feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_4_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 5
feat_summary_id: chapter 5
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim13.asp", "summary": "There is another time shift in the novel. It is after dinner, and Marlow sits on a verandah and tells the story of the Patna incident and how he met Jim. For days after the accident, anyone connected with the sea talks of nothing but the incident. Supposedly, four of the ship's officers deserted the sinking ship, leaving behind the crew and 800 Moslem pilgrims. Ironically, the ship does not sink, but is towed into Aden with all of the crew and passengers alive. As a result, there is an inquiry about the accident. Only Jim can testify, for the captain has disappeared and the engineers are in the hospital. In a flashback, Marlow explains how he is standing one day in the shade by the steps of the harbor office when he notices four men walking towards him. One is the skipper of the Patna. He is very fat and reminds Marlow of a trained baby elephant walking on hind legs. He is wearing an outfit that has bright green and deep orange vertical stripes. With him, there is a young chap who looks unapproachable and makes no movement while he stares into the sunshine. Marlow is impressed with his demeanor and strong, handsome appearance. The lad seems a picture of confidence. Some time later, Marlow goes to the hospital to visit a friend. While there, he sees two strangers and is told that the men have seen the Patna sink. He questions both of the men, who are the Patna's first and second engineers, but they can offer no explanation. One talks about the toads under his bed, and the other argues that the Patna, filled with reptiles, sank. As a result of this meeting, Marlow grows more interested in the inquiry, as if driven by a \"guardian devil,\" and decides to attend. It is in the courtroom that his eyes meet Jim's for the first time.", "analysis": "Notes The fifth chapter is the first one that is told from Marlow's point of view, and it quickly becomes clear that Jim has already provoked a strong emotional response in Marlow. The first time he sees the young man, he is extremely impressed with him. He feels that Jim's strong appearance and calm, self-confident demeanor inspire trust. He also says that Jim is \"one of us.\" Marlow obviously feels some immediate kinship to the protagonist of the story; he also tries to relate Jim to the reader. Conrad wants the reader to compare how he would act in comparison to Jim if placed in similar circumstances. Before the inquiry begins, Marlow has the opportunity to see the four officers of the Patna as they walk to the harbor office. He describes the fat and ugly captain in totally disgusting terms. He adds that the two engineers are not very impressive. In contrast, Jim clearly stands out as exceptional. Later, in the hospital, Marlow tries to gain some information about the accident from the two engineers, who are patients; neither is able to answer any questions, for they are in dazed states. In an almost protective manner, Marlow chooses to still withhold information about Jim's deserting the ship. But from this chapter forward, Marlow will show how Jim is repeatedly treated like an outcast; others feel indignation over his actions and judge him as disgraceful. Marlow will also portray Jim's guilt complex, which dogs him until the end of his life. Like many humans, Jim is portrayed as weak and vulnerable. The resulting Mood is somber."}
text: 
  'Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,' he would say, 'and to this day I
  haven't left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of
  us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of
  us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don't
  like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil,
  I mean. I haven't seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial
  evidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in
  for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry
  thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn't think a mangy, native tyke
  would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate's
  court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly
  diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with
  hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues
  at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth,
  I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I
  didn't have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my
  own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be
  thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns
  as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in
  this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of
  confessions. Then why? Can't tell--unless it be to make time pass away
  after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and
  in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous
  occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves,
  "Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk."
  
  'Talk? So be it. And it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a
  good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent
  cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would
  make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to
  pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every
  irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in
  the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to
  expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there
  are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner
  hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some
  fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end
  is told--even if there happens to be any end to it.
  
  'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know
  that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the
  affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable
  message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious,
  because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about
  as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked
  of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my
  state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering
  about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea,
  by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some
  acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of
  anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile
  cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers
  would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their
  minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for
  a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour
  office, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from
  natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on
  the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not
  a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them,
  you know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion
  that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic
  as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing
  in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men
  walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that
  queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself,
  "Here they are!"
  
  'There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one
  much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed
  with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line
  steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no
  mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance:
  the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good
  old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come
  across him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was
  abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking
  himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh's back-shop,
  till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much
  as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little
  leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, "Business is
  business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!"
  
  'I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little in
  advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a
  startling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking
  on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled
  sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a
  pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody's cast-off
  pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a
  manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like
  that hasn't the ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes.
  Very well. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed
  within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on
  pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or
  report, or whatever you like to call it.
  
