finished_summaries/gradesaver/Lord Jim/section_7_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 23-27
chapters 23-27
{"name": "Chapters 23-27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-23-27", "summary": "On his way to Patusan, Jim carries a letter from Mr. Stein to Cornelius, together with a silver ring common among natives as his introduction to Doramin, Mr. Stein's \"war-comrades\" friend. Doramin gave him the ring as a parting gift and promise of eternal friendship. Stein had saved Doramin's life at one point. Now Jim keeps the ring around his neck. Set to leave, Marlow notices three books tumble out of Jim's valise: the complete Shakespeare. Marlow is struck by this choice of Jim's. He is also struck when Jim, taking the revolver Marlow has offered him, forgets the two small boxes of cartridges. Jim calls to Marlow: \"You - shall - hear - of - me\" . Marlow visits Patusan two years later, and at the mouth of the river, the elderly headman of the fisher-folk village comes to board Stein's schooner and tells Marlow about a certain \"Tuan Jim,\" the first white man he ever saw. As he goes down the river, he can see Jim going down the river for the first time, and the narrative subtly shifts to Jim's perspective: Jim is describing how he felt seeing the first houses, how the boat came onto the bank. A boat full of armed men behind him, people coming out of the gate straight at him, his revolver empty, he just stood there. He asked them what was the matter, and it stunned them. Kassim, the Rajah's counselor, announced that the Rajah wanted to see him. The Rajah kept him prisoner for three days. He was a fearful soul who hated Doramin and was deeply afraid of Jim. Jim was held by the north front of the stockade which, on his third day in Patusan, he leaped over. His leap of escape was a flying one over the mouth of a muddy creek. Traveling by foot, he reached Doramin, as the women screamed and children cried. He produced the ring. Doramin and his motherly wife were of the merchant class and were viewed with great respect and dignity. They were involved in a deep, factional fight regarding trade, since the Rajah had been pretending he was the only trader in the country. Doramin, fat, imposing, monumental, and motionless, was growing old, and the area was fraught with insecurity. The couple had had a son late in life, named Dain Waris. Dain Waris was very distinguished and about twenty-four or twenty-five. He was adored by his parents, and he would become Jim's best friend. Dain Waris understands Jim very well. Jim next describes to Marlow the extent to which he has become a legend. Like a judge, he feels a keen responsibility for the social order. Many believe he has supernatural powers. An old man from a faraway village even came to ask Jim if he should divorce his wife. A key victory in war settled his stature and respect, having concluded a quarrel with the Rajah. A stockade that had already been knocked to pieces caused the story to circulate that Jim had thrown it down with the touch of a finger. Dain Waris had saved Jim's life at that time. There had been a hot five minutes in the stockade, and then all was clear. Jim cries that it was \"Immense!\" . As a result of the battle, Tamb' Itam, a stranger to Patusan who had been detained by the Rajah, bolted from him in order to become Jim's devoted servant. He was inseparable from Jim, like a \"morose shadow\" .", "analysis": "The narrative scatters chronologically.  The reader gets a brief view of Jim's success in Patusan, and we learn that Marlow visits him there.  The narrative then returns to Jim's perspective, as he first learns about the opportunity Stein is giving him.  The silver ring is a traditional symbol of the romantic quest, of which Jim's journey is an example: it takes him into the heart of an unknown place, where the ring will help him inherit the cultural and other ties that Stein made in those parts long ago.  He has the opportunity to prove himself, while Stein plays the part of providing luck or chance.  From then on, Jim is on his own. The prospect of anonymity is, for Jim, a possible freedom.  He discovers that he is not so bad after all, something Marlow had sensed from the beginning.  Thrown into a whirlwind of self-confusion, Jim now proves his worth.  It is not certain, however, that this success will help him reconcile with his previous failure, since his personality remains obsessed with a particular, fixed aspect of the past.  While people can change generally, the past cannot.  Hence, the question of Jim's fate ultimately turns on how he learns to live with his past. When Marlow notes Jim's copy of Shakespeare, the scene resonates against the recent scene with Stein, who made reference to the poet's Hamlet.  This detail provides a further sense of connection between the romantics, Jim and Stein, regarding the question of how one is to live.  The search into literature for answers is Conrad's subtle hint, being an author himself, that his literary work endeavors to answer the complex questions of how to be and how to live. From the moment Jim arrives in Patusan, he exhibits courage.  His judgment is flawless, and he makes the correct leap from his imprisonment when he needs to.  This contrasts with his leap from the Patna and with his earlier failure to leap at the best time.  These successful leaps in Patusan, moreover, provide the seeds of the mythmaking that envelops Jim, who comes to be known as \"Tuan Jim\" or \"Lord Jim.\"  This romanticized \"Jim\" can fly.  He cannot die.  The story even trickles down to a faraway place where Marlow will hear that the legend has discovered a giant emerald. When Marlow once again encounters Jim, he feels the pride of a father.  He is glad that Jim has successfully made use of the opportunity he received.  Something of the stammering, young, ineloquent man remains, but Marlow notes: \"Now and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the certitude of rehabilitation.  That is why he seemed to love the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous tenderness\" .  While Jim looks upon the land with one eye on possession, Marlow still concludes that \"all his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these things that made him master had made him captive, too\" .  Marlow is coming to understand Jim very well.  This understanding is reiterated: \"Jim the leader was a captive in every sense.  The land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body.  Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom\" .  In other words, the freedom he had sought, the freedom that comes with honor and power generally, must be held accountable to others.  Binding oneself to others is constraining: you can't leap or run away.  The responsibility is severe.  Jim has inserted himself as a necessary and important part of the social fabric in Patusan, and, in this way, the community is not unlike that of a ship on the sea. Thus while Jim is exiled from the sea, this new oceanic wilderness is isolating in a new way.  He has assumed a position not unlike the one he had held on board the Patna as first mate.  In Patusan, a name that resonates with the sound of \"Patna,\" Jim is isolated even while he is in position to guide the community. An important point to keep in mind in thinking about the communities on board the Patna and in Patusan is their \"otherness\"; both sets of people for whom Jim is responsible differ considerably from the Western figures who dominate the novel.  The ship had been filled with Muslim pilgrims heading for Mecca, and Patusan is filled with a community of Southeast Asian islanders.  Stein, also, had been intimately involved with a Malay community.  In all these cases, though Jim and Stein had been relatively isolated insofar as they were white men, the white men achieved dominance and held a high stature among the population.  This white ascendancy has been critiqued as problematic in much of Conrad's work, gaining some energy from being set in \"exotic\" locations.  Note that Dain Waris \"knew how to fight like a white man ... he had also a European mind\"--which, from the perspective of the speaker, suggests the superiority of the Western presence in that part of the world, as well as the superiority of a native man who is like a white man .  Though colonialism was a fact of the time, critics have argued that Conrad fails to render the native characters in his work with the subtlety and generosity he affords his white characters."}

'He did not return till next morning. He had been kept to dinner and for
the night. There never had been such a wonderful man as Mr. Stein. He
had in his pocket a letter for Cornelius ("the Johnnie who's going to
get the sack," he explained, with a momentary drop in his elation), and
he exhibited with glee a silver ring, such as natives use, worn down
very thin and showing faint traces of chasing.

