finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_37_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapter 38
chapter 38
{"name": "Chapter 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-38", "summary": "Here's Gentleman Brown's story. A pirate, with some serious bad luck, Brown heads to Patusan, which he has heard is easy pickings. Some island locals raise the alarm about his arrival, and the Patusan natives are lying in wait to attack him. They sure know how to welcome visitors over in Patusan, don't they? To avoid a fight, Brown and his crew retreat to a hilltop.", "analysis": ""}

'It all begins, as I've told you, with the man called Brown,' ran the
opening sentence of Marlow's narrative. 'You who have knocked about the
Western Pacific must have heard of him. He was the show ruffian on the
Australian coast--not that he was often to be seen there, but because
he was always trotted out in the stories of lawless life a visitor from
home is treated to; and the mildest of these stories which were told
about him from Cape York to Eden Bay was more than enough to hang a man
if told in the right place. They never failed to let you know, too,
that he was supposed to be the son of a baronet. Be it as it may, it is
certain he had deserted from a home ship in the early gold-digging days,
and in a few years became talked about as the terror of this or that
group of islands in Polynesia. He would kidnap natives, he would strip
some lonely white trader to the very pyjamas he stood in, and after he
had robbed the poor devil, he would as likely as not invite him to fight
a duel with shot-guns on the beach--which would have been fair enough
as these things go, if the other man hadn't been by that time already
half-dead with fright. Brown was a latter-day buccaneer, sorry enough,
like his more celebrated prototypes; but what distinguished him from
his contemporary brother ruffians, like Bully Hayes or the mellifluous
Pease, or that perfumed, Dundreary-whiskered, dandified scoundrel known
as Dirty Dick, was the arrogant temper of his misdeeds and a vehement
scorn for mankind at large and for his victims in particular. The
others were merely vulgar and greedy brutes, but he seemed moved by some
complex intention. He would rob a man as if only to demonstrate his poor
opinion of the creature, and he would bring to the shooting or maiming
of some quiet, unoffending stranger a savage and vengeful earnestness
fit to terrify the most reckless of desperadoes. In the days of his
greatest glory he owned an armed barque, manned by a mixed crew of
Kanakas and runaway whalers, and boasted, I don't know with what truth,
of being financed on the quiet by a most respectable firm of copra
merchants. Later on he ran off--it was reported--with the wife of a
missionary, a very young girl from Clapham way, who had married the
mild, flat-footed fellow in a moment of enthusiasm, and, suddenly
transplanted to Melanesia, lost her bearings somehow. It was a dark
story. She was ill at the time he carried her off, and died on board his
ship. It is said--as the most wonderful put of the tale--that over her
body he gave way to an outburst of sombre and violent grief. His luck
left him, too, very soon after. He lost his ship on some rocks off
Malaita, and disappeared for a time as though he had gone down with her.
He is heard of next at Nuka-Hiva, where he bought an old French schooner
out of Government service. What creditable enterprise he might have had
in view when he made that purchase I can't say, but it is evident that
what with High Commissioners, consuls, men-of-war, and international
control, the South Seas were getting too hot to hold gentlemen of his
kidney. Clearly he must have shifted the scene of his operations farther
west, because a year later he plays an incredibly audacious, but not a
very profitable part, in a serio-comic business in Manila Bay, in which
a peculating governor and an absconding treasurer are the principal
figures; thereafter he seems to have hung around the Philippines in his
rotten schooner battling with un adverse fortune, till at last, running
his appointed course, he sails into Jim's history, a blind accomplice of
the Dark Powers.

'His tale goes that when a Spanish patrol cutter captured him he was
simply trying to run a few guns for the insurgents. If so, then I can't
understand what he was doing off the south coast of Mindanao. My belief,
however, is that he was blackmailing the native villages along the
coast. The principal thing is that the cutter, throwing a guard on
board, made him sail in company towards Zamboanga. On the way, for some
reason or other, both vessels had to call at one of these new Spanish
settlements--which never came to anything in the end--where there was
not only a civil official in charge on shore, but a good stout coasting
schooner lying at anchor in the little bay; and this craft, in every way
much better than his own, Brown made up his mind to steal.

