eaves of
+the high-pitched roof. Slowly, Willems mounted the dozen steps
+that led to the verandah. He paused at every step. He must tell
+his wife. He felt frightened at the prospect, and his alarm
+dismayed him. Frightened to face her! Nothing could give him a
+better measure of the greatness of the change around him, and in
+him. Another man--and another life with the faith in himself
+gone. He could not be worth much if he was afraid to face that
+woman.
+
+He dared not enter the house through the open door of the
+dining-room, but stood irresolute by the little work-table where
+trailed a white piece of calico, with a needle stuck in it, as if
+the work had been left hurriedly. The pink-crested cockatoo
+started, on his appearance, into clumsy activity and began to
+climb laboriously up and down his perch, calling "Joanna" with
+indistinct loudness and a persistent screech that prolonged the
+last syllable of the name as if in a peal of insane laughter.
+The screen in the doorway moved gently once or twice in the
+breeze, and each time Willems started slightly, expecting his
+wife, but he never lifted his eyes, although straining his ears
+for the sound of her footsteps. Gradually he lost himself in his
+thoughts, in the endless speculation as to the manner in which
+she would receive his news--and his orders. In this
+preoccupationhe almost forgot the fear of her presence. No doubt
+she will cry, she will lament, she will be helpless and
+frightened and passive as ever. And he would have to drag that
+limp weight on and on through the darkness of a spoiled life.
+Horrible! Of course he could not abandon her and the child to
+certain misery or possible starvation. The wife and the child of
+Willems. Willems the successful, the smart; Willems the conf . .
+. . Pah! And what was Willems now? Willems the. . . . He
+strangled the half-born thought, and cleared his throat to stifle
+a groan. Ah! Won't they talk to-night in the billiard-room--his
+world, where he had been first--all those men to whom he had been
+so superciliously condescending. Won't they talk with surprise,
+and affected regret, and grave faces, and wise nods. Some of
+them owed him money, but he never pressed anybody. Not he.
+Willems, the prince of good fellows, they called him. And now
+they will rejoice, no doubt, at his downfall. A crowd of
+imbeciles. In his abasement he was yet aware of his superiority
+over those fellows, who were merely honest or simply not found
+out yet. A crowd of imbeciles! He shook his fist at the evoked
+image of his friends, and the startled parrot fluttered its wings
+and shrieked in desperate fright.
+
+In a short glance upwards Willems saw his wife come round the
+corner of the house. He lowered his eyelids quickly, and waited
+silently till she came near and stood on the other side of the
+little table. He would not look at her face, but he could see
+the red dressing-gown he knew so well. She trailed through life
+in that red dressing-gown, with its row of dirty blue bows down
+the front, stained, and hooked on awry; a torn flounce at the
+bottom following her like a snake as she moved languidly about,
+with her hair negligently caught up, and a tangled wisp
+straggling untidily down her back. His gaze travelled upwards
+from bow to bow, noticing those that hung only by a thread, but
+it did not go beyond her chin. He looked at her lean throat, at
+the obtrusive collarbone visible in the disarray of the upper
+part of her attire. He saw the thin arm and the bony hand
+clasping the child she carried, and he felt an immense distaste
+for those encumbrances of his life. He waited for her to say
+something, but as he felt her eyes rest on him in unbroken
+silence he sighed and began to speak.
+
+It was a hard task. He spoke slowly, lingering amongst the
+memories of this early life in his reluctance to confess that
+this was the end of it and the beginning of a less splendid
+existence. In his conviction of having made her happiness in the
+full satisfaction of all material wants he never doubted for a
+moment that she was ready to keep him company on no matter how
+hard and stony a road. He was not elated by this certitude. He
+had married her to please Hudig, and the greatness of his
+sacrifice ought to have made her happy without any further
+exertion on his part. She had years of glory as Willems' wife,
+and years of comfort, of loyal care, and of such tenderness as
+she deserved. He had guarded her carefully from any bodily hurt;
+and of any other suffering he had no conception. The assertion
+of his superiority was only another benefit conferred on her.
+All this was a matter of course, but he told her all this so as
+to bring vividly before her the greatness of her loss. She was
+so dull of understanding that she would not grasp it else. And
+now it was at an end. They would have to go. Leave this house,
+leave this island, go far away where he was unknown. To the
+English Strait-Settlements perhaps. He would find an opening
+there for his abilities--and juster men to deal with than old
+Hudig. He laughed bitterly.
+
+"You have the money I left at home this morning, Joanna?" he
+asked. "We will want it all now."
+
+As he spoke those words he thought he was a fine fellow. Nothing
+new that. Still, he surpassed there his own expectations. Hang
+it all, there are sacred things in life, after all. The marriage
+tie was one of them, and he was not the man to break it. The
+solidity of his principles caused him great satisfaction, but he
+did not care to look at his wife, for all that. He waited for
+her to speak. Then he would have to console her; tell her not to
+be a crying fool; to get ready to go. Go where? How? When? He
+shook his head. They must leave at once; that was the principal
+thing. He felt a sudden need to hurry up his departure.
+
+"Well, Joanna," he said, a little impatiently---"don't stand
+there in a trance. Do you hear? We must. . . ."
+
+He looked up at his wife, and whatever he was going to add
+remained unspoken. She was staring at him with her big, slanting
+eyes, that seemed to him twice their natural size. The child,
+its dirty little face pressed to its mother's shoulder, was
+sleeping peacefully. The deep silence of the house was not
+broken, but rather accentuated, by the low mutter of the
+cockatoo, now very still on its perch. As Willems was looking at
+Joanna her upper lip was drawn up on one side, giving to her
+melancholy face a vicious expression altogether new to his
+experience. He stepped back in his surprise.
+
+"Oh! You great man!" she said distinctly, but in a voice that
+was hardly above a whisper.
+
+Those words, and still more her tone, stunned him as if somebody
+had fired a gun close to his ear. He stared back at her
+stupidly.
+
+"Oh! you great man!" she repeated slowly, glancing right and left
+as if meditating a sudden escape. "And you think that I am going
+to starve with you. You are nobody now. You think my mamma and
+Leonard would let me go away? And with you! With you," she
+repeated scornfully, raising her voice, which woke up the child
+and caused it to whimper feebly.
+
+"Joanna!" exclaimed Willems.
+
+"Do not speak to me. I have heard what I have waited for all
+these years. You are less than dirt, you that have wiped your
+feet on me. I have waited for this. I am not afraid now. I do
+not want you; do not come near me. Ah-h!" she screamed shrilly,
+as he held out his hand in an entreating gesture--"Ah! Keep off
+me! Keep off me! Keep off!"
+
+She backed away, looking at him with eyes both angry and
+frightened. Willems stared motionless, in dumb amazement at the
+mystery of anger and revolt in the head of his wife. Why? What
+had he ever done to her? This was the day of injustice indeed.
+First Hudig--and now his wife. He felt a terror at this hate
+that had lived stealthily so near him for years. He tried to
+speak, but she shrieked again, and it was like a needle through
+his heart. Again he raised his hand.
+
+"Help!" called Mrs. Willems, in a piercing voice. "Help!"
+
+"Be quiet! You fool!" shouted Willems, trying to drown the noise
+of his wife and child in his own angry accents and rattling
+violently the little zinc table in his exasperation.
+
+From under the house, where there were bathrooms and a tool
+closet, appeared Leonard, a rusty iron bar in his hand. He
+called threateningly from the bottom of the stairs.
+
+"Do not hurt her, Mr. Willems. You are a savage. Not at all
+like we, whites."
+
+"You too!" said the bewildered Willems. "I haven't touched her.
+Is this a madhouse?" He moved towards the stairs, and Leonard
+dropped the bar with a clang and made for the gate of the
+compound. Willems turned back to his wife.
+
+"So you expected this," he said. "It is a conspiracy. Who's that
+sobbing and groaning in the room? Some more of your precious
+family. Hey?"
+
+She was more calm now, and putting hastily the crying child in
+the big chair walked towards him with sudden fearlessness.
+
+"My mother," she said, "my mother who came to defend me from
+you--man from nowhere; a vagabond!"
+
+"You did not call me a vagabond when you hung round my
+neck--before we were married," said Willems, contemptuously.
+
+"You took good care that I should not hang round your neck after
+we were," she answered, clenching her hands, and putting her face
+close to his. "You boasted while I suffered and said nothing.
+What has become of your greatness; of our greatness--you were
+always speaking about? Now I am going to live on the charity of
+your master. Yes. That is true. He sent Leonard to tell me so.
+
+And you will go and boast somewhere else, and starve. So! Ah!
+I can breathe now! This house is mine."
+
+"Enough!" said Willems, slowly, with an arresting gesture.
+
+She leaped back, the fright again in her eyes, snatched up the
+child, pressed it to her breast, and, falling into a chair,
+drummed insanely with her heels on the resounding floor of the
+verandah.
+
+"I shall go," said Willems, steadily. "I thank you. For the
+first time in your life you make me happy. You were a stone
+round my neck; you understand. I did not mean to tell you that
+as long as you lived, but you made me--now. Before I pass this
+gate you shall be gone from my mind. You made it very easy. I
+thank you."
+
+He turned and went down the steps without giving her a glance,
+while she sat upright and quiet, with wide-open eyes, the child
+crying querulously in her arms. At the gate he came suddenly
+upon Leonard, who had been dodging about there and failed to get
+out of the way in time.
+
+"Do not be brutal, Mr. Willems," said Leonard, hurriedly. "It is
+unbecoming between white men with all those natives looking on."
+Leonard's legs trembled very much, and his voice wavered between
+high and low tones without any attempt at control on his part.
+"Restrain your improper violence," he went on mumbling rapidly.
+"I am a respectable man of very good family, while you . . . it
+is regrettable . . . they all say so . . ."
+
+"What?" thundered Willems. He felt a sudden impulse of mad
+anger, and before he knew what had happened he was looking at
+Leonard da Souza rolling in the dust at his feet. He stepped
+over his prostrate brother-in-law and tore blindly down the
+street, everybody making way for the frantic white man.
+
+When he came to himself he was beyond the outskirts of the town,
+stumbling on the hard and cracked earth of reaped rice fields.
+How did he get there? It was dark. He must get back. As he
+walked towards the town slowly, his mind reviewed the events of
+the day and he felt a sense of bitter loneliness. His wife had
+turned him out of his own house. He had assaulted brutally his
+brother-in-law, a member of the Da Souza family--of that band of
+his worshippers. He did. Well, no! It was some other man.
+Another man was coming back. A man without a past, without a
+future, yet full of pain and shame and anger. He stopped and
+looked round. A dog or two glided across the empty street and
+rushed past him with a frightened snarl. He was now in the midst
+of the Malay quarter whose bamboo houses, hidden in the verdure
+of their little gardens, were dark and silent. Men, women and
+children slept in there. Human beings. Would he ever sleep, and
+where? He felt as if he was the outcast of all mankind, and as
+he looked hopelessly round, before resuming his weary march, it
+seemed to him that the world was bigger, the night more vast and
+more black; but he went on doggedly with his head down as if
+pushing his way through some thick brambles. Then suddenly he
+felt planks under his feet and, looking up, saw the red light at
+the end of the jetty. He walked quite to the end and stood
+leaning against the post, under the lamp, looking at the
+roadstead where two vessels at anchor swayed their slender
+rigging amongst the stars. The end of the jetty; and here in one
+step more the end of life; the end of everything. Better so.
+What else could he do? Nothing ever comes back. He saw it
+clearly. The respect and admiration of them all, the old habits
+and old affections finished abruptly in the clear perception of
+the cause of his disgrace. He saw all this; and for a time he
+came out of himself, out of his selfishness--out of the constant
+preoccupation of his interests and his desires--out of the temple
+of self and the concentration of personal thought.
+
+His thoughts now wandered home. Standing in the tepid stillness
+of a starry tropical night he felt the breath of the bitter east
+wind, he saw the high and narrow fronts of tall houses under the
+gloom of a clouded sky; and on muddy quays he saw the shabby,
+high-shouldered figure--the patient, faded face of the weary man
+earning bread for the children that waited for him in a dingy
+home. It was miserable, miserable. But it would never come
+back. What was there in common between those things and Willems
+the clever, Willems the successful. He had cut himself adrift
+from that home many years ago. Better for him then. Better for
+them now. All this was gone, never to come back again; and
+suddenly he shivered, seeing himself alone in the presence of
+unknown and terrible dangers.
+
+For the first time in his life he felt afraid of the future,
+because he had lost his faith, the faith in his own success. And
+he had destroyed it foolishly with his own hands!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+His meditation which resembled slow drifting into suicide was
+interrupted by Lingard, who, with a loud "I've got you at last!"
+dropped his hand heavily on Willems' shoulder. This time it was
+the old seaman himself going out of his way to pick up the
+uninteresting waif--all that there was left of that sudden and
+sordid shipwreck. To Willems, the rough, friendly voice was a
+quick and fleeting relief followed by a sharper pang of anger and
+unavailing regret. That voice carried him back to the beginning
+of his promising career, the end of which was very visible now
+from the jetty where they both stood. He shook himself free from
+the friendly grasp, saying with ready bitterness--
+
+"It's all your fault. Give me a push now, do, and send me over.
+I have been standing here waiting for help. You are the man--of
+all men. You helped at the beginning; you ought to have a hand
+in the end."
+
+"I have better use for you than to throw you to the fishes," said
+Lingard, seriously, taking Willems by the arm and forcing him
+gently to walk up the jetty. "I have been buzzing over this town
+like a bluebottle fly, looking for you high and low. I have
+heard a lot. I will tell you what, Willems; you are no saint,
+that's a fact. And you have not been over-wise either. I am not
+throwing stones," he added, hastily, as Willems made an effort to
+get away, "but I am not going to mince matters. Never could!
+You keep quiet while I talk. Can't you?"
+
+With a gesture of resignation and a half-stifled groan Willems
+submitted to the stronger will, and the two men paced slowly up
+and down the resounding planks, while Lingard disclosed to
+Willems the exact manner of his undoing. After the first shock
+Willems lost the faculty of surprise in the over-powering feeling
+of indignation. So it was Vinck and Leonard who had served him
+so. They had watched him, tracked his misdeeds, reported them to
+Hudig. They had bribed obscure Chinamen, wormed out confidences
+from tipsy skippers, got at various boatmen, and had pieced out
+in that way the story of his irregularities. The blackness of
+this dark intrigue filled him with horror. He could understand
+Vinck. There was no love lost between them. But Leonard!
+Leonard!
+
+"Why, Captain Lingard," he burst out, "the fellow licked my
+boots."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," said Lingard, testily, "we know that, and you
+did your best to cram your boot down his throat. No man likes
+that, my boy."
+
+"I was always giving money to all that hungry lot," went on
+Willems, passionately. "Always my hand in my pocket. They never
+had to ask twice."
+
+"Just so. Your generosity frightened them. They asked
+themselves where all that came from, and concluded that it was
+safer to throw you overboard. After all, Hudig is a much greater
+man than you, my friend, and they have a claim on him also."
+
+"What do you mean, Captain Lingard?"
+
+"What do I mean?" repeated Lingard, slowly. "Why, you are not
+going to make me believe you did not know your wife was Hudig's
+daughter. Come now!"
+
+Willems stopped suddenly and swayed about.
+
+"Ah! I understand," he gasped. "I never heard . . . Lately I
+thought there was . . . But no, I never guessed."
+
+"Oh, you simpleton!" said Lingard, pityingly. "'Pon my word," he
+muttered to himself, "I don't believe the fellow knew. Well!
+well! Steady now. Pull yourself together. What's wrong there.
+She is a good wife to you."
+
+"Excellent wife," said Willems, in a dreary voice, looking far
+over the black and scintillating water.
+
+"Very well then," went on Lingard, with increasing friendliness.
+"Nothing wrong there. But did you really think that Hudig was
+marrying you off and giving you a house and I don't know what,
+out of love for you?"
+
+"I had served him well," answered Willems. "How well, you know
+yourself--through thick and thin. No matter what work and what
+risk, I was always there; always ready."
+
+How well he saw the greatness of his work and the immensity of
+that injustice which was his reward. She was that man's daughter!
+
+In the light of this disclosure the facts of the last five years
+of his life stood clearly revealed in their full meaning. He had
+spoken first to Joanna at the gate of their dwelling as he went
+to his work in the brilliant flush of the early morning, when
+women and flowers are charming even to the dullest eyes. A most
+respectable family--two women and a young man--were his next-door
+neighbours. Nobody ever came to their little house but the
+priest, a native from the Spanish islands, now and then. The
+young man Leonard he had met in town, and was flattered by the
+little fellow's immense respect for the great Willems. He let
+him bring chairs, call the waiters, chalk his cues when playing
+billiards, express his admiration in choice words. He even
+condescended to listen patiently to Leonard's allusions to "our
+beloved father," a man of official position, a government agent
+in Koti, where he died of cholera, alas! a victim to duty, like a
+good Catholic, and a good man. It sounded very respectable, and
+Willems approved of those feeling references. Moreover, he
+prided himself upon having no colour-prejudices and no racial
+antipathies. He consented to drink curacoa one afternoon on the
+verandah of Mrs. da Souza's house. He remembered Joanna that
+day, swinging in a hammock. She was untidy even then, he
+remembered, and that was the only impression he carried away from
+that visit. He had no time for love in those glorious days, no
+time even for a passing fancy, but gradually he fell into the
+habit of calling almost every day at that little house where he
+was greeted by Mrs. da Souza's shrill voice screaming for Joanna
+to come and entertain the gentleman from Hudig & Co. And then
+the sudden and unexpected visit of the priest. He remembered the
+man's flat, yellow face, his thin legs, his propitiatory smile,
+his beaming black eyes, his conciliating manner, his veiled hints
+which he did not understand at the time. How he wondered what
+the man wanted, and how unceremoniously he got rid of him. And
+then came vividly into his recollection the morning when he met
+again that fellow coming out of Hudig's office, and how he was
+amused at the incongruous visit. And that morning with Hudig!
+Would he ever forget it? Would he ever forget his surprise as
+the master, instead of plunging at once into business, looked at
+him thoughtfully before turning, with a furtive smile, to the
+papers on the desk? He could hear him now, his nose in the paper
+before him, dropping astonishing words in the intervals of wheezy
+breathing.
+
+"Heard said . . . called there often . . . most respectable
+ladies . . . knew the father very well . . . estimable . . . best
+thing for a young man . . . settle down. . . . Personally, very
+glad to hear . . . thing arranged. . . . Suitable recognition of
+valuable services. . . . Best thing--best thing to do."
+
+And he believed! What credulity! What an ass! Hudig knew the
+father! Rather. And so did everybody else probably; all except
+himself. How proud he had been of Hudig's benevolent interest in
+his fate! How proud he was when invited by Hudig to stay with
+him at his little house in the country--where he could meet men,
+men of official position--as a friend. Vinck had been green with
+envy. Oh, yes! He had believed in the best thing, and took the
+girl like a gift of fortune. How he boasted to Hudig of being
+free from prejudices. The old scoundrel must have been laughing
+in his sleeve at his fool of a confidential clerk. He took the
+girl, guessing nothing. How could he? There had been a father
+of some kind to the common knowledge. Men knew him; spoke about
+him. A lank man of hopelessly mixed descent, but
+otherwise--apparently--unobjectionable. The shady relations came
+out afterward, but--with his freedom from prejudices--he did not
+mind them, because, with their humble dependence, they completed
+his triumphant life. Taken in! taken in! Hudig had found an
+easy way to provide for the begging crowd. He had shifted the
+burden of his youthful vagaries on to the shoulders of his
+confidential clerk; and while he worked for the master, the
+master had cheated him; had stolen his very self from him. He
+was married. He belonged to that woman, no matter what she might
+do! . . . Had sworn . . . for all life! . . . Thrown himself
+away. . . . And that man dared this very morning call him a
+thief! Damnation!
+
+"Let go, Lingard!" he shouted, trying to get away by a sudden
+jerk from the watchful old seaman. "Let me go and kill that . .
+."
+
+"No you don't!" panted Lingard, hanging on manfully. "You want
+to kill, do you? You lunatic. Ah!--I've got you now! Be quiet,
+I say!"
+
+They struggled violently, Lingard forcing Willems slowly towards
+the guard-rail. Under their feet the jetty sounded like a drum
+in the quiet night. On the shore end the native caretaker of the
+wharf watched the combat, squatting behind the safe shelter of
+some big cases. The next day he informed his friends, with calm
+satisfaction, that two drunken white men had fought on the jetty.
+
+It had been a great fight. They fought without arms, like wild
+beasts, after the manner of white men. No! nobody was killed, or
+there would have been trouble and a report to make. How could he
+know why they fought? White men have no reason when they are
+like that.
+
+Just as Lingard was beginning to fear that he would be unable to
+restrain much longer the violence of the younger man, he felt
+Willems' muscles relaxing, and took advantage of this opportunity
+to pin him, by a last effort, to the rail. They both panted
+heavily, speechless, their faces very close.
+
+"All right," muttered Willems at last. "Don't break my back over
+this infernal rail. I will be quiet."
+
+"Now you are reasonable," said Lingard, much relieved. "What
+made you fly into that passion?" he asked, leading him back to
+the end of the jetty, and, still holding him prudently with one
+hand, he fumbled with the other for his whistle and blew a shrill
+and prolonged blast. Over the smooth water of the roadstead came
+in answer a faint cry from one of the ships at anchor.
+
+"My boat will be here directly," said Lingard. "Think of what
+you are going to do. I sail to-night."
+
+"What is there for me to do, except one thing?" said Willems,
+gloomily.
+
+"Look here," said Lingard; "I picked you up as a boy, and
+consider myself responsible for you in a way. You took your life
+into your own hands many years ago--but still . . ."
+
+He paused, listening, till he heard the regular grind of the oars
+in the rowlocks of the approaching boat then went on again.
+
+ "I have made it all right with Hudig. You owe him nothing now.
+Go back to your wife. She is a good woman. Go back to her."
+
+"Why, Captain Lingard," exclaimed Willems, "she . . ."
+
+"It was most affecting," went on Lingard, without heeding him.
+"I went to your house to look for you and there I saw her
+despair. It was heart-breaking. She called for you; she
+entreated me to find you. She spoke wildly, poor woman, as if
+all this was her fault."
+
+Willems listened amazed. The blind old idiot! How queerly he
+misunderstood! But if it was true, if it was even true, the very
+idea of seeing her filled his soul with intense loathing. He did
+not break his oath, but he would not go back to her. Let hers be
+the sin of that separation; of the sacred bond broken. He
+revelled in the extreme purity of his heart, and he would not go
+back to her. Let her come back to him. He had the comfortable
+conviction that he would never see her again, and that through
+her own fault only. In this conviction he told himself solemnly
+that if she would come to him he would receive her with generous
+forgiveness, because such was the praiseworthy solidity of his
+principles. But he hesitated whether he would or would not
+disclose to Lingard the revolting completeness of his
+humiliation. Turned out of his house--and by his wife; that
+woman who hardly dared to breathe in his presence, yesterday. He
+remained perplexed and silent. No. He lacked the courage to
+tell the ignoble story.
+
+As the boat of the brig appeared suddenly on the black water
+close to the jetty, Lingard broke the painful silence.
+
+"I always thought," he said, sadly, "I always thought you were
+somewhat heartless, Willems, and apt to cast adrift those that
+thought most of you. I appeal to what is best in you; do not
+abandon that woman."
+
+"I have not abandoned her," answered Willems, quickly, with
+conscious truthfulness. "Why should I? As you so justly
+observed, she has been a good wife to me. A very good, quiet,
+obedient, loving wife, and I love her as much as she loves me.
+Every bit. But as to going back now, to that place where I . . .
+To walk again amongst those men who yesterday were ready to crawl
+before me, and then feel on my back the sting of their pitying or
+satisfied smiles--no! I can't. I would rather hide from them at
+the bottom of the sea," he went on, with resolute energy. "I
+don't think, Captain Lingard," he added, more quietly, "I don't
+think that you realize what my position was there."
+
+In a wide sweep of his hand he took in the sleeping shore from
+north to south, as if wishing it a proud and threatening
+good-bye. For a short moment he forgot his downfall in the
+recollection of his brilliant triumphs. Amongst the men of his
+class and occupation who slept in those dark houses he had been
+indeed the first.
+
+"It is hard," muttered Lingard, pensively. "But whose the fault?
+
+Whose the fault?"
+
+"Captain Lingard!" cried Willems, under the sudden impulse of a
+felicitous inspiration, "if you leave me here on this jetty--it's
+murder. I shall never return to that place alive, wife or no
+wife. You may just as well cut my throat at once."
+
+The old seaman started.
+
+"Don't try to frighten me, Willems," he said, with great
+severity, and paused.
+
+Above the accents of Willems' brazen despair he heard, with
+considerable uneasiness, the whisper of his own absurd
+conscience. He meditated for awhile with an irresolute air.
+
+"I could tell you to go and drown yourself, and be damned to
+you," he said, with an unsuccessful assumption of brutality in
+his manner, "but I won't. We are responsible for one
+another--worse luck. I am almost ashamed of myself, but I can
+understand your dirty pride. I can! By . . ."
+
+He broke off with a loud sigh and walked briskly to the steps, at
+the bottom of which lay his boat, rising and falling gently on
+the slight and invisible swell.
+
+"Below there! Got a lamp in the boat? Well, light it and bring
+it up, one of you. Hurry now!"
+
+He tore out a page of his pocketbook, moistened his pencil with
+great energy and waited, stamping his feet impatiently.
+
+"I will see this thing through," he muttered to himself. "And I
+will have it all square and ship-shape; see if I don't! Are you
+going to bring that lamp, you son of a crippled mud-turtle? I am
+waiting."
+
+The gleam of the light on the paper placated his professional
+anger, and he wrote rapidly, the final dash of his signature
+curling the paper up in a triangular tear.
+
+"Take that to this white Tuan's house. I will send the boat back
+for you in half an hour."
+
+The coxswain raised his lamp deliberately to Willem's face.
+
+"This Tuan? Tau! I know."
+
+"Quick then!" said Lingard, taking the lamp from him--and the man
+went off at a run.
+
+"Kassi mem! To the lady herself," called Lingard after him.
+
+Then, when the man disappeared, he turned to Willems.
+
+"I have written to your wife," he said. "If you do not return
+for good, you do not go back to that house only for another
+parting. You must come as you stand. I won't have that poor
+woman tormented. I will see to it that you are not separated for
+long. Trust me!"
+
+Willems shivered, then smiled in the darkness.
+
+"No fear of that," he muttered, enigmatically. "I trust you
+implicitly, Captain Lingard," he added, in a louder tone.
+
+Lingard led the way down the steps, swinging the lamp and
+speaking over his shoulder.
+
+"It is the second time, Willems, I take you in hand. Mind it is
+the last. The second time; and the only difference between then
+and now is that you were bare-footed then and have boots now. In
+fourteen years. With all your smartness! A poor result that. A
+very poor result."
+
+He stood for awhile on the lowest platform of the steps, the
+light of the lamp falling on the upturned face of the stroke oar,
+who held the gunwale of the boat close alongside, ready for the
+captain to step in.
+
+"You see," he went on, argumentatively, fumbling about the top of
+the lamp, "you got yourself so crooked amongst those 'longshore
+quill-drivers that you could not run clear in any way. That's
+what comes of such talk as yours, and of such a life. A man sees
+so much falsehood that he begins to lie to himself. Pah!" he
+said, in disgust, "there's only one place for an honest man. The
+sea, my boy, the sea! But you never would; didn't think there
+was enough money in it; and now--look!"
+
+He blew the light out, and, stepping into the boat, stretched
+quickly his hand towards Willems, with friendly care. Willems
+sat by him in silence, and the boat shoved off, sweeping in a
+wide circle towards the brig.
+
+"Your compassion is all for my wife, Captain Lingard," said
+Willems, moodily. "Do you think I am so very happy?"
+
+"No! no!" said Lingard, heartily. "Not a word more shall pass my
+lips. I had to speak my mind once, seeing that I knew you from a
+child, so to speak. And now I shall forget; but you are young
+yet. Life is very long," he went on, with unconscious sadness;
+"let this be a lesson to you."
+
+He laid his hand affectionately on Willems' shoulder, and they
+both sat silent till the boat came alongside the ship's ladder.
+
+When on board Lingard gave orders to his mate, and leading
+Willems on the poop, sat on the breech of one of the brass
+six-pounders with which his vessel was armed. The boat went off
+again to bring back the messenger. As soon as it was seen
+returning dark forms appeared on the brig's spars; then the sails
+fell in festoons with a swish of their heavy folds, and hung
+motionless under the yards in the dead calm of the clear and dewy
+night. From the forward end came the clink of the windlass, and
+soon afterwards the hail of the chief mate informing Lingard that
+the cable was hove short.
+
+"Hold on everything," hailed back Lingard; "we must wait for the
+land-breeze before we let go our hold of the ground."
+
+He approached Willems, who sat on the skylight, his body bent
+down, his head low, and his hands hanging listlessly between his
+knees.
+
+"I am going to take you to Sambir," he said. "You've never heard
+of the place, have you? Well, it's up that river of mine about
+which people talk so much and know so little. I've found out the
+entrance for a ship of Flash's size. It isn't easy. You'll see.
+
+I will show you. You have been at sea long enough to take an
+interest. . . . Pity you didn't stick to it. Well, I am going
+there. I have my own trading post in the place. Almayer is my
+partner. You knew him when he was at Hudig's. Oh, he lives
+there as happy as a king. D'ye see, I have them all in my
+pocket. The rajah is an old friend of mine. My word is law--and
+I am the only trader. No other white man but Almayer had ever
+been in that settlement. You will live quietly there till I come
+back from my next cruise to the westward. We shall see then what
+can be done for you. Never fear. I have no doubt my secret will
+be safe with you. Keep mum about my river when you get amongst
+the traders again. There's many would give their ears for the
+knowledge of it. I'll tell you something: that's where I get all
+my guttah and rattans. Simply inexhaustible, my boy."
+
+While Lingard spoke Willems looked up quickly, but soon his head
+fell on his breast in the discouraging certitude that the
+knowledge he and Hudig had wished for so much had come to him too
+late. He sat in a listless attitude.
+
+"You will help Almayer in his trading if you have a heart for
+it," continued Lingard, "just to kill time till I come back for
+you. Only six weeks or so."
+
+Over their heads the damp sails fluttered noisily in the first
+faint puff of the breeze; then, as the airs freshened, the brig
+tended to the wind, and the silenced canvas lay quietly aback.
+The mate spoke with low distinctness from the shadows of the
+quarter-deck.
+
+"There's the breeze. Which way do you want to cast her, Captain
+Lingard?"
+
+Lingard's eyes, that had been fixed aloft, glanced down at the
+dejected figure of the man sitting on the skylight. He seemed to
+hesitate for a minute.
+
+"To the northward, to the northward," he answered, testily, as if
+annoyed at his own fleeting thought, "and bear a hand there.
+Every puff of wind is worth money in these seas."
+
+He remained motionless, listening to the rattle of blocks and the
+creaking of trusses as the head-yards were hauled round. Sail
+was made on the ship and the windlass manned again while he stood
+still, lost in thought. He only roused himself when a barefooted
+seacannie glided past him silently on his way to the wheel.
+
+"Put the helm aport! Hard over!" he said, in his harsh
+sea-voice, to the man whose face appeared suddenly out of the
+darkness in the circle of light thrown upwards from the binnacle
+lamps.
+
+The anchor was secured, the yards trimmed, and the brig began to
+move out of the roadstead. The sea woke up under the push of the
+sharp cutwater, and whispered softly to the gliding craft in that
+tender and rippling murmur in which it speaks sometimes to those
+it nurses and loves. Lingard stood by the taff-rail listening,
+with a pleased smile till the Flash began to draw close to the
+only other vessel in the anchorage.
+
+"Here, Willems," he said, calling him to his side, "d'ye see that
+barque here? That's an Arab vessel. White men have mostly given
+up the game, but this fellow drops in my wake often, and lives in
+hopes of cutting me out in that settlement. Not while I live, I
+trust. You see, Willems, I brought prosperity to that place. I
+composed their quarrels, and saw them grow under my eyes.
+There's peace and happiness there. I am more master there than
+his Dutch Excellency down in Batavia ever will be when some day a
+lazy man-of-war blunders at last against the river. I mean to
+keep the Arabs out of it, with their lies and their intrigues. I
+shall keep the venomous breed out, if it costs me my fortune."
+
+The Flash drew quietly abreast of the barque, and was beginning
+to drop it astern when a white figure started up on the poop of
+the Arab vessel, and a voice called out--
+
+"Greeting to the Rajah Laut!"
+
+"To you greeting!" answered Lingard, after a moment of hesitating
+surprise. Then he turned to Willems with a grim smile. "That's
+Abdulla's voice," he said. "Mighty civil all of a sudden, isn't
+he? I wonder what it means. Just like his impudence! No
+matter! His civility or his impudence are all one to me. I know
+that this fellow will be under way and after me like a shot. I
+don't care! I have the heels of anything that floats in these
+seas," he added, while his proud and loving glance ran over and
+rested fondly amongst the brig's lofty and graceful spars.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+"It was the writing on his forehead," said Babalatchi, adding a
+couple of small sticks to the little fire by which he was
+squatting, and without looking at Lakamba who lay down supported
+on his elbow on the other side of the embers. "It was written
+when he was born that he should end his life in darkness, and now
+he is like a man walking in a black night--with his eyes open,
+yet seeing not. I knew him well when he had slaves, and many
+wives, and much merchandise, and trading praus, and praus for
+fighting. Hai--ya! He was a great fighter in the days before the
+breath of the Merciful put out the light in his eyes. He was a
+pilgrim, and had many virtues: he was brave, his hand was open,
+and he was a great robber. For many years he led the men that
+drank blood on the sea: first in prayer and first in fight! Have
+I not stood behind him when his face was turned to the West?
+Have I not watched by his side ships with high masts burning in a
+straight flame on the calm water? Have I not followed him on
+dark nights amongst sleeping men that woke up only to die? His
+sword was swifter than the fire from Heaven, and struck before it
+flashed. Hai! Tuan! Those were the days and that was a leader,
+and I myself was younger; and in those days there were not so
+many fireships with guns that deal fiery death from afar. Over
+the hill and over the forest--O! Tuan Lakamba! they dropped
+whistling fireballs into the creek where our praus took refuge,
+and where they dared not follow men who had arms in their hands."
+
+He shook his head with mournful regret and threw another handful
+of fuel on the fire. The burst of clear flame lit up his broad,
+dark, and pock-marked face, where the big lips, stained with
+betel-juice, looked like a deep and bleeding gash of a fresh
+wound. The reflection of the firelight gleamed brightly in his
+solitary eye, lending it for a moment a fierce animation that
+died out together with the short-lived flame. With quick touches
+of his bare hands he raked the embers into a heap, then, wiping
+the warm ash on his waistcloth--his only garment--he clasped his
+thin legs with his entwined fingers, and rested his chin on his
+drawn-up knees. Lakamba stirred slightly without changing his
+position or taking his eyes off the glowing coals, on which they
+had been fixed in dreamy immobility.
+
+"Yes," went on Babalatchi, in a low monotone, as if pursuing
+aloud a train of thought that had its beginning in the silent
+contemplation of the unstable nature of earthly greatness--"yes.
+He has been rich and strong, and now he lives on alms: old,
+feeble, blind, and without companions, but for his daughter. The
+Rajah Patalolo gives him rice, and the pale woman--his
+daughter--cooks it for him, for he has no slave."
+
+"I saw her from afar," muttered Lakamba, disparagingly. "A
+she-dog with white teeth, like a woman of the Orang-Putih."
+
+"Right, right," assented Babalatchi; "but you have not seen her
+near. Her mother was a woman from the west; a Baghdadi woman
+with veiled face. Now she goes uncovered, like our women do, for
+she is poor and he is blind, and nobody ever comes near them
+unless to ask for a charm or a blessing and depart quickly for
+fear of his anger and of the Rajah's hand. You have not been on
+that side of the river?"
+
+"Not for a long time. If I go . . ."
+
+"True! true!" interrupted Babalatchi, soothingly, "but I go often
+alone--for your good--and look--and listen. When the time comes;
+when we both go together towards the Rajah's campong, it will be
+to enter--and to remain."
+
+Lakamba sat up and looked at Babalatchi gloomily.
+
+"This is good talk, once, twice; when it is heard too often it
+becomes foolish, like the prattle of children."
+
+"Many, many times have I seen the cloudy sky and have heard the
+wind of the rainy seasons," said Babalatchi, impressively.
+
+"And where is your wisdom? It must be with the wind and the
+clouds of seasons past, for I do not hear it in your talk."
+
+"Those are the words of the ungrateful!" shouted Babalatchi, with
+sudden exasperation. "Verily, our only refuge is with the One,
+the Mighty, the Redresser of . . ."
+
+"Peace! Peace!" growled the startled Lakamba. "It is but a
+friend's talk."
+
+Babalatchi subsided into his former attitude, muttering to
+himself. After awhile he went on again in a louder voice--
+
+"Since the Rajah Laut left another white man here in Sambir, the
+daughter of the blind Omar el Badavi has spoken to other ears
+than mine."
+
+"Would a white man listen to a beggar's daughter?" said Lakamba,
+doubtingly.
+
+"Hai! I have seen . . ."
+
+"And what did you see? O one-eyed one!" exclaimed Lakamba,
+contemptuously.
+
+"I have seen the strange white man walking on the narrow path
+before the sun could dry the drops of dew on the bushes, and I
+have heard the whisper of his voice when he spoke through the
+smoke of the morning fire to that woman with big eyes and a pale
+skin. Woman in body, but in heart a man! She knows no fear and
+no shame. I have heard her voice too."
+
+He nodded twice at Lakamba sagaciously and gave himself up to
+silent musing, his solitary eye fixed immovably upon the straight
+wall of forest on the opposite bank. Lakamba lay silent, staring
+vacantly. Under them Lingard's own river rippled softly amongst
+the piles supporting the bamboo platform of the little
+watch-house before which they were lying. Behind the house the
+ground rose in a gentle swell of a low hill cleared of the big
+timber, but thickly overgrown with the grass and bushes, now
+withered and burnt up in the long drought of the dry season.
+This old rice clearing, which had been several years lying
+fallow, was framed on three sides by the impenetrable and tangled
+growth of the untouched forest, and on the fourth came down to
+the muddy river bank. There was not a breath of wind on the land
+or river, but high above, in the transparent sky, little clouds
+rushed past the moon, now appearing in her diffused rays with the
+brilliance of silver, now obscuring her face with the blackness
+of ebony. Far away, in the middle of the river, a fish would
+leap now and then with a short splash, the very loudness of which
+measured the profundity of the overpowering silence that
+swallowed up the sharp sound suddenly.
+
+Lakamba dozed uneasily off, but the wakeful Babalatchi sat
+thinking deeply, sighing from time to time, and slapping himself
+over his naked torso incessantly in a vain endeavour to keep off
+an occasional and wandering mosquito that, rising as high as the
+platform above the swarms of the riverside, would settle with a
+ping of triumph on the unexpected victim. The moon, pursuing her
+silent and toilsome path, attained her highest elevation, and
+chasing the shadow of the roof-eaves from Lakamba's face, seemed
+to hang arrested over their heads. Babalatchi revived the fire
+and woke up his companion, who sat up yawning and shivering
+discontentedly.
+
+Babalatchi spoke again in a voice which was like the murmur of a
+brook that runs over the stones: low, monotonous, persistent;
+irresistible in its power to wear out and to destroy the hardest
+obstacles. Lakamba listened, silent but interested. They were
+Malay adventurers; ambitious men of that place and time; the
+Bohemians of their race. In the early days of the settlement,
+before the ruler Patalolo had shaken off his allegiance to the
+Sultan of Koti, Lakamba appeared in the river with two small
+trading vessels. He was disappointed to find already some
+semblance of organization amongst the settlers of various races
+who recognized the unobtrusive sway of old Patalolo, and he was
+not politic enough to conceal his disappointment. He declared
+himself to be a man from the east, from those parts where no
+white man ruled, and to be of an oppressed race, but of a
+princely family. And truly enough he had all the gifts of an
+exiled prince. He was discontented, ungrateful, turbulent; a man
+full of envy and ready for intrigue, with brave words and empty
+promises for ever on his lips. He was obstinate, but his will
+was made up of short impulses that never lasted long enough to
+carry him to the goal of his ambition. Received coldly by the
+suspicious Patalolo, he persisted--permission or no
+permission--in clearing the ground on a good spot some fourteen
+miles down the river from Sambir, and built himself a house
+there, which he fortified by a high palisade. As he had many
+followers and seemed very reckless, the old Rajah did not think
+it prudent at the time to interfere with him by force. Once
+settled, he began to intrigue. The quarrel of Patalolo with the
+Sultan of Koti was of his fomenting, but failed to produce the
+result he expected because the Sultan could not back him up
+effectively at such a great distance. Disappointed in that
+scheme, he promptly organized an outbreak of the Bugis settlers,
+and besieged the old Rajah in his stockade with much noisy valour
+and a fair chance of success; but Lingard then appeared on the
+scene with the armed brig, and the old seaman's hairy forefinger,
+shaken menacingly in his face, quelled his martial ardour. No
+man cared to encounter the Rajah Laut, and Lakamba, with
+momentary resignation, subsided into a half-cultivator,
+half-trader, and nursed in his fortified house his wrath and his
+ambition, keeping it for use on a more propitious occasion.
+Still faithful to his character of a prince-pretender, he would
+not recognize the constituted authorities, answering sulkily the
+Rajah's messenger, who claimed the tribute for the cultivated
+fields, that the Rajah had better come and take it himself. By
+Lingard's advice he was left alone, notwithstanding his
+rebellious mood; and for many days he lived undisturbed amongst
+his wives and retainers, cherishing that persistent and causeless
+hope of better times, the possession of which seems to be the
+universal privilege of exiled greatness.
+
+But the passing days brought no change. The hope grew faint and
+the hot ambition burnt itself out, leaving only a feeble and
+expiring spark amongst a heap of dull and tepid ashes of indolent
+acquiescence with the decrees of Fate, till Babalatchi fanned it
+again into a bright flame. Babalatchi had blundered upon the
+river while in search of a safe refuge for his disreputable head.
+
+He was a vagabond of the seas, a true Orang-Laut, living by
+rapine and plunder of coasts and ships in his prosperous days;
+earning his living by honest and irksome toil when the days of
+adversity were upon him. So, although at times leading the Sulu
+rovers, he had also served as Serang of country ships, and in
+that wise had visited the distant seas, beheld the glories of
+Bombay, the might of the Mascati Sultan; had even struggled in a
+pious throng for the privilege of touching with his lips the
+Sacred Stone of the Holy City. He gathered experience and wisdom
+in many lands, and after attaching himself to Omar el Badavi, he
+affected great piety (as became a pilgrim), although unable to
+read the inspired words of the Prophet. He was brave and
+bloodthirsty without any affection, and he hated the white men
+who interfered with the manly pursuits of throat-cutting,
+kidnapping, slave-dealing, and fire-raising, that were the only
+possible occupation for a true man of the sea. He found favour
+in the eyes of his chief, the fearless Omar el Badavi, the leader
+of Brunei rovers, whom he followed with unquestioning loyalty
+through the long years of successful depredation. And when that
+long career of murder, robbery and violence received its first
+serious check at the hands of white men, he stood faithfully by
+his chief, looked steadily at the bursting shells, was undismayed
+by the flames of the burning stronghold, by the death of his
+companions, by the shrieks of their women, the wailing of their
+children; by the sudden ruin and destruction of all that he
+deemed indispensable to a happy and glorious existence. The
+beaten ground between the houses was slippery with blood, and the
+dark mangroves of the muddy creeks were full of sighs of the
+dying men who were stricken down before they could see their
+enemy. They died helplessly, for into the tangled forest there
+was no escape, and their swift praus, in which they had so often
+scoured the coast and the seas, now wedged together in the narrow
+creek, were burning fiercely. Babalatchi, with the clear
+perception of the coming end, devoted all his energies to saving
+if it was but only one of them. He succeeded in time. When the
+end came in the explosion of the stored powder-barrels, he was
+ready to look for his chief. He found him half dead and totally
+blinded, with nobody near him but his daughter Aissa:--the sons
+had fallen earlier in the day, as became men of their courage.
+Helped by the girl with the steadfast heart, Babalatchi carried
+Omar on board the light prau and succeeded in escaping, but with
+very few companions only. As they hauled their craft into the
+network of dark and silent creeks, they could hear the cheering
+of the crews of the man-of-war's boats dashing to the attack of
+the rover's village. Aissa, sitting on the high after-deck, her
+father's blackened and bleeding head in her lap, looked up with
+fearless eyes at Babalatchi. "They shall find only smoke, blood
+and dead men, and women mad with fear there, but nothing else
+living," she said, mournfully. Babalatchi, pressing with his
+right hand the deep gash on his shoulder, answered sadly: "They
+are very strong. When we fight with them we can only die. Yet,"
+he added, menacingly--"some of us still live! Some of us still
+live!"
+
+For a short time he dreamed of vengeance, but his dream was
+dispelled by the cold reception of the Sultan of Sulu, with whom
+they sought refuge at first and who gave them only a contemptuous
+and grudging hospitality. While Omar, nursed by Aissa, was
+recovering from his wounds, Babalatchi attended industriously
+before the exalted Presence that had extended to them the hand of
+Protection. For all that, when Babalatchi spoke into the
+Sultan's ear certain proposals of a great and profitable raid,
+that was to sweep the islands from Ternate to Acheen, the Sultan
+was very angry. "I know you, you men from the west," he
+exclaimed, angrily. "Your words are poison in a Ruler's ears.
+Your talk is of fire and murder and booty--but on our heads falls
+the vengeance of the blood you drink. Begone!"
+
+There was nothing to be done. Times were changed. So changed
+that, when a Spanish frigate appeared before the island and a
+demand was sent to the Sultan to deliver Omar and his companions,
+Babalatchi was not surprised to hear that they were going to be
+made the victims of political expediency. But from that sane
+appreciation of danger to tame submission was a very long step.
+And then began Omar's second flight. It began arms in hand, for
+the little band had to fight in the night on the beach for the
+possession of the small canoes in which those that survived got
+away at last. The story of that escape lives in the hearts of
+brave men even to this day. They talk of Babalatchi and of the
+strong woman who carried her blind father through the surf under
+the fire of the warship from the north. The companions of that
+piratical and son-less Aeneas are dead now, but their ghosts
+wander over the waters and the islands at night--after the manner
+of ghosts--and haunt the fires by which sit armed men, as is meet
+for the spirits of fearless warriors who died in battle. There
+they may hear the story of their own deeds, of their own courage,
+suffering and death, on the lips of living men. That story is
+told in many places. On the cool mats in breezy verandahs of
+Rajahs' houses it is alluded to disdainfully by impassive
+statesmen, but amongst armed men that throng the courtyards it is
+a tale which stills the murmur of voices and the tinkle of
+anklets; arrests the passage of the siri-vessel, and fixes the
+eyes in absorbed gaze. They talk of the fight, of the fearless
+woman, of the wise man; of long suffering on the thirsty sea in
+leaky canoes; of those who died. . . . Many died. A few
+survived. The chief, the woman, and another one who became
+great.
+
+There was no hint of incipient greatness in Babalatchi's
+unostentatious arrival in Sambir. He came with Omar and Aissa in
+a small prau loaded with green cocoanuts, and claimed the
+ownership of both vessel and cargo. How it came to pass that
+Babalatchi, fleeing for his life in a small canoe, managed to end
+his hazardous journey in a vessel full of a valuable commodity,
+is one of those secrets of the sea that baffle the most searching
+inquiry. In truth nobody inquired much. There were rumours of a
+missing trading prau belonging to Menado, but they were vague and
+remained mysterious. Babalatchi told a story which--it must be
+said in justice to Patalolo's knowledge of the world--was not
+believed. When the Rajah ventured to state his doubts,
+Babalatchi asked him in tones of calm remonstrance whether he
+could reasonably suppose that two oldish men--who had only one
+eye amongst them--and a young woman were likely to gain
+possession of anything whatever by violence? Charity was a
+virtue recommended by the Prophet. There were charitable people,
+and their hand was open to the deserving. Patalolo wagged his
+aged head doubtingly, and Babalatchi withdrew with a shocked mien
+and put himself forthwith under Lakamba's protection. The two
+men who completed the prau's crew followed him into that
+magnate's campong. The blind Omar, with Aissa, remained under
+the care of the Rajah, and the Rajah confiscated the cargo. The
+prau hauled up on the mud-bank, at the junction of the two
+branches of the Pantai, rotted in the rain, warped in the sun,
+fell to pieces and gradually vanished into the smoke of household
+fires of the settlement. Only a forgotten plank and a rib or
+two, sticking neglected in the shiny ooze for a long time, served
+to remind Babalatchi during many months that he was a stranger in
+the land.
+
+Otherwise, he felt perfectly at home in Lakamba's establishment,
+where his peculiar position and influence were quickly recognized
+and soon submitted to even by the women. He had all a true
+vagabond's pliability to circumstances and adaptiveness to
+momentary surroundings. In his readiness to learn from
+experience that contempt for early principles so necessary to a
+true statesman, he equalled the most successful politicians of
+any age; and he had enough persuasiveness and firmness of purpose
+to acquire a complete mastery over Lakamba's vacillating
+mind--where there was nothing stable but an all-pervading
+discontent. He kept the discontent alive, he rekindled the
+expiring ambition, he moderated the poor exile's not unnatural
+impatience to attain a high and lucrative position. He--the man
+of violence--deprecated the use of force, for he had a clear
+comprehension of the difficult situation. From the same cause,
+he--the hater of white men--would to some extent admit the
+eventual expediency of Dutch protection. But nothing should be
+done in a hurry. Whatever his master Lakamba might think, there
+was no use in poisoning old Patalolo, he maintained. It could be
+done, of course; but what then? As long as Lingard's influence
+was paramount--as long as Almayer, Lingard's representative, was
+the only great trader of the settlement, it was not worth
+Lakamba's while--even if it had been possible--to grasp the rule
+of the young state. Killing Almayer and Lingard was so difficult
+and so risky that it might be dismissed as impracticable. What
+was wanted was an alliance; somebody to set up against the white
+men's influence--and somebody who, while favourable to Lakamba,
+would at the same time be a person of a good standing with the
+Dutch authorities. A rich and considered trader was wanted.
+Such a person once firmly established in Sambir would help them
+to oust the old Rajah, to remove him from power or from life if
+there was no other way. Then it would be time to apply to the
+Orang Blanda for a flag; for a recognition of their meritorious
+services; for that protection which would make them safe for
+ever! The word of a rich and loyal trader would mean something
+with the Ruler down in Batavia. The first thing to do was to
+find such an ally and to induce him to settle in Sambir. A white
+trader would not do. A white man would not fall in with their
+ideas--would not be trustworthy. The man they wanted should be
+rich, unscrupulous, have many followers, and be a well-known
+personality in the islands. Such a man might be found amongst
+the Arab traders. Lingard's jealousy, said Babalatchi, kept all
+the traders out of the river. Some were afraid, and some did not
+know how to get there; others ignored the very existence of
+Sambir; a good many did not think it worth their while to run the
+risk of Lingard's enmity for the doubtful advantage of trade with
+a comparatively unknown settlement. The great majority were
+undesirable or untrustworthy. And Babalatchi mentioned
+regretfully the men he had known in his young days: wealthy,
+resolute, courageous, reckless, ready for any enterprise! But
+why lament the past and speak about the dead? There is one
+man--living--great--not far off . . .
+
+Such was Babalatchi's line of policy laid before his ambitious
+protector. Lakamba assented, his only objection being that it
+was very slow work. In his extreme desire to grasp dollars and
+power, the unintellectual exile was ready to throw himself into
+the arms of any wandering cut-throat whose help could be secured,
+and Babalatchi experienced great difficulty in restraining him
+from unconsidered violence. It would not do to let it be seen
+that they had any hand in introducing a new element into the
+social and political life of Sambir. There was always a
+possibility of failure, and in that case Lingard's vengeance
+would be swift and certain. No risk should be run. They must
+wait.
+
+Meantime he pervaded the settlement, squatting in the course of
+each day by many household fires, testing the public temper and
+public opinion--and always talking about his impending departure.
+
+At night he would often take Lakamba's smallest canoe and depart
+silently to pay mysterious visits to his old chief on the other
+side of the river. Omar lived in odour of sanctity under the
+wing of Patalolo. Between the bamboo fence, enclosing the houses
+of the Rajah, and the wild forest, there was a banana plantation,
+and on its further edge stood two little houses built on low
+piles under a few precious fruit trees that grew on the banks of
+a clear brook, which, bubbling up behind the house, ran in its
+short and rapid course down to the big river. Along the brook a
+narrow path led through the dense second growth of a neglected
+clearing to the banana plantation and to the houses in it which
+the Rajah had given for residence to Omar. The Rajah was greatly
+impressed by Omar's ostentatious piety, by his oracular wisdom,
+by his many misfortunes, by the solemn fortitude with which he
+bore his affliction. Often the old ruler of Sambir would visit
+informally the blind Arab and listen gravely to his talk during
+the hot hours of an afternoon. In the night, Babalatchi would
+call and interrupt Omar's repose, unrebuked. Aissa, standing
+silently at the door of one of the huts, could see the two old
+friends as they sat very still by the fire in the middle of the
+beaten ground between the two houses, talking in an indistinct
+murmur far into the night. She could not hear their words, but
+she watched the two formless shadows curiously. Finally
+Babalatchi would rise and, taking her father by the wrist, would
+lead him back to the house, arrange his mats for him, and go out
+quietly. Instead of going away, Babalatchi, unconscious of
+Aissa's eyes, often sat again by the fire, in a long and deep
+meditation. Aissa looked with respect on that wise and brave
+man--she was accustomed to see at her father's side as long as
+she could remember--sitting alone and thoughtful in the silent
+night by the dying fire, his body motionless and his mind
+wandering in the land of memories, or--who knows?--perhaps
+groping for a road in the waste spaces of the uncertain future.
+
+Babalatchi noted the arrival of Willems with alarm at this new
+accession to the white men's strength. Afterwards he changed his
+opinion. He met Willems one night on the path leading to Omar's
+house, and noticed later on, with only a moderate surprise, that
+the blind Arab did not seem to be aware of the new white man's
+visits to the neighbourhood of his dwelling. Once, coming
+unexpectedly in the daytime, Babalatchi fancied he could see the
+gleam of a white jacket in the bushes on the other side of the
+brook. That day he watched Aissa pensively as she moved about
+preparing the evening rice; but after awhile he went hurriedly
+away before sunset, refusing Omar's hospitable invitation, in the
+name of Allah, to share their meal. That same evening he
+startled Lakamba by announcing that the time had come at last to
+make the first move in their long-deferred game. Lakamba asked
+excitedly for explanation. Babalatchi shook his head and pointed
+to the flitting shadows of moving women and to the vague forms of
+men sitting by the evening fires in the courtyard. Not a word
+would he speak here, he declared. But when the whole household
+was reposing, Babalatchi and Lakamba passed silent amongst
+sleeping groups to the riverside, and, taking a canoe, paddled
+off stealthily on their way to the dilapidated guard-hut in the
+old rice-clearing. There they were safe from all eyes and ears,
+and could account, if need be, for their excursion by the wish to
+kill a deer, the spot being well known as the drinking-place of
+all kinds of game. In the seclusion of its quiet solitude
+Babalatchi explained his plan to the attentive Lakamba. His idea
+was to make use of Willems for the destruction of Lingard's
+influence.
+
+"I know the white men, Tuan," he said, in conclusion. "In many
+lands have I seen them; always the slaves of their desires,
+always ready to give up their strength and their reason into the
+hands of some woman. The fate of the Believers is written by the
+hand of the Mighty One, but they who worship many gods are thrown
+into the world with smooth foreheads, for any woman's hand to
+mark their destruction there. Let one white man destroy another.
+
+The will of the Most High is that they should be fools. They
+know how to keep faith with their enemies, but towards each other
+they know only deception. Hai! I have seen! I have seen!"
+
+He stretched himself full length before the fire, and closed his
+eye in real or simulated sleep. Lakamba, not quite convinced,
+sat for a long time with his gaze riveted on the dull embers. As
+the night advanced, a slight white mist rose from the river, and
+the declining moon, bowed over the tops of the forest, seemed to
+seek the repose of the earth, like a wayward and wandering lover
+who returns at last to lay his tired and silent head on his
+beloved's breast.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+
+"Lend me your gun, Almayer," said Willems, across the table on
+which a smoky lamp shone redly above the disorder of a finished
+meal. "I have a mind to go and look for a deer when the moon
+rises to-night."
+
+Almayer, sitting sidewise to the table, his elbow pushed amongst
+the dirty plates, his chin on his breast and his legs stretched
+stiffly out, kept his eyes steadily on the toes of his grass
+slippers and laughed abruptly.
+
+"You might say yes or no instead of making that unpleasant
+noise," remarked Willems, with calm irritation.
+
+"If I believed one word of what you say, I would," answered
+Almayer without changing his attitude and speaking slowly, with
+pauses, as if dropping his words on the floor. "As it is--what's
+the use? You know where the gun is; you may take it or leave it.
+
+Gun. Deer. Bosh! Hunt deer! Pah! It's a . . . gazelle you
+are
+after, my honoured guest. You want gold anklets and silk sarongs
+for that game--my mighty hunter. And you won't get those for the
+asking, I promise you. All day amongst the natives. A fine help
+you are to me."
+
+"You shouldn't drink so much, Almayer," said Willems, disguising
+his fury under an affected drawl. "You have no head. Never had,
+as far as I can remember, in the old days in Macassar. You drink
+too much."
+
+"I drink my own," retorted Almayer, lifting his head quickly and
+darting an angry glance at Willems.
+
+Those two specimens of the superior race glared at each other
+savagely for a minute, then turned away their heads at the same
+moment as if by previous arrangement, and both got up. Almayer
+kicked off his slippers and scrambled into his hammock, which
+hung between two wooden columns of the verandah so as to catch
+every rare breeze of the dry season, and Willems, after standing
+irresolutely by the table for a short time, walked without a word
+down the steps of the house and over the courtyard towards the
+little wooden jetty, where several small canoes and a couple of
+big white whale-boats were made fast, tugging at their short
+painters and bumping together in the swift current of the river.
+He jumped into the smallest canoe, balancing himself clumsily,
+slipped the rattan painter, and gave an unnecessary and violent
+shove, which nearly sent him headlong overboard. By the time he
+regained his balance the canoe had drifted some fifty yards down
+the river. He knelt in the bottom of his little craft and fought
+the current with long sweeps of the paddle. Almayer sat up in
+his hammock, grasping his feet and peering over the river with
+parted lips till he made out the shadowy form of man and canoe as
+they struggled past the jetty again.
+
+"I thought you would go," he shouted. "Won't you take the gun?
+Hey?" he yelled, straining his voice. Then he fell back in his
+hammock and laughed to himself feebly till he fell asleep. On
+the river, Willems, his eyes fixed intently ahead, swept his
+paddle right and left, unheeding the words that reached him
+faintly.
+
+It was now three months since Lingard had landed Willems in
+Sambir and had departed hurriedly, leaving him in Almayer's care.
+
+The two white men did not get on well together. Almayer,
+remembering the time when they both served Hudig, and when the
+superior Willems treated him with offensive condescension, felt a
+great dislike towards his guest. He was also jealous of
+Lingard's favour. Almayer had married a Malay girl whom the old
+seaman had adopted in one of his accesses of unreasoning
+benevolence, and as the marriage was not a happy one from a
+domestic point of view, he looked to Lingard's fortune for
+compensation in his matrimonial unhappiness. The appearance of
+that man, who seemed to have a claim of some sort upon Lingard,
+filled him with considerable uneasiness, the more so because the
+old seaman did not choose to acquaint the husband of his adopted
+daughter with Willems' history, or to confide to him his
+intentions as to that individual's future fate. Suspicious from
+the first, Almayer discouraged Willems' attempts to help him in
+his trading, and then when Willems drew back, he made, with
+characteristic perverseness, a grievance of his unconcern. From
+cold civility in their relations, the two men drifted into silent
+hostility, then into outspoken enmity, and both wished ardently
+for Lingard's return and the end of a situation that grew more
+intolerable from day to day. The time dragged slowly. Willems
+watched the succeeding sunrises wondering dismally whether before
+the evening some change would occur in the deadly dullness of his
+life. He missed the commercial activity of that existence which
+seemed to him far off, irreparably lost, buried out of sight
+under the ruins of his past success--now gone from him beyond the
+possibility of redemption. He mooned disconsolately about
+Almayer's courtyard, watching from afar, with uninterested eyes,
+the up-country canoes discharging guttah or rattans, and loading
+rice or European goods on the little wharf of Lingard & Co. Big
+as was the extent of ground owned by Almayer, Willems yet felt
+that there was not enough room for him inside those neat fences.
