confidentially to Vinck; perhaps send an order thundering down the
warehouse, or spy a hesitating stranger and greet him with a friendly
roar, "Welgome, Gapitan! ver' you gome vrom? Bali, eh? Got bonies? I
vant bonies! Vant all you got; ha! ha! ha! Gome in!" Then the stranger
was dragged in, in a tempest of yells, the door was shut, and the usual
noises refilled the place; the song of the workmen, the rumble of
barrels, the scratch of rapid pens; while above all rose the musical
chink of broad silver pieces streaming ceaselessly through the yellow
fingers of the attentive Chinamen.

At that time Macassar was teeming with life and commerce. It was the
point in the islands where tended all those bold spirits who, fitting out
schooners on the Australian coast, invaded the Malay Archipelago in
search of money and adventure. Bold, reckless, keen in business, not
disinclined for a brush with the pirates that were to be found on many a
coast as yet, making money fast, they used to have a general "rendezvous"
in the bay for purposes of trade and dissipation. The Dutch merchants
called those men English pedlars; some of them were undoubtedly gentlemen
for whom that kind of life had a charm; most were seamen; the
acknowledged king of them all was Tom Lingard, he whom the Malays, honest
or dishonest, quiet fishermen or desperate cut-throats, recognised as
"the Rajah-Laut"--the King of the Sea.

Almayer had heard of him before he had been three days in Macassar, had
heard the stories of his smart business transactions, his loves, and also
of his desperate fights with the Sulu pirates, together with the romantic
tale of some child--a girl--found in a piratical prau by the victorious
Lingard, when, after a long contest, he boarded the craft, driving the
crew overboard. This girl, it was generally known, Lingard had adopted,
was having her educated in some convent in Java, and spoke of her as "my