shore, stepped boldly into the river, shooting over it in a close row of
bamboo platforms elevated on high piles, amongst which the current below
spoke in a soft and unceasing plaint of murmuring eddies. There was only
one path in the whole town and it ran at the back of the houses along
the succession of blackened circular patches that marked the place of
the household fires. On the other side the virgin forest bordered the
path, coming close to it, as if to provoke impudently any passer-by to
the solution of the gloomy problem of its depths. Nobody would accept
the deceptive challenge. There were only a few feeble attempts at a
clearing here and there, but the ground was low and the river, retiring
after its yearly floods, left on each a gradually diminishing mudhole,
where the imported buffaloes of the Bugis settlers wallowed happily
during the heat of the day. When Willems walked on the path, the
indolent men stretched on the shady side of the houses looked at him
with calm curiosity, the women busy round the cooking fires would send
after him wondering and timid glances, while the children would only
look once, and then run away yelling with fright at the horrible
appearance of the man with a red and white face. These manifestations
of childish disgust and fear stung Willems with a sense of absurd
humiliation; he sought in his walks the comparative solitude of the
rudimentary clearings, but the very buffaloes snorted with alarm at his
sight, scrambled lumberingly out of the cool mud and stared wildly in a
compact herd at him as he tried to slink unperceived along the edge of
the forest. One day, at some unguarded and sudden movement of his, the
whole herd stampeded down the path, scattered the fires, sent the women
flying with shrill cries, and left behind a track of smashed pots,
trampled rice, overturned children, and a crowd of angry men brandishing
sticks in loud-voiced pursuit. The innocent cause of that disturbance
ran shamefacedly the gauntlet of black looks and unfriendly remarks,
and hastily sought refuge in Almayer's campong. After that he left the