Almayer sat up in his hammock, grasping his feet and peering over the
river with parted lips till he made out the shadowy form of man and
canoe as they struggled past the jetty again.

"I thought you would go," he shouted. "Won't you take the gun? Hey?"
he yelled, straining his voice. Then he fell back in his hammock and
laughed to himself feebly till he fell asleep. On the river, Willems,
his eyes fixed intently ahead, swept his paddle right and left,
unheeding the words that reached him faintly.

It was now three months since Lingard had landed Willems in Sambir and
had departed hurriedly, leaving him in Almayer's care.

The two white men did not get on well together. Almayer, remembering the
time when they both served Hudig, and when the superior Willems treated
him with offensive condescension, felt a great dislike towards his
guest. He was also jealous of Lingard's favour. Almayer had married a
Malay girl whom the old seaman had adopted in one of his accesses of
unreasoning benevolence, and as the marriage was not a happy one from a
domestic point of view, he looked to Lingard's fortune for compensation
in his matrimonial unhappiness. The appearance of that man, who seemed
to have a claim of some sort upon Lingard, filled him with considerable
uneasiness, the more so because the old seaman did not choose to
acquaint the husband of his adopted daughter with Willems' history, or
to confide to him his intentions as to that individual's future fate.
Suspicious from the first, Almayer discouraged Willems' attempts to
help him in his trading, and then when Willems drew back, he made, with
characteristic perverseness, a grievance of his unconcern. From cold
civility in their relations, the two men drifted into silent hostility,
then into outspoken enmity, and both wished ardently for Lingard's