Types of Conrad novels

Joseph Conrad's Victory is not exactly one of his novels of the sea, for which he is most notably and justifiably famous, but one of his novels of another sort - of the mostly European population in the South Sea Islands who live by trading  up and down the coast and who mainly seem to be people, men actually, whose guiding spirit in life is the exotic and the isolate. The central character in this "yarn," very typical of Conrad in that the central character does not tell his own story but the entire narrative is conveyed to us by a loquacious yet presumably reliable (and unnamed) narrator - who tells us what he can, there are some elements to the story that remain shrouded in mystery (a first-person narrator can withhold information for a # of reasons but would have all the information, at least from his or her own perspective). Axel Heym, a Swede, is the main character, a man who traded in the most remote parts of Indonesia and SE Asia, eventually setting up as an agent for a South Pacific coal company - this business highly symbolic as it was coal that fueled the steamships that were replacing the sailing vessels and changing life forever in the region, both aesthetically and economically - but his coal business failed (unsurprisingly), his business partner returned home to his much-loathed Dorsetshire, where he died, and Heym stayed on in his small island, a complete recluse. How does he live? How dies he even survive? He must deal with the native tribes in the area, but he's the only European - and a source of wonder and mystery to the narrator and other merchants in the region, who have their own hierarchical culture. On one of his rare trips to one of the trading ports, Heym (not sure I have his name correctly) runs off with an English (?) woman who's entertaining int he region as part of an all-female band - a scandalous affair that turns him even more into a pariah. A friendly merchant makes a point of passing by Heym's port every 23 days - usually H makes no sign of recognition, but one day he raises a flag and the merchant pulls up to the port and finds Heym very disturbed - H provides the merchant with a shawl that he wants returned to its owner in the port city. What a strange novel about a strange and long-gone culture and way of life.