feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/novelguide/Lord Jim/section_10_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapters 24-26
feat_summary_id: chapters 24-26
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 24-26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter24-26", "summary": "Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . Chapter Twenty Four begins with a description of Patusan, which Marlow visits nearly two years later. It is 'straight and sombre, and faces a misty ocean'. When Marlow goes there, the elderly headsman, who acts as his pilot, calls Jim 'Tuan Jim'  with a tone of familiarity and awe. . . The narrative switches back to the time of Jim's arrival . On his journey up the river, Jim sat on Marlow's box and held the unloaded revolver. He tells Marlow later that he never felt as depressed and tired as when he was sitting there. When Jim thought he had arrived, he jumped out and a boat full of armed men appeared alongside him. He was startled and would have shot somebody if his gun had been loaded. Kassim then ran out to him and told him the Rajah wants to see him. . . Jim points out to Marlow that if he had been 'wiped out', this place 'would have been the loser'. Jim tells him this in the moonlight and says he is now trusted in all the houses. He also says he has no thought of leaving especially since he has been informed that Stein wants him to keep the house and trading goods. Initially Jim wants to disagree with this idea, but Marlow corrects him. Marlow also sees that 'all these things that made him master had made him captive too'. Jim looks at his surroundings with an 'owner's eye', but Marlow believes that it is they that possess him. . . In Chapter Twenty Five, Marlow and Jim visit the Rajah. They are both given coffee and Jim tells him he does not have to drink it. When they leave, Jim explains there is a risk that the Rajah might try to poison them. Jim takes the risk every month as many people trust him to do so. He then explains how he escaped the Rajah's courtyard . He suddenly decided to escape when his 'extreme peril dawned upon him'. He leapt over his confines and landed on a soft and sticky mud bank. He managed to crawl up it and, covered in mud, he crossed half the settlement. He noticed children run away in fear, but he is taken in by Doramin, the chief of the Bugis and rival of the Rajah . . . Chapter Twenty Six begins with Marlow describing Doramin as 'one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen'. He has an immense bulk and looks 'monumental'. His son, Dain Waris, is a most distinguished youth and Jim now sees him as his best friend . . . Jim realizes how lucky he has been because when he first arrived in the Bugis community, he 'was in a most critical position'. Each man was afraid for himself and of the Rajah and a newcomer, Sherif Ali, and Jim could see that something needed to be done. He devised a plan and gained the community's confidence including that of Doramin and Dain Waris. Jim's idea was to take Sherif Ali's camp in the hills and directed the attack . Marlow recalls looking at Jim and thinking he dominated the forest. He also remembers the incident which gave Jim this new direction and thinks of it as 'a shadow in the light'. .", "analysis": "Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . On Marlow's visit to Jim in Patusan, it transpires that Jim has not only settled into having a new life there, he is also highly regarded . At last, Jim has found the admiration and status he has sought since he was child reading literature of heroic deeds. His successful plan to attack Sherif Ali's camp has helped to bring him this trusted status and his decision to formulate this can be seen to be inspired by his dreams of leadership and honorability."}
text: 'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight
  and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts
  of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers
  clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers,
  with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing
  a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting
  sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.
  
  'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch
  of the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then,
  and Stein's little schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her
  way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from
  "irresponsive parties." Such a state of affairs belonged already to
  ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing
  village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me
  (the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his
  talk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan
  Jim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange
  mixture of familiarity and awe. They, in the village, were under that
  lord's special protection, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If
  he had warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was
  hearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had turned
  two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The
  talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the
  phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his
  son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience,
  who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them
  the amazing fact.
  
  'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to
  many of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many generations
  had been released since the last white man had visited the river that
  the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that
  descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan
  was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than
  suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What
  would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part
  of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the
  anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out
  was got ready. The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless
  old hag cursed the stranger.
  
  'He sat in it, as I've told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded
  revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution--than which there is nothing
  more fatiguing--and thus entered the land he was destined to fill with
  the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon
  of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with
  its labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise
  again--the very image of struggling mankind--and faced the immovable
  forests rooted deep in the soil, soaring towards the sunshine,
  everlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself.
  And his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting
  to be uncovered by the hand of the master. He too was the heir of a
  shadowy and mighty tradition! He told me, however, that he had never in
  his life felt so depressed and tired as in that canoe. All the movement
  he dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the
  shell of half a cocoa-nut floating between his shoes, and bale some of
  the water out with a carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard
  the lid of a block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but
  several times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and
  between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the
  sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to
  decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a
  log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No
  fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all
  but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in
  a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came
  right down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage.
  Such was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any
  man ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime
  his three paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of
  delivering him up to the Rajah.
  
