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Almayer's Folly: A Story of an Eastern River

by Joseph Conrad · English · Gutenberg #720 · 374,320 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Almayer's Folly: A Story of an Eastern River

Author: Joseph Conrad


        
Release date: November 1, 1996 [eBook #720]
                Most recently updated: February 23, 2006

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/720

Credits: Transcribed from the 1915 T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALMAYER'S FOLLY: A STORY OF AN EASTERN RIVER ***





Transcribed from the 1915 T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





ALMAYER'S FOLLY:  A STORY OF AN EASTERN RIVER
by Joseph Conrad


   Qui de nous n'a eu sa terre promise, son jour d'extase et sa fin en
   exil?--AMIEL.

_LONDON_: T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
ADELPHI TERRACE

_First Edition_ . . . 1895

_Second Impression_, 1907

_Third_ ,, 1914

_Fourth_ ,, 1915

To the memory of T. B.




CHAPTER I.


"Kaspar!  Makan!"

The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid
future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour.  An unpleasant
voice too.  He had heard it for many years, and with every year he liked
it less.  No matter; there would be an end to all this soon.

He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call.  Leaning
with both his elbows on the balustrade of the verandah, he went on
looking fixedly at the great river that flowed--indifferent and
hurried--before his eyes.  He liked to look at it about the time of
sunset; perhaps because at that time the sinking sun would spread a
glowing gold tinge on the waters of the Pantai, and Almayer's thoughts
were often busy with gold; gold he had failed to secure; gold the others
had secured--dishonestly, of course--or gold he meant to secure yet,
through his own honest exertions, for himself and Nina.  He absorbed
himself in his dream of wealth and power away from this coast where he
had dwelt for so many years, forgetting the bitterness of toil and strife
in the vision of a great and splendid reward.  They would live in Europe,
he and his daughter.  They would be rich and respected.  Nobody would
think of her mixed blood in the presence of her great beauty and of his
immense wealth.  Witnessing her triumphs he would grow young again, he
would forget the twenty-five years of heart-breaking struggle on this
coast where he felt like a prisoner.  All this was nearly within his
reach.  Let only Dain return!  And return soon he must--in his own
interest, for his own share.  He was now more than a week late!  Perhaps
he would return to-night.  Such were Almayer's thoughts as, standing on
the verandah of his new but already decaying house--that last failure of
his life--he looked on the broad river.  There was no tinge of gold on it
this evening, for it had been swollen by the rains, and rolled an angry
and muddy flood under his inattentive eyes, carrying small drift-wood and
big dead logs, and whole uprooted trees with branches and foliage,
amongst which the water swirled and roared angrily.

One of those drifting trees grounded on the shelving shore, just by the
house, and Almayer, neglecting his dream, watched it with languid
interest.  The tree swung slowly round, amid the hiss and foam of the
water, and soon getting free of the obstruction began to move down stream
again, rolling slowly over, raising upwards a long, denuded branch, like
a hand lifted in mute appeal to heaven against the river's brutal and
unnecessary violence.  Almayer's interest in the fate of that tree
increased rapidly.  He leaned over to see if it would clear the low point
below.  It did; then he drew back, thinking that now its course was free
down to the sea, and he envied the lot of that inanimate thing now
growing small and indistinct in the deepening darkness.  As he lost sight
of it altogether he began to wonder how far out to sea it would drift.
Would the current carry it north or south?  South, probably, till it
drifted in sight of Celebes, as far as Macassar, perhaps!

Macassar!  Almayer's quickened fancy distanced the tree on its imaginary
voyage, but his memory lagging behind some twenty years or more in point
of time saw a young and slim Almayer, clad all in white and
modest-looking, landing from the Dutch mail-boat on the dusty jetty of
Macassar, coming to woo fortune in the godowns of old Hudig.  It was an
important epoch in his life, the beginning of a new existence for him.
His father, a subordinate official employed in the Botanical Gardens of
Buitenzorg, was no doubt delighted to place his son in such a firm.  The
young man himself too was nothing loth to leave the poisonous shores of
Java, and the meagre comforts of the parental bungalow, where the father
grumbled all day at the stupidity of native gardeners, and the mother
from the depths of her long easy-chair bewailed the lost glories of
Amsterdam, where she had been brought up, and of her position as the
daughter of a cigar dealer there.

Almayer had left his home with a light heart and a lighter pocket,
speaking English well, and strong in arithmetic; ready to conquer the
world, never doubting that he would.

After those twenty years, standing in the close and stifling heat of a
Bornean evening, he recalled with pleasurable regret the image of Hudig's
lofty and cool warehouses with their long and straight avenues of gin
cases and bales of Manchester goods; the big door swinging noiselessly;
the dim light of the place, so delightful after the glare of the streets;
the little railed-off spaces amongst piles of merchandise where the
Chinese clerks, neat, cool, and sad-eyed, wrote rapidly and in silence
amidst the din of the working gangs rolling casks or shifting cases to a
muttered song, ending with a desperate yell.  At the upper end, facing
the great door, there was a larger space railed off, well lighted; there
the noise was subdued by distance, and above it rose the soft and
continuous clink of silver guilders which other discreet Chinamen were
counting and piling up under the supervision of Mr. Vinck, the cashier,
the genius presiding in the place--the right hand of the Master.

In that clear space Almayer worked at his table not far from a little
green painted door, by which always stood a Malay in a red sash and
turban, and whose hand, holding a small string dangling from above, moved
up and down with the regularity of a machine.  The string worked a punkah
on the other side of the green door, where the so-called private office
was, and where old Hudig--the Master--sat enthroned, holding noisy
receptions.  Sometimes the little door would fly open disclosing to the
outer world, through the bluish haze of tobacco smoke, a long table
loaded with bottles of various shapes and tall water-pitchers, rattan
easy-chairs occupied by noisy men in sprawling attitudes, while the
Master would put his head through and, holding by the handle, would grunt
confidentially to Vinck; perhaps send an order thundering down the
warehouse, or spy a hesitating stranger and greet him with a friendly
roar, "Welgome, Gapitan! ver' you gome vrom?  Bali, eh?  Got bonies?  I
vant bonies!  Vant all you got; ha! ha! ha!  Gome in!"  Then the stranger
was dragged in, in a tempest of yells, the door was shut, and the usual
noises refilled the place; the song of the workmen, the rumble of
barrels, the scratch of rapid pens; while above all rose the musical
chink of broad silver pieces streaming ceaselessly through the yellow
fingers of the attentive Chinamen.

At that time Macassar was teeming with life and commerce.  It was the
point in the islands where tended all those bold spirits who, fitting out
schooners on the Australian coast, invaded the Malay Archipelago in
search of money and adventure.  Bold, reckless, keen in business, not
disinclined for a brush with the pirates that were to be found on many a
coast as yet, making money fast, they used to have a general "rendezvous"
in the bay for purposes of trade and dissipation.  The Dutch merchants
called those men English pedlars; some of them were undoubtedly gentlemen
for whom that kind of life had a charm; most were seamen; the
acknowledged king of them all was Tom Lingard, he whom the Malays, honest
or dishonest, quiet fishermen or desperate cut-throats, recognised as
"the Rajah-Laut"--the King of the Sea.

Almayer had heard of him before he had been three days in Macassar, had
heard the stories of his smart business transactions, his loves, and also
of his desperate fights with the Sulu pirates, together with the romantic
tale of some child--a girl--found in a piratical prau by the victorious
Lingard, when, after a long contest, he boarded the craft, driving the
crew overboard.  This girl, it was generally known, Lingard had adopted,
was having her educated in some convent in Java, and spoke of her as "my
daughter."  He had sworn a mighty oath to marry her to a white man before
he went home and to leave her all his money.  "And Captain Lingard has
lots of money," would say Mr. Vinck solemnly, with his head on one side,
"lots of money; more than Hudig!"  And after a pause--just to let his
hearers recover from their astonishment at such an incredible
assertion--he would add in an explanatory whisper, "You know, he has
discovered a river."

That was it!  He had discovered a river!  That was the fact placing old
Lingard so much above the common crowd of sea-going adventurers who
traded with Hudig in the daytime and drank champagne, gambled, sang noisy
songs, and made love to half-caste girls under the broad verandah of the
Sunda Hotel at night.  Into that river, whose entrances himself only
knew, Lingard used to take his assorted cargo of Manchester goods, brass
gongs, rifles and gunpowder.  His brig _Flash_, which he commanded
himself, would on those occasions disappear quietly during the night from
the roadstead while his companions were sleeping off the effects of the
midnight carouse, Lingard seeing them drunk under the table before going
on board, himself unaffected by any amount of liquor.  Many tried to
follow him and find that land of plenty for gutta-percha and rattans,
pearl shells and birds' nests, wax and gum-dammar, but the little _Flash_
could outsail every craft in those seas.  A few of them came to grief on
hidden sandbanks and coral reefs, losing their all and barely escaping
with life from the cruel grip of this sunny and smiling sea; others got
discouraged; and for many years the green and peaceful-looking islands
guarding the entrances to the promised land kept their secret with all
the merciless serenity of tropical nature.  And so Lingard came and went
on his secret or open expeditions, becoming a hero in Almayer's eyes by
the boldness and enormous profits of his ventures, seeming to Almayer a
very great man indeed as he saw him marching up the warehouse, grunting a
"how are you?" to Vinck, or greeting Hudig, the Master, with a boisterous
"Hallo, old pirate!  Alive yet?" as a preliminary to transacting business
behind the little green door.  Often of an evening, in the silence of the
then deserted warehouse, Almayer putting away his papers before driving
home with Mr. Vinck, in whose household he lived, would pause listening
to the noise of a hot discussion in the private office, would hear the
deep and monotonous growl of the Master, and the roared-out interruptions
of Lingard--two mastiffs fighting over a marrowy bone.  But to Almayer's
ears it sounded like a quarrel of Titans--a battle of the gods.

After a year or so Lingard, having been brought often in contact with
Almayer in the course of business, took a sudden and, to the onlookers, a
rather inexplicable fancy to the young man.  He sang his praises, late at
night, over a convivial glass to his cronies in the Sunda Hotel, and one
fine morning electrified Vinck by declaring that he must have "that young
fellow for a supercargo.  Kind of captain's clerk.  Do all my
quill-driving for me."  Hudig consented.  Almayer, with youth's natural
craving for change, was nothing loth, and packing his few belongings,
started in the _Flash_ on one of those long cruises when the old seaman
was wont to visit almost every island in the archipelago.  Months slipped
by, and Lingard's friendship seemed to increase.  Often pacing the deck
with Almayer, when the faint night breeze, heavy with aromatic
exhalations of the islands, shoved the brig gently along under the
peaceful and sparkling sky, did the old seaman open his heart to his
entranced listener.  He spoke of his past life, of escaped dangers, of
big profits in his trade, of new combinations that were in the future to
bring profits bigger still.  Often he had mentioned his daughter, the
girl found in the pirate prau, speaking of her with a strange assumption
of fatherly tenderness.  "She must be a big girl now," he used to say.
"It's nigh unto four years since I have seen her!  Damme, Almayer, if I
don't think we will run into Sourabaya this trip."  And after such a
declaration he always dived into his cabin muttering to himself,
"Something must be done--must be done."  More than once he would astonish
Almayer by walking up to him rapidly, clearing his throat with a powerful
"Hem!" as if he was going to say something, and then turning abruptly
away to lean over the bulwarks in silence, and watch, motionless, for
hours, the gleam and sparkle of the phosphorescent sea along the ship's
side.  It was the night before arriving in Sourabaya when one of those
attempts at confidential communication succeeded.  After clearing his
throat he spoke.  He spoke to some purpose.  He wanted Almayer to marry
his adopted daughter.  "And don't you kick because you're white!" he
shouted, suddenly, not giving the surprised young man the time to say a
word.  "None of that with me!  Nobody will see the colour of your wife's
skin.  The dollars are too thick for that, I tell you!  And mind you,
they will be thicker yet before I die.  There will be millions, Kaspar!
Millions I say!  And all for her--and for you, if you do what you are
told."

Startled by the unexpected proposal, Almayer hesitated, and remained
silent for a minute.  He was gifted with a strong and active imagination,
and in that short space of time he saw, as in a flash of dazzling light,
great piles of shining guilders, and realised all the possibilities of an
opulent existence.  The consideration, the indolent ease of life--for
which he felt himself so well fitted--his ships, his warehouses, his
merchandise (old Lingard would not live for ever), and, crowning all, in
the far future gleamed like a fairy palace the big mansion in Amsterdam,
that earthly paradise of his dreams, where, made king amongst men by old
Lingard's money, he would pass the evening of his days in inexpressible
splendour.  As to the other side of the picture--the companionship for
life of a Malay girl, that legacy of a boatful of pirates--there was only
within him a confused consciousness of shame that he a white man--Still,
a convent education of four years!--and then she may mercifully die.  He
was always lucky, and money is powerful!  Go through it.  Why not?  He
had a vague idea of shutting her up somewhere, anywhere, out of his
gorgeous future.  Easy enough to dispose of a Malay woman, a slave, after
all, to his Eastern mind, convent or no convent, ceremony or no ceremony.

He lifted his head and confronted the anxious yet irate seaman.

"I--of course--anything you wish, Captain Lingard."

"Call me father, my boy.  She does," said the mollified old adventurer.
"Damme, though, if I didn't think you were going to refuse.  Mind you,
Kaspar, I always get my way, so it would have been no use.  But you are
no fool."

He remembered well that time--the look, the accent, the words, the effect
they produced on him, his very surroundings.  He remembered the narrow
slanting deck of the brig, the silent sleeping coast, the smooth black
surface of the sea with a great bar of gold laid on it by the rising
moon.  He remembered it all, and he remembered his feelings of mad
exultation at the thought of that fortune thrown into his hands.  He was
no fool then, and he was no fool now.  Circumstances had been against
him; the fortune was gone, but hope remained.

He shivered in the night air, and suddenly became aware of the intense
darkness which, on the sun's departure, had closed in upon the river,
blotting out the outlines of the opposite shore.  Only the fire of dry
branches lit outside the stockade of the Rajah's compound called fitfully
into view the ragged trunks of the surrounding trees, putting a stain of
glowing red half-way across the river where the drifting logs were
hurrying towards the sea through the impenetrable gloom.  He had a hazy
recollection of having been called some time during the evening by his
wife.  To his dinner probably.  But a man busy contemplating the wreckage
of his past in the dawn of new hopes cannot be hungry whenever his rice
is ready.  Time he went home, though; it was getting late.

He stepped cautiously on the loose planks towards the ladder.  A lizard,
disturbed by the noise, emitted a plaintive note and scurried through the
long grass growing on the bank.  Almayer descended the ladder carefully,
now thoroughly recalled to the realities of life by the care necessary to
prevent a fall on the uneven ground where the stones, decaying planks,
and half-sawn beams were piled up in inextricable confusion.  As he
turned towards the house where he lived--"my old house" he called it--his
ear detected the splash of paddles away in the darkness of the river.  He
stood still in the path, attentive and surprised at anybody being on the
river at this late hour during such a heavy freshet.  Now he could hear
the paddles distinctly, and even a rapidly exchanged word in low tones,
the heavy breathing of men fighting with the current, and hugging the
bank on which he stood.  Quite close, too, but it was too dark to
distinguish anything under the overhanging bushes.

"Arabs, no doubt," muttered Almayer to himself, peering into the solid
blackness.  "What are they up to now?  Some of Abdulla's business; curse
him!"

The boat was very close now.

"Oh, ya!  Man!" hailed Almayer.

The sound of voices ceased, but the paddles worked as furiously as
before.  Then the bush in front of Almayer shook, and the sharp sound of
the paddles falling into the canoe rang in the quiet night.  They were
holding on to the bush now; but Almayer could hardly make out an
indistinct dark shape of a man's head and shoulders above the bank.

"You Abdulla?" said Almayer, doubtfully.

A grave voice answered--

"Tuan Almayer is speaking to a friend.  There is no Arab here."

Almayer's heart gave a great leap.

"Dain!" he exclaimed.  "At last! at last!  I have been waiting for you
every day and every night.  I had nearly given you up."

"Nothing could have stopped me from coming back here," said the other,
almost violently.  "Not even death," he whispered to himself.

"This is a friend's talk, and is very good," said Almayer, heartily.  "But
you are too far here.  Drop down to the jetty and let your men cook their
rice in my campong while we talk in the house."

There was no answer to that invitation.

"What is it?" asked Almayer, uneasily.  "There is nothing wrong with the
brig, I hope?"

"The brig is where no Orang Blanda can lay his hands on her," said Dain,
with a gloomy tone in his voice, which Almayer, in his elation, failed to
notice.

"Right," he said.  "But where are all your men?  There are only two with
you."

"Listen, Tuan Almayer," said Dain.  "To-morrow's sun shall see me in your
house, and then we will talk.  Now I must go to the Rajah."

"To the Rajah!  Why?  What do you want with Lakamba?"

"Tuan, to-morrow we talk like friends.  I must see Lakamba to-night."

"Dain, you are not going to abandon me now, when all is ready?" asked
Almayer, in a pleading voice.

"Have I not returned?  But I must see Lakamba first for your good and
mine."

The shadowy head disappeared abruptly.  The bush, released from the grasp
of the bowman, sprung back with a swish, scattering a shower of muddy
water over Almayer, as he bent forward, trying to see.

In a little while the canoe shot into the streak of light that streamed
on the river from the big fire on the opposite shore, disclosing the
outline of two men bending to their work, and a third figure in the stern
flourishing the steering paddle, his head covered with an enormous round
hat, like a fantastically exaggerated mushroom.

Almayer watched the canoe till it passed out of the line of light.
Shortly after the murmur of many voices reached him across the water.  He
could see the torches being snatched out of the burning pile, and
rendering visible for a moment the gate in the stockade round which they
crowded.  Then they went in apparently.  The torches disappeared, and the
scattered fire sent out only a dim and fitful glare.

Almayer stepped homewards with long strides and mind uneasy.  Surely Dain
was not thinking of playing him false.  It was absurd.  Dain and Lakamba
were both too much interested in the success of his scheme.  Trusting to
Malays was poor work; but then even Malays have some sense and understand
their own interest.  All would be well--must be well.  At this point in
his meditation he found himself at the foot of the steps leading to the
verandah of his home.  From the low point of land where he stood he could
see both branches of the river.  The main branch of the Pantai was lost
in complete darkness, for the fire at the Rajah's had gone out
altogether; but up the Sambir reach his eye could follow the long line of
Malay houses crowding the bank, with here and there a dim light twinkling
through bamboo walls, or a smoky torch burning on the platforms built out
over the river.  Further away, where the island ended in a low cliff,
rose a dark mass of buildings towering above the Malay structures.
Founded solidly on a firm ground with plenty of space, starred by many
lights burning strong and white, with a suggestion of paraffin and lamp-
glasses, stood the house and the godowns of Abdulla bin Selim, the great
trader of Sambir.  To Almayer the sight was very distasteful, and he
shook his fist towards the buildings that in their evident prosperity
looked to him cold and insolent, and contemptuous of his own fallen
fortunes.

He mounted the steps of his house slowly.

In the middle of the verandah there was a round table.  On it a paraffin
lamp without a globe shed a hard glare on the three inner sides.  The
fourth side was open, and faced the river.  Between the rough supports of
the high-pitched roof hung torn rattan screens.  There was no ceiling,
and the harsh brilliance of the lamp was toned above into a soft half-
light that lost itself in the obscurity amongst the rafters.  The front
wall was cut in two by the doorway of a central passage closed by a red
curtain.  The women's room opened into that passage, which led to the
back courtyard and to the cooking shed.  In one of the side walls there
was a doorway.  Half obliterated words--"Office: Lingard and Co."--were
still legible on the dusty door, which looked as if it had not been
opened for a very long time.  Close to the other side wall stood a bent-
wood rocking-chair, and by the table and about the verandah four wooden
armchairs straggled forlornly, as if ashamed of their shabby
surroundings.  A heap of common mats lay in one corner, with an old
hammock slung diagonally above.  In the other corner, his head wrapped in
a piece of red calico, huddled into a shapeless heap, slept a Malay, one
of Almayer's domestic slaves--"my own people," he used to call them.  A
numerous and representative assembly of moths were holding high revels
round the lamp to the spirited music of swarming mosquitoes.  Under the
palm-leaf thatch lizards raced on the beams calling softly.  A monkey,
chained to one of the verandah supports--retired for the night under the
eaves--peered and grinned at Almayer, as it swung to one of the bamboo
roof sticks and caused a shower of dust and bits of dried leaves to
settle on the shabby table.  The floor was uneven, with many withered
plants and dried earth scattered about.  A general air of squalid neglect
pervaded the place.  Great red stains on the floor and walls testified to
frequent and indiscriminate betel-nut chewing.  The light breeze from the
river swayed gently the tattered blinds, sending from the woods opposite
a faint and sickly perfume as of decaying flowers.

Under Almayer's heavy tread the boards of the verandah creaked loudly.
The sleeper in the corner moved uneasily, muttering indistinct words.
There was a slight rustle behind the curtained doorway, and a soft voice
asked in Malay, "Is it you, father?"

"Yes, Nina.  I am hungry.  Is everybody asleep in this house?"

Almayer spoke jovially and dropped with a contented sigh into the
armchair nearest to the table.  Nina Almayer came through the curtained
doorway followed by an old Malay woman, who busied herself in setting
upon the table a plateful of rice and fish, a jar of water, and a bottle
half full of genever.  After carefully placing before her master a
cracked glass tumbler and a tin spoon she went away noiselessly.  Nina
stood by the table, one hand lightly resting on its edge, the other
hanging listlessly by her side.  Her face turned towards the outer
darkness, through which her dreamy eyes seemed to see some entrancing
picture, wore a look of impatient expectancy.  She was tall for a half-
caste, with the correct profile of the father, modified and strengthened
by the squareness of the lower part of the face inherited from her
maternal ancestors--the Sulu pirates.  Her firm mouth, with the lips
slightly parted and disclosing a gleam of white teeth, put a vague
suggestion of ferocity into the impatient expression of her features.  And
yet her dark and perfect eyes had all the tender softness of expression
common to Malay women, but with a gleam of superior intelligence; they
looked gravely, wide open and steady, as if facing something invisible to
all other eyes, while she stood there all in white, straight, flexible,
graceful, unconscious of herself, her low but broad forehead crowned with
a shining mass of long black hair that fell in heavy tresses over her
shoulders, and made her pale olive complexion look paler still by the
contrast of its coal-black hue.

Almayer attacked his rice greedily, but after a few mouthfuls he paused,
spoon in hand, and looked at his daughter curiously.

"Did you hear a boat pass about half an hour ago Nina?" he asked.

The girl gave him a quick glance, and moving away from the light stood
with her back to the table.

"No," she said, slowly.

"There was a boat.  At last!  Dain himself; and he went on to Lakamba.  I
know it, for he told me so.  I spoke to him, but he would not come here
to-night.  Will come to-morrow, he said."

He swallowed another spoonful, then said--

"I am almost happy to-night, Nina.  I can see the end of a long road, and
it leads us away from this miserable swamp.  We shall soon get away from
here, I and you, my dear little girl, and then--"

He rose from the table and stood looking fixedly before him as if
contemplating some enchanting vision.

"And then," he went on, "we shall be happy, you and I.  Live rich and
respected far from here, and forget this life, and all this struggle, and
all this misery!"

He approached his daughter and passed his hand caressingly over her hair.

"It is bad to have to trust a Malay," he said, "but I must own that this
Dain is a perfect gentleman--a perfect gentleman," he repeated.

"Did you ask him to come here, father?" inquired Nina, not looking at
him.

"Well, of course.  We shall start on the day after to-morrow," said
Almayer, joyously.  "We must not lose any time.  Are you glad, little
girl?"

She was nearly as tall as himself, but he liked to recall the time when
she was little and they were all in all to each other.

"I am glad," she said, very low.

"Of course," said Almayer, vivaciously, "you cannot imagine what is
before you.  I myself have not been to Europe, but I have heard my mother
talk so often that I seem to know all about it.  We shall live a--a
glorious life.  You shall see."

Again he stood silent by his daughter's side looking at that enchanting
vision.  After a while he shook his clenched hand towards the sleeping
settlement.

"Ah! my friend Abdulla," he cried, "we shall see who will have the best
of it after all these years!"

He looked up the river and remarked calmly:

"Another thunderstorm.  Well!  No thunder will keep me awake to-night, I
know!  Good-night, little girl," he whispered, tenderly kissing her
cheek.  "You do not seem to be very happy to-night, but to-morrow you
will show a brighter face.  Eh?"

Nina had listened to her father with her face unmoved, with her
half-closed eyes still gazing into the night now made more intense by a
heavy thunder-cloud that had crept down from the hills blotting out the
stars, merging sky, forest, and river into one mass of almost palpable
blackness.  The faint breeze had died out, but the distant rumble of
thunder and pale flashes of lightning gave warning of the approaching
storm.  With a sigh the girl turned towards the table.

Almayer was in his hammock now, already half asleep.

"Take the lamp, Nina," he muttered, drowsily.  "This place is full of
mosquitoes.  Go to sleep, daughter."

But Nina put the lamp out and turned back again towards the balustrade of
the verandah, standing with her arm round the wooden support and looking
eagerly towards the Pantai reach.  And motionless there in the oppressive
calm of the tropical night she could see at each flash of lightning the
forest lining both banks up the river, bending before the furious blast
of the coming tempest, the upper reach of the river whipped into white
foam by the wind, and the black clouds torn into fantastic shapes
trailing low over the swaying trees.  Round her all was as yet stillness
and peace, but she could hear afar off the roar of the wind, the hiss of
heavy rain, the wash of the waves on the tormented river.  It came nearer
and nearer, with loud thunder-claps and long flashes of vivid lightning,
followed by short periods of appalling blackness.  When the storm reached
the low point dividing the river, the house shook in the wind, and the
rain pattered loudly on the palm-leaf roof, the thunder spoke in one
prolonged roll, and the incessant lightning disclosed a turmoil of
leaping waters, driving logs, and the big trees bending before a brutal
and merciless force.

Undisturbed by the nightly event of the rainy monsoon, the father slept
quietly, oblivious alike of his hopes, his misfortunes, his friends, and
his enemies; and the daughter stood motionless, at each flash of
lightning eagerly scanning the broad river with a steady and anxious
gaze.




CHAPTER II.


When, in compliance with Lingard's abrupt demand, Almayer consented to
wed the Malay girl, no one knew that on the day when the interesting
young convert had lost all her natural relations and found a white
father, she had been fighting desperately like the rest of them on board
the prau, and was only prevented from leaping overboard, like the few
other survivors, by a severe wound in the leg.  There, on the fore-deck
of the prau, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and dying
pirates, and had her carried on the poop of the _Flash_ before the Malay
craft was set on fire and sent adrift.  She was conscious, and in the
great peace and stillness of the tropical evening succeeding the turmoil
of the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her own
savage manner, drift away into the gloom in a great roar of flame and
smoke.  She lay there unheeding the careful hands attending to her wound,
silent and absorbed in gazing at the funeral pile of those brave men she
had so much admired and so well helped in their contest with the
redoubtable "Rajah-Laut."

* * * * *

The light night breeze fanned the brig gently to the southward, and the
great blaze of light got smaller and smaller till it twinkled only on the
horizon like a setting star.  It set: the heavy canopy of smoke reflected
the glare of hidden flames for a short time and then disappeared also.

She realised that with this vanishing gleam her old life departed too.
Thenceforth there was slavery in the far countries, amongst strangers, in
unknown and perhaps terrible surroundings.  Being fourteen years old, she
realised her position and came to that conclusion, the only one possible
to a Malay girl, soon ripened under a tropical sun, and not unaware of
her personal charms, of which she heard many a young brave warrior of her
father's crew express an appreciative admiration.  There was in her the
dread of the unknown; otherwise she accepted her position calmly, after
the manner of her people, and even considered it quite natural; for was
she not a daughter of warriors, conquered in battle, and did she not
belong rightfully to the victorious Rajah?  Even the evident kindness of
the terrible old man must spring, she thought, from admiration for his
captive, and the flattered vanity eased for her the pangs of sorrow after
such an awful calamity.  Perhaps had she known of the high walls, the
quiet gardens, and the silent nuns of the Samarang convent, where her
destiny was leading her, she would have sought death in her dread and
hate of such a restraint.  But in imagination she pictured to herself the
usual life of a Malay girl--the usual succession of heavy work and fierce
love, of intrigues, gold ornaments, of domestic drudgery, and of that
great but occult influence which is one of the few rights of half-savage
womankind.  But her destiny in the rough hands of the old sea-dog, acting
under unreasoning impulses of the heart, took a strange and to her a
terrible shape.  She bore it all--the restraint and the teaching and the
new faith--with calm submission, concealing her hate and contempt for all
that new life.  She learned the language very easily, yet understood but
little of the new faith the good sisters taught her, assimilating quickly
only the superstitious elements of the religion.  She called Lingard
father, gently and caressingly, at each of his short and noisy visits,
under the clear impression that he was a great and dangerous power it was
good to propitiate.  Was he not now her master?  And during those long
four years she nourished a hope of finding favour in his eyes and
ultimately becoming his wife, counsellor, and guide.

Those dreams of the future were dispelled by the Rajah Laut's "fiat,"
which made Almayer's fortune, as that young man fondly hoped.  And
dressed in the hateful finery of Europe, the centre of an interested
circle of Batavian society, the young convert stood before the altar with
an unknown and sulky-looking white man.  For Almayer was uneasy, a little
disgusted, and greatly inclined to run away.  A judicious fear of the
adopted father-in-law and a just regard for his own material welfare
prevented him from making a scandal; yet, while swearing fidelity, he was
concocting plans for getting rid of the pretty Malay girl in a more or
less distant future.  She, however, had retained enough of conventual
teaching to understand well that according to white men's laws she was
going to be Almayer's companion and not his slave, and promised to
herself to act accordingly.

So when the _Flash_ freighted with materials for building a new house
left the harbour of Batavia, taking away the young couple into the
unknown Borneo, she did not carry on her deck so much love and happiness
as old Lingard was wont to boast of before his casual friends in the
verandahs of various hotels.  The old seaman himself was perfectly happy.
Now he had done his duty by the girl.  "You know I made her an orphan,"
he often concluded solemnly, when talking about his own affairs to a
scratch audience of shore loafers--as it was his habit to do.  And the
approbative shouts of his half-intoxicated auditors filled his simple
soul with delight and pride.  "I carry everything right through," was
another of his sayings, and in pursuance of that principle he pushed the
building of house and godowns on the Pantai River with feverish haste.
The house for the young couple; the godowns for the big trade Almayer was
going to develop while he (Lingard) would be able to give himself up to
some mysterious work which was only spoken of in hints, but was
understood to relate to gold and diamonds in the interior of the island.
Almayer was impatient too.  Had he known what was before him he might not
have been so eager and full of hope as he stood watching the last canoe
of the Lingard expedition disappear in the bend up the river.  When,
turning round, he beheld the pretty little house, the big godowns built
neatly by an army of Chinese carpenters, the new jetty round which were
clustered the trading canoes, he felt a sudden elation in the thought
that the world was his.

But the world had to be conquered first, and its conquest was not so easy
as he thought.  He was very soon made to understand that he was not
wanted in that corner of it where old Lingard and his own weak will
placed him, in the midst of unscrupulous intrigues and of a fierce trade
competition.  The Arabs had found out the river, had established a
trading post in Sambir, and where they traded they would be masters and
suffer no rival.  Lingard returned unsuccessful from his first
expedition, and departed again spending all the profits of the legitimate
trade on his mysterious journeys.  Almayer struggled with the
difficulties of his position, friendless and unaided, save for the
protection given to him for Lingard's sake by the old Rajah, the
predecessor of Lakamba.  Lakamba himself, then living as a private
individual on a rice clearing, seven miles down the river, exercised all
his influence towards the help of the white man's enemies, plotting
against the old Rajah and Almayer with a certainty of combination,
pointing clearly to a profound knowledge of their most secret affairs.
Outwardly friendly, his portly form was often to be seen on Almayer's
verandah; his green turban and gold-embroidered jacket shone in the front
rank of the decorous throng of Malays coming to greet Lingard on his
returns from the interior; his salaams were of the lowest, and his hand-
shakings of the heartiest, when welcoming the old trader.  But his small
eyes took in the signs of the times, and he departed from those
interviews with a satisfied and furtive smile to hold long consultations
with his friend and ally, Syed Abdulla, the chief of the Arab trading
post, a man of great wealth and of great influence in the islands.

It was currently believed at that time in the settlement that Lakamba's
visits to Almayer's house were not limited to those official interviews.
Often on moonlight nights the belated fishermen of Sambira saw a small
canoe shooting out from the narrow creek at the back of the white man's
house, and the solitary occupant paddle cautiously down the river in the
deep shadows of the bank; and those events, duly reported, were discussed
round the evening fires far into the night with the cynicism of
expression common to aristocratic Malays, and with a malicious pleasure
in the domestic misfortunes of the Orang Blando--the hated Dutchman.
Almayer went on struggling desperately, but with a feebleness of purpose
depriving him of all chance of success against men so unscrupulous and
resolute as his rivals the Arabs.  The trade fell away from the large
godowns, and the godowns themselves rotted piecemeal.  The old man's
banker, Hudig of Macassar, failed, and with this went the whole available
capital.  The profits of past years had been swallowed up in Lingard's
exploring craze.  Lingard was in the interior--perhaps dead--at all
events giving no sign of life.  Almayer stood alone in the midst of those
adverse circumstances, deriving only a little comfort from the
companionship of his little daughter, born two years after the marriage,
and at the time some six years old.  His wife had soon commenced to treat
him with a savage contempt expressed by sulky silence, only occasionally
varied by a flood of savage invective.  He felt she hated him, and saw
her jealous eyes watching himself and the child with almost an expression
of hate.  She was jealous of the little girl's evident preference for the
father, and Almayer felt he was not safe with that woman in the house.
While she was burning the furniture, and tearing down the pretty curtains
in her unreasoning hate of those signs of civilisation, Almayer, cowed by
these outbursts of savage nature, meditated in silence on the best way of
getting rid of her.  He thought of everything; even planned murder in an
undecided and feeble sort of way, but dared do nothing--expecting every
day the return of Lingard with news of some immense good fortune.  He
returned indeed, but aged, ill, a ghost of his former self, with the fire
of fever burning in his sunken eyes, almost the only survivor of the
numerous expedition.  But he was successful at last!  Untold riches were
in his grasp; he wanted more money--only a little more torealise a dream
of fabulous fortune.  And Hudig had failed!  Almayer scraped all he could
together, but the old man wanted more.  If Almayer could not get it he
would go to Singapore--to Europe even, but before all to Singapore; and
he would take the little Nina with him.  The child must be brought up
decently.  He had good friends in Singapore who would take care of her
and have her taught properly.  All would be well, and that girl, upon
whom the old seaman seemed to have transferred all his former affection
for the mother, would be the richest woman in the East--in the world
even.  So old Lingard shouted, pacing the verandah with his heavy quarter-
deck step, gesticulating with a smouldering cheroot; ragged, dishevelled,
enthusiastic; and Almayer, sitting huddled up on a pile of mats, thought
with dread of the separation with the only human being he loved--with
greater dread still, perhaps, of the scene with his wife, the savage
tigress deprived of her young.  She will poison me, thought the poor
wretch, well aware of that easy and final manner of solving the social,
political, or family problems in Malay life.

To his great surprise she took the news very quietly, giving only him and
Lingard a furtive glance, and saying not a word.  This, however, did not
prevent her the next day from jumping into the river and swimming after
the boat in which Lingard was carrying away the nurse with the screaming
child.  Almayer had to give chase with his whale-boat and drag her in by
the hair in the midst of cries and curses enough to make heaven fall.  Yet
after two days spent in wailing, she returned to her former mode of life,
chewing betel-nut, and sitting all day amongst her women in stupefied
idleness.  She aged very rapidly after that, and only roused herself from
her apathy to acknowledge by a scathing remark or an insulting
exclamation the accidental presence of her husband.  He had built for her
a riverside hut in the compound where she dwelt in perfect seclusion.
Lakamba's visits had ceased when, by a convenient decree of Providence
and the help of a little scientific manipulation, the old ruler of Sambir
departed this life.  Lakamba reigned in his stead now, having been well
served by his Arab friends with the Dutch authorities.  Syed Abdulla was
the great man and trader of the Pantai.  Almayer lay ruined and helpless
under the close-meshed net of their intrigues, owing his life only to his
supposed knowledge of Lingard's valuable secret.  Lingard had
disappeared.  He wrote once from Singapore saying the child was well, and
under the care of a Mrs. Vinck, and that he himself was going to Europe
to raise money for the great enterprise.  "He was coming back soon.  There
would be no difficulties," he wrote; "people would rush in with their
money."  Evidently they did not, for there was only one letter more from
him saying he was ill, had found no relation living, but little else
besides.  Then came a complete silence.  Europe had swallowed up the
Rajah Laut apparently, and Almayer looked vainly westward for a ray of
light out of the gloom of his shattered hopes.  Years passed, and the
rare letters from Mrs. Vinck, later on from the girl herself, were the
only thing to be looked to to make life bearable amongst the triumphant
savagery of the river.  Almayer lived now alone, having even ceased to
visit his debtors who would not pay, sure of Lakamba's protection.  The
faithful Sumatrese Ali cooked his rice and made his coffee, for he dared
not trust any one else, and least of all his wife.  He killed time
wandering sadly in the overgrown paths round the house, visiting the
ruined godowns where a few brass guns covered with verdigris and only a
few broken cases of mouldering Manchester goods reminded him of the good
early times when all this was full of life and merchandise, and he
overlooked a busy scene on the river bank, his little daughter by his
side.  Now the up-country canoes glided past the little rotten wharf of
Lingard and Co., to paddle up the Pantai branch, and cluster round the
new jetty belonging to Abdulla.  Not that they loved Abdulla, but they
dared not trade with the man whose star had set.  Had they done so they
knew there was no mercy to be expected from Arab or Rajah; no rice to be
got on credit in the times of scarcity from either; and Almayer could not
help them, having at times hardly enough for himself.  Almayer, in his
isolation and despair, often envied his near neighbour the Chinaman, Jim-
Eng, whom he could see stretched on a pile of cool mats, a wooden pillow
under his head, an opium pipe in his nerveless fingers.  He did not seek,
however, consolation in opium--perhaps it was too expensive--perhaps his
white man's pride saved him from that degradation; but most likely it was
the thought of his little daughter in the far-off Straits Settlements.  He
heard from her oftener since Abdulla bought a steamer, which ran now
between Singapore and the Pantai settlement every three months or so.
Almayer felt himself nearer his daughter.  He longed to see her, and
planned a voyage to Singapore, but put off his departure from year to
year, always expecting some favourable turn of fortune.  He did not want
to meet her with empty hands and with no words of hope on his lips.  He
could not take her back into that savage life to which he was condemned
himself.  He was also a little afraid of her.  What would she think of
him?  He reckoned the years.  A grown woman.  A civilised woman, young
and hopeful; while he felt old and hopeless, and very much like those
savages round him.  He asked himself what was going to be her future.  He
could not answer that question yet, and he dared not face her.  And yet
he longed after her.  He hesitated for years.

His hesitation was put an end to by Nina's unexpected appearance in
Sambir.  She arrived in the steamer under the captain's care.  Almayer
beheld her with surprise not unmixed with wonder.  During those ten years
the child had changed into a woman, black-haired, olive-skinned, tall,
and beautiful, with great sad eyes, where the startled expression common
to Malay womankind was modified by a thoughtful tinge inherited from her
European ancestry.  Almayer thought with dismay of the meeting of his
wife and daughter, of what this grave girl in European clothes would
think of her betel-nut chewing mother, squatting in a dark hut,
disorderly, half naked, and sulky.  He also feared an outbreak of temper
on the part of that pest of a woman he had hitherto managed to keep
tolerably quiet, thereby saving the remnants of his dilapidated
furniture.  And he stood there before the closed door of the hut in the
blazing sunshine listening to the murmur of voices, wondering what went
on inside, wherefrom all the servant-maids had been expelled at the
beginning of the interview, and now stood clustered by the palings with
half-covered faces in a chatter of curious speculation.  He forgot
himself there trying to catch a stray word through the bamboo walls, till
the captain of the steamer, who had walked up with the girl, fearing a
sunstroke, took him under the arm and led him into the shade of his own
verandah: where Nina's trunk stood already, having been landed by the
steamer's men.  As soon as Captain Ford had his glass before him and his
cheroot lighted, Almayer asked for the explanation of his daughter's
unexpected arrival.  Ford said little beyond generalising in vague but
violent terms upon the foolishness of women in general, and of Mrs. Vinck
in particular.

"You know, Kaspar," said he, in conclusion, to the excited Almayer, "it
is deucedly awkward to have a half-caste girl in the house.  There's such
a lot of fools about.  There was that young fellow from the bank who used
to ride to the Vinck bungalow early and late.  That old woman thought it
was for that Emma of hers.  When she found out what he wanted exactly,
there was a row, I can tell you.  She would not have Nina--not an hour
longer--in the house.  Fact is, I heard of this affair and took the girl
to my wife.  My wife is a pretty good woman--as women go--and upon my
word we would have kept the girl for you, only she would not stay.  Now,
then!  Don't flare up, Kaspar.  Sit still.  What can you do?  It is
better so.  Let her stay with you.  She was never happy over there.  Those
two Vinck girls are no better than dressed-up monkeys.  They slighted
her.  You can't make her white.  It's no use you swearing at me.  You
can't.  She is a good girl for all that, but she would not tell my wife
anything.  If you want to know, ask her yourself; but if I was you I
would leave her alone.  You are welcome to her passage money, old fellow,
if you are short now."  And the skipper, throwing away his cigar, walked
off to "wake them up on board," as he expressed it.

Almayer vainly expected to hear of the cause of his daughter's return
from his daughter's lips.  Not that day, not on any other day did she
ever allude to her Singapore life.  He did not care to ask, awed by the
calm impassiveness of her face, by those solemn eyes looking past him on
the great, still forests sleeping in majestic repose to the murmur of the
broad river.  He accepted the situation, happy in the gentle and
protecting affection the girl showed him, fitfully enough, for she had,
as she called it, her bad days when she used to visit her mother and
remain long hours in the riverside hut, coming out as inscrutable as
ever, but with a contemptuous look and a short word ready to answer any
of his speeches.  He got used even to that, and on those days kept quiet,
although greatly alarmed by his wife's influence upon the girl.  Otherwise
Nina adapted herself wonderfully to the circumstances of a half-savage
and miserable life.  She accepted without question or apparent disgust
the neglect, the decay, the poverty of the household, the absence of
furniture, and the preponderance of rice diet on the family table.  She
lived with Almayer in the little house (now sadly decaying) built
originally by Lingard for the young couple.  The Malays eagerly discussed
her arrival.  There were at the beginning crowded levees of Malay women
with their children, seeking eagerly after "Ubat" for all the ills of the
flesh from the young Mem Putih.  In the cool of the evening grave Arabs
in long white shirts and yellow sleeveless jackets walked slowly on the
dusty path by the riverside towards Almayer's gate, and made solemn calls
upon that Unbeliever under shallow pretences of business, only to get a
glimpse of the young girl in a highly decorous manner.  Even Lakamba came
out of his stockade in a great pomp of war canoes and red umbrellas, and
landed on the rotten little jetty of Lingard and Co.  He came, he said,
to buy a couple of brass guns as a present to his friend the chief of
Sambir Dyaks; and while Almayer, suspicious but polite, busied himself in
unearthing the old popguns in the godowns, the Rajah sat on an armchair
in the verandah, surrounded by his respectful retinue waiting in vain for
Nina's appearance.  She was in one of her bad days, and remained in her
mother's hut watching with her the ceremonious proceedings on the
verandah.  The Rajah departed, baffled but courteous, and soon Almayer
began to reap the benefit of improved relations with the ruler in the
shape of the recovery of some debts, paid to him with many apologies and
many a low salaam by debtors till then considered hopelessly insolvent.
Under these improving circumstances Almayer brightened up a little.  All
was not lost perhaps.  Those Arabs and Malays saw at last that he was a
man of some ability, he thought.  And he began, after his manner, to plan
great things, to dream of great fortunes for himself and Nina.  Especially
for Nina!  Under these vivifying impulses he asked Captain Ford to write
to his friends in England making inquiries after Lingard.  Was he alive
or dead?  If dead, had he left any papers, documents; any indications or
hints as to his great enterprise?  Meantime he had found amongst the
rubbish in one of the empty rooms a note-book belonging to the old
adventurer.  He studied the crabbed handwriting of its pages and often
grew meditative over it.  Other things also woke him up from his apathy.
The stir made in the whole of the island by the establishment of the
British Borneo Company affected even the sluggish flow of the Pantai
life.  Great changes were expected; annexation was talked of; the Arabs
grew civil.  Almayer began building his new house for the use of the
future engineers, agents, or settlers of the new Company.  He spent every
available guilder on it with a confiding heart.  One thing only disturbed
his happiness: his wife came out of her seclusion, importing her green
jacket, scant sarongs, shrill voice, and witch-like appearance, into his
quiet life in the small bungalow.  And his daughter seemed to accept that
savage intrusion into their daily existence with wonderful equanimity.  He
did not like it, but dared say nothing.




CHAPTER III.


The deliberations conducted in London have a far-reaching importance, and
so the decision issued from the fog-veiled offices of the Borneo Company
darkened for Almayer the brilliant sunshine of the Tropics, and added
another drop of bitterness to the cup of his disenchantments.  The claim
to that part of the East Coast was abandoned, leaving the Pantai river
under the nominal power of Holland.  In Sambir there was joy and
excitement.  The slaves were hurried out of sight into the forest and
jungle, and the flags were run up to tall poles in the Rajah's compound
in expectation of a visit from Dutch man-of-war boats.

The frigate remained anchored outside the mouth of the river, and the
boats came up in tow of the steam launch, threading their way cautiously
amongst a crowd of canoes filled with gaily dressed Malays.  The officer
in command listened gravely to the loyal speeches of Lakamba, returned
the salaams of Abdulla, and assured those gentlemen in choice Malay of
the great Rajah's--down in Batavia--friendship and goodwill towards the
ruler and inhabitants of this model state of Sambir.

Almayer from his verandah watched across the river the festive
proceedings, heard the report of brass guns saluting the new flag
presented to Lakamba, and the deep murmur of the crowd of spectators
surging round the stockade.  The smoke of the firing rose in white clouds
on the green background of the forests, and he could not help comparing
his own fleeting hopes to the rapidly disappearing vapour.  He was by no
means patriotically elated by the event, yet he had to force himself into
a gracious behaviour when, the official reception being over, the naval
officers of the Commission crossed the river to pay a visit to the
solitary white man of whom they had heard, no doubt wishing also to catch
a glimpse of his daughter.  In that they were disappointed, Nina refusing
to show herself; but they seemed easily consoled by the gin and cheroots
set before them by the hospitable Almayer; and sprawling comfortably on
the lame armchairs under the shade of the verandah, while the blazing
sunshine outside seemed to set the great river simmering in the heat,
they filled the little bungalow with the unusual sounds of European
languages, with noise and laughter produced by naval witticisms at the
expense of the fat Lakamba whom they had been complimenting so much that
very morning.  The younger men in an access of good fellowship made their
host talk, and Almayer, excited by the sight of European faces, by the
sound of European voices, opened his heart before the sympathising
strangers, unaware of the amusement the recital of his many misfortunes
caused to those future admirals.  They drank his health, wished him many
big diamonds and a mountain of gold, expressed even an envy of the high
destinies awaiting him yet.  Encouraged by so much friendliness, the grey-
headed and foolish dreamer invited his guests to visit his new house.
They went there through the long grass in a straggling procession while
their boats were got ready for the return down the river in the cool of
the evening.  And in the great empty rooms where the tepid wind entering
through the sashless windows whirled gently the dried leaves and the dust
of many days of neglect, Almayer in his white jacket and flowered sarong,
surrounded by a circle of glittering uniforms, stamped his foot to show
the solidity of the neatly-fitting floors and expatiated upon the
beauties and convenience of the building.  They listened and assented,
amazed by the wonderful simplicity and the foolish hopefulness of the
man, till Almayer, carried away by his excitement, disclosed his regret
at the non-arrival of the English, "who knew how to develop a rich
country," as he expressed it.  There was a general laugh amongst the
Dutch officers at that unsophisticated statement, and a move was made
towards the boats; but when Almayer, stepping cautiously on the rotten
boards of the Lingard jetty, tried to approach the chief of the
Commission with some timid hints anent the protection required by the
Dutch subject against the wily Arabs, that salt water diplomat told him
significantly that the Arabs were better subjects than Hollanders who
dealt illegally in gunpowder with the Malays.  The innocent Almayer
recognised there at once the oily tongue of Abdulla and the solemn
persuasiveness of Lakamba, but ere he had time to frame an indignant
protest the steam launch and the string of boats moved rapidly down the
river leaving him on the jetty, standing open-mouthed in his surprise and
anger.  There are thirty miles of river from Sambir to the gem-like
islands of the estuary where the frigate was awaiting the return of the
boats.  The moon rose long before the boats had traversed half that
distance, and the black forest sleeping peacefully under her cold rays
woke up that night to the ringing laughter in the small flotilla provoked
by some reminiscence of Almayer's lamentable narrative.  Salt-water jests
at the poor man's expense were passed from boat to boat, the
non-appearance of his daughter was commented upon with severe
displeasure, and the half-finished house built for the reception of
Englishmen received on that joyous night the name of "Almayer's Folly" by
the unanimous vote of the lighthearted seamen.

For many weeks after this visit life in Sambir resumed its even and
uneventful flow.  Each day's sun shooting its morning rays above the tree-
tops lit up the usual scene of daily activity.  Nina walking on the path
that formed the only street in the settlement saw the accustomed sight of
men lolling on the shady side of the houses, on the high platforms; of
women busily engaged in husking the daily rice; of naked brown children
racing along the shady and narrow paths leading to the clearings.  Jim-
Eng, strolling before his house, greeted her with a friendly nod before
climbing up indoors to seek his beloved opium pipe.  The elder children
clustered round her, daring from long acquaintance, pulling the skirts of
her white robe with their dark fingers, and showing their brilliant teeth
in expectation of a shower of glass beads.  She greeted them with a quiet
smile, but always had a few friendly words for a Siamese girl, a slave
owned by Bulangi, whose numerous wives were said to be of a violent
temper.  Well-founded rumour said also that the domestic squabbles of
that industrious cultivator ended generally in a combined assault of all
his wives upon the Siamese slave.  The girl herself never
complained--perhaps from dictates of prudence, but more likely through
the strange, resigned apathy of half-savage womankind.  From early
morning she was to be seen on the paths amongst the houses--by the
riverside or on the jetties, the tray of pastry, it was her mission to
sell, skilfully balanced on her head.  During the great heat of the day
she usually sought refuge in Almayer's campong, often finding shelter in
a shady corner of the verandah, where she squatted with her tray before
her, when invited by Nina.  For "Mem Putih" she had always a smile, but
the presence of Mrs. Almayer, the very sound of her shrill voice, was the
signal for a hurried departure.

To this girl Nina often spoke; the other inhabitants of Sambir seldom or
never heard the sound of her voice.  They got used to the silent figure
moving in their midst calm and white-robed, a being from another world
and incomprehensible to them.  Yet Nina's life for all her outward
composure, for all the seeming detachment from the things and people
surrounding her, was far from quiet, in consequence of Mrs. Almayer being
much too active for the happiness and even safety of the household.  She
had resumed some intercourse with Lakamba, not personally, it is true
(for the dignity of that potentate kept him inside his stockade), but
through the agency of that potentate's prime minister, harbour master,
financial adviser, and general factotum.  That gentleman--of Sulu
origin--was certainly endowed with statesmanlike qualities, although he
was totally devoid of personal charms.  In truth he was perfectly
repulsive, possessing only one eye and a pockmarked face, with nose and
lips horribly disfigured by the small-pox.  This unengaging individual
often strolled into Almayer's garden in unofficial costume, composed of a
piece of pink calico round his waist.  There at the back of the house,
squatting on his heels on scattered embers, in close proximity to the
great iron boiler, where the family daily rice was being cooked by the
women under Mrs. Almayer's superintendence, did that astute negotiator
carry on long conversations in Sulu language with Almayer's wife.  What
the subject of their discourses was might have been guessed from the
subsequent domestic scenes by Almayer's hearthstone.

Of late Almayer had taken to excursions up the river.  In a small canoe
with two paddlers and the faithful Ali for a steersman he would disappear
for a few days at a time.  All his movements were no doubt closely
watched by Lakamba and Abdulla, for the man once in the confidence of
Rajah Laut was supposed to be in possession of valuable secrets.  The
coast population of Borneo believes implicitly in diamonds of fabulous
value, in gold mines of enormous richness in the interior.  And all those
imaginings are heightened by the difficulty of penetrating far inland,
especially on the north-east coast, where the Malays and the river tribes
of Dyaks or Head-hunters are eternally quarrelling.  It is true enough
that some gold reaches the coast in the hands of those Dyaks when, during
short periods of truce in the desultory warfare, they visit the coast
settlements of Malays.  And so the wildest exaggerations are built up and
added to on the slight basis of that fact.

Almayer in his quality of white man--as Lingard before him--had somewhat
better relations with the up-river tribes.  Yet even his excursions were
not without danger, and his returns were eagerly looked for by the
impatient Lakamba.  But every time the Rajah was disappointed.  Vain were
the conferences by the rice-pot of his factotum Babalatchi with the white
man's wife.  The white man himself was impenetrable--impenetrable to
persuasion, coaxing, abuse; to soft words and shrill revilings; to
desperate beseechings or murderous threats; for Mrs. Almayer, in her
extreme desire to persuade her husband into an alliance with Lakamba,
played upon the whole gamut of passion.  With her soiled robe wound
tightly under the armpits across her lean bosom, her scant grayish hair
tumbled in disorder over her projecting cheek-bones, in suppliant
attitude, she depicted with shrill volubility the advantages of close
union with a man so good and so fair dealing.

"Why don't you go to the Rajah?" she screamed.  "Why do you go back to
those Dyaks in the great forest?  They should be killed.  You cannot kill
them, you cannot; but our Rajah's men are brave!  You tell the Rajah
where the old white man's treasure is.  Our Rajah is good!  He is our
very grandfather, Datu Besar!  He will kill those wretched Dyaks, and you
shall have half the treasure.  Oh, Kaspar, tell where the treasure is!
Tell me!  Tell me out of the old man's surat where you read so often at
night."

On those occasions Almayer sat with rounded shoulders bending to the
blast of this domestic tempest, accentuating only each pause in the
torrent of his wife's eloquence by an angry growl, "There is no treasure!
Go away, woman!"  Exasperated by the sight of his patiently bent back,
she would at last walk round so as to face him across the table, and
clasping her robe with one hand she stretched the other lean arm and claw-
like hand to emphasise, in a passion of anger and contempt, the rapid
rush of scathing remarks and bitter cursings heaped on the head of the
man unworthy to associate with brave Malay chiefs.  It ended generally by
Almayer rising slowly, his long pipe in hand, his face set into a look of
inward pain, and walking away in silence.  He descended the steps and
plunged into the long grass on his way to the solitude of his new house,
dragging his feet in a state of physical collapse from disgust and fear
before that fury.  She followed to the head of the steps, and sent the
shafts of indiscriminate abuse after the retreating form.  And each of
those scenes was concluded by a piercing shriek, reaching him far away.
"You know, Kaspar, I am your wife! your own Christian wife after your own
Blanda law!"  For she knew that this was the bitterest thing of all; the
greatest regret of that man's life.

All these scenes Nina witnessed unmoved.  She might have been deaf, dumb,
without any feeling as far as any expression of opinion went.  Yet oft
when her father had sought the refuge of the great dusty rooms of
"Almayer's Folly," and her mother, exhausted by rhetorical efforts,
squatted wearily on her heels with her back against the leg of the table,
Nina would approach her curiously, guarding her skirts from betel juice
besprinkling the floor, and gaze down upon her as one might look into the
quiescent crater of a volcano after a destructive eruption.  Mrs.
Almayer's thoughts, after these scenes, were usually turned into a
channel of childhood reminiscences, and she gave them utterance in a kind
of monotonous recitative--slightly disconnected, but generally describing
the glories of the Sultan of Sulu, his great splendour, his power, his
great prowess; the fear which benumbed the hearts of white men at the
sight of his swift piratical praus.  And these muttered statements of her
grandfather's might were mixed up with bits of later recollections, where
the great fight with the "White Devil's" brig and the convent life in
Samarang occupied the principal place.  At that point she usually dropped
the thread of her narrative, and pulling out the little brass cross,
always suspended round her neck, she contemplated it with superstitious
awe.  That superstitious feeling connected with some vague talismanic
properties of the little bit of metal, and the still more hazy but
terrible notion of some bad Djinns and horrible torments invented, as she
thought, for her especial punishment by the good Mother Superior in case
of the loss of the above charm, were Mrs. Almayer's only theological
luggage for the stormy road of life.  Mrs. Almayer had at least something
tangible to cling to, but Nina, brought up under the Protestant wing of
the proper Mrs. Vinck, had not even a little piece of brass to remind her
of past teaching.  And listening to the recital of those savage glories,
those barbarous fights and savage feasting, to the story of deeds
valorous, albeit somewhat bloodthirsty, where men of her mother's race
shone far above the Orang Blanda, she felt herself irresistibly
fascinated, and saw with vague surprise the narrow mantle of civilised
morality, in which good-meaning people had wrapped her young soul, fall
away and leave her shivering and helpless as if on the edge of some deep
and unknown abyss.  Strangest of all, this abyss did not frighten her
when she was under the influence of the witch-like being she called her
mother.  She seemed to have forgotten in civilised surroundings her life
before the time when Lingard had, so to speak, kidnapped her from Brow.
Since then she had had Christian teaching, social education, and a good
glimpse of civilised life.  Unfortunately her teachers did not understand
her nature, and the education ended in a scene of humiliation, in an
outburst of contempt from white people for her mixed blood.  She had
tasted the whole bitterness of it and remembered distinctly that the
virtuous Mrs. Vinck's indignation was not so much directed against the
young man from the bank as against the innocent cause of that young man's
infatuation.  And there was also no doubt in her mind that the principal
cause of Mrs. Vinck's indignation was the thought that such a thing
should happen in a white nest, where her snow-white doves, the two Misses
Vinck, had just returned from Europe, to find shelter under the maternal
wing, and there await the coming of irreproachable men of their destiny.
Not even the thought of the money so painfully scraped together by
Almayer, and so punctually sent for Nina's expenses, could dissuade Mrs.
Vinck from her virtuous resolve.  Nina was sent away, and in truth the
girl herself wanted to go, although a little frightened by the impending
change.  And now she had lived on the river for three years with a savage
mother and a father walking about amongst pitfalls, with his head in the
clouds, weak, irresolute, and unhappy.  She had lived a life devoid of
all the decencies of civilisation, in miserable domestic conditions; she
had breathed in the atmosphere of sordid plottings for gain, of the no
less disgusting intrigues and crimes for lust or money; and those things,
together with the domestic quarrels, were the only events of her three
years' existence.  She did not die from despair and disgust the first
month, as she expected and almost hoped for.  On the contrary, at the end
of half a year it had seemed to her that she had known no other life.  Her
young mind having been unskilfully permitted to glance at better things,
and then thrown back again into the hopeless quagmire of barbarism, full
of strong and uncontrolled passions, had lost the power to discriminate.
It seemed to Nina that there was no change and no difference.  Whether
they traded in brick godowns or on the muddy river bank; whether they
reached after much or little; whether they made love under the shadows of
the great trees or in the shadow of the cathedral on the Singapore
promenade; whether they plotted for their own ends under the protection
of laws and according to the rules of Christian conduct, or whether they
sought the gratification of their desires with the savage cunning and the
unrestrained fierceness of natures as innocent of culture as their own
immense and gloomy forests, Nina saw only the same manifestations of love
and hate and of sordid greed chasing the uncertain dollar in all its
multifarious and vanishing shapes.  To her resolute nature, however,
after all these years, the savage and uncompromising sincerity of purpose
shown by her Malay kinsmen seemed at last preferable to the sleek
hypocrisy, to the polite disguises, to the virtuous pretences of such
white people as she had had the misfortune to come in contact with.  After
all it was her life; it was going to be her life, and so thinking she
fell more and more under the influence of her mother.  Seeking, in her
ignorance, a better side to that life, she listened with avidity to the
old woman's tales of the departed glories of the Rajahs, from whose race
she had sprung, and she became gradually more indifferent, more
contemptuous of the white side of her descent represented by a feeble and
traditionless father.

Almayer's difficulties were by no means diminished by the girl's presence
in Sambir.  The stir caused by her arrival had died out, it is true, and
Lakamba had not renewed his visits; but about a year after the departure
of the man-of-war boats the nephew of Abdulla, Syed Reshid, returned from
his pilgrimage to Mecca, rejoicing in a green jacket and the proud title
of Hadji.  There was a great letting off of rockets on board the steamer
which brought him in, and a great beating of drums all night in Abdulla's
compound, while the feast of welcome was prolonged far into the small
hours of the morning.  Reshid was the favourite nephew and heir of
Abdulla, and that loving uncle, meeting Almayer one day by the riverside,
stopped politely to exchange civilities and to ask solemnly for an
interview.  Almayer suspected some attempt at a swindle, or at any rate
something unpleasant, but of course consented with a great show of
rejoicing.  Accordingly the next evening, after sunset, Abdulla came,
accompanied by several other grey-beards and by his nephew.  That young
man--of a very rakish and dissipated appearance--affected the greatest
indifference as to the whole of the proceedings.  When the torch-bearers
had grouped themselves below the steps, and the visitors had seated
themselves on various lame chairs, Reshid stood apart in the shadow,
examining his aristocratically small hands with great attention.  Almayer,
surprised by the great solemnity of his visitors, perched himself on the
corner of the table with a characteristic want of dignity quickly noted
by the Arabs with grave disapproval.  But Abdulla spoke now, looking
straight past Almayer at the red curtain hanging in the doorway, where a
slight tremor disclosed the presence of women on the other side.  He
began by neatly complimenting Almayer upon the long years they had dwelt
together in cordial neighbourhood, and called upon Allah to give him many
more years to gladden the eyes of his friends by his welcome presence.  He
made a polite allusion to the great consideration shown him (Almayer) by
the Dutch "Commissie," and drew thence the flattering inference of
Almayer's great importance amongst his own people.  He--Abdulla--was also
important amongst all the Arabs, and his nephew Reshid would be heir of
that social position and of great riches.  Now Reshid was a Hadji.  He
was possessor of several Malay women, went on Abdulla, but it was time he
had a favourite wife, the first of the four allowed by the Prophet.  And,
speaking with well-bred politeness, he explained further to the
dumbfounded Almayer that, if he would consent to the alliance of his
offspring with that true believer and virtuous man Reshid, she would be
the mistress of all the splendours of Reshid's house, and first wife of
the first Arab in the Islands, when he--Abdulla--was called to the joys
of Paradise by Allah the All-merciful.  "You know, Tuan," he said, in
conclusion, "the other women would be her slaves, and Reshid's house is
great.  From Bombay he has brought great divans, and costly carpets, and
European furniture.  There is also a great looking-glass in a frame
shining like gold.  What could a girl want more?"  And while Almayer
looked upon him in silent dismay Abdulla spoke in a more confidential
tone, waving his attendants away, and finished his speech by pointing out
the material advantages of such an alliance, and offering to settle upon
Almayer three thousand dollars as a sign of his sincere friendship and
the price of the girl.

Poor Almayer was nearly having a fit.  Burning with the desire of taking
Abdulla by the throat, he had but to think of his helpless position in
the midst of lawless men to comprehend the necessity of diplomatic
conciliation.  He mastered his impulses, and spoke politely and coldly,
saying the girl was young and as the apple of his eye.  Tuan Reshid, a
Faithful and a Hadji, would not want an infidel woman in his harem; and,
seeing Abdulla smile sceptically at that last objection, he remained
silent, not trusting himself to speak more, not daring to refuse point-
blank, nor yet to say anything compromising.  Abdulla understood the
meaning of that silence, and rose to take leave with a grave salaam.  He
wished his friend Almayer "a thousand years," and moved down the steps,
helped dutifully by Reshid.  The torch-bearers shook their torches,
scattering a shower of sparks into the river, and the cortege moved off,
leaving Almayer agitated but greatly relieved by their departure.  He
dropped into a chair and watched the glimmer of the lights amongst the
tree trunks till they disappeared and complete silence succeeded the
tramp of feet and the murmur of voices.  He did not move till the curtain
rustled and Nina came out on the verandah and sat in the rocking-chair,
where she used to spend many hours every day.  She gave a slight rocking
motion to her seat, leaning back with half-closed eyes, her long hair
shading her face from the smoky light of the lamp on the table.  Almayer
looked at her furtively, but the face was as impassible as ever.  She
turned her head slightly towards her father, and, speaking, to his great
surprise, in English, asked--

"Was that Abdulla here?"

"Yes," said Almayer--"just gone."

"And what did he want, father?"

"He wanted to buy you for Reshid," answered Almayer, brutally, his anger
getting the better of him, and looking at the girl as if in expectation
of some outbreak of feeling.  But Nina remained apparently unmoved,
gazing dreamily into the black night outside.

"Be careful, Nina," said Almayer, after a short silence and rising from
his chair, "when you go paddling alone into the creeks in your canoe.
That Reshid is a violent scoundrel, and there is no saying what he may
do.  Do you hear me?"

She was standing now, ready to go in, one hand grasping the curtain in
the doorway.  She turned round, throwing her heavy tresses back by a
sudden gesture.

"Do you think he would dare?" she asked, quickly, and then turned again
to go in, adding in a lower tone, "He would not dare.  Arabs are all
cowards."

Almayer looked after her, astonished.  He did not seek the repose of his
hammock.  He walked the floor absently, sometimes stopping by the
balustrade to think.  The lamp went out.  The first streak of dawn broke
over the forest; Almayer shivered in the damp air.  "I give it up," he
muttered to himself, lying down wearily.  "Damn those women!  Well!  If
the girl did not look as if she wanted to be kidnapped!"

And he felt a nameless fear creep into his heart, making him shiver
again.




CHAPTER IV.


That year, towards the breaking up of the south-west monsoon, disquieting
rumours reached Sambir.  Captain Ford, coming up to Almayer's house for
an evening's chat, brought late numbers of the _Straits Times_ giving the
news of Acheen war and of the unsuccessful Dutch expedition.  The
Nakhodas of the rare trading praus ascending the river paid visits to
Lakamba, discussing with that potentate the unsettled state of affairs,
and wagged their heads gravely over the recital of Orang Blanda exaction,
severity, and general tyranny, as exemplified in the total stoppage of
gunpowder trade and the rigorous visiting of all suspicious craft trading
in the straits of Macassar.  Even the loyal soul of Lakamba was stirred
into a state of inward discontent by the withdrawal of his license for
powder and by the abrupt confiscation of one hundred and fifty barrels of
that commodity by the gunboat _Princess Amelia_, when, after a hazardous
voyage, it had almost reached the mouth of the river.  The unpleasant
news was given him by Reshid, who, after the unsuccessful issue of his
matrimonial projects, had made a long voyage amongst the islands for
trading purposes; had bought the powder for his friend, and was
overhauled and deprived of it on his return when actually congratulating
himself on his acuteness in avoiding detection.  Reshid's wrath was
principally directed against Almayer, whom he suspected of having
notified the Dutch authorities of the desultory warfare carried on by the
Arabs and the Rajah with the up-river Dyak tribes.

To Reshid's great surprise the Rajah received his complaints very coldly,
and showed no signs of vengeful disposition towards the white man.  In
truth, Lakamba knew very well that Almayer was perfectly innocent of any
meddling in state affairs; and besides, his attitude towards that much
persecuted individual was wholly changed in consequence of a
reconciliation effected between him and his old enemy by Almayer's newly-
found friend, Dain Maroola.

Almayer had now a friend.  Shortly after Reshid's departure on his
commercial journey, Nina, drifting slowly with the tide in the canoe on
her return home after one of her solitary excursions, heard in one of the
small creeks a splashing, as if of heavy ropes dropping in the water, and
the prolonged song of Malay seamen when some heavy pulling is to be done.
Through the thick fringe of bushes hiding the mouth of the creek she saw
the tall spars of some European-rigged sailing vessel overtopping the
summits of the Nipa palms.  A brig was being hauled out of the small
creek into the main stream.  The sun had set, and during the short
moments of twilight Nina saw the brig, aided by the evening breeze and
the flowing tide, head towards Sambir under her set foresail.  The girl
turned her canoe out of the main river into one of the many narrow
channels amongst the wooded islets, and paddled vigorously over the black
and sleepy backwaters towards Sambir.  Her canoe brushed the water-palms,
skirted the short spaces of muddy bank where sedate alligators looked at
her with lazy unconcern, and, just as darkness was setting in, shot out
into the broad junction of the two main branches of the river, where the
brig was already at anchor with sails furled, yards squared, and decks
seemingly untenanted by any human being.  Nina had to cross the river and
pass pretty close to the brig in order to reach home on the low
promontory between the two branches of the Pantai.  Up both branches, in
the houses built on the banks and over the water, the lights twinkled
already, reflected in the still waters below.  The hum of voices, the
occasional cry of a child, the rapid and abruptly interrupted roll of a
wooden drum, together with some distant hailing in the darkness by the
returning fishermen, reached her over the broad expanse of the river.  She
hesitated a little before crossing, the sight of such an unusual object
as an European-rigged vessel causing her some uneasiness, but the river
in its wide expansion was dark enough to render a small canoe invisible.
She urged her small craft with swift strokes of her paddle, kneeling in
the bottom and bending forward to catch any suspicious sound while she
steered towards the little jetty of Lingard and Co., to which the strong
light of the paraffin lamp shining on the whitewashed verandah of
Almayer's bungalow served as a convenient guide.  The jetty itself, under
the shadow of the bank overgrown by drooping bushes, was hidden in
darkness.  Before even she could see it she heard the hollow bumping of a
large boat against its rotten posts, and heard also the murmur of
whispered conversation in that boat whose white paint and great
dimensions, faintly visible on nearer approach, made her rightly guess
that it belonged to the brig just anchored.  Stopping her course by a
rapid motion of her paddle, with another swift stroke she sent it
whirling away from the wharf and steered for a little rivulet which gave
access to the back courtyard of the house.  She landed at the muddy head
of the creek and made her way towards the house over the trodden grass of
the courtyard.  To the left, from the cooking shed, shone a red glare
through the banana plantation she skirted, and the noise of feminine
laughter reached her from there in the silent evening.  She rightly
judged her mother was not near, laughter and Mrs. Almayer not being close
neighbours.  She must be in the house, thought Nina, as she ran lightly
up the inclined plane of shaky planks leading to the back door of the
narrow passage dividing the house in two.  Outside the doorway, in the
black shadow, stood the faithful Ali.

"Who is there?" asked Nina.

"A great Malay man has come," answered Ali, in a tone of suppressed
excitement.  "He is a rich man.  There are six men with lances.  Real
Soldat, you understand.  And his dress is very brave.  I have seen his
dress.  It shines!  What jewels!  Don't go there, Mem Nina.  Tuan said
not; but the old Mem is gone.  Tuan will be angry.  Merciful Allah! what
jewels that man has got!"

Nina slipped past the outstretched hand of the slave into the dark
passage where, in the crimson glow of the hanging curtain, close by its
other end, she could see a small dark form crouching near the wall.  Her
mother was feasting her eyes and ears with what was taking place on the
front verandah, and Nina approached to take her share in the rare
pleasure of some novelty.  She was met by her mother's extended arm and
by a low murmured warning not to make a noise.

"Have you seen them, mother?" asked Nina, in a breathless whisper.

Mrs. Almayer turned her face towards the girl, and her sunken eyes shone
strangely in the red half-light of the passage.

"I saw him," she said, in an almost inaudible tone, pressing her
daughter's hand with her bony fingers.  "A great Rajah has come to
Sambir--a Son of Heaven," muttered the old woman to herself.  "Go away,
girl!"

The two women stood close to the curtain, Nina wishing to approach the
rent in the stuff, and her mother defending the position with angry
obstinacy.  On the other side there was a lull in the conversation, but
the breathing of several men, the occasional light tinkling of some
ornaments, the clink of metal scabbards, or of brass siri-vessels passed
from hand to hand, was audible during the short pause.  The women
struggled silently, when there was a shuffling noise and the shadow of
Almayer's burly form fell on the curtain.

The women ceased struggling and remained motionless.  Almayer had stood
up to answer his guest, turning his back to the doorway, unaware of what
was going on on the other side.  He spoke in a tone of regretful
irritation.

"You have come to the wrong house, Tuan Maroola, if you want to trade as
you say.  I was a trader once, not now, whatever you may have heard about
me in Macassar.  And if you want anything, you will not find it here; I
have nothing to give, and want nothing myself.  You should go to the
Rajah here; you can see in the daytime his houses across the river,
there, where those fires are burning on the shore.  He will help you and
trade with you.  Or, better still, go to the Arabs over there," he went
on bitterly, pointing with his hand towards the houses of Sambir.
"Abdulla is the man you want.  There is nothing he would not buy, and
there is nothing he would not sell; believe me, I know him well."

He waited for an answer a short time, then added--

"All that I have said is true, and there is nothing more."

Nina, held back by her mother, heard a soft voice reply with a calm
evenness of intonation peculiar to the better class Malays--

"Who would doubt a white Tuan's words?  A man seeks his friends where his
heart tells him.  Is this not true also?  I have come, although so late,
for I have something to say which you may be glad to hear.  To-morrow I
will go to the Sultan; a trader wants the friendship of great men.  Then
I shall return here to speak serious words, if Tuan permits.  I shall not
go to the Arabs; their lies are very great!  What are they?  Chelakka!"

Almayer's voice sounded a little more pleasantly in reply.

"Well, as you like.  I can hear you to-morrow at any time if you have
anything to say.  Bah!  After you have seen the Sultan Lakamba you will
not want to return here, Inchi Dain.  You will see.  Only mind, I will
have nothing to do with Lakamba.  You may tell him so.  What is your
business with me, after all?"

"To-morrow we talk, Tuan, now I know you," answered the Malay.  "I speak
English a little, so we can talk and nobody will understand, and then--"

He interrupted himself suddenly, asking surprised, "What's that noise,
Tuan?"

Almayer had also heard the increasing noise of the scuffle recommenced on
the women's side of the curtain.  Evidently Nina's strong curiosity was
on the point of overcoming Mrs. Almayer's exalted sense of social
proprieties.  Hard breathing was distinctly audible, and the curtain
shook during the contest, which was mainly physical, although Mrs.
Almayer's voice was heard in angry remonstrance with its usual want of
strictly logical reasoning, but with the well-known richness of
invective.

"You shameless woman!  Are you a slave?" shouted shrilly the irate
matron.  "Veil your face, abandoned wretch!  You white snake, I will not
let you!"

Almayer's face expressed annoyance and also doubt as to the advisability
of interfering between mother and daughter.  He glanced at his Malay
visitor, who was waiting silently for the end of the uproar in an
attitude of amused expectation, and waving his hand contemptuously he
murmured--

"It is nothing.  Some women."

The Malay nodded his head gravely, and his face assumed an expression of
serene indifference, as etiquette demanded after such an explanation.  The
contest was ended behind the curtain, and evidently the younger will had
its way, for the rapid shuffle and click of Mrs. Almayer's high-heeled
sandals died away in the distance.  The tranquillised master of the house
was going to resume the conversation when, struck by an unexpected change
in the expression of his guest's countenance, he turned his head and saw
Nina standing in the doorway.

After Mrs. Almayer's retreat from the field of battle, Nina, with a
contemptuous exclamation, "It's only a trader," had lifted the conquered
curtain and now stood in full light, framed in the dark background on the
passage, her lips slightly parted, her hair in disorder after the
exertion, the angry gleam not yet faded out of her glorious and sparkling
eyes.  She took in at a glance the group of white-clad lancemen standing
motionless in the shadow of the far-off end of the verandah, and her gaze
rested curiously on the chief of that imposing _cortege_.  He stood,
almost facing her, a little on one side, and struck by the beauty of the
unexpected apparition had bent low, elevating his joint hands above his
head in a sign of respect accorded by Malays only to the great of this
earth.  The crude light of the lamp shone on the gold embroidery of his
black silk jacket, broke in a thousand sparkling rays on the jewelled
hilt of his kriss protruding from under the many folds of the red sarong
gathered into a sash round his waist, and played on the precious stones
of the many rings on his dark fingers.  He straightened himself up
quickly after the low bow, putting his hand with a graceful ease on the
hilt of his heavy short sword ornamented with brilliantly dyed fringes of
horsehair.  Nina, hesitating on the threshold, saw an erect lithe figure
of medium height with a breadth of shoulder suggesting great power.  Under
the folds of a blue turban, whose fringed ends hung gracefully over the
left shoulder, was a face full of determination and expressing a reckless
good-humour, not devoid, however, of some dignity.  The squareness of
lower jaw, the full red lips, the mobile nostrils, and the proud carriage
of the head gave the impression of a being half-savage, untamed, perhaps
cruel, and corrected the liquid softness of the almost feminine eye, that
general characteristic of the race.  Now, the first surprise over, Nina
saw those eyes fixed upon her with such an uncontrolled expression of
admiration and desire that she felt a hitherto unknown feeling of
shyness, mixed with alarm and some delight, enter and penetrate her whole
being.

Confused by those unusual sensations she stopped in the doorway and
instinctively drew the lower part of the curtain across her face, leaving
only half a rounded cheek, a stray tress, and one eye exposed, wherewith
to contemplate the gorgeous and bold being so unlike in appearance to the
rare specimens of traders she had seen before on that same verandah.

Dain Maroola, dazzled by the unexpected vision, forgot the confused
Almayer, forgot his brig, his escort staring in open-mouthed admiration,
the object of his visit and all things else, in his overpowering desire
to prolong the contemplation of so much loveliness met so suddenly in
such an unlikely place--as he thought.

"It is my daughter," said Almayer, in an embarrassed manner.  "It is of
no consequence.  White women have their customs, as you know Tuan, having
travelled much, as you say.  However, it is late; we will finish our talk
to-morrow."

Dain bent low trying to convey in a last glance towards the girl the bold
expression of his overwhelming admiration.  The next minute he was
shaking Almayer's hand with grave courtesy, his face wearing a look of
stolid unconcern as to any feminine presence.  His men filed off, and he
followed them quickly, closely attended by a thick-set, savage-looking
Sumatrese he had introduced before as the commander of his brig.  Nina
walked to the balustrade of the verandah and saw the sheen of moonlight
on the steel spear-heads and heard the rhythmic jingle of brass anklets
as the men moved in single file towards the jetty.  The boat shoved off
after a little while, looming large in the full light of the moon, a
black shapeless mass in the slight haze hanging over the water.  Nina
fancied she could distinguish the graceful figure of the trader standing
erect in the stern sheets, but in a little while all the outlines got
blurred, confused, and soon disappeared in the folds of white vapour
shrouding the middle of the river.

Almayer had approached his daughter, and leaning with both arms over the
rail, was looking moodily down on the heap of rubbish and broken bottles
at the foot of the verandah.

"What was all that noise just now?" he growled peevishly, without looking
up.  "Confound you and your mother!  What did she want?  What did you
come out for?"

"She did not want to let me come out," said Nina.  "She is angry.  She
says the man just gone is some Rajah.  I think she is right now."

"I believe all you women are crazy," snarled Almayer.  "What's that to
you, to her, to anybody?  The man wants to collect trepang and birds'
nests on the islands.  He told me so, that Rajah of yours.  He will come
to-morrow.  I want you both to keep away from the house, and let me
attend to my business in peace."

Dain Maroola came the next day and had a long conversation with Almayer.
This was the beginning of a close and friendly intercourse which, at
first, was much remarked in Sambir, till the population got used to the
frequent sight of many fires burning in Almayer's campong, where
Maroola's men were warming themselves during the cold nights of the north-
east monsoon, while their master had long conferences with the Tuan
Putih--as they styled Almayer amongst themselves.  Great was the
curiosity in Sambir on the subject of the new trader.  Had he seen the
Sultan?  What did the Sultan say?  Had he given any presents?  What would
he sell?  What would he buy?  Those were the questions broached eagerly
by the inhabitants of bamboo houses built over the river.  Even in more
substantial buildings, in Abdulla's house, in the residences of principal
traders, Arab, Chinese, and Bugis, the excitement ran high, and lasted
many days.  With inborn suspicion they would not believe the simple
account of himself the young trader was always ready to give.  Yet it had
all the appearance of truth.  He said he was a trader, and sold rice.  He
did not want to buy gutta-percha or beeswax, because he intended to
employ his numerous crew in collecting trepang on the coral reefs outside
the river, and also in seeking for bird's nests on the mainland.  Those
two articles he professed himself ready to buy if there were any to be
obtained in that way.  He said he was from Bali, and a Brahmin, which
last statement he made good by refusing all food during his often
repeated visits to Lakamba's and Almayer's houses.  To Lakamba he went
generally at night and had long audiences.  Babalatchi, who was always a
third party at those meetings of potentate and trader, knew how to resist
all attempts on the part of the curious to ascertain the subject of so
many long talks.  When questioned with languid courtesy by the grave
Abdulla he sought refuge in a vacant stare of his one eye, and in the
affectation of extreme simplicity.

"I am only my master's slave," murmured Babalatchi, in a hesitating
manner.  Then as if making up his mind suddenly for a reckless confidence
he would inform Abdulla of some transaction in rice, repeating the words,
"A hundred big bags the Sultan bought; a hundred, Tuan!" in a tone of
mysterious solemnity.  Abdulla, firmly persuaded of the existence of some
more important dealings, received, however, the information with all the
signs of respectful astonishment.  And the two would separate, the Arab
cursing inwardly the wily dog, while Babalatchi went on his way walking
on the dusty path, his body swaying, his chin with its few grey hairs
pushed forward, resembling an inquisitive goat bent on some unlawful
expedition.  Attentive eyes watched his movements.  Jim-Eng, descrying
Babalatchi far away, would shake off the stupor of an habitual opium
smoker and, tottering on to the middle of the road, would await the
approach of that important person, ready with hospitable invitation.  But
Babalatchi's discretion was proof even against the combined assaults of
good fellowship and of strong gin generously administered by the open-
hearted Chinaman.  Jim-Eng, owning himself beaten, was left uninformed
with the empty bottle, and gazed sadly after the departing form of the
statesman of Sambir pursuing his devious and unsteady way, which, as
usual, led him to Almayer's compound.  Ever since a reconciliation had
been effected by Dain Maroola between his white friend and the Rajah, the
one-eyed diplomatist had again become a frequent guest in the Dutchman's
house.  To Almayer's great disgust he was to be seen there at all times,
strolling about in an abstracted kind of way on the verandah, skulking in
the passages, or else popping round unexpected corners, always willing to
engage Mrs. Almayer in confidential conversation.  He was very shy of the
master himself, as if suspicious that the pent-up feelings of the white
man towards his person might find vent in a sudden kick.  But the cooking
shed was his favourite place, and he became an habitual guest there,
squatting for hours amongst the busy women, with his chin resting on his
knees, his lean arms clasped round his legs, and his one eye roving
uneasily--the very picture of watchful ugliness.  Almayer wanted more
than once to complain to Lakamba of his Prime Minister's intrusion, but
Dain dissuaded him.  "We cannot say a word here that he does not hear,"
growled Almayer.

