'Twixt Land and Sea

’Twixt Land and Sea is a collection of Joseph Conrad’s three short stories—“A Smile of Fortune,” “The Secret Sharer,” and “Freya of the Seven Isles”—published together in a single volume as Conrad meant them to be.

In “A Smile of Fortune,” a ship’s captain meets the seemingly genial Mr. Jacobus and his irritable brother while embarking in the tropics. One a respectable businessman with a considerable reputation, the other a confessed rogue and entrepreneur with no reputation left to lose, the captain is at a loss to determine which he should befriend. In this masterly tale of misplaced loyalty, family feuds, and illicit bargaining, the captain finds himself the unwitting partner in a deeply unorthodox transaction.

In “The Secret Sharer,” Leggatt, formerly chief mate of the Sephora, a neighboring ship in the Gulf, sneaks onto a young, untested captain’s ship and joins him on deck. Leggatt admits to killing a fellow crewman a few weeks ago, for which he was subsequently stripped of his duties and kept under arrest onboard. The captain hides him from his own crew … and must decide his fate.

Conrad explores how the lust for power can drive men to greatness—or its opposite—in “Freya of the Seven Isles,” a sweeping saga set against a turbulent background of barely suppressed hostilities between Dutch and British merchant navies in the Indian Ocean basin.