'This was his introduction to an old chap called Doramin--one of the
principal men out there--a big pot--who had been Mr. Stein's friend in
that country where he had all these adventures. Mr. Stein called him
"war-comrade." War-comrade was good. Wasn't it? And didn't Mr. Stein
speak English wonderfully well? Said he had learned it in Celebes--of
all places! That was awfully funny. Was it not? He did speak with an
accent--a twang--did I notice? That chap Doramin had given him the ring.
They had exchanged presents when they parted for the last time. Sort of
promising eternal friendship. He called it fine--did I not? They had
to make a dash for dear life out of the country when that
Mohammed--Mohammed--What's-his-name had been killed. I knew the story,
of course. Seemed a beastly shame, didn't it? . . .

'He ran on like this, forgetting his plate, with a knife and fork in
hand (he had found me at tiffin), slightly flushed, and with his eyes
darkened many shades, which was with him a sign of excitement. The ring
was a sort of credential--("It's like something you read of in books,"
he threw in appreciatively)--and Doramin would do his best for him. Mr.
Stein had been the means of saving that chap's life on some occasion;
purely by accident, Mr. Stein had said, but he--Jim--had his own opinion
about that. Mr. Stein was just the man to look out for such accidents.
No matter. Accident or purpose, this would serve his turn immensely.
Hoped to goodness the jolly old beggar had not gone off the hooks
meantime. Mr. Stein could not tell. There had been no news for more
than a year; they were kicking up no end of an all-fired row amongst
themselves, and the river was closed. Jolly awkward, this; but, no fear;
he would manage to find a crack to get in.

'He impressed, almost frightened, me with his elated rattle. He was
voluble like a youngster on the eve of a long holiday with a prospect of
delightful scrapes, and such an attitude of mind in a grown man and in
this connection had in it something phenomenal, a little mad, dangerous,
unsafe. I was on the point of entreating him to take things seriously
when he dropped his knife and fork (he had begun eating, or rather
swallowing food, as it were, unconsciously), and began a search all
round his plate. The ring! The ring! Where the devil . . . Ah! Here it
was . . . He closed his big hand on it, and tried all his pockets one
after another. Jove! wouldn't do to lose the thing. He meditated gravely
over his fist. Had it? Would hang the bally affair round his neck! And
he proceeded to do this immediately, producing a string (which looked
like a bit of a cotton shoe-lace) for the purpose. There! That would do
the trick! It would be the deuce if . . . He seemed to catch sight of my
face for the first time, and it steadied him a little. I probably didn't
realise, he said with a naive gravity, how much importance he attached
to that token. It meant a friend; and it is a good thing to have a
friend. He knew something about that. He nodded at me expressively, but
before my disclaiming gesture he leaned his head on his hand and for
a while sat silent, playing thoughtfully with the bread-crumbs on the
cloth . . . "Slam the door--that was jolly well put," he cried, and
jumping up, began to pace the room, reminding me by the set of the
shoulders, the turn of his head, the headlong and uneven stride, of
that night when he had paced thus, confessing, explaining--what you
will--but, in the last instance, living--living before me, under his
own little cloud, with all his unconscious subtlety which could draw
consolation from the very source of sorrow. It was the same mood, the
same and different, like a fickle companion that to-day guiding you
on the true path, with the same eyes, the same step, the same impulse,
to-morrow will lead you hopelessly astray. His tread was assured, his
straying, darkened eyes seemed to search the room for something. One of
his footfalls somehow sounded louder than the other--the fault of his
boots probably--and gave a curious impression of an invisible halt in
his gait. One of his hands was rammed deep into his trousers' pocket,
the other waved suddenly above his head. "Slam the door!" he shouted.
"I've been waiting for that. I'll show yet . . . I'll . . . I'm ready
for any confounded thing . . . I've been dreaming of it . . . Jove! Get
out of this. Jove! This is luck at last . . . You wait. I'll . . ."

'He tossed his head fearlessly, and I confess that for the first and
last time in our acquaintance I perceived myself unexpectedly to be
thoroughly sick of him. Why these vapourings? He was stumping about
the room flourishing his arm absurdly, and now and then feeling on
his breast for the ring under his clothes. Where was the sense of such
exaltation in a man appointed to be a trading-clerk, and in a place
where there was no trade--at that? Why hurl defiance at the universe?
This was not a proper frame of mind to approach any undertaking; an
improper frame of mind not only for him, I said, but for any man. He
stood still over me. Did I think so? he asked, by no means subdued, and
with a smile in which I seemed to detect suddenly something insolent.
But then I am twenty years his senior. Youth is insolent; it is its
right--its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in
this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence. He went off into a
far corner, and coming back, he, figuratively speaking, turned to rend
me. I spoke like that because I--even I, who had been no end kind
to him--even I remembered--remembered--against him--what--what had
happened. And what about others--the--the--world? Where's the wonder he
wanted to get out, meant to get out, meant to stay out--by heavens! And
I talked about proper frames of mind!

'"It is not I or the world who remember," I shouted. "It is you--you,
who remember."

'He did not flinch, and went on with heat, "Forget everything,
everybody, everybody." . . . His voice fell. . . "But you," he added.

'"Yes--me too--if it would help," I said, also in a low tone. After this
we remained silent and languid for a time as if exhausted. Then he began
again, composedly, and told me that Mr. Stein had instructed him to wait
for a month or so, to see whether it was possible for him to remain,
before he began building a new house for himself, so as to avoid
"vain expense." He did make use of funny expressions--Stein did. "Vain
expense" was good. . . . Remain? Why! of course. He would hang on. Let
him only get in--that's all; he would answer for it he would remain.
Never get out. It was easy enough to remain.

'"Don't be foolhardy," I said, rendered uneasy by his threatening tone.
"If you only live long enough you will want to come back."

'"Come back to what?" he asked absently, with his eyes fixed upon the
face of a clock on the wall.

'I was silent for a while. "Is it to be never, then?" I said. "Never,"
he repeated dreamily without looking at me, and then flew into sudden
activity. "Jove! Two o'clock, and I sail at four!"