+The man who, during long years, became accustomed to think of
+himself as indispensable to others, felt a bitter and savage rage
+at the cruel consciousness of his superfluity, of his
+uselessness; at the cold hostility visible in every look of the
+only white man in this barbarous corner of the world. He gnashed
+his teeth when he thought of the wasted days, of the life thrown
+away in the unwilling company of that peevish and suspicious
+fool. He heard the reproach of his idleness in the murmurs of
+the river, in the unceasing whisper of the great forests. Round
+him everything stirred, moved, swept by in a rush; the earth
+under his feet and the heavens above his head. The very savages
+around him strove, struggled, fought, worked--if only to prolong
+a miserable existence; but they lived, they lived! And it was
+only himself that seemed to be left outside the scheme of
+creation in a hopeless immobility filled with tormenting anger
+and with ever-stinging regret.
+
+He took to wandering about the settlement. The afterwards
+flourishing Sambir was born in a swamp and passed its youth in
+malodorous mud. The houses crowded the bank, and, as if to get
+away from the unhealthy shore, stepped boldly into the river,
+shooting over it in a close row of bamboo platforms elevated on
+high piles, amongst which the current below spoke in a soft and
+unceasing plaint of murmuring eddies. There was only one path in
+the whole town and it ran at the back of the houses along the
+succession of blackened circular patches that marked the place of
+the household fires. On the other side the virgin forest
+bordered the path, coming close to it, as if to provoke
+impudently any passer-by to the solution of the gloomy problem of
+its depths. Nobody would accept the deceptive challenge. There
+were only a few feeble attempts at a clearing here and there, but
+the ground was low and the river, retiring after its yearly
+floods, left on each a gradually diminishing mudhole, where the
+imported buffaloes of the Bugis settlers wallowed happily during
+the heat of the day. When Willems walked on the path, the
+indolent men stretched on the shady side of the houses looked at
+him with calm curiosity, the women busy round the cooking fires
+would send after him wondering and timid glances, while the
+children would only look once, and then run away yelling with
+fright at the horrible appearance of the man with a red and white
+face. These manifestations of childish disgust and fear stung
+Willems with a sense of absurd humiliation; he sought in his
+walks the comparative solitude of the rudimentary clearings, but
+the very buffaloes snorted with alarm at his sight, scrambled
+lumberingly out of the cool mud and stared wildly in a compact
+herd at him as he tried to slink unperceived along the edge of
+the forest. One day, at some unguarded and sudden movement of
+his, the whole herd stampeded down the path, scattered the fires,
+sent the women flying with shrill cries, and left behind a track
+of smashed pots, trampled rice, overturned children, and a crowd
+of angry men brandishing sticks in loud-voiced pursuit. The
+innocent cause of that disturbance ran shamefacedly the gauntlet
+of black looks and unfriendly remarks, and hastily sought refuge
+in Almayer's campong. After that he left the settlement alone.
+
+Later, when the enforced confinement grew irksome, Willems took
+one of Almayer's many canoes and crossed the main branch of the
+Pantai in search of some solitary spot where he could hide his
+discouragement and his weariness. He skirted in his little craft
+the wall of tangled verdure, keeping in the dead water close to
+the bank where the spreading nipa palms nodded their broad leaves
+over his head as if in contemptuous pity of the wandering
+outcast. Here and there he could see the beginnings of
+chopped-out pathways, and, with the fixed idea of getting out of
+sight of the busy river, he would land and follow the narrow and
+winding path, only to find that it led nowhere, ending abruptly
+in the discouragement of thorny thickets. He would go back
+slowly, with a bitter sense of unreasonable disappointment and
+sadness; oppressed by the hot smell of earth, dampness, and decay
+in that forest which seemed to push him mercilessly back into the
+glittering sunshine of the river. And he would recommence
+paddling with tired arms to seek another opening, to find another
+deception.
+
+As he paddled up to the point where the Rajah's stockade came
+down to the river, the nipas were left behind rattling their
+leaves over the brown water, and the big trees would appear on
+the bank, tall, strong, indifferent in the immense solidity of
+their life, which endures for ages, to that short and fleeting
+life in the heart of the man who crept painfully amongst their
+shadows in search of a refuge from the unceasing reproach of his
+thoughts. Amongst their smooth trunks a clear brook meandered
+for a time in twining lacets before it made up its mind to take a
+leap into the hurrying river, over the edge of the steep bank.
+There was also a pathway there and it seemed frequented. Willems
+landed, and following the capricious promise of the track soon
+found himself in a comparatively clear space, where the confused
+tracery of sunlight fell through the branches and the foliage
+overhead, and lay on the stream that shone in an easy curve like
+a bright sword-blade dropped amongst the long and feathery grass.
+
+Further on, the path continued, narrowed again in the thick
+undergrowth. At the end of the first turning Willems saw a flash
+of white and colour, a gleam of gold like a sun-ray lost in
+shadow, and a vision of blackness darker than the deepest shade
+of the forest. He stopped, surprised, and fancied he had heard
+light footsteps--growing lighter--ceasing. He looked around.
+The grass on the bank of the stream trembled and a tremulous path
+of its shivering, silver-grey tops ran from the water to the
+beginning of the thicket. And yet there was not a breath of
+wind. Somebody kind passed there. He looked pensive while the
+tremor died out in a quick tremble under his eyes; and the grass
+stood high, unstirring, with drooping heads in the warm and
+motionless air.
+
+He hurried on, driven by a suddenly awakened curiosity, and
+entered the narrow way between the bushes. At the next turn of
+the path he caught again the glimpse of coloured stuff and of a
+woman's black hair before him. He hastened his pace and came in
+full view of the object of his pursuit. The woman, who was
+carrying two bamboo vessels full of water, heard his footsteps,
+stopped, and putting the bamboos down half turned to look back.
+Willems also stood still for a minute, then walked steadily on
+with a firm tread, while the woman moved aside to let him pass.
+He kept his eyes fixed straight before him, yet almost
+unconsciously he took in every detail of the tall and graceful
+figure. As he approached her the woman tossed her head slightly
+back, and with a free gesture of her strong, round arm, caught up
+the mass of loose black hair and brought it over her shoulder and
+across the lower part of her face. The next moment he was
+passing her close, walking rigidly, like a man in a trance. He
+heard her rapid breathing and he felt the touch of a look darted
+at him from half-open eyes. It touched his brain and his heart
+together. It seemed to him to be something loud and stirring
+like a shout, silent and penetrating like an inspiration. The
+momentum of his motion carried him past her, but an invisible
+force made up of surprise and curiosity and desire spun him round
+as soon as he had passed.
+
+She had taken up her burden already, with the intention of
+pursuing her path. His sudden movement arrested her at the first
+step, and again she stood straight, slim, expectant, with a
+readiness to dart away suggested in the light immobility of her
+pose. High above, the branches of the trees met in a transparent
+shimmer of waving green mist, through which the rain of yellow
+rays descended upon her head, streamed in glints down her black
+tresses, shone with the changing glow of liquid metal on her
+face, and lost itself in vanishing sparks in the sombre depths of
+her eyes that, wide open now, with enlarged pupils, looked
+steadily at the man in her path. And Willems stared at her,
+charmed with a charm that carries with it a sense of irreparable
+loss, tingling with that feeling which begins like a caress and
+ends in a blow, in that sudden hurt of a new emotion making its
+way into a human heart, with the brusque stirring of sleeping
+sensations awakening suddenly to the rush of new hopes, new
+fears, new desires--and to the flight of one's old self.
+
+She moved a step forward and again halted. A breath of wind that
+came through the trees, but in Willems' fancy seemed to be driven
+by her moving figure, rippled in a hot wave round his body and
+scorched his face in a burning touch. He drew it in with a long
+breath, the last long breath of a soldier before the rush of
+battle, of a lover before he takes in his arms the adored woman;
+the breath that gives courage to confront the menace of death or
+the storm of passion.
+
+Who was she? Where did she come from? Wonderingly he took his
+eyes off her face to look round at the serried trees of the
+forest that stood big and still and straight, as if watching him
+and her breathlessly. He had been baffled, repelled, almost
+frightened by the intensity of that tropical life which wants the
+sunshine but works in gloom; which seems to be all grace of
+colour and form, all brilliance, all smiles, but is only the
+blossoming of the dead; whose mystery holds the promise of joy
+and beauty, yet contains nothing but poison and decay. He had
+been frightened by the vague perception of danger before, but
+now, as he looked at that life again, his eyes seemed able to
+pierce the fantastic veil of creepers and leaves, to look past
+the solid trunks, to see through the forbidding gloom--and the
+mystery was disclosed--enchanting, subduing, beautiful. He
+looked at the woman. Through the checkered light between them
+she appeared to him with the impalpable distinctness of a dream.
+The very spirit of that land of mysterious forests, standing
+before him like an apparition behind a transparent veil--a veil
+woven of sunbeams and shadows.
+
+She had approached him still nearer. He felt a strange
+impatience within him at her advance. Confused thoughts rushed
+through his head, disordered, shapeless, stunning. Then he heard
+his own voice asking--
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am the daughter of the blind Omar," she answered, in a low but
+steady tone. "And you," she went on, a little louder, "you are
+the white trader--the great man of this place."
+
+"Yes," said Willems, holding her eyes with his in a sense of
+extreme effort, "Yes, I am white." Then he added, feeling as if
+he spoke about some other man, "But I am the outcast of my
+people."
+
+She listened to him gravely. Through the mesh of scattered hair
+her face looked like the face of a golden statue with living
+eyes. The heavy eyelids dropped slightly, and from between the
+long eyelashes she sent out a sidelong look: hard, keen, and
+narrow, like the gleam of sharp steel. Her lips were firm and
+composed in a graceful curve, but the distended nostrils, the
+upward poise of the half-averted head, gave to her whole person
+the expression of a wild and resentful defiance.
+
+A shadow passed over Willems' face. He put his hand over his
+lips as if to keep back the words that wanted to come out in a
+surge of impulsive necessity, the outcome of dominant thought
+that rushes from the heart to the brain and must be spoken in the
+face of doubt, of danger, of fear, of destruction itself.
+
+"You are beautiful," he whispered.
+
+She looked at him again with a glance that running in one quick
+flash of her eyes over his sunburnt features, his broad
+shoulders, his straight, tall, motionless figure, rested at last
+on the ground at his feet. Then she smiled. In the sombre
+beauty of her face that smile was like the first ray of light on
+a stormy daybreak that darts evanescent and pale through the
+gloomy clouds: the forerunner of sunrise and of thunder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+
+There are in our lives short periods which hold no place in
+memory but only as the recollection of a feeling. There is no
+remembrance of gesture, of action, of any outward manifestation
+of life; those are lost in the unearthly brilliance or in the
+unearthly gloom of such moments. We are absorbed in the
+contemplation of that something, within our bodies, which
+rejoices or suffers while the body goes on breathing,
+instinctively runs away or, not less instinctively,
+fights--perhaps dies. But death in such a moment is the
+privilege of the fortunate, it is a high and rare favour, a
+supreme grace.
+
+Willems never remembered how and when he parted from Aissa. He
+caught himself drinking the muddy water out of the hollow of his
+hand, while his canoe was drifting in mid-stream past the last
+houses of Sambir. With his returning wits came the fear of
+something unknown that had taken possession of his heart, of
+something inarticulate and masterful which could not speak and
+would be obeyed. His first impulse was that of revolt. He would
+never go back there. Never! He looked round slowly at the
+brilliance of things in the deadly sunshine and took up his
+paddle! How changed everything seemed! The river was broader,
+the sky was higher. How fast the canoe flew under the strokes of
+his paddle! Since when had he acquired the strength of two men
+or more? He looked up and down the reach at the forests of the
+bank with a confused notion that with one sweep of his hand he
+could tumble all these trees into the stream. His face felt
+burning. He drank again, and shuddered with a depraved sense of
+pleasure at the after-taste of slime in the water.
+
+It was late when he reached Almayer's house, but he crossed the
+dark and uneven courtyard, walking lightly in the radiance of
+some light of his own, invisible to other eyes. His host's sulky
+greeting jarred him like a sudden fall down a great height. He
+took his place at the table opposite Almayer and tried to speak
+cheerfully to his gloomy companion, but when the meal was ended
+and they sat smoking in silence he felt an abrupt discouragement,
+a lassitude in all his limbs, a sense of immense sadness as after
+some great and irreparable loss. The darkness of the night
+entered his heart, bringing with it doubt and hesitation and dull
+anger with himself and all the world. He had an impulse to shout
+horrible curses, to quarrel with Almayer, to do something
+violent. Quite without any immediate provocation he thought he
+would like to assault the wretched, sulky beast. He glanced at
+him ferociously from under his eyebrows. The unconscious Almayer
+smoked thoughtfully, planning to-morrow's work probably. The
+man's composure seemed to Willems an unpardonable insult. Why
+didn't that idiot talk to-night when he wanted him to? . . . on
+other nights he was ready enough to chatter. And such dull
+nonsense too! And Willems, trying hard to repress his own
+senseless rage, looked fixedly through the thick tobacco-smoke at
+the stained tablecloth.
+
+They retired early, as usual, but in the middle of the night
+Willems leaped out of his hammock with a stifled execration and
+ran down the steps into the courtyard. The two night watchmen,
+who sat by a little fire talking together in a monotonous
+undertone, lifted their heads to look wonderingly at the
+discomposed features of the white man as he crossed the circle of
+light thrown out by their fire. He disappeared in the darkness
+and then came back again, passing them close, but with no sign of
+consciousness of their presence on his face. Backwards and
+forwards he paced, muttering to himself, and the two Malays,
+after a short consultation in whispers left the fire quietly, not
+thinking it safe to remain in the vicinity of a white man who
+behaved in such a strange manner. They retired round the corner
+of the godown and watched Willems curiously through the night,
+till the short daybreak was followed by the sudden blaze of the
+rising sun, and Almayer's establishment woke up to life and work.
+
+As soon as he could get away unnoticed in the bustle of the busy
+riverside, Willems crossed the river on his way to the place
+where he had met Aissa. He threw himself down in the grass by
+the side of the brook and listened for the sound of her
+footsteps. The brilliant light of day fell through the irregular
+opening in the high branches of the trees and streamed down,
+softened, amongst the shadows of big trunks. Here and there a
+narrow sunbeam touched the rugged bark of a tree with a golden
+splash, sparkled on the leaping water of the brook, or rested on
+a leaf that stood out, shimmering and distinct, on the monotonous
+background of sombre green tints. The clear gap of blue above
+his head was crossed by the quick flight of white rice-birds
+whose wings flashed in the sunlight, while through it the heat
+poured down from the sky, clung about the steaming earth, rolled
+among the trees, and wrapped up Willems in the soft and odorous
+folds of air heavy with the faint scent of blossoms and with the
+acrid smell of decaying life. And in that atmosphere of Nature's
+workshop Willems felt soothed and lulled into forgetfulness of
+his past, into indifference as to his future. The recollections
+of his triumphs, of his wrongs and of his ambition vanished in
+that warmth, which seemed to melt all regrets, all hope, all
+anger, all strength out of his heart. And he lay there, dreamily
+contented, in the tepid and perfumed shelter, thinking of Aissa's
+eyes; recalling the sound of her voice, the quiver of her
+lips--her frowns and her smile.
+
+She came, of course. To her he was something new, unknown and
+strange. He was bigger, stronger than any man she had seen
+before, and altogether different from all those she knew. He was
+of the victorious race. With a vivid remembrance of the great
+catastrophe of her life he appeared to her with all the
+fascination of a great and dangerous thing; of a terror
+vanquished, surmounted, made a plaything of. They spoke with
+just such a deep voice--those victorious men; they looked with
+just such hard blue eyes at their enemies. And she made that
+voice speak softly to her, those eyes look tenderly at her face!
+He was indeed a man. She could not understand all he told her of
+his life, but the fragments she understood she made up for
+herself into a story of a man great amongst his own people,
+valorous and unfortunate; an undaunted fugitive dreaming of
+vengeance against his enemies. He had all the attractiveness of
+the vague and the unknown--of the unforeseen and of the sudden;
+of a being strong, dangerous, alive, and human, ready to be
+enslaved.
+
+She felt that he was ready. She felt it with the unerring
+intuition of a primitive woman confronted by a simple impulse.
+Day after day, when they met and she stood a little way off,
+listening to his words, holding him with her look, the undefined
+terror of the new conquest became faint and blurred like the
+memory of a dream, and the certitude grew distinct, and
+convincing, and visible to the eyes like some material thing in
+full sunlight. It was a deep joy, a great pride, a tangible
+sweetness that seemed to leave the taste of honey on her lips.
+He lay stretched at her feet without moving, for he knew from
+experience how a slight movement of his could frighten her away
+in those first days of their intercourse. He lay very quiet,
+with all the ardour of his desire ringing in his voice and
+shining in his eyes, whilst his body was still, like death
+itself. And he looked at her, standing above him, her head lost
+in the shadow of broad and graceful leaves that touched her
+cheek; while the slender spikes of pale green orchids streamed
+down from amongst the boughs and mingled with the black hair that
+framed her face, as if all those plants claimed her for their
+own--the animated and brilliant flower of all that exuberant life
+which, born in gloom, struggles for ever towards the sunshine.
+
+Every day she came a little nearer. He watched her slow
+progress--the gradual taming of that woman by the words of his
+love. It was the monotonous song of praise and desire that,
+commencing at creation, wraps up the world like an atmosphere and
+shall end only in the end of all things--when there are no lips
+to sing and no ears to hear. He told her that she was beautiful
+and desirable, and he repeated it again and again; for when he
+told her that, he had said all there was within him--he had
+expressed his only thought, his only feeling. And he watched the
+startled look of wonder and mistrust vanish from her face with
+the passing days, her eyes soften, the smile dwell longer and
+longer on her lips; a smile as of one charmed by a delightful
+dream; with the slight exaltation of intoxicating triumph lurking
+in its dawning tenderness.
+
+And while she was near there was nothing in the whole world--for
+that idle man--but her look and her smile. Nothing in the past,
+nothing in the future; and in the present only the luminous fact
+of her existence. But in the sudden darkness of her going he
+would be left weak and helpless, as though despoiled violently of
+all that was himself. He who had lived all his life with no
+preoccupation but that of his own career, contemptuously
+indifferent to all feminine influence, full of scorn for men that
+would submit to it, if ever so little; he, so strong, so superior
+even in his errors, realized at last that his very individuality
+was snatched from within himself by the hand of a woman. Where
+was the assurance and pride of his cleverness; the belief in
+success, the anger of failure, the wish to retrieve his fortune,
+the certitude of his ability to accomplish it yet? Gone. All
+gone. All that had been a man within him was gone, and there
+remained only the trouble of his heart--that heart which had
+become a contemptible thing; which could be fluttered by a look
+or a smile, tormented by a word, soothed by a promise.
+
+When the longed-for day came at last, when she sank on the grass
+by his side and with a quick gesture took his hand in hers, he
+sat up suddenly with the movement and look of a man awakened by
+the crash of his own falling house. All his blood, all his
+sensation, all his life seemed to rush into that hand leaving him
+without strength, in a cold shiver, in the sudden clamminess and
+collapse as of a deadly gun-shot wound. He flung her hand away
+brutally, like something burning, and sat motionless, his head
+fallen forward, staring on the ground and catching his breath in
+painful gasps. His impulse of fear and apparent horror did not
+dismay her in the least. Her face was grave and her eyes looked
+seriously at him. Her fingers touched the hair of his temple,
+ran in a light caress down his cheek, twisted gently the end of
+his long moustache: and while he sat in the tremor of that
+contact she ran off with startling fleetness and disappeared in a
+peal of clear laughter, in the stir of grass, in the nod of young
+twigs growing over the path; leaving behind only a vanishing
+trail of motion and sound.
+
+He scrambled to his feet slowly and painfully, like a man with a
+burden on his shoulders, and walked towards the riverside. He
+hugged to his breast the recollection of his fear and of his
+delight, but told himself seriously over and over again that this
+must be the end of that adventure. After shoving off his canoe
+into the stream he lifted his eyes to the bank and gazed at it
+long and steadily, as if taking his last look at a place of
+charming memories. He marched up to Almayer's house with the
+concentrated expression and the determined step of a man who had
+just taken a momentous resolution. His face was set and rigid,
+his gestures and movements were guarded and slow. He was keeping
+a tight hand on himself. A very tight hand. He had a vivid
+illusion--as vivid as reality almost--of being in charge of a
+slippery prisoner. He sat opposite Almayer during that
+dinner--which was their last meal together--with a perfectly calm
+face and within him a growing terror of escape from his own self.
+
+Now and then he would grasp the edge of the table and set his
+teeth hard in a sudden wave of acute despair, like one who,
+falling down a smooth and rapid declivity that ends in a
+precipice, digs his finger nails into the yielding surface and
+feels himself slipping helplessly to inevitable destruction.
+
+Then, abruptly, came a relaxation of his muscles, the giving way
+of his will. Something seemed to snap in his head, and that
+wish, that idea kept back during all those hours, darted into his
+brain with the heat and noise of a conflagration. He must see
+her! See her at once! Go now! To-night! He had the raging
+regret of the lost hour, of every passing moment. There was no
+thought of resistance now. Yet with the instinctive fear of the
+irrevocable, with the innate falseness of the human heart, he
+wanted to keep open the way of retreat. He had never absented
+himself during the night. What did Almayer know? What would
+Almayer think? Better ask him for the gun. A moonlight night. .
+. . Look for deer. . . . A colourable pretext. He would lie to
+Almayer. What did it matter! He lied to himself every minute of
+his life. And for what? For a woman. And such. . . .
+
+Almayer's answer showed him that deception was useless.
+Everything gets to be known, even in this place. Well, he did
+not care. Cared for nothing but for the lost seconds. What if
+he should suddenly die. Die before he saw her. Before he could .
+. .
+
+As, with the sound of Almayer's laughter in his ears, he urged
+his canoe in a slanting course across the rapid current, he tried
+to tell himself that he could return at any moment. He would
+just go and look at the place where they used to meet, at the
+tree under which he lay when she took his hand, at the spot where
+she sat by his side. Just go there and then return--nothing
+more; but when his little skiff touched the bank he leaped out,
+forgetting the painter, and the canoe hung for a moment amongst
+the bushes and then swung out of sight before he had time to dash
+into the water and secure it. He was thunderstruck at first.
+Now
+he could not go back unless he called up the Rajah's people to
+get a boat and rowers--and the way to Patalolo's campong led past
+Aissa's house!
+
+He went up the path with the eager eyes and reluctant steps of a
+man pursuing a phantom, and when he found himself at a place
+where a narrow track branched off to the left towards Omar's
+clearing he stood still, with a look of strained attention on his
+face as if listening to a far-off voice--the voice of his fate.
+It was a sound inarticulate but full of meaning; and following it
+there came a rending and tearing within his breast. He twisted
+his fingers together, and the joints of his hands and arms
+cracked. On his forehead the perspiration stood out in small
+pearly drops. He looked round wildly. Above the shapeless
+darkness of the forest undergrowth rose the treetops with their
+high boughs and leaves standing out black on the pale sky--like
+fragments of night floating on moonbeams. Under his feet warm
+steam rose from the heated earth. Round him there was a great
+silence.
+
+He was looking round for help. This silence, this immobility of
+his surroundings seemed to him a cold rebuke, a stern refusal, a
+cruel unconcern. There was no safety outside of himself--and in
+himself there was no refuge; there was only the image of that
+woman. He had a sudden moment of lucidity--of that cruel lucidity
+that comes once in life to the most benighted. He seemed to see
+what went on within him, and was horrified at the strange sight.
+He, a white man whose worst fault till then had been a little
+want of judgment and too much confidence in the rectitude of his
+kind! That woman was a complete savage, and . . . He tried to
+tell himself that the thing was of no consequence. It was a vain
+effort. The novelty of the sensations he had never experienced
+before in the slightest degree, yet had despised on hearsay from
+his safe position of a civilized man, destroyed his courage. He
+was disappointed with himself. He seemed to be surrendering to a
+wild creature the unstained purity of his life, of his race, of
+his civilization. He had a notion of being lost amongst
+shapeless things that were dangerous and ghastly. He struggled
+with the sense of certain defeat--lost his footing--fell back
+into the darkness. With a faint cry and an upward throw of his
+arms he gave up as a tired swimmer gives up: because the swamped
+craft is gone from under his feet; because the night is dark and
+the shore is far--because death is better than strife.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+
+The light and heat fell upon the settlement, the clearings, and
+the river as if flung down by an angry hand. The land lay
+silent, still, and brilliant under the avalanche of burning rays
+that had destroyed all sound and all motion, had buried all
+shadows, had choked every breath. No living thing dared to
+affront the serenity of this cloudless sky, dared to revolt
+against the oppression of this glorious and cruel sunshine.
+Strength and resolution, body and mind alike were helpless, and
+tried to hide before the rush of the fire from heaven. Only the
+frail butterflies, the fearless children of the sun, the
+capricious tyrants of the flowers, fluttered audaciously in the
+open, and their minute shadows hovered in swarms over the
+drooping blossoms, ran lightly on the withering grass, or glided
+on the dry and cracked earth. No voice was heard in this hot
+noontide but the faint murmur of the river that hurried on in
+swirls and eddies, its sparkling wavelets chasing each other in
+their joyous course to the sheltering depths, to the cool refuge
+of the sea.
+
+Almayer had dismissed his workmen for the midday rest, and, his
+little daughter on his shoulder, ran quickly across the
+courtyard, making for the shade of the verandah of his house. He
+laid the sleepy child on the seat of the big rocking-chair, on a
+pillow which he took out of his own hammock, and stood for a
+while looking down at her with tender and pensive eyes. The
+child, tired and hot, moved uneasily, sighed, and looked up at
+him with the veiled look of sleepy fatigue. He picked up from
+the floor a broken palm-leaf fan, and began fanning gently the
+flushed little face. Her eyelids fluttered and Almayer smiled.
+A responsive smile brightened for a second her heavy eyes, broke
+with a dimple the soft outline of her cheek; then the eyelids
+dropped suddenly, she drew a long breath through the parted
+lips--and was in a deep sleep before the fleeting smile could
+vanish from her face.
+
+Almayer moved lightly off, took one of the wooden armchairs, and
+placing it close to the balustrade of the verandah sat down with
+a sigh of relief. He spread his elbows on the top rail and
+resting his chin on his clasped hands looked absently at the
+river, at the dance of sunlight on the flowing water. Gradually
+the forest of the further bank became smaller, as if sinking
+below the level of the river. The outlines wavered, grew thin,
+dissolved in the air. Before his eyes there was now only a space
+of undulating blue--one big, empty sky growing dark at times. . .
+. Where was the sunshine? . . . He felt soothed and happy, as
+if some gentle and invisible hand had removed from his soul the
+burden of his body. In another second he seemed to float out
+into a cool brightness where there was no such thing as memory or
+pain. Delicious. His eyes closed--opened--closed again.
+
+"Almayer!"
+
+With a sudden jerk of his whole body he sat up, grasping the
+front rail with both his hands, and blinked stupidly.
+
+"What? What's that?" he muttered, looking round vaguely.
+
+"Here! Down here, Almayer."
+
+Half rising in his chair, Almayer looked over the rail at the
+foot of the verandah, and fell back with a low whistle of
+astonishment.
+
+"A ghost, by heavens!" he exclaimed softly to himself.
+
+"Will you listen to me?" went on the husky voice from the
+courtyard. "May I come up, Almayer?"
+
+Almayer stood up and leaned over the rail. "Don't you dare," he
+said, in a voice subdued but distinct. "Don't you dare! The
+child sleeps here. And I don't want to hear you--or speak to you
+either."
+
+"You must listen to me! It's something important."
+
+"Not to me, surely."
+
+"Yes! To you. Very important."
+
+"You were always a humbug," said Almayer, after a short silence,
+in an indulgent tone. "Always! I remember the old days. Some
+fellows used to say there was no one like you for smartness--but
+you never took me in. Not quite. I never quite believed in you,
+Mr. Willems."
+
+"I admit your superior intelligence," retorted Willems, with
+scornful impatience, from below. "Listening to me would be a
+further proof of it. You will be sorry if you don't."
+
+"Oh, you funny fellow!" said Almayer, banteringly. "Well, come
+up. Don't make a noise, but come up. You'll catch a sunstroke
+down there and die on my doorstep perhaps. I don't want any
+tragedy here. Come on!"
+
+Before he finished speaking Willems' head appeared above the
+level of the floor, then his shoulders rose gradually and he
+stood at last before Almayer--a masquerading spectre of the once
+so very confidential clerk of the richest merchant in the
+islands. His jacket was soiled and torn; below the waist he was
+clothed in a worn-out and faded sarong. He flung off his hat,
+uncovering his long, tangled hair that stuck in wisps on his
+perspiring forehead and straggled over his eyes, which glittered
+deep down in the sockets like the last sparks amongst the black
+embers of a burnt-out fire. An unclean beard grew out of the
+caverns of his sunburnt cheeks. The hand he put out towards
+Almayer was very unsteady. The once firm mouth had the tell-tale
+droop of mental suffering and physical exhaustion. He was
+barefooted. Almayer surveyed him with leisurely composure.
+
+"Well!" he said at last, without taking the extended hand which
+dropped slowly along Willems' body.
+
+"I am come," began Willems.
+
+"So I see," interrupted Almayer. "You might have spared me this
+treat without making me unhappy. You have been away five weeks,
+if I am not mistaken. I got on very well without you--and now you
+are here you are not pretty to look at."
+
+"Let me speak, will you!" exclaimed Willems.
+
+"Don't shout like this. Do you think yourself in the forest with
+your . . . your friends? This is a civilized man's house. A
+white man's. Understand?"
+
+"I am come," began Willems again; "I am come for your good and
+mine."
+
+"You look as if you had come for a good feed," chimed in the
+irrepressible Almayer, while Willems waved his hand in a
+discouraged gesture. "Don't they give you enough to eat," went
+on Almayer, in a tone of easy banter, "those--what am I to call
+them--those new relations of yours? That old blind scoundrel
+must be delighted with your company. You know, he was the
+greatest thief and murderer of those seas. Say! do you exchange
+confidences? Tell me, Willems, did you kill somebody in Macassar
+or did you only steal something?"
+
+"It is not true!" exclaimed Willems, hotly. "I only borrowed. .
+. . They all lied! I . . ."
+
+"Sh-sh!" hissed Almayer, warningly, with a look at the sleeping
+child. "So you did steal," he went on, with repressed
+exultation. "I thought there was something of the kind. And
+now, here, you steal again."
+
+For the first time Willems raised his eyes to Almayer's face.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean from me. I haven't missed anything," said
+Almayer, with mocking haste. "But that girl. Hey! You stole
+her. You did not pay the old fellow. She is no good to him now,
+is she?"
+
+"Stop that. Almayer!"
+
+Something in Willems' tone caused Almayer to pause. He looked
+narrowly at the man before him, and could not help being shocked
+at his appearance.
+
+"Almayer," went on Willems, "listen to me. If you are a human
+being you will. I suffer horribly--and for your sake."
+
+Almayer lifted his eyebrows. "Indeed! How? But you are
+raving," he added, negligently.
+
+"Ah! You don't know," whispered Willems. "She is gone. Gone,"
+he repeated, with tears in his voice, "gone two days ago."
+
+"No!" exclaimed the surprised Almayer. "Gone! I haven't heard
+that news yet." He burst into a subdued laugh. "How funny! Had
+enough of you already? You know it's not flattering for you, my
+superior countryman."
+
+Willems--as if not hearing him--leaned against one of the columns
+of the roof and looked over the river. "At first," he whispered,
+dreamily, "my life was like a vision of heaven--or hell; I didn't
+know which. Since she went I know what perdition means; what
+darkness is. I know what it is to be torn to pieces alive.
+That's how I feel."
+
+"You may come and live with me again," said Almayer, coldly.
+"After all, Lingard--whom I call my father and respect as
+such--left you under my care. You pleased yourself by going
+away. Very good. Now you want to come back. Be it so. I am no
+friend of yours. I act for Captain Lingard."
+
+"Come back?" repeated Willems, passionately. "Come back to you
+and abandon her? Do you think I am mad? Without her! Man! what
+are you made of? To think that she moves, lives, breathes out of
+my sight. I am jealous of the wind that fans her, of the air she
+breathes, of the earth that receives the caress of her foot, of
+the sun that looks at her now while I . . . I haven't seen her
+for two days--two days."
+
+The intensity of Willems' feeling moved Almayer somewhat, but he
+affected to yawn elaborately
+
+"You do bore me," he muttered. "Why don't you go after her
+instead of coming here?"
+
+"Why indeed?"
+
+"Don't you know where she is? She can't be very far. No native
+craft has left this river for the last fortnight."
+
+"No! not very far--and I will tell you where she is. She is in
+Lakamba's campong." And Willems fixed his eyes steadily on
+Almayer's face.
+
+"Phew! Patalolo never sent to let me know. Strange," said
+Almayer, thoughtfully. "Are you afraid of that lot?" he added,
+after a short pause.
+
+"I--afraid!"
+
+"Then is it the care of your dignity which prevents you from
+following her there, my high-minded friend?" asked Almayer, with
+mock solicitude. "How noble of you!"
+
+There was a short silence; then Willems said, quietly, "You are a
+fool. I should like to kick you."
+
+"No fear," answered Almayer, carelessly; "you are too weak for
+that. You look starved."
+
+"I don't think I have eaten anything for the last two days;
+perhaps more--I don't remember. It does not matter. I am full
+of live embers," said Willems, gloomily. "Look!" and he bared an
+arm covered with fresh scars. "I have been biting myself to
+forget in that pain the fire that hurts me there!" He struck his
+breast violently with his fist, reeled under his own blow, fell
+into a chair that stood near and closed his eyes slowly.
+
+"Disgusting exhibition," said Almayer, loftily. "What could
+father ever see in you? You are as estimable as a heap of
+garbage."
+
+"You talk like that! You, who sold your soul for a few
+guilders," muttered Willems, wearily, without opening his eyes.
+
+"Not so few," said Almayer, with instinctive readiness, and
+stopped confused for a moment. He recovered himself quickly,
+however, and went on: "But you--you have thrown yours away for
+nothing; flung it under the feet of a damned savage woman who has
+made you already the thing you are, and will kill you very soon,
+one way or another, with her love or with her hate. You spoke
+just now about guilders. You meant Lingard's money, I suppose.
+Well, whatever I have sold, and for whatever price, I never meant
+you--you of all people--to spoil my bargain. I feel pretty safe
+though. Even father, even Captain Lingard, would not touch you
+now with a pair of tongs; not with a ten-foot pole. . . ."
+
+He spoke excitedly, all in one breath, and, ceasing suddenly,
+glared at Willems and breathed hard through his nose in sulky
+resentment. Willems looked at him steadily for a moment, then
+got up.
+
+"Almayer," he said resolutely, "I want to become a trader in
+this place."
+
+Almayer shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Yes. And you shall set me up. I want a house and trade
+goods--perhaps a little money. I ask you for it."
+
+"Anything else you want? Perhaps this coat?" and here Almayer
+unbuttoned his jacket--"or my house--or my boots?"
+
+"After all it's natural," went on Willems, without paying any
+attention to Almayer--"it's natural that she should expect the
+advantages which . . . and then I could shut up that old wretch
+and then . . ."
+
+He paused, his face brightened with the soft light of dreamy
+enthusiasm, and he turned his eyes upwards. With his gaunt figure
+and dilapidated appearance he looked like some ascetic dweller in
+a wilderness, finding the reward of a self-denying life in a
+vision of dazzling glory. He went on in an impassioned murmur--
+
+"And then I would have her all to myself away from her
+people--all to myself--under my own influence--to fashion--to
+mould--to adore--to soften--to . . . Oh! Delight! And
+then--then go away to some distant place where, far from all she
+knew, I would be all the world to her! All the world to her!"
+
+His face changed suddenly. His eyes wandered for awhile and
+then became steady all at once.
+
+"I would repay every cent, of course," he said, in a
+business-like tone, with something of his old assurance, of his
+old belief in himself, in it. "Every cent. I need not interfere
+with your business. I shall cut out the small native traders. I
+have ideas--but never mind that now. And Captain Lingard would
+approve, I feel sure. After all it's a loan, and I shall be at
+hand. Safe thing for you."
+
+"Ah! Captain Lingard would approve! He would app . . ."
+Almayer choked. The notion of Lingard doing something for
+Willems enraged him. His face was purple. He spluttered
+insulting words. Willems looked at him coolly.
+
+"I assure you, Almayer," he said, gently, "that I have good
+grounds for my demand."
+
+"Your cursed impudence!"
+
+"Believe me, Almayer, your position here is not so safe as you
+may think. An unscrupulous rival here would destroy your trade
+in a year. It would be ruin. Now Lingard's long absence gives
+courage to certain individuals. You know?--I have heard much
+lately. They made proposals to me . . . You are very much alone
+here. Even Patalolo . . ."
+
+"Damn Patalolo! I am master in this place."
+
+"But, Almayer, don't you see . . ."
+
+"Yes, I see. I see a mysterious ass," interrupted Almayer,
+violently. "What is the meaning of your veiled threats? Don't
+you think I know something also? They have been intriguing for
+years--and nothing has happened. The Arabs have been hanging
+about outside this river for years--and I am still the only
+trader here; the master here. Do you bring me a declaration of
+war? Then it's from yourself only. I know all my other enemies.
+
+I ought to knock you on the head. You are not worth powder and
+shot though. You ought to be destroyed with a stick--like a
+snake."
+
+Almayer's voice woke up the little girl, who sat up on the pillow
+with a sharp cry. He rushed over to the chair, caught up the
+child in his arms, walked back blindly, stumbled against Willems'
+hat which lay on the floor, and kicked it furiously down the
+steps.
+
+"Clear out of this! Clear out!" he shouted.
+
+Willems made an attempt to speak, but Almayer howled him down.
+
+"Take yourself off! Don't you see you frighten the child--you
+scarecrow! No, no! dear," he went on to his little daughter,
+soothingly, while Willems walked down the steps slowly. "No.
+Don't cry. See! Bad man going away. Look! He is afraid of
+your papa. Nasty, bad man. Never come back again. He shall
+live in the woods and never come near my little girl. If he
+comes papa will kill him--so!" He struck his fist on the rail of
+the balustrade to show how he would kill Willems, and, perching
+the consoled child on his shoulder held her with one hand, while
+he pointed toward the retreating figure of his visitor.
+
+"Look how he runs away, dearest," he said, coaxingly. "Isn't he
+funny. Call 'pig' after him, dearest. Call after him."
+
+The seriousness of her face vanished into dimples. Under the long
+eyelashes, glistening with recent tears, her big eyes sparkled
+and danced with fun. She took firm hold of Almayer's hair with
+one hand, while she waved the other joyously and called out with
+all her might, in a clear note, soft and distinct like the pipe
+of a bird:--
+
+"Pig! Pig! Pig!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+A sigh under the flaming blue, a shiver of the sleeping sea, a
+cool breath as if a door had been swung upon the frozen spaces of
+the universe, and with a stir of leaves, with the nod of boughs,
+with the tremble of slender branches the sea breeze struck the
+coast, rushed up the river, swept round the broad reaches, and
+travelled on in a soft ripple of darkening water, in the whisper
+of branches, in the rustle of leaves of the awakened forests. It
+fanned in Lakamba's campong the dull red of expiring embers into
+a pale brilliance; and, under its touch, the slender, upright
+spirals of smoke that rose from every glowing heap swayed,
+wavered, and eddying down filled the twilight of clustered shade
+trees with the aromatic scent of the burning wood. The men who
+had been dozing in the shade during the hot hours of the
+afternoon woke up, and the silence of the big courtyard was
+broken by the hesitating murmur of yet sleepy voices, by coughs
+and yawns, with now and then a burst of laughter, a loud hail, a
+name or a joke sent out in a soft drawl. Small groups squatted
+round the little fires, and the monotonous undertone of talk
+filled the enclosure; the talk of barbarians, persistent, steady,
+repeating itself in the soft syllables, in musical tones of the
+never-ending discourses of those men of the forests and the sea,
+who can talk most of the day and all the night; who never exhaust
+a subject, never seem able to thresh a matter out; to whom that
+talk is poetry and painting and music, all art, all history;
+their only accomplishment, their only superiority, their only
+amusement. The talk of camp fires, which speaks of bravery and
+cunning, of strange events and of far countries, of the news of
+yesterday and the news of to-morrow. The talk about the dead and
+the living--about those who fought and those who loved.
+
+Lakamba came out on the platform before his own house and sat
+down--perspiring, half asleep, and sulky--in a wooden armchair
+under the shade of the overhanging eaves. Through the darkness
+of the doorway he could hear the soft warbling of his womenkind,
+busy round the looms where they were weaving the checkered
+pattern of his gala sarongs. Right and left of him on the
+flexible bamboo floor those of his followers to whom their
+distinguished birth, long devotion, or faithful service had given
+the privilege of using the chief's house, were sleeping on mats
+or just sat up rubbing their eyes: while the more wakeful had
+mustered enough energy to draw a chessboard with red clay on a
+fine mat and were now meditating silently over their moves.
+Above the prostrate forms of the players, who lay face downward
+supported on elbow, the soles of their feet waving irresolutely
+about, in the absorbed meditation of the game, there towered here
+and there the straight figure of an attentive spectator looking
+down with dispassionate but profound interest. On the edge of
+the platform a row of high-heeled leather sandals stood ranged
+carefully in a level line, and against the rough wooden rail
+leaned the slender shafts of the spears belonging to these
+gentlemen, the broad blades of dulled steel looking very black in
+the reddening light of approaching sunset.
+
+A boy of about twelve--the personal attendant of Lakamba--
+squatted at his master's feet and held up towards him a silver
+siri box. Slowly Lakamba took the box, opened it, and tearing
+off a piece of green leaf deposited in it a pinch of lime, a
+morsel of gambier, a small bit of areca nut, and wrapped up the
+whole with a dexterous twist. He paused, morsel in hand, seemed
+to miss something, turned his head from side to side,
+slowly, like a man with a stiff neck, and ejaculated in an
+ill-humoured bass--
+
+"Babalatchi!"
+
+The players glanced up quickly, and looked down again directly.
+Those men who were standing stirred uneasily as if prodded by the
+sound of the chief's voice. The one nearest to Lakamba repeated
+the call, after a while, over the rail into the courtyard. There
+was a movement of upturned faces below by the fires, and the cry
+trailed over the enclosure in sing-song tones. The thumping of
+wooden pestles husking the evening rice stopped for a moment and
+Babalatchi's name rang afresh shrilly on women's lips in various
+keys. A voice far off shouted something--another, nearer,
+repeated it; there was a short hubbub which died out with extreme
+suddenness. The first crier turned to Lakamba, saying
+indolently--
+
+"He is with the blind Omar."
+
+Lakamba's lips moved inaudibly. The man who had just spoken was
+again deeply absorbed in the game going on at his feet; and the
+chief--as if he had forgotten all about it already--sat with a
+stolid face amongst his silent followers, leaning back squarely
+in his chair, his hands on the arms of his seat, his knees apart,
+his big blood-shot eyes blinking solemnly, as if dazzled by the
+noble vacuity of his thoughts.
+
+Babalatchi had gone to see old Omar late in the afternoon. The
+delicate manipulation of the ancient pirate's susceptibilities,
+the skilful management of Aissa's violent impulses engrossed him
+to the exclusion of every other business--interfered with his
+regular attendance upon his chief and protector--even disturbed
+his sleep for the last three nights. That day when he left his
+own bamboo hut--which stood amongst others in Lakamba's
+campong--his heart was heavy with anxiety and with doubt as to
+the success of his intrigue. He walked slowly, with his usual
+air of detachment from his surroundings, as if unaware that many
+sleepy eyes watched from all parts of the courtyard his progress
+towards a small gate at its upper end. That gate gave access to
+a separate enclosure in which a rather large house, built of
+planks, had been prepared by Lakamba's orders for the reception
+of Omar and Aissa. It was a superior kind of habitation which
+Lakamba intended for the dwelling of his chief adviser--whose
+abilities were worth that honour, he thought. But after the
+consultation in the deserted clearing--when Babalatchi had
+disclosed his plan--they both had agreed that the new house
+should be used at first to shelter Omar and Aissa after they had
+been persuaded to leave the Rajah's place, or had been kidnapped
+from there--as the case might be. Babalatchi did not mind in the
+least the putting off of his own occupation of the house of
+honour, because it had many advantages for the quiet working out
+of his plans. It had a certain seclusion, having an enclosure of
+its own, and that enclosure communicated also with Lakamba's
+private courtyard at the back of his residence--a place set apart
+for the female household of the chief. The only communication
+with the river was through the great front courtyard always full
+of armed men and watchful eyes. Behind the whole group of
+buildings there stretched the level ground of rice-clearings,
+which in their turn were closed in by the wall of untouched
+forests with undergrowth so thick and tangled that nothing but a
+bullet--and that fired at pretty close range--could penetrate any
+distance there.
+
+Babalatchi slipped quietly through the little gate and, closing
+it, tied up carefully the rattan fastenings. Before the house
+there was a square space of ground, beaten hard into the level
+smoothness of asphalte. A big buttressed tree, a giant left
+there on purpose during the process of clearing the land, roofed
+in the clear space with a high canopy of gnarled boughs and
+thick, sombre leaves. To the right--and some small distance away
+from the large house--a little hut of reeds, covered with mats,
+had been put up for the special convenience of Omar, who, being
+blind and infirm, had some difficulty in ascending the steep
+plankway that led to the more substantial dwelling, which was
+built on low posts and had an uncovered verandah. Close by the
+trunk of the tree, and facing the doorway of the hut, the
+household fire glowed in a small handful of embers in the midst
+of a large circle of white ashes. An old woman--some humble
+relation of one of Lakamba's wives, who had been ordered to
+attend on Aissa--was squatting over the fire and lifted up her
+bleared eyes to gaze at Babalatchi in an uninterested manner, as
+he advanced rapidly across the courtyard.
+
+Babalatchi took in the courtyard with a keen glance of his
+solitary eye, and without looking down at the old woman muttered
+a question. Silently, the woman stretched a tremulous and
+emaciated arm towards the hut. Babalatchi made a few steps
+towards the doorway, but stopped outside in the sunlight.
+
+"O! Tuan Omar, Omar besar! It is I--Babalatchi!"
+
+Within the hut there was a feeble groan, a fit of coughing and an
+indistinct murmur in the broken tones of a vague plaint.
+Encouraged evidently by those signs of dismal life within,
+Babalatchi entered the hut, and after some time came out leading
+with rigid carefulness the blind Omar, who followed with both his
+hands on his guide's shoulders. There was a rude seat under the
+tree, and there Babalatchi led his old chief, who sat down with a
+sigh of relief and leaned wearily against the rugged trunk. The
+rays of the setting sun, darting under the spreading branches,
+rested on the white-robed figure sitting with head thrown back in
+stiff dignity, on the thin hands moving uneasily, and on the
+stolid face with its eyelids dropped over the destroyed eyeballs;
+a face set into the immobility of a plaster cast yellowed by age.
+
+"Is the sun near its setting?" asked Omar, in a dull voice.
+
+"Very near," answered Babalatchi.
+
+"Where am I? Why have I been taken away from the place which I
+knew--where I, blind, could move without fear? It is like black
+night to those who see. And the sun is near its setting--and I
+have not heard the sound of her footsteps since the morning!
+Twice a strange hand has given me my food to-day. Why? Why?
+Where is she?"
+
+"She is near," said Babalatchi.
+
+"And he?" went on Omar, with sudden eagerness, and a drop in his
+voice. "Where is he? Not here. Not here!" he repeated, turning
+his head from side to side as if in deliberate attempt to see.
+
+"No! He is not here now," said Babalatchi, soothingly. Then,
+after a pause, he added very low, "But he shall soon return."
+
+"Return! O crafty one! Will he return? I have cursed him three
+times," exclaimed Omar, with weak violence.
+
+"He is--no doubt--accursed," assented Babalatchi, in a
+conciliating manner--"and yet he will be here before very long--I
+know!"
+
+"You are crafty and faithless. I have made you great. You were
+dirt under my feet--less than dirt," said Omar, with tremulous
+energy.
+
+"I have fought by your side many times," said Babalatchi, calmly.
+
+"Why did he come?" went on Omar. "Did you send him? Why did he
+come to defile the air I breathe--to mock at my fate--to poison
+her mind and steal her body? She has grown hard of heart to me.
+Hard and merciless and stealthy like rocks that tear a ship's
+life out under the smooth sea." He drew a long breath, struggled
+with his anger, then broke down suddenly. "I have been hungry,"
+he continued, in a whimpering tone--"often I have been very
+hungry--and cold--and neglected--and nobody near me. She has
+often forgotten me--and my sons are dead, and that man is an
+infidel and a dog. Why did he come? Did you show him the way?"
+
+"He found the way himself, O Leader of the brave," said
+Babalatchi, sadly. "I only saw a way for their destruction and
+our own greatness. And if I saw aright, then you shall never
+suffer from hunger any more. There shall be peace for us, and
+glory and riches."
+
+"And I shall die to-morrow," murmured Omar, bitterly.
+
+"Who knows? Those things have been written since the beginning
+of the world," whispered Babalatchi, thoughtfully.
+
+"Do not let him come back," exclaimed Omar.
+
+"Neither can he escape his fate," went on Babalatchi. "He shall
+come back, and the power of men we always hated, you and I, shall
+crumble into dust in our hand." Then he added with enthusiasm,
+"They shall fight amongst themselves and perish both."
+
+"And you shall see all this, while, I . . ."
+
+"True!" murmured Babalatchi, regretfully. "To you life is
+darkness."
+
+"No! Flame!" exclaimed the old Arab, half rising, then falling
+back in his seat. "The flame of that last day! I see it
+yet--the last thing I saw! And I hear the noise of the rent
+earth--when they all died. And I live to be the plaything of a
+crafty one," he added, with inconsequential peevishness.
+
+"You are my master still," said Babalatchi, humbly. "You are very
+wise--and in your wisdom you shall speak to Syed Abdulla when he
+comes here--you shall speak to him as I advised, I, your servant,
+the man who fought at your right hand for many years. I have
+heard by a messenger that the Syed Abdulla is coming to-night,
+perhaps late; for those things must be done secretly, lest the
+white man, the trader up the river, should know of them. But he
+will be here. There has been a surat delivered to Lakamba. In
+it, Syed Abdulla says he will leave his ship, which is anchored
+outside the river, at the hour of noon to-day. He will be here
+before daylight if Allah wills."
+
+He spoke with his eye fixed on the ground, and did not become
+aware of Aissa's presence till he lifted his head when he ceased
+speaking. She had approached so quietly that even Omar did not
+hear her footsteps, and she stood now looking at them with
+troubled eyes and parted lips, as if she was going to speak; but
+at Babalatchi's entreating gesture she remained silent. Omar sat
+absorbed in thought.
+
+"Ay wa! Even so!" he said at last, in a weak voice. "I am to
+speak your wisdom, O Babalatchi! Tell him to trust the white
+man! I do not understand. I am old and blind and weak. I do
+not understand. I am very cold," he continued, in a lower tone,
+moving his shoulders uneasily. He ceased, then went on rambling
+in a faint whisper. "They are the sons of witches, and their
+father is Satan the stoned. Sons of witches. Sons of witches."
+After a short silence he asked suddenly, in a firmer voice--"How
+many white men are there here, O crafty one?"
+
+"There are two here. Two white men to fight one another,"
+answered Babalatchi, with alacrity.
+
+"And how many will be left then? How many? Tell me, you who are
+wise."
+
+"The downfall of an enemy is the consolation of the unfortunate,"
+said Babalatchi, sententiously. "They are on every sea; only the
+wisdom of the Most High knows their number--but you shall know
+that some of them suffer."
+
+"Tell me, Babalatchi, will they die? Will they both die?" asked
+Omar, in sudden agitation.
+
+Aissa made a movement. Babalatchi held up a warning hand.
+
+"They shall, surely, die," he said steadily, looking at the girl
+with unflinching eye.
+
+"Ay wa! But die soon! So that I can pass my hand over their
+faces when Allah has made them stiff."
+
+"If such is their fate and yours," answered Babalatchi, without
+hesitation. "God is great!"
+
+A violent fit of coughing doubled Omar up, and he rocked himself
+to and fro, wheezing and moaning in turns, while Babalatchi and
+the girl looked at him in silence. Then he leaned back against
+the tree, exhausted.
+
+"I am alone, I am alone," he wailed feebly, groping vaguely about
+with his trembling hands. "Is there anybody near me? Is there
+anybody? I am afraid of this strange place."
+
+"I am by your side, O Leader of the brave," said Babalatchi,
+touching his shoulder lightly. "Always by your side as in the
+days when we both were young: as in the time when we both went
+with arms in our hands."
+
+"Has there been such a time, Babalatchi?" said Omar, wildly; "I
+have forgotten. And now when I die there will be no man, no
+fearless man to speak of his father's bravery. There was a
+woman! A woman! And she has forsaken me for an infidel dog.
+The hand of the Compassionate is heavy on my head! Oh, my
+calamity! Oh, my shame!"
+
+He calmed down after a while, and asked quietly--
+"Is the sun set, Babalatchi?"
+
+"It is now as low as the highest tree I can see from here,"
+answered Babalatchi.
+
+"It is the time of prayer," said Omar, attempting to get up.
+
+Dutifully Babalatchi helped his old chief to rise, and they
+walked slowly towards the hut. Omar waited outside, while
+Babalatchi went in and came out directly, dragging after him the
+old Arab's praying carpet. Out of a brass vessel he poured the
+water of ablution on Omar's outstretched hands, and eased him
+carefully down into a kneeling posture, for the venerable robber
+was far too infirm to be able to stand. Then as Omar droned out
+the first words and made his first bow towards the Holy City,
+Babalatchi stepped noiselessly towards Aissa, who did not move
+all the time.
+
+Aissa looked steadily at the one-eyed sage, who was approaching
+her slowly and with a great show of deference. For a moment they
+stood facing each other in silence. Babalatchi appeared
+embarrassed. With a sudden and quick gesture she caught hold of
+his arm, and with the other hand pointed towards the sinking red
+disc that glowed, rayless, through the floating mists of the
+evening.
+
+"The third sunset! The last! And he is not here," she
+whispered; "what have you done, man without faith? What have you
+done?"
+
+"Indeed I have kept my word," murmured Babalatchi, earnestly.
+"This morning Bulangi went with a canoe to look for him. He is a
+strange man, but our friend, and shall keep close to him and
+watch him without ostentation. And at the third hour of the day
+I have sent another canoe with four rowers. Indeed, the man you
+long for, O daughter of Omar! may come when he likes."
+
+"But he is not here! I waited for him yesterday. To-day!
+To-morrow I shall go."
+
+"Not alive!" muttered Babalatchi to himself. "And do you doubt
+your power," he went on in a louder tone--"you that to him are
+more beautiful than an houri of the seventh Heaven? He is your
+slave."
+
+"A slave does run away sometimes," she said, gloomily, "and then
+the master must go and seek him out."
+
+"And do you want to live and die a beggar?" asked Babalatchi,
+impatiently.
+
+"I care not," she exclaimed, wringing her hands; and the black
+pupils of her wide-open eyes darted wildly here and there like
+petrels before the storm.
+
+"Sh! Sh!" hissed Babalatchi, with a glance towards Omar. "Do
+you think, O girl! that he himself would live like a beggar, even
+with you?"
+
+"He is great," she said, ardently. "He despises you all! He
+despises you all! He is indeed a man!"
+
+"You know that best," muttered Babalatchi, with a fugitive
+smile--"but remember, woman with the strong heart, that to hold
+him now you must be to him like the great sea to thirsty men--a
+never-ceasing torment, and a madness."
+
+He ceased and they stood in silence, both looking on the ground,
+and for a time nothing was heard above the crackling of the fire
+but the intoning of Omar glorifying the God--his God, and the
+Faith--his faith. Then Babalatchi cocked his head on one side
+and appeared to listen intently to the hum of voices in the big
+courtyard. The dull noise swelled into distinct shouts, then
+into a great tumult of voices, dying away, recommencing, growing
+louder, to cease again abruptly; and in those short pauses the
+shrill vociferations of women rushed up, as if released, towards
+the quiet heaven. Aissa and Babalatchi started, but the latter
+gripped in his turn the girl's arm and restrained her with a
+strong grasp.
+
+"Wait," he whispered.
+
+The little door in the heavy stockade which separated Lakamba's
+private ground from Omar's enclosure swung back quickly, and the
+noble exile appeared with disturbed mien and a naked short sword
+in his hand. His turban was half unrolled, and the end trailed
+on the ground behind him. His jacket was open. He breathed
+thickly for a moment before he spoke.
+
+"He came in Bulangi's boat," he said, "and walked quietly till he
+was in my presence, when the senseless fury of white men caused
+him to rush upon me. I have been in great danger," went on the
+ambitious nobleman in an aggrieved tone. "Do you hear that,
+Babalatchi? That eater of swine aimed a blow at my face with his
+unclean fist. He tried to rush amongst my household. Six men
+are holding him now."
+
+A fresh outburst of yells stopped Lakamba's discourse. Angry
+voices shouted: "Hold him. Beat him down. Strike at his head."
+
+Then the clamour ceased with sudden completeness, as if strangled
+by a mighty hand, and after a second of surprising silence the
+voice of Willems was heard alone, howling maledictions in Malay,
+in Dutch, and in English.
+
+"Listen," said Lakamba, speaking with unsteady lips, "he
+blasphemes his God. His speech is like the raving of a mad dog.
+Can we hold him for ever? He must be killed!"
+
+"Fool!" muttered Babalatchi, looking up at Aissa, who stood with
+set teeth, with gleaming eyes and distended nostrils, yet
+obedient to the touch of his restraining hand. "It is the third
+day, and I have kept my promise," he said to her, speaking very
+low. "Remember," he added warningly--"like the sea to the
+thirsty! And now," he said aloud, releasing her and stepping
+back, "go, fearless daughter, go!"
+
+Like an arrow, rapid and silent she flew down the enclosure, and
+disappeared through the gate of the courtyard. Lakamba and
+Babalatchi looked after her. They heard the renewed tumult, the
+girl's clear voice calling out, "Let him go!" Then after a pause
+in the din no longer than half the human breath the name of Aissa
+rang in a shout loud, discordant, and piercing, which sent
+through them an involuntary shudder. Old Omar collapsed on his
+carpet and moaned feebly; Lakamba stared with gloomy contempt in
+the direction of the inhuman sound; but Babalatchi, forcing a
+smile, pushed his distinguished protector through the narrow gate
+in the stockade, followed him, and closed it quickly.
+
+The old woman, who had been most of the time kneeling by the
+fire, now rose, glanced round fearfully and crouched hiding
+behind the tree. The gate of the great courtyard flew open with
+a great clatter before a frantic kick, and Willems darted in
+carrying Aissa in his arms. He rushed up the enclosure like a
+tornado, pressing the girl to his breast, her arms round his
+neck, her head hanging back over his arm, her eyes closed and her
+long hair nearly touching the ground. They appeared for a second
+in the glare of the fire, then, with immense strides, he dashed
+up the planks and disappeared with his burden in the doorway of
+the big house.
+
+Inside and outside the enclosure there was silence. Omar lay
+supporting himself on his elbow, his terrified face with its
+closed eyes giving him the appearance of a man tormented by a
+nightmare.
+
+"What is it? Help! Help me to rise!" he called out faintly.
+
+The old hag, still crouching in the shadow, stared with bleared
+eyes at the doorway of the big house, and took no notice of his
+call. He listened for a while, then his arm gave way, and, with
+a deep sigh of discouragement, he let himself fall on the carpet.
+
+The boughs of the tree nodded and trembled in the unsteady
+currents of the light wind. A leaf fluttered down slowly from
+some high branch and rested on the ground, immobile, as if
+resting for ever, in the glow of the fire; but soon it stirred,
+then soared suddenly, and flew, spinning and turning before the
+breath of the perfumed breeze, driven helplessly into the dark
+night that had closed over the land.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+For upwards of forty years Abdulla had walked in the way of his
+Lord. Son of the rich Syed Selim bin Sali, the great Mohammedan
+trader of the Straits, he went forth at the age of seventeen on
+his first commercial expedition, as his father's representative
+on board a pilgrim ship chartered by the wealthy Arab to convey a
+crowd of pious Malays to the Holy Shrine. That was in the days
+when steam was not in those seas--or, at least, not so much as
+now. The voyage was long, and the young man's eyes were opened
+to the wonders of many lands. Allah had made it his fate to
+become a pilgrim very early in life. This was a great favour of
+Heaven, and it could not have been bestowed upon a man who prized
+it more, or who made himself more worthy of it by the unswerving
+piety of his heart and by the religious solemnity of his
+demeanour. Later on it became clear that the book of his destiny
+contained the programme of a wandering life. He visited Bombay
+and Calcutta, looked in at the Persian Gulf, beheld in due course
+the high and barren coasts of the Gulf of Suez, and this was the
+limit of his wanderings westward. He was then twenty-seven, and
+the writing on his forehead decreed that the time had come for
+him to return to the Straits and take from his dying father's
+hands the many threads of a business that was spread over all the
+Archipelago: from Sumatra to New Guinea, from Batavia to Palawan.
