Only hours before, the young son of Colonel Cumner had one of those experiences that changes an eighteen-year-old boy to a man -- and now the promise of death was hanging over his head, here in Mandakan. The Dakoon, the ruler who sat guarded by four sacred warriors, was dying -- and the one whom all called Cumner's Son was now on a mission to an outlaw, to seek aid for the British outpost in a time when the present calm was threatening to shatter.

Novelist Sir Gilbert Parker (1862-1932) wrote some of his most entrancing stories, published here in "Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk," based on his experiences in Australia and the islands of the Pacific.