  '"I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze
  off for a time," he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe coming
  to the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been
  left behind, of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade
  on his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a low point of
  land and taking to their heels. Instinctively he leaped out after them.
  At first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but
  he heard excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured
  out, making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men
  appeared on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting
  off his retreat.
  
  '"I was too startled to be quite cool--don't you know? and if that
  revolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody--perhaps two, three
  bodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it wasn't. . . ."
  "Why not?" I asked. "Well, I couldn't fight the whole population, and
  I wasn't coming to them as if I were afraid of my life," he said, with
  just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the glance he gave me.
  I refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the
  chambers were actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way.
  . . . "Anyhow it wasn't," he repeated good-humouredly, "and so I just
  stood still and asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike
  them dumb. I saw some of these thieves going off with my box. That
  long-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I'll show him to you to-morrow)
  ran out fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, 'All
  right.' I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply walked in through
  the gate and--and--here I am." He laughed, and then with unexpected
  emphasis, "And do you know what's the best in it?" he asked. "I'll tell
  you. It's the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that
  would have been the loser."
  
  'He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I've
  mentioned--after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm
  between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen
  descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There
  is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the
  dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its
  inconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which--say what you
  like--is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound:
  misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all
  forms of matter--which, after all, is our domain--of their substance,
  and gives a sinister reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were
  very real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as though
  nothing--not even the occult power of moonlight--could rob him of his
  reality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he
  had survived the assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was
  still; even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It was the
  moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter
  isolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along
  the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the
  water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with
  black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures
  pressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and
  there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living
  spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose.
  
  'He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go
  out one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes,
  confident in the security of to-morrow. "Peaceful here, eh?" he asked.
  He was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that
  followed. "Look at these houses; there's not one where I am not trusted.
  Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask any man, woman, or child . . ." He
  paused. "Well, I am all right anyhow."
  
  'I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had been
  sure of it, I added. He shook his head. "Were you?" He pressed my arm
  lightly above the elbow. "Well, then--you were right."
  
  'There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low
  exclamation. "Jove!" he cried, "only think what it is to me." Again he
  pressed my arm. "And you asked me whether I thought of leaving. Good
  God! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr.
  Stein's . . . Leave! Why! That's what I was afraid of. It would have
  been--it would have been harder than dying. No--on my word. Don't
  laugh. I must feel--every day, every time I open my eyes--that I am
  trusted--that nobody has a right--don't you know? Leave! For where? What
  for? To get what?"
  
  'I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was
  Stein's intention to present him at once with the house and the stock
  of trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would make the
  transaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at
  first. "Confound your delicacy!" I shouted. "It isn't Stein at all. It's
  giving you what you had made for yourself. And in any case keep your
  remarks for McNeil--when you meet him in the other world. I hope it
  won't happen soon. . . ." He had to give in to my arguments, because all
  his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these
  things that made him master had made him a captive, too. He looked with
  an owner's eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses,
  at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind,
  at the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was
  they that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought,
  to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.
  
