feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_42_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 43
feat_summary_id: chapter 43
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-43", "summary": "Jim's huffy ultimatum strikes a chord, and Doramin comes around to his viewpoint. He agrees to give Brown safe passage off the island, so Jim arranges for the pirate's departure. Understandably, he feels a lot of pressure because everyone is letting Brown go on his suggestion. When Tamb' Itam goes to let Dain Waris know about the change of plans, Jim gives his servant his silver ring to give to Dain Waris, so he'll know the message can be trusted. Then, Jim sends Cornelius, who has rejoined the group, to let Brown know that he and his men can leave. He suggests a route, and tells them to be careful. Worst idea ever. We mean it. In the grand tradition of bad ideas, this ranks right up there with New Coke. The devious Cornelius tells Brown he can leave, but he fails to tell him that Dain Waris isn't planning to attack. Instead, he lets Brown know exactly where to find Dain Waris's armed party. Soon, Brown and his group head out to find Dain Waris, thinking that the war is still on.", "analysis": ""}
text: 'Tamb' Itam behind his chair was thunderstruck. The declaration produced
  an immense sensation. "Let them go because this is best in my knowledge
  which has never deceived you," Jim insisted. There was a silence. In
  the darkness of the courtyard could be heard the subdued whispering,
  shuffling noise of many people. Doramin raised his heavy head and said
  that there was no more reading of hearts than touching the sky with the
  hand, but--he consented. The others gave their opinion in turn. "It is
  best," "Let them go," and so on. But most of them simply said that they
  "believed Tuan Jim."
  
  'In this simple form of assent to his will lies the whole gist of
  the situation; their creed, his truth; and the testimony to that
  faithfulness which made him in his own eyes the equal of the
  impeccable men who never fall out of the ranks. Stein's words,
  "Romantic!--Romantic!" seem to ring over those distances that will never
  give him up now to a world indifferent to his failings and his virtues,
  and to that ardent and clinging affection that refuses him the dole of
  tears in the bewilderment of a great grief and of eternal separation.
  From the moment the sheer truthfulness of his last three years of life
  carries the day against the ignorance, the fear, and the anger of men,
  he appears no longer to me as I saw him last--a white speck catching all
  the dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea--but greater
  and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for
  her who loved him best a cruel and insoluble mystery.
  
  'It is evident that he did not mistrust Brown; there was no reason to
  doubt the story, whose truth seemed warranted by the rough frankness,
  by a sort of virile sincerity in accepting the morality and the
  consequences of his acts. But Jim did not know the almost inconceivable
  egotism of the man which made him, when resisted and foiled in his will,
  mad with the indignant and revengeful rage of a thwarted autocrat.
  But if Jim did not mistrust Brown, he was evidently anxious that some
  misunderstanding should not occur, ending perhaps in collision and
  bloodshed. It was for this reason that directly the Malay chiefs had
  gone he asked Jewel to get him something to eat, as he was going out of
  the fort to take command in the town. On her remonstrating against this
  on the score of his fatigue, he said that something might happen for
  which he would never forgive himself. "I am responsible for every life
  in the land," he said. He was moody at first; she served him with her
  own hands, taking the plates and dishes (of the dinner-service presented
  him by Stein) from Tamb' Itam. He brightened up after a while; told her
  she would be again in command of the fort for another night. "There's
  no sleep for us, old girl," he said, "while our people are in danger."
  Later on he said jokingly that she was the best man of them all. "If you
  and Dain Waris had done what you wanted, not one of these poor devils
  would be alive to-day." "Are they very bad?" she asked, leaning over his
  chair. "Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,"
  he said after some hesitation.
  
  'Tamb' Itam followed his master to the landing-stage outside the fort.
  The night was clear but without a moon, and the middle of the river was
  dark, while the water under each bank reflected the light of many fires
  "as on a night of Ramadan," Tamb' Itam said. War-boats drifted silently
  in the dark lane or, anchored, floated motionless with a loud ripple.
  That night there was much paddling in a canoe and walking at his
  master's heels for Tamb' Itam: up and down the street they tramped,
  where the fires were burning, inland on the outskirts of the town where
  small parties of men kept guard in the fields. Tuan Jim gave his orders
  and was obeyed. Last of all they went to the Rajah's stockade, which a
  detachment of Jim's people manned on that night. The old Rajah had fled
  early in the morning with most of his women to a small house he had
  near a jungle village on a tributary stream. Kassim, left behind, had
  attended the council with his air of diligent activity to explain away
  the diplomacy of the day before. He was considerably cold-shouldered,
  but managed to preserve his smiling, quiet alertness, and professed
  himself highly delighted when Jim told him sternly that he proposed to
  occupy the stockade on that night with his own men. After the council
  broke up he was heard outside accosting this and that deputing chief,
  and speaking in a loud, gratified tone of the Rajah's property being
  protected in the Rajah's absence.
  
