In which Marlow introduces the remote and mysterious district of Patusan, a place scarcely known beyond obscure government and commercial circles, to which Jim has been sent, carrying with him the weight of his troubled reputation. Amid reflections on the demands of home and the spirit of the land, Marlow contemplates Jim’s remarkable progress there, tinged with a quiet melancholy about the elusive and unfinished nature of a man’s final reckoning.