finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_16_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 24-25
chapters 24-25
{"name": "Chapters 24-25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2425", "summary": "Two years later, Marlow visited Patusan, carrying a message from Stein to Jim, which instructed Jim to set up a proper trading post. Marlow marveled at the misty ocean, the swampy plains, and the far-off blue mountain peaks. He stopped at a fishing village and engaged an old man who seemed to be the village's head man to pilot him upriver. Most of the old man's talk on the way up was about \"Tuan Jim,\" or Lord Jim, a man of whom he spoke with warm, glowing familiarity and simple awe. Clearly, all the villagers loved and trusted Jim. In fact, most of them believed that he had supernatural powers. In the short time that Jim had lived in Patusan, many legends had grown up around him. Marlow was told, for example, that on the day Jim arrived, the tide rose two hours before its usual time in order to carry Jim upriver. Later, when Jim and Marlow were sitting on the verandah of Jim's house, Marlow listened to Jim's version of his arrival at Patusan. Jim had sat on the tin luggage box during the entire voyage, his unloaded revolver on his lap. It was an exhausting journey, he said, the boat scissoring through crocodiles, and the jungle seeming to be continually formidable and ominous. Near the end of the journey, he dozed. When he awakened, he noticed that his three paddlers had disappeared. Almost immediately, he was taken prisoner by armed men who escorted him to Rajah Allang, the little \"used-up\" despot. Jim paused, and Marlow reflected that the \"experiment\" had turned out remarkably well. There was none of Jim's former hypersensitivity to guilt and anguish. Instead, Jim seemed to have conquered his urge to punish himself. He had won the trust, the friendship, and the love of the natives. And he had even attained a kind of fame. As Jim talked to Marlow, Marlow noted Jim's deep and fierce love for the land. To leave Patusan would be, Jim said, \"harder than dying.\" According to Marlow, Jim had become both Patusan's master and its captive. On their way to meet Rajah Allang, Jim pointed out to Marlow a filthy stockade in which he was held captive for three days. On the third day, he said, he did the only thing he could do: he tried to escape. At that moment of their conversation, however, they met Rajah Allang. Marlow says that he was immediately impressed with the man's respectful attitude toward Jim, who only two years before had been this man's prisoner. Jim and Marlow witnessed Rajah Allang's solving a village problem, and then they were offered coffee. Marlow was reluctant to drink his, fearing that it might be poisoned, but Jim unperturbedly sipped his coffee. Later, Jim told Marlow that he had to constantly prove that he was worthy of their trust. He had to drink their coffee. He had to take the risk -- \"take it every month\" -- the natives trusted him to do that. Jim said that Rajah Allang was most likely afraid of Jim precisely because Jim was not afraid to drink the Rajah's coffee. After Jim escaped from Rajah Allang's stockade two years ago and found safety with Doramin, he learned about the warring factions that seemed to rule Patusan. They were: Rajah Allang, from whom Jim had just escaped; he brought blood and fiery destruction on any villager who attempted to trade with the outside world. Rajah Allang wanted to be the exclusive trader in Patusan. Stein's friend Doramin was the \"second chief\" in Patusan. Years ago, he was elected by \"his people,\" immigrants from the Dutch West Indies; his party opposed Rajah Allang's terrorizing monopoly on trading. The other \"leader\" of Patusan was a half-breed Arab, Sherif Ali. He incited the interior tribes with religious fervor, and his followers practiced guerrilla warfare. He had a camp on the summit of one of Patusan's twin mountains, where he hung over the village \"like a hawk over a poultry yard.\" Of the three powers that controlled Patusan, Sherif Ali was the most dangerous -- to Rajah Allang's people, and to the Bugis Malays under old Doramin.", "analysis": "Again in these chapters, Conrad  skips about from past time to present time . We witness a scene when Marlow visits Jim, and then the narrator returns to a past time, when Jim first arrived in Patusan. Marlow even hints of future occurrences and tells the story of Jim's arrival from a distance of many years, and so it seems natural to him  to call up, first, one experience and then another -- without due regard for their time sequences. By the time of Marlow's arrival, the natives are calling Jim \"Tuan Jim\" or, in English, Lord Jim, and we are told that Jim has won their respect and, in some cases, their awe; already, many legendary stories have grown up around Lord Jim. Without our knowing how Lord Jim accomplished it, we are informed that he had indeed achieved a type of greatness -- complete trust and ultimate respect in this outpost. \"He was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved.\" When Jim first arrived, we hear from Marlow  that Jim had been held captive for three days, and Marlow points out that had he Jim) been killed then, the entire province of Patusan \"would have been the loser.\" Even Jim recognizes his greatness and appreciates the fact that now, \"there is not one  where I am not trusted.\" Lord Jim has at last, finally, found his niche in the universe, and he will never leave Patusan, the place where he is honored and trusted, respected and loved. In addition to Jim's newfound self-assurance and happiness, Marlow noticed other differences in Jim. He was now more intellectually alert; there was an eloquence and \"a dignity in his constitutional reticence\" and a \"high seriousness\" in his actions that showed \"how deeply, how solemnly\" he felt about his work at Patusan. Marlow concluded that Jim had indeed found himself. When Jim took Marlow to the place where Rajah Allang, who had held him prisoner, lived, Jim showed great courage in drinking coffee once a month with the Rajah -- even though he knew that it might be poisoned. Lord Jim then told Marlow of his escape -- of another \"Jump,\" which this time led him to a bog where, for awhile, he was stuck in mud and slime. When he emerged, he was symbolically covered with filth, but even in this disgusting condition, he ran to Doramin's stockade where he showed him the ring and was accepted into Doramin's family, thus symbolically emerging from the filth and slime to begin anew a new, clean, productive life. The symbolism is obvious: the \"jump\" that takes Jim deep into the vile slime and mud of the creek represents the jump from the Patna which immersed Jim deep into vile shame and everlasting remorse."}
'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight
and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts
of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers
clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers,
with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing
a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting
sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old Doramin sat
squarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on a plain. He was only
of the nakhoda or merchant class, but the respect shown to him and
the dignity of his bearing were very striking. He was the chief of
the second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about sixty
families that, with dependants and so on, could muster some two hundred
men "wearing the kriss") had elected him years ago for their head. The
men of that race are intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a
more frank courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppression.
They formed the party opposed to the Rajah. Of course the quarrels were
for trade. This was the primary cause of faction fights, of the sudden
outbreaks that would fill this or that part of the settlement with
smoke, flame, the noise of shots and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men
were dragged into the Rajah's stockade to be killed or tortured for the
crime of trading with anybody else but himself. Only a day or two before
Jim's arrival several heads of households in the very fishing village
that was afterwards taken under his especial protection had been driven
over the cliffs by a party of the Rajah's spearmen, on suspicion of
having been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah
Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty
for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was
indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and
rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of
the organised power of the Celebes men, only--till Jim came--he was not
afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and
thought himself pathetically in the right. The situation was complicated
by a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I believe, on
purely religious grounds, had incited the tribes in the interior (the
bush-folk, as Jim himself called them) to rise, and had established
himself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills. He
hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he
devastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their
blackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into
the water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a
curious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation
stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in Patusan were
not sure which one this partisan most desired to plunder. The Rajah
intrigued with him feebly. Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with
endless insecurity, were half inclined to call him in. The younger
spirits amongst them, chaffing, advised to "get Sherif Ali with his wild
men and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country." Doramin restrained
them with difficulty. He was growing old, and, though his influence had
not diminished, the situation was getting beyond him. This was the state
of affairs when Jim, bolting from the Rajah's stockade, appeared before
the chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner
of speaking, into the heart of the community.'
Chapters 24-25
Two years later, Marlow visited Patusan, carrying a message from Stein to Jim, which instructed Jim to set up a proper trading post. Marlow marveled at the misty ocean, the swampy plains, and the far-off blue mountain peaks. He stopped at a fishing village and engaged an old man who seemed to be the village's head man to pilot him upriver. Most of the old man's talk on the way up was about "Tuan Jim," or Lord Jim, a man of whom he spoke with warm, glowing familiarity and simple awe. Clearly, all the villagers loved and trusted Jim. In fact, most of them believed that he had supernatural powers. In the short time that Jim had lived in Patusan, many legends had grown up around him. Marlow was told, for example, that on the day Jim arrived, the tide rose two hours before its usual time in order to carry Jim upriver. Later, when Jim and Marlow were sitting on the verandah of Jim's house, Marlow listened to Jim's version of his arrival at Patusan. Jim had sat on the tin luggage box during the entire voyage, his unloaded revolver on his lap. It was an exhausting journey, he said, the boat scissoring through crocodiles, and the jungle seeming to be continually formidable and ominous. Near the end of the journey, he dozed. When he awakened, he noticed that his three paddlers had disappeared. Almost immediately, he was taken prisoner by armed men who escorted him to Rajah Allang, the little "used-up" despot. Jim paused, and Marlow reflected that the "experiment" had turned out remarkably well. There was none of Jim's former hypersensitivity to guilt and anguish. Instead, Jim seemed to have conquered his urge to punish himself. He had won the trust, the friendship, and the love of the natives. And he had even attained a kind of fame. As Jim talked to Marlow, Marlow noted Jim's deep and fierce love for the land. To leave Patusan would be, Jim said, "harder than dying." According to Marlow, Jim had become both Patusan's master and its captive. On their way to meet Rajah Allang, Jim pointed out to Marlow a filthy stockade in which he was held captive for three days. On the third day, he said, he did the only thing he could do: he tried to escape. At that moment of their conversation, however, they met Rajah Allang. Marlow says that he was immediately impressed with the man's respectful attitude toward Jim, who only two years before had been this man's prisoner. Jim and Marlow witnessed Rajah Allang's solving a village problem, and then they were offered coffee. Marlow was reluctant to drink his, fearing that it might be poisoned, but Jim unperturbedly sipped his coffee. Later, Jim told Marlow that he had to constantly prove that he was worthy of their trust. He had to drink their coffee. He had to take the risk -- "take it every month" -- the natives trusted him to do that. Jim said that Rajah Allang was most likely afraid of Jim precisely because Jim was not afraid to drink the Rajah's coffee. After Jim escaped from Rajah Allang's stockade two years ago and found safety with Doramin, he learned about the warring factions that seemed to rule Patusan. They were: Rajah Allang, from whom Jim had just escaped; he brought blood and fiery destruction on any villager who attempted to trade with the outside world. Rajah Allang wanted to be the exclusive trader in Patusan. Stein's friend Doramin was the "second chief" in Patusan. Years ago, he was elected by "his people," immigrants from the Dutch West Indies; his party opposed Rajah Allang's terrorizing monopoly on trading. The other "leader" of Patusan was a half-breed Arab, Sherif Ali. He incited the interior tribes with religious fervor, and his followers practiced guerrilla warfare. He had a camp on the summit of one of Patusan's twin mountains, where he hung over the village "like a hawk over a poultry yard." Of the three powers that controlled Patusan, Sherif Ali was the most dangerous -- to Rajah Allang's people, and to the Bugis Malays under old Doramin.
Again in these chapters, Conrad  skips about from past time to present time . We witness a scene when Marlow visits Jim, and then the narrator returns to a past time, when Jim first arrived in Patusan. Marlow even hints of future occurrences and tells the story of Jim's arrival from a distance of many years, and so it seems natural to him  to call up, first, one experience and then another -- without due regard for their time sequences. By the time of Marlow's arrival, the natives are calling Jim "Tuan Jim" or, in English, Lord Jim, and we are told that Jim has won their respect and, in some cases, their awe; already, many legendary stories have grown up around Lord Jim. Without our knowing how Lord Jim accomplished it, we are informed that he had indeed achieved a type of greatness -- complete trust and ultimate respect in this outpost. "He was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved." When Jim first arrived, we hear from Marlow  that Jim had been held captive for three days, and Marlow points out that had he Jim) been killed then, the entire province of Patusan "would have been the loser." Even Jim recognizes his greatness and appreciates the fact that now, "there is not one  where I am not trusted." Lord Jim has at last, finally, found his niche in the universe, and he will never leave Patusan, the place where he is honored and trusted, respected and loved. In addition to Jim's newfound self-assurance and happiness, Marlow noticed other differences in Jim. He was now more intellectually alert; there was an eloquence and "a dignity in his constitutional reticence" and a "high seriousness" in his actions that showed "how deeply, how solemnly" he felt about his work at Patusan. Marlow concluded that Jim had indeed found himself. When Jim took Marlow to the place where Rajah Allang, who had held him prisoner, lived, Jim showed great courage in drinking coffee once a month with the Rajah -- even though he knew that it might be poisoned. Lord Jim then told Marlow of his escape -- of another "Jump," which this time led him to a bog where, for awhile, he was stuck in mud and slime. When he emerged, he was symbolically covered with filth, but even in this disgusting condition, he ran to Doramin's stockade where he showed him the ring and was accepted into Doramin's family, thus symbolically emerging from the filth and slime to begin anew a new, clean, productive life. The symbolism is obvious: the "jump" that takes Jim deep into the vile slime and mud of the creek represents the jump from the Patna which immersed Jim deep into vile shame and everlasting remorse.