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The upper part of her body was wrapped up in the thick folds of a head covering which was pulled down over her brow, and one end of it thrown across from shoulder to shoulder hid the lower part of her face. Only her eyes were visible sombre and gleaming like a starry night. Willems, looking at this strange, muffled figure, felt exasperated, amazed and helpless.
Confused thoughts rushed through his head, disordered, shapeless, stunning. Then he heard his own voice asking "Who are you?" "I am the daughter of the blind Omar," she answered, in a low but steady tone. "And you," she went on, a little louder, "you are the white trader the great man of this place." "Yes," said Willems, holding her eyes with his in a sense of extreme effort, "Yes, I am white."
The players' heads dived into the light as they bent down for the stroke, springing back again smartly into the greenish gloom of broad lamp-shades; the clock ticked methodically; the unmoved Chinaman continuously repeated the score in a lifeless voice, like a big talking doll and Willems would win the game.
Willems' gaze roamed over the ground, and then he watched with idiotic fixity half a dozen black ants entering courageously a tuft of long grass which, to them, must have appeared a dark and a dangerous jungle. Suddenly he thought: There must be something dead in there. Some dead insect. Death everywhere! He closed his eyes again in an access of trembling pain. Death everywhere wherever one looks.
"I trust you implicitly, Captain Lingard," he added, in a louder tone. Lingard led the way down the steps, swinging the lamp and speaking over his shoulder. "It is the second time, Willems, I take you in hand. Mind it is the last. The second time; and the only difference between then and now is that you were bare-footed then and have boots now. In fourteen years. With all your smartness!
In his abasement he was yet aware of his superiority over those fellows, who were merely honest or simply not found out yet. A crowd of imbeciles! He shook his fist at the evoked image of his friends, and the startled parrot fluttered its wings and shrieked in desperate fright. In a short glance upwards Willems saw his wife come round the corner of the house.
Willems moved languidly towards the river, then retraced his steps to the tree and let himself fall on the seat under its shade. On the other side of the immense trunk he could hear the old woman moving about, sighing loudly, muttering to herself, snapping dry sticks, blowing up the fire. After a while a whiff of smoke drifted round to where he sat.
In exchange he had their silent fear, their loquacious love, their noisy veneration. It is a fine thing to be a providence, and to be told so on every day of one's life. It gives one a feeling of enormously remote superiority, and Willems revelled in it.
You want gold anklets and silk sarongs for that game my mighty hunter. And you won't get those for the asking, I promise you. All day amongst the natives. A fine help you are to me." "You shouldn't drink so much, Almayer," said Willems, disguising his fury under an affected drawl. "You have no head. Never had, as far as I can remember, in the old days in Macassar. You drink too much."
"Yes," drawled out Willems, thoughtfully, and went on with increasing animation: "As I said, I have always led a virtuous life. More so than Hudig than you. Yes, than you. I drank a little, I played cards a little. Who doesn't? But I had principles from a boy. Yes, principles. Business is business, and I never was an ass. I never respected fools.
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