'Twixt Land and Sea.

'Twixt Land and Sea (1912) is a collection of three tales by Joseph Conrad — "A Smile of Fortune," "The Secret Sharer," and "Freya of the Seven Isles" — gathered from their original appearances in literary magazines and published in a single volume of only 3,500 copies. The collection owes its existence to an unexpected visit Conrad received in 1909 from Captain C.M. Marris, a seafarer he had known in his youth in the Malay Archipelago, who informed him that many of his old colleagues at sea were avid readers of his fiction — an encounter that inspired Conrad to return to short story writing after a hiatus of several years, and to whom he dedicated the volume. Written while he was working on Under Western Eyes, these stories marked the turning point in Conrad's professional fortunes that Chance would soon confirm, pulling him out of a prolonged period of critical respect but modest commercial success. The collection is known above all for "The Secret Sharer," generally regarded as one of Conrad's finest shorter works, second only to Heart of Darkness — a tale of a newly appointed sea captain who hides and protects a fugitive stowaway, with strong psychological elements in which the identities of the two men overlap in increasingly surreal and morally complex ways.