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dead than standing where I am.  Forgive me, your slave, but you must not.”  She fell at his feet sobbing violently and repeating, “Kill me!  Kill me!”
    “I want you alive,” said Almayer, speaking also in Malay, with sombre calmness.  “You go, or he hangs.  Will you obey?”
    Dain shook Nina off, and, making a sudden lunge, struck Almayer full in the chest with the handle of his kriss, keeping the point towards himself.
    “Hai, look!  It was easy for me to turn the point the other way,” he said in his even voice.  “Go, Tuan Putih,” he added with dignity.  “I give you your life, my life, and her life.  I am the slave of this woman’s desire, and she wills it so.”
    There was not a glimmer of light in the sky now, and the tops of the trees were as invisible as their trunks, being lost in the mass of clouds that hung low over the woods, the clearing, and the river.
    Every outline had disappeared in the intense blackness that seemed to have destroyed everything but space.  Only the fire glimmered like a star forgotten in this annihilation of all visible things, and nothing was heard after Dain ceased speaking but the sobs of Nina, whom he held in his arms, kneeling beside the fire.  Almayer stood looking down at them in gloomy thoughtfulness.  As he was opening his lips to speak they were startled by a cry of warning by the riverside, followed by the splash of many paddles and the sound of voices.
    “Babalatchi!” shouted Dain, lifting up Nina as he got upon his feet quickly.
    “Ada!  Ada!” came the answer from the panting statesman who ran up the path and stood amongst them.  “Run to my canoe,” he said to Dain excitedly, without taking any notice of Almayer.  “Run! we must go.  That woman has told them all!”
    “What woman?” asked Dain, looking at Nina.  Just then there was only one woman in the whole world for him.
    “The she-dog with white teeth; the seven times accursed slave of Bulangi.  She yelled at Abdulla’s gate till she woke up all Sambir.  Now the white officers are coming, guided by her and Reshid.  If you want to live, do not look at me, but go!”
    “How do you know this?” asked Almayer.
    “Oh, Tuan! what matters how I know!  I have only one eye, but I saw lights in Abdulla’s house and in his campong as we were paddling past.  I have ears, and while we lay under the bank I have heard the messengers sent out to the white men’s house.”
    “Will you depart without that woman who is my daughter?” said Almayer, addressing Dain, while Babalatchi stamped with impatience, muttering, “Run!  Run at once!”
    “No,” answered Dain, steadily, “I will not go; to no man will I abandon this woman.”
    “Then kill me and escape yourself,” sobbed out Nina.
    He clasped her close, looking at her tenderly, and whispered, “We will never part, O Nina!”
    “I shall not stay here any longer,” broke in Babalatchi, angrily.  “This is great foolishness.  No woman is worth a man’s life.  I am an old man, and I know.”
    He picked up his staff, and, turning to go, looked at Dain as if offering him his last chance of escape.  But Dain’s face was hidden amongst Nina’s black tresses, and he did not see this last appealing glance.
    Babalatchi vanished in the darkness.  Shortly after his disappearance they heard the war canoe leave the landing-place in the swish of the numerous paddles dipped in the water together.  Almost at the same time Ali came up from the riverside, two paddles on his shoulder.
    “Our canoe is hidden up the creek, Tuan Almayer,” he said, “in the dense bush where the forest comes down to the water.  I took it there because I heard from Babalatchi’s paddlers that the white men are coming here.”
    “Wait for me there,” said Almayer, “but keep the canoe hidden.”
    He remained silent, listening to Ali’s footsteps, then turned to Nina.
    “Nina,” he said sadly, “will you have no pity for me?”
    There was no answer.  She did not even turn her head, which was pressed close to Dain’s breast.
    He made a movement as if to leave them and stopped.  By the dim glow of the burning-out fire he saw their two motionless figures.  The woman’s back turned to him with the long black hair streaming down over the white dress, and Dain’s calm face looking at him above her head.
    “I cannot,” he muttered to himself.  After a long pause he spoke again a little lower, but in an unsteady voice, “It would be