Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION This book is a protest and a deliverance. For seven years I had written continuously of Canada, though some short stories of South Sea life, and the novel Mrs. Falchion, had, during that time, issued from my pen. It looked as though I should be writing of the Far North all my life. Editors had begun to take that view; but from the start it had never been my view. Even when writing Pierre... more...

CHAPTER I SIGHTING THE SHOOTING STAR "Green light off the starboard bow, sir." The voice came from the black void far above the navigating bridge of the battleship "Long Island." "Where away?" demanded the watch officer on the bridge. "Two points off starboard bow, sir." "What do you make her out?" "Don't make her out, sir," answered the red-haired... more...

CHAPTER I THE ALBATROSS The fo’c’sle, lit by a teapot lamp, shewed the port watch in their bunks, snoring, all but Harbutt and Raft seated on a chest, Harbutt patching a pair of trousers, Raft smoking. Raft was a big red-headed man with eyes that seemed always roving over great distances as though in search of something. He was thirty-two years of age and he had used the sea since twelve—twenty... more...

CHAPTER I What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention—spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance.  He had been conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she was staying; the party of visitors at the... more...

Here the dark cave, along which Nat Starrett had been creeping, broadened into what his powerful searchlight revealed to be a low, wide, smoothly circular room. At his feet lapped black, thick-looking waves of an underground lake, a pool of viscous substance that gave off a penetrating, poignant odor of acid, sweetish and intoxicating, unlike any acid he knew. The smell rolled up in a sickening, sultry... more...

he examiner looked doubtful and said, "But Mr. Holloway, regulations require that I read your log before I take verbal testimony." Holloway's face was drawn and ravaged. His bloodshot eyes sat in black pits. They were trained on the Examiner but looked through him rather than at him. Holloway said, "But, I must talk! I've got to tell you about it. I have to keep talking."... more...

CHAPTER I ANTHONY PATCH In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As... more...

Chapter One Nothing could have been more painful to my sensitiveness than to occupy myself, confused with blushes, at the center of the whole world as a living advertisement of the least amusing ballet in Paris. To be the day's sensation of the boulevards one must possess an eccentricity of appearance conceived by nothing short of genius; and my misfortunes had reduced me to present such to all... more...

CHAPTER I. The opening bars of a waltz sounded through the house above the irregular murmur of conversation, bearing their promise and summons along festal corridors and into garlanded nooks and alcoves. Paul Middleton drew a breath of relief as the girl to whom he had been talking was carried off to dance, for she had bored him intolerably. The refreshment room, crowded a moment ago, was thinning... more...

CHAPTER I. SINGING SAL. On a certain golden afternoon in August, when the sea was as still and radiant as the vaulted blue overhead, and when the earth was lying so hushed and silent that you would have thought it was listening for the chirp of the small birds among the gorse, a young girl of about seventeen or so was walking over the downs that undulate, wave on wave, from Newhaven all along the coast... more...