Almayer dropped
his head upon his arms on the table, and spoke in that position in an
indistinct and muffled voice, without looking up.
"Finally, by his directions, they flung me into the big rocking-chair.
I was sewed in so tight that I was stiff like a piece of wood. He was
giving orders in a very loud voice, and that man Babalatchi saw that
they were executed. They obeyed him implicitly. Meantime I lay there in
the chair like a log, and that woman capered before me and made faces;
snapped her fingers before my nose. Women are bad!--ain't they? I never
saw her before, as far as I know. Never done anything to her. Yet she
was perfectly fiendish. Can you understand it? Now and then she would
leave me alone to hang round his neck for awhile, and then she would
return before my chair and begin her exercises again. He looked on,
indulgent. The perspiration ran down my face, got into my eyes--my arms
were sewn in. I was blinded half the time; at times I could see better.
She drags him before my chair. 'I am like white women,' she says, her
arms round his neck.
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