feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_24_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 25
feat_summary_id: chapter 25
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim34.asp", "summary": "Jim continues his story, telling of his meeting with Allang. He explained to the Raja why he had come to Patusan and asked to be taken to Doramin. Since the Raja and Doramin did not get along, Allang did not grant Jim's request; instead, Jim was imprisoned in a stockade and carefully watched. The Raja was afraid that he, himself might be killed by white men, if more of them followed Jim to Patusan. Jim understood that his life was in danger. In a brave move, he fled from imprisonment and ran to the edge of the river, which he swam across even though it was filled with crocodiles. After crossing the river safely, he rested for a while before heading towards Doramin's village. When he finally arrived, the native folk carried him to Doramin. Upon arrival, Jim told Doramin about Stein. Jim learned that Doramin was the second chief in Patusan, elected by his people who were immigrants from the West Indies. Another chief of the island was Sherif Ali, a half-breed Arab, who incited the tribes to warfare. The natives under Doramin were Bugis. They were fierce rivals with Raja Allang, the third chief of Patusan. Allang, who wanted a monopoly on all commerce on the island, would fight any native who would attempt to trade with the outside world. The people were tired of the rivalry and terror of the Raja and the guerrilla tactics of Sherif Ali. Marlow and Jim travel to meet Raja Allang. Marlow is surprised that the Raja treats Jim with such respect. He is equally amazed that Jim calmly drinks the coffee offered by Allang, with no apparent thought that it might be poisoned. Later Jim explains that by drinking the Raja's coffee, he has earned the trust of the natives.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter is mostly a flashback of what happened to Jim two years earlier. It gives an account of Jim's arrival on Patusan and compares him to a hunted animal, sought and captured by Tungku Allang's men. He escapes from Allang and leaps into the unknown, muddy water of the Patusan river. He emerges safely, but is covered with mud and slime. It is a comparison to his jump from the Patna, which was also a leap into unknown waters, from which he emerged covered with shame. Jim symbolically escapes the mud, slime, and shame of both jumps when he reaches Doramin, who offers him shelter and protection, as arranged by Stein. The Bugis, Doramin's men, quickly learn to love and respect Jim; the hostile rulers, however, consider him a threat to their supremacy. Both Raja Allang and Sherif Ali resent his presence on the island. The hostility brewing in Patusan is clearly developed in the chapter."}
text: '"This is where I was prisoner for three days," he murmured to me (it
  was on the occasion of our visit to the Rajah), while we were making our
  way slowly through a kind of awestruck riot of dependants across Tunku
  Allang's courtyard. "Filthy place, isn't it? And I couldn't get anything
  to eat either, unless I made a row about it, and then it was only
  a small plate of rice and a fried fish not much bigger than a
  stickleback--confound them! Jove! I've been hungry prowling inside this
  stinking enclosure with some of these vagabonds shoving their mugs right
  under my nose. I had given up that famous revolver of yours at the first
  demand. Glad to get rid of the bally thing. Look like a fool walking
  about with an empty shooting-iron in my hand." At that moment we came
  into the presence, and he became unflinchingly grave and complimentary
  with his late captor. Oh! magnificent! I want to laugh when I think of
  it. But I was impressed, too. The old disreputable Tunku Allang could
  not help showing his fear (he was no hero, for all the tales of his hot
  youth he was fond of telling); and at the same time there was a wistful
  confidence in his manner towards his late prisoner. Note! Even where he
  would be most hated he was still trusted. Jim--as far as I could follow
  the conversation--was improving the occasion by the delivery of a
  lecture. Some poor villagers had been waylaid and robbed while on their
  way to Doramin's house with a few pieces of gum or beeswax which they
  wished to exchange for rice. "It was Doramin who was a thief," burst
  out the Rajah. A shaking fury seemed to enter that old frail body.
  He writhed weirdly on his mat, gesticulating with his hands and feet,
  tossing the tangled strings of his mop--an impotent incarnation of rage.
  There were staring eyes and dropping jaws all around us. Jim began to
  speak. Resolutely, coolly, and for some time he enlarged upon the text
  that no man should be prevented from getting his food and his children's
  food honestly. The other sat like a tailor at his board, one palm on
  each knee, his head low, and fixing Jim through the grey hair that
  fell over his very eyes. When Jim had done there was a great stillness.
