“I really don’t know what I can do now!”

Captain C—­ only raised his eyebrows at him, and got up from his chair.  We dispersed to our duties, but Almayer, half dressed as he was in his cretonne pyjamas and the thin cotton singlet, remained on board, lingering near the gangway as though he could not make up his mind whether to go home or stay with us for good.  Our Chinamen boys gave him side glances as they went to and fro; and Ah Sing, our young chief steward, the handsomest and most sympathetic of Chinamen, catching my eye, nodded knowingly at his burly back.  In the course of the morning I approached him for a moment.

“Well, Mr. Almayer,” I addressed him easily, “you haven’t started on your letters yet.”

We had brought him his mail and he had held the bundle in his hand ever since we got up from breakfast.  He glanced at it when I spoke and, for a moment, it looked as if he were on the point of opening his fingers and letting the whole lot fall overboard.  I believe he was tempted to do so.  I shall never forget that man afraid of his letters.

“Have you been long out from Europe?” he asked me.

“Not very.  Not quite eight months,” I told him.  “I left a ship in Samarang with a hurt back and have been in the hospital in Singapore some weeks.”

He sighed.

“Trade is very bad here.”

“Indeed!”

“Hopeless! . . .  See these geese?”

With the hand holding the letters he pointed out to me what resembled a patch of snow creeping and swaying across the distant part of his compound.  It disappeared behind some bushes.

“The only geese on the East Coast,” Almayer informed me in a perfunctory mutter without a spark of faith, hope or pride.  Thereupon, with the same absence of any sort of sustaining spirit he declared his intention to silence a fat bird and send him on board for us not later than next day.

I had heard of these largesses before.  He conferred a goose as if it were a sort of Court decoration given only to the tried friends of the house.  I had expected more pomp in the ceremony.  The gift had surely its special quality, multiple and rare.  From the only flock on the East Coast!  He did not make half enough of it.  That man did not understand his opportunities.  However, I thanked him at some length.

“You see,” he interrupted abruptly in a very peculiar tone, “the worst of this country is that one is not able to realise . . . it’s impossible to realise . . .”  His voice sank into a languid mutter.  “And when one has very large interests . . . very important interests . . .” he finished faintly . . . “up the river.”

We looked at each other.  He astonished me by giving a start and making a very queer grimace.

“Well, I must be off,” he burst out hurriedly.  “So long!”

At the moment of stepping over the gangway he checked himself though, to give me a mumbled invitation to dine at his house that evening with my captain, an invitation which I accepted.  I don’t think it could have been possible for me to refuse.