feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_16_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapters 24-25
feat_summary_id: chapters 24-25
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 24-25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2425", "summary": "Two years later, Marlow visited Patusan, carrying a message from Stein to Jim, which instructed Jim to set up a proper trading post. Marlow marveled at the misty ocean, the swampy plains, and the far-off blue mountain peaks. He stopped at a fishing village and engaged an old man who seemed to be the village's head man to pilot him upriver. Most of the old man's talk on the way up was about \"Tuan Jim,\" or Lord Jim, a man of whom he spoke with warm, glowing familiarity and simple awe. Clearly, all the villagers loved and trusted Jim. In fact, most of them believed that he had supernatural powers. In the short time that Jim had lived in Patusan, many legends had grown up around him. Marlow was told, for example, that on the day Jim arrived, the tide rose two hours before its usual time in order to carry Jim upriver. Later, when Jim and Marlow were sitting on the verandah of Jim's house, Marlow listened to Jim's version of his arrival at Patusan. Jim had sat on the tin luggage box during the entire voyage, his unloaded revolver on his lap. It was an exhausting journey, he said, the boat scissoring through crocodiles, and the jungle seeming to be continually formidable and ominous. Near the end of the journey, he dozed. When he awakened, he noticed that his three paddlers had disappeared. Almost immediately, he was taken prisoner by armed men who escorted him to Rajah Allang, the little \"used-up\" despot. Jim paused, and Marlow reflected that the \"experiment\" had turned out remarkably well. There was none of Jim's former hypersensitivity to guilt and anguish. Instead, Jim seemed to have conquered his urge to punish himself. He had won the trust, the friendship, and the love of the natives. And he had even attained a kind of fame. As Jim talked to Marlow, Marlow noted Jim's deep and fierce love for the land. To leave Patusan would be, Jim said, \"harder than dying.\" According to Marlow, Jim had become both Patusan's master and its captive. On their way to meet Rajah Allang, Jim pointed out to Marlow a filthy stockade in which he was held captive for three days. On the third day, he said, he did the only thing he could do: he tried to escape. At that moment of their conversation, however, they met Rajah Allang. Marlow says that he was immediately impressed with the man's respectful attitude toward Jim, who only two years before had been this man's prisoner. Jim and Marlow witnessed Rajah Allang's solving a village problem, and then they were offered coffee. Marlow was reluctant to drink his, fearing that it might be poisoned, but Jim unperturbedly sipped his coffee. Later, Jim told Marlow that he had to constantly prove that he was worthy of their trust. He had to drink their coffee. He had to take the risk -- \"take it every month\" -- the natives trusted him to do that. Jim said that Rajah Allang was most likely afraid of Jim precisely because Jim was not afraid to drink the Rajah's coffee. After Jim escaped from Rajah Allang's stockade two years ago and found safety with Doramin, he learned about the warring factions that seemed to rule Patusan. They were: Rajah Allang, from whom Jim had just escaped; he brought blood and fiery destruction on any villager who attempted to trade with the outside world. Rajah Allang wanted to be the exclusive trader in Patusan. Stein's friend Doramin was the \"second chief\" in Patusan. Years ago, he was elected by \"his people,\" immigrants from the Dutch West Indies; his party opposed Rajah Allang's terrorizing monopoly on trading. The other \"leader\" of Patusan was a half-breed Arab, Sherif Ali. He incited the interior tribes with religious fervor, and his followers practiced guerrilla warfare. He had a camp on the summit of one of Patusan's twin mountains, where he hung over the village \"like a hawk over a poultry yard.\" Of the three powers that controlled Patusan, Sherif Ali was the most dangerous -- to Rajah Allang's people, and to the Bugis Malays under old Doramin.", "analysis": "Again in these chapters, Conrad  skips about from past time to present time . We witness a scene when Marlow visits Jim, and then the narrator returns to a past time, when Jim first arrived in Patusan. Marlow even hints of future occurrences and tells the story of Jim's arrival from a distance of many years, and so it seems natural to him  to call up, first, one experience and then another -- without due regard for their time sequences. By the time of Marlow's arrival, the natives are calling Jim \"Tuan Jim\" or, in English, Lord Jim, and we are told that Jim has won their respect and, in some cases, their awe; already, many legendary stories have grown up around Lord Jim. Without our knowing how Lord Jim accomplished it, we are informed that he had indeed achieved a type of greatness -- complete trust and ultimate respect in this outpost. \"He was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved.\" When Jim first arrived, we hear from Marlow  that Jim had been held captive for three days, and Marlow points out that had he Jim) been killed then, the entire province of Patusan \"would have been the loser.\" Even Jim recognizes his greatness and appreciates the fact that now, \"there is not one  where I am not trusted.\" Lord Jim has at last, finally, found his niche in the universe, and he will never leave Patusan, the place where he is honored and trusted, respected and loved. In addition to Jim's newfound self-assurance and happiness, Marlow noticed other differences in Jim. He was now more intellectually alert; there was an eloquence and \"a dignity in his constitutional reticence\" and a \"high seriousness\" in his actions that showed \"how deeply, how solemnly\" he felt about his work at Patusan. Marlow concluded that Jim had indeed found himself. When Jim took Marlow to the place where Rajah Allang, who had held him prisoner, lived, Jim showed great courage in drinking coffee once a month with the Rajah -- even though he knew that it might be poisoned. Lord Jim then told Marlow of his escape -- of another \"Jump,\" which this time led him to a bog where, for awhile, he was stuck in mud and slime. When he emerged, he was symbolically covered with filth, but even in this disgusting condition, he ran to Doramin's stockade where he showed him the ring and was accepted into Doramin's family, thus symbolically emerging from the filth and slime to begin anew a new, clean, productive life. The symbolism is obvious: the \"jump\" that takes Jim deep into the vile slime and mud of the creek represents the jump from the Patna which immersed Jim deep into vile shame and everlasting remorse."}
text: 'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight
  and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts
  of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers
  clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers,
  with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing
  a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting
  sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.
  
  'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch
  of the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then,
  and Stein's little schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her
  way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from
  "irresponsive parties." Such a state of affairs belonged already to
  ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing
  village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me
  (the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his
  talk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan
  Jim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange
  mixture of familiarity and awe. They, in the village, were under that
  lord's special protection, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If
  he had warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was
  hearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had turned
  two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The
  talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the
  phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his
  son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience,
  who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them
  the amazing fact.
  
  'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to
  many of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many generations
  had been released since the last white man had visited the river that
  the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that
  descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan
  was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than
  suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What
  would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part
  of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the
  anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out
  was got ready. The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless
  old hag cursed the stranger.
  
  'He sat in it, as I've told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded
  revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution--than which there is nothing
  more fatiguing--and thus entered the land he was destined to fill with
  the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon
  of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with
  its labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise
  again--the very image of struggling mankind--and faced the immovable
  forests rooted deep in the soil, soaring towards the sunshine,
  everlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself.
  And his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting
  to be uncovered by the hand of the master. He too was the heir of a
  shadowy and mighty tradition! He told me, however, that he had never in
  his life felt so depressed and tired as in that canoe. All the movement
  he dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the
  shell of half a cocoa-nut floating between his shoes, and bale some of
  the water out with a carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard
  the lid of a block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but
  several times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and
  between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the
  sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to
  decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a
  log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No
  fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all
  but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in
  a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came
  right down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage.
  Such was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any
  man ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime
  his three paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of
  delivering him up to the Rajah.
  
  '"I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze
  off for a time," he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe coming
  to the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been
  left behind, of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade
  on his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a low point of
  land and taking to their heels. Instinctively he leaped out after them.
  At first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but
  he heard excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured
  out, making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men
  appeared on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting
  off his retreat.
  
  '"I was too startled to be quite cool--don't you know? and if that
  revolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody--perhaps two, three
  bodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it wasn't. . . ."
  "Why not?" I asked. "Well, I couldn't fight the whole population, and
  I wasn't coming to them as if I were afraid of my life," he said, with
  just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the glance he gave me.
  I refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the
  chambers were actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way.
  . . . "Anyhow it wasn't," he repeated good-humouredly, "and so I just
  stood still and asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike
  them dumb. I saw some of these thieves going off with my box. That
  long-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I'll show him to you to-morrow)
  ran out fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, 'All
  right.' I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply walked in through
  the gate and--and--here I am." He laughed, and then with unexpected
  emphasis, "And do you know what's the best in it?" he asked. "I'll tell
  you. It's the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that
  would have been the loser."
  
  'He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I've
  mentioned--after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm
  between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen
  descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There
  is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the
  dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its
  inconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which--say what you
  like--is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound:
  misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all
  forms of matter--which, after all, is our domain--of their substance,
  and gives a sinister reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were
  very real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as though
  nothing--not even the occult power of moonlight--could rob him of his
  reality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he
  had survived the assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was
  still; even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It was the
  moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter
  isolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along
  the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the
  water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with
  black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures
  pressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and
  there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living
  spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose.
  
  'He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go
  out one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes,
  confident in the security of to-morrow. "Peaceful here, eh?" he asked.
  He was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that
  followed. "Look at these houses; there's not one where I am not trusted.
  Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask any man, woman, or child . . ." He
  paused. "Well, I am all right anyhow."
  
  'I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had been
  sure of it, I added. He shook his head. "Were you?" He pressed my arm
  lightly above the elbow. "Well, then--you were right."
  
  'There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low
  exclamation. "Jove!" he cried, "only think what it is to me." Again he
  pressed my arm. "And you asked me whether I thought of leaving. Good
  God! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr.
  Stein's . . . Leave! Why! That's what I was afraid of. It would have
  been--it would have been harder than dying. No--on my word. Don't
  laugh. I must feel--every day, every time I open my eyes--that I am
  trusted--that nobody has a right--don't you know? Leave! For where? What
  for? To get what?"
  
  'I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was
  Stein's intention to present him at once with the house and the stock
  of trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would make the
  transaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at
  first. "Confound your delicacy!" I shouted. "It isn't Stein at all. It's
  giving you what you had made for yourself. And in any case keep your
  remarks for McNeil--when you meet him in the other world. I hope it
  won't happen soon. . . ." He had to give in to my arguments, because all
  his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these
  things that made him master had made him a captive, too. He looked with
  an owner's eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses,
  at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind,
  at the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was
  they that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought,
  to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.
  
  'It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud--for him, if not so
  certain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful. It was
  not so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange how little
  account I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be
  at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he
  had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation,
  his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his
  readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like
  keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a
  dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness
  in his stammerings. He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now
  and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how
  deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the
  certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land
  and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous
  tenderness.'
  '"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: Chapters 24-25
target: Two years later, Marlow visited Patusan, carrying a message from Stein to Jim, which instructed Jim to set up a proper trading post. Marlow marveled at the misty ocean, the swampy plains, and the far-off blue mountain peaks. He stopped at a fishing village and engaged an old man who seemed to be the village's head man to pilot him upriver. Most of the old man's talk on the way up was about "Tuan Jim," or Lord Jim, a man of whom he spoke with warm, glowing familiarity and simple awe. Clearly, all the villagers loved and trusted Jim. In fact, most of them believed that he had supernatural powers. In the short time that Jim had lived in Patusan, many legends had grown up around him. Marlow was told, for example, that on the day Jim arrived, the tide rose two hours before its usual time in order to carry Jim upriver. Later, when Jim and Marlow were sitting on the verandah of Jim's house, Marlow listened to Jim's version of his arrival at Patusan. Jim had sat on the tin luggage box during the entire voyage, his unloaded revolver on his lap. It was an exhausting journey, he said, the boat scissoring through crocodiles, and the jungle seeming to be continually formidable and ominous. Near the end of the journey, he dozed. When he awakened, he noticed that his three paddlers had disappeared. Almost immediately, he was taken prisoner by armed men who escorted him to Rajah Allang, the little "used-up" despot. Jim paused, and Marlow reflected that the "experiment" had turned out remarkably well. There was none of Jim's former hypersensitivity to guilt and anguish. Instead, Jim seemed to have conquered his urge to punish himself. He had won the trust, the friendship, and the love of the natives. And he had even attained a kind of fame. As Jim talked to Marlow, Marlow noted Jim's deep and fierce love for the land. To leave Patusan would be, Jim said, "harder than dying." According to Marlow, Jim had become both Patusan's master and its captive. On their way to meet Rajah Allang, Jim pointed out to Marlow a filthy stockade in which he was held captive for three days. On the third day, he said, he did the only thing he could do: he tried to escape. At that moment of their conversation, however, they met Rajah Allang. Marlow says that he was immediately impressed with the man's respectful attitude toward Jim, who only two years before had been this man's prisoner. Jim and Marlow witnessed Rajah Allang's solving a village problem, and then they were offered coffee. Marlow was reluctant to drink his, fearing that it might be poisoned, but Jim unperturbedly sipped his coffee. Later, Jim told Marlow that he had to constantly prove that he was worthy of their trust. He had to drink their coffee. He had to take the risk -- "take it every month" -- the natives trusted him to do that. Jim said that Rajah Allang was most likely afraid of Jim precisely because Jim was not afraid to drink the Rajah's coffee. After Jim escaped from Rajah Allang's stockade two years ago and found safety with Doramin, he learned about the warring factions that seemed to rule Patusan. They were: Rajah Allang, from whom Jim had just escaped; he brought blood and fiery destruction on any villager who attempted to trade with the outside world. Rajah Allang wanted to be the exclusive trader in Patusan. Stein's friend Doramin was the "second chief" in Patusan. Years ago, he was elected by "his people," immigrants from the Dutch West Indies; his party opposed Rajah Allang's terrorizing monopoly on trading. The other "leader" of Patusan was a half-breed Arab, Sherif Ali. He incited the interior tribes with religious fervor, and his followers practiced guerrilla warfare. He had a camp on the summit of one of Patusan's twin mountains, where he hung over the village "like a hawk over a poultry yard." Of the three powers that controlled Patusan, Sherif Ali was the most dangerous -- to Rajah Allang's people, and to the Bugis Malays under old Doramin.
feat_summary_analysis: Again in these chapters, Conrad  skips about from past time to present time . We witness a scene when Marlow visits Jim, and then the narrator returns to a past time, when Jim first arrived in Patusan. Marlow even hints of future occurrences and tells the story of Jim's arrival from a distance of many years, and so it seems natural to him  to call up, first, one experience and then another -- without due regard for their time sequences. By the time of Marlow's arrival, the natives are calling Jim "Tuan Jim" or, in English, Lord Jim, and we are told that Jim has won their respect and, in some cases, their awe; already, many legendary stories have grown up around Lord Jim. Without our knowing how Lord Jim accomplished it, we are informed that he had indeed achieved a type of greatness -- complete trust and ultimate respect in this outpost. "He was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved." When Jim first arrived, we hear from Marlow  that Jim had been held captive for three days, and Marlow points out that had he Jim) been killed then, the entire province of Patusan "would have been the loser." Even Jim recognizes his greatness and appreciates the fact that now, "there is not one  where I am not trusted." Lord Jim has at last, finally, found his niche in the universe, and he will never leave Patusan, the place where he is honored and trusted, respected and loved. In addition to Jim's newfound self-assurance and happiness, Marlow noticed other differences in Jim. He was now more intellectually alert; there was an eloquence and "a dignity in his constitutional reticence" and a "high seriousness" in his actions that showed "how deeply, how solemnly" he felt about his work at Patusan. Marlow concluded that Jim had indeed found himself. When Jim took Marlow to the place where Rajah Allang, who had held him prisoner, lived, Jim showed great courage in drinking coffee once a month with the Rajah -- even though he knew that it might be poisoned. Lord Jim then told Marlow of his escape -- of another "Jump," which this time led him to a bog where, for awhile, he was stuck in mud and slime. When he emerged, he was symbolically covered with filth, but even in this disgusting condition, he ran to Doramin's stockade where he showed him the ring and was accepted into Doramin's family, thus symbolically emerging from the filth and slime to begin anew a new, clean, productive life. The symbolism is obvious: the "jump" that takes Jim deep into the vile slime and mud of the creek represents the jump from the Patna which immersed Jim deep into vile shame and everlasting remorse.