feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/Lord Jim/section_8_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapters 28-33
feat_summary_id: chapters 28-33
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 28-33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-28-33", "summary": "Past events are now referred to in passing. Sherif Ali, one of Doramin's competitors and an ally of the Rajah, was defeated and then fled. Old scores were settled. The Rajah reacted with fear. All felt confidence in Jim's wisdom. Marlow then describes how Doramin and his wife begin to ask him questions about Jim. Doramin is anxious; in his opinion, and perhaps thinking about Stein, white men have a tendency to come and go. Doramin's wife asks Marlow about Jim's past: is there anyone for him to return to, perhaps a mother who yearns to see him? This query brings Marlow, in his narration, to the story of Jim's love. Cornelius's deceased wife had left a daughter . The mother had not been an ordinary woman; her white father was a high official. Jim and the woman's daughter come to share mutual intimacy; Jim refers to her as \"Jewel.\" This name leads Marlow to comment on how he pieced a puzzle together, recalling how, 230 miles south of Patusan, he had heard a rumor of how a young man in Patusan had discovered an extraordinarily priceless emerald that could only be concealed on a woman who was young and insensible to the seductions of love. Jewel's mother had taught her English and, according to Marlow, she spoke it having absorbed Jim's own manner of speaking. He observes that Jim was \"jealously loved\" . Marlow then reports seeing Cornelius for the first time. Tamb' Itam points him out, and Marlow notes that he is a slinking, dark, unsavory type, like a \"repulsive beetle\" . His presence seemed the one blemish on Jim's charmed life. Jim had discovered that Cornelius had embezzled from Stein's company, kept poor records, and left the house is disrepair, all the while blaming his dead wife for the failures. Jim felt deep sympathy for the girl whose mother had died and who had to suffer Cornelius's insults. The girl had said she would have killed him with her own hands, if she hadn't seen how wretched he was. This statement, for Jim, hinted at a complexity in her character that impressed him. Cornelius, eager to be rid of Jim, offered to smuggle him out of the area for a price, since it was widely known that the Rajah wanted him killed. Jim didn't respond. Later that very night, however, he arrived at a plan for overcoming Sherif Ali, and the girl proved useful in providing the necessary background information about Patusan affairs. When Cornelius again offered to help him out of Patusan, Jim stated his intention to remain. Cornelius responded that, then, Jim would die here. Jim gives a speech in favor of \"vigorous action\" to the principal men of the community where Jim had been persuasive and eloquent, stirring the passions roused by Sherif Ali's last raid . That night, Jim had a dream, a great voice from the heavens commanding that he \"Awake!\" He did wake and see the flame of a torch and the girl holding it, in a white gown, with her long black hair. Jewel insisted that he get up, that there was a plan in place for his murder that night. Marlow reminds his audience then that this is a love story, and Jim admits to the strength of his emotion at the time: \"that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow\" . Jim then sensed that his assassins were near and, in the end, killed a man. The three others surrendered. The conclusion of this story is that Jim ordered the three would-be assassins to jump into the water. Jim then turns to Marlow and says that he loves the girl. The fact that his existence was necessary for another person provided a wonderful feeling. The community believed he was brave, true, and just. He was happy. Marlow then tells Jim that he will always be a mystery amongst them; he will never be fully known. This is almost a warning, but Jim replies that this situation is exactly what he wants. Later in the night, Jewel approaches Marlow and seems to ask for an assurance from him that Jim will never leave her. She tells Marlow that her mother had warned her of such things before she died. Marlow was, himself, a signal of that Unknown from which Jim had come, so she hoped to learn something of it from him. Marlow, touched by the girl's delicate charm, tells her that it is not his intention to ask Jim to leave, and that Jim wouldn't leave anyway. Jewel says that she does not want to die weeping like her mother. She senses a strong feeling of dread, and Marlow is then strangely brutal to her. He tells her that Jim will never leave Patusan because he is \"not good enough\" for the world outside. The girl says that Jim said the same thing, and she protests, sobbing. She claims that Marlow is lying, and Marlow, regretful, says, \"nobody is good enough.\" She exits.", "analysis": "As the political situation in Patusan is elaborated, Jim's integral role in the defeat of Sherif Ali and his trustworthiness bring him the acclaim and status he has always sought.  The intelligence of the plan proves his good judgment, and its execution proves his ability and loyalty.  In the end, Dain Waris saves Jim's life, in the same way that Stein had saved Dain Waris's father's life.  This parallelism does not exclude the possibility that a kind of reversal could take place: though Jim and Stein share a characteristic romanticism, events may work in the reverse for Jim compared to how they worked for Stein.  At this point, however, Marlow observes the success Jim has made out of his opportunity. The character Cornelius is more intensely drawn through Marlow's eyes, who sees him immediately as a \"blemish.\"  This corrupt presence in the midst of Jim's romantic life yields a sense of instability for the reader in that Cornelius, with his bitter loss of standing, as well as his general decrepit state, promises ill will for future events.  Jim, however, like Jewel, considers him to be a sad wretch, not really worth worrying over or expending the energy to punish.  This proves later to be a mistake of judgment on Jim's part.  While so many aspects of his life in Patusan have been exquisitely assessed and judged and then acted upon, Jim's assessment of Cornelius becomes a mistake that will unravel his life with disastrous consequences. When Jim's love story is introduced, the reader recalls the mysterious reference made by Stein to a Malay-Dutch woman who had died.  The daughter of this woman is the one who becomes Jim's lover.  The two share, among other things, in having isolated positions in the community.  It is unclear whether Jewel is her real name or merely the name that Jim gives her.  In any case, the allusion to Adam's naming of Eve is made clear.  It is fitting that Jewel, in this romantic setting, completes Jim's fair picture of the charmed life with a beautiful girl.  The girl herself attains the status of myth, like Jim.  Jim protects the fabulous, enormous emerald he has found; she is his precious jewel. Thus Jewel represents what women in the novel symbolize generally.  Women tend to function as symbols of opportunity, in the sense that romantic Western men seek to wed their dreams to the reality of the Eastern landscape.  Hence, a relationship with a girl from the East symbolizes the realization of the man's dreams.  Stein had accomplished this wedding in actually having married a Malay princess.  The suggestion here is that Jim will do the same with Jewel.  Her mother's tragic end in life, however, foreshadows the sorrows that will fall over Jewel.  The East-West romance, once realized, does not promise to be sustainable.  It is, more often than not, untenable. Jewel's love for Jim, in Marlow's observation, is a \"jealous\" love, not unlike the way he has described the community's love for Jim.  Jim has become such an integral part of the community, as well as of Jewel's life, that the fear of being without him implies overdependence.  They absorb him, in the way that Jewel absorbs even Jim's manner of speech.  During the private conversation between Marlow and Jewel, Marlow seems jealous himself--of Jim's youth, of his success, and of this girl.  This jealousy may explain why he brutally shares with Jewel the idea that Jim isn't good enough for the world beyond Patusan. Regretfully, however, Marlow then revises his statement, showing that what was an initial passion of judgment can also be equally applied to all men: that \"nobody is good enough.\"  In other words, the romantic ideals of honor and manhood are not really possible for anyone, in view of man's countless imperfections.  This reflection suggests, on the one hand, a general solidarity between Jim and the rest of the world and, on the other hand, Jim's distinct choice to go to a special place where he might possibly be able to achieve the ideal after all."}
text: 'The defeated Sherif Ali fled the country without making another stand,
  and when the miserable hunted villagers began to crawl out of the jungle
  back to their rotting houses, it was Jim who, in consultation with Dain
  Waris, appointed the headmen. Thus he became the virtual ruler of the
  land. As to old Tunku Allang, his fears at first had known no bounds. It
  is said that at the intelligence of the successful storming of the hill
  he flung himself, face down, on the bamboo floor of his audience-hall,
  and lay motionless for a whole night and a whole day, uttering stifled
  sounds of such an appalling nature that no man dared approach his
  prostrate form nearer than a spear's length. Already he could see
  himself driven ignominiously out of Patusan, wandering abandoned,
  stripped, without opium, without his women, without followers, a fair
  game for the first comer to kill. After Sherif Ali his turn would come,
  and who could resist an attack led by such a devil? And indeed he owed
  his life and such authority as he still possessed at the time of my
  visit to Jim's idea of what was fair alone. The Bugis had been extremely
  anxious to pay off old scores, and the impassive old Doramin cherished
  the hope of yet seeing his son ruler of Patusan. During one of our
  interviews he deliberately allowed me to get a glimpse of this secret
  ambition. Nothing could be finer in its way than the dignified wariness
  of his approaches. He himself--he began by declaring--had used his
  strength in his young days, but now he had grown old and tired. . . .
  With his imposing bulk and haughty little eyes darting sagacious,
  inquisitive glances, he reminded one irresistibly of a cunning old
  elephant; the slow rise and fall of his vast breast went on powerful and
  regular, like the heave of a calm sea. He too, as he protested, had an
  unbounded confidence in Tuan Jim's wisdom. If he could only obtain a
  promise! One word would be enough! . . . His breathing silences, the
  low rumblings of his voice, recalled the last efforts of a spent
  thunderstorm.
  
