Ebb-Tide

Stevenson Robert Louis

Description

Best known for rip-roaring adventure tales such as Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson penned the novella The Ebb-Tide in collaboration with his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne. Regarded by critics as a sharp rebuke of British imperialism, the plot revolves around three transients who board a ship that they think is carrying a large quantity of champagne, only to find that their attempted heist has backfired in the worst way imaginable.

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Adventure

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775451372
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE EBB-TIDE
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
LLOYD OSBOURNE
 
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The Ebb-Tide First published in 1894 ISBN 978-1-775451-37-2 © 2011 The Floating Press
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
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Contents
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PART I - A TRIO AND QUARTETTE Chapter 1 - Night on the Beach Chapter 2 - Morning on the Beach—The Three Letters Chapter 3 - The Old Calaboose—Destiny at the Door Chapter 4 - The Yellow Flag Chapter 5 - The Cargo of Champagne Chapter 6 - The Partners PART II - THE QUARTETTE Chapter 7 - The Pearl-Fisher Chapter 8 - Better Acquaintance Chapter 9 - The Dinner Party Chapter 10 - The Open Door Chapter 11 - David and Goliath Chapter 12 - Tail-Piece
PART I - A TRIO AND QUARTETTE
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'There is a tide in the affairs of men.'
Chapter 1 - Night on the Beach
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Throughout the island world of the Pacific, scattered men of manyEuropean races and from almost every grade of society carry activity anddisseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted thesteps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marryfor a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supportsthem in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retainingsome foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic(such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawlin palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs ofthe music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable,less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles ofplenty, to lack bread.
At the far end of the town of Papeete, three such men were seated on thebeach 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. Longago darkness and silence had gone from house to house about the tinypagan city. Only the street lamps shone on, making a glow-worm halo inthe umbrageous alleys or drawing a tremulous image on the waters of theport. A sound of snoring ran among the piles of lumber by the Governmentpier. It was wafted ashore from the graceful clipper-bottomed schooners,where they lay moored close in like dinghies, and their crews werestretched upon the deck under the open sky or huddled in a rude tentamidst the disorder of merchandise.
But the men under the purao had no thought of sleep. The sametemperature in England would have passed without remark in summer; butit was bitter cold for the South Seas. Inanimate nature knew it, and thebottle of cocoanut oil stood frozen in every bird-cage house aboutthe island; and the men knew it, and shivered. They wore flimsy cottonclothes, the same they had sweated in by day and run the gauntlet of thetropic showers; and to complete their evil case, they had no breakfastto 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 miserableEnglish-speaking creatures in Tahiti; and beyond their misery, they knewnext to nothing of each other, not even their true names. For each hadmade a long apprenticeship in going downward; and each, at some stage ofthe descent, had been shamed into the adoption of an alias. And yet notone of them had figured in a court of justice; two were men of kindlyvirtues; and one, as he sat and shivered under the purao, had a tatteredVirgil in his pocket.
Certainly, if money could have been raised upon the book, Robert Herrickwould long ago have sacrificed that last possession; but the demandfor literature, which is so marked a feature in some parts of the SouthSeas, extends not so far as the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which hecould 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 theold calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only lessbeautiful because they lacked the consecration of remembrance. Or hewould pause on random country walks; sit on the path side, gazing overthe sea on the mountains of Eimeo; and dip into the Aeneid, seekingsortes. And if the oracle (as is the way of oracles) replied with novery certain nor encouraging voice, visions of England at leastwould throng upon the exile's memory: the busy schoolroom, the greenplaying-fields, holidays at home, and the perennial roar of London, andthe fireside, and the white head of his father. For it is the destiny ofthose grave, restrained and classic writers, with whom we make enforcedand often painful acquaintanceship at school, to pass into the blood andbecome native in the memory; so that a phrase of Virgil speaks not somuch of Mantua or Augustus, but of English places and the student's ownirrevocable youth.
