The Wrecker
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Stevenson, Robert Louis
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 813276
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: wrecker.txt
subject: man
subject: captain
subject: carthew
subject: pinkerton
subject: time
subject: internet
subject: wiretap
subject: electronic
subject: edition
subject: wrecker
subject: robert
subject: louis
subject: stevenson
subject: written
subject: collaboration
subject: lloyd
subject: osbourne
subject: edinburgh
subject: john
subject: hamm
subject: mindlink
subject: public
subject: domain
subject: english
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: stevenson-wrecker-167.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: stevenson-wrecker-167.htm
sort title: Wrecker, The
full text: THE INTERNET WIRETAP ELECTRONIC EDITION OF The Wrecker By Robert Louis Stevenson written in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne Edinburgh Edition 1896 Prepared by John Hamm <John_Hamm@MindLink.bc.ca> This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN, released January 1994 Scanned with OmniPage Professional OCR software donated by Caere Corporation. PROLOGUE IN THE MARQUESAS IT was about three o'clock of a winter's afternoon in Tai-o-hae, the French capital and port of entry of the Marquesas Islands. The trades blew strong and squally; the surf roared loud on the shingle beach; and the fifty-ton schooner of war, that carries the flag and influence of France about the islands of the cannibal group, rolled at her moorings under Prison Hill. The clouds hung low and black on the surrounding amphitheatre of mountains; rain had fallen earlier in the day, real tropic rain, a waterspout for violence; and the green and gloomy brow of the mountain was still seamed with many silver threads of torrent. In these hot and healthy islands winter is but a name. The rain had not refreshed, nor could the wind invigorate, the dwellers of Tai-o-hae: away at one end, indeed, the commandant was directing some changes in the residency garden beyond Prison Hill; and the gardeners, being all convicts, had no choice but to continue to obey. All other folks slumbered and took their rest: Vaekehu, the native Queen, in her trim house under the rustling palms; the Tahitian commissary, in his be-flagged official residence; the merchants, in their deserted stores; and even the club- servant in the club, his head fallen forward on the bottle-counter, under the map of the world and the cards of navy officers. In the whole length of the single shoreside street, with its scattered board houses looking to the sea, its grateful shade of palms and green jungle of puraos, no moving figure could be seen. Only, at the end of the rickety pier, that once (in the prosperous days of the American rebellion) was used to groan under …