This compendium surveys a sequence of South‑Sea adventures centred on David Grief, a wealthy, sun‑tanned island magnate whose energy, tastes and caprice shape the lives and fortunes around him. Grief is portrayed as a “son of the sun”: at ease in tropical heat, a risk‑taker and a man whose wealth lets him treat dangerous games as sport.

Chapter One opens with Harrison J. Griffiths aboard the ketch Willi‑Waw, feverish, miserly and desperate to escape a creditor. David Grief appears unexpectedly to demand a debt of £1,200. A violent, near‑fatal struggle ends with Grief rescued by his Gooma crew; he escapes ashore with the money while Griffiths is left to sail off ruined and humbled — an early episode that establishes Grief’s audacity and the brutal material stakes of island life.

Subsequent chapters follow Grief’s wider enterprises. We meet Aloysius Pankburn, an educated but alcoholic Englishman whom Grief rehabilitates by forcing hard shipboard labour on the Kittiwake. Pankburn recuperates, learns discipline, and becomes eager, ambitious, and loyal — his transformation an exemplar of Grief’s rough‑minded benevolence.

Grief’s voyages take him to Francis Island, where a claim about buried treasure inspires a perilous expedition; to Fuatino, where he confronts murderous white pirates (Raoul Van Asveld and his cutthroats) who have enslaved women and terrorized natives. With Mauriri, the Goat‑Man, Grief executes a daring campaign using dynamite from a cliff magazine; the pirate flotilla is destroyed, the Rattler sunk, and Grief reclaims the island.

On New Gibbon Grief’s practical politics and the Trouble‑mender McTavish face Koho, an infamous chief who alternates savagery and collaboration. A foolhardy joke with liniment and liquor erupts into massacre and the loss of plantation labourers; McTavish later returns with grim trophies, underscoring colonial fragility.

A subtle caper involves Swithin Hall’s “secret island.” Grief exposes imposture and seizes pearls: he negotiates with an impostor (Captain Raffy), engineers a creative settlement, and takes possession of a pearl hoard in a document that reads like calculated reprisal, blending salvage, bluff and theatrical justice. Another episode sends Deacon, a boastful gambler, to Karo‑Karo as the price of a lost wager — Grief’s mixture of severity and opportunity.

Finally, at Hikihoho (Parlay’s lagoon), Parlay, an eccentric pearl‑owner, gathers buyers for an auction. A hurricane devastates the atoll; treachery (Narii Herring) and elemental fury combine. Grief’s vessel, the Malahini, survives by engine work and seamanship; Parlay dies in the storm and the wreckage reveals both the cost of greed and Grief’s hard‑practical resourcefulness.

Through these linked tales the book sketches the harsh comedy and moral complexity of South‑Sea commerce: law, piracy, native politics, storms, salvage, and the temperament of a man who is at once benefactor, gambler and conqueror of suns and seas.