daughter." He had sworn a mighty oath to marry her to a white man before
he went home and to leave her all his money. "And Captain Lingard has
lots of money," would say Mr. Vinck solemnly, with his head on one side,
"lots of money; more than Hudig!" And after a pause--just to let his
hearers recover from their astonishment at such an incredible
assertion--he would add in an explanatory whisper, "You know, he has
discovered a river."

That was it! He had discovered a river! That was the fact placing old
Lingard so much above the common crowd of sea-going adventurers who
traded with Hudig in the daytime and drank champagne, gambled, sang noisy
songs, and made love to half-caste girls under the broad verandah of the
Sunda Hotel at night. Into that river, whose entrances himself only
knew, Lingard used to take his assorted cargo of Manchester goods, brass
gongs, rifles and gunpowder. His brig _Flash_, which he commanded
himself, would on those occasions disappear quietly during the night from
the roadstead while his companions were sleeping off the effects of the
midnight carouse, Lingard seeing them drunk under the table before going
on board, himself unaffected by any amount of liquor. Many tried to
follow him and find that land of plenty for gutta-percha and rattans,
pearl shells and birds' nests, wax and gum-dammar, but the little _Flash_
could outsail every craft in those seas. A few of them came to grief on
hidden sandbanks and coral reefs, losing their all and barely escaping
with life from the cruel grip of this sunny and smiling sea; others got
discouraged; and for many years the green and peaceful-looking islands
guarding the entrances to the promised land kept their secret with all
the merciless serenity of tropical nature. And so Lingard came and went
on his secret or open expeditions, becoming a hero in Almayer's eyes by
the boldness and enormous profits of his ventures, seeming to Almayer a
very great man indeed as he saw him marching up the warehouse, grunting a