  'I tried to put the subject aside. It was difficult, for there could be
  no question that Jim had the power; in his new sphere there did not seem
  to be anything that was not his to hold or to give. But that, I repeat,
  was nothing in comparison with the notion, which occurred to me, while I
  listened with a show of attention, that he seemed to have come very near
  at last to mastering his fate. Doramin was anxious about the future of
  the country, and I was struck by the turn he gave to the argument. The
  land remains where God had put it; but white men--he said--they come to
  us and in a little while they go. They go away. Those they leave behind
  do not know when to look for their return. They go to their own land, to
  their people, and so this white man too would. . . . I don't know what
  induced me to commit myself at this point by a vigorous "No, no." The
  whole extent of this indiscretion became apparent when Doramin, turning
  full upon me his face, whose expression, fixed in rugged deep folds,
  remained unalterable, like a huge brown mask, said that this was good
  news indeed, reflectively; and then wanted to know why.
  
  'His little, motherly witch of a wife sat on my other hand, with
  her head covered and her feet tucked up, gazing through the great
  shutter-hole. I could only see a straying lock of grey hair, a high
  cheek-bone, the slight masticating motion of the sharp chin. Without
  removing her eyes from the vast prospect of forests stretching as far as
  the hills, she asked me in a pitying voice why was it that he so young
  had wandered from his home, coming so far, through so many dangers?
  Had he no household there, no kinsmen in his own country? Had he no old
  mother, who would always remember his face? . . .
  
  'I was completely unprepared for this. I could only mutter and shake my
  head vaguely. Afterwards I am perfectly aware I cut a very poor figure
  trying to extricate myself out of this difficulty. From that moment,
  however, the old nakhoda became taciturn. He was not very pleased, I
  fear, and evidently I had given him food for thought. Strangely enough,
  on the evening of that very day (which was my last in Patusan) I was
  once more confronted with the same question, with the unanswerable why
  of Jim's fate. And this brings me to the story of his love.
  
  'I suppose you think it is a story that you can imagine for yourselves.
  We have heard so many such stories, and the majority of us don't believe
  them to be stories of love at all. For the most part we look upon them
  as stories of opportunities: episodes of passion at best, or perhaps
  only of youth and temptation, doomed to forgetfulness in the end, even
  if they pass through the reality of tenderness and regret. This view
  mostly is right, and perhaps in this case too. . . . Yet I don't know.
  To tell this story is by no means so easy as it should be--were the
  ordinary standpoint adequate. Apparently it is a story very much like
  the others: for me, however, there is visible in its background the
  melancholy figure of a woman, the shadow of a cruel wisdom buried in a
  lonely grave, looking on wistfully, helplessly, with sealed lips. The
  grave itself, as I came upon it during an early morning stroll, was a
  rather shapeless brown mound, with an inlaid neat border of white lumps
  of coral at the base, and enclosed within a circular fence made of split
  saplings, with the bark left on. A garland of leaves and flowers was
  woven about the heads of the slender posts--and the flowers were fresh.
  
  'Thus, whether the shadow is of my imagination or not, I can at all
  events point out the significant fact of an unforgotten grave. When I
  tell you besides that Jim with his own hands had worked at the rustic
  fence, you will perceive directly the difference, the individual side of
  the story. There is in his espousal of memory and affection belonging to
  another human being something characteristic of his seriousness. He had
  a conscience, and it was a romantic conscience. Through her whole life
  the wife of the unspeakable Cornelius had no other companion, confidant,
  and friend but her daughter. How the poor woman had come to marry the
  awful little Malacca Portuguese--after the separation from the father
  of her girl--and how that separation had been brought about, whether by
  death, which can be sometimes merciful, or by the merciless pressure of
  conventions, is a mystery to me. From the little which Stein (who knew
  so many stories) had let drop in my hearing, I am convinced that she was
  no ordinary woman. Her own father had been a white; a high official;
  one of the brilliantly endowed men who are not dull enough to nurse a
  success, and whose careers so often end under a cloud. I suppose she too
  must have lacked the saving dullness--and her career ended in Patusan.
  Our common fate . . . for where is the man--I mean a real sentient
  man--who does not remember vaguely having been deserted in the fullness
  of possession by some one or something more precious than life? . . .
  our common fate fastens upon the women with a peculiar cruelty. It
  does not punish like a master, but inflicts lingering torment, as if to
  gratify a secret, unappeasable spite. One would think that, appointed
  to rule on earth, it seeks to revenge itself upon the beings that come
  nearest to rising above the trammels of earthly caution; for it is
  only women who manage to put at times into their love an element just
  palpable enough to give one a fright--an extra-terrestrial touch. I ask
  myself with wonder--how the world can look to them--whether it has the
  shape and substance _we_ know, the air _we_ breathe! Sometimes I fancy
  it must be a region of unreasonable sublimities seething with the
  excitement of their adventurous souls, lighted by the glory of all
  possible risks and renunciations. However, I suspect there are very few
  women in the world, though of course I am aware of the multitudes of
  mankind and of the equality of sexes--in point of numbers, that is. But
  I am sure that the mother was as much of a woman as the daughter seemed
  to be. I cannot help picturing to myself these two, at first the young
  woman and the child, then the old woman and the young girl, the awful
  sameness and the swift passage of time, the barrier of forest, the
  solitude and the turmoil round these two lonely lives, and every word
  spoken between them penetrated with sad meaning. There must have
  been confidences, not so much of fact, I suppose, as of innermost
  feelings--regrets--fears--warnings, no doubt: warnings that the younger
  did not fully understand till the elder was dead--and Jim came along.
  Then I am sure she understood much--not everything--the fear mostly, it
  seems. Jim called her by a word that means precious, in the sense of a
  precious gem--jewel. Pretty, isn't it? But he was capable of anything.
  He was equal to his fortune, as he--after all--must have been equal to
  his misfortune. Jewel he called her; and he would say this as he might
  have said "Jane," don't you know--with a marital, homelike, peaceful
  effect. I heard the name for the first time ten minutes after I had
  landed in his courtyard, when, after nearly shaking my arm off, he
  darted up the steps and began to make a joyous, boyish disturbance at
  the door under the heavy eaves. "Jewel! O Jewel! Quick! Here's a friend
  come," . . . and suddenly peering at me in the dim verandah, he mumbled
  earnestly, "You know--this--no confounded nonsense about it--can't tell
  you how much I owe to her--and so--you understand--I--exactly as
  if . . ." His hurried, anxious whispers were cut short by the flitting of
  a white form within the house, a faint exclamation, and a child-like but
  energetic little face with delicate features and a profound, attentive
  glance peeped out of the inner gloom, like a bird out of the recess of a
  nest. I was struck by the name, of course; but it was not till later
  on that I connected it with an astonishing rumour that had met me on my
  journey, at a little place on the coast about 230 miles south of Patusan
  River. Stein's schooner, in which I had my passage, put in there, to
  collect some produce, and, going ashore, I found to my great surprise
  that the wretched locality could boast of a third-class deputy-assistant
  resident, a big, fat, greasy, blinking fellow of mixed descent, with
  turned-out, shiny lips. I found him lying extended on his back in a cane
  chair, odiously unbuttoned, with a large green leaf of some sort on the
  top of his steaming head, and another in his hand which he used lazily
  as a fan . . . Going to Patusan? Oh yes. Stein's Trading Company. He
  knew. Had a permission? No business of his. It was not so bad there now,
  he remarked negligently, and, he went on drawling, "There's some sort of
  white vagabond has got in there, I hear. . . . Eh? What you say?
  Friend of yours? So! . . . Then it was true there was one of these
  verdammte--What was he up to? Found his way in, the rascal. Eh? I had
  not been sure. Patusan--they cut throats there--no business of ours." He
  interrupted himself to groan. "Phoo! Almighty! The heat! The heat! Well,
  then, there might be something in the story too, after all, and . . ."
  He shut one of his beastly glassy eyes (the eyelid went on quivering)
  while he leered at me atrociously with the other. "Look here," says
  he mysteriously, "if--do you understand?--if he has really got hold of
  something fairly good--none of your bits of green glass--understand?--I
  am a Government official--you tell the rascal . . . Eh? What? Friend of
  yours?" . . . He continued wallowing calmly in the chair . . . "You said
  so; that's just it; and I am pleased to give you the hint. I suppose
  you too would like to get something out of it? Don't interrupt. You
  just tell him I've heard the tale, but to my Government I have made no
  report. Not yet. See? Why make a report? Eh? Tell him to come to me if
  they let him get alive out of the country. He had better look out
  for himself. Eh? I promise to ask no questions. On the quiet--you
  understand? You too--you shall get something from me. Small commission
  for the trouble. Don't interrupt. I am a Government official, and make
  no report. That's business. Understand? I know some good people that
  will buy anything worth having, and can give him more money than
  the scoundrel ever saw in his life. I know his sort." He fixed me
  steadfastly with both his eyes open, while I stood over him utterly
  amazed, and asking myself whether he was mad or drunk. He perspired,
  puffed, moaning feebly, and scratching himself with such horrible
  composure that I could not bear the sight long enough to find out. Next
  day, talking casually with the people of the little native court of the
  place, I discovered that a story was travelling slowly down the
  coast about a mysterious white man in Patusan who had got hold of
  an extraordinary gem--namely, an emerald of an enormous size, and
  altogether priceless. The emerald seems to appeal more to the Eastern
  imagination than any other precious stone. The white man had obtained
  it, I was told, partly by the exercise of his wonderful strength and
  partly by cunning, from the ruler of a distant country, whence he had
  fled instantly, arriving in Patusan in utmost distress, but frightening
  the people by his extreme ferocity, which nothing seemed able to subdue.
  Most of my informants were of the opinion that the stone was probably
  unlucky,--like the famous stone of the Sultan of Succadana, which in
  the old times had brought wars and untold calamities upon that country.
  Perhaps it was the same stone--one couldn't say. Indeed the story of a
  fabulously large emerald is as old as the arrival of the first white men
  in the Archipelago; and the belief in it is so persistent that less than
  forty years ago there had been an official Dutch inquiry into the truth
  of it. Such a jewel--it was explained to me by the old fellow from whom
  I heard most of this amazing Jim-myth--a sort of scribe to the wretched
  little Rajah of the place;--such a jewel, he said, cocking his poor
  purblind eyes up at me (he was sitting on the cabin floor out of
  respect), is best preserved by being concealed about the person of a
  woman. Yet it is not every woman that would do. She must be young--he
  sighed deeply--and insensible to the seductions of love. He shook his
  head sceptically. But such a woman seemed to be actually in existence.
  He had been told of a tall girl, whom the white man treated with great
  respect and care, and who never went forth from the house unattended.
  People said the white man could be seen with her almost any day; they
  walked side by side, openly, he holding her arm under his--pressed to
  his side--thus--in a most extraordinary way. This might be a lie, he
  conceded, for it was indeed a strange thing for any one to do: on the
  other hand, there could be no doubt she wore the white man's jewel
  concealed upon her bosom.'
  'This was the theory of Jim's marital evening walks. I made a third on
  more than one occasion, unpleasantly aware every time of Cornelius,
  who nursed the aggrieved sense of his legal paternity, slinking in
  the neighbourhood with that peculiar twist of his mouth as if he were
  perpetually on the point of gnashing his teeth. But do you notice how,
  three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat
  lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilisation wither and die,
  to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination, that have the futility,
  often the charm, and sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of
  art? Romance had singled Jim for its own--and that was the true part of
  the story, which otherwise was all wrong. He did not hide his jewel. In
  fact, he was extremely proud of it.
  
