On the eve of his first command, the first-person narrator of “The Secret Sharer” wondered how far he “should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly” (Conrad,' Twixt Land and Sea, p. 94). Although he almost fails to realize that ideal, he does finally achieve what he sees as “the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command” (p. 143). But, pursuing that ideal more often has fatal consequences for Conrad's characters who dream the wrong dreams. More significantly, they remain innocent of the understanding, revealed through the fiction, that the dream, the ideal, has been shaped. A man might believe he is setting up that ideal “for himself,” or that the ideal simply exists as a monolithic absolute, an unquestioned truth, but in fact, the provenance is more complex. What creates the desire? In Conrad's fiction, in large part, it is constructed and carried on by the dreams and narratives of others, oral texts and written ones, especially by the adventure fiction and travel writing of the day. On the margins of Almayer's story but crucial to it is the shaping of Nina's desires by her mother's stories of a heroic past. Similarly, Lingard's ideals of heroic conduct are shaped by the narratives of sea-going missionaries.