"Then come and talk on board the brig," retorted Dain, with a quiet
smile.  "It is good to let the man come here.  Lakamba thinks he knows
much.  Perhaps the Sultan thinks I want to run away.  Better let the one-
eyed crocodile sun himself in your campong, Tuan."

And Almayer assented unwillingly muttering vague threats of personal
violence, while he eyed malevolently the aged statesman sitting with
quiet obstinacy by his domestic rice-pot.




CHAPTER V.


At last the excitement had died out in Sambir.  The inhabitants got used
to the sight of comings and goings between Almayer's house and the
vessel, now moored to the opposite bank, and speculation as to the
feverish activity displayed by Almayer's boatmen in repairing old canoes
ceased to interfere with the due discharge of domestic duties by the
women of the Settlement.  Even the baffled Jim-Eng left off troubling his
muddled brain with secrets of trade, and relapsed by the aid of his opium
pipe into a state of stupefied bliss, letting Babalatchi pursue his way
past his house uninvited and seemingly unnoticed.

So on that warm afternoon, when the deserted river sparkled under the
vertical sun, the statesman of Sambir could, without any hindrance from
friendly inquirers, shove off his little canoe from under the bushes,
where it was usually hidden during his visits to Almayer's compound.
Slowly and languidly Babalatchi paddled, crouching low in the boat,
making himself small under his as enormous sun hat to escape the
scorching heat reflected from the water.  He was not in a hurry; his
master, Lakamba, was surely reposing at this time of the day.  He would
have ample time to cross over and greet him on his waking with important
news.  Will he be displeased?  Will he strike his ebony wood staff
angrily on the floor, frightening him by the incoherent violence of his
exclamations; or will he squat down with a good-humoured smile, and,
rubbing his hands gently over his stomach with a familiar gesture,
expectorate copiously into the brass siri-vessel, giving vent to a low,
approbative murmur?  Such were Babalatchi's thoughts as he skilfully
handled his paddle, crossing the river on his way to the Rajah's campong,
whose stockades showed from behind the dense foliage of the bank just
opposite to Almayer's bungalow.

Indeed, he had a report to make.  Something certain at last to confirm
the daily tale of suspicions, the daily hints of familiarity, of stolen
glances he had seen, of short and burning words he had overheard
exchanged between Dain Maroola and Almayer's daughter.

Lakamba had, till then, listened to it all, calmly and with evident
distrust; now he was going to be convinced, for Babalatchi had the proof;
had it this very morning, when fishing at break of day in the creek over
which stood Bulangi's house.  There from his skiff he saw Nina's long
canoe drift past, the girl sitting in the stern bending over Dain, who
was stretched in the bottom with his head resting on the girl's knees.  He
saw it.  He followed them, but in a short time they took to the paddles
and got away from under his observant eye.  A few minutes afterwards he
saw Bulangi's slave-girl paddling in a small dug-out to the town with her
cakes for sale.  She also had seen them in the grey dawn.  And Babalatchi
grinned confidentially to himself at the recollection of the slave-girl's
discomposed face, of the hard look in her eyes, of the tremble in her
voice, when answering his questions.  That little Taminah evidently
admired Dain Maroola.  That was good!  And Babalatchi laughed aloud at
the notion; then becoming suddenly serious, he began by some strange
association of ideas to speculate upon the price for which Bulangi would,
possibly, sell the girl.  He shook his head sadly at the thought that
Bulangi was a hard man, and had refused one hundred dollars for that same
Taminah only a few weeks ago; then he became suddenly aware that the
canoe had drifted too far down during his meditation.  He shook off the
despondency caused by the certitude of Bulangi's mercenary disposition,
and, taking up his paddle, in a few strokes sheered alongside the water-
gate of the Rajah's house.

That afternoon Almayer, as was his wont lately, moved about on the water-
side, overlooking the repairs to his boats.  He had decided at last.
Guided by the scraps of information contained in old Lingard's pocket-
book, he was going to seek for the rich gold-mine, for that place where
he had only to stoop to gather up an immense fortune and realise the
dream of his young days.  To obtain the necessary help he had shared his
knowledge with Dain Maroola, he had consented to be reconciled with
Lakamba, who gave his support to the enterprise on condition of sharing
the profits; he had sacrificed his pride, his honour, and his loyalty in
the face of the enormous risk of his undertaking, dazzled by the
greatness of the results to be achieved by this alliance so distasteful
yet so necessary.  The dangers were great, but Maroola was brave; his men
seemed as reckless as their chief, and with Lakamba's aid success seemed
assured.

For the last fortnight Almayer was absorbed in the preparations, walking
amongst his workmen and slaves in a kind of waking trance, where
practical details as to the fitting out of the boats were mixed up with
vivid dreams of untold wealth, where the present misery of burning sun,
of the muddy and malodorous river bank disappeared in a gorgeous vision
of a splendid future existence for himself and Nina.  He hardly saw Nina
during these last days, although the beloved daughter was ever present in
his thoughts.  He hardly took notice of Dain, whose constant presence in
his house had become a matter of course to him now they were connected by
a community of interests.  When meeting the young chief he gave him an
absent greeting and passed on, seemingly wishing to avoid him, bent upon
forgetting the hated reality of the present by absorbing himself in his
work, or else by letting his imagination soar far above the tree-tops
into the great white clouds away to the westward, where the paradise of
Europe was awaiting the future Eastern millionaire.  And Maroola, now the
bargain was struck and there was no more business to be talked over,
evidently did not care for the white man's company.  Yet Dain was always
about the house, but he seldom stayed long by the riverside.  On his
daily visits to the white man the Malay chief preferred to make his way
quietly through the central passage of the house, and would come out into
the garden at the back, where the fire was burning in the cooking shed,
with the rice kettle swinging over it, under the watchful supervision of
Mrs. Almayer.  Avoiding that shed, with its black smoke and the warbling
of soft, feminine voices, Dain would turn to the left.  There, on the
edge of a banana plantation, a clump of palms and mango trees formed a
shady spot, a few scattered bushes giving it a certain seclusion into
which only the serving women's chatter or an occasional burst of laughter
could penetrate.  Once in, he was invisible; and hidden there, leaning
against the smooth trunk of a tall palm, he waited with gleaming eyes and
an assured smile to hear the faint rustle of dried grass under the light
footsteps of Nina.

From the very first moment when his eyes beheld this--to him--perfection
of loveliness he felt in his inmost heart the conviction that she would
be his; he felt the subtle breath of mutual understanding passing between
their two savage natures, and he did not want Mrs. Almayer's encouraging
smiles to take every opportunity of approaching the girl; and every time
he spoke to her, every time he looked into her eyes, Nina, although
averting her face, felt as if this bold-looking being who spoke burning
words into her willing ear was the embodiment of her fate, the creature
of her dreams--reckless, ferocious, ready with flashing kriss for his
enemies, and with passionate embrace for his beloved--the ideal Malay
chief of her mother's tradition.

She recognised with a thrill of delicious fear the mysterious
consciousness of her identity with that being.  Listening to his words,
it seemed to her she was born only then to a knowledge of a new
existence, that her life was complete only when near him, and she
abandoned herself to a feeling of dreamy happiness, while with
half-veiled face and in silence--as became a Malay girl--she listened to
Dain's words giving up to her the whole treasure of love and passion his
nature was capable of with all the unrestrained enthusiasm of a man
totally untrammelled by any influence of civilised self-discipline.

And they used to pass many a delicious and fast fleeting hour under the
mango trees behind the friendly curtain of bushes till Mrs. Almayer's
shrill voice gave the signal of unwilling separation.  Mrs. Almayer had
undertaken the easy task of watching her husband lest he should interrupt
the smooth course of her daughter's love affair, in which she took a
great and benignant interest.  She was happy and proud to see Dain's
infatuation, believing him to be a great and powerful chief, and she
found also a gratification of her mercenary instincts in Dain's
open-handed generosity.

On the eve of the day when Babalatchi's suspicions were confirmed by
ocular demonstration, Dain and Nina had remained longer than usual in
their shady retreat.  Only Almayer's heavy step on the verandah and his
querulous clamour for food decided Mrs. Almayer to lift a warning cry.
Maroola leaped lightly over the low bamboo fence, and made his way
stealthily through the banana plantation down to the muddy shore of the
back creek, while Nina walked slowly towards the house to minister to her
father's wants, as was her wont every evening.  Almayer felt happy enough
that evening; the preparations were nearly completed; to-morrow he would
launch his boats.  In his mind's eye he saw the rich prize in his grasp;
and, with tin spoon in his hand, he was forgetting the plateful of rice
before him in the fanciful arrangement of some splendid banquet to take
place on his arrival in Amsterdam.  Nina, reclining in the long chair,
listened absently to the few disconnected words escaping from her
father's lips.  Expedition!  Gold!  What did she care for all that?  But
at the name of Maroola mentioned by her father she was all attention.
Dain was going down the river with his brig to-morrow to remain away for
a few days, said Almayer.  It was very annoying, this delay.  As soon as
Dain returned they would have to start without loss of time, for the
river was rising.  He would not be surprised if a great flood was coming.
And he pushed away his plate with an impatient gesture on rising from the
table.  But now Nina heard him not.  Dain going away!  That's why he had
ordered her, with that quiet masterfulness it was her delight to obey, to
meet him at break of day in Bulangi's creek.  Was there a paddle in her
canoe? she thought.  Was it ready?  She would have to start early--at
four in the morning, in a very few hours.

She rose from her chair, thinking she would require rest before the long
pull in the early morning.  The lamp was burning dimly, and her father,
tired with the day's labour, was already in his hammock.  Nina put the
lamp out and passed into a large room she shared with her mother on the
left of the central passage.  Entering, she saw that Mrs. Almayer had
deserted the pile of mats serving her as bed in one corner of the room,
and was now bending over the opened lid of her large wooden chest.  Half
a shell of cocoanut filled with oil, where a cotton rag floated for a
wick, stood on the floor, surrounding her with a ruddy halo of light
shining through the black and odorous smoke.  Mrs. Almayer's back was
bent, and her head and shoulders hidden in the deep box.  Her hands
rummaged in the interior, where a soft clink as of silver money could be
heard.  She did not notice at first her daughter's approach, and Nina,
standing silently by her, looked down on many little canvas bags ranged
in the bottom of the chest, wherefrom her mother extracted handfuls of
shining guilders and Mexican dollars, letting them stream slowly back
again through her claw-like fingers.  The music of tinkling silver seemed
to delight her, and her eyes sparkled with the reflected gleam of freshly-
minted coins.  She was muttering to herself: "And this, and this, and yet
this!  Soon he will give more--as much more as I ask.  He is a great
Rajah--a Son of Heaven!  And she will be a Ranee--he gave all this for
her!  Who ever gave anything for me?  I am a slave!  Am I?  I am the
mother of a great Ranee!"  She became aware suddenly of her daughter's
presence, and ceased her droning, shutting the lid down violently; then,
without rising from her crouching position, she looked up at the girl
standing by with a vague smile on her dreamy face.

"You have seen.  Have you?" she shouted, shrilly.  "That is all mine, and
for you.  It is not enough!  He will have to give more before he takes
you away to the southern island where his father is king.  You hear me?
You are worth more, granddaughter of Rajahs!  More!  More!"

The sleepy voice of Almayer was heard on the verandah recommending
silence.  Mrs. Almayer extinguished the light and crept into her corner
of the room.  Nina laid down on her back on a pile of soft mats, her
hands entwined under her head, gazing through the shutterless hole,
serving as a window at the stars twinkling on the black sky; she was
awaiting the time of start for her appointed meeting-place.  With quiet
happiness she thought of that meeting in the great forest, far from all
human eyes and sounds.  Her soul, lapsing again into the savage mood,
which the genius of civilisation working by the hand of Mrs. Vinck could
never destroy, experienced a feeling of pride and of some slight trouble
at the high value her worldly-wise mother had put upon her person; but
she remembered the expressive glances and words of Dain, and,
tranquillised, she closed her eyes in a shiver of pleasant anticipation.

There are some situations where the barbarian and the, so-called,
civilised man meet upon the same ground.  It may be supposed that Dain
Maroola was not exceptionally delighted with his prospective mother-in-
law, nor that he actually approved of that worthy woman's appetite for
shining dollars.  Yet on that foggy morning when Babalatchi, laying aside
the cares of state, went to visit his fish-baskets in the Bulangi creek,
Maroola had no misgivings, experienced no feelings but those of
impatience and longing, when paddling to the east side of the island
forming the back-water in question.  He hid his canoe in the bushes and
strode rapidly across the islet, pushing with impatience through the
twigs of heavy undergrowth intercrossed over his path.  From motives of
prudence he would not take his canoe to the meeting-place, as Nina had
done.  He had left it in the main stream till his return from the other
side of the island.  The heavy warm fog was closing rapidly round him,
but he managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of a light away to the left,
proceeding from Bulangi's house.  Then he could see nothing in the
thickening vapour, and kept to the path only by a sort of instinct, which
also led him to the very point on the opposite shore he wished to reach.
A great log had stranded there, at right angles to the bank, forming a
kind of jetty against which the swiftly flowing stream broke with a loud
ripple.  He stepped on it with a quick but steady motion, and in two
strides found himself at the outer end, with the rush and swirl of the
foaming water at his feet.

Standing there alone, as if separated from the world; the heavens, earth;
the very water roaring under him swallowed up in the thick veil of the
morning fog, he breathed out the name of Nina before him into the
apparently limitless space, sure of being heard, instinctively sure of
the nearness of the delightful creature; certain of her being aware of
his near presence as he was aware of hers.

The bow of Nina's canoe loomed up close to the log, canted high out of
the water by the weight of the sitter in the stern.  Maroola laid his
hand on the stem and leaped lightly in, giving it a vigorous shove off.
The light craft, obeying the new impulse, cleared the log by a hair's
breadth, and the river, with obedient complicity, swung it broadside to
the current, and bore it off silently and rapidly between the invisible
banks.  And once more Dain, at the feet of Nina, forgot the world, felt
himself carried away helpless by a great wave of supreme emotion, by a
rush of joy, pride, and desire; understood once more with overpowering
certitude that there was no life possible without that being he held
clasped in his arms with passionate strength in a prolonged embrace.

Nina disengaged herself gently with a low laugh.

"You will overturn the boat, Dain," she whispered.

He looked into her eyes eagerly for a minute and let her go with a sigh,
then lying down in the canoe he put his head on her knees, gazing upwards
and stretching his arms backwards till his hands met round the girl's
waist.  She bent over him, and, shaking her head, framed both their faces
in the falling locks of her long black hair.

And so they drifted on, he speaking with all the rude eloquence of a
savage nature giving itself up without restraint to an overmastering
passion, she bending low to catch the murmur of words sweeter to her than
life itself.  To those two nothing existed then outside the gunwales of
the narrow and fragile craft.  It was their world, filled with their
intense and all-absorbing love.  They took no heed of thickening mist, or
of the breeze dying away before sunrise; they forgot the existence of the
great forests surrounding them, of all the tropical nature awaiting the
advent of the sun in a solemn and impressive silence.

Over the low river-mist hiding the boat with its freight of young
passionate life and all-forgetful happiness, the stars paled, and a
silvery-grey tint crept over the sky from the eastward.  There was not a
breath of wind, not a rustle of stirring leaf, not a splash of leaping
fish to disturb the serene repose of all living things on the banks of
the great river.  Earth, river, and sky were wrapped up in a deep sleep,
from which it seemed there would be no waking.  All the seething life and
movement of tropical nature seemed concentrated in the ardent eyes, in
the tumultuously beating hearts of the two beings drifting in the canoe,
under the white canopy of mist, over the smooth surface of the river.

Suddenly a great sheaf of yellow rays shot upwards from behind the black
curtain of trees lining the banks of the Pantai.  The stars went out; the
little black clouds at the zenith glowed for a moment with crimson tints,
and the thick mist, stirred by the gentle breeze, the sigh of waking
nature, whirled round and broke into fantastically torn pieces,
disclosing the wrinkled surface of the river sparkling in the broad light
of day.  Great flocks of white birds wheeled screaming above the swaying
tree-tops.  The sun had risen on the east coast.

Dain was the first to return to the cares of everyday life.  He rose and
glanced rapidly up and down the river.  His eye detected Babalatchi's
boat astern, and another small black speck on the glittering water, which
was Taminah's canoe.  He moved cautiously forward, and, kneeling, took up
a paddle; Nina at the stern took hers.  They bent their bodies to the
work, throwing up the water at every stroke, and the small craft went
swiftly ahead, leaving a narrow wake fringed with a lace-like border of
white and gleaming foam.  Without turning his head, Dain spoke.

"Somebody behind us, Nina.  We must not let him gain.  I think he is too
far to recognise us."

"Somebody before us also," panted out Nina, without ceasing to paddle.

"I think I know," rejoined Dain.  "The sun shines over there, but I fancy
it is the girl Taminah.  She comes down every morning to my brig to sell
cakes--stays often all day.  It does not matter; steer more into the
bank; we must get under the bushes.  My canoe is hidden not far from
here."

As he spoke his eyes watched the broad-leaved nipas which they were
brushing in their swift and silent course.

"Look out, Nina," he said at last; "there, where the water palms end and
the twigs hang down under the leaning tree.  Steer for the big green
branch."

He stood up attentive, and the boat drifted slowly in shore, Nina guiding
it by a gentle and skilful movement of her paddle.  When near enough Dain
laid hold of the big branch, and leaning back shot the canoe under a low
green archway of thickly matted creepers giving access to a miniature bay
formed by the caving in of the bank during the last great flood.  His own
boat was there anchored by a stone, and he stepped into it, keeping his
hand on the gunwale of Nina's canoe.  In a moment the two little
nutshells with their occupants floated quietly side by side, reflected by
the black water in the dim light struggling through a high canopy of
dense foliage; while above, away up in the broad day, flamed immense red
blossoms sending down on their heads a shower of great dew-sparkling
petals that descended rotating slowly in a continuous and perfumed
stream; and over them, under them, in the sleeping water; all around them
in a ring of luxuriant vegetation bathed in the warm air charged with
strong and harsh perfumes, the intense work of tropical nature went on:
plants shooting upward, entwined, interlaced in inextricable confusion,
climbing madly and brutally over each other in the terrible silence of a
desperate struggle towards the life-giving sunshine above--as if struck
with sudden horror at the seething mass of corruption below, at the death
and decay from which they sprang.

"We must part now," said Dain, after a long silence.  "You must return at
once, Nina.  I will wait till the brig drifts down here, and shall get on
board then."

"And will you be long away, Dain?" asked Nina, in a low voice.

"Long!" exclaimed Dain.  "Would a man willingly remain long in a dark
place?  When I am not near you, Nina, I am like a man that is blind.  What
is life to me without light?"

Nina leaned over, and with a proud and happy smile took Dain's face
between her hands, looking into his eyes with a fond yet questioning
gaze.  Apparently she found there the confirmation of the words just
said, for a feeling of grateful security lightened for her the weight of
sorrow at the hour of parting.  She believed that he, the descendant of
many great Rajahs, the son of a great chief, the master of life and
death, knew the sunshine of life only in her presence.  An immense wave
of gratitude and love welled forth out of her heart towards him.  How
could she make an outward and visible sign of all she felt for the man
who had filled her heart with so much joy and so much pride?  And in the
great tumult of passion, like a flash of lightning came to her the
reminiscence of that despised and almost forgotten civilisation she had
only glanced at in her days of restraint, of sorrow, and of anger.  In
the cold ashes of that hateful and miserable past she would find the sign
of love, the fitting expression of the boundless felicity of the present,
the pledge of a bright and splendid future.  She threw her arms around
Dain's neck and pressed her lips to his in a long and burning kiss.  He
closed his eyes, surprised and frightened at the storm raised in his
breast by the strange and to him hitherto unknown contact, and long after
Nina had pushed her canoe into the river he remained motionless, without
daring to open his eyes, afraid to lose the sensation of intoxicating
delight he had tasted for the first time.

Now he wanted but immortality, he thought, to be the equal of gods, and
the creature that could open so the gates of paradise must be his--soon
would be his for ever!

He opened his eyes in time to see through the archway of creepers the
bows of his brig come slowly into view, as the vessel drifted past on its
way down the river.  He must go on board now, he thought; yet he was loth
to leave the place where he had learned to know what happiness meant.
"Time yet.  Let them go," he muttered to himself; and he closed his eyes
again under the red shower of scented petals, trying to recall the scene
with all its delight and all its fear.

He must have been able to join his brig in time, after all, and found
much occupation outside, for it was in vain that Almayer looked for his
friend's speedy return.  The lower reach of the river where he so often
and so impatiently directed his eyes remained deserted, save for the
rapid flitting of some fishing canoe; but down the upper reaches came
black clouds and heavy showers heralding the final setting in of the
rainy season with its thunderstorms and great floods making the river
almost impossible of ascent for native canoes.

