feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_11_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 12
feat_summary_id: chapter 12
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "Resuming his story, Jim tells us that the men in the lifeboat were rescued by the Avondale. But of course before we can settle in to the story again, Marlow breaks in with his own information on the Patna and how the news of it broke. He seems to have something against telling stories in chronological order. We jump forward in time to Marlow's conversation with a French lieutenant, who was serving aboard the vessel that rescued the Patna. The two meet up in Sydney, and Marlow learns from the lieutenant that his French gunboat towed the Patna to safety. The French lieutenant recalls being bored during much of this, though he and his crew were very interested in the dead body they found .", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  'All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist
  of his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by his struggles,
  and in the rifts of the immaterial veil he would appear to my staring
  eyes distinct of form and pregnant with vague appeal like a symbolic
  figure in a picture. The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my
  limbs as heavy as a slab of marble.
  
  '"I see," I murmured, more to prove to myself that I could break my
  state of numbness than for any other reason.
  
  '"The Avondale picked us up just before sunset," he remarked moodily.
  "Steamed right straight for us. We had only to sit and wait."
  
  'After a long interval, he said, "They told their story." And again
  there was that oppressive silence. "Then only I knew what it was I had
  made up my mind to," he added.
  
  '"You said nothing," I whispered.
  
  '"What could I say?" he asked, in the same low tone. . . . "Shock
  slight. Stopped the ship. Ascertained the damage. Took measures to get
  the boats out without creating a panic. As the first boat was lowered
  ship went down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . . What could be more
  clear" . . . he hung his head . . . "and more awful?" His lips quivered
  while he looked straight into my eyes. "I had jumped--hadn't I?" he
  asked, dismayed. "That's what I had to live down. The story didn't
  matter." . . . He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and
  left into the gloom: "It was like cheating the dead," he stammered.
  
  '"And there were no dead," I said.
  
  'He went away from me at this. That is the only way I can describe it.
  In a moment I saw his back close to the balustrade. He stood there for
  some time, as if admiring the purity and the peace of the night. Some
  flowering-shrub in the garden below spread its powerful scent through
  the damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps.
  
  '"And that did not matter," he said, as stubbornly as you please.
  
  '"Perhaps not," I admitted. I began to have a notion he was too much for
  me. After all, what did _I_ know?
  
  '"Dead or not dead, I could not get clear," he said. "I had to live;
  hadn't I?"
  
  '"Well, yes--if you take it in that way," I mumbled.
  
  '"I was glad, of course," he threw out carelessly, with his mind fixed
  on something else. "The exposure," he pronounced slowly, and lifted
  his head. "Do you know what was my first thought when I heard? I was
  relieved. I was relieved to learn that those shouts--did I tell you I
  had heard shouts? No? Well, I did. Shouts for help . . . blown along
  with the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose. And yet I can hardly . . . How
  stupid. . . . The others did not. I asked them afterwards. They all
  said No. No? And I was hearing them even then! I might have known--but
  I didn't think--I only listened. Very faint screams--day after day. Then
  that little half-caste chap here came up and spoke to me. 'The
  Patna . . . French gunboat . . . towed successfully to Aden . . .
  Investigation . . . Marine Office . . . Sailors' Home . . . arrangements
  made for your board and lodging!' I walked along with him, and I enjoyed
  the silence. So there had been no shouting. Imagination. I had to
  believe him. I could hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could
  have stood it. It was getting worse, too . . . I mean--louder." 'He fell
  into thought.
  
  '"And I had heard nothing! Well--so be it. But the lights! The lights
  did go! We did not see them. They were not there. If they had been, I
  would have swam back--I would have gone back and shouted alongside--I
  would have begged them to take me on board. . . . I would have had my
  chance. . . . You doubt me? . . . How do you know how I felt? . . . What
  right have you to doubt? . . . I very nearly did it as it was--do you
  understand?" His voice fell. "There was not a glimmer--not a glimmer,"
  he protested mournfully. "Don't you understand that if there had been,
  you would not have seen me here? You see me--and you doubt."
  
