APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/lord_jim/CHAP30_39

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                         CHAPTER 30


'He told me further that he didn't know what made him hang
on -- but of course we may guess. He sympathised deeply with the
defenceless girl, at the mercy of that "mean, cowardly scoundrel."
It appears Cornelius led her an awful life, stopping only short of
actual ill-usage, for which he had not the pluck, I suppose. He
insisted upon her calling him father -- "and with respect too -- with
respect," he would scream, shaking a little yellow fist in her face.
"I am a respectable man, and what are you? Tell me -- what are
you? You think I am going to bring up somebody else's child and
not be treated with respect? You ought to be glad I let you. Come --
say Yes, father.... No? ... You wait a bit." Thereupon he would
begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off with her
hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round
the house and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner,
where she would fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he
would stand at a distance and declaim filthy denunciations at her
back for half an hour at a stretch. "Your mother was a devil, a
deceitful devil -- and you too are a devil," he would shriek in a final
outburst, pick up a bit of dry earth or a handful of mud (there
was plenty of mud around the house), and fling it into her hair.
Sometimes, though, she would hold out full of scorn, confronting
him in silence, her face sombre and contracted, and only now and
then uttering a word or two that would make the other jump and
writhe with the sting. Jim told me these scenes were terrible. It was
indeed a strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The endless-
ness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling -- if you think of
it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi 'Nelyus the Malays called him,
with a grimace that meant many things) was a much-disappointed
man. I don't know what he had expected would be done for him in
consideration of his marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and
embezzle, and appropriate to himself for many years and in any
way that suited him best, the goods of Stein's Trading Company
(Stein kept the supply up unfalteringly as long as he could get his
skippers to take it there) did not seem to him a fair equivalent
for the sacrifice of his honourable name. Jim would have enjoyed
exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within an inch of his life; on the
other hand, the scenes were of so painful a character, so abominable,
that his impulse would be to get out of earshot, in order to spare
the girl's feelings. They left her agitated, speechless, clutching her
bosom now and then with a stony, desperate face, and then Jim
would lounge up and say unhappily, "Now -- come -- really -- what's
the use -- you must try to eat a bit," or give some such mark of
sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through the doorways,
across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and with
malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game,"
Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what
she answered? She said -- Jim told me impressively -- that if she had
not been sure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have
found the courage to kill him with her own hands. "Just fancy that!
The poor devil of a girl, almost a child, being driven to talk like
that," he exclaimed in horror. It seemed impossible to save her not
only from that mean rascal but even from herself! It wasn't that he
pitied her so much, he affirmed; it was more than pity; it was as if
he had something on his conscience, while that life went on. To
leave the house would have appeared a base desertion. He had
understood at last that there was nothing to expect from a longer
stay, neither accounts nor money, nor truth of any sort, but he
stayed on, exasperating Cornelius to the verge, I won't say of
insanity, but almost of courage. Meantime he felt all sorts of dangers
gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent over twice a
trusty servant to tell him seriously that he could do nothing for his
safety unless he would recross the river again and live amongst the
Bugis as at first. People of every condition used to call, often in the
dead of night, in order to disclose to him plots for his assassination.
He was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the bath-house.
Arrangements were being made to have him shot from a boat on
the river. Each of these informants professed himself to be his very
good friend. It was enough -- he told me -- to spoil a fellow's rest for
ever. Something of the kind was extremely possible -- nay, prob-
able -- but the lying warnings gave him only the sense af deadly
scheming going on all around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing
more calculated to shake the best of nerve. Finally, one night,
Cornelius himself, with a great apparatus of alarm and secrecy,
unfolded in solemn wheedling tones a little plan wherein for one
hundred dollars -- or even for eighty; let's say eighty -- he, Cornelius,
would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle Jim out of the river,
all safe. There was nothing else for it now -- if Jim cared a pin for
his life. What's eighty dollars? A trifle. An insignificant sum. While
he, Cornelius, who had to remain behind, was absolutely courting
death by this proof of devotion to Mr. Stein's young friend. The
sight of his abject grimacing was -- Jim told me -- very hard to bear:
he clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to and fro
with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pretended to
shed tears. "Your blood be on your own head," he squeaked at last,
and rushed out. It is a curious question how far Cornelius was
sincere in that performance. Jim confessed to me that he did not
sleep a wink after the fellow had gone. He lay on his back on a thin
mat spread over the bamboo flooring, trying idly to make out the
bare rafters, and listening to the rustlings in the torn thatch. A star
suddenly twinkled through a hole in the roof. His brain was in a
whirl; but, nevertheless, it was on that very night that he matured
his plan for overcoming Sherif Ali. It had been the thought of all
the moments he could spare from the hopeless investigation into
Stein's affairs, but the notion -- he says -- came to him then all at
once. He could see, as it were, the guns mounted on the top of the
hill. He got very hot and excited lying there; sleep was out of the
question more than ever. He jumped up, and went out barefooted
on the verandah. Walking silently, he came upon the girl, motion-
less against the wall, as if on the watch. In his then state of mind it
did not surprise him to see her up, nor yet to hear her ask in an
anxious whisper where Cornelius could be. He simply said he did
not know. She moaned a little, and peered into the campong. Every-
thing was very quiet. He was possessed by his new idea, and so full
of it that he could not help telling the girl all about it at once. She
listened, clapped her hands lightly, whispered softly her admir-
ation, but was evidently on the alert all the time. It seems he had
been used to make a confidant of her all along -- and that she on her
part could and did give him a lot of useful hints as to Patusan affairs
there is no doubt. He assured me more than once that he had never
found himself the worse for her advice. At any rate, he was proceed-
ing to explain his plan fully to her there and then, when she pressed
his arm once, and vanished from his side. Then Cornelius appeared
from somewhere, and, perceiving Jim, ducked sideways, as though
he had been shot at, and afterwards stood very still in the dusk. At
last he came forward prudently, like a suspicious cat. "There were
some fishermen there -- with fish," he said in a shaky voice. "To
sell fish -- you understand." . . . It must have been then two o'clock
in the morning -- a likely time for anybody to hawk fish about!

'Jim, however, let the statement pass, and did not give it a single
thought. Other matters occupied his mind, and besides he had
neither seen nor heard anything. He contented himself by saying,
"Oh!" absently, got a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there,
and leaving Cornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion -- that
made him embrace with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the veran-
dah as if his legs had failed -- went in again and lay down on his mat
to think. By-and-by he heard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A
voice whispered tremulously through the wall, "Are you asleep?"
"No! What is it?" he answered briskly, and there was an abrupt
movement outside, and then all was still, as if the whisperer had
been startled. Extremely annoyed at this, Jim came out impetu-
ously, and Cornelius with a faint shriek fled along the verandah as
far as the steps, where he hung on to the broken banister. Very
puzzled, Jim called out to him from the distance to know what the
devil he meant. "Have you given your consideration to what I spoke
to you about?" asked Cornelius, pronouncing the words with diffi-
culty, like a man in the cold fit of a fever. "No!" shouted Jim in a
passion. "I have not, and I don't intend to. I am going to live here,
in Patusan." "You shall d-d-die h-h-here," answered Cornelius,
still shaking violently, and in a sort of expiring voice. The whole
performance was so absurd and provoking that Jim didn't know
whether he ought to be amused or angry. "Not till I have seen you
tucked away, you bet," he called out, exasperated yet ready to
laugh. Half seriously (being excited with his own thoughts, you
know) he went on shouting, "Nothing can touch me! You can do
your damnedest." Somehow the shadowy Cornelius far off there
seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the annoyances and
difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself go -- his nerves
had been over-wrought for days -- and called him many pretty
names, -- swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an extra-
ordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite
beside himself -- defied all Patusan to scare him away -- declared he
would make them all dance to his own tune yet, and so on, in a
menacing, boasting strain. Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he
said. His ears burned at the bare recollection. Must have been off
his chump in some way.... The girl, who was sitting with us,
nodded her little head at me quickly, frowned faintly, and said, "I
heard him," with child-like solemnity. He laughed and blushed.
What stopped him at last, he said, was the silence, the complete
deathlike silence, of the indistinct figure far over there, that seemed
to hang collapsed, doubled over the rail in a weird immobility.
He came to his senses, and ceasing suddenly, wondered gready at
himself. He watched for a while. Not a stir, not a sound. "Exactly
as if the chap had died while I had been making all that noise," he
said. He was so ashamed of himself that he went indoors in a hurry
without another word, and flung himself down again. The row
seemed to have done him good though, because he went to sleep
for the rest of the night like a baby. Hadn't slept like that for weeks.
"But I didn't sleep," struck in the girl, one elbow on the table and
nursing her cheek. "I watched." Her big eyes flashed, rolling a
little, and then she fixed them on my face intently.'


                       CHAPTER 31


'You may imagine with what interest I listened. All these details
were perceived to have some significance twenty-four hours later.
In the morning Cornelius made no allusion to the events of the
night. "I suppose you will come back to my poor house," he mut-
tered surlily, slinking up just as Jim was entering the canoe to go
over to Doramin's campong. Jim only nodded, without looking at
him. "You find it good fun, no doubt," muttered the other in a
sour tone. Jim spent the day with the old nakhoda, preaching the
necessity of vigorous action to the principal men of the Bugis com-
munity, who had been summoned for a big talk. He remembered
with pleasure how very eloquent and persuasive he had been. "I
managed to put some backbone into them that time, and no mis-
take," he said. Sherif Ali's last raid had swept the outskirts of the
settlement, and some women belonging to the town had been car-
ried off to the stockade. Sherif Ali's emissaries had been seen in the
market-place the day before, strutting about haughtily in white
cloaks, and boasting of the Rajah's friendship for their master. One
of them stood forward in the shade of a tree, and, leaning on the
long barrel of a rifle, exhorted the people to prayer and repentance,
advising them to kill all the strangers in their midst, some of whom,
he said, were infidels and others even worse -- children of Satan in
the guise of Moslems. It was reported that several of the Rajah's
people amongst the listeners had loudly expressed their appro-
bation. The terror amongst the common people was intense. Jim,
immensely pleased with his day's work, crossed the river again
before sunset.

'As he had got the Bugis irretrievably committed to action, and
had made himself responsible for success on his own head, he was
so elated that in the lightness of his heart he absolutely tried to be
civil with Cornelius. But Cornelius became wildly jovial in
response, and it was almost more than he could stand, he says, to
hear his little squeaks of false laughter, to see him wriggle and blink,
and suddenly catch hold of his chin and crouch low over the table
with a distracted stare. The girl did not show herself, and Jim
retired early. When he rose to say good-night, Cornelius jumped
up, knocking his chair over, and ducked out of sight as if to pick
up something he had dropped. His good-night came huskily from
under the table. Jim was amazed to see him emerge with a dropping
jaw, and staring, stupidly frightened eyes. He clutched the edge of
the table. "What's the matter? Are you unwell?" asked Jim. "Yes,
yes, yes. A great colic in my stomach," says the other; and it is
Jim's opinion that it was perfectly true. If so, it was, in view of his
contemplated action, an abject sign of a still imperfect callousness
for which he must be given all due credit.

'Be it as it may, Jim's slumbers were disturbed by a dream of
heavens like brass resounding with a great voice, which called upon
him to Awake! Awake! so loud that, notwithstanding his desperate
determination to sleep on, he did wake up in reality. The glare of
a red spluttering conflagration going on in mid-air fell on his eyes.
Coils of black thick smoke curved round the head of some appar-
ition, some unearthly being, all in white, with a severe, drawn,
anxious face. After a second or so he recognised the girl. She was
holding a dammar torch at arm's-length aloft, and in a persistent,
urgent monotone she was repeating, "Get up! Get up! Get up!"

'Suddenly he leaped to his feet; at once she put into his hand a
revolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging on a nail, but
loaded this time. He gripped it in silence, bewildered, blinking in
the light. He wondered what he could do for her.

