Almayer, bewildered, looked in turn at his wife, at Mahmat, at Babalatchi, and at last arrested his fascinated gaze on the body lying on the mud with covered face in a grotesquely unnatural contortion of mangled and broken limbs, one twisted and lacerated arm, with white bones protruding in many places through the torn flesh, stretched out; the hand with outspread fingers nearly touching his foot.
"Do you know who this is ?" he asked of Babalatchi, in a low voice.
Babalatchi, staring straight before him, hardly moved his lips, while Mrs.Almayer's persistent lamentations drowned the whisper of his murmured reply intended only for Almayer's ear.
"It was fate.

Look at your feet, white man.

I can see a ring on those torn fingers which I know well." Saying this, Babalatchi stepped carelessly forward, putting his foot as if accidentally on the hand of the corpse and pressing it into the soft mud.

He swung his staff menacingly towards the crowd, which fell back a little.
"Go away," he said sternly, "and send your women to their cooking fires, which they ought not to have left to run after a dead stranger.

This is men's work here.