'I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, her pretty beauty,
which had the simple charm and the delicate vigour of a wild-flower,
her pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me with almost
the strength of her own unreasonable and natural fear. She feared the
unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely
vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows, for all the world
that neither cared for Jim nor needed him in the least. I would have
been ready enough to answer for the indifference of the teeming earth
but for the reflection that he too belonged to this mysterious unknown
of her fears, and that, however much I stood for, I did not stand for
him. This made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless pain unsealed my lips.
I began by protesting that I at least had come with no intention to take
Jim away.

'Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still as a
marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship,
business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay.
. . . "They always leave us," she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom
from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a
faint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her.

'It is my firm conviction now; it was my conviction at the time; it was
the only possible conclusion from the facts of the case. It was not made
more certain by her whispering in a tone in which one speaks to oneself,
"He swore this to me." "Did you ask him?" I said.

'She made a step nearer. "No. Never!" She had asked him only to go away.
It was that night on the river-bank, after he had killed the man--after
she had flung the torch in the water because he was looking at her so.
There was too much light, and the danger was over then--for a little
time--for a little time. He said then he would not abandon her to
Cornelius. She had insisted. She wanted him to leave her. He said that
he could not--that it was impossible. He trembled while he said this.
She had felt him tremble. . . . One does not require much imagination
to see the scene, almost to hear their whispers. She was afraid for him
too. I believe that then she saw in him only a predestined victim of
dangers which she understood better than himself. Though by nothing
but his mere presence he had mastered her heart, had filled all
her thoughts, and had possessed himself of all her affections, she
underestimated his chances of success. It is obvious that at about
that time everybody was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly
speaking he didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view.
He confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had
played in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif Ali
himself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for the white
man. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious grounds, I believe. A
simple act of piety (and so far infinitely meritorious), but otherwise
without much importance. In the last part of this opinion Cornelius
concurred. "Honourable sir," he argued abjectly on the only occasion he
managed to have me to himself--"honourable sir, how was I to know? Who
was he? What could he do to make people believe him? What did Mr. Stein
mean sending a boy like that to talk big to an old servant? I was ready
to save him for eighty dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn't the
fool go? Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger?" He
grovelled in spirit before me, with his body doubled up insinuatingly
and his hands hovering about my knees, as though he were ready to
embrace my legs. "What's eighty dollars? An insignificant sum to give to
a defenceless old man ruined for life by a deceased she-devil." Here he
wept. But I anticipate. I didn't that night chance upon Cornelius till I
had had it out with the girl.

'She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to leave
the country. It was his danger that was foremost in her thoughts--even
if she wanted to save herself too--perhaps unconsciously: but then look
at the warning she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from
every moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories were
centred. She fell at his feet--she told me so--there by the river, in
the discreet light of stars which showed nothing except great masses of
silent shadows, indefinite open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the
broad stream made it appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up.
He lifted her up, and then she would struggle no more. Of course not.
Strong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely
little head upon. The need--the infinite need--of all this for the
aching heart, for the bewildered mind;--the promptings of youth--the
necessity of the moment. What would you have? One understands--unless
one is incapable of understanding anything under the sun. And so she was
content to be lifted up--and held. "You know--Jove! this is serious--no
nonsense in it!" as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled
concerned face on the threshold of his house. I don't know so much about
nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance: they
came together under the shadow of a life's disaster, like knight and
maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was
good enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot
resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream. I
did look upon the stream that night and from the very place; it rolled
silent and as black as Styx: the next day I went away, but I am not
likely to forget what it was she wanted to be saved from when she
entreated him to leave her while there was time. She told me what
it was, calmed--she was now too passionately interested for mere
excitement--in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost
figure. She told me, "I didn't want to die weeping." I thought I had not
heard aright.