'It was true. A brigantine of Stein's was leaving for the westward that
afternoon, and he had been instructed to take his passage in her, only
no orders to delay the sailing had been given. I suppose Stein forgot.
He made a rush to get his things while I went aboard my ship, where
he promised to call on his way to the outer roadstead. He turned up
accordingly in a great hurry and with a small leather valise in his
hand. This wouldn't do, and I offered him an old tin trunk of mine
supposed to be water-tight, or at least damp-tight. He effected the
transfer by the simple process of shooting out the contents of his
valise as you would empty a sack of wheat. I saw three books in the
tumble; two small, in dark covers, and a thick green-and-gold volume--a
half-crown complete Shakespeare. "You read this?" I asked. "Yes. Best
thing to cheer up a fellow," he said hastily. I was struck by this
appreciation, but there was no time for Shakespearian talk. A
heavy revolver and two small boxes of cartridges were lying on the
cuddy-table. "Pray take this," I said. "It may help you to remain."
No sooner were these words out of my mouth than I perceived what grim
meaning they could bear. "May help you to get in," I corrected myself
remorsefully. He however was not troubled by obscure meanings; he
thanked me effusively and bolted out, calling Good-bye over his
shoulder. I heard his voice through the ship's side urging his boatmen
to give way, and looking out of the stern-port I saw the boat rounding
under the counter. He sat in her leaning forward, exciting his men with
voice and gestures; and as he had kept the revolver in his hand and
seemed to be presenting it at their heads, I shall never forget the
scared faces of the four Javanese, and the frantic swing of their stroke
which snatched that vision from under my eyes. Then turning away, the
first thing I saw were the two boxes of cartridges on the cuddy-table.
He had forgotten to take them.

'I ordered my gig manned at once; but Jim's rowers, under the impression
that their lives hung on a thread while they had that madman in the
boat, made such excellent time that before I had traversed half the
distance between the two vessels I caught sight of him clambering over
the rail, and of his box being passed up. All the brigantine's canvas
was loose, her mainsail was set, and the windlass was just beginning to
clink as I stepped upon her deck: her master, a dapper little half-caste
of forty or so, in a blue flannel suit, with lively eyes, his round
face the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin little black moustache
drooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came forward smirking. He
turned out, notwithstanding his self-satisfied and cheery exterior, to
be of a careworn temperament. In answer to a remark of mine (while Jim
had gone below for a moment) he said, "Oh yes. Patusan." He was going to
carry the gentleman to the mouth of the river, but would "never ascend."
His flowing English seemed to be derived from a dictionary compiled by
a lunatic. Had Mr. Stein desired him to "ascend," he would have
"reverentially"--(I think he wanted to say respectfully--but devil only
knows)--"reverentially made objects for the safety of properties."
If disregarded, he would have presented "resignation to quit." Twelve
months ago he had made his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius
"propitiated many offertories" to Mr. Rajah Allang and the "principal
populations," on conditions which made the trade "a snare and ashes
in the mouth," yet his ship had been fired upon from the woods by
"irresponsive parties" all the way down the river; which causing his
crew "from exposure to limb to remain silent in hidings," the brigantine
was nearly stranded on a sandbank at the bar, where she "would have
been perishable beyond the act of man." The angry disgust at the
recollection, the pride of his fluency, to which he turned an attentive
ear, struggled for the possession of his broad simple face. He scowled
and beamed at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect
of his phraseology. Dark frowns ran swiftly over the placid sea, and
the brigantine, with her fore-topsail to the mast and her main-boom
amidships, seemed bewildered amongst the cat's-paws. He told me further,
gnashing his teeth, that the Rajah was a "laughable hyaena" (can't
imagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else was many
times falser than the "weapons of a crocodile." Keeping one eye on the
movements of his crew forward, he let loose his volubility--comparing
the place to a "cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence." I
fancy he meant impunity. He had no intention, he cried, to "exhibit
himself to be made attached purposefully to robbery." The long-drawn
wails, giving the time for the pull of the men catting the anchor,
came to an end, and he lowered his voice. "Plenty too much enough of
Patusan," he concluded, with energy.

'I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get himself tied up
by the neck with a rattan halter to a post planted in the middle of a
mud-hole before the Rajah's house. He spent the best part of a day and a
whole night in that unwholesome situation, but there is every reason
to believe the thing had been meant as a sort of joke. He brooded for
a while over that horrid memory, I suppose, and then addressed in a
quarrelsome tone the man coming aft to the helm. When he turned to me
again it was to speak judicially, without passion. He would take the
gentleman to the mouth of the river at Batu Kring (Patusan town "being
situated internally," he remarked, "thirty miles"). But in his eyes,
he continued--a tone of bored, weary conviction replacing his previous
voluble delivery--the gentleman was already "in the similitude of a
corpse." "What? What do you say?" I asked. He assumed a startlingly
ferocious demeanour, and imitated to perfection the act of stabbing from
behind. "Already like the body of one deported," he explained, with the
insufferably conceited air of his kind after what they imagine a display
of cleverness. Behind him I perceived Jim smiling silently at me, and
with a raised hand checking the exclamation on my lips.

'Then, while the half-caste, bursting with importance, shouted his
orders, while the yards swung creaking and the heavy boom came surging
over, Jim and I, alone as it were, to leeward of the mainsail, clasped
each other's hands and exchanged the last hurried words. My heart was
freed from that dull resentment which had existed side by side with
interest in his fate. The absurd chatter of the half-caste had given
more reality to the miserable dangers of his path than Stein's careful
statements. On that occasion the sort of formality that had been always
present in our intercourse vanished from our speech; I believe I
called him "dear boy," and he tacked on the words "old man" to some
half-uttered expression of gratitude, as though his risk set off against
my years had made us more equal in age and in feeling. There was a
moment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a
glimpse of some everlasting, of some saving truth. He exerted himself to
soothe me as though he had been the more mature of the two. "All right,
all right," he said, rapidly, and with feeling. "I promise to take care
of myself. Yes; I won't take any risks. Not a single blessed risk. Of
course not. I mean to hang out. Don't you worry. Jove! I feel as if
nothing could touch me. Why! this is luck from the word Go. I wouldn't
spoil such a magnificent chance!" . . . A magnificent chance! Well, it
_was_ magnificent, but chances are what men make them, and how was I
to know? As he had said, even I--even I remembered--his--his misfortune
against him. It was true. And the best thing for him was to go.