Almayer, strolling along the muddy beach between his houses, watched
uneasily the river rising inch by inch, creeping slowly nearer to the
boats, now ready and hauled up in a row under the cover of dripping
Kajang-mats.  Fortune seemed to elude his grasp, and in his weary tramp
backwards and forwards under the steady rain falling from the lowering
sky, a sort of despairing indifference took possession of him.  What did
it matter?  It was just his luck!  Those two infernal savages, Lakamba
and Dain, induced him, with their promises of help, to spend his last
dollar in the fitting out of boats, and now one of them was gone
somewhere, and the other shut up in his stockade would give no sign of
life.  No, not even the scoundrelly Babalatchi, thought Almayer, would
show his face near him, now they had sold him all the rice, brass gongs,
and cloth necessary for his expedition.  They had his very last coin, and
did not care whether he went or stayed.  And with a gesture of abandoned
discouragement Almayer would climb up slowly to the verandah of his new
house to get out of the rain, and leaning on the front rail with his head
sunk between his shoulders he would abandon himself to the current of
bitter thoughts, oblivious of the flight of time and the pangs of hunger,
deaf to the shrill cries of his wife calling him to the evening meal.
When, roused from his sad meditations by the first roll of the evening
thunderstorm, he stumbled slowly towards the glimmering light of his old
house, his half-dead hope made his ears preternaturally acute to any
sound on the river.  Several nights in succession he had heard the splash
of paddles and had seen the indistinct form of a boat, but when hailing
the shadowy apparition, his heart bounding with sudden hope of hearing
Dain's voice, he was disappointed each time by the sulky answer conveying
to him the intelligence that the Arabs were on the river, bound on a
visit to the home-staying Lakamba.  This caused him many sleepless
nights, spent in speculating upon the kind of villainy those estimable
personages were hatching now.  At last, when all hope seemed dead, he was
overjoyed on hearing Dain's voice; but Dain also appeared very anxious to
see Lakamba, and Almayer felt uneasy owing to a deep and ineradicable
distrust as to that ruler's disposition towards himself.  Still, Dain had
returned at last.  Evidently he meant to keep to his bargain.  Hope
revived, and that night Almayer slept soundly, while Nina watched the
angry river under the lash of the thunderstorm sweeping onward towards
the sea.




CHAPTER VI.


Dain was not long in crossing the river after leaving Almayer.  He landed
at the water-gate of the stockade enclosing the group of houses which
composed the residence of the Rajah of Sambir.  Evidently somebody was
expected there, for the gate was open, and men with torches were ready to
precede the visitor up the inclined plane of planks leading to the
largest house where Lakamba actually resided, and where all the business
of state was invariably transacted.  The other buildings within the
enclosure served only to accommodate the numerous household and the wives
of the ruler.

Lakamba's own house was a strong structure of solid planks, raised on
high piles, with a verandah of split bamboos surrounding it on all sides;
the whole was covered in by an immensely high-pitched roof of
palm-leaves, resting on beams blackened by the smoke of many torches.

The building stood parallel to the river, one of its long sides facing
the water-gate of the stockade.  There was a door in the short side
looking up the river, and the inclined plank-way led straight from the
gate to that door.  By the uncertain light of smoky torches, Dain noticed
the vague outlines of a group of armed men in the dark shadows to his
right.  From that group Babalatchi stepped forward to open the door, and
Dain entered the audience chamber of the Rajah's residence.  About one-
third of the house was curtained off, by heavy stuff of European
manufacture, for that purpose; close to the curtain there was a big arm-
chair of some black wood, much carved, and before it a rough deal table.
Otherwise the room was only furnished with mats in great profusion.  To
the left of the entrance stood a rude arm-rack, with three rifles with
fixed bayonets in it.  By the wall, in the shadow, the body-guard of
Lakamba--all friends or relations--slept in a confused heap of brown
arms, legs, and multi-coloured garments, from whence issued an occasional
snore or a subdued groan of some uneasy sleeper.  An European lamp with a
green shade standing on the table made all this indistinctly visible to
Dain.

"You are welcome to your rest here," said Babalatchi, looking at Dain
interrogatively.

"I must speak to the Rajah at once," answered Dain.

Babalatchi made a gesture of assent, and, turning to the brass gong
suspended under the arm-rack, struck two sharp blows.

The ear-splitting din woke up the guard.  The snores ceased; outstretched
legs were drawn in; the whole heap moved, and slowly resolved itself into
individual forms, with much yawning and rubbing of sleepy eyes; behind
the curtains there was a burst of feminine chatter; then the bass voice
of Lakamba was heard.

"Is that the Arab trader?"

"No, Tuan," answered Babalatchi; "Dain has returned at last.  He is here
for an important talk, bitcharra--if you mercifully consent."

Evidently Lakamba's mercy went so far--for in a short while he came out
from behind the curtain--but it did not go to the length of inducing him
to make an extensive toilet.  A short red sarong tightened hastily round
his hips was his only garment.  The merciful ruler of Sambir looked
sleepy and rather sulky.  He sat in the arm-chair, his knees well apart,
his elbows on the arm-rests, his chin on his breast, breathing heavily
and waiting malevolently for Dain to open the important talk.

But Dain did not seem anxious to begin.  He directed his gaze towards
Babalatchi, squatting comfortably at the feet of his master, and remained
silent with a slightly bent head as if in attentive expectation of coming
words of wisdom.

Babalatchi coughed discreetly, and, leaning forward, pushed over a few
mats for Dain to sit upon, then lifting up his squeaky voice he assured
him with eager volubility of everybody's delight at this long-looked-for
return.  His heart had hungered for the sight of Dain's face, and his
ears were withering for the want of the refreshing sound of his voice.
Everybody's hearts and ears were in the same sad predicament, according
to Babalatchi, as he indicated with a sweeping gesture the other bank of
the river where the settlement slumbered peacefully, unconscious of the
great joy awaiting it on the morrow when Dain's presence amongst them
would be disclosed.  "For"--went on Babalatchi--"what is the joy of a
poor man if not the open hand of a generous trader or of a great--"

Here he checked himself abruptly with a calculated embarrassment of
manner, and his roving eye sought the floor, while an apologetic smile
dwelt for a moment on his misshapen lips.  Once or twice during this
opening speech an amused expression flitted across Dain's face, soon to
give way, however, to an appearance of grave concern.  On Lakamba's brow
a heavy frown had settled, and his lips moved angrily as he listened to
his Prime Minister's oratory.  In the silence that fell upon the room
when Babalatchi ceased speaking arose a chorus of varied snores from the
corner where the body-guard had resumed their interrupted slumbers, but
the distant rumble of thunder filling then Nina's heart with apprehension
for the safety of her lover passed unheeded by those three men intent
each on their own purposes, for life or death.

After a short silence, Babalatchi, discarding now the flowers of polite
eloquence, spoke again, but in short and hurried sentences and in a low
voice.  They had been very uneasy.  Why did Dain remain so long absent?
The men dwelling on the lower reaches of the river heard the reports of
big guns and saw a fire-ship of the Dutch amongst the islands of the
estuary.  So they were anxious.  Rumours of a disaster had reached
Abdulla a few days ago, and since then they had been waiting for Dain's
return under the apprehension of some misfortune.  For days they had
closed their eyes in fear, and woke up alarmed, and walked abroad
trembling, like men before an enemy.  And all on account of Dain.  Would
he not allay their fears for his safety, not for themselves?  They were
quiet and faithful, and devoted to the great Rajah in Batavia--may his
fate lead him ever to victory for the joy and profit of his servants!
"And here," went on Babalatchi, "Lakamba my master was getting thin in
his anxiety for the trader he had taken under his protection; and so was
Abdulla, for what would wicked men not say if perchance--"

"Be silent, fool!" growled Lakamba, angrily.

Babalatchi subsided into silence with a satisfied smile, while Dain, who
had been watching him as if fascinated, turned with a sigh of relief
towards the ruler of Sambir.  Lakamba did not move, and, without raising
his head, looked at Dain from under his eyebrows, breathing audibly, with
pouted lips, in an air of general discontent.

"Speak!  O Dain!" he said at last.  "We have heard many rumours.  Many
nights in succession has my friend Reshid come here with bad tidings.
News travels fast along the coast.  But they may be untrue; there are
more lies in men's mouths in these days than when I was young, but I am
not easier to deceive now."

"All my words are true," said Dain, carelessly.  "If you want to know
what befell my brig, then learn that it is in the hands of the Dutch.
Believe me, Rajah," he went on, with sudden energy, "the Orang Blanda
have good friends in Sambir, or else how did they know I was coming
thence?"

Lakamba gave Dain a short and hostile glance.  Babalatchi rose quietly,
and, going to the arm-rack, struck the gong violently.

Outside the door there was a shuffle of bare feet; inside, the guard woke
up and sat staring in sleepy surprise.

"Yes, you faithful friend of the white Rajah," went on Dain, scornfully,
turning to Babalatchi, who had returned to his place, "I have escaped,
and I am here to gladden your heart.  When I saw the Dutch ship I ran the
brig inside the reefs and put her ashore.  They did not dare to follow
with the ship, so they sent the boats.  We took to ours and tried to get
away, but the ship dropped fireballs at us, and killed many of my men.
But I am left, O Babalatchi!  The Dutch are coming here.  They are
seeking for me.  They are coming to ask their faithful friend Lakamba and
his slave Babalatchi.  Rejoice!"

But neither of his hearers appeared to be in a joyful mood.  Lakamba had
put one leg over his knee, and went on gently scratching it with a
meditative air, while Babalatchi, sitting cross-legged, seemed suddenly
to become smaller and very limp, staring straight before him vacantly.
The guard evinced some interest in the proceedings, stretching themselves
full length on the mats to be nearer the speaker.  One of them got up and
now stood leaning against the arm-rack, playing absently with the fringes
of his sword-hilt.

Dain waited till the crash of thunder had died away in distant mutterings
before he spoke again.

"Are you dumb, O ruler of Sambir, or is the son of a great Rajah unworthy
of your notice?  I am come here to seek refuge and to warn you, and want
to know what you intend doing."

"You came here because of the white man's daughter," retorted Lakamba,
quickly.  "Your refuge was with your father, the Rajah of Bali, the Son
of Heaven, the 'Anak Agong' himself.  What am I to protect great princes?
Only yesterday I planted rice in a burnt clearing; to-day you say I hold
your life in my hand."

Babalatchi glanced at his master.  "No man can escape his fate," he
murmured piously.  "When love enters a man's heart he is like a
child--without any understanding.  Be merciful, Lakamba," he added,
twitching the corner of the Rajah's sarong warningly.

Lakamba snatched away the skirt of the sarong angrily.  Under the dawning
comprehension of intolerable embarrassments caused by Dain's return to
Sambir he began to lose such composure as he had been, till then, able to
maintain; and now he raised his voice loudly above the whistling of the
wind and the patter of rain on the roof in the hard squall passing over
the house.

"You came here first as a trader with sweet words and great promises,
asking me to look the other way while you worked your will on the white
man there.  And I did.  What do you want now?  When I was young I fought.
Now I am old, and want peace.  It is easier for me to have you killed
than to fight the Dutch.  It is better for me."

The squall had now passed, and, in the short stillness of the lull in the
storm, Lakamba repeated softly, as if to himself, "Much easier.  Much
better."

Dain did not seem greatly discomposed by the Rajah's threatening words.
While Lakamba was speaking he had glanced once rapidly over his shoulder,
just to make sure that there was nobody behind him, and, tranquillised in
that respect, he had extracted a siri-box out of the folds of his waist-
cloth, and was wrapping carefully the little bit of betel-nut and a small
pinch of lime in the green leaf tendered him politely by the watchful
Babalatchi.  He accepted this as a peace-offering from the silent
statesman--a kind of mute protest against his master's undiplomatic
violence, and as an omen of a possible understanding to be arrived at
yet.  Otherwise Dain was not uneasy.  Although recognising the justice of
Lakamba's surmise that he had come back to Sambir only for the sake of
the white man's daughter, yet he was not conscious of any childish lack
of understanding, as suggested by Babalatchi.  In fact, Dain knew very
well that Lakamba was too deeply implicated in the gunpowder smuggling to
care for an investigation the Dutch authorities into that matter.  When
sent off by his father, the independent Rajah of Bali, at the time when
the hostilities between Dutch and Malays threatened to spread from
Sumatra over the whole archipelago, Dain had found all the big traders
deaf to his guarded proposals, and above the temptation of the great
prices he was ready to give for gunpowder.  He went to Sambir as a last
and almost hopeless resort, having heard in Macassar of the white man
there, and of the regular steamer trading from Singapore--allured also by
the fact that there was no Dutch resident on the river, which would make
things easier, no doubt.  His hopes got nearly wrecked against the
stubborn loyalty of Lakamba arising from well-understood self-interest;
but at last the young man's generosity, his persuasive enthusiasm, the
prestige of his father's great name, overpowered the prudent hesitation
of the ruler of Sambir.  Lakamba would have nothing to do himself with
any illegal traffic.  He also objected to the Arabs being made use of in
that matter; but he suggested Almayer, saying that he was a weak man
easily persuaded, and that his friend, the English captain of the
steamer, could be made very useful--very likely even would join in the
business, smuggling the powder in the steamer without Abdulla's
knowledge.  There again Dain met in Almayer with unexpected resistance;
Lakamba had to send Babalatchi over with the solemn promise that his eyes
would be shut in friendship for the white man, Dain paying for the
promise and the friendship in good silver guilders of the hated Orang
Blanda.  Almayer, at last consenting, said the powder would be obtained,
but Dain must trust him with dollars to send to Singapore in payment for
it.  He would induce Ford to buy and smuggle it in the steamer on board
the brig.  He did not want any money for himself out of the transaction,
but Dain must help him in his great enterprise after sending off the
brig.  Almayer had explained to Dain that he could not trust Lakamba
alone in that matter; he would be afraid of losing his treasure and his
life through the cupidity of the Rajah; yet the Rajah had to be told, and
insisted on taking a share in that operation, or else his eyes would
remain shut no longer.  To this Almayer had to submit.  Had Dain not seen
Nina he would have probably refused to engage himself and his men in the
projected expedition to Gunong Mas--the mountain of gold.  As it was he
intended to return with half of his men as soon as the brig was clear of
the reefs, but the persistent chase given him by the Dutch frigate had
forced him to run south and ultimately to wreck and destroy his vessel in
order to preserve his liberty or perhaps even his life.  Yes, he had come
back to Sambir for Nina, although aware that the Dutch would look for him
there, but he had also calculated his chances of safety in Lakamba's
hands.  For all his ferocious talk, the merciful ruler would not kill
him, for he had long ago been impressed with the notion that Dain
possessed the secret of the white man's treasure; neither would he give
him up to the Dutch, for fear of some fatal disclosure of complicity in
the treasonable trade.  So Dain felt tolerably secure as he sat
meditating quietly his answer to the Rajah's bloodthirsty speech.  Yes,
he would point out to him the aspect of his position should he--Dain--fall
into the hands of the Dutch and should he speak the truth.  He would have
nothing more to lose then, and he would speak the truth.  And if he did
return to Sambir, disturbing thereby Lakamba's peace of mind, what then?
He came to look after his property.  Did he not pour a stream of silver
into Mrs. Almayer's greedy lap?  He had paid, for the girl, a price
worthy of a great prince, although unworthy of that delightfully
maddening creature for whom his untamed soul longed in an intensity of
desire far more tormenting than the sharpest pain.  He wanted his
happiness.  He had the right to be in Sambir.

He rose, and, approaching the table, leaned both his elbows on it;
Lakamba responsively edged his seat a little closer, while Babalatchi
scrambled to his feet and thrust his inquisitive head between his
master's and Dain's.  They interchanged their ideas rapidly, speaking in
whispers into each other's faces, very close now, Dain suggesting,
Lakamba contradicting, Babalatchi conciliating and anxious in his vivid
apprehension of coming difficulties.  He spoke most, whispering
earnestly, turning his head slowly from side to side so as to bring his
solitary eye to bear upon each of his interlocutors in turn.  Why should
there be strife? said he.  Let Tuan Dain, whom he loved only less than
his master, go trustfully into hiding.  There were many places for that.
Bulangi's house away in the clearing was best.

Bulangi was a safe man.  In the network of crooked channels no white man
could find his way.  White men were strong, but very foolish.  It was
undesirable to fight them, but deception was easy.  They were like silly
women--they did not know the use of reason, and he was a match for any of
them--went on Babalatchi, with all the confidence of deficient
experience.  Probably the Dutch would seek Almayer.  Maybe they would
take away their countryman if they were suspicious of him.  That would be
good.  After the Dutch went away Lakamba and Dain would get the treasure
without any trouble, and there would be one person less to share it.  Did
he not speak wisdom?  Will Tuan Dain go to Bulangi's house till the
danger is over, go at once?

Dain accepted this suggestion of going into hiding with a certain sense
of conferring a favour upon Lakamba and the anxious statesman, but he met
the proposal of going at once with a decided no, looking Babalatchi
meaningly in the eye.  The statesman sighed as a man accepting the
inevitable would do, and pointed silently towards the other bank of the
river.  Dain bent his head slowly.

"Yes, I am going there," he said.

"Before the day comes?" asked Babalatchi.

"I am going there now," answered Dain, decisively.  "The Orang Blanda
will not be here before to-morrow night, perhaps, and I must tell Almayer
of our arrangements."

"No, Tuan.  No; say nothing," protested Babalatchi.  "I will go over
myself at sunrise and let him know."

"I will see," said Dain, preparing to go.

The thunderstorm was recommencing outside, the heavy clouds hanging low
overhead now.

There was a constant rumble of distant thunder punctuated by the nearer
sharp crashes, and in the continuous play of blue lightning the woods and
the river showed fitfully, with all the elusive distinctness of detail
characteristic of such a scene.  Outside the door of the Rajah's house
Dain and Babalatchi stood on the shaking verandah as if dazed and stunned
by the violence of the storm.  They stood there amongst the cowering
forms of the Rajah's slaves and retainers seeking shelter from the rain,
and Dain called aloud to his boatmen, who responded with an unanimous
"Ada!  Tuan!" while they looked uneasily at the river.

"This is a great flood!" shouted Babalatchi into Dain's ear.  "The river
is very angry.  Look!  Look at the drifting logs!  Can you go?"

Dain glanced doubtfully on the livid expanse of seething water bounded
far away on the other side by the narrow black line of the forests.
Suddenly, in a vivid white flash, the low point of land with the bending
trees on it and Almayer's house, leaped into view, flickered and
disappeared.  Dain pushed Babalatchi aside and ran down to the water-gate
followed by his shivering boatmen.

Babalatchi backed slowly in and closed the door, then turned round and
looked silently upon Lakamba.  The Rajah sat still, glaring stonily upon
the table, and Babalatchi gazed curiously at the perplexed mood of the
man he had served so many years through good and evil fortune.  No doubt
the one-eyed statesman felt within his savage and much sophisticated
breast the unwonted feelings of sympathy with, and perhaps even pity for,
the man he called his master.  From the safe position of a confidential
adviser, he could, in the dim vista of past years, see himself--a casual
cut-throat--finding shelter under that man's roof in the modest
rice-clearing of early beginnings.  Then came a long period of unbroken
success, of wise counsels, and deep plottings resolutely carried out by
the fearless Lakamba, till the whole east coast from Poulo Laut to
Tanjong Batu listened to Babalatchi's wisdom speaking through the mouth
of the ruler of Sambir.  In those long years how many dangers escaped,
how many enemies bravely faced, how many white men successfully
circumvented!  And now he looked upon the result of so many years of
patient toil: the fearless Lakamba cowed by the shadow of an impending
trouble.  The ruler was growing old, and Babalatchi, aware of an uneasy
feeling at the pit of his stomach, put both his hands there with a
suddenly vivid and sad perception of the fact that he himself was growing
old too; that the time of reckless daring was past for both of them, and
that they had to seek refuge in prudent cunning.  They wanted peace; they
were disposed to reform; they were ready even to retrench, so as to have
the wherewithal to bribe the evil days away, if bribed away they could
be.  Babalatchi sighed for the second time that night as he squatted
again at his master's feet and tendered him his betel-nut box in mute
sympathy.  And they sat there in close yet silent communion of betel-nut
chewers, moving their jaws slowly, expectorating decorously into the wide-
mouthed brass vessel they passed to one another, and listening to the
awful din of the battling elements outside.

"There is a very great flood," remarked Babalatchi, sadly.

"Yes," said Lakamba.  "Did Dain go?"

"He went, Tuan.  He ran down to the river like a man possessed of the
Sheitan himself."

There was another long pause.

"He may get drowned," suggested Lakamba at last, with some show of
interest.

"The floating logs are many," answered Babalatchi, "but he is a good
swimmer," he added languidly.

"He ought to live," said Lakamba; "he knows where the treasure is."

Babalatchi assented with an ill-humoured grunt.  His want of success in
penetrating the white man's secret as to the locality where the gold was
to be found was a sore point with the statesman of Sambir, as the only
conspicuous failure in an otherwise brilliant career.

