GOLD PLAYS BY EUGENE G. O’NEILL THE MOON OF THE CARIBBEES AND SIX OTHER PLAYS OF THE SEA BEYOND THE HORIZON THE STRAW GOLD GOLD A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS BY EUGENE G. O’NEILL [Illustration: colophon] BONI AND LIVERIGHT PUBLISHERS NEW YORK GOLD COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC. _Printed in the United States of America_ SCENES OF ACTS ACT ONE--A barren coral island on the fringe of the Malay archipelago--Noon. ACT TWO--Interior of a boat shed on the wharf of the Bartlett place on the California coast. An afternoon six months later. ACT THREE--Exterior of the Bartlett house--dawn of the following morning. ACT FOUR--Bartlett’s “cabin”--his lookout post--at the top of the house. A night one year later. _Time of the play--About the year 1900_ ACT I CHARACTERS CAPTAIN ISAIAH BARTLETT, _of the whaling ship, Triton_ SILAS HORNE, _boatswain of the Triton_ BEN CATES } JIMMY KANAKA, _an Islander_ } _of the Triton’s crew_ BUTLER, _cook of the Triton_ ABEL, _the ship’s boy_ SARAH ALLEN BARTLETT, _the captain’s wife_ SUE, _their daughter_ NAT, _their son_ DANIEL DREW, _officer of a freight steamer_ DOCTOR BERRY ACT ONE SCENE--_A small, barren coral island on the southern fringe of the Malay Archipelago. The coral sand, blazing white under the full glare of the sun, lifts in the right foreground to a long hummuck a few feet above sea-level. A stunted coco palm rises from the center of this elevation, its bunch of scraggly leaves drooping motionlessly, casting a small circular patch of shadow directly beneath on the ground about the trunk. About a hundred yards in the distance the lagoon is seen, its vivid blue contrasting with the white coral beach which borders its circular outline. The far horizon to seaward is marked by a broad band of purplish haze which separates the bright blue of the water from the metallic grey-blue of the sky. The island bakes. The intensity of the sun’s rays is flung back skyward in a quivering mist of heat-waves which distorts the outlines of things, giving the visible world an intangible eerie quality, as if it were floating submerged in some colorless molten fluid._