The Bottle Imp
If an owner of the bottle dies without having sold it in the prescribed manner, that person's soul will burn for eternity in Hell.
The bottle was said to have been brought to Earth by the Devil and first purchased by Prester John for millions; it was owned by Napoleon and Captain James Cook and accounted for their great successes.
The man of European ancestry has both good and bad news for Keawe: (a) he owns the bottle and is very willing to sell, but (b) he had only paid two cents for it.
His wife suggests they sail, with the bottle, to Tahiti; on that archipelago the colonists of French Polynesia use centimes, a coin worth one fifth of an American cent.
[1] At the time of publication in 1891, the currency system of the Kingdom of Hawaii included cent coins that circulated at par with the U.S. penny.
[2] Part of the storyline takes place in the little town Hoʻokena at the Kona coast of the island of Hawaii, which the author visited.
[3] In a scene which takes place in Honolulu Stevenson mentions Heinrich Berger, the bandmaster of the Royal Hawaiian Band.
[6] Several times Stevenson uses the Hawaiian word Haole, which is the usual term for Caucasians, for example describing the last owner of the bottle.
[8] The Locus Online Index to Science Fiction similarly states "The Stevenson story was first published in Samoan in 1891, appearing later that year in English.
"[9] The Project Gutenberg text of the story has a note by Stevenson[10] which says "...the tale has been designed and written for a Polynesian audience..." which also suggests initial publication in Polynesia, not in the United States.
[11] The story shows that the paradox could be resolved by the existence of certain characters: Since the exchange rates of different currencies can fluctuate with respect to one another, it is also possible that the value of the bottle could increase from one transaction to the next even if the stated price decreases.
This leads to an endless staircase-type paradox which would make it possible, in theory, for the bottle to keep getting sold infinitely many times.
The film was directed by Marshall Neilan, and starred Sessue Hayakawa, Lehua Waipahu, H. Komshi, George Kuwa, Guy Oliver and James Neill.
West German filmmakers the Diehl Brothers used the story as the basis for a feature film shot with a mixture of puppetry and live action, released in 1952 under the title Der Flaschenteufel.
The Devil Inside, an opera based on Stevenson's short story written by the novelist Louise Welsh and the composer Stuart MacRae, premiered at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow in January 2016.
