eurs did not
want to be told about them in Stevenson's "Letters from the South
Seas." Stevenson "collected songs and legends": fortunately he also
worked at "The Master of Ballantrae," in spite of frequent illnesses,
and many perils of the sea. "The Master of Ballantrae" was finished at
Honolulu; the closing chapters are the work of a weary pen.

He had made tryst with an evil genius that was essential to the
conception of the book, and with a hideous tale of fraternal hatred,
told by a constitutional coward. Everything is under the shadow of
thunder and lit by lightning. A glimpse of Allan Breck, and the
babblings of the Chevalier Bourke, are the only relief. But the life is
as clearly seen as life in Stevenson's books always is, for example when
the guinea is thrown through the stained window pane, or the old
serving-man holds the candle to light the duel of brothers who are born
foes; or as in the final scenes of desperate wanderings in the company
of murderers through Canadian snows. But the book, as Sir Henry Yule
said, is "as grim as the road to Lucknow"--as it was intended to be.

A fresh cruise, in the following year, bettered his health, and brought
him the anecdote of a mystery of the sea which was the germ of "The
Wrecker." He saw Samoa, and bought land there--Vailima--the last and
best of his resting-places; and here he was joined, in 1891, by his
intrepid mother. He was now a lord of land, a householder in his
unpretentious Abbotsford, and "a great chief" among the natives,
distracted as they were by a king _de facto_, and a king over the water,
with the sonorous names of Malietoa and Mataafa. Samoan politics, the
strifes of Germany, England, and the States, were labyrinthine: their
chronicle is written in his "Footnote to History." My conjectures as to
the romantic side of his dealings with the rightful king are vague and
need not be recorded. "You can be in a new conspiracy every day," said
an Irishman with zest, but conspiracies are better things in fiction
than in real life; and Stevenson had no personal ambitions, and, withal,
as much common sense as Shelley displayed in certain late events of his
life. He turned to the half-finished "Wrecker" and completed it.

When the story began to appear in "Scribner's Magazine" it seemed full
of vivacity and promise. The opening scenes in the Pacific were like
Paradise, as the author said, to dwellers in Brixton, or other purlieus
of London. The financial schoo