+
+Very soon his ability, his will--strong to obstinacy--his wisdom
+beyond his years, caused him to be recognized as the head of a
+family whose members and connections were found in every part of
+those seas. An uncle here--a brother there; a father-in-law in
+Batavia, another in Palembang; husbands of numerous sisters;
+cousins innumerable scattered north, south, east, and west--in
+every place where there was trade: the great family lay like a
+network over the islands. They lent money to princes, influenced
+the council-rooms, faced--if need be--with peaceful intrepidity
+the white rulers who held the land and the sea under the edge of
+sharp swords; and they all paid great deference to Abdulla,
+listened to his advice, entered into his plans--because he was
+wise, pious, and fortunate.
+
+He bore himself with the humility becoming a Believer, who never
+forgets, even for one moment of his waking life, that he is the
+servant of the Most High. He was largely charitable because the
+charitable man is the friend of Allah, and when he walked out of
+his house--built of stone, just outside the town of Penang--on
+his way to his godowns in the port, he had often to snatch his
+hand away sharply from under the lips of men of his race and
+creed; and often he had to murmur deprecating words, or even to
+rebuke with severity those who attempted to touch his knees with
+their finger-tips in gratitude or supplication. He was very
+handsome, and carried his small head high with meek gravity. His
+lofty brow, straight nose, narrow, dark face with its chiselled
+delicacy of feature, gave him an aristocratic appearance which
+proclaimed his pure descent. His beard was trimmed close and to
+a rounded point. His large brown eyes looked out steadily with a
+sweetness that was belied by the expression of his thin-lipped
+mouth. His aspect was serene. He had a belief in his own
+prosperity which nothing could shake.
+
+Restless, like all his people, he very seldom dwelt for many days
+together in his splendid house in Penang. Owner of ships, he was
+often on board one or another of them, traversing in all
+directions the field of his operations. In every port he had a
+household--his own or that of a relation--to hail his advent with
+demonstrative joy. In every port there were rich and influential
+men eager to see him, there was business to talk over, there were
+important letters to read: an immense correspondence, enclosed
+in silk envelopes--a correspondence which had nothing to do with
+the infidels of colonial post-offices, but came into his hands by
+devious, yet safe, ways. It was left for him by taciturn
+nakhodas of native trading craft, or was delivered with profound
+salaams by travel-stained and weary men who would withdraw from
+his presence calling upon Allah to bless the generous giver of
+splendid rewards. And the news was always good, and all his
+attempts always succeeded, and in his ears there rang always a
+chorus of admiration, of gratitude, of humble entreaties.
+
+A fortunate man. And his felicity was so complete that the good
+genii, who ordered the stars at his birth, had not neglected--by
+a refinement of benevolence strange in such primitive beings--to
+provide him with a desire difficult to attain, and with an enemy
+hard to overcome. The envy of Lingard's political and commercial
+successes, and the wish to get the best of him in every way,
+became Abdulla's mania, the paramount interest of his life, the
+salt of his existence.
+
+For the last few months he had been receiving mysterious messages
+from Sambir urging him to decisive action. He had found the
+river a couple of years ago, and had been anchored more than once
+off that estuary where the, till then, rapid Pantai, spreading
+slowly over the lowlands, seems to hesitate, before it flows
+gently through twenty outlets; over a maze of mudflats, sandbanks
+and reefs, into the expectant sea. He had never attempted the
+entrance, however, because men of his race, although brave and
+adventurous travellers, lack the true seamanlike instincts, and
+he was afraid of getting wrecked. He could not bear the idea of
+the Rajah Laut being able to boast that Abdulla bin Selim, like
+other and lesser men, had also come to grief when trying to wrest
+his secret from him. Meantime he returned encouraging answers to
+his unknown friends in Sambir, and waited for his opportunity in
+the calm certitude of ultimate triumph.
+
+Such was the man whom Lakamba and Babalatchi expected to see for
+the first time on the night of Willems' return to Aissa.
+Babalatchi, who had been tormented for three days by the fear of
+having over-reached himself in his little plot, now, feeling sure
+of his white man, felt lighthearted and happy as he superintended
+the preparations in the courtyard for Abdulla's reception.
+Half-way between Lakamba's house and the river a pile of dry wood
+was made ready for the torch that would set fire to it at the
+moment of Abdulla's landing. Between this and the house again
+there was, ranged in a semicircle, a set of low bamboo frames,
+and on those were piled all the carpets and cushions of Lakamba's
+household. It had been decided that the reception was to take
+place in the open air, and that it should be made impressive by
+the great number of Lakamba's retainers, who, clad in clean
+white, with their red sarongs gathered round their waists,
+chopper at side and lance in hand, were moving about the compound
+or, gathering into small knots, discussed eagerly the coming
+ceremony.
+
+Two little fires burned brightly on the water's edge on each side
+of the landing place. A small heap of damar-gum torches lay by
+each, and between them Babalatchi strolled backwards and
+forwards, stopping often with his face to the river and his head
+on one side, listening to the sounds that came from the darkness
+over the water. There was no moon and the night was very clear
+overhead, but, after the afternoon breeze had expired in fitful
+puffs, the vapours hung thickening over the glancing surface of
+the Pantai and clung to the shore, hiding from view the middle of
+the stream.
+
+A cry in the mist--then another--and, before Babalatchi could
+answer, two little canoes dashed up to the landing-place, and two
+of the principal citizens of Sambir, Daoud Sahamin and Hamet
+Bahassoen, who had been confidentially invited to meet Abdulla,
+landed quickly and after greeting Babalatchi walked up the dark
+courtyard towards the house. The little stir caused by their
+arrival soon subsided, and another silent hour dragged its slow
+length while Babalatchi tramped up and down between the fires,
+his face growing more anxious with every passing moment.
+
+At last there was heard a loud hail from down the river. At a
+call from Babalatchi men ran down to the riverside and, snatching
+the torches, thrust them into the fires, then waved them above
+their heads till they burst into a flame. The smoke ascended in
+thick, wispy streams, and hung in a ruddy cloud above the glare
+that lit up the courtyard and flashed over the water, showing
+three long canoes manned by many paddlers lying a little off; the
+men in them lifting their paddles on high and dipping them down
+together, in an easy stroke that kept the small flotilla
+motionless in the strong current, exactly abreast of the landing-
+place. A man stood up in the largest craft and called out--
+
+"Syed Abdulla bin Selim is here!"
+
+Babalatchi answered aloud in a formal tone--
+
+"Allah gladdens our hearts! Come to the land!"
+
+Abdulla landed first, steadying himself by the help of
+Babalatchi's extended hand. In the short moment of his passing
+from the boat to the shore they exchanged sharp glances and a few
+rapid words.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Babalatchi. The friend of Omar. The protected of Lakamba."
+
+"You wrote?"
+
+"My words were written, O Giver of alms!"
+
+And then Abdulla walked with composed face between the two lines
+of men holding torches, and met Lakamba in front of the big fire
+that was crackling itself up into a great blaze. For a moment
+they stood with clasped hands invoking peace upon each other's
+head, then Lakamba, still holding his honoured guest by the hand,
+led him round the fire to the prepared seats. Babalatchi
+followed close behind his protector. Abdulla was accompanied by
+two Arabs. He, like his companions, was dressed in a white robe
+of starched muslin, which fell in stiff folds straight from the
+neck. It was buttoned from the throat halfway down with a close
+row of very small gold buttons; round the tight sleeves there was
+a narrow braid of gold lace. On his shaven head he wore a small
+skull-cap of plaited grass. He was shod in patent leather
+slippers over his naked feet. A rosary of heavy wooden beads
+hung by a round turn from his right wrist. He sat down slowly in
+the place of honour, and, dropping his slippers, tucked up his
+legs under him decorously.
+
+The improvised divan was arranged in a wide semi-circle, of which
+the point most distant from the fire--some ten yards--was also
+the nearest to Lakamba's dwelling. As soon as the principal
+personages were seated, the verandah of the house was filled
+silently by the muffled-up forms of Lakamba's female belongings.
+They crowded close to the rail and looked down, whispering
+faintly. Below, the formal exchange of compliments went on for
+some time between Lakamba and Abdulla, who sat side by side.
+Babalatchi squatted humbly at his protector's feet, with nothing
+but a thin mat between himself and the hard ground.
+
+Then there was a pause. Abdulla glanced round in an expectant
+manner, and after a while Babalatchi, who had been sitting very
+still in a pensive attitude, seemed to rouse himself with an
+effort, and began to speak in gentle and persuasive tones. He
+described in flowing sentences the first beginnings of Sambir,
+the dispute of the present ruler, Patalolo, with the Sultan of
+Koti, the consequent troubles ending with the rising of Bugis
+settlers under the leadership of Lakamba. At different points of
+the narrative he would turn for confirmation to Sahamin and
+Bahassoen, who sat listening eagerly and assented together with a
+"Betul! Betul! Right! Right!" ejaculated in a fervent
+undertone.
+
+Warming up with his subject as the narrative proceeded,
+Babalatchi went on to relate the facts connected with Lingard's
+action at the critical period of those internal dissensions. He
+spoke in a restrained voice still, but with a growing energy of
+indignation. What was he, that man of fierce aspect, to keep all
+the world away from them? Was he a government? Who made him
+ruler? He took possession of Patalolo's mind and made his heart
+hard; he put severe words into his mouth and caused his hand to
+strike right and left. That unbeliever kept the Faithful panting
+under the weight of his senseless oppression. They had to trade
+with him--accept such goods as he would give--such credit as he
+would accord. And he exacted payment every year . . .
+
+"Very true!" exclaimed Sahamin and Bahassoen together.
+
+Babalatchi glanced at them approvingly and turned to Abdulla.
+
+"Listen to those men, O Protector of the oppressed!" he
+exclaimed. "What could we do? A man must trade. There was
+nobody else."
+
+Sahamin got up, staff in hand, and spoke to Abdulla with
+ponderous courtesy, emphasizing his words by the solemn
+flourishes of his right arm.
+
+"It is so. We are weary of paying our debts to that white man
+here, who is the son of the Rajah Laut. That white man--may the
+grave of his mother be defiled!--is not content to hold us all in
+his hand with a cruel grasp. He seeks to cause our very death.
+He trades with the Dyaks of the forest, who are no better than
+monkeys. He buys from them guttah and rattans--while we starve.
+Only two days ago I went to him and said, 'Tuan Almayer'--even
+so; we must speak politely to that friend of Satan--'Tuan
+Almayer, I have such and such goods to sell. Will you buy?' And
+he spoke thus--because those white men have no understanding of
+any courtesy--he spoke to me as if I was a slave: 'Daoud, you are
+a lucky man'--remark, O First amongst the Believers! that by
+those words he could have brought misfortune on my head--'you are
+a lucky man to have anything in these hard times. Bring your
+goods quickly, and I shall receive them in payment of what you
+owe me from last year.' And he laughed, and struck me on the
+shoulder with his open hand. May Jehannum be his lot!"
+
+"We will fight him," said young Bahassoen, crisply. "We shall
+fight if there is help and a leader. Tuan Abdulla, will you come
+among us?"
+
+Abdulla did not answer at once. His lips moved in an inaudible
+whisper and the beads passed through his fingers with a dry
+click. All waited in respectful silence. "I shall come if my
+ship can enter this river," said Abdulla at last, in a solemn
+tone.
+
+"It can, Tuan," exclaimed Babalatchi. "There is a white man here
+who . . ."
+
+"I want to see Omar el Badavi and that white man you wrote
+about," interrupted Abdulla.
+
+Babalatchi got on his feet quickly, and there was a general move.
+
+The women on the verandah hurried indoors, and from the crowd
+that had kept discreetly in distant parts of the courtyard a
+couple of men ran with armfuls of dry fuel, which they cast upon
+the fire. One of them, at a sign from Babalatchi, approached
+and, after getting his orders, went towards the little gate and
+entered Omar's enclosure. While waiting for his return, Lakamba,
+Abdulla, and Babalatchi talked together in low tones. Sahamin
+sat by himself chewing betel-nut sleepily with a slight and
+indolent motion of his heavy jaw. Bahassoen, his hand on the
+hilt of his short sword, strutted backwards and forwards in the
+full light of the fire, looking very warlike and reckless; the
+envy and admiration of Lakamba's retainers, who stood in groups
+or flitted about noiselessly in the shadows of the courtyard.
+
+The messenger who had been sent to Omar came back and stood at a
+distance, waiting till somebody noticed him. Babalatchi beckoned
+him close.
+
+"What are his words?" asked Babalatchi.
+
+"He says that Syed Abdulla is welcome now," answered the man.
+
+Lakamba was speaking low to Abdulla, who listened to him with
+deep interest.
+
+". . . We could have eighty men if there was need," he was
+saying--"eighty men in fourteen canoes. The only thing we want is
+gunpowder . . ."
+
+"Hai! there will be no fighting," broke in Babalatchi. "The fear
+of your name will be enough and the terror of your coming."
+
+"There may be powder too," muttered Abdulla with great
+nonchalance, "if only the ship enters the river safely."
+
+"If the heart is stout the ship will be safe," said Babalatchi.
+"We will go now and see Omar el Badavi and the white man I have
+here."
+
+Lakamba's dull eyes became animated suddenly.
+
+"Take care, Tuan Abdulla," he said, "take care. The behaviour of
+that unclean white madman is furious in the extreme. He offered
+to strike . . ."
+
+"On my head, you are safe, O Giver of alms!" interrupted
+Babalatchi.
+
+Abdulla looked from one to the other, and the faintest flicker of
+a passing smile disturbed for a moment his grave composure. He
+turned to Babalatchi, and said with decision--
+
+"Let us go."
+
+"This way, O Uplifter of our hearts!" rattled on Babalatchi, with
+fussy deference. "Only a very few paces and you shall behold
+Omar the brave, and a white man of great strength and cunning.
+This way."
+
+He made a sign for Lakamba to remain behind, and with respectful
+touches on the elbow steered Abdulla towards the gate at the
+upper end of the court-yard. As they walked on slowly, followed
+by the two Arabs, he kept on talking in a rapid undertone to the
+great man, who never looked at him once, although appearing to
+listen with flattering attention. When near the gate Babalatchi
+moved forward and stopped, facing Abdulla, with his hand on the
+fastenings.
+
+"You shall see them both," he said. "All my words about them are
+true. When I saw him enslaved by the one of whom I spoke, I knew
+he would be soft in my hand like the mud of the river. At first
+he answered my talk with bad words of his own language, after the
+manner of white men. Afterwards, when listening to the voice he
+loved, he hesitated. He hesitated for many days--too many. I,
+knowing him well, made Omar withdraw here with his . . .
+household. Then this red-faced man raged for three days like a
+black panther that is hungry. And this evening, this very
+evening, he came. I have him here. He is in the grasp of one
+with a merciless heart. I have him here," ended Babalatchi,
+exultingly tapping the upright of the gate with his hand.
+
+"That is good," murmured Abdulla.
+
+"And he shall guide your ship and lead in the fight--if fight
+there be," went on Babalatchi. "If there is any killing--let him
+be the slayer. You should give him arms--a short gun that fires
+many times."
+
+"Yes, by Allah!" assented Abdulla, with slow thoughtfulness.
+
+"And you will have to open your hand, O First amongst the
+generous!" continued Babalatchi. "You will have to satisfy the
+rapacity of a white man, and also of one who is not a man, and
+therefore greedy of ornaments."
+
+"They shall be satisfied," said Abdulla; "but . . ." He
+hesitated, looking down on the ground and stroking his beard,
+while Babalatchi waited, anxious, with parted lips. After a
+short time he spoke again jerkily in an indistinct whisper, so
+that Babalatchi had to turn his head to catch the words. "Yes.
+But Omar is the son of my father's uncle . . . and all belonging
+to him are of the Faith . . . while that man is an unbeliever.
+It is most unseemly . . . very unseemly. He cannot live under my
+shadow. Not that dog. Penitence! I take refuge with my God,"
+he mumbled rapidly. "How can he live under my eyes with that
+woman, who is of the Faith? Scandal! O abomination!"
+
+He finished with a rush and drew a long breath, then added
+dubiously--
+
+"And when that man has done all we want, what is to be done with
+him?"
+
+They stood close together, meditative and silent, their eyes
+roaming idly over the courtyard. The big bonfire burned
+brightly, and a wavering splash of light lay on the dark earth at
+their feet, while the lazy smoke wreathed itself slowly in
+gleaming coils amongst the black boughs of the trees. They could
+see Lakamba, who had returned to his place, sitting hunched up
+spiritlessly on the cushions, and Sahamin, who had got on his
+feet again and appeared to be talking to him with dignified
+animation. Men in twos or threes came out of the shadows into
+the light, strolling slowly, and passed again into the shadows,
+their faces turned to each other, their arms moving in restrained
+gestures. Bahassoen, his head proudly thrown back, his
+ornaments, embroideries, and sword-hilt flashing in the light,
+circled steadily round the fire like a planet round the sun. A
+cool whiff of damp air came from the darkness of the riverside;
+it made Abdulla and Babalatchi shiver, and woke them up from
+their abstraction.
+
+"Open the gate and go first," said Abdulla; "there is no danger?"
+
+"On my life, no!" answered Babalatchi, lifting the rattan ring.
+"He is all peace and content, like a thirsty man who has drunk
+water after many days."
+
+He swung the gate wide, made a few paces into the gloom of the
+enclosure, and retraced his steps suddenly.
+
+"He may be made useful in many ways," he whispered to Abdulla,
+who had stopped short, seeing him come back.
+
+"O Sin! O Temptation!" sighed out Abdulla, faintly. "Our refuge
+is with the Most High. Can I feed this infidel for ever and for
+ever?" he added, impatiently.
+
+"No," breathed out Babalatchi. "No! Not for ever. Only while
+he serves your designs, O Dispenser of Allah's gifts! When the
+time comes--and your order . . ."
+
+He sidled close to Abdulla, and brushed with a delicate touch the
+hand that hung down listlessly, holding the prayer-beads.
+
+"I am your slave and your offering," he murmured, in a distinct
+and polite tone, into Abdulla's ear. "When your wisdom speaks,
+there may be found a little poison that will not lie. Who
+knows?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+Babalatchi saw Abdulla pass through the low and narrow entrance
+into the darkness of Omar's hut; heard them exchange the usual
+greetings and the distinguished visitor's grave voice asking:
+"There is no misfortune--please God--but the sight?" and then,
+becoming aware of the disapproving looks of the two Arabs who had
+accompanied Abdulla, he followed their example and fell back out
+of earshot. He did it unwillingly, although he did not ignore
+that what was going to happen in there was now absolutely beyond
+his control. He roamed irresolutely about for awhile, and at
+last wandered with careless steps towards the fire, which had
+been moved, from under the tree, close to the hut and a little to
+windward of its entrance. He squatted on his heels and began
+playing pensively with live embers, as was his habit when
+engrossed in thought, withdrawing his hand sharply and shaking it
+above his head when he burnt his fingers in a fit of deeper
+abstraction. Sitting there he could hear the murmur of the talk
+inside the hut, and he could distinguish the voices but not the
+words. Abdulla spoke in deep tones, and now and then this
+flowing monotone was interrupted by a querulous exclamation, a
+weak moan or a plaintive quaver of the old man. Yes. It was
+annoying not to be able to make out what they were saying,
+thought Babalatchi, as he sat gazing fixedly at the unsteady glow
+of the fire. But it will be right. All will be right. Abdulla
+inspired him with confidence. He came up fully to his
+expectation. From the very first moment when he set his eye on
+him he felt sure that this man--whom he had known by reputation
+only--was very resolute. Perhaps too resolute. Perhaps he would
+want to grasp too much later on. A shadow flitted over
+Babalatchi's face. On the eve of the accomplishment of his
+desires he felt the bitter taste of that drop of doubt which is
+mixed with the sweetness of every success.
+
+When, hearing footsteps on the verandah of the big house, he
+lifted his head, the shadow had passed away and on his face there
+was an expression of watchful alertness. Willems was coming down
+the plankway, into the courtyard. The light within trickled
+through the cracks of the badly joined walls of the house, and in
+the illuminated doorway appeared the moving form of Aissa. She
+also passed into the night outside and disappeared from view.
+Babalatchi wondered where she had got to, and for the moment
+forgot the approach of Willems. The voice of the white man
+speaking roughly above his head made him jump to his feet as if
+impelled upwards by a powerful spring.
+
+"Where's Abdulla?"
+
+Babalatchi waved his hand towards the hut and stood listening
+intently. The voices within had ceased, then recommenced again.
+He shot an oblique glance at Willems, whose indistinct form
+towered above the glow of dying embers.
+
+"Make up this fire," said Willems, abruptly. "I want to see your
+face."
+
+With obliging alacrity Babalatchi put some dry brushwood on the
+coals from a handy pile, keeping all the time a watchful eye on
+Willems. When he straightened himself up his hand wandered
+almost involuntarily towards his left side to feel the handle of
+a kriss amongst the folds of his sarong, but he tried to look
+unconcerned under the angry stare.
+
+"You are in good health, please God?" he murmured.
+
+"Yes!" answered Willems, with an unexpected loudness that caused
+Babalatchi to start nervously. "Yes! . . . Health! . . . You .
+. ."
+
+He made a long stride and dropped both his hands on the Malay's
+shoulders. In the powerful grip Babalatchi swayed to and fro
+limply, but his face was as peaceful as when he sat--a little
+while ago--dreaming by the fire. With a final vicious jerk
+Willems let go suddenly, and turning away on his heel stretched
+his hands over the fire. Babalatchi stumbled backwards,
+recovered himself, and wriggled his shoulders laboriously.
+
+"Tse! Tse! Tse!" he clicked, deprecatingly. After a short
+silence he went on with accentuated admiration: "What a man it
+is! What a strong man! A man like that"--he concluded, in a
+tone of meditative wonder--"a man like that could upset
+mountains--mountains!"
+
+He gazed hopefully for a while at Willems' broad shoulders, and
+continued, addressing the inimical back, in a low and persuasive
+voice--
+
+"But why be angry with me? With me who think only of your good?
+Did I not give her refuge, in my own house? Yes, Tuan! This is
+my own house. I will let you have it without any recompense
+because she must have a shelter. Therefore you and she shall
+live here. Who can know a woman's mind? And such a woman! If
+she wanted to go away from that other place, who am I--to say no!
+
+I am Omar's servant. I said: 'Gladden my heart by taking my
+house.' Did I say right?"
+
+"I'll tell you something," said Willems, without changing his
+position; "if she takes a fancy to go away from this place it is
+you who shall suffer. I will wring your neck."
+
+"When the heart is full of love there is no room in it for
+justice," recommenced Babalatchi, with unmoved and persistent
+softness. "Why slay me? You know, Tuan, what she wants. A
+splendid destiny is her desire--as of all women. You have been
+wronged and cast out by your people. She knows that. But you
+are brave, you are strong--you are a man; and, Tuan--I am older
+than you--you are in her hand. Such is the fate of strong men.
+And she is of noble birth and cannot live like a slave. You know
+her--and you are in her hand. You are like a snared bird,
+because of your strength. And--remember I am a man that has seen
+much--submit, Tuan! Submit! . . . Or else . . ."
+
+He drawled out the last words in a hesitating manner and broke
+off his sentence. Still stretching his hands in turns towards
+the blaze and without moving his head, Willems gave a short,
+lugubrious laugh, and asked--
+
+"Or else what?"
+
+"She may go away again. Who knows?" finished Babalatchi, in a
+gentle and insinuating tone.
+
+This time Willems spun round sharply. Babalatchi stepped back.
+
+"If she does it will be the worse for you," said Willems, in a
+menacing voice. "It will be your doing, and I . . ."
+
+Babalatchi spoke, from beyond the circle of light, with calm
+disdain.
+
+"Hai--ya! I have heard before. If she goes--then I die. Good!
+Will that bring her back do you think--Tuan? If it is my doing
+it shall be well done, O white man! and--who knows--you will have
+to live without her."
+
+Willems gasped and started back like a confident wayfarer who,
+pursuing a path he thinks safe, should see just in time a
+bottomless chasm under his feet. Babalatchi came into the light
+and approached Willems sideways, with his head thrown back and a
+little on one side so as to bring his only eye to bear full on
+the countenance of the tall white man.
+
+"You threaten me," said Willems, indistinctly.
+
+"I, Tuan!" exclaimed Babalatchi, with a slight suspicion of irony
+in the affected surprise of his tone. "I, Tuan? Who spoke of
+death? Was it I? No! I spoke of life only. Only of life. Of a
+long life for a lonely man!"
+
+They stood with the fire between them, both silent, both aware,
+each in his own way, of the importance of the passing minutes.
+Babalatchi's fatalism gave him only an insignificant relief in
+his suspense, because no fatalism can kill the thought of the
+future, the desire of success, the pain of waiting for the
+disclosure of the immutable decrees of Heaven. Fatalism is born
+of the fear of failure, for we all believe that we carry success
+in our own hands, and we suspect that our hands are weak.
+Babalatchi looked at Willems and congratulated himself upon his
+ability to manage that white man. There was a pilot for
+Abdulla--a victim to appease Lingard's anger in case of any
+mishap. He would take good care to put him forward in
+everything. In any case let the white men fight it out amongst
+themselves. They were fools. He hated them--the strong
+fools--and knew that for his righteous wisdom was reserved the
+safe triumph.
+
+Willems measured dismally the depth of his degradation. He--a
+white man, the admired of white men, was held by those miserable
+savages whose tool he was about to become. He felt for them all
+the hate of his race, of his morality, of his intelligence. He
+looked upon himself with dismay and pity. She had him. He had
+heard of such things. He had heard of women who . . . He would
+never believe such stories. . . . Yet they were true. But his
+own captivity seemed more complete, terrible, and final--without
+the hope of any redemption. He wondered at the wickedness of
+Providence that had made him what he was; that, worse still,
+permitted such a creature as Almayer to live. He had done his
+duty by going to him. Why did he not understand? All men were
+fools. He gave him his chance. The fellow did not see it. It
+was hard, very hard on himself--Willems. He wanted to take her
+from amongst her own people. That's why he had condescended to
+go to Almayer. He examined himself. With a sinking heart he
+thought that really he could not--somehow--live without her. It
+was terrible and sweet. He remembered the first days. Her
+appearance, her face, her smile, her eyes, her words. A savage
+woman! Yet he perceived that he could think of nothing else but
+of the three days of their separation, of the few hours since
+their reunion. Very well. If he could not take her away, then
+he would go to her. . . . He had, for a moment, a wicked
+pleasure in the thought that what he had done could not be
+undone. He had given himself up. He felt proud of it. He was
+ready to face anything, do anything. He cared for nothing, for
+nobody. He thought himself very fearless, but as a matter of
+fact he was only drunk; drunk with the poison of passionate
+memories.
+
+He stretched his hands over the fire, looked round and called
+out--
+
+"Aissa!"
+
+She must have been near, for she appeared at once within the
+light of the fire. The upper part of her body was wrapped up in
+the thick folds of a head covering which was pulled down over her
+brow, and one end of it thrown across from shoulder to shoulder
+hid the lower part of her face. Only her eyes were visible--
+sombre and gleaming like a starry night.
+
+Willems, looking at this strange, muffled figure, felt
+exasperated, amazed and helpless. The ex-confidential clerk of
+the rich Hudig would hug to his breast settled conceptions of
+respectable conduct. He sought refuge within his ideas of
+propriety from the dismal mangroves, from the darkness of the
+forests and of the heathen souls of the savages that were his
+masters. She looked like an animated package of cheap cotton
+goods! It made him furious. She had disguised herself so
+because a man of her race was near! He told her not to do it,
+and she did not obey. Would his ideas ever change so as to agree
+with her own notions of what was becoming, proper and
+respectable? He was really afraid they would, in time. It
+seemed to him awful. She would never change! This manifestation
+of her sense of proprieties was another sign of their hopeless
+diversity; something like another step downwards for him. She
+was too different from him. He was so civilized! It struck him
+suddenly that they had nothing in common--not a thought, not a
+feeling; he could not make clear to her the simplest motive of
+any act of his . . . and he could not live without her.
+
+The courageous man who stood facing Babalatchi gasped
+unexpectedly with a gasp that was half a groan. This little
+matter of her veiling herself against his wish acted upon him
+like a disclosure of some great disaster. It increased his
+contempt for himself as the slave of a passion he had always
+derided, as the man unable to assert his will. This will, all
+his sensations, his personality--all this seemed to be lost in
+the abominable desire, in the priceless promise of that woman.
+He was not, of course, able to discern clearly the causes of his
+misery; but there are none so ignorant as not to know suffering,
+none so simple as not to feel and suffer from the shock of
+warring impulses. The ignorant must feel and suffer from their
+complexity as well as the wisest; but to them the pain of
+struggle and defeat appears strange, mysterious, remediable and
+unjust. He stood watching her, watching himself. He tingled
+with rage from head to foot, as if he had been struck in the
+face. Suddenly he laughed; but his laugh was like a distorted
+echo of some insincere mirth very far away.
+
+From the other side of the fire Babalatchi spoke hurriedly--
+
+"Here is Tuan Abdulla."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+Directly on stepping outside Omar's hut Abdulla caught sight of
+Willems. He expected, of course, to see a white man, but not
+that white man, whom he knew so well. Everybody who traded in
+the islands, and who had any dealings with Hudig, knew Willems.
+For the last two years of his stay in Macassar the confidential
+clerk had been managing all the local trade of the house under a
+very slight supervision only on the part of the master. So
+everybody knew Willems, Abdulla amongst others--but he was
+ignorant of Willems' disgrace. As a matter of fact the thing had
+been kept very quiet--so quiet that a good many people in
+Macassar were expecting Willems' return there, supposing him to
+be absent on some confidential mission. Abdulla, in his
+surprise, hesitated on the threshold. He had prepared himself to
+see some seaman--some old officer of Lingard's; a common man--
+perhaps difficult to deal with, but still no match for him.
+Instead, he saw himself confronted by an individual whose
+reputation for sagacity in business was well known to him. How
+did he get here, and why? Abdulla, recovering from his surprise,
+advanced in a dignified manner towards the fire, keeping his eyes
+fixed steadily on Willems. When within two paces from Willems he
+stopped and lifted his right hand in grave salutation. Willems
+nodded slightly and spoke after a while.
+
+"We know each other, Tuan Abdulla," he said, with an assumption
+of easy indifference.
+
+"We have traded together," answered Abdulla, solemnly, "but it
+was far from here."
+
+"And we may trade here also," said Willems.
+
+"The place does not matter. It is the open mind and the true
+heart that are required in business."
+
+"Very true. My heart is as open as my mind. I will tell you why
+I am here."
+
+"What need is there? In leaving home one learns life. You
+travel. Travelling is victory! You shall return with much
+wisdom."
+
+"I shall never return," interrupted Willems. "I have done with
+my people. I am a man without brothers. Injustice destroys
+fidelity."
+
+Abdulla expressed his surprise by elevating his eyebrows. At the
+same time he made a vague gesture with his arm that could be
+taken as an equivalent of an approving and conciliating "just
+so!"
+
+Till then the Arab had not taken any notice of Aissa, who stood
+by the fire, but now she spoke in the interval of silence
+following Willems' declaration. In a voice that was much
+deadened by her wrappings she addressed Abdulla in a few words of
+greeting, calling him a kinsman. Abdulla glanced at her swiftly
+for a second, and then, with perfect good breeding, fixed his
+eyes on the ground. She put out towards him her hand, covered
+with a corner of her face-veil, and he took it, pressed it twice,
+and dropping it turned towards Willems. She looked at the two
+men searchingly, then backed away and seemed to melt suddenly
+into the night.
+
+"I know what you came for, Tuan Abdulla," said Willems; "I have
+been told by that man there." He nodded towards Babalatchi, then
+went on slowly, "It will be a difficult thing."
+
+"Allah makes everything easy," interjected Babalatchi, piously,
+from a distance.
+
+The two men turned quickly and stood looking at him thoughtfully,
+as if in deep consideration of the truth of that proposition.
+Under their sustained gaze Babalatchi experienced an unwonted
+feeling of shyness, and dared not approach nearer. At last
+Willems moved slightly, Abdulla followed readily, and they both
+walked down the courtyard, their voices dying away in the
+darkness. Soon they were heard returning, and the voices grew
+distinct as their forms came out of the gloom. By the fire they
+wheeled again, and Babalatchi caught a few words. Willems was
+saying--
+
+"I have been at sea with him many years when young. I have used
+my knowledge to observe the way into the river when coming in,
+this time."
+
+Abdulla assented in general terms.
+
+"In the variety of knowledge there is safety," he said; and then
+they passed out of earshot.
+
+Babalatchi ran to the tree and took up his position in the solid
+blackness under its branches, leaning against the trunk. There
+he was about midway between the fire and the other limit of the
+two men's walk. They passed him close. Abdulla slim, very
+straight, his head high, and his hands hanging before him and
+twisting mechanically the string of beads; Willems tall, broad,
+looking bigger and stronger in contrast to the slight white
+figure by the side of which he strolled carelessly, taking one
+step to the other's two; his big arms in constant motion as he
+gesticulated vehemently, bending forward to look Abdulla in the
+face.
+
+They passed and repassed close to Babalatchi some half a dozen
+times, and, whenever they were between him and the fire, he could
+see them plain enough. Sometimes they would stop short, Willems
+speaking emphatically, Abdulla listening with rigid attention,
+then, when the other had ceased, bending his head slightly as if
+consenting to some demand, or admitting some statement. Now and
+then Babalatchi caught a word here and there, a fragment of a
+sentence, a loud exclamation. Impelled by curiosity he crept to
+the very edge of the black shadow under the tree. They were
+nearing him, and he heard Willems say--
+
+"You will pay that money as soon as I come on board. That I must
+have."
+
+He could not catch Abdulla's reply. When they went past again,
+Willems was saying--
+
+"My life is in your hand anyway. The boat that brings me on
+board your ship shall take the money to Omar. You must have it
+ready in a sealed bag."
+
+Again they were out of hearing, but instead of coming back they
+stopped by the fire facing each other. Willems moved his arm,
+shook his hand on high talking all the time, then brought it down
+jerkily--stamped his foot. A short period of immobility ensued.
+Babalatchi, gazing intently, saw Abdulla's lips move almost
+imperceptibly. Suddenly Willems seized the Arab's passive hand
+and shook it. Babalatchi drew the long breath of relieved
+suspense. The conference was over. All well, apparently.
+
+He ventured now to approach the two men, who saw him and waited
+in silence. Willems had retired within himself already, and wore
+a look of grim indifference. Abdulla moved away a step or two.
+Babalatchi looked at him inquisitively.
+
+"I go now," said Abdulla, "and shall wait for you outside the
+river, Tuan Willems, till the second sunset. You have only one
+word, I know."
+
+"Only one word," repeated Willems.
+
+Abdulla and Babalatchi walked together down the enclosure,
+leaving the white man alone by the fire. The two Arabs who had
+come with Abdulla preceded them and passed at once through the
+little gate into the light and the murmur of voices of the
+principal courtyard, but Babalatchi and Abdulla stopped on this
+side of it. Abdulla said--
+
+"It is well. We have spoken of many things. He consents."
+
+"When?" asked Babalatchi, eagerly.
+
+"On the second day from this. I have promised every thing. I
+mean to keep much."
+
+"Your hand is always open, O Most Generous amongst Believers!
+You will not forget your servant who called you here. Have I not
+spoken the truth? She has made roast meat of his heart."
+
+With a horizontal sweep of his arm Abdulla seemed to push away
+that last statement, and said slowly, with much meaning--
+
+"He must be perfectly safe; do you understand? Perfectly safe--as
+if he was amongst his own people--till . . ."
+
+"Till when?" whispered Babalatchi.
+
+"Till I speak," said Abdulla. "As to Omar." He hesitated for a
+moment, then went on very low: "He is very old."
+
+"Hai-ya! Old and sick," murmured Babalatchi, with sudden
+melancholy.
+
+"He wanted me to kill that white man. He begged me to have him
+killed at once," said Abdulla, contemptuously, moving again
+towards the gate.
+
+"He is impatient, like those who feel death near them," exclaimed
+Babalatchi, apologetically.
+
+ "Omar shall dwell with me," went on Abdulla, "when . . . But no
+matter. Remember! The white man must be safe."
+
+"He lives in your shadow," answered Babalatchi, solemnly. "It is
+enough!" He touched his forehead and fell back to let Abdulla go
+first.
+
+And now they are back in the courtyard wherefrom, at their
+appearance, listlessness vanishes, and all the faces become alert
+and interested once more. Lakamba approaches his guest, but
+looks at Babalatchi, who reassures him by a confident nod.
+Lakamba clumsily attempts a smile, and looking, with natural and
+ineradicable sulkiness, from under his eyebrows at the man whom
+he wants to honour, asks whether he would condescend to visit the
+place of sitting down and take food. Or perhaps he would prefer
+to give himself up to repose? The house is his, and what is in
+it, and those many men that stand afar watching the interview are
+his. Syed Abdulla presses his host's hand to his breast, and
+informs him in a confidential murmur that his habits are ascetic
+and his temperament inclines to melancholy. No rest; no food; no
+use whatever for those many men who are his. Syed Abdulla is
+impatient to be gone. Lakamba is sorrowful but polite, in his
+hesitating, gloomy way. Tuan Abdulla must have fresh boatmen,
+and many, to shorten the dark and fatiguing road. Hai-ya!
+There! Boats!
+
+By the riverside indistinct forms leap into a noisy and
+disorderly activity. There are cries, orders, banter, abuse.
+Torches blaze sending out much more smoke than light, and in
+their red glare Babalatchi comes up to say that the boats are
+ready.
+
+Through that lurid glare Syed Abdulla, in his long white gown,
+seems to glide fantastically, like a dignified apparition
+attended by two inferior shades, and stands for a moment at the
+landing-place to take leave of his host and ally--whom he loves.
+Syed Abdulla says so distinctly before embarking, and takes his
+seat in the middle of the canoe under a small canopy of blue
+calico stretched on four sticks. Before and behind Syed Abdulla,
+the men squatting by the gunwales hold high the blades of their
+paddles in readiness for a dip, all together. Ready? Not yet.
+Hold on all! Syed Abdulla speaks again, while Lakamba and
+Babalatchi stand close on the bank to hear his words. His words
+are encouraging. Before the sun rises for the second time they
+shall meet, and Syed Abdulla's ship shall float on the waters of
+this river--at last! Lakamba and Babalatchi have no doubt--if
+Allah wills. They are in the hands of the Compassionate. No
+doubt. And so is Syed Abdulla, the great trader who does not
+know what the word failure means; and so is the white man--the
+smartest business man in the islands--who is lying now by Omar's
+fire with his head on Aissa's lap, while Syed Abdulla flies down
+the muddy river with current and paddles between the sombre walls
+of the sleeping forest; on his way to the clear and open sea
+where the Lord of the Isles (formerly of Greenock, but condemned,
+sold, and registered now as of Penang) waits for its owner, and
+swings erratically at anchor in the currents of the capricious
+tide, under the crumbling red cliffs of Tanjong Mirrah.
+
+For some time Lakamba, Sahamin, and Bahassoen looked silently
+into the humid darkness which had swallowed the big canoe that
+carried Abdulla and his unvarying good fortune. Then the two
+guests broke into a talk expressive of their joyful
+anticipations. The venerable Sahamin, as became his advanced
+age, found his delight in speculation as to the activities of a
+rather remote future. He would buy praus, he would send
+expeditions up the river, he would enlarge his trade, and, backed
+by Abdulla's capital, he would grow rich in a very few years.
+Very few. Meantime it would be a good thing to interview Almayer
+to-morrow and, profiting by the last day of the hated man's
+prosperity, obtain some goods from him on credit. Sahamin
+thought it could be done by skilful wheedling. After all, that
+son of Satan was a fool, and the thing was worth doing, because
+the coming revolution would wipe all debts out. Sahamin did not
+mind imparting that idea to his companions, with much senile
+chuckling, while they strolled together from the riverside
+towards the residence. The bull-necked Lakamba, listening with
+pouted lips without the sign of a smile, without a gleam in his
+dull, bloodshot eyes, shuffled slowly across the courtyard
+between his two guests. But suddenly Bahassoen broke in upon the
+old man's prattle with the generous enthusiasm of his youth. . .
+. Trading was very good. But was the change that would make
+them happy effected yet? The white man should be despoiled with
+a strong hand! . . . He grew excited, spoke very loud, and his
+further discourse, delivered with his hand on the hilt of his
+sword, dealt incoherently with the honourable topics of
+throat-cutting, fire-raising, and with the far-famed valour of
+his ancestors.
+
+Babalatchi remained behind, alone with the greatness of his
+conceptions. The sagacious statesman of Sambir sent a scornful
+glance after his noble protector and his noble protector's
+friends, and then stood meditating about that future which to the
+others seemed so assured. Not so to Babalatchi, who paid the
+penalty of his wisdom by a vague sense of insecurity that kept
+sleep at arm's length from his tired body. When he thought at
+last of leaving the waterside, it was only to strike a path for
+himself and to creep along the fences, avoiding the middle of the
+courtyard where small fires glimmered and winked as though the
+sinister darkness there had reflected the stars of the serene
+heaven. He slunk past the wicket-gate of Omar's enclosure, and
+crept on patiently along the light bamboo palisade till he was
+stopped by the angle where it joined the heavy stockade of
+Lakamba's private ground. Standing there, he could look over the
+fence and see Omar's hut and the fire before its door. He could
+also see the shadow of two human beings sitting between him and
+the red glow. A man and a woman. The sight seemed to inspire
+the careworn sage with a frivolous desire to sing. It could
+hardly be called a song; it was more in the nature of a
+recitative without any rhythm, delivered rapidly but distinctly
+in a croaking and unsteady voice; and if Babalatchi considered it
+a song, then it was a song with a purpose and, perhaps for that
+reason, artistically defective. It had all the imperfections of
+unskilful improvisation and its subject was gruesome. It told a
+tale of shipwreck and of thirst, and of one brother killing
+another for the sake of a gourd of water. A repulsive story
+which might have had a purpose but possessed no moral whatever.
+Yet it must have pleased Babalatchi for he repeated it twice, the
+second time even in louder tones than at first, causing a
+disturbance amongst the white rice-birds and the wild
+fruit-pigeons which roosted on the boughs of the big tree growing
+in Omar's compound. There was in the thick foliage above the
+singer's head a confused beating of wings, sleepy remarks in
+bird-language, a sharp stir of leaves. The forms by the fire
+moved; the shadow of the woman altered its shape, and
+Babalatchi's song was cut short abruptly by a fit of soft and
+persistent coughing. He did not try to resume his efforts after
+that interruption, but went away stealthily to seek--if not
+sleep--then, at least, repose.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+
+As soon as Abdulla and his companions had left the enclosure,
+Aissa approached Willems and stood by his side. He took no
+notice of her expectant attitude till she touched him gently,
+when he turned furiously upon her and, tearing off her face-veil,
+trampled upon it as though it had been a mortal enemy. She
+looked at him with the faint smile of patient curiosity, with the
+puzzled interest of ignorance watching the running of a
+complicated piece of machinery. After he had exhausted his rage,
+he stood again severe and unbending looking down at the fire, but
+the touch of her fingers at the nape of his neck effaced
+instantly the hard lines round his mouth; his eyes wavered
+uneasily; his lips trembled slightly. Starting with the
+unresisting rapidity of a particle of iron--which, quiescent one
+moment, leaps in the next to a powerful magnet--he moved forward,
+caught her in his arms and pressed her violently to his breast.
+He released her as suddenly, and she stumbled a little, stepped
+back, breathed quickly through her parted lips, and said in a
+tone of pleased reproof--
+
+"O Fool-man! And if you had killed me in your strong arms what
+would you have done?"
+
+"You want to live . . . and to run away from me again," he said
+gently. "Tell me--do you?"
+
+She moved towards him with very short steps, her head a little on
+one side, hands on hips, with a slight balancing of her body: an
+approach more tantalizing than an escape. He looked on,
+eager--charmed. She spoke jestingly.
+
+"What am I to say to a man who has been away three days from me?
+Three!" she repeated, holding up playfully three fingers before
+Willems' eyes. He snatched at the hand, but she was on her guard
+and whisked it behind her back.
+
+"No!" she said. "I cannot be caught. But I will come. I am
+coming myself because I like. Do not move. Do not touch me with
+your mighty hands, O child!"
+
+As she spoke she made a step nearer, then another. Willems did
+not stir. Pressing against him she stood on tiptoe to look into
+his eyes, and her own seemed to grow bigger, glistening and
+tender, appealing and promising. With that look she drew the
+man's soul away from him through his immobile pupils, and from
+Willems' features the spark of reason vanished under her gaze and
+was replaced by an appearance of physical well-being, an ecstasy
+of the senses which had taken possession of his rigid body; an
+ecstasy that drove out regrets, hesitation and doubt, and
+proclaimed its terrible work by an appalling aspect of idiotic
+beatitude. He never stirred a limb, hardly breathed, but stood
+in stiff immobility, absorbing the delight of her close contact
+by every pore.
+
+"Closer! Closer!" he murmured.
+
+Slowly she raised her arms, put them over his shoulders, and
+clasping her hands at the back of his neck, swung off the full
+length of her arms. Her head fell back, the eyelids dropped
+slightly, and her thick hair hung straight down: a mass of ebony
+touched by the red gleams of the fire. He stood unyielding under
+the strain, as solid and motionless as one of the big trees of
+the surrounding forests; and his eyes looked at the modelling of
+her chin, at the outline of her neck, at the swelling lines of
+her bosom, with the famished and concentrated expression of a
+starving man looking at food. She drew herself up to him and
+rubbed her head against his cheek slowly and gently. He sighed.
+She, with her hands still on his shoulders, glanced up at the
+placid stars and said--
+
+"The night is half gone. We shall finish it by this fire. By
+this fire you shall tell me all: your words and Syed Abdulla's
+words; and listening to you I shall forget the three
+days--because I am good. Tell me--am I good?"
+
+He said "Yes" dreamily, and she ran off towards the big house.
+
+When she came back, balancing a roll of fine mats on her head, he
+had replenished the fire and was ready to help her in arranging a
+couch on the side of it nearest to the hut. She sank down with a
+quick but gracefully controlled movement, and he threw himself
+full length with impatient haste, as if he wished to forestall
+somebody. She took his head on her knees, and when he felt her
+hands touching his face, her fingers playing with his hair, he
+had an expression of being taken possession of; he experienced a
+sense of peace, of rest, of happiness, and of soothing delight.
+His hands strayed upwards about her neck, and he drew her down so
+as to have her face above his. Then he whispered--"I wish I
+could die like this--now!" She looked at him with her big sombre
+eyes, in which there was no responsive light. His thought was so
+remote from her understanding that she let the words pass by
+unnoticed, like the breath of the wind, like the flight of a
+cloud. Woman though she was, she could not comprehend, in her
+simplicity, the tremendous compliment of that speech, that
+whisper of deadly happiness, so sincere, so spontaneous, coming
+so straight from the heart--like every corruption. It was the
+voice of madness, of a delirious peace, of happiness that is
+infamous, cowardly, and so exquisite that the debased mind
+refuses to contemplate its termination: for to the victims of
+such happiness the moment of its ceasing is the beginning afresh
+of that torture which is its price.
+
+With her brows slightly knitted in the determined preoccupation
+of her own desires, she said--
+
+"Now tell me all. All the words spoken between you and Syed
+Abdulla."
+
+Tell what? What words? Her voice recalled back the
+consciousness that had departed under her touch, and he became
+aware of the passing minutes every one of which was like a
+reproach; of those minutes that falling, slow, reluctant,
+irresistible into the past, marked his footsteps on the way to
+perdition. Not that he had any conviction about it, any notion
+of the possible ending on that painful road. It was an
+indistinct feeling, a threat of suffering like the confused
+warning of coming disease, an inarticulate monition of evil made
+up of fear and pleasure, of resignation and of revolt. He was
+ashamed of his state of mind. After all, what was he afraid of?
+Were those scruples? Why that hesitation to think, to speak of
+what he intended doing? Scruples were for imbeciles. His clear
+duty was to make himself happy. Did he ever take an oath of
+fidelity to Lingard? No. Well then--he would not let any
+interest of that old fool stand between Willems and Willems'
+happiness. Happiness? Was he not, perchance, on a false track?
+Happiness meant money. Much money. At least he had always
+thought so till he had experienced those new sensations which . .
+.
+
+Aissa's question, repeated impatiently, interrupted his musings,
+and looking up at her face shining above him in the dim light of
+the fire he stretched his limbs luxuriously and obedient to her
+desire, he spoke slowly and hardly above his breath. She, with
+her head close to his lips, listened absorbed, interested, in
+attentive immobility. The many noises of the great courtyard
+were hushed up gradually by the sleep that stilled all voices and
+closed all eyes. Then somebody droned out a song with a nasal
+drawl at the end of every verse. He stirred. She put her hand
+suddenly on his lips and sat upright. There was a feeble
+coughing, a rustle of leaves, and then a complete silence took
+possession of the land; a silence cold, mournful, profound; more
+like death than peace; more hard to bear than the fiercest
+tumult. As soon as she removed her hand he hastened to speak, so
+insupportable to him was that stillness perfect and absolute in
+which his thoughts seemed to ring with the loudness of shouts.
+
+"Who was there making that noise?" he asked.
+
+"I do not know. He is gone now," she answered, hastily. "Tell
+me, you will not return to your people; not without me. Not with
+me. Do you promise?"
+
+"I have promised already. I have no people of my own. Have I
+not told you, that you are everybody to me?"
+
+"Ah, yes," she said, slowly, "but I like to hear you say that
+again--every day, and every night, whenever I ask; and never to
+be angry because I ask. I am afraid of white women who are
+shameless and have fierce eyes." She scanned his features close
+for a moment and added:
+
+"Are they very beautiful? They must be."
+
+"I do not know," he whispered, thoughtfully. "And if I ever did
+know, looking at you I have forgotten."
+
+"Forgotten! And for three days and two nights you have forgotten
+me also! Why? Why were you angry with me when I spoke at first
+of Tuan Abdulla, in the days when we lived beside the brook? You
+remembered somebody then. Somebody in the land whence you come.
+Your tongue is false. You are white indeed, and your heart is
+full of deception. I know it. And yet I cannot help believing
+you when you talk of your love for me. But I am afraid!"
+
+He felt flattered and annoyed by her vehemence, and said--
+
+"Well, I am with you now. I did come back. And it was you that
+went away."
+
+"When you have helped Abdulla against the Rajah Laut, who is the
+first of white men, I shall not be afraid any more," she
+whispered.
+
+"You must believe what I say when I tell you that there never was
+another woman; that there is nothing for me to regret, and
+nothing but my enemies to remember."
+
+"Where do you come from?" she said, impulsive and inconsequent,
+in a passionate whisper. "What is that land beyond the great sea
+from which you come? A land of lies and of evil from which
+nothing but misfortune ever comes to us--who are not white. Did
+you not at first ask me to go there with you? That is why I went
+away."
+
+"I shall never ask you again."
+
+"And there is no woman waiting for you there?"
+
+"No!" said Willems, firmly.
+
+She bent over him. Her lips hovered above his face and her long
+hair brushed his cheeks.
+
+"You taught me the love of your people which is of the Devil,"
+she murmured, and bending still lower, she said faintly, "Like
+this?"
+
+"Yes, like this!" he answered very low, in a voice that trembled
+slightly with eagerness; and she pressed suddenly her lips to his
+while he closed his eyes in an ecstasy of delight.
+
+There was a long interval of silence. She stroked his head with
+gentle touches, and he lay dreamily, perfectly happy but for the
+annoyance of an indistinct vision of a well-known figure; a man
+going away from him and diminishing in a long perspective of
+fantastic trees, whose every leaf was an eye looking after that
+man, who walked away growing smaller, but never getting out of
+sight for all his steady progress. He felt a desire to see him
+vanish, a hurried impatience of his disappearance, and he watched
+for it with a careful and irksome effort. There was something
+familiar about that figure. Why! Himself! He gave a sudden
+start and opened his eyes, quivering with the emotion of that
+quick return from so far, of finding himself back by the fire
+with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. It had been half a
+dream; he had slumbered in her arms for a few seconds. Only the
+beginning of a dream--nothing more. But it was some time before
+he recovered from the shock of seeing himself go away so
+deliberately, so definitely, so unguardedly; and going
+away--where? Now, if he had not woke up in time he would never
+have come back again from there; from whatever place he was going
+to. He felt indignant. It was like an evasion, like a prisoner
+breaking his parole--that thing slinking off stealthily while he
+slept. He was very indignant, and was also astonished at the
+absurdity of his own emotions.
+
+She felt him tremble, and murmuring tender words, pressed his
+head to her breast. Again he felt very peaceful with a peace
+that was as complete as the silence round them. He muttered--
+
+"You are tired, Aissa."
+
+She answered so low that it was like a sigh shaped into faint
+words.
+
+"I shall watch your sleep, O child!"
+
+He lay very quiet, and listened to the beating of her heart.
+That sound, light, rapid, persistent, and steady; her very life
+beating against his cheek, gave him a clear perception of secure
+ownership, strengthened his belief in his possession of that
+human being, was like an assurance of the vague felicity of the
+future. There were no regrets, no doubts, no hesitation now.
+Had there ever been? All that seemed far away, ages ago--as
+unreal and pale as the fading memory of some delirium. All the
+anguish, suffering, strife of the past days; the humiliation and
+anger of his downfall; all that was an infamous nightmare, a
+thing born in sleep to be forgotten and leave no trace--and true
+life was this: this dreamy immobility with his head against her
+heart that beat so steadily.
+
+He was broad awake now, with that tingling wakefulness of the
+tired body which succeeds to the few refreshing seconds of
+irresistible sleep, and his wide-open eyes looked absently at the
+doorway of Omar's hut. The reed walls glistened in the light of
+the fire, the smoke of which, thin and blue, drifted slanting in
+a succession of rings and spirals across the doorway, whose empty
+blackness seemed to him impenetrable and enigmatical like a
+curtain hiding vast spaces full of unexpected surprises. This
+was only his fancy, but it was absorbing enough to make him
+accept the sudden appearance of a head, coming out of the gloom,
+as part of his idle fantasy or as the beginning of another short
+dream, of another vagary of his overtired brain. A face with
+drooping eyelids, old, thin, and yellow, above the scattered
+white of a long beard that touched the earth. A head without a
+body, only a foot above the ground, turning slightly from side to
+side on the edge of the circle of light as if to catch the
+radiating heat of the fire on either cheek in succession. He
+watched it in passive amazement, growing distinct, as if coming
+nearer to him, and the confused outlines of a body crawling on
+all fours came out, creeping inch by inch towards the fire, with
+a silent and all but imperceptible movement. He was astounded at
+the appearance of that blind head dragging that crippled body
+behind, without a sound, without a change in the composure of the
+sightless face, which was plain one second, blurred the next in
+the play of the light that drew it to itself steadily. A mute
+face with a kriss between its lips. This was no dream. Omar's
+face. But why? What was he after?
+
+He was too indolent in the happy languor of the moment to answer
+the question. It darted through his brain and passed out,
+leaving him free to listen again to the beating of her heart; to
+that precious and delicate sound which filled the quiet immensity
+of the night. Glancing upwards he saw the motionless head of the
+woman looking down at him in a tender gleam of liquid white
+between the long eyelashes, whose shadow rested on the soft curve
+of her cheek; and under the caress of that look, the uneasy
+wonder and the obscure fear of that apparition, crouching and
+creeping in turns towards the fire that was its guide, were
+lost--were drowned in the quietude of all his senses, as pain is
+drowned in the flood of drowsy serenity that follows upon a dose
+of opium.
+
+He altered the position of his head by ever so little, and now
+could see easily that apparition which he had seen a minute
+before and had nearly forgotten already. It had moved closer,
+gliding and noiseless like the shadow of some nightmare, and now
+it was there, very near, motionless and still as if listening;
+one hand and one knee advanced; the neck stretched out and the
+head turned full towards the fire. He could see the emaciated
+face, the skin shiny over the prominent bones, the black shadows
+of the hollow temples and sunken cheeks, and the two patches of
+blackness over the eyes, over those eyes that were dead and could
+not see. What was the impulse which drove out this blind cripple
+into the night to creep and crawl towards that fire? He looked
+at him, fascinated, but the face, with its shifting lights and
+shadows, let out nothing, closed and impenetrable like a walled
+door.
+
+Omar raised himself to a kneeling posture and sank on his heels,
+with his hands hanging down before him. Willems, looking out of
+his dreamy numbness, could see plainly the kriss between the thin
+lips, a bar across the face; the handle on one side where the
+polished wood caught a red gleam from the fire and the thin line
+of the blade running to a dull black point on the other. He felt
+an inward shock, which left his body passive in Aissa's embrace,
+but filled his breast with a tumult of powerless fear; and he
+perceived suddenly that it was his own death that was groping
+towards him; that it was the hate of himself and the hate of her
+love for him which drove this helpless wreck of a once brilliant
+and resolute pirate, to attempt a desperate deed that would be
+the glorious and supreme consolation of an unhappy old age. And
+while he looked, paralyzed with dread, at the father who had
+resumed his cautious advance--blind like fate, persistent like
+destiny--he listened with greedy eagerness to the heart of the
+daughter beating light, rapid, and steady against his head.
+
+He was in the grip of horrible fear; of a fear whose cold hand
+robs its victim of all will and of all power; of all wish to
+escape, to resist, or to move; which destroys hope and despair
+alike, and holds the empty and useless carcass as if in a vise
+under the coming stroke. It was not the fear of death--he had
+faced danger before--it was not even the fear of that particular
+form of death. It was not the fear of the end, for he knew that
+the end would not come then. A movement, a leap, a shout would
+save him from the feeble hand of the blind old man, from that
+hand that even now was, with cautious sweeps along the ground,
+feeling for his body in the darkness. It was the unreasoning
+fear of this glimpse into the unknown things, into those motives,
+impulses, desires he had ignored, but that had lived in the
+breasts of despised men, close by his side, and were revealed to
+him for a second, to be hidden again behind the black mists of
+doubt and deception. It was not death that frightened him: it
+was the horror of bewildered life where he could understand
+nothing and nobody round him; where he could guide, control,
+comprehend nothing and no one--not even himself.
+
+He felt a touch on his side. That contact, lighter than the
+caress of a mother's hand on the cheek of a sleeping child, had
+for him the force of a crushing blow. Omar had crept close, and
+now, kneeling above him, held the kriss in one hand while the
+other skimmed over his jacket up towards his breast in gentle
+touches; but the blind face, still turned to the heat of the
+fire, was set and immovable in its aspect of stony indifference
+to things it could not hope to see. With an effort Willems took
+his eyes off the deathlike mask and turned them up to Aissa's
+head. She sat motionless as if she had been part of the sleeping
+earth, then suddenly he saw her big sombre eyes open out wide in
+a piercing stare and felt the convulsive pressure of her hands
+pinning his arms along his body. A second dragged itself out,
+slow and bitter, like a day of mourning; a second full of regret
+and grief for that faith in her which took its flight from the
+shattered ruins of his trust. She was holding him! She too! He
+felt her heart give a great leap, his head slipped down on her
+knees, he closed his eyes and there was nothing. Nothing! It
+was as if she had died; as though her heart had leaped out into
+the night, abandoning him, defenceless and alone, in an empty
+world.
+
+His head struck the ground heavily as she flung him aside in her
+sudden rush. He lay as if stunned, face up and, daring not move,
+did not see the struggle, but heard the piercing shriek of mad
+fear, her low angry words; another shriek dying out in a moan.
+When he got up at last he looked at Aissa kneeling over her
+father, he saw her bent back in the effort of holding him down,
+Omar's contorted limbs, a hand thrown up above her head and her
+quick movement grasping the wrist. He made an impulsive step
+forward, but she turned a wild face to him and called out over
+her shoulder--
+
+"Keep back! Do not come near! Do not. . . ."
+
+And he stopped short, his arms hanging lifelessly by his side, as
+if those words had changed him into stone. She was afraid of his
+possible violence, but in the unsettling of all his convictions
+he was struck with the frightful thought that she preferred to
+kill her father all by herself; and the last stage of their
+struggle, at which he looked as though a red fog had filled his
+eyes, loomed up with an unnatural ferocity, with a sinister
+meaning; like something monstrous and depraved, forcing its
+complicity upon him under the cover of that awful night. He was
+horrified and grateful; drawn irresistibly to her--and ready to
+run away. He could not move at first--then he did not want to
+stir. He wanted to see what would happen. He saw her lift, with
+a tremendous effort, the apparently lifeless body into the hut,
+and remained standing, after they disappeared, with the vivid
+image in his eyes of that head swaying on her shoulder, the lower
+jaw hanging down, collapsed, passive, meaningless, like the head
+of a corpse.
+
+Then after a while he heard her voice speaking inside, harshly,
+with an agitated abruptness of tone; and in answer there were
+groans and broken murmurs of exhaustion. She spoke louder. He
+heard her saying violently--"No! No! Never!"
+
+And again a plaintive murmur of entreaty as of some one begging
+for a supreme favour, with a last breath. Then she said--
+
+"Never! I would sooner strike it into my own heart."
+
+She came out, stood panting for a short moment in the doorway,
+and then stepped into the firelight. Behind her, through the
+darkness came the sound of words calling the vengeance of heaven
+on her head, rising higher, shrill, strained, repeating the curse
+over and over again--till the voice cracked in a passionate
+shriek that died out into hoarse muttering ending with a deep and
+prolonged sigh. She stood facing Willems, one hand behind her
+back, the other raised in a gesture compelling attention, and she
+listened in that attitude till all was still inside the hut.
