Wrong box ; Ebb tide
(Book)

Printing dates may vary.

Wrong box. The Finsbury family has long been involved in a tontine--a scheme in which subscribers invest money in a fund which then falls to the last survivor. Now there are only two aged uncles between Morris and John Finsbury and their fortune. A railway accident appears to dispose of one, and then the farce begins. A masterpiece of black comedy, turning on mistaken identity, the disappearance of a corpse, and several makeshift coffins -- Ebb tide : a trio and quartette. It is Tahiti in the 1890's and three men, an American sea captain, an English gentleman and a cockney thief, are "on the beach". Dispossessed and destitute, the trio agree to sail a smallpox-infected ship loaded with champagne to Sydney, Australia, plotting to steal the cargo, scupper the vessel, and head for the "Dangerous Archipelago". Predictably, the thieves fall out. They lose their course and are driven towards an uncharted island which flies the red ensign. The owner of the island, also an English gentleman, has amassed a fortune in pearls. He is both a stern disciplinarian and a religious megalomaniac. As the protagonists in this quartette begin to play out their parts, the plot moves to its dramatic, but ambiguous, conclusion. Stevenson's tale of exploitation in the South Seas recreates both the period and the place through a brilliant exploration of the moral corruption of colonization.