APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/lord_jim/CHAP20_29

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                      CHAPTER 20


'Late in the evening I entered his study, after traversing an
imposing but empty dining-room very dimly lit. The house was
silent. I was preceded by an elderly grim Javanese servant in a sort
of livery of white jacket and yellow sarong, who, after throwing
the door open, exclaimed low, "O master!" and stepping aside,
vanished in a mysterious way as though he had been a ghost only
momentarily embodied for that particular service. Stein turned
round with the chair, and in the same movement his spectacles
seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He welcomed me in his
quiet and humorous voice. Only one corner of the vast room, the
corner in which stood his writing-desk, was strongly lighted by a
shaded reading-lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted
into shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with dark
boxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the walls, not from
floor to ceiling, but in a sombre belt about four feet broad -- cata-
combs of beetles. Wooden tablets were hung above at irregular
intervals. The light reached one of them, and the word Coleoptera
written in gold letters glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness.
The glass cases containing the collection of butterflies were ranged
in three long rows upon slender-legged little tables. One of these
cases had been removed from its place and stood on the desk, which
was bestrewn with oblong slips of paper blackened with minute
handwriting.

' "So you see me -- so," he said. His hand hovered over the case
where a butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out dark bronze wings,
seven inches or more across, with exquisite white veinings and a
gorgeous border of yellow spots. "Only one specimen like this they
have in your London, and then -- no more. To my small native town
this my collection I shall bequeath. Something of me. The best."

'He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his chin over
the front of the case. I stood at his back. "Marvellous," he whis-
pered, and seemed to forget my presence. His history was curious.
He had been born in Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had
taken an active part in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily
compromised, he managed to make his escape, and at first found a
refuge with a poor republican watchmaker in Trieste. From there
he made his way to Tripoli with a stock of cheap watches to hawk
about, -- not a very great opening truly, but it turned out lucky
enough, because it was there he came upon a Dutch traveller -- a
rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember his name. It
was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of assistant, took
him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago together and
separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or more.
Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go
to, remained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys
in the interior of Celebes -- if Celebes may be said to have an interior.
This old Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the
country at the time, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of
Wajo States, who was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that
chap, who was slightly paralysed on one side, had introduced him
to the native court a short time before another stroke carried him
off. He was a heavy man with a patriarchal white beard, and of
imposing stature. He came into the council-hall where all the rajahs,
pangerans, and headmen were assembled, with the queen, a fat
wrinkled woman (very free in her speech, Stein said), reclining on
a high couch under a canopy. He dragged his leg, thumping with
his stick, and grasped Stein's arm, leading him right up to the
couch. "Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is my son," he pro-
claimed in a stentorian voice. "I have traded with your fathers, and
when I die he shall trade with you and your sons."

'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's
privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a forti-
fied house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country.
Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech,
died, and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to
the throne. Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of
whom thirty years later he never sppke otherwise but as "my poor
Mohammed Bonso." They both became the heroes of innumerable
exploits; they had wonderful adventures, and once stood a siege in
the Scotsman's house for a month, with only a score of followers
against a whole army. I believe the natives talk of that war to this
day. Meantime, it seems, Stein never failed to annex on his own
account every butterfly or beetle he could lay hands on. After some
eight years of war, negotiations, false truces, sudden outbreaks,
reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as peace seemed at
last permanently established, his "poor Mohammed Bonso" was
assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while dismount-
ing in the highest spirits on his return from a successful deer-hunt.
This event rendered Stein's position extremely insecure, but he
would have stayed perhaps had it not been that a short time after-
wards he lost Mohammed's sister ("my dear wife the princess," he
used to say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter -- mother
and child both dying within three days of each other from some
infectious fever. He left the country, which this cruel loss had made
unbearable to him. Thus ended the first and adventurous part of
his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality
of sorrow which remained with him, this strang past must have
resembled a dream. He had a little money; he started life afresh,
and in the course of years acquired a considerable fortune. At first
he had travelled a good deal amongst the islands, but age had stolen
upon him, and of late he seldom left his spacious house three miles
out of town, with an extensive garden, and surrounded by stables,
offices, and bamboo cottages for his servants and dependants, of
whom he had many. He drove in his buggy every morning to town,
where he had an office with white and Chinese clerks. He owned a
small fleet of schooners and native craft, and dealt in island produce
on a large scale. For the rest he lived solitary, but not misanthropic,
with his books and his collection, classing and arranging specimens,
corresponding with entomologists in Europe, writing up a descrip-
tive catalogue of his treasures. Such was the history of the man
whom I had come to consult upon Jim's case without any definite
hope. Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been
a relief. I was very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost
passionate, absorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as
though on the bronze sheen of these frail wings, in the white
tracings, in the gorgeous markings, he could see other things, an
image of something as perishable and defying destruction as these
delicate and lifeless tissues displaying a splendour unmarred by
death.

' "Marvellious!" he repeated, looking up at me. "Look! The
beauty -- but that is nothing -- look at the accuracy, the harmony.
And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature -- the
balance of colossal forces. Every star is so -- and every blade of
grass stands so -- and the mighty Kosmos il perfect equilibrium
produces -- this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature -- the great
artist."

' "Never heard an entomologist go on like this," I observed
cheerfully. "Masterpiece! And what of man?'

' "Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece," he said, keeping
his eyes fixed on the glass case. "Perhaps the artist was a little mad.
Eh? What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is
come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for
if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about
here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about
the stars, disturbing the blades of grass? . . ."

' "Catching butterflies," I chimed in.

'He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his
legs. "Sit down," he said. "I captured this rare specimen myself
one very fine morning. And I had a very big emotion. You don't
know what it is for a collector to capture such a rare specimen. You
can't know."

