LOUIS BECKE has crowded into the 292 pages of his book of South Sea tales more blood and slaughter than is often found in cloth covers, and yet the setting is so out of the usual that the ghastly element does not seem to obtrude itself unduly. Th-re are dainty and pretty stories too, as “ Ninia,” the tale of the maiden adrift in the boat, — cynical, also, as “ Mrs. Liardet,” as well as the frankly horrible ones like “ An Honour to the Service,” and indeed the majority of the tales. Over them all is the witchery of the tropical ocean, of waving palms and the dashing of surf on coral reefs, of the free rover’s life, and of the languorous grace and barbaric frenzy of the Polynesians. It was bold to name a book so like Stevenson’s “Ebb Tide,” and the name is not new even aside from that, but Mr. Becke gives his readers pleasure enough to cause them to overlook his presumption; for not even Stevenson gives himself up so thoroughly to the spirit of the life he is writing about. The beach comber, the remittance man, the Bully Hayeses, and all their tribes, are drawn with full knowledge and sympathetic touch.
