A self-important English philosopher and his haughty, beautiful daughter sail to the South Pacific in hope of locating the daughter's wrongly accused fiancée and rehabilitating his reputation. An evasive silk planter who may have met the man in question has other plans, however, for the beautiful, if dangerously vapid, daughter. A patent medicine salesman goes into partnership with an honest but financially troubled ship owner. What could go possibly wrong? During the Napoleonic era, a young British naval officer has a terrifying encounter involving a bed in Spain in which an Archbishop has once slept. The kind-hearted captain of a small steamer in the Far East undertakes a voyage to collect silver dollars being withdrawn from circulation from various trading stations, but runs up against three vicious rogues, one without hands, who have their own ideas about where those dollars belong. Even the greatest authors have to pay their bills — and these four stories, originally published in magazines, would appear to show Conrad writing very much in a bill-paying frame of mind. (Summary by Peter Dann)