Joseph Conrad

Almayer's Folly Joseph Conrad

When, in compliance with Lingard's abrupt demand, Almayer consented to wed the Malay girl, noone knew that on the day when the interesting young convert had lost all her natural relations andfound a white father, she had been fighting desperately like the rest of them on board the prau, andwas only prevented from leaping overboard, like the few other survivors, by a severe wound in theleg. There, on the fore-deck of the prau, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and dyingpirates, and had her carried on the poop of the Flash before the Malay craft was set on fire and sentadrift. She was conscious, and in the great peace and stillness of the tropical evening succeeding theturmoil of the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her own savage manner, drift awayinto the gloom in a great roar of flame and smoke. She lay there unheeding the careful handsattending to her wound, silent and absorbed in gazing at the funeral pile of those brave men she hadso 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 gotsmaller and smaller till it twinkled only on the horizon like a setting star. It set: the heavy canopy ofsmoke reflected the glare of hidden flames for a short time and then disappeared also. She realised that with this vanishing gleam her old life departed too. Thenceforth there was slaveryin the far countries, amongst strangers, in unknown and perhaps terrible surroundings. Beingfourteen years old, she realised her position and came to that conclusion, the only one possible to aMalay girl, soon ripened under a tropical sun, and not unaware of her personal charms, of which sheheard many a young brave warrior of her father's crew express an appreciative admiration.