finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_19_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 31-33
chapters 31-33
{"name": "Chapters 31-33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3133", "summary": "The next day, Jim spent a long time with Doramin, the old nakhoda, trying to impress on him and the principal men of the Bugis community the absolute necessity for immediate and vigorous action in order to counter Sherif Ali. Meanwhile, Sherif Ali's men strutted about, \"haughtily in white cloaks,\" spreading the rumor that Rajah Allang intended to join them in raiding and defeating the Bugis once and for all. The attack seemed imminent, and terror among the natives was intense and widespread. Jim returned home at sunset, pleased at having convinced Doramin of his plan to rout Sherif Ali. Now he had \"irretrievably committed\" the Bugis to action. Now, also, Jim had committed himself; in fact, all of the responsibility for success was \"on his own head.\" And yet he was elated and lighthearted with the fantastic possibility of his vision. In the middle of a deep sleep that night, Jim was awakened by Jewel. She put his revolver into his hand and insisted that he get up. Four men, she said, were waiting to kill him. Then she took him to one of the storehouses. Jim sighed. He was tired of these alarms, and he was angry with Jewel for her increasing anxiety. But he pushed open the door of the dungeon-like ruin of a storehouse anyway. At first, he saw nothing -- an empty wooden crate, and a litter of rags and straw. For days, he had been living with a heavy weight on his soul; if only there had been something here -- a trace or a sign of someone. But there was nothing. Suddenly, Jewel shouted at Jim to defend himself, and in the pale light, he saw the gleam of a pair of eyes within a heap of mats. Jim yelled for the man to come out, and a half-naked, glistening native pounced toward Jim, the blade of his knife above his head. Jim felt utter relief. He let the man come toward him until he could see his dilated nostrils and his wide eyes. Then he fired, his bullet exploding inside the man's mouth and disappearing through the back of his head. Afterward, Jim was strangely calm. He felt \"appeased, without rancour, without uneasiness.\" He stepped over the body and routed out three other naked figures, crawling forward from under the mats and holding out their empty hands. Jim led the prisoners out into the night, and Jewel followed, her white nightgown trailing and her black hair falling to her waist. At the edge of the river bank, Jim stopped. He told the men to take his greetings to Sherif Ali, and then he ordered them all to \"Jump!\" Afterward, when he and Jewel were alone on the river bank, Jim told Marlow that never before had he realized how dearly he loved Jewel. \"More than I can tell,\" Jim said; to him, his love for Jewel was \"idyllic, a little solemn, and also true.\" In addition, Jim expressed his almost disbelief in the natives' complete trust of him. He knew that he was equated with what was \"true\" and \"brave\" and \"just,\" and yet he knew his own secret nature -- that is, he knew how utterly he had failed, once. Later, after sundown, Marlow was stopped by Jewel. She wanted assurance\" from Marlow, \"a statement, a promise, an explanation.\" Her life had been a puzzle and a living hell -- until Jim's appearance. Now she had fallen in love with him -- a white man -- exactly what her mother warned her against. What would keep Jim from leaving her and Patusan one day? The world \"out there\" had always been one vast Unknown to her, and then Jim came to her from that vast Unknown, as did Marlow now. Marlow sensed that she felt that he could -- and would -- \"with a word whisk Jim away -- out of her arms.\" He was overwhelmed by her breathless urgency to keep Jim. Marlow was touched by Jewel's innocence and her youth, as well as by her \"wild flower\" beauty and by her tremulous fears. To her, Marlow clearly stood for the frightening void of the Unknown. If he had not come for Jim, Jewel asked, why had he come? Marlow tried to explain that he had come because of friendship and because of business. But the girl was firmly convinced that he had come for Jim. Marlow said that she must trust Jim: he would never leave her. Marlow also told her that she was the only one in Patusan who doubted Jim's word. Jewel said that Jim swore never to leave her, but she could not believe him. His promise was not enough. And yet she feared for his life if he stayed. She had even begged him to go. But after Jim killed a man and sent three others back to Sherif Ali, he and Jewel fell in love \"under the shadow of a life's disaster.\" Jewel said that she feared dying like her mother -- that is, dying of sorrow because of a man. And even if Jim did swear never to leave her, what made his vow any more honorable than any other white man's vow? Was Jim, she asked Marlow, any different from other men? Marlow answered Jewel. He said that yes, Jim was different. Was Jim, Jewel asked, more brave? More true? Marlow tried to discover what Jim had told the girl about his past, but he could not. Seemingly, Jim had told her only that once, long ago, he was \"afraid.\" Jewel beseeched Marlow to tell her what it was that Jim was afraid of. How could she battle this ghost in Jim's past? Jim had told her that \"the world out there\" did not want him; was it true, she asked. Marlow answered that yes, it was true. Jewel continued to ask questions about Jim until Marlow exasperatedly shouted that Jim was \"not good enough\" for the world. Jewel was stunned. Those were the same words that Jim had uttered when he had told her why he had to stay on at Patusan. \"You lie!\" she cried out to Marlow. Hearing footsteps, Marlow slipped away.", "analysis": "These chapters are essentially devoted to the love that developed between Jim and Jewel, and the difficulties that Jewel encountered when she tried to believe Jim and trust him -- in spite of the fact that everyone else in the village trusted him completely. In Chapter 31, we go back in narrative time to a point before Jim blew up Sherif Ali's fortress; we return to a night when four of Sherif Ali's men attempted to kill Jim. It was the first night that Jim discovered that the girl, Jewel, had constantly kept a vigil over him while he was sleeping, thus indicating to him her deep concern for him. At first, when Jewel came to him, Jim thought that she was in trouble; then he was annoyed when she told him that his life was in danger. He had heard this fear expressed so many times from so many people that the threat had become boring. This time, however, Jewel was correct, and we see Jim confronting the charging killer and capturing the three men in hiding. The entire purpose of this scene is to illustrate both to the reader and to Jewel the nature of Jim's courage. Here, in the face of almost certain death, Jim did not \"jump.\" He held his ground until the last possible moment, and then he fired at the charging killer. By standing his ground, Jim displayed considerable courage; in one sense, he has begun to redeem himself from his jump from the Patna. Furthermore, Jim grew in stature in Jewel's eyes. In Chapter 32, Jim expressed some of the paradoxes of his love for Jewel. First of all, he couldn't leave her because he had become convinced that his very existence was essential for her own continued existence. He was obligated to her. He was, however, troubled that he could never be completely honest with her, partly because she would never believe him if he were to tell her the true reason for his being in Patusan. That is, Jewel has seen Lord Jim perform outstanding acts of bravery, courage, and defiance; thus, she would never believe him if he were to tell her the true state of affairs. But the colossal irony is that if Jim were to tell Jewel or anyone else about his past, they not only wouldn't care, but they would agree that Jim had done the right thing in saving his own life. This view is what will make it so impossible for Jewel and Tamb' Itam to accept Jim's decision, at the end of the novel, not to \"run for his life.\" Chapters 32 and 33 present a fuller view of Jewel. When she is alone with Marlow, she questions him about Jim because she can't understand Jim. We see her as an acute, sharp, intelligent woman, but one who is still naive and innocent. She also has deep fears of Marlow's \"hold\" over Jim, and as Marlow says: I belonged to the Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any moment.\" Jewel greatly fears this great Unknown. Jewel knows that other white men have come, and they have always left after awhile: \"They always leave us.\" Sometimes she thinks that Jim \"in his sleep when he cannot see me  then arise and go\" because even though \"other men had sworn the same,\" yet they all have left. The irony of these fears is that, in the ultimate analysis, Jewel is right. In deciding not to flee  and in his decision to face death rather than live with her, Jim will be \"deserting\" Jewel."}

'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 muttered, 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 community, 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 mistake," he
said. Sherif Ali's last raid had swept the outskirts of the settlement,
and some women belonging to the town had been carried 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 approbation. 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 apparition, 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 circumstances, 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 courtyard. 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 fluttering 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, fearless . . ." "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 fearless--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 glistened 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 forward, 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.''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. Excitement--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 understand, when you
are _made_ to understand every day that your existence 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 everything 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 anywhere 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 outlines, 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 simplest
impossibility in the world; as, for instance, the exact description 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 inconceivable
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.'