'She asked rapidly and very low, "Can you face four men with
this?" He laughed while narrating this part at the recollection of his
polite alacrity. It seems he made a great display of it. "Certainly --
of course -- certainly -- command me." He was not properly awake,
and had a notion of being very civil in these extraordinary circum-
stances, of showing his unquestioning, devoted readiness. She left
the room, and he followed her; in the passage they disturbed an old
hag who did the casual cooking of the household, though she was
so decrepit as to be hardly able to understand human speech. She
got up and hobbled behind them, mumbling toothlessly. On the
verandah a hammock of sail-cloth, belonging to Cornelius, swayed
lightly to the touch of Jim's elbow. It was empty.

'The Patusan establishment, like all the posts of Stein's Trading
Company, had originally consisted of four buildings. Two of them
were represented by two heaps of sticks, broken bamboos, rotten
thatch, over which the four corner-posts of hardwood leaned sadly
at different angles: the principal storeroom, however, stood yet,
facing the agent's house. It was an oblong hut, built of mud and
clay; it had at one end a wide door of stout planking, which so far
had not come off the hinges, and in one of the side walls there was
a square aperture, a sort of window, with three wooden bars. Before
descending the few steps the girl turned her face over her shoulder
and said quickly, "You were to be set upon while you slept." Jim
tells me he experienced a sense of deception. It was the old story.
He was weary of these attempts upon his life. He had had his fill of
these alarms. He was sick of them. He assured me he was angry
with the girl for deceiving him. He had followed her under the
impression that it was she who wanted his help, and now he had
half a mind to turn on his heel and go back in disgust. "Do you
know," he commented profoundly, "I rather think I was not quite
myself for whole weeks on end about that time." "Oh yes. You
were though," I couldn't help contradicting.

'But she moved on swiftly, and he followed her into the court-
yard. All its fences had fallen in a long time ago; the neighbours'
buffaloes would pace in the morning across the open space, snorting
profoundly, without haste; the very jungle was invading it already.
Jim and the girl stopped in the rank grass. The light in which they
stood made a dense blackness all round, and only above their heads
there was an opulent glitter of stars. He told me it was a beautiful
night -- quite cool, with a little stir of breeze from the river. It seems
he noticed its friendly beauty. Remember this is a love story I am
telling you now. A lovely night seemed to breathe on them a soft
caress. The flame of the torch streamed now and then with a flutter-
ing noise like a flag, and for a time this was the only sound. "They
are in the storeroom waiting," whispered the girl; "they are waiting
for the signal." "Who's to give it?" he asked. She shook the torch,
which blazed up after a shower of sparks. "Only you have been
sleeping so restlessly," she continued in a murmur; "I watched
your sleep, too." "You!" he exclaimed, craning his neck to look
about him. "You think I watched on this night only!" she said,
with a sort of despairing indignation..

'He says it was as if he had received a blow on the chest. He
gasped. He thought he had been an awful brute somehow, and he
felt remorseful, touched, happy, elated. This, let me remind you
again, is a love story; you can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive
imbecility, the exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station
in torchlight, as if they had come there on purpose to have it out
for the edification of concealed murderers. If Sherif Ali's emissaries
had been possessed -- as Jim remarked -- of a pennyworth of spunk,
this was the time to make a rush. His heart was thumping -- not
with fear -- but he seemed to hear the grass rustle, and he stepped
smartly out of the light. Something dark, imperfectly seen, flitted
rapidly out of sight. He called out in a strong voice, "Cornelius! O
Cornelius!" A profound silence succeeded: his voice did not seem
to have carried twenty feet. Again the girl was by his side. "Fly!"
she said. The old woman was coming up; her broken figure hovered
in crippled little jumps on the edge of the light; they heard her
mumbling, and a light, moaning sigh. "Fly!" repeated the girl
excitedly. "They are frightened now -- this light -- the voices. They
know you are awake now -- they know you are big, strong, fear-
less . . ." "If I am all that," he began; but she interrupted him:
"Yes -- to-night! But what of to-morrow night? Of the next night?
Of the night after -- of all the many, many nights? Can I be always
watching?" A sobbing catch of her breath affected him beyond the
power of words.

'He told me that he had never felt so small, so powerless -- and
as to courage, what was the good of it? he thought. He was so
helpless that even flight seemed of no use; and though she kept
on whispering, "Go to Doramin, go to Doramin," with feverish
insistence, he realised that for him there was no refuge from that
loneliness which centupled all his dangers except -- in her. "I
thought," he said to me, "that if I went away from her it would be
the end of everything somehow." Only as they couldn't stop there
for ever in the middle of that courtyard, he made up his mind to go
and look into the storehouse. He let her follow him without thinking
of any protest, as if they had been indissolubly united. "I am fear-
less -- am I?" he muttered through his teeth. She restrained his arm.
"Wait till you hear my voice," she said, and, torch in hand, ran
lightly round the corner. He remained alone in the darkness, his
face to the door: not a sound, not a breath came from the other side.
The old hag let out a dreary groan somewhere behind his back. He
heard a high-pitched almost screaming call from the girl. "Now!
Push!" He pushed violently; the door swung with a creak and a
clatter, disclosing to his intense astonishment the low dungeon-like
interior illuminated by a lurid, wavering glare. A turmoil of smoke
eddied down upon an empty wooden crate in the middle of the
floor, a litter of rags and straw tried to soar, but only stirred feebly
in the draught. She had thrust the light through the bars of the
window. He saw her bare round arm extended and rigid, holding
up the torch with the steadiness of an iron bracket. A conical ragged
heap of old mats cumbered a distant corner almost to the ceiling,
and that was all.

'He explained to me that he was bitterly disappointed at this. His
fortitude had been tried by so many warnings, he had been for
weeks surrounded by so many hints of danger, that he wanted the
relief of some reality, of something tangible that he could meet. "It
would have cleared the air for a couple of hours at least, if you know
what I mean," he said to me. "Jove! I had been living for days with
a stone on my chest. " Now at last he had thought he would get hold
of something, and -- nothing! Not a trace, not a sign of anybody.
He had raised his weapon as the door flew open, but now his arm
fell. "Fire! Defend yourself," the girl outside cried in an agonising
voice. She, being in the dark and with her arm thrust in to the
shoulder through the small hole, couldn't see what was going on,
and she dared not withdraw the torch now to run round. "There's
nobody here!" yelled Jim contemptuously, but his impulse to burst
into a resentful exasperated laugh died without a sound: he had
perceived in the very act of turning away that he was exchanging
glances with a pair of eyes in the heap of mats. He saw a shifting
gleam of whites. "Come out!" he cried in a fury, a little doubtful,
and a dark-faced head, a head without a body, shaped itself in the
rubbish, a strangely detached head, that looked at him with a steady
scowl. Next moment the whole mound stirred, and with a low grunt
a man emerged swiftly, and bounded towards Jim. Behind him the
mats as it were jumped and flew, his right arm was raised with a
crooked elbow, and the dull blade of a kriss protruded from his fist
held off, a little above his head. A cloth wound tight round his
loins seemed dazzlingly white on his bronze skin; his naked body
distened as if wet.

'Jim noted all this. He told me he was experiencing a feeling of
unutterable relief, of vengeful elation. He held his shot, he says,
deliberately. He held it for the tenth part of a second, for three
strides of the man -- an unconscionable time. He held it for the
pleasure of saying to himself, That's a dead man! He was absolutely
positive and certain. He let him come on because it did not matter.
A dead man, anyhow. He noticed the dilated nostrils, the wide eyes,
the intent, eager stillness of the face, and then he fired.

'The explosion in that confined space was stunning. He stepped
back a pace. He saw the man jerk his head up, fling his arms for-
ward, and drop the kriss. He ascertained afterwards that he had
shot him through the mouth, a little upwards, the bullet coming
out high at the back of the skull. With the impetus of his rush the
man drove straight on, his face suddenly gaping disfigured, with
his hands open before him gropingly, as though blinded, and landed
with terrific violence on his forehead, just short of Jim's bare toes.
Jim says he didn't lose the smallest detail of all this. He found
himself calm, appeased, without rancour, without uneasiness, as if
the death of that man had atoned for everything. The place was
getting very full of sooty smoke from the torch, in which the
unswaying flame burned blood-red without a flicker. He walked in
resolutely, striding over the dead body, and covered with his
revolver another naked figure outlined vaguely at the other end. As
he was about to pull the trigger, the man threw away with force a
short heavy spear, and squatted submissively on his hams, his back
to the wall and his clasped hands between his legs. "You want your
life?" Jim said. The other made no sound. "How many more of
you?" asked Jim again. "Two more, Tuan," said the man very
softly, looking with big fascinated eyes into the muzzle of the
revolver. Accordingly, two more crawled from under the mats,
holding out ostentatiously their empty hands.'


                        CHAPTER 32


'Jim took up an advantageous position and shepherded them out
in a bunch through the doorway: all that time the torch had
remained vertical in the grip of a little hand, without so much as
a tremble. The three men obeyed him, perfectly mute, moving
automatically. He ranged them in a row. "Link arms!" he ordered.
They did so. "The first who withdraws his arm or turns his head is
a dead man," he said. "March!" They stepped out together, rigidly;
he followed, and at the side the girl, in a trailing white gown, her
black hair falling as low as her waist, bore the light. Erect and
swaying, she seemed to glide without touching the earth; the only
sound was the silky swish and rustle of the long grass. "Stop!" cried
Jim.

'The river-bank was steep; a great freshness ascended, the light
fell on the edge of smooth dark water frothing without a ripple;
right and left the shapes of the houses ran together below the sharp
outlines of the roofs. "Take my greetings to Sherif Ali -- till I come
myself," said Jim. Not one head of the three budged. "Jump!" he
thundered. The three splashes made one splash, a shower flew up,
black heads bobbed convulsively, and disappeared; but a great
blowing and spluttering went on, growing faint, for they were
diving industriously, in great fear of a parting shot. Jim turned to
the girl, who had been a silent and attentive observer. His heart
seemed suddenly to grow too big for his breast and choke him in
the hollow of his throat. This probably made him speechless for so
long, and after returning his gaze she flung the burning torch with
a wide sweep of the arm into the river. The ruddy fiery glare, taking
a long flight through the night, sank with a vicious hiss, and the
calm soft starlight descended upon them, unchecked.

'He did not tell me what it was he said when at last he recovered
his voice. I don't suppose he could be very eloquent. The world
was still, the night breathed on them, one of those nights that seem
created for the sheltering of tenderness, and there are moments
when our souls, as if freed from their dark envelope, glow with an
exquisite sensibility that makes certain silences more lucid than
speeches. As to the girl, he told me, "She broke down a bit. Excite-
ment -- don't you know. Reaction. Deucedly tired she must have
been -- and all that kind of thing. And -- and -- hang it all -- she was
fond of me, don't you see.... I too... didn't know, of
course . . . never entered my head . . ."

'Then he got up and began to walk about in some agitation. "I --
I love her dearly. More than I can tell. Of course one cannot tell.
You take a different view of your actions when you come to under-
stand, when you are made to understand every day that your exist-
ence is necessary -- you see, absolutely necessary -- to another
person. I am made to feel that. Wonderful! But only try to think
what her life has been. It is too extravagantly awful! Isn't it? And
me finding her here like this -- as you may go out for a stroll and
come suddenly upon somebody drowning in a lonely dark place.
Jove! No time to lose. Well, it is a trust too . . . I believe I am equal
to it . . ."

'I must tell you the girl had left us to ourselves some time before.
He slapped his chest. "Yes! I feel that, but I believe I am equal to
all my luck!" He had the gift of finding a special meaning in every-
thing that happened to him. This was the view he took of his love
affair; it was idyllic, a little solemn, and also true, since his belief
had all the unshakable seriousness of youth. Some time after, on
another occasion, he said to me, "I've been only two years here,
and now, upon my word, I can't conceive being able to live any-
where else. The very thought of the world outside is enough to give
me a fright; because, don't you see," he continued, with downcast
eyes watching the action of his boot busied in squashing thoroughly
a tiny bit of dried mud (we were strolling on the river-bank) --
"because I have not forgotten why I came here. Not yet!"

