Joseph Conrad - The Collected Works of Joseph Conrad - Novels, Short Stories, Letters & Memoirs

Dain came into the circle of light, and, throwing his arm around Nina’s neck, whispered in her ear—“I can kill him where he stands, before a sound can pass his lips. For you it is to say yes or no. Babalatchi cannot be far now.”

He straightened himself up, taking his arm off her shoulder, and confronted Almayer, who looked at them both with an expression of concentrated fury.

“No!” she cried, clinging to Dain in wild alarm. “No! Kill me! Then perhaps he will let you go. You do not know the mind of a white man. He would rather see me dead than standing where I am. Forgive me, your slave, but you must not.” She fell at his feet sobbing violently and repeating, “Kill me! Kill me!”

“I want you alive,” said Almayer, speaking also in Malay, with sombre calmness. “You go, or he hangs. Will you obey?”

Dain shook Nina off, and, making a sudden lunge, struck Almayer full in the chest with the handle of his kriss, keeping the point towards himself.

“Hai, look! It was easy for me to turn the point the other way,” he said in his even voice. “Go, Tuan Putih,” he added with dignity. “I give you your life, my life, and her life. I am the slave of this woman’s desire, and she wills it so.”

There was not a glimmer of light in the sky now, and the tops of the trees were as invisible as their trunks, being lost in the mass of clouds that hung low over the woods, the clearing, and the river.

Every outline had disappeared in the intense blackness that seemed to have destroyed everything but space. Only the fire glimmered like a star forgotten in this annihilation of all visible things, and nothing was heard after Dain ceased speaking but the sobs of Nina, whom he held in his arms, kneeling beside the fire. Almayer stood looking down at them in gloomy thoughtfulness. As he was opening his lips to speak they were startled by a cry of warning by the riverside, followed by the splash of many paddles and the sound of voices.

“Babalatchi!” shouted Dain, lifting up Nina as he got upon his feet quickly.

“Ada! Ada!” came the answer from the panting statesman who ran up the path and stood amongst them. “Run to my canoe,” he said to Dain excitedly, without taking any notice of Almayer. “Run! we must go. That woman has told them all!”

“What woman?” asked Dain, looking at Nina. Just then there was only one woman in the whole world for him.

“The she-dog with white teeth; the seven times accursed slave of Bulangi. She yelled at Abdulla’s gate till she woke up all Sambir. Now the white officers are coming, guided by her and Reshid. If you want to live, do not look at me, but go!”

“How do you know this?” asked Almayer.

“Oh, Tuan! what matters how I know! I have only one eye, but I saw lights in Abdulla’s house and in his campong as we were paddling past. I have ears, and while we lay under the bank I have heard the messengers sent out to the white men’s house.”

“Will you depart without that woman who is my daughter?” said Almayer, addressing Dain, while Babalatchi stamped with impatience, muttering, “Run! Run at once!”

“No,” answered Dain, steadily, “I will not go; to no man will I abandon this woman.”

“Then kill me and escape yourself,” sobbed out Nina.

He clasped her close, looking at her tenderly, and whispered, “We will never part, O Nina!”

“I shall not stay here any longer,” broke in Babalatchi, angrily. “This is great foolishness. No woman is worth a man’s life. I am an old man, and I know.”

He picked up his staff, and, turning to go, looked at Dain as if offering him his last chance of escape. But Dain’s face was hidden amongst Nina’s black tresses, and he did not see this last appealing glance.

Babalatchi vanished in the darkness. Shortly after his disappearance they heard the war canoe leave the landing-place in the swish of the numerous paddles dipped in the water together. Almost at the same time Ali came up from the riverside, two paddles on his shoulder.

“Our canoe is hidden up the creek, Tuan Almayer,” he said, “in the dense bush where the forest comes down to the water. I took it there because I heard from Babalatchi’s paddlers that the white men are coming here.”

“Wait for me there,” said Almayer, “but keep the canoe hidden.”

He remained silent, listening to Ali’s footsteps, then turned to Nina.

“Nina,” he said sadly, “will you have no pity for me?”

There was no answer. She did not even turn her head, which was pressed close to Dain’s breast.

He made a movement as if to leave them and stopped. By the dim glow of the burning-out fire he saw their two motionless figures. The woman’s back turned to him with the long black hair streaming down over the white dress, and Dain’s calm face looking at him above her head.

“I cannot,” he muttered to himself. After a long pause he spoke again a little lower, but in an unsteady voice, “It would be too great a disgrace. I am a white man.” He broke down completely there, and went on tearfully, “I am a white man, and of good family. Very good family,” he repeated, weeping bitterly. “It would be a disgrace . . . all over the islands, . . . the only white man on the east coast. No, it cannot be . . . white men finding my daughter with this Malay. My daughter!” he cried aloud, with a ring of despair in his voice.

He recovered his composure after a while and said distinctly—

“I will never forgive you, Nina—never! If you were to come back to me now, the memory of this night would poison all my life. I shall try to forget. I have no daughter. There used to be a half-caste woman in my house, but she is going even now. You, Dain, or whatever your name may be, I shall take you and that woman to the island at the mouth of the river myself. Come with me.”

He led the way, following the bank as far as the forest. Ali answered to his call, and, pushing their way through the dense bush, they stepped into the canoe hidden under the overhanging branches. Dain laid Nina in the bottom, and sat holding her head on his knees. Almayer and Ali each took up a paddle. As they were going to push out Ali hissed warningly. All listened.

In the great stillness before the bursting out of the thunderstorm they could hear the sound of oars working regularly in their row-locks. The sound approached steadily, and Dain, looking through the branches, could see the faint shape of a big white boat. A woman’s voice said in a cautious tone—

“There is the place where you may land white men; a little higher—there!”

The boat was passing them so close in the narrow creek that the blades of the long oars nearly touched the canoe.

“Way enough! Stand by to jump on shore! He is alone and unarmed,” was the quiet order in a man’s voice, and in Dutch.

Somebody else whispered: “I think I can see a glimmer of a fire through the bush.” And then the boat floated past them, disappearing instantly in the darkness.

“Now,” whispered Ali, eagerly, “let us push out and paddle away.”

The little canoe swung into the stream, and as it sprung forward in response to the vigorous dig of the paddles they could hear an angry shout.

“He is not by the fire. Spread out, men, and search for him!”

Blue lights blazed out in different parts of the clearing, and the shrill voice of a woman cried in accents of rage and pain—

“Too late! O senseless white men! He has escaped!”

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“That is the place,” said Dain, indicating with the blade of his paddle a small islet about a mile ahead of the canoe—“that is the place where Babalatchi promised that a boat from the prau would come for me when the sun is overhead. We will wait for that boat there.”