He flung his hat on deck and laid hold of his hair despairingly. Lingard looked at him with concern.
“What did she mean by it?” he muttered, thoughtfully.
“Mean! She is crazy, I tell you—and I will be, very soon, if this lasts!”
“Just a little patience, Kaspar,” pleaded Lingard. “A day or so more.”
Relieved or tired by his violent outburst, Almayer calmed down, picked up his hat and, leaning against the bulwark, commenced to fan himself with it.
“Days do pass,” he said, resignedly—“but that kind of thing makes a man old before his time. What is there to think about?—I can’t imagine! Abdulla says plainly that if you undertake to pilot his ship out and instruct the half-caste, he will drop Willems like a hot potato and be your friend ever after. I believe him perfectly, as to Willems. It’s so natural. As to being your friend it’s a lie of course, but we need not bother about that just yet. You just say yes to Abdulla, and then whatever happens to Willems will be nobody’s business.”
He interrupted himself and remained silent for a while, glaring about with set teeth and dilated nostrils.
“You leave it to me. I’ll see to it that something happens to him,” he said at last, with calm ferocity. Lingard smiled faintly.
“The fellow isn’t worth a shot. Not the trouble of it,” he whispered, as if to himself. Almayer fired up suddenly.
“That’s what you think,” he cried. “You haven’t been sewn up in your hammock to be made a laughing-stock of before a parcel of savages. Why! I daren’t look anybody here in the face while that scoundrel is alive. I will . . . I will settle him.”