'I refrained from looking at him, but I think I heard a short sigh;
we took a turn or two in silence. "Upon my soul and conscience,"
he began again, "if such a thing can be forgotten, then I think I
have a right to dismiss it from my mind. Ask any man here" . . .
his voice changed. "Is it not strange," he went on in a gentle, almost
yearning tone, "that all these people, all these people who would
do anything for me, can never be made to understand? Never! If you
disbelieved me I could not call them up. It seems hard, somehow. I
am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who
is brave -- who is true -- who is just -- who is it they would trust with
their lives? -- they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never
know the real, real truth . . ."

'That's what he said to me on my last day with him. I did not let
a murmur escape me: I felt he was going to say more, and come no
nearer to the root of the matter. The sun, whose concentrated glare
dwarfs the earth into a restless mote of dust, had sunk behind the
forest, and the diffused light from an opal sky seemed to cast upon
a world without shadows and without brilliance the illusion of a
calm and pensive greatness. I don't know why, listening to him, I
should have noted so distinctly the gradual darkening of the river,
of the air; the irresistible slow work of the night settling silently on
all the visible forms, effacing the oudines, burying the shapes
deeper and deeper, like a steady fall of impalpable black dust.

' "Jove!" he began abruptly, "there are days when a fellow is too
absurd for anything; only I know I can tell you what I like. I talk
about being done with it -- with the bally thing at the back of my
head . . . Forgetting . . . Hang me if I know! I can think of it
quietly. After all, what has it proved? Nothing. I suppose you don't
think so . . ."

'I made a protesting murmur.

' "No matter," he said. "I am satisfied . . . nearly. I've got to
look only at the face of the first man that comes along, to regain my
confidence. They can't be made to understand what is going on in
me. What of that? Come! I haven't done so badly."

' "Not so badly," I said.

' "But all the same, you wouldn't like to have me aboard your
own ship hey?"

' "Confound you!" I cried. "Stop this."

' "Aha! You see," he said, crowing, as it were, over me placidly.
"Only," he went on, "you just try to tell this to any of them here.
They would think you a fool, a liar, or worse. And so I can stand
it. I've done a thing or two for them, but this is what they have
done for me."

' "My dear chap," I cried, "you shall always remain for them an
insoluble mystery." Thereupon we were silent.

' "Mystery," he repeated, before looking up. "Well, then let me
always remain here."

'After the sun had set, the darkness seemed to drive upon us,
borne in every faint puff of the breeze. In the middle of a hedged
path I saw the arrested, gaunt, watchful, and apparently one-legged
silhouette of Tamb' Itam; and across the dusky space my eye
detected something white moving to and fro behind the supports
of the roof. As soon as Jim, with Tamb' Itam at his heels, had
started upon his evening rounds, I went up to the house alone,
and, unexpectedly, found myself waylaid by the girl, who had been
clearly waiting for this opportunity.

'It is hard to tell you what it was precisely she wanted to wrest
from me. Obviously it would be something very simple -- the sim-
plest impossibility in the world; as, for instance, the exact descrip-
tion of the form of a cloud. She wanted an assurance, a statement,
a promise, an explanation -- I don't know how to call it: the thing
has no name. It was dark under the projecting roof, and all I could
see were the flowing lines of her gown, the pale small oval of her
face, with the white flash of her teeth, and, turned towards me, the
big sombre orbits of her eyes, where there seemed to be a faint stir,
such as you may fancy you can detect when you plunge your gaze
to the bottom of an immensely deep well. What is it that moves
there? you ask yourself. Is it a blind monster or only a lost gleam
from the universe? It occurred to me -- don't laugh -- that all things
being dissimilar, she was more inscrutable in her childish ignorance
than the Sphinx propounding childish riddles to wayfarers. She
had been carried off to Patusan before her eyes were open. She had
grown up there; she had seen nothing, she had known nothing, she
had no conception of anything. I ask myself whether she were sure
that anything else existed. What notions she may have formed of
the outside world is to me inconceivable: all that she knew of its
inhabitants were a betrayed woman and a sinister pantaloon. Her
lover also came to her from there, gifted with irresistible seductions;
but what would become of her if he should return to these inconceiv-
able regions that seemed always to claim back their own? Her
mother had warned her of this with tears, before she died . . .

'She had caught hold of my arm firmly, and as soon as I had
stopped she had withdrawn her hand in haste. She was audacious
and shrinking. She feared nothing, but she was checked by the
profound incertitude and the extreme strangeness -- a brave person
groping in the dark. I belonged to this Unknown that might claim
Jim for its own at any moment. I was, as it were, in the secret of its
nature and of its intentions -- the confidant of a threatening
mystery -- armed with its power, perhaps! I believe she supposed I
could with a word whisk Jim away out of her very arms; it is my
sober conviction she went through agonies of apprehension during
my long talks with Jim; through a real and intolerable anguish that
might have conceivably driven her into plotting my murder, had
the fierceness of her soul been equal to the tremendous situation it
had created. This is my impression, and it is all I can give you: the
whole thing dawned gradually upon me, and as it got clearer and
clearer I was overwhelmed by a slow incredulous amazement. She
made me believe her, but there is no word that on my lips could
render the effect of the headlong and vehement whisper, of the soft,
passionate tones, of the sudden breathless pause and the appealing
movement of the white arms extended swiftly. They fell; the ghostly
figure swayed like a slender tree in the wind, the pale oval of the
face drooped; it was impossible to distinguish her features, the
darkness of the eyes was unfathomable; two wide sleeves uprose in
the dark like unfolding wings, and she stood silent, holding her
head in her hands.'


                    CHAPTER 33


'I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, her pretty
beauty, which had the simple charm and the delicate vigour of a
wild flower, her pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me
with almost the strength of her own unreasonable and natural fear.
She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the
unknown infinitely vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows,
for all the world that neither cared for Jim nor needed him in the
least. I would have been ready enough to answer for the indifference
of the teeming earth but for the reflection that he too belonged to
this mysterious unknown of her fears, and that, however much I
stood for, I did not stand for him. This made me hesitate. A murmur
of hopeless pain unsealed my lips. I began by protesting that I at
least had come with no intention to take Jim away.

'Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still
as a marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship,
business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him
stay.... "They always leave us," she murmured. The breath of
sad wisdom from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers
seemed to pass in a faint sigh.... Nothing, I said, could separate
Jim from her.

'It is my firm conviction now; it was my conviction at the time;
it was the only possible conclusion from the facts of the case. It was
not made more certain by her whispering in a tone in which one
speaks to oneself, "He swore this to me." "Did you ask him?" I
said.

'She made a step nearer. "No. Never!" She had asked him only
to go away. It was that night on the river-bank, after he had killed
the man -- after she had flung the torch in the water because he was
looking at her so. There was too much light, and the danger was
over then -- for a little time -- for a little time. He said then he would
not abandon her to Cornelius. She had insisted. She wanted him to
leave her. He said that he could not -- that it was impossible. He
trembled while he said this. She had felt him tremble.... One
does not require much imagination to see the scene, almost to hear
their whispers. She was afraid for him too. I believe that then she
saw in him only a predestined victim of dangers which she under-
stood better than himself. Though by nothing but his mere presence
he had mastered her heart, had filled all her thoughts, and had
possessed himself of all her affections, she underestimated his
chances of success. It is obvious that at about that time everybody
was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly speaking he
didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view. He
confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had
played in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif
Ali himself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for
the white man. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious
grounds, I believe. A simple act of piety (and so far infinitely meri-
torious), but otherwise without much importance. In the last part
of this opinion Cornelius concurred. "Honourable sir," he argued
abjectly on the only occasion he managed to have me to himself --
"honourable sir, how was I to know? Who was he? What could he
do to make people believe him? What did Mr. Stein mean sending
a boy like that to talk big to an old servant? I was ready to save him
for eighty dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn't the fool go?
Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger?" He grovelled
in spirit before me, with his body doubled up insinuatingly and his
hands hovering about my knees, as though he were ready to
embrace my legs. "What's eighty dollars? An insignificant sum to
give to a defenceless old man ruined for life by a deceased she-
devil." Here he wept. But I anticipate. I didn't that night chance
upon Cornelius till I had had it out with the girl.

'She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to
leave the country. It was his danger that was foremost in her
thoughts -- even if she wanted to save herself too -- perhaps uncon-
sciously: but then look at the warning she had, look at the lesson
that could be drawn from every moment of the recently ended life
in which all her memories were centred. She fell at his feet -- she
told me so -- there by the river, in the discreet light of stars which
showed nothing except great masses of silent shadows, indefinite
open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the broad stream made it
appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up. He lifted her up,
and then she would struggle no more. Of course not. Strong arms,
a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely little head
upon. The need -- the infinite need -- of all this for the aching heart,
for the bewildered mind; -- the promptings of youth -- the necessity
of the moment. What would you have? One understands -- unless
one is incapable of understanding anything under the sun. And so
she was content to be lifted up -- and held. "You know -- Jove! this
is serious -- no nonsense in it!" as Jim had whispered hurriedly with
a troubled concerned face on the threshold of his house. I don't
know so much about nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted
in their romance: they came together under the shadow of a life's
disaster, like knight and maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst
haunted ruins. The starlight was good enough for that story, a light
so faint and remote that it cannot resolve shadows into shapes, and
show the other shore of a stream. I did look upon the stream that
night and from the very place; it rolled silent and as black as Styx:
the next day I went away, but I am not likely to forget what it was
she wanted to be saved from when she entreated him to leave her
while there was time. She told me what it was, calmed -- she was
now too passionately interested for mere excitement -- in a voice as
quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost figure. She told me, "I
didn't want to die weeping." I thought I had not heard aright.

' "You did not want to die weeping?" I repeated after her. "Like
my mother," she added readily. The outlines of her white shape
did not stir in the least. "My mother had wept bitterly before she
died," she explained. An inconseivable calmness seemed to have
risen from the ground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of
a flood in the night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions.
There came upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing
in the midst of waters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown
depths. She went on explaining that, during the last moments,
being alone with her mother, she had to leave the side of the couch
to go and set her back against the door, in order to keep Cornelius
out. He desired to get in, and kept on drumming with both fists,
only desisting now and again to shout huskily, "Let me in! Let me
in! Let me in!" In a far corner upon a few mats the moribund
woman, already speechless and unable to lift her arm, rolled her
head over, and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to
command - "No! No!" and the obedient daughter, setting her
shoulders with all her strength against the door, was looking on.
"The tears fell from her eyes -- and then she died," concluded the
girl in an imperturbable monotone, which more than anything else,
more than the white statuesque immobility of her person, more
than mere words could do, troubled my mind profoundly with the
passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It had the power to drive
me out of my conception of existence, out of that shelter each of us
makes for himself to creep under in moments of danger, as a tortoise
withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had a view of a world
that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in
truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny as arrangement
of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive. But still --
it was only a moment: I went back into my shell directly. One must --
don't you know? -- though I seemed to have lost all my words in the
chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second or two
beyond the pale. These came back, too, very soon, for words also
belong to the sheltering conception of light and order which is our
refuge. I had them ready at my disposal before she whispered
softly, "He swore he would never leave me, when we stood there
alone! He swore to me!"... "And it is possible that you -- you! do
not believe him?" I asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely
shocked. Why couldn't she believe? Wherefore this craving for
incertitude, this clinging to fear, as if incertitude and fear had been
the safeguards of her love. It was monstrous. She should have made
for herself a shelter of inexpugnable peace out of that honest affec-
tion. She had not the knowledge -- not the skill perhaps. The night
had come on apace; it had grown pitch-dark where we were, so that
without stirring she had faded like the intangible form of a wistful
and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard her quiet whisper again,
"Other men had sworn the same thing." It was like a meditative
comment on some thoughts full of sadness, of awe. And she added,
still lower if possible, "My father did." She paused the time to draw
an inaudible breath. "Her father too." . . . These were the things
she knew! At once I said, "Ah! but he is not like that." This, it
seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time the strange
still whisper wandering dreamily in the air stole into my ears. "Why
is he different? Is he better? Is he . . ." "Upon my word of hon-
our," I broke in, "I believe he is." We subdued our tones to a
mysterious pitch. Amongst the huts of Jim's workmen (they were
mostly liberated slaves from the Sherif's stockade) somebody
started a shrill, drawling song. Across the river a big fire (at Dora-
min's, I think) made a glowing ball, completely isolated in the
night. "Is he more true?" she murmured. "Yes," I said. "More true
than any other man," she repeated in lingering accents. "Nobody
here," I said, "would dream of doubting his word -- nobody would
dare -- except you."