'I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed to look
far beyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one
night, a messenger arrived from his "poor Mohammed," requiring
his presence at the "residenz" -- as he called it -- which was distant
some nine or ten miles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with
patches of forest here and there. Early in the morning he started
from his fortified house, after embracing his little Emma, and leav-
ing the "princess," his wife, in command. He described how she
came with him as far as the gate, walking with one hand on the neck
of his horse; she had on a white jacket, gold pins in her hair, and a
brown leather belt over her left shoulder with a revolver in it. "She
talked as women will talk," he said, "telling me to be careful, and
to try to get back before dark, and what a great wikedness it was
for me to go alone. We were at war, and the country was not safe;
my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters to the house and
loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear for her.
She could defend the house against anybody till I returned. And I
laughed with pleasure a little. I liked to see her so brave and young
and strong. I too was young then. At the gate she caught hold of
my hand and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse
stand still outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me.
There was a great enemy of mine, a great noble -- and a great rascal
too -- roaming with a band in the neighbourhood. I cantered for
four or five miles; there had been rain in the night, but the musts
had gone up, up -- and the face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling
to me, so fresh and innocent -- like a little chilid. Suddenliy somebody
fires a volley -- twenty shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets
sing in my ear, and my hat jumps to the back of my head. It was a
little intrigue, you understand. They got my poor Mohammed to
send for me and then laid that ambush. I see it all in a minute, and
I think -- This wants a little management. My pony snort, jump,
and stand, and I fall slowly forward with my head on his mane. He
begins to walk, and with one eye I could see over his neck a faint
cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump of bamboos to my left.
I think -- Aha! my friends, why you not wait long enough before
you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of my revolver
with my right hand -- quiet -- quiet. After all, there were only seven
of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running with
their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and yel-
ling to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was
dead. I let them come as close as the door here, and then bang,
bang, bang -- take aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man's
back, but I miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone on my horse
with the clean earth smiling at me, and there are the bodies of three
men lying on the ground. One was curled up like a dog, another on
his back had an arm over his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the
third man he draws up his leg very slowly and makes it with one
kick straight again. I watch him very carefully from my horse, but
there is no more -- bleibt ganz ruhig -- keep still, so. And as I looked
at his face for some sign of life I observed something like a faint
shadow pass over his forehead. It was the shadow of this butterfly.
Look at the form of the wing. This species fly high with a strong
flight. I raised my eyes and I saw him fluttering away. I think -- Can
it be possible? And then I lost him. I dismounted and went on very
slow, leading my horse and holding my revolver with one hand and
my eyes darting up and down and right and left, everywhere! At last
I saw him sitting on a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once my
heart began to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one
hand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my head. One
step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him! When I got up I shook
like a leaf with excitement, and when I opened these beautiful wings
and made sure what a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I
had, my head went round and my legs became so weak with emotion
that I had to sit on the ground. I had greatly desired to possess myself
of a specimen of that species when collecting for the professor. I took
long journeys and underwent great privations; I had dreamed of him
in my sleep, and here suddenly I had him in my fingers -- for myself!
In the words of the poet" (he pronounced it "boet") --


      " 'So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen,

         Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein.' "

He gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly lowered voice,
and withdrew his eyes slowly from my face. He began to charge a
long-stemmed pipe busily and in silence, then, pausing with his
thumb on the orifice of the bowl, looked again at me significantly.

' "Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to desire; I
had greatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was young, strong; I
had friendship; I had the love" (he said "lof') "of woman, a child
I had, to make my heart very full -- and even what I had once
dreamed in my sleep had come into my hand too!"

'He struck a match, which flared violently. His thoughtful placid
face twitched once.

' "Friend, wife, child," he said slowly, gazing at the small flame --
"phoo!" The match was blown out. He sighed and turned again to
the glass case. The frail and beautiful wings quivered faintly, as if
his breath had for an instant called back to life that gorgeous object
of his dreams.

' "The work," he began suddenly, pointing to the scattered slips,
and in his usual gentle and cheery tone, "is making great progress.
I have been this rare specimen describing.... Na! And what is
your good news?"

' "To tell you the truth, Stein," I said with an effort that sur-
prised me, "I came here to describe a specimen...."

' "Butterfly?" he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous
eagerness.

' "Nothing so perfect," I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited
with all sorts of doubts. "A man!"

' "Ach so!" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned
to me, became grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said
slowly, "Well -- I am a man too."

'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously
encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of
confidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long.

'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head
would disappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a
sympathetic growl would come out from the cloud. When I finished
he uncrossed his legs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards
me earnestly with his elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of
his fingers together.

' "I understand very well. He is romantic."

'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled
to find how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so
much a medical consultation -- Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in
an arm-chair before his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him,
but a little to one side -- that it seemed natural to ask --

' "What's good for it?"

'He lifted up a long forefinger.

' "There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being
ourselves cure!" The finger came down on the desk with a smart
rap. The case which he had made to look so simple before became
if possible still simpler -- and altogether hopeless. There was a pause.
"Yes," said I, "strictly speaking, the question is not how to get
cured, but how to live."

'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. "Ja!
ja! In general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the
question...." He went on nodding sympathetically.... "How
to be! Ach! How to be."

'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk.

' "We want in so many different ways to be," he began again.
"This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still
on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want
to be so, and again he want to be so...." He moved his hand up,
then down.... "He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a
devil -- and every time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very
fine fellow -- so fine as he can never be.... In a dream...."

'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and
taking up the case in both hands he bore it religiously away to its
place, passing out of the bright circle of the lamp into the ring of
fainter light -- into shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect -- as
if these few steps had carried him out of this concrete and perplexed
world. His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered
noiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite move-
ments; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be
glimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer
incisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave -- mellowed by dis-
tance.

' "And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there
comes the real trouble -- the heart pain -- the world pain. I tell you,
my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your
dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or
not clever enough. .Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine
fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha!
ha!"

'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed
boisterously.

' "Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls
into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb
out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he
drowns -- nicht wahr? . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destruc-
tive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands
and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if
you ask me -- how to be?"

'His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there
in the dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge.
"I will tell you! For that too there is only one way."

'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring
of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the
lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deep-
set eyes seemed to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered
no word, and the austere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk
vanished from his face. The hand that had been pointing at my
breast fell, and by-and-by, coming a step nearer, he laid it gently
on my shoulder. There were things, he said mournfully, that per-
haps could never be told, only he had lived so much alone that
sometimes he forgot -- he forgot. The light had destroyed the assur-
ance which had inspired him in the distant shadows. He sat down
and, with both elbows on the desk, rubbed his forehead. "And yet
it is true -- it is true. In the destructive element immerse." . . . He
spoke in a subdued tone, without looking at me, one hand on each
side of his face. "That was the way. To follow the dream, and again
to follow the dream -- and so -- ewig -- usque ad finem...." The
whisper of his conviction seemed to open before me a vast and
uncertain expanse, as of a crepuscular horizon on a plain at dawn --
or was it, perchance, at the coming of the night? One had not
the courage to decide; but it was a charming and deceptive light,
throwing the impalpable poesy of its dimness over pitfalls -- over
graves. His life had begun in sacrifice, in enthusiasm for generous
ideas; he had travelled very far, on various ways, on strange paths,
and whatever he followed it had been without faltering, and there-
fore without shame and without regret. In so far he was right. That
was the way, no doubt. Yet for all that, the great plain on which
men wander amongst graves and pitfalls remained very desolate
under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular light, overshadowed
in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if surrounded by an abyss
full of flames. When at last I broke the silence it was to express the
opinion that no one could be more romantic than himself.

'He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me with a
patient and inquiring glance. It was a shame, he said. There we
were sitting and talking like two boys, instead of putting our heads
together to find something practical -- a practical remedy -- for the
evil -- for the great evil -- he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent
smile. For all that, our talk did not grow more practical. We avoided
pronouncing Jim's name as though we had tried to keep flesh and
blood out of our discussion, or he were nothing but an erring spirit,
a suffering and nameless shade. "Na!" said Stein, rising. "To-night
you sleep here, and in the morning we shall do something practical --
practical...." He lit a two-branched candlestick and led the way.
We passed through empty dark rooms, escorted by gleams from
the lights Stein carried. They glided along the waxed floors, sweep-
ing here and there over the polished surface of a table, leaped upon
a fragmentary curve of a piece of furniture, or flashed perpendicul-
arly in and out of distant mirrors, while the forms of two men and
the flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment stealing silently
across the depths of a crystalline void. He walked slowly a pace in
advance with stooping courtesy; there was a profound, as it were a
listening, quietude on his face; the long flaxen locks mixed with
white threads were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed neck.

' "He is romantic -- romantic," he repeated. "And that is very
bad -- very bad.... Very good, too," he added. "But is he?" I
queried.

' "Gewiss," he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum,
but without looking at me. "Evident! What is it that by inward pain
makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes
him -- exist?"

'At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim's existence --
starting from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by
clouds of dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in
a material world -- but his imperishable reality came to me with a
convincing, with an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in
our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams
of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with
flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had
approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself,
floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of
mystery. "Perhaps he is," I admitted with a slight laugh, whose
unexpectedly loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly;
"but I am sure you are." With his head dropping on his breast and
the light held high he began to walk again. "Well -- I exist too," he
said.

'He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, but what I
did see was not the head of the firm, the welcome guest at afternoon
receptions, the correspondent of learned societies, the entertainer
of stray naturalists; I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he
had known how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun
in humble surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in
friendship, love, war -- in all the exalted elements of romance. At
the door of my room he faced me. "Yes," I said, as though carrying
on a discussion, "and amongst other things you dreamed foolishly
of a certain butterfly; but when one fine morning your dream came
in your way you did not let the splendid opportunity escape. Did
you? Whereas he . . ." Stein lifted his hand. "And do you know
how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost
that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It seems
to me that some would have been very fine -- if I had made them
come true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know. "
"Whether his were fine or not," I said, "he knows of one which he
certainly did not catch." "Everybody knows of one or two like
that," said Stein; "and that is the trouble -- the great trouble...."

'He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room under
his raised arm. "Sleep well. And to-morrow we must do something
practical -- practical...."

'Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him return the
way he came. He was going back to his butterflies.'


                    CHAPTER 21


'I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?' Marlow
resumed, after a silence occupied in the careful lighting of a cigar.
'It does not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowd-
ing upon us of a night that mankind had never heard of, it being
outside the sphere of its activities and of no earthly importance to
anybody but to the astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about
its composition, weight, path -- the irregularities of its conduct, the
aberrations of its light -- a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus
with Patusan. It was referred to knowingly in the inner government
circles in Batavia, especially as to its irregularities and aberrations,
and it was known by name to some few, very few, in the mercantile
world. Nobody, however, had been there, and I suspect no one
desired to go there in person -- just as an astronomer, I should fancy,
would strongly object to being transported into a distant heavenly
body, where, parted from his earthly emoluments, he would be
bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar heaven. However, neither
heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do with Patusan.
It was Jim who went there. I only meant you to understand that
had Stein arranged to send him into a star of the fifth magnitude
the change could not have been greater. He left his earthly failings
behind him and what sort of reputation he had, and there was a
totally new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work
upon. Entirely new, entirely remarkable. And he got hold of them
in a remarkable way.

'Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan than anybody
else. More than was known in the government circles I suspect. I
have no doubt he had been there, either in his butterfly-hunting
days or later on, when he tried in his incorrigible way to season with
a pinch of romance the fattening dishes of his commercial kitchen.
There were very few places in the Archipelago he had not seen in
the original dusk of their being, before light (and even electric light)
had been carried into them for the sake of better morality and --
and -- well -- the greater profit too. It was at breakfast of the morning
following our talk about Jim that he mentioned the place, after
I had quoted poor Brierly's remark: "Let him creep twenty feet
underground and stay there." He looked up at me with interested
attention, as though I had been a rare insect. "This could be done
too," he remarked, sipping his coffee. "Bury him in some sort," I
explained. "One doesn't like to do it of course, but it would be the
best thing, seeing what he is." "Yes; he is young," Stein mused.
"The youngest human being now in existence," I affirmed. "Schon.
There's Patusan," he went on in the same tone.... "And the
woman is dead now," he added incomprehensibly.

