finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_23_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 40-41
chapters 40-41
{"name": "Chapters 40-41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4041", "summary": "Brown pretended to be interested in Kassim's and Cornelius' proposals, but, in actuality, he was waiting for Jim to return. He was intrigued by the idea of a weak man ruling Patusan. He was also more than a little interested in the reality of \"a fort,\" readymade and waiting for him. He felt sure that he and Jim could work out some kind of arrangement, some kind of plan in which they could \"work like brothers.\" Then, at the proper time, Brown would put an end to Jim, and the land would be his \"to tear to pieces, squeeze and throw away.\" Marlow tells us that Brown had an \"undisguised ruthlessness of purpose.\" For an example of Brown's loathsome nature, note that he ordered one of his men to shoot a Malay native in cold blood. He wanted the man shot for no other reason than wanting to \"strike terror . . . terror, terror, I tell you.\" That night, Brown's spirits fell; escape seemed impossible. He knew that his men were outnumbered two hundred to one, and they too were growing restless and fearful. One of them asked permission to get some tobacco. Brown told him to go. But just as the man cried out in delight that he had found some tobacco, a shot rang out and the night air was filled, again and again, with the groans of the wounded man. Six hours later, the incoming tide silenced the moans of the wounded man. That night, in the stillness, a sonorous voice proclaimed that \"between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan and the white men on the hill . . . there would be no faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace.\" At dawn, a cannon barked briefly. Jim was coming back, Cornelius told Brown. Lord Jim was returning; the cannon was a salute to welcome him. Brown was anxious to talk to Jim, and Cornelius assured him that it would be no problem. Jim, he said, was not afraid of anything. He was like a child; he was a fool. Jim would simply tell Brown to leave \"his people\" alone, and Brown could easily kill Jim. Then Brown could do \"anything you like.\" Brown spotted Jim almost immediately. Jim was dressed all in white and was surrounded by \"a knot of coloured figures.\" A contempt, a wish to \"try for one more chance -- for some other grave\" pulsed within Brown when he saw Jim. He waved wildly, and the two men began advancing toward one another until they stood facing each other across the creek. Then Brown jumped the creek. With steady eyes, each man tried to understand the other one before either one spoke. Marlow is sure that Brown detested Jim at that moment. He is certain that Brown inwardly cursed Jim for his youth, his assurance, his clear eyes, and his untroubled bearing. Jim was the antithesis of Brown's sunken, sun-blackened body and soul. Moreover, Jim had a sense of possession, security, and power. He was not hungry, and he was not desperate; his clothing was pressed and his shoes were whitened. But Brown knew that Jim must have something in his past which caused him to come here, and so when he asked Jim why he came to Patusan, he was elated to see Jim tremble slightly. He had tapped Jim's weakness. Thus, he told Jim that they both probably had shady pasts, that they both were no doubt running away from something, and that they both shared a common guilt. In effect, he slapped Jim in the face with his taunts, challenging Jim to let him go free and starve, or else to shoot him immediately. This moment, Brown recalled to Marlow, was wondrous; Brown had cornered Jim psychologically. The memory of that moment was sufficient to warm Brown's dying moments. He remembered feeling intensely joyous. He had discovered that he could rattle the \"twopenny soul\" of Jim, that \"confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow.\"", "analysis": "Chapter 40 continues to blacken the picture of Brown, showing him as one of the most detestable characters in fiction, possessing absolutely no redeeming traits. He uses everyone in order to achieve his evil purposes merely for the sake of evil. Like Shakespeare's Iago, he seems to dwell upon evil merely for the sake of evil. For example, he is delighted that there is a fort already built so that he will be able to crush the people of Patusan more efficiently. At the end of Chapter 40, he is told by Cornelius that Jim is like a child -- that he has no fear of anything and that it will be very easy to take anything from him. Not surprisingly, in Chapter 41, Jim goes to see Brown. From the very first meeting, Brown despises Jim because Jim is clearly loved and trusted by the people of Patusan and because Jim's looks and assurance and youth are in total contrast to Brown's blackened body and his dark, evil soul. Furthermore, Jim displays no sense of fear; he seems entirely self-possessed and confident. However, as the two men talk, Brown, who is evil but no fool, is soon able to worm his way into the inner nature of Jim. Brown reminds Jim that they are both here because of some guilty thing that happened to them in the past, and that they both must have done things in the past of which they are ashamed. As Brown says, \"I am here because I was afraid once in my life.\" This, of course, is a terrifying parallel to why Jim is here -- that is, once in his life, Jim, possibly out of fear, jumped. And ever since, to the public and to himself, Jim has been convinced that he is indelibly branded as a \"coward.\" Note that Brown uses the same imagery associated with Jim's jump from the Patna -- \"I am sick of my infernal luck. . . . There are men in the same boat -- and by God, I am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d -- d lurch.\" These words and illusions serve to remind Jim that a man should not be judged by a single act performed under stress and duress. These comments, as we will see, will lead Jim astray in his judgment of Brown's basically evil nature and will render Jim incapable of acting as a free agent. Jim's inability to see through Brown's evil nature and treachery simply because Brown makes such a parallel analogy to their mutual pasts causes Jim to feel a compassion for Brown which will, in turn, bring about the tragic deaths of Dain Waris and others, including Jim himself."}
'Brown's object was to gain time by fooling with Kassim's diplomacy. For
doing a real stroke of business he could not help thinking the white man
was the person to work with. He could not imagine such a chap (who must
be confoundedly clever after all to get hold of the natives like
that) refusing a help that would do away with the necessity for slow,
cautious, risky cheating, that imposed itself as the only possible
line of conduct for a single-handed man. He, Brown, would offer him
the power. No man could hesitate. Everything was in coming to a clear
understanding. Of course they would share. The idea of there being a
fort--all ready to his hand--a real fort, with artillery (he knew this
from Cornelius), excited him. Let him only once get in and . . . He
would impose modest conditions. Not too low, though. The man was no
fool, it seemed. They would work like brothers till . . . till the time
came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts. With grim
impatience of plunder he wished himself to be talking with the man now.
The land already seemed to be his to tear to pieces, squeeze, and throw
away. Meantime Kassim had to be fooled for the sake of food first--and
for a second string. But the principal thing was to get something to eat
from day to day. Besides, he was not averse to begin fighting on that
Rajah's account, and teach a lesson to those people who had received him
with shots. The lust of battle was upon him.

