The Ebb-Tide

The Ebb-Tide Synopsis

Excerpt from The Ebb-Tide: A Trio and Quartette

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. Long ago dark ness and silence had gone from house to house about the tiny pagan city. Only the street lamps shone on, making a glow-worm halo in the umbrageous alleys or drawing a tremulous image on the waters of the port. A sound Of snoring ran among the piles of lumber by the Government pier. It was wafted ashore from the graceful clipper-bottomed schooners, where they lay moored close in like dinghies, and their crews were stretched upon the deck under the open sky or huddled in a rude tent amidst the disorder of merchandise.

But the men under the parao had no thought of sleep. The same temperature in England would have passed without remark in summer; but it was bitter cold for the South Seas. In animate nature knew it, and the bottle of cocoa nut oil stood frozen in every bird-cage house about the island; and the men knew it, and shivered. They wore ?imsy cotton clothes.

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