But that is rough criticism.  Moreover it is almost demonstrably false.  For the weakness of The Wrecker, such as it was, lay in the Paris and Barbizon business and the author’s failure to make this of one piece with the main theme, with the romantic histories of the Currency Lass and the Flying Scud.  But which of the two partners stands responsible for this Pais-Barbizon business?  Mr. Stevenson beyond a doubt.  If you shut your eyes to Mr. Stevenson’s confessed familiarity with the Paris and the Barbizon of a certain era; if you choose to deny that he wrote that chapter on Fontainebleau in Across the Plains; if you go on to deny that he wrote the opening of Chapter XXI. of The Wrecker; why then you are obliged to maintain that it was Mr. Osbourne, and not Mr. Stevenson, who wrote that famous chapter on the Roussillon Wine—­which is absurd.  And if, in spite of its absurdity, you stick to this also, why, then you are only demonstrating that Mr. Lloyd Osbourne is one of the greatest living writers of fiction:  and your conception of him as a mere imp of mischief jogging the master’s elbow is wider of the truth than ever.

No; the vital defect of The Wrecker must be set down to Mr. Stevenson’s account.  Fine story as that was, it failed to assimilate the Paris-Barbizon business. The Ebb-Tide, on the other hand, is all of one piece.  It has at any rate one atmosphere, and one only.  And who can demand a finer atmosphere of romance than that of the South Pacific?

The Ebb-Tide, so far as atmosphere goes, is all of one piece.  And the story, too, is all of one piece—­until we come to Attwater:  I own Attwater beats me.  As Mr. Osbourne might say, “I have no use for” that monstrous person.  I wish, indeed, Mr. Osbourne had said so:  for again I cannot help feeling that the offence of Attwater lies at Mr. Stevenson’s door.  He strikes me as a bad dream of Mr. Stevenson’s—­a General Gordon out of the Arabian Nights.  Do you remember a drawing of Mr. du Maurier’s in Punch, wherein, seizing upon a locution of Miss Rhoda Broughton’s, he gave us a group of “magnificently ugly” men?  I seem to see Attwater in that group.

But if Mr. Stevenson is responsible for Attwater, surely also he contributed the two splendid surprises of the story.  I am the more certain because they occur in the same chapter, and within three pages of each other.  I mean, of course, Captain Davis’s sudden confession about his “little Adar,” and the equally startling discovery that the cargo of the Farallone schooner, supposed to be champagne, is mostly water.  These are the two triumphant surprises of the book:  and I shall continue to believe that only one living man could have contrived them, until somebody writes to Samoa and obtains the assurance that they are among Mr. Osbourne’s contributions to the tale.