His words are encouraging.

Before the sun rises for the second time they shall meet, and Syed Abdulla's ship shall float on the waters of this river--at last! Lakamba and Babalatchi have no doubt--if Allah wills.

They are in the hands of the Compassionate.

No doubt.

And so is Syed Abdulla, the great trader who does not know what the word failure means; and so is the white man--the smartest business man in the islands--who is lying now by Omar's fire with his head on Aissa's lap, while Syed Abdulla flies down the muddy river with current and paddles between the sombre walls of the sleeping forest; on his way to the clear and open sea where the Lord of the Isles (formerly of Greenock, but condemned, sold, and registered now as of Penang) waits for its owner, and swings erratically at anchor in the currents of the capricious tide, under the crumbling red cliffs of Tanjong Mirrah.
For some time Lakamba, Sahamin, and Bahassoen looked silently into the humid darkness which had swallowed the big canoe that carried Abdulla and his unvarying good fortune.