



Produced by Dianne Bean





THE EBB-TIDE

A TRIO AND QUARTETTE


By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyde Osbourne



          'There is a tide in the affairs of men.'




Part I.



Chapter 1. NIGHT ON THE BEACH

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- 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 garlands. 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.

But the men under the purao had no thought of sleep. The same
temperature in England would have passed without remark in summer; but
it was bitter cold for the South Seas. Inanimate nature knew it, and the
bottle of cocoanut oil stood frozen in every bird-cage house about
the island; and the men knew it, and shivered. They wore flimsy cotton
clothes, the same they had sweated in by day and run the gauntlet of the
tropic showers; and to complete their evil case, they had no breakfast
to mention, less dinner, and no supper at all.

In the telling South Sea phrase, these three men were ON THE BEACH.
Common calamity had brought them acquainted, as the three most miserable
English-speaking creatures in Tahiti; and beyond their misery, they knew
next to nothing of each other, not even their true names. For each had
made a long apprenticeship in going downward; and each, at some stage of
the descent, had been shamed into the adoption of an alias. And yet not
one of them had figured in a court of justice; two were men of kindly
virtues; and one, as he sat and shivered under the purao, had a tattered
Virgil in his pocket.

Certainly, if money could have been raised upon the book, Robert Herrick
would long ago have sacrificed that last possession; but the demand
for literature, which is so marked a feature in some parts of the South
Seas, extends not so far as the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which he
could not exchange against a meal, had often consoled him in his hunger.
He would study it, as he lay with tightened belt on the floor of the
old calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only less
beautiful because they lacked the consecration of remembrance. Or he
would pause on random country walks; sit on the path side, gazing over
the sea on the mountains of Eimeo; and dip into the Aeneid, seeking
sortes. And if the oracle (as is the way of oracles) replied with no
very certain nor encouraging voice, visions of England at least
would throng upon the exile's memory: the busy schoolroom, the green
playing-fields, holidays at home, and the perennial roar of London, and
the fireside, and the white head of his father. For it is the destiny of
those grave, restrained and classic writers,