The Ebb-Tide: A Trio And Quartette

On the beach at Papeete, in Tahiti, three ruined men are starving: Herrick, an Oxford graduate who has failed at everything; Davis, an American captain who lost his ship while drunk; and Huish, a vicious London clerk. Given command of a schooner whose captain has died of smallpox, they plan to steal it with its cargo of champagne, but the cargo is not what it seems, and they come to an unknown island ruled by Attwater, a pearl fisher, a religious fanatic and a deadly shot.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the novella with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne in Samoa, and it was published in 1894, the year of his death. It is one of his darkest stories, about the moral collapse of men far from home. Read Stevenson's Treasure Island and Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) came from a family of Edinburgh lighthouse engineers and was expected to follow them, but chose writing, despite lungs so weak he was often bedridden. He travelled constantly in search of health, married the American Fanny Osbourne and wrote Treasure Island for her son.

Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child's Garden of Verses followed, and in 1890 he settled in Samoa, where the islanders called him Tusitala, the teller of tales. He died there at forty-four and is buried on a hilltop above his home.