'I think she made a movement at this. "More brave," she went
on in a changed tone. "Fear will never drive him away from you,"
I said a little nervously. The song stopped short on a shrill note,
and was succeeded by several voices talking in the distance. Jim's
voice too. I was struck by her silence. "What has he been telling
you? He has been telling you something?" I asked. There was no
answer. "What is it he told you?" I insisted.

' "Do you think I can tell you? How am I to know? How am I to
understand?" she cried at last. There was a stir. I believe she was
wringing her hands. "There is something he can never forget."

' "So much the better for you," I said gloomily.

' "What is it? What is it?" She put an extraordinary force of
appeal into her supplicating tone. "He says he had been afraid.
How can I believe this? Am I a mad woman to believe this? You all
remember something! You all go back to it. What is it? You tell
me! What is this thing? Is it alive? -- is it dead? I hate it. It is cruel.
Has it got a face and a voice -- this calamity? Will he see it -- will he
hear it? In his sleep perhaps when he cannot see me -- and then arise
and go. Ah! I shall never forgive him. My mother had forgiven --
but I, never! Will it be a sign -- a call?"

'It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slum-
bers -- and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor
mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to
wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the
other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the pas-
sions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to
melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits
evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each
other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I --
I alone of us dwellers in the flesh -- have shuddered in the hopeless
chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its expression was
her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them, how
she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their
inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful,
absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough
to strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain
it could not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These
few sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted
lives tragic to my mind. It was impossible to make her understand.
I chafed silendy at my impotence. And Jim, too -- poor devil! Who
would need him? Who would remember him? He had what he
wanted. His very existence probably had been forgotten by this
time. They had mastered their fates. They were tragic.

'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part
was to speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I
was deeply moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would
have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, torment-
ing itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about
the cruel wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear!
Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do
you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head,
take it by its spectral throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while
you dream, and are glad to make your escape with wet hair and
every limb shaking. The bullet is not run, the blade not forged, the
man not born; even the winged words of truth drop at your feet
like lumps of lead. You require for such a desperate encounter an
enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too subtle to be found
on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters!

'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of sullen
anger in it too. Jim's voice, suddenly raised with a stern intonation,
carried across the courtyard, reproving the carelessness of some
dumb sinner by the river-side. Nothing -- I said, speaking in a
distinct murmur -- there could be nothing, in that unknown world
she fancied so eager to rob her of her happiness, there was nothing,
neither living nor dead, there was no face, no voice, no power, that
could tear Jim from her side. I drew breath and she whispered
softly, "He told me so." "He told you the truth," I said.
"Nothing," she sighed out, and abruptly turned upon me with a
barely audible intensity of tone: "Why did you come to us from out
there? He speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you --
do you want him?" A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept into our
hurried mutters. "I shall never come again," I said bitterly. "And
I don't want him. No one wants him." "No one," she repeated in
a tone of doubt. "No one," I affirmed, feeling myself swayed by
some strange excitement. "You think him strong, wise, courageous,
great -- why not believe him to be true too? I shall go to-morrow --
and that is the end. You shall never be troubled by a voice from
there again. This world you don't know is too big to miss him. You
understand? Too big. You've got his heart in your hand. You must
feel that. You must know that." "Yes, I know that," she breathed
out, hard and still, as a statue might whisper.

'I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had wished to do?
I am not sure now. At the time I was animated by an inexplicable
ardour, as if before some great and necessary task -- the influence
of the moment upon my mental and emotional state. There are in
all our lives such moments, such influences, coming from the out-
side, as it were, irresistible, incomprehensible -- as if brought about
by the mysterious conjunctions of the planets. She owned, as I had
put it to her, his heart. She had that and everything else -- if she
could only believe it. What I had to tell her was that in the whole
world there was no one who ever would need his heart, his mind,
his hand. It was a common fate, and yet it seemed an awful thing
to say of any man. She listened without a word, and her stillness
now was like the protest of an invincible unbelief. What need she
care for the world beyond the forests? I asked. From all the multi-
tudes that peopled the vastness of that unknown there would come,
I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a call nor a sign for him.
Never. I was carried away. Never! Never! I remember with wonder
the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed. I had the illusion of having
got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed the whole real thing has
left behind the detailed and amazing impression of a dream. Why
should she fear? She knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He
was all that. Certainly. He was more. He was great -- invincible --
and the world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not
even know tlim.

'I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble
dry sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in
the middle of the river seemed to make it infinite. "Why?" she
murmured. I felt that sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle.
The spectre vas trying to slip out of my grasp. "Why?" she repeated
louder; "tell me!" And as I remained confounded, she stamped
with her foot like a spoilt child. "Why? Speak." "You want to
know?" I asked in a fury. "Yes!" she cried. "Because he is not good
enough," I said brutally. During the moment's pause I noticed the
fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating the circle of its glow like
an amazed stare, and contract suddenly to a red pin-point. I only
knew how close to me she had been when I felt the clutch of her
fingers on my forearm. Without raising her voice, she threw into it
an infinity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair.

' "This is the very thing he said.... You lie!"

'The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. "Hear
me out!" I entreated. She caught her breath tremulously, flung my
arm away. "Nobody, nobody is good enough," I began with the
greatest earnestness. I could hear the sobbing labour of her breath
frightfully quickened. I hung my head. What was the use? Foot-
steps were approaching; I slipped away without another word....'


                        CHAPTER 34


Marlow swung his legs out, got up quickly, and staggered a little,
as though he had been set down after a rush through space. He
leaned his back against the balustrade and faced a disordered array
of long cane chairs. The bodies prone in them seemed startled out
of their torpor by his movement. One or two sat up as if alarmed;
here and there a cigar glowed yet; Marlow looked at them all with
the eyes of a man returning from the excessive remoteness of a
dream. A throat was cleared; a calm voice encouraged negligently,
'Well.'

'Nothing,' said Marlow with a slight start. 'He had told her --
that's all. She did not believe him -- nothing more. As to myself, I
do not know whether it be just, proper, decent for me to rejoice or
to be sorry. For my part, I cannot say what I believed -- indeed I
don't know to this day, and never shall probably. But what did the
poor devil believe himself? Truth shall prevail -- don't you know.
Magna est veritas el . . . Yes, when it gets a chance. There is a law,
no doubt -- and likewise a law regulates your luck in the throwing
of dice. It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard,
Fortune -- the ally of patient Time -- that holds an even and scrupu-
lous balance. Both of us had said the very same thing. Did we both
speak the truth -- or one of us did -- or neither? . . .'

Marlow paused, crossed his arms on his breast, and in a changed
tone --

'She said we lied. Poor soul! Well -- let's leave it to Chance, whose
ally is Time, that cannot be hurried, and whose enemy is Death,
that will not wait. I had retreated -- a little cowed, I must own. I
had tried a fall with fear itself and got thrown -- of course. I had
only succeeded in adding to her anguish the hint of some mysterious
collusion, of an inexplicable and incomprehensible conspiracy to
keep her for ever in the dark. And it had come easily, naturally,
unavoidably, by his act, by her own act! It was as though I had been
shown the working of the implacable destiny of which we are the
victims -- and the tools. It was appalling to think of the girl whom
I had left standing there motionless; Jim's footsteps had a fateful
sound as he tramped by, without seeing me, in his heavy laced
boots. "What? No lights!" he said in a loud, surprised voice. "What
are you doing in the dark -- you two?" Next moment he caught sight
of her, I suppose. "Hallo, girl!" he cried cheerily. "Hallo, boy!"
she answered at once, with amazing pluck.

'This was their usual greeting to each other, and the bit of swagger
she would put into her rather high but sweet voice was very droll,
pretty, and childlike. It delighted Jim greatly. This was the last
occasion on which I heard them exchange this familiar hail, and it
struck a chill into my heart. There was the high sweet voice, the
pretty effort, the swagger; but it all seemed to die out prematurely,
and the playful call sounded like a moan. It was too confoundedly
awful. "What have you done with Marlow?" Jim was asking; and
then, "Gone down -- has he? Funny I didn't meet him.... You
there, Marlow?"

'I didn't answer. I wasn't going in -- not yet at any rate. I really
couldn't. While he was calling me I was engaged in making my
escape through a little gate leading out upon a stretch of newly
cleared ground. No; I couldn't face them yet. I walked hastily with
lowered head along a trodden path. The ground rose gently, the
few big trees had been felled, the undergrowth had been cut down
and the grass fired. He had a mind to try a coffee-plantation there.
The big hill, rearing its double summit coal-black in the clear yellow
glow of the rising moon, seemed to cast its shadow upon the ground
prepared for that experiment. He was going to try ever so many
experiments; I had admired his energy, his enterprise, and his
shrewdness. Nothing on earth seeemed less real now than his plans,
his energy, and his enthusiasm; and raising my eyes, I saw part of
the moon glittering through the bushes at the bottom of the chasm.
For a moment it looked as though the smooth disc, falling from its
place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled to the bottom of that
precipice: its ascending movement was like a leisurely rebound; it
disengaged itself from the tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb
of some tree, growing on the slope, made a black crack right across
its face. It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this
mournful eclipse-like light the stumps of felled trees uprose very
dark, the heavy shadows fell at my feet on all sides, my own moving
shadow, and across my path the shadow of the solitary grave perpet-
ually garlanded with flowers. In the darkened moonlight the inter-
laced blossoms took on shapes foreign to one's memory and colours
indefinable to the eye, as though they had been special flowers
gathered by no man, grown not in this world, and destined for the
use of the dead alone. Their powerful scent hung in the warm air,
making it thick and heavy like the fumes of incense. The lumps of
white coral shone round the dark mound like a chaplet of bleached
skulls, and everything around was so quiet that when I stood still
all sound and all movement in the world seemed to come to an end.

'It was a great peace, as if the earth had been one grave, and for
a time I stood there thinking mostly of the living who, buried in
remote places out of the knowledge of mankind, still are fated to
share in its tragic or grotesque miseries. In its noble struggles too --
who knows? The human heart is vast enough to contain all the
world. It is valiant enough to bear the burden, but where is the
courage that would cast it off?

'I suppose I must have fallen into a sentimental mood; I only
know that I stood there long enough for the sense of utter solitude
to get hold of me so completely that all I had lately seen, all I had
heard, and the very human speech itself, seemed to have passed
away out of existence, living only for a while longer in my memory,
as though I had been the last of mankind. It was a strange and
melancholy illusion, evolved half-consciously like all our illusions,
which I suspect only to be visions of remote unattainable truth,
seen dimly. This was, indeed, one of the lost, forgotten, unknown
places of the earth; I had looked under its obscure surface; and I
felt that when to-morrow I had left it for ever, it would slip out of
existence, to live only in my memory till I myself passed into ob-
livion. I have that feeling about me now; perhaps it is that feeling
which has incited me to tell you the story, to try to hand over to
you, as it were, its very existence, its reality -- the truth disclosed
in a moment of illusion.

