o tend and nurse for you. Never mind
the consequences--to the poor devil. Let him be mangled or eaten up, of
course! You haven't any pity to spare for the victims of your infernal
charity. Not you! Your tender heart bleeds only for what is poisonous
and deadly. I curse the day when you set your benevolent eyes on him. I
curse it . . ."

"Now then! Now then!" growled Lingard in his moustache. Almayer, who had
talked himself up to the choking point, drew a long breath and went on--

"Yes! It has been always so. Always. As far back as I can remember.
Don't you recollect? What about that half-starved dog you brought on
board in Bankok in your arms. In your arms by . . . ! It went mad next
day and bit the serang. You don't mean to say you have forgotten? The
best serang you ever had! You said so yourself while you were helping
us to lash him down to the chain-cable, just before he died in his fits.
Now, didn't you? Two wives and ever so many children the man left. That
was your doing. . . . And when you went out of your way and risked
your ship to rescue some Chinamen from a water-logged junk in Formosa
Straits, that was also a clever piece of business. Wasn't it? Those
damned Chinamen rose on you before forty-eight hours. They were
cut-throats, those poor fishermen. You knew they were cut-throats before
you made up your mind to run down on a lee shore in a gale of wind
to save them. A mad trick! If they hadn't been scoundrels--hopeless
scoundrels--you would not have put your ship in jeopardy for them, I
know. You would not have risked the lives of your crew--that crew you
loved so--and your own life. Wasn't that foolish! And, besides, you were
not honest. Suppose you had been drowned? I would have been in a pretty
mess then, left alone here with that adopted daughter of yours. Your
duty was to myself first. I married that girl because you promised to
make my fortune. You know you did! And then three months afterwards you
go and do that mad trick--for a lot of Chinamen too. Chinamen! You have
no morality. I might have been ruined for the sake of those murderous
scoundrels that, after all, had to be driven overboard after killing
ever so many of your crew--of your beloved crew! Do you call that
honest?"

"Well, well!" muttered Lingard, chewing nervously the stump of his
cheroot that had gone out and looking at Almayer--who stamped wildly
about the verandah--much as a shepherd might look at a pet sheep in
his obedient flock