VictorySet in the islands of the Malay Archipelago, Victory tells the story of a disillusioned Swede, Axel Heyst, who rescues Lena, a young English musician, from the clutches of a brutish German hotel owner. Seeking refuge at Heyst's remote island retreat on Samburan, the couple is soon besieged by three villains dispatched by the enraged hotelier. The arrival on the island paradise of this trio of fiends sets off a terrifying series of events that ultimately ends in catastrophe. |
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Page xiii
... by the desolate end of a complete stranger . I looked down the skylight , and there was the devoted Martin busy cording cowhide trunks belonging to the deceased whose white beard and hooked nose were the only parts I AUTHOR'S NOTE.
... by the desolate end of a complete stranger . I looked down the skylight , and there was the devoted Martin busy cording cowhide trunks belonging to the deceased whose white beard and hooked nose were the only parts I AUTHOR'S NOTE.
Page xv
... looked the longest and with a most sustained attention . This attention criginated in idleness for which I have a natural talent . One evening I wandered into a café , in a town not of the tropics but of the South of France . It was ...
... looked the longest and with a most sustained attention . This attention criginated in idleness for which I have a natural talent . One evening I wandered into a café , in a town not of the tropics but of the South of France . It was ...
Page 11
... looked up with a wild worried expression . He was really in trouble . He had come the week before into Delli , and the Portuguese authorities , on some pretence of irregu- larity in his papers , had inflicted a fine upon him and had ...
... looked up with a wild worried expression . He was really in trouble . He had come the week before into Delli , and the Portuguese authorities , on some pretence of irregu- larity in his papers , had inflicted a fine upon him and had ...
Page 12
... looked already gone to the bad , past redemp- tion . The sight was shocking to Heyst ; but he let nothing of it appear in his bearing , concealing his impression under that consummate good - society manner of his . Polite attention ...
... looked already gone to the bad , past redemp- tion . The sight was shocking to Heyst ; but he let nothing of it appear in his bearing , concealing his impression under that consummate good - society manner of his . Polite attention ...
Page 14
... looked Iwith sudden disfavour at that noble forehead , at those great martial moustaches , at the tired eyes of the man sitting opposite him . Who the devil was he ? What was he , Morrison , doing there , talking like this ? Morrison ...
... looked Iwith sudden disfavour at that noble forehead , at those great martial moustaches , at the tired eyes of the man sitting opposite him . Who the devil was he ? What was he , Morrison , doing there , talking like this ? Morrison ...
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Common terms and phrases
ain't Alfuro arms asked believe boat breath brig bungalow buran chair cheroot chimæras Chinaman clairvoyance course dark Davidson door doorway dunnage eyes face faint feeling fellow felt frightened gaze gentleman gharry girl glance gleam gone governor gunwale hand hanging head hear heard Heyst hotel-keeper island Java Sea jetty Jones knew laugh Lena light lips looked Malay Martin matter mean mind Morrison moved movement murmured mysterious never night Number once paused Pedro perhaps physiognomy quiet Ricardo round Samburan sarong sauceboat Schom Schomberg schooner seemed shadow shoulders side sight silence smile sort sound Sourabaya speak stare stood strange suddenly surprised Swede table d'hôte talk tell Tesmans There's thing thought tion told tone Tropical Belt Coal trouble turned verandah voice walked Wang watched wharf What's whispered woman wonder words Zangiacomo
Popular passages
Page 87 - Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes.
Page xiv - This bestial apparition and a certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti only a couple of months afterwards have fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.
Page 308 - Here they are, the envoys of the outer world. Here they are before you — evil intelligence, instinctive savagery, arm in arm. The brute force is at the back. A trio of fitting envoys perhaps — but what about the welcome? Suppose I were armed, could I shoot those two down where they stand? Could I?" Without moving her head, the girl felt for Heyst's hand, pressed it, and thereafter did not let it go. He continued, bitterly playful: "I don't know. I don't think so. There is a strain in me which...
Page 188 - Heyst's tone was light, with the flavour of playfulness which seasoned all his speeches and seemed to be of the very essence of his thoughts. The girl he had come across, of whom he had possessed himself, to whose presence he was not yet accustomed, with whom he did not yet know how to live ; that human being so near and still so strange, gave him a greater sense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life. IV WITH her knees drawn up, Lena rested her elbows on them and held her head...
Page 158 - Are we likely to be seen on our way?" "No, unless by native craft," said Schomberg. Ricardo nodded, satisfied. Both these white men looked on native life as a mere play of shadows. A play of shadows the dominant race could walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of its incomprehensible aims and needs.
Page 367 - He felt it distinctly, but he did not feel the ground under his feet. They found the steps, without his being aware that he was ascending them — slowly, one by one. Doubt entered into him — a doubt of a new kind, formless, hideous. It seemed to spread itself all over him, enter his limbs, and lodge in his entrails. He stopped suddenly, with a thought that he who experienced such a feeling had no business to live — or perhaps was no longer living. Everything — the bungalow, the forest, the...
Page 200 - I had scorned what people call by that name from the first — but for being alive. I don't know if that is what men call courage, but I doubt it very much." "You! You have no courage?" she protested. "I really don't know. Not the sort that always itches for a weapon, for I have never been anxious to use one in the quarrels that a man gets into in the most innocent way, sometimes. The differences for which men murder each other are, like everything else they do, the most contemptible, the most pitiful...
Page 101 - Latin races; and though his eyes strayed about irresolutely, yet his swollen, angry features awakened in the miserable woman over whom he had been tyrannising for years a fear for his precious carcass, since the poor creature had nothing else but that to hold on to in the world. She knew him well; but she did not know him altogether. The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. And, timid in her corner, she ventured to...
Page 88 - Three years of such companionship at that plastic and impressionable age were bound to leave in the boy a profound mistrust of life. The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost.
Page 108 - Schomberg's argument was met by Mr. Jones's statement that one must do something to kill time. Killing time was not forbidden. For the rest, being in a communicative mood, Mr. Jones said languidly and in a voice indifferent, as if issuing from a tomb, that he depended on himself, as if the world were still one great, wild jungle without law. Martin was something like that, too — for reasons of his own. All these statements Ricardo confirmed by short, inhuman grins. Schomberg lowered his eyes, for...