But instead he leads him to concealment in his cabin. This is the point at which our captain could, and by all the rules should, arrest Leggatt. However, he had escaped his locked cabin and had swum between islands to reach the narrator's ship. Leggatt, a "stranger" on the other ship just as our captain was on this, would certainly face the gallows on landing. During a storm which nearly sank their ship on their voyage here, Leggatt was physically wrestling with the man to make him to pull a rope when a freak wave threw them both against a bulwark and the man was killed. Still on deck, Leggatt explains that he was the First Mate of the other ship, but under arrest for murdering a crew member. Once on board he and the captain find a natural rapport, almost as if he, Leggatt, were the captain's other self especially as the captain has now fetched some of his own clothes that Leggatt is now wearing. The naked swimmer is hesitant to talk or come on board, but seems pleased to discover he is speaking to the captain. As the only man on deck in the small hours, he sees that a man has swum up to the ship's side. That night, the captain, being restless, unusually takes the watch. An incoming ship is anchored similarly a couple of miles away, awaiting a tug to go upriver. He is unsure of his ability to exert his authority over the officers and crew who have been together for some time, and makes the point several times that he is the "stranger" on board.Īfter being towed down-river (presumably from Bangkok) by a steam tug, the ship is left at anchor near a group of small barren islands a few miles off shore, waiting for wind to begin its voyage. The narrator is the ship's young captain, and he is unfamiliar with both his ship and his crew, having joined the ship only a fortnight earlier. In common with many of Conrad's stories, it is narrated in the first person. The date is probably in the 1880s (when Conrad was at sea himself). The story takes place on a sailing ship in the Gulf of Siam (now the Gulf of Thailand), at the start of a voyage with cargo for Britain.
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