  Nobody seemed to breathe even; no one made a sound till the old Rajah
  sighed faintly, and looking up, with a toss of his head, said quickly,
  "You hear, my people! No more of these little games." This decree
  was received in profound silence. A rather heavy man, evidently in a
  position of confidence, with intelligent eyes, a bony, broad, very dark
  face, and a cheerily of officious manner (I learned later on he was the
  executioner), presented to us two cups of coffee on a brass tray, which
  he took from the hands of an inferior attendant. "You needn't drink,"
  muttered Jim very rapidly. I didn't perceive the meaning at first, and
  only looked at him. He took a good sip and sat composedly, holding the
  saucer in his left hand. In a moment I felt excessively annoyed. "Why
  the devil," I whispered, smiling at him amiably, "do you expose me to
  such a stupid risk?" I drank, of course, there was nothing for it, while
  he gave no sign, and almost immediately afterwards we took our leave.
  While we were going down the courtyard to our boat, escorted by the
  intelligent and cheery executioner, Jim said he was very sorry. It was
  the barest chance, of course. Personally he thought nothing of poison.
  The remotest chance. He was--he assured me--considered to be infinitely
  more useful than dangerous, and so . . . "But the Rajah is afraid of
  you abominably. Anybody can see that," I argued with, I own, a certain
  peevishness, and all the time watching anxiously for the first twist of
  some sort of ghastly colic. I was awfully disgusted. "If I am to do any
  good here and preserve my position," he said, taking his seat by my
  side in the boat, "I must stand the risk: I take it once every month, at
  least. Many people trust me to do that--for them. Afraid of me! That's
  just it. Most likely he is afraid of me because I am not afraid of his
  coffee." Then showing me a place on the north front of the stockade
  where the pointed tops of several stakes were broken, "This is where
  I leaped over on my third day in Patusan. They haven't put new stakes
  there yet. Good leap, eh?" A moment later we passed the mouth of a muddy
  creek. "This is my second leap. I had a bit of a run and took this one
  flying, but fell short. Thought I would leave my skin there. Lost my
  shoes struggling. And all the time I was thinking to myself how beastly
  it would be to get a jab with a bally long spear while sticking in the
  mud like this. I remember how sick I felt wriggling in that slime. I
  mean really sick--as if I had bitten something rotten."
  
  'That's how it was--and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped over the
  gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpectedness of his
  coming was the only thing, you understand, that saved him from being at
  once dispatched with krisses and flung into the river. They had him, but
  it was like getting hold of an apparition, a wraith, a portent. What did
  it mean? What to do with it? Was it too late to conciliate him? Hadn't
  he better be killed without more delay? But what would happen then?
  Wretched old Allang went nearly mad with apprehension and through the
  difficulty of making up his mind. Several times the council was broken
  up, and the advisers made a break helter-skelter for the door and out
  on to the verandah. One--it is said--even jumped down to the
  ground--fifteen feet, I should judge--and broke his leg. The royal
  governor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to
  introduce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when,
  getting gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a
  kriss in his hand. But, barring such interruptions, the deliberations
  upon Jim's fate went on night and day.
  
  'Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned by some, glared at
  by others, but watched by all, and practically at the mercy of the first
  casual ragamuffin with a chopper, in there. He took possession of a
  small tumble-down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of filth and rotten
  matter incommoded him greatly: it seems he had not lost his appetite
  though, because--he told me--he had been hungry all the blessed time.
  Now and again "some fussy ass" deputed from the council-room would
  come out running to him, and in honeyed tones would administer amazing
  interrogatories: "Were the Dutch coming to take the country? Would the
  white man like to go back down the river? What was the object of coming
  to such a miserable country? The Rajah wanted to know whether the white
  man could repair a watch?" They did actually bring out to him a nickel
  clock of New England make, and out of sheer unbearable boredom he busied
  himself in trying to get the alarum to work. It was apparently when
  thus occupied in his shed that the true perception of his extreme peril
  dawned upon him. He dropped the thing--he says--"like a hot potato,"
  and walked out hastily, without the slightest idea of what he would,
  or indeed could, do. He only knew that the position was intolerable. He
  strolled aimlessly beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts,
  and his eyes fell on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then--he
  says--at once, without any mental process as it were, without any stir
  of emotion, he set about his escape as if executing a plan matured for a
  month. He walked off carelessly to give himself a good run, and when he
  faced about there was some dignitary, with two spearmen in attendance,
  close at his elbow ready with a question. He started off "from under his
  very nose," went over "like a bird," and landed on the other side with
  a fall that jarred all his bones and seemed to split his head. He picked
  himself up instantly. He never thought of anything at the time; all he
  could remember--he said--was a great yell; the first houses of Patusan
  were before him four hundred yards away; he saw the creek, and as it
  were mechanically put on more pace. The earth seemed fairly to fly
  backwards under his feet. He took off from the last dry spot, felt
  himself flying through the air, felt himself, without any shock, planted
  upright in an extremely soft and sticky mudbank. It was only when he
  tried to move his legs and found he couldn't that, in his own words,
  "he came to himself." He began to think of the "bally long spears." As
  a matter of fact, considering that the people inside the stockade had to
  run to the gate, then get down to the landing-place, get into boats,
  and pull round a point of land, he had more advance than he imagined.
  Besides, it being low water, the creek was without water--you couldn't
  call it dry--and practically he was safe for a time from everything but
  a very long shot perhaps. The higher firm ground was about six feet in
  front of him. "I thought I would have to die there all the same,"
  he said. He reached and grabbed desperately with his hands, and only
  succeeded in gathering a horrible cold shiny heap of slime against his
  breast--up to his very chin. It seemed to him he was burying himself
  alive, and then he struck out madly, scattering the mud with his fists.
  It fell on his head, on his face, over his eyes, into his mouth. He told
  me that he remembered suddenly the courtyard, as you remember a place
  where you had been very happy years ago. He longed--so he said--to be
  back there again, mending the clock. Mending the clock--that was the
  idea. He made efforts, tremendous sobbing, gasping efforts, efforts that
  seemed to burst his eyeballs in their sockets and make him blind, and
  culminating into one mighty supreme effort in the darkness to crack the
  earth asunder, to throw it off his limbs--and he felt himself creeping
  feebly up the bank. He lay full length on the firm ground and saw the
  light, the sky. Then as a sort of happy thought the notion came to him
  that he would go to sleep. He will have it that he _did_ actually go to
  sleep; that he slept--perhaps for a minute, perhaps for twenty seconds,
  or only for one second, but he recollects distinctly the violent
  convulsive start of awakening. He remained lying still for a while, and
  then he arose muddy from head to foot and stood there, thinking he
  was alone of his kind for hundreds of miles, alone, with no help, no
  sympathy, no pity to expect from any one, like a hunted animal. The
  first houses were not more than twenty yards from him; and it was the
  desperate screaming of a frightened woman trying to carry off a child
  that started him again. He pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered
  with filth out of all semblance to a human being. He traversed more
  than half the length of the settlement. The nimbler women fled right and
  left, the slower men just dropped whatever they had in their hands, and
  remained petrified with dropping jaws. He was a flying terror. He says
  he noticed the little children trying to run for life, falling on their
  little stomachs and kicking. He swerved between two houses up a slope,
  clambered in desperation over a barricade of felled trees (there wasn't
  a week without some fight in Patusan at that time), burst through a
  fence into a maize-patch, where a scared boy flung a stick at him,
  blundered upon a path, and ran all at once into the arms of several
  startled men. He just had breath enough to gasp out, "Doramin! Doramin!"
  He remembers being half-carried, half-rushed to the top of the slope,
  and in a vast enclosure with palms and fruit trees being run up to a
  large man sitting massively in a chair in the midst of the greatest
  possible commotion and excitement. He fumbled in mud and clothes to
  produce the ring, and, finding himself suddenly on his back, wondered
  who had knocked him down. They had simply let him go--don't you
  know?--but he couldn't stand. At the foot of the slope random shots were
  fired, and above the roofs of the settlement there rose a dull roar of
  amazement. But he was safe. Doramin's people were barricading the gate
  and pouring water down his throat; Doramin's old wife, full of business
  and commiseration, was issuing shrill orders to her girls. "The old
  woman," he said softly, "made a to-do over me as if I had been her own
  son. They put me into an immense bed--her state bed--and she ran in
  and out wiping her eyes to give me pats on the back. I must have been a
  pitiful object. I just lay there like a log for I don't know how long."
  
  'He seemed to have a great liking for Doramin's old wife. She on her
  side had taken a motherly fancy to him. She had a round, nut-brown,
  soft face, all fine wrinkles, large, bright red lips (she chewed
  betel assiduously), and screwed up, winking, benevolent eyes. She was
  constantly in movement, scolding busily and ordering unceasingly a troop
  of young women with clear brown faces and big grave eyes, her daughters,
  her servants, her slave-girls. You know how it is in these households:
  it's generally impossible to tell the difference. She was very spare,
  and even her ample outer garment, fastened in front with jewelled
  clasps, had somehow a skimpy effect. Her dark bare feet were thrust into
  yellow straw slippers of Chinese make. I have seen her myself flitting
  about with her extremely thick, long, grey hair falling about her
  shoulders. She uttered homely shrewd sayings, was of noble birth, and
  was eccentric and arbitrary. In the afternoon she would sit in a very
  roomy arm-chair, opposite her husband, gazing steadily through a wide
  opening in the wall which gave an extensive view of the settlement and
  the river.
  
  'She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old Doramin sat
  squarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on a plain. He was only
  of the nakhoda or merchant class, but the respect shown to him and
  the dignity of his bearing were very striking. He was the chief of
  the second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about sixty
  families that, with dependants and so on, could muster some two hundred
  men "wearing the kriss") had elected him years ago for their head. The
  men of that race are intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a
  more frank courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppression.
  They formed the party opposed to the Rajah. Of course the quarrels were
  for trade. This was the primary cause of faction fights, of the sudden
  outbreaks that would fill this or that part of the settlement with
  smoke, flame, the noise of shots and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men
  were dragged into the Rajah's stockade to be killed or tortured for the
  crime of trading with anybody else but himself. Only a day or two before
  Jim's arrival several heads of households in the very fishing village
  that was afterwards taken under his especial protection had been driven
  over the cliffs by a party of the Rajah's spearmen, on suspicion of
  having been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah
  Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty
  for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was
  indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and
  rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of
  the organised power of the Celebes men, only--till Jim came--he was not
  afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and
  thought himself pathetically in the right. The situation was complicated
  by a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I believe, on
  purely religious grounds, had incited the tribes in the interior (the
  bush-folk, as Jim himself called them) to rise, and had established
  himself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills. He
  hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he
  devastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their
  blackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into
  the water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a
  curious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation
  stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in Patusan were
  not sure which one this partisan most desired to plunder. The Rajah
  intrigued with him feebly. Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with
  endless insecurity, were half inclined to call him in. The younger
  spirits amongst them, chaffing, advised to "get Sherif Ali with his wild
  men and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country." Doramin restrained
  them with difficulty. He was growing old, and, though his influence had
  not diminished, the situation was getting beyond him. This was the state
  of affairs when Jim, bolting from the Rajah's stockade, appeared before
  the chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner
  of speaking, into the heart of the community.'
feat_summary_name: Chapter 25
target: Jim continues his story, telling of his meeting with Allang. He explained to the Raja why he had come to Patusan and asked to be taken to Doramin. Since the Raja and Doramin did not get along, Allang did not grant Jim's request; instead, Jim was imprisoned in a stockade and carefully watched. The Raja was afraid that he, himself might be killed by white men, if more of them followed Jim to Patusan. Jim understood that his life was in danger. In a brave move, he fled from imprisonment and ran to the edge of the river, which he swam across even though it was filled with crocodiles. After crossing the river safely, he rested for a while before heading towards Doramin's village. When he finally arrived, the native folk carried him to Doramin. Upon arrival, Jim told Doramin about Stein. Jim learned that Doramin was the second chief in Patusan, elected by his people who were immigrants from the West Indies. Another chief of the island was Sherif Ali, a half-breed Arab, who incited the tribes to warfare. The natives under Doramin were Bugis. They were fierce rivals with Raja Allang, the third chief of Patusan. Allang, who wanted a monopoly on all commerce on the island, would fight any native who would attempt to trade with the outside world. The people were tired of the rivalry and terror of the Raja and the guerrilla tactics of Sherif Ali. Marlow and Jim travel to meet Raja Allang. Marlow is surprised that the Raja treats Jim with such respect. He is equally amazed that Jim calmly drinks the coffee offered by Allang, with no apparent thought that it might be poisoned. Later Jim explains that by drinking the Raja's coffee, he has earned the trust of the natives.
feat_summary_analysis: Notes This chapter is mostly a flashback of what happened to Jim two years earlier. It gives an account of Jim's arrival on Patusan and compares him to a hunted animal, sought and captured by Tungku Allang's men. He escapes from Allang and leaps into the unknown, muddy water of the Patusan river. He emerges safely, but is covered with mud and slime. It is a comparison to his jump from the Patna, which was also a leap into unknown waters, from which he emerged covered with shame. Jim symbolically escapes the mud, slime, and shame of both jumps when he reaches Doramin, who offers him shelter and protection, as arranged by Stein. The Bugis, Doramin's men, quickly learn to love and respect Jim; the hostile rulers, however, consider him a threat to their supremacy. Both Raja Allang and Sherif Ali resent his presence on the island. The hostility brewing in Patusan is clearly developed in the chapter.