"Didn't expect you till this evening," he remarked, suspiciously.
I didn't know why he should have been aggrieved, but he seemed to be.
I took pains to explain to him that, having picked up the beacon at the
mouth of the river just before dark and the tide serving, Captain C----
was enabled to cross the bar and there was nothing to prevent him going
up the river at night.
"Captain C---- knows this river like his own pocket," I concluded,
discursively, trying to get on terms.
"Better," said Almayer.
Leaning over the rail of the bridge, I looked at Almayer, who looked
down at the wharf in aggrieved thought. He shuffled his feet a little;
he wore straw slippers with thick soles. The morning fog had thickened
considerably. Everything round us dripped--the derricks, the rails,
every single rope in the ship--as if a fit of crying had come upon the
universe.
Almayer again raised his head and, in the accents of a man accustomed to
the buffets of evil fortune, asked, hardly audibly:
"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a pony on board?"
I told him, almost in a whisper, for he attuned my communications to his
minor key, that we had such a thing as a pony, and I hinted, as gently
as I could, that he was confoundedly in the way, too.
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