finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_5_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapter 6
chapter 6
{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-6", "summary": "Back at the trial, we meet a Captain Brierly through the eyes of Marlow. Brierly was one of the three men sitting in judgment at the trial, and apparently he was quite the successful, well-regarded guy. Too bad, then, that he committed suicide right after the trial concluded. His suicide is a big mystery, but Marlow, for one, has his theories. He thinks Captain B killed himself because of Jim; Jim's case hit a little too close to home for the Captain, and he realized that he, too, could behave as badly as Jim. Or that's Marlow's theory, anyway. Marlow later meets up with Jones, who served with Brierly. He gives Marlow the lowdown on Brierly's suicide - what he knows about it, at least. He can't figure out why Brierly did it because Captain B was \"Young, healthy, well off, no cares... I sit here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason.\" Anyways, let's get back to the matter at hand, shall we? The crew of the Patna has shown up on land sans ship, which is a big old problem, and now Jim is on trial for whatever he did wrong. At the trial, Brierly and Marlow have a conversation about Jim. Horrified by the publicity the trial is getting, Captain B wishes Jim would just skip town so the naval community could stop being so embarrassed. At this, Marlow wanders outside, where a dude comments on a \"wretched cur,\" referring to a stray dog. Poor Jim overhears and thinks the \"cur\" jab was aimed at him. Uh oh. He gets mad and attacks Marlow, who calms him down and explains the misunderstanding. This Jim fellow is one awkward guy. In a moment of kindness, or perhaps just curiosity, Marlow invites Jim to dine with him at his hotel, and Jim agrees. This should be interesting...", "analysis": ""}
'The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not
adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it
was well attended because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no
incertitude as to facts--as to the one material fact, I mean. How the
Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not
expect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who
cared. Yet, as I've told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and
the waterside business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or
not, the interest that drew them here was purely psychological--the
expectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power,
the horror, of human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be
disclosed. The examination of the only man able and willing to face
it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of
questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on
an iron box, were the object to find out what's inside. However, an
official inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the
fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.

'The young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing
was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him
necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have
been the only truth worth knowing. You can't expect the constituted
authorities to inquire into the state of a man's soul--or is it only of
his liver? Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and
frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not
much good for anything else. I don't mean to imply these fellows were
stupid. The magistrate was very patient. One of the assessors was a
sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition.
Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big
Brierly--the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. That's the
man.

'He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. He had never
in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap,
never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky
fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust.
At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern
trade--and, what's more, he thought a lot of what he had. There was
nothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him
point-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not
such another commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. The
rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa
were rather poor creatures. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued
ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the
underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from
some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. He was
acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough,
though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn't stand him at
any price. I haven't the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my
superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not
have ignored your inferiority in his presence--but I couldn't get up any
real sentiment of offence. He did not despise me for anything I could
help, for anything I was--don't you know? I was a negligible quantity
simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague
Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold
chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the
excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed
of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and
worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never
was such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this
forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was
associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of
other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his
good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite
and attractive in the man. I have never defined to myself this
attraction, but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of life
could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the
smooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked at him, flanking
on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the
inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a
surface as hard as granite. He committed suicide very soon after.

'No wonder Jim's case bored him, and while I thought with something
akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the young man under
examination, he was probably holding silent inquiry into his own case.
The verdict must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret
of the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. If I understand
anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of
those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which
a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am
in a position to know that it wasn't money, and it wasn't drink, and it
wasn't woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of
the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward
passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had
suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open wide for his
reception.

'Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate
sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with
his commander the surliest chief officer I've ever seen, would tell the
story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in
the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. "It was ten
minutes to four," he said, "and the middle watch was not relieved yet of
course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate, and
called me in. I was loth to go, and that's the truth, Captain Marlow--I
couldn't stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never
know what a man is made of. He had been promoted over too many heads,
not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel
small, nothing but by the way he said 'Good morning.' I never addressed
him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do
to keep a civil tongue in my head." (He flattered himself there. I often
wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half
a voyage.) "I've a wife and children," he went on, "and I had been ten
years in the Company, always expecting the next command--more fool I.
Says he, just like this: 'Come in here, Mr. Jones,' in that swagger
voice of his--'Come in here, Mr. Jones.' In I went. 'We'll lay down her
position,' says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand.
By the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that
at the end of his watch. However, I said nothing, and looked on while he
marked off the ship's position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and
the time. I can see him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen,
eight, four A.M. The year would be written in red ink at the top of
the chart. He never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly
didn't. I've the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down
at the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me.
'Thirty-two miles more as she goes,' says he, 'and then we shall be
clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.'

