An Outcast of the Islands by Joseph Conrad (page 6)

his head thrown up, his arms swinging about wildly; lean, ragged, disfigured; a tall madman making a great disturbance about something invisible; a being absurd, repulsive, pathetic, and droll. Lingard, who was looking down as if absorbed in deep thought, gave him a quick glance from under his eyebrows: Aissa stood with clasped hands. At the other end of the courtyard the old woman, like a vague and decrepit apparition, rose noiselessly to look, then sank down again with a stealthy movement and crouched low over the small glow of the fire. Willems’ voice filled the enclosure, rising louder with every word, and then, sud- denly, at its very loudest, stopped short–like water stops running from an over-turned vessel. As soon as it had ceased the thunder seemed to take up the burden in a low growl coming from the inland hills. The noise approached in confused mutterings which kept on in- creasing, swelling into a roar that came nearer, rushed down the river, passed close in a tearing crash–and

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instantly sounded faint, dying away in monotonous and dull repetitions amongst the endless sinuosities of the lower reaches. Over the great forests, over all the innumerable people of unstirring trees–over all that living people immense, motionless, and mute–the silence, that had rushed in on the track of the passing tumult, remained suspended as deep and complete as if it had never been disturbed from the beginning of remote ages. Then, through it, after a time, came to Lingard’s ears the voice of the running river: a voice low, discreet, and sad, like the persistent and gentle voices that speak of the past in the silence of dreams. He felt a great emptiness in his heart. It seemed to him that there was within his breast a great space without any light, where his thoughts wandered for- lornly, unable to escape, unable to rest, unable to die, to vanish–and to relieve him from the fearful oppres- sion of their existence. Speech, action, anger, for- giveness, all appeared to him alike useless and vain, appeared to him unsatisfactory, not worth the effort of hand or brain that was needed to give them effect. He could not see why he should not remain standing there, without ever doing anything, to the end of time. He felt something, something like a heavy chain, that held him there. This wouldn’t do. He backed away a little from Willems and Aissa, leaving them close together, then stopped and looked at both. The man and the woman appeared to him much further than they really were. He had made only about three steps backward, but he believed for a moment that an- other step would take him out of earshot for ever. They appeared to him slightly under life size, and with a great cleanness of outlines, like figures carved with great pre- cision of detail and highly finished by a skilful hand. He pulled himself together. The strong consciousness of his

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own personality came back to him. He had a notion of surveying them from a great and inaccessible height. He said slowly: “You have been possessed of a devil.” “Yes,” answered Willems gloomily, and looking at Aissa. “Isn’t it pretty?”
“I’ve heard this kind of talk before,” said Lingard, in a scornful tone; then paused, and went on steadily after a while: “I regret nothing. I picked you up by the waterside, like a starving cat–by God. I regret nothing; nothing that I have done. Abdulla–twenty others–no doubt Hudig himself, were after me. That’s business–for them. But that you should . . . Money belongs to him who picks it up and is strong enough to keep it–but this thing was different. It was part of my life. . . . I am an old fool.” He was. The breath of his words, of the very words he spoke, fanned the spark of divine folly in his breast, the spark that made him–the hard-headed, heavy-handed adventurer–stand out from the crowd, from the sordid, from the joyous, unscrupulous, and noisy crowd of men that were so much like himself. Willems said hurriedly: “It wasn’t me. The evil was not in me, Captain Lingard.”
“And where else confound you! Where else?” interrupted Lingard, raising his voice. “Did you ever see me cheat and lie and steal? Tell me that. Did you? Hey? I wonder where in perdition you came from when I found you under my feet. . . . No matter. You will do no more harm.”
Willems moved nearer, gazing upon him anxiously. Lingard went on with distinct deliberation– “What did you expect when you asked me to see you? What? You know me. I am Lingard. You lived with me. You’ve heard men speak. You knew what you had done. Well! What did you expect?”

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“How can I know?” groaned Willems, wringing his hands; “I was alone in that infernal savage crowd. I was delivered into their hands. After the thing was done, I felt so lost and weak that I would have called the devil himself to my aid if it had been any good–if he hadn’t put in all his work already. In the whole world there was only one man that had ever cared for me. Only one white man. You! Hate is better than being alone! Death is better! I expected . . . anything. Something to expect. Something to take me out of this. Out of her sight!”
He laughed. His laugh seemed to be torn out from him against his will, seemed to be brought violently on the surface from under his bitterness, his self-contempt, from under his despairing wonder at his own nature. “When I think that when I first knew her it seemed to me that my whole life wouldn’t be enough to . . . And now when I look at her! She did it all. I must have been mad. I was mad. Every time I look at her I remember my madness. It frightens me. . . . And when I think that of all my life, of all my past, of all my future, of my intelligence, of my work, there is nothing left but she, the cause of my ruin, and you whom I have mortally offended . . .”
He hid his face for a moment in his hands, and when he took them away he had lost the appearance of com- parative calm and gave way to a wild distress. “Captain Lingard . . . anything . . . a deserted island . . . anywhere . . . I prom- ise . . .”
“Shut up!” shouted Lingard, roughly. He became dumb, suddenly, completely. The wan light of the clouded morning retired slowly from the courtyard, from the clearings, from the river, as if it had gone unwillingly to hide in the enigmatical

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solitudes of the gloomy and silent forests. The clouds over their heads thickened into a low vault of uniform blackness. The air was still and inexpressibly oppres- sive. Lingard unbuttoned his jacket, flung it wide open and, inclining his body sideways a little, wiped his fore- head with his hand, which he jerked sharply afterwards. Then he looked at Willems and said–
“No promise of yours is any good to me. I am going to take your conduct into my own hands. Pay attention to what I am going to say. You are my prisoner.”
Willems’ head moved imperceptibly; then he became rigid and still. He seemed not to breathe. “You shall stay here,” continued Lingard, with sombre deliberation. “You are not fit to go amongst people. Who could suspect, who could guess, who could imagine what’s in you? I couldn’t! You are my mistake. I shall hide you here. If I let you out you would go amongst unsuspecting men, and lie, and steal, and cheat for a little money or for some woman. I don’t care about shooting you. It would be the safest way though. But I won’t. Do not expect me to forgive you. To forgive one must have been angry and become contemptuous, and there is nothing in me now–no anger, no contempt, no disap- pointment. To me you are not Willems, the man I befriended and helped through thick and thin, and thought much of . . . You are not a human being that may be destroyed or forgiven. You are a bitter thought, a something without a body and that must be hidden . . . You are my shame.”
He ceased and looked slowly round. How dark it was! It seemed to him that the light was dying pre- maturely out of the world and that the air was already dead.

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“Of course,” he went on, “I shall see to it that you don’t starve.”
“You don’t mean to say that I must live here, Cap- tain Lingard?” said Willems, in a kind of mechanical voice without any inflections.
“Did you ever hear me say something I did not mean?” asked Lingard. “You said you didn’t want to die here–well, you must live . . . Unless you change your mind,” he added, as if in involuntary afterthought.
He looked at Willems narrowly, then shook his head.
“You are alone,” he went on. “Nothing can help you. Nobody will. You are neither white nor brown. You have no colour as you have no heart. Your ac- complices have abandoned you to me because I am still somebody to be reckoned with. You are alone but for that woman there. You say you did this for her. Well, you have her.”
Willems mumbled something, and then suddenly caught his hair with both his hands and remained standing so. Aissa, who had been looking at him, turned to Lingard.
“What did you say, Rajah Laut?” she cried. There was a slight stir amongst the filmy threads of her disordered hair, the bushes by the river sides trembled, the big tree nodded precipitately over them with an abrupt rustle, as if waking with a start from a troubled sleep–and the breath of hot breeze passed, light, rapid, and scorching, under the clouds that whirled round, unbroken but undulating, like a rest- less phantom of a sombre sea.
Lingard looked at her pityingly before he said– “I have told him that he must live here all his life . . . and with you.”

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The sun seemed to have gone out at last like a flickering light away up beyond the clouds, and in the stifling gloom of the courtyard the three figures stood colourless and shadowy, as if surrounded by a black and superheated mist. Aissa looked at Willems, who remained still, as though he had been changed into stone in the very act of tearing his hair. Then she turned her head towards Lingard and shouted– “You lie! You lie! . . . White man. Like you all do. You . . . whom Abdulla made small. You lie!”
Her words rang out shrill and venomous with her secret scorn, with her overpowering desire to wound regardless of consequences; in her woman’s reckless desire to cause suffering at any cost, to cause it by the sound of her own voice–by her own voice, that would carry the poison of her thought into the hated heart. Willems let his hands fall, and began to mumble again. Lingard turned his ear towards him instinc- tively, caught something that sounded like “Very well”–then some more mumbling–then a sigh. “As far as the rest of the world is concerned,” said Lingard, after waiting for awhile in an attentive at- titude, “your life is finished. Nobody will be able to throw any of your villainies in my teeth; nobody will be able to point at you and say, ‘Here goes a scoundrel of Lingard’s up-bringing.’ You are buried here.” “And you think that I will stay . . . that I will submit?” exclaimed Willems, as if he had suddenly recovered the power of speech.
“You needn’t stay here–on this spot,” said Lingard, drily. “There are the forests–and here is the river. You may swim. Fifteen miles up, or forty down. At one end you will meet Almayer, at the other the sea. Take your choice.”

