The Ebb-Tide | Robert Louis Stevenson | Literature | Literature | eBooks
The Ebb-Tide
by Robert Louis Stevenson
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The Ebb-Tide Summary:
| Throughout the island world of the Pacific, scattered men of many European races and from almost every grade of society carry activity and disseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted the steps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marry for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs of the music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable, less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles of plenty, to lack bread. At the far end of the town of Papeete, three such men were seated on the beach under a purao tree. It was late. Long ago the band had broken up and marched musically home, a motley troop of men and women, merchant clerks and navy officers, dancing in its wake, arms about waist and crowned with gar- lands. Long ago darkness and silence had gone from house to house about the tiny pagan city. Only the street lamps shone on, making a glow-worm halo in the umbrageous alleys or drawing a tremulous image on the waters of the port. A sound of snoring ran among the piles of lumber by the Government pier. It was wafted ashore from the graceful clipper-bottomed schooners, where they lay moored close in like dinghies, and their crews were stretched upon the deck under the open sky or huddled in a rude tent amidst the disorder of merchandise. |
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| It is Tahiti in the 1890's and three men--an American sea captain, an English gentleman and a cockney thief--are 'on the beach'. Dispossessed and destitute, the 'trio' agree to sail a smallpox-infected ship loaded with champagne to Sydney, Australia, plotting to steal the cargo, scupper the vessel, and head for the 'Dangerous Archipelago'. Predictably, the thieves fall out. They lose their course and are driven towards an uncharted island which flies the red ensign. The owner of the island, also an English gentleman, has amassed a fortune in pearls. He is both a stern disciplinarian and a religious megalomaniac. As the protagonists in this 'quartette' begin to play out their parts, the plot moves to its dramatic, but ambiguous, conclusion. Stevenson's tale of exploitation in the South Seas recreates both the period and the place through a brilliant exploration of the moral corruption of colonisation. |
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' The Ebb-Tide |
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