finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_15_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 22-23
chapters 22-23
{"name": "Chapters 22-23", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2223", "summary": "Patusan, we are told, was often used by adventurers to satisfy either their greed or their need to perform heroic deeds. It was savage country, shut off from the rest of the world. A man could feel as though he were a \"hero\" if he went there to go \"into the bush\" -- that is, to ravage Patusan's treasure, which was pepper. Men had often died in Patusan attempting a perilous quest for pepper, for at one time, pepper was almost as valuable as pearls. One day, however, pepper lost its aura of rarity, and as the narrator says, \"Nobody cares for it now.\" Today, wealth is no longer flowing out of Patusan, and the bones of its anonymous \"heroes\" are lying in scattered heaps, bleaching on sunlit beaches. Marlow marvels at the bizarre, absurd lengths to which some men will go to achieve money and transient glory. When Jim went to Patusan, Marlow says, the only people fighting over Patusan were the diverse uncles of the Sultan, himself \"an imbecile youth with two thumbs on his left hand.\" The worst of the uncles was Rajah Allang, a \"dirty little used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth.\" Marlow remembers Jim's reaction when he first told him about Patusan. Initially, Jim had felt a kind of \"weary resignation,\" but that attitude was gradually replaced by \"surprise, interest, wonder, and by boyish eagerness.\" This was the chance Jim had been dreaming of! Marlow emphasized to Jim that this venture would be \"his own doing.\" Jim would be wholly responsible. The young man was filled with impulsive and inarticulate joy. He didn't mind going into a wilderness. He was eager to do so! The outside world would never know that he had ever existed. At last, he would finally have \"nothing but the soles of his two feet to stand on.\" Marlow cautioned Jim to use prudence in this new venture, but Jim was filled with so much exuberance that he flung himself out of the room before Marlow could finish speaking. Jim stated that he never wanted to go back to England, a desire that Marlow found unimaginable. Never? he asked him. Never, Jim emphasized. He was adamant about his decision: \"'Never,' he repeated dreamily . . . and then flew into sudden activity.\" With Marlow's help, Jim finally got packed. Then, at the last moment before Jim's rowers had cast off, Marlow clamored onto Jim's ship and talked briefly to Jim's half-caste captain, who seemed to be a lunatic. The man said that he intended to take Jim to the mouth of the river leading into Patusan, but that he had no intention of going any farther upriver. Patusan was too dangerous; it was like a \"cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence,\" he said, and in a mock pantomime, he dramatically stabbed himself in the back. Behind the captain, Marlow saw Jim suddenly appear, smiling silently and raising a hand to check Marlow's horror of the adventure that was about to begin. Then a heavy boom swung around, and Jim and Marlow clasped each other's hands. Marlow awkwardly called Jim \"dear boy,\" and Jim half-uttered \"old man.\" Yet, Marlow says, there was in their embarrassed goodbyes, \"a moment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a glimpse of some everlasting, saving truth.\" The ship cast off, and Jim raised his cap above his head and waved it broadly to Marlow, calling out indistinctly, \"You -- shall -- hear -- of -- me.\"", "analysis": "Again, Conrad  lets us know that at an earlier time, Patusan was famous for its vast treasure of pepper, but now that pepper is not so important, Patusan has lost much of its influence as an important trading center. In fact, the reader often wonders  what it is that justifies Stein's still retaining a trading post there. In this chapter, we also hear of the immense danger for strangers to travel to Patusan; the \"wary captain\" who is to take Jim to Patusan refuses to go any farther than the mouth of the river; he explains to Marlow that he already sees Jim as a dead man. Part of the danger is a man named Rajah Allang . Jim, however, welcomes to the point of ecstasy the opportunity to simply fade from civilization, to enter Patusan and let the veil of civilization forever close behind him. He welcomes the opportunity to \"jump into the unknown\" and \"achieve his disappearance\" from all of the known world. Thus, Conrad continues his metaphor of \"jumping\" -- that is, just as Jim's jump from the Patna was a jump into an unknown part of himself, his \"Jump\" here, into an unknown part of the world , is an equivalent jump into the unknown. \"Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as though he had never existed. He would have nothing but the soles of his two feet to stand upon.\" We further see Stein as the complete romantic, and his romantic nature is further revealed in the generous provisions that he is ready to make for this youth, whose story has captured his own romantic imagination to the point that he is ready to bestow much of his fortune on Jim. In Chapter 23, we are told about the ring which old Doramin gave to Stein as a parting symbol of their eternal friendship. Jim is to take Stein's ring to Doramin, and it will insure him protection by the great chief . This, of course, is the ring which will figure so prominently in Jim's tragic death at the end of the narrative. Although Jim is wildly enthusiastic about his future fortunes -- to Marlow, Jim seems filled with romantic posturing to the point of being melodramatic. But even now, Marlow doesn't fully understand the nature of the weight that Jim feels, a weight so heavy that Marlow doesn't understand Jim when Jim mentions that once he is in Patusan, he will never want to come out again. When Marlow asserts that \"if you only live long enough, you will want to come back,\" Jim virtually ignores him and dismisses Marlow's comment with the remark, \"Come back to what?\" For Jim, the civilized world has no hold on him. He is no longer a part of the civilized world. For Jim, this is his \"magnificent chance\" to prove his own worth to himself."}