'Of course I don't know that story; I can only guess that once
before Patusan had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression,
or misfortune. It is impossible to suspect Stein. The only woman
that had ever existed for him was the Malay girl he called "My
wife the princess," or, more rarely, in moments of expansion, "the
mother of my Emma." Who was the woman he had mentioned
in connection with Patusan I can't say; but from his allusions I
understand she had been an educated and very good-looking Dutch-
Malay girl, with a tragic or perhaps only a pitiful history, whose
most painful part no doubt was her marriage with a Malacca Portu-
guese who had been clerk in some commercial house in the Dutch
colonies. I gathered from Stein that this man was an unsatisfactory
person in more ways than one, all being more or less indefinite and
offensive. It was solely for his wife's sake that Stein had appointed
him manager of Stein & Co.'s trading post in Patusan; but commer-
cially the arrangement was not a success, at any rate for the firm,
and now the woman had died, Stein was disposed to try another
agent there. The Portuguese, whose name was Cornelius, con-
sidered himself a very deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his
abilities to a better position. This man Jim would have to relieve.
"But I don't think he will go away from the place," remarked Stein.
"That has nothing to do with me. It was only for the sake of the
woman that I . . . But as I think there is a daughter left, I shall let
him, if he likes to stay, keep the old house."

'Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief
settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty
miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can
be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep
hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep
fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the
valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from
the settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with
the two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full,
the moon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he
had a very fine house in the native style when I visited him), rose
exactly behind these hills, its diffused light at first throwing the two
masses into intensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disc,
glowing ruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between the sides of
the chasm, till it floated away above the summits, as if escaping
from a yawning grave in gentle triumph. "Wonderful effect," said
Jim by my side. "Worth seeing. Is it not?"

'And this question was put with a note of personal pride that
made me smile, as though he had had a hand in regulating that
unique spectacle. He had regulated so many things in Patusan --
things that would have appeared as much beyond his control as the
motions of the moon and the stars.

'It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality of the part
into which Stein and I had tumbled him unwittingly, with no other
notion than to get him out of the way; out of his own way, be it
understood. That was our main purpose, though, I own, I might
have had another motive which had influenced me a little. I was
about to go home for a time; and it may be I desired, more than I
was aware of myself, to dispose of him -- to dispose of him, you
understand -- before I left. I was going home, and he had come to
me from there, with his miserable trouble and his shadowy claim,
like a man panting under a burden in a mist. I cannot say I had ever
seen him distinctly -- not even to this day, after I had my last view
of him; but it seemed to me that the less I understood the more I
was bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the inseparable
part of our knowledge. I did not know so much more about myself.
And then, I repeat, I was going home -- to that home distant enough
for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the
humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands
over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning
beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but
it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to
render an account. We return to face our superiors, our kindred,
our friends -- those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but
even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and
bereft of ties, -- even those for whom home holds no dear face, no
familiar voice, -- even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within
the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in
its fields, in its waters and its trees -- a mute friend, judge, and
inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to
face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may
seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have
the will or the capacity to look consciously under the surface of
familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men we look up
to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures!
But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean
hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I think
it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their
own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to
meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit -- it is those
who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of
its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us
understand, but we all feel it though, and I say all without excep-
tion, because those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of
grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and
so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together
with his life. I don't know how much Jim understood; but I know
he felt, he felt confusedly but powerfully, the demand of some such
truth or some such illusion -- I don't care how you call it, there is
so little difference, and the difference means so little. The thing is
that in virtue of his feeling he mattered. He would never go home
now. Not he. Never. Had he been capable of picturesque manifes-
tations he would have shuddered at the thought and made you
shudder too. But he was not of that sort, though he was expressive
enough in his way. Before the idea of going home he would grow
desperately stiff and immovable, with lowered chin and pouted lips,
and with those candid blue eyes of his glowering darkly under a
frown, as if before something unbearable, as if before something
revolting. There was imagination in that hard skull of his, over
which the thick clustering hair fitted like a cap. As to me, I have
no imagination (I would be more certain about him today, if I had),
and I do not mean to imply that I figured to myself the spirit of the
land uprising above the white cliffs of Dover, to ask me what I --
returning with no bones broken, so to speak -- had done with my
very young brother. I could not make such a mistake. I knew very
well he was of those about whom there is no inquiry; I had seen
better men go out, disappear, vanish utterly, without provoking a
sound of curiosity or sorrow. The spirit of the land, as becomes the
ruler of great enterprises, is careless of innumerable lives. Woe to
the stragglers! We exist only in so far as we hang together. He had
straggled in a way; he had not hung on; but he was aware of it with
an intensity that made him touching, just as a man's more intense
life makes his death more touching than the death of a tree. I hap-
pened to be handy, and I happened to be touched. That's all there
is to it. I was concerned as to the way he would go out. It would
have hurt me if, for instance, he had taken to drink. The earth is
so small that I was afraid of, some day, being waylaid by a blear-
eyed, swollen-faced, besmirched loafer, with no soles to his canvas
shoes, and with a flutter of rags about the elbows, who, on the
strength of old acquaintance, would ask for a loan of five dollars.
You know the awful jaunty bearing of these scarecrows coming to
you from a decent past, the rasping careless voice, the half-averted
impudent glances -- those meetings more trying to a man who
believes in the solidarity of our lives than the sight of an impenitent
death-bed to a priest. That, to tell you the truth, was the only
danger I could see for him and for me; but I also mistrusted my
want of imagination. It might even come to something worse, in
some way it was beyond my powers of fancy to foresee. He wouldn't
let me forget how imaginative he was, and your imaginative people
swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer scope of cable in
the uneasy anchorage of life. They do. They take to drink too. It
may be I was belittling him by such a fear. How could I tell? Even
Stein could say no more than that he was romantic. I only knew he
was one of us. And what business had he to be romantic? I am
telling you so much about my own instinctive feelings and bemused
reflections because there remains so little to be told of him. He
existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for
you. I've led him out by the hand; I have paraded him before you.
Were my commonplace fears unjust? I won't say -- not even now.
You may be able to tell better, since the proverb has it that the
onlookers see most of the game. At any rate, they were superfluous.
He did not go out, not at all; on the contrary, he came on wonder-
fully, came on straight as a die and in excellent form, which showed
that he could stay as well as spurt. I ought to be delighted, for it is
a victory in which I had taken my part; but I am not so pleased as
I would have expected to be. I ask myself whether his rush had
really carried him out of that mist in which he loomed interesting
if not very big, with floating outlines -- a straggler yearning inconsol-
ably for his humble place in the ranks. And besides, the last word
is not said -- probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short
for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of
course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting
those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced,
would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our
last word -- the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse,
submission, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken,
I suppose -- at least, not by us who know so many truths about
either. My last words about lim shall be few. I affirm he had
achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling,
or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust,
but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows
had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean
to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions -- and safe -- and
profitable -- and dull. Yet you too in your time must have known
the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of
trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone --
and as short-lived, alas!'


