A new captain, unsure of himself and unknown to his crew, takes the anchor watch alone and finds a naked man in the water at the ship's side - a fugitive from another vessel, and his double in everything but circumstance. Conrad had commanded a ship in those waters and wrote all his fiction in his third language; this is the tightest thing he made. Fifty-eight plates of ships, harbours and sea light, from Aivazovsky to Francis Smith, keep the maritime world of the tale in view throughout.