The wayward Archie is fenced in with social, moral and judicial rules. What was the situation in the Pacific? There was certainly plenty of opportunity to witness human nature in the raw. Traditional tribal life was breaking down. It had once been firmly stratified and organised, contrary to how it seemed to white incomers who were only too ready to exploit economic innocence and an apparently easy-going sexuality. There was a system of morality that was as strong, however different, as anything devised in the Christian world. To the whites, tribal life looked like moral anarchy while they themselves were a long way from the accustomed boundaries of behaviour – indeed that was part of the place’s attraction. The result was a breeding ground of moral ambivalence which fascinated Stevenson.

The novelist could no longer write about human nature in terms of a contest between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or a balance between prim, whiggish, sensible David Balfour and flamboyant, self-conceited, courageous Alan Breck. The edges of moral responsibility and the margins of moral judgment were too blurred. All around him were people whose customary moral and social structures were destroyed or left behind. This is the territory he explores in the novel The Ebb-Tide (1893) where he looks at the varieties of disintegration exhibited in three individuals who find themselves ‘on the beach’ in Tahiti, a form of destitution that was common in the islands. One of The Ebb-Tide’s characters shows himself to be totally evil. Another is desperately weak and when a figure of authority appears, he submits thankfully to that dubious power. The third, the central character, struggles to maintain his self-respect by seeking resources within himself.

The Beach of Falesá is equally a moral tale. Wiltshire, the hero, is a small-time trader. By the end of the nineteenth Century the focus of white trading in the Pacific was copra, dried coconut meat valuable for its oil. Coconuts were plentiful, native labour to collect them not difficult to harness. Stevenson himself had taken a close look at the copra trade as the Equator had made her way from island to island. ‘The mystery of the copra trade tormented me,’ he wrote in ‘Around Our House’ (In the South Seas), ‘as I sat and watched the profits drip on the stair and sands.’ Traders like Wiltshire, established on island stations, had come to expect an easy time. They offered cheap trade goods in exchange for the copra the islanders brought in, cheated the islanders whenever they could – everyone, it seemed, cheerfully watered the copra to bump up the weight, hence the dripping profits – and assumed there would be no lack of bodily comforts. Women were available, liquor was cheap, and sunshine inexhaustible.

Stevenson’s Wiltshire is no different from any other trader, and in many respects this is still true at the end of the story. He does not change, and his identity as hero does not blot out his shortcomings. He retains the prejudices and limitations with which he started out. We are in no doubt that he is in the business of exploitation, and although there is a certain charm in his frankness the reader quickly recognises him as an ordinary and unremarkable sort of man. The tone and rhythm of his thought and speech tell us this. But they also tell us that, plain man though he is, he is not unresponsive to his surroundings. He appreciates the setting moon, the scent of the mountains, the prospect of fresh experience.

Stevenson’s portrayal through the first person of a character who gives away more about himself than he states is a fine achievement. As the oblique unfolding of personality is continued, deeper levels of moral ambivalence are revealed. Wiltshire has no scruples about cheating the natives, yet he is troubled, not so much by exploitation itself as by the hypocrisy that surrounds it. His feelings about the marriage to Uma, the island girl who is acquired for him, demonstrate this. He does not object to being provided with a woman.