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He burst into a short, joyless laugh, then added with severe gravity–
“There is also another way.”
“If you want to drive my soul into damnation by trying to drive me to suicide you will not succeed,” said Willems in wild excitement. “I will live. I shall repent. I may escape. . . . Take that woman away–she is sin.”
A hooked dart of fire tore in two the darkness of the distant horizon and lit up the gloom of the earth with a dazzling and ghastly flame. Then the thunder was heard far away, like an incredibly enormous voice muttering menaces.
Lingard said–
“I don’t care what happens, but I may tell you that without that woman your life is not worth much –not twopence. There is a fellow here who . . . and Abdulla himself wouldn’t stand on any ceremony. Think of that! And then she won’t go.”
He began, even while he spoke, to walk slowly down towards the little gate. He didn’t look, but he felt as sure that Willems was following him as if he had been leading him by a string. Directly he had passed through the wicket-gate into the big courtyard he heard a voice, behind his back, saying–
“I think she was right. I ought to have shot you. I couldn’t have been worse off.”
“Time yet,” answered Lingard, without stopping or looking back. “But, you see, you can’t. There is not even that in you.”
“Don’t provoke me, Captain Lingard,” cried Wil- lems.
Lingard turned round sharply. Willems and Aissa stopped. Another forked flash of lightning split up the clouds overhead, and threw upon their faces a sudden

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burst of light–a blaze violent, sinister and fleeting; and in the same instant they were deafened by a near, single crash of thunder, which was followed by a rushing noise, like a frightened sigh of the startled earth.
“Provoke you!” said the old adventurer, as soon as he could make himself heard. “Provoke you! Hey! What’s there in you to provoke? What do I care?” “It is easy to speak like that when you know that in the whole world–in the whole world–I have no friend,” said Willems.
“Whose fault?” said Lingard, sharply. Their voices, after the deep and tremendous noise, sounded to them very unsatisfactory–thin and frail, like the voices of pigmies–and they became suddenly silent, as if on that account. From up the courtyard Lingard’s boatmen came down and passed them, keep- ing step in a single file, their paddles on shoulder, and holding their heads straight with their eyes fixed on the river. Ali, who was walking last, stopped before Lingard, very stiff and upright. He said– “That one-eyed Babalatchi is gone, with all his women. He took everything. All the pots and boxes. Big. Heavy. Three boxes.”
He grinned as if the thing had been amusing, then added with an appearance of anxious concern, “Rain coming.”
“We return,” said Lingard. “Make ready.” “Aye, aye, sir!” ejaculated Ali with precision, and moved on. He had been quartermaster with Lingard before making up his mind to stay in Sambir as Al- mayer’s head man. He strutted towards the landing- place thinking proudly that he was not like those other ignorant boatmen, and knew how to answer properly the very greatest of white captains.

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“You have misunderstood me from the first, Captain Lingard,” said Willems.
“Have I? It’s all right, as long as there is no mis- take about my meaning,” answered Lingard, strolling slowly to the landing-place. Willems followed him, and Aissa followed Willems.
Two hands were extended to help Lingard in embark- ing. He stepped cautiously and heavily into the long and narrow canoe, and sat in the canvas folding-chair that had been placed in the middle. He leaned back and turned his head to the two figures that stood on the bank a little above him. Aissa’s eyes were fastened on his face in a visible impatience to see him gone. Wil- lems’ look went straight above the canoe, straight at the forest on the other side of the river.
“All right, Ali,” said Lingard, in a low voice. A slight stir animated the faces, and a faint murmur ran along the line of paddlers. The foremost man pushed with the point of his paddle, canted the fore end out of the dead water into the current; and the canoe fell rapidly off before the rush of brown water, the stern rubbing gently against the low bank. “We shall meet again, Captain Lingard!” cried Willems, in an unsteady voice.
“Never!” said Lingard, turning half round in his chair to look at Willems. His fierce red eyes glittered remorselessly over the high back of his seat. “Must cross the river. Water less quick over there,” said Ali.
He pushed in his turn now with all his strength, throwing his body recklessly right out over the stern. Then he recovered himself just in time into the squat- ting attitude of a monkey perched on a high shelf, and shouted: “Dayong!”
The paddles struck the water together. The canoe

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darted forward and went on steadily crossing the river with a sideways motion made up of its own speed and the downward drift of the current.
Lingard watched the shore astern. The woman shook her hand at him, and then squatted at the feet of the man who stood motionless. After a while she got up and stood beside him, reaching up to his head–and Lingard saw then that she had wetted some part of her covering and was trying to wash the dried blood off the man’s immovable face, which did not seem to know anything about it. Lingard turned away and threw himself back in his chair, stretching his legs out with a sigh of fatigue. His head fell forward; and under his red face the white beard lay fan-like on his breast, the ends of fine long hairs all astir in the faint draught made by the rapid motion of the craft that carried him away from his prisoner–from the only thing in his life he wished to hide.
In its course across the river the canoe came into the line of Willems’ sight and his eyes caught the image, followed it eagerly as it glided, small but dis- tinct, on the dark background of the forest. He could see plainly the figure of the man sitting in the middle. All his life he had felt that man behind his back, a reas- suring presence ready with help, with commendation, with advice; friendly in reproof, enthusiastic in appro- bation; a man inspiring confidence by his strength, by his fearlessness, by the very weakness of his simple heart. And now that man was going away. He must call him back.
He shouted, and his words, which he wanted to throw across the river, seemed to fall helplessly at his feet. Aissa put her hand on his arm in a restraining attempt, but he shook it off. He wanted to call back his very life that was going away from him. He shouted

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again–and this time he did not even hear himself. No use. He would never return. And he stood in sullen silence looking at the white figure over there, lying back in the chair in the middle of the boat; a figure that struck him suddenly as very terrible, heartless and astonishing, with its unnatural appearance of running over the water in an attitude of languid repose.
For a time nothing on earth stirred, seemingly, but the canoe, which glided up-stream with a motion so even and smooth that it did not convey any sense of movement. Overhead, the massed clouds appeared solid and steady as if held there in a powerful grip, but on their uneven surface there was a continuous and trembling glimmer, a faint reflection of the distant lightning from the thunderstorm that had broken al- ready on the coast and was working its way up the river with low and angry growls. Willems looked on, as motionless as everything round him and above him. Only his eyes seemed to live, as they followed the canoe on its course that carried it away from him, steadily, unhesitatingly, finally, as if it were going, not up the great river into the momentous excitement of Sambir, but straight into the past, into the past crowded yet empty, like an old cemetery full of neglected graves, where lie dead hopes that never return.
From time to time he felt on his face the passing, warm touch of an immense breath coming from beyond the forest, like the short panting of an oppressed world. Then the heavy air round him was pierced by a sharp gust of wind, bringing with it the fresh, damp feel of the falling rain; and all the innumerable tree-tops of the forests swayed to the left and sprang back again in a tumultuous balancing of nodding branches and shudder- ing leaves. A light frown ran over the river, the clouds stirred slowly, changing their aspect but not their place,

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as if they had turned ponderously over; and when the sudden movement had died out in a quickened tremor of the slenderest twigs, there was a short period of for- midable immobility above and below, during which the voice of the thunder was heard, speaking in a sustained, emphatic and vibrating roll, with violent louder bursts of crashing sound, like a wrathful and threatening dis- course of an angry god. For a moment it died out, and then another gust of wind passed, driving before it a white mist which filled the space with a cloud of water- dust that hid suddenly from Willems the canoe, the forests, the river itself; that woke him up from his numbness in a forlorn shiver, that made him look round despairingly to see nothing but the whirling drift of rain spray before the freshening breeze, while through it the heavy big drops fell about him with sonorous and rapid beats upon the dry earth. He made a few hurried steps up the courtyard and was arrested by an immense sheet of water that fell all at once on him, fell sudden and overwhelming from the clouds, cutting his respiration, streaming over his head, clinging to him, running down his body, off his arms, off his legs. He stood gasping while the water beat him in a vertical downpour, drove on him slanting in squalls, and he felt the drops striking him from above, from every- where; drops thick, pressed and dashing at him as if flung from all sides by a mob of infuriated hands. From under his feet a great vapour of broken water floated up, he felt the ground become soft–melt under him–and saw the water spring out from the dry earth to meet the water that fell from the sombre heaven. An insane dread took possession of him, the dread of all that water around him, of the water that ran down the courtyard towards him, of the water that pressed him on every side, of the slanting water that drove across his face in

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wavering sheets which gleamed pale red with the flicker of lightning streaming through them, as if fire and water were falling together, monstrously mixed, upon the stunned earth.
He wanted to run away, but when he moved it was to slide about painfully and slowly upon that earth which had become mud so suddenly under his feet. He fought his way up the courtyard like a man pushing through a crowd, his head down, one shoulder forward, stopping often, and sometimes carried back a pace or two in the rush of water which his heart was not stout enough to face. Aissa followed him step by step, stopping when he stopped, recoiling with him, moving forward with him in his toilsome way up the slippery declivity of the courtyard, of that courtyard, from which everything seemed to have been swept away by the first rush of the mighty downpour. They could see nothing. The tree, the bushes, the house, and the fences–all had disappeared in the thickness of the fall- ing rain. Their hair stuck, streaming, to their heads; their clothing clung to them, beaten close to their bodies; water ran off them, off their heads over their shoulders. They moved, patient, upright, slow and dark, in the gleam clear or fiery of the falling drops, under the roll of unceasing thunder, like two wandering ghosts of the drowned that, condemned to haunt the water for ever, had come up from the river to look at the world under a deluge.
On the left the tree seemed to step out to meet them, appearing vaguely, high, motionless and patient; with a rustling plaint of its innumerable leaves through which every drop of water tore its separate way with cruel haste. And then, to the right, the house surged up in the mist, very black, and clamorous with the quick patter of rain on its high-pitched roof above the

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steady splash of the water running off the eaves. Down the plankway leading to the door flowed a thin and pellucid stream, and when Willems began his ascent it broke over his foot as if he were going up a steep ravine in the bed of a rapid and shallow torrent. Behind his heels two streaming smudges of mud stained for an instant the purity of the rushing water, and then he splashed his way up with a spurt and stood on the bamboo platform before the open door under the shelter of the overhanging eaves– under shelter at last!
A low moan ending in a broken and plaintive mutter arrested Willems on the threshold. He peered round in the half-light under the roof and saw the old woman crouching close to the wall in a shapeless heap, and while he looked he felt a touch of two arms on his shoulders. Aissa! He had forgotten her. He turned, and she clasped him round the neck instantly, pressing close to him as if afraid of violence or escape. He stiffened himself in repulsion, in horror, in the myster- ious revolt of his heart; while she clung to him–clung to him as if he were a refuge from misery, from storm, from weariness, from fear, from despair; and it was on the part of that being an embrace terrible, enraged and mournful, in which all her strength went out to make him captive, to hold him for ever.
He said nothing. He looked into her eyes while he struggled with her fingers about the nape of his neck, and suddenly he tore her hands apart, holding her arms up in a strong grip of her wrists, and bending his swol- len face close over hers, he said–
“It is all your doing. You . . .” She did not understand him–not a word. He spoke in the language of his people–of his people that know no mercy and no shame. And he was angry.

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Alas! he was always angry now, and always speaking words that she could not understand. She stood in silence, looking at him through her patient eyes, while he shook her arms a little and then flung them down. “Don’t follow me!” he shouted. “I want to be alone –I mean to be left alone!”
He went in, leaving the door open. She did not move. What need to understand the words when they are spoken in such a voice? In that voice which did not seem to be his voice–his voice when he spoke by the brook, when he was never angry and always smiling! Her eyes were fixed upon the dark doorway, but her hands strayed mechanically upwards; she took up all her hair, and, inclining her head slightly over her shoulder, wrung out the long black tresses, twisting them persistently, while she stood, sad and absorbed, like one listening to an inward voice– the voice of bitter, of unavailing regret. The thunder had ceased, the wind had died out, and the rain fell perpendicular and steady through a great pale clearness –the light of remote sun coming victorious from amongst the dissolving blackness of the clouds. She stood near the doorway. He was there–alone in the gloom of the dwelling. He was there. He spoke not. What was in his mind now? What fear? What de- sire? Not the desire of her as in the days when he used to smile . . . How could she know? . . . A sigh coming from the bottom of her heart, flew out into the world through her parted lips. A sigh faint, profound, and broken; a sigh full of pain and fear, like the sigh of those who are about to face the unknown: to face it in loneliness, in doubt, and without hope. She let go her hair, that fell scattered over her shoulders like a funeral veil, and she sank down suddenly by the door. Her hands clasped her ankles; she rested her

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head on her drawn-up knees, and remained still, very still, under the streaming mourning of her hair. She was thinking of him; of the days by the brook; she was thinking of all that had been their love–and she sat in the abandoned posture of those who sit weeping by the dead, of those who watch and mourn over a corpse.

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PART V

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CHAPTER ONE

ALMAYER propped, alone on the verandah of his house, with both his elbows on the table, and holding his head between his hands, stared before him, away over the stretch of sprouting young grass in his courtyard, and over the short jetty with its cluster of small canoes, amongst which his big whale-boat floated high, like a white mother of all that dark and aquatic brood. He stared on the river, past the schooner anchored in mid-stream, past the forests of the left bank; he stared through and past the illusion of the material world. The sun was sinking. Under the sky was stretched a network of white threads, a network fine and close- meshed, where here and there were caught thicker white vapours of globular shape; and to the eastward, above the ragged barrier of the forests, surged the summits of a chain of great clouds, growing bigger slowly, in imperceptible motion, as if careful not to dis- turb the glowing stillness of the earth and of the sky. Abreast of the house the river was empty but for the motionless schooner. Higher up, a solitary log came out from the bend above and went on drifting slowly down the straight reach: a dead and wandering tree going out to its grave in the sea, between two ranks of trees motionless and living.
And Almayer sat, his face in his hands, looking on and hating all this: the muddy river; the faded blue of the sky; the black log passing by on its first and last voyage; the green sea of leaves–the sea that glowed shimmered, and stirred above the uniform and

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impenetrable gloom of the forests–the joyous sea of living green powdered with the brilliant dust of oblique sunrays. He hated all this; he begrudged every day –every minute–of his life spent amongst all these things; he begrudged it bitterly, angrily, with enraged and immense regret, like a miser compelled to give up some of his treasure to a near relation. And yet all this was very precious to him. It was the present sign of a splendid future.
He pushed the table away impatiently, got up, made a few steps aimlessly, then stood by the balus- trade and again looked at the river–at that river which would have been the instrument for the making of his fortune if . . . if . . .
“What an abominable brute!” he said. He was alone, but he spoke aloud, as one is apt to do under the impulse of a strong, of an overmastering thought.
“What a brute!” he muttered again. The river was dark now, and the schooner lay on it, a black, a lonely, and a graceful form, with the slender masts darting upwards from it in two frail and raking lines. The shadows of the evening crept up the trees, crept up from bough to bough, till at last the long sunbeams coursing from the western horizon skimmed lightly over the topmost branches, then flew upwards amongst the piled-up clouds, giving them a sombre and fiery aspect in the last flush of light. And suddenly the light disappeared as if lost in the immensity of the great, blue, and empty hollow overhead. The sun had set: and the forests became a straight wall of formless blackness. Above them, on the edge of lingering clouds, a single star glimmered fitfully, obscured now and then by the rapid flight of high and invisible vapours.

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Almayer fought with the uneasiness within his breast. He heard Ali, who moved behind him prepar- ing his evening meal, and he listened with strange attention to the sounds the man made–to the short, dry bang of the plate put upon the table, to the clink of glass and the metallic rattle of knife and fork. The man went away. Now he was coming back. He would speak directly; and Almayer, notwithstanding the absorbing gravity of his thoughts, listened for the sound of expected words. He heard them, spoken in English with painstaking distinctness.
“Ready, sir!”
“All right,” said Almayer, curtly. He did not move. He remained pensive, with his back to the table upon which stood the lighted lamp brought by Ali. He was thinking: Where was Lingard now? Halfway down the river probably, in Abdulla’s ship. He would be back in about three days–perhaps less. And then? Then the schooner would have to be got out of the river, and when that craft was gone they–he and Lingard– would remain here; alone with the constant thought of that other man, that other man living near them! What an extraordinary idea to keep him there for ever. For ever! What did that mean–for ever? Perhaps a year, perhaps ten years. Preposterous! Keep him there ten years–or may be twenty! The fellow was capable of living more than twenty years. And for all that time he would have to be watched, fed, looked after. There was nobody but Lingard to have such notions. Twenty years! Why, no! In less than ten years their fortune would be made and they would leave this place, first for Batavia–yes, Batavia–and then for Europe. England, no doubt. Lingard would want to go to England. And would they leave that man here? How would that fellow look in ten years?

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Very old probably. Well, devil take him. Nina would be fifteen. She would be rich and very pretty and he himself would not be so old then. . . .” Almayer smiled into the night.
. . . Yes, rich! Why! Of course! Captain Lingard was a resourceful man, and he had plenty of money even now. They were rich already; but not enough. Decidedly not enough. Money brings money. That gold business was good. Famous! Captain Lingard was a remarkable man. He said the gold was there–and it was there. Lingard knew what he was talking about. But he had queer ideas. For instance, about Willems. Now what did he want to keep him alive for? Why?
“That scoundrel,” muttered Almayer again. “Makan Tuan!” ejaculated Ali suddenly, very loud in a pressing tone.
Almayer walked to the table, sat down, and his anxious visage dropped from above into the light thrown down by the lamp-shade. He helped himself absently, and began to eat in great mouthfuls. . . . Undoubtedly, Lingard was the man to stick to! The man undismayed, masterful and ready. How quickly he had planned a new future when Willems’ treachery destroyed their established position in Sambir! And the position even now was not so bad. What an immense prestige that Lingard had with all those people–Arabs, Malays and all. Ah, it was good to be able to call a man like that father. Fine! Won- der how much money really the old fellow had. People talked–they exaggerated surely, but if he had only half of what they said . . .
He drank, throwing his head up, and fell to again. . . . Now, if that Willems had known how to play his cards well, had he stuck to the old fellow he would

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have been in his position, he would be now married to Lingard’s adopted daughter with his future assured –splendid . . .
“The beast!” growled Almayer, between two mouth- fuls.
Ali stood rigidly straight with an uninterested face, his gaze lost in the night which pressed round the small circle of light that shone on the table, on the glass, on the bottle, and on Almayer’s head as he leaned over his plate moving his jaws.
. . . A famous man Lingard–yet you never knew what he would do next. It was notorious that he had shot a white man once for less than Willems had done. For less? . . . Why, for nothing, so to speak! It was not even his own quarrel. It was about some Malay returning from pilgrimage with wife and children. Kidnapped, or robbed, or something. A stupid story– an old story. And now he goes to see that Willems and–nothing. Comes back talking big about his prisoner; but after all he said very little. What did that Willems tell him? What passed between them? The old fellow must have had something in his mind when he let that scoundrel off. And Joanna! She would get round the old fellow. Sure. Then he would forgive perhaps. Impossible. But at any rate he would waste a lot of money on them. The old man was tenacious in his hates, but also in his affections. He had known that beast Willems from a boy. They would make it up in a year or so. Everything is possible: why did he not rush off at first and kill the brute? That would have been more like Lingard. . . . Almayer laid down his spoon suddenly, and pushing his plate away, threw himself back in the chair. . . . Unsafe. Decidedly unsafe. He had no mind to share Lingard’s money with anybody. Lin-

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gard’s money was Nina’s money in a sense. And if Willems managed to become friendly with the old man it would be dangerous for him–Almayer. Such an unscrupulous scoundrel! He would oust him from his position. He would lie and slander. Everything would be lost. Lost. Poor Nina. What would become of her? Poor child. For her sake he must remove that Wil- lems. Must. But how? Lingard wanted to be obeyed. Impossible to kill Willems. Lingard might be angry. Incredible, but so it was. He might . . . A wave of heat passed through Almayer’s body, flushed his face, and broke out of him in copious perspiration. He wriggled in his chair, and pressed his hands together under the table. What an awful prospect! He fancied he could see Lingard and Willems reconciled and going away arm-in-arm, leaving him alone in this God-forsaken hole–in Sambir–in this deadly swamp! And all his sacrifices, the sacrifice of his independence, of his best years, his surrender to Lingard’s fancies and caprices, would go for nothing! Horrible! Then he thought of his little daughter–his daughter!–and the ghastliness of his supposition over- powered him. He had a deep emotion, a sudden emo- tion that made him feel quite faint at the idea of that young life spoiled before it had fairly begun. His dear child’s life! Lying back in his chair he covered his face with both his hands.
Ali glanced down at him and said, unconcernedly– “Master finish?”
Almayer was lost in the immensity of his com- miseration for himself, for his daughter, who was– perhaps–not going to be the richest woman in the world–notwithstanding Lingard’s promises. He did not understand the other’s question, and muttered through his fingers in a doleful tone–

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“What did you say? What? Finish what?” “Clear up meza,” explained Ali.
“Clear up!” burst out Almayer, with incompre- hensible exasperation. “Devil take you and the table. Stupid! Chatterer! Chelakka! Get out!”
He leaned forward, glaring at his head man, then sank back in his seat with his arms hanging straight down on each side of the chair. And he sat motion- less in a meditation so concentrated and so absorbing, with all his power of thought so deep within himself, that all expression disappeared from his face in an aspect of staring vacancy.
Ali was clearing the table. He dropped negligently the tumbler into the greasy dish, flung there the spoon and fork, then slipped in the plate with a push amongst the remnants of food. He took up the dish, tucked up the bottle under his armpit, and went off. “My hammock!” shouted Almayer after him. “Ada! I come soon,” answered Ali from the door- way in an offended tone, looking back over his shoulder. . . . How could he clear the table and hang the hammock at the same time. Ya-wa! Those white men were all alike. Wanted everything done at once. Like children . . .
The indistinct murmur of his criticism went away, faded and died out together with the soft footfall of his bare feet in the dark passage.
For some time Almayer did not move. His thoughts were busy at work shaping a momentous resolution, and in the perfect silence of the house he believed that he could hear the noise of the operation as if the work had been done with a hammer. He certainly felt a thumping of strokes, faint, profound, and startling, somewhere low down in his breast; and he was aware of a sound of dull knocking, abrupt and rapid, in his

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ears. Now and then he held his breath, unconsciously, too long, and had to relieve himself by a deep expiration that whistled dully through his pursed lips. The lamp standing on the far side of the table threw a section of a lighted circle on the floor, where his out- stretched legs stuck out from under the table with feet rigid and turned up like the feet of a corpse; and his set face with fixed eyes would have been also like the face of the dead, but for its vacant yet conscious aspect; the hard, the stupid, the stony aspect of one not dead, but only buried under the dust, ashes, and corruption of personal thoughts, of base fears, of selfish desires. “I will do it!”
Not till he heard his own voice did he know that he had spoken. It startled him. He stood up. The knuckles of his hand, somewhat behind him, were resting on the edge of the table as he remained still with one foot advanced, his lips a little open, and thought: It would not do to fool about with Lingard. But I must risk it. It’s the only way I can see. I must tell her. She has some little sense. I wish they were a thousand miles off already. A hundred thousand miles. I do. And if it fails. And she blabs out then to Lingard? She seemed a fool. No; probably they will get away. And if they did, would Lingard be- lieve me? Yes. I never lied to him. He would believe. I don’t know . . . Perhaps he won’t. . . . “I must do it. Must!” he argued aloud to himself.
For a long time he stood still, looking before him with an intense gaze, a gaze rapt and immobile, that seemed to watch the minute quivering of a delicate balance, coming to a rest.
To the left of him, in the whitewashed wall of the house that formed the back of the verandah, there

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was a closed door. Black letters were painted on it proclaiming the fact that behind that door there was the office of Lingard & Co. The interior had been furnished by Lingard when he had built the house for his adopted daughter and her husband, and it had been furnished with reckless prodigality. There was an office desk, a revolving chair, bookshelves, a safe: all to humour the weakness of Almayer, who thought all those paraphernalia necessary to successful trading. Lingard had laughed, but had taken immense trouble to get the things. It pleased him to make his protege,
his adopted son-in-law, happy. It had been the sensation of Sambir some five years ago. While the things were being landed, the whole settlement literally lived on the river bank in front of the Rajah Laut’s house, to look, to wonder, to admire. . . . What a big meza, with many boxes fitted all over it and under it! What did the white man do with such a table? And look, look, O Brothers! There is a green square box, with a gold plate on it, a box so heavy that those twenty men cannot drag it up the bank. Let us go, brothers, and help pull at the ropes, and perchance we may see what’s inside. Treasure, no doubt. Gold is heavy and hard to hold, O Brothers! Let us go and earn a recom- pense from the fierce Rajah of the Sea who shouts over there, with a red face. See! There is a man carrying a pile of books from the boat! What a number of books. What were they for? . . . And an old in- valided jurumudi, who had travelled over many seas and had heard holy men speak in far-off countries, explained to a small knot of unsophisticated citizens of Sambir that those books were books of magic– of magic that guides the white men’s ships over the seas, that gives them their wicked wisdom and their

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strength; of magic that makes them great, powerful, and irresistible while they live, and–praise be to Allah!–the victims of Satan, the slaves of Jehannum when they die.
And when he saw the room furnished, Almayer had felt proud. In his exultation of an empty-headed quill-driver, he thought himself, by the virtue of that furniture, at the head of a serious business. He had sold himself to Lingard for these things–married the Malay girl of his adoption for the reward of these things and of the great wealth that must necessarily follow upon conscientious book-keeping. He found out very soon that trade in Sambir meant something entirely different. He could not guide Patalolo, control the irrepressible old Sahamin, or restrain the youthful vagaries of the fierce Bahassoen with pen, ink, and paper. He found no successful magic in the blank pages of his ledgers; and gradually he lost his old point of view in the saner appreciation of his situation. The room known as the office became neglected then like a temple of an exploded superstition. At first, when his wife reverted to her original savagery, Almayer, now and again, had sought refuge from her there; but after their child began to speak, to know him, he became braver, for he found courage and consolation in his unreasoning and fierce affection for his daughter–in the impenetrable mantle of selfishness he wrapped round both their lives: round himself, and that young life that was also his.
When Lingard ordered him to receive Joanna into his house, he had a truckle bed put into the office– the only room he could spare. The big office desk was pushed on one side, and Joanna came with her little shabby trunk and with her child and took pos- session in her dreamy, slack, half-asleep way; took

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possession of the dust, dirt, and squalor, where she appeared naturally at home, where she dragged a melancholy and dull existence; an existence made up of sad remorse and frightened hope, amongst the hopeless disorder–the senseless and vain decay of all these emblems of civilized commerce. Bits of white stuff; rags yellow, pink, blue: rags limp, brilliant and soiled, trailed on the floor, lay on the desk amongst the sombre covers of books soiled, grimy, but stiff-backed, in virtue, perhaps, of their European origin. The biggest set of bookshelves was partly hidden by a petticoat, the waist- band of which was caught upon the back of a slender book pulled a little out of the row so as to make an improvised clothespeg. The folding canvas bedstead stood nearly in the middle of the room, stood anyhow, parallel to no wall, as if it had been, in the process of transportation to some remote place, dropped casually there by tired bearers. And on the tumbled blankets that lay in a disordered heap on its edge, Joanna sat almost all day with her stockingless feet upon one of the bed pillows that were somehow always kicking about the floor. She sat there, vaguely tormented at times by the thought of her absent husband, but most of the time thinking tearfully of nothing at all, looking with swimming eyes at her little son–at the big- headed, pasty-faced, and sickly Louis Willems–who rolled a glass inkstand, solid with dried ink, about the floor, and tottered after it with the portentous gravity of demeanour and absolute absorption by the business in hand that characterize the pursuits of early child- hood. Through the half-open shutter a ray of sunlight, a ray merciless and crude, came into the room, beat in the early morning upon the safe in the far-off corner, then, travelling against the sun, cut at midday the big desk in two with its solid and clean-edged brilliance;

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with its hot brilliance in which a swarm of flies hovered in dancing flight over some dirty plate forgotten there amongst yellow papers for many a day. And towards the evening the cynical ray seemed to cling to the ragged petticoat, lingered on it with wicked enjoyment of that misery it had exposed all day; lingered on the corner of the dusty bookshelf, in a red glow intense and mocking, till it was suddenly snatched by the setting sun out of the way of the coming night. And the night entered the room. The night abrupt, impene- trable and all-filling with its flood of darkness; the night cool and merciful; the blind night that saw nothing, but could hear the fretful whimpering of the child, the creak of the bedstead, Joanna’s deep sighs as she turned over, sleepless, in the confused conviction of her wicked- ness, thinking of that man masterful, fair-headed, and strong–a man hard perhaps, but her husband; her clever and handsome husband to whom she had acted so cruelly on the advice of bad people, if her own people; and of her poor, dear, deceived mother.
To Almayer, Joanna’s presence was a constant worry, a worry unobtrusive yet intolerable; a constant, but mostly mute, warning of possible danger. In view of the absurd softness of Lingard’s heart, every one in whom Lingard manifested the slightest interest was to Almayer a natural enemy. He was quite alive to that feeling, and in the intimacy of the secret intercourse with his inner self had often congratu- lated himself upon his own wide-awake comprehension of his position. In that way, and impelled by that motive, Almayer had hated many and various persons at various times. But he never had hated and feared anybody so much as he did hate and fear Willems. Even after Willems’ treachery, which seemed to re- move him beyond the pale of all human sympathy,

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Almayer mistrusted the situation and groaned in spirit every time he caught sight of Joanna. He saw her very seldom in the daytime. But in the short and opal-tinted twilights, or in the azure dusk of starry evenings, he often saw, before he slept, the slender and tall figure trailing to and fro the rag- ged tail of its white gown over the dried mud of the riverside in front of the house. Once or twice when he sat late on the verandah, with his feet upon the deal table on a level with the lamp, reading the seven months’ old copy of the North China Herald, brought
by Lingard, he heard the stairs creak, and, looking round the paper, he saw her frail and meagre form rise step by step and toil across the verandah, carrying with difficulty the big, fat child, whose head, lying on the mother’s bony shoulder, seemed of the same size as Joanna’s own. Several times she had assailed him with tearful clamour or mad entreaties: asking about her husband, wanting to know where he was, when he would be back; and ending every such outburst with despairing and incoherent self-reproaches that were absolutely incomprehensible to Almayer. On one or two occasions she had overwhelmed her host with vituperative abuse, making him responsible for her husband’s absence. Those scenes, begun without any warning, ended abruptly in a sobbing flight and a bang of the door; stirred the house with a sudden, a fierce, and an evanescent disturbance; like those inex- plicable whirlwinds that rise, run, and vanish without apparent cause upon the sun-scorched dead level of arid and lamentable plains.
But to-night the house was quiet, deadly quiet, while Almayer stood still, watching that delicate bal- ance where he was weighing all his chances: Joan- na’s intelligence, Lingard’s credulity, Willems’ reckless

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audacity, desire to escape, readiness to seize an un- expected opportunity. He weighed, anxious and atten- tive, his fears and his desires against the tremendous risk of a quarrel with Lingard. . . . Yes. Lin- gard would be angry. Lingard might suspect him of some connivance in his prisoner’s escape–but surely he would not quarrel with him–Almayer– about those people once they were gone–gone to the devil in their own way. And then he had hold of Lingard through the little girl. Good. What an annoyance! A prisoner! As if one could keep him in there. He was bound to get away some time or other. Of course. A situation like that can’t last. Anybody could see that. Lingard’s eccentricity passed all bounds. You may kill a man, but you mustn’t torture him. It was almost criminal. It caused worry, trouble, and unpleasantness. . . . Almayer for a moment felt very angry with Lingard. He made him responsible for the anguish he suffered from, for the anguish of doubt and fear; for compelling him– the practical and innocent Almayer–to such painful efforts of mind in order to find out some issue for absurd situations created by the unreasonable sentimentality of Lingard’s unpractical impulses.
“Now if the fellow were dead it would be all right,” said Almayer to the verandah.
He stirred a little, and scratching his nose thought- fully, revelled in a short flight of fancy, showing him his own image crouching in a big boat, that floated arrested–say fifty yards off–abreast of Willems’ landing-place. In the bottom of the boat there was a gun. A loaded gun. One of the boatmen would shout, and Willems would answer–from the bushes. The rascal would be suspicious. Of course. Then the man would wave a piece of paper urging Willems

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to come to the landing-place and receive an important message. “From the Rajah Laut” the man would yell as the boat edged in-shore, and that would fetch Willems out. Wouldn’t it? Rather! And Almayer saw himself jumping up at the right moment, taking aim, pulling the trigger–and Willems tumbling over, his head in the water–the swine!
He seemed to hear the report of the shot. It made him thrill from head to foot where he stood. . . . How simple! . . . Unfortunate . . . Lingard . . . He sighed, shook his head. Pity. Couldn’t be done. And couldn’t leave him there either! Sup- pose the Arabs were to get hold of him again–for in- stance to lead an expedition up the river! Goodness only knows what harm would come of it. . . . The balance was at rest now and inclining to the side of immediate action. Almayer walked to the door, walked up very close to it, knocked loudly, and turned his head away, looking frightened for a moment at what he had done. After waiting for a while he put his ear against the panel and listened. Nothing. He composed his features into an agreeable expression while he stood listening and thinking to himself: I hear her. Crying. Eh? I believe she has lost the little wits she had and is crying night and day since I began to prepare her for the news of her husband’s death–as Lingard told me. I wonder what she thinks. It’s just like father to make me invent all these stories for nothing at all. Out of kindness. Kindness! Damn! . . . She isn’t deaf, surely.
He knocked again, then said in a friendly tone, grin- ning benevolently at the closed door–
“It’s me, Mrs. Willems. I want to speak to you. I have . . . have . . . important news. . . .” “What is it?”

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“News,” repeated Almayer, distinctly. “News about your husband. Your husband! . . . Damn him!” he added, under his breath.
He heard a stumbling rush inside. Things were overturned. Joanna’s agitated voice cried– “News! What? What? I am coming out.”
“No,” shouted Almayer. “Put on some clothes, Mrs. Willems, and let me in. It’s . . . very con- fidential. You have a candle, haven’t you?” She was knocking herself about blindly amongst the furniture in that room. The candlestick was upset. Matches were struck ineffectually. The matchbox fell. He heard her drop on her knees and grope over the floor while she kept on moaning in maddened distraction. “Oh, my God! News! Yes . . . yes. . . . Ah! where . . . where . . . candle. Oh, my God! . . . I can’t find . . . Don’t go away, for the love of Heaven . . .”
“I don’t want to go away,” said Almayer, im- patiently, through the keyhole; “but look sharp. It’s confi . . . it’s pressing.”
He stamped his foot lightly, waiting with his hand on the door-handle. He thought anxiously: The woman’s a perfect idiot. Why should I go away? She will be off her head. She will never catch my meaning. She’s too stupid.
She was moving now inside the room hurriedly and in silence. He waited. There was a moment of perfect stillness in there, and then she spoke in an exhausted voice, in words that were shaped out of an expiring sigh–out of a sigh light and profound, like words breathed out by a woman before going off into a dead faint–
“Come in.”
He pushed the door. Ali, coming through the

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passage with an armful of pillows and blankets pressed to his breast high up under his chin, caught sight of his master before the door closed behind him. He was so astonished that he dropped his bundle and stood staring at the door for a long time. He heard the voice of his master talking. Talking to that Sirani woman! Who was she? He had never thought about that really. He speculated for a while hazily upon things in general. She was a Sirani woman– and ugly. He made a disdainful grimace, picked up the bedding, and went about his work, slinging the hammock between two uprights of the verandah. . . . Those things did not concern him. She was ugly, and brought here by the Rajah Laut, and his master spoke to her in the night. Very well. He, Ali, had his work to do. Sling the hammock–go round and see that the watchmen were awake–take a look at the moorings of the boats, at the padlock of the big storehouse–then go to sleep. To sleep! He shivered pleasantly. He leaned with both arms over his master’s hammock and fell into a light doze.
A scream, unexpected, piercing–a scream begin- ning at once in the highest pitch of a woman’s voice and then cut short, so short that it suggested the swift work of death–caused Ali to jump on one side away from the hammock, and the silence that succeeded seemed to him as startling as the awful shriek. He was thunderstruck with surprise. Almayer came out of the office, leaving the door ajar, passed close to his servant without taking any notice, and made straight for the water-chatty hung on a nail in a draughty place. He took it down and came back, missing the petrified Ali by an inch. He moved with long strides, yet, notwithstanding his haste, stopped short before the door, and, throwing his head back, poured a thin

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stream of water down his throat. While he came and went, while he stopped to drink, while he did all this, there came steadily from the dark room the sound of feeble and persistent crying, the crying of a sleepy and frightened child. After he had drunk, Almayer went in, closing the door carefully. Ali did not budge. That Sirani woman shrieked! He felt an immense curiosity very unusual to his stolid disposition. He could not take his eyes off the door. Was she dead in there? How interesting and funny! He stood with open mouth till he heard again the rattle of the door-handle. Master coming out. He pivoted on his heels with great rapidity and made believe to be absorbed in the contemplation of the night outside. He heard Almayer moving about behind his back. Chairs were displaced. His master sat down.
“Ali,” said Almayer.
His face was gloomy and thoughtful. He looked at his head man, who had approached the table, then he pulled out his watch. It was going. Whenever Lingard was in Sambir Almayer’s watch was going. He would set it by the cabin clock, telling himself every time that he must really keep that watch going for the future. And every time, when Lingard went away, he would let it run down and would measure his weariness by sunrises and sunsets in an apathetic indifference to mere hours; to hours only; to hours that had no importance in Sambir life, in the tired stagnation of empty days; when nothing mattered to him but the quality of guttah and the size of rattans; where there were no small hopes to be watched for; where to him there was nothing interesting, nothing supportable, nothing desirable to expect; nothing bit- ter but the slowness of the passing days; nothing

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sweet but the hope, the distant and glorious hope– the hope wearying, aching and precious, of getting away.
He looked at the watch. Half-past eight. Ali waited stolidly.
“Go to the settlement,” said Almayer, “and tell Mahmat Banjer to come and speak to me to-night.” Ali went off muttering. He did not like his errand. Banjer and his two brothers were Bajow vagabonds who had appeared lately in Sambir and had been allowed to take possession of a tumbledown abandoned hut, on three posts, belonging to Lingard & Co., and stand- ing just outside their fence. Ali disapproved of the favour shown to those strangers. Any kind of dwelling was valuable in Sambir at that time, and if master did not want that old rotten house he might have given it to him, Ali, who was his servant, instead of bestowing it upon those bad men. Everybody knew they were bad. It was well known that they had stolen a boat from Hinopari, who was very aged and feeble and had no sons; and that afterwards, by the truculent reckless- ness of their demeanour, they had frightened the poor old man into holding his tongue about it. Yet every- body knew of it. It was one of the tolerated scandals of Sambir, disapproved and accepted, a manifestation of that base acquiescence in success, of that inexpressed and cowardly toleration of strength, that exists, in- famous and irremediable, at the bottom of all hearts, in all societies; whenever men congregate; in bigger and more virtuous places than Sambir, and in Sambir also, where, as in other places, one man could steal a boat with impunity while another would have no right to look at a paddle.
Almayer, leaning back in his chair, meditated. The more he thought, the more he felt convinced that

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Banjer and his brothers were exactly the men he wanted. Those fellows were sea gipsies, and could disappear without attracting notice; and if they returned, nobody–and Lingard least of all–would dream of seeking information from them. More- over, they had no personal interest of any kind in Sambir affairs–had taken no sides–would know nothing anyway.
He called in a strong voice: “Mrs. Willems!” She came out quickly, almost startling him, so much did she appear as though she had surged up through the floor, on the other side of the table. The lamp was between them, and Almayer moved it aside, looking up at her from his chair. She was crying. She was crying gently, silently, in a ceaseless welling up of tears that did not fall in drops, but seemed to overflow in a clear sheet from under her eyelids– seemed to flow at once all over her face, her cheeks, and over her chin that glistened with moisture in the light. Her breast and her shoulders were shaken repeatedly by a convulsive and noiseless catching in her breath, and after every spasmodic sob her sorrow- ful little head, tied up in a red kerchief, trembled on her long neck, round which her bony hand gathered and clasped the disarranged dress.
“Compose yourself, Mrs. Willems,” said Almayer. She emitted an inarticulate sound that seemed to be a faint, a very far off, a hardly audible cry of mortal distress. Then the tears went on flowing in profound stillness.
“You must understand that I have told you all this because I am your friend–real friend,” said Almayer, after looking at her for some time with visible dissatis- faction. “You, his wife, ought to know the danger he is in. Captain Lingard is a terrible man, you know.”

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She blubbered out, sniffing and sobbing together. “Do you . . . you . . . speak . . . the . . . the truth now?”
“Upon my word of honour. On the head of my child,” protested Almayer. “I had to deceive you till now because of Captain Lingard. But I couldn’t bear it. Think only what a risk I run in telling you –if ever Lingard was to know! Why should I do it? Pure friendship. Dear Peter was my colleague in Macassar for years, you know.”
“What shall I do . . . what shall I do!” she exclaimed, faintly, looking around on every side as if she could not make up her mind which way to rush off.
“You must help him to clear out, now Lingard is away. He offended Lingard, and that’s no joke. Lingard said he would kill him. He will do it, too,” said Almayer, earnestly.
She wrung her hands. “Oh! the wicked man. The wicked, wicked man!” she moaned, swaying her body from side to side.
“Yes. Yes! He is terrible,” assented Almayer. “You must not lose any time. I say! Do you under- stand me, Mrs. Willems? Think of your husband. Of your poor husband. How happy he will be. You will bring him his life–actually his life. Think of him.” She ceased her swaying movement, and now, with her head sunk between her shoulders, she hugged herself with both her arms; and she stared at Almayer with wild eyes, while her teeth chattered, rattling violently and uninterruptedly, with a very loud sound, in the deep peace of the house.
“Oh! Mother of God!” she wailed. “I am a miserable woman. Will he forgive me? The poor, innocent man. Will he forgive me? Oh, Mr. Almayer,

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he is so severe. Oh! help me. . . . I dare not. . . . You don’t know what I’ve done to him. . . . I daren’t! . . . I can’t! . . . God help me!”
The last words came in a despairing cry. Had she been flayed alive she could not have sent to heaven a more terrible, a more heartrending and anguished plaint. “Sh! Sh!” hissed Almayer, jumping up. “You will wake up everybody with your shouting.” She kept on sobbing then without any noise, and Almayer stared at her in boundless astonishment. The idea that, maybe, he had done wrong by con- fiding in her, upset him so much that for a moment he could not find a connected thought in his head. At last he said: “I swear to you that your husband is in such a position that he would welcome the devil . . . listen well to me . . . the devil himself if the devil came to him in a canoe. Unless I am much mistaken,” he added, under his breath. Then again, loudly: “If you have any little difference to make up with him, I assure you–I swear to you–this is your time!”
The ardently persuasive tone of his words–he thought–would have carried irresistible conviction to a graven image. He noticed with satisfaction that Joanna seemed to have got some inkling of his mean- ing. He continued, speaking slowly–
“Look here, Mrs. Willems. I can’t do anything. Daren’t. But I will tell you what I will do. There will come here in about ten minutes a Bugis man– you know the language; you are from Macassar. He has a large canoe; he can take you there. To the new Rajah’s clearing, tell him. They are three broth- ers, ready for anything if you pay them . . . you have some money. Haven’t you?”

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She stood–perhaps listening–but giving no sign of intelligence, and stared at the floor in sudden im- mobility, as if the horror of the situation, the over- whelming sense of her own wickedness and of her husband’s great danger, had stunned her brain, her heart, her will–had left her no faculty but that of breathing and of keeping on her feet. Almayer swore to himself with much mental profanity that he had never seen a more useless, a more stupid being. “D’ye hear me?” he said, raising his voice. “Do try to understand. Have you any money? Money. Dollars. Guilders. Money! What’s the matter with you?” Without raising her eyes she said, in a voice that sounded weak and undecided as if she had been making a desperate effort of memory–
“The house has been sold. Mr. Hudig was angry.” Almayer gripped the edge of the table with all his strength. He resisted manfully an almost uncontrol- lable impulse to fly at her and box her ears. “It was sold for money, I suppose,” he said with studied and incisive calmness. “Have you got it? Who has got it?”
She looked up at him, raising her swollen eyelids with a great effort, in a sorrowful expression of her drooping mouth, of her whole besmudged and tear- stained face. She whispered resignedly– “Leonard had some. He wanted to get married. And uncle Antonio; he sat at the door and would not go away. And Aghostina–she is so poor . . . and so many, many children–little children. And Luiz the engineer. He never said a word against my husband. Also our cousin Maria. She came and shouted, and my head was so bad, and my heart was worse. Then cousin Salvator and old Daniel da Souza, who . . .”

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Almayer had listened to her speechless with rage. He thought: I must give money now to that idiot. Must! Must get her out of the way now before Lingard is back. He made two attempts to speak before he managed to burst out–
“I don’t want to know their blasted names! Tell me, did all those infernal people leave you anything? To you! That’s what I want to know!”
“I have two hundred and fifteen dollars,” said Joanna, in a frightened tone.
Almayer breathed freely. He spoke with great friendliness–
“That will do. It isn’t much, but it will do. Now when the man comes I will be out of the way. You speak to him. Give him some money; only a little, mind! And promise more. Then when you get there you will be guided by your husband, of course. And don’t forget to tell him that Captain Lingard is at the mouth of the river–the northern entrance. You will remember. Won’t you? The northern branch. Lin- gard is–death.”
Joanna shivered. Almayer went on rapidly– “I would have given you money if you had wanted it. ‘Pon my word! Tell your husband I’ve sent you to him. And tell him not to lose any time. And also say to him from me that we shall meet–some day. That I could not die happy unless I met him once more. Only once. I love him, you know. I prove it. Tre- mendous risk to me–this business is!”
Joanna snatched his hand and before he knew what she would be at, pressed it to her lips. “Mrs. Willems! Don’t. What are you . . .” cried the abashed Almayer, tearing his hand away. “Oh, you are good!” she cried, with sudden exalta- tion, “You are noble . . . I shall pray every

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day . . . to all the saints . . . I
shall . . .”
“Never mind . . . never mind!” stammered out Almayer, confusedly, without knowing very well what he was saying. “Only look out for Lingard. . . . I am happy to be able . . . in your sad situation . . . believe me. . . . “
They stood with the table between them, Joanna looking down, and her face, in the half-light above the lamp, appeared like a soiled carving of old ivory– a carving, with accentuated anxious hollows, of old, very old ivory. Almayer looked at her, mistrustful, hopeful. He was saying to himself: How frail she is! I could upset her by blowing at her. She seems to have got some idea of what must be done, but will she have the strength to carry it through? I must trust to luck now!
Somewhere far in the back courtyard Ali’s voice rang suddenly in angry remonstrance–
“Why did you shut the gate, O father of all mis- chief? You a watchman! You are only a wild man. Did I not tell you I was coming back? You . . .” “I am off, Mrs. Willems,” exclaimed Almayer. “That man is here–with my servant. Be calm. Try to . . .”
He heard the footsteps of the two men in the pas- age, and without finishing his sentence ran rapidly down the steps towards the riverside.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR the next half-hour Almayer, who wanted to give Joanna plenty of time, stumbled amongst the lumber in distant parts of his enclosure, sneaked along the fences; or held his breath, flattened against grass walls behind various outhouses: all this to escape Ali’s inconveniently zealous search for his master. He heard him talk with the head watchman–sometimes quite close to him in the darkness–then moving off, coming back, wondering, and, as the time passed, growing uneasy.
“He did not fall into the river?–say, thou blind watcher!” Ali was growling in a bullying tone, to the other man. “He told me to fetch Mahmat, and when I came back swiftly I found him not in the house. There is that Sirani woman there, so that Mahmat cannot steal anything, but it is in my mind, the night will be half gone before I rest.”
He shouted–
“Master! O master! O mast . . .” “What are you making that noise for?” said Almayer, with severity, stepping out close to them. The two Malays leaped away from each other in their surprise.
“You may go. I don’t want you any more to- night, Ali,” went on Almayer. “Is Mahmat there?” “Unless the ill-behaved savage got tired of waiting. Those men know not politeness. They should not be spoken to by white men,” said Ali, resentfully. Almayer went towards the house, leaving his ser-

316

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vants to wonder where he had sprung from so unex- pectedly. The watchman hinted obscurely at powers of invisibility possessed by the master, who often at night . . . Ali interrupted him with great scorn. Not every white man has the power. Now, the Rajah Laut could make himself invisible. Also, he could be in two places at once, as everybody knew; except he–the useless watchman–who knew no more about white men than a wild pig! Ya-wa!
And Ali strolled towards his hut, yawning loudly. As Almayer ascended the steps he heard the noise of a door flung to, and when he entered the verandah he saw only Mahmat there, close to the doorway of the passage. Mahmat seemed to be caught in the very act of slinking away, and Almayer noticed that with satisfaction. Seeing the white man, the Malay gave up his attempt and leaned against the wall. He was a short, thick, broad-shouldered man with very dark skin and a wide, stained, bright-red mouth that uncovered, when he spoke, a close row of black and glistening teeth. His eyes were big, promi- nent, dreamy and restless. He said sulkily, looking all over the place from under his eyebrows– “White Tuan, you are great and strong–and I a poor man. Tell me what is your will, and let me go in the name of God. It is late.”
Almayer examined the man thoughtfully. How could he find out whether . . . He had it! Lately he had employed that man and his two brothers as extra boatmen to carry stores, provisions, and new axes to a camp of rattan cutters some distance up the river. A three days’ expedition. He would test him now in that way. He said negligently–
“I want you to start at once for the camp, with surat for the Kavitan. One dollar a day.”

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The man appeared plunged in dull hesitation, but Almayer, who knew his Malays, felt pretty sure from his aspect that nothing would induce the fellow to go. He urged–
“It is important–and if you are swift I shall give two dollars for the last day.”
“No, Tuan. We do not go,” said the man, in a hoarse whisper.
“Why?”
“We start on another journey.”
“Where?”
“To a place we know of,” said Mahmat, a little louder, in a stubborn manner, and looking at the floor.
Almayer experienced a feeling of immense joy. He said, with affected annoyance–
“You men live in my house and it is as if it were your own. I may want my house soon.”
Mahmat looked up.
“We are men of the sea and care not for a roof when we have a canoe that will hold three, and a paddle apiece. The sea is our house. Peace be with you, Tuan.”
He turned and went away rapidly, and Almayer heard him directly afterwards in the courtyard calling to the watchman to open the gate. Mahmat passed through the gate in silence, but before the bar had been put up behind him he had made up his mind that if the white man ever wanted to eject him from his hut, he would burn it and also as many of the white man’s other buildings as he could safely get at. And he began to call his brothers before he was inside the dilapidated dwelling.
“All’s well!” muttered Almayer to himself, taking some loose Java tobacco from a drawer in the table.

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“Now if anything comes out I am clear. I asked the man to go up the river. I urged him. He will say so himself. Good.”
He began to charge the china bowl of his pipe, a pipe with a long cherry stem and a curved mouth- piece, pressing the tobacco down with his thumb and thinking: No. I sha’n’t see her again. Don’t want to. I will give her a good start, then go in chase– and send an express boat after father. Yes! that’s it. He approached the door of the office and said, hold- ing his pipe away from his lips–
“Good luck to you, Mrs. Willems. Don’t lose any time. You may get along by the bushes; the fence there is out of repair. Don’t lose time. Don’t forget that it is a matter of . . . life and death. And don’t forget that I know nothing. I trust you.” He heard inside a noise as of a chest-lid falling down. She made a few steps. Then a sigh, pro- found and long, and some faint words which he did not catch. He moved away from the door on tiptoe, kicked off his slippers in a corner of the verandah, then entered the passage puffing at his pipe; entered cautiously in a gentle creaking of planks and turned into a curtained entrance to the left. There was a big room. On the floor a small binnacle lamp–that had found its way to the house years ago from the lumber-room of the Flash–did duty for a night-
light. It glimmered very small and dull in the great darkness. Almayer walked to it, and picking it up revived the flame by pulling the wick with his fingers, which he shook directly after with a grimace of pain. Sleeping shapes, covered–head and all–with white sheets, lay about on the mats on the floor. In the middle of the room a small cot, under a square white mosquito net, stood–the only piece of furniture be-

320 AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS

tween the four walls–looking like an altar of trans- parent marble in a gloomy temple. A woman, half- lying on the floor with her head dropped on her arms, which were crossed on the foot of the cot, woke up as Almayer strode over her outstretched legs. She sat up without a word, leaning forward, and, clasping her knees, stared down with sad eyes, full of sleep. Almayer, the smoky light in one hand, his pipe in the other, stood before the curtained cot looking at his daughter–at his little Nina–at that part of him- self, at that small and unconscious particle of humanity that seemed to him to contain all his soul. And it was as if he had been bathed in a bright and warm wave of tenderness, in a tenderness greater than the world, more precious than life; the only thing real, living, sweet, tangible, beautiful and safe amongst the elusive, the distorted and menacing shadows of exist- ence. On his face, lit up indistinctly by the short yellow flame of the lamp, came a look of rapt atten- tion while he looked into her future. And he could see things there! Things charming and splendid passing before him in a magic unrolling of resplendent pictures; pictures of events brilliant, happy, inexpres- sibly glorious, that would make up her life. He would do it! He would do it. He would! He would– for that child! And as he stood in the still night, lost in his enchanting and gorgeous dreams, while the ascending, thin thread of tobacco smoke spread into a faint bluish cloud above his head, he appeared strangely impressive and ecstatic: like a devout and mystic worshipper, adoring, transported and mute; burning incense before a shrine, a diaphanous shrine of a child- idol with closed eyes; before a pure and vaporous shrine of a small god–fragile, powerless, unconscious and sleeping.

