finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_10_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 12-13
chapters 12-13
{"name": "Chapters 12-13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-1213", "summary": "The narrative now focuses on what happened when Jim and the three crewmen were picked up next day by the Avondale. The German skipper recited the alibi agreed on by all the crewmen, except Jim. The first lifeboat, the skipper said, was lowered slowly to avoid panic, and then \"the ship went down in a squall -- sank like lead.\" Jim knew that this was a lie, but he said nothing. Still, however, he was sure that he heard hundreds of pilgrims screaming and crying out for help. Once the men were on shore, they learned immediately that the Patna did not sink; it was sighted by a small French gunboat and towed to Aden. Did the Patna's light disappear, as the crewmen in the lifeboat seem to think it did? Yes, the wind had swung the ship's stern around, so that the lifeboat was suddenly behind the Patna. Thus, the Patna did seem to suddenly disappear. Marlow recalls a conversation that he had, purely by chance, some time afterward; it took place in Sydney, Australia, with the French lieutenant who boarded the Patna the day after its officers deserted it. For thirty hours, the Frenchman remained on board while his small boat pulled the Patna toward Aden, two of his men ready at any minute to cut the tow lines and let the Patna -- and all 800 Moslems sink if the ship's stern caved in. But the Patna's stern did not burst, and the rescue mission was wholly uneventful, remembered by the Frenchman primarily because the religious pilgrims did not have a single drop of wine to serve him with dinner. Marlow continued his conversation with the elderly French officer, fascinated by the man's bitterness and sadness. I have known some brave men,\" the Frenchman said, but, within each one, there was always fear: \"the fear -- it is always there.\" He sighed and said that all men are weak,\" but that we must each accept that truth and \"live with it.\" The French lieutenant left, and Marlow was alone. He shuddered as he thought of Jim working as a mere water-clerk, perhaps the most 11 unheroic,\" most unromantic work imaginable. He remembered a small, short man, \"bearded to the waist like a gnome,\" whose soul had shrunk to the size of \"a parched pea\" when circumstances forced him to do menial work; yet that man proved his manhood to himself when he tried to rescue a strong-bodied, strong-willed woman who so overpowered him that they both drowned. Marlow then returns us to the night before Jim's sentencing. That night, Marlow offered Jim a plan for escape, in addition to a letter of recommendation for a new job -- plus more than 200 rupees . Jim would have none of it. \"Clear out!\" he told Marlow, and Jim's face was so close that Marlow could see the soft down on Jim's smooth, young skin. Jim said that he had to be his own witness for what he had done. I may have jumped, but I don't run away.\" The knowledge that he jumped from the Patna, abandoning 800 people to what he was sure was certain death, was a deadly weight upon his soul. By staying to face the panel of inquiry, Jim hoped to perform an act that would partially restore his sense of self-worth. With a miserable grin on his face and a nervous laugh, Jim dashed off then, and the night swallowed him up. Marlow was stunned. Jim had touched Marlow's \"secret sensibility\"; Marlow knew that he himself might have taken the money and run if he were Jim. He was awed and puzzled by such resolute idealism in one so alone and so young, \"not yet four-and-twenty.\"", "analysis": "Jim tries to explain that when the Avondale rescued them, he said nothing when the captain gave out the fictitious story because, after all, I had jumped, hadn't I?\" Thus after avoiding the word \"jumped\" for so long, now that he has actually said it, he seems to take a perverse delight in using the word. After the report of the Patna, Jim is exultant partly because the shouts for help that have been haunting him must have been imaginary, but nevertheless, these shouts were so piercing that he is now glad that the pilgrims were saved so that he will no longer hear their imaginary shouts. He still can't understand the sinking of the masthead , but he knows that it too must be imaginary. Conrad then shifts his narrative to that of the report of the French lieutenant whose gunboat rescued the Patna. Then Conrad shifts the novel's time sequence again -- this time, to three years in the future, when Marlow encountered this same French lieutenant who had boarded the Patna and oversaw her towing for thirty hours without sleep or wine, but knowing that two quartermasters were standing with axes ready to cut loose the lines if the Patna were to begin to sink, in which case, the French lieutenant would have also have gone to his death. And yet in Chapter 13, when Marlow and the French lieutenant discuss the events, the Frenchman does not condemn Jim for his actions. Even though he himself was there for thirty hours, he maintains that \"After all, one does not die of . . . being afraid.\" Also, he maintains that \"there is a point -- there is a point -- for the best of us there is somewhere a point when you let go everything. And you have got to live with that truth -- do you see?\" Thus, the man who faced death for thirty hours refuses to either condemn or judge Jim. Conrad  then returns to the time of the trial -- just before the judging, when Marlow finally feels that Jim has suffered enough indignation and therefore offers him money  so that Jim can simply leave, disappear. But Jim refuses: \"I may have jumped, but I don't run away.\" It is as though once again his romantic nature craves added punishment and indignation."}

'All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist
of his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by his struggles,
and in the rifts of the immaterial veil he would appear to my staring
eyes distinct of form and pregnant with vague appeal like a symbolic
figure in a picture. The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my
limbs as heavy as a slab of marble.