'"You did not want to die weeping?" I repeated after her. "Like my
mother," she added readily. The outlines of her white shape did not
stir in the least. "My mother had wept bitterly before she died," she
explained. An inconceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the
ground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the
night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions. There came
upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing in the midst of
waters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown depths. She went on
explaining that, during the last moments, being alone with her mother,
she had to leave the side of the couch to go and set her back against
the door, in order to keep Cornelius out. He desired to get in, and
kept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and again to shout
huskily, "Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!" In a far corner upon a few
mats the moribund woman, already speechless and unable to lift her arm,
rolled her head over, and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to
command--"No! No!" and the obedient daughter, setting her shoulders with
all her strength against the door, was looking on. "The tears fell from
her eyes--and then she died," concluded the girl in an imperturbable
monotone, which more than anything else, more than the white statuesque
immobility of her person, more than mere words could do, troubled my
mind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It
had the power to drive me out of my conception of existence, out of
that shelter each of us makes for himself to creep under in moments of
danger, as a tortoise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had
a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of
disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is
as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can
conceive. But still--it was only a moment: I went back into my shell
directly. One _must_--don't you know?--though I seemed to have lost all
my words in the chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second
or two beyond the pale. These came back, too, very soon, for words also
belong to the sheltering conception of light and order which is our
refuge. I had them ready at my disposal before she whispered softly, "He
swore he would never leave me, when we stood there alone! He swore to
me!". . . "And it is possible that you--you! do not believe him?"
I asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely shocked. Why couldn't she
believe? Wherefore this craving for incertitude, this clinging to fear,
as if incertitude and fear had been the safeguards of her love. It was
monstrous. She should have made for herself a shelter of inexpugnable
peace out of that honest affection. She had not the knowledge--not the
skill perhaps. The night had come on apace; it had grown pitch-dark
where we were, so that without stirring she had faded like the
intangible form of a wistful and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard
her quiet whisper again, "Other men had sworn the same thing." It was
like a meditative comment on some thoughts full of sadness, of awe. And
she added, still lower if possible, "My father did." She paused the
time to draw an inaudible breath. "Her father too." . . . These were the
things she knew! At once I said, "Ah! but he is not like that." This,
it seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time the strange
still whisper wandering dreamily in the air stole into my ears. "Why
is he different? Is he better? Is he . . ." "Upon my word of honour," I
broke in, "I believe he is." We subdued our tones to a mysterious pitch.
Amongst the huts of Jim's workmen (they were mostly liberated slaves
from the Sherif's stockade) somebody started a shrill, drawling song.
Across the river a big fire (at Doramin's, I think) made a glowing
ball, completely isolated in the night. "Is he more true?" she murmured.
"Yes," I said. "More true than any other man," she repeated in
lingering accents. "Nobody here," I said, "would dream of doubting his
word--nobody would dare--except you."

'I think she made a movement at this. "More brave," she went on in a
changed tone. "Fear will never drive him away from you," I said a little
nervously. The song stopped short on a shrill note, and was succeeded by
several voices talking in the distance. Jim's voice too. I was struck
by her silence. "What has he been telling you? He has been telling you
something?" I asked. There was no answer. "What is it he told you?" I
insisted.

'"Do you think I can tell you? How am I to know? How am I to
understand?" she cried at last. There was a stir. I believe she was
wringing her hands. "There is something he can never forget."

'"So much the better for you," I said gloomily.

'"What is it? What is it?" She put an extraordinary force of appeal into
her supplicating tone. "He says he had been afraid. How can I believe
this? Am I a mad woman to believe this? You all remember something! You
all go back to it. What is it? You tell me! What is this thing? Is it
alive?--is it dead? I hate it. It is cruel. Has it got a face and a
voice--this calamity? Will he see it--will he hear it? In his sleep
perhaps when he cannot see me--and then arise and go. Ah! I shall never
forgive him. My mother had forgiven--but I, never! Will it be a sign--a
call?"

'It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and
she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by
the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another
ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a
disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very
ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so
simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have
ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians
that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered
in the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its
expression was her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them,
how she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their
inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful,
absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough
to strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain it
could not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few
sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic
to my mind. It was impossible to make her understand. I chafed silently
at my impotence. And Jim, too--poor devil! Who would need him? Who would
remember him? He had what he wanted. His very existence probably had
been forgotten by this time. They had mastered their fates. They were
tragic.

'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part was to
speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply
moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given
anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in
its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel
wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more
difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre
through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral
throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad
to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is
not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words
of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a
desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too
subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters!

'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of sullen anger in
it too. Jim's voice, suddenly raised with a stern intonation, carried
across the courtyard, reproving the carelessness of some dumb sinner by
the river-side. Nothing--I said, speaking in a distinct murmur--there
could be nothing, in that unknown world she fancied so eager to rob her
of her happiness, there was nothing, neither living nor dead, there was
no face, no voice, no power, that could tear Jim from her side. I drew
breath and she whispered softly, "He told me so." "He told you the
truth," I said. "Nothing," she sighed out, and abruptly turned upon me
with a barely audible intensity of tone: "Why did you come to us from
out there? He speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you--do
you want him?" A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept into our hurried
mutters. "I shall never come again," I said bitterly. "And I don't want
him. No one wants him." "No one," she repeated in a tone of doubt. "No
one," I affirmed, feeling myself swayed by some strange excitement. "You
think him strong, wise, courageous, great--why not believe him to be
true too? I shall go to-morrow--and that is the end. You shall never be
troubled by a voice from there again. This world you don't know is too
big to miss him. You understand? Too big. You've got his heart in your
hand. You must feel that. You must know that." "Yes, I know that," she
breathed out, hard and still, as a statue might whisper.

