THE WRECKER
by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
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
beflagged 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
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