'"We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage. I said,
'All right, sir,' wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to
call him before altering the course anyhow. Just then eight bells were
struck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going off
mentions in the usual way--'Seventy-one on the log.' Captain Brierly
looks at the compass and then all round. It was dark and clear, and
all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes.
Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh: 'I am going aft, and
shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no
mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe.
Let's see--the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say,
then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to
starboard at once. No use losing any distance--is there?' I had never
heard him talk so much at a stretch, and to no purpose as it seemed
to me. I said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, that was
always at his heels whenever he moved, night or day, followed,
sliding nose first, after him. I heard his boot-heels tap, tap on the
after-deck, then he stopped and spoke to the dog--'Go back, Rover. On
the bridge, boy! Go on--get.' Then he calls out to me from the dark,
'Shut that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones--will you?'

'"This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. These are
the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir."
At this point the old chap's voice got quite unsteady. "He was afraid
the poor brute would jump after him, don't you see?" he pursued with
a quaver. "Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he--would you
believe it?--he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder
where he left it near by. The boat-swain's mate got the hose along aft
to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on
the bridge--'Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,' he says. 'There's a
funny thing. I don't like to touch it.' It was Captain Brierly's gold
chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain.

'"As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew, sir. My
legs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over; and I could
tell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log marked eighteen
miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round
the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help him down, I suppose; but,
Lord! what's four iron pins to a powerful man like Captain Brierly.
Maybe his confidence in himself was just shook a bit at the last. That's
the only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but
I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a
stroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day
long on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir.
He was second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He
had written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and the
other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--I had
been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end of hints
as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the
command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son,
Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had
tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. In his letter to the
owners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done
his duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying
their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman
as could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if
the last act of his life didn't take away all his credit with them, they
would give weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation,
when about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more like
this, sir. I couldn't believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all over,"
went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something
in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula.
"You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky
man a last show to get on. What with the shock of him going in this
awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was
nearly off my chump for a week. But no fear. The captain of the Pelion
was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay,
sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. 'Aw--I
am--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.' He was drowned in
scent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look
I gave him that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural
disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got
the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of
course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, 'Don't
you mind old Jones, sir; dam' his soul, he's used to it.' I could see
directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first
tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and
that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy
show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my
peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something. Up
he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little
fighting-cock. 'You'll find you have a different person to deal with
than the late Captain Brierly.' 'I've found it,' says I, very glum, but
pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. 'You are an old ruffian,
Mister--aw--Jones; and what's more, you are known for an old ruffian
in the employ,' he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers stood about
listening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. 'I may be a hard
case,' answers I, 'but I ain't so far gone as to put up with the sight
of you sitting in Captain Brierly's chair.' With that I lay down my
knife and fork. 'You would like to sit in it yourself--that's where the
shoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and
was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the
stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift--on shore--after ten years'
service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles
off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir!
I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his
night-glasses--here they are; and he wished me to take care of the
dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where's the captain, Rover?"
The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate
bark, and crept under the table.

'All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board
that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite
by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally
called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before
the occupation days. The old chap snuffled on--

'"Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there's no other
place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in
reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they
did not want to know."

'The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a
red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of
that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a
veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's remembered figure, the
posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which
had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps
wholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take
of his own suicide?

'"Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think?" asked
Jones, pressing his palms together. "Why? It beats me! Why?" He slapped
his low and wrinkled forehead. "If he had been poor and old and in
debt--and never a show--or else mad. But he wasn't of the kind that
goes mad, not he. You trust me. What a mate don't know about his skipper
isn't worth knowing. Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit
here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz.
There was some reason."

'"You may depend on it, Captain Jones," said I, "it wasn't anything that
would have disturbed much either of us two," I said; and then, as if
a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones
found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me
dolefully: "Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of
ourselves."

'Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is
tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. I
spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It
was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street.
He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his
usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly
cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his
interlocutor had been a rather good joke. "They caught me for that
inquiry, you see," he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon
the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. "And goodness knows how
long it will last. Three days, I suppose." I heard him out in silence;
in my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side.
"What's the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine," he
pursued hotly. I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me
with a sort of pent-up violence. "I feel like a fool all the time." I
looked up at him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of
Brierly. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it
a slight tug. "Why are we tormenting that young chap?" he asked. This
question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine
that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered
at once, "Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you." I was
astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance,
which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, "Why, yes.
Can't he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? What does he
expect to happen? Nothing can save him. He's done for." We walked on
in silence a few steps. "Why eat all that dirt?" he exclaimed, with an
oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can
find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. I wondered greatly at the
direction of his thoughts, but now I strongly suspect it was strictly in
character: at bottom poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself.
I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have
feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the
means of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was
keeping him in the Sailors' Home for the time being, and probably he
hadn't a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money
to run away. "Does it? Not always," he said, with a bitter laugh, and
to some further remark of mine--"Well, then, let him creep twenty feet
underground and stay there! By heavens! _I_ would." I don't know why his
tone provoked me, and I said, "There is a kind of courage in facing
it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would
trouble to run after him." "Courage be hanged!" growled Brierly. "That
sort of courage is of no use to keep a man straight, and I don't care
a snap for such courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice
now--of softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if
you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out
early to-morrow morning. The fellow's a gentleman if he ain't fit to
be touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too
shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs,
lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that's enough to burn a man
to ashes with shame. This is abominable. Why, Marlow, don't you think,
don't you feel, that this is abominable; don't you now--come--as a
seaman? If he went away all this would stop at once." Brierly said these
words with a most unusual animation, and made as if to reach after his
pocket-book. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice
of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance.
"And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he pronounced angrily. I
said that's what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard me
out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of
my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. "The worst of it," he
said, "is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you don't think
enough of what you are supposed to be."

'We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the
harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain
of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a
hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: "This is a disgrace. We've got all
kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we
must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many
tinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted!
Frankly, I don't care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of
Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo
of old rags in bales. We aren't an organised body of men, and the only
thing that holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency.
Such an affair destroys one's confidence. A man may go pretty near
through his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip.
But when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . ."

'He broke off, and in a changed tone, "I'll give you two hundred rupees
now, Marlow, and you just talk to that chap. Confound him! I wish he had
never come out here. Fact is, I rather think some of my people know his.
The old man's a parson, and I remember now I met him once when staying
with my cousin in Essex last year. If I am not mistaken, the old
chap seemed rather to fancy his sailor son. Horrible. I can't do it
myself--but you . . ."

'Thus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few days
before he committed his reality and his sham together to the keeping of
the sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this last "but
you" (poor Brierly couldn't help it), that seemed to imply I was no
more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the proposal with
indignation, and on account of that provocation, or for some other
reason, I became positive in my mind that the inquiry was a severe
punishment to that Jim, and that his facing it--practically of his own
free will--was a redeeming feature in his abominable case. I hadn't been
so sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff. At the time his state
of mind was more of a mystery to me than it is now.

'Next day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of course I could
not forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had them both
under my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy impudence and of
the other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude might not have been
truer than the other, and I was aware that one was not true. Brierly was
not bored--he was exasperated; and if so, then Jim might not have been
impudent. According to my theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless.
Then it was that our glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was
discouraging of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon
either hypothesis--insolence or despair--I felt I could be of no use to
him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after that
exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the next day. The
white men began to troop out at once. Jim had been told to stand down
some time before, and was able to leave amongst the first. I saw his
broad shoulders and his head outlined in the light of the door, and
while I made my way slowly out talking with some one--some stranger who
had addressed me casually--I could see him from within the court-room
resting both elbows on the balustrade of the verandah and turning his
back on the small stream of people trickling down the few steps. There
was a murmur of voices and a shuffle of boots.

'The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a
money-lender, I believe; and the defendant--a venerable villager with a
straight white beard--sat on a mat just outside the door with his sons,
daughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think, half the
population of his village besides, squatting or standing around him. A
slim dark woman, with part of her back and one black shoulder bared,
and with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly began to talk in a
high-pitched, shrewish tone. The man with me instinctively looked up
at her. We were then just through the door, passing behind Jim's burly
back.

'Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them, I don't
know. Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and out amongst
people's legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs have, and my
companion stumbled over him. The dog leaped away without a sound; the
man, raising his voice a little, said with a slow laugh, "Look at that
wretched cur," and directly afterwards we became separated by a lot of
people pushing in. I stood back for a moment against the wall while the
stranger managed to get down the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin
round. He made a step forward and barred my way. We were alone; he
glared at me with an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was
being held up, so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by
then, the noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell
upon the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice
began to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak in
at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.

'"Did you speak to me?" asked Jim very low, and bending forward, not so
much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said "No" at once.
Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be on my
defence. I watched him. It was very much like a meeting in a wood, only
more uncertain in its issue, since he could possibly want neither my
money nor my life--nothing that I could simply give up or defend with
a clear conscience. "You say you didn't," he said, very sombre. "But I
heard." "Some mistake," I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking
my eyes off him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky
before a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the
doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.

'"As far as I know, I haven't opened my lips in your hearing," I
affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the
absurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my life
been so near a beating--I mean it literally; a beating with fists. I
suppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in the
air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary, he was
strangely passive--don't you know? but he was lowering, and, though not
exceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish a wall. The
most reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of slow and ponderous
hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the evident sincerity of my
manner and of my tone. We faced each other. In the court the assault
case was proceeding. I caught the words: "Well--buffalo--stick--in the
greatness of my fear. . . ."

'"What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?" said Jim at last.
He looked up and looked down again. "Did you expect us all to sit with
downcast eyes out of regard for your susceptibilities?" I retorted
sharply. I was not going to submit meekly to any of his nonsense. He
raised his eyes again, and this time continued to look me straight
in the face. "No. That's all right," he pronounced with an air of
deliberating with himself upon the truth of this statement--"that's all
right. I am going through with that. Only"--and there he spoke a little
faster--"I won't let any man call me names outside this court. There was
a fellow with you. You spoke to him--oh yes--I know; 'tis all very fine.
You spoke to him, but you meant me to hear. . . ."

'I assured him he was under some extraordinary delusion. I had no
conception how it came about. "You thought I would be afraid to resent
this," he said, with just a faint tinge of bitterness. I was interested
enough to discern the slightest shades of expression, but I was not in
the least enlightened; yet I don't know what in these words, or perhaps
just the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all
possible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected
predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I
had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate
nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as
one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence.
The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations
of the higher order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to
the possibility--nay, likelihood--of this encounter ending in some
disreputable brawl which could not possibly be explained, and would make
me ridiculous. I did not hanker after a three days' celebrity as the man
who got a black eye or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna.
He, in all probability, did not care what he did, or at any rate would
be fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magician to see he was
amazingly angry about something, for all his quiet and even torpid
demeanour. I don't deny I was extremely desirous to pacify him at all
costs, had I only known what to do. But I didn't know, as you may well
imagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We confronted each
other in silence. He hung fire for about fifteen seconds, then made a
step nearer, and I made ready to ward off a blow, though I don't think I
moved a muscle. "If you were as big as two men and as strong as six,"
he said very softly, "I would tell you what I think of you. You . . ."
"Stop!" I exclaimed. This checked him for a second. "Before you tell me
what you think of me," I went on quickly, "will you kindly tell me what
it is I've said or done?" During the pause that ensued he surveyed me
with indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of memory, in which
I was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating
with impassioned volubility against a charge of falsehood. Then we spoke
almost together. "I will soon show you I am not," he said, in a tone
suggestive of a crisis. "I declare I don't know," I protested earnestly
at the same time. He tried to crush me by the scorn of his glance.
"Now that you see I am not afraid you try to crawl out of it," he said.
"Who's a cur now--hey?" Then, at last, I understood.

'He had been scanning my features as though looking for a place where
he would plant his fist. "I will allow no man," . . . he mumbled
threateningly. It was, indeed, a hideous mistake; he had given himself
away utterly. I can't give you an idea how shocked I was. I suppose he
saw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because his expression
changed just a little. "Good God!" I stammered, "you don't think
I . . ." "But I am sure I've heard," he persisted, raising his voice for
the first time since the beginning of this deplorable scene. Then with a
shade of disdain he added, "It wasn't you, then? Very well; I'll find
the other." "Don't be a fool," I cried in exasperation; "it wasn't that
at all." "I've heard," he said again with an unshaken and sombre
perseverance.

