oor was shut, and the usual
noises refilled the place; the song of the workmen, the rumble of
barrels, the scratch of rapid pens; while above all rose the musical
chink of broad silver pieces streaming ceaselessly through the yellow
fingers of the attentive Chinamen.

At that time Macassar was teeming with life and commerce. It was the
point in the islands where tended all those bold spirits who, fitting out
schooners on the Australian coast, invaded the Malay Archipelago in
search of money and adventure. Bold, reckless, keen in business, not
disinclined for a brush with the pirates that were to be found on many a
coast as yet, making money fast, they used to have a general "rendezvous"
in the bay for purposes of trade and dissipation. The Dutch merchants
called those men English pedlars; some of them were undoubtedly gentlemen
for whom that kind of life had a charm; most were seamen; the
acknowledged king of them all was Tom Lingard, he whom the Malays, honest
or dishonest, quiet fishermen or desperate cut-throats, recognised as
"the Rajah-Laut"--the King of the Sea.

Almayer had heard of him before he had been three days in Macassar, had
heard the stories of his smart business transactions, his loves, and also
of his desperate fights with the Sulu pirates, together with the romantic
tale of some child--a girl--found in a piratical prau by the victorious
Lingard, when, after a long contest, he boarded the craft, driving the
crew overboard. This girl, it was generally known, Lingard had adopted,
was having her educated in some convent in Java, and spoke of her as "my
daughter." He had sworn a mighty oath to marry her to a white man before
he went home and to leave her all his money. "And Captain Lingard has
lots of money," would say Mr. Vinck solemnly, with his head on one side,
"lots of money; more than Hudig!" And after a pause--just to let his
hearers recover from their astonishment at such an incredible
assertion--he would add in an explanatory whisper, "You know, he has
discovered a river."

That was it! He had discovered a river! That was the fact placing old
Lingard so much above the common crowd of sea-going adventurers who
traded with Hudig in the daytime and drank champagne, gambled, sang noisy
songs, and made love to half-caste girls under the broad verandah of the
Sunda Hotel at night. Into that river, whose entrances himself only
knew, Lingard used to take his assorted cargo of Manchester goods,