“De mortuis nil ni . . . num,” muttered Almayer’s guest.
“I wish you would speak English instead of jabbering in your own language, which no one can understand,” said Almayer, sulkily.
“Don’t be angry,” hiccoughed the other. “It’s Latin, and it’s wisdom. It means: Don’t waste your breath in abusing shadows. No offence there. I like you. You have a quarrel with Providence—so have I. I was meant to be a professor, while—look.”
His head nodded. He sat grasping the glass. Almayer walked up and down, then stopped suddenly.
“Yes, they all got on but I. Why? I am better than any of them. Lakamba calls himself a Sultan, and when I go to see him on business sends that one-eyed fiend of his—Babalatchi—to tell me that the ruler is asleep; and shall sleep for a long time. And that Babalatchi! He is the Shahbandar of the State—if you please. Oh Lord! Shahbandar! The pig! A vagabond I wouldn’t let come up these steps when he first came here. . . . Look at Abdulla now. He lives here because—he says—here he is away from white men. But he has hundreds of thousands. Has a house in Penang. Ships. What did he not have when he stole my trade from me! He knocked everything here into a cocked hat, drove father to gold-hunting—then to Europe, where he disappeared. Fancy a man like Captain Lingard disappearing as though he had been a common coolie. Friends of mine wrote to London asking about him. Nobody ever heard of him there! Fancy! Never heard of Captain Lingard!”
The learned gatherer of orchids lifted his head.
“He was a sen—sentimen—tal old buc—buccaneer,” he stammered out, “I like him. I’m sent—tal myself.”
He winked slowly at Almayer, who laughed.
“Yes! I told you about that gravestone. Yes! Another hundred and twenty dollars thrown away. Wish I had them now. He would do it. And the inscription. Ha! ha! ha! ‘Peter Willems, Delivered by the Mercy of God from his Enemy.’ What enemy—unless Captain Lingard himself? And then it has no sense. He was a great man—father was—but strange in many ways. . . . You haven’t seen the grave? On the top of that hill, there, on the other side of the river. I must show you. We will go there.”
“Not I!” said the other. “No interest—in the sun—too tiring. . . . Unless you carry me there.”