In the time of Napoleon, a thoughtful and romantic young Russian officer finds himself asked to do something unthinkable. In 1868, a Polish boy of eight encounters a real life prince and finds him to be nothing like what he had imagined a prince to be. The captain of a British ship patrolling the North Sea during the Great War comes upon small craft from a neutral country whose captain denies giving aid to the enemy — but is he telling the truth? In the 1880s, an officer in a sailing ship with a very dark secret finds himself under the thumb of a nasty, opinionated captain who believes strongly in the possibility of communicating with the dead. Even at his most anecdotal, Conrad understood well how to hold an audience, and these four tales, collected in book form soon after his death, certainly do that.