'There may be those who could have laughed at his pertinacity; I didn't.
Oh, I didn't! There had never been a man so mercilessly shown up by
his own natural impulse. A single word had stripped him of his
discretion--of that discretion which is more necessary to the decencies
of our inner being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. "Don't
be a fool," I repeated. "But the other man said it, you don't deny
that?" he pronounced distinctly, and looking in my face without
flinching. "No, I don't deny," said I, returning his gaze. At last his
eyes followed downwards the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared
at first uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and scared
as though a dog had been a monster and he had never seen a dog before.
"Nobody dreamt of insulting you," I said.

'He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no more than an effigy:
it sat with ears pricked and its sharp muzzle pointed into the doorway,
and suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of mechanism.

'I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened
suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead, spread to
the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely crimson, and even
the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood
to his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though he had been
on the point of bursting into tears. I perceived he was incapable
of pronouncing a word from the excess of his humiliation. From
disappointment too--who knows? Perhaps he looked forward to that
hammering he was going to give me for rehabilitation, for appeasement?
Who can tell what relief he expected from this chance of a row? He
was naive enough to expect anything; but he had given himself away for
nothing in this case. He had been frank with himself--let alone
with me--in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective
refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an
inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a
blow on the head. It was pitiful.

'I didn't catch up again with him till well outside the gate. I had even
to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow, I taxed
him with running away, he said, "Never!" and at once turned at bay. I
explained I never meant to say he was running away from _me_. "From no
man--from not a single man on earth," he affirmed with a stubborn mien.
I forbore to point out the one obvious exception which would hold good
for the bravest of us; I thought he would find out by himself very soon.
He looked at me patiently while I was thinking of something to say, but
I could find nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on.
I kept up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn't
think of leaving him under a false impression of my--of my--I stammered.
The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish
it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the
logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He
cut it short by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an
immense power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of
spirits--"Altogether my mistake." I marvelled greatly at this
expression: he might have been alluding to some trifling occurrence.
Hadn't he understood its deplorable meaning? "You may well forgive me,"
he continued, and went on a little moodily, "All these staring people in
court seemed such fools that--that it might have been as I supposed."

'This opened suddenly a new view of him to my wonder. I looked at him
curiously and met his unabashed and impenetrable eyes. "I can't put up
with this kind of thing," he said, very simply, "and I don't mean to. In
court it's different; I've got to stand that--and I can do it too."

'I don't pretend I understood him. The views he let me have of himself
were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog--bits
of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected idea of the general
aspect of a country. They fed one's curiosity without satisfying it;
they were no good for purposes of orientation. Upon the whole he was
misleading. That's how I summed him up to myself after he left me late
in the evening. I had been staying at the Malabar House for a few days,
and on my pressing invitation he dined with me there.'
Chapter 6
Back at the trial, we meet a Captain Brierly through the eyes of Marlow. Brierly was one of the three men sitting in judgment at the trial, and apparently he was quite the successful, well-regarded guy. Too bad, then, that he committed suicide right after the trial concluded. His suicide is a big mystery, but Marlow, for one, has his theories. He thinks Captain B killed himself because of Jim; Jim's case hit a little too close to home for the Captain, and he realized that he, too, could behave as badly as Jim. Or that's Marlow's theory, anyway. Marlow later meets up with Jones, who served with Brierly. He gives Marlow the lowdown on Brierly's suicide - what he knows about it, at least. He can't figure out why Brierly did it because Captain B was "Young, healthy, well off, no cares... I sit here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason." Anyways, let's get back to the matter at hand, shall we? The crew of the Patna has shown up on land sans ship, which is a big old problem, and now Jim is on trial for whatever he did wrong. At the trial, Brierly and Marlow have a conversation about Jim. Horrified by the publicity the trial is getting, Captain B wishes Jim would just skip town so the naval community could stop being so embarrassed. At this, Marlow wanders outside, where a dude comments on a "wretched cur," referring to a stray dog. Poor Jim overhears and thinks the "cur" jab was aimed at him. Uh oh. He gets mad and attacks Marlow, who calms him down and explains the misunderstanding. This Jim fellow is one awkward guy. In a moment of kindness, or perhaps just curiosity, Marlow invites Jim to dine with him at his hotel, and Jim agrees. This should be interesting...