“Captain C—— knows this river like his own pocket,” I concluded, discursively, trying to get on terms.
“Better,” said Almayer.
Leaning over the rail of the bridge, I looked at Almayer, who looked down at the wharf in aggrieved thought. He shuffled his feet a little; he wore straw slippers with thick soles. The morning fog had thickened considerably. Everything round us dripped—the derricks, the rails, every single rope in the ship—as if a fit of crying had come upon the universe.
Almayer again raised his head and, in the accents of a man accustomed to the buffets of evil fortune, asked, hardly audibly:
“I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a pony on board?”
I told him, almost in a whisper, for he attuned my communications to his minor key, that we had such a thing as a pony, and I hinted, as gently as I could, that he was confoundedly in the way, too. I was very anxious to have him landed before I began to handle the cargo. Almayer remained looking up at me for a long while, with incredulous and melancholy eyes, as though it were not a safe thing to believe in my statement. This pathetic mistrust in the favourable issue of any sort of affair touched me deeply, and I added:
“He doesn't seem a bit the worse for the passage. He's a nice pony, too.”
Almayer was not to be cheered up; for all answer he cleared his throat and looked down again at his feet. I tried to close with him on another tack.
“By Jove!” I said. “Aren't you afraid of catching pneumonia or bronchitis or some thing, walking about in a singlet in such a wet fog?”
He was not to be propitiated by a show of interest in his health.