The Arrow of Gold

Set in the 1870s, this tale concerns the love of an English sea captain for the Spanish beauty Dona Rita. He carries Carlist munitions to Peninsular ports, she finances the project.

Conrad recounts all the adventures of gun-running and the ever-threatening sea, but never loses his theme, the beautiful and transitory nature of love.

Conrad treasured this story, and explained it as a fragment from his "buried youth."