In these four stories, written between 1900 and 1902, Joseph Conrad slowly bids farewell to his adventurous life at sea and begins to confront the more challenging complexities of life on land in the twentieth century. In "Typhoon," Conrad reveals the differences between instinct and intelligence through the steadfast courage of an undemonstrative captain and the resourceful willingness of his young first mate, in a partnership essential to human survival. The companion sea story, "Falk," contrasts, as Conrad once put it, "ordinary sentimentality with the honest point of view of a more or less primitive man"—a man who, however, has a conscience about the girl he desires. One of the "land stories" explores the utter isolation of an Eastern European immigrant in England; the other chronicles the fate of a woman ironically caught in the unintended alliance of two retired widowers—each blind in his own way.