'I am sorry that I can't give you this part of the story, which of
course I have mainly from Brown, in Brown's own words. There was in the
broken, violent speech of that man, unveiling before me his thoughts
with the very hand of Death upon his throat, an undisguised ruthlessness
of purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, and a
blind belief in the righteousness of his will against all mankind,
something of that feeling which could induce the leader of a horde of
wandering cut-throats to call himself proudly the Scourge of God.
No doubt the natural senseless ferocity which is the basis of such
a character was exasperated by failure, ill-luck, and the recent
privations, as well as by the desperate position in which he found
himself; but what was most remarkable of all was this, that while he
planned treacherous alliances, had already settled in his own mind the
fate of the white man, and intrigued in an overbearing, offhand manner
with Kassim, one could perceive that what he had really desired, almost
in spite of himself, was to play havoc with that jungle town which had
defied him, to see it strewn over with corpses and enveloped in flames.
Listening to his pitiless, panting voice, I could imagine how he must
have looked at it from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder
and rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned aspect,
though as a matter of fact every house concealed a few armed men on the
alert. Suddenly beyond the stretch of waste ground, interspersed with
small patches of low dense bush, excavations, heaps of rubbish, with
trodden paths between, a man, solitary and looking very small, strolled
out into the deserted opening of the street between the shut-up, dark,
lifeless buildings at the end. Perhaps one of the inhabitants, who had
fled to the other bank of the river, coming back for some object of
domestic use. Evidently he supposed himself quite safe at that distance
from the hill on the other side of the creek. A light stockade, set up
hastily, was just round the turn of the street, full of his friends.
He moved leisurely. Brown saw him, and instantly called to his side the
Yankee deserter, who acted as a sort of second in command. This lanky,
loose-jointed fellow came forward, wooden-faced, trailing his rifle
lazily. When he understood what was wanted from him a homicidal and
conceited smile uncovered his teeth, making two deep folds down his
sallow, leathery cheeks. He prided himself on being a dead shot. He
dropped on one knee, and taking aim from a steady rest through the
unlopped branches of a felled tree, fired, and at once stood up to look.
The man, far away, turned his head to the report, made another step
forward, seemed to hesitate, and abruptly got down on his hands and
knees. In the silence that fell upon the sharp crack of the rifle, the
dead shot, keeping his eyes fixed upon the quarry, guessed that "this
there coon's health would never be a source of anxiety to his friends
any more." The man's limbs were seen to move rapidly under his body
in an endeavour to run on all-fours. In that empty space arose a
multitudinous shout of dismay and surprise. The man sank flat, face
down, and moved no more. "That showed them what we could do," said Brown
to me. "Struck the fear of sudden death into them. That was what we
wanted. They were two hundred to one, and this gave them something to
think over for the night. Not one of them had an idea of such a long
shot before. That beggar belonging to the Rajah scooted down-hill with
his eyes hanging out of his head."

