Lord!"

"Don't make a show of yourself. Sit down. Let's talk quietly. I want to
know all about it. So he led?"

"He was the soul of the whole thing. He piloted Abdulla's ship in. He
ordered everything and everybody," said Almayer, who sat down again,
with a resigned air.

"When did it happen--exactly?"

"On the sixteenth I heard the first rumours of Abdulla's ship being in
the river; a thing I refused to believe at first. Next day I could not
doubt any more. There was a great council held openly in Lakamba's place
where almost everybody in Sambir attended. On the eighteenth the Lord of
the Isles was anchored in Sambir reach, abreast of my house. Let's see.
Six weeks to-day, exactly."

"And all that happened like this? All of a sudden. You never heard
anything--no warning. Nothing. Never had an idea that something was up?
Come, Almayer!"

"Heard! Yes, I used to hear something every day. Mostly lies. Is there
anything else in Sambir?"

"You might not have believed them," observed Lingard. "In fact you ought
not to have believed everything that was told to you, as if you had been
a green hand on his first voyage."

Almayer moved in his chair uneasily.

"That scoundrel came here one day," he said. "He had been away from the
house for a couple of months living with that woman. I only heard about
him now and then from Patalolo's people when they came over. Well one
day, about noon, he appeared in this courtyard, as if he had been jerked
up from hell-where he belongs."

Lingard took his cheroot out, and, with his mouth full of white smoke
that oozed out through his parted lips, listened, attentive. After a
short pause Almayer went on, looking at the floor moodily--

"I must say he looked awful. Had a bad bout of the ague probably. The
left shore is very unhealthy. Strange that only the breadth of the river
. . ."

He dropped off into deep thoughtfulness as if he had forgotten his
grievances in a bitter meditation upon the unsanitary condition of the
virgin forests on the left bank. Lingard took this opportunity to expel
the smoke in a mighty expiration and threw the stump of his cheroot over
his shoulder.

"Go on," he said, after a while. "He came to see you . . ."

"But it wasn't unhealthy enough to finish him, worse luck!" went on
Almayer, rousing himself, "and, as I said, he turned up here with his
brazen impudence. He bullied me, he threatened vaguely. He wanted
to scare me, to blackmail me. Me! And, by