  'About ten or so Jim's men marched in. The stockade commanded the mouth
  of the creek, and Jim meant to remain there till Brown had passed below.
  A small fire was lit on the flat, grassy point outside the wall of
  stakes, and Tamb' Itam placed a little folding-stool for his master. Jim
  told him to try and sleep. Tamb' Itam got a mat and lay down a little
  way off; but he could not sleep, though he knew he had to go on an
  important journey before the night was out. His master walked to and fro
  before the fire with bowed head and with his hands behind his back. His
  face was sad. Whenever his master approached him Tamb' Itam pretended to
  sleep, not wishing his master to know he had been watched. At last his
  master stood still, looking down on him as he lay, and said softly, "It
  is time."
  
  'Tamb' Itam arose directly and made his preparations. His mission was
  to go down the river, preceding Brown's boat by an hour or more, to tell
  Dain Waris finally and formally that the whites were to be allowed to
  pass out unmolested. Jim would not trust anybody else with that service.
  Before starting, Tamb' Itam, more as a matter of form (since his
  position about Jim made him perfectly known), asked for a token.
  "Because, Tuan," he said, "the message is important, and these are thy
  very words I carry." His master first put his hand into one pocket, then
  into another, and finally took off his forefinger Stein's silver ring,
  which he habitually wore, and gave it to Tamb' Itam. When Tamb' Itam
  left on his mission, Brown's camp on the knoll was dark but for a single
  small glow shining through the branches of one of the trees the white
  men had cut down.
  
  'Early in the evening Brown had received from Jim a folded piece of
  paper on which was written, "You get the clear road. Start as soon
  as your boat floats on the morning tide. Let your men be careful. The
  bushes on both sides of the creek and the stockade at the mouth are full
  of well-armed men. You would have no chance, but I don't believe you
  want bloodshed." Brown read it, tore the paper into small pieces, and,
  turning to Cornelius, who had brought it, said jeeringly, "Good-bye, my
  excellent friend." Cornelius had been in the fort, and had been sneaking
  around Jim's house during the afternoon. Jim chose him to carry the note
  because he could speak English, was known to Brown, and was not likely
  to be shot by some nervous mistake of one of the men as a Malay,
  approaching in the dusk, perhaps might have been.
  
  'Cornelius didn't go away after delivering the paper. Brown was sitting
  up over a tiny fire; all the others were lying down. "I could tell you
  something you would like to know," Cornelius mumbled crossly. Brown paid
  no attention. "You did not kill him," went on the other, "and what do
  you get for it? You might have had money from the Rajah, besides the
  loot of all the Bugis houses, and now you get nothing." "You had better
  clear out from here," growled Brown, without even looking at him. But
  Cornelius let himself drop by his side and began to whisper very fast,
  touching his elbow from time to time. What he had to say made Brown sit
  up at first, with a curse. He had simply informed him of Dain Waris's
  armed party down the river. At first Brown saw himself completely sold
  and betrayed, but a moment's reflection convinced him that there could
  be no treachery intended. He said nothing, and after a while Cornelius
  remarked, in a tone of complete indifference, that there was another way
  out of the river which he knew very well. "A good thing to know, too,"
  said Brown, pricking up his ears; and Cornelius began to talk of
  what went on in town and repeated all that had been said in council,
  gossiping in an even undertone at Brown's ear as you talk amongst
  sleeping men you do not wish to wake. "He thinks he has made me
  harmless, does he?" mumbled Brown very low. . . . "Yes. He is a fool. A
  little child. He came here and robbed me," droned on Cornelius, "and he
  made all the people believe him. But if something happened that they did
  not believe him any more, where would he be? And the Bugis Dain who
  is waiting for you down the river there, captain, is the very man who
  chased you up here when you first came." Brown observed nonchalantly
  that it would be just as well to avoid him, and with the same detached,
  musing air Cornelius declared himself acquainted with a backwater broad
  enough to take Brown's boat past Waris's camp. "You will have to be
  quiet," he said as an afterthought, "for in one place we pass close
  behind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore with their boats
  hauled up." "Oh, we know how to be as quiet as mice; never fear," said
  Brown. Cornelius stipulated that in case he were to pilot Brown out, his
  canoe should be towed. "I'll have to get back quick," he explained.
  