'As he was telling me this he tried with a shaking hand to wipe the thin
foam on his blue lips. "Two hundred to one. Two hundred to one . . .
strike terror, . . . terror, terror, I tell you. . . ." His own eyes
were starting out of their sockets. He fell back, clawing the air with
skinny fingers, sat up again, bowed and hairy, glared at me sideways
like some man-beast of folk-lore, with open mouth in his miserable and
awful agony before he got his speech back after that fit. There are
sights one never forgets.

'Furthermore, to draw the enemy's fire and locate such parties as
might have been hiding in the bushes along the creek, Brown ordered the
Solomon Islander to go down to the boat and bring an oar, as you send a
spaniel after a stick into the water. This failed, and the fellow came
back without a single shot having been fired at him from anywhere.
"There's nobody," opined some of the men. It is "onnatural," remarked
the Yankee. Kassim had gone, by that time, very much impressed, pleased
too, and also uneasy. Pursuing his tortuous policy, he had dispatched a
message to Dain Waris warning him to look out for the white men's
ship, which, he had had information, was about to come up the river.
He minimised its strength and exhorted him to oppose its passage. This
double-dealing answered his purpose, which was to keep the Bugis forces
divided and to weaken them by fighting. On the other hand, he had in
the course of that day sent word to the assembled Bugis chiefs in town,
assuring them that he was trying to induce the invaders to retire; his
messages to the fort asked earnestly for powder for the Rajah's men. It
was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or
so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall.
The open intercourse between the hill and the palace unsettled all the
minds. It was already time for men to take sides, it began to be said.
There would soon be much bloodshed, and thereafter great trouble for
many people. The social fabric of orderly, peaceful life, when every man
was sure of to-morrow, the edifice raised by Jim's hands, seemed on that
evening ready to collapse into a ruin reeking with blood. The poorer
folk were already taking to the bush or flying up the river. A good many
of the upper class judged it necessary to go and pay their court to the
Rajah. The Rajah's youths jostled them rudely. Old Tunku Allang, almost
out of his mind with fear and indecision, either kept a sullen silence
or abused them violently for daring to come with empty hands: they
departed very much frightened; only old Doramin kept his countrymen
together and pursued his tactics inflexibly. Enthroned in a big chair
behind the improvised stockade, he issued his orders in a deep veiled
rumble, unmoved, like a deaf man, in the flying rumours.

'Dusk fell, hiding first the body of the dead man, which had been left
lying with arms outstretched as if nailed to the ground, and then the
revolving sphere of the night rolled smoothly over Patusan and came to
a rest, showering the glitter of countless worlds upon the earth. Again,
in the exposed part of the town big fires blazed along the only street,
revealing from distance to distance upon their glares the falling
straight lines of roofs, the fragments of wattled walls jumbled in
confusion, here and there a whole hut elevated in the glow upon the
vertical black stripes of a group of high piles and all this line of
dwellings, revealed in patches by the swaying flames, seemed to flicker
tortuously away up-river into the gloom at the heart of the land. A
great silence, in which the looms of successive fires played without
noise, extended into the darkness at the foot of the hill; but the
other bank of the river, all dark save for a solitary bonfire at the
river-front before the fort, sent out into the air an increasing tremor
that might have been the stamping of a multitude of feet, the hum of
many voices, or the fall of an immensely distant waterfall. It was
then, Brown confessed to me, while, turning his back on his men, he sat
looking at it all, that notwithstanding his disdain, his ruthless faith
in himself, a feeling came over him that at last he had run his head
against a stone wall. Had his boat been afloat at the time, he believed
he would have tried to steal away, taking his chances of a long chase
down the river and of starvation at sea. It is very doubtful whether he
would have succeeded in getting away. However, he didn't try this. For
another moment he had a passing thought of trying to rush the town,
but he perceived very well that in the end he would find himself in the
lighted street, where they would be shot down like dogs from the houses.
They were two hundred to one--he thought, while his men, huddling round
two heaps of smouldering embers, munched the last of the bananas and
roasted the few yams they owed to Kassim's diplomacy. Cornelius sat
amongst them dozing sulkily.

'Then one of the whites remembered that some tobacco had been left in
the boat, and, encouraged by the impunity of the Solomon Islander,
said he would go to fetch it. At this all the others shook off
their despondency. Brown applied to, said, "Go, and be d--d to you,"
scornfully. He didn't think there was any danger in going to the creek
in the dark. The man threw a leg over the tree-trunk and disappeared. A
moment later he was heard clambering into the boat and then clambering
out. "I've got it," he cried. A flash and a report at the very foot of
the hill followed. "I am hit," yelled the man. "Look out, look out--I am
hit," and instantly all the rifles went off. The hill squirted fire
and noise into the night like a little volcano, and when Brown and
the Yankee with curses and cuffs stopped the panic-stricken firing, a
profound, weary groan floated up from the creek, succeeded by a plaint
whose heartrending sadness was like some poison turning the blood
cold in the veins. Then a strong voice pronounced several distinct
incomprehensible words somewhere beyond the creek. "Let no one fire,"
shouted Brown. "What does it mean?" . . . "Do you hear on the hill?
Do you hear? Do you hear?" repeated the voice three times. Cornelius
translated, and then prompted the answer. "Speak," cried Brown, "we
hear." Then the voice, declaiming in the sonorous inflated tone of a
herald, and shifting continually on the edge of the vague waste-land,
proclaimed that between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan
and the white men on the hill and those with them, there would be no
faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace. A bush rustled; a haphazard
volley rang out. "Dam' foolishness," muttered the Yankee, vexedly
grounding the butt. Cornelius translated. The wounded man below
the hill, after crying out twice, "Take me up! take me up!" went on
complaining in moans. While he had kept on the blackened earth of the
slope, and afterwards crouching in the boat, he had been safe enough.
It seems that in his joy at finding the tobacco he forgot himself and
jumped out on her off-side, as it were. The white boat, lying high and
dry, showed him up; the creek was no more than seven yards wide in that
place, and there happened to be a man crouching in the bush on the other
bank.

'He was a Bugis of Tondano only lately come to Patusan, and a relation
of the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed
appalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down,
in full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they
seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage.
That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the
stockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that
the fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the message,
alone, in the dark. Creeping across the open ground, he had deviated
to the left and found himself opposite the boat. He was startled when
Brown's man shouted. He came to a sitting position with his gun to his
shoulder, and when the other jumped out, exposing himself, he pulled the
trigger and lodged three jagged slugs point-blank into the poor wretch's
stomach. Then, lying flat on his face, he gave himself up for dead,
while a thin hail of lead chopped and swished the bushes close on his
right hand; afterwards he delivered his speech shouting, bent double,
dodging all the time in cover. With the last word he leaped sideways,
lay close for a while, and afterwards got back to the houses unharmed,
having achieved on that night such a renown as his children will not
willingly allow to die.

