ch hurried past overhead to catch up the main
body flashing silently in the distance, sent down short showers that
pattered softly with a soothing hiss over the palm-leaf roof.

Lakamba roused himself from his apathy with an appearance of having
grasped the situation at last.

"Babalatchi," he called briskly, giving him a slight kick.

"Ada Tuan! I am listening."

"If the Orang Blanda come here, Babalatchi, and take Almayer to Batavia
to punish him for smuggling gunpowder, what will he do, you think?"

"I do not know, Tuan."

"You are a fool," commented Lakamba, exultingly. "He will tell them
where the treasure is, so as to find mercy. He will."

Babalatchi looked up at his master and nodded his head with by no means a
joyful surprise. He had not thought of this; there was a new
complication.

"Almayer must die," said Lakamba, decisively, "to make our secret safe.
He must die quietly, Babalatchi. You must do it."

Babalatchi assented, and rose wearily to his feet. "To-morrow?" he
asked.

"Yes; before the Dutch come. He drinks much coffee," answered Lakamba,
with seeming irrelevancy.

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. He went reluctantly behind the curtain and soon reappeared
carrying in his arms a small hand-organ, which he put down on the table
with an air of deep dejection. Lakamba settled himself comfortably in
his arm-chair.

"Turn, Babalatchi, turn," he murmured, with closed eyes.

Babalatchi's hand grasped the handle with the energy of despair, and as
he turned, the deep gloom on his countenance changed into an expression
of hopeless resignation. Through the open shutter the notes of Verdi's
music floated out on the great silence over the river and forest. Lakamba
listened with closed eyes and a delighted smile; Babalatchi turned, at
times dozing off and swaying over, then catching himself up in a great
fright with a few quick turns of the handle. Nature slept in an
exhausted repose after the fierce turmoil, while under the unsteady hand
of the statesman of Sambir the Trovatore fitfully wept, wailed, and bade
good-bye to his Leonore again and agai