+Then she made another step forward and her hand dropped slowly.
+
+"Nothing but misfortune," she whispered, absently, to herself.
+"Nothing but misfortune to us who are not white." The anger and
+excitement died out of her face, and she looked straight at
+Willems with an intense and mournful gaze.
+
+He recovered his senses and his power of speech with a sudden
+start.
+
+"Aissa," he exclaimed, and the words broke out through his lips
+with hurried nervousness. "Aissa! How can I live here? Trust
+me. Believe in me. Let us go away from here. Go very far away!
+
+Very far; you and I!"
+
+He did not stop to ask himself whether he could escape, and how,
+and where. He was carried away by the flood of hate, disgust,
+and contempt of a white man for that blood which is not his
+blood, for that race which is not his race; for the brown skins;
+for the hearts false like the sea, blacker than night. This
+feeling of repulsion overmastered his reason in a clear
+conviction of the impossibility for him to live with her people.
+He urged her passionately to fly with him because out of all that
+abhorred crowd he wanted this one woman, but wanted her away from
+them, away from that race of slaves and cut-throats from which
+she sprang. He wanted her for himself--far from everybody, in
+some safe and dumb solitude. And as he spoke his anger and
+contempt rose, his hate became almost fear; and his desire of her
+grew immense, burning, illogical and merciless; crying to him
+through all his senses; louder than his hate, stronger than his
+fear, deeper than his contempt--irresistible and certain like
+death itself.
+
+Standing at a little distance, just within the light--but on the
+threshold of that darkness from which she had come--she listened,
+one hand still behind her back, the other arm stretched out with
+the hand half open as if to catch the fleeting words that rang
+around her, passionate, menacing, imploring, but all tinged with
+the anguish of his suffering, all hurried by the impatience that
+gnawed his breast. And while she listened she felt a slowing
+down of her heart-beats as the meaning of his appeal grew clearer
+before her indignant eyes, as she saw with rage and pain the
+edifice of her love, her own work, crumble slowly to pieces,
+destroyed by that man's fears, by that man's falseness. Her
+memory recalled the days by the brook when she had listened to
+other words--to other thoughts--to promises and to pleadings for
+other things, which came from that man's lips at the bidding of
+her look or her smile, at the nod of her head, at the whisper of
+her lips. Was there then in his heart something else than her
+image, other desires than the desires of her love, other fears
+than the fear of losing her? How could that be? Had she grown
+ugly or old in a moment? She was appalled, surprised and angry
+with the anger of unexpected humiliation; and her eyes looked
+fixedly, sombre and steady, at that man born in the land of
+violence and of evil wherefrom nothing but misfortune comes to
+those who are not white. Instead of thinking of her caresses,
+instead of forgetting all the world in her embrace, he was
+thinking yet of his people; of that people that steals every
+land, masters every sea, that knows no mercy and no truth--knows
+nothing but its own strength. O man of strong arm and of false
+heart! Go with him to a far country, be lost in the throng of
+cold eyes and false hearts--lose him there! Never! He was
+mad--mad with fear; but he should not escape her! She would keep
+him here a slave and a master; here where he was alone with her;
+where he must live for her--or die. She had a right to his love
+which was of her making, to the love that was in him now, while
+he spoke those words without sense. She must put between him and
+other white men a barrier of hate. He must not only stay, but he
+must also keep his promise to Abdulla, the fulfilment of which
+would make her safe.
+
+"Aissa, let us go! With you by my side I would attack them with
+my naked hands. Or no! Tomorrow we shall be outside, on board
+Abdulla's ship. You shall come with me and then I could . . .
+If the ship went ashore by some chance, then we could steal a
+canoe and escape in the confusion. . . . You are not afraid of
+the sea . . . of the sea that would give me freedom . . ."
+
+He was approaching her gradually with extended arms, while he
+pleaded ardently in incoherent words that ran over and tripped
+each other in the extreme eagerness of his speech. She stepped
+back, keeping her distance, her eyes on his face, watching on it
+the play of his doubts and of his hopes with a piercing gaze,
+that seemed to search out the innermost recesses of his thought;
+and it was as if she had drawn slowly the darkness round her,
+wrapping herself in its undulating folds that made her indistinct
+and vague. He followed her step by step till at last they both
+stopped, facing each other under the big tree of the enclosure.
+The solitary exile of the forests, great, motionless and solemn
+in his abandonment, left alone by the life of ages that had been
+pushed away from him by those pigmies that crept at his foot,
+towered high and straight above their heads. He seemed to look
+on, dispassionate and imposing, in his lonely greatness,
+spreading his branches wide in a gesture of lofty protection, as
+if to hide them in the sombre shelter of innumerable leaves; as
+if moved by the disdainful compassion of the strong, by the
+scornful pity of an aged giant, to screen this struggle of two
+human hearts from the cold scrutiny of glittering stars.
+
+The last cry of his appeal to her mercy rose loud, vibrated under
+the sombre canopy, darted among the boughs startling the white
+birds that slept wing to wing--and died without an echo,
+strangled in the dense mass of unstirring leaves. He could not
+see her face, but he heard her sighs and the distracted murmur of
+indistinct words. Then, as he listened holding his breath, she
+exclaimed suddenly--
+
+"Have you heard him? He has cursed me because I love you. You
+brought me suffering and strife--and his curse. And now you want
+to take me far away where I would lose you, lose my life; because
+your love is my life now. What else is there? Do not move," she
+cried violently, as he stirred a little--"do not speak! Take
+this! Sleep in peace!"
+
+He saw a shadowy movement of her arm. Something whizzed past and
+struck the ground behind him, close to the fire. Instinctively
+he turned round to look at it. A kriss without its sheath lay by
+the embers; a sinuous dark object, looking like something that
+had been alive and was now crushed, dead and very inoffensive; a
+black wavy outline very distinct and still in the dull red glow.
+Without thinking he moved to pick it up, stooping with the sad
+and humble movement of a beggar gathering the alms flung into the
+dust of the roadside. Was this the answer to his pleading, to
+the hot and living words that came from his heart? Was this the
+answer thrown at him like an insult, that thing made of wood and
+iron, insignificant and venomous, fragile and deadly? He held it
+by the blade and looked at the handle stupidly for a moment
+before he let it fall again at his feet; and when he turned round
+he faced only the night:--the night immense, profound and quiet;
+a sea of darkness in which she had disappeared without leaving a
+trace.
+
+He moved forward with uncertain steps, putting out both his hands
+before him with the anguish of a man blinded suddenly.
+
+"Aissa!" he cried--"come to me at once."
+
+He peered and listened, but saw nothing, heard nothing. After a
+while the solid blackness seemed to wave before his eyes like a
+curtain disclosing movements but hiding forms, and he heard light
+and hurried footsteps, then the short clatter of the gate leading
+to Lakamba's private enclosure. He sprang forward and brought up
+against the rough timber in time to hear the words, "Quick!
+Quick!" and the sound of the wooden bar dropped on the other
+side, securing the gate. With his arms thrown up, the palms
+against the paling, he slid down in a heap on the ground.
+
+"Aissa," he said, pleadingly, pressing his lips to a chink
+between the stakes. "Aissa, do you hear me? Come back! I will
+do what you want, give you all you desire--if I have to set the
+whole Sambir on fire and put that fire out with blood. Only come
+back. Now! At once! Are you there? Do you hear me? Aissa!"
+
+On the other side there were startled whispers of feminine
+voices; a frightened little laugh suddenly interrupted; some
+woman's admiring murmur--"This is brave talk!" Then after a
+short silence Aissa cried--
+
+"Sleep in peace--for the time of your going is near. Now I am
+afraid of you. Afraid of your fear. When you return with Tuan
+Abdulla you shall be great. You will find me here. And there
+will be nothing but love. Nothing else!--Always!--Till we die!"
+
+He listened to the shuffle of footsteps going away, and staggered
+to his feet, mute with the excess of his passionate anger against
+that being so savage and so charming; loathing her, himself,
+everybody he had ever known; the earth, the sky, the very air he
+drew into his oppressed chest; loathing it because it made him
+live, loathing her because she made him suffer. But he could not
+leave that gate through which she had passed. He wandered a
+little way off, then swerved round, came back and fell down again
+by the stockade only to rise suddenly in another attempt to break
+away from the spell that held him, that brought him back there,
+dumb, obedient and furious. And under the immobilized gesture of
+lofty protection in the branches outspread wide above his head,
+under the high branches where white birds slept wing to wing in
+the shelter of countless leaves, he tossed like a grain of dust
+in a whirlwind--sinking and rising--round and round--always near
+that gate. All through the languid stillness of that night he
+fought with the impalpable; he fought with the shadows, with the
+darkness, with the silence. He fought without a sound, striking
+futile blows, dashing from side to side; obstinate, hopeless, and
+always beaten back; like a man bewitched within the invisible
+sweep of a magic circle.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+"Yes! Cat, dog, anything that can scratch or bite; as long as it
+is harmful enough and mangy enough. A sick tiger would make you
+happy--of all things. A half-dead tiger that you could weep over
+and palm upon some poor devil in your power, to tend and nurse
+for you. Never mind the consequences--to the poor devil. Let
+him be mangled or eaten up, of course! You haven't any pity to
+spare for the victims of your infernal charity. Not you! Your
+tender heart bleeds only for what is poisonous and deadly. I
+curse the day when you set your benevolent eyes on him. I curse
+it . . ."
+
+"Now then! Now then!" growled Lingard in his moustache.
+Almayer, who had talked himself up to the choking point, drew a
+long breath and went on--
+
+"Yes! It has been always so. Always. As far back as I can
+remember. Don't you recollect? What about that half-starved dog
+you brought on board in Bankok in your arms. In your arms by . .
+. ! It went mad next day and bit the serang. You don't mean to
+say you have forgotten? The best serang you ever had! You said
+so yourself while you were helping us to lash him down to the
+chain-cable, just before he died in his fits. Now, didn't you?
+Two wives and ever so many children the man left. That was your
+doing. . . . And when you went out of your way and risked your
+ship to rescue some Chinamen from a water-logged junk in Formosa
+Straits, that was also a clever piece of business. Wasn't it?
+Those damned Chinamen rose on you before forty-eight hours. They
+were cut-throats, those poor fishermen. You knew they were
+cut-throats before you made up your mind to run down on a lee
+shore in a gale of wind to save them. A mad trick! If they
+hadn't been scoundrels--hopeless scoundrels--you would not have
+put your ship in jeopardy for them, I know. You would not have
+risked the lives of your crew--that crew you loved so--and your
+own life. Wasn't that foolish! And, besides, you were not
+honest. Suppose you had been drowned? I would have been in a
+pretty mess then, left alone here with that adopted daughter of
+yours. Your duty was to myself first. I married that girl
+because you promised to make my fortune. You know you did! And
+then three months afterwards you go and do that mad trick--for a
+lot of Chinamen too. Chinamen! You have no morality. I might
+have been ruined for the sake of those murderous scoundrels that,
+after all, had to be driven overboard after killing ever so many
+of your crew--of your beloved crew! Do you call that honest?"
+
+"Well, well!" muttered Lingard, chewing nervously the stump of
+his cheroot that had gone out and looking at Almayer--who stamped
+wildly about the verandah--much as a shepherd might look at a pet
+sheep in his obedient flock turning unexpectedly upon him in
+enraged revolt. He seemed disconcerted, contemptuously angry yet
+somewhat amused; and also a little hurt as if at some bitter jest
+at his own expense. Almayer stopped suddenly, and crossing his
+arms on his breast, bent his body forward and went on speaking.
+
+"I might have been left then in an awkward hole--all on account
+of your absurd disregard for your safety--yet I bore no grudge.
+I knew your weaknesses. But now--when I think of it! Now we are
+ruined. Ruined! Ruined! My poor little Nina. Ruined!"
+
+He slapped his thighs smartly, walked with small steps this way
+and that, seized a chair, planted it with a bang before Lingard,
+and sat down staring at the old seaman with haggard eyes.
+Lingard, returning his stare steadily, dived slowly into various
+pockets, fished out at last a box of matches and proceeded to
+light his cheroot carefully, rolling it round and round between
+his lips, without taking his gaze for a moment off the distressed
+Almayer. Then from behind a cloud of tobacco smoke he said
+calmly--
+
+"If you had been in trouble as often as I have, my boy, you
+wouldn't carry on so. I have been ruined more than once. Well,
+here I am."
+
+"Yes, here you are," interrupted Almayer. "Much good it is to
+me. Had you been here a month ago it would have been of some
+use. But now! . . You might as well be a thousand miles off."
+
+"You scold like a drunken fish-wife," said Lingard, serenely. He
+got up and moved slowly to the front rail of the verandah. The
+floor shook and the whole house vibrated under his heavy step.
+For a moment he stood with his back to Almayer, looking out on
+the river and forest of the east bank, then turned round and
+gazed mildly down upon him.
+
+"It's very lonely this morning here. Hey?" he said.
+
+Almayer lifted up his head.
+
+"Ah! you notice it--don't you? I should think it is lonely!
+Yes, Captain Lingard, your day is over in Sambir. Only a month
+ago this verandah would have been full of people coming to greet
+you. Fellows would be coming up those steps grinning and
+salaaming--to you and to me. But our day is over. And not by my
+fault either. You can't say that. It's all the doing of that
+pet rascal of yours. Ah! He is a beauty! You should have seen
+him leading that hellish crowd. You would have been proud of
+your old favourite."
+
+"Smart fellow that," muttered Lingard, thoughtfully. Almayer
+jumped up with a shriek.
+
+"And that's all you have to say! Smart fellow! O Lord!"
+
+"Don't make a show of yourself. Sit down. Let's talk quietly.
+I want to know all about it. So he led?"
+
+"He was the soul of the whole thing. He piloted Abdulla's ship
+in. He ordered everything and everybody," said Almayer, who sat
+down again, with a resigned air.
+
+"When did it happen--exactly?"
+
+"On the sixteenth I heard the first rumours of Abdulla's ship
+being in the river; a thing I refused to believe at first. Next
+day I could not doubt any more. There was a great council held
+openly in Lakamba's place where almost everybody in Sambir
+attended. On the eighteenth the Lord of the Isles was anchored
+in Sambir reach, abreast of my house. Let's see. Six weeks
+to-day, exactly."
+
+"And all that happened like this? All of a sudden. You never
+heard anything--no warning. Nothing. Never had an idea that
+something was up? Come, Almayer!"
+
+"Heard! Yes, I used to hear something every day. Mostly lies.
+Is there anything else in Sambir?"
+
+"You might not have believed them," observed Lingard. "In fact
+you ought not to have believed everything that was told to you,
+as if you had been a green hand on his first voyage."
+
+Almayer moved in his chair uneasily.
+
+"That scoundrel came here one day," he said. "He had been away
+from the house for a couple of months living with that woman. I
+only heard about him now and then from Patalolo's people when
+they came over. Well one day, about noon, he appeared in this
+courtyard, as if he had been jerked up from hell-where he
+belongs."
+
+Lingard took his cheroot out, and, with his mouth full of white
+smoke that oozed out through his parted lips, listened,
+attentive. After a short pause Almayer went on, looking at the
+floor moodily--
+
+"I must say he looked awful. Had a bad bout of the ague
+probably. The left shore is very unhealthy. Strange that only
+the breadth of the river . . ."
+
+He dropped off into deep thoughtfulness as if he had forgotten
+his grievances in a bitter meditation upon the unsanitary
+condition of the virgin forests on the left bank. Lingard took
+this opportunity to expel the smoke in a mighty expiration and
+threw the stump of his cheroot over his shoulder.
+
+"Go on," he said, after a while. "He came to see you . . ."
+
+"But it wasn't unhealthy enough to finish him, worse luck!" went
+on Almayer, rousing himself, "and, as I said, he turned up here
+with his brazen impudence. He bullied me, he threatened vaguely.
+He wanted to scare me, to blackmail me. Me! And, by heaven--he
+said you would approve. You! Can you conceive such impudence?
+I couldn't exactly make out what he was driving at. Had I known,
+I would have approved him. Yes! With a bang on the head. But
+how could I guess that he knew enough to pilot a ship through the
+entrance you always said was so difficult. And, after all, that
+was the only danger. I could deal with anybody here--but when
+Abdulla came. . . . That barque of his is armed. He carries
+twelve brass six-pounders, and about thirty men. Desperate
+beggars. Sumatra men, from Deli and Acheen. Fight all day and
+ask for more in the evening. That kind."
+
+"I know, I know," said Lingard, impatiently.
+
+"Of course, then, they were cheeky as much as you please after he
+anchored abreast of our jetty. Willems brought her up himself in
+the best berth. I could see him from this verandah standing
+forward, together with the half-caste master. And that woman was
+there too. Close to him. I heard they took her on board off
+Lakamba's place. Willems said he would not go higher without
+her. Stormed and raged. Frightened them, I believe. Abdulla
+had to interfere. She came off alone in a canoe, and no sooner
+on deck than she fell at his feet before all hands, embraced his
+knees, wept, raved, begged his pardon. Why? I wonder.
+Everybody in Sambir is talking of it. They never heard tell or
+saw anything like it. I have all this from Ali, who goes about
+in the settlement and brings me the news. I had better know what
+is going on--hadn't I? From what I can make out, they--he and
+that woman--are looked upon as something mysterious--beyond
+comprehension. Some think them mad. They live alone with an old
+woman in a house outside Lakamba's campong and are greatly
+respected--or feared, I should say rather. At least, he is. He
+is very violent. She knows nobody, sees nobody, will speak to
+nobody but him. Never leaves him for a moment. It's the talk of
+the place. There are other rumours. From what I hear I suspect
+that Lakamba and Abdulla are tired of him. There's also talk of
+him going away in the Lord of the Isles--when she leaves here for
+the southward--as a kind of Abdulla's agent. At any rate, he
+must take the ship out. The half-caste is not equal to it as
+yet."
+
+Lingard, who had listened absorbed till then, began now to walk
+with measured steps. Almayer ceased talking and followed him
+with his eyes as he paced up and down with a quarter-deck swing,
+tormenting and twisting his long white beard, his face perplexed
+and thoughtful.
+
+"So he came to you first of all, did he?" asked Lingard, without
+stopping.
+
+"Yes. I told you so. He did come. Came to extort money,
+goods--I don't know what else. Wanted to set up as a trader--the
+swine! I kicked his hat into the courtyard, and he went after
+it, and that was the last of him till he showed up with Abdulla.
+How could I know that he could do harm in that way? Or in any
+way at that! Any local rising I could put down easy with my own
+men and with Patalolo's help."
+
+"Oh! yes. Patalolo. No good. Eh? Did you try him at all?"
+
+"Didn't I!" exclaimed Almayer. "I went to see him myself on the
+twelfth. That was four days before Abdulla entered the river.
+In fact, same day Willems tried to get at me. I did feel a
+little uneasy then. Patalolo assured me that there was no
+human being that did not love me in Sambir. Looked as wise as an
+owl. Told me not to listen to the lies of wicked people from
+down the river. He was alluding to that man Bulangi, who lives
+up the sea reach, and who had sent me word that a strange ship
+was anchored outside--which, of course, I repeated to Patalolo.
+He would not believe. Kept on mumbling 'No! No! No!' like an old
+parrot, his head all of a tremble, all beslobbered with betel-nut
+juice. I thought there was something queer about him. Seemed so
+restless, and as if in a hurry to get rid of me. Well. Next day
+that one-eyed malefactor who lives with Lakamba--what's his
+name--Babalatchi, put in an appearance here! Came about mid-day,
+casually like, and stood there on this verandah chatting about
+one thing and another. Asking when I expected you, and so on.
+Then, incidentally, he mentioned that they--his master and
+himself--were very much bothered by a ferocious white man--my
+friend--who was hanging about that woman--Omar's daughter. Asked
+my advice. Very deferential and proper. I told him the white
+man was not my friend, and that they had better kick him out.
+Whereupon he went away salaaming, and protesting his friendship
+and his master's goodwill. Of course I know now the infernal
+nigger came to spy and to talk over some of my men. Anyway,
+eight were missing at the evening muster. Then I took alarm.
+Did not dare to leave my house unguarded. You know what my wife
+is, don't you? And I did not care to take the child with me--it
+being late--so I sent a message to Patalolo to say that we ought
+to consult; that there were rumours and uneasiness in the
+settlement. Do you know what answer I got?"
+
+Lingard stopped short in his walk before Almayer, who went on,
+after an impressive pause, with growing animation.
+
+"All brought it: 'The Rajah sends a friend's greeting, and does
+not understand the message.' That was all. Not a word more
+could Ali get out of him. I could see that Ali was pretty well
+scared. He hung about, arranging my hammock--one thing and
+another. Then just before going away he mentioned that the
+water-gate of the Rajah's place was heavily barred, but that he
+could see only very few men about the courtyard. Finally he said,
+'There is darkness in our Rajah's house, but no sleep. Only
+darkness and fear and the wailing of women.' Cheerful, wasn't
+it? It made me feel cold down my back somehow. After Ali
+slipped away I stood here--by this table, and listened to the
+shouting and drumming in the settlement. Racket enough for
+twenty weddings. It was a little past midnight then."
+
+Again Almayer stopped in his narrative with an abrupt shutting of
+lips, as if he had said all that there was to tell, and Lingard
+stood staring at him, pensive and silent. A big bluebottle fly
+flew in recklessly into the cool verandah, and darted with loud
+buzzing between the two men. Lingard struck at it with his hat.
+The fly swerved, and Almayer dodged his head out of the way.
+Then Lingard aimed another ineffectual blow; Almayer jumped up
+and waved his arms about. The fly buzzed desperately, and the
+vibration of minute wings sounded in the peace of the early
+morning like a far-off string orchestra accompanying the hollow,
+determined stamping of the two men, who, with heads thrown back
+and arms gyrating on high, or again bending low with infuriated
+lunges, were intent upon killing the intruder. But suddenly the
+buzz died out in a thin thrill away in the open space of the
+courtyard, leaving Lingard and Almayer standing face to face in
+the fresh silence of the young day, looking very puzzled and
+idle, their arms hanging uselessly by their sides--like men
+disheartened by some portentous failure.
+
+"Look at that!" muttered Lingard. "Got away after all."
+
+"Nuisance," said Almayer in the same tone. "Riverside is overrun
+with them. This house is badly placed . . . mosquitos . . . and
+these big flies . . . . last week stung Nina . . . been ill four
+days . . . poor child. . . . I wonder what such damned things
+are made for!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+After a long silence, during which Almayer had moved towards the
+table and sat down, his head between his hands, staring straight
+before him, Lingard, who had recommenced walking, cleared his
+throat and said--
+
+"What was it you were saying?"
+
+"Ah! Yes! You should have seen this settlement that night. I
+don't think anybody went to bed. I walked down to the point, and
+could see them. They had a big bonfire in the palm grove, and
+the talk went on there till the morning. When I came back here
+and sat in the dark verandah in this quiet house I felt so
+frightfully lonely that I stole in and took the child out of her
+cot and brought her here into my hammock. If it hadn't been for
+her I am sure I would have gone mad; I felt so utterly alone and
+helpless. Remember, I hadn't heard from you for four months.
+Didn't know whether you were alive or dead. Patalolo would have
+nothing to do with me. My own men were deserting me like rats do
+a sinking hulk. That was a black night for me, Captain Lingard.
+A black night as I sat here not knowing what would happen next.
+They were so excited and rowdy that I really feared they would
+come and burn the house over my head. I went and brought my
+revolver. Laid it loaded on the table. There were such awful
+yells now and then. Luckily the child slept through it, and
+seeing her so pretty and peaceful steadied me somehow. Couldn't
+believe there was any violence in this world, looking at her
+lying so quiet and so unconscious of what went on. But it was
+very hard. Everything was at an end. You must understand that
+on that night there was no government in Sambir. Nothing to
+restrain those fellows. Patalolo had collapsed. I was abandoned
+by my own people, and all that lot could vent their spite on me
+if they wanted. They know no gratitude. How many times haven't I
+saved this settlement from starvation? Absolute starvation.
+Only three months ago I distributed again a lot of rice on
+credit. There was nothing to eat in this infernal place. They
+came begging on their knees. There isn't a man in Sambir, big or
+little, who is not in debt to Lingard & Co. Not one. You ought
+to be satisfied. You always said that was the right policy for
+us. Well, I carried it out. Ah! Captain Lingard, a policy like
+that should be backed by loaded rifles . . ."
+
+"You had them!" exclaimed Lingard in the midst of his promenade,
+that went on more rapid as Almayer talked: the headlong tramp of
+a man hurrying on to do something violent. The verandah was full
+of dust, oppressive and choking, which rose under the old
+seaman's feet, and made Almayer cough again and again.
+
+"Yes, I had! Twenty. And not a finger to pull a trigger. It's
+easy to talk," he spluttered, his face very red.
+
+Lingard dropped into a chair, and leaned back with one hand
+stretched out at length upon the table, the other thrown over the
+back of his seat. The dust settled, and the sun surging above
+the forest flooded the verandah with a clear light. Almayer got
+up and busied himself in lowering the split rattan screens that
+hung between the columns of the verandah.
+
+"Phew!" said Lingard, "it will be a hot day. That's right, my
+boy. Keep the sun out. We don't want to be roasted alive here."
+
+Almayer came back, sat down, and spoke very calmly--
+
+"In the morning I went across to see Patalolo. I took the child
+with me, of course. I found the water-gate barred, and had to
+walk round through the bushes. Patalolo received me lying on the
+floor, in the dark, all the shutters closed. I could get nothing
+out of him but lamentations and groans. He said you must be
+dead. That Lakamba was coming now with Abdulla's guns to kill
+everybody. Said he did not mind being killed, as he was an old
+man, but that the wish of his heart was to make a pilgrimage. He
+was tired of men's ingratitude--he had no heirs--he wanted to go
+to Mecca and die there. He would ask Abdulla to let him go.
+Then he abused Lakamba--between sobs--and you, a little. You
+prevented him from asking for a flag that would have been
+respected--he was right there--and now when his enemies were
+strong he was weak, and you were not there to help him. When I
+tried to put some heart into him, telling him he had four big
+guns--you know the brass six-pounders you left here last
+year--and that I would get powder, and that, perhaps, together we
+could make head against Lakamba, he simply howled at me. No
+matter which way he turned--he shrieked--the white men would be
+the death of him, while he wanted only to be a pilgrim and be at
+peace. My belief is," added Almayer, after a short pause, and
+fixing a dull stare upon Lingard, "that the old fool saw this
+thing coming for a long time, and was not only too frightened to
+do anything himself, but actually too scared to let you or me
+know of his suspicions. Another of your particular pets! Well!
+You have a lucky hand, I must say!"
+
+Lingard struck a sudden blow on the table with his clenched hand.
+There was a sharp crack of splitting wood. Almayer started up
+violently, then fell back in his chair and looked at the table.
+
+"There!" he said, moodily, "you don't know your own strength.
+This table is completely ruined. The only table I had been able
+to save from my wife. By and by I will have to eat squatting on
+the floor like a native."
+
+Lingard laughed heartily. "Well then, don't nag at me like a
+woman at a drunken husband!" He became very serious after
+awhile, and added, "If it hadn't been for the loss of the Flash I
+would have been here three months ago, and all would have been
+well. No use crying over that. Don't you be uneasy, Kaspar. We
+will have everything ship-shape here in a very short time."
+
+"What? You don't mean to expel Abdulla out of here by force! I
+tell you, you can't."
+
+"Not I!" exclaimed Lingard. "That's all over, I am afraid.
+Great pity. They will suffer for it. He will squeeze them.
+Great pity. Damn it! I feel so sorry for them if I had the
+Flash here I would try force. Eh! Why not? However, the poor
+Flash is gone, and there is an end of it. Poor old hooker. Hey,
+Almayer? You made a voyage or two with me. Wasn't she a sweet
+craft? Could make her do anything but talk. She was better than
+a wife to me. Never scolded. Hey? . . . And to think that it
+should come to this. That I should leave her poor old bones
+sticking on a reef as though I had been a damned fool of a
+southern-going man who must have half a mile of water under his
+keel to be safe! Well! well! It's only those who do nothing
+that make no mistakes, I suppose. But it's hard. Hard."
+
+He nodded sadly, with his eyes on the ground. Almayer looked at
+him with growing indignation.
+
+"Upon my word, you are heartless," he burst out; "perfectly
+heartless--and selfish. It does not seem to strike you--in all
+that--that in losing your ship--by your recklessness, I am
+sure--you ruin me--us, and my little Nina. What's going to
+become of me and of her? That's what I want to know. You
+brought me here, made me your partner, and now, when everything
+is gone to the devil--through your fault, mind you--you talk
+about your ship . . . ship! You can get another. But here.
+This trade. That's gone now, thanks to Willems. . . . Your dear
+Willems!"
+
+"Never you mind about Willems. I will look after him," said
+Lingard, severely. "And as to the trade . . . I will make your
+fortune yet, my boy. Never fear. Have you got any cargo for the
+schooner that brought me here?"
+
+"The shed is full of rattans," answered Almayer, "and I have
+about eighty tons of guttah in the well. The last lot I ever will
+have, no doubt," he added, bitterly.
+
+"So, after all, there was no robbery. You've lost nothing
+actually. Well, then, you must . . . Hallo! What's the matter!
+. . . Here! . . ."
+
+"Robbery! No!" screamed Almayer, throwing up his hands.
+
+He fell back in the chair and his face became purple. A little
+white foam appeared on his lips and trickled down his chin, while
+he lay back, showing the whites of his upturned eyes. When he
+came to himself he saw Lingard standing over him, with an empty
+water-chatty in his hand.
+
+"You had a fit of some kind," said the old seaman with much
+concern. "What is it? You did give me a fright. So very
+sudden."
+
+Almayer, his hair all wet and stuck to his head, as if he had
+been diving, sat up and gasped.
+
+"Outrage! A fiendish outrage. I . . ."
+
+Lingard put the chatty on the table and looked at him in
+attentive silence. Almayer passed his hand over his forehead and
+went on in an unsteady tone:
+
+"When I remember that, I lose all control," he said. "I told you
+he anchored Abdulla's ship abreast our jetty, but over to the
+other shore, near the Rajah's place. The ship was surrounded
+with boats. From here it looked as if she had been landed on a
+raft. Every dugout in Sambir was there. Through my glass I
+could distinguish the faces of people on the poop--Abdulla,
+Willems, Lakamba--everybody. That old cringing scoundrel Sahamin
+was there. I could see quite plain. There seemed to be much
+talk and discussion. Finally I saw a ship's boat lowered. Some
+Arab got into her, and the boat went towards Patalolo's
+landing-place. It seems they had been refused admittance--so
+they say. I think myself that the water-gate was not unbarred
+quick enough to please the exalted messenger. At any rate I saw
+the boat come back almost directly. I was looking on, rather
+interested, when I saw Willems and some more go forward--very
+busy about something there. That woman was also amongst them.
+Ah, that woman . . ."
+
+Almayer choked, and seemed on the point of having a relapse, but
+by a violent effort regained a comparative composure.
+
+"All of a sudden," he continued--"bang! They fired a shot into
+Patalolo's gate, and before I had time to catch my breath--I was
+startled, you may believe--they sent another and burst the gate
+open. Whereupon, I suppose, they thought they had done enough
+for a while, and probably felt hungry, for a feast began aft.
+Abdulla sat amongst them like an idol, cross-legged, his hands on
+his lap. He's too great altogether to eat when others do, but he
+presided, you see. Willems kept on dodging about forward, aloof
+from the crowd, and looking at my house through the ship's long
+glass. I could not resist it. I shook my fist at him."
+
+"Just so," said Lingard, gravely. "That was the thing to do, of
+course. If you can't fight a man the best thing is to exasperate
+him."
+
+Almayer waved his hand in a superior manner, and continued,
+unmoved: "You may say what you like. You can't realize my
+feelings. He saw me, and, with his eye still at the small end of
+the glass, lifted his arm as if answering a hail. I thought my
+turn to be shot at would come next after Patalolo, so I ran up
+the Union Jack to the flagstaff in the yard. I had no other
+protection. There were only three men besides Ali that stuck to
+me--three cripples, for that matter, too sick to get away. I
+would have fought singlehanded, I think, I was that angry, but
+there was the child. What to do with her? Couldn't send her up
+the river with the mother. You know I can't trust my wife. I
+decided to keep very quiet, but to let nobody land on our shore.
+Private property, that; under a deed from Patalolo. I was within
+my right--wasn't I? The morning was very quiet. After they had
+a feed on board the barque with Abdulla most of them went home;
+only the big people remained. Towards three o'clock Sahamin
+crossed alone in a small canoe. I went down on our wharf with my
+gun to speak to him, but didn't let him land. The old hypocrite
+said Abdulla sent greetings and wished to talk with me on
+business; would I come on board? I said no; I would not. Told
+him that Abdulla may write and I would answer, but no interview,
+neither on board his ship nor on shore. I also said that if
+anybody attempted to land within my fences I would shoot--no
+matter whom. On that he lifted his hands to heaven, scandalized,
+and then paddled away pretty smartly--to report, I suppose. An
+hour or so afterwards I saw Willems land a boat party at the
+Rajah's. It was very quiet. Not a shot was fired, and there was
+hardly any shouting. They tumbled those brass guns you presented
+to Patalolo last year down the bank into the river. It's deep
+there close to. The channel runs that way, you know. About
+five, Willems went back on board, and I saw him join Abdulla by
+the wheel aft. He talked a lot, swinging his arms about--seemed
+to explain things--pointed at my house, then down the reach.
+Finally, just before sunset, they hove upon the cable and dredged
+the ship down nearly half a mile to the junction of the two
+branches of the river--where she is now, as you might have seen."
+
+Lingard nodded.
+
+"That evening, after dark--I was informed--Abdulla landed for the
+first time in Sambir. He was entertained in Sahamin's house. I
+sent Ali to the settlement for news. He returned about nine, and
+reported that Patalolo was sitting on Abdulla's left hand before
+Sahamin's fire. There was a great council. Ali seemed to think
+that Patalolo was a prisoner, but he was wrong there. They did
+the trick very neatly. Before midnight everything was arranged
+as I can make out. Patalolo went back to his demolished
+stockade, escorted by a dozen boats with torches. It appears he
+begged Abdulla to let him have a passage in the Lord of the Isles
+to Penang. From there he would go to Mecca. The firing
+business was alluded to as a mistake. No doubt it was in a
+sense. Patalolo never meant resisting. So he is going as soon
+as the ship is ready for sea. He went on board next day with
+three women and half a dozen fellows as old as himself. By
+Abdulla's orders he was received with a salute of seven guns, and
+he has been living on board ever since--five weeks. I doubt
+whether he will leave the river alive. At any rate he won't live
+to reach Penang. Lakamba took over all his goods, and gave him a
+draft on Abdulla's house payable in Penang. He is bound to die
+before he gets there. Don't you see?"
+
+He sat silent for a while in dejected meditation, then went on:
+
+"Of course there were several rows during the night. Various
+fellows took the opportunity of the unsettled state of affairs to
+pay off old scores and settle old grudges. I passed the night in
+that chair there, dozing uneasily. Now and then there would be a
+great tumult and yelling which would make me sit up, revolver in
+hand. However, nobody was killed. A few broken heads--that's
+all. Early in the morning Willems caused them to make a fresh
+move which I must say surprised me not a little. As soon as
+there was daylight they busied themselves in setting up a
+flag-pole on the space at the other end of the settlement, where
+Abdulla is having his houses built now. Shortly after sunrise
+there was a great gathering at the flag-pole. All went there.
+Willems was standing leaning against the mast, one arm over that
+woman's shoulders. They had brought an armchair for Patalolo,
+and Lakamba stood on the right hand of the old man, who made a
+speech. Everybody in Sambir was there: women, slaves,
+children--everybody! Then Patalolo spoke. He said that by the
+mercy of the Most High he was going on a pilgrimage. The dearest
+wish of his heart was to be accomplished. Then, turning to
+Lakamba, he begged him to rule justly during his--Patalolo's--
+absence. There was a bit of play-acting there. Lakamba said he
+was unworthy of the honourable burden, and Patalolo insisted.
+Poor old fool! It must have been bitter to him. They made him
+actually entreat that scoundrel. Fancy a man compelled to beg of
+a robber to despoil him! But the old Rajah was so frightened.
+Anyway, he did it, and Lakamba accepted at last. Then Willems
+made a speech to the crowd. Said that on his way to the west the
+Rajah--he meant Patalolo--would see the Great White Ruler in
+Batavia and obtain his protection for Sambir. Meantime, he went
+on, I, an Orang Blanda and your friend, hoist the flag under the
+shadow of which there is safety. With that he ran up a Dutch
+flag to the mast-head. It was made hurriedly, during the night,
+of cotton stuffs, and, being heavy, hung down the mast, while the
+crowd stared. Ali told me there was a great sigh of surprise,
+but not a word was spoken till Lakamba advanced and proclaimed in
+a loud voice that during all that day every one passing by the
+flagstaff must uncover his head and salaam before the emblem."
+
+"But, hang it all!" exclaimed Lingard--"Abdulla is British!"
+
+"Abdulla wasn't there at all--did not go on shore that day. Yet
+Ali, who has his wits about him, noticed that the space where the
+crowd stood was under the guns of the Lord of the Isles. They
+had put a coir warp ashore, and gave the barque a cant in the
+current, so as to bring the broadside to bear on the flagstaff.
+Clever! Eh? But nobody dreamt of resistance. When they
+recovered from the surprise there was a little quiet jeering; and
+Bahassoen abused Lakamba violently till one of Lakamba's men hit
+him on the head with a staff. Frightful crack, I am told. Then
+they left off jeering. Meantime Patalolo went away, and Lakamba
+sat in the chair at the foot of the flagstaff, while the crowd
+surged around, as if they could not make up their minds to go.
+Suddenly there was a great noise behind Lakamba's chair. It was
+that woman, who went for Willems. Ali says she was like a wild
+beast, but he twisted her wrist and made her grovel in the dust.
+Nobody knows exactly what it was about. Some say it was about
+that flag. He carried her off, flung her into a canoe, and went
+on board Abdulla's ship. After that Sahamin was the first to
+salaam to the flag. Others followed suit. Before noon
+everything was quiet in the settlement, and Ali came back and
+told me all this."
+
+Almayer drew a long breath. Lingard stretched out his legs.
+
+"Go on!" he said.
+
+Almayer seemed to struggle with himself. At last he spluttered
+out:
+
+"The hardest is to tell yet. The most unheard-of thing! An
+outrage! A fiendish outrage!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+"Well! Let's know all about it. I can't imagine . . ." began
+Lingard, after waiting for some time in silence.
+
+"Can't imagine! I should think you couldn't," interrupted
+Almayer. "Why! . . . You just listen. When Ali came back I
+felt a little easier in my mind. There was then some semblance
+of order in Sambir. I had the Jack up since the morning and
+began to feel safer. Some of my men turned up in the afternoon.
+I did not ask any questions; set them to work as if nothing had
+happened. Towards the evening--it might have been five or
+half-past--I was on our jetty with the child when I heard shouts
+at the far-off end of the settlement. At first I didn't take
+much notice. By and by Ali came to me and says, 'Master, give me
+the child, there is much trouble in the settlement.' So I gave
+him Nina and went in, took my revolver, and passed through the
+house into the back courtyard. As I came down the steps I saw
+all the serving girls clear out from the cooking shed, and I
+heard a big crowd howling on the other side of the dry ditch
+which is the limit of our ground. Could not see them on account
+of the fringe of bushes along the ditch, but I knew that crowd
+was angry and after somebody. As I stood wondering, that
+Jim-Eng--you know the Chinaman who settled here a couple of years
+ago?"
+
+"He was my passenger; I brought him here," exclaimed Lingard. "A
+first-class Chinaman that."
+
+"Did you? I had forgotten. Well, that Jim-Eng, he burst through
+the bush and fell into my arms, so to speak. He told me,
+panting, that they were after him because he wouldn't take off
+his hat to the flag. He was not so much scared, but he was very
+angry and indignant. Of course he had to run for it; there were
+some fifty men after him--Lakamba's friends--but he was full of
+fight. Said he was an Englishman, and would not take off his hat
+to any flag but English. I tried to soothe him while the crowd
+was shouting on the other side of the ditch. I told him he must
+take one of my canoes and cross the river. Stop on the other
+side for a couple of days. He wouldn't. Not he. He was
+English, and he would fight the whole lot. Says he: 'They are
+only black fellows. We white men,' meaning me and himself, 'can
+fight everybody in Sambir.' He was mad with passion. The crowd
+quieted a little, and I thought I could shelter Jim-Eng without
+much risk, when all of a sudden I heard Willems' voice. He
+shouted to me in English: 'Let four men enter your compound to
+get that Chinaman!' I said nothing. Told Jim-Eng to keep quiet
+too. Then after a while Willems shouts again: 'Don't resist,
+Almayer. I give you good advice. I am keeping this crowd back.
+Don't resist them!' That beggar's voice enraged me; I could not
+help it. I cried to him: 'You are a liar!' and just then
+Jim-Eng, who had flung off his jacket and had tucked up his
+trousers ready for a fight; just then that fellow he snatches the
+revolver out of my hand and lets fly at them through the bush.
+There was a sharp cry--he must have hit somebody--and a great
+yell, and before I could wink twice they were over the ditch and
+through the bush and on top of us! Simply rolled over us! There
+wasn't the slightest chance to resist. I was trampled under
+foot, Jim-Eng got a dozen gashes about his body, and we were
+carried halfway up the yard in the first rush. My eyes and mouth
+were full of dust; I was on my back with three or four fellows
+sitting on me. I could hear Jim-Eng trying to shout not very far
+from me. Now and then they would throttle him and he would
+gurgle. I could hardly breathe myself with two heavy fellows on
+my chest. Willems came up running and ordered them to raise me
+up, but to keep good hold. They led me into the verandah. I
+looked round, but did not see either Ali or the child. Felt
+easier. Struggled a little. . . . Oh, my God!"
+
+Almayer's face was distorted with a passing spasm of rage.
+Lingard moved in his chair slightly. Almayer went on after a
+short pause:
+
+"They held me, shouting threats in my face. Willems took down my
+hammock and threw it to them. He pulled out the drawer of this
+table, and found there a palm and needle and some sail-twine. We
+were making awnings for your brig, as you had asked me last
+voyage before you left. He knew, of course, where to look for
+what he wanted. By his orders they laid me out on the floor,
+wrapped me in my hammock, and he started to stitch me in, as if I
+had been a corpse, beginning at the feet. While he worked he
+laughed wickedly. I called him all the names I could think of.
+He told them to put their dirty paws over my mouth and nose. I
+was nearly choked. Whenever I moved they punched me in the ribs.
+
+He went on taking fresh needlefuls as he wanted them, and working
+steadily. Sewed me up to my throat. Then he rose, saying, 'That
+will do; let go.' That woman had been standing by; they must
+have been reconciled. She clapped her hands. I lay on the floor
+like a bale of goods while he stared at me, and the woman
+shrieked with delight. Like a bale of goods! There was a grin
+on every face, and the verandah was full of them. I wished
+myself dead--'pon my word, Captain Lingard, I did! I do now
+whenever I think of it!"
+
+Lingard's face expressed sympathetic indignation. Almayer
+dropped his head upon his arms on the table, and spoke in that
+position in an indistinct and muffled voice, without looking up.
+
+"Finally, by his directions, they flung me into the big
+rocking-chair. I was sewed in so tight that I was stiff like a
+piece of wood. He was giving orders in a very loud voice, and
+that man Babalatchi saw that they were executed. They obeyed him
+implicitly. Meantime I lay there in the chair like a log, and
+that woman capered before me and made faces; snapped her fingers
+before my nose. Women are bad!--ain't they? I never saw her
+before, as far as I know. Never done anything to her. Yet she
+was perfectly fiendish. Can you understand it? Now and then she
+would leave me alone to hang round his neck for awhile, and then
+she would return before my chair and begin her exercises again.
+He looked on, indulgent. The perspiration ran down my face, got
+into my eyes--my arms were sewn in. I was blinded half the time;
+at times I could see better. She drags him before my chair. 'I
+am like white women,' she says, her arms round his neck. You
+should have seen the faces of the fellows in the verandah! They
+were scandalized and ashamed of themselves to see her behaviour.
+Suddenly she asks him, alluding to me: 'When are you going to
+kill him?' Imagine how I felt. I must have swooned; I don't
+remember exactly. I fancy there was a row; he was angry. When I
+got my wits again he was sitting close to me, and she was gone.
+I understood he sent her to my wife, who was hiding in the back
+room and never came out during this affair. Willems says to
+me--I fancy I can hear his voice, hoarse and dull--he says to me:
+'Not a hair of your head shall be touched.' I made no sound.
+Then he goes on: 'Please remark that the flag you have
+hoisted--which, by the by, is not yours--has been respected.
+Tell Captain Lingard so when you do see him. But,' he says, 'you
+first fired at the crowd.' 'You are a liar, you blackguard!' I
+shouted. He winced, I am sure. It hurt him to see I was not
+frightened. 'Anyways,' he says, 'a shot had been fired out of
+your compound and a man was hit. Still, all your property shall
+be respected on account of the Union Jack. Moreover, I have no
+quarrel with Captain Lingard, who is the senior partner in this
+business. As to you,' he continued, 'you will not forget this
+day--not if you live to be a hundred years old--or I don't know
+your nature. You will keep the bitter taste of this humiliation
+to the last day of your life, and so your kindness to me shall be
+repaid. I shall remove all the powder you have. This coast is
+under the protection of the Netherlands, and you have no right to
+have any powder. There are the Governor's Orders in Council to
+that effect, and you know it. Tell me where the key of the small
+storehouse is?' I said not a word, and he waited a little, then
+rose, saying: 'It's your own fault if there is any damage done.'
+He ordered Babalatchi to have the lock of the office-room forced,
+and went in--rummaged amongst my drawers--could not find the key.
+Then that woman Aissa asked my wife, and she gave them the key.
+After awhile they tumbled every barrel into the river.
+Eighty-three hundredweight! He superintended himself, and saw
+every barrel roll into the water. There were mutterings.
+Babalatchi was angry and tried to expostulate, but he gave him a
+good shaking. I must say he was perfectly fearless with those
+fellows. Then he came back to the verandah, sat down by me
+again, and says: 'We found your man Ali with your little daughter
+hiding in the bushes up the river. We brought them in. They are
+perfectly safe, of course. Let me congratulate you, Almayer,
+upon the cleverness of your child. She recognized me at once,
+and cried "pig" as naturally as you would yourself.
+Circumstances alter feelings. You should have seen how
+frightened your man Ali was. Clapped his hands over her mouth.
+I think you spoil her, Almayer. But I am not angry. Really, you
+look so ridiculous in this chair that I can't feel angry.' I
+made a frantic effort to burst out of my hammock to get at that
+scoundrel's throat, but I only fell off and upset the chair over
+myself. He laughed and said only: 'I leave you half of your
+revolver cartridges and take half myself; they will fit mine. We
+are both white men, and should back each other up. I may want
+them.' I shouted at him from under the chair: 'You are a thief,'
+but he never looked, and went away, one hand round that woman's
+waist, the other on Babalatchi's shoulder, to whom he was
+talking--laying down the law about something or other. In less
+than five minutes there was nobody inside our fences. After
+awhile Ali came to look for me and cut me free. I haven't seen
+Willems since--nor anybody else for that matter. I have been
+left alone. I offered sixty dollars to the man who had been
+wounded, which were accepted. They released Jim-Eng the next
+day, when the flag had been hauled down. He sent six cases of
+opium to me for safe keeping but has not left his house. I think
+he is safe enough now. Everything is very quiet."
+
+Towards the end of his narrative Almayer lifted his head off the
+table, and now sat back in his chair and stared at the bamboo
+rafters of the roof above him. Lingard lolled in his seat with
+his legs stretched out. In the peaceful gloom of the verandah,
+with its lowered screens, they heard faint noises from the world
+outside in the blazing sunshine: a hail on the river, the answer
+from the shore, the creak of a pulley; sounds short, interrupted,
+as if lost suddenly in the brilliance of noonday. Lingard got up
+slowly, walked to the front rail, and holding one of the screens
+aside, looked out in silence. Over the water and the empty
+courtyard came a distinct voice from a small schooner anchored
+abreast of the Lingard jetty.
+
+"Serang! Take a pull at the main peak halyards. This gaff is
+down on the boom.''
+
+There was a shrill pipe dying in long-drawn cadence, the song of
+the men swinging on the rope. The voice said sharply: "That will
+do!" Another voice--the serang's probably--shouted: "Ikat!" and
+as Lingard dropped the blind and turned away all was silent
+again, as if there had been nothing on the other side of the
+swaying screen; nothing but the light, brilliant, crude, heavy,
+lying on a dead land like a pall of fire. Lingard sat down
+again, facing Almayer, his elbow on the table, in a thoughtful
+attitude.
+
+"Nice little schooner," muttered Almayer, wearily. "Did you buy
+her?"
+
+"No," answered Lingard. "After I lost the Flash we got to
+Palembang in our boats. I chartered her there, for six months.
+From young Ford, you know. Belongs to him. He wanted a spell
+ashore, so I took charge myself. Of course all Ford's people on
+board. Strangers to me. I had to go to Singapore about the
+insurance; then I went to Macassar, of course. Had long
+passages. No wind. It was like a curse on me. I had lots of
+trouble with old Hudig. That delayed me much."
+
+"Ah! Hudig! Why with Hudig?" asked Almayer, in a perfunctory
+manner.
+
+"Oh! about a . . . a woman," mumbled Lingard.
+
+Almayer looked at him with languid surprise. The old seaman had
+twisted his white beard into a point, and now was busy giving his
+moustaches a fierce curl. His little red eyes--those eyes that
+had smarted under the salt sprays of every sea, that had looked
+unwinking to windward in the gales of all latitudes--now glared
+at Almayer from behind the lowered eyebrows like a pair of
+frightened wild beasts crouching in a bush.
+
+"Extraordinary! So like you! What can you have to do with
+Hudig's women? The old sinner!" said Almayer, negligently.
+
+"What are you talking about! Wife of a friend of . . . I mean of
+a man I know . . ."
+
+"Still, I don't see . . ." interjected Almayer carelessly.
+
+"Of a man you know too. Well. Very well."
+
+"I knew so many men before you made me bury myself in this hole!"
+growled Almayer, unamiably. "If she had anything to do with
+Hudig--that wife--then she can't be up to much. I would be sorry
+for the man," added Almayer, brightening up with the recollection
+of the scandalous tittle-tattle of the past, when he was a young
+man in the second capital of the Islands--and so well informed,
+so well informed. He laughed. Lingard's frown deepened.
+
+"Don't talk foolish! It's Willems' wife."
+
+Almayer grasped the sides of his seat, his eyes and mouth opened
+wide.
+
+"What? Why!" he exclaimed, bewildered.
+
+"Willems'--wife," repeated Lingard distinctly. "You ain't deaf,
+are you? The wife of Willems. Just so. As to why! There was a
+promise. And I did not know what had happened here."
+
+"What is it. You've been giving her money, I bet," cried
+Almayer.
+
+"Well, no!" said Lingard, deliberately. "Although I suppose I
+shall have to . . ."
+
+Almayer groaned.
+
+"The fact is," went on Lingard, speaking slowly and steadily,
+"the fact is that I have . . . I have brought her here. Here.
+To Sambir."
+
+"In heaven's name! why?" shouted Almayer, jumping up. The chair
+tilted and fell slowly over. He raised his clasped hands above
+his head and brought them down jerkily, separating his fingers
+with an effort, as if tearing them apart. Lingard nodded,
+quickly, several times.
+
+"I have. Awkward. Hey?" he said, with a puzzled look upwards.
+
+"Upon my word," said Almayer, tearfully. "I can't understand you
+at all. What will you do next! cWillems' wife!"
+
+"Wife and child. Small boy, you know. They are on board the
+schooner."
+
+Almayer looked at Lingard with sudden suspicion, then turning
+away busied himself in picking up the chair, sat down in it
+turning his back upon the old seaman, and tried to whistle, but
+gave it up directly. Lingard went on--
+
+"Fact is, the fellow got into trouble with Hudig. Worked upon my
+feelings. I promised to arrange matters. I did. With much
+trouble. Hudig was angry with her for wishing to join her
+husband. Unprincipled old fellow. You know she is his daughter.
+Well, I said I would see her through it all right; help Willems
+to a fresh start and so on. I spoke to Craig in Palembang. He
+is getting on in years, and wanted a manager or partner. I
+promised to guarantee Willems' good behaviour. We settled all
+that. Craig is an old crony of mine. Been shipmates in the
+forties. He's waiting for him now. A pretty mess! What do you
+think?"
+
+Almayer shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That woman broke with Hudig on my assurance that all would be
+well," went on Lingard, with growing dismay. "She did. Proper
+thing, of course. Wife, husband . . . together . . . as it
+should be . . . Smart fellow . . . Impossible scoundrel . . .
+Jolly old go! Oh! damn!"
+
+Almayer laughed spitefully.
+
+"How delighted he will be," he said, softly. "You will make two
+people happy. Two at least!" He laughed again, while Lingard
+looked at his shaking shoulders in consternation.
+
+"I am jammed on a lee shore this time, if ever I was," muttered
+Lingard.
+
+"Send her back quick," suggested Almayer, stifling another laugh.
+
+"What are you sniggering at?" growled Lingard, angrily. "I'll
+work it out all clear yet. Meantime you must receive her into
+this house."
+
+"My house!" cried Almayer, turning round.
+
+"It's mine too--a little isn't it?" said Lingard. "Don't argue,"
+he shouted, as Almayer opened his mouth. "Obey orders and hold
+your tongue!"
+
+"Oh! If you take it in that tone!" mumbled Almayer, sulkily,
+with a gesture of assent.
+
+"You are so aggravating too, my boy," said the old seaman, with
+unexpected placidity. "You must give me time to turn round. I
+can't keep her on board all the time. I must tell her something.
+Say, for instance, that he is gone up the river. Expected back
+every day. That's it. D'ye hear? You must put her on that tack
+and dodge her along easy, while I take the kinks out of the
+situation. By God!" he exclaimed, mournfully, after a short
+pause, "life is foul! Foul like a lee forebrace on a dirty
+night. And yet. And yet. One must see it clear for running
+before going below--for good. Now you attend to what I said," he
+added, sharply, "if you don't want to quarrel with me, my boy."
+
+"I don't want to quarrel with you," murmured Almayer with
+unwilling deference. "Only I wish I could understand you. I
+know you are my best friend, Captain Lingard; only, upon my word,
+I can't make you out sometimes! I wish I could . . ."
+
+Lingard burst into a loud laugh which ended shortly in a deep
+sigh. He closed his eyes, tilting his head over the back of his
+armchair; and on his face, baked by the unclouded suns of many
+hard years, there appeared for a moment a weariness and a look of
+age which startled Almayer, like an unexpected disclosure of
+evil.
+
+"I am done up," said Lingard, gently. "Perfectly done up. All
+night on deck getting that schooner up the river. Then talking
+with you. Seems to me I could go to sleep on a clothes-line. I
+should like to eat something though. Just see about that,
+Kaspar."
+
+Almayer clapped his hands, and receiving no response was going to
+call, when in the central passage of the house, behind the red
+curtain of the doorway opening upon the verandah, they heard a
+child's imperious voice speaking shrilly.
+
+"Take me up at once. I want to be carried into the verandah. I
+shall be very angry. Take me up."
+
+A man's voice answered, subdued, in humble remonstrance. The
+faces of Almayer and Lingard brightened at once. The old seaman
+called out--
+
+"Bring the child. Lekas!"
+
+"You will see how she has grown," exclaimed Almayer, in a
+jubilant tone.
+
+Through the curtained doorway Ali appeared with little Nina
+Almayer in his arms. The child had one arm round his neck, and
+with the other she hugged a ripe pumelo nearly as big as her own
+head. Her little pink, sleeveless robe had half slipped off her
+shoulders, but the long black hair, that framed her olive face,
+in which the big black eyes looked out in childish solemnity,
+fell in luxuriant profusion over her shoulders, all round her and
+over Ali's arms, like a close-meshed and delicate net of silken
+threads. Lingard got up to meet Ali, and as soon as she caught
+sight of the old seaman she dropped the fruit and put out both
+her hands with a cry of delight. He took her from the Malay, and
+she laid hold of his moustaches with an affectionate goodwill
+that brought unaccustomed tears into his little red eyes.
+
+"Not so hard, little one, not so hard," he murmured, pressing
+with an enormous hand, that covered it entirely, the child's head
+to his face.
+
+"Pick up my pumelo, O Rajah of the sea!" she said, speaking in a
+high-pitched, clear voice with great volubility. "There, under
+the table. I want it quick! Quick! You have been away fighting
+with many men. Ali says so. You are a mighty fighter. Ali says
+so. On the great sea far away, away, away."
+
+She waved her hand, staring with dreamy vacancy, while Lingard
+looked at her, and squatting down groped under the table after
+the pumelo.
+
+"Where does she get those notions?" said Lingard, getting up
+cautiously, to Almayer, who had been giving orders to Ali.
+
+"She is always with the men. Many a time I've found her with her
+fingers in their rice dish, of an evening. She does not care for
+her mother though--I am glad to say. How pretty she is--and so
+sharp. My very image!"
+
+Lingard had put the child on the table, and both men stood
+looking at her with radiant faces.
+
+"A perfect little woman," whispered Lingard. "Yes, my dear boy,
+we shall make her somebody. You'll see!"
+
+"Very little chance of that now," remarked Almayer, sadly.
+
+"You do not know!" exclaimed Lingard, taking up the child again,
+and beginning to walk up and down the verandah. "I have my
+plans. I have--listen."
+
+And he began to explain to the interested Almayer his plans for
+the future. He would interview Abdulla and Lakamba. There must
+be some understanding with those fellows now they had the upper
+hand. Here he interrupted himself to swear freely, while the
+child, who had been diligently fumbling about his neck, had found
+his whistle and blew a loud blast now and then close to his
+ear--which made him wince and laugh as he put her hands down,
+scolding her lovingly. Yes--that would be easily settled. He
+was a man to be reckoned with yet. Nobody knew that better than
+Almayer. Very well. Then he must patiently try and keep some
+little trade together. It would be all right. But the great
+thing--and here Lingard spoke lower, bringing himself to a sudden
+standstill before the entranced Almayer--the great thing would be
+the gold hunt up the river. He--Lingard--would devote himself to
+it. He had been in the interior before. There were immense
+deposits of alluvial gold there. Fabulous. He felt sure. Had
+seen places. Dangerous work? Of course! But what a reward! He
+would explore--and find. Not a shadow of doubt. Hang the
+danger! They would first get as much as they could for
+themselves. Keep the thing quiet. Then after a time form a
+Company. In Batavia or in England. Yes, in England. Much
+better. Splendid! Why, of course. And that baby would be the
+richest woman in the world. He--Lingard--would not, perhaps, see
+it--although he felt good for many years yet--but Almayer would.
+Here was something to live for yet! Hey?
+
+But the richest woman in the world had been for the last five
+minutes shouting shrilly--"Rajah Laut! Rajah Laut! Hai! Give
+ear!" while the old seaman had been speaking louder,
+unconsciously, to make his deep bass heard above the impatient
+clamour. He stopped now and said tenderly--
+
+"What is it, little woman?"
+
+"I am not a little woman. I am a white child. Anak Putih. A
+white child; and the white men are my brothers. Father says so.
+And Ali says so too. Ali knows as much as father. Everything."
+
+Almayer almost danced with paternal delight.
+
+"I taught her. I taught her," he repeated, laughing with tears
+in his eyes. "Isn't she sharp?"
+
+"I am the slave of the white child," said Lingard, with playful
+solemnity. "What is the order?"
+
+"I want a house," she warbled, with great eagerness. "I want a
+house, and another house on the roof, and another on the
+roof--high. High! Like the places where they dwell--my
+brothers--in the land where the sun sleeps."
+
+"To the westward," explained Almayer, under his breath. "She
+remembers everything. She wants you to build a house of cards.
+You did, last time you were here."
+
+Lingard sat down with the child on his knees, and Almayer pulled
+out violently one drawer after another, looking for the cards, as
+if the fate of the world depended upon his haste. He produced a
+dirty double pack which was only used during Lingard's visit to
+Sambir, when he would sometimes play--of an evening--with
+Almayer, a game which he called Chinese bezique. It bored
+Almayer, but the old seaman delighted in it, considering it a
+remarkable product of Chinese genius--a race for which he had an
+unaccountable liking and admiration.
+
+"Now we will get on, my little pearl," he said, putting together
+with extreme precaution two cards that looked absurdly flimsy
+between his big fingers. Little Nina watched him with intense
+seriousness as he went on erecting the ground floor, while he
+continued to speak to Almayer with his head over his shoulder so
+as not to endanger the structure with his breath.
+
+"I know what I am talking about. . . . Been in California in
+forty-nine. . . . Not that I made much . . . then in Victoria in
+the early days. . . . I know all about it. Trust me. Moreover
+a blind man could . . . Be quiet, little sister, or you will
+knock this affair down. . . . My hand pretty steady yet! Hey,
+Kaspar? . . . Now, delight of my heart, we shall put a third
+house on the top of these two . . . keep very quiet. . . . As I
+was saying, you got only to stoop and gather handfuls of gold . .