  'It comes to me now that I had, on the whole, seen very little of her.
  What I remember best is the even, olive pallor of her complexion, and
  the intense blue-black gleams of her hair, flowing abundantly from under
  a small crimson cap she wore far back on her shapely head. Her movements
  were free, assured, and she blushed a dusky red. While Jim and I were
  talking, she would come and go with rapid glances at us, leaving on her
  passage an impression of grace and charm and a distinct suggestion of
  watchfulness. Her manner presented a curious combination of shyness and
  audacity. Every pretty smile was succeeded swiftly by a look of silent,
  repressed anxiety, as if put to flight by the recollection of some
  abiding danger. At times she would sit down with us and, with her soft
  cheek dimpled by the knuckles of her little hand, she would listen
  to our talk; her big clear eyes would remain fastened on our lips, as
  though each pronounced word had a visible shape. Her mother had taught
  her to read and write; she had learned a good bit of English from
  Jim, and she spoke it most amusingly, with his own clipping, boyish
  intonation. Her tenderness hovered over him like a flutter of wings. She
  lived so completely in his contemplation that she had acquired something
  of his outward aspect, something that recalled him in her movements, in
  the way she stretched her arm, turned her head, directed her glances.
  Her vigilant affection had an intensity that made it almost perceptible
  to the senses; it seemed actually to exist in the ambient matter
  of space, to envelop him like a peculiar fragrance, to dwell in the
  sunshine like a tremulous, subdued, and impassioned note. I suppose you
  think that I too am romantic, but it is a mistake. I am relating to you
  the sober impressions of a bit of youth, of a strange uneasy romance
  that had come in my way. I observed with interest the work of
  his--well--good fortune. He was jealously loved, but why she should
  be jealous, and of what, I could not tell. The land, the people, the
  forests were her accomplices, guarding him with vigilant accord, with
  an air of seclusion, of mystery, of invincible possession. There was
  no appeal, as it were; he was imprisoned within the very freedom of his
  power, and she, though ready to make a footstool of her head for his
  feet, guarded her conquest inflexibly--as though he were hard to keep.
  The very Tamb' Itam, marching on our journeys upon the heels of his
  white lord, with his head thrown back, truculent and be-weaponed like a
  janissary, with kriss, chopper, and lance (besides carrying Jim's gun);
  even Tamb' Itam allowed himself to put on the airs of uncompromising
  guardianship, like a surly devoted jailer ready to lay down his life for
  his captive. On the evenings when we sat up late, his silent, indistinct
  form would pass and repass under the verandah, with noiseless footsteps,
  or lifting my head I would unexpectedly make him out standing rigidly
  erect in the shadow. As a general rule he would vanish after a time,
  without a sound; but when we rose he would spring up close to us as if
  from the ground, ready for any orders Jim might wish to give. The girl
  too, I believe, never went to sleep till we had separated for the night.
  More than once I saw her and Jim through the window of my room come out
  together quietly and lean on the rough balustrade--two white forms very
  close, his arm about her waist, her head on his shoulder. Their soft
  murmurs reached me, penetrating, tender, with a calm sad note in the
  stillness of the night, like a self-communion of one being carried on
  in two tones. Later on, tossing on my bed under the mosquito-net, I
  was sure to hear slight creakings, faint breathing, a throat cleared
  cautiously--and I would know that Tamb' Itam was still on the prowl.
  Though he had (by the favour of the white lord) a house in the compound,
  had "taken wife," and had lately been blessed with a child, I believe
  that, during my stay at all events, he slept on the verandah every
  night. It was very difficult to make this faithful and grim retainer
  talk. Even Jim himself was answered in jerky short sentences, under
  protest as it were. Talking, he seemed to imply, was no business of his.
  The longest speech I heard him volunteer was one morning when, suddenly
  extending his hand towards the courtyard, he pointed at Cornelius and
  said, "Here comes the Nazarene." I don't think he was addressing me,
  though I stood at his side; his object seemed rather to awaken the
  indignant attention of the universe. Some muttered allusions, which
  followed, to dogs and the smell of roast-meat, struck me as singularly
  felicitous. The courtyard, a large square space, was one torrid blaze of
  sunshine, and, bathed in intense light, Cornelius was creeping across
  in full view with an inexpressible effect of stealthiness, of dark and
  secret slinking. He reminded one of everything that is unsavoury. His
  slow laborious walk resembled the creeping of a repulsive beetle, the
  legs alone moving with horrid industry while the body glided evenly. I
  suppose he made straight enough for the place where he wanted to get to,
  but his progress with one shoulder carried forward seemed oblique. He
  was often seen circling slowly amongst the sheds, as if following
  a scent; passing before the verandah with upward stealthy glances;
  disappearing without haste round the corner of some hut. That he seemed
  free of the place demonstrated Jim's absurd carelessness or else his
  infinite disdain, for Cornelius had played a very dubious part (to say
  the least of it) in a certain episode which might have ended fatally for
  Jim. As a matter of fact, it had redounded to his glory. But everything
  redounded to his glory; and it was the irony of his good fortune that
  he, who had been too careful of it once, seemed to bear a charmed life.
  
  'You must know he had left Doramin's place very soon after his
  arrival--much too soon, in fact, for his safety, and of course a long
  time before the war. In this he was actuated by a sense of duty; he had
  to look after Stein's business, he said. Hadn't he? To that end, with an
  utter disregard of his personal safety, he crossed the river and took up
  his quarters with Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through
  the troubled times I can't say. As Stein's agent, after all, he must
  have had Doramin's protection in a measure; and in one way or another
  he had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I
  have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was
  marked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was
  his characteristic; he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as other
  men are markedly of a generous, distinguished, or venerable appearance.
  It was the element of his nature which permeated all his acts and
  passions and emotions; he raged abjectly, smiled abjectly, was abjectly
  sad; his civilities and his indignations were alike abject. I am sure
  his love would have been the most abject of sentiments--but can one
  imagine a loathsome insect in love? And his loathsomeness, too, was
  abject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble
  by his side. He has his place neither in the background nor in the
  foreground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its outskirts,
  enigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance of its youth and of its
  naiveness.
  
  'His position in any case could not have been other than extremely
  miserable, yet it may very well be that he found some advantages in it.
  Jim told me he had been received at first with an abject display of
  the most amicable sentiments. "The fellow apparently couldn't contain
  himself for joy," said Jim with disgust. "He flew at me every morning to
  shake both my hands--confound him!--but I could never tell whether there
  would be any breakfast. If I got three meals in two days I considered
  myself jolly lucky, and he made me sign a chit for ten dollars every
  week. Said he was sure Mr. Stein did not mean him to keep me for
  nothing. Well--he kept me on nothing as near as possible. Put it down to
  the unsettled state of the country, and made as if to tear his hair out,
  begging my pardon twenty times a day, so that I had at last to entreat
  him not to worry. It made me sick. Half the roof of his house had
  fallen in, and the whole place had a mangy look, with wisps of dry grass
  sticking out and the corners of broken mats flapping on every wall. He
  did his best to make out that Mr. Stein owed him money on the last three
  years' trading, but his books were all torn, and some were missing. He
  tried to hint it was his late wife's fault. Disgusting scoundrel! At
  last I had to forbid him to mention his late wife at all. It made Jewel
  cry. I couldn't discover what became of all the trade-goods; there was
  nothing in the store but rats, having a high old time amongst a litter
  of brown paper and old sacking. I was assured on every hand that he had
  a lot of money buried somewhere, but of course could get nothing out of
  him. It was the most miserable existence I led there in that wretched
  house. I tried to do my duty by Stein, but I had also other matters to
  think of. When I escaped to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and
  returned all my things. It was done in a roundabout way, and with no end
  of mystery, through a Chinaman who keeps a small shop here; but as soon
  as I left the Bugis quarter and went to live with Cornelius it began
  to be said openly that the Rajah had made up his mind to have me killed
  before long. Pleasant, wasn't it? And I couldn't see what there was to
  prevent him if he really _had_ made up his mind. The worst of it was,
  I couldn't help feeling I wasn't doing any good either for Stein or for
  myself. Oh! it was beastly--the whole six weeks of it."'
  'He told me further that he didn't know what made him hang on--but of
  course we may guess. He sympathised deeply with the defenceless girl, at
  the mercy of that "mean, cowardly scoundrel." It appears Cornelius led
  her an awful life, stopping only short of actual ill-usage, for which
  he had not the pluck, I suppose. He insisted upon her calling him
  father--"and with respect, too--with respect," he would scream, shaking
  a little yellow fist in her face. "I am a respectable man, and what are
  you? Tell me--what are you? You think I am going to bring up somebody
  else's child and not be treated with respect? You ought to be glad I let
  you. Come--say Yes, father. . . . No? . . . You wait a bit." Thereupon
  he would begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off with
  her hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round the
  house and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner, where she
  would fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a
  distance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for half an hour
  at a stretch. "Your mother was a devil, a deceitful devil--and you too
  are a devil," he would shriek in a final outburst, pick up a bit of dry
  earth or a handful of mud (there was plenty of mud around the house),
  and fling it into her hair. Sometimes, though, she would hold out full
  of scorn, confronting him in silence, her face sombre and contracted,
  and only now and then uttering a word or two that would make the other
  jump and writhe with the sting. Jim told me these scenes were terrible.
  It was indeed a strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The
  endlessness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling--if you think
  of it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi 'Nelyus the Malays called him,
  with a grimace that meant many things) was a much-disappointed man. I
  don't know what he had expected would be done for him in consideration
  of his marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and embezzle, and
  appropriate to himself for many years and in any way that suited him
  best, the goods of Stein's Trading Company (Stein kept the supply up
  unfalteringly as long as he could get his skippers to take it there) did
  not seem to him a fair equivalent for the sacrifice of his honourable
  name. Jim would have enjoyed exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within an
  inch of his life; on the other hand, the scenes were of so painful
  a character, so abominable, that his impulse would be to get out of
  earshot, in order to spare the girl's feelings. They left her agitated,
  speechless, clutching her bosom now and then with a stony,
  desperate face, and then Jim would lounge up and say unhappily,
  "Now--come--really--what's the use--you must try to eat a bit," or give
  some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through
  the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and
  with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game,"
  Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what she
  answered? She said--Jim told me impressively--that if she had not been
  sure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have found the courage
  to kill him with her own hands. "Just fancy that! The poor devil of a
  girl, almost a child, being driven to talk like that," he exclaimed in
  horror. It seemed impossible to save her not only from that mean
  rascal but even from herself! It wasn't that he pitied her so much, he
  affirmed; it was more than pity; it was as if he had something on his
  conscience, while that life went on. To leave the house would have
  appeared a base desertion. He had understood at last that there was
  nothing to expect from a longer stay, neither accounts nor money, nor
  truth of any sort, but he stayed on, exasperating Cornelius to the
  verge, I won't say of insanity, but almost of courage. Meantime he felt
  all sorts of dangers gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent
  over twice a trusty servant to tell him seriously that he could do
  nothing for his safety unless he would recross the river again and live
  amongst the Bugis as at first. People of every condition used to call,
  often in the dead of night, in order to disclose to him plots for
  his assassination. He was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the
  bath-house. Arrangements were being made to have him shot from a boat
  on the river. Each of these informants professed himself to be his very
  good friend. It was enough--he told me--to spoil a fellow's rest for
  ever. Something of the kind was extremely possible--nay, probable--but
  the lying warnings gave him only the sense of deadly scheming going on
  all around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing more calculated to
  shake the best of nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a
  great apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheedling tones
  a little plan wherein for one hundred dollars--or even for eighty; let's
  say eighty--he, Cornelius, would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle
  Jim out of the river, all safe. There was nothing else for it now--if
  Jim cared a pin for his life. What's eighty dollars? A trifle. An
  insignificant sum. While he, Cornelius, who had to remain behind, was
  absolutely courting death by this proof of devotion to Mr. Stein's young
  friend. The sight of his abject grimacing was--Jim told me--very hard
  to bear: he clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to
  and fro with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pretended to
  shed tears. "Your blood be on your own head," he squeaked at last, and
  rushed out. It is a curious question how far Cornelius was sincere in
  that performance. Jim confessed to me that he did not sleep a wink after
  the fellow had gone. He lay on his back on a thin mat spread over the
  bamboo flooring, trying idly to make out the bare rafters, and listening
  to the rustlings in the torn thatch. A star suddenly twinkled through a
  hole in the roof. His brain was in a whirl; but, nevertheless, it was on
  that very night that he matured his plan for overcoming Sherif Ali. It
  had been the thought of all the moments he could spare from the hopeless
  investigation into Stein's affairs, but the notion--he says--came to him
  then all at once. He could see, as it were, the guns mounted on the top
  of the hill. He got very hot and excited lying there; sleep was out of
  the question more than ever. He jumped up, and went out barefooted
  on the verandah. Walking silently, he came upon the girl, motionless
  against the wall, as if on the watch. In his then state of mind it did
  not surprise him to see her up, nor yet to hear her ask in an anxious
  whisper where Cornelius could be. He simply said he did not know. She
  moaned a little, and peered into the campong. Everything was very quiet.
  He was possessed by his new idea, and so full of it that he could not
  help telling the girl all about it at once. She listened, clapped her
  hands lightly, whispered softly her admiration, but was evidently on the
  alert all the time. It seems he had been used to make a confidant of
  her all along--and that she on her part could and did give him a lot of
  useful hints as to Patusan affairs there is no doubt. He assured me more
  than once that he had never found himself the worse for her advice. At
  any rate, he was proceeding to explain his plan fully to her there and
  then, when she pressed his arm once, and vanished from his side. Then
  Cornelius appeared from somewhere, and, perceiving Jim, ducked sideways,
  as though he had been shot at, and afterwards stood very still in the
  dusk. At last he came forward prudently, like a suspicious cat. "There
  were some fishermen there--with fish," he said in a shaky voice. "To
  sell fish--you understand." . . . It must have been then two o'clock in
  the morning--a likely time for anybody to hawk fish about!
  
  'Jim, however, let the statement pass, and did not give it a single
  thought. Other matters occupied his mind, and besides he had neither
  seen nor heard anything. He contented himself by saying, "Oh!" absently,
  got a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving
  Cornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion--that made him embrace
  with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah as if his legs had
  failed--went in again and lay down on his mat to think. By-and-by he
  heard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously
  through the wall, "Are you asleep?" "No! What is it?" he answered
  briskly, and there was an abrupt movement outside, and then all was
  still, as if the whisperer had been startled. Extremely annoyed at this,
  Jim came out impetuously, and Cornelius with a faint shriek fled
  along the verandah as far as the steps, where he hung on to the broken
  banister. Very puzzled, Jim called out to him from the distance to know
  what the devil he meant. "Have you given your consideration to what
  I spoke to you about?" asked Cornelius, pronouncing the words with
  difficulty, like a man in the cold fit of a fever. "No!" shouted Jim in
  a passion. "I have not, and I don't intend to. I am going to live here,
  in Patusan." "You shall d-d-die h-h-here," answered Cornelius,
  still shaking violently, and in a sort of expiring voice. The whole
  performance was so absurd and provoking that Jim didn't know whether he
  ought to be amused or angry. "Not till I have seen you tucked away,
  you bet," he called out, exasperated yet ready to laugh. Half seriously
  (being excited with his own thoughts, you know) he went on shouting,
  "Nothing can touch me! You can do your damnedest." Somehow the shadowy
  Cornelius far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the
  annoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself
  go--his nerves had been over-wrought for days--and called him many
  pretty names,--swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an
  extraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite
  beside himself--defied all Patusan to scare him away--declared he would
  make them all dance to his own tune yet, and so on, in a menacing,
  boasting strain. Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he said. His ears
  burned at the bare recollection. Must have been off his chump in some
  way. . . . The girl, who was sitting with us, nodded her little head at
  me quickly, frowned faintly, and said, "I heard him," with child-like
  solemnity. He laughed and blushed. What stopped him at last, he said,
  was the silence, the complete deathlike silence, of the indistinct
  figure far over there, that seemed to hang collapsed, doubled over the
  rail in a weird immobility. He came to his senses, and ceasing suddenly,
  wondered greatly at himself. He watched for a while. Not a stir, not a
  sound. "Exactly as if the chap had died while I had been making all that
  noise," he said. He was so ashamed of himself that he went indoors in a
  hurry without another word, and flung himself down again. The row seemed
  to have done him good though, because he went to sleep for the rest of
  the night like a baby. Hadn't slept like that for weeks. "But _I_ didn't
  sleep," struck in the girl, one elbow on the table and nursing her
  cheek. "I watched." Her big eyes flashed, rolling a little, and then she
  fixed them on my face intently.'
  'You may imagine with what interest I listened. All these details were
  perceived to have some significance twenty-four hours later. In the
  morning Cornelius made no allusion to the events of the night. "I
  suppose you will come back to my poor house," he muttered, surlily,
  slinking up just as Jim was entering the canoe to go over to Doramin's
  campong. Jim only nodded, without looking at him. "You find it good fun,
  no doubt," muttered the other in a sour tone. Jim spent the day with the
  old nakhoda, preaching the necessity of vigorous action to the principal
  men of the Bugis community, who had been summoned for a big talk. He
  remembered with pleasure how very eloquent and persuasive he had been.
  "I managed to put some backbone into them that time, and no mistake," he
  said. Sherif Ali's last raid had swept the outskirts of the settlement,
  and some women belonging to the town had been carried off to the
  stockade. Sherif Ali's emissaries had been seen in the market-place the
  day before, strutting about haughtily in white cloaks, and boasting of
  the Rajah's friendship for their master. One of them stood forward
  in the shade of a tree, and, leaning on the long barrel of a rifle,
  exhorted the people to prayer and repentance, advising them to kill all
  the strangers in their midst, some of whom, he said, were infidels and
  others even worse--children of Satan in the guise of Moslems. It was
  reported that several of the Rajah's people amongst the listeners had
  loudly expressed their approbation. The terror amongst the common people
  was intense. Jim, immensely pleased with his day's work, crossed the
  river again before sunset.
  
  'As he had got the Bugis irretrievably committed to action and had made
  himself responsible for success on his own head, he was so elated that
  in the lightness of his heart he absolutely tried to be civil with
  Cornelius. But Cornelius became wildly jovial in response, and it was
  almost more than he could stand, he says, to hear his little squeaks of
  false laughter, to see him wriggle and blink, and suddenly catch hold of
  his chin and crouch low over the table with a distracted stare. The
  girl did not show herself, and Jim retired early. When he rose to say
  good-night, Cornelius jumped up, knocking his chair over, and ducked out
  of sight as if to pick up something he had dropped. His good-night came
  huskily from under the table. Jim was amazed to see him emerge with a
  dropping jaw, and staring, stupidly frightened eyes. He clutched the
  edge of the table. "What's the matter? Are you unwell?" asked Jim. "Yes,
  yes, yes. A great colic in my stomach," says the other; and it is
  Jim's opinion that it was perfectly true. If so, it was, in view of his
  contemplated action, an abject sign of a still imperfect callousness for
  which he must be given all due credit.
  
  'Be it as it may, Jim's slumbers were disturbed by a dream of heavens
  like brass resounding with a great voice, which called upon him to
  Awake! Awake! so loud that, notwithstanding his desperate determination
  to sleep on, he did wake up in reality. The glare of a red spluttering
  conflagration going on in mid-air fell on his eyes. Coils of black thick
  smoke curved round the head of some apparition, some unearthly being,
  all in white, with a severe, drawn, anxious face. After a second or so
  he recognised the girl. She was holding a dammar torch at arm's-length
  aloft, and in a persistent, urgent monotone she was repeating, "Get up!
  Get up! Get up!"
  
  'Suddenly he leaped to his feet; at once she put into his hand a
  revolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging on a nail, but loaded
  this time. He gripped it in silence, bewildered, blinking in the light.
  He wondered what he could do for her.
  
  'She asked rapidly and very low, "Can you face four men with this?"
  He laughed while narrating this part at the recollection of his polite
  alacrity. It seems he made a great display of it. "Certainly--of
  course--certainly--command me." He was not properly awake, and had a
  notion of being very civil in these extraordinary circumstances, of
  showing his unquestioning, devoted readiness. She left the room, and
  he followed her; in the passage they disturbed an old hag who did the
  casual cooking of the household, though she was so decrepit as to be
  hardly able to understand human speech. She got up and hobbled behind
  them, mumbling toothlessly. On the verandah a hammock of sail-cloth,
  belonging to Cornelius, swayed lightly to the touch of Jim's elbow. It
  was empty.
  
  'The Patusan establishment, like all the posts of Stein's Trading
  Company, had originally consisted of four buildings. Two of them were
  represented by two heaps of sticks, broken bamboos, rotten thatch,
  over which the four corner-posts of hardwood leaned sadly at different
  angles: the principal storeroom, however, stood yet, facing the agent's
  house. It was an oblong hut, built of mud and clay; it had at one end a
  wide door of stout planking, which so far had not come off the hinges,
  and in one of the side walls there was a square aperture, a sort of
  window, with three wooden bars. Before descending the few steps the girl
  turned her face over her shoulder and said quickly, "You were to be set
  upon while you slept." Jim tells me he experienced a sense of deception.
  It was the old story. He was weary of these attempts upon his life. He
  had had his fill of these alarms. He was sick of them. He assured me he
  was angry with the girl for deceiving him. He had followed her under the
  impression that it was she who wanted his help, and now he had half
  a mind to turn on his heel and go back in disgust. "Do you know," he
  commented profoundly, "I rather think I was not quite myself for whole
  weeks on end about that time." "Oh yes. You were though," I couldn't
  help contradicting.
  
  'But she moved on swiftly, and he followed her into the courtyard. All
  its fences had fallen in a long time ago; the neighbours' buffaloes
  would pace in the morning across the open space, snorting profoundly,
  without haste; the very jungle was invading it already. Jim and the girl
  stopped in the rank grass. The light in which they stood made a dense
  blackness all round, and only above their heads there was an opulent
  glitter of stars. He told me it was a beautiful night--quite cool, with
  a little stir of breeze from the river. It seems he noticed its friendly
  beauty. Remember this is a love story I am telling you now. A lovely
  night seemed to breathe on them a soft caress. The flame of the torch
  streamed now and then with a fluttering noise like a flag, and for
  a time this was the only sound. "They are in the storeroom waiting,"
  whispered the girl; "they are waiting for the signal." "Who's to give
  it?" he asked. She shook the torch, which blazed up after a shower of
  sparks. "Only you have been sleeping so restlessly," she continued in
  a murmur; "I watched your sleep, too." "You!" he exclaimed, craning his
  neck to look about him. "You think I watched on this night only!" she
  said, with a sort of despairing indignation.
  
  'He says it was as if he had received a blow on the chest. He gasped.
  He thought he had been an awful brute somehow, and he felt remorseful,
  touched, happy, elated. This, let me remind you again, is a love story;
  you can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the
  exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in torchlight, as
  if they had come there on purpose to have it out for the edification of
  concealed murderers. If Sherif Ali's emissaries had been possessed--as
  Jim remarked--of a pennyworth of spunk, this was the time to make a
  rush. His heart was thumping--not with fear--but he seemed to hear the
  grass rustle, and he stepped smartly out of the light. Something dark,
  imperfectly seen, flitted rapidly out of sight. He called out in a
  strong voice, "Cornelius! O Cornelius!" A profound silence succeeded:
  his voice did not seem to have carried twenty feet. Again the girl was
  by his side. "Fly!" she said. The old woman was coming up; her broken
  figure hovered in crippled little jumps on the edge of the light; they
  heard her mumbling, and a light, moaning sigh. "Fly!" repeated the girl
  excitedly. "They are frightened now--this light--the voices. They know
  you are awake now--they know you are big, strong, fearless . . ." "If
  I am all that," he began; but she interrupted him: "Yes--to-night! But
  what of to-morrow night? Of the next night? Of the night after--of all
  the many, many nights? Can I be always watching?" A sobbing catch of her
  breath affected him beyond the power of words.
  
  'He told me that he had never felt so small, so powerless--and as to
  courage, what was the good of it? he thought. He was so helpless that
  even flight seemed of no use; and though she kept on whispering, "Go to
  Doramin, go to Doramin," with feverish insistence, he realised that for
  him there was no refuge from that loneliness which centupled all his
  dangers except--in her. "I thought," he said to me, "that if I went
  away from her it would be the end of everything somehow." Only as they
  couldn't stop there for ever in the middle of that courtyard, he made
  up his mind to go and look into the storehouse. He let her follow
  him without thinking of any protest, as if they had been indissolubly
  united. "I am fearless--am I?" he muttered through his teeth. She
  restrained his arm. "Wait till you hear my voice," she said, and,
  torch in hand, ran lightly round the corner. He remained alone in the
  darkness, his face to the door: not a sound, not a breath came from
  the other side. The old hag let out a dreary groan somewhere behind his
  back. He heard a high-pitched almost screaming call from the girl. "Now!
  Push!" He pushed violently; the door swung with a creak and a clatter,
  disclosing to his intense astonishment the low dungeon-like interior
  illuminated by a lurid, wavering glare. A turmoil of smoke eddied down
  upon an empty wooden crate in the middle of the floor, a litter of rags
  and straw tried to soar, but only stirred feebly in the draught. She had
  thrust the light through the bars of the window. He saw her bare round
  arm extended and rigid, holding up the torch with the steadiness of
  an iron bracket. A conical ragged heap of old mats cumbered a distant
  corner almost to the ceiling, and that was all.
  
  'He explained to me that he was bitterly disappointed at this. His
  fortitude had been tried by so many warnings, he had been for weeks
  surrounded by so many hints of danger, that he wanted the relief of
  some reality, of something tangible that he could meet. "It would have
  cleared the air for a couple of hours at least, if you know what I
  mean," he said to me. "Jove! I had been living for days with a stone on
  my chest." Now at last he had thought he would get hold of something,
  and--nothing! Not a trace, not a sign of anybody. He had raised his
  weapon as the door flew open, but now his arm fell. "Fire! Defend
  yourself," the girl outside cried in an agonising voice. She, being in
  the dark and with her arm thrust in to the shoulder through the small
  hole, couldn't see what was going on, and she dared not withdraw
  the torch now to run round. "There's nobody here!" yelled Jim
  contemptuously, but his impulse to burst into a resentful exasperated
  laugh died without a sound: he had perceived in the very act of turning
  away that he was exchanging glances with a pair of eyes in the heap of
  mats. He saw a shifting gleam of whites. "Come out!" he cried in a fury,
  a little doubtful, and a dark-faced head, a head without a body, shaped
  itself in the rubbish, a strangely detached head, that looked at him
  with a steady scowl. Next moment the whole mound stirred, and with a
  low grunt a man emerged swiftly, and bounded towards Jim. Behind him the
  mats as it were jumped and flew, his right arm was raised with a crooked
  elbow, and the dull blade of a kriss protruded from his fist held off,
  a little above his head. A cloth wound tight round his loins seemed
  dazzlingly white on his bronze skin; his naked body glistened as if wet.
  
  'Jim noted all this. He told me he was experiencing a feeling of
  unutterable relief, of vengeful elation. He held his shot, he says,
  deliberately. He held it for the tenth part of a second, for three
  strides of the man--an unconscionable time. He held it for the pleasure
  of saying to himself, That's a dead man! He was absolutely positive
  and certain. He let him come on because it did not matter. A dead man,
  anyhow. He noticed the dilated nostrils, the wide eyes, the intent,
  eager stillness of the face, and then he fired.
  
  'The explosion in that confined space was stunning. He stepped back a
  pace. He saw the man jerk his head up, fling his arms forward, and drop
  the kriss. He ascertained afterwards that he had shot him through the
  mouth, a little upwards, the bullet coming out high at the back of the
  skull. With the impetus of his rush the man drove straight on, his face
  suddenly gaping disfigured, with his hands open before him gropingly, as
  though blinded, and landed with terrific violence on his forehead, just
  short of Jim's bare toes. Jim says he didn't lose the smallest detail
  of all this. He found himself calm, appeased, without rancour, without
  uneasiness, as if the death of that man had atoned for everything. The
  place was getting very full of sooty smoke from the torch, in which
  the unswaying flame burned blood-red without a flicker. He walked in
  resolutely, striding over the dead body, and covered with his revolver
  another naked figure outlined vaguely at the other end. As he was about
  to pull the trigger, the man threw away with force a short heavy spear,
  and squatted submissively on his hams, his back to the wall and his
  clasped hands between his legs. "You want your life?" Jim said. The
  other made no sound. "How many more of you?" asked Jim again. "Two more,
  Tuan," said the man very softly, looking with big fascinated eyes into
  the muzzle of the revolver. Accordingly two more crawled from under the
  mats, holding out ostentatiously their empty hands.''Jim took up an advantageous position and shepherded them out in a bunch
  through the doorway: all that time the torch had remained vertical in
  the grip of a little hand, without so much as a tremble. The three men
  obeyed him, perfectly mute, moving automatically. He ranged them in a
  row. "Link arms!" he ordered. They did so. "The first who withdraws his
  arm or turns his head is a dead man," he said. "March!" They stepped out
  together, rigidly; he followed, and at the side the girl, in a trailing
  white gown, her black hair falling as low as her waist, bore the light.
  Erect and swaying, she seemed to glide without touching the earth; the
  only sound was the silky swish and rustle of the long grass. "Stop!"
  cried Jim.
  
  'The river-bank was steep; a great freshness ascended, the light fell on
  the edge of smooth dark water frothing without a ripple; right and left
  the shapes of the houses ran together below the sharp outlines of the
  roofs. "Take my greetings to Sherif Ali--till I come myself," said
  Jim. Not one head of the three budged. "Jump!" he thundered. The
  three splashes made one splash, a shower flew up, black heads bobbed
  convulsively, and disappeared; but a great blowing and spluttering went
  on, growing faint, for they were diving industriously in great fear of
  a parting shot. Jim turned to the girl, who had been a silent and
  attentive observer. His heart seemed suddenly to grow too big for his
  breast and choke him in the hollow of his throat. This probably made
  him speechless for so long, and after returning his gaze she flung the
  burning torch with a wide sweep of the arm into the river. The ruddy
  fiery glare, taking a long flight through the night, sank with a vicious
  hiss, and the calm soft starlight descended upon them, unchecked.
  
  'He did not tell me what it was he said when at last he recovered his
  voice. I don't suppose he could be very eloquent. The world was still,
  the night breathed on them, one of those nights that seem created for
  the sheltering of tenderness, and there are moments when our souls, as
  if freed from their dark envelope, glow with an exquisite sensibility
  that makes certain silences more lucid than speeches. As to the girl,
  he told me, "She broke down a bit. Excitement--don't you know.
  Reaction. Deucedly tired she must have been--and all that kind of thing.
  And--and--hang it all--she was fond of me, don't you see. . . . I
  too . . . didn't know, of course . . . never entered my head . . ."
  
  'Then he got up and began to walk about in some agitation. "I--I love
  her dearly. More than I can tell. Of course one cannot tell. You take a
  different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you
  are _made_ to understand every day that your existence is necessary--you
  see, absolutely necessary--to another person. I am made to feel that.
  Wonderful! But only try to think what her life has been. It is too
  extravagantly awful! Isn't it? And me finding her here like this--as you
  may go out for a stroll and come suddenly upon somebody drowning in a
  lonely dark place. Jove! No time to lose. Well, it is a trust too . . .
  I believe I am equal to it . . ."
  
  'I must tell you the girl had left us to ourselves some time before. He
  slapped his chest. "Yes! I feel that, but I believe I am equal to all my
  luck!" He had the gift of finding a special meaning in everything that
  happened to him. This was the view he took of his love affair; it was
  idyllic, a little solemn, and also true, since his belief had all the
  unshakable seriousness of youth. Some time after, on another occasion,
  he said to me, "I've been only two years here, and now, upon my word, I
  can't conceive being able to live anywhere else. The very thought of the
  world outside is enough to give me a fright; because, don't you see," he
  continued, with downcast eyes watching the action of his boot busied in
  squashing thoroughly a tiny bit of dried mud (we were strolling on the
  river-bank)--"because I have not forgotten why I came here. Not yet!"
  
  'I refrained from looking at him, but I think I heard a short sigh; we
  took a turn or two in silence. "Upon my soul and conscience," he began
  again, "if such a thing can be forgotten, then I think I have a right to
  dismiss it from my mind. Ask any man here" . . . his voice changed. "Is
  it not strange," he went on in a gentle, almost yearning tone, "that all
  these people, all these people who would do anything for me, can never
  be made to understand? Never! If you disbelieved me I could not call
  them up. It seems hard, somehow. I am stupid, am I not? What more can I
  want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it
  they would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet
  they can never know the real, real truth . . ."
  
  'That's what he said to me on my last day with him. I did not let a
  murmur escape me: I felt he was going to say more, and come no nearer
  to the root of the matter. The sun, whose concentrated glare dwarfs the
  earth into a restless mote of dust, had sunk behind the forest, and
  the diffused light from an opal sky seemed to cast upon a world without
  shadows and without brilliance the illusion of a calm and pensive
  greatness. I don't know why, listening to him, I should have noted
  so distinctly the gradual darkening of the river, of the air; the
  irresistible slow work of the night settling silently on all the visible
  forms, effacing the outlines, burying the shapes deeper and deeper, like
  a steady fall of impalpable black dust.
  
  '"Jove!" he began abruptly, "there are days when a fellow is too absurd
  for anything; only I know I can tell you what I like. I talk about
  being done with it--with the bally thing at the back of my head . . .
  Forgetting . . . Hang me if I know! I can think of it quietly. After
  all, what has it proved? Nothing. I suppose you don't think so . . ."
  
  'I made a protesting murmur.
  
  '"No matter," he said. "I am satisfied . . . nearly. I've got to
  look only at the face of the first man that comes along, to regain my
  confidence. They can't be made to understand what is going on in me.
  What of that? Come! I haven't done so badly."
  
  '"Not so badly," I said.
  
  '"But all the same, you wouldn't like to have me aboard your own ship
  hey?"
  
  '"Confound you!" I cried. "Stop this."
  
  '"Aha! You see," he said, crowing, as it were, over me placidly. "Only,"
  he went on, "you just try to tell this to any of them here. They would
  think you a fool, a liar, or worse. And so I can stand it. I've done a
  thing or two for them, but this is what they have done for me."
  
  '"My dear chap," I cried, "you shall always remain for them an insoluble
  mystery." Thereupon we were silent.
  
  '"Mystery," he repeated, before looking up. "Well, then let me always
  remain here."
  
  'After the sun had set, the darkness seemed to drive upon us, borne in
  every faint puff of the breeze. In the middle of a hedged path I saw the
  arrested, gaunt, watchful, and apparently one-legged silhouette of Tamb'
  Itam; and across the dusky space my eye detected something white moving
  to and fro behind the supports of the roof. As soon as Jim, with Tamb'
  Itam at his heels, had started upon his evening rounds, I went up to the
  house alone, and, unexpectedly, found myself waylaid by the girl, who
  had been clearly waiting for this opportunity.
  
  'It is hard to tell you what it was precisely she wanted to wrest
  from me. Obviously it would be something very simple--the simplest
  impossibility in the world; as, for instance, the exact description of
  the form of a cloud. She wanted an assurance, a statement, a promise, an
  explanation--I don't know how to call it: the thing has no name. It was
  dark under the projecting roof, and all I could see were the flowing
  lines of her gown, the pale small oval of her face, with the white flash
  of her teeth, and, turned towards me, the big sombre orbits of her eyes,
  where there seemed to be a faint stir, such as you may fancy you can
  detect when you plunge your gaze to the bottom of an immensely deep
  well. What is it that moves there? you ask yourself. Is it a blind
  monster or only a lost gleam from the universe? It occurred to me--don't
  laugh--that all things being dissimilar, she was more inscrutable in
  her childish ignorance than the Sphinx propounding childish riddles
  to wayfarers. She had been carried off to Patusan before her eyes
  were open. She had grown up there; she had seen nothing, she had known
  nothing, she had no conception of anything. I ask myself whether she
  were sure that anything else existed. What notions she may have formed
  of the outside world is to me inconceivable: all that she knew of its
  inhabitants were a betrayed woman and a sinister pantaloon. Her lover
  also came to her from there, gifted with irresistible seductions; but
  what would become of her if he should return to these inconceivable
  regions that seemed always to claim back their own? Her mother had
  warned her of this with tears, before she died . . .
  