'The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence--the pride of it, the
power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are
struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's successes there
were no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of
an indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along the coast
overpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civilisation, as if divided
on a headland a hundred miles north of Patusan, branches east and
south-east, leaving its plains and valleys, its old trees and its old
mankind, neglected and isolated, such as an insignificant and crumbling
islet between the two branches of a mighty, devouring stream. You find
the name of the country pretty often in collections of old voyages. The
seventeenth-century traders went there for pepper, because the passion
for pepper seemed to burn like a flame of love in the breast of Dutch
and English adventurers about the time of James the First. Where
wouldn't they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they would cut each
other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls,
of which they were so careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that
desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes--the unknown seas, the
loathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence,
and despair. It made them great! By heavens! it made them heroic; and
it made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the inflexible
death levying its toll on young and old. It seems impossible to believe
that mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of purpose, to
such a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. And indeed those
who adventured their persons and lives risked all they had for a slender
reward. They left their bones to lie bleaching on distant shores, so
that wealth might flow to the living at home. To us, their less tried
successors, they appear magnified, not as agents of trade but as
instruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out into the unknown in
obedience to an inward voice, to an impulse beating in the blood, to a
dream of the future. They were wonderful; and it must be owned they
were ready for the wonderful. They recorded it complacently in their
sufferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the customs of strange
nations, in the glory of splendid rulers.

'In Patusan they had found lots of pepper, and had been impressed by the
magnificence and the wisdom of the Sultan; but somehow, after a century
of chequered intercourse, the country seems to drop gradually out of the
trade. Perhaps the pepper had given out. Be it as it may, nobody cares
for it now; the glory has departed, the Sultan is an imbecile youth
with two thumbs on his left hand and an uncertain and beggarly revenue
extorted from a miserable population and stolen from him by his many
uncles.

'This of course I have from Stein. He gave me their names and a short
sketch of the life and character of each. He was as full of information
about native states as an official report, but infinitely more amusing.
He _had_ to know. He traded in so many, and in some districts--as in
Patusan, for instance--his firm was the only one to have an agency by
special permit from the Dutch authorities. The Government trusted his
discretion, and it was understood that he took all the risks. The men
he employed understood that too, but he made it worth their while
apparently. He was perfectly frank with me over the breakfast-table in
the morning. As far as he was aware (the last news was thirteen months
old, he stated precisely), utter insecurity for life and property was
the normal condition. There were in Patusan antagonistic forces, and one
of them was Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor
of the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down
to the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly
defenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating--"For indeed," as
Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could they get away?"
No doubt they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is
circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) has been given into the
hand of the high-born, and _this_ Rajah they knew: he was of their own
royal house. I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman later on. He
was a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth,
who swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance of common
decency wore his hair uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about
his wizened grimy face. When giving audience he would clamber upon a
sort of narrow stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten
bamboo floor, through the cracks of which you could see, twelve or
fifteen feet below, the heaps of refuse and garbage of all kinds lying
under the house. That is where and how he received us when, accompanied
by Jim, I paid him a visit of ceremony. There were about forty people in
the room, and perhaps three times as many in the great courtyard below.
There was constant movement, coming and going, pushing and murmuring,
at our backs. A few youths in gay silks glared from the distance; the
majority, slaves and humble dependants, were half naked, in ragged
sarongs, dirty with ashes and mud-stains. I had never seen Jim look so
grave, so self-possessed, in an impenetrable, impressive way. In the
midst of these dark-faced men, his stalwart figure in white apparel,
the gleaming clusters of his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine
that trickled through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim
hall, with its walls of mats and a roof of thatch. He appeared like a
creature not only of another kind but of another essence. Had they not
seen him come up in a canoe they might have thought he had descended
upon them from the clouds. He did, however, come in a crazy dug-out,
sitting (very still and with his knees together, for fear of overturning
the thing)--sitting on a tin box--which I had lent him--nursing on his
lap a revolver of the Navy pattern--presented by me on parting--which,
through an interposition of Providence, or through some wrong-headed
notion, that was just like him, or else from sheer instinctive sagacity,
he had decided to carry unloaded. That's how he ascended the Patusan
river. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more
extravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would
cast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive
unreflecting desertion of a jump into the unknown.