Robert Herrick was the son of an intelligent, active, and ambitious man,small partner in a considerable London house. Hopes were conceivedof the boy; he was sent to a good school, gained there an Oxfordscholarship, and proceeded in course to the Western University. With allhis talent and taste (and he had much of both) Robert was deficientin consistency and intellectual manhood, wandered in bypaths of study,worked at music or at metaphysics when he should have been at Greek, andtook at last a paltry degree. Almost at the same time, the London housewas disastrously wound up; Mr Herrick must begin the world again asa clerk in a strange office, and Robert relinquish his ambitions andaccept with gratitude a career that he detested and despised. He hadno head for figures, no interest in affairs, detested the constraint ofhours, and despised the aims and the success of merchants. To grow richwas none of his ambitions; rather to do well. A worse or a more boldyoung man would have refused the destiny; perhaps tried his future withhis pen; perhaps enlisted. Robert, more prudent, possibly more timid,consented to embrace that way of life in which he could most readilyassist his family. But he did so with a mind divided; fled theneighbourhood of former comrades; and chose, out of several positionsplaced at his disposal, a clerkship in New York.
His career thenceforth was one of unbroken shame. He did not drink,he was exactly honest, he was never rude to his employers, yet waseverywhere discharged. Bringing no interest to his duties, he broughtno attention; his day was a tissue of things neglected and things doneamiss; and from place to place and from town to town, he carried thecharacter of one thoroughly incompetent. No man can bear the wordapplied to him without some flush of colour, as indeed there isnone other that so emphatically slams in a man's face the doorof self-respect. And to Herrick, who was conscious of talents andacquirements, who looked down upon those humble duties in which he wasfound wanting, the pain was the more exquisite. Early in his fall, hehad ceased to be able to make remittances; shortly after, having nothingbut failure to communicate, he ceased writing home; and about a yearbefore this tale begins, turned suddenly upon the streets of SanFrancisco by a vulgar and infuriated German Jew, he had broken the lastbonds of self-respect, and upon a sudden Impulse, changed his name andinvested his last dollar in a passage on the mail brigantine, the Cityof Papeete. With what expectation he had trimmed his flight for theSouth Seas, Herrick perhaps scarcely knew. Doubtless there were fortunesto be made in pearl and copra; doubtless others not more gifted thanhimself had climbed in the island world to be queen's consorts andking's ministers. But if Herrick had gone there with any manful purpose,he would have kept his father's name; the alias betrayed his moralbankruptcy; he had struck his flag; he entertained no hope to reinstatehimself or help his straitened family; and he came to the islands (wherehe knew the climate to be soft, bread cheap, and manners easy) a skulkerfrom life's battle and his own immediate duty. Failure, he had said, washis portion; let it be a pleasant failure.
It is fortunately not enough to say 'I will be base.' Herrick continuedin the islands his career of failure; but in the new scene and under thenew name, he suffered no less sharply than before. A place was got, itwas lost in the old style; from the long-suffering of the keepers ofrestaurants he fell to more open charity upon the wayside; as time wenton, good nature became weary, and after a repulse or two, Herrick becameshy. There were women enough who would have supported a far worse and afar uglier man; Herrick never met or never knew them: or if he did both,some manlier feeling would revolt, and he preferred starvation. Drenchedwith rains, broiling by day, shivering by night, a disused and ruinousprison for a bedroom, his diet begged or pilfered out of rubbish heaps,his associates two creatures equally outcast with himself, he haddrained for months the cup of penitence. He had known what it was tobe resigned, what it was to break forth in a childish fury of rebellionagainst fate, and what it was to sink into the coma of despair. The timehad changed him. He told himself no longer tales of an easy and perhapsagreeable declension; he read his nature otherwise; he had provedhimself incapable of rising, and he now learned by experience that hecould not stoop to fall. Something that was scarcely pride or strength,that was perhaps only refinement, withheld him from capitulat