'My gig had dropped in the wake of the brigantine, and I saw him aft
detached upon the light of the westering sun, raising his cap high above
his head. I heard an indistinct shout, "You--shall--hear--of--me." Of
me, or from me, I don't know which. I think it must have been of me. My
eyes were too dazzled by the glitter of the sea below his feet to see
him clearly; I am fated never to see him clearly; but I can assure you
no man could have appeared less "in the similitude of a corpse," as that
half-caste croaker had put it. I could see the little wretch's face,
the shape and colour of a ripe pumpkin, poked out somewhere under Jim's
elbow. He, too, raised his arm as if for a downward thrust. Absit omen!'
'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight
and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts
of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers
clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers,
with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing
a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting
sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.

'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch
of the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then,
and Stein's little schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her
way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from
"irresponsive parties." Such a state of affairs belonged already to
ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing
village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me
(the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his
talk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan
Jim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange
mixture of familiarity and awe. They, in the village, were under that
lord's special protection, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If
he had warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was
hearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had turned
two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The
talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the
phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his
son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience,
who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them
the amazing fact.

'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to
many of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many generations
had been released since the last white man had visited the river that
the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that
descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan
was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than
suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What
would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part
of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the
anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out
was got ready. The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless
old hag cursed the stranger.

'He sat in it, as I've told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded
revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution--than which there is nothing
more fatiguing--and thus entered the land he was destined to fill with
the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon
of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with
its labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise
again--the very image of struggling mankind--and faced the immovable
forests rooted deep in the soil, soaring towards the sunshine,
everlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself.
And his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting
to be uncovered by the hand of the master. He too was the heir of a
shadowy and mighty tradition! He told me, however, that he had never in
his life felt so depressed and tired as in that canoe. All the movement
he dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the
shell of half a cocoa-nut floating between his shoes, and bale some of
the water out with a carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard
the lid of a block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but
several times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and
between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the
sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to
decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a
log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No
fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all
but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in
a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came
right down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage.
Such was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any
man ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime
his three paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of
delivering him up to the Rajah.

'"I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze
off for a time," he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe coming
to the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been
left behind, of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade
on his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a low point of
land and taking to their heels. Instinctively he leaped out after them.
At first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but
he heard excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured
out, making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men
appeared on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting
off his retreat.

'"I was too startled to be quite cool--don't you know? and if that
revolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody--perhaps two, three
bodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it wasn't. . . ."
"Why not?" I asked. "Well, I couldn't fight the whole population, and
I wasn't coming to them as if I were afraid of my life," he said, with
just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the glance he gave me.
I refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the
chambers were actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way.
. . . "Anyhow it wasn't," he repeated good-humouredly, "and so I just
stood still and asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike
them dumb. I saw some of these thieves going off with my box. That
long-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I'll show him to you to-morrow)
ran out fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, 'All
right.' I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply walked in through
the gate and--and--here I am." He laughed, and then with unexpected
emphasis, "And do you know what's the best in it?" he asked. "I'll tell
you. It's the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that
would have been the loser."

'He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I've
mentioned--after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm
between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen
descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There
is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the
dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its
inconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which--say what you
like--is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound:
misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all
forms of matter--which, after all, is our domain--of their substance,
and gives a sinister reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were
very real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as though
nothing--not even the occult power of moonlight--could rob him of his
reality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he
had survived the assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was
still; even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It was the
moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter
isolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along
the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the
water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with
black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures
pressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and
there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living
spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose.

'He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go
out one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes,
confident in the security of to-morrow. "Peaceful here, eh?" he asked.
He was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that
followed. "Look at these houses; there's not one where I am not trusted.
Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask any man, woman, or child . . ." He
paused. "Well, I am all right anyhow."

'I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had been
sure of it, I added. He shook his head. "Were you?" He pressed my arm
lightly above the elbow. "Well, then--you were right."

'There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low
exclamation. "Jove!" he cried, "only think what it is to me." Again he
pressed my arm. "And you asked me whether I thought of leaving. Good
God! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr.
Stein's . . . Leave! Why! That's what I was afraid of. It would have
been--it would have been harder than dying. No--on my word. Don't
laugh. I must feel--every day, every time I open my eyes--that I am
trusted--that nobody has a right--don't you know? Leave! For where? What
for? To get what?"

'I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was
Stein's intention to present him at once with the house and the stock
of trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would make the
transaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at
first. "Confound your delicacy!" I shouted. "It isn't Stein at all. It's
giving you what you had made for yourself. And in any case keep your
remarks for McNeil--when you meet him in the other world. I hope it
won't happen soon. . . ." He had to give in to my arguments, because all
his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these
things that made him master had made him a captive, too. He looked with
an owner's eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses,
at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind,
at the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was
they that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought,
to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.