'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 understood 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 meritorious), 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 unconsciously: 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 inconceivable 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 an 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 affection. 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 honour," 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 Doramin'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 slumbers--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 passions 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 silently
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, tormenting 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 outside, 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 multitudes 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
him.

'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 was 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? Footsteps were approaching; I slipped
away without another word. . . .'

Chapters 31-33
The next day, Jim spent a long time with Doramin, the old nakhoda, trying to impress on him and the principal men of the Bugis community the absolute necessity for immediate and vigorous action in order to counter Sherif Ali. Meanwhile, Sherif Ali's men strutted about, "haughtily in white cloaks," spreading the rumor that Rajah Allang intended to join them in raiding and defeating the Bugis once and for all. The attack seemed imminent, and terror among the natives was intense and widespread. Jim returned home at sunset, pleased at having convinced Doramin of his plan to rout Sherif Ali. Now he had "irretrievably committed" the Bugis to action. Now, also, Jim had committed himself; in fact, all of the responsibility for success was "on his own head." And yet he was elated and lighthearted with the fantastic possibility of his vision. In the middle of a deep sleep that night, Jim was awakened by Jewel. She put his revolver into his hand and insisted that he get up. Four men, she said, were waiting to kill him. Then she took him to one of the storehouses. Jim sighed. He was tired of these alarms, and he was angry with Jewel for her increasing anxiety. But he pushed open the door of the dungeon-like ruin of a storehouse anyway. At first, he saw nothing -- an empty wooden crate, and a litter of rags and straw. For days, he had been living with a heavy weight on his soul; if only there had been something here -- a trace or a sign of someone. But there was nothing. Suddenly, Jewel shouted at Jim to defend himself, and in the pale light, he saw the gleam of a pair of eyes within a heap of mats. Jim yelled for the man to come out, and a half-naked, glistening native pounced toward Jim, the blade of his knife above his head. Jim felt utter relief. He let the man come toward him until he could see his dilated nostrils and his wide eyes. Then he fired, his bullet exploding inside the man's mouth and disappearing through the back of his head. Afterward, Jim was strangely calm. He felt "appeased, without rancour, without uneasiness." He stepped over the body and routed out three other naked figures, crawling forward from under the mats and holding out their empty hands. Jim led the prisoners out into the night, and Jewel followed, her white nightgown trailing and her black hair falling to her waist. At the edge of the river bank, Jim stopped. He told the men to take his greetings to Sherif Ali, and then he ordered them all to "Jump!" Afterward, when he and Jewel were alone on the river bank, Jim told Marlow that never before had he realized how dearly he loved Jewel. "More than I can tell," Jim said; to him, his love for Jewel was "idyllic, a little solemn, and also true." In addition, Jim expressed his almost disbelief in the natives' complete trust of him. He knew that he was equated with what was "true" and "brave" and "just," and yet he knew his own secret nature -- that is, he knew how utterly he had failed, once. Later, after sundown, Marlow was stopped by Jewel. She wanted assurance" from Marlow, "a statement, a promise, an explanation." Her life had been a puzzle and a living hell -- until Jim's appearance. Now she had fallen in love with him -- a white man -- exactly what her mother warned her against. What would keep Jim from leaving her and Patusan one day? The world "out there" had always been one vast Unknown to her, and then Jim came to her from that vast Unknown, as did Marlow now. Marlow sensed that she felt that he could -- and would -- "with a word whisk Jim away -- out of her arms." He was overwhelmed by her breathless urgency to keep Jim. Marlow was touched by Jewel's innocence and her youth, as well as by her "wild flower" beauty and by her tremulous fears. To her, Marlow clearly stood for the frightening void of the Unknown. If he had not come for