f
Mahmat's eloquence. Almayer, bewildered, looked in turn at his wife, at
Mahmat, at Babalatchi, and at last arrested his fascinated gaze on the
body lying on the mud with covered face in a grotesquely unnatural
contortion of mangled and broken limbs, one twisted and lacerated arm,
with white bones protruding in many places through the torn flesh,
stretched out; the hand with outspread fingers nearly touching his foot.

"Do you know who this is?" he asked of Babalatchi, in a low voice.

Babalatchi, staring straight before him, hardly moved his lips, while
Mrs. Almayer's persistent lamentations drowned the whisper of his
murmured reply intended only for Almayer's ear.

"It was fate. Look at your feet, white man. I can see a ring on those
torn fingers which I know well."

Saying this, Babalatchi stepped carelessly forward, putting his foot as
if accidentally on the hand of the corpse and pressing it into the soft
mud. He swung his staff menacingly towards the crowd, which fell back a
little.

"Go away," he said sternly, "and send your women to their cooking fires,
which they ought not to have left to run after a dead stranger. This is
men's work here. I take him now in the name of the Rajah. Let no man
remain here but Tuan Almayer's slaves. Now go!"

The crowd reluctantly began to disperse. The women went first, dragging
away the children that hung back with all their weight on the maternal
hand. The men strolled slowly after them in ever forming and changing
groups that gradually dissolved as they neared the settlement and every
man regained his own house with steps quickened by the hungry
anticipation of the morning rice. Only on the slight elevation where the
land sloped down towards the muddy point a few men, either friends or
enemies of Mahmat, remained gazing curiously for some time longer at the
small group standing around the body on the river bank.

"I do not understand what you mean, Babalatchi," said Almayer. "What is
the ring you are talking about? Whoever he is, you have trodden the poor
fellow's hand right into the mud. Uncover his face," he went on,
addressing Mrs. Almayer, who, squatting by the head of the corpse, rocked
herself to and fro, shaking from time to time her dishevelled grey locks,
and muttering mournfully.

"Hai!" exclaimed Mahmat, who had lingered close by. "Look, Tuan; the
logs came together so," and here he pressed the palms of his hands
together, "and his head must