The
path was deserted this morning; it stretched its dark yellow surface,
hard beaten by the tramp of many bare feet, between the clusters of palm
trees, whose tall trunks barred it with strong black lines at irregular
intervals, while the newly risen sun threw the shadows of their leafy
heads far away over the roofs of the buildings lining the river, even
over the river itself as it flowed swiftly and silently past the deserted
houses. For the houses were deserted too. On the narrow strip of
trodden grass intervening between their open doors and the road, the
morning fires smouldered untended, sending thin fluted columns of smoke
into the cool air, and spreading the thinnest veil of mysterious blue
haze over the sunlit solitude of the settlement. Almayer, just out of
his hammock, gazed sleepily at the unwonted appearance of Sambir,
wondering vaguely at the absence of life. His own house was very quiet;
he could not hear his wife's voice, nor the sound of Nina's footsteps in
the big room, opening on the verandah, which he called his sitting-room,
whenever, in the company of white men, he wished to assert his claims to
the commonplace decencies of civilisation. Nobody ever sat there; there
was nothing there to sit upon, for Mrs.
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