'It is precisely the casualness of it that strikes me most. Neither
Stein nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other side
when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the
wall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his
disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sentimental motive.
He had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose) the old debt he had
never forgotten. Indeed he had been all his life especially friendly to
anybody from the British Isles. His late benefactor, it is true, was a
Scot--even to the length of being called Alexander McNeil--and Jim came
from a long way south of the Tweed; but at the distance of six or
seven thousand miles Great Britain, though never diminished, looks
foreshortened enough even to its own children to rob such details of
their importance. Stein was excusable, and his hinted intentions were
so generous that I begged him most earnestly to keep them secret for
a time. I felt that no consideration of personal advantage should be
allowed to influence Jim; that not even the risk of such influence
should be run. We had to deal with another sort of reality. He wanted
a refuge, and a refuge at the cost of danger should be offered
him--nothing more.

'Upon every other point I was perfectly frank with him, and I even (as
I believed at the time) exaggerated the danger of the undertaking. As
a matter of fact I did not do it justice; his first day in Patusan was
nearly his last--would have been his last if he had not been so reckless
or so hard on himself and had condescended to load that revolver. I
remember, as I unfolded our precious scheme for his retreat, how his
stubborn but weary resignation was gradually replaced by surprise,
interest, wonder, and by boyish eagerness. This was a chance he had been
dreaming of. He couldn't think how he merited that I . . . He would be
shot if he could see to what he owed . . . And it was Stein, Stein the
merchant, who . . . but of course it was me he had to . . . I cut him
short. He was not articulate, and his gratitude caused me inexplicable
pain. I told him that if he owed this chance to any one especially, it
was to an old Scot of whom he had never heard, who had died many years
ago, of whom little was remembered besides a roaring voice and a rough
sort of honesty. There was really no one to receive his thanks. Stein
was passing on to a young man the help he had received in his own young
days, and I had done no more than to mention his name. Upon this he
coloured, and, twisting a bit of paper in his fingers, he remarked
bashfully that I had always trusted him.

'I admitted that such was the case, and added after a pause that I
wished he had been able to follow my example. "You think I don't?" he
asked uneasily, and remarked in a mutter that one had to get some sort
of show first; then brightening up, and in a loud voice he protested he
would give me no occasion to regret my confidence, which--which . . .

'"Do not misapprehend," I interrupted. "It is not in your power to make
me regret anything." There would be no regrets; but if there were, it
would be altogether my own affair: on the other hand, I wished him to
understand clearly that this arrangement, this--this--experiment, was
his own doing; he was responsible for it and no one else. "Why? Why," he
stammered, "this is the very thing that I . . ." I begged him not to
be dense, and he looked more puzzled than ever. He was in a fair way
to make life intolerable to himself . . . "Do you think so?" he asked,
disturbed; but in a moment added confidently, "I was going on though.
Was I not?" It was impossible to be angry with him: I could not help a
smile, and told him that in the old days people who went on like
this were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness. "Hermits be
hanged!" he commented with engaging impulsiveness. Of course he didn't
mind a wilderness. . . . "I was glad of it," I said. That was where
he would be going to. He would find it lively enough, I ventured to
promise. "Yes, yes," he said, keenly. He had shown a desire, I continued
inflexibly, to go out and shut the door after him. . . . "Did I?" he
interrupted in a strange access of gloom that seemed to envelop him
from head to foot like the shadow of a passing cloud. He was wonderfully
expressive after all. Wonderfully! "Did I?" he repeated bitterly. "You
can't say I made much noise about it. And I can keep it up, too--only,
confound it! you show me a door." . . . "Very well. Pass on," I struck
in. I could make him a solemn promise that it would be shut behind him
with a vengeance. His fate, whatever it was, would be ignored,
because the country, for all its rotten state, was not judged ripe
for interference. Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as
though he had never existed. He would have nothing but the soles of his
two feet to stand upon, and he would have first to find his ground at
that. "Never existed--that's it, by Jove," he murmured to himself. His
eyes, fastened upon my lips, sparkled. If he had thoroughly understood
the conditions, I concluded, he had better jump into the first gharry he
could see and drive on to Stein's house for his final instructions. He
flung out of the room before I had fairly finished speaking.'

'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!'

Chapters 22-23
Patusan, we are told, was often used by adventurers to satisfy either their greed or their need to perform heroic deeds. It was savage country, shut off from the rest of the world. A man could feel as though he were a "hero" if he went there to go "into the bush" -- that is, to ravage Patusan's treasure, which was pepper. Men had often died in Patusan attempting a perilous quest for pepper, for at one time, pepper was almost as valuable as pearls. One day, however, pepper lost its aura of rarity, and as the narrator says, "Nobody cares for it now." Today, wealth is no longer flowing out of Patusan, and the bones of its anonymous "heroes" are lying in scattered heaps, bleaching on sunlit beaches. Marlow marvels at the bizarre, absurd lengths to which some men will go to achieve money and transient glory. When Jim went to Patusan, Marlow says, the only people fighting over Patusan were the diverse uncles of the Sultan, himself "an imbecile youth with two thumbs on his left hand." The worst of the uncles was Rajah Allang, a "dirty little used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth." Marlow remembers Jim's reaction when he first told him about Patusan. Initially, Jim had felt a kind of "weary resignation," but that attitude was gradually replaced by "surprise, interest, wonder, and by boyish eagerness." This was the chance Jim had been dreaming of! Marlow emphasized to Jim that this venture would be "his own doing." Jim would be wholly responsible. The young man was filled with impulsive and inarticulate joy. He didn't mind going into a wilderness. He was eager to do so! The outside world would never know that he had ever existed. At last, he would finally have "nothing but the soles of his two feet to stand on." Marlow cautioned Jim to use prudence in this new venture, but Jim was filled with so much exuberance that he flung himself out of the room before Marlow could finish speaking. Jim stated that he never wanted to go back to England, a desire that Marlow found unimaginable. Never? he asked him. Never, Jim emphasized. He was adamant about his decision: "'Never,' he repeated dreamily . . . and then flew into sudden activity." With Marlow's help, Jim finally got packed. Then, at the last moment before Jim's rowers had cast off, Marlow clamored onto Jim's ship and talked briefly to Jim's half-caste captain, who seemed to be a lunatic. The man said that he intended to take Jim to the mouth of the river leading into Patusan, but that he had no intention of going any farther upriver. Patusan was too dangerous; it was like a "cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence," he said, and in a mock pantomime, he dramatically stabbed himself in the back. Behind the captain, Marlow saw Jim suddenly appear, smiling silently and raising a hand to check Marlow's horror of the adventure that was about to begin. Then a heavy boom swung around, and Jim and Marlow clasped each other's hands. Marlow awkwardly called Jim "dear boy," and Jim half-uttered "old man." Yet, Marlow says, there was in their embarrassed goodbyes, "a moment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a glimpse of some everlasting, saving truth." The ship cast off, and Jim raised his cap above his head and waved it broadly to Marlow, calling out indistinctly, "You -- shall -- hear -- of -- me."
Again, Conrad  lets us know that at an earlier time, Patusan was famous for its vast treasure of pepper, but now that pepper is not so important, Patusan has lost much of its influence as an important trading center. In fact, the reader often wonders  what it is that justifies Stein's still retaining a trading post there. In this chapter, we also hear of the immense danger for strangers to travel to Patusan; the "wary captain" who is to take Jim to Patusan refuses to go any farther than the mouth of the river; he explains to Marlow that he already sees Jim as a dead man. Part of the danger is a man named Rajah Allang . Jim, however, welcomes to the point of ecstasy the opportunity to simply fade from civilization, to enter Patusan and let the veil of civilization forever close behind him. He welcomes the opportunity to "jump into the unknown" and "achieve his disappearance" from all of the known world. Thus, Conrad continues his metaphor of "jumping" -- that is, just as Jim's jump from the Patna was a jump into an unknown part of himself, his "Jump" here, into an unknown part of the world , is an equivalent jump into the unknown. "Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as though he had never existed. He would have nothing but the soles of his two feet to stand upon." We further see Stein as the complete romantic, and his romantic nature is further revealed in the generous provisions that he is ready to make for this youth, whose story has captured his own romantic imagination to the point that he is ready to bestow much of his fortune on Jim. In Chapter 23, we are told about the ring which old Doramin gave to Stein as a parting symbol of their eternal friendship. Jim is to take Stein's ring to Doramin, and it will insure him protection by the great chief . This, of course, is the ring which will figure so prominently in Jim's tragic death at the end of the narrative. Although Jim is wildly enthusiastic about his future fortunes -- to Marlow, Jim seems filled with romantic posturing to the point of being melodramatic. But even now, Marlow doesn't fully understand the nature of the weight that Jim feels, a weight so heavy that Marlow doesn't understand Jim when Jim mentions that once he is in Patusan, he will never want to come out again. When Marlow asserts that "if you only live long enough, you will want to come back," Jim virtually ignores him and dismisses Marlow's comment with the remark, "Come back to what?" For Jim, the civilized world has no hold on him. He is no longer a part of the civilized world. For Jim, this is his "magnificent chance" to prove his own worth to himself.