empts to
help him in his trading, and then when Willems drew back, he made, with
characteristic perverseness, a grievance of his unconcern. From cold
civility in their relations, the two men drifted into silent hostility,
then into outspoken enmity, and both wished ardently for Lingard's
return and the end of a situation that grew more intolerable from day
to day. The time dragged slowly. Willems watched the succeeding sunrises
wondering dismally whether before the evening some change would occur
in the deadly dullness of his life. He missed the commercial activity of
that existence which seemed to him far off, irreparably lost, buried out
of sight under the ruins of his past success--now gone from him beyond
the possibility of redemption. He mooned disconsolately about Almayer's
courtyard, watching from afar, with uninterested eyes, the up-country
canoes discharging guttah or rattans, and loading rice or European goods
on the little wharf of Lingard & Co. Big as was the extent of ground
owned by Almayer, Willems yet felt that there was not enough room for
him inside those neat fences. The man who, during long years, became
accustomed to think of himself as indispensable to others, felt a bitter
and savage rage at the cruel consciousness of his superfluity, of his
uselessness; at the cold hostility visible in every look of the only
white man in this barbarous corner of the world. He gnashed his teeth
when he thought of the wasted days, of the life thrown away in the
unwilling company of that peevish and suspicious fool. He heard the
reproach of his idleness in the murmurs of the river, in the unceasing
whisper of the great forests. Round him everything stirred, moved, swept
by in a rush; the earth under his feet and the heavens above his head.
The very savages around him strove, struggled, fought, worked--if only
to prolong a miserable existence; but they lived, they lived! And it was
only himself that seemed to be left outside the scheme of creation in a
hopeless immobility filled with tormenting anger and with ever-stinging
regret.

He took to wandering about the settlement. The afterwards flourishing
Sambir was born in a swamp and passed its youth in malodorous mud.
The houses crowded the bank, and, as if to get away from the unhealthy
shore, stepped boldly into the river, shooting over it in a close row of
bamboo platforms elevated on high piles, amongst which the current below
spoke in a soft and unceasing plaint o