The image of the law arises, but like the woman, the captain has already experienced a kind of internal, moral shift. Like the woman the captain cannot bear to morally condemn the murderer, or reveal the fact that Leggatt is on his ship when the authorities arrive. Captain Archbold wants to act according to the law, like the men of the Glaspell tale, but Leggatt's protective captain pretends the ship is empty and points out that Leggatt's actions helped save the ship during a storm.

The captain, from a law-abiding man, has suddenly become a man who will evade the law, because he mysteriously perceives himself to be the same as another man. Unlike the feminist identification or mirroring that occurs in the Glaspell tale, the Conrad tale's sense of a "mirror image" of two psychologically united selves is far more mysterious. Eventually, the captain agrees to allow Leggatt to...
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