It was left for him by taciturn nakhodas of native trading craft, or was delivered with profound salaams by travel-stained and weary men who would withdraw from his presence calling upon Allah to bless the generous giver of splendid rewards.

And the news was always good, and all his attempts always succeeded, and in his ears there rang always a chorus of admiration, of gratitude, of humble entreaties.
A fortunate man.

And his felicity was so complete that the good genii, who ordered the stars at his birth, had not neglected--by a refinement of benevolence strange in such primitive beings--to provide him with a desire difficult to attain, and with an enemy hard to overcome.

The envy of Lingard's political and commercial successes, and the wish to get the best of him in every way, became Abdulla's mania, the paramount interest of his life, the salt of his existence.
For the last few months he had been receiving mysterious messages from Sambir urging him to decisive action.

He had found the river a couple of years ago, and had been anchored more than once off that estuary where the, till then, rapid Pantai, spreading slowly over the lowlands, seems to hesitate, before it flows gently through twenty outlets; over a maze of mudflats, sandbanks and reefs, into the expectant sea.