A great peace had now succeeded the turmoil of the storm.  Only the
little belated clouds, which hurried past overhead to catch up the main
body flashing silently in the distance, sent down short showers that
pattered softly with a soothing hiss over the palm-leaf roof.

Lakamba roused himself from his apathy with an appearance of having
grasped the situation at last.

"Babalatchi," he called briskly, giving him a slight kick.

"Ada Tuan!  I am listening."

"If the Orang Blanda come here, Babalatchi, and take Almayer to Batavia
to punish him for smuggling gunpowder, what will he do, you think?"

"I do not know, Tuan."

"You are a fool," commented Lakamba, exultingly.  "He will tell them
where the treasure is, so as to find mercy.  He will."

Babalatchi looked up at his master and nodded his head with by no means a
joyful surprise.  He had not thought of this; there was a new
complication.

"Almayer must die," said Lakamba, decisively, "to make our secret safe.
He must die quietly, Babalatchi.  You must do it."

Babalatchi assented, and rose wearily to his feet.  "To-morrow?" he
asked.

"Yes; before the Dutch come.  He drinks much coffee," answered Lakamba,
with seeming irrelevancy.

Babalatchi stretched himself yawning, but Lakamba, in the flattering
consciousness of a knotty problem solved by his own unaided intellectual
efforts, grew suddenly very wakeful.

"Babalatchi," he said to the exhausted statesman, "fetch the box of music
the white captain gave me.  I cannot sleep."

At this order a deep shade of melancholy settled upon Babalatchi's
features.  He went reluctantly behind the curtain and soon reappeared
carrying in his arms a small hand-organ, which he put down on the table
with an air of deep dejection.  Lakamba settled himself comfortably in
his arm-chair.

"Turn, Babalatchi, turn," he murmured, with closed eyes.

Babalatchi's hand grasped the handle with the energy of despair, and as
he turned, the deep gloom on his countenance changed into an expression
of hopeless resignation.  Through the open shutter the notes of Verdi's
music floated out on the great silence over the river and forest.  Lakamba
listened with closed eyes and a delighted smile; Babalatchi turned, at
times dozing off and swaying over, then catching himself up in a great
fright with a few quick turns of the handle.  Nature slept in an
exhausted repose after the fierce turmoil, while under the unsteady hand
of the statesman of Sambir the Trovatore fitfully wept, wailed, and bade
good-bye to his Leonore again and again in a mournful round of tearful
and endless iteration.




CHAPTER VII.


The bright sunshine of the clear mistless morning, after the stormy
night, flooded the main path of the settlement leading from the low shore
of the Pantai branch of the river to the gate of Abdulla's compound.  The
path was deserted this morning; it stretched its dark yellow surface,
hard beaten by the tramp of many bare feet, between the clusters of palm
trees, whose tall trunks barred it with strong black lines at irregular
intervals, while the newly risen sun threw the shadows of their leafy
heads far away over the roofs of the buildings lining the river, even
over the river itself as it flowed swiftly and silently past the deserted
houses.  For the houses were deserted too.  On the narrow strip of
trodden grass intervening between their open doors and the road, the
morning fires smouldered untended, sending thin fluted columns of smoke
into the cool air, and spreading the thinnest veil of mysterious blue
haze over the sunlit solitude of the settlement.  Almayer, just out of
his hammock, gazed sleepily at the unwonted appearance of Sambir,
wondering vaguely at the absence of life.  His own house was very quiet;
he could not hear his wife's voice, nor the sound of Nina's footsteps in
the big room, opening on the verandah, which he called his sitting-room,
whenever, in the company of white men, he wished to assert his claims to
the commonplace decencies of civilisation.  Nobody ever sat there; there
was nothing there to sit upon, for Mrs. Almayer in her savage moods, when
excited by the reminiscences of the piratical period of her life, had
torn off the curtains to make sarongs for the slave-girls, and had burnt
the showy furniture piecemeal to cook the family rice.  But Almayer was
not thinking of his furniture now.  He was thinking of Dain's return, of
Dain's nocturnal interview with Lakamba, of its possible influence on his
long-matured plans, now nearing the period of their execution.  He was
also uneasy at the non-appearance of Dain who had promised him an early
visit.  "The fellow had plenty of time to cross the river," he mused,
"and there was so much to be done to-day.  The settling of details for
the early start on the morrow; the launching of the boats; the thousand
and one finishing touches.  For the expedition must start complete,
nothing should be forgotten, nothing should--"

The sense of the unwonted solitude grew upon him suddenly, and in the
unusual silence he caught himself longing even for the usually unwelcome
sound of his wife's voice to break the oppressive stillness which seemed,
to his frightened fancy, to portend the advent of some new misfortune.
"What has happened?" he muttered half aloud, as he shuffled in his
imperfectly adjusted slippers towards the balustrade of the verandah.  "Is
everybody asleep or dead?"

The settlement was alive and very much awake.  It was awake ever since
the early break of day, when Mahmat Banjer, in a fit of unheard-of
energy, arose and, taking up his hatchet, stepped over the sleeping forms
of his two wives and walked shivering to the water's edge to make sure
that the new house he was building had not floated away during the night.

The house was being built by the enterprising Mahmat on a large raft, and
he had securely moored it just inside the muddy point of land at the
junction of the two branches of the Pantai so as to be out of the way of
drifting logs that would no doubt strand on the point during the freshet.
Mahmat walked through the wet grass saying bourrouh, and cursing softly
to himself the hard necessities of active life that drove him from his
warm couch into the cold of the morning.  A glance showed him that his
house was still there, and he congratulated himself on his foresight in
hauling it out of harm's way, for the increasing light showed him a
confused wrack of drift-logs, half-stranded on the muddy flat,
interlocked into a shapeless raft by their branches, tossing to and fro
and grinding together in the eddy caused by the meeting currents of the
two branches of the river.  Mahmat walked down to the water's edge to
examine the rattan moorings of his house just as the sun cleared the
trees of the forest on the opposite shore.  As he bent over the
fastenings he glanced again carelessly at the unquiet jumble of logs and
saw there something that caused him to drop his hatchet and stand up,
shading his eyes with his hand from the rays of the rising sun.  It was
something red, and the logs rolled over it, at times closing round it,
sometimes hiding it.  It looked to him at first like a strip of red
cloth.  The next moment Mahmat had made it out and raised a great shout.

"Ah ya!  There!" yelled Mahmat.  "There's a man amongst the logs."  He
put the palms of his hand to his lips and shouted, enunciating
distinctly, his face turned towards the settlement: "There's a body of a
man in the river!  Come and see!  A dead--stranger!"

The women of the nearest house were already outside kindling the fires
and husking the morning rice.  They took up the cry shrilly, and it
travelled so from house to house, dying away in the distance.  The men
rushed out excited but silent, and ran towards the muddy point where the
unconscious logs tossed and ground and bumped and rolled over the dead
stranger with the stupid persistency of inanimate things.  The women
followed, neglecting their domestic duties and disregarding the
possibilities of domestic discontent, while groups of children brought up
the rear, warbling joyously, in the delight of unexpected excitement.

Almayer called aloud for his wife and daughter, but receiving no
response, stood listening intently.  The murmur of the crowd reached him
faintly, bringing with it the assurance of some unusual event.  He
glanced at the river just as he was going to leave the verandah and
checked himself at the sight of a small canoe crossing over from the
Rajah's landing-place.  The solitary occupant (in whom Almayer soon
recognised Babalatchi) effected the crossing a little below the house and
paddled up to the Lingard jetty in the dead water under the bank.
Babalatchi clambered out slowly and went on fastening his canoe with
fastidious care, as if not in a hurry to meet Almayer, whom he saw
looking at him from the verandah.  This delay gave Almayer time to notice
and greatly wonder at Babalatchi's official get-up.  The statesman of
Sambir was clad in a costume befitting his high rank.  A loudly checkered
sarong encircled his waist, and from its many folds peeped out the silver
hilt of the kriss that saw the light only on great festivals or during
official receptions.  Over the left shoulder and across the otherwise
unclad breast of the aged diplomatist glistened a patent leather belt
bearing a brass plate with the arms of Netherlands under the inscription,
"Sultan of Sambir."  Babalatchi's head was covered by a red turban, whose
fringed ends falling over the left cheek and shoulder gave to his aged
face a ludicrous expression of joyous recklessness.  When the canoe was
at last fastened to his satisfaction he straightened himself up, shaking
down the folds of his sarong, and moved with long strides towards
Almayer's house, swinging regularly his long ebony staff, whose gold head
ornamented with precious stones flashed in the morning sun.  Almayer
waved his hand to the right towards the point of land, to him invisible,
but in full view from the jetty.

"Oh, Babalatchi! oh!" he called out; "what is the matter there? can you
see?"

Babalatchi stopped and gazed intently at the crowd on the river bank, and
after a little while the astonished Almayer saw him leave the path,
gather up his sarong in one hand, and break into a trot through the grass
towards the muddy point.  Almayer, now greatly interested, ran down the
steps of the verandah.  The murmur of men's voices and the shrill cries
of women reached him quite distinctly now, and as soon as he turned the
corner of his house he could see the crowd on the low promontory swaying
and pushing round some object of interest.  He could indistinctly hear
Babalatchi's voice, then the crowd opened before the aged statesman and
closed after him with an excited hum, ending in a loud shout.

As Almayer approached the throng a man ran out and rushed past him
towards the settlement, unheeding his call to stop and explain the cause
of this excitement.  On the very outskirts of the crowd Almayer found
himself arrested by an unyielding mass of humanity, regardless of his
entreaties for a passage, insensible to his gentle pushes as he tried to
work his way through it towards the riverside.

In the midst of his gentle and slow progress he fancied suddenly he had
heard his wife's voice in the thickest of the throng.  He could not
mistake very well Mrs. Almayer's high-pitched tones, yet the words were
too indistinct for him to understand their purport.  He paused in his
endeavours to make a passage for himself, intending to get some
intelligence from those around him, when a long and piercing shriek rent
the air, silencing the murmurs of the crowd and the voices of his
informants.  For a moment Almayer remained as if turned into stone with
astonishment and horror, for he was certain now that he had heard his
wife wailing for the dead.  He remembered Nina's unusual absence, and
maddened by his apprehensions as to her safety, he pushed blindly and
violently forward, the crowd falling back with cries of surprise and pain
before his frantic advance.

On the point of land in a little clear space lay the body of the stranger
just hauled out from amongst the logs.  On one side stood Babalatchi, his
chin resting on the head of his staff and his one eye gazing steadily at
the shapeless mass of broken limbs, torn flesh, and bloodstained rags.  As
Almayer burst through the ring of horrified spectators, Mrs. Almayer
threw her own head-veil over the upturned face of the drowned man, and,
squatting by it, with another mournful howl, sent a shiver through the
now silent crowd.  Mahmat, dripping wet, turned to Almayer, eager to tell
his tale.

In the first moment of reaction from the anguish of his fear the sunshine
seemed to waver before Almayer's eyes, and he listened to words spoken
around him without comprehending their meaning.  When, by a strong effort
of will, he regained the possession of his senses, Mahmat was saying--

"That is the way, Tuan.  His sarong was caught in the broken branch, and
he hung with his head under water.  When I saw what it was I did not want
it here.  I wanted it to get clear and drift away.  Why should we bury a
stranger in the midst of our houses for his ghost to frighten our women
and children?  Have we not enough ghosts about this place?"

A murmur of approval interrupted him here.  Mahmat looked reproachfully
at Babalatchi.

"But the Tuan Babalatchi ordered me to drag the body ashore"--he went on
looking round at his audience, but addressing himself only to
Almayer--"and I dragged him by the feet; in through the mud I have
dragged him, although my heart longed to see him float down the river to
strand perchance on Bulangi's clearing--may his father's grave be
defiled!"

There was subdued laughter at this, for the enmity of Mahmat and Bulangi
was a matter of common notoriety and of undying interest to the
inhabitants of Sambir.  In the midst of that mirth Mrs. Almayer wailed
suddenly again.

"Allah!  What ails the woman!" exclaimed Mahmat, angrily.  "Here, I have
touched this carcass which came from nobody knows where, and have most
likely defiled myself before eating rice.  By orders of Tuan Babalatchi I
did this thing to please the white man.  Are you pleased, O Tuan Almayer?
And what will be my recompense?  Tuan Babalatchi said a recompense there
will be, and from you.  Now consider.  I have been defiled, and if not
defiled I may be under the spell.  Look at his anklets!  Who ever heard
of a corpse appearing during the night amongst the logs with gold anklets
on its legs?  There is witchcraft there.  However," added Mahmat, after a
reflective pause, "I will have the anklet if there is permission, for I
have a charm against the ghosts and am not afraid.  God is great!"

A fresh outburst of noisy grief from Mrs. Almayer checked the flow of
Mahmat's eloquence.  Almayer, bewildered, looked in turn at his wife, at
Mahmat, at Babalatchi, and at last arrested his fascinated gaze on the
body lying on the mud with covered face in a grotesquely unnatural
contortion of mangled and broken limbs, one twisted and lacerated arm,
with white bones protruding in many places through the torn flesh,
stretched out; the hand with outspread fingers nearly touching his foot.

"Do you know who this is?" he asked of Babalatchi, in a low voice.

Babalatchi, staring straight before him, hardly moved his lips, while
Mrs. Almayer's persistent lamentations drowned the whisper of his
murmured reply intended only for Almayer's ear.

"It was fate.  Look at your feet, white man.  I can see a ring on those
torn fingers which I know well."

Saying this, Babalatchi stepped carelessly forward, putting his foot as
if accidentally on the hand of the corpse and pressing it into the soft
mud.  He swung his staff menacingly towards the crowd, which fell back a
little.

"Go away," he said sternly, "and send your women to their cooking fires,
which they ought not to have left to run after a dead stranger.  This is
men's work here.  I take him now in the name of the Rajah.  Let no man
remain here but Tuan Almayer's slaves.  Now go!"

The crowd reluctantly began to disperse.  The women went first, dragging
away the children that hung back with all their weight on the maternal
hand.  The men strolled slowly after them in ever forming and changing
groups that gradually dissolved as they neared the settlement and every
man regained his own house with steps quickened by the hungry
anticipation of the morning rice.  Only on the slight elevation where the
land sloped down towards the muddy point a few men, either friends or
enemies of Mahmat, remained gazing curiously for some time longer at the
small group standing around the body on the river bank.

"I do not understand what you mean, Babalatchi," said Almayer.  "What is
the ring you are talking about?  Whoever he is, you have trodden the poor
fellow's hand right into the mud.  Uncover his face," he went on,
addressing Mrs. Almayer, who, squatting by the head of the corpse, rocked
herself to and fro, shaking from time to time her dishevelled grey locks,
and muttering mournfully.

"Hai!" exclaimed Mahmat, who had lingered close by.  "Look, Tuan; the
logs came together so," and here he pressed the palms of his hands
together, "and his head must have been between them, and now there is no
face for you to look at.  There are his flesh and his bones, the nose,
and the lips, and maybe his eyes, but nobody could tell the one from the
other.  It was written the day he was born that no man could look at him
in death and be able to say, 'This is my friend's face.'"

"Silence, Mahmat; enough!" said Babalatchi, "and take thy eyes off his
anklet, thou eater of pigs flesh.  Tuan Almayer," he went on, lowering
his voice, "have you seen Dain this morning?"

Almayer opened his eyes wide and looked alarmed.  "No," he said quickly;
"haven't you seen him?  Is he not with the Rajah?  I am waiting; why does
he not come?"

Babalatchi nodded his head sadly.

"He is come, Tuan.  He left last night when the storm was great and the
river spoke angrily.  The night was very black, but he had within him a
light that showed the way to your house as smooth as a narrow backwater,
and the many logs no bigger than wisps of dried grass.  Therefore he
went; and now he lies here."  And Babalatchi nodded his head towards the
body.

"How can you tell?" said Almayer, excitedly, pushing his wife aside.  He
snatched the cover off and looked at the formless mass of flesh, hair,
and drying mud, where the face of the drowned man should have been.
"Nobody can tell," he added, turning away with a shudder.

Babalatchi was on his knees wiping the mud from the stiffened fingers of
the outstretched hand.  He rose to his feet and flashed before Almayer's
eyes a gold ring set with a large green stone.

"You know this well," he said.  "This never left Dain's hand.  I had to
tear the flesh now to get it off.  Do you believe now?"

Almayer raised his hands to his head and let them fall listlessly by his
side in the utter abandonment of despair.  Babalatchi, looking at him
curiously, was astonished to see him smile.  A strange fancy had taken
possession of Almayer's brain, distracted by this new misfortune.  It
seemed to him that for many years he had been falling into a deep
precipice.  Day after day, month after month, year after year, he had
been falling, falling, falling; it was a smooth, round, black thing, and
the black walls had been rushing upwards with wearisome rapidity.  A
great rush, the noise of which he fancied he could hear yet; and now,
with an awful shock, he had reached the bottom, and behold! he was alive
and whole, and Dain was dead with all his bones broken.  It struck him as
funny.  A dead Malay; he had seen many dead Malays without any emotion;
and now he felt inclined to weep, but it was over the fate of a white man
he knew; a man that fell over a deep precipice and did not die.  He
seemed somehow to himself to be standing on one side, a little way off,
looking at a certain Almayer who was in great trouble.  Poor, poor
fellow!  Why doesn't he cut his throat?  He wished to encourage him; he
was very anxious to see him lying dead over that other corpse.  Why does
he not die and end this suffering?  He groaned aloud unconsciously and
started with affright at the sound of his own voice.  Was he going mad?
Terrified by the thought he turned away and ran towards his house
repeating to himself, I am not going mad; of course not, no, no, no!  He
tried to keep a firm hold of the idea.

Not mad, not mad.  He stumbled as he ran blindly up the steps repeating
fast and ever faster those words wherein seemed to lie his salvation.  He
saw Nina standing there, and wished to say something to her, but could
not remember what, in his extreme anxiety not to forget that he was not
going mad, which he still kept repeating mentally as he ran round the
table, till he stumbled against one of the arm-chairs and dropped into it
exhausted.  He sat staring wildly at Nina, still assuring himself
mentally of his own sanity and wondering why the girl shrank from him in
open-eyed alarm.  What was the matter with her?  This was foolish.  He
struck the table violently with his clenched fist and shouted hoarsely,
"Give me some gin!  Run!"  Then, while Nina ran off, he remained in the
chair, very still and quiet, astonished at the noise he had made.

Nina returned with a tumbler half filled with gin, and found her father
staring absently before him.  Almayer felt very tired now, as if he had
come from a long journey.  He felt as if he had walked miles and miles
that morning and now wanted to rest very much.  He took the tumbler with
a shaking hand, and as he drank his teeth chattered against the glass
which he drained and set down heavily on the table.  He turned his eyes
slowly towards Nina standing beside him, and said steadily--

"Now all is over, Nina.  He is dead, and I may as well burn all my
boats."

He felt very proud of being able to speak so calmly.  Decidedly he was
not going mad.  This certitude was very comforting, and he went on
talking about the finding of the body, listening to his own voice
complacently.  Nina stood quietly, her hand resting lightly on her
father's shoulder, her face unmoved, but every line of her features, the
attitude of her whole body expressing the most keen and anxious
attention.

"And so Dain is dead," she said coldly, when her father ceased speaking.

Almayer's elaborately calm demeanour gave way in a moment to an outburst
of violent indignation.

"You stand there as if you were only half alive, and talk to me," he
exclaimed angrily, "as if it was a matter of no importance.  Yes, he is
dead!  Do you understand?  Dead!  What do you care?  You never cared; you
saw me struggle, and work, and strive, unmoved; and my suffering you
could never see.  No, never.  You have no heart, and you have no mind, or
you would have understood that it was for you, for your happiness I was
working.  I wanted to be rich; I wanted to get away from here.  I wanted
to see white men bowing low before the power of your beauty and your
wealth.  Old as I am I wished to seek a strange land, a civilisation to
which I am a stranger, so as to find a new life in the contemplation of
your high fortunes, of your triumphs, of your happiness.  For that I bore
patiently the burden of work, of disappointment, of humiliation amongst
these savages here, and I had it all nearly in my grasp."

He looked at his daughter's attentive face and jumped to his feet
upsetting the chair.

"Do you hear?  I had it all there; so; within reach of my hand."

He paused, trying to keep down his rising anger, and failed.

"Have you no feeling?" he went on.  "Have you lived without hope?"  Nina's
silence exasperated him; his voice rose, although he tried to master his
feelings.

"Are you content to live in this misery and die in this wretched hole?
Say something, Nina; have you no sympathy?  Have you no word of comfort
for me?  I that loved you so."

He waited for a while for an answer, and receiving none shook his fist in
his daughter's face.

"I believe you are an idiot!" he yelled.