'Cornelius broke upon it. He bolted out, vermin-like, from the
long grass growing in a depression of the ground. I believe his
house was rotting somewhere near by, though I've never seen it, not
having been far enough in that direction. He ran towards me upon
the path; his feet, shod in dirty white shoes, twinkled on the dark
earth; he pulled himself up, and began to whine and cringe under
a tall stove-pipe hat. His dried-up little carcass was swallowed up,
totally lost, in a suit of black broadcloth. That was his costume for
holidays and ceremonies, and it reminded me that this was the
fourth Sunday I had spent in Patusan. All the time of my stay I had
been vaguely aware of his desire to confide in me, if he only could
get me all to himself. He hung about with an eager craving look on
his sour yellow little face; but his timidity had kept him back as
much as my natural reluctance to have anything to do with such an
unsavoury creature. He would have succeeded, nevertheless, had
he not been so ready to slink off as soon as you looked at him. He
would slink off before Jim's severe gaze, before my own, which I
tried to make indifferent, even before Tamb' Itam's surly, superior
glance. He was perpetually slinking away; whenever seen he was
seen moving off deviously, his face over his shoulder, with either a
mistrustful snarl or a woe-begone, piteous, mute aspect; but no
assumed expression could conceal this innate irremediable abject-
ness of his nature, any more than an arrangement of clothing can
conceal some monstrous deformity of the body.

'I don't know whether it was the demoralisation of my utter
defeat in my encounter with a spectre of fear less than an hour ago,
but I let him capture me without even a show of resistance. I was
doomed to be the recipient of confidences, and to be confronted
with unanswerable questions. It was trying; but the contempt, the
unreasoned contempt, the man's appearance provoked, made it
easier to bear. He couldn't possibly matter. Nothing mattered, since
I had made up my mind that Jim, for whom alone I cared, had at
last mastered his fate. He had told me he was satisfied . . . nearly.
This is going further than most of us dare. I -- who have the right
to think myself good enough -- dare not. Neither does any of you
here, I suppose? . . .'

Marlow paused, as if expecting an answer. Nobody spoke.

'Quite right,' he began again. 'Let no soul know, since the truth
can be wrung out of us only by some cruel, little, awful catastrophe.
But he is one of us, and he could say he was satisfied . . . nearly.
Just fancy this! Nearly satisfied. One could almost envy him his
catastrophe. Nearly satisfied. After this nothing could matter. It
did not matter who suspected him, who trusted him, who loved
him, who hated him -- especially as it was Cornelius who hated him.

'Yet after all this was a kind of recognition. You shall judge of a
man by his foes as well as by his friends, and this enemy of Jim was
such as no decent man would be ashamed to own, without, however,
making too much of him. This was the view Jim took, and in which
I shared; but Jim disregarded him on general grounds. "My dear
Marlow," he said, "I feel that if I go straight nothing can touch me.
Indeed I do. Now you have been long enough here to have a good
look round -- and, frankly, don't you think I am pretty safe? It all
depends upon me, and, by Jove! I have lots of confidence in myself.
The worst thing he could do would be to kill me, I suppose. I don't
think for a moment he would. He couldn't, you know -- not if I
were myself to hand him a loaded rifle for the purpose, and then
turn my back on him. That's the sort of thing he is. And suppose
he would -- suppose he could? Well -- what of that? I didn't come
here flying for my life -- did I? I came here to set my back against
the wall, and I am going to stay here . . ."

' "Till you are quite satisfied," I struck in.

'We were sitting at the time under the roof in the stern of his
boat; twenty paddles flashed like one, ten on a side, striking the
water with a single splash, while behind our backs Tamb' Itam
dipped silently right and left, and stared right down the river,
attentive to keep the long canoe in the greatest strength of the
current. Jim bowed his head, and our last talk seemed to flicker out
for good. He was seeing me off as far as the mouth of the river. The
schooner had left the day before, working down and drifting on the
ebb, while I had prolonged my stay overnight. And now he was
seeing me off.

'Jim had been a little angry with me for mentioning Cornelius at
all. I had not, in truth, said much. The man was too insignificant
to be dangerous, though he was as full of hate as he could hold. He
had called me "honourable sir" at every second sentence, and had
whined at my elbow as he followed me from the grave of his "late
wife" to the gate of Jim's compound. He declared himself the most
unhappy of men, a victim, crushed like a worm; he entreated me
to look at him. I wouldn't turn my head to do so; but I could see
out of the corner of my eye his obsequious shadow gliding after
mine, while the moon, suspended on our right hand, seemed to
gloat serenely upon the spectacle. He tried to explain -- as I've told
you -- his share in the events of the memorable night. It was a matter
of expediency. How could he know who was going to get the upper
hand? "I would have saved him, honourable sir! I would have saved
him for eighty dollars," he protested in dulcet tones, keeping a pace
behind me. "He has saved himself," I said, "and he has forgiven
you." I heard a sort of tittering, and turned upon him; at once he
appeared ready to take to his heels. "What are you laughing at?"
I asked, standing still. "Don't be deceived, honourable sir!" he
shrieked, seemingly losing all control over his feelings. "He save
himself! He knows nothing, honourable sir -- nothing whatever.
Who is he? What does he want here -- the big thief? What does he
want here? He throws dust into everybody's eyes; he throws dust
into your eyes, honourable sir; but he can't throw dust into my
eyes. He is a big fool, honourable sir." I laughed contemptuously,
and, turning on my heel, began to walk on again. He ran up to my
elbow and whispered forcibly, "He's no more than a little child
here -- like a little child -- a little child." Of course I didn't take
the slightest notice, and seeing the time pressed, because we were
approaching the bamboo fence that glittered over the blackened
ground of the clearing, he came to the point. He commenced by
being abjectly lachrymose. His great misfortunes had affected his
head. He hoped I would kindly forget what nothing but his troubles
made him say. He didn't mean anything by it; only the honourable
sir did not know what it was to be ruined, broken down, trampled
upon. After this introduction he approached the matter near his
heart, but in such a rambling, ejaculatory, craven fashion, that for
a long time I couldn't make out what he was driving at. He wanted
me to intercede with Jim in his favour. It seemed, too, to be some
sort of money affair. I heard time and again the words, "Moderate
provision -- suitable present." He seemed to be claiming value for
something, and he even went the length of saying with some warmth
that life was not worth having if a man were to be robbed of every-
thing. I did not breathe a word, of course, but neither did I stop
my ears. The gist of the affair, which became clear to me gradually,
was in this, that he rgarded himself as entitled to some money in
exchange for the girl. He had brought her up. Somebody else's
child. Great trouble and pains -- old man now -- suitable present. If
the honourable sir would say a word.... I stood still to look at
him with curiosity, and fearful lest I should think him extortionate,
I suppose, he hastily brought himself to make a concession. In
consideration of a "suitable present" given at once, he would, he
declared, be willing to undertake the charge of the girl, "without
any other provision -- when the time came for the gentleman to go
home." His little yellow face, all crumpled as though it had been
squeezed together, expressed the most anxious, eager avarice. His
voice whined coaxingly, "No more trouble -- natural guardian -- a
sum of money . . . "

'I stood there and marvelled. That kind of thing, with him, was
evidently a vocation. I discovered suddenly in his cringing attitude a
sort of assurance, as though he had been all his life dealing in certi-
tudes. He must have thought I was dispassionately considering his
proposal, because he became as sweet as honey. "Every gentleman
made a provision when the time came to go home,"he began insinuat-
ingly. I slammed the little gate. "In this case, Mr. Cornelius," I said,
"the time will never come." He took a few seconds to gather this in.
"What!"he fairly squealed. "Why," I continued from my side of the
gate,"haven't you heard him say so himself? He will nevergo home."
"Oh! this is too much," he shouted. He would not address me as
"honoured sir" any more. He was very still for a time, and then with-
out a trace of humility began very low: "Never go -- ah! He -- he -- he
comes here devil knows from where -- comes here -- devil knows why --
to trample on me till I die -- ah -- trample" (he stamped softly with
both feet), "trample like this -- nobody knows why -- till I die.. .. "
His voice became quite extinct; he was bothered by a little cough; he
came up close to the fence and told me, dropping into a confidential
and piteous tone, that he would not be trampled upon. "Patience --
patience," he muttered, striking his breast. I had done laughing at
him, but unexpectedly he treated me to a wild cracked burst of it.
"Ha! ha! ha! We shall see! We shall see! What! Steal from me! Steal
from me everything! Everything! Everything! " His head drooped on
one shoulder, his hands were hanging before him lightly clasped. One
would have thought he had cherished the girl with surpassing love,
that his spirit had been crushed and his heart broken by the most cruel
of spoliations. Suddenly he lifted his head and shot out an infamous
word. "Like her mother -- she is like her deceitful mother. Exactly.
In her face too. In her face. The devil! " He leaned his forehead against
the fence, and in that position uttered threats and horrible blasphem-
ies in Portuguese in very weak ejaculations, mingled with miserable
plaints and groans, coming out with a heave of the shoulders as
though he had been overtaken by a deadly fit of sickness. It was an
inexpressibly grotesque and vile performance, and I hastened away.
He tried to shout something after me. Some disparagement of Jim, I
believe -- not too loud though, we were too near the house . All I heard
distinctly was, "No more than a little child -- a little child." '


                     CHAPTER 35


'But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the
houses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its
colour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on
a canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back
for the last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with
its life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the
fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had
seen them -- intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression.
I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world
where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear
stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones . I wasn't going to
dive into it; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the
surface. But as to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any
alteration. The immense and magnanimous Doramin and his little
motherly witch of a wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing
secretly their dreams of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened
and gready perplexed; Dain Waris, intelligent und brave, with his
faith in Jim, with his firm glance und his ironic friendliness; the girl,
absorbed in her frightened, suspicious adoration; Tumb' Itam, surly
and faithful; Cornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under
the moonlight -- I am certain of them. They exist as if under un ench-
anter's wand. But the figure round which all these are grouped -- that
one lives, and I am not certain of him. No magician's wand can
immobilise him under my eyes. He is one of us.

'Jim, as I've told you, accompanied me on the first stage of my
journey back to the world he had renounced, and the way at times
seemed to lead through the very heart of untouched wilderness. The
empty reaches sparkled under the high sun; between the high walls
of vegetation the heat drowsed upon the water, and the boat,impelled
vigorously, cut her way through the air that seemed to have settled
dense and warm under the shelter of lofty trees.

'The shadow of the impending separation had already put an
immense space between us, und when we spoke it was with an effort,
as if to force our low voices across a vast und increasing distance. The
boat fairly flew; we sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated
air; the smell of mud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth,
seemed to sting our faces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great
hand far away had lifted a heavy curtain, had flung open un immense
portal. The light itself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads wid-
ened, a far-off murmur reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us,
filled our lungs, quickened our thoughts, our blood, our regrets --
and, straight ahead, the forests sank down against the dark-blue ridge
of the sea.

'I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon,
in the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life,
with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were
open to me. The girl was right -- there was a sign, a call in them --
something to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let
my eyes roam through space, like a man released from bonds who
stretches his cramped limbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring
elation of freedom. "This is glorious!" I cried, und then I looked at
the sinner by my side . He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said
"Yes," without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the
clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience.

'I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a
bit of white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow,
draped in creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of
a serene and intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the
thread-like horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of
glitter blew lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers
chased by the breeze . A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing
the wide estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting
faithfully the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a
solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the
same spot with a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty
bunch of flimsy mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image
upon a crooked multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny
black canoe put off from amongst them with two tiny men, all black,
who toiled exceedingly, striking down at the pale water: and the
canoe seemed to slide painfully on a mirror. This bunch of miserable
hovels was the fishing village that boasted of the white lord's especial
protection, and the two men crossing over were the old headman and
his son-in-law. They landed and walked up to us on the white sand,
lean, dark-brown as if dried in smoke, with ashy patches on the skin
of their naked shoulders and breasts . Their heads were bound in dirty
but carefully folded headkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to
state a complaint, voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim
his old bleared eyes confidently . The Rajah's people would not leave
them alone; there had been some trouble about a lot of turtles' eggs
his people had collected on the islets there -- and leaning at arm's-
length upon his paddle, he pointed with a brown skinny hand over
the sea. Jim listened for a time without looking up, und at last told
him gently to wait. He would hear him by-and-by. They withdrew
obediently to some little distance, and sat on their heels, with their
paddles lying before them on the sand; the silvery gleams in their
eyes followed our movements patiently; and the immensity of the
outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing north and south
beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal Presence watch-
ing us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand.

' "The trouble is," remarked Jim moodily, "that for generations
these beggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered
as the Rajah's personal slaves -- and the old rip can't get it into his head
that . . ."

'He paused. "That you have changed all that," I said.

' "Yes I've changed all that," he muttered in a gloomy voice.

' "You have had your opportunity," I pursued.

' "Have I?" he said. "Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back
my confidence in myself -- a good name -- yet sometimes I wish . . .
No! I shall hold what I've got. Can't expect anything more." He flung
his arm out towards the sea. "Not out there anyhow." He stamped
his foot upon the sand. "This is my limit, because nothing less will
do."

'We continued pacing the beach. "Yes, I've changed all that," he
went on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fisher-
men; "but only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can't
you see it? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance
of drinking that silly old Tunku Allung's coffee, und I shall make no
end of fuss over these rotten turtles' eggs. No. I cun't say -- enough.
Never. I must go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure
that nothing can touch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel
safe and to -- to" . . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it
on the sea . . . "to keep in touch with" . . . His voice sank suddenly
to a murmur . . . "with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any
more. "With -- with -- you, for instunce."

'I was profoundly humbled by his words. "For God's sake," I said,
"don't set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself." I felt a grati-
tude, an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out,
keeping my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How
little that was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away;
under the low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like un ember
snatched from the fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense
stillness to the approach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak,
but checked himself; at last, as if he had found a formula --

' "I shall be faithful," he said quietly. "I shall be faithful," he
repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes
wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy
purple under the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I
recalled some words of Stein's.... "In the destructive element
immerse! . . . To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream --
and so -- always -- usque ad finem . . ." He was romantic, but none the
less true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what
forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! . . . A small boat,
leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars,
towards the sandbank to take me off. "And then there's Jewel," he
said, out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mas-
tered my very thoughts so that his voice made me start. "There's
Jewel. " "Yes," I murmured. "I need not tell you what she is to me,"
he pursued. "You've seen. In time she will come to understand . . . "
"I hope so," I interrupted. "She trusts me, too," he mused, and then
changed his tone. "When shall we meet next, I wonder?" he said.

' "Never -- unless you come out," I answered, avoiding his glance.
He didn't seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while.

' "Good-bye, then," he said, after a pause. "Perhaps it's just as
well."

'We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which waited with her
nose on the beach. The schooner, her mainsail set and jib-sheet to
windward, curveted on the purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her
sails. "Will you be going home again soon?" asked Jim, just as I
swung my leg over the gunwale. "In a yeu or so if I live," I said. The
forefoot grated on the sand, the boat floated, the wet oars flashed and
dipped once, twice. Jim, at the water's edge, raised his voice. "Tell
them . . . " he began. I signed to the men to cease rowing, and waited
in wonder. Tell who? The half-submerged sun faced him; I could
see its red gleam in his eyes that looked dumbly at me.... "No --
nothing," he said, and with a slight wave of his hand motioned the
boat away. I did not look again at the shore till I had clambered on
board the schooner.

'By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over the east, and
the coast, turned black, extended infinitely its sombre wall that
seemed the very stronghold of the night; the western horizon was one
great blaze of gold and crimson in which a big detached cloud floated
dark and still, casting a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw
Jim on the beach watching the schooner fall off and gather headway.

'The two half-naked fishermen had arisen as soon as I had gone;
they were no doubt pouring the plaint of their trifling, miserable,
oppressed lives into the ears of the white lord, a no doubt he was
listening to it, making it his own, for was it not a part of his luck -- the
luck "from the word Go" -- the luck to which he had assured me he
was so completely equal? They too, I should think, were in luck, and
I was sure their pertinacity would be equal to it. Their dark-skinned
bodies vanished on the dark background long before I had lost sight
of their protector. He was white from head to foot, and remained
persistently visible with the stronghold of the night at his back, the
sea at his feet, the opportunity by his side -- still veiled. What do you
say? Was it still veiled? I don't know. For me that white figure in the
stillness of coast and sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma.
The twilight was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of
sand had sunk already under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger
than a child -- then only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to
catch all the light left in a darkened world .. .. And, suddenly, I lost
him. . ..


                            CHAPTER 36


With these words Marlow had ended his narrative, and his audi-
ence had broken up forthwith, under his abstract, pensive gaze. Men
drifted off the verandah in pairs or alone without loss of time, without
offering a remark, as if the last image of that incomplete story, its
incompleteness itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made
discussion vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed to
carry away his own impression, to cary it away with him like a secret;
but there was only one man of all these listeners who was ever to hear
the last word of the story. It came to him at home, more than two years
later, and it came contained in a thick packet addressed in Marlow's
upright and angular handwriting.

The privileged man opened the packet, looked in, then, laying it
down, went to the window. His rooms were in the highest flat of a
lofty building, and his glance could travel afar beyond the clear panes
of glass, as though he were looking out of the lantern of a lighthouse.
The slopes of the roofs glistened, the dark broken ridges succeeded
each other without end like sombre, uncrested waves, and from the
depths of the town under his feet ascended a confused and unceasing
mutter. The spires of churches, numerous, scattered haphazard,
uprose like beacons on a maze of shoals without a channel; the driving
rain mingled with the falling dusk of a winter's evening; and the
booming of a big clock on a tower, striking the hour, rolled past in
voluminous, austere bursts of sound, with a shrill vibrating cry at the
core. He drew the heavy curtains.

The light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a sheltered pool, his
footfalls made no sound on the carpet, his wandering days were over.
No more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the
forests as solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscov-
ered Country over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The
hour was striking! No more! No more! -- but the opened packet under
the lamp brought back the sounds, the visions, the very savour of the
past -- a multitude of fading faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away
upon the shores of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling
sunshine. He sighed and sat down to read.

At first he saw three distinct enclosures. A good many pages closely
blackened and pinned together; a loose square sheet of greyish paper
with a few words traced in a handwriting he had never seen before,
and an explanatory letter from Marlow. From this last fell another
letter, yellowed by time and frayed on the folds. He picked it up and,
laying it aside, turned to Marlow's message, ran swiftly over the open-
ing lines, and, checking himself, thereafter read on deliberately, like
one approaching with slow feet and alert eyes the glimpse of an undis-
covered country.

'. . . I don't suppose you've forgotten,' went on the letter. 'You
alone have showed an interest in him that survived the telling of his
story, though I remember well you would not admit he had mastered
his fate. You prophesied for him the disaster of weariness and of dis-
gust with acquired honour, with the self-appointed task, with the
love sprung from pity and youth. You had said you knew so well "that
kind of thing," its illusory satisfaction, its unavoidable deception.
You said also -- I call to mind -- that "giving your life up to them" (them
meaning all of mankind with skins brown, yellow, or black in colour)
"was like selling your soul to a brute." You contended that "that kind
of thing" was only endurable and enduring when based on a firm con-
viction in the truth of ideas racially our own, in whose name are estab-
lished the order, the morality of an ethical progress. "We want its
strength at our backs," you had said. "We want a belief in its necessity
and its justice, to make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives.
Without it the sacrifice is only forgetfulness, the way of offering is no
better than the way to perdition." In other words, you maintained
that we must fight in the ranks or our lives don't count. Possibly! You
ought to know -- be it said without malice -- you who have rushed
into one or two places single-handed and came out cleverly, without
singeing your wings. The point, however, is that of all mankind Jim
had no dealings but with himself, and the question is whether at the
last he had not confessed to a faith mightier than the laws of order and
progress.

'I affirm nothing. Perhaps you may pronounce -- after you've read.
There is much truth -- after all -- in the common expression "under a
cloud." It is impossible to see him clearly -- especially as it is through
the eyes of others that we take our last look at him. I have no hesitation
in imparting to you all I know of the last episode that, as he used to
say, had "come to him." One wonders whether this was perhaps that
supreme opportunity, that last and satisfying test for which I had
always suspected him to be waiting, before he could frame a message
to the impeccable world. You remember that when I was leaving him
for the last time he had asked whether I would be going home soon,
and suddenly cried after me, "Tell them . . ." I had waited -- curious
I'll own, and hopeful too -- only to hear him shout, "No -- nothing."
That was all then -- and there will be nothing more; there will be no
message, unless such as each of us can interpret for himself from the
language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic than the craftiest
arrangement of words. He made, it is true, one more attempt to
deliver himself; but that too failed, as you may perceive if you look at
the sheet of greyish foolscap enclosed here. He had tried to write; do
you notice the commonplace hand? It is headed "The Fort, Patu-
sun." I suppose he had carried out his intention of making out of his
house a place of defence. It was an excellent plan: a deep ditch, an
earth wall topped by a palisade, and at the angles guns mounted on
platforms to sweep each side of the square. Doramin had agreed to
furnish him the guns; and so each man of his party would know there
was a place of safety, upon which every faithful partisan could rally
in case of some sudden danger. All this showed his judicious fore-
sight, his faith in the future. What he called "my own people" -- the
liberated captives of the Sherif -- were to make a distinct quarter of
Patusan, with their huts and little plots of ground under the walls of
the stronghold. Within he would be an invincible host in himself
"The Fort, Patusan." No date, as you observe. What is a number and
a name to a day of days? It is also impossible to say whom he had in
his mind when he seized the pen: Stein -- myself -- the world at large --
or was this only the aimless startled cry of a solitary man confronted
by his fate? "An awful thing has happened," he wrote before he flung
the pen down for the first time; look at the ink blot resembling the
head of an arrow under these words. After a while he had tried again,
scrawling heavily, as if with a hand of lead, another line. "I must now
at once . . ." The pen had spluttered, and that time he gave it up.
There's nothing more; he had seen a broad gulf that neither eye nor
voice could span. I can understand this. He was overwhelmed by the
inexplicable; he was overwhelmed by his own personality -- the gift
of that destiny which he had done his best to master.

'I send you also an old letter -- a very old letter. It was found care-
fully preserved in his writing-case. It is from his father, and by the
date you can see he must have received it a few days before he joined
the Patna. Thus it must be the last letter he ever had from home. He
had treasured it all these years. The good old parson fancied his sailor
son. I've looked in at a sentence here and there. There is nothing in it
except just affection. He tells his "dear James" that the last long letter
from him was very "honest and entertaining." He would not have
him "judge men harshly or hastily. " There are four pages of it, easy
morality and family news. Tom had "taken orders." Carrie's hus-
band had "money losses." The old chap goes on equably trusting
Providence and the established order of the universe, but alive to its
small dangers and its small mercies. One can almost see him, grey-
haired and serene in the inviolable shelter of his book-lined, faded,
and comfortable study, where for forty years he had conscientiously
gone over and over again the round of his little thoughts about faith
and virtue, about the conduct of life and the only proper manner of
dying; where he had written so many sermons, where he sits talking
to his boy, over there, on the other side of the earth. But what of the
distance? Virtue is one all over the world, and there is only one faith,
one conceivable conduct of life, one manner of dying. He hopes his
"dear James" will never forget that "who once gives way to temp-
tation, in the very instant hazards his total depravity and everlasting
ruin. Therefore resolve fixedly never, through any possible motives,
to do anything which you believe to be wrong." There is also some
news of a favourite dog; and a pony, "which all you boys used to ride,"
had gone blind from old age and had to be shot. The old chap invokes
Heaven's blessing; the mother and all the girls then at home send
their love.... No, there is nothing much in that yellow frayed letter
fluttering out of his cherishing grasp after so many years. It was never
answered, but who can say what converse he may have held with all
these placid, colourless forms of men and women peopling that quiet
corner of the world as free of danger or strife as a tomb, and breathing
equably the air of undisturbed rectitude. It seems amazing that he
should belong to it, he to whom so many things "had come. "Nothing
ever came to them; they would never be taken unawares, and never
be called upon to grapple with fate. Here they all are, evoked by the
mild gossip of the father, all these brothers and sisters, bone of his
bone and flesh of his flesh, gazing with clear unconscious eyes, while
I seem to see him, returned at last, no longer a mere white speck at
the heart of an immense mystery, but of full stature, standing disre-
garded amongst their untroubled shapes, with a stern and romantic
aspect, but always mute, dark -- under a cloud.

