without changing his attitude and speaking slowly, with pauses, as if
dropping his words on the floor. "As it is--what's the use? You know
where the gun is; you may take it or leave it. Gun. Deer. Bosh! Hunt
deer! Pah! It's a . . . gazelle you are after, my honoured guest. You
want gold anklets and silk sarongs for that game--my mighty hunter. And
you won't get those for the asking, I promise you. All day amongst the
natives. A fine help you are to me."

"You shouldn't drink so much, Almayer," said Willems, disguising his
fury under an affected drawl. "You have no head. Never had, as far as I
can remember, in the old days in Macassar. You drink too much."

"I drink my own," retorted Almayer, lifting his head quickly and darting
an angry glance at Willems.

Those two specimens of the superior race glared at each other savagely
for a minute, then turned away their heads at the same moment as if by
previous arrangement, and both got up. Almayer kicked off his slippers
and scrambled into his hammock, which hung between two wooden columns
of the verandah so as to catch every rare breeze of the dry season,
and Willems, after standing irresolutely by the table for a short time,
walked without a word down the steps of the house and over the courtyard
towards the little wooden jetty, where several small canoes and a couple
of big white whale-boats were made fast, tugging at their short painters
and bumping together in the swift current of the river. He jumped into
the smallest canoe, balancing himself clumsily, slipped the rattan
painter, and gave an unnecessary and violent shove, which nearly sent
him headlong overboard. By the time he regained his balance the canoe
had drifted some fifty yards down the river. He knelt in the bottom of
his little craft and fought the current with long sweeps of the paddle.