. . [T]hese men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals. . . . They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages.

Other black men, enslaved and driven like animals until they are of no further use, are allowed to crawl off and die. Marlow is horrified by these ‘‘moribund shapes’’—‘‘phantoms’’—dying of exhaustion and malnutrition ‘‘as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. ’’ Yet we wait in vain for Marlow to protest to anyone, though he soon encounters the chief accountant of the station, an impeccably dressed and groomed Englishman. There is the suggestion in ‘‘Heart of Darkness, ’’ as elsewhere in Conrad’s work, of a pessimism so deeply entrenched as to be identical with a self-serving political conservatism that conveniently renders any form of activism, even protest, ineffective.

For if all men harbor darkness in their hearts, why try to save them? Why even pity them?

The famous tale ‘‘The Secret Sharer,’’ from Conrad’s collection ’Twixt Land and Sea (1912), similarly reflects the narrowness of its creator’s perspective. Here it is class, not sex or race, that determines a man’s worth: an immature young captain, uneasy in his responsibility, mysteriously protects a fugitive named Leggatt, who has fled another ship after having killed a man; the young captain goes to extraordinary, foolhardy risks to allow Leggatt to escape being brought back to England to be tried; by the end of the suspense story, with the flight of Leggatt, the equation between the two men, forged out of their similar backgrounds and temperaments, has been many times reiterated: Leggatt swims clear of the ship ‘‘as though he were my second self . . . a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.’’

The difficulty for contemporary readers of ‘‘The Secret Sharer,’’ which was one of Conrad’s favorites among his own stories, is that the bond immediately forged between the young captain and the young fugitive is class-ordained and narcissistic: Leggatt has even attended the captain’s school, Conway (‘‘You’re a Conway boy?’’). Leggatt’s act of violence is portrayed as a virtuous act by an upstanding if hot-headed first mate; the man he has killed is of a lower social rank, one of the common sailors: ‘‘He wouldn’t do his duty and wouldn’t let anybody else do theirs. . . . You know well the sort of ill-conditioned snarling cur—’’ Why does the young captain so eagerly take Leggatt at his own word, and make no attempt to verify the story?

He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as our clothes. And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such a character where there are no means of legal repression. And I knew well enough also that my double there was no homicidal ruffian. I did not think of asking him for details, and he told me the story roughly in brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no more. I saw it all going on as though I were myself inside that other sleeping suit.

Where the Doppelgänger (‘‘double’’) relationship between Marlow and Kurtz is mysterious, subtle, and ever-shifting in its meanings, the relationship between the captain and Leggatt is superficial and far too heavily underscored. But ‘‘The Secret Sharer’’ remains one of Conrad’s most characteristic stories, and it contains passages of language as beautifully evocative as the most celebrated passages in ‘‘Heart of Darkness.’’ The opening is particularly effective, setting the tone for a tale of solitary risk and initiation:

On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe . . . for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.

The silent approach of Leggatt, like a phantom in a dream:

The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder.