Portraying a young man"s first sea-voyage to the East in Youth, and the blind old age of Captain Whalley in The End of the Tether, the stories in this volume are united in their theme - the "Ages of Man" - and in their scepticism. Conrad"s vision has influenced twentieth-century writers and artists from T. S. Eliot to Jorge Luis Borges and Werner Herzog, and continues to draw critical fire.