                       CHAPTER 22


'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, bran-
ches 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, devour-
ing stream. You find the name of the country pretty often in collec-
tions 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 inflex-
ible 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 counuy-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, com-
ing and going, pushing and murmuring, at our backs. A few youths
in gay silks glared from the distance; the majority, slaves and hum-
ble 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 sup-
pose) 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 blit 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 confi-
dence, 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: an 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 acess of gloom that
seemed to envelop him from head to foot like the shadow of a
passing cloud. He was wonderfully expressive after all. Wonder-
fully! "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 inter-
ference. 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 love," he murmured to him-
self. 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.'


                   CHAPTER 23


'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, uncon-
sciously), 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 pro-
ceeded 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, confess-
ing, explaining -- what you will -- but, in the last instance, living --
living before me, under his own little cloud, with all his un-
conscious 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 threaten-
ing 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 road-
stead. 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 turn-
ing 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 tempera-
ment. 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 proper-
ties." 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 pur-
posefully 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 con-
cluded, 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
silendy 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 grati-
tude, 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 pro-
found 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!'


                       CHAPTER 24


'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 fusil-
lade 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 refer-
ences 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 excite-
ment 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 deliver-
ing 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 -- per-
haps 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 men-
tioned -- 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 dispas-
sionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceiv-
able 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 tender-
ness.'


                      CHAPTER 25


' "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. Looked 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 complimen-
tary 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 pris-
oner. 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 still-
ness. 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 ficious 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 -- con-
sidered 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 watch-
ing 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 some-
thing rotten."

'That's how it was -- and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped
over the gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpect-
edness 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 royai governor
of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to intro-
duce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when, get-
ting 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 casuai 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 himseif 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 himseif 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 dark-
ness 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 himseif suddenly on his back, won-
dered 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; Dora-
min'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 unceas-
ingly 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 differ-
ence. She was very spare, and even her ample outer garment, fast-
ened 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 rob-
bery. His cruelty and rapacity had no other bounds than his coward-
ice, 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 patheti-
cally 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 forti-
fied 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 black-
ened 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 veg-
etation stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in
Patusan were not sure which one this partisan most desired to plun-
der. The Rajah intrigued with him feebly. Some of the Bugis set-
tlers, 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.'


                      CHAPTER 26


'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 over-
hanging 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 ruth-
less 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 see-
ing," 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 mught 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 posi-
tion. "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 concili-
ate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all sorts of senseless mis-
trusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and his son's
fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the dis-
tinguished 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 unex-
pectedly 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 imma-
terial 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
medltative 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 litde 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 cap-
stan 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 hoist-
ing 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 doom,
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.'


                    CHAPTER 27


'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 house-
holder 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. lt 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 fight-
ing 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 ar 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. Mean-
time -- 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 achieve-
ment. The whole stockade -- he would insist on explaining to you --
was a poor affair (Sherif Ali wsted mainly to the inaccessible posi-
tion); 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 ser-
vant. This was a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wand-
ered 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 per-
son. His complexion was very dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent
and injected with bile. There was something excessive, almost fana-
tical, 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 com-
mon 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 atten-
dants 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 mur-
mured, 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 brood-
ing 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 soli-
tude 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.'


                     CHAPTER 28


'The defeated Sherif Ali fled the country without making another
stand, and when the miserable hunted villagers began to crawl out
of the jungle back to their rotting houses, it was Jim who, in consul-
tation with Dain Waris, appointed the headmen. Thus he became
the virtual ruler of the land. As to old Tunku Allang, his fears at
first had known no bounds. It is said that at the intelligence of the
successful storming of the hill he flung himself, face down, on the
bamboo floor of his audience-hall, and lay motionless for a whole
night and a whole day, uttering stifled sounds of such an appalling
nature that no man dared approach his prostrate form nearer than
a spear's length. Already he could see himself driven ignominiously
out of Patusan, wandering, abandoned, stripped, without opium,
without his women, without followers, a fair game for the first
comer to kill. After Sherif Ali his turn would come, and who could
resist an attack led by such a devil? And indeed he owed his life and
such authority as he still possessed at the time of my visit to Jim's
idea of what was fair alone. The Bugis had been extremely anxious
to pay off old scores, and the impassive old Doramin cherished the
hope of yet seeing his son ruler of Patusan. During one of our
interviews he deliberately allowed me to get a glimpse of this secret
ambition. Nothing could be finer in its way than the dignified wari-
ness of his approaches. He himself -- he began by declaring -- had
used his strength in his young days, but now he had grown old and
tired.... With his imposing bulk and haughty little eyes darting
sagacious, inquisitive glances, he reminded one irresistibly of a
cunning old elephant; the slow rise and fall of his vast breast went
on powerful and regular, like the heave of a calm sea. He too, as he
protested, had an unbounded confidence in Tuan Jim's wisdom. If
he could only obtain a promise! One word would be enough! . . .
His breathing silences, the low rumblings of his voice, recalled the
last efforts of a spent thunderstorm.

'I tried to put the subject aside. It was difficult, for there could
be no question that Jim had the power; in his new sphere there did
not seem to be anything that was not his to hold or to give. But
that, I repeat, was nothing in comparison with the notion, which
occurred to me, while I listened with a show of attention, that he
seemed to have come very near at last to mastering his fate. Doramin
was anxious about the future of the country, and I was struck by
the turn he gave to the argument. The land remains where God had
put it; but white men -- he said -- they come to us and in a little
while they go. They go away. Those they leave behind do not know
when to look for their return. They go to their own land, to their
people, and so this white man too would.... I don't know what
induced me to commit myself at this point by a vigorous "No,
no." The whole extent of this indiscretion became apparent when
Doramin, turning full upon me his face, whose expression, fixed in
rugged deep folds, remained unalterable, like a huge brown mask,
said that this was good news indeed, reflectively; and then wanted
to know why.

'His little, motherly witch of a wife sat on my other hand, with
her head covered and her feet tucked up, gazing through the great
shutter-hole. I could only see a straying lock of grey hair, a high
cheek-bone, the slight masticating motion of the sharp chin. With-
out removing her eyes from the vast prospect of forests stretching
as far as the hills, she asked me in a pitying voice why was it that
he so young had wandered from his home, coming so far, through
so many dangers? Had he no household there, no kinsmen in his
own country? Had he no old mother, who would always remember
his face? . . .

'I was completely unprepared for this. I could only mutter and
shake my head vaguely. Afterwards I am perfectly aware I cut a
very poor figure trying to extricate myself out of this difficulty.
From that moment, however, the old nakhoda became taciturn. He
was not very pleased, I fear, and evidently I had given him food for
thought. Strangely enough, on the evening of that very day (which
was my last in Patusan) I was once more confronted with the same
question, with the unanswerable why of Jim's fate. And this brings
me to the story of his love.

'I suppose you think it is a story that you can imagine for your-
selves. We have heard so many such stories, and the majority of us
don't believe them to be stories of love at all. For the most part we
look upon them as stories of opportunities: episodes of passion at
best, or perhaps only of youth and temptation, doomed to forgetful-
ness in the end, even if they pass through the reality of tenderness
and regret. This view mostly is right, and perhaps in this case
too.... Yet I don't know. To tell this story is by no means so easy
as it should be -- were the ordinary standpoint adequate. Apparently
it is a story very much like the others: for me, however, there is
visible in its background the melancholy figure of a woman, the
shadow of a cruel wisdom buried in a lonely grave, looking on
wistfully, helplessly, with sealed lips. The grave itself, as I came
upon it during an early morning stroll, was a rather shapeless brown
mound, with an inlaid neat border of white lumps of coral at the
base, and enclosed within a circular fence made of split saplings,
with the bark left on. A garland of leaves and flowers was woven
about the heads of the slender posts -- and the flowers were fresh.

'Thus, whether the shadow is of my imagination or not, I can at
all events point out the significant fact of an unforgotten grave.
When I tell you besides that Jim with his own hands had worked
at the rustic fence, you will perceive directly the difference, the
individual side of the story. There is in his espousal of memory and
affection belonging to another human being something character-
istic of his seriousness. He had a conscience, and it was a romantic
conscience. Through her whole life the wife of the unspeakable
Cornelius had no other companion, confidant, and friend but her
daughter. How the poor woman had come to marry the awful little
Malacca Portuguese -- after the separation from the father of her
girl -- and how that separation had been brought about, whether by
death, which can be sometimes merciful, or by the merciless press-
ure of conventions, is a mystery to me. From the little which Stein
(who knew so many stories) had let drop in my hearing, I am con-
vinced that she was no ordinary woman. Her own father had been
a white; a high official; one of the brilliantly endowed men who are
not dull enough to nurse a success, and whose careers so often
end under a cloud. I suppose she too must have lacked the saving
dullness -- and her career ended in Patusan. Our common fate . . .
for where is the man -- I mean a real sentient man -- who does not
remember vaguely having been deserted in the fullness of pos-
session by some one or something more precious than life? . . . our
common fate fastens upon the women with a peculiar cruelty. It
does not punish like a master, but inflicts lingering torment, as
if to gratify a secret, unappeasable spite. One would think that,
appointed to rule on earth, it seeks to revenge itself upon the beings
that come nearest to rising above the trammels of earthly caution;
for it is only women who manage to put at times into their love an
element just palpable enough to give one a fright -- an extra-terres-
trial touch. I ask myself with wonder -- how the world can look to
them -- whether it has the shape and substance we know, the air we
breathe! Sometimes I fancy it must be a region of unreasonable
sublimities seething with the excitement of their adventurous souls,
lighted by the glory of all possible risks and renunciations. How-
ever, I suspect there are very few women in the world, though of
course I am aware of the multitudes of mankind and of the equality
of sexes -- in point of numbers, that is. But I am sure that the mother
was as much of a woman as the daughter seemed to be. I cannot
help picturing to myself these two, at first the young woman and
the child, then the old woman and the young girl, the awful same-
ness and the swift passage of time, the barrier of forest, the solitude
and the turmoil round these two lonely lives, and every word spoken
between them penetrated with sad meaning. There must have been
confidences, not so much of fact, I suppose, as of innermost feel-
ings -- regrets -- fears -- warnings, no doubt: warnings that the
younger did not fully understand till the elder was dead -- and Jim
came along. Then I am sure she understood much -- not everything --
the fear mostly, it seems. Jim called her by a word that means
precious, in the sense of a precious gem -- jewel. Pretty, isn't it? But
he was capable of anything. He was equal to his fortune, as he --
after all -- must have beeen equal to his misfortune. Jewel he called
her; and he would say this as he might have said "Jane," don't you
know -- with a marital, homelike, peaceful effect. I heard the name
for the first time ten minutes after I had landed in his courtyard,
when, after nearly shaking my arm off, he darted up the steps and
began to make a joyous, boyish disturbance at the door under the
heavy eaves. "Jewel! O Jewel! Quick! Here's a friend come," . . .
and suddenly peering at me in the dim verandah, he mumbled
earnestly, "You know -- this -- no confounded nonsense about it --
can't tell you how much I owe to her -- and so -- you understand --
I -- exactly as if . . " His hurried, anxious whispers were cut short
by the flitting of a white form within the house, a faint exclamation,
and a child-like but energetic little face with delicate features and a
profound, attentive glance peeped out of the inner gloom, like a
bird out of the recess of a nest. I was struck by the name, of course;
but it was not till later on that I connected it with an astonishing
rumour that had met me on my journey, at a little place on the coast
about 230 miles south of Patusan River. Stein's schooner, in which
I had my passage, put in there, to collect some produce, and, going
ashore, I found to my great surprise that the wretched locality could
boast of a third-class deputy-assistant resident, a big, fat, greasy,
blinking fellow of mixed descent, with turned-out, shiny lips. I
found him lying extended on his back in a cane chair, odiously
unbuttoned, with a large green leaf of some sort on the top of his
steaming head, and another in his hand which he used lazily as a
fan . . . Going to Patusan? Oh yes. Stein's Trading Company. He
knew. Had a permission? No business of his. It was not so bad there
now, he remarked negligently, and, he went on drawling, "There's
some sort of white vagabond has got in there, I hear.... Eh? What
you say? Friend of yours? So! . . . Then it was true there was one
of these verdammte -- What was he up to? Found his way in, the
rascal. Eh? I had not been sure. Patusan -- they cut throats there --
no business of ours." He interrupted himself to groan. "Phoo!
Almighty! The heat! The heat! Well, then, there might be some-
thing in the story too, after all, and . . ." He shut one of his beastly
glassy eyes (the eyelid went on quivering) while he leered at me
atrociously with the other. "Look here," says he mysteriously, "if --
do you understand? -- if he has really got hold of something fairly
good -- none of your bits of green glass -- understand? -- I am a
Government official -- you tell the rascal . . . Eh? What? Friend of
yours?" . . . He continued wallowing calmly in the chair . . . "You
said so; that's just it; and I am pleased to give you the hint. I suppose
you too would like to get something out of it? Don't interrupt. You
just tell him I've heard the tale, but to my Government I have made
no report. Not yet. See? Why make a report? Eh? Tell him to come
to me if they let him get alive out of the country. He had better look
out for himself. Eh? I promise to ask no questions. On the quiet --
you understand? You too -- you shall get something from me. Small
commission for the trouble. Don't interrupt. I am a Government
official, and make no report. That's business. Understand? I know
some good people that will buy anything worth having, and can
give him more money than the scoundrel ever saw in his life. I know
his sort." He fixed me steadfastly with both his eyes open, while I
stood over him utterly amazed, and asking myself whether he was
mad or drunk. He perspired, puffed, moaning feebly, and scratch-
ing himself with such horrible composure that I could not bear the
sight long enough to find out. Next day, talking casually with the
people of the little native court of the place, I discovered that a story
was travelling slowly down the coast about a mysterious white man
in Patusan who had got hold of an extraordinary gem -- namely, an
emerald of an enormous size, and altogether priceless. The emerald
seems to appeal more to the Eastern imagination than any other
precious stone. The white man had obtained it, I was told, partly
by the exercise of his wonderful strength and partly by cunning,
from the ruler of a distant country, whence he had fled instantly,
arriving in Patusan in utmost distress, but frightening the people
by his extreme ferocity, which nothing seemed able to subdue. Most
of my informants were of the opinion that the stone was probably
unlucky, -- like the famous stone of the Sultan of Succadana,
which in the old times had brought wars and untold calamities upon
that country. Perhaps it was the same stone -- one couldn't say.
Indeed the story of a fabulously large emerald is as old as the arrival
of the first white men in the Archipelago; and the belief in it is so
persistent that less than forty years ago there had been an official
Dutch inquiry into the truth of it. Such a jewel -- it was explained
to me by the old fellow from whom I heard most of this amazing
Jim-myth -- a sort of scribe to the wretched little Rajah of the place; --
such a jewel, he said, cocking his poor purblind eyes up at me (he
was sitting on the cabin floor out of respect), is best preserved by
being concealed about the person of a woman. Yet it is not every
woman that would do. She must be young -- he sighed deeply -- and
insensible to the seductions of love. He shook his head sceptically.
But such a woman seemed to be actually in existence. He had been
told of a tall girl, whom the white man treated with great respect
and care, and who never went forth from the house unattended.
People said the white man could be seen with her almost any day;
they walked side by side, openly, he holding her arm under his --
pressed to his side -- thus -- in a most extraordinary way. This might
be a lie, he conceded, for it was indeed a strange thing for any one
to do: on the other hand, there could be no doubt she wore the
white man's jewel concealed upon her bosom.'


