Frederick Moore was a sailor, soldier, war correspondent, editor, pulp writer and deputy marshal -- the last job got him killed. He wrote about the Pacific and parts of Asia, and while he tends to render Asians and Pacific Islanders as stereotypes, the real subject of most of his work is the ruthlessness and greed of white men. You could argue that the brutal pearl hunters and pirates who populate Moore's world are scapegoats of a sort for the institutionalized brutality of empire. If there were excesses and atrocities, they were the work of evil individuals, not of nations and definitely not of western civilization. In any event, Moore's stories often take place effectively out of reach of imperial authority, in free zones for plunder and exploitation. His plots often pit ruthless men against each other, though someone typically proves less ruthless than he seems. "The Lagoon of the Secret Pearls" (ADVENTURE, March 1, 1928) is not one of those times.
Prowse, a ship captain, encounters the elderly Jenner on an island where the old man has stayed for thirty years acting as a sort of wise man for the natives. After such a long time Jenner finally wants to leave as Prowse's passenger. To make it worth the captain's trouble to come back for him, Jenner shows Prowse a small sack of pearls. Prowse immediately suspects that there's much more where those came from.
We next see Prowse consulting with two pearlers who hired him to scout Jenner's island. They hope to take whatever additional stash Jenner has by force. Toward that end, while Prowse remains at sea, the pearlers land pretending to be castaways. Moore has a rather theatrical yet effective way of building suspense through a series of confrontations where we need to keep score of who knows what about whom. The pearlers know about Jenner's pearls, as we know, but Jenner doesn't know that. He two men set to spying on Jenner, hoping to discover a hideout for a secret stash. Patiently they find their way to Jenner's real treasure, but that only seals their fate. We get the usual pulp trope of Jenner opposing the torture of the pearlers by the natives, but you get the impression that he regrets the loss of his supposed control more than the horrific end the natives plan for the whites who were greedily stupid enough to murder two men on an outrigger. Jenner elicits a promise that the pearlers will leave the island alive. The natives keep their word by lashing the murderers to he backs of giant turtles heading out to sea. The whites will indeed leave alive, but they'll soon drown and end up food for sea creatures.
Prowse discovers what's left of them when the turtles swim past his boat. He's heading in for a final encounter with Jenner. Prowse doesn't know that the pearlers outed him to Jenner as their spy. He doesn't know the truth about Jenner's treasure, or about Jenner himself, which the old man revealed to his late visitors. Now the suspense is over whether Prowse will realize the depth of his peril, and whether Jenner and/or the natives will destroy him. The fact that you feel sympathetic suspense when Prowse arguably deserves whatever he gets proves Moore's skill as a pulp writer. This is the point in a pulp tale where somebody redeems himself, but Moore blows right past it. Neither Prowse nor Jenner gets the opportunity for redemption. The natives, still inflamed by the pearlers' crimes, storm the boat and slaughter Jenner, Prowse and the latter's crew. While Jenner sees this as a reversion to primitive type in his last moments, you could as easily conclude that awareness of Jenner's treasure and the example set by the whites only awakened a more universal greed among the islanders. The story comcludes with a chilling benediction as the dying Jenner confirms the natives' estimate of the power his severed head will bring and declares them his true heirs.
So ends a particularly dark story for an adventure pulp, and probably the best thing of Moore's I've read so far. Thanks to the admirable efforts of a relative handful of scanners who are making the pulp heritage accessible to everyone, you can check this story and the whole issue out for yourself if you have the stomach for it, or the time.
