From cold civility in their relations, the two men drifted into silent hostility, then into outspoken enmity, and both wished ardently for Lingard's return and the end of a situation that grew more intolerable from day to day.

The time dragged slowly.

Willems watched the succeeding sunrises wondering dismally whether before the evening some change would occur in the deadly dullness of his life.

He missed the commercial activity of that existence which seemed to him far off, irreparably lost, buried out of sight under the ruins of his past success--now gone from him beyond the possibility of redemption.

He mooned disconsolately about Almayer's courtyard, watching from afar, with uninterested eyes, the up-country canoes discharging guttah or rattans, and loading rice or European goods on the little wharf of Lingard & Co.