After that he left the
settlement alone.
Later, when the enforced confinement grew irksome, Willems took one
of Almayer's many canoes and crossed the main branch of the Pantai in
search of some solitary spot where he could hide his discouragement
and his weariness. He skirted in his little craft the wall of tangled
verdure, keeping in the dead water close to the bank where the spreading
nipa palms nodded their broad leaves over his head as if in contemptuous
pity of the wandering outcast. Here and there he could see the
beginnings of chopped-out pathways, and, with the fixed idea of getting
out of sight of the busy river, he would land and follow the narrow and
winding path, only to find that it led nowhere, ending abruptly in
the discouragement of thorny thickets. He would go back slowly, with a
bitter sense of unreasonable disappointment and sadness; oppressed by
the hot smell of earth, dampness, and decay in that forest which seemed
to push him mercilessly back into the glittering sunshine of the
river. And he would recommence paddling with tired arms to seek another
opening, to find another deception.
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