And these muttered statements of her
grandfather's might were mixed up with bits of later recollections, where
the great fight with the "White Devil's" brig and the convent life in
Samarang occupied the principal place. At that point she usually dropped
the thread of her narrative, and pulling out the little brass cross,
always suspended round her neck, she contemplated it with superstitious
awe. That superstitious feeling connected with some vague talismanic
properties of the little bit of metal, and the still more hazy but
terrible notion of some bad Djinns and horrible torments invented, as she
thought, for her especial punishment by the good Mother Superior in case
of the loss of the above charm, were Mrs. Almayer's only theological
luggage for the stormy road of life. Mrs. Almayer had at least something
tangible to cling to, but Nina, brought up under the Protestant wing of
the proper Mrs. Vinck, had not even a little piece of brass to remind her
of past teaching. And listening to the recital of those savage glories,
those barbarous fights and savage feasting, to the story of deeds
valorous, albeit somewhat bloodthirsty, where men of her mother's race
shone far above the Orang Blanda, she felt herself irresistibly
fascinated, and saw with vague surprise the narrow mantle of civilised
morality, in which good-meaning people had wrapped her young soul, fall
away and leave her shivering and helpless as if on the edge of some deep
and unknown abyss.
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