finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_41_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapter 42
chapter 42
{"name": "Chapter 42", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-42", "summary": "As their conversation continues, Jim finally promises that Brown will either have a fight or be let go. When the two part ways, Jim heads off to discuss matters with Doramin, and Brown returns to an unhappy Cornelius, who is irked that Brown didn't shoot Jim when he had the chance. Elsewhere, Jim argues that they should just let Brown go and avoid any more bloodshed. Of course no one agrees with him. Well, fine then, thinks Jim. He tells them that Dain Waris can take over the attack on Brown, because he wants nothing more to do with the whole rigmarole.", "analysis": ""}
'I don't think he could do more than perhaps look upon that straight
path. He seemed to have been puzzled by what he saw, for he interrupted
himself in his narrative more than once to exclaim, "He nearly slipped
from me there. I could not make him out. Who was he?" And after
glaring at me wildly he would go on, jubilating and sneering. To me the
conversation of these two across the creek appears now as the deadliest
kind of duel on which Fate looked on with her cold-eyed knowledge of the
end. No, he didn't turn Jim's soul inside out, but I am much mistaken if
the spirit so utterly out of his reach had not been made to taste to the
full the bitterness of that contest. These were the emissaries with whom
the world he had renounced was pursuing him in his retreat--white men
from "out there" where he did not think himself good enough to live.
This was all that came to him--a menace, a shock, a danger to his
work. I suppose it is this sad, half-resentful, half-resigned feeling,
piercing through the few words Jim said now and then, that puzzled Brown
so much in the reading of his character. Some great men owe most of
their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for
their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work;
and Brown, as though he had been really great, had a satanic gift of
finding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims. He admitted
to me that Jim wasn't of the sort that can be got over by truckling, and
accordingly he took care to show himself as a man confronting without
dismay ill-luck, censure, and disaster. The smuggling of a few guns was
no great crime, he pointed out. As to coming to Patusan, who had the
right to say he hadn't come to beg? The infernal people here let loose
at him from both banks without staying to ask questions. He made
the point brazenly, for, in truth, Dain Waris's energetic action had
prevented the greatest calamities; because Brown told me distinctly
that, perceiving the size of the place, he had resolved instantly in his
mind that as soon as he had gained a footing he would set fire right and
left, and begin by shooting down everything living in sight, in order to
cow and terrify the population. The disproportion of forces was so great
that this was the only way giving him the slightest chance of attaining
his ends--he argued in a fit of coughing. But he didn't tell Jim this.
As to the hardships and starvation they had gone through, these had been
very real; it was enough to look at his band. He made, at the sound of a
shrill whistle, all his men appear standing in a row on the logs in full
view, so that Jim could see them. For the killing of the man, it had
been done--well, it had--but was not this war, bloody war--in a corner?
and the fellow had been killed cleanly, shot through the chest, not like
that poor devil of his lying now in the creek. They had to listen to him
dying for six hours, with his entrails torn with slugs. At any rate this
was a life for a life. . . . And all this was said with the weariness,
with the recklessness of a man spurred on and on by ill-luck till he
cares not where he runs. When he asked Jim, with a sort of brusque
despairing frankness, whether he himself--straight now--didn't
understand that when "it came to saving one's life in the dark, one
didn't care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people"--it was
as if a demon had been whispering advice in his ear. "I made him wince,"
boasted Brown to me. "He very soon left off coming the righteous over
me. He just stood there with nothing to say, and looking as black as
thunder--not at me--on the ground." He asked Jim whether he had nothing
fishy in his life to remember that he was so damnedly hard upon a man
trying to get out of a deadly hole by the first means that came to
hand--and so on, and so on. And there ran through the rough talk a
vein of subtle reference to their common blood, an assumption of common
experience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge
that was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts.

'At last Brown threw himself down full length and watched Jim out of
the corners of his eyes. Jim on his side of the creek stood thinking and
switching his leg. The houses in view were silent, as if a pestilence
had swept them clean of every breath of life; but many invisible eyes
were turned, from within, upon the two men with the creek between them,
a stranded white boat, and the body of the third man half sunk in the
mud. On the river canoes were moving again, for Patusan was recovering
its belief in the stability of earthly institutions since the return of
the white lord. The right bank, the platforms of the houses, the rafts
moored along the shores, even the roofs of bathing-huts, were covered
with people that, far away out of earshot and almost out of sight, were
straining their eyes towards the knoll beyond the Rajah's stockade.
Within the wide irregular ring of forests, broken in two places by the
sheen of the river, there was a silence. "Will you promise to leave the
coast?" Jim asked. Brown lifted and let fall his hand, giving everything
up as it were--accepting the inevitable. "And surrender your arms?" Jim
went on. Brown sat up and glared across. "Surrender our arms! Not till
you come to take them out of our stiff hands. You think I am gone crazy
with funk? Oh no! That and the rags I stand in is all I have got in the
world, besides a few more breechloaders on board; and I expect to sell
the lot in Madagascar, if I ever get so far--begging my way from ship to
ship."

'Jim said nothing to this. At last, throwing away the switch he held in
his hand, he said, as if speaking to himself, "I don't know whether I
have the power." . . . "You don't know! And you wanted me just now to
give up my arms! That's good, too," cried Brown; "Suppose they say one
thing to you, and do the other thing to me." He calmed down markedly. "I
dare say you have the power, or what's the meaning of all this talk?" he
continued. "What did you come down here for? To pass the time of day?"

'"Very well," said Jim, lifting his head suddenly after a long silence.
"You shall have a clear road or else a clear fight." He turned on his
heel and walked away.

'Brown got up at once, but he did not go up the hill till he had seen
Jim disappear between the first houses. He never set his eyes on him
again. On his way back he met Cornelius slouching down with his head
between his shoulders. He stopped before Brown. "Why didn't you kill
him?" he demanded in a sour, discontented voice. "Because I could do
better than that," Brown said with an amused smile. "Never! never!"
protested Cornelius with energy. "Couldn't. I have lived here for many
years." Brown looked up at him curiously. There were many sides to the
life of that place in arms against him; things he would never find out.
Cornelius slunk past dejectedly in the direction of the river. He was
now leaving his new friends; he accepted the disappointing course of
events with a sulky obstinacy which seemed to draw more together his
little yellow old face; and as he went down he glanced askant here and
there, never giving up his fixed idea.

'Henceforth events move fast without a check, flowing from the very
hearts of men like a stream from a dark source, and we see Jim amongst
them, mostly through Tamb' Itam's eyes. The girl's eyes had watched him
too, but her life is too much entwined with his: there is her passion,
her wonder, her anger, and, above all, her fear and her unforgiving
love. Of the faithful servant, uncomprehending as the rest of them, it
is the fidelity alone that comes into play; a fidelity and a belief in
his lord so strong that even amazement is subdued to a sort of saddened
acceptance of a mysterious failure. He has eyes only for one figure,
and through all the mazes of bewilderment he preserves his air of
guardianship, of obedience, of care.

