s or Head-hunters are eternally quarrelling. It is true enough
that some gold reaches the coast in the hands of those Dyaks when, during
short periods of truce in the desultory warfare, they visit the coast
settlements of Malays. And so the wildest exaggerations are built up and
added to on the slight basis of that fact.

Almayer in his quality of white man--as Lingard before him--had somewhat
better relations with the up-river tribes. Yet even his excursions were
not without danger, and his returns were eagerly looked for by the
impatient Lakamba. But every time the Rajah was disappointed. Vain were
the conferences by the rice-pot of his factotum Babalatchi with the white
man's wife. The white man himself was impenetrable--impenetrable to
persuasion, coaxing, abuse; to soft words and shrill revilings; to
desperate beseechings or murderous threats; for Mrs. Almayer, in her
extreme desire to persuade her husband into an alliance with Lakamba,
played upon the whole gamut of passion. With her soiled robe wound
tightly under the armpits across her lean bosom, her scant grayish hair
tumbled in disorder over her projecting cheek-bones, in suppliant
attitude, she depicted with shrill volubility the advantages of close
union with a man so good and so fair dealing.

"Why don't you go to the Rajah?" she screamed. "Why do you go back to
those Dyaks in the great forest? They should be killed. You cannot kill
them, you cannot; but our Rajah's men are brave! You tell the Rajah
where the old white man's treasure is. Our Rajah is good! He is our
very grandfather, Datu Besar! He will kill those wretched Dyaks, and you
shall have half the treasure. Oh, Kaspar, tell where the treasure is!
Tell me! Tell me out of the old man's surat where you read so often at
night."

On those occasions Almayer sat with rounded shoulders bending to the
blast of this domestic tempest, accentuating only each pause in the
torrent of his wife's eloquence by an angry growl, "There is no treasure!
Go away, woman!" Exasperated by the sight of his patiently bent back,
she would at last walk round so as to face him across the table, and
clasping her robe with one hand she stretched the other lean arm and claw-
like hand to emphasise, in a passion of anger and contempt, the rapid
rush of scathing remarks and bitter cursings heaped on the head of the
man unworthy to associate with brave Malay chiefs. It ended generally by
Almayer rising slowly, hi