'"I see," I murmured, more to prove to myself that I could break my
state of numbness than for any other reason.

'"The Avondale picked us up just before sunset," he remarked moodily.
"Steamed right straight for us. We had only to sit and wait."

'After a long interval, he said, "They told their story." And again
there was that oppressive silence. "Then only I knew what it was I had
made up my mind to," he added.

'"You said nothing," I whispered.

'"What could I say?" he asked, in the same low tone. . . . "Shock
slight. Stopped the ship. Ascertained the damage. Took measures to get
the boats out without creating a panic. As the first boat was lowered
ship went down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . . What could be more
clear" . . . he hung his head . . . "and more awful?" His lips quivered
while he looked straight into my eyes. "I had jumped--hadn't I?" he
asked, dismayed. "That's what I had to live down. The story didn't
matter." . . . He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and
left into the gloom: "It was like cheating the dead," he stammered.

'"And there were no dead," I said.

'He went away from me at this. That is the only way I can describe it.
In a moment I saw his back close to the balustrade. He stood there for
some time, as if admiring the purity and the peace of the night. Some
flowering-shrub in the garden below spread its powerful scent through
the damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps.

'"And that did not matter," he said, as stubbornly as you please.

'"Perhaps not," I admitted. I began to have a notion he was too much for
me. After all, what did _I_ know?

'"Dead or not dead, I could not get clear," he said. "I had to live;
hadn't I?"

'"Well, yes--if you take it in that way," I mumbled.

'"I was glad, of course," he threw out carelessly, with his mind fixed
on something else. "The exposure," he pronounced slowly, and lifted
his head. "Do you know what was my first thought when I heard? I was
relieved. I was relieved to learn that those shouts--did I tell you I
had heard shouts? No? Well, I did. Shouts for help . . . blown along
with the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose. And yet I can hardly . . . How
stupid. . . . The others did not. I asked them afterwards. They all
said No. No? And I was hearing them even then! I might have known--but
I didn't think--I only listened. Very faint screams--day after day. Then
that little half-caste chap here came up and spoke to me. 'The
Patna . . . French gunboat . . . towed successfully to Aden . . .
Investigation . . . Marine Office . . . Sailors' Home . . . arrangements
made for your board and lodging!' I walked along with him, and I enjoyed
the silence. So there had been no shouting. Imagination. I had to
believe him. I could hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could
have stood it. It was getting worse, too . . . I mean--louder." 'He fell
into thought.

'"And I had heard nothing! Well--so be it. But the lights! The lights
did go! We did not see them. They were not there. If they had been, I
would have swam back--I would have gone back and shouted alongside--I
would have begged them to take me on board. . . . I would have had my
chance. . . . You doubt me? . . . How do you know how I felt? . . . What
right have you to doubt? . . . I very nearly did it as it was--do you
understand?" His voice fell. "There was not a glimmer--not a glimmer,"
he protested mournfully. "Don't you understand that if there had been,
you would not have seen me here? You see me--and you doubt."

'I shook my head negatively. This question of the lights being lost
sight of when the boat could not have been more than a quarter of a mile
from the ship was a matter for much discussion. Jim stuck to it that
there was nothing to be seen after the first shower had cleared away;
and the others had affirmed the same thing to the officers of the
Avondale. Of course people shook their heads and smiled. One old skipper
who sat near me in court tickled my ear with his white beard to murmur,
"Of course they would lie." As a matter of fact nobody lied; not even
the chief engineer with his story of the mast-head light dropping like a
match you throw down. Not consciously, at least. A man with his liver in
such a state might very well have seen a floating spark in the corner of
his eye when stealing a hurried glance over his shoulder. They had seen
no light of any sort though they were well within range, and they could
only explain this in one way: the ship had gone down. It was obvious
and comforting. The foreseen fact coming so swiftly had justified their
haste. No wonder they did not cast about for any other explanation. Yet
the true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the
court ceased to bother about the question. If you remember, the ship had
been stopped, and was lying with her head on the course steered through
the night, with her stern canted high and her bows brought low down in
the water through the filling of the fore-compartment. Being thus out of
trim, when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head
to wind as sharply as though she had been at anchor. By this change in
her position all her lights were in a very few moments shut off from
the boat to leeward. It may very well be that, had they been seen, they
would have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in
the darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the
human glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity. It would
have said, "I am here--still here" . . . and what more can the eye of
the most forsaken of human beings say? But she turned her back on them
as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round, burdened, to glare
stubbornly at the new danger of the open sea which she so strangely
survived to end her days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her
recorded fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. What
were the various ends their destiny provided for the pilgrims I am
unable to say; but the immediate future brought, at about nine o'clock
next morning, a French gunboat homeward bound from Reunion. The report
of her commander was public property. He had swept a little out of
his course to ascertain what was the matter with that steamer floating
dangerously by the head upon a still and hazy sea. There was an ensign,
union down, flying at her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a
signal of distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food
in the cooking-boxes forward as usual. The decks were packed as close
as a sheep-pen: there were people perched all along the rails, jammed on
the bridge in a solid mass; hundreds of eyes stared, and not a sound was
heard when the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that multitude of lips
had been sealed by a spell.

'The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, and after
ascertaining through his binoculars that the crowd on deck did not look
plague-stricken, decided to send a boat. Two officers came on board,
listened to the serang, tried to talk with the Arab, couldn't make head
or tail of it: but of course the nature of the emergency was obvious
enough. They were also very much struck by discovering a white man, dead
and curled up peacefully on the bridge. "Fort intrigues par ce cadavre,"
as I was informed a long time after by an elderly French lieutenant whom
I came across one afternoon in Sydney, by the merest chance, in a sort
of cafe, and who remembered the affair perfectly. Indeed this affair,
I may notice in passing, had an extraordinary power of defying the
shortness of memories and the length of time: it seemed to live, with
a sort of uncanny vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their
tongues. I've had the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years
afterwards, thousands of miles away, emerging from the remotest possible
talk, coming to the surface of the most distant allusions. Has it not
turned up to-night between us? And I am the only seaman here. I am the
only one to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out! But if
two men who, unknown to each other, knew of this affair met accidentally
on any spot of this earth, the thing would pop up between them as sure
as fate, before they parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and
at the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: he did not
seem particularly talkative either; he was a quiet, massive chap in a
creased uniform, sitting drowsily over a tumbler half full of some
dark liquid. His shoulder-straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved
cheeks were large and sallow; he looked like a man who would be given
to taking snuff--don't you know? I won't say he did; but the habit would
have fitted that kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of
Home News, which I didn't want, across the marble table. I said "Merci."
We exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, before
I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it, and he was
telling me how much they had been "intrigued by that corpse." It turned
out he had been one of the boarding officers.

'In the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of foreign
drinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and he took a
sip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was nothing more
nasty than cassis a l'eau, and glancing with one eye into the tumbler,
shook his head slightly. "Impossible de comprendre--vous concevez," he
said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and thoughtfulness. I could
very easily conceive how impossible it had been for them to understand.
Nobody in the gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as
told by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two
officers. "They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead
man (autour de ce mort)," he described. "One had to attend to the most
pressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves--Parbleu!
A mob like that--don't you see?" he interjected with philosophic
indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the
safest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at.
They got two hawsers on board promptly (en toute hale) and took the
Patna in tow--stern foremost at that--which, under the circumstances,
was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to
be of any great use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on
the bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded
the greatest care (exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not
help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of
these arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active,
and he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with his
thick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one
of those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the
sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on whose faces
the placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown over the mystery
of pain and distress. He ought to have had a threadbare black soutane
buttoned smoothly up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with
shoulder-straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly
while he went on telling me that it had been the very devil of a job,
as doubtless (sans doute) I could figure to myself in my quality of a
seaman (en votre qualite de marin). At the end of the period he inclined
his body slightly towards me, and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the
air to escape with a gentle hiss. "Luckily," he continued, "the sea was
level like this table, and there was no more wind than there is here."
. . . The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot;
my face burned as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and
blushing. They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest
English port "naturellement," where their responsibility ceased, "Dieu
merci." . . . He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . "Because,
mind you (notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quartermasters
stationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear of our tow in case
she . . ." He fluttered downwards his heavy eyelids, making his meaning
as plain as possible. . . . "What would you! One does what one can
(on fait ce qu'on peut)," and for a moment he managed to invest
his ponderous immobility with an air of resignation. "Two
quartermasters--thirty hours--always there. Two!" he repeated, lifting
up his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. This was
absolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It gave me the opportunity
to "note" a starred scar on the back of his hand--effect of a gunshot
clearly; and, as if my sight had been made more acute by this discovery,
I perceived also the seam of an old wound, beginning a little below the
temple and going out of sight under the short grey hair at the side of
his head--the graze of a spear or the cut of a sabre. He clasped his
hands on his stomach again. "I remained on board that--that--my memory
is going (s'en va). Ah! Patt-na. C'est bien ca. Patt-na. Merci. It is
droll how one forgets. I stayed on that ship thirty hours. . . ."

'"You did!" I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he pursed his lips a
little, but this time made no hissing sound. "It was judged proper," he
said, lifting his eyebrows dispassionately, "that one of the officers
should remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir l'oeil)" . . . he sighed
idly . . . "and for communicating by signals with the towing ship--do
you see?--and so on. For the rest, it was my opinion too. We made our
boats ready to drop over--and I also on that ship took measures. . . .
Enfin! One has done one's possible. It was a delicate position. Thirty
hours! They prepared me some food. As for the wine--go and whistle for
it--not a drop." In some extraordinary way, without any marked change in
his inert attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he managed
to convey the idea of profound disgust. "I--you know--when it comes to
eating without my glass of wine--I am nowhere."

'I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for though he didn't
stir a limb or twitch a feature, he made one aware how much he was
irritated by the recollection. But he seemed to forget all about it.
They delivered their charge to the "port authorities," as he expressed
it. He was struck by the calmness with which it had been received. "One
might have thought they had such a droll find (drole de trouvaille)
brought them every day. You are extraordinary--you others," he
commented, with his back propped against the wall, and looking himself
as incapable of an emotional display as a sack of meal. There happened
to be a man-of-war and an Indian Marine steamer in the harbour at the
time, and he did not conceal his admiration of the efficient manner in
which the boats of these two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers.
Indeed his torpid demeanour concealed nothing: it had that mysterious,
almost miraculous, power of producing striking effects by means
impossible of detection which is the last word of the highest art.
"Twenty-five minutes--watch in hand--twenty-five, no more." . . . He
unclasped and clasped again his fingers without removing his hands from
his stomach, and made it infinitely more effective than if he had thrown
up his arms to heaven in amazement. . . . "All that lot (tout ce monde)
on shore--with their little affairs--nobody left but a guard of
seamen (marins de l'Etat) and that interesting corpse (cet interessant
cadavre). Twenty-five minutes." . . . With downcast eyes and his head
tilted slightly on one side he seemed to roll knowingly on his tongue
the savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded one without any further
demonstration that his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming
his hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform me that, being
under orders to make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in
two hours' time, "so that (de sorte que) there are many things in this
incident of my life (dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained
obscure."''After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to speak,
submitted himself passively to a state of silence. I kept him company;
and suddenly, but not abruptly, as if the appointed time had arrived
for his moderate and husky voice to come out of his immobility, he
pronounced, "Mon Dieu! how the time passes!" Nothing could have been
more commonplace than this remark; but its utterance coincided for me
with a moment of vision. It's extraordinary how we go through life with
eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just
as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to
the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless,
there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments
of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much--everything--in
a flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I
raised my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen
him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy folds of his
coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so curiously suggestive
of his having been simply left there. Time had passed indeed: it had
overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with
a few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned
face, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulder-straps; one of those
steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations,
one of those uncounted lives that are buried without drums and
trumpets under the foundations of monumental successes. "I am now third
lieutenant of the Victorieuse" (she was the flagship of the French
Pacific squadron at the time), he said, detaching his shoulders from
the wall a couple of inches to introduce himself. I bowed slightly on my
side of the table, and told him I commanded a merchant vessel at present
anchored in Rushcutters' Bay. He had "remarked" her,--a pretty little
craft. He was very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy
he went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he repeated,
breathing visibly the while, "Ah, yes. A little craft painted
black--very pretty--very pretty (tres coquet)." After a time he twisted
his body slowly to face the glass door on our right. "A dull town
(triste ville)," he observed, staring into the street. It was a
brilliant day; a southerly buster was raging, and we could see the
passers-by, men and women, buffeted by the wind on the sidewalks, the
sunlit fronts of the houses across the road blurred by the tall whirls
of dust. "I descended on shore," he said, "to stretch my legs a little,
but . . ." He didn't finish, and sank into the depths of his repose.
"Pray--tell me," he began, coming up ponderously, "what was there at the
bottom of this affair--precisely (au juste)? It is curious. That dead
man, for instance--and so on."

'"There were living men too," I said; "much more curious."

'"No doubt, no doubt," he agreed half audibly, then, as if after
mature consideration, murmured, "Evidently." I made no difficulty in
communicating to him what had interested me most in this affair. It
seemed as though he had a right to know: hadn't he spent thirty hours
on board the Patna--had he not taken the succession, so to speak, had
he not done "his possible"? He listened to me, looking more priest-like
than ever, and with what--probably on account of his downcast eyes--had
the appearance of devout concentration. Once or twice he elevated
his eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids), as one would say "The
devil!" Once he calmly exclaimed, "Ah, bah!" under his breath, and when
I had finished he pursed his lips in a deliberate way and emitted a sort
of sorrowful whistle.

'In any one else it might have been an evidence of boredom, a sign of
indifference; but he, in his occult way, managed to make his immobility
appear profoundly responsive, and as full of valuable thoughts as an
egg is of meat. What he said at last was nothing more than a "Very
interesting," pronounced politely, and not much above a whisper. Before
I got over my disappointment he added, but as if speaking to himself,
"That's it. That _is_ it." His chin seemed to sink lower on his breast,
his body to weigh heavier on his seat. I was about to ask him what he
meant, when a sort of preparatory tremor passed over his whole person,
as a faint ripple may be seen upon stagnant water even before the wind
is felt. "And so that poor young man ran away along with the others," he
said, with grave tranquillity.

'I don't know what made me smile: it is the only genuine smile of mine
I can remember in connection with Jim's affair. But somehow this simple
statement of the matter sounded funny in French. . . . "S'est enfui avec
les autres," had said the lieutenant. And suddenly I began to admire the
discrimination of the man. He had made out the point at once: he did
get hold of the only thing I cared about. I felt as though I were taking
professional opinion on the case. His imperturbable and mature calmness
was that of an expert in possession of the facts, and to whom one's
perplexities are mere child's-play. "Ah! The young, the young," he said
indulgently. "And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I
asked swiftly. "Of being afraid." He elucidated his meaning and sipped
his drink.

'I perceived that the three last fingers of his wounded hand were stiff
and could not move independently of each other, so that he took up his
tumbler with an ungainly clutch. "One is always afraid. One may talk,
but . . ." He put down the glass awkwardly. . . . "The fear, the
fear--look you--it is always there." . . . He touched his breast near
a brass button, on the very spot where Jim had given a thump to his
own when protesting that there was nothing the matter with his heart. I
suppose I made some sign of dissent, because he insisted, "Yes! yes! One
talks, one talks; this is all very fine; but at the end of the reckoning
one is no cleverer than the next man--and no more brave. Brave! This
is always to be seen. I have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse)," he said,
using the slang expression with imperturbable seriousness, "in all parts
of the world; I have known brave men--famous ones! Allez!" . . . He
drank carelessly. . . . "Brave--you conceive--in the Service--one has
got to be--the trade demands it (le metier veut ca). Is it not so?" he
appealed to me reasonably. "Eh bien! Each of them--I say each of them,
if he were an honest man--bien entendu--would confess that there is a
point--there is a point--for the best of us--there is somewhere a point
when you let go everything (vous lachez tout). And you have got to
live with that truth--do you see? Given a certain combination
of circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable funk (un trac
epouvantable). And even for those who do not believe this truth there is
fear all the same--the fear of themselves. Absolutely so. Trust me. Yes.
Yes. . . . At my age one knows what one is talking about--que diable!"
. . . He had delivered himself of all this as immovably as though he had
been the mouthpiece of abstract wisdom, but at this point he heightened
the effect of detachment by beginning to twirl his thumbs slowly. "It's
evident--parbleu!" he continued; "for, make up your mind as much as you
like, even a simple headache or a fit of indigestion (un derangement
d'estomac) is enough to . . . Take me, for instance--I have made my
proofs. Eh bien! I, who am speaking to you, once . . ."

'He drained his glass and returned to his twirling. "No, no; one does
not die of it," he pronounced finally, and when I found he did not mean
to proceed with the personal anecdote, I was extremely disappointed; the
more so as it was not the sort of story, you know, one could very well
press him for. I sat silent, and he too, as if nothing could please him
better. Even his thumbs were still now. Suddenly his lips began to move.
"That is so," he resumed placidly. "Man is born a coward (L'homme est ne
poltron). It is a difficulty--parbleu! It would be too easy other vise.
But habit--habit--necessity--do you see?--the eye of others--voila. One
puts up with it. And then the example of others who are no better than
yourself, and yet make good countenance. . . ."

'His voice ceased.

'"That young man--you will observe--had none of these inducements--at
least at the moment," I remarked.

'He raised his eyebrows forgivingly: "I don't say; I don't say. The
young man in question might have had the best dispositions--the best
dispositions," he repeated, wheezing a little.

'"I am glad to see you taking a lenient view," I said. "His own feeling
in the matter was--ah!--hopeful, and . . ."

'The shuffle of his feet under the table interrupted me. He drew up
his heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say--no other expression can describe the
steady deliberation of the act--and at last was disclosed completely to
me. I was confronted by two narrow grey circlets, like two tiny steel
rings around the profound blackness of the pupils. The sharp glance,
coming from that massive body, gave a notion of extreme efficiency, like
a razor-edge on a battle-axe. "Pardon," he said punctiliously. His right
hand went up, and he swayed forward. "Allow me . . . I contended that
one may get on knowing very well that one's courage does not come of
itself (ne vient pas tout seul). There's nothing much in that to
get upset about. One truth the more ought not to make life
impossible. . . . But the honour--the honour, monsieur! . . . The honour
. . . that is real--that is! And what life may be worth when" . . . he
got on his feet with a ponderous impetuosity, as a startled ox might
scramble up from the grass . . . "when the honour is gone--ah
ca! par exemple--I can offer no opinion. I can offer no
opinion--because--monsieur--I know nothing of it."

'I had risen too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into
our attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a
mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The blight
of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our
conversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. "Very well," I said,
with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce itself to not being
found out?" He made as if to retort readily, but when he spoke he had
changed his mind. "This, monsieur, is too fine for me--much above me--I
don't think about it." He bowed heavily over his cap, which he held
before him by the peak, between the thumb and the forefinger of his
wounded hand. I bowed too. We bowed together: we scraped our feet at
each other with much ceremony, while a dirty specimen of a waiter looked
on critically, as though he had paid for the performance. "Serviteur,"
said the Frenchman. Another scrape. "Monsieur" . . . "Monsieur." . . .
The glass door swung behind his burly back. I saw the southerly buster
get hold of him and drive him down wind with his hand to his head, his
shoulders braced, and the tails of his coat blown hard against his legs.

'I sat down again alone and discouraged--discouraged about Jim's case.
If you wonder that after more than three years it had preserved its
actuality, you must know that I had seen him only very lately. I had
come straight from Samarang, where I had loaded a cargo for Sydney: an
utterly uninteresting bit of business,--what Charley here would call one
of my rational transactions,--and in Samarang I had seen something
of Jim. He was then working for De Jongh, on my recommendation.
Water-clerk. "My representative afloat," as De Jongh called him. You
can't imagine a mode of life more barren of consolation, less capable of
being invested with a spark of glamour--unless it be the business of an
insurance canvasser. Little Bob Stanton--Charley here knew him well--had
gone through that experience. The same who got drowned afterwards trying
to save a lady's-maid in the Sephora disaster. A case of collision on a
hazy morning off the Spanish coast--you may remember. All the passengers
had been packed tidily into the boats and shoved clear of the ship, when
Bob sheered alongside again and scrambled back on deck to fetch that
girl. How she had been left behind I can't make out; anyhow, she had
gone completely crazy--wouldn't leave the ship--held to the rail like
grim death. The wrestling-match could be seen plainly from the boats;
but poor Bob was the shortest chief mate in the merchant service, and
the woman stood five feet ten in her shoes and was as strong as a horse,
I've been told. So it went on, pull devil, pull baker, the wretched girl
screaming all the time, and Bob letting out a yell now and then to
warn his boat to keep well clear of the ship. One of the hands told me,
hiding a smile at the recollection, "It was for all the world, sir, like
a naughty youngster fighting with his mother." The same old chap said
that "At the last we could see that Mr. Stanton had given up hauling
at the gal, and just stood by looking at her, watchful like. We thought
afterwards he must've been reckoning that, maybe, the rush of water
would tear her away from the rail by-and-by and give him a show to save
her. We daren't come alongside for our life; and after a bit the old
ship went down all on a sudden with a lurch to starboard--plop. The suck
in was something awful. We never saw anything alive or dead come up."
Poor Bob's spell of shore-life had been one of the complications of a
love affair, I believe. He fondly hoped he had done with the sea for
ever, and made sure he had got hold of all the bliss on earth, but it
came to canvassing in the end. Some cousin of his in Liverpool put up
to it. He used to tell us his experiences in that line. He made us laugh
till we cried, and, not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized
and bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst us and
say, "It's all very well for you beggars to laugh, but my immortal soul
was shrivelled down to the size of a parched pea after a week of that
work." I don't know how Jim's soul accommodated itself to the new
conditions of his life--I was kept too busy in getting him something to
do that would keep body and soul together--but I am pretty certain his
adventurous fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation. It had
certainly nothing to feed upon in this new calling. It was distressing
to see him at it, though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for
which I must give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby plodding
with a sort of notion that it was a punishment for the heroics of his
fancy--an expiation for his craving after more glamour than he could
carry. He had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse,
and now he was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger's
donkey. He did it very well. He shut himself in, put his head down, said
never a word. Very well; very well indeed--except for certain
fantastic and violent outbreaks, on the deplorable occasions when the
irrepressible Patna case cropped up. Unfortunately that scandal of the
Eastern seas would not die out. And this is the reason why I could never
feel I had done with Jim for good.