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When Ali, roused by loud and repeated shouting of his name, stumbled outside the door of his hut, he saw a narrow streak of trembling gold above the forests and a pale sky with faded stars overhead: signs of the coming day. His master stood before the door waving a piece of paper in his hand and shouting excitedly– “Quick, Ali! Quick!” When he saw his servant he rushed forward, and pressing the paper on him objurgated him, in tones which induced Ali to think that something awful had happened, to hurry up and get the whale-boat ready to go immediately–at once, at once–after Captain Lingard. Ali remonstrated, agitated also, having caught the infection of distracted haste.
“If must go quick, better canoe. Whale-boat no can catch, same as small canoe.”
“No, no! Whale-boat! whale-boat! You dolt! you wretch!” howled Almayer, with all the appearance of having gone mad. “Call the men! Get along with it. Fly!”
And Ali rushed about the courtyard kicking the doors of huts open to put his head in and yell fright- fully inside; and as he dashed from hovel to hovel, men shivering and sleepy were coming out, looking after him stupidly, while they scratched their ribs with bewildered apathy. It was hard work to put them in motion. They wanted time to stretch them- selves and to shiver a little. Some wanted food. One said he was sick. Nobody knew where the rudder was. Ali darted here and there, ordering, abusing, pushing one, then another, and stopping in his exertions at times to wring his hands hastily and groan, because the whale-boat was much slower than the worst canoe and his master would not listen to his protestations. Almayer saw the boat go off at last, pulled anyhow

322 AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS

by men that were cold, hungry, and sulky; and he remained on the jetty watching it down the reach. It was broad day then, and the sky was perfectly cloudless. Almayer went up to the house for a mo- ment. His household was all astir and wondering at the strange disappearance of the Sirani woman, who had taken her child and had left her luggage. Almayer spoke to no one, got his revolver, and went down to the river again. He jumped into a small canoe and paddled himself towards the schooner. He worked very leisurely, but as soon as he was nearly alongside he began to hail the silent craft with the tone and appearance of a man in a tremendous hurry. “Schooner ahoy! schooner ahoy!” he shouted. A row of blank faces popped up above the bulwark. After a while a man with a woolly head of hair said– “Sir!”
“The mate! the mate! Call him, steward!” said Almayer, excitedly, making a frantic grab at a rope thrown down to him by somebody.
In less than a minute the mate put his head over. He asked, surprised–
“What can I do for you, Mr. Almayer?” “Let me have the gig at once, Mr. Swan–at once. I ask in Captain Lingard’s name. I must have it. Matter of life and death.”
The mate was impressed by Almayer’s agitation “You shall have it, sir. . . . Man the gig there! Bear a hand, serang! . . . It’s hanging astern, Mr. Almayer,” he said, looking down again. “Get into it, sir. The men are coming down by the painter.” By the time Almayer had clambered over into the stern sheets, four calashes were in the boat and the oars were being passed over the taffrail. The mate was looking on. Suddenly he said–

AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS 323

“Is it dangerous work? Do you want any help? I would come . . .”
“Yes, yes!” cried Almayer. “Come along. Don’t lose a moment. Go and get your revolver. Hurry up! hurry up!”
Yet, notwithstanding his feverish anxiety to be off, he lolled back very quiet and unconcerned till the mate got in and, passing over the thwarts, sat down by his side. Then he seemed to wake up, and called out– “Let go–let go the painter!”
“Let go the painter–the painter!” yelled the bow- man, jerking at it.
People on board also shouted “Let go!” to one another, till it occurred at last to somebody to cast off the rope; and the boat drifted rapidly away from the schooner in the sudden silencing of all voices. Almayer steered. The mate sat by his side, pushing the cartridges into the chambers of his revolver. When the weapon was loaded he asked–
“What is it? Are you after somebody?” “Yes,” said Almayer, curtly, with his eyes fixed ahead on the river. “We must catch a dangerous man.”
“I like a bit of a chase myself,” declared the mate, and then, discouraged by Almayer’s aspect of severe thoughtfulness, said nothing more.
Nearly an hour passed. The calashes stretched forward head first and lay back with their faces to the sky, alternately, in a regular swing that sent the boat flying through the water; and the two sitters, very up- right in the stern sheets, swayed rhythmically a little at every stroke of the long oars plied vigorously. The mate observed: “The tide is with us.” “The current always runs down in this river,” said Almayer.

324 AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS

“Yes–I know,” retorted the other; “but it runs faster on the ebb. Look by the land at the way we get over the ground! A five-knot current here, I should say.”
“H’m!” growled Almayer. Then suddenly: “There is a passage between two islands that will save us four miles. But at low water the two islands, in the dry season, are like one with only a mud ditch between them. Still, it’s worth trying.” “Ticklish job that, on a falling tide,” said the mate, coolly. “You know best whether there’s time to get through.”
“I will try,” said Almayer, watching the shore intently. “Look out now!”
He tugged hard at the starboard yoke-line. “Lay in your oars!” shouted the mate. The boat swept round and shot through the narrow opening of a creek that broadened out before the craft had time to lose its way.
“Out oars! . . . Just room enough,” muttered the mate.
It was a sombre creek of black water speckled with the gold of scattered sunlight falling through the boughs that met overhead in a soaring, restless arc full of gentle whispers passing, tremulous, aloft amongst the thick leaves. The creepers climbed up the trunks of serried trees that leaned over, looking insecure and undermined by floods which had eaten away the earth from under their roots. And the pungent, acrid smell of rotting leaves, of flowers, of blossoms and plants dying in that poisonous and cruel gloom, where they pined for sunshine in vain, seemed to lay heavy, to press upon the shiny and stagnant water in its tortuous windings amongst the everlasting and invincible shad- ows.

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Almayer looked anxious. He steered badly. Several times the blades of the oars got foul of the bushes on one side or the other, checking the way of the gig. During one of those occurrences, while they were getting clear, one of the calashes said something to the others in a rapid whisper. They looked down at the water. So did the mate.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed. “Eh, Mr. Almayer! Look! The water is running out. See there! We will be caught.”
“Back! back! We must go back!” cried Almayer. “Perhaps better go on.”
“No; back! back!”
He pulled at the steering line, and ran the nose of the boat into the bank. Time was lost again in getting clear.
“Give way, men! give way!” urged the mate, anxiously.
The men pulled with set lips and dilated nostrils, breathing hard.
“Too late,” said the mate, suddenly. “The oars touch the bottom already. We are done.”
The boat stuck. The men laid in the oars, and sat, panting, with crossed arms.
“Yes, we are caught,” said Almayer, composedly. “That is unlucky!”
The water was falling round the boat. The mate watched the patches of mud coming to the surface. Then in a moment he laughed, and pointing his finger at the creek–
“Look!” he said; “the blamed river is running away from us. Here’s the last drop of water clearing out round that bend.”
Almayer lifted his head. The water was gone, and he looked only at a curved track of mud–of mud

326 AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS

soft and black, hiding fever, rottenness, and evil under its level and glazed surface.
“We are in for it till the evening,” he said, with cheerful resignation. “I did my best. Couldn’t help it.”
“We must sleep the day away,” said the mate. “There’s nothing to eat,” he added, gloomily. Almayer stretched himself in the stern sheets. The Malays curled down between thwarts.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” said the mate, starting up after a long pause. “I was in a devil of a hurry to go and pass the day stuck in the mud. Here’s a holiday for you! Well! well!”
They slept or sat unmoving and patient. As the sun mounted higher the breeze died out, and perfect stillness reigned in the empty creek. A troop of long-nosed monkeys appeared, and crowding on the outer boughs, contemplated the boat and the motion- less men in it with grave and sorrowful intensity, disturbed now and then by irrational outbreaks of mad gesticulation. A little bird with sapphire breast balanced a slender twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped