Almayer’s Folly

Almayer’s Folly

Joseph Conrad

"Kaspar! Makan!"

The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid

future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour. An unpleasant

voice too. He had heard it for many years, and with every year he liked

it less. No matter; there would be an end to all this soon.

He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call. Leaning

with both his elbows on the balustrade of the verandah, he went on

looking fixedly at the great river that flowed--indifferent and

hurried--before his eyes. He liked to look at it about the time of

sunset; perhaps because at that time the sinking sun would spread a

glowing gold tinge on the waters of the Pantai, and Almayer's thoughts

were often busy with gold; gold he had failed to secure; gold the others

had secured--dishonestly, of course--or gold he meant to secure yet,

through his own honest exertions, for himself and Nina. He absorbed

himself in his dream of wealth and power away from this coast where he

had dwelt for so many years, forgetting the bitterness of toil and strife

in the vision of a great and splendid reward. They would live in Europe,

he and his daughter. They would be rich and respected. Nobody would

think of her mixed blood in the presence of her great beauty and of his

immense wealth. Witnessing her triumphs he would grow young again, he

would forget the twenty-five years of heart-breaking struggle on this

coast where he felt like a prisoner. All this was nearly within his

reach. Let only Dain return! And return soon he must--in his own

interest, for his own share. He was now more than a week late! Perhaps

he would return to-night. Such were Almayer's thoughts as, standing on

the verandah of his new but already decaying house--that last failure of

his life--he looked on the broad river. There was no tinge of gold on it

this evening, for it had been swollen by the rains, and rolled an angry

and muddy flood under his inattentive eyes, carrying small drift-wood and

big dead logs, and whole uprooted trees with branches and foliage,

amongst which the water swirled and roared angrily.

One of those drifting trees grounded on the shelving shore, just by the

house, and Almayer, neglecting his dream, watched it with languid

interest. The tree swung slowly round, amid the hiss and foam of the

water, and soon getting free of the obstruction began to move down stream

again, rolling slowly over, raising upwards a long, denuded branch, like

a hand lifted in mute appeal to heaven against the river's brutal and

unnecessary violence. Almayer's interest in the fate of that tree

increased rapidly. He leaned over to see if it would clear the low point

below. It did; then he drew back, thinking that now its course was free

down to the sea, and he envied the lot of that inanimate thing now

growing small and indistinct in the deepening darkness. As he lost sight

of it altogether he began to wonder how far out to sea it would drift.

Would the current carry it north or south? South, probably, till it

drifted in sight of Celebes, as far as Macassar, perhaps!

Macassar! Almayer's quickened fancy distanced the tree on its imaginary

voyage, but his memory lagging behind some twenty years or more in point

of time saw a young and slim Almayer, clad all in white and

modest-looking, landing from the Dutch mail-boat on the dusty jetty of

Macassar, coming to woo fortune in the godowns of old Hudig. It was an

important epoch in his life, the beginning of a new existence for him.

His father, a subordinate official employed in the Botanical Gardens of

Buitenzorg, was no doubt delighted to place his son in such a firm. The

young man himself too was nothing loth to leave the poisonous shores of

When, in compliance with Lingard's abrupt demand, Almayer consented to

wed the Malay girl, no one knew that on the day when the interesting

young convert had lost all her natural relations and found a white

father, she had been fighting desperately like the rest of them on board

the prau, and was only prevented from leaping overboard, like the few

other survivors, by a severe wound in the leg. There, on the fore-deck

of the prau, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and dying

pirates, and had her carried on the poop of the Flash before the Malay

craft was set on fire and sent adrift. She was conscious, and in the

great peace and stillness of the tropical evening succeeding the turmoil

of the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her own

savage manner, drift away into the gloom in a great roar of flame and

smoke. She lay there unheeding the careful hands attending to her wound,

silent and absorbed in gazing at the funeral pile of those brave men she

had so much admired and so well helped in their contest with the

redoubtable "Rajah-Laut."

The light night breeze fanned the brig gently to the southward, and the

great blaze of light got smaller and smaller till it twinkled only on the

horizon like a setting star. It set: the heavy canopy of smoke reflected

the glare of hidden flames for a short time and then disappeared also.

She realised that with this vanishing gleam her old life departed too.

Thenceforth there was slavery in the far countries, amongst strangers, in

unknown and perhaps terrible surroundings. Being fourteen years old, she

realised her position and came to that conclusion, the only one possible

to a Malay girl, soon ripened under a tropical sun, and not unaware of

her personal charms, of which she heard many a young brave warrior of her

father's crew express an appreciative admiration. There was in her the

dread of the unknown; otherwise she accepted her position calmly, after

the manner of her people, and even considered it quite natural; for was

she not a daughter of warriors, conquered in battle, and did she not

belong rightfully to the victorious Rajah? Even the evident kindness of

the terrible old man must spring, she thought, from admiration for his

captive, and the flattered vanity eased for her the pangs of sorrow after

such an awful calamity. Perhaps had she known of the high walls, the

quiet gardens, and the silent nuns of the Samarang convent, where her

destiny was leading her, she would have sought death in her dread and

hate of such a restraint. But in imagination she pictured to herself the

usual life of a Malay girl--the usual succession of heavy work and fierce

love, of intrigues, gold ornaments, of domestic drudgery, and of that

great but occult influence which is one of the few rights of half-savage

womankind. But her destiny in the rough hands of the old sea-dog, acting

under unreasoning impulses of the heart, took a strange and to her a

terrible shape. She bore it all--the restraint and the teaching and the

new faith--with calm submission, concealing her hate and contempt for all

that new life. She learned the language very easily, yet understood but

little of the new faith the good sisters taught her, assimilating quickly

only the superstitious elements of the religion. She called Lingard

father, gently and caressingly, at each of his short and noisy visits,

under the clear impression that he was a great and dangerous power it was

good to propitiate. Was he not now her master? And during those long

four years she nourished a hope of finding favour in his eyes and

ultimately becoming his wife, counsellor, and guide.

Those dreams of the future were dispelled by the Rajah Laut's "fiat,"