forgetting the painter, and the canoe hung for a moment
amongst the bushes and then swung out of sight before he had time to
dash into the water and secure it. He was thunderstruck at first. Now he
could not go back unless he called up the Rajah's people to get a boat
and rowers--and the way to Patalolo's campong led past Aissa's house!

He went up the path with the eager eyes and reluctant steps of a man
pursuing a phantom, and when he found himself at a place where a narrow
track branched off to the left towards Omar's clearing he stood still,
with a look of strained attention on his face as if listening to a
far-off voice--the voice of his fate. It was a sound inarticulate but
full of meaning; and following it there came a rending and tearing
within his breast. He twisted his fingers together, and the joints of
his hands and arms cracked. On his forehead the perspiration stood
out in small pearly drops. He looked round wildly. Above the shapeless
darkness of the forest undergrowth rose the treetops with their high
boughs and leaves standing out black on the pale sky--like fragments
of night floating on moonbeams. Under his feet warm steam rose from the
heated earth. Round him there was a great silence.

He was looking round for help. This silence, this immobility of his
surroundings seemed to him a cold rebuke, a stern refusal, a cruel
unconcern. There was no safety outside of himself--and in himself there
was no refuge; there was only the image of that woman. He had a sudden
moment of lucidity--of that cruel lucidity that comes once in life to
the most benighted. He seemed to see what went on within him, and was
horrified at the strange sight. He, a white man whose worst fault till
then had been a little want of judgment and too much confidence in the
rectitude of his kind! That woman was a complete savage, and . . . He
tried to tell himself that the thing was of no consequence. It was a
vain effort. The novelty of the sensations he had never experienced
before in the slightest degree, yet had despised on hearsay from
his safe position of a civilized man, destroyed his courage. He was
disappointed with himself. He seemed to be surrendering to a wild
creature the unstained purity of his life, of his race, of his
civilization. He had a notion of being lost amongst shapeless things
that were dangerous and ghastly. He struggled with the sense of certain
defeat--lost his footing--fell back into the darkness. With a faint