Fiction Books

I It was the morning after the shipwreck. The five men still lay where they had slept. A long time had passed since anybody had spoken. A long time had passed since anybody had moved. Indeed, it, looked almost as if they would never speak or move again. So bruised and bloodless of skin were they, so bleak and sharp of feature, so stark and hollow of eye, so rigid and moveless of limb that they might... more...

CHAPTER I Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, before I learned, did I wonder whence came the multitudes of pictures that thronged my dreams; for they were pictures the like of which I had never seen in real wake-a-day life. They tormented my childhood, making of my dreams a procession of nightmares and a little later convincing me that I was different from my kind, a creature unnatural and accursed.... more...

CHAPTER I. OF THE KING OF OAKENREALM, AND HIS WIFE AND HIS CHILD. Of old there was a land which was so much a woodland, that a minstrel thereof said it that a squirrel might go from end to end, and all about, from tree to tree, and never touch the earth: therefore was that land called Oakenrealm. The lord and king thereof was a stark man, and so great a warrior that in his youth he took no delight in... more...

CHAPTER XXIII RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while.  Merlin was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet. Finally I said: "How does the thing promise by this time, partner?" "Behold, I am even... more...

Verily and indeed it is the unexpected that happens! Probably if there was one person upon the earth from whom the Editor of this, and of a certain previous history, did not expect to hear again, that person was Ludwig Horace Holly. This, too, for a good reason; he believed him to have taken his departure from the earth. When Mr. Holly last wrote, many, many years ago, it was to transmit the manuscript... more...

CHAPTER VII MERLIN'S TOWER Inasmuch as I was now the second personage in the Kingdom, as far as political power and authority were concerned, much was made of me.  My raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable.  But habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes; I was aware of that.  I was given the choicest suite of apartments in the... more...

DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting.  They were sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy.  You see, in addition to the dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of... more...

I. THE DISCOVERY It is a strange fact, for which I do not expect ever satisfactorily to account, and which will receive little credence even among those who know that I am not given to romancing—it is a strange fact, I say, that the substance of the following pages has evolved itself during a period of six months, more or less, between the hours of midnight and four o'clock in the morning,... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.  It may be doubted whether a brighter, more prosperous, and specially a more orderly colony than Britannula was ever settled by British colonists. But it had its period of separation from the mother country, though never of rebellion,—like its elder sister New Zealand. Indeed, in that respect it simply followed the lead given her by the Australias, which, when they set up... more...

SLOW TORTURE Straight off, we were in the country.  It was most lovely and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning in the first freshness of autumn.  From hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyond the... more...