  'It was two hours before the dawn when word was passed to the stockade
  from outlying watchers that the white robbers were coming down to their
  boat. In a very short time every armed man from one end of Patusan
  to the other was on the alert, yet the banks of the river remained so
  silent that but for the fires burning with sudden blurred flares the
  town might have been asleep as if in peace-time. A heavy mist lay very
  low on the water, making a sort of illusive grey light that showed
  nothing. When Brown's long-boat glided out of the creek into the
  river, Jim was standing on the low point of land before the Rajah's
  stockade--on the very spot where for the first time he put his foot on
  Patusan shore. A shadow loomed up, moving in the greyness, solitary,
  very bulky, and yet constantly eluding the eye. A murmur of low talking
  came out of it. Brown at the tiller heard Jim speak calmly: "A clear
  road. You had better trust to the current while the fog lasts; but
  this will lift presently." "Yes, presently we shall see clear," replied
  Brown.
  
  'The thirty or forty men standing with muskets at ready outside the
  stockade held their breath. The Bugis owner of the prau, whom I saw
  on Stein's verandah, and who was amongst them, told me that the boat,
  shaving the low point close, seemed for a moment to grow big and hang
  over it like a mountain. "If you think it worth your while to wait a
  day outside," called out Jim, "I'll try to send you down something--a
  bullock, some yams--what I can." The shadow went on moving. "Yes. Do,"
  said a voice, blank and muffled out of the fog. Not one of the many
  attentive listeners understood what the words meant; and then Brown
  and his men in their boat floated away, fading spectrally without the
  slightest sound.
  
  'Thus Brown, invisible in the mist, goes out of Patusan elbow to elbow
  with Cornelius in the stern-sheets of the long-boat. "Perhaps you shall
  get a small bullock," said Cornelius. "Oh yes. Bullock. Yam. You'll get
  it if he said so. He always speaks the truth. He stole everything I had.
  I suppose you like a small bullock better than the loot of many houses."
  "I would advise you to hold your tongue, or somebody here may fling
  you overboard into this damned fog," said Brown. The boat seemed to be
  standing still; nothing could be seen, not even the river alongside,
  only the water-dust flew and trickled, condensed, down their beards and
  faces. It was weird, Brown told me. Every individual man of them felt
  as though he were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost
  imperceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. "Throw me out,
  would you? But I would know where I was," mumbled Cornelius surlily.
  "I've lived many years here." "Not long enough to see through a fog like
  this," Brown said, lolling back with his arm swinging to and fro on the
  useless tiller. "Yes. Long enough for that," snarled Cornelius. "That's
  very useful," commented Brown. "Am I to believe you could find that
  backway you spoke of blindfold, like this?" Cornelius grunted. "Are you
  too tired to row?" he asked after a silence. "No, by God!" shouted Brown
  suddenly. "Out with your oars there." There was a great knocking in
  the fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible
  sweeps against invisible thole-pins. Otherwise nothing was changed, and
  but for the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a balloon
  car in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius did not open his lips
  except to ask querulously for somebody to bale out his canoe, which
  was towing behind the long-boat. Gradually the fog whitened and became
  luminous ahead. To the left Brown saw a darkness as though he had been
  looking at the back of the departing night. All at once a big bough
  covered with leaves appeared above his head, and ends of twigs, dripping
  and still, curved slenderly close alongside. Cornelius, without a word,
  took the tiller from his hand.'
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 43
target: Jim's huffy ultimatum strikes a chord, and Doramin comes around to his viewpoint. He agrees to give Brown safe passage off the island, so Jim arranges for the pirate's departure. Understandably, he feels a lot of pressure because everyone is letting Brown go on his suggestion. When Tamb' Itam goes to let Dain Waris know about the change of plans, Jim gives his servant his silver ring to give to Dain Waris, so he'll know the message can be trusted. Then, Jim sends Cornelius, who has rejoined the group, to let Brown know that he and his men can leave. He suggests a route, and tells them to be careful. Worst idea ever. We mean it. In the grand tradition of bad ideas, this ranks right up there with New Coke. The devious Cornelius tells Brown he can leave, but he fails to tell him that Dain Waris isn't planning to attack. Instead, he lets Brown know exactly where to find Dain Waris's armed party. Soon, Brown and his group head out to find Dain Waris, thinking that the war is still on.