“In a big canoe with three men. I know everything. Lingard’s away. I come to save you. I know. . . . Almayer told me.”
“Canoe!—Almayer—Lies. Told you—You!” stammered Willems in a distracted manner. “Why you?—Told what?”
Words failed him. He stared at his wife, thinking with fear that she—stupid woman—had been made a tool in some plan of treachery . . . in some deadly plot.
She began to cry—
“Don’t look at me like that, Peter. What have I done? I come to beg—to beg—forgiveness. . . . Save—Lingard—danger.”
He trembled with impatience, with hope, with fear. She looked at him and sobbed out in a fresh outburst of grief—
“Oh! Peter. What’s the matter?—Are you ill? . . . Oh! you look so ill . . .”
He shook her violently into a terrified and wondering silence.
“How dare you!—I am well—perfectly well. . . . Where’s that boat? Will you tell me where that boat is—at last? The boat, I say . . . You! . . .”
“You hurt me,” she moaned.