  'It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud--for him, if not so
  certain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful. It was
  not so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange how little
  account I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be
  at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he
  had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation,
  his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his
  readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like
  keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a
  dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness
  in his stammerings. He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now
  and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how
  deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the
  certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land
  and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous
  tenderness.'
  '"This is where I was prisoner for three days," he murmured to me (it
  was on the occasion of our visit to the Rajah), while we were making our
  way slowly through a kind of awestruck riot of dependants across Tunku
  Allang's courtyard. "Filthy place, isn't it? And I couldn't get anything
  to eat either, unless I made a row about it, and then it was only
  a small plate of rice and a fried fish not much bigger than a
  stickleback--confound them! Jove! I've been hungry prowling inside this
  stinking enclosure with some of these vagabonds shoving their mugs right
  under my nose. I had given up that famous revolver of yours at the first
  demand. Glad to get rid of the bally thing. Look like a fool walking
  about with an empty shooting-iron in my hand." At that moment we came
  into the presence, and he became unflinchingly grave and complimentary
  with his late captor. Oh! magnificent! I want to laugh when I think of
  it. But I was impressed, too. The old disreputable Tunku Allang could
  not help showing his fear (he was no hero, for all the tales of his hot
  youth he was fond of telling); and at the same time there was a wistful
  confidence in his manner towards his late prisoner. Note! Even where he
  would be most hated he was still trusted. Jim--as far as I could follow
  the conversation--was improving the occasion by the delivery of a
  lecture. Some poor villagers had been waylaid and robbed while on their
  way to Doramin's house with a few pieces of gum or beeswax which they
  wished to exchange for rice. "It was Doramin who was a thief," burst
  out the Rajah. A shaking fury seemed to enter that old frail body.
  He writhed weirdly on his mat, gesticulating with his hands and feet,
  tossing the tangled strings of his mop--an impotent incarnation of rage.
  There were staring eyes and dropping jaws all around us. Jim began to
  speak. Resolutely, coolly, and for some time he enlarged upon the text
  that no man should be prevented from getting his food and his children's
  food honestly. The other sat like a tailor at his board, one palm on
  each knee, his head low, and fixing Jim through the grey hair that
  fell over his very eyes. When Jim had done there was a great stillness.
  Nobody seemed to breathe even; no one made a sound till the old Rajah
  sighed faintly, and looking up, with a toss of his head, said quickly,
  "You hear, my people! No more of these little games." This decree
  was received in profound silence. A rather heavy man, evidently in a
  position of confidence, with intelligent eyes, a bony, broad, very dark
  face, and a cheerily of officious manner (I learned later on he was the
  executioner), presented to us two cups of coffee on a brass tray, which
  he took from the hands of an inferior attendant. "You needn't drink,"
  muttered Jim very rapidly. I didn't perceive the meaning at first, and
  only looked at him. He took a good sip and sat composedly, holding the
  saucer in his left hand. In a moment I felt excessively annoyed. "Why
  the devil," I whispered, smiling at him amiably, "do you expose me to
  such a stupid risk?" I drank, of course, there was nothing for it, while
  he gave no sign, and almost immediately afterwards we took our leave.
  While we were going down the courtyard to our boat, escorted by the
  intelligent and cheery executioner, Jim said he was very sorry. It was
  the barest chance, of course. Personally he thought nothing of poison.
  The remotest chance. He was--he assured me--considered to be infinitely
  more useful than dangerous, and so . . . "But the Rajah is afraid of
  you abominably. Anybody can see that," I argued with, I own, a certain
  peevishness, and all the time watching anxiously for the first twist of
  some sort of ghastly colic. I was awfully disgusted. "If I am to do any
  good here and preserve my position," he said, taking his seat by my
  side in the boat, "I must stand the risk: I take it once every month, at
  least. Many people trust me to do that--for them. Afraid of me! That's
  just it. Most likely he is afraid of me because I am not afraid of his
  coffee." Then showing me a place on the north front of the stockade
  where the pointed tops of several stakes were broken, "This is where
  I leaped over on my third day in Patusan. They haven't put new stakes
  there yet. Good leap, eh?" A moment later we passed the mouth of a muddy
  creek. "This is my second leap. I had a bit of a run and took this one
  flying, but fell short. Thought I would leave my skin there. Lost my
  shoes struggling. And all the time I was thinking to myself how beastly
  it would be to get a jab with a bally long spear while sticking in the
  mud like this. I remember how sick I felt wriggling in that slime. I
  mean really sick--as if I had bitten something rotten."
  
  'That's how it was--and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped over the
  gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpectedness of his
  coming was the only thing, you understand, that saved him from being at
  once dispatched with krisses and flung into the river. They had him, but
  it was like getting hold of an apparition, a wraith, a portent. What did
  it mean? What to do with it? Was it too late to conciliate him? Hadn't
  he better be killed without more delay? But what would happen then?
  Wretched old Allang went nearly mad with apprehension and through the
  difficulty of making up his mind. Several times the council was broken
  up, and the advisers made a break helter-skelter for the door and out
  on to the verandah. One--it is said--even jumped down to the
  ground--fifteen feet, I should judge--and broke his leg. The royal
  governor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to
  introduce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when,
  getting gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a
  kriss in his hand. But, barring such interruptions, the deliberations
  upon Jim's fate went on night and day.
  
  'Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned by some, glared at
  by others, but watched by all, and practically at the mercy of the first
  casual ragamuffin with a chopper, in there. He took possession of a
  small tumble-down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of filth and rotten
  matter incommoded him greatly: it seems he had not lost his appetite
  though, because--he told me--he had been hungry all the blessed time.
  Now and again "some fussy ass" deputed from the council-room would
  come out running to him, and in honeyed tones would administer amazing
  interrogatories: "Were the Dutch coming to take the country? Would the
  white man like to go back down the river? What was the object of coming
  to such a miserable country? The Rajah wanted to know whether the white
  man could repair a watch?" They did actually bring out to him a nickel
  clock of New England make, and out of sheer unbearable boredom he busied
  himself in trying to get the alarum to work. It was apparently when
  thus occupied in his shed that the true perception of his extreme peril
  dawned upon him. He dropped the thing--he says--"like a hot potato,"
  and walked out hastily, without the slightest idea of what he would,
  or indeed could, do. He only knew that the position was intolerable. He
  strolled aimlessly beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts,
  and his eyes fell on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then--he
  says--at once, without any mental process as it were, without any stir
  of emotion, he set about his escape as if executing a plan matured for a
  month. He walked off carelessly to give himself a good run, and when he
  faced about there was some dignitary, with two spearmen in attendance,
  close at his elbow ready with a question. He started off "from under his
  very nose," went over "like a bird," and landed on the other side with
  a fall that jarred all his bones and seemed to split his head. He picked
  himself up instantly. He never thought of anything at the time; all he
  could remember--he said--was a great yell; the first houses of Patusan
  were before him four hundred yards away; he saw the creek, and as it
  were mechanically put on more pace. The earth seemed fairly to fly
  backwards under his feet. He took off from the last dry spot, felt
  himself flying through the air, felt himself, without any shock, planted
  upright in an extremely soft and sticky mudbank. It was only when he
  tried to move his legs and found he couldn't that, in his own words,
  "he came to himself." He began to think of the "bally long spears." As
  a matter of fact, considering that the people inside the stockade had to
  run to the gate, then get down to the landing-place, get into boats,
  and pull round a point of land, he had more advance than he imagined.
  Besides, it being low water, the creek was without water--you couldn't
  call it dry--and practically he was safe for a time from everything but
  a very long shot perhaps. The higher firm ground was about six feet in
  front of him. "I thought I would have to die there all the same,"
  he said. He reached and grabbed desperately with his hands, and only
  succeeded in gathering a horrible cold shiny heap of slime against his
  breast--up to his very chin. It seemed to him he was burying himself
  alive, and then he struck out madly, scattering the mud with his fists.
  It fell on his head, on his face, over his eyes, into his mouth. He told
  me that he remembered suddenly the courtyard, as you remember a place
  where you had been very happy years ago. He longed--so he said--to be
  back there again, mending the clock. Mending the clock--that was the
  idea. He made efforts, tremendous sobbing, gasping efforts, efforts that
  seemed to burst his eyeballs in their sockets and make him blind, and
  culminating into one mighty supreme effort in the darkness to crack the
  earth asunder, to throw it off his limbs--and he felt himself creeping
  feebly up the bank. He lay full length on the firm ground and saw the
  light, the sky. Then as a sort of happy thought the notion came to him
  that he would go to sleep. He will have it that he _did_ actually go to
  sleep; that he slept--perhaps for a minute, perhaps for twenty seconds,
  or only for one second, but he recollects distinctly the violent
  convulsive start of awakening. He remained lying still for a while, and
  then he arose muddy from head to foot and stood there, thinking he
  was alone of his kind for hundreds of miles, alone, with no help, no
  sympathy, no pity to expect from any one, like a hunted animal. The
  first houses were not more than twenty yards from him; and it was the
  desperate screaming of a frightened woman trying to carry off a child
  that started him again. He pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered
  with filth out of all semblance to a human being. He traversed more
  than half the length of the settlement. The nimbler women fled right and
  left, the slower men just dropped whatever they had in their hands, and
  remained petrified with dropping jaws. He was a flying terror. He says
  he noticed the little children trying to run for life, falling on their
  little stomachs and kicking. He swerved between two houses up a slope,
  clambered in desperation over a barricade of felled trees (there wasn't
  a week without some fight in Patusan at that time), burst through a
  fence into a maize-patch, where a scared boy flung a stick at him,
  blundered upon a path, and ran all at once into the arms of several
  startled men. He just had breath enough to gasp out, "Doramin! Doramin!"
  He remembers being half-carried, half-rushed to the top of the slope,
  and in a vast enclosure with palms and fruit trees being run up to a
  large man sitting massively in a chair in the midst of the greatest
  possible commotion and excitement. He fumbled in mud and clothes to
  produce the ring, and, finding himself suddenly on his back, wondered
  who had knocked him down. They had simply let him go--don't you
  know?--but he couldn't stand. At the foot of the slope random shots were
  fired, and above the roofs of the settlement there rose a dull roar of
  amazement. But he was safe. Doramin's people were barricading the gate
  and pouring water down his throat; Doramin's old wife, full of business
  and commiseration, was issuing shrill orders to her girls. "The old
  woman," he said softly, "made a to-do over me as if I had been her own
  son. They put me into an immense bed--her state bed--and she ran in
  and out wiping her eyes to give me pats on the back. I must have been a
  pitiful object. I just lay there like a log for I don't know how long."
  
