Jack London

MOON-FACE John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind, cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes, and I... more...

CHAPTER I I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s credit.  He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain.  When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and... more...

CHAPTER I MY EAGLE The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples sweet cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the sunshine, and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is so quiet and peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless. It is the quiet that makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the world is quiet, but it is the quiet before the storm. I... more...

CHAPTER I "All ready, Miss Welse, though I'm sorry we can't spare one of the steamer's boats." Frona Welse arose with alacrity and came to the first officer's side. "We're so busy," he explained, "and gold-rushers are such perishable freight, at least—" "I understand," she interrupted, "and I, too, am behaving as though I were perishable.... more...

CHAPTER I BROTHER AND SISTER They ran across the shining sand, the Pacific thundering its long surge at their backs, and when they gained the roadway leaped upon bicycles and dived at faster pace into the green avenues of the park. There were three of them, three boys, in as many bright-colored sweaters, and they "scorched" along the cycle-path as dangerously near the speed-limit as is the... more...

CHAPTER I—THE DESCENT “But you can’t do it, you know,” friends said, to whom I applied for assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of London.  “You had better see the police for a guide,” they added, on second thought, painfully endeavouring to adjust themselves to the psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better credentials than brains.... more...

BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN I Law, order, and restraint had carved Frederick Travers' face. It was the strong, firm face of one used to power and who had used power with wisdom and discretion. Clean living had made the healthy skin, and the lines graved in it were honest lines. Hard and devoted work had left its wholesome handiwork, that was all. Every feature of the man told the same story, from the... more...

CHAPTER I Not until Mister Haggin abruptly picked him up under one arm and stepped into the sternsheets of the waiting whaleboat, did Jerry dream that anything untoward was to happen to him.  Mister Haggin was Jerry’s beloved master, and had been his beloved master for the six months of Jerry’s life.  Jerry did not know Mister Haggin as “master,” for “master” had no place in Jerry’s... more...

CHAPTER I It was a quiet night in the Shovel. At the bar, which ranged along one side of the large chinked-log room, leaned half a dozen men, two of whom were discussing the relative merits of spruce-tea and lime-juice as remedies for scurvy. They argued with an air of depression and with intervals of morose silence. The other men scarcely heeded them. In a row, against the opposite wall, were the... more...

CHAPTER I—THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.  The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light.  A vast silence reigned over the land.  The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it... more...