+. dust . . . there. Now here we are. Three houses on top of one
+another. Grand!"
+
+He leaned back in his chair, one hand on the child's head, which
+he smoothed mechanically, and gesticulated with the other,
+speaking to Almayer.
+
+"Once on the spot, there would be only the trouble to pick up the
+stuff. Then we shall all go to Europe. The child must be
+educated. We shall be rich. Rich is no name for it. Down in
+Devonshire where I belong, there was a fellow who built a house
+near Teignmouth which had as many windows as a three-decker has
+ports. Made all his money somewhere out here in the good old
+days. People around said he had been a pirate. We boys--I was a
+boy in a Brixham trawler then--certainly believed that. He went
+about in a bath-chair in his grounds. Had a glass eye . . ."
+
+"Higher, Higher!" called out Nina, pulling the old seaman's
+beard.
+
+"You do worry me--don't you?" said Lingard, gently, giving her a
+tender kiss. "What? One more house on top of all these? Well!
+I will try."
+
+The child watched him breathlessly. When the difficult feat was
+accomplished she clapped her hands, looked on steadily, and after
+a while gave a great sigh of content.
+
+"Oh! Look out!" shouted Almayer.
+
+The structure collapsed suddenly before the child's light breath.
+Lingard looked discomposed for a moment. Almayer laughed, but
+the little girl began to cry.
+
+"Take her," said the old seaman, abruptly. Then, after Almayer
+went away with the crying child, he remained sitting by the
+table, looking gloomily at the heap of cards.
+
+"Damn this Willems," he muttered to himself. "But I will do it
+yet!"
+
+He got up, and with an angry push of his hand swept the cards off
+the table. Then he fell back in his chair.
+
+"Tired as a dog," he sighed out, closing his eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+Consciously or unconsciously, men are proud of their firmness,
+steadfastness of purpose, directness of aim. They go straight
+towards their desire, to the accomplishment of virtue--sometimes
+of crime--in an uplifting persuasion of their firmness. They
+walk the road of life, the road fenced in by their tastes,
+prejudices, disdains or enthusiasms, generally honest, invariably
+stupid, and are proud of never losing their way. If they do
+stop, it is to look for a moment over the hedges that make them
+safe, to look at the misty valleys, at the distant peaks, at
+cliffs and morasses, at the dark forests and the hazy plains
+where other human beings grope their days painfully away,
+stumbling over the bones of the wise, over the unburied remains
+of their predecessors who died alone, in gloom or in sunshine,
+halfway from anywhere. The man of purpose does not understand,
+and goes on, full of contempt. He never loses his way. He knows
+where he is going and what he wants. Travelling on, he achieves
+great length without any breadth, and battered, besmirched, and
+weary, he touches the goal at last; he grasps the reward of his
+perseverance, of his virtue, of his healthy optimism: an
+untruthful tombstone over a dark and soon forgotten grave.
+
+Lingard had never hesitated in his life. Why should he? He had
+been a most successful trader, and a man lucky in his fights,
+skilful in navigation, undeniably first in seamanship in those
+seas. He knew it. Had he not heard the voice of common consent?
+
+The voice of the world that respected him so much; the whole
+world to him--for to us the limits of the universe are strictly
+defined by those we know. There is nothing for us outside the
+babble of praise and blame on familiar lips, and beyond our last
+acquaintance there lies only a vast chaos; a chaos of laughter
+and tears which concerns us not; laughter and tears unpleasant,
+wicked, morbid, contemptible--because heard imperfectly by ears
+rebellious to strange sounds. To Lingard--simple himself--all
+things were simple. He seldom read. Books were not much in his
+way, and he had to work hard navigating, trading, and also, in
+obedience to his benevolent instincts, shaping stray lives he
+found here and there under his busy hand. He remembered the
+Sunday-school teachings of his native village and the discourses
+of the black-coated gentleman connected with the Mission to
+Fishermen and Seamen, whose yawl-rigged boat darting through
+rain-squalls amongst the coasters wind-bound in Falmouth Bay, was
+part of those precious pictures of his youthful days that
+lingered in his memory. "As clever a sky-pilot as you could wish
+to see," he would say with conviction, "and the best man to
+handle a boat in any weather I ever did meet!" Such were the
+agencies that had roughly shaped his young soul before he went
+away to see the world in a southern-going ship--before he went,
+ignorant and happy, heavy of hand, pure in heart, profane in
+speech, to give himself up to the great sea that took his life
+and gave him his fortune. When thinking of his rise in the
+world--commander of ships, then shipowner, then a man of much
+capital, respected wherever he went, Lingard in a word, the Rajah
+Laut--he was amazed and awed by his fate, that seemed to his
+ill-informed mind the most wondrous known in the annals of men.
+His experience appeared to him immense and conclusive, teaching
+him the lesson of the simplicity of life. In life--as in
+seamanship--there were only two ways of doing a thing: the right
+way and the wrong way. Common sense and experience taught a man
+the way that was right. The other was for lubbers and fools, and
+led, in seamanship, to loss of spars and sails or shipwreck; in
+life, to loss of money and consideration, or to an unlucky knock
+on the head. He did not consider it his duty to be angry with
+rascals. He was only angry with things he could not understand,
+but for the weaknesses of humanity he could find a contemptuous
+tolerance. It being manifest that he was wise and
+lucky--otherwise how could he have been as successful in life as
+he had been?--he had an inclination to set right the lives of
+other people, just as he could hardly refrain--in defiance of
+nautical etiquette--from interfering with his chief officer when
+the crew was sending up a new topmast, or generally when busy
+about, what he called, "a heavy job." He was meddlesome with
+perfect modesty; if he knew a thing or two there was no merit in
+it. "Hard knocks taught me wisdom, my boy," he used to say, "and
+you had better take the advice of a man who has been a fool in
+his time. Have another." And "my boy" as a rule took the cool
+drink, the advice, and the consequent help which Lingard felt
+himself bound in honour to give, so as to back up his opinion
+like an honest man. Captain Tom went sailing from island to
+island, appearing unexpectedly in various localities, beaming,
+noisy, anecdotal, commendatory or comminatory, but always
+welcome.
+
+It was only since his return to Sambir that the old seaman had
+for the first time known doubt and unhappiness, The loss of the
+Flash--planted firmly and for ever on a ledge of rock at the
+north end of Gaspar Straits in the uncertain light of a cloudy
+morning--shook him considerably; and the amazing news which he
+heard on his arrival in Sambir were not made to soothe his
+feelings. A good many years ago--prompted by his love of
+adventure--he, with infinite trouble, had found out and
+surveyed--for his own benefit only--the entrances to that river,
+where, he had heard through native report, a new settlement of
+Malays was forming. No doubt he thought at the time mostly of
+personal gain; but, received with hearty friendliness by
+Patalolo, he soon came to like the ruler and the people, offered
+his counsel and his help, and--knowing nothing of Arcadia--he
+dreamed of Arcadian happiness for that little corner of the world
+which he loved to think all his own. His deep-seated and
+immovable conviction that only he--he, Lingard--knew what was
+good for them was characteristic of him. and, after all, not so
+very far wrong. He would make them happy whether or no, he said,
+and he meant it. His trade brought prosperity to the young state,
+and the fear of his heavy hand secured its internal peace for
+many years.
+
+He looked proudly upon his work. With every passing year he
+loved more the land, the people, the muddy river that, if he
+could help it, would carry no other craft but the Flash on its
+unclean and friendly surface. As he slowly warped his vessel
+up-stream he would scan with knowing looks the riverside
+clearings, and pronounce solemn judgment upon the prospects of
+the season's rice-crop. He knew every settler on the banks
+between the sea and Sambir; he knew their wives, their children;
+he knew every individual of the multi-coloured groups that,
+standing on the flimsy platforms of tiny reed dwellings built
+over the water, waved their hands and shouted shrilly: "O! Kapal
+layer! Hai!" while the Flash swept slowly through the populated
+reach, to enter the lonely stretches of sparkling brown water
+bordered by the dense and silent forest, whose big trees nodded
+their outspread boughs gently in the faint, warm breeze--as if in
+sign of tender but melancholy welcome. He loved it all: the
+landscape of brown golds and brilliant emeralds under the dome of
+hot sapphire; the whispering big trees; the loquacious nipa-palms
+that rattled their leaves volubly in the night breeze, as if in
+haste to tell him all the secrets of the great forest behind
+them. He loved the heavy scents of blossoms and black earth,
+that breath of life and of death which lingered over his brig in
+the damp air of tepid and peaceful nights. He loved the narrow
+and sombre creeks, strangers to sunshine: black, smooth,
+tortuous--like byways of despair. He liked even the troops of
+sorrowful-faced monkeys that profaned the quiet spots with
+capricious gambols and insane gestures of inhuman madness. He
+loved everything there, animated or inanimated; the very mud of
+the riverside; the very alligators, enormous and stolid, basking
+on it with impertinent unconcern. Their size was a source of
+pride to him. "Immense fellows! Make two of them Palembang
+reptiles! I tell you, old man!" he would shout, poking some
+crony of his playfully in the ribs: "I tell you, big as you are,
+they could swallow you in one gulp, hat, boots and all!
+Magnificent beggars! Wouldn't you like to see them? Wouldn't
+you! Ha! ha! ha!" His thunderous laughter filled the verandah,
+rolled over the hotel garden, overflowed into the street,
+paralyzing for a short moment the noiseless traffic of bare brown
+feet; and its loud reverberations would even startle the
+landlord's tame bird--a shameless mynah--into a momentary
+propriety of behaviour under the nearest chair. In the big
+billiard-room perspiring men in thin cotton singlets would stop
+the game, listen, cue in hand, for a while through the open
+windows, then nod their moist faces at each other sagaciously and
+whisper: "The old fellow is talking about his river."
+
+His river! The whispers of curious men, the mystery of the
+thing, were to Lingard a source of never-ending delight. The
+common talk of ignorance exaggerated the profits of his queer
+monopoly, and, although strictly truthful in general, he liked,
+on that matter, to mislead speculation still further by boasts
+full of cold raillery. His river! By it he was not only
+rich--he was interesting. This secret of his which made him
+different to the other traders of those seas gave intimate
+satisfaction to that desire for singularity which he shared with
+the rest of mankind, without being aware of its presence within
+his breast. It was the greater part of his happiness, but he
+only knew it after its loss, so unforeseen, so sudden and so
+cruel.
+
+After his conversation with Almayer he went on board the
+schooner, sent Joanna on shore, and shut himself up in his cabin,
+feeling very unwell. He made the most of his indisposition to
+Almayer, who came to visit him twice a day. It was an excuse for
+doing nothing just yet. He wanted to think. He was very angry.
+Angry with himself, with Willems. Angry at what Willems had
+done--and also angry at what he had left undone. The scoundrel
+was not complete. The conception was perfect, but the execution,
+unaccountably, fell short. Why? He ought to have cut Almayer's
+throat and burnt the place to ashes--then cleared out. Got out
+of his way; of him, Lingard! Yet he didn't. Was it impudence,
+contempt--or what? He felt hurt at the implied disrespect of his
+power, and the incomplete rascality of the proceeding disturbed
+him exceedingly. There was something short, something wanting,
+something that would have given him a free hand in the work of
+retribution. The obvious, the right thing to do, was to shoot
+Willems. Yet how could he? Had the fellow resisted, showed
+fight, or ran away; had he shown any consciousness of harm done,
+it would have been more possible, more natural. But no! The
+fellow actually had sent him a message. Wanted to see him. What
+for? The thing could not be explained. An unexampled,
+cold-blooded treachery, awful, incomprehensible. Why did he do
+it? Why? Why? The old seaman in the stuffy solitude of his
+little cabin on board the schooner groaned out many times that
+question, striking with an open palm his perplexed forehead.
+
+During his four days of seclusion he had received two messages
+from the outer world; from that world of Sambir which had, so
+suddenly and so finally, slipped from his grasp. One, a few
+words from Willems written on a torn-out page of a small
+notebook; the other, a communication from Abdulla caligraphed
+carefully on a large sheet of flimsy paper and delivered to him
+in a green silk wrapper. The first he could not understand. It
+said: "Come and see me. I am not afraid. Are you? W." He
+tore it up angrily, but before the small bits of dirty paper had
+the time to flutter down and settle on the floor, the anger was
+gone and was replaced by a sentiment that induced him to go on
+his knees, pick up the fragments of the torn message, piece it
+together on the top of his chronometer box, and contemplate it
+long and thoughtfully, as if he had hoped to read the answer of
+the horrible riddle in the very form of the letters that went to
+make up that fresh insult. Abdulla's letter he read carefully
+and rammed it into his pocket, also with anger, but with anger
+that ended in a half-resigned, half-amused smile. He would never
+give in as long as there was a chance. "It's generally the
+safest way to stick to the ship as long as she will swim," was
+one of his favourite sayings: "The safest and the right way. To
+abandon a craft because it leaks is easy--but poor work. Poor
+work!" Yet he was intelligent enough to know when he was beaten,
+and to accept the situation like a man, without repining. When
+Almayer came on board that afternoon he handed him the letter
+without comment.
+
+Almayer read it, returned it in silence, and leaning over the
+taffrail (the two men were on deck) looked down for some time at
+the play of the eddies round the schooner's rudder. At last he
+said without looking up--
+
+"That's a decent enough letter. Abdulla gives him up to you. I
+told you they were getting sick of him. What are you going to
+do?"
+
+Lingard cleared his throat, shuffled his feet, opened his mouth
+with great determination, but said nothing for a while. At last
+he murmured--
+
+"I'll be hanged if I know--just yet."
+
+"I wish you would do something soon . . ."
+
+"What's the hurry?" interrupted Lingard. "He can't get away. As
+it stands he is at my mercy, as far as I can see."
+
+"Yes," said Almayer, reflectively--"and very little mercy he
+deserves too. Abdulla's meaning--as I can make it out amongst
+all those compliments--is: 'Get rid for me of that white man--and
+we shall live in peace and share the trade."'
+
+"You believe that?" asked Lingard, contemptuously.
+
+"Not altogether," answered Almayer. "No doubt we will share the
+trade for a time--till he can grab the lot. Well, what are you
+going to do?"
+
+He looked up as he spoke and was surprised to see Lingard's
+discomposed face.
+
+"You ain't well. Pain anywhere?" he asked, with real solicitude.
+
+"I have been queer--you know--these last few days, but no pain."
+He struck his broad chest several times, cleared his throat with
+a powerful "Hem!" and repeated: "No. No pain. Good for a few
+years yet. But I am bothered with all this, I can tell you!"
+
+"You must take care of yourself," said Almayer. Then after a
+pause he added: "You will see Abdulla. Won't you?"
+
+"I don't know. Not yet. There's plenty of time," said Lingard,
+impatiently.
+
+"I wish you would do something," urged Almayer, moodily. "You
+know, that woman is a perfect nuisance to me. She and her brat!
+Yelps all day. And the children don't get on together. Yesterday
+the little devil wanted to fight with my Nina. Scratched her
+face, too. A perfect savage! Like his honourable papa. Yes,
+really. She worries about her husband, and whimpers from morning
+to night. When she isn't weeping she is furious with me.
+Yesterday she tormented me to tell her when he would be back and
+cried because he was engaged in such dangerous work. I said
+something about it being all right--no necessity to make a fool
+of herself, when she turned upon me like a wild cat. Called me a
+brute, selfish, heartless; raved about her beloved Peter risking
+his life for my benefit, while I did not care. Said I took
+advantage of his generous good-nature to get him to do dangerous
+work--my work. That he was worth twenty of the likes of me.
+That she would tell you--open your eyes as to the kind of man I
+was, and so on. That's what I've got to put up with for your
+sake. You really might consider me a little. I haven't robbed
+anybody," went on Almayer, with an attempt at bitter irony--"or
+sold my best friend, but still you ought to have some pity on me.
+It's like living in a hot fever. She is out of her wits. You
+make my house a refuge for scoundrels and lunatics. It isn't
+fair. 'Pon my word it isn't! When she is in her tantrums she is
+ridiculously ugly and screeches so--it sets my teeth on edge.
+Thank God! my wife got a fit of the sulks and cleared out of the
+house. Lives in a riverside hut since that affair--you know.
+But this Willems' wife by herself is almost more than I can bear.
+And I ask myself why should I? You are exacting and no mistake.
+This morning I thought she was going to claw me. Only think!
+She wanted to go prancing about the settlement. She might have
+heard something there, so I told her she mustn't. It wasn't safe
+outside our fences, I said. Thereupon she rushes at me with her
+ten nails up to my eyes. 'You miserable man,' she yells, 'even
+this place is not safe, and you've sent him up this awful river
+where he may lose his head. If he dies before forgiving me,
+Heaven will punish you for your crime . . .' My crime! I ask
+myself sometimes whether I am dreaming! It will make me ill, all
+this. I've lost my appetite already."
+
+He flung his hat on deck and laid hold of his hair despairingly.
+Lingard looked at him with concern.
+
+"What did she mean by it?" he muttered, thoughtfully.
+
+"Mean! She is crazy, I tell you--and I will be, very soon, if
+this lasts!"
+
+"Just a little patience, Kaspar," pleaded Lingard. "A day or so
+more."
+
+Relieved or tired by his violent outburst, Almayer calmed down,
+picked up his hat and, leaning against the bulwark, commenced to
+fan himself with it.
+
+"Days do pass," he said, resignedly--"but that kind of thing
+makes a man old before his time. What is there to think
+about?--I can't imagine! Abdulla says plainly that if you
+undertake to pilot his ship out and instruct the half-caste, he
+will drop Willems like a hot potato and be your friend ever
+after. I believe him perfectly, as to Willems. It's so natural.
+As to being your friend it's a lie of course, but we need not
+bother about that just yet. You just say yes to Abdulla, and
+then whatever happens to Willems will be nobody's business."
+
+He interrupted himself and remained silent for a while, glaring
+about with set teeth and dilated nostrils.
+
+"You leave it to me. I'll see to it that something happens to
+him," he said at last, with calm ferocity. Lingard smiled
+faintly.
+
+"The fellow isn't worth a shot. Not the trouble of it," he
+whispered, as if to himself. Almayer fired up suddenly.
+
+"That's what you think," he cried. "You haven't been sewn up in
+your hammock to be made a laughing-stock of before a parcel of
+savages. Why! I daren't look anybody here in the face while
+that scoundrel is alive. I will . . . I will settle him."
+
+"I don't think you will," growled Lingard.
+
+"Do you think I am afraid of him?"
+
+"Bless you! no!" said Lingard with alacrity. "Afraid! Not you.
+I know you. I don't doubt your courage. It's your head, my boy,
+your head that I . . ."
+
+"That's it," said the aggrieved Almayer. "Go on. Why don't you
+call me a fool at once?"
+
+"Because I don't want to," burst out Lingard, with nervous
+irritability. "If I wanted to call you a fool, I would do so
+without asking your leave." He began to walk athwart the narrow
+quarter-deck, kicking ropes' ends out of his way and growling to
+himself: "Delicate gentleman . . . what next? . . . I've done
+man's work before you could toddle. Understand . . . say what I
+like."
+
+"Well! well!" said Almayer, with affected resignation. "There's
+no talking to you these last few days." He put on his hat,
+strolled to the gangway and stopped, one foot on the little
+inside ladder, as if hesitating, came back and planted himself in
+Lingard's way, compelling him to stand still and listen.
+
+"Of course you will do what you like. You never take advice--I
+know that; but let me tell you that it wouldn't be honest to let
+that fellow get away from here. If you do nothing, that
+scoundrel will leave in Abdulla's ship for sure. Abdulla will
+make use of him to hurt you and others elsewhere. Willems knows
+too much about your affairs. He will cause you lots of trouble.
+You mark my words. Lots of trouble. To you--and to others
+perhaps. Think of that, Captain Lingard. That's all I've got to
+say. Now I must go back on shore. There's lots of work. We
+will begin loading this schooner to-morrow morning, first thing.
+All the bundles are ready. If you should want me for anything,
+hoist some kind of flag on the mainmast. At night two shots will
+fetch me." Then he added, in a friendly tone, "Won't you come
+and dine in the house to-night? It can't be good for you to stew
+on board like that, day after day."
+
+Lingard did not answer. The image evoked by Almayer; the picture
+of Willems ranging over the islands and disturbing the harmony of
+the universe by robbery, treachery, and violence, held him
+silent, entranced--painfully spellbound. Almayer, after waiting
+for a little while, moved reluctantly towards the gangway,
+lingered there, then sighed and got over the side, going down
+step by step. His head disappeared slowly below the rail.
+Lingard, who had been staring at him absently, started suddenly,
+ran to the side, and looking over, called out--
+
+"Hey! Kaspar! Hold on a bit!"
+
+Almayer signed to his boatmen to cease paddling, and turned his
+head towards the schooner. The boat drifted back slowly abreast
+of Lingard, nearly alongside.
+
+"Look here," said Lingard, looking down--"I want a good canoe
+with four men to-day."
+
+"Do you want it now?" asked Almayer.
+
+"No! Catch this rope. Oh, you clumsy devil! . . . No, Kaspar,"
+went on Lingard, after the bow-man had got hold of the end of the
+brace he had thrown down into the canoe--"No, Kaspar. The sun is
+too much for me. And it would be better to keep my affairs
+quiet, too. Send the canoe--four good paddlers, mind, and your
+canvas chair for me to sit in. Send it about sunset. D'ye
+hear?"
+
+"All right, father," said Almayer, cheerfully--"I will send Ali
+for a steersman, and the best men I've got. Anything else?"
+
+"No, my lad. Only don't let them be late."
+
+"I suppose it's no use asking you where you are going," said
+Almayer, tentatively. "Because if it is to see Abdulla, I . . ."
+
+"I am not going to see Abdulla. Not to-day. Now be off with
+you."
+
+He watched the canoe dart away shorewards, waved his hand in
+response to Almayer's nod, and walked to the taffrail smoothing
+out Abdulla's letter, which he had pulled out of his pocket. He
+read it over carefully, crumpled it up slowly, smiling the while
+and closing his fingers firmly over the crackling paper as though
+he had hold there of Abdulla's throat. Halfway to his pocket he
+changed his mind, and flinging the ball overboard looked at it
+thoughtfully as it spun round in the eddies for a moment, before
+the current bore it away down-stream, towards the sea.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+The night was very dark. For the first time in many months the
+East Coast slept unseen by the stars under a veil of motionless
+cloud that, driven before the first breath of the rainy monsoon,
+had drifted slowly from the eastward all the afternoon; pursuing
+the declining sun with its masses of black and grey that seemed
+to chase the light with wicked intent, and with an ominous and
+gloomy steadiness, as though conscious of the message of violence
+and turmoil they carried. At the sun's disappearance below the
+western horizon, the immense cloud, in quickened motion, grappled
+with the glow of retreating light, and rolling down to the clear
+and jagged outline of the distant mountains, hung arrested above
+the steaming forests; hanging low, silent and menacing over the
+unstirring tree-tops; withholding the blessing of rain, nursing
+the wrath of its thunder; undecided--as if brooding over its own
+power for good or for evil.
+
+Babalatchi, coming out of the red and smoky light of his little
+bamboo house, glanced upwards, drew in a long breath of the warm
+and stagnant air, and stood for a moment with his good eye closed
+tightly, as if intimidated by the unwonted and deep silence of
+Lakamba's courtyard. When he opened his eye he had recovered his
+sight so far, that he could distinguish the various degrees of
+formless blackness which marked the places of trees, of abandoned
+houses, of riverside bushes, on the dark background of the night.
+
+The careworn sage walked cautiously down the deserted courtyard
+to the waterside, and stood on the bank listening to the voice of
+the invisible river that flowed at his feet; listening to the
+soft whispers, to the deep murmurs, to the sudden gurgles and the
+short hisses of the swift current racing along the bank through
+the hot darkness.
+
+He stood with his face turned to the river, and it seemed to him
+that he could breathe easier with the knowledge of the clear vast
+space before him; then, after a while he leaned heavily forward
+on his staff, his chin fell on his breast, and a deep sigh was
+his answer to the selfish discourse of the river that hurried on
+unceasing and fast, regardless of joy or sorrow, of suffering and
+of strife, of failures and triumphs that lived on its banks. The
+brown water was there, ready to carry friends or enemies, to
+nurse love or hate on its submissive and heartless bosom, to help
+or to hinder, to save life or give death; the great and rapid
+river: a deliverance, a prison, a refuge or a grave.
+
+Perchance such thoughts as these caused Babalatchi to send
+another mournful sigh into the trailing mists of the unconcerned
+Pantai. The barbarous politician had forgotten the recent
+success of his plottings in the melancholy contemplation of a
+sorrow that made the night blacker, the clammy heat more
+oppressive, the still air more heavy, the dumb solitude more
+significant of torment than of peace. He had spent the night
+before by the side of the dying Omar, and now, after twenty-four
+hours, his memory persisted in returning to that low and sombre
+reed hut from which the fierce spirit of the incomparably
+accomplished pirate took its flight, to learn too late, in a
+worse world, the error of its earthly ways. The mind of the
+savage statesman, chastened by bereavement, felt for a moment the
+weight of his loneliness with keen perception worthy even of a
+sensibility exasperated by all the refinements of tender
+sentiment that a glorious civilization brings in its train, among
+other blessings and virtues, into this excellent world. For the
+space of about thirty seconds, a half-naked, betel-chewing
+pessimist stood upon the bank of the tropical river, on the edge
+of the still and immense forests; a man angry, powerless,
+empty-handed, with a cry of bitter discontent ready on his lips;
+a cry that, had it come out, would have rung through the virgin
+solitudes of the woods, as true, as great, as profound, as any
+philosophical shriek that ever came from the depths of an
+easy-chair to disturb the impure wilderness of chimneys and
+roofs.
+
+For half a minute and no more did Babalatchi face the gods in the
+sublime privilege of his revolt, and then the one-eyed puller of
+wires became himself again, full of care and wisdom and
+far-reaching plans, and a victim to the tormenting superstitions
+of his race. The night, no matter how quiet, is never perfectly
+silent to attentive ears, and now Babalatchi fancied he could
+detect in it other noises than those caused by the ripples and
+eddies of the river. He turned his head sharply to the right and
+to the left in succession, and then spun round quickly in a
+startled and watchful manner, as if he had expected to see the
+blind ghost of his departed leader wandering in the obscurity of
+the empty courtyard behind his back. Nothing there. Yet he had
+heard a noise; a strange noise! No doubt a ghostly voice of a
+complaining and angry spirit. He listened. Not a sound.
+Reassured, Babalatchi made a few paces towards his house, when a
+very human noise, that of hoarse coughing, reached him from the
+river. He stopped, listened attentively, but now without any
+sign of emotion, and moving briskly back to the waterside stood
+expectant with parted lips, trying to pierce with his eye the
+wavering curtain of mist that hung low over the water. He could
+see nothing, yet some people in a canoe must have been very near,
+for he heard words spoken in an ordinary tone.
+
+"Do you think this is the place, Ali? I can see nothing."
+
+"It must be near here, Tuan," answered another voice. "Shall we
+try the bank?"
+
+"No! . . . Let drift a little. If you go poking into the bank
+in the dark you might stove the canoe on some log. We must be
+careful. . . . Let drift! Let drift! . . . This does seem to be
+a clearing of some sort. We may see a light by and by from some
+house or other. In Lakamba's campong there are many houses?
+Hey?"
+
+"A great number, Tuan . . . I do not see any light."
+
+"Nor I," grumbled the first voice again, this time nearly abreast
+of the silent Babalatchi who looked uneasily towards his own
+house, the doorway of which glowed with the dim light of a torch
+burning within. The house stood end on to the river, and its
+doorway faced down-stream, so Babalatchi reasoned rapidly that
+the strangers on the river could not see the light from the
+position their boat was in at the moment. He could not make up
+his mind to call out to them, and while he hesitated he heard the
+voices again, but now some way below the landing-place where he
+stood.
+
+"Nothing. This cannot be it. Let them give way, Ali! Dayong
+there!"
+
+That order was followed by the splash of paddles, then a sudden
+cry--
+
+"I see a light. I see it! Now I know where to land, Tuan."
+
+There was more splashing as the canoe was paddled sharply round
+and came back up-stream close to the bank.
+
+"Call out," said very near a deep voice, which Babalatchi felt
+sure must belong to a white man. "Call out--and somebody may
+come with a torch. I can't see anything."
+
+The loud hail that succeeded these words was emitted nearly under
+the silent listener's nose. Babalatchi, to preserve appearances,
+ran with long but noiseless strides halfway up the courtyard, and
+only then shouted in answer and kept on shouting as he walked
+slowly back again towards the river bank. He saw there an
+indistinct shape of a boat, not quite alongside the
+landing-place.
+
+"Who speaks on the river?" asked Babalatchi, throwing a tone of
+surprise into his question.
+
+"A white man," answered Lingard from the canoe. "Is there not
+one torch in rich Lakamba's campong to light a guest on his
+landing?"
+
+"There are no torches and no men. I am alone here," said
+Babalatchi, with some hesitation.
+
+"Alone!" exclaimed Lingard. "Who are you?"
+
+"Only a servant of Lakamba. But land, Tuan Putih, and see my
+face. Here is my hand. No! Here! . . . By your mercy. . . .
+Ada! . . . Now you are safe."
+
+"And you are alone here?" said Lingard, moving with precaution a
+few steps into the courtyard. "How dark it is," he muttered to
+himself--"one would think the world had been painted black."
+
+"Yes. Alone. What more did you say, Tuan? I did not understand
+your talk."
+
+"It is nothing. I expected to find here . . . But where are they
+all?"
+
+"What matters where they are?" said Babalatchi, gloomily. "Have
+you come to see my people? The last departed on a long
+journey--and I am alone. Tomorrow I go too."
+
+"I came to see a white man," said Lingard, walking on slowly.
+"He is not gone, is he?"
+
+"No!" answered Babalatchi, at his elbow. "A man with a red skin
+and hard eyes," he went on, musingly, "whose hand is strong, and
+whose heart is foolish and weak. A white man indeed . . . But
+still a man."
+
+They were now at the foot of the short ladder which led to the
+split-bamboo platform surrounding Babalatchi's habitation. The
+faint light from the doorway fell down upon the two men's faces
+as they stood looking at each other curiously.
+
+"Is he there?" asked Lingard, in a low voice, with a wave of his
+hand upwards.
+
+Babalatchi, staring hard at his long-expected visitor, did not
+answer at once. "No, not there," he said at last, placing his
+foot on the lowest rung and looking back. "Not there, Tuan--yet
+not very far. Will you sit down in my dwelling? There may be
+rice and fish and clear water--not from the river, but from a
+spring . . ."
+
+"I am not hungry," interrupted Lingard, curtly, "and I did not
+come here to sit in your dwelling. Lead me to the white man who
+expects me. I have no time to lose."
+
+"The night is long, Tuan," went on Babalatchi, softly, "and there
+are other nights and other days. Long. Very long . . . How much
+time it takes for a man to die! O Rajah Laut!"
+
+ Lingard started.
+
+ "You know me!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Ay--wa! I have seen your face and felt your hand before--many
+years ago," said Babalatchi, holding on halfway up the ladder,
+and bending down from above to peer into Lingard's upturned face.
+"You do not remember--but I have not forgotten. There are many
+men like me: there is only one Rajah Laut."
+
+He climbed with sudden agility the last few steps, and stood on
+the platform waving his hand invitingly to Lingard, who followed
+after a short moment of indecision.
+
+The elastic bamboo floor of the hut bent under the heavy weight
+of the old seaman, who, standing within the threshold, tried to
+look into the smoky gloom of the low dwelling. Under the torch,
+thrust into the cleft of a stick, fastened at a right angle to
+the middle stay of the ridge pole, lay a red patch of light,
+showing a few shabby mats and a corner of a big wooden chest the
+rest of which was lost in shadow. In the obscurity of the more
+remote parts of the house a lance-head, a brass tray hung on the
+wall, the long barrel of a gun leaning against the chest, caught
+the stray rays of the smoky illumination in trembling gleams that
+wavered, disappeared, reappeared, went out, came back--as if
+engaged in a doubtful struggle with the darkness that, lying in
+wait in distant corners, seemed to dart out viciously towards its
+feeble enemy. The vast space under the high pitch of the roof
+was filled with a thick cloud of smoke, whose under-side--level
+like a ceiling--reflected the light of the swaying dull flame,
+while at the top it oozed out through the imperfect thatch of
+dried palm leaves. An indescribable and complicated smell, made
+up of the exhalation of damp earth below, of the taint of dried
+fish and of the effluvia of rotting vegetable matter, pervaded
+the place and caused Lingard to sniff strongly as he strode over,
+sat on the chest, and, leaning his elbows on his knees, took his
+head between his hands and stared at the doorway thoughtfully.
+
+Babalatchi moved about in the shadows, whispering to an
+indistinct form or two that flitted about at the far end of the
+hut. Without stirring Lingard glanced sideways, and caught sight
+of muffled-up human shapes that hovered for a moment near the
+edge of light and retreated suddenly back into the darkness.
+Babalatchi approached, and sat at Lingard's feet on a rolled-up
+bundle of mats.
+
+"Will you eat rice and drink sagueir?" he said. "I have waked up
+my household."
+
+"My friend," said Lingard, without looking at him, "when I come
+to see Lakamba, or any of Lakamba's servants, I am never hungry
+and never thirsty. Tau! Savee! Never! Do you think I am devoid
+of reason? That there is nothing there?"
+
+He sat up, and, fixing abruptly his eyes on Babalatchi, tapped
+his own forehead significantly.
+
+"Tse! Tse! Tse! How can you talk like that, Tuan!" exclaimed
+Babalatchi, in a horrified tone.
+
+"I talk as I think. I have lived many years," said Lingard,
+stretching his arm negligently to take up the gun, which he began
+to examine knowingly, cocking it, and easing down the hammer
+several times. "This is good. Mataram make. Old, too," he went
+on.
+
+"Hai!" broke in Babalatchi, eagerly. "I got it when I was young.
+He was an Aru trader, a man with a big stomach and a loud voice,
+and brave--very brave. When we came up with his prau in the grey
+morning, he stood aft shouting to his men and fired this gun at
+us once. Only once!" . . . He paused, laughed softly, and went
+on in a low, dreamy voice. "In the grey morning we came up:
+forty silent men in a swift Sulu prau; and when the sun was so
+high"--here he held up his hands about three feet apart--"when
+the sun was only so high, Tuan, our work was done--and there was
+a feast ready for the fishes of the sea."
+
+"Aye! aye!" muttered Lingard, nodding his head slowly. "I see.
+You should not let it get rusty like this," he added.
+
+He let the gun fall between his knees, and moving back on his
+seat, leaned his head against the wall of the hut, crossing his
+arms on his breast.
+
+"A good gun," went on Babalatchi. "Carry far and true. Better
+than this--there."
+
+With the tips of his fingers he touched gently the butt of a
+revolver peeping out of the right pocket of Lingard's white
+jacket.
+
+"Take your hand off that," said Lingard sharply, but in a
+good-humoured tone and without making the slightest movement.
+
+Babalatchi smiled and hitched his seat a little further off.
+
+For some time they sat in silence. Lingard, with his head tilted
+back, looked downwards with lowered eyelids at Babalatchi, who
+was tracing invisible lines with his finger on the mat between
+his feet. Outside, they could hear Ali and the other boatmen
+chattering and laughing round the fire they had lighted in the
+big and deserted courtyard.
+
+"Well, what about that white man?" said Lingard, quietly.
+
+It seemed as if Babalatchi had not heard the question. He went
+on tracing elaborate patterns on the floor for a good while.
+Lingard waited motionless. At last the Malay lifted his head.
+
+"Hai! The white man. I know!" he murmured absently. "This
+white man or another. . . . Tuan," he said aloud with unexpected
+animation, "you are a man of the sea?"
+
+"You know me. Why ask?" said Lingard, in a low tone.
+
+"Yes. A man of the sea--even as we are. A true Orang Laut,"
+went on Babalatchi, thoughtfully, "not like the rest of the white
+men."
+
+"I am like other whites, and do not wish to speak many words when
+the truth is short. I came here to see the white man that helped
+Lakamba against Patalolo, who is my friend. Show me where that
+white man lives; I want him to hear my talk."
+
+"Talk only? Tuan! Why hurry? The night is long and death is
+swift--as you ought to know; you who have dealt it to so many of
+my people. Many years ago I have faced you, arms in hand. Do
+you not remember? It was in Carimata--far from here."
+
+"I cannot remember every vagabond that came in my way," protested
+Lingard, seriously.
+
+"Hai! Hai!" continued Babalatchi, unmoved and dreamy. "Many
+years ago. Then all this"--and looking up suddenly at Lingard's
+beard, he flourished his fingers below his own beardless
+chin--"then all this was like gold in sunlight, now it is like
+the foam of an angry sea."
+
+"Maybe, maybe," said Lingard, patiently, paying the involuntary
+tribute of a faint sigh to the memories of the past evoked by
+Babalatchi's words.
+
+He had been living with Malays so long and so close that the
+extreme deliberation and deviousness of their mental proceedings
+had ceased to irritate him much. To-night, perhaps, he was less
+prone to impatience than ever. He was disposed, if not to listen
+to Babalatchi, then to let him talk. It was evident to him that
+the man had something to say, and he hoped that from the talk a
+ray of light would shoot through the thick blackness of
+inexplicable treachery, to show him clearly--if only for a
+second--the man upon whom he would have to execute the verdict of
+justice. Justice only! Nothing was further from his thoughts
+than such an useless thing as revenge. Justice only. It was his
+duty that justice should be done--and by his own hand. He did
+not like to think how. To him, as to Babalatchi, it seemed that
+the night would be long enough for the work he had to do. But he
+did not define to himself the nature of the work, and he sat very
+still, and willingly dilatory, under the fearsome oppression of
+his call. What was the good to think about it? It was
+inevitable, and its time was near. Yet he could not command his
+memories that came crowding round him in that evil-smelling hut,
+while Babalatchi talked on in a flowing monotone, nothing of him
+moving but the lips, in the artificially inanimated face.
+Lingard, like an anchored ship that had broken her sheer, darted
+about here and there on the rapid tide of his recollections. The
+subdued sound of soft words rang around him, but his thoughts
+were lost, now in the contemplation of the past sweetness and
+strife of Carimata days, now in the uneasy wonder at the failure
+of his judgment; at the fatal blindness of accident that had
+caused him, many years ago, to rescue a half-starved runaway from
+a Dutch ship in Samarang roads. How he had liked the man: his
+assurance, his push, his desire to get on, his conceited
+good-humour and his selfish eloquence. He had liked his very
+faults--those faults that had so many, to him, sympathetic sides.
+
+And he had always dealt fairly by him from the very beginning;
+and he would deal fairly by him now--to the very end. This last
+thought darkened Lingard's features with a responsive and
+menacing frown. The doer of justice sat with compressed lips and
+a heavy heart, while in the calm darkness outside the silent
+world seemed to be waiting breathlessly for that justice he held
+in his hand--in his strong hand:--ready to strike--reluctant to move.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+Babalatchi ceased speaking. Lingard shifted his feet a little,
+uncrossed his arms, and shook his head slowly. The narrative of
+the events in Sambir, related from the point of view of the
+astute statesman, the sense of which had been caught here and
+there by his inattentive ears, had been yet like a thread to
+guide him out of the sombre labyrinth of his thoughts; and now he
+had come to the end of it, out of the tangled past into the
+pressing necessities of the present. With the palms of his hands
+on his knees, his elbows squared out, he looked down on
+Babalatchi who sat in a stiff attitude, inexpressive and mute as
+a talking doll the mechanism of which had at length run down.
+
+"You people did all this," said Lingard at last, "and you will be
+sorry for it before the dry wind begins to blow again. Abdulla's
+voice will bring the Dutch rule here."
+
+Babalatchi waved his hand towards the dark doorway.
+
+"There are forests there. Lakamba rules the land now. Tell me,
+Tuan, do you think the big trees know the name of the ruler? No.
+They are born, they grow, they live and they die--yet know not,
+feel not. It is their land."
+
+"Even a big tree may be killed by a small axe," said Lingard,
+drily. "And, remember, my one-eyed friend, that axes are made by
+white hands. You will soon find that out, since you have hoisted
+the flag of the Dutch."
+
+"Ay--wa!" said Babalatchi, slowly. "It is written that the earth
+belongs to those who have fair skins and hard but foolish hearts.
+The farther away is the master, the easier it is for the slave,
+Tuan! You were too near. Your voice rang in our ears always.
+Now it is not going to be so. The great Rajah in Batavia is
+strong, but he may be deceived. He must speak very loud to be
+heard here. But if we have need to shout, then he must hear the
+many voices that call for protection. He is but a white man."
+
+"If I ever spoke to Patalolo, like an elder brother, it was for
+your good--for the good of all," said Lingard with great
+earnestness.
+
+"This is a white man's talk," exclaimed Babalatchi, with bitter
+exultation. "I know you. That is how you all talk while you
+load your guns and sharpen your swords; and when you are ready,
+then to those who are weak you say: 'Obey me and be happy, or
+die! You are strange, you white men. You think it is only your
+wisdom and your virtue and your happiness that are true. You are
+stronger than the wild beasts, but not so wise. A black tiger
+knows when he is not hungry--you do not. He knows the difference
+between himself and those that can speak; you do not understand
+the difference between yourselves and us--who are men. You are
+wise and great--and you shall always be fools."
+
+He threw up both his hands, stirring the sleeping cloud of smoke
+that hung above his head, and brought the open palms on the
+flimsy floor on each side of his outstretched legs. The whole
+hut shook. Lingard looked at the excited statesman curiously.
+
+"Apa! Apa! What's the matter?" he murmured, soothingly. "Whom
+did I kill here? Where are my guns? What have I done? What have
+I eaten up?"
+
+Babalatchi calmed down, and spoke with studied courtesy.
+
+"You, Tuan, are of the sea, and more like what we are. Therefore
+I speak to you all the words that are in my heart. . . . Only
+once has the sea been stronger than the Rajah of the sea."
+
+"You know it; do you?" said Lingard, with pained sharpness.
+
+"Hai! We have heard about your ship--and some rejoiced. Not I.
+Amongst the whites, who are devils, you are a man."
+
+"Trima kassi! I give you thanks," said Lingard, gravely.
+
+Babalatchi looked down with a bashful smile, but his face became
+saddened directly, and when he spoke again it was in a mournful
+tone.
+
+"Had you come a day sooner, Tuan, you would have seen an enemy
+die. You would have seen him die poor, blind, unhappy--with no
+son to dig his grave and speak of his wisdom and courage. Yes;
+you would have seen the man that fought you in Carimata many
+years ago, die alone--but for one friend. A great sight to you."
+
+"Not to me," answered Lingard. "I did not even remember him till
+you spoke his name just now. You do not understand us. We
+fight, we vanquish--and we forget."
+
+"True, true," said Babalatchi, with polite irony; "you whites are
+so great that you disdain to remember your enemies. No! No!" he
+went on, in the same tone, "you have so much mercy for us, that
+there is no room for any remembrance. Oh, you are great and
+good! But it is in my mind that amongst yourselves you know how
+to remember. Is it not so, Tuan?"
+
+Lingard said nothing. His shoulders moved imperceptibly. He
+laid his gun across his knees and stared at the flint lock
+absently.
+
+"Yes," went on Babalatchi, falling again into a mournful mood,
+"yes, he died in darkness. I sat by his side and held his hand,
+but he could not see the face of him who watched the faint breath
+on his lips. She, whom he had cursed because of the white man,
+was there too, and wept with covered face. The white man walked
+about the courtyard making many noises. Now and then he would
+come to the doorway and glare at us who mourned. He stared with
+wicked eyes, and then I was glad that he who was dying was blind.
+This is true talk. I was glad; for a white man's eyes are not
+good to see when the devil that lives within is looking out
+through them."
+
+"Devil! Hey?" said Lingard, half aloud to himself, as if struck
+with the obviousness of some novel idea. Babalatchi went on:
+
+"At the first hour of the morning he sat up--he so weak--and said
+plainly some words that were not meant for human ears. I held
+his hand tightly, but it was time for the leader of brave men to
+go amongst the Faithful who are happy. They of my household
+brought a white sheet, and I began to dig a grave in the hut in
+which he died. She mourned aloud. The white man came to the
+doorway and shouted. He was angry. Angry with her because she
+beat her breast, and tore her hair, and mourned with shrill cries
+as a woman should. Do you understand what I say, Tuan? That
+white man came inside the hut with great fury, and took her by
+the shoulder, and dragged her out. Yes, Tuan. I saw Omar dead,
+and I saw her at the feet of that white dog who has deceived me.
+I saw his face grey, like the cold mist of the morning; I saw his
+pale eyes looking down at Omar's daughter beating her head on the
+ground at his feet. At the feet of him who is Abdulla's slave.
+Yes, he lives by Abdulla's will. That is why I held my hand
+while I saw all this. I held my hand because we are now under
+the flag of the Orang Blanda, and Abdulla can speak into the ears
+of the great. We must not have any trouble with white men.
+Abdulla has spoken--and I must obey."
+
+"That's it, is it?" growled Lingard in his moustache. Then in
+Malay, "It seems that you are angry, O Babalatchi!"
+
+"No; I am not angry, Tuan," answered Babalatchi, descending from
+the insecure heights of his indignation into the insincere depths
+of safe humility. "I am not angry. What am I to be angry? I am
+only an Orang Laut, and I have fled before your people many
+times. Servant of this one--protected of another; I have given
+my counsel here and there for a handful of rice. What am I, to
+be angry with a white man? What is anger without the power to
+strike? But you whites have taken all: the land, the sea, and the
+power to strike! And there is nothing left for us in the islands
+but your white men's justice; your great justice that knows not
+anger."
+
+He got up and stood for a moment in the doorway, sniffing the hot
+air of the courtyard, then turned back and leaned against the
+stay of the ridge pole, facing Lingard who kept his seat on the
+chest. The torch, consumed nearly to the end, burned noisily.
+Small explosions took place in the heart of the flame, driving
+through its smoky blaze strings of hard, round puffs of white
+smoke, no bigger than peas, which rolled out of doors in the
+faint draught that came from invisible cracks of the bamboo
+walls. The pungent taint of unclean things below and about the
+hut grew heavier, weighing down Lingard's resolution and his
+thoughts in an irresistible numbness of the brain. He thought
+drowsily of himself and of that man who wanted to see him--who
+waited to see him. Who waited! Night and day. Waited. . . . A
+spiteful but vaporous idea floated through his brain that such
+waiting could not be very pleasant to the fellow. Well, let him
+wait. He would see him soon enough. And for how long? Five
+seconds--five minutes--say nothing--say something. What? No!
+Just give him time to take one good look, and then . . .
+
+Suddenly Babalatchi began to speak in a soft voice. Lingard
+blinked, cleared his throat--sat up straight.
+
+"You know all now, Tuan. Lakamba dwells in the stockaded house
+of Patalolo; Abdulla has begun to build godowns of plank and
+stone; and now that Omar is dead, I myself shall depart from this
+place and live with Lakamba and speak in his ear. I have served
+many. The best of them all sleeps in the ground in a white
+sheet, with nothing to mark his grave but the ashes of the hut in
+which he died. Yes, Tuan! the white man destroyed it himself.
+With a blazing brand in his hand he strode around, shouting to me
+to come out--shouting to me, who was throwing earth on the body
+of a great leader. Yes; swearing to me by the name of your God
+and ours that he would burn me and her in there if we did not
+make haste. . . . Hai! The white men are very masterful and
+wise. I dragged her out quickly!"
+
+"Oh, damn it!" exclaimed Lingard--then went on in Malay, speaking
+earnestly. "Listen. That man is not like other white men. You
+know he is not. He is not a man at all. He is . . . I don't
+know."
+
+Babalatchi lifted his hand deprecatingly. His eye twinkled, and
+his red-stained big lips, parted by an expressionless grin,
+uncovered a stumpy row of black teeth filed evenly to the gums.
+
+"Hai! Hai! Not like you. Not like you," he said, increasing
+the softness of his tones as he neared the object uppermost in
+his mind during that much-desired interview. "Not like you,
+Tuan, who are like ourselves, only wiser and stronger. Yet he,
+also, is full of great cunning, and speaks of you without any
+respect, after the manner of white men when they talk of one
+another."
+
+Lingard leaped in his seat as if he had been prodded.
+
+"He speaks! What does he say?" he shouted.
+
+"Nay, Tuan," protested the composed Babalatchi; "what matters his
+talk if he is not a man? I am nothing before you--why should I
+repeat words of one white man about another? He did boast to
+Abdulla of having learned much from your wisdom in years past.
+Other words I have forgotten. Indeed, Tuan, I have . . ."
+
+Lingard cut short Babalatchi's protestations by a contemptuous
+wave of the hand and reseated himself with dignity.
+
+"I shall go," said Babalatchi, "and the white man will remain
+here, alone with the spirit of the dead and with her who has been
+the delight of his heart. He, being white, cannot hear the voice
+of those that died. . . . Tell me, Tuan," he went on, looking at
+Lingard with curiosity--"tell me, Tuan, do you white people ever
+hear the voices of the invisible ones?"
+
+"We do not," answered Lingard, "because those that we cannot see
+do not speak."
+
+"Never speak! And never complain with sounds that are not
+words?" exclaimed Babalatchi, doubtingly. "It may be so--or your
+ears are dull. We Malays hear many sounds near the places where
+men are buried. To-night I heard . . . Yes, even I have heard.
+. . . I do not want to hear any more," he added, nervously.
+"Perhaps I was wrong when I . . . There are things I regret.
+The trouble was heavy in his heart when he died. Sometimes I
+think I was wrong . . . but I do not want to hear the complaint
+of invisible lips. Therefore I go, Tuan. Let the unquiet spirit
+speak to his enemy the white man who knows not fear, or love, or
+mercy--knows nothing but contempt and violence. I have been
+wrong! I have! Hai! Hai!"
+
+He stood for awhile with his elbow in the palm of his left hand,
+the fingers of the other over his lips as if to stifle the
+expression of inconvenient remorse; then, after glancing at the
+torch, burnt out nearly to its end, he moved towards the wall by
+the chest, fumbled about there and suddenly flung open a large
+shutter of attaps woven in a light framework of sticks. Lingard
+swung his legs quickly round the corner of his seat.
+
+"Hallo!" he said, surprised.
+
+The cloud of smoke stirred, and a slow wisp curled out through
+the new opening. The torch flickered, hissed, and went out, the
+glowing end falling on the mat, whence Babalatchi snatched it up
+and tossed it outside through the open square. It described a
+vanishing curve of red light, and lay below, shining feebly in
+the vast darkness. Babalatchi remained with his arm stretched
+out into the empty night.
+
+"There," he said, "you can see the white man's courtyard, Tuan,
+and his house."
+
+ "I can see nothing," answered Lingard, putting his head through
+the shutter-hole. "It's too dark."
+
+"Wait, Tuan," urged Babalatchi. "You have been looking long at
+the burning torch. You will soon see. Mind the gun, Tuan. It
+is loaded."
+
+"There is no flint in it. You could not find a fire-stone for a
+hundred miles round this spot," said Lingard, testily. "Foolish
+thing to load that gun."
+
+"I have a stone. I had it from a man wise and pious that lives
+in Menang Kabau. A very pious man--very good fire. He spoke
+words over that stone that make its sparks good. And the gun is
+good--carries straight and far. Would carry from here to the
+door of the white man's house, I believe, Tuan."
+
+"Tida apa. Never mind your gun," muttered Lingard, peering into
+the formless darkness. "Is that the house--that black thing over
+there?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," answered Babalatchi; "that is his house. He lives there
+by the will of Abdulla, and shall live there till . . . From
+where you stand, Tuan, you can look over the fence and across the
+courtyard straight at the door--at the door from which he comes
+out every morning, looking like a man that had seen Jehannum in
+his sleep."
+
+Lingard drew his head in. Babalatchi touched his shoulder with a
+groping hand.
+
+"Wait a little, Tuan. Sit still. The morning is not far off
+now--a morning without sun after a night without stars. But
+there will be light enough to see the man who said not many days
+ago that he alone has made you less than a child in Sambir."
+
+He felt a slight tremor under his hand, but took it off directly
+and began feeling all over the lid of the chest, behind Lingard's
+back, for the gun.
+
+"What are you at?" said Lingard, impatiently. "You do worry about
+that rotten gun. You had better get a light."
+
+"A light! I tell you, Tuan, that the light of heaven is very
+near," said Babalatchi, who had now obtained possession of the
+object of his solicitude, and grasping it strongly by its long
+barrel, grounded the stock at his feet.
+
+"Perhaps it is near," said Lingard, leaning both his elbows on
+the lower cross-piece of the primitive window and looking out.
+"It is very black outside yet," he remarked carelessly.
+
+Babalatchi fidgeted about.
+
+"It is not good for you to sit where you may be seen," he
+muttered.
+
+"Why not?" asked Lingard.
+
+"The white man sleeps, it is true," explained Babalatchi, softly;
+"yet he may come out early, and he has arms."
+
+"Ah! he has arms?" said Lingard.
+
+"Yes; a short gun that fires many times--like yours here.
+Abdulla had to give it to him."
+
+Lingard heard Babalatchi's words, but made no movement. To the
+old adventurer the idea that fire arms could be dangerous in
+other hands than his own did not occur readily, and certainly not
+in connection with Willems. He was so busy with the thoughts
+about what he considered his own sacred duty, that he could not
+give any consideration to the probable actions of the man of whom
+he thought--as one may think of an executed criminal--with
+wondering indignation tempered by scornful pity. While he sat
+staring into the darkness, that every minute grew thinner before
+his pensive eyes, like a dispersing mist, Willems appeared to him
+as a figure belonging already wholly to the past--a figure that
+could come in no way into his life again. He had made up his
+mind, and the thing was as well as done. In his weary thoughts
+he had closed this fatal, inexplicable, and horrible episode in
+his life. The worst had happened. The coming days would see the
+retribution.
+
+He had removed an enemy once or twice before, out of his path; he
+had paid off some very heavy scores a good many times. Captain
+Tom had been a good friend to many: but it was generally
+understood, from Honolulu round about to Diego Suarez, that
+Captain Tom's enmity was rather more than any man single-handed
+could easily manage. He would not, as he said often, hurt a fly
+as long as the fly left him alone; yet a man does not live for
+years beyond the pale of civilized laws without evolving for
+himself some queer notions of justice. Nobody of those he knew
+had ever cared to point out to him the errors of his conceptions.
+
+It was not worth anybody's while to run counter to Lingard's
+ideas of the fitness of things--that fact was acquired to the
+floating wisdom of the South Seas, of the Eastern Archipelago,
+and was nowhere better understood than in out-of-the-way nooks of
+the world; in those nooks which he filled, unresisted and
+masterful, with the echoes of his noisy presence. There is not
+much use in arguing with a man who boasts of never having
+regretted a single action of his life, whose answer to a mild
+criticism is a good-natured shout--"You know nothing about it. I
+would do it again. Yes, sir!" His associates and his
+acquaintances accepted him, his opinions, his actions like things
+preordained and unchangeable; looked upon his many-sided
+manifestations with passive wonder not unmixed with that
+admiration which is only the rightful due of a successful man.
+But nobody had ever seen him in the mood he was in now. Nobody
+had seen Lingard doubtful and giving way to doubt, unable to make
+up his mind and unwilling to act; Lingard timid and hesitating
+one minute, angry yet inactive the next; Lingard puzzled in a
+word, because confronted with a situation that discomposed him by
+its unprovoked malevolence, by its ghastly injustice, that to his
+rough but unsophisticated palate tasted distinctly of sulphurous
+fumes from the deepest hell.
+
+The smooth darkness filling the shutter-hole grew paler and
+became blotchy with ill-defined shapes, as if a new universe was
+being evolved out of sombre chaos. Then outlines came out,
+defining forms without any details, indicating here a tree, there
+a bush; a black belt of forest far off; the straight lines of a
+house, the ridge of a high roof near by. Inside the hut,
+Babalatchi, who lately had been only a persuasive voice, became a
+human shape leaning its chin imprudently on the muzzle of a gun
+and rolling an uneasy eye over the reappearing world. The day
+came rapidly, dismal and oppressed by the fog of the river and by
+the heavy vapours of the sky--a day without colour and without
+sunshine: incomplete, disappointing, and sad.
+
+Babalatchi twitched gently Lingard's sleeve, and when the old
+seaman had lifted up his head interrogatively, he stretched out
+an arm and a pointing forefinger towards Willems' house, now
+plainly visible to the right and beyond the big tree of the
+courtyard.
+
+"Look, Tuan!" he said. "He lives there. That is the door--his
+door. Through it he will appear soon, with his hair in disorder
+and his mouth full of curses. That is so. He is a white man,
+and never satisfied. It is in my mind he is angry even in his
+sleep. A dangerous man. As Tuan may observe," he went on,
+obsequiously, "his door faces this opening, where you condescend
+to sit, which is concealed from all eyes. Faces it--straight--and
+not far. Observe, Tuan, not at all far."
+
+"Yes, yes; I can see. I shall see him when he wakes."
+
+"No doubt, Tuan. When he wakes. . . . If you remain here he can
+not see you. I shall withdraw quickly and prepare my canoe
+myself. I am only a poor man, and must go to Sambir to greet
+Lakamba when he opens his eyes. I must bow before Abdulla who
+has strength--even more strength than you. Now if you remain
+here, you shall easily behold the man who boasted to Abdulla that
+he had been your friend, even while he prepared to fight those
+who called you protector. Yes, he plotted with Abdulla for that
+cursed flag. Lakamba was blind then, and I was deceived. But
+you, Tuan! Remember, he deceived you more. Of that he boasted
+before all men."
+
+He leaned the gun quietly against the wall close to the window,
+and said softly: "Shall I go now, Tuan? Be careful of the gun.
+I have put the fire-stone in. The fire-stone of the wise man,
+which never fails."
+
+Lingard's eyes were fastened on the distant doorway. Across his
+line of sight, in the grey emptiness of the courtyard, a big
+fruit-pigeon flapped languidly towards the forests with a loud
+booming cry, like the note of a deep gong: a brilliant bird
+looking in the gloom of threatening day as black as a crow. A
+serried flock of white rice birds rose above the trees with a
+faint scream, and hovered, swaying in a disordered mass that
+suddenly scattered in all directions, as if burst asunder by a
+silent explosion. Behind his back Lingard heard a shuffle of
+feet--women leaving the hut. In the other courtyard a voice was
+heard complaining of cold, and coming very feeble, but
+exceedingly distinct, out of the vast silence of the abandoned
+houses and clearings. Babalatchi coughed discreetly. From under
+the house the thumping of wooden pestles husking the rice started
+with unexpected abruptness. The weak but clear voice in the yard
+again urged, "Blow up the embers, O brother!" Another voice
+answered, drawling in modulated, thin sing-song, "Do it yourself,
+O shivering pig!" and the drawl of the last words stopped short,
+as if the man had fallen into a deep hole. Babalatchi coughed
+again a little impatiently, and said in a confidential tone--
+
+"Do you think it is time for me to go, Tuan? Will you take care
+of my gun, Tuan? I am a man that knows how to obey; even obey
+Abdulla, who has deceived me. Nevertheless this gun carries far
+and true--if you would want to know, Tuan. And I have put in a
+double measure of powder, and three slugs. Yes, Tuan.
+Now--perhaps--I go."
+
+When Babalatchi commenced speaking, Lingard turned slowly round
+and gazed upon him with the dull and unwilling look of a sick man
+waking to another day of suffering. As the astute statesman
+proceeded, Lingard's eyebrows came close, his eyes became
+animated, and a big vein stood out on his forehead, accentuating
+a lowering frown. When speaking his last words Babalatchi
+faltered, then stopped, confused, before the steady gaze of the
+old seaman.
+
+Lingard rose. His face cleared, and he looked down at the
+anxious Babalatchi with sudden benevolence.
+
+"So! That's what you were after," he said, laying a heavy hand
+on Babalatchi's yielding shoulder. "You thought I came here to
+murder him. Hey? Speak! You faithful dog of an Arab trader!"
+
+"And what else, Tuan?" shrieked Babalatchi, exasperated into
+sincerity. "What else, Tuan! Remember what he has done; he
+poisoned our ears with his talk about you. You are a man. If
+you did not come to kill, Tuan, then either I am a fool or . . ."
+
+He paused, struck his naked breast with his open palm, and
+finished in a discouraged whisper--"or, Tuan, you are."
+
+Lingard looked down at him with scornful serenity. After his
+long and painful gropings amongst the obscure abominations of
+Willems' conduct, the logical if tortuous evolutions of
+Babalatchi's diplomatic mind were to him welcome as daylight.
+There was something at last he could understand--the clear effect
+of a simple cause. He felt indulgent towards the disappointed
+sage.
+
+"So you are angry with your friend, O one-eyed one!" he said
+slowly, nodding his fierce countenance close to Babalatchi's
+discomfited face. "It seems to me that you must have had much to
+do with what happened in Sambir lately. Hey? You son of a burnt
+father."
+
+"May I perish under your hand, O Rajah of the sea, if my words
+are not true!" said Babalatchi, with reckless excitement. "You
+are here in the midst of your enemies. He the greatest. Abdulla
+would do nothing without him, and I could do nothing without
+Abdulla. Strike me--so that you strike all!"