'I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had wished to do? I am
not sure now. At the time I was animated by an inexplicable ardour, as
if before some great and necessary task--the influence of the moment
upon my mental and emotional state. There are in all our lives
such moments, such influences, coming from the outside, as it were,
irresistible, incomprehensible--as if brought about by the mysterious
conjunctions of the planets. She owned, as I had put it to her, his
heart. She had that and everything else--if she could only believe it.
What I had to tell her was that in the whole world there was no one who
ever would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was a common fate, and
yet it seemed an awful thing to say of any man. She listened without
a word, and her stillness now was like the protest of an invincible
unbelief. What need she care for the world beyond the forests? I asked.
From all the multitudes that peopled the vastness of that unknown there
would come, I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a call nor a
sign for him. Never. I was carried away. Never! Never! I remember with
wonder the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed. I had the illusion
of having got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed the whole real
thing has left behind the detailed and amazing impression of a dream.
Why should she fear? She knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He
was all that. Certainly. He was more. He was great--invincible--and the
world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not even know
him.

'I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble dry
sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle
of the river seemed to make it infinite. "Why?" she murmured. I felt
that sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying
to slip out of my grasp. "Why?" she repeated louder; "tell me!" And as
I remained confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt child.
"Why? Speak." "You want to know?" I asked in a fury. "Yes!" she cried.
"Because he is not good enough," I said brutally. During the moment's
pause I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating the
circle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract suddenly to a
red pin-point. I only knew how close to me she had been when I felt
the clutch of her fingers on my forearm. Without raising her voice, she
threw into it an infinity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair.

'"This is the very thing he said. . . . You lie!"

'The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. "Hear me
out!" I entreated; she caught her breath tremulously, flung my arm away.
"Nobody, nobody is good enough," I began with the greatest earnestness.
I could hear the sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened. I
hung my head. What was the use? Footsteps were approaching; I slipped
away without another word. . . .'
Marlow swung his legs out, got up quickly, and staggered a little, as
though he had been set down after a rush through space. He leaned his
back against the balustrade and faced a disordered array of long cane
chairs. The bodies prone in them seemed startled out of their torpor by
his movement. One or two sat up as if alarmed; here and there a cigar
glowed yet; Marlow looked at them all with the eyes of a man returning
from the excessive remoteness of a dream. A throat was cleared; a calm
voice encouraged negligently, 'Well.'

'Nothing,' said Marlow with a slight start. 'He had told her--that's
all. She did not believe him--nothing more. As to myself, I do not know
whether it be just, proper, decent for me to rejoice or to be sorry. For
my part, I cannot say what I believed--indeed I don't know to this day,
and never shall probably. But what did the poor devil believe himself?
Truth shall prevail--don't you know Magna est veritas el . . . Yes, when
it gets a chance. There is a law, no doubt--and likewise a law regulates
your luck in the throwing of dice. It is not Justice the servant of men,
but accident, hazard, Fortune--the ally of patient Time--that holds an
even and scrupulous balance. Both of us had said the very same thing.
Did we both speak the truth--or one of us did--or neither? . . .'

Marlow paused, crossed his arms on his breast, and in a changed tone--

'She said we lied. Poor soul! Well--let's leave it to Chance, whose ally
is Time, that cannot be hurried, and whose enemy is Death, that will not
wait. I had retreated--a little cowed, I must own. I had tried a fall
with fear itself and got thrown--of course. I had only succeeded in
adding to her anguish the hint of some mysterious collusion, of an
inexplicable and incomprehensible conspiracy to keep her for ever in the
dark. And it had come easily, naturally, unavoidably, by his act, by her
own act! It was as though I had been shown the working of the implacable
destiny of which we are the victims--and the tools. It was appalling
to think of the girl whom I had left standing there motionless; Jim's
footsteps had a fateful sound as he tramped by, without seeing me, in
his heavy laced boots. "What? No lights!" he said in a loud, surprised
voice. "What are you doing in the dark--you two?" Next moment he caught
sight of her, I suppose. "Hallo, girl!" he cried cheerily. "Hallo, boy!"
she answered at once, with amazing pluck.

'This was their usual greeting to each other, and the bit of swagger she
would put into her rather high but sweet voice was very droll, pretty,
and childlike. It delighted Jim greatly. This was the last occasion on
which I heard them exchange this familiar hail, and it struck a chill
into my heart. There was the high sweet voice, the pretty effort, the
swagger; but it all seemed to die out prematurely, and the playful call
sounded like a moan. It was too confoundedly awful. "What have you done
with Marlow?" Jim was asking; and then, "Gone down--has he? Funny I
didn't meet him. . . . You there, Marlow?"

'I didn't answer. I wasn't going in--not yet at any rate. I really
couldn't. While he was calling me I was engaged in making my escape
through a little gate leading out upon a stretch of newly cleared
ground. No; I couldn't face them yet. I walked hastily with lowered head
along a trodden path. The ground rose gently, the few big trees had been
felled, the undergrowth had been cut down and the grass fired. He had a
mind to try a coffee-plantation there. The big hill, rearing its double
summit coal-black in the clear yellow glow of the rising moon, seemed
to cast its shadow upon the ground prepared for that experiment. He was
going to try ever so many experiments; I had admired his energy, his
enterprise, and his shrewdness. Nothing on earth seemed less real now
than his plans, his energy, and his enthusiasm; and raising my eyes, I
saw part of the moon glittering through the bushes at the bottom of the
chasm. For a moment it looked as though the smooth disc, falling from
its place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled to the bottom of that
precipice: its ascending movement was like a leisurely rebound; it
disengaged itself from the tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb of
some tree, growing on the slope, made a black crack right across its
face. It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this
mournful eclipse-like light the stumps of felled trees uprose very dark,
the heavy shadows fell at my feet on all sides, my own moving shadow,
and across my path the shadow of the solitary grave perpetually
garlanded with flowers. In the darkened moonlight the interlaced
blossoms took on shapes foreign to one's memory and colours indefinable
to the eye, as though they had been special flowers gathered by no man,
grown not in this world, and destined for the use of the dead alone.
Their powerful scent hung in the warm air, making it thick and heavy
like the fumes of incense. The lumps of white coral shone round the dark
mound like a chaplet of bleached skulls, and everything around was so
quiet that when I stood still all sound and all movement in the world
seemed to come to an end.

'It was a great peace, as if the earth had been one grave, and for a
time I stood there thinking mostly of the living who, buried in remote
places out of the knowledge of mankind, still are fated to share in its
tragic or grotesque miseries. In its noble struggles too--who knows?
The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world. It is valiant
enough to bear the burden, but where is the courage that would cast it
off?

'I suppose I must have fallen into a sentimental mood; I only know that
I stood there long enough for the sense of utter solitude to get hold
of me so completely that all I had lately seen, all I had heard, and the
very human speech itself, seemed to have passed away out of existence,
living only for a while longer in my memory, as though I had been the
last of mankind. It was a strange and melancholy illusion, evolved
half-consciously like all our illusions, which I suspect only to be
visions of remote unattainable truth, seen dimly. This was, indeed, one
of the lost, forgotten, unknown places of the earth; I had looked under
its obscure surface; and I felt that when to-morrow I had left it for
ever, it would slip out of existence, to live only in my memory till I
myself passed into oblivion. I have that feeling about me now; perhaps
it is that feeling which has incited me to tell you the story, to try to
hand over to you, as it were, its very existence, its reality--the truth
disclosed in a moment of illusion.

'Cornelius broke upon it. He bolted out, vermin-like, from the long
grass growing in a depression of the ground. I believe his house was
rotting somewhere near by, though I've never seen it, not having been
far enough in that direction. He ran towards me upon the path; his feet,
shod in dirty white shoes, twinkled on the dark earth; he pulled himself
up, and began to whine and cringe under a tall stove-pipe hat. His
dried-up little carcass was swallowed up, totally lost, in a suit of
black broadcloth. That was his costume for holidays and ceremonies, and
it reminded me that this was the fourth Sunday I had spent in Patusan.
All the time of my stay I had been vaguely aware of his desire to
confide in me, if he only could get me all to himself. He hung about
with an eager craving look on his sour yellow little face; but his
timidity had kept him back as much as my natural reluctance to have
anything to do with such an unsavoury creature. He would have succeeded,
nevertheless, had he not been so ready to slink off as soon as you
looked at him. He would slink off before Jim's severe gaze, before my
own, which I tried to make indifferent, even before Tamb' Itam's surly,
superior glance. He was perpetually slinking away; whenever seen he was
seen moving off deviously, his face over his shoulder, with either a
mistrustful snarl or a woe-begone, piteous, mute aspect; but no assumed
expression could conceal this innate irremediable abjectness of his
nature, any more than an arrangement of clothing can conceal some
monstrous deformity of the body.

'I don't know whether it was the demoralisation of my utter defeat in
my encounter with a spectre of fear less than an hour ago, but I let
him capture me without even a show of resistance. I was doomed to be
the recipient of confidences, and to be confronted with unanswerable
questions. It was trying; but the contempt, the unreasoned contempt, the
man's appearance provoked, made it easier to bear. He couldn't possibly
matter. Nothing mattered, since I had made up my mind that Jim, for
whom alone I cared, had at last mastered his fate. He had told me he
was satisfied . . . nearly. This is going further than most of us dare.
I--who have the right to think myself good enough--dare not. Neither
does any of you here, I suppose? . . .'

Marlow paused, as if expecting an answer. Nobody spoke.

'Quite right,' he began again. 'Let no soul know, since the truth can be
wrung out of us only by some cruel, little, awful catastrophe. But he
is one of us, and he could say he was satisfied . . . nearly. Just
fancy this! Nearly satisfied. One could almost envy him his catastrophe.
Nearly satisfied. After this nothing could matter. It did not matter who
suspected him, who trusted him, who loved him, who hated him--especially
as it was Cornelius who hated him.

'Yet after all this was a kind of recognition. You shall judge of a man
by his foes as well as by his friends, and this enemy of Jim was such as
no decent man would be ashamed to own, without, however, making too
much of him. This was the view Jim took, and in which I shared; but Jim
disregarded him on general grounds. "My dear Marlow," he said, "I feel
that if I go straight nothing can touch me. Indeed I do. Now you have
been long enough here to have a good look round--and, frankly, don't
you think I am pretty safe? It all depends upon me, and, by Jove! I have
lots of confidence in myself. The worst thing he could do would be to
kill me, I suppose. I don't think for a moment he would. He couldn't,
you know--not if I were myself to hand him a loaded rifle for the
purpose, and then turn my back on him. That's the sort of thing he is.
And suppose he would--suppose he could? Well--what of that? I didn't
come here flying for my life--did I? I came here to set my back against
the wall, and I am going to stay here . . ."

'"Till you are _quite_ satisfied," I struck in.

'We were sitting at the time under the roof in the stern of his boat;
twenty paddles flashed like one, ten on a side, striking the water with
a single splash, while behind our backs Tamb' Itam dipped silently right
and left, and stared right down the river, attentive to keep the long
canoe in the greatest strength of the current. Jim bowed his head, and
our last talk seemed to flicker out for good. He was seeing me off as
far as the mouth of the river. The schooner had left the day before,
working down and drifting on the ebb, while I had prolonged my stay
overnight. And now he was seeing me off.

'Jim had been a little angry with me for mentioning Cornelius at all.
I had not, in truth, said much. The man was too insignificant to be
dangerous, though he was as full of hate as he could hold. He had called
me "honourable sir" at every second sentence, and had whined at my elbow
as he followed me from the grave of his "late wife" to the gate of Jim's
compound. He declared himself the most unhappy of men, a victim, crushed
like a worm; he entreated me to look at him. I wouldn't turn my head to
do so; but I could see out of the corner of my eye his obsequious shadow
gliding after mine, while the moon, suspended on our right hand, seemed
to gloat serenely upon the spectacle. He tried to explain--as I've told
you--his share in the events of the memorable night. It was a matter of
expediency. How could he know who was going to get the upper hand? "I
would have saved him, honourable sir! I would have saved him for eighty
dollars," he protested in dulcet tones, keeping a pace behind me. "He
has saved himself," I said, "and he has forgiven you." I heard a sort of
tittering, and turned upon him; at once he appeared ready to take to his
heels. "What are you laughing at?" I asked, standing still. "Don't be
deceived, honourable sir!" he shrieked, seemingly losing all control
over his feelings. "_He_ save himself! He knows nothing, honourable
sir--nothing whatever. Who is he? What does he want here--the big thief?
What does he want here? He throws dust into everybody's eyes; he throws
dust into your eyes, honourable sir; but he can't throw dust into my
eyes. He is a big fool, honourable sir." I laughed contemptuously, and,
turning on my heel, began to walk on again. He ran up to my elbow and
whispered forcibly, "He's no more than a little child here--like a
little child--a little child." Of course I didn't take the slightest
notice, and seeing the time pressed, because we were approaching the
bamboo fence that glittered over the blackened ground of the clearing,
he came to the point. He commenced by being abjectly lachrymose. His
great misfortunes had affected his head. He hoped I would kindly forget
what nothing but his troubles made him say. He didn't mean anything
by it; only the honourable sir did not know what it was to be ruined,
broken down, trampled upon. After this introduction he approached the
matter near his heart, but in such a rambling, ejaculatory, craven
fashion, that for a long time I couldn't make out what he was driving
at. He wanted me to intercede with Jim in his favour. It seemed, too,
to be some sort of money affair. I heard time and again the words,
"Moderate provision--suitable present." He seemed to be claiming value
for something, and he even went the length of saying with some warmth
that life was not worth having if a man were to be robbed of everything.
I did not breathe a word, of course, but neither did I stop my ears.
The gist of the affair, which became clear to me gradually, was in this,
that he regarded himself as entitled to some money in exchange for the
girl. He had brought her up. Somebody else's child. Great trouble and
pains--old man now--suitable present. If the honourable sir would say
a word. . . . I stood still to look at him with curiosity, and fearful
lest I should think him extortionate, I suppose, he hastily brought
himself to make a concession. In consideration of a "suitable present"
given at once, he would, he declared, be willing to undertake the charge
of the girl, "without any other provision--when the time came for the
gentleman to go home." His little yellow face, all crumpled as though it
had been squeezed together, expressed the most anxious, eager avarice.
His voice whined coaxingly, "No more trouble--natural guardian--a sum of
money . . ."

'I stood there and marvelled. That kind of thing, with him, was
evidently a vocation. I discovered suddenly in his cringing attitude
a sort of assurance, as though he had been all his life dealing in
certitudes. He must have thought I was dispassionately considering his
proposal, because he became as sweet as honey. "Every gentleman made
a provision when the time came to go home," he began insinuatingly. I
slammed the little gate. "In this case, Mr. Cornelius," I said, "the
time will never come." He took a few seconds to gather this in. "What!"
he fairly squealed. "Why," I continued from my side of the gate,
"haven't you heard him say so himself? He will never go home." "Oh! this
is too much," he shouted. He would not address me as "honoured sir" any
more. He was very still for a time, and then without a trace of humility
began very low: "Never go--ah! He--he--he comes here devil knows
from where--comes here--devil knows why--to trample on me till I
die--ah--trample" (he stamped softly with both feet), "trample like
this--nobody knows why--till I die. . . ." His voice became quite
extinct; he was bothered by a little cough; he came up close to the
fence and told me, dropping into a confidential and piteous tone,
that he would not be trampled upon. "Patience--patience," he muttered,
striking his breast. I had done laughing at him, but unexpectedly he
treated me to a wild cracked burst of it. "Ha! ha! ha! We shall see! We
shall see! What! Steal from me! Steal from me everything! Everything!
Everything!" His head drooped on one shoulder, his hands were hanging
before him lightly clasped. One would have thought he had cherished
the girl with surpassing love, that his spirit had been crushed and his
heart broken by the most cruel of spoliations. Suddenly he lifted his
head and shot out an infamous word. "Like her mother--she is like her
deceitful mother. Exactly. In her face, too. In her face. The devil!"
He leaned his forehead against the fence, and in that position
uttered threats and horrible blasphemies in Portuguese in very weak
ejaculations, mingled with miserable plaints and groans, coming out with
a heave of the shoulders as though he had been overtaken by a deadly fit
of sickness. It was an inexpressibly grotesque and vile performance,
and I hastened away. He tried to shout something after me. Some
disparagement of Jim, I believe--not too loud though, we were too near
the house. All I heard distinctly was, "No more than a little child--a
little child."'

'But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the
houses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its
colour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on
a canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back for
the last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with its
life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the
fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had
seen them--intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression. I
had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where
events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream,
no matter whether over mud or over stones. I wasn't going to dive into
it; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the surface. But
as to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration. The
immense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly witch of a
wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing secretly their dreams
of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened and greatly perplexed;
Dain Waris, intelligent and brave, with his faith in Jim, with his
firm glance and his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her
frightened, suspicious adoration; Tamb' Itam, surly and faithful;
Cornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the moonlight--I
am certain of them. They exist as if under an enchanter's wand. But the
figure round which all these are grouped--that one lives, and I am not
certain of him. No magician's wand can immobilise him under my eyes. He
is one of us.

'Jim, as I've told you, accompanied me on the first stage of my journey
back to the world he had renounced, and the way at times seemed to
lead through the very heart of untouched wilderness. The empty reaches
sparkled under the high sun; between the high walls of vegetation the
heat drowsed upon the water, and the boat, impelled vigorously, cut her
way through the air that seemed to have settled dense and warm under the
shelter of lofty trees.

'The shadow of the impending separation had already put an immense space
between us, and when we spoke it was with an effort, as if to force our
low voices across a vast and increasing distance. The boat fairly flew;
we sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the smell of
mud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth, seemed to sting our
faces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great hand far away had
lifted a heavy curtain, had flung open un immense portal. The light
itself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur
reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled our lungs, quickened
our thoughts, our blood, our regrets--and, straight ahead, the forests
sank down against the dark-blue ridge of the sea.

'I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in
the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life,
with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open
to me. The girl was right--there was a sign, a call in them--something
to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam
through space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped
limbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. "This
is glorious!" I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my side. He
sat with his head sunk on his breast and said "Yes," without raising his
eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the
reproach of his romantic conscience.

'I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a bit
of white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow, draped
in creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene
and intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-like
horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew
lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by
the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide
estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully
the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary
bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with
a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy
mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked
multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off
from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly,
striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide painfully
on a mirror. This bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village
that boasted of the white lord's especial protection, and the two men
crossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. They landed
and walked up to us on the white sand, lean, dark-brown as if dried
in smoke, with ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders
and breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded
headkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint,
voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes
confidently. The Rajah's people would not leave them alone; there had
been some trouble about a lot of turtles' eggs his people had collected
on the islets there--and leaning at arm's-length upon his paddle, he
pointed with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a time
without looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. He would hear
him by-and-by. They withdrew obediently to some little distance, and sat
on their heels, with their paddles lying before them on the sand; the
silvery gleams in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and the
immensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing
north and south beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal
Presence watching us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand.

'"The trouble is," remarked Jim moodily, "that for generations these
beggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered as the
Rajah's personal slaves--and the old rip can't get it into his head that
. . ."

'He paused. "That you have changed all that," I said.

'"Yes I've changed all that," he muttered in a gloomy voice.

'"You have had your opportunity," I pursued.

'"Have I?" he said. "Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back my
confidence in myself--a good name--yet sometimes I wish . . . No! I
shall hold what I've got. Can't expect anything more." He flung his arm
out towards the sea. "Not out there anyhow." He stamped his foot upon
the sand. "This is my limit, because nothing less will do."

'We continued pacing the beach. "Yes, I've changed all that," he went
on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; "but
only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can't you see
it? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking
that silly old Tunku Allang's coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss
over these rotten turtles' eggs. No. I can't say--enough. Never. I must
go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can
touch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to--to"
. . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . .
"to keep in touch with" . . . His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . .
"with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more. With--with--you,
for instance."

'I was profoundly humbled by his words. "For God's sake," I said, "don't
set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself." I felt a gratitude,
an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping
my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that
was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away; under the
low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like un ember snatched from the
fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the
approach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but checked
himself; at last, as if he had found a formula--

'"I shall be faithful," he said quietly. "I shall be faithful," he
repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes
wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple
under the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled
some words of Stein's. . . . "In the destructive element immerse! . . .
To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and
so--always--usque ad finem . . ." He was romantic, but none the
less true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what
forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! . . . A small boat,
leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars,
towards the sandbank to take me off. "And then there's Jewel," he said,
out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my
very thoughts so that his voice made me start. "There's Jewel." "Yes,"
I murmured. "I need not tell you what she is to me," he pursued.
"You've seen. In time she will come to understand . . ." "I hope so," I
interrupted. "She trusts me, too," he mused, and then changed his tone.
"When shall we meet next, I wonder?" he said.

'"Never--unless you come out," I answered, avoiding his glance. He
didn't seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while.

'"Good-bye, then," he said, after a pause. "Perhaps it's just as well."

