 Conrad emphasises that he did not set the novel down in despair, but rather he had doubts as to how to handle the subject matter presented in "The Rescue" through his prose.When Conrad set this novel aside, it was to work on "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'".Once Conrad started working on other novels, he kept working from beginning to end on new stories, and kept setting "The Rescue" to the side, as the other novels were "on the tip of my pen" as Conrad wrote.