Jim, Jewel asked, why had he come? Marlow tried to explain that he had come because of friendship and because of business. But the girl was firmly convinced that he had come for Jim. Marlow said that she must trust Jim: he would never leave her. Marlow also told her that she was the only one in Patusan who doubted Jim's word. Jewel said that Jim swore never to leave her, but she could not believe him. His promise was not enough. And yet she feared for his life if he stayed. She had even begged him to go. But after Jim killed a man and sent three others back to Sherif Ali, he and Jewel fell in love "under the shadow of a life's disaster." Jewel said that she feared dying like her mother -- that is, dying of sorrow because of a man. And even if Jim did swear never to leave her, what made his vow any more honorable than any other white man's vow? Was Jim, she asked Marlow, any different from other men? Marlow answered Jewel. He said that yes, Jim was different. Was Jim, Jewel asked, more brave? More true? Marlow tried to discover what Jim had told the girl about his past, but he could not. Seemingly, Jim had told her only that once, long ago, he was "afraid." Jewel beseeched Marlow to tell her what it was that Jim was afraid of. How could she battle this ghost in Jim's past? Jim had told her that "the world out there" did not want him; was it true, she asked. Marlow answered that yes, it was true. Jewel continued to ask questions about Jim until Marlow exasperatedly shouted that Jim was "not good enough" for the world. Jewel was stunned. Those were the same words that Jim had uttered when he had told her why he had to stay on at Patusan. "You lie!" she cried out to Marlow. Hearing footsteps, Marlow slipped away.
These chapters are essentially devoted to the love that developed between Jim and Jewel, and the difficulties that Jewel encountered when she tried to believe Jim and trust him -- in spite of the fact that everyone else in the village trusted him completely. In Chapter 31, we go back in narrative time to a point before Jim blew up Sherif Ali's fortress; we return to a night when four of Sherif Ali's men attempted to kill Jim. It was the first night that Jim discovered that the girl, Jewel, had constantly kept a vigil over him while he was sleeping, thus indicating to him her deep concern for him. At first, when Jewel came to him, Jim thought that she was in trouble; then he was annoyed when she told him that his life was in danger. He had heard this fear expressed so many times from so many people that the threat had become boring. This time, however, Jewel was correct, and we see Jim confronting the charging killer and capturing the three men in hiding. The entire purpose of this scene is to illustrate both to the reader and to Jewel the nature of Jim's courage. Here, in the face of almost certain death, Jim did not "jump." He held his ground until the last possible moment, and then he fired at the charging killer. By standing his ground, Jim displayed considerable courage; in one sense, he has begun to redeem himself from his jump from the Patna. Furthermore, Jim grew in stature in Jewel's eyes. In Chapter 32, Jim expressed some of the paradoxes of his love for Jewel. First of all, he couldn't leave her because he had become convinced that his very existence was essential for her own continued existence. He was obligated to her. He was, however, troubled that he could never be completely honest with her, partly because she would never believe him if he were to tell her the true reason for his being in Patusan. That is, Jewel has seen Lord Jim perform outstanding acts of bravery, courage, and defiance; thus, she would never believe him if he were to tell her the true state of affairs. But the colossal irony is that if Jim were to tell Jewel or anyone else about his past, they not only wouldn't care, but they would agree that Jim had done the right thing in saving his own life. This view is what will make it so impossible for Jewel and Tamb' Itam to accept Jim's decision, at the end of the novel, not to "run for his life." Chapters 32 and 33 present a fuller view of Jewel. When she is alone with Marlow, she questions him about Jim because she can't understand Jim. We see her as an acute, sharp, intelligent woman, but one who is still naive and innocent. She also has deep fears of Marlow's "hold" over Jim, and as Marlow says: I belonged to the Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any moment." Jewel greatly fears this great Unknown. Jewel knows that other white men have come, and they have always left after awhile: "They always leave us." Sometimes she thinks that Jim "in his sleep when he cannot see me  then arise and go" because even though "other men had sworn the same," yet they all have left. The irony of these fears is that, in the ultimate analysis, Jewel is right. In deciding not to flee  and in his decision to face death rather than live with her, Jim will be "deserting" Jewel.