'He was down on his luck--as he told me himself. The world he had
bullied for twenty years with fierce, aggressive disdain, had yielded
him nothing in the way of material advantage except a small bag of
silver dollars, which was concealed in his cabin so that "the devil
himself couldn't smell it out." And that was all--absolutely all. He
was tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this man, who would
stake his existence on a whim with a bitter and jeering recklessness,
stood in mortal fear of imprisonment. He had an unreasoning cold-sweat,
nerve-shaking, blood-to-water-turning sort of horror at the bare
possibility of being locked up--the sort of terror a superstitious man
would feel at the thought of being embraced by a spectre. Therefore the
civil official who came on board to make a preliminary investigation
into the capture, investigated arduously all day long, and only went
ashore after dark, muffled up in a cloak, and taking great care not to
let Brown's little all clink in its bag. Afterwards, being a man of his
word, he contrived (the very next evening, I believe) to send off
the Government cutter on some urgent bit of special service. As her
commander could not spare a prize crew, he contented himself by taking
away before he left all the sails of Brown's schooner to the very last
rag, and took good care to tow his two boats on to the beach a couple of
miles off.

'But in Brown's crew there was a Solomon Islander, kidnapped in his
youth and devoted to Brown, who was the best man of the whole gang. That
fellow swam off to the coaster--five hundred yards or so--with the end
of a warp made up of all the running gear unrove for the purpose. The
water was smooth, and the bay dark, "like the inside of a cow," as Brown
described it. The Solomon Islander clambered over the bulwarks with the
end of the rope in his teeth. The crew of the coaster--all Tagals--were
ashore having a jollification in the native village. The two shipkeepers
left on board woke up suddenly and saw the devil. It had glittering eyes
and leaped quick as lightning about the deck. They fell on their knees,
paralysed with fear, crossing themselves and mumbling prayers. With
a long knife he found in the caboose the Solomon Islander, without
interrupting their orisons, stabbed first one, then the other; with the
same knife he set to sawing patiently at the coir cable till suddenly it
parted under the blade with a splash. Then in the silence of the bay
he let out a cautious shout, and Brown's gang, who meantime had been
peering and straining their hopeful ears in the darkness, began to
pull gently at their end of the warp. In less than five minutes the two
schooners came together with a slight shock and a creak of spars.

'Brown's crowd transferred themselves without losing an instant, taking
with them their firearms and a large supply of ammunition. They were
sixteen in all: two runaway blue-jackets, a lanky deserter from a Yankee
man-of-war, a couple of simple, blond Scandinavians, a mulatto of sorts,
one bland Chinaman who cooked--and the rest of the nondescript spawn
of the South Seas. None of them cared; Brown bent them to his will, and
Brown, indifferent to gallows, was running away from the spectre of
a Spanish prison. He didn't give them the time to trans-ship enough
provisions; the weather was calm, the air was charged with dew, and when
they cast off the ropes and set sail to a faint off-shore draught there
was no flutter in the damp canvas; their old schooner seemed to detach
itself gently from the stolen craft and slip away silently, together
with the black mass of the coast, into the night.

'They got clear away. Brown related to me in detail their passage down
the Straits of Macassar. It is a harrowing and desperate story. They
were short of food and water; they boarded several native craft and got
a little from each. With a stolen ship Brown did not dare to put into
any port, of course. He had no money to buy anything, no papers to show,
and no lie plausible enough to get him out again. An Arab barque, under
the Dutch flag, surprised one night at anchor off Poulo Laut, yielded a
little dirty rice, a bunch of bananas, and a cask of water; three days
of squally, misty weather from the north-east shot the schooner across
the Java Sea. The yellow muddy waves drenched that collection of hungry
ruffians. They sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes;
passed well-found home ships with rusty iron sides anchored in the
shallow sea waiting for a change of weather or the turn of the tide; an
English gunboat, white and trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows
one day in the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette, black
and heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, steaming dead slow
in the mist. They slipped through unseen or disregarded, a wan,
sallow-faced band of utter outcasts, enraged with hunger and hunted by
fear. Brown's idea was to make for Madagascar, where he expected, on
grounds not altogether illusory, to sell the schooner in Tamatave, and
no questions asked, or perhaps obtain some more or less forged papers
for her. Yet before he could face the long passage across the Indian
Ocean food was wanted--water too.

