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“fetch the box of music the white captain gave me.  I cannot sleep.”
    At this order a deep shade of melancholy settled upon Babalatchi’s features.  He went reluctantly behind the curtain and soon reappeared carrying in his arms a small hand-organ, which he put down on the table with an air of deep dejection.  Lakamba settled himself comfortably in his arm-chair.
    “Turn, Babalatchi, turn,” he murmured, with closed eyes.
    Babalatchi’s hand grasped the handle with the energy of despair, and as he turned, the deep gloom on his countenance changed into an expression of hopeless resignation.  Through the open shutter the notes of Verdi’s music floated out on the great silence over the river and forest.  Lakamba listened with closed eyes and a delighted smile; Babalatchi turned, at times dozing off and swaying over, then catching himself up in a great fright with a few quick turns of the handle.  Nature slept in an exhausted repose after the fierce turmoil, while under the unsteady hand of the statesman of Sambir the Trovatore fitfully wept, wailed, and bade good-bye to his Leonore again and again in a mournful round of tearful and endless iteration.
     

CHAPTER VII.
     
    The bright sunshine of the clear mistless morning, after the stormy night, flooded the main path of the settlement leading from the low shore of the Pantai branch of the river to the gate of Abdulla’s compound.  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. Almayer in her savage moods, when excited by the reminiscences of the piratical period of her life, had torn off the curtains to make sarongs for the slave-girls, and had burnt the showy furniture piecemeal to cook the family rice.  But Almayer was not thinking of his furniture now.  He was thinking of Dain’s return, of Dain’s nocturnal interview with Lakamba, of its possible influence on his long-matured plans, now nearing the period of their execution.  He was also uneasy at the non-appearance of Dain who had promised him an early visit.  “The fellow had plenty of time to cross the river,” he mused, “and there was so much to be done to-day.  The settling of details for the early start on the morrow; the launching of the boats; the thousand and one finishing touches.  For the expedition must start complete, nothing should be forgotten, nothing should — ”
    The sense of the unwonted solitude grew upon him suddenly, and in the unusual silence he caught himself longing even for the usually unwelcome sound of his wife’s voice to break the oppressive stillness which seemed, to his frightened fancy, to portend the advent of some new misfortune.  “What has happened?” he muttered half aloud, as he shuffled in his imperfectly adjusted slippers towards the balustrade of the verandah.  “Is everybody asleep or dead?”
    The settlement was alive and very much awake.  It was awake ever since the early break of day, when Mahmat Banjer, in a fit of unheard-of energy, arose and, taking up his hatchet, stepped over the sleeping forms of his two wives and walked shivering to the water’s edge to make sure that the new house he was building had not floated away during the night.
    The house was being built by the enterprising Mahmat on a large raft, and he had securely moored