                         CHAPTER 29


'This was the theory of Jim's marital evening walks. I made a
third on more than one occasion, unpleasantly aware every time of
Cornelius, who nursed the aggrieved sense of his legal paternity,
slinking in the neighbourhood with that peculiar twist of his mouth
as if he were perpetually on the point of gnashing his teeth. But do
you notice how, three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph
cables and mail-boat lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilisa-
tion wither and die, to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination,
that have the futility, often the charm, and sometimes the deep
hidden truthfulness, of works of art? Romance had singled Jim for
its own -- and that was the true part of the story, which otherwise
was all wrong. He did not hide his jewel. In fact, he was extremely
proud of it.

'It comes to me now that I had, on the whole, seen very little of
her. What I remember best is the even, olive pallor of her com-
plexion, and the intense blue-black gleams of her hair, flowing
abundantly from under a small crimson cap she wore far back on her
shapely head. Her movements were free, assured, and she blushed a
dusky red. While Jim and I were talking, she would come and go
with rapid glances at us, leaving on her passage an impression of
grace and charm and a distinct suggestion of watchfulness. Her
manner presented a curious combination of shyness and audacity.
Every pretty smile was succeeded swiftly by a look of silent,
repressed anxiety, as if put to flight by the recollection of some
abiding danger. At times she would sit down with us and, with her
soft cheek dimpled by the knuckles of her little hand, she would
listen to our talk; her big clear eyes would remain fastened on our
lips, as though each pronounced word had a visible shape. Her
mother had taught her to read and write; she had learned a good
bit of English from Jim, and she spoke it most amusingly, with his
own clipping, boyish intonation. Her tenderness hovered over him
like a flutter of wings. She lived so completely in his contemplation
that she had acquired something of his outward aspect, something
that recalled him in her movements, in the way she stretched her
arm, turned her head, directed her glances. Her vigilant affection
had an intensity that made it almost perceptible to the senses; it
seemed actually to exist in the ambient matter of space, to envelop
him like a peculiar fragrance, to dwell in the sunshine like a tremu-
lous, subdued, and impassioned note. I suppose you think that I
too am romantic, but it is a mistake. I am relating to you the sober
impressions of a bit of youth, of a strange uneasy romance that had
come in my way. I observed with interest the work of his -- well --
good fortune. He was jealously loved, but why she should be jeal-
ous, and of what, I could not tell. The land, the people, the forests
were her accomplices, guarding him with vigilant accord, with an
air of seclusion, of mystery, of invincible possession. There was no
appeal, as it were; he was imprisoned within the very freedom of
his power, and she, though ready to make a footstool of her head
for his feet, guarded her conquest inflexibly -- as though he were
hard to keep. The very Tamb' Itam, marching on our journeys upon
the heels of his white lord, with his head thrown back, truculent
and be-weaponed like a janissary, with kriss, chopper, and lance
(besides carrying Jim's gun); even Tamb' Itam allowed himself to
put on the airs of uncompromising guardianship, like a surly
devoted jailer ready to lay down his life for his captive. On the
evenings when we sat up late, his silent, indistinct form would pass
and repass under the verandah, with noiseless footsteps, or lifting
my head I would unexpectedly make him out standing rigidly erect
in the shadow. As a general rule he would vanish after a time,
without a sound; but when we rose he would spring up close to us
as if from the ground, ready for any orders Jim might wish to give.
The girl too, I believe, never went to sleep till we had separated for
the night. More than once I saw her and Jim through the window
of my room come out together quietly and lean on the rough balus-
trade -- two white forms very close, his arm about her waist, her
head on his shoulder. Their soft murmurs reached me, penetrating,
tender, with a calm sad note in the stillness of the night, like a self-
communion of one being carried on in two tones. Later on, tossing
on my bed under the mosquito-net, I was sure to hear slight creak-
ings, faint breathing, a throat cleared cautiously -- and I would know
that Tamb' Itam was still on the prowl. Though he had (by the
favour of the white lord) a house in the compound, had "taken
wife," and had lately been blessed with a child, I believe that,
during my stay at all events, he slept on the verandah every night.
It was very difficult to make this faithful and grim retainer talk.
Even Jim himself was answered in jerky short sentences, under
protest as it were. Talking, he seemed to imply, was no business of
his. The longest speech I heard him volunteer was one morning
when, suddenly extending his hand towards the courtyard, he
pointed at Cornelius and said, "Here comes the Nazarene." I don't
think he was addressing me, though I stood at his side; his object
seemed rather to awaken the indignant attention of the universe.
Some muttered allusions, which followed, to dogs and the smell of
roast-meat, struck me as singularly felicitous. The courtyard, a
large square space, was one torrid blaze of sunshine, and, bathed
in intense light, Cornelius was creeping across in full view with an
inexpressible effect of stealthiness, of dark and secret slinking. He
reminded one of everything that is unsavoury. His slow laborious
walk resembled the creeping of a repulsive beetle, the legs alone
moving with horrid industry while the body glided evenly. I sup-
pose he made straight enough for the place where he wanted to
get to, but his progress with one shoulder carried forward seemed
oblique. He was often seen circling slowly amongst the sheds, as if
following a scent; passing before the verandah with upward stealthy
glances; disappearing without haste round the corner of some hut.
That he seemed free of the place demonstrated Jim's absurd care-
lessness or else his infinite disdain, for Cornelius had played a very
dubious part (to say the least of it) in a certain episode which might
have ended fatally for Jim. As a matter of fact, it had redounded to
his glory. But everything redounded to his glory; and it was the
irony of his good fortune that he, who had been too careful of it
once, seemed to bear a charmed life.

'You must know he had left Doramin's place very soon after his
arrival -- much too soon, in fact, for his safety, and of course a long
time before the war. In this he was actuated by a sense of duty; he
had to look after Stein's business, he said. Hadn't he? To that end,
with an utter disregard of his personal safety, he crossed the river
and took up his quarters with Cornelius. How the latter had man-
aged to exist through the troubled times I can't say. As Stein's
agent, after all, he must have had Doramin's protection in a meas-
ure; and in one way or another he had managed to wriggle through
all the deadly complications, while I have no doubt that his conduct,
whatever line he was forced to take, was marked by that abjectness
which was like the stamp of the man. That was his characteristic;
he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as other men are mark-
edly of a generous, distinguished, or venerable appearance. It was
the element of his nature which permeated all his acts and passions
and emotions; he raged abjectly, smiled abjectly, was abjectly sad;
his civilities and his indignations were alike abject. I am sure his
love would have been the most abject of sentiments -- but can one
imagine a loathsome insect in love? And his loathsomeness, too,
was abject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared
noble by his side. He has his place neither in the background nor
in the foreground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its
outskirts, enigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance of its
youth and of its naiveness.

'His position in any case could not have been other than extremely
miserable, yet it may very well be that he found some advantages
in it. Jim told me he had been received at first with an abject display
of the most amicable sentiments. "The fellow apparently couldn't
contain himself for joy," said Jim with disgust. "He flew at me
every morning to shake both my hands -- confound him! -- but I
could never tell whether there would be any breakfast. If I got three
meals in two days I considered myself jolly lucky, and he made me
sign a chit for ten dollars every week. Said he was sure Mr. Stein
did not mean him to keep me for nothing. Well -- he kept me on
nothing as near as possible. Put it down to the unsettled state of the
country, and made as if to tear his hair out, begging my pardon
twenty times a day, so that I had at last to entreat him not to worry.
It made me sick. Half the roof of his house had fallen in, and the
whole place had a mangy look, with wisps of dry grass sticking out
and the corners of broken mats flapping on every wall. He did his
best to make out that Mr. Stein owed him money on the last three
years' trading, but his books were all torn, and some were missing.
He tried to hint it was his late wife's fault. Disgusting scoundrel!
At last I had to forbid him to mention his late wife at all. It made
Jewel cry. I couldn't discover what became of all the trade-goods;
there was nothing in the store but rats, having a high old time
amongst a litter of brown paper and old sacking. I was assured on
every hand that he had a lot of money buried somewhere, but of
course could get nothing out of him. It was the most miserable
existence I led there in that wretched house. I tried to do my duty
by Stein, but I had also other matters to think of. When I escaped
to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and returned all my
things. It was done in a roundabout way, and with no end of
mystery, through a Chinaman who keeps a small shop here; but as
soon as I left the Bugis quarter and went to live with Cornelius it
began to be said openly that the Rajah had made up his mind to
have me killed before long. Pleasant, wasn't it? And I couldn't see
what there was to prevent him if he really had made up his mind.
The worst of it was, I couldn't help feeling I wasn't doing any good
either for Stein or for myself. Oh! it was beastly -- the whole six
weeks of it." '