'Perhaps he had heard of Patusan--or perhaps he just only happened to
see the name written in small letters on the chart--probably that of a
largish village up a river in a native state, perfectly defenceless, far
from the beaten tracks of the sea and from the ends of submarine cables.
He had done that kind of thing before--in the way of business;
and this now was an absolute necessity, a question of life and
death--or rather of liberty. Of liberty! He was sure to get
provisions--bullocks--rice--sweet-potatoes. The sorry gang licked
their chops. A cargo of produce for the schooner perhaps could be
extorted--and, who knows?--some real ringing coined money! Some of these
chiefs and village headmen can be made to part freely. He told me he
would have roasted their toes rather than be baulked. I believe him. His
men believed him too. They didn't cheer aloud, being a dumb pack, but
made ready wolfishly.

'Luck served him as to weather. A few days of calm would have brought
unmentionable horrors on board that schooner, but with the help of land
and sea breezes, in less than a week after clearing the Sunda Straits,
he anchored off the Batu Kring mouth within a pistol-shot of the fishing
village.

'Fourteen of them packed into the schooner's long-boat (which was big,
having been used for cargo-work) and started up the river, while two
remained in charge of the schooner with food enough to keep starvation
off for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon the
big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea
breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows
glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles.
Brown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They
sailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah's stockade gave no sign;
the first houses on both sides of the stream seemed deserted. A few
canoes were seen up the reach in full flight. Brown was astonished at
the size of the place. A profound silence reigned. The wind dropped
between the houses; two oars were got out and the boat held on
up-stream, the idea being to effect a lodgment in the centre of the town
before the inhabitants could think of resistance.

'It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing village at Batu
Kring had managed to send off a timely warning. When the long-boat came
abreast of the mosque (which Doramin had built: a structure with gables
and roof finials of carved coral) the open space before it was full of
people. A shout went up, and was followed by a clash of gongs all up the
river. From a point above two little brass 6-pounders were discharged,
and the round-shot came skipping down the empty reach, spurting
glittering jets of water in the sunshine. In front of the mosque a
shouting lot of men began firing in volleys that whipped athwart the
current of the river; an irregular, rolling fusillade was opened on the
boat from both banks, and Brown's men replied with a wild, rapid fire.
The oars had been got in.

'The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that river,
and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began to drift back
stern foremost. Along both shores the smoke thickened also, lying below
the roofs in a level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the
slope of a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang
of gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes of
volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat confounded but
steady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of hate and rage
against those people who dared to defend themselves. Two of his men
had been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some
boats that had put off from Tunku Allang's stockade. There were six of
them, full of men. While he was thus beset he perceived the entrance of
the narrow creek (the same which Jim had jumped at low water). It was
then brim full. Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a
long story short, they established themselves on a little knoll about
900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that
position. The slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees
on the summit. They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork,
and were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah's boats
remained in the river with curious neutrality. When the sun set the glue
of many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and between the
double line of houses on the land side threw into black relief the
roofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees.
Brown ordered the grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of
thin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly down the
slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush caught with a tall,
vicious roar. The conflagration made a clear zone of fire for the rifles
of the small party, and expired smouldering on the edge of the forests
and along the muddy bank of the creek. A strip of jungle luxuriating in
a damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah's stockade stopped it
on that side with a great crackling and detonations of bursting bamboo
stems. The sky was sombre, velvety, and swarming with stars. The
blackened ground smoked quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little
breeze came on and blew everything away. Brown expected an attack to
be delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the
war-boats which had cut off his retreat to enter the creek. At any rate
he was sure there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat,
which lay below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet
mud-flat. But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river.
Over the stockade and the Rajah's buildings Brown saw their lights on
the water. They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights
afloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to
side. There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of
houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others
isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs,
black piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The
fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised
their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend
up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They did not
speak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a
single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their position
everything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if
the excitement keeping awake all the population had nothing to do with
them, as if they had been dead already.'

Chapter 38
Here's Gentleman Brown's story. A pirate, with some serious bad luck, Brown heads to Patusan, which he has heard is easy pickings. Some island locals raise the alarm about his arrival, and the Patusan natives are lying in wait to attack him. They sure know how to welcome visitors over in Patusan, don't they? To avoid a fight, Brown and his crew retreat to a hilltop.