'And on the hill the forlorn band let the two little heaps of embers
go out under their bowed heads. They sat dejected on the ground with
compressed lips and downcast eyes, listening to their comrade below. He
was a strong man and died hard, with moans now loud, now sinking to a
strange confidential note of pain. Sometimes he shrieked, and again,
after a period of silence, he could be heard muttering deliriously a
long and unintelligible complaint. Never for a moment did he cease.

'"What's the good?" Brown had said unmoved once, seeing the Yankee, who
had been swearing under his breath, prepare to go down. "That's so,"
assented the deserter, reluctantly desisting. "There's no encouragement
for wounded men here. Only his noise is calculated to make all the
others think too much of the hereafter, cap'n." "Water!" cried the
wounded man in an extraordinarily clear vigorous voice, and then went
off moaning feebly. "Ay, water. Water will do it," muttered the other to
himself, resignedly. "Plenty by-and-by. The tide is flowing."

'At last the tide flowed, silencing the plaint and the cries of pain,
and the dawn was near when Brown, sitting with his chin in the palm of
his hand before Patusan, as one might stare at the unscalable side of a
mountain, heard the brief ringing bark of a brass 6-pounder far away
in town somewhere. "What's this?" he asked of Cornelius, who hung about
him. Cornelius listened. A muffled roaring shout rolled down-river over
the town; a big drum began to throb, and others responded, pulsating and
droning. Tiny scattered lights began to twinkle in the dark half of the
town, while the part lighted by the loom of fires hummed with a deep and
prolonged murmur. "He has come," said Cornelius. "What? Already? Are
you sure?" Brown asked. "Yes! yes! Sure. Listen to the noise." "What
are they making that row about?" pursued Brown. "For joy," snorted
Cornelius; "he is a very great man, but all the same, he knows no more
than a child, and so they make a great noise to please him, because they
know no better." "Look here," said Brown, "how is one to get at him?"
"He shall come to talk to you," Cornelius declared. "What do you mean?
Come down here strolling as it were?" Cornelius nodded vigorously in the
dark. "Yes. He will come straight here and talk to you. He is just like
a fool. You shall see what a fool he is." Brown was incredulous. "You
shall see; you shall see," repeated Cornelius. "He is not afraid--not
afraid of anything. He will come and order you to leave his people
alone. Everybody must leave his people alone. He is like a little child.
He will come to you straight." Alas! he knew Jim well--that "mean little
skunk," as Brown called him to me. "Yes, certainly," he pursued with
ardour, "and then, captain, you tell that tall man with a gun to shoot
him. Just you kill him, and you will frighten everybody so much that
you can do anything you like with them afterwards--get what you like--go
away when you like. Ha! ha! ha! Fine . . ." He almost danced with
impatience and eagerness; and Brown, looking over his shoulder at him,
could see, shown up by the pitiless dawn, his men drenched with dew,
sitting amongst the cold ashes and the litter of the camp, haggard,
cowed, and in rags.'


'To the very last moment, till the full day came upon them with a
spring, the fires on the west bank blazed bright and clear; and then
Brown saw in a knot of coloured figures motionless between the advanced
houses a man in European clothes, in a helmet, all white. "That's him;
look! look!" Cornelius said excitedly. All Brown's men had sprung up and
crowded at his back with lustreless eyes. The group of vivid colours
and dark faces with the white figure in their midst were observing the
knoll. Brown could see naked arms being raised to shade the eyes and
other brown arms pointing. What should he do? He looked around, and the
forests that faced him on all sides walled the cock-pit of an unequal
contest. He looked once more at his men. A contempt, a weariness, the
desire of life, the wish to try for one more chance--for some other
grave--struggled in his breast. From the outline the figure presented
it seemed to him that the white man there, backed up by all the power of
the land, was examining his position through binoculars. Brown jumped up
on the log, throwing his arms up, the palms outwards. The coloured group
closed round the white man, and fell back twice before he got clear of
them, walking slowly alone. Brown remained standing on the log till
Jim, appearing and disappearing between the patches of thorny scrub, had
nearly reached the creek; then Brown jumped off and went down to meet
him on his side.