+
+"Who are you," exclaimed Lingard contemptuously--"who are you to
+dare call yourself my enemy! Dirt! Nothing! Go out first," he
+went on severely. "Lakas! quick. March out!"
+
+He pushed Babalatchi through the doorway and followed him down
+the short ladder into the courtyard. The boatmen squatting over
+the fire turned their slow eyes with apparent difficulty towards
+the two men; then, unconcerned, huddled close together again,
+stretching forlornly their hands over the embers. The women
+stopped in their work and with uplifted pestles flashed quick and
+curious glances from the gloom under the house.
+
+"Is that the way?" asked Lingard with a nod towards the little
+wicket-gate of Willems' enclosure.
+
+"If you seek death, that is surely the way," answered Babalatchi
+in a dispassionate voice, as if he had exhausted all the
+emotions. "He lives there: he who destroyed your friends; who
+hastened Omar's death; who plotted with Abdulla first against
+you, then against me. I have been like a child. O shame! . . .
+But go, Tuan. Go there."
+
+"I go where I like," said Lingard, emphatically, "and you may go
+to the devil; I do not want you any more. The islands of these
+seas shall sink before I, Rajah Laut, serve the will of any of
+your people. Tau? But I tell you this: I do not care what you
+do with him after to-day. And I say that because I am merciful."
+
+"Tida! I do nothing," said Babalatchi, shaking his head with
+bitter apathy. "I am in Abdulla's hand and care not, even as you
+do. No! no!" he added, turning away, "I have learned much wisdom
+this morning. There are no men anywhere. You whites are cruel
+to your friends and merciful to your enemies--which is the work
+of fools."
+
+He went away towards the riverside, and, without once looking
+back, disappeared in the low bank of mist that lay over the water
+and the shore. Lingard followed him with his eyes thoughtfully.
+After awhile he roused himself and called out to his boatmen--
+
+"Hai--ya there! After you have eaten rice, wait for me with your
+paddles in your hands. You hear?"
+
+"Ada, Tuan!" answered Ali through the smoke of the morning fire
+that was spreading itself, low and gentle, over the
+courtyard--"we hear!"
+
+Lingard opened slowly the little wicket-gate, made a few steps
+into the empty enclosure, and stopped. He had felt about his
+head the short breath of a puff of wind that passed him, made
+every leaf of the big tree shiver--and died out in a hardly
+perceptible tremor of branches and twigs. Instinctively he
+glanced upwards with a seaman's impulse. Above him, under the
+grey motionless waste of a stormy sky, drifted low black vapours,
+in stretching bars, in shapeless patches, in sinuous wisps and
+tormented spirals. Over the courtyard and the house floated a
+round, sombre, and lingering cloud, dragging behind a tail of
+tangled and filmy streamers--like the dishevelled hair of a
+mourning woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+"Beware!"
+
+The tremulous effort and the broken, inadequate tone of the faint
+cry, surprised Lingard more than the unexpected suddenness of the
+warning conveyed, he did not know by whom and to whom. Besides
+himself there was no one in the courtyard as far as he could see.
+
+The cry was not renewed, and his watchful eyes, scanning warily
+the misty solitude of Willems' enclosure, were met everywhere
+only by the stolid impassiveness of inanimate things: the big
+sombre-looking tree, the shut-up, sightless house, the glistening
+bamboo fences, the damp and drooping bushes further off--all
+these things, that condemned to look for ever at the
+incomprehensible afflictions or joys of mankind, assert in their
+aspect of cold unconcern the high dignity of lifeless matter that
+surrounds, incurious and unmoved, the restless mysteries of the
+ever-changing, of the never-ending life.
+
+Lingard, stepping aside, put the trunk of the tree between
+himself and the house, then, moving cautiously round one of the
+projecting buttresses, had to tread short in order to avoid
+scattering a small heap of black embers upon which he came
+unexpectedly on the other side. A thin, wizened, little old
+woman, who, standing behind the tree, had been looking at the
+house, turned towards him with a start, gazed with faded,
+expressionless eyes at the intruder, then made a limping attempt
+to get away. She seemed, however, to realize directly the
+hopelessness or the difficulty of the undertaking, stopped,
+hesitated, tottered back slowly; then, after blinking dully, fell
+suddenly on her knees amongst the white ashes, and, bending over
+the heap of smouldering coals, distended her sunken cheeks in a
+steady effort to blow up the hidden sparks into a useful blaze.
+Lingard looked down on her, but she seemed to have made up her
+mind that there was not enough life left in her lean body for
+anything else than the discharge of the simple domestic duty,
+and, apparently, she begrudged him the least moment of attention.
+
+After waiting for awhile, Lingard asked--
+
+"Why did you call, O daughter?"
+
+"I saw you enter," she croaked feebly, still grovelling with her
+face near the ashes and without looking up, "and I called--the
+cry of warning. It was her order. Her order," she repeated,
+with a moaning sigh.
+
+"And did she hear?" pursued Lingard, with gentle composure.
+
+Her projecting shoulder-blades moved uneasily under the thin
+stuff of the tight body jacket. She scrambled up with difficulty
+to her feet, and hobbled away, muttering peevishly to herself,
+towards a pile of dry brushwood heaped up against the fence.
+
+Lingard, looking idly after her, heard the rattle of loose planks
+that led from the ground to the door of the house. He moved his
+head beyond the shelter of the tree and saw Aissa coming down the
+inclined way into the courtyard. After making a few hurried
+paces towards the tree, she stopped with one foot advanced in an
+appearance of sudden terror, and her eyes glanced wildly right
+and left. Her head was uncovered. A blue cloth wrapped her from
+her head to foot in close slanting folds, with one end thrown
+over her shoulder. A tress of her black hair strayed across her
+bosom. Her bare arms pressed down close to her body, with hands
+open and outstretched fingers; her slightly elevated shoulders
+and the backward inclination of her torso gave her the aspect of
+one defiant yet shrinking from a coming blow. She had closed the
+door of the house behind her; and as she stood solitary in the
+unnatural and threatening twilight of the murky day, with
+everything unchanged around her, she appeared to Lingard as if
+she had been made there, on the spot, out of the black vapours of
+the sky and of the sinister gleams of feeble sunshine that
+struggled, through the thickening clouds, into the colourless
+desolation of the world.
+
+After a short but attentive glance towards the shut-up house,
+Lingard stepped out from behind the tree and advanced slowly
+towards her. The sudden fixity of her--till then--restless eyes
+and a slight twitch of her hands were the only signs she gave at
+first of having seen him. She made a long stride forward, and
+putting herself right in his path, stretched her arms across; her
+black eyes opened wide, her lips parted as if in an uncertain
+attempt to speak--but no sound came out to break the significant
+silence of their meeting. Lingard stopped and looked at her with
+stern curiosity. After a while he said composedly--
+
+"Let me pass. I came here to talk to a man. Does he hide? Has
+he sent you?"
+
+She made a step nearer, her arms fell by her side, then she put
+them straight out nearly touching Lingard's breast.
+
+"He knows not fear," she said, speaking low, with a forward throw
+of her head, in a voice trembling but distinct. "It is my own
+fear that has sent me here. He sleeps."
+
+"He has slept long enough," said Lingard, in measured tones. "I
+am come--and now is the time of his waking. Go and tell him
+this--or else my own voice will call him up. A voice he knows
+well."
+
+He put her hands down firmly and again made as if to pass by her.
+
+"Do not!" she exclaimed, and fell at his feet as if she had been
+cut down by a scythe. The unexpected suddenness of her movement
+startled Lingard, who stepped back.
+
+"What's this?" he exclaimed in a wondering whisper--then added in
+a tone of sharp command: "Stand up!"
+
+She rose at once and stood looking at him, timorous and fearless;
+yet with a fire of recklessness burning in her eyes that made
+clear her resolve to pursue her purpose even to the death.
+Lingard went on in a severe voice--
+
+"Go out of my path. You are Omar's daughter, and you ought to
+know that when men meet in daylight women must be silent and
+abide their fate."
+
+"Women!" she retorted, with subdued vehemence. "Yes, I am a
+woman! Your eyes see that, O Rajah Laut, but can you see my
+life? I also have heard--O man of many fights--I also have heard
+the voice of fire-arms; I also have felt the rain of young twigs
+and of leaves cut up by bullets fall down about my head; I also
+know how to look in silence at angry faces and at strong hands
+raised high grasping sharp steel. I also saw men fall dead
+around me without a cry of fear and of mourning; and I have
+watched the sleep of weary fugitives, and looked at night shadows
+full of menace and death with eyes that knew nothing but
+watchfulness. And," she went on, with a mournful drop in her
+voice, "I have faced the heartless sea, held on my lap the heads
+of those who died raving from thirst, and from their cold hands
+took the paddle and worked so that those with me did not know
+that one man more was dead. I did all this. What more have you
+done? That was my life. What has been yours?"
+
+The matter and the manner of her speech held Lingard motionless,
+attentive and approving against his will. She ceased speaking,
+and from her staring black eyes with a narrow border of white
+above and below, a double ray of her very soul streamed out in a
+fierce desire to light up the most obscure designs of his heart.
+After a long silence, which served to emphasize the meaning of
+her words, she added in the whisper of bitter regret--
+
+"And I have knelt at your feet! And I am afraid!"
+
+"You," said Lingard deliberately, and returning her look with an
+interested gaze, "you are a woman whose heart, I believe, is
+great enough to fill a man's breast: but still you are a woman,
+and to you, I, Rajah Laut, have nothing to say."
+
+She listened bending her head in a movement of forced attention;
+and his voice sounded to her unexpected, far off, with the
+distant and unearthly ring of voices that we hear in dreams,
+saying faintly things startling, cruel or absurd, to which there
+is no possible reply. To her he had nothing to say! She wrung
+her hands, glanced over the courtyard with that eager and
+distracted look that sees nothing, then looked up at the hopeless
+sky of livid grey and drifting black; at the unquiet mourning of
+the hot and brilliant heaven that had seen the beginning of her
+love, that had heard his entreaties and her answers, that had
+seen his desire and her fear; that had seen her joy, her
+surrender--and his defeat. Lingard moved a little, and this
+slight stir near her precipitated her disordered and shapeless
+thoughts into hurried words.
+
+"Wait!" she exclaimed in a stifled voice, and went on
+disconnectedly and rapidly--"Stay. I have heard. Men often
+spoke by the fires . . . men of my people. And they said of
+you--the first on the sea--they said that to men's cries you were
+deaf in battle, but after . . . No! even while you fought, your
+ears were open to the voice of children and women. They said . .
+. that. Now I, a woman, I . . ."
+
+She broke off suddenly and stood before him with dropped eyelids
+and parted lips, so still now that she seemed to have been
+changed into a breathless, an unhearing, an unseeing figure,
+without knowledge of fear or hope, of anger or despair. In the
+astounding repose that came on her face, nothing moved but the
+delicate nostrils that expanded and collapsed quickly,
+flutteringly, in interrupted beats, like the wings of a snared
+bird.
+
+"I am white," said Lingard, proudly, looking at her with a steady
+gaze where simple curiosity was giving way to a pitying
+annoyance, "and men you have heard, spoke only what is true over
+the evening fires. My ears are open to your prayer. But listen
+to me before you speak. For yourself you need not be afraid. You
+can come even now with me and you shall find refuge in the
+household of Syed Abdulla--who is of your own faith. And this
+also you must know: nothing that you may say will change my
+purpose towards the man who is sleeping--or hiding--in that
+house."
+
+Again she gave him the look that was like a stab, not of anger
+but of desire; of the intense, over-powering desire to see in, to
+see through, to understand everything: every thought, emotion,
+purpose; every impulse, every hesitation inside that man; inside
+that white-clad foreign being who looked at her, who spoke to
+her, who breathed before her like any other man, but bigger,
+red-faced, white-haired and mysterious. It was the future
+clothed in flesh; the to-morrow; the day after; all the days, all
+the years of her life standing there before her alive and secret,
+with all their good or evil shut up within the breast of that
+man; of that man who could be persuaded, cajoled, entreated,
+perhaps touched, worried; frightened--who knows?--if only first
+he could be understood! She had seen a long time ago whither
+events were tending. She had noted the contemptuous yet menacing
+coldness of Abdulla; she had heard--alarmed yet
+unbelieving--Babalatchi's gloomy hints, covert allusions and
+veiled suggestions to abandon the useless white man whose fate
+would be the price of the peace secured by the wise and good who
+had no need of him any more. And he--himself! She clung to him.
+There was nobody else. Nothing else. She would try to cling to
+him always--all the life! And yet he was far from her. Further
+every day. Every day he seemed more distant, and she followed
+him patiently, hopefully, blindly, but steadily, through all the
+devious wanderings of his mind. She followed as well as she
+could. Yet at times--very often lately--she had felt lost like
+one strayed in the thickets of tangled undergrowth of a great
+forest. To her the ex-clerk of old Hudig appeared as remote, as
+brilliant, as terrible, as necessary, as the sun that gives life
+to these lands: the sun of unclouded skies that dazzles and
+withers; the sun beneficent and wicked--the giver of light,
+perfume, and pestilence. She had watched him--watched him close;
+fascinated by love, fascinated by danger. He was alone now--but
+for her; and she saw--she thought she saw--that he was like a man
+afraid of something. Was it possible? He afraid? Of what? Was
+it of that old white man who was coming--who had come? Possibly.
+She had heard of that man ever since she could remember. The
+bravest were afraid of him! And now what was in the mind of this
+old, old man who looked so strong? What was he going to do with
+the light of her life? Put it out? Take it away? Take it away
+for ever!--for ever!--and leave her in darkness:--not in the
+stirring, whispering, expectant night in which the hushed world
+awaits the return of sunshine; but in the night without end, the
+night of the grave, where nothing breathes, nothing moves,
+nothing thinks--the last darkness of cold and silence without
+hope of another sunrise.
+
+She cried--"Your purpose! You know nothing. I must . . ."
+
+He interrupted--unreasonably excited, as if she had, by her look,
+inoculated him with some of her own distress.
+
+"I know enough."
+
+She approached, and stood facing him at arm's length, with both
+her hands on his shoulders; and he, surprised by that audacity,
+closed and opened his eyes two or three times, aware of some
+emotion arising within him, from her words, her tone, her
+contact; an emotion unknown, singular, penetrating and sad--at
+the close sight of that strange woman, of that being savage and
+tender, strong and delicate, fearful and resolute, that had got
+entangled so fatally between their two lives--his own and that
+other white man's, the abominable scoundrel.
+
+"How can you know?" she went on, in a persuasive tone that seemed
+to flow out of her very heart--"how can you know? I live with
+him all the days. All the nights. I look at him; I see his
+every breath, every glance of his eye, every movement of his
+lips. I see nothing else! What else is there? And even I do
+not understand. I do not understand him!--Him!--My life! Him
+who to me is so great that his presence hides the earth and the
+water from my sight!"
+
+Lingard stood straight, with his hands deep in the pockets of his
+jacket. His eyes winked quickly, because she spoke very close to
+his face. She disturbed him and he had a sense of the efforts he
+was making to get hold of her meaning, while all the time he
+could not help telling himself that all this was of no use.
+
+She added after a pause--"There has been a time when I could
+understand him. When I knew what was in his mind better than he
+knew it himself. When I felt him. When I held him. . . . And
+now he has escaped."
+
+"Escaped? What? Gone away!" shouted Lingard.
+
+"Escaped from me," she said; "left me alone. Alone. And I am
+ever near him. Yet alone."
+
+Her hands slipped slowly off Lingard's shoulders and her arms
+fell by her side, listless, discouraged, as if to her--to her,
+the savage, violent, and ignorant creature--had been revealed
+clearly in that moment the tremendous fact of our isolation, of
+the loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and
+everlasting; of the indestructible loneliness that surrounds,
+envelopes, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the grave,
+and, perhaps, beyond.
+
+"Aye! Very well! I understand. His face is turned away from
+you," said Lingard. "Now, what do you want?"
+
+"I want . . . I have looked--for help . . . everywhere . . .
+against men. . . . All men . . . I do not know. First they
+came, the invisible whites, and dealt death from afar . . . then
+he came. He came to me who was alone and sad. He came; angry
+with his brothers; great amongst his own people; angry with those
+I have not seen: with the people where men have no mercy and
+women have no shame. He was of them, and great amongst them.
+For he was great?"
+
+Lingard shook his head slightly. She frowned at him, and went on
+in disordered haste--
+
+"Listen. I saw him. I have lived by the side of brave men . . .
+of chiefs. When he came I was the daughter of a beggar--of a
+blind man without strength and hope. He spoke to me as if I had
+been brighter than the sunshine--more delightful than the cool
+water of the brook by which we met--more . . ." Her anxious eyes
+saw some shade of expression pass on her listener's face that
+made her hold her breath for a second, and then explode into
+pained fury so violent that it drove Lingard back a pace, like an
+unexpected blast of wind. He lifted both his hands,
+incongruously paternal in his venerable aspect, bewildered and
+soothing, while she stretched her neck forward and shouted at
+him.
+
+"I tell you I was all that to him. I know it! I saw it! . . .
+There are times when even you white men speak the truth. I saw
+his eyes. I felt his eyes, I tell you! I saw him tremble when I
+came near--when I spoke--when I touched him. Look at me! You
+have been young. Look at me. Look, Rajah Laut!"
+
+She stared at Lingard with provoking fixity, then, turning her
+head quickly, she sent over her shoulder a glance, full of humble
+fear, at the house that stood high behind her back--dark, closed,
+rickety and silent on its crooked posts.
+
+Lingard's eyes followed her look, and remained gazing expectantly
+at the house. After a minute or so he muttered, glancing at her
+suspiciously--
+
+"If he has not heard your voice now, then he must be far away--or
+dead."
+
+"He is there," she whispered, a little calmed but still
+anxious--"he is there. For three days he waited. Waited for you
+night and day. And I waited with him. I waited, watching his
+face, his eyes, his lips; listening to his words.--To the words I
+could not understand.--To the words he spoke in daylight; to the
+words he spoke at night in his short sleep. I listened. He
+spoke to himself walking up and down here--by the river; by the
+bushes. And I followed. I wanted to know--and I could not! He
+was tormented by things that made him speak in the words of his
+own people. Speak to himself--not to me. Not to me! What was
+he saying? What was he going to do? Was he afraid of you?--Of
+death? What was in his heart? . . . Fear? . . . Or anger? . .
+. what desire? . . . what sadness? He spoke; spoke; many words.
+All the time! And I could not know! I wanted to speak to him.
+He was deaf to me. I followed him everywhere, watching for some
+word I could understand; but his mind was in the land of his
+people--away from me. When I touched him he was angry--so!"
+
+She imitated the movement of some one shaking off roughly an
+importunate hand, and looked at Lingard with tearful and unsteady
+eyes.
+
+After a short interval of laboured panting, as if she had been
+out of breath with running or fighting, she looked down and went
+on--
+
+"Day after day, night after night, I lived watching him--seeing
+nothing. And my heart was heavy--heavy with the presence of
+death that dwelt amongst us. I could not believe. I thought he
+was afraid. Afraid of you! Then I, myself, knew fear. . . .
+Tell me, Rajah Laut, do you know the fear without voice--the fear
+of silence--the fear that comes when there is no one near--when
+there is no battle, no cries, no angry faces or armed hands
+anywhere? . . . The fear from which there is no escape!"
+
+She paused, fastened her eyes again on the puzzled Lingard, and
+hurried on in a tone of despair--
+
+"And I knew then he would not fight you! Before--many days
+ago--I went away twice to make him obey my desire; to make him
+strike at his own people so that he could be mine--mine! O
+calamity! His hand was false as your white hearts. It struck
+forward, pushed by my desire--by his desire of me. . . . It
+struck that strong hand, and--O shame!--it killed nobody! Its
+fierce and lying blow woke up hate without any fear. Round me
+all was lies. His strength was a lie. My own people lied to me
+and to him. And to meet you--you, the great!--he had no one but
+me? But me with my rage, my pain, my weakness. Only me! And to
+me he would not even speak. The fool!"
+
+She came up close to Lingard, with the wild and stealthy aspect
+of a lunatic longing to whisper out an insane secret--one of
+those misshapen, heart-rending, and ludicrous secrets; one of
+those thoughts that, like monsters--cruel, fantastic, and
+mournful, wander about terrible and unceasing in the night of
+madness. Lingard looked at her, astounded but unflinching. She
+spoke in his face, very low.
+
+"He is all! Everything. He is my breath, my light, my heart. .
+. . Go away. . . . Forget him. . . . He has no courage and no
+wisdom any more . . . and I have lost my power. . . . Go away and
+forget. There are other enemies. . . . Leave him to me. He had
+been a man once. . . . You are too great. Nobody can withstand
+you. . . . I tried. . . . I know now. . . . I cry for mercy.
+Leave him to me and go away."
+
+The fragments of her supplicating sentences were as if tossed on
+the crest of her sobs. Lingard, outwardly impassive, with his
+eyes fixed on the house, experienced that feeling of
+condemnation, deep-seated, persuasive, and masterful; that
+illogical impulse of disapproval which is half disgust, half
+vague fear, and that wakes up in our hearts in the presence of
+anything new or unusual, of anything that is not run into the
+mould of our own conscience; the accursed feeling made up of
+disdain, of anger, and of the sense of superior virtue that
+leaves us deaf, blind, contemptuous and stupid before anything
+which is not like ourselves.
+
+He answered, not looking at her at first, but speaking towards
+the house that fascinated him--
+"_I_ go away! He wanted me to come--he himself did! . . . YOU
+must go away. You do not know what you are asking for. Listen.
+Go to your own people. Leave him. He is . . ."
+
+He paused, looked down at her with his steady eyes; hesitated, as
+if seeking an adequate expression; then snapped his fingers, and
+said--
+
+"Finish."
+
+She stepped back, her eyes on the ground, and pressed her temples
+with both her hands, which she raised to her head in a slow and
+ample movement full of unconscious tragedy. The tone of her
+words was gentle and vibrating, like a loud meditation. She
+said--
+
+"Tell the brook not to run to the river; tell the river not to
+run to the sea. Speak loud. Speak angrily. Maybe they will
+obey you. But it is in my mind that the brook will not care.
+The brook that springs out of the hillside and runs to the great
+river. He would not care for your words: he that cares not for
+the very mountain that gave him life; he that tears the earth
+from which he springs. Tears it, eats it, destroys it--to hurry
+faster to the river--to the river in which he is lost for ever. .
+. . O Rajah Laut! I do not care."
+
+She drew close again to Lingard, approaching slowly, reluctantly,
+as if pushed by an invisible hand, and added in words that seemed
+to be torn out of her--
+
+"I cared not for my own father. For him that died. I would have
+rather . . . You do not know what I have done . . . I . . ."
+
+"You shall have his life," said Lingard, hastily.
+
+They stood together, crossing their glances; she suddenly
+appeased, and Lingard thoughtful and uneasy under a vague sense
+of defeat. And yet there was no defeat. He never intended to
+kill the fellow--not after the first moment of anger, a long time
+ago. The days of bitter wonder had killed anger; had left only a
+bitter indignation and a bitter wish for complete justice. He
+felt discontented and surprised. Unexpectedly he had come upon a
+human being--a woman at that--who had made him disclose his will
+before its time. She should have his life. But she must be
+told, she must know, that for such men as Willems there was no
+favour and no grace.
+
+"Understand," he said slowly, "that I leave him his life not in
+mercy but in punishment."
+
+She started, watched every word on his lips, and after he
+finished speaking she remained still and mute in astonished
+immobility. A single big drop of rain, a drop enormous, pellucid
+and heavy--like a super-human tear coming straight and rapid from
+above, tearing its way through the sombre sky--struck loudly the
+dry ground between them in a starred splash. She wrung her hands
+in the bewilderment of the new and incomprehensible fear. The
+anguish of her whisper was more piercing than the shrillest cry.
+
+"What punishment! Will you take him away then? Away from me?
+Listen to what I have done. . . . It is I who . . ."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Lingard, who had been looking at the house.
+
+"Don't you believe her, Captain Lingard," shouted Willems from
+the doorway, where he appeared with swollen eyelids and bared
+breast. He stood for a while, his hands grasping the lintels on
+each side of the door, and writhed about, glaring wildly, as if
+he had been crucified there. Then he made a sudden rush head
+foremost down the plankway that responded with hollow, short
+noises to every footstep.
+
+She heard him. A slight thrill passed on her face and the words
+that were on her lips fell back unspoken into her benighted
+heart; fell back amongst the mud, the stones--and the flowers,
+that are at the bottom of every heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+When he felt the solid ground of the courtyard under his feet,
+Willems pulled himself up in his headlong rush and moved forward
+with a moderate gait. He paced stiffly, looking with extreme
+exactitude at Lingard's face; looking neither to the right nor to
+the left but at the face only, as if there was nothing in the
+world but those features familiar and dreaded; that white-haired,
+rough and severe head upon which he gazed in a fixed effort of
+his eyes, like a man trying to read small print at the full range
+of human vision. As soon as Willems' feet had left the planks,
+the silence which had been lifted up by the jerky rattle of his
+footsteps fell down again upon the courtyard; the silence of the
+cloudy sky and of the windless air, the sullen silence of the
+earth oppressed by the aspect of coming turmoil, the silence of
+the world collecting its faculties to withstand the storm.
+Through this silence Willems pushed his way, and stopped about
+six feet from Lingard. He stopped simply because he could go no
+further. He had started from the door with the reckless purpose
+of clapping the old fellow on the shoulder. He had no idea that
+the man would turn out to be so tall, so big and so
+unapproachable. It seemed to him that he had never, never in his
+life, seen Lingard.
+
+He tried to say--
+
+"Do not believe . . ."
+
+A fit of coughing checked his sentence in a faint splutter.
+Directly afterwards he swallowed--as it were--a couple of
+pebbles, throwing his chin up in the act; and Lingard, who looked
+at him narrowly, saw a bone, sharp and triangular like the head
+of a snake, dart up and down twice under the skin of his throat.
+Then that, too, did not move. Nothing moved.
+
+"Well," said Lingard, and with that word he came unexpectedly to
+the end of his speech. His hand in his pocket closed firmly
+round the butt of his revolver bulging his jacket on the hip, and
+he thought how soon and how quickly he could terminate his
+quarrel with that man who had been so anxious to deliver himself
+into his hands--and how inadequate would be that ending! He
+could not bear the idea of that man escaping from him by going
+out of life; escaping from fear, from doubt, from remorse into
+the peaceful certitude of death. He held him now. And he was
+not going to let him go--to let him disappear for ever in the
+faint blue smoke of a pistol shot. His anger grew within him.
+He felt a touch as of a burning hand on his heart. Not on the
+flesh of his breast, but a touch on his heart itself, on the
+palpitating and untiring particle of matter that responds to
+every emotion of the soul; that leaps with joy, with terror, or
+with anger.
+
+He drew a long breath. He could see before him the bare chest of
+the man expanding and collapsing under the wide-open jacket. He
+glanced aside, and saw the bosom of the woman near him rise and
+fall in quick respirations that moved slightly up and down her
+hand, which was pressed to her breast with all the fingers spread
+out and a little curved, as if grasping something too big for its
+span. And nearly a minute passed. One of those minutes when the
+voice is silenced, while the thoughts flutter in the head, like
+captive birds inside a cage, in rushes desperate, exhausting and
+vain.
+
+During that minute of silence Lingard's anger kept rising,
+immense and towering, such as a crested wave running over the
+troubled shallows of the sands. Its roar filled his cars; a roar
+so powerful and distracting that, it seemed to him, his head must
+burst directly with the expanding volume of that sound. He
+looked at that man. That infamous figure upright on its feet,
+still, rigid, with stony eyes, as if its rotten soul had departed
+that moment and the carcass hadn't had the time yet to topple
+over. For the fraction of a second he had the illusion and the
+fear of the scoundrel having died there before the enraged glance
+of his eyes. Willems' eyelids fluttered, and the unconscious and
+passing tremor in that stiffly erect body exasperated Lingard
+like a fresh outrage. The fellow dared to stir! Dared to wink,
+to breathe, to exist; here, right before his eyes! His grip on
+the revolver relaxed gradually. As the transport of his rage
+increased, so also his contempt for the instruments that pierce
+or stab, that interpose themselves between the hand and the
+object of hate. He wanted another kind of satisfaction. Naked
+hands, by heaven! No firearms. Hands that could take him by the
+throat, beat down his defence, batter his face into shapeless
+flesh; hands that could feel all the desperation of his
+resistance and overpower it in the violent delight of a contact
+lingering and furious, intimate and brutal.
+
+He let go the revolver altogether, stood hesitating, then
+throwing his hands out, strode forward--and everything passed
+from his sight. He could not see the man, the woman, the earth,
+the sky--saw nothing, as if in that one stride he had left the
+visible world behind to step into a black and deserted space. He
+heard screams round him in that obscurity, screams like the
+melancholy and pitiful cries of sea-birds that dwell on the
+lonely reefs of great oceans. Then suddenly a face appeared
+within a few inches of his own. His face. He felt something in
+his left hand. His throat . . . Ah! the thing like a snake's
+head that darts up and down . . . He squeezed hard. He was back
+in the world. He could see the quick beating of eyelids over a
+pair of eyes that were all whites, the grin of a drawn-up lip, a
+row of teeth gleaming through the drooping hair of a moustache .
+. . Strong white teeth. Knock them down his lying throat . . .
+He drew back his right hand, the fist up to the shoulder,
+knuckles out. From under his feet rose the screams of sea-birds.
+Thousands of them. Something held his legs . . . What the devil
+. . . He delivered his blow straight from the shoulder, felt the
+jar right up his arm, and realized suddenly that he was striking
+something passive and unresisting. His heart sank within him
+with disappointment, with rage, with mortification. He pushed
+with his left arm, opening the hand with haste, as if he had just
+perceived that he got hold by accident of something repulsive--
+and he watched with stupefied eyes Willems tottering backwards in
+groping strides, the white sleeve of his jacket across his face.
+He watched his distance from that man increase, while he remained
+motionless, without being able to account to himself for the fact
+that so much empty space had come in between them. It should
+have been the other way. They ought to have been very close, and
+. . . Ah! He wouldn't fight, he wouldn't resist, he wouldn't
+defend himself! A cur! Evidently a cur! . . . He was amazed and
+aggrieved--profoundly--bitterly--with the immense and blank
+desolation of a small child robbed of a toy. He shouted--
+unbelieving:
+
+"Will you be a cheat to the end?"
+
+He waited for some answer. He waited anxiously with an
+impatience that seemed to lift him off his feet. He waited for
+some word, some sign; for some threatening stir. Nothing! Only
+two unwinking eyes glittered intently at him above the white
+sleeve. He saw the raised arm detach itself from the face and
+sink along the body. A white clad arm, with a big stain on the
+white sleeve. A red stain. There was a cut on the cheek. It
+bled. The nose bled too. The blood ran down, made one moustache
+look like a dark rag stuck over the lip, and went on in a wet
+streak down the clipped beard on one side of the chin. A drop of
+blood hung on the end of some hairs that were glued together; it
+hung for a while and took a leap down on the ground. Many more
+followed, leaping one after another in close file. One alighted
+on the breast and glided down instantly with devious vivacity,
+like a small insect running away; it left a narrow dark track on
+the white skin. He looked at it, looked at the tiny and active
+drops, looked at what he had done, with obscure satisfaction,
+with anger, with regret. This wasn't much like an act of
+justice. He had a desire to go up nearer to the man, to hear him
+speak, to hear him say something atrocious and wicked that would
+justify the violence of the blow. He made an attempt to move,
+and became aware of a close embrace round both his legs, just
+above the ankles. Instinctively, he kicked out with his foot,
+broke through the close bond and felt at once the clasp
+transferred to his other leg; the clasp warm, desperate and soft,
+of human arms. He looked down bewildered. He saw the body of
+the woman stretched at length, flattened on the ground like a
+dark blue rag. She trailed face downwards, clinging to his leg
+with both arms in a tenacious hug. He saw the top of her head,
+the long black hair streaming over his foot, all over the beaten
+earth, around his boot. He couldn't see his foot for it. He
+heard the short and repeated moaning of her breath. He imagined
+the invisible face close to his heel. With one kick into that
+face he could free himself. He dared not stir, and shouted
+down--
+
+"Let go! Let go! Let go!"
+
+The only result of his shouting was a tightening of the pressure
+of her arms. With a tremendous effort he tried to bring his
+right foot up to his left, and succeeded partly. He heard
+distinctly the rub of her body on the ground as he jerked her
+along. He tried to disengage himself by drawing up his foot. He
+stamped. He heard a voice saying sharply--
+
+"Steady, Captain Lingard, steady!"
+
+His eyes flew back to Willems at the sound of that voice, and, in
+the quick awakening of sleeping memories, Lingard stood suddenly
+still, appeased by the clear ring of familiar words. Appeased as
+in days of old, when they were trading together, when Willems was
+his trusted and helpful companion in out-of-the-way and dangerous
+places; when that fellow, who could keep his temper so much
+better than he could himself, had spared him many a difficulty,
+had saved him from many an act of hasty violence by the timely
+and good-humoured warning, whispered or shouted, "Steady, Captain
+Lingard, steady." A smart fellow. He had brought him up. The
+smartest fellow in the islands. If he had only stayed with him,
+then all this . . . He called out to Willems--
+
+"Tell her to let me go or . . ."
+
+He heard Willems shouting something, waited for awhile, then
+glanced vaguely down and saw the woman still stretched out
+perfectly mute and unstirring, with her head at his feet. He
+felt a nervous impatience that, somehow, resembled fear.
+
+"Tell her to let go, to go away, Willems, I tell you. I've had
+enough of this," he cried.
+
+"All right, Captain Lingard," answered the calm voice of Willems,
+"she has let go. Take your foot off her hair; she can't get up."
+
+Lingard leaped aside, clean away, and spun round quickly. He saw
+her sit up and cover her face with both hands, then he turned
+slowly on his heel and looked at the man. Willems held himself
+very straight, but was unsteady on his feet, and moved about
+nearly on the same spot, like a tipsy man attempting to preserve
+his balance. After gazing at him for a while, Lingard called,
+rancorous and irritable--
+
+"What have you got to say for yourself?"
+
+Willems began to walk towards him. He walked slowly, reeling a
+little before he took each step, and Lingard saw him put his hand
+to his face, then look at it holding it up to his eyes, as if he
+had there, concealed in the hollow of the palm, some small object
+which he wanted to examine secretly. Suddenly he drew it, with a
+brusque movement, down the front of his jacket and left a long
+smudge.
+
+"That's a fine thing to do," said Willems.
+
+He stood in front of Lingard, one of his eyes sunk deep in the
+increasing swelling of his cheek, still repeating mechanically
+the movement of feeling his damaged face; and every time he did
+this he pressed the palm to some clean spot on his jacket,
+covering the white cotton with bloody imprints as of some
+deformed and monstrous hand. Lingard said nothing, looking on.
+At last Willems left off staunching the blood and stood, his arms
+hanging by his side, with his face stiff and distorted under the
+patches of coagulated blood; and he seemed as though he had been
+set up there for a warning: an incomprehensible figure marked all
+over with some awful and symbolic signs of deadly import.
+Speaking with difficulty, he repeated in a reproachful tone--
+
+"That was a fine thing to do."
+
+"After all," answered Lingard, bitterly, "I had too good an
+opinion of you."
+
+"And I of you. Don't you see that I could have had that fool
+over there killed and the whole thing burnt to the ground, swept
+off the face of the earth. You wouldn't have found as much as a
+heap of ashes had I liked. I could have done all that. And I
+wouldn't."
+
+"You--could--not. You dared not. You scoundrel!" cried Lingard.
+
+"What's the use of calling me names?"
+
+"True," retorted Lingard--"there's no name bad enough for you."
+
+There was a short interval of silence. At the sound of their
+rapidly exchanged words, Aissa had got up from the ground where
+she had been sitting, in a sorrowful and dejected pose, and
+approached the two men. She stood on one side and looked on
+eagerly, in a desperate effort of her brain, with the quick and
+distracted eyes of a person trying for her life to penetrate the
+meaning of sentences uttered in a foreign tongue: the meaning
+portentous and fateful that lurks in the sounds of mysterious
+words; in the sounds surprising, unknown and strange.
+
+Willems let the last speech of Lingard pass by; seemed by a
+slight movement of his hand to help it on its way to join the
+other shadows of the past. Then he said--
+
+"You have struck me; you have insulted me . . ."
+
+"Insulted you!" interrupted Lingard, passionately. "Who--what
+can insult you . . . you . . ."
+
+He choked, advanced a step.
+
+"Steady! steady!" said Willems calmly. "I tell you I sha'n't
+fight. Is it clear enough to you that I sha'n't?
+I--shall--not--lift--a--finger."
+
+As he spoke, slowly punctuating each word with a slight jerk of
+his head, he stared at Lingard, his right eye open and big, the
+left small and nearly closed by the swelling of one half of his
+face, that appeared all drawn out on one side like faces seen in
+a concave glass. And they stood exactly opposite each other: one
+tall, slight and disfigured; the other tall, heavy and severe.
+
+Willems went on--
+
+"If I had wanted to hurt you--if I had wanted to destroy you, it
+was easy. I stood in the doorway long enough to pull a
+trigger--and you know I shoot straight."
+
+"You would have missed," said Lingard, with assurance. "There
+is, under heaven, such a thing as justice."
+
+The sound of that word on his own lips made him pause, confused,
+like an unexpected and unanswerable rebuke. The anger of his
+outraged pride, the anger of his outraged heart, had gone out in
+the blow; and there remained nothing but the sense of some
+immense infamy--of something vague, disgusting and terrible,
+which seemed to surround him on all sides, hover about him with
+shadowy and stealthy movements, like a band of assassins in the
+darkness of vast and unsafe places. Was there, under heaven,
+such a thing as justice? He looked at the man before him with
+such an intensity of prolonged glance that he seemed to see right
+through him, that at last he saw but a floating and unsteady mist
+in human shape. Would it blow away before the first breath of
+the breeze and leave nothing behind?
+
+The sound of Willems' voice made him start violently. Willems was
+saying--
+
+"I have always led a virtuous life; you know I have. You always
+praised me for my steadiness; you know you have. You know also I
+never stole--if that's what you're thinking of. I borrowed. You
+know how much I repaid. It was an error of judgment. But then
+consider my position there. I had been a little unlucky in my
+private affairs, and had debts. Could I let myself go under
+before the eyes of all those men who envied me? But that's all
+over. It was an error of judgment. I've paid for it. An error
+of judgment."
+
+Lingard, astounded into perfect stillness, looked down. He
+looked down at Willems' bare feet. Then, as the other had
+paused, he repeated in a blank tone--
+
+"An error of judgment . . ."
+
+"Yes," drawled out Willems, thoughtfully, and went on with
+increasing animation: "As I said, I have always led a virtuous
+life. More so than Hudig--than you. Yes, than you. I drank a
+little, I played cards a little. Who doesn't? But I had
+principles from a boy. Yes, principles. Business is business,
+and I never was an ass. I never respected fools. They had to
+suffer for their folly when they dealt with me. The evil was in
+them, not in me. But as to principles, it's another matter. I
+kept clear of women. It's forbidden--I had no time--and I
+despised them. Now I hate them!"
+
+He put his tongue out a little; a tongue whose pink and moist end
+ran here and there, like something independently alive, under his
+swollen and blackened lip; he touched with the tips of his
+fingers the cut on his cheek, felt all round it with precaution:
+and the unharmed side of his face appeared for a moment to be
+preoccupied and uneasy about the state of that other side which
+was so very sore and stiff.
+
+He recommenced speaking, and his voice vibrated as though with
+repressed emotion of some kind.
+
+"You ask my wife, when you see her in Macassar, whether I have no
+reason to hate her. She was nobody, and I made her Mrs. Willems.
+A half-caste girl! You ask her how she showed her gratitude to
+me. You ask . . . Never mind that. Well, you came and dumped
+me here like a load of rubbish; dumped me here and left me with
+nothing to do--nothing good to remember--and damn little to hope
+for. You left me here at the mercy of that fool, Almayer, who
+suspected me of something. Of what? Devil only knows. But he
+suspected and hated me from the first; I suppose because you
+befriended me. Oh! I could read him like a book. He isn't very
+deep, your Sambir partner, Captain Lingard, but he knows how to
+be disagreeable. Months passed. I thought I would die of sheer
+weariness, of my thoughts, of my regrets And then . . ."
+
+He made a quick step nearer to Lingard, and as if moved by the
+same thought, by the same instinct, by the impulse of his will,
+Aissa also stepped nearer to them. They stood in a close group,
+and the two men could feel the calm air between their faces
+stirred by the light breath of the anxious woman who enveloped
+them both in the uncomprehending, in the despairing and wondering
+glances of her wild and mournful eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+Willems turned a little from her and spoke lower.
+
+"Look at that," he said, with an almost imperceptible movement of
+his head towards the woman to whom he was presenting his
+shoulder. "Look at that! Don't believe her! What has she been
+saying to you? What? I have been asleep. Had to sleep at last.
+I've been waiting for you three days and nights. I had to sleep
+some time. Hadn't I? I told her to remain awake and watch for
+you, and call me at once. She did watch. You can't believe her.
+You can't believe any woman. Who can tell what's inside their
+heads? No one. You can know nothing. The only thing you can
+know is that it isn't anything like what comes through their
+lips. They live by the side of you. They seem to hate you, or
+they seem to love you; they caress or torment you; they throw you
+over or stick to you closer than your skin for some inscrutable
+and awful reason of their own--which you can never know! Look at
+her--and look at me. At me!--her infernal work. What has she
+been saying?"
+
+His voice had sunk to a whisper. Lingard listened with great
+attention, holding his chin in his hand, which grasped a great
+handful of his white beard. His elbow was in the palm of his
+other hand, and his eyes were still fixed on the ground. He
+murmured, without looking up--
+
+"She begged me for your life--if you want to know--as if the
+thing were worth giving or taking!"
+
+"And for three days she begged me to take yours," said Willems
+quickly. "For three days she wouldn't give me any peace. She
+was never still. She planned ambushes. She has been looking for
+places all over here where I could hide and drop you with a safe
+shot as you walked up. It's true. I give you my word."
+
+"Your word," muttered Lingard, contemptuously.
+
+Willems took no notice.
+
+"Ah! She is a ferocious creature," he went on. "You don't know .
+. . I wanted to pass the time--to do something--to have
+something to think about--to forget my troubles till you came
+back. And . . . look at her . . . she took me as if I did not
+belong to myself. She did. I did not know there was something
+in me she could get hold of. She, a savage. I, a civilized
+European, and clever! She that knew no more than a wild animal!
+Well, she found out something in me. She found it out, and I was
+lost. I knew it. She tormented me. I was ready to do anything.
+I resisted--but I was ready. I knew that too. That frightened
+me more than anything; more than my own sufferings; and that was
+frightful enough, I assure you."
+
+Lingard listened, fascinated and amazed like a child listening to
+a fairy tale, and, when Willems stopped for breath, he shuffled
+his feet a little.
+
+"What does he say?" cried out Aissa, suddenly.
+
+The two men looked at her quickly, and then looked at one
+another.
+
+Willems began again, speaking hurriedly--
+
+"I tried to do something. Take her away from those people. I
+went to Almayer; the biggest blind fool that you ever . . . Then
+Abdulla came--and she went away. She took away with her
+something of me which I had to get back. I had to do it. As far
+as you are concerned, the change here had to happen sooner or
+later; you couldn't be master here for ever. It isn't what I
+have done that torments me. It is the why. It's the madness
+that drove me to it. It's that thing that came over me. That
+may come again, some day."
+
+"It will do no harm to anybody then, I promise you," said
+Lingard, significantly.
+
+Willems looked at him for a second with a blank stare, then went
+on--
+
+"I fought against her. She goaded me to violence and to murder.
+Nobody knows why. She pushed me to it persistently, desperately,
+all the time. Fortunately Abdulla had sense. I don't know what
+I wouldn't have done. She held me then. Held me like a
+nightmare that is terrible and sweet. By and by it was another
+life. I woke up. I found myself beside an animal as full of
+harm as a wild cat. You don't know through what I have passed.
+Her father tried to kill me--and she very nearly killed him. I
+believe she would have stuck at nothing. I don't know which was
+more terrible! She would have stuck at nothing to defend her
+own. And when I think that it was me--me--Willems . . . I hate
+her. To-morrow she may want my life. How can I know what's in
+her? She may want to kill me next!"
+
+He paused in great trepidation, then added in a scared tone--
+
+"I don't want to die here."
+
+"Don't you?" said Lingard, thoughtfully.
+
+Willems turned towards Aissa and pointed at her with a bony
+forefinger.
+
+"Look at her! Always there. Always near. Always watching,
+watching . . . for something. Look at her eyes. Ain't they big?
+Don't they stare? You wouldn't think she can shut them like
+human beings do. I don't believe she ever does. I go to sleep,
+if I can, under their stare, and when I wake up I see them fixed
+on me and moving no more than the eyes of a corpse. While I am
+still they are still. By God--she can't move them till I stir,
+and then they follow me like a pair of jailers. They watch me;
+when I stop they seem to wait patient and glistening till I am
+off my guard--for to do something. To do something horrible.
+Look at them! You can see nothing in them. They are big,
+menacing--and empty. The eyes of a savage; of a damned mongrel,
+half-Arab, half-Malay. They hurt me! I am white! I swear to
+you I can't stand this! Take me away. I am white! All white!"
+
+He shouted towards the sombre heaven, proclaiming desperately
+under the frown of thickening clouds the fact of his pure and
+superior descent. He shouted, his head thrown up, his arms
+swinging about wildly; lean, ragged, disfigured; a tall madman
+making a great disturbance about something invisible; a being
+absurd, repulsive, pathetic, and droll. Lingard, who was looking
+down as if absorbed in deep thought, gave him a quick glance from
+under his eyebrows: Aissa stood with clasped hands. At the other
+end of the courtyard the old woman, like a vague and decrepit
+apparition, rose noiselessly to look, then sank down again with a
+stealthy movement and crouched low over the small glow of the
+fire. Willems' voice filled the enclosure, rising louder with
+every word, and then, suddenly, at its very loudest, stopped
+short--like water stops running from an over-turned vessel. As
+soon as it had ceased the thunder seemed to take up the burden in
+a low growl coming from the inland hills. The noise approached
+in confused mutterings which kept on increasing, swelling into a
+roar that came nearer, rushed down the river, passed close in a
+tearing crash--and instantly sounded faint, dying away in
+monotonous and dull repetitions amongst the endless sinuosities
+of the lower reaches. Over the great forests, over all the
+innumerable people of unstirring trees--over all that living
+people immense, motionless, and mute--the silence, that had
+rushed in on the track of the passing tumult, remained suspended
+as deep and complete as if it had never been disturbed from the
+beginning of remote ages. Then, through it, after a time, came
+to Lingard's ears the voice of the running river: a voice low,
+discreet, and sad, like the persistent and gentle voices that
+speak of the past in the silence of dreams.
+
+He felt a great emptiness in his heart. It seemed to him that
+there was within his breast a great space without any light,
+where his thoughts wandered forlornly, unable to escape, unable
+to rest, unable to die, to vanish--and to relieve him from the
+fearful oppression of their existence. Speech, action, anger,
+forgiveness, all appeared to him alike useless and vain, appeared
+to him unsatisfactory, not worth the effort of hand or brain that
+was needed to give them effect. He could not see why he should
+not remain standing there, without ever doing anything, to the
+end of time. He felt something, something like a heavy chain,
+that held him there. This wouldn't do. He backed away a little
+from Willems and Aissa, leaving them close together, then stopped
+and looked at both. The man and the woman appeared to him much
+further than they really were. He had made only about three
+steps backward, but he believed for a moment that another step
+would take him out of earshot for ever. They appeared to him
+slightly under life size, and with a great cleanness of outlines,
+like figures carved with great precision of detail and highly
+finished by a skilful hand. He pulled himself together. The
+strong consciousness of his own personality came back to him. He
+had a notion of surveying them from a great and inaccessible
+height.
+
+He said slowly: "You have been possessed of a devil."
+
+"Yes," answered Willems gloomily, and looking at Aissa. "Isn't
+it pretty?"
+
+"I've heard this kind of talk before," said Lingard, in a
+scornful tone; then paused, and went on steadily after a while:
+"I regret nothing. I picked you up by the waterside, like a
+starving cat--by God. I regret nothing; nothing that I have
+done. Abdulla--twenty others--no doubt Hudig himself, were after
+me. That's business--for them. But that you should . . . Money
+belongs to him who picks it up and is strong enough to keep
+it--but this thing was different. It was part of my life. . . .
+I am an old fool."
+
+He was. The breath of his words, of the very words he spoke,
+fanned the spark of divine folly in his breast, the spark that
+made him--the hard-headed, heavy-handed adventurer--stand out
+from the crowd, from the sordid, from the joyous, unscrupulous,
+and noisy crowd of men that were so much like himself.
+
+Willems said hurriedly: "It wasn't me. The evil was not in me,
+Captain Lingard."
+
+"And where else confound you! Where else?" interrupted Lingard,
+raising his voice. "Did you ever see me cheat and lie and steal?
+Tell me that. Did you? Hey? I wonder where in perdition you
+came from when I found you under my feet. . . . No matter. You
+will do no more harm."
+
+Willems moved nearer, gazing upon him anxiously. Lingard went on
+with distinct deliberation--
+
+"What did you expect when you asked me to see you? What? You
+know me. I am Lingard. You lived with me. You've heard men
+speak. You knew what you had done. Well! What did you expect?"
+
+"How can I know?" groaned Willems, wringing his hands; "I was
+alone in that infernal savage crowd. I was delivered into their
+hands. After the thing was done, I felt so lost and weak that I
+would have called the devil himself to my aid if it had been any
+good--if he hadn't put in all his work already. In the whole
+world there was only one man that had ever cared for me. Only
+one white man. You! Hate is better than being alone! Death is
+better! I expected . . . anything. Something to expect.
+Something to take me out of this. Out of her sight!"
+
+He laughed. His laugh seemed to be torn out from him against his
+will, seemed to be brought violently on the surface from under
+his bitterness, his self-contempt, from under his despairing
+wonder at his own nature.
+
+"When I think that when I first knew her it seemed to me that my
+whole life wouldn't be enough to . . . And now when I look at
+her! She did it all. I must have been mad. I was mad. Every
+time I look at her I remember my madness. It frightens me. . . .
+And when I think that of all my life, of all my past, of all my
+future, of my intelligence, of my work, there is nothing left but
+she, the cause of my ruin, and you whom I have mortally offended
+. . ."
+
+He hid his face for a moment in his hands, and when he took them
+away he had lost the appearance of comparative calm and gave way
+to a wild distress.
+
+"Captain Lingard . . . anything . . . a deserted island . . .
+anywhere . . . I promise . . ."
+
+"Shut up!" shouted Lingard, roughly.
+
+He became dumb, suddenly, completely.
+
+The wan light of the clouded morning retired slowly from the
+courtyard, from the clearings, from the river, as if it had gone
+unwillingly to hide in the enigmatical solitudes of the gloomy
+and silent forests. The clouds over their heads thickened into a
+low vault of uniform blackness. The air was still and
+inexpressibly oppressive. Lingard unbuttoned his jacket, flung
+it wide open and, inclining his body sideways a little, wiped his
+forehead with his hand, which he jerked sharply afterwards. Then
+he looked at Willems and said--
+
+"No promise of yours is any good to me. I am going to take your
+conduct into my own hands. Pay attention to what I am going to
+say. You are my prisoner."
+
+Willems' head moved imperceptibly; then he became rigid and
+still. He seemed not to breathe.
+
+"You shall stay here," continued Lingard, with sombre
+deliberation. "You are not fit to go amongst people. Who could
+suspect, who could guess, who could imagine what's in you? I
+couldn't! You are my mistake. I shall hide you here. If I let
+you out you would go amongst unsuspecting men, and lie, and
+steal, and cheat for a little money or for some woman. I don't
+care about shooting you. It would be the safest way though. But
+I won't. Do not expect me to forgive you. To forgive one must
+have been angry and become contemptuous, and there is nothing in
+me now--no anger, no contempt, no disappointment. To me you are
+not Willems, the man I befriended and helped through thick and
+thin, and thought much of . . . You are not a human being that
+may be destroyed or forgiven. You are a bitter thought, a
+something without a body and that must be hidden . . . You are
+my shame."
+
+He ceased and looked slowly round. How dark it was! It seemed
+to him that the light was dying prematurely out of the world and
+that the air was already dead.
+
+"Of course," he went on, "I shall see to it that you don't
+starve."
+
+"You don't mean to say that I must live here, Captain Lingard?"
+said Willems, in a kind of mechanical voice without any
+inflections.
+
+"Did you ever hear me say something I did not mean?" asked
+Lingard. "You said you didn't want to die here--well, you must
+live . . . Unless you change your mind," he added, as if in
+involuntary afterthought.
+
+He looked at Willems narrowly, then shook his head.
+
+"You are alone," he went on. "Nothing can help you. Nobody
+will. You are neither white nor brown. You have no colour as
+you have no heart. Your accomplices have abandoned you to me
+because I am still somebody to be reckoned with. You are alone
+but for that woman there. You say you did this for her. Well,
+you have her."
+
+Willems mumbled something, and then suddenly caught his hair with
+both his hands and remained standing so. Aissa, who had been
+looking at him, turned to Lingard.
+
+"What did you say, Rajah Laut?" she cried.
+
+There was a slight stir amongst the filmy threads of her
+disordered hair, the bushes by the river sides trembled, the big
+tree nodded precipitately over them with an abrupt rustle, as if
+waking with a start from a troubled sleep--and the breath of hot
+breeze passed, light, rapid, and scorching, under the clouds that
+whirled round, unbroken but undulating, like a restless phantom
+of a sombre sea.
+
+Lingard looked at her pityingly before he said--
+
+"I have told him that he must live here all his life . . . and
+with you."
+
+The sun seemed to have gone out at last like a flickering light
+away up beyond the clouds, and in the stifling gloom of the
+courtyard the three figures stood colourless and shadowy, as if
+surrounded by a black and superheated mist. Aissa looked at
+Willems, who remained still, as though he had been changed into
+stone in the very act of tearing his hair. Then she turned her
+head towards Lingard and shouted--
+
+"You lie! You lie! . . . White man. Like you all do. You . .
+. whom Abdulla made small. You lie!"
+
+Her words rang out shrill and venomous with her secret scorn,
+with her overpowering desire to wound regardless of consequences;
+in her woman's reckless desire to cause suffering at any cost, to
+cause it by the sound of her own voice--by her own voice, that
+would carry the poison of her thought into the hated heart.
+
+Willems let his hands fall, and began to mumble again. Lingard
+turned his ear towards him instinctively, caught something that
+sounded like "Very well"--then some more mumbling--then a sigh.
+
+"As far as the rest of the world is concerned," said Lingard,
+after waiting for awhile in an attentive attitude, "your life is
+finished. Nobody will be able to throw any of your villainies in
+my teeth; nobody will be able to point at you and say, 'Here goes
+a scoundrel of Lingard's up-bringing.' You are buried here."
+
+"And you think that I will stay . . . that I will submit?"
+exclaimed Willems, as if he had suddenly recovered the power of
+speech.
+
+"You needn't stay here--on this spot," said Lingard, drily.
+"There are the forests--and here is the river. You may swim.
+Fifteen miles up, or forty down. At one end you will meet
+Almayer, at the other the sea. Take your choice."
+
+He burst into a short, joyless laugh, then added with severe
+gravity--
+
+"There is also another way."
+
+"If you want to drive my soul into damnation by trying to drive
+me to suicide you will not succeed," said Willems in wild
+excitement. "I will live. I shall repent. I may escape. . . .
+Take that woman away--she is sin."
+
+A hooked dart of fire tore in two the darkness of the distant
+horizon and lit up the gloom of the earth with a dazzling and
+ghastly flame. Then the thunder was heard far away, like an
+incredibly enormous voice muttering menaces.
+
+Lingard said--
+
+"I don't care what happens, but I may tell you that without that
+woman your life is not worth much--not twopence. There is a
+fellow here who . . . and Abdulla himself wouldn't stand on any
+ceremony. Think of that! And then she won't go."
+
+He began, even while he spoke, to walk slowly down towards the
+little gate. He didn't look, but he felt as sure that Willems
+was following him as if he had been leading him by a string.
+Directly he had passed through the wicket-gate into the big
+courtyard he heard a voice, behind his back, saying--
+
+"I think she was right. I ought to have shot you. I couldn't
+have been worse off."
+
+"Time yet," answered Lingard, without stopping or looking back.
+"But, you see, you can't. There is not even that in you."
+
+"Don't provoke me, Captain Lingard," cried Willems.
+
+Lingard turned round sharply. Willems and Aissa stopped.
+Another forked flash of lightning split up the clouds overhead,
+and threw upon their faces a sudden burst of light--a blaze
+violent, sinister and fleeting; and in the same instant they were
+deafened by a near, single crash of thunder, which was followed
+by a rushing noise, like a frightened sigh of the startled earth.
+
+"Provoke you!" said the old adventurer, as soon as he could make
+himself heard. "Provoke you! Hey! What's there in you to
+provoke? What do I care?"
+
+"It is easy to speak like that when you know that in the whole
+world--in the whole world--I have no friend," said Willems.
+
+"Whose fault?" said Lingard, sharply.
+
+Their voices, after the deep and tremendous noise, sounded to
+them very unsatisfactory--thin and frail, like the voices of
+pigmies--and they became suddenly silent, as if on that account.
+From up the courtyard Lingard's boatmen came down and passed
+them, keeping step in a single file, their paddles on shoulder,
+and holding their heads straight with their eyes fixed on the
+river. Ali, who was walking last, stopped before Lingard, very
+stiff and upright. He said--
+
+"That one-eyed Babalatchi is gone, with all his women. He took
+everything. All the pots and boxes. Big. Heavy. Three boxes."
+
+He grinned as if the thing had been amusing, then added with an
+appearance of anxious concern, "Rain coming."
+
+"We return," said Lingard. "Make ready."
+
+"Aye, aye, sir!" ejaculated Ali with precision, and moved on. He
+had been quartermaster with Lingard before making up his mind to
+stay in Sambir as Almayer's head man. He strutted towards the
+landing-place thinking proudly that he was not like those other
+ignorant boatmen, and knew how to answer properly the very
+greatest of white captains.
+
+"You have misunderstood me from the first, Captain Lingard," said
+Willems.
+
+"Have I? It's all right, as long as there is no mistake about my
+meaning," answered Lingard, strolling slowly to the
+landing-place. Willems followed him, and Aissa followed Willems.
+
+Two hands were extended to help Lingard in embarking. He stepped
+cautiously and heavily into the long and narrow canoe, and sat in
+the canvas folding-chair that had been placed in the middle. He
+leaned back and turned his head to the two figures that stood on
+the bank a little above him. Aissa's eyes were fastened on his
+face in a visible impatience to see him gone. Willems' look went
+straight above the canoe, straight at the forest on the other
+side of the river.
+
+"All right, Ali," said Lingard, in a low voice.
+
+A slight stir animated the faces, and a faint murmur ran along
+the line of paddlers. The foremost man pushed with the point of
+his paddle, canted the fore end out of the dead water into the
+current; and the canoe fell rapidly off before the rush of brown
+water, the stern rubbing gently against the low bank.
+
+"We shall meet again, Captain Lingard!" cried Willems, in an
+unsteady voice.
+
+"Never!" said Lingard, turning half round in his chair to look at
+Willems. His fierce red eyes glittered remorselessly over the
+high back of his seat.
+
+"Must cross the river. Water less quick over there," said Ali.
+
+He pushed in his turn now with all his strength, throwing his
+body recklessly right out over the stern. Then he recovered
+himself just in time into the squatting attitude of a monkey
+perched on a high shelf, and shouted: "Dayong!"
+
+The paddles struck the water together. The canoe darted forward
+and went on steadily crossing the river with a sideways motion
+made up of its own speed and the downward drift of the current.
+
+Lingard watched the shore astern. The woman shook her hand at
+him, and then squatted at the feet of the man who stood
+motionless. After a while she got up and stood beside him,
+reaching up to his head--and Lingard saw then that she had wetted
+some part of her covering and was trying to wash the dried blood
+off the man's immovable face, which did not seem to know anything
+about it. Lingard turned away and threw himself back in his
+chair, stretching his legs out with a sigh of fatigue. His head
+fell forward; and under his red face the white beard lay fan-like
+on his breast, the ends of fine long hairs all astir in the faint
+draught made by the rapid motion of the craft that carried him
+away from his prisoner--from the only thing in his life he wished
+to hide.
+
+In its course across the river the canoe came into the line of
+Willems' sight and his eyes caught the image, followed it eagerly
+as it glided, small but distinct, on the dark background of the
+forest. He could see plainly the figure of the man sitting in
+the middle. All his life he had felt that man behind his back, a
+reassuring presence ready with help, with commendation, with
+advice; friendly in reproof, enthusiastic in approbation; a man
+inspiring confidence by his strength, by his fearlessness, by the
+very weakness of his simple heart. And now that man was going
+away. He must call him back.
+
+He shouted, and his words, which he wanted to throw across the
+river, seemed to fall helplessly at his feet. Aissa put her hand
+on his arm in a restraining attempt, but he shook it off. He
+wanted to call back his very life that was going away from him.
