finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_24_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 42-43
chapters 42-43
{"name": "Chapters 42-43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4243", "summary": "Brown didn't know precisely what he had come upon in the jungle. But he sensed, intuitively, that Jim was a man with a guilty conscience and was, therefore, pitifully vulnerable. Brown, of course, never expected to confront this sort of man, He supposed that he would have to battle Jim physically for control of Patusan. Of course, he did not tell Jim this. He simply fed Jim's weakness by continuing to speak of their \"common blood,\" the bond between both their minds and their hearts. And at last, Lord Jim walked away, promising Brown either \"a clear road or a clear fight.\" Cornelius was furious. Why didn't Brown kill Jim? Brown answered that he could \"do better than that.\" Jim returned and tried to convince Doramin and the other Bugis to allow Brown and his men to return downriver. Doramin was against the idea. Jim then suggested that they call Dain Waris back and allow him to massacre Brown and his men; Jim said that he himself could not do so. Jim then promised to answer with his life if any harm came to any of the Bugis if they agreed to let Brown and his men leave Patusan. Doramin still did not respond, and Jim told him to call in Dain Waris, for \"in this business, I shall not lead.\" He had to live according to his own code. Tamb' Itam, Jim's bodyguard, was thunderstruck when he learned of Jim's decision. Jim, in turn, elaborated on his decision: he wanted Brown and his men to be allowed to leave, he said, because that was \"best in my knowledge,\" and his knowledge, he said, had \"never deceived you .\" At last, most of the men said that they would comply, because, above all, they believed and trusted in the wisdom of Tuan Jim. Jim realized the immensity of his responsibility. He told Jewel that he was \"responsible for every life in the land.\" Accordingly, Jim wanted no misunderstanding to occur, so he spent the night patrolling the streets. Then he put his own men in Rajah Allang's stockade, which commanded the mouth of the creek. There, Jim intended to remain until Brown and his party passed downriver. Next, he sent Tamb' Itam, downstream to warn Dain Waris that Brown and his men would be passing, and they were to be allowed to proceed without incident. Tamb' Itam asked for some sort of token so that Dain Waris would know that it was Jim himself who had issued this unusual order. Jim gave his bodyguard the silver ring that Stein gave to him long ago. Jim then sent Cornelius to Brown, telling Brown to use the full tide in the morning, but to be very careful not to provoke the armed men who would be alongside the river. Cornelius also added that one of the men would be Dain Waris, who had initially pursued Brown upriver. Cornelius then told Brown that he knew another way out of Patusan. Brown was interested; he agreed to take this new, secret route, especially if it would, as Cornelius promised, route him behind Dain Waris. Then, if \"something happened,\" the people would cease to believe blindly in Lord Jim. \"Then,\" says Brown, \"where will he be?\"", "analysis": "In Chapter 42, once Brown has discovered Jim's weak spot, he continues to emphasize to Jim that there is a common bond between them -- that they both share some kind of common guilt. As noted above, Brown is similar to Iago -- that is, while being the incarnation of pure evil, he is nevertheless very astute in psyching out his opponent. Brown, Conrad tells us, \"had a satanic gift of finding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims,\" and it did not take him long to discover Jim's weak spot. In fact, Conrad virtually uses Jim's earlier words when Brown asks Jim if Jim \"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,\" and upon asking this question to Jim, Brown brags that he was delighted: \"I made him wince.\" Of course, Brown's question uses virtually the same words that Jim used earlier to Marlow when he was trying to explain the confusion aboard the Patna and the fact that any man in an emergency would reach out to save his own life. Thus, we see that Lord Jim's deep compassion, combined with his lingering guilt over the Patna affair, causes him to totally misjudge Brown. Jim's guilt is still so great that he eventually yields to Brown's refusal to surrender his arms, thus leaving Brown and his men with sufficient means to accomplish the forthcoming ambush. Having now been exposed to Brown's total devotion to evil, we are in a position to know that Jim was wrong in his decision to release Brown, and thus we can once again see how Jim's judgment has been affected by his guilt long before we know of the impending catastrophe. For example, Jim's defense of his decision to free Brown and his men -- \"they were erring men whom suffering had made blind to right and wrong\" -- could so easily apply to Jim himself, for Jim also feels that as he himself once needed a chance to redeem himself, so these cutthroats might also need a similar chance for redemption. Therefore, Jim pledges his life if any of the men should come to any harm -- a pledge that later Jewel and Tamb' Itam cannot see any reason to honor. In Chapter 43, Stein, upon hearing of Jim's releasing Brown, once again calls Jim a \"romantic! romantic!\" and in this instance, Stein means that the true romantic is forever looking for the innate goodness of man. Jim's altruistic belief in man's innate nobility causes him to be blind to Brown's evilness and thus allows Brown to wreak vengeance upon Patusan."}
'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."'
'Tamb' Itam behind his chair was thunderstruck. The declaration produced
an immense sensation. "Let them go because this is best in my knowledge
which has never deceived you," Jim insisted. There was a silence. In
the darkness of the courtyard could be heard the subdued whispering,
shuffling noise of many people. Doramin raised his heavy head and said
that there was no more reading of hearts than touching the sky with the
hand, but--he consented. The others gave their opinion in turn. "It is
best," "Let them go," and so on. But most of them simply said that they
"believed Tuan Jim."

'In this simple form of assent to his will lies the whole gist of
the situation; their creed, his truth; and the testimony to that
faithfulness which made him in his own eyes the equal of the
impeccable men who never fall out of the ranks. Stein's words,
"Romantic!--Romantic!" seem to ring over those distances that will never
give him up now to a world indifferent to his failings and his virtues,
and to that ardent and clinging affection that refuses him the dole of
tears in the bewilderment of a great grief and of eternal separation.
From the moment the sheer truthfulness of his last three years of life
carries the day against the ignorance, the fear, and the anger of men,
he appears no longer to me as I saw him last--a white speck catching all
the dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea--but greater
and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for
her who loved him best a cruel and insoluble mystery.

'It is evident that he did not mistrust Brown; there was no reason to
doubt the story, whose truth seemed warranted by the rough frankness,
by a sort of virile sincerity in accepting the morality and the
consequences of his acts. But Jim did not know the almost inconceivable
egotism of the man which made him, when resisted and foiled in his will,
mad with the indignant and revengeful rage of a thwarted autocrat.
But if Jim did not mistrust Brown, he was evidently anxious that some
misunderstanding should not occur, ending perhaps in collision and
bloodshed. It was for this reason that directly the Malay chiefs had
gone he asked Jewel to get him something to eat, as he was going out of
the fort to take command in the town. On her remonstrating against this
on the score of his fatigue, he said that something might happen for
which he would never forgive himself. "I am responsible for every life
in the land," he said. He was moody at first; she served him with her
own hands, taking the plates and dishes (of the dinner-service presented
him by Stein) from Tamb' Itam. He brightened up after a while; told her
she would be again in command of the fort for another night. "There's
no sleep for us, old girl," he said, "while our people are in danger."
Later on he said jokingly that she was the best man of them all. "If you
and Dain Waris had done what you wanted, not one of these poor devils
would be alive to-day." "Are they very bad?" she asked, leaning over his
chair. "Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,"
he said after some hesitation.

'Tamb' Itam followed his master to the landing-stage outside the fort.
The night was clear but without a moon, and the middle of the river was
dark, while the water under each bank reflected the light of many fires
"as on a night of Ramadan," Tamb' Itam said. War-boats drifted silently
in the dark lane or, anchored, floated motionless with a loud ripple.
That night there was much paddling in a canoe and walking at his
master's heels for Tamb' Itam: up and down the street they tramped,
where the fires were burning, inland on the outskirts of the town where
small parties of men kept guard in the fields. Tuan Jim gave his orders
and was obeyed. Last of all they went to the Rajah's stockade, which a
detachment of Jim's people manned on that night. The old Rajah had fled
early in the morning with most of his women to a small house he had
near a jungle village on a tributary stream. Kassim, left behind, had
attended the council with his air of diligent activity to explain away
the diplomacy of the day before. He was considerably cold-shouldered,
but managed to preserve his smiling, quiet alertness, and professed
himself highly delighted when Jim told him sternly that he proposed to
occupy the stockade on that night with his own men. After the council
broke up he was heard outside accosting this and that deputing chief,
and speaking in a loud, gratified tone of the Rajah's property being
protected in the Rajah's absence.

'About ten or so Jim's men marched in. The stockade commanded the mouth
of the creek, and Jim meant to remain there till Brown had passed below.
A small fire was lit on the flat, grassy point outside the wall of
stakes, and Tamb' Itam placed a little folding-stool for his master. Jim
told him to try and sleep. Tamb' Itam got a mat and lay down a little
way off; but he could not sleep, though he knew he had to go on an
important journey before the night was out. His master walked to and fro
before the fire with bowed head and with his hands behind his back. His
face was sad. Whenever his master approached him Tamb' Itam pretended to
sleep, not wishing his master to know he had been watched. At last his
master stood still, looking down on him as he lay, and said softly, "It
is time."

'Tamb' Itam arose directly and made his preparations. His mission was
to go down the river, preceding Brown's boat by an hour or more, to tell
Dain Waris finally and formally that the whites were to be allowed to
pass out unmolested. Jim would not trust anybody else with that service.
Before starting, Tamb' Itam, more as a matter of form (since his
position about Jim made him perfectly known), asked for a token.
"Because, Tuan," he said, "the message is important, and these are thy
very words I carry." His master first put his hand into one pocket, then
into another, and finally took off his forefinger Stein's silver ring,
which he habitually wore, and gave it to Tamb' Itam. When Tamb' Itam
left on his mission, Brown's camp on the knoll was dark but for a single
small glow shining through the branches of one of the trees the white
men had cut down.

'Early in the evening Brown had received from Jim a folded piece of
paper on which was written, "You get the clear road. Start as soon
as your boat floats on the morning tide. Let your men be careful. The
bushes on both sides of the creek and the stockade at the mouth are full
of well-armed men. You would have no chance, but I don't believe you
want bloodshed." Brown read it, tore the paper into small pieces, and,
turning to Cornelius, who had brought it, said jeeringly, "Good-bye, my
excellent friend." Cornelius had been in the fort, and had been sneaking
around Jim's house during the afternoon. Jim chose him to carry the note
because he could speak English, was known to Brown, and was not likely
to be shot by some nervous mistake of one of the men as a Malay,
approaching in the dusk, perhaps might have been.

'Cornelius didn't go away after delivering the paper. Brown was sitting
up over a tiny fire; all the others were lying down. "I could tell you
something you would like to know," Cornelius mumbled crossly. Brown paid
no attention. "You did not kill him," went on the other, "and what do
you get for it? You might have had money from the Rajah, besides the
loot of all the Bugis houses, and now you get nothing." "You had better
clear out from here," growled Brown, without even looking at him. But
Cornelius let himself drop by his side and began to whisper very fast,
touching his elbow from time to time. What he had to say made Brown sit
up at first, with a curse. He had simply informed him of Dain Waris's
armed party down the river. At first Brown saw himself completely sold
and betrayed, but a moment's reflection convinced him that there could
be no treachery intended. He said nothing, and after a while Cornelius
remarked, in a tone of complete indifference, that there was another way
out of the river which he knew very well. "A good thing to know, too,"
said Brown, pricking up his ears; and Cornelius began to talk of
what went on in town and repeated all that had been said in council,
gossiping in an even undertone at Brown's ear as you talk amongst
sleeping men you do not wish to wake. "He thinks he has made me
harmless, does he?" mumbled Brown very low. . . . "Yes. He is a fool. A
little child. He came here and robbed me," droned on Cornelius, "and he
made all the people believe him. But if something happened that they did
not believe him any more, where would he be? And the Bugis Dain who
is waiting for you down the river there, captain, is the very man who
chased you up here when you first came." Brown observed nonchalantly
that it would be just as well to avoid him, and with the same detached,
musing air Cornelius declared himself acquainted with a backwater broad
enough to take Brown's boat past Waris's camp. "You will have to be
quiet," he said as an afterthought, "for in one place we pass close
behind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore with their boats
hauled up." "Oh, we know how to be as quiet as mice; never fear," said
Brown. Cornelius stipulated that in case he were to pilot Brown out, his
canoe should be towed. "I'll have to get back quick," he explained.

'It was two hours before the dawn when word was passed to the stockade
from outlying watchers that the white robbers were coming down to their
boat. In a very short time every armed man from one end of Patusan
to the other was on the alert, yet the banks of the river remained so
silent that but for the fires burning with sudden blurred flares the
town might have been asleep as if in peace-time. A heavy mist lay very
low on the water, making a sort of illusive grey light that showed
nothing. When Brown's long-boat glided out of the creek into the
river, Jim was standing on the low point of land before the Rajah's
stockade--on the very spot where for the first time he put his foot on
Patusan shore. A shadow loomed up, moving in the greyness, solitary,
very bulky, and yet constantly eluding the eye. A murmur of low talking
came out of it. Brown at the tiller heard Jim speak calmly: "A clear
road. You had better trust to the current while the fog lasts; but
this will lift presently." "Yes, presently we shall see clear," replied
Brown.

'The thirty or forty men standing with muskets at ready outside the
stockade held their breath. The Bugis owner of the prau, whom I saw
on Stein's verandah, and who was amongst them, told me that the boat,
shaving the low point close, seemed for a moment to grow big and hang
over it like a mountain. "If you think it worth your while to wait a
day outside," called out Jim, "I'll try to send you down something--a
bullock, some yams--what I can." The shadow went on moving. "Yes. Do,"
said a voice, blank and muffled out of the fog. Not one of the many
attentive listeners understood what the words meant; and then Brown
and his men in their boat floated away, fading spectrally without the
slightest sound.

'Thus Brown, invisible in the mist, goes out of Patusan elbow to elbow
with Cornelius in the stern-sheets of the long-boat. "Perhaps you shall
get a small bullock," said Cornelius. "Oh yes. Bullock. Yam. You'll get
it if he said so. He always speaks the truth. He stole everything I had.
I suppose you like a small bullock better than the loot of many houses."
"I would advise you to hold your tongue, or somebody here may fling
you overboard into this damned fog," said Brown. The boat seemed to be
standing still; nothing could be seen, not even the river alongside,
only the water-dust flew and trickled, condensed, down their beards and
faces. It was weird, Brown told me. Every individual man of them felt
as though he were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost
imperceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. "Throw me out,
would you? But I would know where I was," mumbled Cornelius surlily.
"I've lived many years here." "Not long enough to see through a fog like
this," Brown said, lolling back with his arm swinging to and fro on the
useless tiller. "Yes. Long enough for that," snarled Cornelius. "That's
very useful," commented Brown. "Am I to believe you could find that
backway you spoke of blindfold, like this?" Cornelius grunted. "Are you
too tired to row?" he asked after a silence. "No, by God!" shouted Brown
suddenly. "Out with your oars there." There was a great knocking in
the fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible
sweeps against invisible thole-pins. Otherwise nothing was changed, and
but for the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a balloon
car in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius did not open his lips
except to ask querulously for somebody to bale out his canoe, which
was towing behind the long-boat. Gradually the fog whitened and became
luminous ahead. To the left Brown saw a darkness as though he had been
looking at the back of the departing night. All at once a big bough
covered with leaves appeared above his head, and ends of twigs, dripping
and still, curved slenderly close alongside. Cornelius, without a word,
took the tiller from his hand.'

Chapters 42-43
Brown didn't know precisely what he had come upon in the jungle. But he sensed, intuitively, that Jim was a man with a guilty conscience and was, therefore, pitifully vulnerable. Brown, of course, never expected to confront this sort of man, He supposed that he would have to battle Jim physically for control of Patusan. Of course, he did not tell Jim this. He simply fed Jim's weakness by continuing to speak of their "common blood," the bond between both their minds and their hearts. And at last, Lord Jim walked away, promising Brown either "a clear road or a clear fight." Cornelius was furious. Why didn't Brown kill Jim? Brown answered that he could "do better than that." Jim returned and tried to convince Doramin and the other Bugis to allow Brown and his men to return downriver. Doramin was against the idea. Jim then suggested that they call Dain Waris back and allow him to massacre Brown and his men; Jim said that he himself could not do so. Jim then promised to answer with his life if any harm came to any of the Bugis if they agreed to let Brown and his men leave Patusan. Doramin still did not respond, and Jim told him to call in Dain Waris, for "in this business, I shall not lead." He had to live according to his own code. Tamb' Itam, Jim's bodyguard, was thunderstruck when he learned of Jim's decision. Jim, in turn, elaborated on his decision: he wanted Brown and his men to be allowed to leave, he said, because that was "best in my knowledge," and his knowledge, he said, had "never deceived you ." At last, most of the men said that they would comply, because, above all, they believed and trusted in the wisdom of Tuan Jim. Jim realized the immensity of his responsibility. He told Jewel that he was "responsible for every life in the land." Accordingly, Jim wanted no misunderstanding to occur, so he spent the night patrolling the streets. Then he put his own men in Rajah Allang's stockade, which commanded the mouth of the creek. There, Jim intended to remain until Brown and his party passed downriver. Next, he sent Tamb' Itam, downstream to warn Dain Waris that Brown and his men would be passing, and they were to be allowed to proceed without incident. Tamb' Itam asked for some sort of token so that Dain Waris would know that it was Jim himself who had issued this unusual order. Jim gave his bodyguard the silver ring that Stein gave to him long ago. Jim then sent Cornelius to Brown, telling Brown to use the full tide in the morning, but to be very careful not to provoke the armed men who would be alongside the river. Cornelius also added that one of the men would be Dain Waris, who had initially pursued Brown upriver. Cornelius then told Brown that he knew another way out of Patusan. Brown was interested; he agreed to take this new, secret route, especially if it would, as Cornelius promised, route him behind Dain Waris. Then, if "something happened," the people would cease to believe blindly in Lord Jim. "Then," says Brown, "where will he be?"
In Chapter 42, once Brown has discovered Jim's weak spot, he continues to emphasize to Jim that there is a common bond between them -- that they both share some kind of common guilt. As noted above, Brown is similar to Iago -- that is, while being the incarnation of pure evil, he is nevertheless very astute in psyching out his opponent. Brown, Conrad tells us, "had a satanic gift of finding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims," and it did not take him long to discover Jim's weak spot. In fact, Conrad virtually uses Jim's earlier words when Brown asks Jim if Jim "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," and upon asking this question to Jim, Brown brags that he was delighted: "I made him wince." Of course, Brown's question uses virtually the same words that Jim used earlier to Marlow when he was trying to explain the confusion aboard the Patna and the fact that any man in an emergency would reach out to save his own life. Thus, we see that Lord Jim's deep compassion, combined with his lingering guilt over the Patna affair, causes him to totally misjudge Brown. Jim's guilt is still so great that he eventually yields to Brown's refusal to surrender his arms, thus leaving Brown and his men with sufficient means to accomplish the forthcoming ambush. Having now been exposed to Brown's total devotion to evil, we are in a position to know that Jim was wrong in his decision to release Brown, and thus we can once again see how Jim's judgment has been affected by his guilt long before we know of the impending catastrophe. For example, Jim's defense of his decision to free Brown and his men -- "they were erring men whom suffering had made blind to right and wrong" -- could so easily apply to Jim himself, for Jim also feels that as he himself once needed a chance to redeem himself, so these cutthroats might also need a similar chance for redemption. Therefore, Jim pledges his life if any of the men should come to any harm -- a pledge that later Jewel and Tamb' Itam cannot see any reason to honor. In Chapter 43, Stein, upon hearing of Jim's releasing Brown, once again calls Jim a "romantic! romantic!" and in this instance, Stein means that the true romantic is forever looking for the innate goodness of man. Jim's altruistic belief in man's innate nobility causes him to be blind to Brown's evilness and thus allows Brown to wreak vengeance upon Patusan.