Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
He sat for awhile panting with exertion and anger, and looking round vaguely for Nina; then making a threatening gesture towards the compound, where he had heard Babalatchi's voice, he overturned the table with his foot in a great crash of smashed crockery. He muttered yet menacingly to himself, then his head fell on his breast, his eyes closed, and with a deep sigh he fell asleep.
When speaking his last words Babalatchi faltered, then stopped, confused, before the steady gaze of the old seaman. Lingard rose. His face cleared, and he looked down at the anxious Babalatchi with sudden benevolence. "So! That's what you were after," he said, laying a heavy hand on Babalatchi's yielding shoulder. "You thought I came here to murder him. Hey? Speak!
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.
Mahmat had to produce the bangle, and saw with rage and mortification the lieutenant put it in his pocket, as one of the proofs of Dain's death, to be sent in with the official report of the mission. Babalatchi's ring was also impounded for the same purpose, but the experienced statesman was resigned to that loss from the very beginning.
He may be very sick for the white men, for all the world if he liked, as long as he would take upon himself the execution of part at least of Babalatchi's carefully thought-of plan. Babalatchi wanted a big canoe manned by twelve men to be sent out after dark towards Bulangi's clearing. Dain may have to be overpowered.
The one nearest to Lakamba repeated the call, after a while, over the rail into the courtyard. There was a movement of upturned faces below by the fires, and the cry trailed over the enclosure in sing-song tones. The thumping of wooden pestles husking the evening rice stopped for a moment and Babalatchi's name rang afresh shrilly on women's lips in various keys.
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.
Then all this" and looking up suddenly at Lingard's beard, he flourished his fingers below his own beardless chin "then all this was like gold in sunlight, now it is like the foam of an angry sea." "Maybe, maybe," said Lingard, patiently, paying the involuntary tribute of a faint sigh to the memories of the past evoked by Babalatchi's words.
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.
She had seen a long time ago whither events were tending. She had noted the contemptuous yet menacing coldness of Abdulla; she had heard alarmed yet unbelieving Babalatchi's gloomy hints, covert allusions and veiled suggestions to abandon the useless white man whose fate would be the price of the peace secured by the wise and good who had no need of him any more. And he himself! She clung to him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking