 of things - that fact was acquired to the floating wisdom of the
South Seas, of the Eastern Archipelago, and was nowhere better understood than
in out-of-the-way nooks of the world; in those nooks which he filled, unresisted
and masterful, with the echoes of his noisy presence. There is not much use in
arguing with a man who boasts of never having regretted a single action of his
life, whose answer to a mild criticism is a good-natured shout - »You know
nothing about it. I would do it again. Yes, sir!« His associates and his
acquaintances accepted him, his opinions, his actions like things preordained
and unchangeable; looked upon his many-sided manifestations with passive wonder
not unmixed with that admiration which is only the rightful due of a successful
man. But nobody had ever seen him in the mood he was in now. Nobody had seen
Lingard doubtful and giving way to doubt, unable to make up his mind and
unwilling to act; Lingard timid and hesitating one minute, angry yet inactive
the next; Lingard puzzled in a word, because confronted with a situation that
discomposed him by its unprovoked malevolence, by its ghastly injustice, that to
his rough but unsophisticated palate tasted distinctly of sulphurous fumes from
the deepest hell.
    The smooth darkness filling the shutter-hole grew paler and became blotchy
with ill-defined shapes, as if a new universe was being evolved out of sombre
chaos. Then outlines came out, defining forms without any details, indicating
here a tree, there a bush; a black belt of forest far off; the straight lines of
a house, the ridge of a high roof near by. Inside the hut, Babalatchi, who
lately had been only a persuasive voice, became a human shape leaning its chin
imprudently on the muzzle of a gun and rolling an uneasy eye over the
reappearing world. The day came rapidly, dismal and oppressed by the fog of the
river and by the heavy vapours of the sky - a day without colour and without
sunshine: incomplete, disappointing, and sad.
    Babalatchi twitched gently Lingard's sleeve, and when the old seaman had
lifted up his head interrogatively, he stretched out an arm and a pointing
forefinger towards Willems' house, now plainly visible to the right and beyond
the big tree of the courtyard.
    »Look, Tuan!« he said. »He lives there. That is the door - his door. Through
it he will appear soon, with his hair in disorder and his mouth full of curses.
That is so. He is a white man
