to retire. They were evil-doers, but their destiny
had been evil, too. Had he ever advised them ill?
Had his words ever brought suffering to the people?
he asked. He believed that it would be best to
let these whites and their followers go with their
lives. It would be a small gift. “I
whom you have tried and found always true ask you
to let them go.” He turned to Doramin.
The old nakhoda made no movement. “Then,”
said Jim, “call in Dain Waris, your son, my friend,
for in this business I shall not lead."’
CHAPTER 43
‘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