  'I shook my head negatively. This question of the lights being lost
  sight of when the boat could not have been more than a quarter of a mile
  from the ship was a matter for much discussion. Jim stuck to it that
  there was nothing to be seen after the first shower had cleared away;
  and the others had affirmed the same thing to the officers of the
  Avondale. Of course people shook their heads and smiled. One old skipper
  who sat near me in court tickled my ear with his white beard to murmur,
  "Of course they would lie." As a matter of fact nobody lied; not even
  the chief engineer with his story of the mast-head light dropping like a
  match you throw down. Not consciously, at least. A man with his liver in
  such a state might very well have seen a floating spark in the corner of
  his eye when stealing a hurried glance over his shoulder. They had seen
  no light of any sort though they were well within range, and they could
  only explain this in one way: the ship had gone down. It was obvious
  and comforting. The foreseen fact coming so swiftly had justified their
  haste. No wonder they did not cast about for any other explanation. Yet
  the true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the
  court ceased to bother about the question. If you remember, the ship had
  been stopped, and was lying with her head on the course steered through
  the night, with her stern canted high and her bows brought low down in
  the water through the filling of the fore-compartment. Being thus out of
  trim, when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head
  to wind as sharply as though she had been at anchor. By this change in
  her position all her lights were in a very few moments shut off from
  the boat to leeward. It may very well be that, had they been seen, they
  would have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in
  the darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the
  human glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity. It would
  have said, "I am here--still here" . . . and what more can the eye of
  the most forsaken of human beings say? But she turned her back on them
  as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round, burdened, to glare
  stubbornly at the new danger of the open sea which she so strangely
  survived to end her days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her
  recorded fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. What
  were the various ends their destiny provided for the pilgrims I am
  unable to say; but the immediate future brought, at about nine o'clock
  next morning, a French gunboat homeward bound from Reunion. The report
  of her commander was public property. He had swept a little out of
  his course to ascertain what was the matter with that steamer floating
  dangerously by the head upon a still and hazy sea. There was an ensign,
  union down, flying at her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a
  signal of distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food
  in the cooking-boxes forward as usual. The decks were packed as close
  as a sheep-pen: there were people perched all along the rails, jammed on
  the bridge in a solid mass; hundreds of eyes stared, and not a sound was
  heard when the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that multitude of lips
  had been sealed by a spell.
  
  'The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, and after
  ascertaining through his binoculars that the crowd on deck did not look
  plague-stricken, decided to send a boat. Two officers came on board,
  listened to the serang, tried to talk with the Arab, couldn't make head
  or tail of it: but of course the nature of the emergency was obvious
  enough. They were also very much struck by discovering a white man, dead
  and curled up peacefully on the bridge. "Fort intrigues par ce cadavre,"
  as I was informed a long time after by an elderly French lieutenant whom
  I came across one afternoon in Sydney, by the merest chance, in a sort
  of cafe, and who remembered the affair perfectly. Indeed this affair,
  I may notice in passing, had an extraordinary power of defying the
  shortness of memories and the length of time: it seemed to live, with
  a sort of uncanny vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their
  tongues. I've had the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years
  afterwards, thousands of miles away, emerging from the remotest possible
  talk, coming to the surface of the most distant allusions. Has it not
  turned up to-night between us? And I am the only seaman here. I am the
  only one to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out! But if
  two men who, unknown to each other, knew of this affair met accidentally
  on any spot of this earth, the thing would pop up between them as sure
  as fate, before they parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and
  at the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: he did not
  seem particularly talkative either; he was a quiet, massive chap in a
  creased uniform, sitting drowsily over a tumbler half full of some
  dark liquid. His shoulder-straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved
  cheeks were large and sallow; he looked like a man who would be given
  to taking snuff--don't you know? I won't say he did; but the habit would
  have fitted that kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of
  Home News, which I didn't want, across the marble table. I said "Merci."
  We exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, before
  I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it, and he was
  telling me how much they had been "intrigued by that corpse." It turned
  out he had been one of the boarding officers.
  
  'In the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of foreign
  drinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and he took a
  sip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was nothing more
  nasty than cassis a l'eau, and glancing with one eye into the tumbler,
  shook his head slightly. "Impossible de comprendre--vous concevez," he
  said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and thoughtfulness. I could
  very easily conceive how impossible it had been for them to understand.
  Nobody in the gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as
  told by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two
  officers. "They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead
  man (autour de ce mort)," he described. "One had to attend to the most
  pressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves--Parbleu!
  A mob like that--don't you see?" he interjected with philosophic
  indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the
  safest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at.
  They got two hawsers on board promptly (en toute hale) and took the
  Patna in tow--stern foremost at that--which, under the circumstances,
  was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to
  be of any great use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on
  the bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded
  the greatest care (exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not
  help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of
  these arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active,
  and he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with his
  thick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one
  of those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the
  sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on whose faces
  the placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown over the mystery
  of pain and distress. He ought to have had a threadbare black soutane
  buttoned smoothly up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with
  shoulder-straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly
  while he went on telling me that it had been the very devil of a job,
  as doubtless (sans doute) I could figure to myself in my quality of a
  seaman (en votre qualite de marin). At the end of the period he inclined
  his body slightly towards me, and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the
  air to escape with a gentle hiss. "Luckily," he continued, "the sea was
  level like this table, and there was no more wind than there is here."
  . . . The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot;
  my face burned as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and
  blushing. They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest
  English port "naturellement," where their responsibility ceased, "Dieu
  merci." . . . He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . "Because,
  mind you (notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quartermasters
  stationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear of our tow in case
  she . . ." He fluttered downwards his heavy eyelids, making his meaning
  as plain as possible. . . . "What would you! One does what one can
  (on fait ce qu'on peut)," and for a moment he managed to invest
  his ponderous immobility with an air of resignation. "Two
  quartermasters--thirty hours--always there. Two!" he repeated, lifting
  up his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. This was
  absolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It gave me the opportunity
  to "note" a starred scar on the back of his hand--effect of a gunshot
  clearly; and, as if my sight had been made more acute by this discovery,
  I perceived also the seam of an old wound, beginning a little below the
  temple and going out of sight under the short grey hair at the side of
  his head--the graze of a spear or the cut of a sabre. He clasped his
  hands on his stomach again. "I remained on board that--that--my memory
  is going (s'en va). Ah! Patt-na. C'est bien ca. Patt-na. Merci. It is
  droll how one forgets. I stayed on that ship thirty hours. . . ."
  
  '"You did!" I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he pursed his lips a
  little, but this time made no hissing sound. "It was judged proper," he
  said, lifting his eyebrows dispassionately, "that one of the officers
  should remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir l'oeil)" . . . he sighed
  idly . . . "and for communicating by signals with the towing ship--do
  you see?--and so on. For the rest, it was my opinion too. We made our
  boats ready to drop over--and I also on that ship took measures. . . .
  Enfin! One has done one's possible. It was a delicate position. Thirty
  hours! They prepared me some food. As for the wine--go and whistle for
  it--not a drop." In some extraordinary way, without any marked change in
  his inert attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he managed
  to convey the idea of profound disgust. "I--you know--when it comes to
  eating without my glass of wine--I am nowhere."
  
  'I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for though he didn't
  stir a limb or twitch a feature, he made one aware how much he was
  irritated by the recollection. But he seemed to forget all about it.
  They delivered their charge to the "port authorities," as he expressed
  it. He was struck by the calmness with which it had been received. "One
  might have thought they had such a droll find (drole de trouvaille)
  brought them every day. You are extraordinary--you others," he
  commented, with his back propped against the wall, and looking himself
  as incapable of an emotional display as a sack of meal. There happened
  to be a man-of-war and an Indian Marine steamer in the harbour at the
  time, and he did not conceal his admiration of the efficient manner in
  which the boats of these two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers.
  Indeed his torpid demeanour concealed nothing: it had that mysterious,
  almost miraculous, power of producing striking effects by means
  impossible of detection which is the last word of the highest art.
  "Twenty-five minutes--watch in hand--twenty-five, no more." . . . He
  unclasped and clasped again his fingers without removing his hands from
  his stomach, and made it infinitely more effective than if he had thrown
  up his arms to heaven in amazement. . . . "All that lot (tout ce monde)
  on shore--with their little affairs--nobody left but a guard of
  seamen (marins de l'Etat) and that interesting corpse (cet interessant
  cadavre). Twenty-five minutes." . . . With downcast eyes and his head
  tilted slightly on one side he seemed to roll knowingly on his tongue
  the savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded one without any further
  demonstration that his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming
  his hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform me that, being
  under orders to make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in
  two hours' time, "so that (de sorte que) there are many things in this
  incident of my life (dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained
  obscure."'
feat_summary_name: Chapter 12
target: Resuming his story, Jim tells us that the men in the lifeboat were rescued by the Avondale. But of course before we can settle in to the story again, Marlow breaks in with his own information on the Patna and how the news of it broke. He seems to have something against telling stories in chronological order. We jump forward in time to Marlow's conversation with a French lieutenant, who was serving aboard the vessel that rescued the Patna. The two meet up in Sydney, and Marlow learns from the lieutenant that his French gunboat towed the Patna to safety. The French lieutenant recalls being bored during much of this, though he and his crew were very interested in the dead body they found .