'Twixt Land and Sea by Joseph Conrad, Fiction, Classics, Short Stories 12+

📙 "One day -- and that day was many years ago now -- I received a long, chatty letter from one of my old chums and fellow-wanderers in Eastern waters. He was still out there, but settled down, and middle-aged; I imagined him -- grown portly in figure and domestic in his habits; in short, overtaken by the fate common to all except to those who, being specially beloved by the gods, get knocked on the head early. The letter was of the reminiscent "do you remember" kind -- a wistful letter of backward glances. And, amongst other things, "surely you remember old Nelson," he wrote. "Remember old Nelson! Certainly. And to begin with, his name was not Nelson. . . ."