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It's very weird indeed. He made the eighteenth. I could not see the pony at all; but from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knew that there was something alive inside. From the wharf Almayer hailed in quavering tones: "Oh, I say!"
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.
His answer was a sinister "No fear," as much as to say that even that way of escape from inclement fortune was closed to him. "I just came down . . ." he mumbled after a while. "Well, then, now you're here I will land that pony for you at once, and you can lead him home. I really don't want him on deck. He's in the way." Almayer seemed doubtful.
"Very little chance of that now," remarked Almayer, sadly. "You do not know!" exclaimed Lingard, taking up the child again, and beginning to walk up and down the verandah. "I have my plans. I have listen." And he began to explain to the interested Almayer his plans for the future. He would interview Abdulla and Lakamba.
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?"
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.
She emitted an inarticulate sound that seemed to be a faint, a very far off, a hardly audible cry of mortal distress. Then the tears went on flowing in profound stillness. "You must understand that I have told you all this because I am your friend real friend," said Almayer, after looking at her for some time with visible dissatisfaction. "You, his wife, ought to know the danger he is in.
And Almayer sat, his face in his hands, looking on and hating all this: the muddy river; the faded blue of the sky; the black log passing by on its first and last voyage; the green sea of leaves the sea that glowed shimmered, and stirred above the uniform and impenetrable gloom of the forests the joyous sea of living green powdered with the brilliant dust of oblique sunrays.
As long as Lingard's influence was paramount as long as Almayer, Lingard's representative, was the only great trader of the settlement, it was not worth Lakamba's while even if it had been possible to grasp the rule of the young state. Killing Almayer and Lingard was so difficult and so risky that it might be dismissed as impracticable.
The sub-lieutenant came up the steps, while Babalatchi stood up uneasily and, with finger on lip, tried to catch Nina's eye. "You are a good girl," whispered Almayer, absently, dropping his daughter's hand. "Father! father!" she cried, bending over him with passionate entreaty. "See those two men looking at us. Send them away. I cannot bear it any more. Send them away.
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