if by
previous arrangement, and both got up. Almayer kicked off his slippers
and scrambled into his hammock, which hung between two wooden columns
of the verandah so as to catch every rare breeze of the dry season,
and Willems, after standing irresolutely by the table for a short time,
walked without a word down the steps of the house and over the courtyard
towards the little wooden jetty, where several small canoes and a couple
of big white whale-boats were made fast, tugging at their short painters
and bumping together in the swift current of the river. He jumped into
the smallest canoe, balancing himself clumsily, slipped the rattan
painter, and gave an unnecessary and violent shove, which nearly sent
him headlong overboard. By the time he regained his balance the canoe
had drifted some fifty yards down the river. He knelt in the bottom of
his little craft and fought the current with long sweeps of the paddle.
Almayer sat up in his hammock, grasping his feet and peering over the
river with parted lips till he made out the shadowy form of man and
canoe as they struggled past the jetty again.

"I thought you would go," he shouted. "Won't you take the gun? Hey?"
he yelled, straining his voice. Then he fell back in his hammock and
laughed to himself feebly till he fell asleep. On the river, Willems,
his eyes fixed intently ahead, swept his paddle right and left,
unheeding the words that reached him faintly.

It was now three months since Lingard had landed Willems in Sambir and
had departed hurriedly, leaving him in Almayer's care.

The two white men did not get on well together. Almayer, remembering the
time when they both served Hudig, and when the superior Willems treated
him with offensive condescension, felt a great dislike towards his
guest. He was also jealous of Lingard's favour. Almayer had married a
Malay girl whom the old seaman had adopted in one of his accesses of
unreasoning benevolence, and as the marriage was not a happy one from a
domestic point of view, he looked to Lingard's fortune for compensation
in his matrimonial unhappiness. The appearance of that man, who seemed
to have a claim of some sort upon Lingard, filled him with considerable
uneasiness, the more so because the old seaman did not choose to
acquaint the husband of his adopted daughter with Willems' history, or
to confide to him his intentions as to that individual's future fate.
Suspicious from the first, Almayer discouraged Willems' att