'They met, I should think, not very far from the place, perhaps on the
very spot, where Jim took the second desperate leap of his life--the
leap that landed him into the life of Patusan, into the trust, the love,
the confidence of the people. They faced each other across the creek,
and with steady eyes tried to understand each other before they opened
their lips. Their antagonism must have been expressed in their glances;
I know that Brown hated Jim at first sight. Whatever hopes he might have
had vanished at once. This was not the man he had expected to see. He
hated him for this--and in a checked flannel shirt with sleeves cut
off at the elbows, grey bearded, with a sunken, sun-blackened face--he
cursed in his heart the other's youth and assurance, his clear eyes and
his untroubled bearing. That fellow had got in a long way before him!
He did not look like a man who would be willing to give anything for
assistance. He had all the advantages on his side--possession, security,
power; he was on the side of an overwhelming force! He was not hungry
and desperate, and he did not seem in the least afraid. And there was
something in the very neatness of Jim's clothes, from the white helmet
to the canvas leggings and the pipeclayed shoes, which in Brown's sombre
irritated eyes seemed to belong to things he had in the very shaping of
his life condemned and flouted.

'"Who are you?" asked Jim at last, speaking in his usual voice. "My
name's Brown," answered the other loudly; "Captain Brown. What's yours?"
and Jim after a little pause went on quietly, as If he had not heard:
"What made you come here?" "You want to know," said Brown bitterly.
"It's easy to tell. Hunger. And what made you?"

'"The fellow started at this," said Brown, relating to me the opening of
this strange conversation between those two men, separated only by
the muddy bed of a creek, but standing on the opposite poles of that
conception of life which includes all mankind--"The fellow started at
this and got very red in the face. Too big to be questioned, I suppose.
I told him that if he looked upon me as a dead man with whom you may
take liberties, he himself was not a whit better off really. I had
a fellow up there who had a bead drawn on him all the time, and only
waited for a sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this.
He had come down of his own free will. 'Let us agree,' said I, 'that we
are both dead men, and let us talk on that basis, as equals. We are
all equal before death,' I said. I admitted I was there like a rat in
a trap, but we had been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give
a bite. He caught me up in a moment. 'Not if you don't go near the trap
till the rat is dead.' I told him that sort of game was good enough for
these native friends of his, but I would have thought him too white to
serve even a rat so. Yes, I had wanted to talk with him. Not to beg
for my life, though. My fellows were--well--what they were--men like
himself, anyhow. All we wanted from him was to come on in the devil's
name and have it out. 'God d--n it,' said I, while he stood there as
still as a wooden post, 'you don't want to come out here every day with
your glasses to count how many of us are left on our feet. Come. Either
bring your infernal crowd along or let us go out and starve in the open
sea, by God! You have been white once, for all your tall talk of this
being your own people and you being one with them. Are you? And what the
devil do you get for it; what is it you've found here that is so d--d
precious? Hey? You don't want us to come down here perhaps--do you? You
are two hundred to one. You don't want us to come down into the open.
Ah! I promise you we shall give you some sport before you've done. You
talk about me making a cowardly set upon unoffending people. What's
that to me that they are unoffending, when I am starving for next to no
offence? But I am not a coward. Don't you be one. Bring them along or,
by all the fiends, we shall yet manage to send half your unoffending
town to heaven with us in smoke!'"

'He was terrible--relating this to me--this tortured skeleton of a man
drawn up together with his face over his knees, upon a miserable bed in
that wretched hovel, and lifting his head to look at me with malignant
triumph.

'"That's what I told him--I knew what to say," he began again, feebly
at first, but working himself up with incredible speed into a fiery
utterance of his scorn. "We aren't going into the forest to wander like
a string of living skeletons dropping one after another for ants to
go to work upon us before we are fairly dead. Oh no! . . . 'You don't
deserve a better fate,' he said. 'And what do you deserve,' I shouted
at him, 'you that I find skulking here with your mouth full of your
responsibility, of innocent lives, of your infernal duty? What do
you know more of me than I know of you? I came here for food. D'ye
hear?--food to fill our bellies. And what did _you_ come for? What did
you ask for when you came here? We don't ask you for anything but to
give us a fight or a clear road to go back whence we came. . . .' 'I
would fight with you now,' says he, pulling at his little moustache.
'And I would let you shoot me, and welcome,' I said. 'This is as good a
jumping-off place for me as another. I am sick of my infernal luck. But
it would be too easy. There are my men in the same boat--and, by God, I
am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d--d lurch,'
I said. He stood thinking for a while and then wanted to know what I
had done ('out there' he says, tossing his head down-stream) to be hazed
about so. 'Have we met to tell each other the story of our lives?' I
asked him. 'Suppose you begin. No? Well, I am sure I don't want to hear.
Keep it to yourself. I know it is no better than mine. I've lived--and
so did you, though you talk as if you were one of those people that
should have wings so as to go about without touching the dirty earth.
Well--it is dirty. I haven't got any wings. I am here because I was
afraid once in my life. Want to know what of? Of a prison. That scares
me, and you may know it--if it's any good to you. I won't ask you what
scared you into this infernal hole, where you seem to have found pretty
pickings. That's your luck and this is mine--the privilege to beg for
the favour of being shot quickly, or else kicked out to go free and
starve in my own way.' . . ."