'It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud--for him, if not so
certain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful. It was
not so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange how little
account I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be
at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he
had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation,
his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his
readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like
keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a
dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness
in his stammerings. He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now
and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how
deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the
certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land
and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous
tenderness.'
'"This is where I was prisoner for three days," he murmured to me (it
was on the occasion of our visit to the Rajah), while we were making our
way slowly through a kind of awestruck riot of dependants across Tunku
Allang's courtyard. "Filthy place, isn't it? And I couldn't get anything
to eat either, unless I made a row about it, and then it was only
a small plate of rice and a fried fish not much bigger than a
stickleback--confound them! Jove! I've been hungry prowling inside this
stinking enclosure with some of these vagabonds shoving their mugs right
under my nose. I had given up that famous revolver of yours at the first
demand. Glad to get rid of the bally thing. Look like a fool walking
about with an empty shooting-iron in my hand." At that moment we came
into the presence, and he became unflinchingly grave and complimentary
with his late captor. Oh! magnificent! I want to laugh when I think of
it. But I was impressed, too. The old disreputable Tunku Allang could
not help showing his fear (he was no hero, for all the tales of his hot
youth he was fond of telling); and at the same time there was a wistful
confidence in his manner towards his late prisoner. Note! Even where he
would be most hated he was still trusted. Jim--as far as I could follow
the conversation--was improving the occasion by the delivery of a
lecture. Some poor villagers had been waylaid and robbed while on their
way to Doramin's house with a few pieces of gum or beeswax which they
wished to exchange for rice. "It was Doramin who was a thief," burst
out the Rajah. A shaking fury seemed to enter that old frail body.
He writhed weirdly on his mat, gesticulating with his hands and feet,
tossing the tangled strings of his mop--an impotent incarnation of rage.
There were staring eyes and dropping jaws all around us. Jim began to
speak. Resolutely, coolly, and for some time he enlarged upon the text
that no man should be prevented from getting his food and his children's
food honestly. The other sat like a tailor at his board, one palm on
each knee, his head low, and fixing Jim through the grey hair that
fell over his very eyes. When Jim had done there was a great stillness.
Nobody seemed to breathe even; no one made a sound till the old Rajah
sighed faintly, and looking up, with a toss of his head, said quickly,
"You hear, my people! No more of these little games." This decree
was received in profound silence. A rather heavy man, evidently in a
position of confidence, with intelligent eyes, a bony, broad, very dark
face, and a cheerily of officious manner (I learned later on he was the
executioner), presented to us two cups of coffee on a brass tray, which
he took from the hands of an inferior attendant. "You needn't drink,"
muttered Jim very rapidly. I didn't perceive the meaning at first, and
only looked at him. He took a good sip and sat composedly, holding the
saucer in his left hand. In a moment I felt excessively annoyed. "Why
the devil," I whispered, smiling at him amiably, "do you expose me to
such a stupid risk?" I drank, of course, there was nothing for it, while
he gave no sign, and almost immediately afterwards we took our leave.
While we were going down the courtyard to our boat, escorted by the
intelligent and cheery executioner, Jim said he was very sorry. It was
the barest chance, of course. Personally he thought nothing of poison.
The remotest chance. He was--he assured me--considered to be infinitely
more useful than dangerous, and so . . . "But the Rajah is afraid of
you abominably. Anybody can see that," I argued with, I own, a certain
peevishness, and all the time watching anxiously for the first twist of
some sort of ghastly colic. I was awfully disgusted. "If I am to do any
good here and preserve my position," he said, taking his seat by my
side in the boat, "I must stand the risk: I take it once every month, at
least. Many people trust me to do that--for them. Afraid of me! That's
just it. Most likely he is afraid of me because I am not afraid of his
coffee." Then showing me a place on the north front of the stockade
where the pointed tops of several stakes were broken, "This is where
I leaped over on my third day in Patusan. They haven't put new stakes
there yet. Good leap, eh?" A moment later we passed the mouth of a muddy
creek. "This is my second leap. I had a bit of a run and took this one
flying, but fell short. Thought I would leave my skin there. Lost my
shoes struggling. And all the time I was thinking to myself how beastly
it would be to get a jab with a bally long spear while sticking in the
mud like this. I remember how sick I felt wriggling in that slime. I
mean really sick--as if I had bitten something rotten."

'That's how it was--and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped over the
gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpectedness of his
coming was the only thing, you understand, that saved him from being at
once dispatched with krisses and flung into the river. They had him, but
it was like getting hold of an apparition, a wraith, a portent. What did
it mean? What to do with it? Was it too late to conciliate him? Hadn't
he better be killed without more delay? But what would happen then?
Wretched old Allang went nearly mad with apprehension and through the
difficulty of making up his mind. Several times the council was broken
up, and the advisers made a break helter-skelter for the door and out
on to the verandah. One--it is said--even jumped down to the
ground--fifteen feet, I should judge--and broke his leg. The royal
governor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to
introduce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when,
getting gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a
kriss in his hand. But, barring such interruptions, the deliberations
upon Jim's fate went on night and day.

'Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned by some, glared at
by others, but watched by all, and practically at the mercy of the first
casual ragamuffin with a chopper, in there. He took possession of a
small tumble-down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of filth and rotten
matter incommoded him greatly: it seems he had not lost his appetite
though, because--he told me--he had been hungry all the blessed time.
Now and again "some fussy ass" deputed from the council-room would
come out running to him, and in honeyed tones would administer amazing
interrogatories: "Were the Dutch coming to take the country? Would the
white man like to go back down the river? What was the object of coming
to such a miserable country? The Rajah wanted to know whether the white
man could repair a watch?" They did actually bring out to him a nickel
clock of New England make, and out of sheer unbearable boredom he busied
himself in trying to get the alarum to work. It was apparently when
thus occupied in his shed that the true perception of his extreme peril
dawned upon him. He dropped the thing--he says--"like a hot potato,"
and walked out hastily, without the slightest idea of what he would,
or indeed could, do. He only knew that the position was intolerable. He
strolled aimlessly beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts,
and his eyes fell on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then--he
says--at once, without any mental process as it were, without any stir
of emotion, he set about his escape as if executing a plan matured for a
month. He walked off carelessly to give himself a good run, and when he
faced about there was some dignitary, with two spearmen in attendance,
close at his elbow ready with a question. He started off "from under his
very nose," went over "like a bird," and landed on the other side with
a fall that jarred all his bones and seemed to split his head. He picked
himself up instantly. He never thought of anything at the time; all he
could remember--he said--was a great yell; the first houses of Patusan
were before him four hundred yards away; he saw the creek, and as it
were mechanically put on more pace. The earth seemed fairly to fly
backwards under his feet. He took off from the last dry spot, felt
himself flying through the air, felt himself, without any shock, planted
upright in an extremely soft and sticky mudbank. It was only when he
tried to move his legs and found he couldn't that, in his own words,
"he came to himself." He began to think of the "bally long spears." As
a matter of fact, considering that the people inside the stockade had to
run to the gate, then get down to the landing-place, get into boats,
and pull round a point of land, he had more advance than he imagined.
Besides, it being low water, the creek was without water--you couldn't
call it dry--and practically he was safe for a time from everything but
a very long shot perhaps. The higher firm ground was about six feet in
front of him. "I thought I would have to die there all the same,"
he said. He reached and grabbed desperately with his hands, and only
succeeded in gathering a horrible cold shiny heap of slime against his
breast--up to his very chin. It seemed to him he was burying himself
alive, and then he struck out madly, scattering the mud with his fists.
It fell on his head, on his face, over his eyes, into his mouth. He told
me that he remembered suddenly the courtyard, as you remember a place
where you had been very happy years ago. He longed--so he said--to be
back there again, mending the clock. Mending the clock--that was the
idea. He made efforts, tremendous sobbing, gasping efforts, efforts that
seemed to burst his eyeballs in their sockets and make him blind, and
culminating into one mighty supreme effort in the darkness to crack the
earth asunder, to throw it off his limbs--and he felt himself creeping
feebly up the bank. He lay full length on the firm ground and saw the
light, the sky. Then as a sort of happy thought the notion came to him
that he would go to sleep. He will have it that he _did_ actually go to
sleep; that he slept--perhaps for a minute, perhaps for twenty seconds,
or only for one second, but he recollects distinctly the violent
convulsive start of awakening. He remained lying still for a while, and
then he arose muddy from head to foot and stood there, thinking he
was alone of his kind for hundreds of miles, alone, with no help, no
sympathy, no pity to expect from any one, like a hunted animal. The
first houses were not more than twenty yards from him; and it was the
desperate screaming of a frightened woman trying to carry off a child
that started him again. He pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered
with filth out of all semblance to a human being. He traversed more
than half the length of the settlement. The nimbler women fled right and
left, the slower men just dropped whatever they had in their hands, and
remained petrified with dropping jaws. He was a flying terror. He says
he noticed the little children trying to run for life, falling on their
little stomachs and kicking. He swerved between two houses up a slope,
clambered in desperation over a barricade of felled trees (there wasn't
a week without some fight in Patusan at that time), burst through a
fence into a maize-patch, where a scared boy flung a stick at him,
blundered upon a path, and ran all at once into the arms of several
startled men. He just had breath enough to gasp out, "Doramin! Doramin!"
He remembers being half-carried, half-rushed to the top of the slope,
and in a vast enclosure with palms and fruit trees being run up to a
large man sitting massively in a chair in the midst of the greatest
possible commotion and excitement. He fumbled in mud and clothes to
produce the ring, and, finding himself suddenly on his back, wondered
who had knocked him down. They had simply let him go--don't you
know?--but he couldn't stand. At the foot of the slope random shots were
fired, and above the roofs of the settlement there rose a dull roar of
amazement. But he was safe. Doramin's people were barricading the gate
and pouring water down his throat; Doramin's old wife, full of business
and commiseration, was issuing shrill orders to her girls. "The old
woman," he said softly, "made a to-do over me as if I had been her own
son. They put me into an immense bed--her state bed--and she ran in
and out wiping her eyes to give me pats on the back. I must have been a
pitiful object. I just lay there like a log for I don't know how long."

