have been between them, and now there is no
face for you to look at. There are his flesh and his bones, the nose,
and the lips, and maybe his eyes, but nobody could tell the one from the
other. It was written the day he was born that no man could look at him
in death and be able to say, 'This is my friend's face.'"

"Silence, Mahmat; enough!" said Babalatchi, "and take thy eyes off his
anklet, thou eater of pigs flesh. Tuan Almayer," he went on, lowering
his voice, "have you seen Dain this morning?"

Almayer opened his eyes wide and looked alarmed. "No," he said quickly;
"haven't you seen him? Is he not with the Rajah? I am waiting; why does
he not come?"

Babalatchi nodded his head sadly.

"He is come, Tuan. He left last night when the storm was great and the
river spoke angrily. 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. He
snatched the cover off and looked at the formless mass of flesh, hair,
and drying mud, where the face of the drowned man should have been.
"Nobody can tell," he added, turning away with a shudder.

Babalatchi was on his knees wiping the mud from the stiffened fingers of
the outstretched hand. He rose to his feet and flashed before Almayer's
eyes a gold ring set with a large green stone.

"You know this well," he said. "This never left Dain's hand. I had to
tear the flesh now to get it off. Do you believe now?"

Almayer raised his hands to his head and let them fall listlessly by his
side in the utter abandonment of despair. Babalatchi, looking at him
curiously, was astonished to see him smile. A strange fancy had taken
possession of Almayer's brain, distracted by this new misfortune. It
seemed to him that for many years he had been falling into a deep
precipice. Day after day, month after month, year after year, he had
been falling, falling, falling; it was a smooth, round, black thing, and
the black walls had been rushing upwards with wearisome rapidity. A
great rush, the noise of which he fancied he could hear yet; and now,
with an awful shock, he had reached the bottom, and behold! he was alive
and whole, and Dain was dead with all his bones broken. It struck him as
funny. A