'The story of the last events you will find in the few pages enclosed
here. You must admit that it is romantic beyond the wildest dreams
of his boyhood, and yet there is to my mind a sort of profound and
terrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could
set loose upon us the might of an overwhelming destiny. The
imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with
the sword shall perish by the sword. This astounding adventure,
of which the most astounding part is that it is true, comes on as an
unavoidable consequence. Something of the sort had to happen.
You repeat this to yourself while you marvel that such a thing could
happen in the year of grace before last. But it has happened -- and
there is no disputing its logic.

'I put it down here for you as though I had been an eyewitness.
My information was fragmentary, but I've fitted the pieces together,
and there is enough of them to make an intelligible picture. I wonder
how he would bave related it himself. He has confided so much in
me that at times it seems as though he must come in presently and
tell the story in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with
his offhand manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt,
but now and then by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses
of his very own self that were never any good for purposes of orien-
tation. It's difficult to believe he will never come. I shall never hear
his voice again, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a
white line on the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened by
excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue.'


                        CHAPTER 37


'It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown,
who stole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small
bay near Zamboanga. Till I discovered the fellow my information
was incomplete, but most unexpectedly I did come upon him a few
hours before he gave up his arrogant ghost. Fortunately he was
willing and able to talk between the choking fits of asthma, and his
racked body writhed with malicious exultation at the bare thought
of Jim. He exulted thus at the idea that he had "paid out the stuck-
up beggar after all." He gloated over his action. I had to bear the
sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if I wanted to know; and
so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms of evil are akin
to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by resistance,
tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to the body.
The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the
wretched Cornelius, whose abject and intense hate acts like a subtle
inspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.

' "I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he
was," gasped the dying Brown. "He a man! Hell! He was a hollow
sham. As if he couldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my plun-
der!' blast him! That would have been like a man! Rot his superior
soul! He had me there -- but he hadn't devil enough in him to make
an end of me. Not he! A thing like that letting me off as if I wasn't
worth a kick! ..." Brown struggled desperately for breath....
"Fraud.... Letting me off.... And so I did make an end of him
after all...." He choked again.... "I expect this thing'll kill me,
but I shall die easy now. You . . . you here . . . I don't know your
name -- I would give you a five-pound note if -- if I had it -- for the
news -- or my name's not Brown...." He grinned horribly....
"Gentleman Brown."

'He said all these things in profound gasps, staring at me with
his yellow eyes out of a long, ravaged, brown face; he jerked his left
arm; a pepper-and-salt matted beard hung almost into his lap; a
dirty ragged blanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Ban-
kok through that busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had,
confidentially, directed me where to look. It appears that a sort of
loafing, fuddled vagabond -- a white man living amongst the natives
with a Siamese woman -- had considered it a great privilege to give
a shelter to the last days of the famous Gentleman Brown. While
he was talking to me in the wretched hovel, and, as it were, fighting
for every minute of his life, the Siamese woman, with big bare legs
and a stupid coarse face, sat in a dark corner chewing betel stolidly.
Now and then she would get up for the purpose of shooing a chicken
away from the door. The whole hut shook when she walked. An
ugly yellow child, naked and pot-bellied like a little heathen god,
stood at the foot of the couch, finger in mouth, lost in a profound
and calm contemplation of the dying man.

'He talked feverishly; but in the middle of a word, perhaps, an
invisible hand would take him by the throat, and he would look at
me dumbly with an expression of doubt and anguish. He seemed
to fear that I would get tired of waiting and go away, leaving him
with his tale untold, with his exultation unexpressed. He died dur-
ing the night, I believe, but by that time I had nothing more to
learn.

'So much as to Brown, for the present.

'Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I went as usual
to see Stein. On the garden side of the house a Malay on the veran-
dah greeted me shyly, and I remembered that I had seen him in
Patusan, in Jim's house, amongst other Bugis men who used to
come in the evening to talk interminably over their war remi-
niscences and to discuss State affairs. Jim had pointed him out to
me once as a respectable petty trader owning a small seagoing native
craft, who had showed himself "one of the best at the taking of the
stockade. " I was not very surprised to see him, since any Patusan
trader venturing as far as Samarang would naturally find his way to
Stein's house. I returned his greeting and passed on. At the door of
Stein's room I came upon another Malay in whom I recognised
Tamb' Itam.

'I asked him at once what he was doing there; it occurred to me
that Jim might have come on a visit. I own I was pleased and excited
at the thought. Tumb' Itam looked as if he did not know what to say.
"Is Tuan Jim inside?" I asked impatiently. "No," he mumbled,
hanging his head for a moment, and then with sudden earnestness,
"He would not fight. He would not fight," he repeated twice. As
he seemed unable to say unything else, I pushed him aside and went
in,

'Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room
between the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?"
he said sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca
hung, unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his
head, and there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. "What's the
matter now?" I asked nervously. "There's Tamb' Itam there...."
"Come and see the girl. Come and see the girl. She is here," he
said, with a half-hearted show of activity. I tried to detain him, but
with gentle obstinacy he would take no notice of my eager questions.
"She is here, she is here," he repeated, in great perturbation. "They
came here two days ago. An old man like me, a stranger -- sehen
Sie -- cannot do much.... Come this way.... Young hearts are
unforgiving...." I could see he was in utmost distress.... "The
strength of life in them, the cruel strength of life...." He mum-
bled, leading me round the house; I followed him, lost in dismal
and angry conjectures. At the door of the drawing-room he barred
my way. "He loved her very much," he said interrogatively, and I
only nodded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not trust
myself to speak . "Very frightful," he murmured. "She can' t under-
stand me. I am only a strange old man. Perhaps you . . . she knows
you. Talk to her. We can't leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him.
It was very frightful." "No doubt," I said, exasperated at being in
the dark; "but have you forgiven him?" He looked at me queerly.
"You shall hear," he said, and opening the door, absolutely pushed
me in.

'You know Stein's big house and the two immense reception-
rooms, uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude und
of shining things that look as if never beheld by the eye of man?
They are cool on the hottest days, and you enter them as you would
a scrubbed cave underground. I passed through one, and in the
other I saw the girl sitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on
which she rested her head, the face hidden in her arms. The waxed
floor reflected her dimly as though it had been a sheet of frozen
water. The rattan screens were down, and through the strange
greenish gloom made by the foliage of the trees outside a strong
wind blew in gusts, swaying the long draperies of windows and
doorways. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the pendent
crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her head like glittering
icicles. She looked up and watched my approach. I was chilled as
if these vast apartments had been the cold abode of despair.

'She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped, looking
down at her: "He has left me," she said quietly; "you always leave
us -- for your own ends." Her face was set. All the heat of life seemed
withdrawn within some inaccessible spot in her breast. "It would
have been easy to die with him," she went on, and made a slight
weary gesture as if giving up the incomprehensible. "He would not!
It was like a blindness -- and yet it was I who was speaking to him;
it was I who stood before his eyes; it was at me that he looked all
the time! Ah! you are hard, treacherous, without truth, without
compassion. What makes you so wicked? Or is it that you are all
mad?"

'I took her hand; it did not respond, and when I dropped it, it
hung down to the floor. That indifference, more awful than tears,
cries, and reproaches, seemed to defy time and consolation. You
felt that nothing you could say would reach the seat of the still and
benumbing pain.

'Stein had said, "You shall hear." I did hear. I heard it all,
listening with amazement, with awe, to the tones of her inflexible
weariness. She could not grasp the real sense of what she was telling
me, and her resentment filled me with pity for her -- for him too. I
stood rooted to the spot after she had finished. Leaning on her arm,
she stared with hard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals
kept on clicking in the greenish gloom. She went on whispering to
herself: "And yet he was looking at me! He could see my face, hear
my voice, hear my grief! When I used to sit at his feet, with my
cheek against his knee and his hand on my head, the curse of cruelty
and madness was already within him, waiting for the day. The day
came! . . . and before the sun had set he could not see me any
more -- he was made blind and deaf and without pity, as you all are.
He shall have no tears from me. Never, never. Not one tear. I will
not! He went away from me as if I had been worse than death. He
fled as if driven by some accursed thing he had heard or seen in his
sleep...."

'Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of a man torn
out of her arms by the strength of a dream. She made no sign to my
silent bow. I was glad to escape.

'I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leaving her I had
gone in search of Stein, whom I could not find indoors; and I
wandered out, pursued by distressful thoughts, into the gardens,
those famous gardens of Stein, in which you can find every plant
and tree of tropical lowlands. I followed the course of the canalised
stream, and sat for a long time on a shaded bench near the ornamen-
tal pond, where some waterfowl with clipped wings were diving
and splashing noisily. The branches of casuarina trees behind me
swayed lightly, incessantly, reminding me of the soughing of fir
trees at home.

'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to
my meditations. She had said he had been driven away from her by
a dream, -- and there was no answer one could make her -- there
seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not
mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its
greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty
and of excessive devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after
all?

'When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of Stein's
drab coat through a gap in the foliage, and very soon at a turn of
the path I came upon him walking with the girl. Her little hand
rested on his forearm, and under the broad, flat rim of his Panama
hat he bent over her, grey-haired, paternal, with compassionate and
chivalrous deference. I stood aside, but they stopped, facing me.
His gaze was bent on the ground at his feet; the girl, erect and slight
on his arm, stared sombrely beyond my shoulder with black, clear,
motionless eyes. "Schrecklich," he murmured. "Terrible! Terrible!
What can one do?" He seemed to be appealing to me, but her youth,
the length of the days suspended over her head, appealed to me
more; and suddenly, even as I realised that nothing could be said,
I found myself pleading his cause for her sake. "You must forgive
him," I concluded, and my own voice seemed to me muffled, lost
in un irresponsive deaf immensity. "We all want to be forgiven," I
added after a while.

' "What have I done?" she asked with her lips only.

' "You always mistrusted him," I said.

' "He was like the others," she pronounced slowly.

' "Not like the others," I protested, but she continued evenly,
without any feeling --

' "He was false." And suddenly Stein broke in. "No! no! no! My
poor child! . . ." He patted her hand lying passively on his sleeve.
"No! no! Not false! True! True! True!" He tried to look into her
stony face. "You don't understand. Ach! Why you do not under-
stand? . . . Terrible," he said to me. "Some day she shall under-
stand."

' "Will you explain?" I asked, looking hard at him. They moved
on.

'I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her black hair
fell loose. She walked upright and light by the side of the tall man,
whose long shapeless coat hung in perpendicular folds from the
stooping shoulders, whose feet moved slowly. They disappeared
beyond that spinney (you may remember) where sixteen different
kinds of bamboo grow together, all distinguishable to the learned
eye. For my part, I was fascinated by the exquisite grace and beauty
of that fluted grove, crowned with pointed leaves and feathery
heads, the lightness, the vigour, the charm as distinct as a voice of
that unperplexed luxuriating life. I remember staying to look at it
for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling
whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast
days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one --
memories of other shores, of other faces.

'I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb'
Itam and the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped
in the bewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of
it seemed to have changed their natures. It had turned her passion
into stone, and it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost
loquacious. His surliness, too, was subdued into puzzled humility,
as though he had seen the failure of a potent charm in a supreme
moment. The Bugis trader, a shy hesitating man, was very clear in
the little he had to say. Both were evidently overawed by a sense of
deep inexpressible wonder, by the touch of an inscrutable mystery.'
There with Marlow's sigrature the letter proper ended. The
privileged reader screwed up his lump, and solitary above the bil-
lowy roofs of the town, like a lighthouse-keeper above the sea, he
turned to the pages of the story.


                      CHAPTER 38


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


                         CHAPTER 39


'All the events of that night have a great importance, since they
brought about a situation which remained unchanged till Jim's
return. Jim had been away in the interior for more than a week,
and it was Dain Waris who had directed the first repulse. That brave
and intelligent youth ("who knew how to fight after the manner of
white men") wished to settle the business off-hand, but his people
were too much for him. He had not Jim's racial prestige and the
reputation of invincible, supernatural power. He was not the vis-
ible, tangible incarnation of unfailing truth and of unfailing victory.
Beloved, trusted, and admired as he was, he was still one of them,
while Jim was one of us. Moreover, the white man, a tower of
strength in himself, was invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be
killed. Those unexpressed thoughts guided the opinions of the chief
men of the town, who elected to assemble in Jim's fort for deliber-
ation upon the emergency, as if expecting to find wisdom and cour-
age in the dwelling of the absent white man. The shooting of
Brown's rufffians was so far good, or lucky, that there had been half-
a-dozen casualties amongst the defenders. The wounded were lying
on the verandah tended by their women-folk. The women and chil-
dren from the lower part of the town had been sent into the fort at
the first alarm. There Jewel was in command, very effficient and
high-spirited, obeyed by Jim's "own people," who, quitting in a
body their little settlement under the stockade, had gone in to form
the garrison. The refugees crowded round her; and through the
whole affair, to the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordinary
martial ardour. It was to her that Dain Waris had gone at once at
the first intelligence of danger, for you must know that Jim was the
only one in Patusan who possessed a store of gunpowder. Stein,
with whom he had kept up intimate relations by letters, had
obtained from the Dutch Government a special authorisation to
export five hundred kegs of it to Patusan. The powder-magazine
was a small hut of rough logs covered entirely with earth, and in
Jim's absence the girl had the key. In the council, held at eleven
o'clock in the evening in Jim's dining-room, she backed up Waris's
advice for immediate and vigorous action. I am told that she stood
up by the side of Jim's empty chair at the head of the long table and
made a warlike impassioned speech, which for the moment extorted
murmurs of approbation from the assembled headmen. Old Dora-
min, who had not showed himself outside his own gate for more
than a year, had been brought across with great difficulty. He was,
of course, the chief man there. The temper of the council was very
unforgiving, and the old man's word would have been decisive; but
it is my opinion that, well aware of his son's fiery courage, he dared
not pronounce the word. More dilatory counsels prevailed. A cer-
tain Haji Saman pointed out at great length that "these tyrannical
and ferocious men had delivered themselves to a certain death in
any case. They would stand fast on their hill and starve, or they
would try to regain their boat and be shot from ambushes across
the creek, or they would break and fly into the forest and perish
singly there." He argued that by the use of proper stratagems these
evil-minded strangers could be destroyed without the risk of a
battle, and his words had a great weight, especially with the Patusan
men proper. What unsettled the minds of the townfolk was the
failure of the Rajah's boats to act at the decisive moment. It was the
diplomatic Kassim who represented the Rajah at the council. He
spoke very little, listened smilingly, very friendly and impenetrable.
During the sitting messengers kept arriving every few minutes
almost, with reports of the invaders' proceedings. Wild and exag-
gerated rumours were flying: there was a large ship at the mouth of
the river with big guns and many more men -- some white, others
with black skins and of bloodthirsty appearance. They were coming
with many more boats to exterminate every living thing. A sense of
near, incomprehensible danger affected the common people. At one
moment there was a panic in the courtyard amongst the women;
shrieking; a rush; children crying -- Haji Sunan went out to quiet
them. Then a fort sentry fired at something moving on the river,
and nearly killed a villager bringing in his women-folk in a canoe
together with the best of his domestic utensils and a dozen fowls.
This caused more confusion. Meantime the palaver inside Jim's
house went on in the presence of the girl. Doramin sat fierce-faced,
heavy, looking at the speakers in turn, and breathing slow like a
bull. He didn't speak till the last, after Kassim had declared that
the Rajah's boats would be called in because the men were required
to defend his master's stockade. Dain Waris in his father's presence
would offer no opinion, though the girl entreated him in Jim's name
to speak out. She offered him Jim's own men in her anxiety to have
these intruders driven out at once. He only shook his head, after a
glance or two at Doramin. Finally, when the council broke up it had
been decided that the houses nearest the creek should be strongly
occupied to obtain the commund of the enemy's boat. The boat
itself was not to be interfered with openly, so that the robbers on
the hill should be tempted to embark, when a well-directed fire
would kill most of them, no doubt. To cut off the escape of those
who might survive, and to prevent more of them coming up, Dain
Waris was ordered by Doramin to take an armed party of Bugis
down the river to a certain spot ten miles below Patusan, und there
form a camp on the shore and blockade the stream with the canoes.
I don't believe for a moment that Doramin feared the arrival of
fresh forces. My opinion is that his conduct was guided solely by
his wish to keep his son out of harm's way. To prevent a rush
being made into the town the construction of a stockade was to be
commenced at daylight at the end of the street on the left bank.
The old nakhoda declared his intention to command there himself.
A distribution of powder, bullets, und percussion-caps was made
immediately under the girl's supervision. Several messengers were
to be dispatched in different directions after Jim, whose exact
whereabouts were unknown. These men started at dawn, but before
that time Kassim had managed to open communications with the
besieged Brown.

'That accomplished diplomatist and confidant of the Rajah, on
leaving the fort to go back to his master, took into his boat Corne-
lius, whom he found slinking mutely amongst the people in the
courtyard. Kassim had a little plan of his own and wanted him for
an interpreter. Thus it came about that towards morning Brown,
reflecting upon the desperate nature of his position, heard from the
marshy overgrown hollow an amicable, quavering, strained voice
crying -- in English -- for permission to come up, under a promise
of personal safety and on a very important errand. He was over-
joyed. If he was spoken to he was no longer a hunted wild beast.
These friendly sounds took off at once the awful stress of vigilant
watchfulness as of so many blind men not knowing whence the
deathblow might come. He pretended a great reluctance. The voice
declared itself "a white man -- a poor, ruined, old man who had
been living here for years." A mist, wet and chilly, lay on the slopes
of the hill, and after some more shouting from one to the other,
Brown called out, "Come on, then, but alone, mind!" As a matter
of fact -- he told me, writhing with rage at the recollection of his
helplessness -- it made no difference. They couldn't see more than
a few yards before them, and no ueachery could make their position
worse. By-and-by Cornelius, in his week-day attire of a ragged dirty
shirt and pants, barefooted, with a broken-rimmed pith hat on his
head, was made out vaguely, sidling up to the defences, hesitating,
stopping to listen in a peering posture. "Come along! You are safe,"
yelled Brown, while his men stared. All their hopes of life became
suddenly centred in that dilapidated, mean newcomer, who in pro-
found silence clambered clumsily over a felled tree-trunk, and shiv-
ering, with his sour, mistrustful face, looked about at the knot of
bearded, anxious, sleepless desperadoes.

'Half an hour's confidential talk with Cornelius opened Brown's
eyes as to the home affairs of Patusan. He was on the alert at once.
There were possibilities, immense possibilities; but before he would
talk over Cornelius's proposals he demanded that some food should
be sent up as a guarantee of good faith. Cornelius went off, creeping
sluggishly down the hill on the side of the Rajah's palace, and after
some delay a few of Tunku Allang's men came up, bringing a scanty
supply of rice, chillies, and dried fish. This was immeasurably bet-
ter than nothing. Later on Cornelius returned accompanying Kas-
sim, who stepped out with an air of perfect good-humoured
trustfulness, in sandals, and muffled up from neck to ankles in
dark-blue sheeting. He shook hands with Brown discreetly, and the
three drew aside for a conference. Brown's men, recovering their
confidence, were slapping each other on the back, and cast knowing
glances at their captain while they busied themselves with prep-
arations for cooking.

'Kassim disliked Doramin and his Bugis very much, but he hated
the new order of things still more. It had occurred to him that these
whites, together with the Rajah's followers, could attack and defeat
the Bugis before Jim's return. Then, he reasoned, general defection
of the townfolk was sure to follow, and the reign of the white man
who protected poor people would be over. Afterwards the new allies
could be dealt with. They would have no friends. The fellow was
perfectly able to perceive the difference of character, and had seen
enough of white men to know that these newcomers were outcasts,
men without country. Brown preserved a stern and inscrutable
demeanour. When he first heard Cornelius's voice demanding
admittance, it brought merely the hope of a loophole for escape. In
less than an hour other thoughts were seething in his head. Urged
by an extreme necessity, he had come there to steal food, a few tons
of rubber or gum may be, perhaps a handful of dollars, and had
found himself enmeshed by deadly dangers. Now in consequence
of these overtures from Kassim he began to think of stealing the
whole country. Some confounded fellow had apparently accom-
plished something of the kind -- single-handed at that. Couldn't
have done it very well though. Perhaps they could work together --
squeeze everything dry and then go out quietly. In the course of his
negotiations with Kassim he became aware that he was supposed to
have a big ship with plenty of men outside. Kassim begged him
earnestly to have this big ship with his many guns and men brought
up the river without delay for the Rajah's service. Brown professed
himself willing, and on this basis the negotiation was carried on
with mutual distrust. Three times in the course of the morning the
courteous and active Kassim went down to consult the Rajah and
came up busily with his long stride. Brown, while bargaining, had
a sort of grim enjoyment in thinking of his wretched schooner, with
nothing but a heap of dirt in her hold, that stood for an armed ship,
and a Chinaman and a lame ex-beachcomber of Levuka on board,
who represented all his many men. In the afternoon he obtained
further doles of food, a promise of some money, and a supply of
mats for his men to make shelters for themselves. They lay down
and snored, protected from the burning sunshine; but Brown, sit-
ting fully exposed on one of the felled trees, feasted his eyes upon
the view of the town and the river. There was much loot there.
Cornelius, who had made himself at home in the camp, talked at
his elbow, pointing out the localities, imparting advice, giving his
own version of Jim's character, and commenting in his own fashion
upon the events of the last three years. Brown, who, apparently
indifferent and gazing away, listened with attention to every word,
could not make out clearly what sort of man this Jim could be.
"What's his name? Jim! Jim! That's not enough for a man's name."
"They call him," said Cornelius scornfully, "Tuan Jim here. As
you may say Lord Jim." "What is he? Where does he come from?"
inquired Brown. "What sort of man is he? Is he an Englishman?"
"Yes, yes, he's an Englishman. I am an Englishman too. From
Malacca. He is a fool. All you have to do is to kill him and then you
are king here. Everything belongs to him," explained Cornelius.
"It strikes me he may be made to share with somebody before very
long," commented Brown half aloud. "No, no. The proper way is
to kill him the first chance you get, and then you can do what you
like," Cornelius would insist earnestly. "I have lived for many years
here, and I am giving you a friend's advice."

'In such converse and in gloating over the view of Patusan, which
he had determined in his mind should become his prey, Brown
whiled away most of the afternoon, his men, meantime, resting.
On that day Dain Waris's fleet of canoes stole one by one under the
shore farthest from the creek, and went down to close the river
against his retreat. Of this Brown was not aware, and Kassim, who
came up the knoll an hour before sunset, took good care not to
enlighten him. He wanted the white man's ship to come up the
river, and this news, he feared, would be discouraging. He was very
pressing with Brown to send the "order," offering at the same time
a trusty messenger, who for greater secrecy (as he explained) would
make his way by land to the mouth of the river and deliver the
"order" on board. After some reflection Brown judged it expedient
to tear a page out of his pocket-book, on which he simply wrote,
"We are getting on. Big job. Detain the man." The stolid youth
selected by Kassim for that service performed it faithfully, and was
rewarded by being suddenly tipped, head first, into the schooner's
empty hold by the ex-beachcomber and the Chinaman, who there-
upon hastened to put on the hatches. What became of him after-
wards Brown did not say.'