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too great a disgrace.  I am a white man.”  He broke down completely there, and went on tearfully, “I am a white man, and of good family.  Very good family,” he repeated, weeping bitterly.  “It would be a disgrace . . . all over the islands, . . . the only white man on the east coast.  No, it cannot be . . . white men finding my daughter with this Malay.  My daughter!” he cried aloud, with a ring of despair in his voice.
    He recovered his composure after a while and said distinctly —
    “I will never forgive you, Nina — never!  If you were to come back to me now, the memory of this night would poison all my life.  I shall try to forget.  I have no daughter.  There used to be a half-caste woman in my house, but she is going even now.  You, Dain, or whatever your name may be, I shall take you and that woman to the island at the mouth of the river myself.  Come with me.”
    He led the way, following the bank as far as the forest.  Ali answered to his call, and, pushing their way through the dense bush, they stepped into the canoe hidden under the overhanging branches.  Dain laid Nina in the bottom, and sat holding her head on his knees.  Almayer and Ali each took up a paddle.  As they were going to push out Ali hissed warningly.  All listened.
    In the great stillness before the bursting out of the thunderstorm they could hear the sound of oars working regularly in their row-locks.  The sound approached steadily, and Dain, looking through the branches, could see the faint shape of a big white boat.  A woman’s voice said in a cautious tone —
    “There is the place where you may land white men; a little higher — there!”
    The boat was passing them so close in the narrow creek that the blades of the long oars nearly touched the canoe.
    “Way enough!  Stand by to jump on shore!  He is alone and unarmed,” was the quiet order in a man’s voice, and in Dutch.
    Somebody else whispered: “I think I can see a glimmer of a fire through the bush.”  And then the boat floated past them, disappearing instantly in the darkness.
    “Now,” whispered Ali, eagerly, “let us push out and paddle away.”
    The little canoe swung into the stream, and as it sprung forward in response to the vigorous dig of the paddles they could hear an angry shout.
    “He is not by the fire.  Spread out, men, and search for him!”
    Blue lights blazed out in different parts of the clearing, and the shrill voice of a woman cried in accents of rage and pain —
    “Too late!  O senseless white men!  He has escaped!”
     

CHAPTER XII.
     
    “That is the place,” said Dain, indicating with the blade of his paddle a small islet about a mile ahead of the canoe — ”that is the place where Babalatchi promised that a boat from the prau would come for me when the sun is overhead.  We will wait for that boat there.”
    Almayer, who was steering, nodded without speaking, and by a slight sweep of his paddle laid the head of the canoe in the required direction.
    They were just leaving the southern outlet of the Pantai, which lay behind them in a straight and long vista of water shining between two walls of thick verdure that ran downwards and towards each other, till at last they joined and sank together in the far-away distance.  The sun, rising above the calm waters of the Straits, marked its own path by a streak of light that glided upon the sea and darted up the wide reach of the river, a hurried messenger of light and life to the gloomy forests of the coast; and in this radiance of the sun’s pathway floated the black canoe heading for the islet which lay bathed in sunshine, the yellow sands of its encircling beach shining like an inlaid golden disc on the polished steel of the unwrinkled sea.  To the north and south of it rose other islets, joyous in their brilliant colouring of green and yellow, and on the main coast the sombre line of mangrove bushes ended to the southward in the reddish cliffs of Tanjong Mirrah, advancing into the sea, steep and shadowless under the clear, light of the early morning.
    The bottom of the canoe grated upon the sand as the little craft ran upon the beach.  Ali leaped on shore and held on while Dain stepped out carrying Nina in his arms, exhausted by the events and the long travelling during the night.  Almayer was the last to leave the boat, and together with Ali ran it higher up on the beach.  Then Ali, tired out by the long paddling, laid down in the shade of the