te vapours of globular shape; and to the eastward,
above the ragged barrier of the forests, surged the summits of a chain
of great clouds, growing bigger slowly, in imperceptible motion, as if
careful not to disturb the glowing stillness of the earth and of the
sky. Abreast of the house the river was empty but for the motionless
schooner. Higher up, a solitary log came out from the bend above and
went on drifting slowly down the straight reach: a dead and wandering
tree going out to its grave in the sea, between two ranks of trees
motionless and living.

And Almayer sat, his face in his hands, looking on and hating all this:
the muddy river; the faded blue of the sky; the black log passing by on
its first and last voyage; the green sea of leaves--the sea that glowed
shimmered, and stirred above the uniform and impenetrable gloom of the
forests--the joyous sea of living green powdered with the brilliant dust
of oblique sunrays.

He hated all this; he begrudged every day--every minute--of his life
spent amongst all these things; he begrudged it bitterly, angrily, with
enraged and immense regret, like a miser compelled to give up some of
his treasure to a near relation. And yet all this was very precious to
him. It was the present sign of a splendid future.

He pushed the table away impatiently, got up, made a few steps
aimlessly, then stood by the balustrade and again looked at the
river--at that river which would have been the instrument for the making
of his fortune if . . . if . . .

"What an abominable brute!" he said.

He was alone, but he spoke aloud, as one is apt to do under the impulse
of a strong, of an overmastering thought.

"What a brute!" he muttered again.

The river was dark now, and the schooner lay on it, a black, a lonely,
and a graceful form, with the slender masts darting upwards from it
in two frail and raking lines. The shadows of the evening crept up the
trees, crept up from bough to bough, till at last the long sunbeams
coursing from the western horizon skimmed lightly over the topmost
branches, then flew upwards amongst the piled-up clouds, giving them
a sombre and fiery aspect in the last flush of light. And suddenly the
light disappeared as if lost in the immensity of the great, blue,
and empty hollow overhead. The sun had set: and the forests became
a straight wall of formless blackness. Above them, on the edge of
lingering clouds, a single star glimmered fitfully, obscured now and
th