Conrad's romantic heroes and the chasm that separates the races

There's a certain type of Conrad her0 - we see this in Victory, which I'm reading now, and in many other novels, maybe most of them other than the spy/suspense novels  - a lonesome independent man, enchanted by the sea - whether serving on board a ship or an outcast in the South Pacific islands, often an outsider or mediating figure - that is, although generally European, not of the predominant ethnic group in whatever locale he's inhabiting, and almost always a romantic, a man holding to a code of ideals that others find it convenient to flout or ignore. Axel Heyst (got his name wrong in yesterday's post), the central figure in Victory, is a prime example: a Swede in the South Pacific (the powers that be seem to be English, Portuguese, and Dutch), enchanted by the islands to the point where he settles in one, after his somewhat ridiculous coal-business scheme goes bust and lives as a hermit essentially, and I think a mediator between the "white" and "brown" cultures: he's a European, but to survive alone on his little island he must have dealings withe native populations (I think we'll see more of this later in the novel), and he's a consummate romantic, not only in his odd attraction to the nomadic life on the archipelago but also in his central actions in the novel: his impulsive offer to help a failing businessman that leads to his entry into the coal business (and finally the death of his business partner who returned to England in search of capital), and later his abduction of the young Englishwoman indentured to perform in a traveling all-female orchestra. Heyst meets her and sees that she's being bullied and abused by the orchestra leader and his wife, she tells him of her miserable and impoverished upbringing and of her continual need to fend off the crude advances of men she meets on tour, and Heyst falls in love with her - rather improbable in a few minutes - more accurately, though he doesn't quite articulate or even know this, he falls in love with the idea of rescuing her from her fate, even if that means bringing her to the solitude of his island - a true romantic. We'll see how she takes this twist of fate. It's always notable how Conrad talks about his living alone - when in fact that's highly unlikely, and what he means is living as the only white European. There's a continual sense in his colonial fiction of a wide chasm separating the races, and separating 1st world from 3rd - a chasm so wide and so accepted, at least in Conrad's time (this novel was completed ca 1915) that it hardly bears notice or mention.