He looked round for the chair, picked it up and sat down stiffly.  His
anger was dead within him, and he felt ashamed of his outburst, yet
relieved to think that now he had laid clear before his daughter the
inner meaning of his life.  He thought so in perfect good faith, deceived
by the emotional estimate of his motives, unable to see the crookedness
of his ways, the unreality of his aims, the futility of his regrets.  And
now his heart was filled only with a great tenderness and love for his
daughter.  He wanted to see her miserable, and to share with her his
despair; but he wanted it only as all weak natures long for a
companionship in misfortune with beings innocent of its cause.  If she
suffered herself she would understand and pity him; but now she would
not, or could not, find one word of comfort or love for him in his dire
extremity.  The sense of his absolute loneliness came home to his heart
with a force that made him shudder.  He swayed and fell forward with his
face on the table, his arms stretched straight out, extended and rigid.
Nina made a quick movement towards her father and stood looking at the
grey head, on the broad shoulders shaken convulsively by the violence of
feelings that found relief at last in sobs and tears.

Nina sighed deeply and moved away from the table.  Her features lost the
appearance of stony indifference that had exasperated her father into his
outburst of anger and sorrow.  The expression of her face, now unseen by
her father, underwent a rapid change.  She had listened to Almayer's
appeal for sympathy, for one word of comfort, apparently indifferent, yet
with her breast torn by conflicting impulses raised unexpectedly by
events she had not foreseen, or at least did not expect to happen so
soon.  With her heart deeply moved by the sight of Almayer's misery,
knowing it in her power to end it with a word, longing to bring peace to
that troubled heart, she heard with terror the voice of her overpowering
love commanding her to be silent.  And she submitted after a short and
fierce struggle of her old self against the new principle of her life.
She wrapped herself up in absolute silence, the only safeguard against
some fatal admission.  She could not trust herself to make a sign, to
murmur a word for fear of saying too much; and the very violence of the
feelings that stirred the innermost recesses of her soul seemed to turn
her person into a stone.  The dilated nostrils and the flashing eyes were
the only signs of the storm raging within, and those signs of his
daughter's emotion Almayer did not see, for his sight was dimmed by self-
pity, by anger, and by despair.

Had Almayer looked at his daughter as she leant over the front rail of
the verandah he could have seen the expression of indifference give way
to a look of pain, and that again pass away, leaving the glorious beauty
of her face marred by deep-drawn lines of watchful anxiety.  The long
grass in the neglected courtyard stood very straight before her eyes in
the noonday heat.  From the river-bank there were voices and a shuffle of
bare feet approaching the house; Babalatchi could be heard giving
directions to Almayer's men, and Mrs. Almayer's subdued wailing became
audible as the small procession bearing the body of the drowned man and
headed by that sorrowful matron turned the corner of the house.
Babalatchi had taken the broken anklet off the man's leg, and now held it
in his hand as he moved by the side of the bearers, while Mahmat lingered
behind timidly, in the hopes of the promised reward.

"Lay him there," said Babalatchi to Almayer's men, pointing to a pile of
drying planks in front of the verandah.  "Lay him there.  He was a Kaffir
and the son of a dog, and he was the white man's friend.  He drank the
white man's strong water," he added, with affected horror.  "That I have
seen myself."

The men stretched out the broken limbs on two planks they had laid level,
while Mrs. Almayer covered the body with a piece of white cotton cloth,
and after whispering for some time with Babalatchi departed to her
domestic duties.  Almayer's men, after laying down their burden,
dispersed themselves in quest of shady spots wherein to idle the day
away.  Babalatchi was left alone by the corpse that laid rigid under the
white cloth in the bright sunshine.

Nina came down the steps and joined Babalatchi, who put his hand to his
forehead, and squatted down with great deference.

"You have a bangle there," said Nina, looking down on Babalatchi's
upturned face and into his solitary eye.

"I have, Mem Putih," returned the polite statesman.  Then turning towards
Mahmat he beckoned him closer, calling out, "Come here!"

Mahmat approached with some hesitation.  He avoided looking at Nina, but
fixed his eyes on Babalatchi.

"Now, listen," said Babalatchi, sharply.  "The ring and the anklet you
have seen, and you know they belonged to Dain the trader, and to no
other.  Dain returned last night in a canoe.  He spoke with the Rajah,
and in the middle of the night left to cross over to the white man's
house.  There was a great flood, and this morning you found him in the
river."

"By his feet I dragged him out," muttered Mahmat under his breath.  "Tuan
Babalatchi, there will be a recompense!" he exclaimed aloud.

Babalatchi held up the gold bangle before Mahmat's eyes.  "What I have
told you, Mahmat, is for all ears.  What I give you now is for your eyes
only.  Take."

Mahmat took the bangle eagerly and hid it in the folds of his
waist-cloth.  "Am I a fool to show this thing in a house with three women
in it?" he growled.  "But I shall tell them about Dain the trader, and
there will be talk enough."

He turned and went away, increasing his pace as soon as he was outside
Almayer's compound.

Babalatchi looked after him till he disappeared behind the bushes.  "Have
I done well, Mem Putih?" he asked, humbly addressing Nina.

"You have," answered Nina.  "The ring you may keep yourself."

Babalatchi touched his lips and forehead, and scrambled to his feet.  He
looked at Nina, as if expecting her to say something more, but Nina
turned towards the house and went up the steps, motioning him away with
her hand.

Babalatchi picked up his staff and prepared to go.  It was very warm, and
he did not care for the long pull to the Rajah's house.  Yet he must go
and tell the Rajah--tell of the event; of the change in his plans; of all
his suspicions.  He walked to the jetty and began casting off the rattan
painter of his canoe.

The broad expanse of the lower reach, with its shimmering surface dotted
by the black specks of the fishing canoes, lay before his eyes.  The
fishermen seemed to be racing.  Babalatchi paused in his work, and looked
on with sudden interest.  The man in the foremost canoe, now within hail
of the first houses of Sambir, laid in his paddle and stood up shouting--

"The boats! the boats!  The man-of-war's boats are coming!  They are
here!"

In a moment the settlement was again alive with people rushing to the
riverside.  The men began to unfasten their boats, the women stood in
groups looking towards the bend down the river.  Above the trees lining
the reach a slight puff of smoke appeared like a black stain on the
brilliant blue of the cloudless sky.

Babalatchi stood perplexed, the painter in his hand.  He looked down the
reach, then up towards Almayer's house, and back again at the river as if
undecided what to do.  At last he made the canoe fast again hastily, and
ran towards the house and up the steps of the verandah.

"Tuan!  Tuan!" he called, eagerly.  "The boats are coming.  The man-of-
war's boats.  You had better get ready.  The officers will come here, I
know."

Almayer lifted his head slowly from the table, and looked at him
stupidly.

"Mem Putih!" exclaimed Babalatchi to Nina, "look at him.  He does not
hear.  You must take care," he added meaningly.

Nina nodded to him with an uncertain smile, and was going to speak, when
a sharp report from the gun mounted in the bow of the steam launch that
was just then coming into view arrested the words on her parted lips.  The
smile died out, and was replaced by the old look of anxious attention.
From the hills far away the echo came back like a long-drawn and mournful
sigh, as if the land had sent it in answer to the voice of its masters.




CHAPTER VIII.


The news as to the identity of the body lying now in Almayer's compound
spread rapidly over the settlement.  During the forenoon most of the
inhabitants remained in the long street discussing the mysterious return
and the unexpected death of the man who had become known to them as the
trader.  His arrival during the north-east monsoon, his long sojourn in
their midst, his sudden departure with his brig, and, above all, the
mysterious appearance of the body, said to be his, amongst the logs, were
subjects to wonder at and to talk over and over again with undiminished
interest.  Mahmat moved from house to house and from group to group,
always ready to repeat his tale: how he saw the body caught by the sarong
in a forked log; how Mrs. Almayer coming, one of the first, at his cries,
recognised it, even before he had it hauled on shore; how Babalatchi
ordered him to bring it out of the water.  "By the feet I dragged him in,
and there was no head," exclaimed Mahmat, "and how could the white man's
wife know who it was?  She was a witch, it was well known.  And did you
see how the white man himself ran away at the sight of the body?  Like a
deer he ran!"  And here Mahmat imitated Almayer's long strides, to the
great joy of the beholders.  And for all his trouble he had nothing.  The
ring with the green stone Tuan Babalatchi kept.  "Nothing!  Nothing!"  He
spat down at his feet in sign of disgust, and left that group to seek
further on a fresh audience.

The news spreading to the furthermost parts of the settlement found out
Abdulla in the cool recess of his godown, where he sat overlooking his
Arab clerks and the men loading and unloading the up-country canoes.
Reshid, who was busy on the jetty, was summoned into his uncle's presence
and found him, as usual, very calm and even cheerful, but very much
surprised.  The rumour of the capture or destruction of Dain's brig had
reached the Arab's ears three days before from the sea-fishermen and
through the dwellers on the lower reaches of the river.  It had been
passed up-stream from neighbour to neighbour till Bulangi, whose clearing
was nearest to the settlement, had brought that news himself to Abdulla
whose favour he courted.  But rumour also spoke of a fight and of Dain's
death on board his own vessel.  And now all the settlement talked of
Dain's visit to the Rajah and of his death when crossing the river in the
dark to see Almayer.

They could not understand this.  Reshid thought that it was very strange.
He felt uneasy and doubtful.  But Abdulla, after the first shock of
surprise, with the old age's dislike for solving riddles, showed a
becoming resignation.  He remarked that the man was dead now at all
events, and consequently no more dangerous.  Where was the use to wonder
at the decrees of Fate, especially if they were propitious to the True
Believers?  And with a pious ejaculation to Allah the Merciful, the
Compassionate, Abdulla seemed to regard the incident as closed for the
present.

Not so Reshid.  He lingered by his uncle, pulling thoughtfully his neatly
trimmed beard.

"There are many lies," he murmured.  "He has been dead once before, and
came to life to die again now.  The Dutch will be here before many days
and clamour for the man.  Shall I not believe my eyes sooner than the
tongues of women and idle men?"

"They say that the body is being taken to Almayer's compound," said
Abdulla.  "If you want to go there you must go before the Dutch arrive
here.  Go late.  It should not be said that we have been seen inside that
man's enclosure lately."

Reshid assented to the truth of this last remark and left his uncle's
side.  He leaned against the lintel of the big doorway and looked idly
across the courtyard through the open gate on to the main road of the
settlement.  It lay empty, straight, and yellow under the flood of light.
In the hot noontide the smooth trunks of palm trees, the outlines of the
houses, and away there at the other end of the road the roof of Almayer's
house visible over the bushes on the dark background of forest, seemed to
quiver in the heat radiating from the steaming earth.  Swarms of yellow
butterflies rose, and settled to rise again in short flights before
Reshid's half-closed eyes.  From under his feet arose the dull hum of
insects in the long grass of the courtyard.  He looked on sleepily.

From one of the side paths amongst the houses a woman stepped out on the
road, a slight girlish figure walking under the shade of a large tray
balanced on its head.  The consciousness of something moving stirred
Reshid's half-sleeping senses into a comparative wakefulness.  He
recognised Taminah, Bulangi's slave-girl, with her tray of cakes for
sale--an apparition of daily recurrence and of no importance whatever.
She was going towards Almayer's house.  She could be made useful.  He
roused himself up and ran towards the gate calling out, "Taminah O!"  The
girl stopped, hesitated, and came back slowly.

Reshid waited, signing to her impatiently to come nearer.

When near Reshid Taminah stood with downcast eyes.  Reshid looked at her
a while before he asked--

"Are you going to Almayer's house?  They say in the settlement that Dain
the trader, he that was found drowned this morning, is lying in the white
man's campong."

"I have heard this talk," whispered Taminah; "and this morning by the
riverside I saw the body.  Where it is now I do not know."

"So you have seen it?" asked Reshid, eagerly.  "Is it Dain?  You have
seen him many times.  You would know him."

The girl's lips quivered and she remained silent for a while, breathing
quickly.

"I have seen him, not a long time ago," she said at last.  "The talk is
true; he is dead.  What do you want from me, Tuan?  I must go."

Just then the report of the gun fired on board the steam launch was
heard, interrupting Reshid's reply.  Leaving the girl he ran to the
house, and met in the courtyard Abdulla coming towards the gate.

"The Orang Blanda are come," said Reshid, "and now we shall have our
reward."

Abdulla shook his head doubtfully.  "The white men's rewards are long in
coming," he said.  "White men are quick in anger and slow in gratitude.
We shall see."

He stood at the gate stroking his grey beard and listening to the distant
cries of greeting at the other end of the settlement.  As Taminah was
turning to go he called her back.

"Listen, girl," he said: "there will be many white men in Almayer's
house.  You shall be there selling your cakes to the men of the sea.  What
you see and what you hear you may tell me.  Come here before the sun sets
and I will give you a blue handkerchief with red spots.  Now go, and
forget not to return."

He gave her a push with the end of his long staff as she was going away
and made her stumble.

"This slave is very slow," he remarked to his nephew, looking after the
girl with great disfavour.

Taminah walked on, her tray on the head, her eyes fixed on the ground.
From the open doors of the houses were heard, as she passed, friendly
calls inviting her within for business purposes, but she never heeded
them, neglecting her sales in the preoccupation of intense thinking.
Since the very early morning she had heard much, she had also seen much
that filled her heart with a joy mingled with great suffering and fear.
Before the dawn, before she left Bulangi's house to paddle up to Sambir
she had heard voices outside the house when all in it but herself were
asleep.  And now, with her knowledge of the words spoken in the darkness,
she held in her hand a life and carried in her breast a great sorrow.  Yet
from her springy step, erect figure, and face veiled over by the everyday
look of apathetic indifference, nobody could have guessed of the double
load she carried under the visible burden of the tray piled up high with
cakes manufactured by the thrifty hands of Bulangi's wives.  In that
supple figure straight as an arrow, so graceful and free in its walk,
behind those soft eyes that spoke of nothing but of unconscious
resignation, there slept all feelings and all passions, all hopes and all
fears, the curse of life and the consolation of death.  And she knew
nothing of it all.  She lived like the tall palms amongst whom she was
passing now, seeking the light, desiring the sunshine, fearing the storm,
unconscious of either.  The slave had no hope, and knew of no change.  She
knew of no other sky, no other water, no other forest, no other world, no
other life.  She had no wish, no hope, no love, no fear except of a blow,
and no vivid feeling but that of occasional hunger, which was seldom, for
Bulangi was rich and rice was plentiful in the solitary house in his
clearing.  The absence of pain and hunger was her happiness, and when she
felt unhappy she was simply tired, more than usual, after the day's
labour.  Then in the hot nights of the south-west monsoon she slept
dreamlessly under the bright stars on the platform built outside the
house and over the river.  Inside they slept too: Bulangi by the door;
his wives further in; the children with their mothers.  She could hear
their breathing; Bulangi's sleepy voice; the sharp cry of a child soon
hushed with tender words.  And she closed her eyes to the murmur of the
water below her, to the whisper of the warm wind above, ignorant of the
never-ceasing life of that tropical nature that spoke to her in vain with
the thousand faint voices of the near forest, with the breath of tepid
wind; in the heavy scents that lingered around her head; in the white
wraiths of morning mist that hung over her in the solemn hush of all
creation before the dawn.

Such had been her existence before the coming of the brig with the
strangers.  She remembered well that time; the uproar in the settlement,
the never-ending wonder, the days and nights of talk and excitement.  She
remembered her own timidity with the strange men, till the brig moored to
the bank became in a manner part of the settlement, and the fear wore off
in the familiarity of constant intercourse.  The call on board then
became part of her daily round.  She walked hesitatingly up the slanting
planks of the gangway amidst the encouraging shouts and more or less
decent jokes of the men idling over the bulwarks.  There she sold her
wares to those men that spoke so loud and carried themselves so free.
There was a throng, a constant coming and going; calls interchanged,
orders given and executed with shouts; the rattle of blocks, the flinging
about of coils of rope.  She sat out of the way under the shade of the
awning, with her tray before her, the veil drawn well over her face,
feeling shy amongst so many men.  She smiled at all buyers, but spoke to
none, letting their jests pass with stolid unconcern.  She heard many
tales told around her of far-off countries, of strange customs, of events
stranger still.  Those men were brave; but the most fearless of them
spoke of their chief with fear.  Often the man they called their master
passed before her, walking erect and indifferent, in the pride of youth,
in the flash of rich dress, with a tinkle of gold ornaments, while
everybody stood aside watching anxiously for a movement of his lips,
ready to do his bidding.  Then all her life seemed to rush into her eyes,
and from under her veil she gazed at him, charmed, yet fearful to attract
attention.  One day he noticed her and asked, "Who is that girl?"  "A
slave, Tuan!  A girl that sells cakes," a dozen voices replied together.
She rose in terror to run on shore, when he called her back; and as she
stood trembling with head hung down before him, he spoke kind words,
lifting her chin with his hand and looking into her eyes with a smile.
"Do not be afraid," he said.  He never spoke to her any more.  Somebody
called out from the river bank; he turned away and forgot her existence.
Taminah saw Almayer standing on the shore with Nina on his arm.  She
heard Nina's voice calling out gaily, and saw Dain's face brighten with
joy as he leaped on shore.  She hated the sound of that voice ever since.

After that day she left off visiting Almayer's compound, and passed the
noon hours under the shade of the brig awning.  She watched for his
coming with heart beating quicker and quicker, as he approached, into a
wild tumult of newly-aroused feelings of joy and hope and fear that died
away with Dain's retreating figure, leaving her tired out, as if after a
struggle, sitting still for a long time in dreamy languor.  Then she
paddled home slowly in the afternoon, often letting her canoe float with
the lazy stream in the quiet backwater of the river.  The paddle hung
idle in the water as she sat in the stern, one hand supporting her chin,
her eyes wide open, listening intently to the whispering of her heart
that seemed to swell at last into a song of extreme sweetness.  Listening
to that song she husked the rice at home; it dulled her ears to the
shrill bickerings of Bulangi's wives, to the sound of angry reproaches
addressed to herself.  And when the sun was near its setting she walked
to the bathing-place and heard it as she stood on the tender grass of the
low bank, her robe at her feet, and looked at the reflection of her
figure on the glass-like surface of the creek.  Listening to it she
walked slowly back, her wet hair hanging over her shoulders; laying down
to rest under the bright stars, she closed her eyes to the murmur of the
water below, of the warm wind above; to the voice of nature speaking
through the faint noises of the great forest, and to the song of her own
heart.

She heard, but did not understand, and drank in the dreamy joy of her new
existence without troubling about its meaning or its end, till the full
consciousness of life came to her through pain and anger.  And she
suffered horribly the first time she saw Nina's long canoe drift silently
past the sleeping house of Bulangi, bearing the two lovers into the white
mist of the great river.  Her jealousy and rage culminated into a
paroxysm of physical pain that left her lying panting on the river bank,
in the dumb agony of a wounded animal.  But she went on moving patiently
in the enchanted circle of slavery, going through her task day after day
with all the pathos of the grief she could not express, even to herself,
locked within her breast.  She shrank from Nina as she would have shrunk
from the sharp blade of a knife cutting into her flesh, but she kept on
visiting the brig to feed her dumb, ignorant soul on her own despair.  She
saw Dain many times.  He never spoke, he never looked.  Could his eyes
see only one woman's image?  Could his ears hear only one woman's voice?
He never noticed her; not once.

And then he went away.  She saw him and Nina for the last time on that
morning when Babalatchi, while visiting his fish baskets, had his
suspicions of the white man's daughter's love affair with Dain confirmed
beyond the shadow of doubt.  Dain disappeared, and Taminah's heart, where
lay useless and barren the seeds of all love and of all hate, the
possibilities of all passions and of all sacrifices, forgot its joys and
its sufferings when deprived of the help of the senses.  Her half-formed,
savage mind, the slave of her body--as her body was the slave of
another's will--forgot the faint and vague image of the ideal that had
found its beginning in the physical promptings of her savage nature.  She
dropped back into the torpor of her former life and found
consolation--even a certain kind of happiness--in the thought that now
Nina and Dain were separated, probably for ever.  He would forget.  This
thought soothed the last pangs of dying jealousy that had nothing now to
feed upon, and Taminah found peace.  It was like the dreary tranquillity
of a desert, where there is peace only because there is no life.

And now he had returned.  She had recognised his voice calling aloud in
the night for Bulangi.  She had crept out after her master to listen
closer to the intoxicating sound.  Dain was there, in a boat, talking to
Bulangi.  Taminah, listening with arrested breath, heard another voice.
The maddening joy, that only a second before she thought herself
incapable of containing within her fast-beating heart, died out, and left
her shivering in the old anguish of physical pain that she had suffered
once before at the sight of Dain and Nina.  Nina spoke now, ordering and
entreating in turns, and Bulangi was refusing, expostulating, at last
consenting.  He went in to take a paddle from the heap lying behind the
door.  Outside the murmur of two voices went on, and she caught a word
here and there.  She understood that he was fleeing from white men, that
he was seeking a hiding-place, that he was in some danger.  But she heard
also words which woke the rage of jealousy that had been asleep for so
many days in her bosom.  Crouching low on the mud in the black darkness
amongst the piles, she heard the whisper in the boat that made light of
toil, of privation, of danger, of life itself, if in exchange there could
be but a short moment of close embrace, a look from the eyes, the feel of
light breath, the touch of soft lips.  So spoke Dain as he sat in the
canoe holding Nina's hands while waiting for Bulangi's return; and
Tam

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