  'He seemed to have a great liking for Doramin's old wife. She on her
  side had taken a motherly fancy to him. She had a round, nut-brown,
  soft face, all fine wrinkles, large, bright red lips (she chewed
  betel assiduously), and screwed up, winking, benevolent eyes. She was
  constantly in movement, scolding busily and ordering unceasingly a troop
  of young women with clear brown faces and big grave eyes, her daughters,
  her servants, her slave-girls. You know how it is in these households:
  it's generally impossible to tell the difference. She was very spare,
  and even her ample outer garment, fastened in front with jewelled
  clasps, had somehow a skimpy effect. Her dark bare feet were thrust into
  yellow straw slippers of Chinese make. I have seen her myself flitting
  about with her extremely thick, long, grey hair falling about her
  shoulders. She uttered homely shrewd sayings, was of noble birth, and
  was eccentric and arbitrary. In the afternoon she would sit in a very
  roomy arm-chair, opposite her husband, gazing steadily through a wide
  opening in the wall which gave an extensive view of the settlement and
  the river.
  
  'She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old Doramin sat
  squarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on a plain. He was only
  of the nakhoda or merchant class, but the respect shown to him and
  the dignity of his bearing were very striking. He was the chief of
  the second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about sixty
  families that, with dependants and so on, could muster some two hundred
  men "wearing the kriss") had elected him years ago for their head. The
  men of that race are intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a
  more frank courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppression.
  They formed the party opposed to the Rajah. Of course the quarrels were
  for trade. This was the primary cause of faction fights, of the sudden
  outbreaks that would fill this or that part of the settlement with
  smoke, flame, the noise of shots and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men
  were dragged into the Rajah's stockade to be killed or tortured for the
  crime of trading with anybody else but himself. Only a day or two before
  Jim's arrival several heads of households in the very fishing village
  that was afterwards taken under his especial protection had been driven
  over the cliffs by a party of the Rajah's spearmen, on suspicion of
  having been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah
  Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty
  for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was
  indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and
  rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of
  the organised power of the Celebes men, only--till Jim came--he was not
  afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and
  thought himself pathetically in the right. The situation was complicated
  by a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I believe, on
  purely religious grounds, had incited the tribes in the interior (the
  bush-folk, as Jim himself called them) to rise, and had established
  himself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills. He
  hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he
  devastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their
  blackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into
  the water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a
  curious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation
  stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in Patusan were
  not sure which one this partisan most desired to plunder. The Rajah
  intrigued with him feebly. Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with
  endless insecurity, were half inclined to call him in. The younger
  spirits amongst them, chaffing, advised to "get Sherif Ali with his wild
  men and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country." Doramin restrained
  them with difficulty. He was growing old, and, though his influence had
  not diminished, the situation was getting beyond him. This was the state
  of affairs when Jim, bolting from the Rajah's stockade, appeared before
  the chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner
  of speaking, into the heart of the community.'
  'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen.
  His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look merely fat; he
  looked imposing, monumental. This motionless body, clad in rich stuffs,
  coloured silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a
  red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrinkled,
  furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting on each side of
  wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick-lipped mouth; the throat
  like a bull; the vast corrugated brow overhanging the staring proud
  eyes--made a whole that, once seen, can never be forgotten. His
  impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) was
  like a display of dignity. He was never known to raise his voice. It
  was a hoarse and powerful murmur, slightly veiled as if heard from a
  distance. When he walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the
  waist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the backs of their
  heads, sustained his elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind
  his chair till he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly,
  as if with difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would
  catch him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was
  nothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous
  movements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force. It
  was generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs; but
  nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single word.
  When they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence. They could
  see below them in the declining light the vast expanse of the forest
  country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as the
  violet and purple range of mountains; the shining sinuosity of the river
  like an immense letter S of beaten silver; the brown ribbon of houses
  following the sweep of both banks, overtopped by the twin hills uprising
  above the nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: she,
  light, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of
  motherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy,
  like a figure of a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something
  magnanimous and ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people
  was a most distinguished youth.
  
  'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as he
  looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is already
  father of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large room, lined
  and carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of white sheeting,
  where the couple sat in state surrounded by a most deferential retinue,
  he would make his way straight to Doramin, to kiss his hand--which the
  other abandoned to him, majestically--and then would step across to
  stand by his mother's chair. I suppose I may say they idolised him, but
  I never caught them giving him an overt glance. Those, it is true, were
  public functions. The room was generally thronged. The solemn formality
  of greetings and leave-takings, the profound respect expressed in
  gestures, on the faces, in the low whispers, is simply indescribable.
  "It's well worth seeing," Jim had assured me while we were crossing the
  river, on our way back. "They are like people in a book, aren't they?"
  he said triumphantly. "And Dain Waris--their son--is the best
  friend (barring you) I ever had. What Mr. Stein would call a good
  'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove! I was in luck when I tumbled amongst
  them at my last gasp." He meditated with bowed head, then rousing
  himself he added--'"Of course I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . ."
  He paused again. "It seemed to come to me," he murmured. "All at once I
  saw what I had to do . . ."
  
  'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come through
  war, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him was the power
  to make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so often is right.
  You must not think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived the
  Bugis community was in a most critical position. "They were all afraid,"
  he said to me--"each man afraid for himself; while I could see as plain
  as possible that they must do something at once, if they did not want
  to go under one after another, what between the Rajah and that vagabond
  Sherif." But to see that was nothing. When he got his idea he had
  to drive it into reluctant minds, through the bulwarks of fear, of
  selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was nothing. He had to
  devise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan; and his task
  was only half done. He had to inspire with his own confidence a lot
  of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang back; he had to
  conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all sorts of senseless
  mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and his son's
  fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished
  youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of those strange,
  profound, rare friendships between brown and white, in which the very
  difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic
  element of sympathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that
  he knew how to fight like a white man. This was true; he had that
  sort of courage--the courage in the open, I may say--but he had also a
  European mind. You meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to
  discover unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision,
  a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but
  admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a
  polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky
  face, with big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose
  thoughtful. He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic
  smile, a courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great
  reserves of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye,
  so often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races
  and lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He not only
  trusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak of him because
  he had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his caustic placidity,
  and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy with Jim's aspirations,
  appealed to me. I seemed to behold the very origin of friendship. If
  Jim took the lead, the other had captivated his leader. In fact, Jim
  the leader was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the
  friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body.
  Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom. I felt
  convinced of it, as from day to day I learned more of the story.
  
  'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march, in
  camp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've listened
  to a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after climbing the last
  hundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our escort (we had volunteer
  followers from village to village) had camped meantime on a bit of level
  ground half-way up the slope, and in the still breathless evening the
  smell of wood-smoke reached our nostrils from below with the penetrating
  delicacy of some choice scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their
  distinct and immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled
  tree, and pulling out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and
  bushes was springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass
  of thorny twigs. "It all started from here," he said, after a long and
  meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre
  precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there
  ruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp.
  
  'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had
  mounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty iron
  7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon. But if the
  brass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed recklessly to
  the muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance. The thing was
  to get them up there. He showed me where he had fastened the cables,
  explained how he had improvised a rude capstan out of a hollowed log
  turning upon a pointed stake, indicated with the bowl of his pipe the
  outline of the earthwork. The last hundred feet of the ascent had been
  the most difficult. He had made himself responsible for success on his
  own head. He had induced the war party to work hard all night. Big
  fires lighted at intervals blazed all down the slope, "but up here," he
  explained, "the hoisting gang had to fly around in the dark." From the
  top he saw men moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on
  that night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel,
  directing, encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had
  himself carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the
  level place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the
  big fires--"amazing old chap--real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his
  little fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees.
  Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and
  a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems--in
  exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God
  only knows how _he_ came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor
  foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots of people rushing
  about, shouting and pulling round him--the most solemn, imposing old
  chap you can imagine. He wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had
  let his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he
  had come up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It
  thrilled me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have
  thought us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody
  believed it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled and
  shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done! Upon my
  word I don't think they did. . . ."
  
  'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with a smile
  on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the stump of a
  tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of
  the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints
  of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a
  clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous
  tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape;
  the light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the
  sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and
  polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall
  of steel.
  
  'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of that
  historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the
  old mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in
  his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that
  never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I don't know why he
  should always have appeared to me symbolic. Perhaps this is the real
  cause of my interest in his fate. I don't know whether it was exactly
  fair to him to remember the incident which had given a new direction to
  his life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. It was
  like a shadow in the light.'
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 24-26
target: Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . Chapter Twenty Four begins with a description of Patusan, which Marlow visits nearly two years later. It is 'straight and sombre, and faces a misty ocean'. When Marlow goes there, the elderly headsman, who acts as his pilot, calls Jim 'Tuan Jim'  with a tone of familiarity and awe. . . The narrative switches back to the time of Jim's arrival . On his journey up the river, Jim sat on Marlow's box and held the unloaded revolver. He tells Marlow later that he never felt as depressed and tired as when he was sitting there. When Jim thought he had arrived, he jumped out and a boat full of armed men appeared alongside him. He was startled and would have shot somebody if his gun had been loaded. Kassim then ran out to him and told him the Rajah wants to see him. . . Jim points out to Marlow that if he had been 'wiped out', this place 'would have been the loser'. Jim tells him this in the moonlight and says he is now trusted in all the houses. He also says he has no thought of leaving especially since he has been informed that Stein wants him to keep the house and trading goods. Initially Jim wants to disagree with this idea, but Marlow corrects him. Marlow also sees that 'all these things that made him master had made him captive too'. Jim looks at his surroundings with an 'owner's eye', but Marlow believes that it is they that possess him. . . In Chapter Twenty Five, Marlow and Jim visit the Rajah. They are both given coffee and Jim tells him he does not have to drink it. When they leave, Jim explains there is a risk that the Rajah might try to poison them. Jim takes the risk every month as many people trust him to do so. He then explains how he escaped the Rajah's courtyard . He suddenly decided to escape when his 'extreme peril dawned upon him'. He leapt over his confines and landed on a soft and sticky mud bank. He managed to crawl up it and, covered in mud, he crossed half the settlement. He noticed children run away in fear, but he is taken in by Doramin, the chief of the Bugis and rival of the Rajah . . . Chapter Twenty Six begins with Marlow describing Doramin as 'one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen'. He has an immense bulk and looks 'monumental'. His son, Dain Waris, is a most distinguished youth and Jim now sees him as his best friend . . . Jim realizes how lucky he has been because when he first arrived in the Bugis community, he 'was in a most critical position'. Each man was afraid for himself and of the Rajah and a newcomer, Sherif Ali, and Jim could see that something needed to be done. He devised a plan and gained the community's confidence including that of Doramin and Dain Waris. Jim's idea was to take Sherif Ali's camp in the hills and directed the attack . Marlow recalls looking at Jim and thinking he dominated the forest. He also remembers the incident which gave Jim this new direction and thinks of it as 'a shadow in the light'. .
feat_summary_analysis: Four, Twenty Five and Twenty Six . On Marlow's visit to Jim in Patusan, it transpires that Jim has not only settled into having a new life there, he is also highly regarded . At last, Jim has found the admiration and status he has sought since he was child reading literature of heroic deeds. His successful plan to attack Sherif Ali's camp has helped to bring him this trusted status and his decision to formulate this can be seen to be inspired by his dreams of leadership and honorability.