Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Read Online Free PDF

no difficulties,” he wrote; “people would rush in with their money.”  Evidently they did not, for there was only one letter more from him saying he was ill, had found no relation living, but little else besides.  Then came a complete silence.  Europe had swallowed up the Rajah Laut apparently, and Almayer looked vainly westward for a ray of light out of the gloom of his shattered hopes.  Years passed, and the rare letters from Mrs. Vinck, later on from the girl herself, were the only thing to be looked to to make life bearable amongst the triumphant savagery of the river.  Almayer lived now alone, having even ceased to visit his debtors who would not pay, sure of Lakamba’s protection.  The faithful Sumatrese Ali cooked his rice and made his coffee, for he dared not trust any one else, and least of all his wife.  He killed time wandering sadly in the overgrown paths round the house, visiting the ruined godowns where a few brass guns covered with verdigris and only a few broken cases of mouldering Manchester goods reminded him of the good early times when all this was full of life and merchandise, and he overlooked a busy scene on the river bank, his little daughter by his side.  Now the up-country canoes glided past the little rotten wharf of Lingard and Co., to paddle up the Pantai branch, and cluster round the new jetty belonging to Abdulla.  Not that they loved Abdulla, but they dared not trade with the man whose star had set.  Had they done so they knew there was no mercy to be expected from Arab or Rajah; no rice to be got on credit in the times of scarcity from either; and Almayer could not help them, having at times hardly enough for himself.  Almayer, in his isolation and despair, often envied his near neighbour the Chinaman, Jim-Eng, whom he could see stretched on a pile of cool mats, a wooden pillow under his head, an opium pipe in his nerveless fingers.  He did not seek, however, consolation in opium — perhaps it was too expensive — perhaps his white man’s pride saved him from that degradation; but most likely it was the thought of his little daughter in the far-off Straits Settlements.  He heard from her oftener since Abdulla bought a steamer, which ran now between Singapore and the Pantai settlement every three months or so.  Almayer felt himself nearer his daughter.  He longed to see her, and planned a voyage to Singapore, but put off his departure from year to year, always expecting some favourable turn of fortune.  He did not want to meet her with empty hands and with no words of hope on his lips.  He could not take her back into that savage life to which he was condemned himself.  He was also a little afraid of her.  What would she think of him?  He reckoned the years.  A grown woman.  A civilised woman, young and hopeful; while he felt old and hopeless, and very much like those savages round him.  He asked himself what was going to be her future.  He could not answer that question yet, and he dared not face her.  And yet he longed after her.  He hesitated for years.
    His hesitation was put an end to by Nina’s unexpected appearance in Sambir.  She arrived in the steamer under the captain’s care.  Almayer beheld her with surprise not unmixed with wonder.  During those ten years the child had changed into a woman, black-haired, olive-skinned, tall, and beautiful, with great sad eyes, where the startled expression common to Malay womankind was modified by a thoughtful tinge inherited from her European ancestry.  Almayer thought with dismay of the meeting of his wife and daughter, of what this grave girl in European clothes would think of her betel-nut chewing mother, squatting in a dark hut, disorderly, half naked, and sulky.  He also feared an outbreak of temper on the part of that pest of a woman he had hitherto managed to keep tolerably quiet, thereby saving the remnants of his dilapidated furniture.  And he stood there before the closed door of the hut in the