Almayers Folly | Page 3

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ALMAYER'S FOLLY: A STORY OF AN EASTERN RIVER
by Joseph Conrad
CHAPTER I.
"Kaspar! Makan!"
The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of
splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour. An
unpleasant voice too. He had heard it for many years, and with every
year he liked it less. No matter; there would be an end to all this soon.
He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call. Leaning
with both his elbows on the balustrade of the verandah, he went on
looking fixedly at the great river that flowed-- indifferent and
hurried--before his eyes. He liked to look at it about the time of sunset;
perhaps because at that time the sinking sun would spread a glowing

gold tinge on the waters of the Pantai, and Almayer's thoughts were
often busy with gold; gold he had failed to secure; gold the others had
secured-- dishonestly, of course--or gold he meant to secure yet,
through his own honest exertions, for himself and Nina. He absorbed
himself in his dream of wealth and power away from this coast where
he had dwelt for so many years, forgetting the bitterness of toil and
strife in the vision of a great and splendid reward. They would live in
Europe, he and his daughter. They would be rich and respected.
Nobody would think of her mixed blood in the presence of her great
beauty and of his immense wealth. Witnessing her triumphs he would
grow young again, he would forget the twenty-five years of
heart-breaking struggle on this coast where he felt like a prisoner. All
this was nearly within his reach. Let only Dain return! And return soon
he must--in his own interest, for his own share. He was now more than
a week late! Perhaps he would return to-night. Such were Almayer's
thoughts as, standing on the verandah of his new but already decaying
house--that last failure of his life-- he looked on the broad river. There
was no tinge of gold on it this evening, for it had been swollen by the
rains, and rolled an angry and muddy flood under his inattentive eyes,
carrying small drift-wood and big dead logs, and whole uprooted trees
with branches and foliage, amongst which the water swirled and roared
angrily.
One of those drifting trees grounded on the shelving shore, just by the
house, and Almayer, neglecting his dream, watched it with languid
interest. The tree swung slowly round, amid the hiss and foam of the
water, and soon getting free of the obstruction began to move down
stream again, rolling slowly over, raising upwards a long, denuded
branch, like a hand lifted in mute appeal to heaven against the river's
brutal and unnecessary violence. Almayer's interest in the fate of that
tree increased rapidly. He leaned over to see if it would clear the low
point below. It did; then he drew back, thinking that now its course was
free down to the sea, and he envied the lot of that inanimate thing now
growing small and indistinct in the deepening darkness. As he lost sight
of it altogether he began to wonder how far out to sea it would drift.
Would the current carry it north or south? South, probably, till it drifted
in sight of Celebes, as far as Macassar, perhaps!

Macassar! Almayer's quickened fancy distanced the tree on its
imaginary voyage, but his memory lagging behind some twenty years
or more in point of time saw a young and slim Almayer, clad all in
white and modest-looking, landing from the Dutch mail-boat on the
dusty jetty of Macassar, coming to woo fortune in the godowns of old
Hudig. It was an important epoch in his life, the beginning of a new
existence for him. His father, a subordinate official employed in the
Botanical Gardens of Buitenzorg, was no doubt delighted to place his
son in such a firm. The young man himself too was nothing loth to
leave the poisonous shores of Java, and the meagre comforts of