'He seemed to have a great liking for Doramin's old wife. She on her
side had taken a motherly fancy to him. She had a round, nut-brown,
soft face, all fine wrinkles, large, bright red lips (she chewed
betel assiduously), and screwed up, winking, benevolent eyes. She was
constantly in movement, scolding busily and ordering unceasingly a troop
of young women with clear brown faces and big grave eyes, her daughters,
her servants, her slave-girls. You know how it is in these households:
it's generally impossible to tell the difference. She was very spare,
and even her ample outer garment, fastened in front with jewelled
clasps, had somehow a skimpy effect. Her dark bare feet were thrust into
yellow straw slippers of Chinese make. I have seen her myself flitting
about with her extremely thick, long, grey hair falling about her
shoulders. She uttered homely shrewd sayings, was of noble birth, and
was eccentric and arbitrary. In the afternoon she would sit in a very
roomy arm-chair, opposite her husband, gazing steadily through a wide
opening in the wall which gave an extensive view of the settlement and
the river.

'She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old Doramin sat
squarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on a plain. He was only
of the nakhoda or merchant class, but the respect shown to him and
the dignity of his bearing were very striking. He was the chief of
the second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about sixty
families that, with dependants and so on, could muster some two hundred
men "wearing the kriss") had elected him years ago for their head. The
men of that race are intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a
more frank courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppression.
They formed the party opposed to the Rajah. Of course the quarrels were
for trade. This was the primary cause of faction fights, of the sudden
outbreaks that would fill this or that part of the settlement with
smoke, flame, the noise of shots and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men
were dragged into the Rajah's stockade to be killed or tortured for the
crime of trading with anybody else but himself. Only a day or two before
Jim's arrival several heads of households in the very fishing village
that was afterwards taken under his especial protection had been driven
over the cliffs by a party of the Rajah's spearmen, on suspicion of
having been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah
Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty
for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was
indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and
rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of
the organised power of the Celebes men, only--till Jim came--he was not
afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and
thought himself pathetically in the right. The situation was complicated
by a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I believe, on
purely religious grounds, had incited the tribes in the interior (the
bush-folk, as Jim himself called them) to rise, and had established
himself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills. He
hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he
devastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their
blackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into
the water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a
curious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation
stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in Patusan were
not sure which one this partisan most desired to plunder. The Rajah
intrigued with him feebly. Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with
endless insecurity, were half inclined to call him in. The younger
spirits amongst them, chaffing, advised to "get Sherif Ali with his wild
men and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country." Doramin restrained
them with difficulty. He was growing old, and, though his influence had
not diminished, the situation was getting beyond him. This was the state
of affairs when Jim, bolting from the Rajah's stockade, appeared before
the chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner
of speaking, into the heart of the community.'
'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen.
His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look merely fat; he
looked imposing, monumental. This motionless body, clad in rich stuffs,
coloured silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a
red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrinkled,
furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting on each side of
wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick-lipped mouth; the throat
like a bull; the vast corrugated brow overhanging the staring proud
eyes--made a whole that, once seen, can never be forgotten. His
impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) was
like a display of dignity. He was never known to raise his voice. It
was a hoarse and powerful murmur, slightly veiled as if heard from a
distance. When he walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the
waist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the backs of their
heads, sustained his elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind
his chair till he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly,
as if with difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would
catch him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was
nothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous
movements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force. It
was generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs; but
nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single word.
When they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence. They could
see below them in the declining light the vast expanse of the forest
country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as the
violet and purple range of mountains; the shining sinuosity of the river
like an immense letter S of beaten silver; the brown ribbon of houses
following the sweep of both banks, overtopped by the twin hills uprising
above the nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: she,
light, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of
motherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy,
like a figure of a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something
magnanimous and ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people
was a most distinguished youth.

'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as he
looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is already
father of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large room, lined
and carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of white sheeting,
where the couple sat in state surrounded by a most deferential retinue,
he would make his way straight to Doramin, to kiss his hand--which the
other abandoned to him, majestically--and then would step across to
stand by his mother's chair. I suppose I may say they idolised him, but
I never caught them giving him an overt glance. Those, it is true, were
public functions. The room was generally thronged. The solemn formality
of greetings and leave-takings, the profound respect expressed in
gestures, on the faces, in the low whispers, is simply indescribable.
"It's well worth seeing," Jim had assured me while we were crossing the
river, on our way back. "They are like people in a book, aren't they?"
he said triumphantly. "And Dain Waris--their son--is the best
friend (barring you) I ever had. What Mr. Stein would call a good
'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove! I was in luck when I tumbled amongst
them at my last gasp." He meditated with bowed head, then rousing
himself he added--'"Of course I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . ."
He paused again. "It seemed to come to me," he murmured. "All at once I
saw what I had to do . . ."

'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come through
war, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him was the power
to make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so often is right.
You must not think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived the
Bugis community was in a most critical position. "They were all afraid,"
he said to me--"each man afraid for himself; while I could see as plain
as possible that they must do something at once, if they did not want
to go under one after another, what between the Rajah and that vagabond
Sherif." But to see that was nothing. When he got his idea he had
to drive it into reluctant minds, through the bulwarks of fear, of
selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was nothing. He had to
devise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan; and his task
was only half done. He had to inspire with his own confidence a lot
of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang back; he had to
conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all sorts of senseless
mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and his son's
fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished
youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of those strange,
profound, rare friendships between brown and white, in which the very
difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic
element of sympathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that
he knew how to fight like a white man. This was true; he had that
sort of courage--the courage in the open, I may say--but he had also a
European mind. You meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to
discover unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision,
a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but
admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a
polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky
face, with big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose
thoughtful. He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic
smile, a courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great
reserves of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye,
so often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races
and lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He not only
trusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak of him because
he had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his caustic placidity,
and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy with Jim's aspirations,
appealed to me. I seemed to behold the very origin of friendship. If
Jim took the lead, the other had captivated his leader. In fact, Jim
the leader was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the
friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body.
Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom. I felt
convinced of it, as from day to day I learned more of the story.

'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march, in
camp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've listened
to a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after climbing the last
hundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our escort (we had volunteer
followers from village to village) had camped meantime on a bit of level
ground half-way up the slope, and in the still breathless evening the
smell of wood-smoke reached our nostrils from below with the penetrating
delicacy of some choice scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their
distinct and immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled
tree, and pulling out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and
bushes was springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass
of thorny twigs. "It all started from here," he said, after a long and
meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre
precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there
ruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp.

'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had
mounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty iron
7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon. But if the
brass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed recklessly to
the muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance. The thing was
to get them up there. He showed me where he had fastened the cables,
explained how he had improvised a rude capstan out of a hollowed log
turning upon a pointed stake, indicated with the bowl of his pipe the
outline of the earthwork. The last hundred feet of the ascent had been
the most difficult. He had made himself responsible for success on his
own head. He had induced the war party to work hard all night. Big
fires lighted at intervals blazed all down the slope, "but up here," he
explained, "the hoisting gang had to fly around in the dark." From the
top he saw men moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on
that night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel,
directing, encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had
himself carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the
level place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the
big fires--"amazing old chap--real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his
little fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees.
Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and
a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems--in
exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God
only knows how _he_ came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor
foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots of people rushing
about, shouting and pulling round him--the most solemn, imposing old
chap you can imagine. He wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had
let his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he
had come up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It
thrilled me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have
thought us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody
believed it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled and
shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done! Upon my
word I don't think they did. . . ."

'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with a smile
on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the stump of a
tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of
the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints
of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a
clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous
tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape;
the light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the
sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and
polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall
of steel.

'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of that
historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the
old mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in
his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that
never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I don't know why he
should always have appeared to me symbolic. Perhaps this is the real
cause of my interest in his fate. I don't know whether it was exactly
fair to him to remember the incident which had given a new direction to
his life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. It was
like a shadow in the light.'
'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it
was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange
contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went
up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in
the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads. There was
something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of
ropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must
be overcome by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very
respectable householder of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one
evening. However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended
all the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of
subduing the stubborn souls of things. This occupation he seemed to
think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more
stubborn than the souls of men. As to the simple folk of outlying
villages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the
world) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back--two at a
time.

'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an
exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly beggars? They
will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie
the more they seem to like it." You could trace the subtle influence of
his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his captivity. The
earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, "My dear
fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He looked at me quite
startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and burst into a Homeric
peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all
together at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly," he
cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his
eyelids and shuffled his feet a little. It appears that the success in
mounting the guns had given Jim's people such a feeling of confidence
that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis
who had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and
the storming party who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours
they began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the
wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed
signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the
swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing,
he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he
would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for
the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my life," he declared.
Gradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him. Men
scattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and
dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side. "We
looked at each other," Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend's
shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir
my lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word,
it's true! I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover--so
you may imagine . . ." He declared, and I believe him, that he had no
fears as to the result. He was only anxious as to his ability to repress
these shivers. He didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to
the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could
be no going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him
alone! His bare word. . . .

'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me.
"As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet,"
he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--worse
luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and
everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the other day an old fool he
had never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find
out if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort
of thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the
verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for
more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with
that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as
it looks. What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old
though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been
living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell. A long,
long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a little, when
she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour. Suddenly in her old
age she goes and lends three brass pots to her sister's son's wife, and
begins to abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered at
him; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up
about it. Impossible to fathom a story like that; told him to go home,
and promised to come along myself and settle it all. It's all very well
to grin, but it was the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the
forest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at
the rights of the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy
in the thing. Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other,
and one half of the village was ready to go for the other half with
anything that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of
attending to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of
course--and pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not.
Could settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little
finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not sure
to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried him. And
the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail to it. Rather
storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much! Child's play to
that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well, yes; a funny set
out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough to be his grandfather.
But from another point of view it was no joke. His word decided
everything--ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful
responsibility," he repeated. "No, really--joking apart, had it been
three lives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been the
same. . . ."

'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in
truth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through death
into the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the land spread
out under the sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of
secular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--it's extraordinary
how very few signs of wear he showed--floated lightly, and passed away
over the unchanged face of the forests like the sound of the big guns
on that cold dewy morning when he had no other concern on earth but
the proper control of the chills in his body. With the first slant of
sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed
itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other
burst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of
surprise, of dismay. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their
hands on the stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch
of one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious
to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade--he would insist on
explaining to you--was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the
inaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked
to pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it
like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been
for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him
with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The
third man in, it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was
a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and
had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the
state boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and
finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis
settlers, had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very
dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There
was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his
"white lord." He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state
occasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft
of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent
brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and
all Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence. At
the taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the
methodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so
quick--Jim said--that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there
was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some
bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all
had to clear out for dear life."

'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in
his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly
above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt. When informed
that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another
sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help,
and, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of
shade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a
piece of white sheeting. In Patusan the excitement was intense. Jim told
me that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers,
black ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the
open spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly
with a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears
caught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild
shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of
streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst
the brown ridges of roofs. "You must have enjoyed it," I murmured,
feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion.

'"It was . . . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his
arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare
the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to
the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks
of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a
third time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone.