  'She had caught hold of my arm firmly, and as soon as I had stopped she
  had withdrawn her hand in haste. She was audacious and shrinking. She
  feared nothing, but she was checked by the profound incertitude and the
  extreme strangeness--a brave person groping in the dark. I belonged to
  this Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any moment. I was,
  as it were, in the secret of its nature and of its intentions--the
  confidant of a threatening mystery--armed with its power perhaps! I
  believe she supposed I could with a word whisk Jim away out of her very
  arms; it is my sober conviction she went through agonies of apprehension
  during my long talks with Jim; through a real and intolerable anguish
  that might have conceivably driven her into plotting my murder, had the
  fierceness of her soul been equal to the tremendous situation it had
  created. This is my impression, and it is all I can give you: the whole
  thing dawned gradually upon me, and as it got clearer and clearer I was
  overwhelmed by a slow incredulous amazement. She made me believe her,
  but there is no word that on my lips could render the effect of the
  headlong and vehement whisper, of the soft, passionate tones, of the
  sudden breathless pause and the appealing movement of the white arms
  extended swiftly. They fell; the ghostly figure swayed like a slender
  tree in the wind, the pale oval of the face drooped; it was impossible
  to distinguish her features, the darkness of the eyes was unfathomable;
  two wide sleeves uprose in the dark like unfolding wings, and she stood
  silent, holding her head in her hands.'
  
  '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. . . .'
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 28-33
target: Past events are now referred to in passing. Sherif Ali, one of Doramin's competitors and an ally of the Rajah, was defeated and then fled. Old scores were settled. The Rajah reacted with fear. All felt confidence in Jim's wisdom. Marlow then describes how Doramin and his wife begin to ask him questions about Jim. Doramin is anxious; in his opinion, and perhaps thinking about Stein, white men have a tendency to come and go. Doramin's wife asks Marlow about Jim's past: is there anyone for him to return to, perhaps a mother who yearns to see him? This query brings Marlow, in his narration, to the story of Jim's love. Cornelius's deceased wife had left a daughter . The mother had not been an ordinary woman; her white father was a high official. Jim and the woman's daughter come to share mutual intimacy; Jim refers to her as "Jewel." This name leads Marlow to comment on how he pieced a puzzle together, recalling how, 230 miles south of Patusan, he had heard a rumor of how a young man in Patusan had discovered an extraordinarily priceless emerald that could only be concealed on a woman who was young and insensible to the seductions of love. Jewel's mother had taught her English and, according to Marlow, she spoke it having absorbed Jim's own manner of speaking. He observes that Jim was "jealously loved" . Marlow then reports seeing Cornelius for the first time. Tamb' Itam points him out, and Marlow notes that he is a slinking, dark, unsavory type, like a "repulsive beetle" . His presence seemed the one blemish on Jim's charmed life. Jim had discovered that Cornelius had embezzled from Stein's company, kept poor records, and left the house is disrepair, all the while blaming his dead wife for the failures. Jim felt deep sympathy for the girl whose mother had died and who had to suffer Cornelius's insults. The girl had said she would have killed him with her own hands, if she hadn't seen how wretched he was. This statement, for Jim, hinted at a complexity in her character that impressed him. Cornelius, eager to be rid of Jim, offered to smuggle him out of the area for a price, since it was widely known that the Rajah wanted him killed. Jim didn't respond. Later that very night, however, he arrived at a plan for overcoming Sherif Ali, and the girl proved useful in providing the necessary background information about Patusan affairs. When Cornelius again offered to help him out of Patusan, Jim stated his intention to remain. Cornelius responded that, then, Jim would die here. Jim gives a speech in favor of "vigorous action" to the principal men of the community where Jim had been persuasive and eloquent, stirring the passions roused by Sherif Ali's last raid . That night, Jim had a dream, a great voice from the heavens commanding that he "Awake!" He did wake and see the flame of a torch and the girl holding it, in a white gown, with her long black hair. Jewel insisted that he get up, that there was a plan in place for his murder that night. Marlow reminds his audience then that this is a love story, and Jim admits to the strength of his emotion at the time: "that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow" . Jim then sensed that his assassins were near and, in the end, killed a man. The three others surrendered. The conclusion of this story is that Jim ordered the three would-be assassins to jump into the water. Jim then turns to Marlow and says that he loves the girl. The fact that his existence was necessary for another person provided a wonderful feeling. The community believed he was brave, true, and just. He was happy. Marlow then tells Jim that he will always be a mystery amongst them; he will never be fully known. This is almost a warning, but Jim replies that this situation is exactly what he wants. Later in the night, Jewel approaches Marlow and seems to ask for an assurance from him that Jim will never leave her. She tells Marlow that her mother had warned her of such things before she died. Marlow was, himself, a signal of that Unknown from which Jim had come, so she hoped to learn something of it from him. Marlow, touched by the girl's delicate charm, tells her that it is not his intention to ask Jim to leave, and that Jim wouldn't leave anyway. Jewel says that she does not want to die weeping like her mother. She senses a strong feeling of dread, and Marlow is then strangely brutal to her. He tells her that Jim will never leave Patusan because he is "not good enough" for the world outside. The girl says that Jim said the same thing, and she protests, sobbing. She claims that Marlow is lying, and Marlow, regretful, says, "nobody is good enough." She exits.
feat_summary_analysis: As the political situation in Patusan is elaborated, Jim's integral role in the defeat of Sherif Ali and his trustworthiness bring him the acclaim and status he has always sought.  The intelligence of the plan proves his good judgment, and its execution proves his ability and loyalty.  In the end, Dain Waris saves Jim's life, in the same way that Stein had saved Dain Waris's father's life.  This parallelism does not exclude the possibility that a kind of reversal could take place: though Jim and Stein share a characteristic romanticism, events may work in the reverse for Jim compared to how they worked for Stein.  At this point, however, Marlow observes the success Jim has made out of his opportunity. The character Cornelius is more intensely drawn through Marlow's eyes, who sees him immediately as a "blemish."  This corrupt presence in the midst of Jim's romantic life yields a sense of instability for the reader in that Cornelius, with his bitter loss of standing, as well as his general decrepit state, promises ill will for future events.  Jim, however, like Jewel, considers him to be a sad wretch, not really worth worrying over or expending the energy to punish.  This proves later to be a mistake of judgment on Jim's part.  While so many aspects of his life in Patusan have been exquisitely assessed and judged and then acted upon, Jim's assessment of Cornelius becomes a mistake that will unravel his life with disastrous consequences. When Jim's love story is introduced, the reader recalls the mysterious reference made by Stein to a Malay-Dutch woman who had died.  The daughter of this woman is the one who becomes Jim's lover.  The two share, among other things, in having isolated positions in the community.  It is unclear whether Jewel is her real name or merely the name that Jim gives her.  In any case, the allusion to Adam's naming of Eve is made clear.  It is fitting that Jewel, in this romantic setting, completes Jim's fair picture of the charmed life with a beautiful girl.  The girl herself attains the status of myth, like Jim.  Jim protects the fabulous, enormous emerald he has found; she is his precious jewel. Thus Jewel represents what women in the novel symbolize generally.  Women tend to function as symbols of opportunity, in the sense that romantic Western men seek to wed their dreams to the reality of the Eastern landscape.  Hence, a relationship with a girl from the East symbolizes the realization of the man's dreams.  Stein had accomplished this wedding in actually having married a Malay princess.  The suggestion here is that Jim will do the same with Jewel.  Her mother's tragic end in life, however, foreshadows the sorrows that will fall over Jewel.  The East-West romance, once realized, does not promise to be sustainable.  It is, more often than not, untenable. Jewel's love for Jim, in Marlow's observation, is a "jealous" love, not unlike the way he has described the community's love for Jim.  Jim has become such an integral part of the community, as well as of Jewel's life, that the fear of being without him implies overdependence.  They absorb him, in the way that Jewel absorbs even Jim's manner of speech.  During the private conversation between Marlow and Jewel, Marlow seems jealous himself--of Jim's youth, of his success, and of this girl.  This jealousy may explain why he brutally shares with Jewel the idea that Jim isn't good enough for the world beyond Patusan. Regretfully, however, Marlow then revises his statement, showing that what was an initial passion of judgment can also be equally applied to all men: that "nobody is good enough."  In other words, the romantic ideals of honor and manhood are not really possible for anyone, in view of man's countless imperfections.  This reflection suggests, on the one hand, a general solidarity between Jim and the rest of the world and, on the other hand, Jim's distinct choice to go to a special place where he might possibly be able to achieve the ideal after all.