Almayers Folly | Page 9

course. We shall start on the day after to-morrow," said
Almayer, joyously. "We must not lose any time. Are you glad, little
girl?"
She was nearly as tall as himself, but he liked to recall the time when
she was little and they were all in all to each other.
"I am glad," she said, very low.
"Of course," said Almayer, vivaciously, "you cannot imagine what is
before you. I myself have not been to Europe, but I have heard my
mother talk so often that I seem to know all about it. We shall live a--a
glorious life. You shall see."
Again he stood silent by his daughter's side looking at that enchanting
vision. After a while he shook his clenched hand towards the sleeping
settlement.
"Ah! my friend Abdulla," he cried, "we shall see who will have the best
of it after all these years!"
He looked up the river and remarked calmly:
"Another thunderstorm. Well! No thunder will keep me awake to-night,
I know! Good-night, little girl," he whispered, tenderly kissing her
cheek. "You do not seem to be very happy to-night, but to-morrow you
will show a brighter face. Eh?"
Nina had listened to her father with her face unmoved, with her
half-closed eyes still gazing into the night now made more intense by a
heavy thunder-cloud that had crept down from the hills blotting out the
stars, merging sky, forest, and river into one mass of almost palpable
blackness. The faint breeze had died out, but the distant rumble of

thunder and pale flashes of lightning gave warning of the approaching
storm. With a sigh the girl turned towards the table.
Almayer was in his hammock now, already half asleep.
"Take the lamp, Nina," he muttered, drowsily. "This place is full of
mosquitoes. Go to sleep, daughter."
But Nina put the lamp out and turned back again towards the balustrade
of the verandah, standing with her arm round the wooden support and
looking eagerly towards the Pantai reach. And motionless there in the
oppressive calm of the tropical night she could see at each flash of
lightning the forest lining both banks up the river, bending before the
furious blast of the coming tempest, the upper reach of the river
whipped into white foam by the wind, and the black clouds torn into
fantastic shapes trailing low over the swaying trees. Round her all was
as yet stillness and peace, but she could hear afar off the roar of the
wind, the hiss of heavy rain, the wash of the waves on the tormented
river. It came nearer and nearer, with loud thunder-claps and long
flashes of vivid lightning, followed by short periods of appalling
blackness. When the storm reached the low point dividing the river, the
house shook in the wind, and the rain pattered loudly on the palm-leaf
roof, the thunder spoke in one prolonged roll, and the incessant
lightning disclosed a turmoil of leaping waters, driving logs, and the
big trees bending before a brutal and merciless force.
Undisturbed by the nightly event of the rainy monsoon, the father slept
quietly, oblivious alike of his hopes, his misfortunes, his friends, and
his enemies; and the daughter stood motionless, at each flash of
lightning eagerly scanning the broad river with a steady and anxious
gaze.
CHAPTER II.
When, in compliance with Lingard's abrupt demand, Almayer
consented to wed the Malay girl, no one knew that on the day when the
interesting young convert had lost all her natural relations and found a
white father, she had been fighting desperately like the rest of them on

board the prau, and was only prevented from leaping overboard, like
the few other survivors, by a severe wound in the leg. There, on the
fore-deck of the prau, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and
dying pirates, and had her carried on the poop of the Flash before the
Malay craft was set on fire and sent adrift. She was conscious, and in
the great peace and stillness of the tropical evening succeeding the
turmoil of the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her
own savage manner, drift away into the gloom in a great roar of flame
and smoke. She lay there unheeding the careful hands attending to her
wound, silent and absorbed in gazing at the funeral pile of those brave
men she had so much admired and so well helped in their contest with
the redoubtable "Rajah-Laut."
The light night breeze fanned the brig gently to the southward, and the
great blaze of light got smaller and smaller till it twinkled only on the
horizon like a setting star. It set: the heavy canopy of smoke reflected
the glare of hidden flames for a short time and then disappeared