'His debilitated body shook with an exultation so vehement, so assured,
and so malicious that it seemed to have driven off the death waiting for
him in that hut. The corpse of his mad self-love uprose from rags and
destitution as from the dark horrors of a tomb. It is impossible to say
how much he lied to Jim then, how much he lied to me now--and to himself
always. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of
every passion wants some pretence to make it live. Standing at the gate
of the other world in the guise of a beggar, he had slapped this world's
face, he had spat on it, he had thrown upon it an immensity of scorn
and revolt at the bottom of his misdeeds. He had overcome them all--men,
women, savages, traders, ruffians, missionaries--and Jim--"that
beefy-faced beggar." I did not begrudge him this triumph in articulo
mortis, this almost posthumous illusion of having trampled all the earth
under his feet. While he was boasting to me, in his sordid and repulsive
agony, I couldn't help thinking of the chuckling talk relating to the
time of his greatest splendour when, during a year or more, Gentleman
Brown's ship was to be seen, for many days on end, hovering off an islet
befringed with green upon azure, with the dark dot of the mission-house
on a white beach; while Gentleman Brown, ashore, was casting his spells
over a romantic girl for whom Melanesia had been too much, and giving
hopes of a remarkable conversion to her husband. The poor man, some time
or other, had been heard to express the intention of winning "Captain
Brown to a better way of life." . . . "Bag Gentleman Brown for
Glory"--as a leery-eyed loafer expressed it once--"just to let them see
up above what a Western Pacific trading skipper looks like." And this
was the man, too, who had run off with a dying woman, and had shed tears
over her body. "Carried on like a big baby," his then mate was never
tired of telling, "and where the fun came in may I be kicked to death by
diseased Kanakas if _I_ know. Why, gents! she was too far gone when he
brought her aboard to know him; she just lay there on her back in his
bunk staring at the beam with awful shining eyes--and then she died.
Dam' bad sort of fever, I guess. . . ." I remembered all these stories
while, wiping his matted lump of a beard with a livid hand, he was
telling me from his noisome couch how he got round, got in, got home,
on that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He
admitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, "as broad as
a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside out
and upside down--by God!"'
Chapters 40-41
Brown pretended to be interested in Kassim's and Cornelius' proposals, but, in actuality, he was waiting for Jim to return. He was intrigued by the idea of a weak man ruling Patusan. He was also more than a little interested in the reality of "a fort," readymade and waiting for him. He felt sure that he and Jim could work out some kind of arrangement, some kind of plan in which they could "work like brothers." Then, at the proper time, Brown would put an end to Jim, and the land would be his "to tear to pieces, squeeze and throw away." Marlow tells us that Brown had an "undisguised ruthlessness of purpose." For an example of Brown's loathsome nature, note that he ordered one of his men to shoot a Malay native in cold blood. He wanted the man shot for no other reason than wanting to "strike terror . . . terror, terror, I tell you." That night, Brown's spirits fell; escape seemed impossible. He knew that his men were outnumbered two hundred to one, and they too were growing restless and fearful. One of them asked permission to get some tobacco. Brown told him to go. But just as the man cried out in delight that he had found some tobacco, a shot rang out and the night air was filled, again and again, with the groans of the wounded man. Six hours later, the incoming tide silenced the moans of the wounded man. That night, in the stillness, a sonorous voice proclaimed that "between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan and the white men on the hill . . . there would be no faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace." At dawn, a cannon barked briefly. Jim was coming back, Cornelius told Brown. Lord Jim was returning; the cannon was a salute to welcome him. Brown was anxious to talk to Jim, and Cornelius assured him that it would be no problem. Jim, he said, was not afraid of anything. He was like a child; he was a fool. Jim would simply tell Brown to leave "his people" alone, and Brown could easily kill Jim. Then Brown could do "anything you like." Brown spotted Jim almost immediately. Jim was dressed all in white and was surrounded by "a knot of coloured figures." A contempt, a wish to "try for one more chance -- for some other grave" pulsed within Brown when he saw Jim. He waved wildly, and the two men began advancing toward one another until they stood facing each other across the creek. Then Brown jumped the creek. With steady eyes, each man tried to understand the other one before either one spoke. Marlow is sure that Brown detested Jim at that moment. He is certain that Brown inwardly cursed Jim for his youth, his assurance, his clear eyes, and his untroubled bearing. Jim was the antithesis of Brown's sunken, sun-blackened body and soul. Moreover, Jim had a sense of possession, security, and power. He was not hungry, and he was not desperate; his clothing was pressed and his shoes were whitened. But Brown knew that Jim must have something in his past which caused him to come here, and so when he asked Jim why he came to Patusan, he was elated to see Jim tremble slightly. He had tapped Jim's weakness. Thus, he told Jim that they both probably had shady pasts, that they both were no doubt running away from something, and that they both shared a common guilt. In effect, he slapped Jim in the face with his taunts, challenging Jim to let him go free and starve, or else to shoot him immediately. This moment, Brown recalled to Marlow, was wondrous; Brown had cornered Jim psychologically. The memory of that moment was sufficient to warm Brown's dying moments. He remembered feeling intensely joyous. He had discovered that he could rattle the "twopenny soul" of Jim, that "confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow."
Chapter 40 continues to blacken the picture of Brown, showing him as one of the most detestable characters in fiction, possessing absolutely no redeeming traits. He uses everyone in order to achieve his evil purposes merely for the sake of evil. Like Shakespeare's Iago, he seems to dwell upon evil merely for the sake of evil. For example, he is delighted that there is a fort already built so that he will be able to crush the people of Patusan more efficiently. At the end of Chapter 40, he is told by Cornelius that Jim is like a child -- that he has no fear of anything and that it will be very easy to take anything from him. Not surprisingly, in Chapter 41, Jim goes to see Brown. From the very first meeting, Brown despises Jim because Jim is clearly loved and trusted by the people of Patusan and because Jim's looks and assurance and youth are in total contrast to Brown's blackened body and his dark, evil soul. Furthermore, Jim displays no sense of fear; he seems entirely self-possessed and confident. However, as the two men talk, Brown, who is evil but no fool, is soon able to worm his way into the inner nature of Jim. Brown reminds Jim that they are both here because of some guilty thing that happened to them in the past, and that they both must have done things in the past of which they are ashamed. As Brown says, "I am here because I was afraid once in my life." This, of course, is a terrifying parallel to why Jim is here -- that is, once in his life, Jim, possibly out of fear, jumped. And ever since, to the public and to himself, Jim has been convinced that he is indelibly branded as a "coward." Note that Brown uses the same imagery associated with Jim's jump from the Patna -- "I am sick of my infernal luck. . . . There are men in the same boat -- and by God, I am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d -- d lurch." These words and illusions serve to remind Jim that a man should not be judged by a single act performed under stress and duress. These comments, as we will see, will lead Jim astray in his judgment of Brown's basically evil nature and will render Jim incapable of acting as a free agent. Jim's inability to see through Brown's evil nature and treachery simply because Brown makes such a parallel analogy to their mutual pasts causes Jim to feel a compassion for Brown which will, in turn, bring about the tragic deaths of Dain Waris and others, including Jim himself.