t melancholy welcome. He loved it all:
the landscape of brown golds and brilliant emeralds under the dome of
hot sapphire; the whispering big trees; the loquacious nipa-palms that
rattled their leaves volubly in the night breeze, as if in haste to tell
him all the secrets of the great forest behind them. He loved the heavy
scents of blossoms and black earth, that breath of life and of death
which lingered over his brig in the damp air of tepid and peaceful
nights. He loved the narrow and sombre creeks, strangers to sunshine:
black, smooth, tortuous--like byways of despair. He liked even the
troops of sorrowful-faced monkeys that profaned the quiet spots with
capricious gambols and insane gestures of inhuman madness. He loved
everything there, animated or inanimated; the very mud of the riverside;
the very alligators, enormous and stolid, basking on it with impertinent
unconcern. Their size was a source of pride to him. "Immense fellows!
Make two of them Palembang reptiles! I tell you, old man!" he would
shout, poking some crony of his playfully in the ribs: "I tell you,
big as you are, they could swallow you in one gulp, hat, boots and all!
Magnificent beggars! Wouldn't you like to see them? Wouldn't you! Ha!
ha! ha!" His thunderous laughter filled the verandah, rolled over the
hotel garden, overflowed into the street, paralyzing for a short moment
the noiseless traffic of bare brown feet; and its loud reverberations
would even startle the landlord's tame bird--a shameless mynah--into
a momentary propriety of behaviour under the nearest chair. In the big
billiard-room perspiring men in thin cotton singlets would stop the
game, listen, cue in hand, for a while through the open windows, then
nod their moist faces at each other sagaciously and whisper: "The old
fellow is talking about his river."

His river! The whispers of curious men, the mystery of the thing,
were to Lingard a source of never-ending delight. The common talk of
ignorance exaggerated the profits of his queer monopoly, and, although
strictly truthful in general, he liked, on that matter, to mislead
speculation still further by boasts full of cold raillery. His river!
By it he was not only rich--he was interesting. This secret of his which
made him different to the other traders of those seas gave intimate
satisfaction to that desire for singularity which he shared with the
rest of mankind, without being aware of its presence within his breast.
It was the g