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