'I sat thinking of him after the French lieutenant had left, not,
however, in connection with De Jongh's cool and gloomy backshop, where
we had hurriedly shaken hands not very long ago, but as I had seen him
years before in the last flickers of the candle, alone with me in the
long gallery of the Malabar House, with the chill and the darkness of
the night at his back. The respectable sword of his country's law was
suspended over his head. To-morrow--or was it to-day? (midnight had
slipped by long before we parted)--the marble-faced police
magistrate, after distributing fines and terms of imprisonment in the
assault-and-battery case, would take up the awful weapon and smite his
bowed neck. Our communion in the night was uncommonly like a last vigil
with a condemned man. He was guilty too. He was guilty--as I had told
myself repeatedly, guilty and done for; nevertheless, I wished to spare
him the mere detail of a formal execution. I don't pretend to explain
the reasons of my desire--I don't think I could; but if you haven't got
a sort of notion by this time, then I must have been very obscure in
my narrative, or you too sleepy to seize upon the sense of my words.
I don't defend my morality. There was no morality in the impulse which
induced me to lay before him Brierly's plan of evasion--I may call
it--in all its primitive simplicity. There were the rupees--absolutely
ready in my pocket and very much at his service. Oh! a loan; a loan of
course--and if an introduction to a man (in Rangoon) who could put some
work in his way . . . Why! with the greatest pleasure. I had pen, ink,
and paper in my room on the first floor And even while I was speaking I
was impatient to begin the letter--day, month, year, 2.30 A.M. . . . for
the sake of our old friendship I ask you to put some work in the way of
Mr. James So-and-so, in whom, &c., &c. . . . I was even ready to write
in that strain about him. If he had not enlisted my sympathies he had
done better for himself--he had gone to the very fount and origin of
that sentiment he had reached the secret sensibility of my egoism. I
am concealing nothing from you, because were I to do so my action would
appear more unintelligible than any man's action has the right to be,
and--in the second place--to-morrow you will forget my sincerity along
with the other lessons of the past. In this transaction, to speak
grossly and precisely, I was the irreproachable man; but the subtle
intentions of my immorality were defeated by the moral simplicity of the
criminal. No doubt he was selfish too, but his selfishness had a higher
origin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say what I would, he was
eager to go through the ceremony of execution, and I didn't say much,
for I felt that in argument his youth would tell against me heavily: he
believed where I had already ceased to doubt. There was something fine
in the wildness of his unexpressed, hardly formulated hope. "Clear out!
Couldn't think of it," he said, with a shake of the head. "I make you
an offer for which I neither demand nor expect any sort of gratitude,"
I said; "you shall repay the money when convenient, and . . ." "Awfully
good of you," he muttered without looking up. I watched him narrowly:
the future must have appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not
falter, as though indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart.
I felt angry--not for the first time that night. "The whole wretched
business," I said, "is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your
kind . . ." "It is, it is," he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on
the floor. It was heartrending. He towered above the light, and I could
see the down on his cheek, the colour mantling warm under the smooth
skin of his face. Believe me or not, I say it was outrageously
heartrending. It provoked me to brutality. "Yes," I said; "and allow me
to confess that I am totally unable to imagine what advantage you can
expect from this licking of the dregs." "Advantage!" he murmured out of
his stillness. "I am dashed if I do," I said, enraged. "I've been trying
to tell you all there is in it," he went on slowly, as if meditating
something unanswerable. "But after all, it is _my_ trouble." I opened my
mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly that I'd lost all confidence in
myself; and it was as if he too had given me up, for he mumbled like a
man thinking half aloud. "Went away . . . went into hospitals. . . . Not
one of them would face it. . . . They! . . ." He moved his hand slightly
to imply disdain. "But I've got to get over this thing, and I mustn't
shirk any of it or . . . I won't shirk any of it." He was silent. He
gazed as though he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the
passing expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution--reflected
them in turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of
unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere
shades. "Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow," I began. He had a movement of
impatience. "You don't seem to understand," he said incisively; then
looking at me without a wink, "I may have jumped, but I don't run away."
"I meant no offence," I said; and added stupidly, "Better men than you
have found it expedient to run, at times." He coloured all over, while
in my confusion I half-choked myself with my own tongue. "Perhaps so,"
he said at last, "I am not good enough; I can't afford it. I am bound to
fight this thing down--I am fighting it now." I got out of my chair and
felt stiff all over. The silence was embarrassing, and to put an end
to it I imagined nothing better but to remark, "I had no idea it was so
late," in an airy tone. . . . "I dare say you have had enough of this,"
he said brusquely: "and to tell you the truth"--he began to look round
for his hat--"so have I."

'Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struck aside my helping
hand; he was ready to go now, and beyond the balustrade the night seemed
to wait for him very still, as though he had been marked down for its
prey. I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He had found his hat. For a
few seconds we hung in the wind. "What will you do after--after . . ."
I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as likely as not," he answered in a
gruff mutter. I had recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to
take it lightly. "Pray remember," I said, "that I should like very much
to see you again before you go." "I don't know what's to prevent
you. The damned thing won't make me invisible," he said with intense
bitterness,--"no such luck." And then at the moment of taking leave he
treated me to a ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to an
awful display of hesitations. God forgive him--me! He had taken it
into his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as to
shaking hands. It was too awful for words. I believe I shouted suddenly
at him as you would bellow to a man you saw about to walk over a cliff;
I remember our voices being raised, the appearance of a miserable grin
on his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a nervous laugh. The candle
spluttered out, and the thing was over at last, with a groan that
floated up to me in the dark. He got himself away somehow. The night
swallowed his form. He was a horrible bungler. Horrible. I heard the
quick crunch-crunch of the gravel under his boots. He was running.
Absolutely running, with nowhere to go to. And he was not yet
four-and-twenty.'