'We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which waited with her nose
on the beach. The schooner, her mainsail set and jib-sheet to windward,
curveted on the purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her sails. "Will
you be going home again soon?" asked Jim, just as I swung my leg over
the gunwale. "In a year or so if I live," I said. The forefoot grated on
the sand, the boat floated, the wet oars flashed and dipped once, twice.
Jim, at the water's edge, raised his voice. "Tell them . . ." he began.
I signed to the men to cease rowing, and waited in wonder. Tell who? The
half-submerged sun faced him; I could see its red gleam in his eyes that
looked dumbly at me. . . . "No--nothing," he said, and with a slight
wave of his hand motioned the boat away. I did not look again at the
shore till I had clambered on board the schooner.

'By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over the east, and the
coast, turned black, extended infinitely its sombre wall that seemed the
very stronghold of the night; the western horizon was one great blaze of
gold and crimson in which a big detached cloud floated dark and still,
casting a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw Jim on the beach
watching the schooner fall off and gather headway.

'The two half-naked fishermen had arisen as soon as I had gone; they
were no doubt pouring the plaint of their trifling, miserable, oppressed
lives into the ears of the white lord, and no doubt he was listening to
it, making it his own, for was it not a part of his luck--the luck "from
the word Go"--the luck to which he had assured me he was so completely
equal? They, too, I should think, were in luck, and I was sure their
pertinacity would be equal to it. Their dark-skinned bodies vanished on
the dark background long before I had lost sight of their protector. He
was white from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with
the stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his feet, the
opportunity by his side--still veiled. What do you say? Was it still
veiled? I don't know. For me that white figure in the stillness of coast
and sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight
was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand had sunk
already under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger than a child--then
only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light
left in a darkened world. . . . And, suddenly, I lost him. . . .

Three, Thirty Four and Thirty Five . Chapter Thirty Three expands on the earlier discussion between Marlow and Jewel and he relates how Jewel fears the unknown. She tells Marlow that she asked Jim to leave on the night he saw off the attackers as he was in danger, but also because she did not want to be left alone like her mother. Marlow compares the two to a knight and a maiden . Jim has sworn to Jewel that he will never leave her and Marlow is shocked that she does not believe him. She says this is because other men have promised the same thing, and this includes her father. Marlow tries to reassure her that Jim will never leave, but she is aware that Jim cannot forget something that has happened to him and wants to know why he came to Patusan. She also thinks Jim speaks of Marlow too often and so she is afraid of him . . . Marlow tells her bitterly that he will never return and no one wants Jim as the world is too big to miss him. She demands to know why and he tells her it is because Jim is not good enough. She says this is the very thing Jim has told her and accuses Marlow of lying. Marlow begs her to hear him out and says, 'nobody, nobody is good enough'. . . In Chapter Thirty Four, Marlow describes walking away from her and avoiding Jim. Cornelius then approaches Marlow and in his obsequious way he tells him of his share in the events when Jim was attacked. He calls Jim a 'big thief'. He eventually gets round to telling Marlow that he will undertake the charge of the girl  when 'the gentleman' goes home. Marlow informs him that Jim will never leave and Cornelius becomes angry. He says he has been stolen from and adds that the girl is as deceitful as her mother. . . Marlow leaves the next morning, in Chapter Thirty Five, and turns away from the picture . Jim accompanies him on the first stage of his journey back to 'the world he had renounced'. When they reach the openness of the sea, Marlow says 'this is glorious'. Jim agrees, but his head is sunk on his chest and he does not raise his eyes. He adds that this is his 'limit', 'because nothing less will do'. Their belief in him makes him feel safe. Jim says quietly that he will be faithful and Marlow points out again that Jim is a romantic, but this is none the less true. Jim asks if they will meet again and Marlow replies 'never - unless you come out'. Jim says this is perhaps just as well. He then asks if Marlow will be going home again soon and says 'tell them...', but does not finish his request; he just says 'nothing'. As Marlow leaves, he sees the white figure of Jim being consulted by two fishermen: 'For me that white figure in the stillness of coast and sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma.' The chapter finishes with Marlow saying, 'and, suddenly, I lost him ...' .

Three, Thirty Four and Thirty Five . Jewel's love for Jim is expanded upon further in Chapter Thirty Three as she reveals to Marlow her fears of Jim leaving . By contrast, Cornelius's jealousy of him is further exposed as he refers to him as a 'big thief'. He considers Jim to be a usurper and his hatred of him is worth noting as this influences the later course of events. . . At this time of Marlow's appearance at Patusan, Jim has now become established as a honorable figure. Marlow's departure is a significantly poignant moment  and it is also striking that the last time he sees Jim it is as a distant 'white figure'. This lends Jim an even greater air of authority in this imperial white-dominated world. Furthermore, two fishermen are consulting with him and this reinforces the parting view of him as having gained the position of leader.