'His master came back from his talk with the white men, walking slowly
towards the stockade in the street. Everybody was rejoiced to see him
return, for while he was away every man had been afraid not only of him
being killed, but also of what would come after. Jim went into one of
the houses, where old Doramin had retired, and remained alone for a
long time with the head of the Bugis settlers. No doubt he discussed
the course to follow with him then, but no man was present at the
conversation. Only Tamb' Itam, keeping as close to the door as he could,
heard his master say, "Yes. I shall let all the people know that such
is my wish; but I spoke to you, O Doramin, before all the others, and
alone; for you know my heart as well as I know yours and its greatest
desire. And you know well also that I have no thought but for the
people's good." Then his master, lifting the sheeting in the doorway,
went out, and he, Tamb' Itam, had a glimpse of old Doramin within,
sitting in the chair with his hands on his knees, and looking between
his feet. Afterwards he followed his master to the fort, where all the
principal Bugis and Patusan inhabitants had been summoned for a talk.
Tamb' Itam himself hoped there would be some fighting. "What was it but
the taking of another hill?" he exclaimed regretfully. However, in the
town many hoped that the rapacious strangers would be induced, by the
sight of so many brave men making ready to fight, to go away. It would
be a good thing if they went away. Since Jim's arrival had been made
known before daylight by the gun fired from the fort and the beating of
the big drum there, the fear that had hung over Patusan had broken and
subsided like a wave on a rock, leaving the seething foam of excitement,
curiosity, and endless speculation. Half of the population had been
ousted out of their homes for purposes of defence, and were living in
the street on the left side of the river, crowding round the fort, and
in momentary expectation of seeing their abandoned dwellings on the
threatened bank burst into flames. The general anxiety was to see the
matter settled quickly. Food, through Jewel's care, had been served
out to the refugees. Nobody knew what their white man would do. Some
remarked that it was worse than in Sherif Ali's war. Then many people
did not care; now everybody had something to lose. The movements of
canoes passing to and fro between the two parts of the town were watched
with interest. A couple of Bugis war-boats lay anchored in the middle of
the stream to protect the river, and a thread of smoke stood at the bow
of each; the men in them were cooking their midday rice when Jim, after
his interviews with Brown and Doramin, crossed the river and entered by
the water-gate of his fort. The people inside crowded round him, so that
he could hardly make his way to the house. They had not seen him before,
because on his arrival during the night he had only exchanged a few
words with the girl, who had come down to the landing-stage for the
purpose, and had then gone on at once to join the chiefs and the
fighting men on the other bank. People shouted greetings after him.
One old woman raised a laugh by pushing her way to the front madly and
enjoining him in a scolding voice to see to it that her two sons, who
were with Doramin, did not come to harm at the hands of the robbers.
Several of the bystanders tried to pull her away, but she struggled and
cried, "Let me go. What is this, O Muslims? This laughter is unseemly.
Are they not cruel, bloodthirsty robbers bent on killing?" "Let her be,"
said Jim, and as a silence fell suddenly, he said slowly, "Everybody
shall be safe." He entered the house before the great sigh, and the loud
murmurs of satisfaction, had died out.

'There's no doubt his mind was made up that Brown should have his way
clear back to the sea. His fate, revolted, was forcing his hand. He
had for the first time to affirm his will in the face of outspoken
opposition. "There was much talk, and at first my master was silent,"
Tamb' Itam said. "Darkness came, and then I lit the candles on the long
table. The chiefs sat on each side, and the lady remained by my master's
right hand."

'When he began to speak, the unaccustomed difficulty seemed only to
fix his resolve more immovably. The white men were now waiting for his
answer on the hill. Their chief had spoken to him in the language of his
own people, making clear many things difficult to explain in any other
speech. They were erring men whom suffering had made blind to right and
wrong. It is true that lives had been lost already, but why lose more?
He declared to his hearers, the assembled heads of the people, that
their welfare was his welfare, their losses his losses, their mourning
his mourning. He looked round at the grave listening faces and told them
to remember that they had fought and worked side by side. They knew his
courage . . . Here a murmur interrupted him . . . And that he had never
deceived them. For many years they had dwelt together. He loved the
land and the people living in it with a very great love. He was ready to
answer with his life for any harm that should come to them if the white
men with beards were allowed to retire. They were evil-doers, but their
destiny had been evil, too. Had he ever advised them ill? Had his words
ever brought suffering to the people? he asked. He believed that it
would be best to let these whites and their followers go with their
lives. It would be a small gift. "I whom you have tried and found always
true ask you to let them go." He turned to Doramin. The old nakhoda made
no movement. "Then," said Jim, "call in Dain Waris, your son, my friend,
for in this business I shall not lead."'

Chapter 42
As their conversation continues, Jim finally promises that Brown will either have a fight or be let go. When the two part ways, Jim heads off to discuss matters with Doramin, and Brown returns to an unhappy Cornelius, who is irked that Brown didn't shoot Jim when he had the chance. Elsewhere, Jim argues that they should just let Brown go and avoid any more bloodshed. Of course no one agrees with him. Well, fine then, thinks Jim. He tells them that Dain Waris can take over the attack on Brown, because he wants nothing more to do with the whole rigmarole.