AustLit

Becke relates his initial meeting with Hayes in San Francisco and his later experiences as supercargo on Hayes's ship, the Leonora, including the ship's destruction during a cyclone in the Caroline Islands.

A cowardly trader fails to save his Islander wife when she is abducted by a young island chief.

Two men and a woman become fugitives after an attempted abduction of one of the men's former lovers goes wrong.

Tom Denison, a trader, has discovered the secret of making a remarkable type of soap. His rival, a German trader, is driven mad with the desire to obtain the secret, with tragic results.

Watson, a trader, sets out in a canoe to return to his own island, Nanomaga, when the people there signal they are in trouble. He is accompanied by a man from the Ellice Island (now Tuvalu), Tassia of Onotoa. On the way Watson falls ill from poisoned gin, sold to him by a rival trader, and Tassia swims to Nanomaga to raise the alarm, but is attacked and killed by a shark just as he gets there. Some years later Watson gets revenge on his enemy.

A ship's captain conspires with an island chief to steal the first mate's female companion. After the chief forces his wife to jump to her death for defying him he blames the girl and returns her to the ship. The mate then plots his revenge.

When his ship puts into Palau for repairs the supercargo meets an old man living alone on the island. The man invites him for supper and relates the story of his life as a pirate.

A gold prospector devises a plan to rescue a woman from her abusive husband.