'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words,
the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of
men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his
achievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling.
I can't with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and
utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his
kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him
in such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed
only the effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. There
was nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one
of those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of
their fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for
many a day's journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long
weary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its
voice. Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we
all know--not blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness
and gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth
of every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that
silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard
continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged with wonder
and mystery on the lips of whispering men.'
Chapters 23-27
On his way to Patusan, Jim carries a letter from Mr. Stein to Cornelius, together with a silver ring common among natives as his introduction to Doramin, Mr. Stein's "war-comrades" friend. Doramin gave him the ring as a parting gift and promise of eternal friendship. Stein had saved Doramin's life at one point. Now Jim keeps the ring around his neck. Set to leave, Marlow notices three books tumble out of Jim's valise: the complete Shakespeare. Marlow is struck by this choice of Jim's. He is also struck when Jim, taking the revolver Marlow has offered him, forgets the two small boxes of cartridges. Jim calls to Marlow: "You - shall - hear - of - me" . Marlow visits Patusan two years later, and at the mouth of the river, the elderly headman of the fisher-folk village comes to board Stein's schooner and tells Marlow about a certain "Tuan Jim," the first white man he ever saw. As he goes down the river, he can see Jim going down the river for the first time, and the narrative subtly shifts to Jim's perspective: Jim is describing how he felt seeing the first houses, how the boat came onto the bank. A boat full of armed men behind him, people coming out of the gate straight at him, his revolver empty, he just stood there. He asked them what was the matter, and it stunned them. Kassim, the Rajah's counselor, announced that the Rajah wanted to see him. The Rajah kept him prisoner for three days. He was a fearful soul who hated Doramin and was deeply afraid of Jim. Jim was held by the north front of the stockade which, on his third day in Patusan, he leaped over. His leap of escape was a flying one over the mouth of a muddy creek. Traveling by foot, he reached Doramin, as the women screamed and children cried. He produced the ring. Doramin and his motherly wife were of the merchant class and were viewed with great respect and dignity. They were involved in a deep, factional fight regarding trade, since the Rajah had been pretending he was the only trader in the country. Doramin, fat, imposing, monumental, and motionless, was growing old, and the area was fraught with insecurity. The couple had had a son late in life, named Dain Waris. Dain Waris was very distinguished and about twenty-four or twenty-five. He was adored by his parents, and he would become Jim's best friend. Dain Waris understands Jim very well. Jim next describes to Marlow the extent to which he has become a legend. Like a judge, he feels a keen responsibility for the social order. Many believe he has supernatural powers. An old man from a faraway village even came to ask Jim if he should divorce his wife. A key victory in war settled his stature and respect, having concluded a quarrel with the Rajah. A stockade that had already been knocked to pieces caused the story to circulate that Jim had thrown it down with the touch of a finger. Dain Waris had saved Jim's life at that time. There had been a hot five minutes in the stockade, and then all was clear. Jim cries that it was "Immense!" . As a result of the battle, Tamb' Itam, a stranger to Patusan who had been detained by the Rajah, bolted from him in order to become Jim's devoted servant. He was inseparable from Jim, like a "morose shadow" .
The narrative scatters chronologically.  The reader gets a brief view of Jim's success in Patusan, and we learn that Marlow visits him there.  The narrative then returns to Jim's perspective, as he first learns about the opportunity Stein is giving him.  The silver ring is a traditional symbol of the romantic quest, of which Jim's journey is an example: it takes him into the heart of an unknown place, where the ring will help him inherit the cultural and other ties that Stein made in those parts long ago.  He has the opportunity to prove himself, while Stein plays the part of providing luck or chance.  From then on, Jim is on his own. The prospect of anonymity is, for Jim, a possible freedom.  He discovers that he is not so bad after all, something Marlow had sensed from the beginning.  Thrown into a whirlwind of self-confusion, Jim now proves his worth.  It is not certain, however, that this success will help him reconcile with his previous failure, since his personality remains obsessed with a particular, fixed aspect of the past.  While people can change generally, the past cannot.  Hence, the question of Jim's fate ultimately turns on how he learns to live with his past. When Marlow notes Jim's copy of Shakespeare, the scene resonates against the recent scene with Stein, who made reference to the poet's Hamlet.  This detail provides a further sense of connection between the romantics, Jim and Stein, regarding the question of how one is to live.  The search into literature for answers is Conrad's subtle hint, being an author himself, that his literary work endeavors to answer the complex questions of how to be and how to live. From the moment Jim arrives in Patusan, he exhibits courage.  His judgment is flawless, and he makes the correct leap from his imprisonment when he needs to.  This contrasts with his leap from the Patna and with his earlier failure to leap at the best time.  These successful leaps in Patusan, moreover, provide the seeds of the mythmaking that envelops Jim, who comes to be known as "Tuan Jim" or "Lord Jim."  This romanticized "Jim" can fly.  He cannot die.  The story even trickles down to a faraway place where Marlow will hear that the legend has discovered a giant emerald. When Marlow once again encounters Jim, he feels the pride of a father.  He is glad that Jim has successfully made use of the opportunity he received.  Something of the stammering, young, ineloquent man remains, but Marlow notes: "Now and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the certitude of rehabilitation.  That is why he seemed to love the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous tenderness" .  While Jim looks upon the land with one eye on possession, Marlow still concludes that "all his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these things that made him master had made him captive, too" .  Marlow is coming to understand Jim very well.  This understanding is reiterated: "Jim the leader was a captive in every sense.  The land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body.  Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom" .  In other words, the freedom he had sought, the freedom that comes with honor and power generally, must be held accountable to others.  Binding oneself to others is constraining: you can't leap or run away.  The responsibility is severe.  Jim has inserted himself as a necessary and important part of the social fabric in Patusan, and, in this way, the community is not unlike that of a ship on the sea. Thus while Jim is exiled from the sea, this new oceanic wilderness is isolating in a new way.  He has assumed a position not unlike the one he had held on board the Patna as first mate.  In Patusan, a name that resonates with the sound of "Patna," Jim is isolated even while he is in position to guide the community. An important point to keep in mind in thinking about the communities on board the Patna and in Patusan is their "otherness"; both sets of people for whom Jim is responsible differ considerably from the Western figures who dominate the novel.  The ship had been filled with Muslim pilgrims heading for Mecca, and Patusan is filled with a community of Southeast Asian islanders.  Stein, also, had been intimately involved with a Malay community.  In all these cases, though Jim and Stein had been relatively isolated insofar as they were white men, the white men achieved dominance and held a high stature among the population.  This white ascendancy has been critiqued as problematic in much of Conrad's work, gaining some energy from being set in "exotic" locations.  Note that Dain Waris "knew how to fight like a white man ... he had also a European mind"--which, from the perspective of the speaker, suggests the superiority of the Western presence in that part of the world, as well as the superiority of a native man who is like a white man .  Though colonialism was a fact of the time, critics have argued that Conrad fails to render the native characters in his work with the subtlety and generosity he affords his white characters.