in judgment or impartiality.

After I had been three months occupied in the multifarious intercourse
of Bangalang and its neighborhood, I understood the language well
enough to dispense with the interpreter, who was one of the Mongo's
confidential agents. When my companion departed on a long journey, he
counselled me to make up with Unga-golah, the _harem's_ Cerberus, as
she suspected my intimacy with Esther, who would doubtless be
denounced to Ormond, unless I purchased the beldame's silence.

Indeed, ever since the night of warning, when the beautiful
_quarteroon_ visited my hovel, I had contrived to meet this charming
girl, as the only solace of my solitude. Amid all the wild,
passionate, and savage surroundings of Bangalang, Esther--the
Pariah--was the only golden link that still seemed to bind me to
humanity and the lands beyond the seas. On that burning coast, I was
not excited by the stirring of an adventurous life, nor was my young
heart seduced and bewildered by absorbing avarice. Many a night, when
the dews penetrated my flesh, as I looked towards the west, my soul
shrank from the selfish wretches around me, and went off in dreams to
the homes I had abandoned. When I came back to myself,--when I was
forced to recognize my doom in Africa,--when I acknowledged that my
lot had been cast, perhaps unwisely, by myself, my spirit turned,
like the worm from the crashing heel, and found nothing that kindled
for me with the light of human sympathy, save this outcast girl.
Esther was to me as a sister, and when the hint of her harm or loss
was given, I hastened to disarm the only hand that could inflict a
blow. Unga-golah was a woman, and a rope of sparkling coral for her
neck, smothered all her wrongs.

The months I had passed in Africa without illness,--though I went
abroad after dark, and bathed in the river during the heat of the
day,--made me believe myself proof against malaria. But, at length, a
violent pain in my loins, accompanied by a swimming head, warned me
that the African fever held me in its dreaded gripe. In two days I was
delirious. Ormond visited me; but I knew him not, and in my madness,
called on Esther, accompanying the name with terms of endearment.
This, I was told, stirred the surprise and jealousy of the Mongo, who
forthwith assailed the matron of his harem with a torrent of inquiries
and abuse. But Unga-golah was faithful. The beads had sealed her
tongue; so that, with the instinctive adroitn