Chapters 12-13
The narrative now focuses on what happened when Jim and the three crewmen were picked up next day by the Avondale. The German skipper recited the alibi agreed on by all the crewmen, except Jim. The first lifeboat, the skipper said, was lowered slowly to avoid panic, and then "the ship went down in a squall -- sank like lead." Jim knew that this was a lie, but he said nothing. Still, however, he was sure that he heard hundreds of pilgrims screaming and crying out for help. Once the men were on shore, they learned immediately that the Patna did not sink; it was sighted by a small French gunboat and towed to Aden. Did the Patna's light disappear, as the crewmen in the lifeboat seem to think it did? Yes, the wind had swung the ship's stern around, so that the lifeboat was suddenly behind the Patna. Thus, the Patna did seem to suddenly disappear. Marlow recalls a conversation that he had, purely by chance, some time afterward; it took place in Sydney, Australia, with the French lieutenant who boarded the Patna the day after its officers deserted it. For thirty hours, the Frenchman remained on board while his small boat pulled the Patna toward Aden, two of his men ready at any minute to cut the tow lines and let the Patna -- and all 800 Moslems sink if the ship's stern caved in. But the Patna's stern did not burst, and the rescue mission was wholly uneventful, remembered by the Frenchman primarily because the religious pilgrims did not have a single drop of wine to serve him with dinner. Marlow continued his conversation with the elderly French officer, fascinated by the man's bitterness and sadness. I have known some brave men," the Frenchman said, but, within each one, there was always fear: "the fear -- it is always there." He sighed and said that all men are weak," but that we must each accept that truth and "live with it." The French lieutenant left, and Marlow was alone. He shuddered as he thought of Jim working as a mere water-clerk, perhaps the most 11 unheroic," most unromantic work imaginable. He remembered a small, short man, "bearded to the waist like a gnome," whose soul had shrunk to the size of "a parched pea" when circumstances forced him to do menial work; yet that man proved his manhood to himself when he tried to rescue a strong-bodied, strong-willed woman who so overpowered him that they both drowned. Marlow then returns us to the night before Jim's sentencing. That night, Marlow offered Jim a plan for escape, in addition to a letter of recommendation for a new job -- plus more than 200 rupees . Jim would have none of it. "Clear out!" he told Marlow, and Jim's face was so close that Marlow could see the soft down on Jim's smooth, young skin. Jim said that he had to be his own witness for what he had done. I may have jumped, but I don't run away." The knowledge that he jumped from the Patna, abandoning 800 people to what he was sure was certain death, was a deadly weight upon his soul. By staying to face the panel of inquiry, Jim hoped to perform an act that would partially restore his sense of self-worth. With a miserable grin on his face and a nervous laugh, Jim dashed off then, and the night swallowed him up. Marlow was stunned. Jim had touched Marlow's "secret sensibility"; Marlow knew that he himself might have taken the money and run if he were Jim. He was awed and puzzled by such resolute idealism in one so alone and so young, "not yet four-and-twenty."
Jim tries to explain that when the Avondale rescued them, he said nothing when the captain gave out the fictitious story because, after all, I had jumped, hadn't I?" Thus after avoiding the word "jumped" for so long, now that he has actually said it, he seems to take a perverse delight in using the word. After the report of the Patna, Jim is exultant partly because the shouts for help that have been haunting him must have been imaginary, but nevertheless, these shouts were so piercing that he is now glad that the pilgrims were saved so that he will no longer hear their imaginary shouts. He still can't understand the sinking of the masthead , but he knows that it too must be imaginary. Conrad then shifts his narrative to that of the report of the French lieutenant whose gunboat rescued the Patna. Then Conrad shifts the novel's time sequence again -- this time, to three years in the future, when Marlow encountered this same French lieutenant who had boarded the Patna and oversaw her towing for thirty hours without sleep or wine, but knowing that two quartermasters were standing with axes ready to cut loose the lines if the Patna were to begin to sink, in which case, the French lieutenant would have also have gone to his death. And yet in Chapter 13, when Marlow and the French lieutenant discuss the events, the Frenchman does not condemn Jim for his actions. Even though he himself was there for thirty hours, he maintains that "After all, one does not die of . . . being afraid." Also, he maintains that "there is a point -- there is a point -- for the best of us there is somewhere a point when you let go everything. And you have got to live with that truth -- do you see?" Thus, the man who faced death for thirty hours refuses to either condemn or judge Jim. Conrad  then returns to the time of the trial -- just before the judging, when Marlow finally feels that Jim has suffered enough indignation and therefore offers him money  so that Jim can simply leave, disappear. But Jim refuses: "I may have jumped, but I don't run away." It is as though once again his romantic nature craves added punishment and indignation.