The author seems obsessed with issues such as sex and procreation.
The protagonist of this novel initially founds a colony of castaways on the Pacific island. He considers it his first duty to distribute 74 shipwrecked women among 307 men. The officers get one woman each; the rest of the men have to share the remaining women.
Remarkably, this same system of distribution is subsequently found to exist in the island society of Sevarambes, which is discovered as soon as the men explore inland.
They find polygamy, polyandry, and collective marriages. But class matters!
Oddly, the women who have intercourse with many men seldom get pregnant, whereas those women who are monogamous give birth to many children.
The author seems to be trying to reassure us that hooligans do not procreate as much as one might expect.
After a detailed examination for venereal (“Neapolitan”) disease, the European men are each allocated a bedtime companion.
The Sevarambes are very relaxed people who love and venerate the sun. They have a complicated democratic system, with elections of osmasionts, coeniobarchs, brosmasionts, and sevarobasts. When they reach the age of seven, children are taken from their parents.
(illustrations from the Dutch edition, Call no Ut 8/113)