feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_23_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 24
feat_summary_id: chapter 24
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-24", "summary": "Two years later, Marlow goes to Patusan to visit Jim. He wants to offer Jim the trading post house on the island, as a gift from Stein. He arrives to find that Jim has become a local hero, and everyone there calls him Tuan Jim, or Lord Jim. When Jim gives Marlow a brief tour, we learn that when Jim first arrived, the natives of Patusan didn't exactly lay out the red carpet. He was taken to Rajah Allang, who promptly locked him up.", "analysis": ""}
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.'
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 24
target: Two years later, Marlow goes to Patusan to visit Jim. He wants to offer Jim the trading post house on the island, as a gift from Stein. He arrives to find that Jim has become a local hero, and everyone there calls him Tuan Jim, or Lord Jim. When Jim gives Marlow a brief tour, we learn that when Jim first arrived, the natives of Patusan didn't exactly lay out the red carpet. He was taken to Rajah Allang, who promptly locked him up.