." He broke off with a loud sigh and walked briskly to the steps, at the bottom of which lay his boat, rising and falling gently on the slight and invisible swell.
"Below there! Got a lamp in the boat?
Well, light it and bring it up, one of you.

Hurry now!" He tore out a page of his pocketbook, moistened his pencil with great energy and waited, stamping his feet impatiently.
"I will see this thing through," he muttered to himself.

"And I will have it all square and ship-shape; see if I don't! Are you going to bring that lamp, you son of a crippled mud-turtle?
I am waiting." The gleam of the light on the paper placated his professional anger, and he wrote rapidly, the final dash of his signature curling the paper up in a triangular tear.
"Take that to this white Tuan's house.

I will send the boat back for you in half an hour." The coxswain raised his lamp deliberately to Willem's face.
"This Tuan?
Tau! I know." "Quick then!" said Lingard, taking the lamp from him--and the man went off at a run.
"Kassi mem! To the lady herself," called Lingard after him.
Then, when the man disappeared, he turned to Willems.
"I have written to your wife," he said.

"If you do not return for good, you do not go back to that house only for another parting.