settlement alone.

Later, when the enforced confinement grew irksome, Willems took one
of Almayer's many canoes and crossed the main branch of the Pantai in
search of some solitary spot where he could hide his discouragement
and his weariness. He skirted in his little craft the wall of tangled
verdure, keeping in the dead water close to the bank where the spreading
nipa palms nodded their broad leaves over his head as if in contemptuous
pity of the wandering outcast. Here and there he could see the
beginnings of chopped-out pathways, and, with the fixed idea of getting
out of sight of the busy river, he would land and follow the narrow and
winding path, only to find that it led nowhere, ending abruptly in
the discouragement of thorny thickets. He would go back slowly, with a
bitter sense of unreasonable disappointment and sadness; oppressed by
the hot smell of earth, dampness, and decay in that forest which seemed
to push him mercilessly back into the glittering sunshine of the
river. And he would recommence paddling with tired arms to seek another
opening, to find another deception.

As he paddled up to the point where the Rajah's stockade came down to
the river, the nipas were left behind rattling their leaves over the
brown water, and the big trees would appear on the bank, tall, strong,
indifferent in the immense solidity of their life, which endures for
ages, to that short and fleeting life in the heart of the man who crept
painfully amongst their shadows in search of a refuge from the unceasing
reproach of his thoughts. Amongst their smooth trunks a clear brook
meandered for a time in twining lacets before it made up its mind to
take a leap into the hurrying river, over the edge of the steep bank.
There was also a pathway there and it seemed frequented. Willems landed,
and following the capricious promise of the track soon found himself in