ms made an attempt to speak, but Almayer howled him down.

"Take yourself off! Don't you see you frighten the child--you scarecrow!
No, no! dear," he went on to his little daughter, soothingly, while
Willems walked down the steps slowly. "No. Don't cry. See! Bad man going
away. Look! He is afraid of your papa. Nasty, bad man. Never come back
again. He shall live in the woods and never come near my little girl. If
he comes papa will kill him--so!" He struck his fist on the rail of the
balustrade to show how he would kill Willems, and, perching the consoled
child on his shoulder held her with one hand, while he pointed toward
the retreating figure of his visitor.

"Look how he runs away, dearest," he said, coaxingly. "Isn't he funny.
Call 'pig' after him, dearest. Call after him."

The seriousness of her face vanished into dimples. Under the long
eyelashes, glistening with recent tears, her big eyes sparkled and
danced with fun. She took firm hold of Almayer's hair with one hand,
while she waved the other joyously and called out with all her might, in
a clear note, soft and distinct like the pipe of a bird:--

"Pig! Pig! Pig!"

CHAPTER TWO

A sigh under the flaming blue, a shiver of the sleeping sea, a cool
breath as if a door had been swung upon the frozen spaces of the
universe, and with a stir of leaves, with the nod of boughs, with the
tremble of slender branches the sea breeze struck the coast, rushed up
the river, swept round the broad reaches, and travelled on in a soft
ripple of darkening water, in the whisper of branches, in the rustle of
leaves of the awakened forests. It fanned in Lakamba's campong the dull
red of expiring embers into a pale brilliance; and, under its touch,
the slender, upright spirals of smoke that rose from every glowing heap
swayed, wavered, and eddying down filled the twilight of clustered shade
trees with the aromatic scent of the burning wood. The men who had been
dozing in the shade during the hot hours of the afternoon woke up, and
the silence of the big courtyard was broken by the hesitating murmur
of yet sleepy voices, by coughs and yawns, with now and then a burst of
laughter, a loud hail, a name or a joke sent out in a soft drawl. Small
groups squatted round the little fires, and the monotonous undertone of
talk filled the enclosure; the talk of barbarians, persistent, steady,
repeating itself in the soft syllables, in musical tones of the
never-ending discourses of those