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Updated: May 8, 2025
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.
They interchanged their ideas rapidly, speaking in whispers into each other's faces, very close now, Dain suggesting, Lakamba contradicting, Babalatchi conciliating and anxious in his vivid apprehension of coming difficulties. He spoke most, whispering earnestly, turning his head slowly from side to side so as to bring his solitary eye to bear upon each of his interlocutors in turn.
He avoided looking at Nina, but fixed his eyes on Babalatchi. "Now, listen," said Babalatchi, sharply. "The ring and the anklet you have seen, and you know they belonged to Dain the trader, and to no other. Dain returned last night in a canoe. He spoke with the Rajah, and in the middle of the night left to cross over to the white man's house.
"The flame of that last day! I see it yet the last thing I saw! And I hear the noise of the rent earth when they all died. And I live to be the plaything of a crafty one," he added, with inconsequential peevishness. "You are my master still," said Babalatchi, humbly.
He paused, morsel in hand, seemed to miss something, turned his head from side to side, slowly, like a man with a stiff neck, and ejaculated in an ill-humoured bass "Babalatchi!" The players glanced up quickly, and looked down again directly. Those men who were standing stirred uneasily as if prodded by the sound of the chief's voice.
What more did you say, Tuan? I did not understand your talk." "It is nothing. I expected to find here . . . But where are they all?" "What matters where they are?" said Babalatchi, gloomily. "Have you come to see my people? The last departed on a long journey and I am alone. Tomorrow I go too." "I came to see a white man," said Lingard, walking on slowly. "He is not gone, is he?"
"Yes," went on Babalatchi, in a low monotone, as if pursuing aloud a train of thought that had its beginning in the silent contemplation of the unstable nature of earthly greatness "yes. He has been rich and strong, and now he lives on alms: old, feeble, blind, and without companions, but for his daughter.
That same evening he startled Lakamba by announcing that the time had come at last to make the first move in their long-deferred game. Lakamba asked excitedly for explanation. Babalatchi shook his head and pointed to the flitting shadows of moving women and to the vague forms of men sitting by the evening fires in the courtyard. Not a word would he speak here, he declared.
The night was very black, but he had within him a light that showed the way to your house as smooth as a narrow backwater, and the many logs no bigger than wisps of dried grass. Therefore he went; and now he lies here." And Babalatchi nodded his head towards the body. "How can you tell?" said Almayer, excitedly, pushing his wife aside.
"No!" answered Babalatchi, at his elbow. "A man with a red skin and hard eyes," he went on, musingly, "whose hand is strong, and whose heart is foolish and weak. A white man indeed . . . But still a man." They were now at the foot of the short ladder which led to the split-bamboo platform surrounding Babalatchi's habitation.
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