In this collection, first published in 1912, Conrad has brought vividly to life the world of the sea and its adventurers. 'The only bond,' he wrote 'between these three stories is, so to speak, geographical, for their scene, be it land, be it sea, is situated in the same region which may be called the region of the Indian Ocean.'
The stories themselves are impressive examples of his shorter fiction : with their qualities of suspense and adventure, tragedy and romance, they evoke all the atmosphere of the Indies and the characters to be found there : the reprobate Jacobus and his castaway daughter Alice ; the young captain who, surprising by himself, takes on board a mysterious swimmer in the Gulf of Siam ; and in the last story, which one reader at the time said was so intolerably harrowing that Conrad had no right to publish it, he has created in Freya one of his most enduring and compelling heroines.