+He shouted again--and this time he did not even hear himself. No
+use. He would never return. And he stood in sullen silence
+looking at the white figure over there, lying back in the chair
+in the middle of the boat; a figure that struck him suddenly as
+very terrible, heartless and astonishing, with its unnatural
+appearance of running over the water in an attitude of languid
+repose.
+
+For a time nothing on earth stirred, seemingly, but the canoe,
+which glided up-stream with a motion so even and smooth that it
+did not convey any sense of movement. Overhead, the massed
+clouds appeared solid and steady as if held there in a powerful
+grip, but on their uneven surface there was a continuous and
+trembling glimmer, a faint reflection of the distant lightning
+from the thunderstorm that had broken already on the coast and
+was working its way up the river with low and angry growls.
+Willems looked on, as motionless as everything round him and
+above him. Only his eyes seemed to live, as they followed the
+canoe on its course that carried it away from him, steadily,
+unhesitatingly, finally, as if it were going, not up the great
+river into the momentous excitement of Sambir, but straight into
+the past, into the past crowded yet empty, like an old cemetery
+full of neglected graves, where lie dead hopes that never return.
+
+From time to time he felt on his face the passing, warm touch of
+an immense breath coming from beyond the forest, like the short
+panting of an oppressed world. Then the heavy air round him was
+pierced by a sharp gust of wind, bringing with it the fresh, damp
+feel of the falling rain; and all the innumerable tree-tops of
+the forests swayed to the left and sprang back again in a
+tumultuous balancing of nodding branches and shuddering leaves.
+A light frown ran over the river, the clouds stirred slowly,
+changing their aspect but not their place, as if they had turned
+ponderously over; and when the sudden movement had died out in a
+quickened tremor of the slenderest twigs, there was a short
+period of formidable immobility above and below, during which the
+voice of the thunder was heard, speaking in a sustained, emphatic
+and vibrating roll, with violent louder bursts of crashing sound,
+like a wrathful and threatening discourse of an angry god. For a
+moment it died out, and then another gust of wind passed, driving
+before it a white mist which filled the space with a cloud of
+waterdust that hid suddenly from Willems the canoe, the forests,
+the river itself; that woke him up from his numbness in a forlorn
+shiver, that made him look round despairingly to see nothing but
+the whirling drift of rain spray before the freshening breeze,
+while through it the heavy big drops fell about him with sonorous
+and rapid beats upon the dry earth. He made a few hurried steps
+up the courtyard and was arrested by an immense sheet of water
+that fell all at once on him, fell sudden and overwhelming from
+the clouds, cutting his respiration, streaming over his head,
+clinging to him, running down his body, off his arms, off his
+legs. He stood gasping while the water beat him in a vertical
+downpour, drove on him slanting in squalls, and he felt the drops
+striking him from above, from everywhere; drops thick, pressed
+and dashing at him as if flung from all sides by a mob of
+infuriated hands. From under his feet a great vapour of broken
+water floated up, he felt the ground become soft--melt under
+him--and saw the water spring out from the dry earth to meet the
+water that fell from the sombre heaven. An insane dread took
+possession of him, the dread of all that water around him, of the
+water that ran down the courtyard towards him, of the water that
+pressed him on every side, of the slanting water that drove
+across his face in wavering sheets which gleamed pale red with
+the flicker of lightning streaming through them, as if fire and
+water were falling together, monstrously mixed, upon the stunned
+earth.
+
+He wanted to run away, but when he moved it was to slide about
+painfully and slowly upon that earth which had become mud so
+suddenly under his feet. He fought his way up the courtyard like
+a man pushing through a crowd, his head down, one shoulder
+forward, stopping often, and sometimes carried back a pace or two
+in the rush of water which his heart was not stout enough to
+face. Aissa followed him step by step, stopping when he stopped,
+recoiling with him, moving forward with him in his toilsome way
+up the slippery declivity of the courtyard, of that courtyard,
+from which everything seemed to have been swept away by the first
+rush of the mighty downpour. They could see nothing. The tree,
+the bushes, the house, and the fences--all had disappeared in the
+thickness of the falling rain. Their hair stuck, streaming, to
+their heads; their clothing clung to them, beaten close to their
+bodies; water ran off them, off their heads over their shoulders.
+They moved, patient, upright, slow and dark, in the gleam clear
+or fiery of the falling drops, under the roll of unceasing
+thunder, like two wandering ghosts of the drowned that, condemned
+to haunt the water for ever, had come up from the river to look
+at the world under a deluge.
+
+On the left the tree seemed to step out to meet them, appearing
+vaguely, high, motionless and patient; with a rustling plaint of
+its innumerable leaves through which every drop of water tore its
+separate way with cruel haste. And then, to the right, the house
+surged up in the mist, very black, and clamorous with the quick
+patter of rain on its high-pitched roof above the steady splash
+of the water running off the eaves. Down the plankway leading to
+the door flowed a thin and pellucid stream, and when Willems
+began his ascent it broke over his foot as if he were going up a
+steep ravine in the bed of a rapid and shallow torrent. Behind
+his heels two streaming smudges of mud stained for an instant the
+purity of the rushing water, and then he splashed his way up with
+a spurt and stood on the bamboo platform before the open door
+under the shelter of the overhanging eaves--under shelter at
+last!
+
+A low moan ending in a broken and plaintive mutter arrested
+Willems on the threshold. He peered round in the half-light
+under the roof and saw the old woman crouching close to the wall
+in a shapeless heap, and while he looked he felt a touch of two
+arms on his shoulders. Aissa! He had forgotten her. He turned,
+and she clasped him round the neck instantly, pressing close to
+him as if afraid of violence or escape. He stiffened himself in
+repulsion, in horror, in the mysterious revolt of his heart;
+while she clung to him--clung to him as if he were a refuge from
+misery, from storm, from weariness, from fear, from despair; and
+it was on the part of that being an embrace terrible, enraged and
+mournful, in which all her strength went out to make him captive,
+to hold him for ever.
+
+He said nothing. He looked into her eyes while he struggled with
+her fingers about the nape of his neck, and suddenly he tore her
+hands apart, holding her arms up in a strong grip of her wrists,
+and bending his swollen face close over hers, he said--
+
+"It is all your doing. You . . ."
+
+She did not understand him--not a word. He spoke in the language
+of his people--of his people that know no mercy and no shame.
+And he was angry. Alas! he was always angry now, and always
+speaking words that she could not understand. She stood in
+silence, looking at him through her patient eyes, while he shook
+her arms a little and then flung them down.
+
+"Don't follow me!" he shouted. "I want to be alone--I mean to be
+left alone!"
+
+He went in, leaving the door open.
+
+She did not move. What need to understand the words when they
+are spoken in such a voice? In that voice which did not seem to
+be his voice--his voice when he spoke by the brook, when he was
+never angry and always smiling! Her eyes were fixed upon the
+dark doorway, but her hands strayed mechanically upwards; she
+took up all her hair, and, inclining her head slightly over her
+shoulder, wrung out the long black tresses, twisting them
+persistently, while she stood, sad and absorbed, like one
+listening to an inward voice--the voice of bitter, of unavailing
+regret. The thunder had ceased, the wind had died out, and the
+rain fell perpendicular and steady through a great pale
+clearness--the light of remote sun coming victorious from amongst
+the dissolving blackness of the clouds. She stood near the
+doorway. He was there--alone in the gloom of the dwelling. He
+was there. He spoke not. What was in his mind now? What fear?
+What desire? Not the desire of her as in the days when he used
+to smile . . . How could she know? . . .
+
+A sigh coming from the bottom of her heart, flew out into the
+world through her parted lips. A sigh faint, profound, and
+broken; a sigh full of pain and fear, like the sigh of those who
+are about to face the unknown: to face it in loneliness, in
+doubt, and without hope. She let go her hair, that fell
+scattered over her shoulders like a funeral veil, and she sank
+down suddenly by the door. Her hands clasped her ankles; she
+rested her head on her drawn-up knees, and remained still, very
+still, under the streaming mourning of her hair. She was
+thinking of him; of the days by the brook; she was thinking of
+all that had been their love--and she sat in the abandoned
+posture of those who sit weeping by the dead, of those who watch
+and mourn over a corpse.
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Almayer propped, alone on the verandah of his house, with both
+his elbows on the table, and holding his head between his hands,
+stared before him, away over the stretch of sprouting young grass
+in his courtyard, and over the short jetty with its cluster of
+small canoes, amongst which his big whale-boat floated high, like
+a white mother of all that dark and aquatic brood. He stared on
+the river, past the schooner anchored in mid-stream, past the
+forests of the left bank; he stared through and past the illusion
+of the material world.
+
+The sun was sinking. Under the sky was stretched a network of
+white threads, a network fine and close-meshed, where here and
+there were caught thicker white vapours of globular shape; and to
+the eastward, above the ragged barrier of the forests, surged the
+summits of a chain of great clouds, growing bigger slowly, in
+imperceptible motion, as if careful not to disturb the glowing
+stillness of the earth and of the sky. Abreast of the house the
+river was empty but for the motionless schooner. Higher up, a
+solitary log came out from the bend above and went on drifting
+slowly down the straight reach: a dead and wandering tree going
+out to its grave in the sea, between two ranks of trees
+motionless and living.
+
+And Almayer sat, his face in his hands, looking on and hating all
+this: the muddy river; the faded blue of the sky; the black log
+passing by on its first and last voyage; the green sea of
+leaves--the sea that glowed shimmered, and stirred above the
+uniform and impenetrable gloom of the forests--the joyous sea of
+living green powdered with the brilliant dust of oblique sunrays.
+
+He hated all this; he begrudged every day--every minute--of his
+life spent amongst all these things; he begrudged it bitterly,
+angrily, with enraged and immense regret, like a miser compelled
+to give up some of his treasure to a near relation. And yet all
+this was very precious to him. It was the present sign of a
+splendid future.
+
+He pushed the table away impatiently, got up, made a few steps
+aimlessly, then stood by the balustrade and again looked at the
+river--at that river which would have been the instrument for the
+making of his fortune if . . . if . . .
+
+"What an abominable brute!" he said.
+
+He was alone, but he spoke aloud, as one is apt to do under the
+impulse of a strong, of an overmastering thought.
+
+"What a brute!" he muttered again.
+
+The river was dark now, and the schooner lay on it, a black, a
+lonely, and a graceful form, with the slender masts darting
+upwards from it in two frail and raking lines. The shadows of
+the evening crept up the trees, crept up from bough to bough,
+till at last the long sunbeams coursing from the western horizon
+skimmed lightly over the topmost branches, then flew upwards
+amongst the piled-up clouds, giving them a sombre and fiery
+aspect in the last flush of light. And suddenly the light
+disappeared as if lost in the immensity of the great, blue, and
+empty hollow overhead. The sun had set: and the forests became a
+straight wall of formless blackness. Above them, on the edge of
+lingering clouds, a single star glimmered fitfully, obscured now
+and then by the rapid flight of high and invisible vapours.
+
+Almayer fought with the uneasiness within his breast. He heard
+Ali, who moved behind him preparing his evening meal, and he
+listened with strange attention to the sounds the man made--to
+the short, dry bang of the plate put upon the table, to the clink
+of glass and the metallic rattle of knife and fork. The man went
+away. Now he was coming back. He would speak directly; and
+Almayer, notwithstanding the absorbing gravity of his thoughts,
+listened for the sound of expected words. He heard them, spoken
+in English with painstaking distinctness.
+
+"Ready, sir!"
+
+"All right," said Almayer, curtly. He did not move. He remained
+pensive, with his back to the table upon which stood the lighted
+lamp brought by Ali. He was thinking: Where was Lingard now?
+Halfway down the river probably, in Abdulla's ship. He would be
+back in about three days--perhaps less. And then? Then the
+schooner would have to be got out of the river, and when that
+craft was gone they--he and Lingard--would remain here; alone
+with the constant thought of that other man, that other man
+living near them! What an extraordinary idea to keep him there
+for ever. For ever! What did that mean--for ever? Perhaps a
+year, perhaps ten years. Preposterous! Keep him there ten
+years--or may be twenty! The fellow was capable of living more
+than twenty years. And for all that time he would have to be
+watched, fed, looked after. There was nobody but Lingard to have
+such notions. Twenty years! Why, no! In less than ten years
+their fortune would be made and they would leave this place,
+first for Batavia--yes, Batavia--and then for Europe. England,
+no doubt. Lingard would want to go to England. And would they
+leave that man here? How would that fellow look in ten years?
+Very old probably. Well, devil take him. Nina would be fifteen.
+She would be rich and very pretty and he himself would not be so
+old then. . . ."
+
+Almayer smiled into the night.
+
+. . . Yes, rich! Why! Of course! Captain Lingard was a
+resourceful man, and he had plenty of money even now. They were
+rich already; but not enough. Decidedly not enough. Money
+brings money. That gold business was good. Famous! Captain
+Lingard was a remarkable man. He said the gold was there--and it
+was there. Lingard knew what he was talking about. But he had
+queer ideas. For instance, about Willems. Now what did he want
+to keep him alive for? Why?
+
+"That scoundrel," muttered Almayer again.
+
+"Makan Tuan!" ejaculated Ali suddenly, very loud in a pressing
+tone.
+
+Almayer walked to the table, sat down, and his anxious visage
+dropped from above into the light thrown down by the lamp-shade.
+He helped himself absently, and began to eat in great mouthfuls.
+
+. . . Undoubtedly, Lingard was the man to stick to! The man
+undismayed, masterful and ready. How quickly he had planned a
+new future when Willems' treachery destroyed their established
+position in Sambir! And the position even now was not so bad.
+What an immense prestige that Lingard had with all those
+people--Arabs, Malays and all. Ah, it was good to be able to
+call a man like that father. Fine! Wonder how much money really
+the old fellow had. People talked--they exaggerated surely, but
+if he had only half of what they said . . .
+
+He drank, throwing his head up, and fell to again.
+
+. . . Now, if that Willems had known how to play his cards well,
+had he stuck to the old fellow he would have been in his
+position, he would be now married to Lingard's adopted daughter
+with his future assured--splendid . . .
+
+"The beast!" growled Almayer, between two mouthfuls.
+
+Ali stood rigidly straight with an uninterested face, his gaze
+lost in the night which pressed round the small circle of light
+that shone on the table, on the glass, on the bottle, and on
+Almayer's head as he leaned over his plate moving his jaws.
+
+. . . A famous man Lingard--yet you never knew what he would do
+next. It was notorious that he had shot a white man once for
+less than Willems had done. For less? . . . Why, for nothing,
+so to speak! It was not even his own quarrel. It was about some
+Malay returning from pilgrimage with wife and children.
+Kidnapped, or robbed, or something. A stupid story--an old
+story. And now he goes to see that Willems and--nothing. Comes
+back talking big about his prisoner; but after all he said very
+little. What did that Willems tell him? What passed between
+them? The old fellow must have had something in his mind when he
+let that scoundrel off. And Joanna! She would get round the old
+fellow. Sure. Then he would forgive perhaps. Impossible. But
+at any rate he would waste a lot of money on them. The old man
+was tenacious in his hates, but also in his affections. He had
+known that beast Willems from a boy. They would make it up in a
+year or so. Everything is possible: why did he not rush off at
+first and kill the brute? That would have been more like
+Lingard. . . .
+
+Almayer laid down his spoon suddenly, and pushing his plate away,
+threw himself back in the chair.
+
+. . . Unsafe. Decidedly unsafe. He had no mind to share
+Lingard's money with anybody. Lingard's money was Nina's money
+in a sense. And if Willems managed to become friendly with the
+old man it would be dangerous for him--Almayer. Such an
+unscrupulous scoundrel! He would oust him from his position. He
+would lie and slander. Everything would be lost. Lost. Poor
+Nina. What would become of her? Poor child. For her sake he
+must remove that Willems. Must. But how? Lingard wanted to be
+obeyed. Impossible to kill Willems. Lingard might be angry.
+Incredible, but so it was. He might . . .
+
+A wave of heat passed through Almayer's body, flushed his face,
+and broke out of him in copious perspiration. He wriggled in his
+chair, and pressed his hands together under the table. What an
+awful prospect! He fancied he could see Lingard and Willems
+reconciled and going away arm-in-arm, leaving him alone in this
+God-forsaken hole--in Sambir--in this deadly swamp! And all his
+sacrifices, the sacrifice of his independence, of his best years,
+his surrender to Lingard's fancies and caprices, would go for
+nothing! Horrible! Then he thought of his little daughter--his
+daughter!--and the ghastliness of his supposition overpowered
+him. He had a deep emotion, a sudden emotion that made him feel
+quite faint at the idea of that young life spoiled before it had
+fairly begun. His dear child's life! Lying back in his chair he
+covered his face with both his hands.
+
+Ali glanced down at him and said, unconcernedly--"Master finish?"
+
+Almayer was lost in the immensity of his commiseration for
+himself, for his daughter, who was--perhaps--not going to be the
+richest woman in the world--notwithstanding Lingard's promises.
+He did not understand the other's question, and muttered through
+his fingers in a doleful tone--
+
+"What did you say? What? Finish what?"
+
+"Clear up meza," explained Ali.
+
+"Clear up!" burst out Almayer, with incomprehensible
+exasperation. "Devil take you and the table. Stupid!
+Chatterer! Chelakka! Get out!"
+
+He leaned forward, glaring at his head man, then sank back in his
+seat with his arms hanging straight down on each side of the
+chair. And he sat motionless in a meditation so concentrated and
+so absorbing, with all his power of thought so deep within
+himself, that all expression disappeared from his face in an
+aspect of staring vacancy.
+
+Ali was clearing the table. He dropped negligently the tumbler
+into the greasy dish, flung there the spoon and fork, then
+slipped in the plate with a push amongst the remnants of food.
+He took up the dish, tucked up the bottle under his armpit, and
+went off.
+
+"My hammock!" shouted Almayer after him.
+
+"Ada! I come soon," answered Ali from the doorway in an offended
+tone, looking back over his shoulder. . . . How could he clear
+the table and hang the hammock at the same time. Ya-wa! Those
+white men were all alike. Wanted everything done at once. Like
+children . . .
+
+The indistinct murmur of his criticism went away, faded and died
+out together with the soft footfall of his bare feet in the dark
+passage.
+
+For some time Almayer did not move. His thoughts were busy at
+work shaping a momentous resolution, and in the perfect silence
+of the house he believed that he could hear the noise of the
+operation as if the work had been done with a hammer. He
+certainly felt a thumping of strokes, faint, profound, and
+startling, somewhere low down in his breast; and he was aware of
+a sound of dull knocking, abrupt and rapid, in his ears. Now and
+then he held his breath, unconsciously, too long, and had to
+relieve himself by a deep expiration that whistled dully through
+his pursed lips. The lamp standing on the far side of the table
+threw a section of a lighted circle on the floor, where his
+out-stretched legs stuck out from under the table with feet rigid
+and turned up like the feet of a corpse; and his set face with
+fixed eyes would have been also like the face of the dead, but
+for its vacant yet conscious aspect; the hard, the stupid, the
+stony aspect of one not dead, but only buried under the dust,
+ashes, and corruption of personal thoughts, of base fears, of
+selfish desires.
+
+"I will do it!"
+
+Not till he heard his own voice did he know that he had spoken.
+It startled him. He stood up. The knuckles of his hand,
+somewhat behind him, were resting on the edge of the table as he
+remained still with one foot advanced, his lips a little open,
+and thought: It would not do to fool about with Lingard. But I
+must risk it. It's the only way I can see. I must tell her.
+She has some little sense. I wish they were a thousand miles off
+already. A hundred thousand miles. I do. And if it fails. And
+she blabs out then to Lingard? She seemed a fool. No; probably
+they will get away. And if they did, would Lingard believe me?
+Yes. I never lied to him. He would believe. I don't know . . .
+Perhaps he won't. . . . "I must do it. Must!" he argued aloud
+to himself.
+
+For a long time he stood still, looking before him with an
+intense gaze, a gaze rapt and immobile, that seemed to watch the
+minute quivering of a delicate balance, coming to a rest.
+
+To the left of him, in the whitewashed wall of the house that
+formed the back of the verandah, there was a closed door. Black
+letters were painted on it proclaiming the fact that behind that
+door there was the office of Lingard & Co. The interior had been
+furnished by Lingard when he had built the house for his adopted
+daughter and her husband, and it had been furnished with reckless
+prodigality. There was an office desk, a revolving chair,
+bookshelves, a safe: all to humour the weakness of Almayer, who
+thought all those paraphernalia necessary to successful trading.
+Lingard had laughed, but had taken immense trouble to get the
+things. It pleased him to make his protege, his adopted
+son-in-law, happy. It had been the sensation of Sambir some five
+years ago. While the things were being landed, the whole
+settlement literally lived on the river bank in front of the
+Rajah Laut's house, to look, to wonder, to admire. . . . What a
+big meza, with many boxes fitted all over it and under it! What
+did the white man do with such a table? And look, look, O
+Brothers! There is a green square box, with a gold plate on it,
+a box so heavy that those twenty men cannot drag it up the bank.
+Let us go, brothers, and help pull at the ropes, and perchance we
+may see what's inside. Treasure, no doubt. Gold is heavy and
+hard to hold, O Brothers! Let us go and earn a recompense from
+the fierce Rajah of the Sea who shouts over there, with a red
+face. See! There is a man carrying a pile of books from the
+boat! What a number of books. What were they for? . . . And an
+old invalided jurumudi, who had travelled over many seas and had
+heard holy men speak in far-off countries, explained to a small
+knot of unsophisticated citizens of Sambir that those books were
+books of magic--of magic that guides the white men's ships over
+the seas, that gives them their wicked wisdom and their strength;
+of magic that makes them great, powerful, and irresistible while
+they live, and--praise be to Allah!--the victims of Satan, the
+slaves of Jehannum when they die.
+
+And when he saw the room furnished, Almayer had felt proud. In
+his exultation of an empty-headed quill-driver, he thought
+himself, by the virtue of that furniture, at the head of a
+serious business. He had sold himself to Lingard for these
+things--married the Malay girl of his adoption for the reward of
+these things and of the great wealth that must necessarily follow
+upon conscientious book-keeping. He found out very soon that
+trade in Sambir meant something entirely different. He could not
+guide Patalolo, control the irrepressible old Sahamin, or
+restrain the youthful vagaries of the fierce Bahassoen with pen,
+ink, and paper. He found no successful magic in the blank pages
+of his ledgers; and gradually he lost his old point of view in
+the saner appreciation of his situation. The room known as the
+office became neglected then like a temple of an exploded
+superstition. At first, when his wife reverted to her original
+savagery, Almayer, now and again, had sought refuge from her
+there; but after their child began to speak, to know him, he
+became braver, for he found courage and consolation in his
+unreasoning and fierce affection for his daughter--in the
+impenetrable mantle of selfishness he wrapped round both their
+lives: round himself, and that young life that was also his.
+
+When Lingard ordered him to receive Joanna into his house, he had
+a truckle bed put into the office--the only room he could spare.
+The big office desk was pushed on one side, and Joanna came with
+her little shabby trunk and with her child and took possession in
+her dreamy, slack, half-asleep way; took possession of the dust,
+dirt, and squalor, where she appeared naturally at home, where
+she dragged a melancholy and dull existence; an existence made up
+of sad remorse and frightened hope, amongst the hopeless
+disorder--the senseless and vain decay of all these emblems of
+civilized commerce. Bits of white stuff; rags yellow, pink,
+blue: rags limp, brilliant and soiled, trailed on the floor, lay
+on the desk amongst the sombre covers of books soiled, grimy, but
+stiff-backed, in virtue, perhaps, of their European origin. The
+biggest set of bookshelves was partly hidden by a petticoat, the
+waistband of which was caught upon the back of a slender book
+pulled a little out of the row so as to make an improvised
+clothespeg. The folding canvas bedstead stood nearly in the
+middle of the room, stood anyhow, parallel to no wall, as if it
+had been, in the process of transportation to some remote place,
+dropped casually there by tired bearers. And on the tumbled
+blankets that lay in a disordered heap on its edge, Joanna sat
+almost all day with her stockingless feet upon one of the bed
+pillows that were somehow always kicking about the floor. She
+sat there, vaguely tormented at times by the thought of her
+absent husband, but most of the time thinking tearfully of
+nothing at all, looking with swimming eyes at her little son--at
+the big-headed, pasty-faced, and sickly Louis Willems--who rolled
+a glass inkstand, solid with dried ink, about the floor, and
+tottered after it with the portentous gravity of demeanour and
+absolute absorption by the business in hand that characterize the
+pursuits of early childhood. Through the half-open shutter a ray
+of sunlight, a ray merciless and crude, came into the room, beat
+in the early morning upon the safe in the far-off corner, then,
+travelling against the sun, cut at midday the big desk in two
+with its solid and clean-edged brilliance; with its hot
+brilliance in which a swarm of flies hovered in dancing flight
+over some dirty plate forgotten there amongst yellow papers for
+many a day. And towards the evening the cynical ray seemed to
+cling to the ragged petticoat, lingered on it with wicked
+enjoyment of that misery it had exposed all day; lingered on the
+corner of the dusty bookshelf, in a red glow intense and mocking,
+till it was suddenly snatched by the setting sun out of the way
+of the coming night. And the night entered the room. The night
+abrupt, impenetrable and all-filling with its flood of darkness;
+the night cool and merciful; the blind night that saw nothing,
+but could hear the fretful whimpering of the child, the creak of
+the bedstead, Joanna's deep sighs as she turned over, sleepless,
+in the confused conviction of her wickedness, thinking of that
+man masterful, fair-headed, and strong--a man hard perhaps, but
+her husband; her clever and handsome husband to whom she had
+acted so cruelly on the advice of bad people, if her own people;
+and of her poor, dear, deceived mother.
+
+To Almayer, Joanna's presence was a constant worry, a worry
+unobtrusive yet intolerable; a constant, but mostly mute, warning
+of possible danger. In view of the absurd softness of Lingard's
+heart, every one in whom Lingard manifested the slightest
+interest was to Almayer a natural enemy. He was quite alive to
+that feeling, and in the intimacy of the secret intercourse with
+his inner self had often congratulated himself upon his own
+wide-awake comprehension of his position. In that way, and
+impelled by that motive, Almayer had hated many and various
+persons at various times. But he never had hated and feared
+anybody so much as he did hate and fear Willems. Even after
+Willems' treachery, which seemed to remove him beyond the pale of
+all human sympathy, Almayer mistrusted the situation and groaned
+in spirit every time he caught sight of Joanna.
+
+He saw her very seldom in the daytime. But in the short and
+opal-tinted twilights, or in the azure dusk of starry evenings,
+he often saw, before he slept, the slender and tall figure
+trailing to and fro the ragged tail of its white gown over the
+dried mud of the riverside in front of the house. Once or twice
+when he sat late on the verandah, with his feet upon the deal
+table on a level with the lamp, reading the seven months' old
+copy of the North China Herald, brought by Lingard, he heard the
+stairs creak, and, looking round the paper, he saw her frail and
+meagre form rise step by step and toil across the verandah,
+carrying with difficulty the big, fat child, whose head, lying on
+the mother's bony shoulder, seemed of the same size as Joanna's
+own. Several times she had assailed him with tearful clamour or
+mad entreaties: asking about her husband, wanting to know where
+he was, when he would be back; and ending every such outburst
+with despairing and incoherent self-reproaches that were
+absolutely incomprehensible to Almayer. On one or two occasions
+she had overwhelmed her host with vituperative abuse, making him
+responsible for her husband's absence. Those scenes, begun
+without any warning, ended abruptly in a sobbing flight and a
+bang of the door; stirred the house with a sudden, a fierce, and
+an evanescent disturbance; like those inexplicable whirlwinds
+that rise, run, and vanish without apparent cause upon the
+sun-scorched dead level of arid and lamentable plains.
+
+But to-night the house was quiet, deadly quiet, while Almayer
+stood still, watching that delicate balance where he was weighing
+all his chances: Joanna's intelligence, Lingard's credulity,
+Willems' reckless audacity, desire to escape, readiness to seize
+an unexpected opportunity. He weighed, anxious and attentive,
+his fears and his desires against the tremendous risk of a
+quarrel with Lingard. . . . Yes. Lingard would be angry.
+Lingard might suspect him of some connivance in his prisoner's
+escape--but surely he would not quarrel with him--Almayer--about
+those people once they were gone--gone to the devil in their own
+way. And then he had hold of Lingard through the little girl.
+Good. What an annoyance! A prisoner! As if one could keep him
+in there. He was bound to get away some time or other. Of
+course. A situation like that can't last. vAnybody could see
+that. Lingard's eccentricity passed all bounds. You may kill a
+man, but you mustn't torture him. It was almost criminal. It
+caused worry, trouble, and unpleasantness. . . . Almayer for a
+moment felt very angry with Lingard. He made him responsible for
+the anguish he suffered from, for the anguish of doubt and fear;
+for compelling him--the practical and innocent Almayer--to such
+painful efforts of mind in order to find out some issue for
+absurd situations created by the unreasonable sentimentality of
+Lingard's unpractical impulses.
+
+"Now if the fellow were dead it would be all right," said Almayer
+to the verandah.
+
+He stirred a little, and scratching his nose thoughtfully,
+revelled in a short flight of fancy, showing him his own image
+crouching in a big boat, that floated arrested--say fifty yards
+off--abreast of Willems' landing-place. In the bottom of the
+boat there was a gun. A loaded gun. One of the boatmen would
+shout, and Willems would answer--from the bushes.c The rascal
+would be suspicious. Of course. Then the man would wave a piece
+of paper urging Willems to come to the landing-place and receive
+an important message. "From the Rajah Laut" the man would yell
+as the boat edged in-shore, and that would fetch Willems out.
+Wouldn't it? Rather! And Almayer saw himself jumping up at the
+right moment, taking aim, pulling the trigger--and Willems
+tumbling over, his head in the water--the swine!
+
+He seemed to hear the report of the shot. It made him thrill
+from head to foot where he stood. . . . How simple! . . .
+Unfortunate . . . Lingard . . . He sighed, shook his head.
+Pity. Couldn't be done. And couldn't leave him there either!
+Suppose the Arabs were to get hold of him again--for instance to
+lead an expedition up the river! Goodness only knows what harm
+would come of it. . . .
+
+The balance was at rest now and inclining to the side of
+immediate action. Almayer walked to the door, walked up very
+close to it, knocked loudly, and turned his head away, looking
+frightened for a moment at what he had done. After waiting for a
+while he put his ear against the panel and listened. Nothing.
+He composed his features into an agreeable expression while he
+stood listening and thinking to himself: I hear her. Crying.
+Eh? I believe she has lost the little wits she had and is crying
+night and day since I began to prepare her for the news of her
+husband's death--as Lingard told me. I wonder what she thinks.
+It's just like father to make me invent all these stories for
+nothing at all. Out of kindness. Kindness! Damn! . . . She
+isn't deaf, surely.
+
+He knocked again, then said in a friendly tone, grinning
+benevolently at the closed door--
+
+"It's me, Mrs. Willems. I want to speak to you. I have . . .
+have . . . important news. . . ."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"News," repeated Almayer, distinctly. "News about your husband.
+Your husband! . . . Damn him!" he added, under his breath.
+
+He heard a stumbling rush inside. Things were overturned.
+Joanna's agitated voice cried--
+
+"News! What? What? I am coming out."
+
+"No," shouted Almayer. "Put on some clothes, Mrs. Willems, and
+let me in. It's . . . very confidential. You have a candle,
+haven't you?"
+
+She was knocking herself about blindly amongst the furniture in
+that room. The candlestick was upset. Matches were struck
+ineffectually. The matchbox fell. He heard her drop on her
+knees and grope over the floor while she kept on moaning in
+maddened distraction.
+
+"Oh, my God! News! Yes . . . yes. . . . Ah! where . . . where .
+. . candle. Oh, my God! . . . I can't find . . . Don't go
+away, for the love of Heaven . . ."
+
+"I don't want to go away," said Almayer, impatiently, through the
+keyhole; "but look sharp. It's coni . . . it's pressing."
+
+He stamped his foot lightly, waiting with his hand on the
+door-handle. He thought anxiously: The woman's a perfect idiot.
+Why should I go away? She will be off her head. She will never
+catch my meaning. She's too stupid.
+
+She was moving now inside the room hurriedly and in silence. He
+waited. There was a moment of perfect stillness in there, and
+then she spoke in an exhausted voice, in words that were shaped
+out of an expiring sigh--out of a sigh light and profound, like
+words breathed out by a woman before going off into a dead
+faint--
+
+"Come in."
+
+He pushed the door. Ali, coming through the passage with an
+armful of pillows and blankets pressed to his breast high up
+under his chin, caught sight of his master before the door closed
+behind him. He was so astonished that he dropped his bundle and
+stood staring at the door for a long time. He heard the voice of
+his master talking. Talking to that Sirani woman! Who was she?
+He had never thought about that really. He speculated for a
+while hazily upon things in general. She was a Sirani woman--and
+ugly. He made a disdainful grimace, picked up the bedding, and
+went about his work, slinging the hammock between two uprights of
+the verandah. . . . Those things did not concern him. She was
+ugly, and brought here by the Rajah Laut, and his master spoke to
+her in the night. Very well. He, Ali, had his work to do.
+Sling the hammock--go round and see that the watchmen were
+awake--take a look at the moorings of the boats, at the padlock
+of the big storehouse--then go to sleep. To sleep! He shivered
+pleasantly. He leaned with both arms over his master's hammock
+and fell into a light doze.
+
+A scream, unexpected, piercing--a scream beginning at once in the
+highest pitch of a woman's voice and then cut short, so short
+that it suggested the swift work of death--caused Ali to jump on
+one side away from the hammock, and the silence that succeeded
+seemed to him as startling as the awful shriek. He was
+thunderstruck with surprise. Almayer came out of the office,
+leaving the door ajar, passed close to his servant without taking
+any notice, and made straight for the water-chatty hung on a nail
+in a draughty place. He took it down and came back, missing the
+petrified Ali by an inch. He moved with long strides, yet,
+notwithstanding his haste, stopped short before the door, and,
+throwing his head back, poured a thin stream of water down his
+throat. While he came and went, while he stopped to drink, while
+he did all this, there came steadily from the dark room the sound
+of feeble and persistent crying, the crying of a sleepy and
+frightened child. After he had drunk, Almayer went in, closing
+the door carefully.
+
+Ali did not budge. That Sirani woman shrieked! He felt an
+immense curiosity very unusual to his stolid disposition. He
+could not take his eyes off the door. Was she dead in there?
+How interesting and funny! He stood with open mouth till he
+heard again the rattle of the door-handle. Master coming out.
+He pivoted on his heels with great rapidity and made believe to
+be absorbed in the contemplation of the night outside. He heard
+Almayer moving about behind his back. Chairs were displaced.
+His master sat down.
+
+"Ali," said Almayer.
+
+His face was gloomy and thoughtful. He looked at his head man,
+who had approached the table, then he pulled out his watch. It
+was going. Whenever Lingard was in Sambir Almayer's watch was
+going. He would set it by the cabin clock, telling himself every
+time that he must really keep that watch going for the future.
+And every time, when Lingard went away, he would let it run down
+and would measure his weariness by sunrises and sunsets in an
+apathetic indifference to mere hours; to hours only; to hours
+that had no importance in Sambir life, in the tired stagnation of
+empty days; when nothing mattered to him but the quality of
+guttah and the size of rattans; where there were no small hopes
+to be watched for; where to him there was nothing interesting,
+nothing supportable, nothing desirable to expect; nothing bitter
+but the slowness of the passing days; nothing sweet but the hope,
+the distant and glorious hope--the hope wearying, aching and
+precious, of getting away.
+
+He looked at the watch. Half-past eight. Ali waited stolidly.
+
+"Go to the settlement," said Almayer, "and tell Mahmat Banjer to
+come and speak to me to-night."
+
+Ali went off muttering. He did not like his errand. Banjer and
+his two brothers were Bajow vagabonds who had appeared lately in
+Sambir and had been allowed to take possession of a tumbledown
+abandoned hut, on three posts, belonging to Lingard & Co., and
+standing just outside their fence. Ali disapproved of the favour
+shown to those strangers. Any kind of dwelling was valuable in
+Sambir at that time, and if master did not want that old rotten
+house he might have given it to him, Ali, who was his servant,
+instead of bestowing it upon those bad men. Everybody knew they
+were bad. It was well known that they had stolen a boat from
+Hinopari, who was very aged and feeble and had no sons; and that
+afterwards, by the truculent recklessness of their demeanour,
+they had frightened the poor old man into holding his tongue
+about it. Yet everybody knew of it. It was one of the tolerated
+scandals of Sambir, disapproved and accepted, a manifestation of
+that base acquiescence in success, of that inexpressed and
+cowardly toleration of strength, that exists, infamous and
+irremediable, at the bottom of all hearts, in all societies;
+whenever men congregate; in bigger and more virtuous places than
+Sambir, and in Sambir also, where, as in other places, one man
+could steal a boat with impunity while another would have no
+right to look at a paddle.
+
+Almayer, leaning back in his chair, meditated. The more he
+thought, the more he felt convinced that Banjer and his brothers
+were exactly the men he wanted. Those fellows were sea gipsies,
+and could disappear without attracting notice; and if they
+returned, nobody--and Lingard least of all--would dream of
+seeking information from them. Moreover, they had no personal
+interest of any kind in Sambir affairs--had taken no sides--would
+know nothing anyway.
+
+He called in a strong voice: "Mrs. Willems!"
+
+She came out quickly, almost startling him, so much did she
+appear as though she had surged up through the floor, on the
+other side of the table. The lamp was between them, and Almayer
+moved it aside, looking up at her from his chair. She was
+crying. She was crying gently, silently, in a ceaseless welling
+up of tears that did not fall in drops, but seemed to overflow in
+a clear sheet from under her eyelids--seemed to flow at once all
+over her face, her cheeks, and over her chin that glistened with
+moisture in the light. Her breast and her shoulders were shaken
+repeatedly by a convulsive and noiseless catching in her breath,
+and after every spasmodic sob her sorrowful little head, tied up
+in a red kerchief, trembled on her long neck, round which her
+bony hand gathered and clasped the disarranged dress.
+
+"Compose yourself, Mrs. Willems," said Almayer.
+
+She emitted an inarticulate sound that seemed to be a faint, a
+very far off, a hardly audible cry of mortal distress. Then the
+tears went on flowing in profound stillness.
+
+"You must understand that I have told you all this because I am
+your friend--real friend," said Almayer, after looking at her for
+some time with visible dissatisfaction. "You, his wife, ought to
+know the danger he is in. Captain Lingard is a terrible man, you
+know."
+
+She blubbered out, sniffing and sobbing together.
+
+"Do you . . . you . . . speak . . . the . . . the truth now?"
+
+"Upon my word of honour. On the head of my child," protested
+Almayer. "I had to deceive you till now because of Captain
+Lingard. But I couldn't bear it. Think only what a risk I run
+in telling you--if ever Lingard was to know! Why should I do it?
+Pure friendship. Dear Peter was my colleague in Macassar for
+years, you know."
+
+"What shall I do . . . what shall I do!" she exclaimed, faintly,
+looking around on every side as if she could not make up her mind
+which way to rush off.
+
+"You must help him to clear out, now Lingard is away. He
+offended Lingard, and that's no joke. Lingard said he would kill
+him. He will do it, too," said Almayer, earnestly.
+
+She wrung her hands. "Oh! the wicked man. The wicked, wicked
+man!" she moaned, swaying her body from side to side.
+
+"Yes. Yes! He is terrible," assented Almayer. "You must not
+lose any time. I say! Do you understand me, Mrs. Willems?
+Think of your husband. Of your poor husband. How happy he will
+be. You will bring him his life--actually his life. Think of
+him."
+
+She ceased her swaying movement, and now, with her head sunk
+between her shoulders, she hugged herself with both her arms; and
+she stared at Almayer with wild eyes, while her teeth chattered,
+rattling violently and uninterruptedly, with a very loud sound,
+in the deep peace of the house.
+
+"Oh! Mother of God!" she wailed. "I am a miserable woman. Will
+he forgive me? The poor, innocent man. Will he forgive me? Oh,
+Mr. Almayer, he is so severe. Oh! help me. . . . I dare not. .
+. . You don't know what I've done to him. . . . I daren't! . . .
+I can't! . . . God help me!"
+
+The last words came in a despairing cry. Had she been flayed
+alive she could not have sent to heaven a more terrible, a more
+heartrending and anguished plaint.
+
+"Sh! Sh!" hissed Almayer, jumping up. "You will wake up
+everybody with your shouting."
+
+She kept on sobbing then without any noise, and Almayer stared at
+her in boundless astonishment. The idea that, maybe, he had done
+wrong by confiding in her, upset him so much that for a moment he
+could not find a connected thought in his head.
+
+At last he said: "I swear to you that your husband is in such a
+position that he would welcome the devil . . . listen well to me
+. . . the devil himself if the devil came to him in a canoe.
+Unless I am much mistaken,'' he added, under his breath. Then
+again, loudly: "If you have any little difference to make up with
+him, I assure you--I swear to you--this is your time!"
+
+The ardently persuasive tone of his words--he thought--would have
+carried irresistible conviction to a graven image. He noticed
+with satisfaction that Joanna seemed to have got some inkling of
+his meaning. He continued, speaking slowly--
+
+"Look here, Mrs. Willems. I can't do anything. Daren't. But I
+will tell you what I will do. There will come here in about ten
+minutes a Bugis man--you know the language; you are from
+Macassar. He has a large canoe; he can take you there. To the
+new Rajah's clearing, tell him. They are three brothers, ready
+for anything if you pay them . . . you have some money. Haven't
+you?"
+
+She stood--perhaps listening--but giving no sign of intelligence,
+and stared at the floor in sudden immobility, as if the horror of
+the situation, the overwhelming sense of her own wickedness and
+of her husband's great danger, had stunned her brain, her heart,
+her will--had left her no faculty but that of breathing and of
+keeping on her feet. Almayer swore to himself with much mental
+profanity that he had never seen a more useless, a more stupid
+being.
+
+"D'ye hear me?" he said, raising his voice. "Do try to
+understand. Have you any money? Money. Dollars. Guilders.
+Money! What's the matter with you?"
+
+Without raising her eyes she said, in a voice that sounded weak
+and undecided as if she had been making a desperate effort of
+memory--
+
+"The house has been sold. Mr. Hudig was angry."
+
+Almayer gripped the edge of the table with all his strength. He
+resisted manfully an almost uncontrollable impulse to fly at her
+and box her ears.
+
+"It was sold for money, I suppose," he said with studied and
+incisive calmness. "Have you got it? Who has got it?"
+
+She looked up at him, raising her swollen eyelids with a great
+effort, in a sorrowful expression of her drooping mouth, of her
+whole besmudged and tear-stained face. She whispered
+resignedly--
+
+"Leonard had some. He wanted to get married. And uncle Antonio;
+he sat at the door and would not go away. And Aghostina--she is
+so poor . . . and so many, many children--little children. And
+Luiz the engineer. He never said a word against my husband.
+Also our cousin Maria. She came and shouted, and my head was so
+bad, and my heart was worse. Then cousin Salvator and old Daniel
+da Souza, who . . ."
+
+Almayer had listened to her speechless with rage. He thought: I
+must give money now to that idiot. Must! Must get her out of
+the way now before Lingard is back. He made two attempts to
+speak before he managed to burst out--
+
+"I don't want to know their blasted names! Tell me, did all
+those infernal people leave you anything? To you! That's what I
+want to know!"
+
+"I have two hundred and fifteen dollars," said Joanna, in a
+frightened tone.
+
+Almayer breathed freely. He spoke with great friendliness--
+
+"That will do. It isn't much, but it will do. Now when the man
+comes I will be out of the way. You speak to him. Give him some
+money; only a little, mind! And promise more. Then when you get
+there you will be guided by your husband, of course. And don't
+forget to tell him that Captain Lingard is at the mouth of the
+river--the northern entrance. You will remember. Won't you?
+The northern branch. Lingard is--death."
+
+Joanna shivered. Almayer went on rapidly--
+
+"I would have given you money if you had wanted it. 'Pon my
+word! Tell your husband I've sent you to him. And tell him not
+to lose any time. And also say to him from me that we shall
+meet--some day. That I could not die happy unless I met him once
+more. Only once. I love him, you know. I prove it. Tremendous
+risk to me--this business is!"
+
+Joanna snatched his hand and before he knew what she would be at,
+pressed it to her lips.
+
+"Mrs. Willems! Don't. What are you . . ." cried the abashed
+Almayer, tearing his hand away.
+
+"Oh, you are good!" she cried, with sudden exaltation, "You are
+noble . . . I shall pray every day . . . to all the saints . . .
+I shall . . ."
+
+"Never mind . . . never mind!" stammered out Almayer, confusedly,
+without knowing very well what he was saying. "Only look out for
+Lingard. . . . I am happy to be able . . . in your sad situation
+. . . believe me. . . . "
+
+They stood with the table between them, Joanna looking down, and
+her face, in the half-light above the lamp, appeared like a
+soiled carving of old ivory--a carving, with accentuated anxious
+hollows, of old, very old ivory. Almayer looked at her,
+mistrustful, hopeful. He was saying to himself: How frail she
+is! I could upset her by blowing at her. She seems to have got
+some idea of what must be done, but will she have the strength to
+carry it through? I must trust to luck now!
+
+Somewhere far in the back courtyard Ali's voice rang suddenly in
+angry remonstrance--
+
+"Why did you shut the gate, O father of all mischief? You a
+watchman! You are only a wild man. Did I not tell you I was
+coming back? You . . ."
+
+"I am off, Mrs. Willems," exclaimed Almayer. "That man is
+here--with my servant. Be calm. Try to . . ."
+
+He heard the footsteps of the two men in the passage, and without
+finishing his sentence ran rapidly down the steps towards the
+riverside.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+For the next half-hour Almayer, who wanted to give Joanna plenty
+of time, stumbled amongst the lumber in distant parts of his
+enclosure, sneaked along the fences; or held his breath,
+flattened against grass walls behind various outhouses: all this
+to escape Ali's inconveniently zealous search for his master. He
+heard him talk with the head watchman--sometimes quite close to
+him in the darkness--then moving off, coming back, wondering,
+and, as the time passed, growing uneasy.
+
+"He did not fall into the river?--say, thou blind watcher!" Ali
+was growling in a bullying tone, to the other man. "He told me
+to fetch Mahmat, and when I came back swiftly I found him not in
+the house. There is that Sirani woman there, so that Mahmat
+cannot steal anything, but it is in my mind, the night will be
+half gone before I rest."
+
+He shouted--
+
+"Master! O master! O mast . . ."
+
+"What are you making that noise for?" said Almayer, with
+severity, stepping out close to them.
+
+The two Malays leaped away from each other in their surprise.
+
+"You may go. I don't want you any more tonight, Ali," went on
+Almayer. "Is Mahmat there?"
+
+"Unless the ill-behaved savage got tired of waiting. Those men
+know not politeness. They should not be spoken to by white men,"
+said Ali, resentfully.
+
+Almayer went towards the house, leaving his servants to wonder
+where he had sprung from so unexpectedly. The watchman hinted
+obscurely at powers of invisibility possessed by the master, who
+often at night . . . Ali interrupted him with great scorn. Not
+every white man has the power. Now, the Rajah Laut could make
+himself invisible. Also, he could be in two places at once, as
+everybody knew; except he--the useless watchman--who knew no more
+about white men than a wild pig! Ya-wa!
+
+And Ali strolled towards his hut, yawning loudly.
+
+As Almayer ascended the steps he heard the noise of a door flung
+to, and when he entered the verandah he saw only Mahmat there,
+close to the doorway of the passage. Mahmat seemed to be caught
+in the very act of slinking away, and Almayer noticed that with
+satisfaction. Seeing the white man, the Malay gave up his
+attempt and leaned against the wall. He was a short, thick,
+broad-shouldered man with very dark skin and a wide, stained,
+bright-red mouth that uncovered, when he spoke, a close row of
+black and glistening teeth. His eyes were big, prominent, dreamy
+and restless. He said sulkily, looking all over the place from
+under his eyebrows--
+
+"White Tuan, you are great and strong--and I a poor man. Tell me
+what is your will, and let me go in the name of God. It is
+late."
+
+Almayer examined the man thoughtfully. How could he find out
+whether . . . He had it! Lately he had employed that man and
+his two brothers as extra boatmen to carry stores, provisions,
+and new axes to a camp of rattan cutters some distance up the
+river. A three days' expedition. He would test him now in that
+way. He said negligently--
+
+"I want you to start at once for the camp, with surat for the
+Kavitan. One dollar a day."
+
+The man appeared plunged in dull hesitation, but Almayer, who
+knew his Malays, felt pretty sure from his aspect that nothing
+would induce the fellow to go. He urged--
+
+"It is important--and if you are swift I shall give two dollars
+for the last day."
+
+"No, Tuan. We do not go," said the man, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"We start on another journey."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To a place we know of," said Mahmat, a little louder, in a
+stubborn manner, and looking at the floor.
+
+Almayer experienced a feeling of immense joy. He said, with
+affected annoyance--
+
+"You men live in my house and it is as if it were your own. I
+may want my house soon."
+
+Mahmat looked up.
+
+"We are men of the sea and care not for a roof when we have a
+canoe that will hold three, and a paddle apiece. The sea is our
+house. Peace be with you, Tuan."
+
+He turned and went away rapidly, and Almayer heard him directly
+afterwards in the courtyard calling to the watchman to open the
+gate. Mahmat passed through the gate in silence, but before the
+bar had been put up behind him he had made up his mind that if
+the white man ever wanted to eject him from his hut, he would
+burn it and also as many of the white man's other buildings as he
+could safely get at. And he began to call his brothers before he
+was inside the dilapidated dwelling.
+
+"All's well!" muttered Almayer to himself, taking some loose Java
+tobacco from a drawer in the table. "Now if anything comes out I
+am clear. I asked the man to go up the river. I urged him. He
+will say so himself. Good."
+
+He began to charge the china bowl of his pipe, a pipe with a long
+cherry stem and a curved mouthpiece, pressing the tobacco down
+with his thumb and thinking: No. I sha'n't see her again.
+Don't want to. I will give her a good start, then go in
+chase--and send an express boat after father. Yes! that's it.
+
+He approached the door of the office and said, holding his pipe
+away from his lips--
+
+"Good luck to you, Mrs. Willems. Don't lose any time. You may
+get along by the bushes; the fence there is out of repair. Don't
+lose time. Don't forget that it is a matter of . . . life and
+death. And don't forget that I know nothing. I trust you."
+
+He heard inside a noise as of a chest-lid falling down. She made
+a few steps. Then a sigh, profound and long, and some faint
+words which he did not catch. He moved away from the door on
+tiptoe, kicked off his slippers in a corner of the verandah, then
+entered the passage puffing at his pipe; entered cautiously in a
+gentle creaking of planks and turned into a curtained entrance to
+the left. There was a big room. On the floor a small binnacle
+lamp--that had found its way to the house years ago from the
+lumber-room of the Flash--did duty for a night-light. It
+glimmered very small and dull in the great darkness. Almayer
+walked to it, and picking it up revived the flame by pulling the
+wick with his fingers, which he shook directly after with a
+grimace of pain. Sleeping shapes, covered--head and all--with
+white sheets, lay about on the mats on the floor. In the middle
+of the room a small cot, under a square white mosquito net,
+stood--the only piece of furniture between the four
+walls--looking like an altar of transparent marble in a gloomy
+temple. A woman, half-lying on the floor with her head dropped
+on her arms, which were crossed on the foot of the cot, woke up
+as Almayer strode over her outstretched legs. She sat up without
+a word, leaning forward, and, clasping her knees, stared down
+with sad eyes, full of sleep.
+
+Almayer, the smoky light in one hand, his pipe in the other,
+stood before the curtained cot looking at his daughter--at his
+little Nina--at that part of himself, at that small and
+unconscious particle of humanity that seemed to him to contain
+all his soul. And it was as if he had been bathed in a bright
+and warm wave of tenderness, in a tenderness greater than the
+world, more precious than life; the only thing real, living,
+sweet, tangible, beautiful and safe amongst the elusive, the
+distorted and menacing shadows of existence. On his face, lit up
+indistinctly by the short yellow flame of the lamp, came a look
+of rapt attention while he looked into her future. And he could
+see things there! Things charming and splendid passing before
+him in a magic unrolling of resplendent pictures; pictures of
+events brilliant, happy, inexpressibly glorious, that would make
+up her life. He would do it! He would do it. He would! He
+would--for that child! And as he stood in the still night, lost
+in his enchanting and gorgeous dreams, while the ascending, thin
+thread of tobacco smoke spread into a faint bluish cloud above
+his head, he appeared strangely impressive and ecstatic: like a
+devout and mystic worshipper, adoring, transported and mute;
+burning incense before a shrine, a diaphanous shrine of a
+child-idol with closed eyes; before a pure and vaporous shrine of
+a small god--fragile, powerless, unconscious and sleeping.
+
+When Ali, roused by loud and repeated shouting of his name,
+stumbled outside the door of his hut, he saw a narrow streak of
+trembling gold above the forests and a pale sky with faded stars
+overhead: signs of the coming day. His master stood before the
+door waving a piece of paper in his hand and shouting
+excitedly--"Quick, Ali! Quick!" When he saw his servant he
+rushed forward, and pressing the paper on him objurgated him, in
+tones which induced Ali to think that something awful had
+happened, to hurry up and get the whale-boat ready to go
+immediately--at once, at once--after Captain Lingard. Ali
+remonstrated, agitated also, having caught the infection of
+distracted haste.
+
+"If must go quick, better canoe. Whale-boat no can catch, same
+as small canoe."
+
+"No, no! Whale-boat! whale-boat! You dolt! you wretch!" howled
+Almayer, with all the appearance of having gone mad. "Call the
+men! Get along with it. Fly!"
+
+And Ali rushed about the courtyard kicking the doors of huts open
+to put his head in and yell frightfully inside; and as he dashed
+from hovel to hovel, men shivering and sleepy were coming out,
+looking after him stupidly, while they scratched their ribs with
+bewildered apathy. It was hard work to put them in motion. They
+wanted time to stretch themselves and to shiver a little. Some
+wanted food. One said he was sick. Nobody knew where the rudder
+was. Ali darted here and there, ordering, abusing, pushing one,
+then another, and stopping in his exertions at times to wring his
+hands hastily and groan, because the whale-boat was much slower
+than the worst canoe and his master would not listen to his
+protestations.
+
+Almayer saw the boat go off at last, pulled anyhow by men that
+were cold, hungry, and sulky; and he remained on the jetty
+watching it down the reach. It was broad day then, and the sky
+was perfectly cloudless. Almayer went up to the house for a
+moment. His household was all astir and wondering at the strange
+disappearance of the Sirani woman, who had taken her child and
+had left her luggage. Almayer spoke to no one, got his revolver,
+and went down to the river again. He jumped into a small canoe
+and paddled himself towards the schooner. He worked very
+leisurely, but as soon as he was nearly alongside he began to
+hail the silent craft with the tone and appearance of a man in a
+tremendous hurry.
+
+"Schooner ahoy! schooner ahoy!" he shouted.
+
+A row of blank faces popped up above the bulwark. After a while a
+man with a woolly head of hair said--
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"The mate! the mate! Call him, steward!" said Almayer,
+excitedly, making a frantic grab at a rope thrown down to him by
+somebody.
+
+In less than a minute the mate put his head over. He asked,
+surprised--
+
+"What can I do for you, Mr. Almayer?"
+
+"Let me have the gig at once, Mr. Swan--at once. I ask in
+Captain Lingard's name. I must have it. Matter of life and
+death."
+
+The mate was impressed by Almayer's agitation
+
+"You shall have it, sir. . . . Man the gig there! Bear a hand,
+serang! . . . It's hanging astern, Mr. Almayer," he said,
+looking down again. "Get into it, sir. The men are coming down
+by the painter."
+
+By the time Almayer had clambered over into the stern sheets,
+four calashes were in the boat and the oars were being passed
+over the taffrail. The mate was looking on. Suddenly he said--
+
+"Is it dangerous work? Do you want any help? I would come . . ."
+
+"Yes, yes!" cried Almayer. "Come along. Don't lose a moment.
+Go and get your revolver. Hurry up! hurry up!"
+
+Yet, notwithstanding his feverish anxiety to be off, he lolled
+back very quiet and unconcerned till the mate got in and, passing
+over the thwarts, sat down by his side. Then he seemed to wake
+up, and called out--
+
+"Let go--let go the painter!"
+
+"Let go the painter--the painter!" yelled the bowman, jerking at
+it.
+
+People on board also shouted "Let go!" to one another, till it
+occurred at last to somebody to cast off the rope; and the boat
+drifted rapidly away from the schooner in the sudden silencing of
+all voices.
+
+Almayer steered. The mate sat by his side, pushing the
+cartridges into the chambers of his revolver. When the weapon was
+loaded he asked--
+
+"What is it? Are you after somebody?"
+
+"Yes," said Almayer, curtly, with his eyes fixed ahead on the
+river. "We must catch a dangerous man."
+
+"I like a bit of a chase myself," declared the mate, and then,
+discouraged by Almayer's aspect of severe thoughtfulness, said
+nothing more.
+
+Nearly an hour passed. The calashes stretched forward head first
+and lay back with their faces to the sky, alternately, in a
+regular swing that sent the boat flying through the water; and
+the two sitters, very upright in the stern sheets, swayed
+rhythmically a little at every stroke of the long oars plied
+vigorously.
+
+The mate observed: "The tide is with us."
+
+"The current always runs down in this river," said Almayer.
+
+"Yes--I know," retorted the other; "but it runs faster on the
+ebb. Look by the land at the way we get over the ground! A
+five-knot current here, I should say."
+
+"H'm!" growled Almayer. Then suddenly: "There is a passage
+between two islands that will save us four miles. But at low
+water the two islands, in the dry season, are like one with only
+a mud ditch between them. Still, it's worth trying."
+
+"Ticklish job that, on a falling tide," said the mate, coolly.
+"You know best whether there's time to get through."
+
+"I will try," said Almayer, watching the shore intently. "Look
+out now!"
+
+He tugged hard at the starboard yoke-line.
+
+"Lay in your oars!" shouted the mate.
+
+The boat swept round and shot through the narrow opening of a
+creek that broadened out before the craft had time to lose its
+way.
+
+"Out oars! . . . Just room enough," muttered the mate.
+
+It was a sombre creek of black water speckled with the gold of
+scattered sunlight falling through the boughs that met overhead
+in a soaring, restless arc full of gentle whispers passing,
+tremulous, aloft amongst the thick leaves. The creepers climbed
+up the trunks of serried trees that leaned over, looking insecure
+and undermined by floods which had eaten away the earth from
+under their roots. And the pungent, acrid smell of rotting
+leaves, of flowers, of blossoms and plants dying in that
+poisonous and cruel gloom, where they pined for sunshine in vain,
+seemed to lay heavy, to press upon the shiny and stagnant water
+in its tortuous windings amongst the everlasting and invincible
+shadows.
+
+Almayer looked anxious. He steered badly. Several times the
+blades of the oars got foul of the bushes on one side or the
+other, checking the way of the gig. During one of those
+occurrences, while they were getting clear, one of the calashes
+said something to the others in a rapid whisper. They looked
+down at the water. So did the mate.
+
+ "Hallo!" he exclaimed. "Eh, Mr. Almayer! Look! The water is
+running out. See there! We will be caught."
+
+"Back! back! We must go back!" cried Almayer.
+
+"Perhaps better go on."
+
+"No; back! back!"
+
+He pulled at the steering line, and ran the nose of the boat into
+the bank. Time was lost again in getting clear.
+
+"Give way, men! give way!" urged the mate, anxiously.
+
+The men pulled with set lips and dilated nostrils, breathing
+hard.
+
+"Too late," said the mate, suddenly. "The oars touch the bottom
+already. We are done."
+
+The boat stuck. The men laid in the oars, and sat, panting, with
+crossed arms.
+
+"Yes, we are caught," said Almayer, composedly. "That is
+unlucky!"
+
+The water was falling round the boat. The mate watched the
+patches of mud coming to the surface. Then in a moment he
+laughed, and pointing his finger at the creek--
+
+"Look!" he said; "the blamed river is running away from us.
+Here's the last drop of water clearing out round that bend."
+
+Almayer lifted his head. The water was gone, and he looked only
+at a curved track of mud--of mud soft and black, hiding fever,
+rottenness, and evil under its level and glazed surface.
+
+"We are in for it till the evening," he said, with cheerful
+resignation. "I did my best. Couldn't help it."
+
+"We must sleep the day away," said the mate. "There's nothing to
+eat," he added, gloomily.
+
+Almayer stretched himself in the stern sheets. The Malays curled
+down between thwarts.
+
+"Well, I'm jiggered!" said the mate, starting up after a long
+pause. "I was in a devil of a hurry to go and pass the day stuck
+in the mud. Here's a holiday for you! Well! well!"
