All would be well, and that girl, upon whom the old seaman seemed to have transferred all his former affection for the mother, would be the richest woman in the East--in the world even.

So old Lingard shouted, pacing the verandah with his heavy quarter- deck step, gesticulating with a smouldering cheroot; ragged, dishevelled, enthusiastic; and Almayer, sitting huddled up on a pile of mats, thought with dread of the separation with the only human being he loved--with greater dread still, perhaps, of the scene with his wife, the savage tigress deprived of her young.

She will poison me, thought the poor wretch, well aware of that easy and final manner of solving the social, political, or family problems in Malay life.
To his great surprise she took the news very quietly, giving only him and Lingard a furtive glance, and saying not a word.

This, however, did not prevent her the next day from jumping into the river and swimming after the boat in which Lingard was carrying away the nurse with the screaming child.

Almayer had to give chase with his whale-boat and drag her in by the hair in the midst of cries and curses enough to make heaven fall.