  'It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal
  shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story
  goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to
  his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little
  Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the
  hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a
  piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One
  voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my
  sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn't,
  you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to
  perquisites quite touched my heart. It was so strong as to be almost
  beautiful. The race--the two races rather--and the climate . . .
  However, never mind. I know where I have a friend for life.
  
  'Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official
  morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his
  back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and
  enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in
  striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space
  in the office. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an
  appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still
  wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been
  transported in front of his desk. The archway from the ante-room was
  crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and
  crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost
  climbing on each other's backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow
  had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with
  slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that
  for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition
  wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and
  little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of
  the Patna case. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before
  him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but
  pulled himself together and shouted "Stop! I can't listen to you. You
  must go to the Master Attendant. I can't possibly listen to you. Captain
  Elliot is the man you want to see. This way, this way." He jumped
  up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him,
  surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private
  office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like
  a frightened bullock. "Look here! what's up? Let go! Look here!" Archie
  flung open the door without knocking. "The master of the Patna, sir,"
  he shouts. "Go in, captain." He saw the old man lift his head from some
  writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and
  fled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature:
  but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he
  couldn't collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of
  his own name. Archie's the most sensitive shipping-master in the two
  hemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a
  hungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I
  have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as
  far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and
  could shout--and didn't mind who he shouted at either. He would have
  shouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: "I am as high as
  I can get; my pension is safe. I've a few pounds laid by, and if they
  don't like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not. I am
  an old man, and I have always spoken my mind. All I care for now is to
  see my girls married before I die." He was a little crazy on that
  point. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him
  amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their
  matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble,
  because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However,
  that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to
  carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah!
  ejected him again.
  
  'Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste
  and stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to me for the
  purpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks quivered. He
  was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed
  look. The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group
  waiting at some distance. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap
  with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat,
  as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey
  moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The
  third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his
  pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking
  together earnestly. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle
  gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the
  group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave
  himself up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap,
  making no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the
  sunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and
  unapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed,
  clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone
  on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I
  was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of
  me by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought
  to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt
  as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer
  mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because
  his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a
  flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him
  there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed
  ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about
  the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale
  that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official
  inquiry. "That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound," said the
  captain of the Patna. I can't tell whether he recognised me--I rather
  think he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled;
  hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open
  window. "Did he?" I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue.
  He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his
  head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--"Bah! the
  Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I
  know where there's plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt
  in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . ." He paused reflectively, while without
  effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was "aguaindt"
  with in those places. I won't make a secret of it that I had been
  "aguaindt" with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when
  a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I've
  known such a time, and, what's more, I shan't now pretend to pull a long
  face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from
  want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other
  equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more
  amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask
  to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from
  cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate
  reasons.
  
  '"You Englishmen are all rogues," went on my patriotic Flensborg or
  Stettin Australian. I really don't recollect now what decent little
  port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that
  precious bird. "What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better
  than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me." His
  thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it
  trembled from head to foot. "That's what you English always make--make
  a tam' fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your
  tam' country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don't want the
  certificate. A man like me don't want your verfluchte certificate. I
  shpit on it." He spat. "I vill an Amerigan citizen begome," he cried,
  fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from
  some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away
  from that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his bullet head
  positively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away:
  curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see
  the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands
  in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the
  grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel
  with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is
  ready. That's how he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him
  overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an
  impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand
  what I mean. Nothing more awful than to watch a man who has been found
  out, not in a crime but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest
  sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense;
  it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of
  the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness
  that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully
  scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one
  of us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called
  names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well
  survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! And
  there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of
  us are totally and completely undone. I watched the youngster there.
  I liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right
  place; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his
  kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very
  existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage.
  I don't mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of
  courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in
  the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without
  pose--a power of resistance, don't you see, ungracious if you like, but
  priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and
  inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption
  of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the
  contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are
  tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking
  a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief
  in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently
  and would like to die easy!
  
  'This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so
  typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and
  left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of
  intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was the
  kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge
  of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say I would,
  and I ought to know. Haven't I turned out youngsters enough in my time,
  for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft
  whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet
  must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the
  component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every
  dream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I
  remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now
  and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don't
  think I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet
  that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate
  would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice
  speaking above my hat would ask: "Don't you remember me, sir? Why!
  little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage." And I
  would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of
  this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very
  quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides
  out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged
  father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the
  morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays
  too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all
  to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl,
  "Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There's a
  gentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got
  carried off to Talcahuano, didn't you? Now's your time; easy does
  it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there." The tugs, smoking
  like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury;
  the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has
  shied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of
  sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks
  nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick
  before next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little
  mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live
  or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this
  fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his
  back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy
  voice: "Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so."
  
  'I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least
  you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have
  winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone
  to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump.
  Don't I remember the little So-and-so's! I tell you I ought to know the
  right kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on
  the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and,
  by Jove! it wouldn't have been safe. There are depths of horror in that
  thought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some
  infernal alloy in his metal. How much? The least thing--the least
  drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made
  you--standing there with his don't-care-hang air--he made you wonder
  whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass.
  
  'I couldn't believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for
  the honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted their
  captain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted together as
  they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been
  visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might have been
  exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one of them it was a
  case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches
  he was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious
  personality. They were nobodies. They approached. The skipper gazed
  in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an
  unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an
  unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting,
  opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his
  puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to
  strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he
  went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the
  door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to
  see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. The driver,
  shaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at
  once all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking
  round from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his
  conveyance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the
  crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs,
  the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the
  whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's
  sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those
  grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever.
  He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box
  on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only
  sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind
  rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his
  head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring,
  furious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious
  flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared
  at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver
  lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop.
  Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to
  disport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. A snorting
  pony snatched him into "Ewigkeit" in the twinkling of an eye, and I
  never saw him again; and, what's more, I don't know of anybody that ever
  had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside
  a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother
  of dust. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly
  enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for
  never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a
  lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is
  indeed big; but whether he found a place for a display of his talents
  in it or not, the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a
  broomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after
  the carriage, bleating, "Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!"--but after
  a few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the
  sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood.
  He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in
  the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight.
  
  'All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am
  trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of
  visual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie
  to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the
  scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and
  very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the
  principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy
  importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent
  altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who
  turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn't going to be
  ordered about--"not he, b'gosh." He wouldn't be terrified with a pack
  of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. He was not going to be
  bullied by "no object of that sort," if the story were true "ever so"!
  He bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. "If you
  weren't a God-forsaken Portuguee," I heard him yell, "you would know
  that the hospital is the right place for me." He pushed the fist of
  his sound arm under the other's nose; a crowd began to collect; the
  half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to
  explain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end.
  
  'But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and
  going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry,
  I saw in the white men's ward that little chap tossing on his back, with
  his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the
  other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also
  found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during
  the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not
  to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his
  distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani's billiard-room
  and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who
  had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other
  places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and
  shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous
  hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal
  safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time
  after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price
  of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking
  any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very
  many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny
  chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears:
  "Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!" What was the precise
  nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may,
  he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a
  chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster
  on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker
  with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of
  the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found
  himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes.
  He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy
  little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani's stomach, picked himself up,
  and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off
  a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were
  carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but
  when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean
  bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow,
  like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not
  been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of
  his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently
  behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to
  indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the
  famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into
  the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me
  no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a
  community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of
  conduct, I can't explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you
  like; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps,
  unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and
  redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an
  excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the
  laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man's creation, of the
  uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and
  more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign
  power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing
  to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good
  little quiet villainies; it's the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe
  in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own
  sake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young
  fellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a
  touch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of
  his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a
  destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled
  his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was,
  and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at
  this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my
  imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady
  invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been
  pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent
  and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as
  any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a
  delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly;
  I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not
  furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance,
  his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor
  iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated
  Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and
  said: "Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down." I
  made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added
  smoothly, "She was full of reptiles."
  
  'This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror
  behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine
  wistfully. "They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look
  at her sinking," he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded
  alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was
  no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the
  perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty
  iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown
  and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my
  interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed
  my shoulder. "Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my
  eyesight. That's why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick
  enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and
  sang out together--like this." . . . A wolfish howl searched the very
  recesses of my soul. "Oh! make 'im dry up," whined the accident case
  irritably. "You don't believe me, I suppose," went on the other, with
  an air of ineffable conceit. "I tell you there are no such eyes as mine
  this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed."
  
  'Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so.
  "What can you see?" he asked. "Nothing," I said, feeling awfully ashamed
  of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt.
  "Just so," he said, "but if I were to look I could see--there's no eyes
  like mine, I tell you." Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his
  eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. "Millions
  of pink toads. There's no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It's
  worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke
  my pipe all day long. Why don't they give me back my pipe? I would get
  a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They've
  got to be watched, you know." He winked facetiously. The perspiration
  dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the
  afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff
  folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the
  covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all
  along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the
  tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter's gale in an old
  barn at home. "Don't you let him start his hollering, mister," hailed
  from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came
  ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The
  clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. "The ship
  was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,"
  he whispered with extreme rapidity. "All pink. All pink--as big as
  mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their
  ugly mouths. Ough! Ough!" Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed
  under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let
  go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled
  tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the
  spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face
  of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed
  before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable
  caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--"Ssh! what are they
  doing now down there?" he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic
  precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a
  lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. "They are all asleep,"
  I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That's what he wanted
  to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long
  breath. "Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them
  brutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There's too many of
  them, and she won't swim more than ten minutes." He panted again. "Hurry
  up," he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: "They are all
  awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait!
  I'll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!" An
  interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in
  the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his
  bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the
  vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I
  confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out
  through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The
  howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and
  suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended
  the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my
  distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons
  who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. "Been to see your man,
  Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no
  notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we've got the chief
  engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.'s of the worst
  kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek's or Italian's grog-shop
  for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy
  a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I
  should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious
  part is there's some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to
  find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium.
  Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn't. Good old
  tradition's at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian.
  Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case
  of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don't you know, after such a
  festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of
  the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking
  old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course.
  Won't you?"
  
  'I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest,
  but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook
  hands in a hurry. "I say," he cried after me; "he can't attend that
  inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?"
  
  '"Not in the least," I called back from the gateway.'
feat_summary_name: Chapter 5
target: There is another time shift in the novel. It is after dinner, and Marlow sits on a verandah and tells the story of the Patna incident and how he met Jim. For days after the accident, anyone connected with the sea talks of nothing but the incident. Supposedly, four of the ship's officers deserted the sinking ship, leaving behind the crew and 800 Moslem pilgrims. Ironically, the ship does not sink, but is towed into Aden with all of the crew and passengers alive. As a result, there is an inquiry about the accident. Only Jim can testify, for the captain has disappeared and the engineers are in the hospital. In a flashback, Marlow explains how he is standing one day in the shade by the steps of the harbor office when he notices four men walking towards him. One is the skipper of the Patna. He is very fat and reminds Marlow of a trained baby elephant walking on hind legs. He is wearing an outfit that has bright green and deep orange vertical stripes. With him, there is a young chap who looks unapproachable and makes no movement while he stares into the sunshine. Marlow is impressed with his demeanor and strong, handsome appearance. The lad seems a picture of confidence. Some time later, Marlow goes to the hospital to visit a friend. While there, he sees two strangers and is told that the men have seen the Patna sink. He questions both of the men, who are the Patna's first and second engineers, but they can offer no explanation. One talks about the toads under his bed, and the other argues that the Patna, filled with reptiles, sank. As a result of this meeting, Marlow grows more interested in the inquiry, as if driven by a "guardian devil," and decides to attend. It is in the courtroom that his eyes meet Jim's for the first time.
feat_summary_analysis: Notes The fifth chapter is the first one that is told from Marlow's point of view, and it quickly becomes clear that Jim has already provoked a strong emotional response in Marlow. The first time he sees the young man, he is extremely impressed with him. He feels that Jim's strong appearance and calm, self-confident demeanor inspire trust. He also says that Jim is "one of us." Marlow obviously feels some immediate kinship to the protagonist of the story; he also tries to relate Jim to the reader. Conrad wants the reader to compare how he would act in comparison to Jim if placed in similar circumstances. Before the inquiry begins, Marlow has the opportunity to see the four officers of the Patna as they walk to the harbor office. He describes the fat and ugly captain in totally disgusting terms. He adds that the two engineers are not very impressive. In contrast, Jim clearly stands out as exceptional. Later, in the hospital, Marlow tries to gain some information about the accident from the two engineers, who are patients; neither is able to answer any questions, for they are in dazed states. In an almost protective manner, Marlow chooses to still withhold information about Jim's deserting the ship. But from this chapter forward, Marlow will show how Jim is repeatedly treated like an outcast; others feel indignation over his actions and judge him as disgraceful. Marlow will also portray Jim's guilt complex, which dogs him until the end of his life. Like many humans, Jim is portrayed as weak and vulnerable. The resulting Mood is somber.