Chapter 2

When, in compliance with Lingard's abrupt demand, Almayer consented to
wed the Malay girl, no one knew that on the day when the interesting
young convert had lost all her natural relations and found a white
father, she had been fighting desperately like the rest of them on board
the prau, and was only prevented from leaping overboard, like the few
other survivors, by a severe wound in the leg. There, on the fore-deck
of the prau, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and dying
pirates, and had her carried on the poop of the _Flash_ before the Malay
craft was set on fire and sent adrift. She was conscious, and in the
great peace and stillness of the tropical evening succeeding the turmoil
of the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her own
savage manner, drift away into the gloom in a great roar of flame and
smoke. She lay there unheeding the careful hands attending to her wound,
silent and absorbed in gazing at the funeral pile of those brave men she
had so much admired and so well helped in their contest with the
redoubtable "Rajah-Laut."

* * * * *

The light night breeze fanned the brig gently to the southward, and the
great blaze of light got smaller and smaller till it twinkled only on the
horizon like a setting star. It set: the heavy canopy of smoke reflected
the glare of hidden flames for a short time and then disappeared also.

She realised that with this vanishing gleam her old life departed too.
Thenceforth there was slavery in the far countries, amongst strangers, in
unknown and perhaps terrible surroundings. Being fourteen years old, she
realised her position and came to that conclusion, the only one possible
to a Malay girl, soon ripened under a tropical sun, and not unaware of
her personal charms, of which she heard many a young brave warrior of her
father's crew express an appreciative admiration. There was in her the
dread of the unknown; otherwise she accepted her position calmly, after
the manner of her people, and even considered it quite natural; for was
she not a daughter of warriors, conquered in battle, and did she not
belong rightfully to the victorious Rajah? Even the evident kindness of
the terrible old man must spring, she thought, from admiration for his
captive, and the flattered vanity eased for her the pangs of sorrow after
such an awful calamity. Perhaps had she known of the high walls, the
quiet gardens, and the silent nuns of the Samarang convent, where her
destiny was leading her, she would have sought death in her dread and
hate of such a restraint. But in imagination she pictured to herself the
usual life of a Malay girl--the usual succession of heavy work and fierce
love, of intrigues, gold ornaments, of domestic drudgery, and of that