If Almayer could not get it he
would go to Singapore--to Europe even, but before all to Singapore; and
he would take the little Nina with him. The child must be brought up
decently. He had good friends in Singapore who would take care of her
and have her taught properly. All would be well, and that girl, upon
whom the old seaman seemed to have transferred all his former affection
for the mother, would be the richest woman in the East--in the world
even. So old Lingard shouted, pacing the verandah with his heavy quarter-
deck step, gesticulating with a smouldering cheroot; ragged, dishevelled,
enthusiastic; and Almayer, sitting huddled up on a pile of mats, thought
with dread of the separation with the only human being he loved--with
greater dread still, perhaps, of the scene with his wife, the savage
tigress deprived of her young. She will poison me, thought the poor
wretch, well aware of that easy and final manner of solving the social,
political, or family problems in Malay life.
To his great surprise she took the news very quietly, giving only him and
Lingard a furtive glance, and saying not a word. This, however, did not
prevent her the next day from jumping into the river and swimming after
the boat in which Lingard was carrying away the nurse with the screaming
child.
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