+
+They slept or sat unmoving and patient. As the sun mounted
+higher the breeze died out, and perfect stillness reigned in the
+empty creek. A troop of long-nosed monkeys appeared, and
+crowding on the outer boughs, contemplated the boat and the
+motionless men in it with grave and sorrowful intensity,
+disturbed now and then by irrational outbreaks of mad
+gesticulation. A little bird with sapphire breast balanced a
+slender twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it
+to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye
+stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat. After
+a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and
+funny in the solemn silence of the great wilderness; in the great
+silence full of struggle and death.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+On Lingard's departure solitude and silence closed round Willems;
+the cruel solitude of one abandoned by men; the reproachful
+silence which surrounds an outcast ejected by his kind, the
+silence unbroken by the slightest whisper of hope; an immense and
+impenetrable silence that swallows up without echo the murmur of
+regret and the cry of revolt. The bitter peace of the abandoned
+clearings entered his heart, in which nothing could live now but
+the memory and hate of his past. Not remorse. In the breast of
+a man possessed by the masterful consciousness of his
+individuality with its desires and its rights; by the immovable
+conviction of his own importance, of an importance so
+indisputable and final that it clothes all his wishes,
+endeavours, and mistakes with the dignity of unavoidable fate,
+there could be no place for such a feeling as that of remorse.
+
+The days passed. They passed unnoticed, unseen, in the rapid
+blaze of glaring sunrises, in the short glow of tender sunsets,
+in the crushing oppression of high noons without a cloud. How
+many days? Two--three--or more? He did not know. To him, since
+Lingard had gone, the time seemed to roll on in profound
+darkness. All was night within him. All was gone from his
+sight. He walked about blindly in the deserted courtyards,
+amongst the empty houses that, perched high on their posts,
+looked down inimically on him, a white stranger, a man from other
+lands; seemed to look hostile and mute out of all the memories of
+native life that lingered between their decaying walls. His
+wandering feet stumbled against the blackened brands of extinct
+fires, kicking up a light black dust of cold ashes that flew in
+drifting clouds and settled to leeward on the fresh grass
+sprouting from the hard ground, between the shade trees. He
+moved on, and on; ceaseless, unresting, in widening circles, in
+zigzagging paths that led to no issue; he struggled on wearily
+with a set, distressed face behind which, in his tired brain,
+seethed his thoughts: restless, sombre, tangled, chilling,
+horrible and venomous, like a nestful of snakes.
+
+From afar, the bleared eyes of the old serving woman, the sombre
+gaze of Aissa followed the gaunt and tottering figure in its
+unceasing prowl along the fences, between the houses, amongst the
+wild luxuriance of riverside thickets. Those three human beings
+abandoned by all were like shipwrecked people left on an insecure
+and slippery ledge by the retiring tide of an angry
+sea--listening to its distant roar, living anguished between the
+menace of its return and the hopeless horror of their
+solitude--in the midst of a tempest of passion, of regret, of
+disgust, of despair. The breath of the storm had cast two of
+them there, robbed of everything--even of resignation. The
+third, the decrepit witness of their struggle and their torture,
+accepted her own dull conception of facts; of strength and youth
+gone; of her useless old age; of her last servitude; of being
+thrown away by her chief, by her nearest, to use up the last and
+worthless remnant of flickering life between those two
+incomprehensible and sombre outcasts: a shrivelled, an unmoved, a
+passive companion of their disaster.
+
+To the river Willems turned his eyes like a captive that looks
+fixedly at the door of his cell. If there was any hope in the
+world it would come from the river, by the river. For hours
+together he would stand in sunlight while the sea breeze sweeping
+over the lonely reach fluttered his ragged garments; the keen
+salt breeze that made him shiver now and then under the flood of
+intense heat. He looked at the brown and sparkling solitude of
+the flowing water, of the water flowing ceaseless and free in a
+soft, cool murmur of ripples at his feet. The world seemed to
+end there. The forests of the other bank appeared unattainable,
+enigmatical, for ever beyond reach like the stars of heaven--and
+as indifferent. Above and below, the forests on his side of the
+river came down to the water in a serried multitude of tall,
+immense trees towering in a great spread of twisted boughs above
+the thick undergrowth; great, solid trees, looking sombre,
+severe, and malevolently stolid, like a giant crowd of pitiless
+enemies pressing round silently to witness his slow agony. He
+was alone, small, crushed. He thought of escape--of something to
+be done. What? A raft! He imagined himself working at it,
+feverishly, desperately; cutting down trees, fastening the logs
+together and then drifting down with the current, down to the sea
+into the straits. There were ships there--ships, help, white
+men. Men like himself. Good men who would rescue him, take him
+away, take him far away where there was trade, and houses, and
+other men that could understand him exactly, appreciate his
+capabilities; where there was proper food, and money; where there
+were beds, knives, forks, carriages, brass bands, cool drinks,
+churches with well-dressed people praying in them. He would pray
+also. The superior land of refined delights where he could sit
+on a chair, eat his tiffin off a white tablecloth, nod to
+fellows--good fellows; he would be popular; always was--where he
+could be virtuous, correct, do business, draw a salary, smoke
+cigars, buy things in shops--have boots . . . be happy, free,
+become rich. O God! What was wanted? Cut down a few trees.
+No! One would do. They used to make canoes by burning out a
+tree trunk, he had heard. Yes! One would do. One tree to cut
+down . . . He rushed forward, and suddenly stood still as if
+rooted in the ground. He had a pocket-knife.
+
+And he would throw himself down on the ground by the riverside.
+He was tired, exhausted; as if that raft had been made, the
+voyage accomplished, the fortune attained. A glaze came over his
+staring eyes, over his eyes that gazed hopelessly at the rising
+river where big logs and uprooted trees drifted in the shine of
+mid-stream: a long procession of black and ragged specks. He
+could swim out and drift away on one of these trees. Anything to
+escape! Anything! Any risk! He could fasten himself up between
+the dead branches. He was torn by desire, by fear; his heart was
+wrung by the faltering of his courage. He turned over, face
+downwards, his head on his arms. He had a terrible vision of
+shadowless horizons where the blue sky and the blue sea met; or a
+circular and blazing emptiness where a dead tree and a dead man
+drifted together, endlessly, up and down, upon the brilliant
+undulations of the straits. No ships there. Only death. And
+the river led to it.
+
+He sat up with a profound groan.
+
+Yes, death. Why should he die? No! Better solitude, better
+hopeless waiting, alone. Alone. No! he was not alone, he saw
+death looking at him from everywhere; from the bushes, from the
+clouds--he heard her speaking to him in the murmur of the river,
+filling the space, touching his heart, his brain with a cold
+hand. He could see and think of nothing else. He saw it--the
+sure death--everywhere. He saw it so close that he was always on
+the point of throwing out his arms to keep it off. It poisoned
+all he saw, all he did; the miserable food he ate, the muddy
+water he drank; it gave a frightful aspect to sunrises and
+sunsets, to the brightness of hot noon, to the cooling shadows of
+the evenings. He saw the horrible form among the big trees, in
+the network of creepers in the fantastic outlines of leaves, of
+the great indented leaves that seemed to be so many enormous
+hands with big broad palms, with stiff fingers outspread to lay
+hold of him; hands gently stirring, or hands arrested in a
+frightful immobility, with a stillness attentive and watching for
+the opportunity to take him, to enlace him, to strangle him, to
+hold him till he died; hands that would hold him dead, that would
+never let go, that would cling to his body for ever till it
+perished--disappeared in their frantic and tenacious grasp.
+
+And yet the world was full of life. All the things, all the men
+he knew, existed, moved, breathed; and he saw them in a long
+perspective, far off, diminished, distinct, desirable,
+unattainable, precious . . . lost for ever. Round him,
+ceaselessly, there went on without a sound the mad turmoil of
+tropical life. After he had died all this would remain! He
+wanted to clasp, to embrace solid things; he had an immense
+craving for sensations; for touching, pressing, seeing, handling,
+holding on, to all these things. All this would remain--remain
+for years, for ages, for ever. After he had miserably died
+there, all this would remain, would live, would exist in joyous
+sunlight, would breathe in the coolness of serene nights. What
+for, then? He would be dead. He would be stretched upon the
+warm moisture of the ground, feeling nothing, seeing nothing,
+knowing nothing; he would lie stiff, passive, rotting slowly;
+while over him, under him, through him--unopposed, busy,
+hurried--the endless and minute throngs of insects, little
+shining monsters of repulsive shapes, with horns, with claws,
+with pincers, would swarm in streams, in rushes, in eager
+struggle for his body; would swarm countless, persistent,
+ferocious and greedy--till there would remain nothing but the
+white gleam of bleaching bones in the long grass; in the long
+grass that would shoot its feathery heads between the bare and
+polished ribs. There would be that only left of him; nobody
+would miss him; no one would remember him.
+
+Nonsense! It could not be. There were ways out of this.
+Somebody would turn up. Some human beings would come. He would
+speak, entreat--use force to extort help from them. He felt
+strong; he was very strong. He would . . . The discouragement,
+the conviction of the futility of his hopes would return in an
+acute sensation of pain in his heart. He would begin again his
+aimless wanderings. He tramped till he was ready to drop,
+without being able to calm by bodily fatigue the trouble of his
+soul. There was no rest, no peace within the cleared grounds of
+his prison. There was no relief but in the black release of
+sleep, of sleep without memory and without dreams; in the sleep
+coming brutal and heavy, like the lead that kills. To forget in
+annihilating sleep; to tumble headlong, as if stunned, out of
+daylight into the night of oblivion, was for him the only, the
+rare respite from this existence which he lacked the courage to
+endure--or to end.
+
+He lived, he struggled with the inarticulate delirium of his
+thoughts under the eyes of the silent Aissa. She shared his
+torment in the poignant wonder, in the acute longing, in the
+despairing inability to understand the cause of his anger and of
+his repulsion; the hate of his looks; the mystery of his silence;
+the menace of his rare words--of those words in the speech of
+white people that were thrown at her with rage, with contempt,
+with the evident desire to hurt her; to hurt her who had given
+herself, her life--all she had to give--to that white man; to
+hurt her who had wanted to show him the way to true greatness,
+who had tried to help him, in her woman's dream of everlasting,
+enduring, unchangeable affection. From the short contact with
+the whites in the crashing collapse of her old life, there
+remained with her the imposing idea of irresistible power and of
+ruthless strength. She had found a man of their race--and with
+all their qualities. All whites are alike. But this man's heart
+was full of anger against his own people, full of anger existing
+there by the side of his desire of her. And to her it had been
+an intoxication of hope for great things born in the proud and
+tender consciousness of her influence. She had heard the passing
+whisper of wonder and fear in the presence of his hesitation, of
+his resistance, of his compromises; and yet with a woman's belief
+in the durable steadfastness of hearts, in the irresistible charm
+of her own personality, she had pushed him forward, trusting the
+future, blindly, hopefully; sure to attain by his side the ardent
+desire of her life, if she could only push him far beyond the
+possibility of retreat. She did not know, and could not
+conceive, anything of his--so exalted--ideals. She thought the
+man a warrior and a chief, ready for battle, violence, and
+treachery to his own people--for her. What more natural? Was he
+not a great, strong man? Those two, surrounded each by the
+impenetrable wall of their aspirations, were hopelessly alone,
+out of sight, out of earshot of each other; each the centre of
+dissimilar and distant horizons; standing each on a different
+earth, under a different sky. She remembered his words, his
+eyes, his trembling lips, his outstretched hands; she remembered
+the great, the immeasurable sweetness of her surrender, that
+beginning of her power which was to last until death. He
+remembered the quaysides and the warehouses; the excitement of a
+life in a whirl of silver coins; the glorious uncertainty of a
+money hunt; his numerous successes, the lost possibilities of
+wealth and consequent glory. She, a woman, was the victim of her
+heart, of her woman's belief that there is nothing in the world
+but love--the everlasting thing. He was the victim of his
+strange principles, of his continence, of his blind belief in
+himself, of his solemn veneration for the voice of his boundless
+ignorance.
+
+In a moment of his idleness, of suspense, of discouragement, she
+had come--that creature--and by the touch of her hand had
+destroyed his future, his dignity of a clever and civilized man;
+had awakened in his breast the infamous thing which had driven
+him to what he had done, and to end miserably in the wilderness
+and be forgotten, or else remembered with hate or contempt. He
+dared not look at her, because now whenever he looked at her his
+thought seemed to touch crime, like an outstretched hand. She
+could only look at him--and at nothing else. What else was
+there? She followed him with a timorous gaze, with a gaze for
+ever expecting, patient, and entreating. And in her eyes there
+was the wonder and desolation of an animal that knows only
+suffering, of the incomplete soul that knows pain but knows not
+hope; that can find no refuge from the facts of life in the
+illusory conviction of its dignity, of an exalted destiny beyond;
+in the heavenly consolation of a belief in the momentous origin
+of its hate.
+
+For the first three days after Lingard went away he would not
+even speak to her. She preferred his silence to the sound of
+hated and incomprehensible words he had been lately addressing to
+her with a wild violence of manner, passing at once into complete
+apathy. And during these three days he hardly ever left the
+river, as if on that muddy bank he had felt himself nearer to his
+freedom. He would stay late; he would stay till sunset; he would
+look at the glow of gold passing away amongst sombre clouds in a
+bright red flush, like a splash of warm blood. It seemed to him
+ominous and ghastly with a foreboding of violent death that
+beckoned him from everywhere--even from the sky.
+
+One evening he remained by the riverside long after sunset,
+regardless of the night mist that had closed round him, had
+wrapped him up and clung to him like a wet winding-sheet. A
+slight shiver recalled him to his senses, and he walked up the
+courtyard towards his house. Aissa rose from before the fire,
+that glimmered red through its own smoke, which hung thickening
+under the boughs of the big tree. She approached him from the
+side as he neared the plankway of the house. He saw her stop to
+let him begin his ascent. In the darkness her figure was like
+the shadow of a woman with clasped hands put out beseechingly. He
+stopped--could not help glancing at her. In all the sombre
+gracefulness of the straight figure, her limbs, features--all was
+indistinct and vague but the gleam of her eyes in the faint
+starlight. He turned his head away and moved on. He could feel
+her footsteps behind him on the bending planks, but he walked up
+without turning his head. He knew what she wanted. She wanted
+to come in there. He shuddered at the thought of what might
+happen in the impenetrable darkness of that house if they were to
+find themselves alone--even for a moment. He stopped in the
+doorway, and heard her say--
+
+"Let me come in. Why this anger? Why this silence? . . . Let
+me watch . . by your side. . . . Have I not watched faithfully?
+Did harm ever come to you when you closed your eyes while I was
+by? . . . I have waited . . . I have waited for your smile, for
+your words . . . I can wait no more. . . . Look at me . . .
+speak to me. Is there a bad spirit in you? A bad spirit that
+has eaten up your courage and your love? Let me touch you.
+Forget all . . . All. Forget the wicked hearts, the angry faces
+. . . and remember only the day I came to you . . . to you! O my
+heart! O my life!"
+
+The pleading sadness of her appeal filled the space with the
+tremor of her low tones, that carried tenderness and tears into
+the great peace of the sleeping world. All around them the
+forests, the clearings, the river, covered by the silent veil of
+night, seemed to wake up and listen to her words in attentive
+stillness. After the sound of her voice had died out in a
+stifled sigh they appeared to listen yet; and nothing stirred
+among the shapeless shadows but the innumerable fireflies that
+twinkled in changing clusters, in gliding pairs, in wandering and
+solitary points--like the glimmering drift of scattered
+star-dust.
+
+Willems turned round slowly, reluctantly, as if compelled by main
+force. Her face was hidden in her hands, and he looked above her
+bent head, into the sombre brilliance of the night. It was one
+of those nights that give the impression of extreme vastness,
+when the sky seems higher, when the passing puffs of tepid breeze
+seem to bring with them faint whispers from beyond the stars.
+The air was full of sweet scent, of the scent charming,
+penetrating. and violent like the impulse of love. He looked
+into that great dark place odorous with the breath of life, with
+the mystery of existence, renewed, fecund, indestructible; and he
+felt afraid of his solitude, of the solitude of his body, of the
+loneliness of his soul in the presence of this unconscious and
+ardent struggle, of this lofty indifference, of this merciless
+and mysterious purpose, perpetuating strife and death through the
+march of ages. For the second time in his life he felt, in a
+sudden sense of his significance, the need to send a cry for help
+into the wilderness, and for the second time he realized the
+hopelessness of its unconcern. He could shout for help on every
+side--and nobody would answer. He could stretch out his hands,
+he could call for aid, for support, for sympathy, for relief--and
+nobody would come. Nobody. There was no one there--but that
+woman.
+
+His heart was moved, softened with pity at his own abandonment.
+His anger against her, against her who was the cause of all his
+misfortunes, vanished before his extreme need for some kind of
+consolation. Perhaps--if he must resign himself to his fate--she
+might help him to forget. To forget! For a moment, in an access
+of despair so profound that it seemed like the beginning of
+peace, he planned the deliberate descent from his pedestal, the
+throwing away of his superiority, of all his hopes, of old
+ambitions, of the ungrateful civilization. For a moment,
+forgetfulness in her arms seemed possible; and lured by that
+possibility the semblance of renewed desire possessed his breast
+in a burst of reckless contempt for everything outside
+himself--in a savage disdain of Earth and of Heaven. He said to
+himself that he would not repent. The punishment for his only
+sin was too heavy. There was no mercy under Heaven. He did not
+want any. He thought, desperately, that if he could find with
+her again the madness of the past, the strange delirium that had
+changed him, that had worked his undoing, he would be ready to
+pay for it with an eternity of perdition. He was intoxicated by
+the subtle perfumes of the night; he was carried away by the
+suggestive stir of the warm breeze; he was possessed by the
+exaltation of the solitude, of the silence, of his memories, in
+the presence of that figure offering herself in a submissive and
+patient devotion; coming to him in the name of the past, in the
+name of those days when he could see nothing, think of nothing,
+desire nothing--but her embrace.
+
+He took her suddenly in his arms, and she clasped her hands round
+his neck with a low cry of joy and surprise. He took her in his
+arms and waited for the transport, for the madness, for the
+sensations remembered and lost; and while she sobbed gently on
+his breast he held her and felt cold, sick, tired, exasperated
+with his failure--and ended by cursing himself. She clung to him
+trembling with the intensity of her happiness and her love. He
+heard her whispering--her face hidden on his shoulder--of past
+sorrow, of coming joy that would last for ever; of her unshaken
+belief in his love. She had always believed. Always! Even
+while his face was turned away from her in the dark days while
+his mind was wandering in his own land, amongst his own people.
+But it would never wander away from her any more, now it had come
+back. He would forget the cold faces and the hard hearts of the
+cruel people. What was there to remember? Nothing? Was it not
+so? . . .
+
+He listened hopelessly to the faint murmur. He stood still and
+rigid, pressing her mechanically to his breast while he thought
+that there was nothing for him in the world. He was robbed of
+everything; robbed of his passion, of his liberty, of
+forgetfulness, of consolation. She, wild with delight, whispered
+on rapidly, of love, of light, of peace, of long years. . . . He
+looked drearily above her head down into the deeper gloom of the
+courtyard. And, all at once, it seemed to him that he was
+peering into a sombre hollow, into a deep black hole full of
+decay and of whitened bones; into an immense and inevitable grave
+full of corruption where sooner or later he must, unavoidably,
+fall.
+
+In the morning he came out early, and stood for a time in the
+doorway, listening to the light breathing behind him--in the
+house. She slept. He had not closed his eyes through all that
+night. He stood swaying--then leaned against the lintel of the
+door. He was exhausted, done up; fancied himself hardly alive.
+He had a disgusted horror of himself that, as he looked at the
+level sea of mist at his feet, faded quickly into dull
+indifference. It was like a sudden and final decrepitude of his
+senses, of his body, of his thoughts. Standing on the high
+platform, he looked over the expanse of low night fog above
+which, here and there, stood out the feathery heads of tall
+bamboo clumps and the round tops of single trees, resembling
+small islets emerging black and solid from a ghostly and
+impalpable sea. Upon the faintly luminous background of the
+eastern sky, the sombre line of the great forests bounded that
+smooth sea of white vapours with an appearance of a fantastic and
+unattainable shore.
+
+He looked without seeing anything--thinking of himself. Before
+his eyes the light of the rising sun burst above the forest with
+the suddenness of an explosion. He saw nothing. Then, after a
+time, he murmured with conviction--speaking half aloud to himself
+in the shock of the penetrating thought:
+
+"I am a lost man."
+
+He shook his hand above his head in a gesture careless and
+tragic, then walked down into the mist that closed above him in
+shining undulations under the first breath of the morning breeze.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+Willems moved languidly towards the river, then retraced his
+steps to the tree and let himself fall on the seat under its
+shade. On the other side of the immense trunk he could hear the
+old woman moving about, sighing loudly, muttering to herself,
+snapping dry sticks, blowing up the fire. After a while a whiff
+of smoke drifted round to where he sat. It made him feel hungry,
+and that feeling was like a new indignity added to an intolerable
+load of humiliations. He felt inclined to cry. He felt very
+weak. He held up his arm before his eyes and watched for a
+little while the trembling of the lean limb. Skin and bone, by
+God! How thin he was! . . . He had suffered from fever a good
+deal, and now he thought with tearful dismay that Lingard,
+although he had sent him food--and what food, great Lord: a
+little rice and dried fish; quite unfit for a white man--had not
+sent him any medicine. Did the old savage think that he was like
+the wild beasts that are never ill? He wanted quinine.
+
+He leaned the back of his head against the tree and closed his
+eyes. He thought feebly that if he could get hold of Lingard he
+would like to flay him alive; but it was only a blurred, a short
+and a passing thought. His imagination, exhausted by the repeated
+delineations of his own fate, had not enough strength left to
+grip the idea of revenge. He was not indignant and rebellious.
+He was cowed. He was cowed by the immense cataclysm of his
+disaster. Like most men, he had carried solemnly within his
+breast the whole universe, and the approaching end of all things
+in the destruction of his own personality filled him with
+paralyzing awe. Everything was toppling over. He blinked his
+eyes quickly, and it seemed to him that the very sunshine of the
+morning disclosed in its brightness a suggestion of some hidden
+and sinister meaning. In his unreasoning fear he tried to hide
+within himself. He drew his feet up, his head sank between his
+shoulders, his arms hugged his sides. Under the high and
+enormous tree soaring superbly out of the mist in a vigorous
+spread of lofty boughs, with a restless and eager flutter of its
+innumerable leaves in the clear sunshine, he remained motionless,
+huddled up on his seat: terrified and still.
+
+Willems' gaze roamed over the ground, and then he watched with
+idiotic fixity half a dozen black ants entering courageously a
+tuft of long grass which, to them, must have appeared a dark and
+a dangerous jungle. Suddenly he thought: There must be something
+dead in there. Some dead insect. Death everywhere! He closed
+his eyes again in an access of trembling pain. Death
+everywhere--wherever one looks. He did not want to see the ants.
+He did not want to see anybody or anything. He sat in the
+darkness of his own making, reflecting bitterly that there was no
+peace for him. He heard voices now. . . . Illusion! Misery!
+Torment! Who would come? Who would speak to him? What business
+had he to hear voices? . . . yet he heard them faintly, from the
+river. Faintly, as if shouted far off over there, came the words
+"We come back soon." . . . Delirium and mockery! Who would come
+back? Nobody ever comes back! Fever comes back. He had it on
+him this morning. That was it. . . . He heard unexpectedly the
+old woman muttering something near by. She had come round to his
+side of the tree. He opened his eyes and saw her bent back
+before him. She stood, with her hand shading her eyes, looking
+towards the landing-place. Then she glided away. She had
+seen--and now she was going back to her cooking; a woman
+incurious; expecting nothing; without fear and without hope.
+
+She had gone back behind the tree, and now Willems could see a
+human figure on the path to the landing-place. It appeared to
+him to be a woman, in a red gown, holding some heavy bundle in
+her arms; it was an apparition unexpected, familiar and odd. He
+cursed through his teeth . . . It had wanted only this! See
+things like that in broad daylight! He was very bad--very bad. .
+. . He was horribly scared at this awful symptom of the
+desperate state of his health.
+
+This scare lasted for the space of a flash of lightning, and in
+the next moment it was revealed to him that the woman was real;
+that she was coming towards him; that she was his wife! He put
+his feet down to the ground quickly, but made no other movement.
+His eyes opened wide. He was so amazed that for a time he
+absolutely forgot his own existence. The only idea in his head
+was: Why on earth did she come here?
+
+Joanna was coming up the courtyard with eager, hurried steps.
+She carried in her arms the child, wrapped up in one of Almayer's
+white blankets that she had snatched off the bed at the last
+moment, before leaving the house. She seemed to be dazed by the
+sun in her eyes; bewildered by her strange surroundings. She
+moved on, looking quickly right and left in impatient expectation
+of seeing her husband at any moment. Then, approaching the tree,
+she perceived suddenly a kind of a dried-up, yellow corpse,
+sitting very stiff on a bench in the shade and looking at her
+with big eyes that were alive. That was her husband.
+
+She stopped dead short. They stared at one another in profound
+stillness, with astounded eyes, with eyes maddened by the
+memories of things far off that seemed lost in the lapse of time.
+Their looks crossed, passed each other, and appeared to dart at
+them through fantastic distances, to come straight from the
+incredible.
+
+Looking at him steadily she came nearer, and deposited the
+blanket with the child in it on the bench. Little Louis, after
+howling with terror in the darkness of the river most of the
+night, now slept soundly and did not wake. Willems' eyes
+followed his wife, his head turning slowly after her. He
+accepted her presence there with a tired acquiescence in its
+fabulous improbability. Anything might happen. What did she
+come for? She was part of the general scheme of his misfortune.
+He half expected that she would rush at him, pull his hair, and
+scratch his face. Why not? Anything might happen! In an
+exaggerated sense of his great bodily weakness he felt somewhat
+apprehensive of possible assault. At any rate, she would scream
+at him. He knew her of old. She could screech. He had thought
+that he was rid of her for ever. She came now probably to see
+the end. . . .
+
+Suddenly she turned, and embracing him slid gently to the ground.
+
+This startled him. With her forehead on his knees she sobbed
+noiselessly. He looked down dismally at the top of her head.
+What was she up to? He had not the strength to move--to get
+away. He heard her whispering something, and bent over to
+listen. He caught the word "Forgive."
+
+That was what she came for! All that way. Women are queer.
+Forgive. Not he! . . . All at once this thought darted through
+his brain: How did she come? In a boat. Boat! boat!
+
+He shouted "Boat!" and jumped up, knocking her over. Before she
+had time to pick herself up he pounced upon her and was dragging
+her up by the shoulders. No sooner had she regained her feet
+than she clasped him tightly round the neck, covering his face,
+his eyes, his mouth, his nose with desperate kisses. He dodged
+his head about, shaking her arms, trying to keep her off, to
+speak, to ask her. . . . She came in a boat, boat, boat! . . .
+They struggled and swung round, tramping in a semicircle. He
+blurted out, "Leave off. Listen," while he tore at her hands.
+This meeting of lawful love and sincere joy resembled fight.
+Louis Willems slept peacefully under his blanket.
+
+At last Willems managed to free himself, and held her off,
+pressing her arms down. He looked at her. He had half a
+suspicion that he was dreaming. Her lips trembled; her eyes
+wandered unsteadily, always coming back to his face. He saw her
+the same as ever, in his presence. She appeared startled,
+tremulous, ready to cry. She did not inspire him with
+confidence. He shouted--
+
+"How did you come?"
+
+She answered in hurried words, looking at him intently--
+
+"In a big canoe with three men. I know everything. Lingard's
+away. I come to save you. I know. . . . Almayer told me."
+
+"Canoe!--Almayer--Lies. Told you--You!" stammered Willems in a
+distracted manner. "Why you?--Told what?"
+
+Words failed him. He stared at his wife, thinking with fear that
+she--stupid woman--had been made a tool in some plan of treachery
+. . . in some deadly plot.
+
+She began to cry--
+
+"Don't look at me like that, Peter. What have I done? I come to
+beg--to beg--forgiveness. . . . Save--Lingard--danger."
+
+He trembled with impatience, with hope, with fear. She looked at
+him and sobbed out in a fresh outburst of grief--
+
+"Oh! Peter. What's the matter?--Are you ill? . . . Oh! you look
+so ill . . ."
+
+He shook her violently into a terrified and wondering silence.
+
+"How dare you!--I am well--perfectly well. . . . Where's that
+boat? Will you tell me where that boat is--at last? The boat, I
+say . . . You! . . ."
+
+"You hurt me," she moaned.
+
+He let her go, and, mastering her terror, she stood quivering and
+looking at him with strange intensity. Then she made a movement
+forward, but he lifted his finger, and she restrained herself
+with a long sigh. He calmed down suddenly and surveyed her with
+cold criticism, with the same appearance as when, in the old
+days, he used to find fault with the household expenses. She
+found a kind of fearful delight in this abrupt return into the
+past, into her old subjection.
+
+He stood outwardly collected now, and listened to her
+disconnected story. Her words seemed to fall round him with the
+distracting clatter of stunning hail. He caught the meaning here
+and there, and straightway would lose himself in a tremendous
+effort to shape out some intelligible theory of events. There
+was a boat. A boat. A big boat that could take him to sea if
+necessary. That much was clear. She brought it. Why did
+Almayer lie to her so? Was it a plan to decoy him into some
+ambush? Better that than hopeless solitude. She had money. The
+men were ready to go anywhere . . . she said.
+
+He interrupted her--
+
+"Where are they now?"
+
+"They are coming directly," she answered, tearfully. "Directly.
+There are some fishing stakes near here--they said. They are
+coming directly."
+
+Again she was talking and sobbing together. She wanted to be
+forgiven. Forgiven? What for? Ah! the scene in Macassar. As
+if he had time to think of that! What did he care what she had
+done months ago? He seemed to struggle in the toils of
+complicated dreams where everything was impossible, yet a matter
+of course, where the past took the aspects of the future and the
+present lay heavy on his heart--seemed to take him by the throat
+like the hand of an enemy. And while she begged, entreated,
+kissed his hands, wept on his shoulder, adjured him in the name
+of God, to forgive, to forget, to speak the word for which she
+longed, to look at his boy, to believe in her sorrow and in her
+devotion--his eyes, in the fascinated immobility of shining
+pupils, looked far away, far beyond her, beyond the river, beyond
+this land, through days, weeks, months; looked into liberty, into
+the future, into his triumph . . . into the great possibility of
+a startling revenge.
+
+He felt a sudden desire to dance and shout. He shouted--
+
+"After all, we shall meet again, Captain Lingard."
+
+"Oh, no! No!" she cried, joining her hands.
+
+He looked at her with surprise. He had forgotten she was there
+till the break of her cry in the monotonous tones of her prayer
+recalled him into that courtyard from the glorious turmoil of his
+dreams. It was very strange to see her there--near him. He felt
+almost affectionate towards her. After all, she came just in
+time. Then he thought: That other one. I must get away without
+a scene. Who knows; she may be dangerous! . . . And all at once
+he felt he hated Aissa with an immense hatred that seemed to
+choke him. He said to his wife--
+
+"Wait a moment."
+
+She, obedient, seemed to gulp down some words which wanted to
+come out. He muttered: "Stay here," and disappeared round the
+tree.
+
+The water in the iron pan on the cooking fire boiled furiously,
+belching out volumes of white steam that mixed with the thin
+black thread of smoke. The old woman appeared to him through
+this as if in a fog, squatting on her heels, impassive and weird.
+
+Willems came up near and asked, "Where is she?"
+
+The woman did not even lift her head, but answered at once,
+readily, as though she had expected the question for a long time.
+
+"While you were asleep under the tree, before the strange canoe
+came, she went out of the house. I saw her look at you and pass
+on with a great light in her eyes. A great light. And she went
+towards the place where our master Lakamba had his fruit trees.
+When we were many here. Many, many. Men with arms by their
+side. Many . . . men. And talk . . . and songs . . . "
+
+She went on like that, raving gently to herself for a long time
+after Willems had left her.
+
+Willems went back to his wife. He came up close to her and found
+he had nothing to say. Now all his faculties were concentrated
+upon his wish to avoid Aissa. She might stay all the morning in
+that grove. Why did those rascally boatmen go? He had a
+physical repugnance to set eyes on her. And somewhere, at the
+very bottom of his heart, there was a fear of her. Why? What
+could she do? Nothing on earth could stop him now. He felt
+strong, reckless, pitiless, and superior to everything. He
+wanted to preserve before his wife the lofty purity of his
+character. He thought: She does not know. Almayer held his
+tongue about Aissa. But if she finds out, I am lost. If it
+hadn't been for the boy I would . . . free of both of them. . . .
+The idea darted through his head. Not he! Married. . . . Swore
+solemnly. No . . . sacred tie. . . . Looking on his wife, he
+felt for the first time in his life something approaching
+remorse. Remorse, arising from his conception of the awful
+nature of an oath before the altar. . . . She mustn't find out.
+. . . Oh, for that boat! He must run in and get his revolver.
+Couldn't think of trusting himself unarmed with those Bajow
+fellows. Get it now while she is away. Oh, for that boat! . . .
+He dared not go to the river and hail. He thought: She might
+hear me. . . . I'll go and get . . . cartridges . . . then will
+be all ready . . . nothing else. No.
+
+And while he stood meditating profoundly before he could make up
+his mind to run to the house, Joanna pleaded, holding to his
+arm--pleaded despairingly, broken-hearted, hopeless whenever she
+glanced up at his face, which to her seemed to wear the aspect of
+unforgiving rectitude, of virtuous severity, of merciless
+justice. And she pleaded humbly--abashed before him, before the
+unmoved appearance of the man she had wronged in defiance of
+human and divine laws. He heard not a word of what she said till
+she raised her voice in a final appeal--
+
+". . . Don't you see I loved you always? They told me horrible
+things about you. . . . My own mother! They told me--you have
+been--you have been unfaithful to me, and I . . ."
+
+"It's a damned lie!" shouted Willems, waking up for a moment into
+righteous indignation.
+
+"I know! I know--Be generous.--Think of my misery since you went
+away--Oh! I could have torn my tongue out. . . . I will never
+believe anybody--Look at the boy--Be merciful--I could never rest
+till I found you. . . . Say--a word--one word. . ."
+
+"What the devil do you want?" exclaimed Willems, looking towards
+the river. "Where's that damned boat? Why did you let them go
+away? You stupid!"
+
+"Oh, Peter!--I know that in your heart you have forgiven me--You
+are so generous--I want to hear you say so. . . . Tell me--do
+you?"
+
+"Yes! yes!" said Willems, impatiently. "I forgive you. Don't be
+a fool."
+
+"Don't go away. Don't leave me alone here. Where is the danger?
+I am so frightened. . . . Are you alone here? Sure? . . . Let
+us go away!"
+
+"That's sense," said Willems, still looking anxiously towards the
+river.
+
+She sobbed gently, leaning on his arm.
+
+"Let me go," he said.
+
+He had seen above the steep bank the heads of three men glide
+along smoothly. Then, where the shore shelved down to the
+landing-place, appeared a big canoe which came slowly to land.
+
+"Here they are," he went on, briskly. "I must get my revolver."
+
+He made a few hurried paces towards the house, but seemed to
+catch sight of something, turned short round and came back to his
+wife. She stared at him, alarmed by the sudden change in his
+face. He appeared much discomposed. He stammered a little as he
+began to speak.
+
+"Take the child. Walk down to the boat and tell them to drop it
+out of sight, quick, behind the bushes. Do you hear? Quick! I
+will come to you there directly. Hurry up!"
+
+"Peter! What is it? I won't leave you. There is some danger in
+this horrible place."
+
+"Will you do what I tell you?" said Willems, in an irritable
+whisper.
+
+"No! no! no! I won't leave you. I will not lose you again.
+Tell me, what is it?"
+
+From beyond the house came a faint voice singing. Willems shook
+his wife by the shoulder.
+
+"Do what I tell you! Run at once!"
+
+She gripped his arm and clung to him desperately. He looked up to
+heaven as if taking it to witness of that woman's infernal folly.
+
+The song grew louder, then ceased suddenly, and Aissa appeared in
+sight, walking slowly, her hands full of flowers.
+
+She had turned the corner of the house, coming out into the full
+sunshine, and the light seemed to leap upon her in a stream
+brilliant, tender, and caressing, as if attracted by the radiant
+happiness of her face. She had dressed herself for a festive
+day, for the memorable day of his return to her, of his return to
+an affection that would last for ever. The rays of the morning
+sun were caught by the oval clasp of the embroidered belt that
+held the silk sarong round her waist. The dazzling white stuff
+of her body jacket was crossed by a bar of yellow and silver of
+her scarf, and in the black hair twisted high on her small head
+shone the round balls of gold pins amongst crimson blossoms and
+white star-shaped flowers, with which she had crowned herself to
+charm his eyes; those eyes that were henceforth to see nothing in
+the world but her own resplendent image. And she moved slowly,
+bending her face over the mass of pure white champakas and
+jasmine pressed to her breast, in a dreamy intoxication of sweet
+scents and of sweeter hopes.
+
+She did not seem to see anything, stopped for a moment at the
+foot of the plankway leading to the house, then, leaving her
+high-heeled wooden sandals there, ascended the planks in a light
+run; straight, graceful, flexible, and noiseless, as if she had
+soared up to the door on invisible wings. Willems pushed his
+wife roughly behind the tree, and made up his mind quickly for a
+rush to the house, to grab his revolver and . . . Thoughts,
+doubts, expedients seemed to boil in his brain. He had a
+flashing vision of delivering a stunning blow, of tying up that
+flower bedecked woman in the dark house--a vision of things done
+swiftly with enraged haste--to save his prestige, his
+superiority--something of immense importance. . . . He had not
+made two steps when Joanna bounded after him, caught the back of
+his ragged jacket, tore out a big piece, and instantly hooked
+herself with both hands to the collar, nearly dragging him down
+on his back. Although taken by surprise, he managed to keep his
+feet. From behind she panted into his ear--
+
+"That woman! Who's that woman? Ah! that's what those boatmen
+were talking about. I heard them . . . heard them . . . heard .
+. . in the night. They spoke about some woman. I dared not
+understand. I would not ask . . . listen . . . believe! How
+could I? Then it's true. No. Say no. . . . Who's that woman?"
+
+He swayed, tugging forward. She jerked at him till the button
+gave way, and then he slipped half out of his jacket and, turning
+round, remained strangely motionless. His heart seemed to beat
+in his throat. He choked--tried to speak--could not find any
+words. He thought with fury: I will kill both of them.
+
+For a second nothing moved about the courtyard in the great vivid
+clearness of the day. Only down by the landing-place a
+waringan-tree, all in a blaze of clustering red berries, seemed
+alive with the stir of little birds that filled with the feverish
+flutter of their feathers the tangle of overloaded branches.
+Suddenly the variegated flock rose spinning in a soft whirr and
+dispersed, slashing the sunlit haze with the sharp outlines of
+stiffened wings. Mahmat and one of his brothers appeared coming
+up from the landing-place, their lances in their hands, to look
+for their passengers.
+
+Aissa coming now empty-handed out of the house, caught sight of
+the two armed men. In her surprise she emitted a faint cry,
+vanished back and in a flash reappeared in the doorway with
+Willems' revolver in her hand. To her the presence of any man
+there could only have an ominous meaning. There was nothing in
+the outer world but enemies. She and the man she loved were
+alone, with nothing round them but menacing dangers. She did not
+mind that, for if death came, no matter from what hand, they
+would die together.
+
+Her resolute eyes took in the courtyard in a circular glance.
+She noticed that the two strangers had ceased to advance and now
+were standing close together leaning on the polished shafts of
+their weapons. The next moment she saw Willems, with his back
+towards her, apparently struggling under the tree with some one.
+She saw nothing distinctly, and, unhesitating, flew down the
+plankway calling out: "I come!"
+
+He heard her cry, and with an unexpected rush drove his wife
+backwards to the seat. She fell on it; he jerked himself
+altogether out of his jacket, and she covered her face with the
+soiled rags. He put his lips close to her, asking--
+
+"For the last time, will you take the child and go?"
+
+She groaned behind the unclean ruins of his upper garment. She
+mumbled something. He bent lower to hear. She was saying--
+
+"I won't. Order that woman away. I can't look at her!"
+
+"You fool!"
+
+He seemed to spit the words at her, then, making up his mind,
+spun round to face Aissa. She was coming towards them slowly
+now, with a look of unbounded amazement on her face. Then she
+stopped and stared at him--who stood there, stripped to the
+waist, bare-headed and sombre.
+
+Some way off, Mahmat and his brother exchanged rapid words in
+calm undertones. . . . This was the strong daughter of the holy
+man who had died. The white man is very tall. There would be
+three women and the child to take in the boat, besides that white
+man who had the money. . . . The brother went away back to the
+boat, and Mahmat remained looking on. He stood like a sentinel,
+the leaf-shaped blade of his lance glinting above his head.
+
+Willems spoke suddenly.
+
+"Give me this," he said, stretching his hand towards the
+revolver.
+
+Aissa stepped back. Her lips trembled. She said very low:
+"Your people?"
+
+He nodded slightly. She shook her head thoughtfully, and a few
+delicate petals of the flowers dying in her hair fell like big
+drops of crimson and white at her feet.
+
+"Did you know?" she whispered.
+
+"No!" said Willems. "They sent for me."
+
+"Tell them to depart. They are accursed. What is there between
+them and you--and you who carry my life in your heart!"
+
+Willems said nothing. He stood before her looking down on the
+ground and repeating to himself: I must get that revolver away
+from her, at once, at once. I can't think of trusting myself with
+those men without firearms. I must have it.
+
+She asked, after gazing in silence at Joanna, who was sobbing
+gently--
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"My wife," answered Willems, without looking up. "My wife
+according to our white law, which comes from God!"
+
+"Your law! Your God!" murmured Aissa, contemptuously.
+
+"Give me this revolver," said Willems, in a peremptory tone. He
+felt an unwillingness to close with her, to get it by force.
+
+She took no notice and went on--
+
+"Your law . . . or your lies? What am I to believe? I came--I
+ran to defend you when I saw the strange men. You lied to me
+with your lips, with your eyes. You crooked heart! . . . Ah!"
+she added, after an abrupt pause. "She is the first! Am I then
+to be a slave?"
+
+"You may be what you like," said Willems, brutally. "I am
+going."
+
+Her gaze was fastened on the blanket under which she had detected
+a slight movement. She made a long stride towards it. Willems
+turned half round. His legs seemed to him to be made of lead.
+He felt faint and so weak that, for a moment, the fear of dying
+there where he stood, before he could escape from sin and
+disaster, passed through his mind in a wave of despair.
+
+She lifted up one corner of the blanket, and when she saw the
+sleeping child a sudden quick shudder shook her as though she had
+seen something inexpressibly horrible. She looked at Louis
+Willems with eyes fixed in an unbelieving and terrified stare.
+Then her fingers opened slowly, and a shadow seemed to settle on
+her face as if something obscure and fatal had come between her
+and the sunshine. She stood looking down, absorbed, as though
+she had watched at the bottom of a gloomy abyss the mournful
+procession of her thoughts.
+
+Willems did not move. All his faculties were concentrated upon
+the idea of his release. And it was only then that the assurance
+of it came to him with such force that he seemed to hear a loud
+voice shouting in the heavens that all was over, that in another
+five, ten minutes, he would step into another existence; that all
+this, the woman, the madness, the sin, the regrets, all would go,
+rush into the past, disappear, become as dust, as smoke, as
+drifting clouds--as nothing! Yes! All would vanish in the
+unappeasable past which would swallow up all--even the very
+memory of his temptation and of his downfall. Nothing mattered.
+He cared for nothing. He had forgotten Aissa, his wife, Lingard,
+Hudig--everybody, in the rapid vision of his hopeful future.
+
+After a while he heard Aissa saying--
+
+"A child! A child! What have I done to be made to devour this
+sorrow and this grief? And while your man-child and the mother
+lived you told me there was nothing for you to remember in the
+land from which you came! And I thought you could be mine. I
+thought that I would . . ."
+
+Her voice ceased in a broken murmur, and with it, in her heart,
+seemed to die the greater and most precious hope of her new life.
+
+She had hoped that in the future the frail arms of a child would
+bind their two lives together in a bond which nothing on earth
+could break, a bond of affection, of gratitude, of tender
+respect. She the first--the only one! But in the instant she
+saw the son of that other woman she felt herself removed into the
+cold, the darkness, the silence of a solitude impenetrable and
+immense--very far from him, beyond the possibility of any hope,
+into an infinity of wrongs without any redress.
+
+She strode nearer to Joanna. She felt towards that woman anger,
+envy, jealousy. Before her she felt humiliated and enraged. She
+seized the hanging sleeve of the jacket in which Joanna was
+hiding her face and tore it out of her hands, exclaiming loudly--
+
+"Let me see the face of her before whom I am only a servant and a
+slave. Ya-wa! I see you!"
+
+Her unexpected shout seemed to fill the sunlit space of cleared
+grounds, rise high and run on far into the land over the
+unstirring tree-tops of the forests. She stood in sudden
+stillness, looking at Joanna with surprised contempt.
+
+"A Sirani woman!" she said, slowly, in a tone of wonder.
+
+Joanna rushed at Willems--clung to him, shrieking: "Defend me,
+Peter! Defend me from that woman!"
+
+"Be quiet. There is no danger," muttered Willems, thickly.
+
+Aissa looked at them with scorn. "God is great! I sit in the
+dust at your feet," she exclaimed jeeringly, joining her hands
+above her head in a gesture of mock humility. "Before you I am
+as nothing." She turned to Willems fiercely, opening her arms
+wide. "What have you made of me?" she cried, "you lying child of
+an accursed mother! What have you made of me? The slave of a
+slave. Don't speak! Your words are worse than the poison of
+snakes. A Sirani woman. A woman of a people despised by all."
+
+She pointed her finger at Joanna, stepped back, and began to
+laugh.
+
+"Make her stop, Peter!" screamed Joanna. "That heathen woman.
+Heathen! Heathen! Beat her, Peter."
+
+Willems caught sight of the revolver which Aissa had laid on the
+seat near the child. He spoke in Dutch to his wife, without
+moving his head.
+
+"Snatch the boy--and my revolver there. See. Run to the boat.
+I will keep her back. Now's the time."
+
+Aissa came nearer. She stared at Joanna, while between the short
+gusts of broken laughter she raved, fumbling distractedly at the
+buckle of her belt.
+
+"To her! To her--the mother of him who will speak of your
+wisdom, of your courage. All to her. I have nothing. Nothing.
+Take, take."
+
+She tore the belt off and threw it at Joanna's feet. She flung
+down with haste the armlets, the gold pins, the flowers; and the
+long hair, released, fell scattered over her shoulders, framing
+in its blackness the wild exaltation of her face.
+
+"Drive her off, Peter. Drive off the heathen savage," persisted
+Joanna. She seemed to have lost her head altogether. She
+stamped, clinging to Willems' arm with both her hands.
+
+"Look," cried Aissa. "Look at the mother of your son! She is
+afraid. Why does she not go from before my face? Look at her.
+She is ugly."
+
+Joanna seemed to understand the scornful tone of the words. As
+Aissa stepped back again nearer to the tree she let go her
+husband's arm, rushed at her madly, slapped her face, then,
+swerving round, darted at the child who, unnoticed, had been
+wailing for some time, and, snatching him up, flew down to the
+waterside, sending shriek after shriek in an access of insane
+terror.
+
+Willems made for the revolver. Aissa passed swiftly, giving him
+an unexpected push that sent him staggering away from the tree.
+She caught up the weapon, put it behind her back, and cried--
+
+"You shall not have it. Go after her. Go to meet danger. . . .
+Go to meet death. . . . Go unarmed. . . . Go with empty hands
+and sweet words . . . as you came to me. . . . Go helpless and
+lie to the forests, to the sea . . . to the death that waits for
+you. . . ."
+
+She ceased as if strangled. She saw in the horror of the passing
+seconds the half-naked, wild-looking man before her; she heard
+the faint shrillness of Joanna's insane shrieks for help
+somewhere down by the riverside. The sunlight streamed on her,
+on him, on the mute land, on the murmuring river--the gentle
+brilliance of a serene morning that, to her, seemed traversed by
+ghastly flashes of uncertain darkness. Hate filled the world,
+filled the space between them--the hate of race, the hate of
+hopeless diversity, the hate of blood; the hate against the man
+born in the land of lies and of evil from which nothing but
+misfortune comes to those who are not white. And as she stood,
+maddened, she heard a whisper near her, the whisper of the dead
+Omar's voice saying in her ear: "Kill! Kill!"
+
+She cried, seeing him move--
+
+"Do not come near me . . . or you die now! Go while I remember
+yet . . . remember. . . ."
+
+Willems pulled himself together for a struggle. He dared not go
+unarmed. He made a long stride, and saw her raise the revolver.
+He noticed that she had not cocked it, and said to himself that,
+even if she did fire, she would surely miss. Go too high; it was
+a stiff trigger. He made a step nearer--saw the long barrel
+moving unsteadily at the end of her extended arm. He thought:
+This is my time . . . He bent his knees slightly, throwing his
+body forward, and took off with a long bound for a tearing rush.
+
+He saw a burst of red flame before his eyes, and was deafened by
+a report that seemed to him louder than a clap of thunder.
+Something stopped him short, and he stood aspiring in his
+nostrils the acrid smell of the blue smoke that drifted from
+before his eyes like an immense cloud. . . . Missed, by Heaven!
+. . . Thought so! . . . And he saw her very far off, throwing
+her arms up, while the revolver, very small, lay on the ground
+between them. . . . Missed! . . . He would go and pick it up
+now. Never before did he understand, as in that second, the joy,
+the triumphant delight of sunshine and of life. His mouth was
+full of something salt and warm. He tried to cough; spat out. . .
+. Who shrieks: In the name of God, he dies!--he dies!--Who
+dies?--Must pick up--Night!--What? . . . Night already. . . .
+
+* * * * * *
+
+
+Many years afterwards Almayer was telling the story of the great
+revolution in Sambir to a chance visitor from Europe. He was a
+Roumanian, half naturalist, half orchid-hunter for commercial
+purposes, who used to declare to everybody, in the first five
+minutes of acquaintance, his intention of writing a scientific
+book about tropical countries. On his way to the interior he had
+quartered himself upon Almayer. He was a man of some education,
+but he drank his gin neat, or only, at most, would squeeze the
+juice of half a small lime into the raw spirit. He said it was
+good for his health, and, with that medicine before him, he would
+describe to the surprised Almayer the wonders of European
+capitals; while Almayer, in exchange, bored him by expounding,
+with gusto, his unfavourable opinions of Sambir's social and
+political life. They talked far into the night, across the deal
+table on the verandah, while, between them, clear-winged, small,
+and flabby insects, dissatisfied with moonlight, streamed in and
+perished in thousands round the smoky light of the evil-smelling
+lamp.
+
+Almayer, his face flushed, was saying--
+
+"Of course, I did not see that. I told you I was stuck in the
+creek on account of father's--Captain Lingard's--susceptible
+temper. I am sure I did it all for the best in trying to
+facilitate the fellow's escape; but Captain Lingard was that kind
+of man--you know--one couldn't argue with. Just before sunset
+the water was high enough, and we got out of the creek. We got
+to Lakamba's clearing about dark. All very quiet; I thought they
+were gone, of course, and felt very glad. We walked up the
+courtyard--saw a big heap of something lying in the middle. Out
+of that she rose and rushed at us. By God. . . . You know those
+stories of faithful dogs watching their masters' corpses . . .
+don't let anybody approach . . . got to beat them off--and all
+that. . . . Well, 'pon my word we had to beat her off. Had to!
+She was like a fury. Wouldn't let us touch him. Dead--of
+course. Should think so. Shot through the lung, on the left
+side, rather high up, and at pretty close quarters too, for the
+two holes were small. Bullet came out through the
+shoulder-blade. After we had overpowered her--you can't imagine
+how strong that woman was; it took three of us--we got the body
+into the boat and shoved off. We thought she had fainted then,
+but she got up and rushed into the water after us. Well, I let
+her clamber in. What could I do? The river's full of
+alligators. I will never forget that pull up-stream in the night
+as long as I live. She sat in the bottom of the boat, holding
+his head in her lap, and now and again wiping his face with her
+hair. There was a lot of blood dried about his mouth and chin.
+And for all the six hours of that journey she kept on whispering
+tenderly to that corpse! . . . I had the mate of the schooner
+with me. The man said afterwards that he wouldn't go through it
+again--not for a handful of diamonds. And I believed him--I did.
+It makes me shiver. Do you think he heard? No! I mean
+somebody--something--heard? . . ."
+
+"I am a materialist," declared the man of science, tilting the
+bottle shakily over the emptied glass.
+
+Almayer shook his head and went on--
+
+"Nobody saw how it really happened but that man Mahmat. He
+always said that he was no further off from them than two lengths
+of his lance. It appears the two women rowed each other while
+that Willems stood between them. Then Mahmat says that when
+Joanna struck her and ran off, the other two seemed to become
+suddenly mad together. They rushed here and there. Mahmat
+says--those were his very words: 'I saw her standing holding the
+pistol that fires many times and pointing it all over the
+campong. I was afraid--lest she might shoot me, and jumped on
+one side. Then I saw the white man coming at her swiftly. He
+came like our master the tiger when he rushes out of the jungle
+at the spears held by men. She did not take aim. The barrel of
+her weapon went like this--from side to side, but in her eyes I
+could see suddenly a great fear. There was only one shot. She
+shrieked while the white man stood blinking his eyes and very
+straight, till you could count slowly one, two, three; then he
+coughed and fell on his face. The daughter of Omar shrieked
+without drawing breath, till he fell. I went away then and left
+silence behind me. These things did not concern me, and in my
+boat there was that other woman who had promised me money. We
+left directly, paying no attention to her cries. We are only
+poor men--and had but a small reward for our trouble!' That's
+what Mahmat said. Never varied. You ask him yourself. He's the
+man you hired the boats from, for your journey up the river."
+
+"The most rapacious thief I ever met!" exclaimed the traveller,
+thickly.
+
+"Ah! He is a respectable man. His two brothers got themselves
+speared--served them right. They went in for robbing Dyak
+graves. Gold ornaments in them you know. Serve them right. But
+he kept respectable and got on. Aye! Everybody got on--but I.
+And all through that scoundrel who brought the Arabs here."
+
+"De mortuis nil ni . . . num," muttered Almayer's guest.
+
+"I wish you would speak English instead of jabbering in your own
+language, which no one can understand," said Almayer, sulkily.
+
+"Don't be angry," hiccoughed the other. "It's Latin, and it's
+wisdom. It means: Don't waste your breath in abusing shadows.
+No offence there. I like you. You have a quarrel with
+Providence--so have I. I was meant to be a professor,
+while--look."
+
+His head nodded. He sat grasping the glass. Almayer walked up
+and down, then stopped suddenly.
+
+"Yes, they all got on but I. Why? I am better than any of them.
+Lakamba calls himself a Sultan, and when I go to see him on
+business sends that one-eyed fiend of his--Babalatchi--to tell me
+that the ruler is asleep; and shall sleep for a long time. And
+that Babalatchi! He is the Shahbandar of the State--if you
+please. Oh Lord! Shahbandar! The pig! A vagabond I wouldn't
+let come up these steps when he first came here. . . . Look at
+Abdulla now. He lives here because--he says--here he is away
+from white men. But he has hundreds of thousands. Has a house
+in Penang. Ships. What did he not have when he stole my trade
+from me! He knocked everything here into a cocked hat, drove
+father to gold-hunting--then to Europe, where he disappeared.
+Fancy a man like Captain Lingard disappearing as though he had
+been a common coolie. Friends of mine wrote to London asking
+about him. Nobody ever heard of him there! Fancy! Never heard
+of Captain Lingard!"
+
+The learned gatherer of orchids lifted his head.
+
+"He was a sen--sentimen--tal old buc--buccaneer," he stammered
+out, "I like him. I'm sent--tal myself."
+
+He winked slowly at Almayer, who laughed.
+
+"Yes! I told you about that gravestone. Yes! Another hundred
+and twenty dollars thrown away. Wish I had them now. He would
+do it. And the inscription. Ha! ha! ha! 'Peter Willems,
+Delivered by the Mercy of God from his Enemy.' What
+enemy--unless Captain Lingard himself? And then it has no sense.
+He was a great man--father was--but strange in many ways. . . .
+You haven't seen the grave? On the top of that hill, there, on
+the other side of the river. I must show you. We will go
+there."
+
+"Not I!" said the other. "No interest--in the sun--too tiring. .
+. . Unless you carry me there."
+
+As a matter of fact he was carried there a few months afterwards,
+and his was the second white man's grave in Sambir; but at
+present he was alive if rather drunk. He asked abruptly--
+
+"And the woman?"
+
+"Oh! Lingard, of course, kept her and her ugly brat in Macassar.
+Sinful waste of money--that! Devil only knows what became of them
+since father went home. I had my daughter to look after. I
+shall give you a word to Mrs. Vinck in Singapore when you go
+back. You shall see my Nina there. Lucky man. She is beautiful,
+and I hear so accomplished, so . . ."
+
+"I have heard already twenty . . . a hundred times about your
+daughter. What ab--about--that--that other one, Ai--ssa?"
+
+"She! Oh! we kept her here. She was mad for a long time in a
+quiet sort of way. Father thought a lot of her. He gave her a
+house to live in, in my campong. She wandered about, speaking to
+nobody unless she caught sight of Abdulla, when she would have a
+fit of fury, and shriek and curse like anything. Very often she
+would disappear--and then we all had to turn out and hunt for
+her, because father would worry till she was brought back. Found
+her in all kinds of places. Once in the abandoned campong of
+Lakamba. Sometimes simply wandering in the bush. She had one
+favourite spot we always made for at first. It was ten to one on
+finding her there--a kind of a grassy glade on the banks of a
+small brook. Why she preferred that place, I can't imagine! And
+such a job to get her away from there. Had to drag her away by
+main force. Then, as the time passed, she became quieter and
+more settled, like. Still, all my people feared her greatly. It
+was my Nina that tamed her. You see the child was naturally
+fearless and used to have her own way, so she would go to her and
+pull at her sarong, and order her about, as she did everybody.
+Finally she, I verily believe, came to love the child. Nothing
+could resist that little one--you know. She made a capital
+nurse. Once when the little devil ran away from me and fell into
+the river off the end of the jetty, she jumped in and pulled her
+out in no time. I very nearly died of fright. Now of course she
+lives with my serving girls, but does what she likes. As long as
+I have a handful of rice or a piece of cotton in the store she
+sha'n't want for anything. You have seen her. She brought in
+the dinner with Ali."
+
+"What! That doubled-up crone?"
+
+"Ah!" said Almayer. "They age quickly here. And long foggy
+nights spent in the bush will soon break the strongest backs--as
+you will find out yourself soon."
+
+"Dis . . . disgusting," growled the traveller.
+
+He dozed off. Almayer stood by the balustrade looking out at the
+bluish sheen of the moonlit night. The forests, unchanged and
+sombre, seemed to hang over the water, listening to the unceasing
+whisper of the great river; and above their dark wall the hill on
+which Lingard had buried the body of his late prisoner rose in a
+black, rounded mass, upon the silver paleness of the sky.
+Almayer looked for a long time at the clean-cut outline of the
+summit, as if trying to make out through darkness and distance
+the shape of that expensive tombstone. When he turned round at
+last he saw his guest sleeping, his arms on the table, his head
+on his arms.
+
+"Now, look here!" he shouted, slapping the table with the palm of
+his hand.
+
+The naturalist woke up, and sat all in a heap, staring owlishly.
+
+"Here!" went on Almayer, speaking very loud and thumping the
+table, "I want to know. You, who say you have read all the
+books, just tell me . . . why such infernal things are ever
+allowed. Here I am! Done harm to nobody, lived an honest life .
+. . and a scoundrel like that is born in Rotterdam or some such
+place at the other end of the world somewhere, travels out here,
+robs his employer, runs away from his wife, and ruins me and my
+Nina--he ruined me, I tell you--and gets himself shot at last by
+a poor miserable savage, that knows nothing at all about him
+really. Where's the sense of all this? Where's your Providence?
+Where's the good for anybody in all this? The world's a swindle!
+A swindle! Why should I suffer? What have I done to be treated
+so?"
+
+He howled out his string of questions, and suddenly became
+silent. The man who ought to have been a professor made a
+tremendous effort to articulate distinctly--
+
+"My dear fellow, don't--don't you see that the ba-bare fac--the
+fact of your existence is off--offensive. . . . I--I like
+you--like . . ."
+
+He fell forward on the table, and ended his remarks by an
+unexpected and prolonged snore.
+
+Almayer shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the balustrade.
+
+He drank his own trade gin very seldom, but when he did, a
+ridiculously small quantity of the stuff could induce him to
+assume a rebellious attitude towards the scheme of the universe.
+And now, throwing his body over the rail, he shouted impudently
+into the night, turning his face towards that far-off and
+invisible slab of imported granite upon which Lingard had thought
+fit to record God's mercy and Willems' escape.
+
+"Father was wrong--wrong!" he yelled. "I want you to smart for
+it. You must smart for it! Where are you, Willems? Hey? . . .
+Hey? . . . Where there is no mercy for you--I hope!"
+
+"Hope," repeated in a whispering echo the startled forests, the
+river and the hills; and Almayer, who stood waiting, with a smile
+of tipsy attention on his lips, heard no other answer.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of An Outcast of the Islands
+
|