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 select 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.
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