CHAPTER II.
When, in compliance with Lingard's abrupt demand, Almayer consented to
wed the Malay girl, no one knew that on the day when the interesting
young convert had lost all her natural relations and found a white
father, she had been fighting desperately like the rest of them on board
the prau, and was only prevented from leaping overboard, like the few
other survivors, by a severe wound in the leg. There, on the fore-deck
of the prau, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and dying
pirates, and had her carried on the poop of the _Flash_ before the Malay
craft was set on fire and sent adrift. She was conscious, and in the
great peace and stillness of the tropical evening succeeding the turmoil
of the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her own
savage manner, drift away into the gloom in a great roar of flame and
smoke. She lay there unheeding the careful hands attending to her wound,
silent and absorbed in gazing at the funeral pile of those brave men she
had so much admired and so well helped in their contest with the
redoubtable "Rajah-Laut."
* * * * *
The light night breeze fanned the brig gently to the southward, and the
great blaze of light got smaller and smaller till it twinkled only on the
horizon like a setting star.
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