The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ebb-Tide, by
Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyde Osbourne

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Title: The Ebb-Tide
A Trio And Quartette

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyde Osbourne

Posting Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #1604]
Release Date: January, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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-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 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 ope