‘Twixt Land and Sea (1912) contains three long stories written for magazines in the 1909 11 period. ‘The Secret Sharer’ is one of the great tales in the English language. All three tales explore a young captain under stress. Although in this period of renewed personal and financial turmoil Conrad’s imagination turns nostalgically to life at sea, the sea is no longer the simplified world of’Typhoon’ or ‘The End of the Tether’, where moral distinctions are clear. In these 1909- 11 tales, a young captain is faced with circumstances and emotional traumas for which neither the maritime code nor his experience has prepared him.
