Action & Adventure Books

CONFIDENCES Beautiful, beautiful was that night! No air that stirred; the black smoke from the funnels of the mail steamer Zanzibar lay low over the surface of the sea like vast, floating ostrich plumes that vanished one by one in the starlight. Benita Beatrix Clifford, for that was her full name, who had been christened Benita after her mother and Beatrix after her father's only sister, leaning... more...

Query Bad Shillings? “Hi!” No answer. “Hi! Dyke!” The lad addressed did not turn his head, but walked straight on, with the dwarf karroo bushes crackling and snapping under his feet, while at each call he gave an angry kick out, sending the dry red sand flying. He was making for the kopje or head of bald granite which rose high out of the level plain—where, save in patches, there was hardly a... more...

CHAPTER I.Description of Fostina's Home—Introduction of Herself and Parents to the Reader—Aunt Aubrey—Sudden Calamity—The Two Brothers and Lewis Mortimer—Introduction of her Uncle, and the Great Change in Fostina's Life.Reader, are you a lover of Nature? And do you behold with pleasure the wonderful works of creation, where the hand of Art has made no claims? Then follow me to the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE REPUBLICAN He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended relationship which did not even possess the virtue of... more...

CHAPTER THE FIRST. OF SUNDRY MY ADVENTURES FROM THE TIME OF MY GOING ABROAD UNTIL MY COMING TO MAN'S ESTATE (WHICH WAS ALL THE ESTATE I HAD).A StrangeNursing-mother—rather a Stepmother of the Stoniest sort—was this Sir Basil Hopwood, Knight and Alderman of London, that contracted with the Government to take us Transports abroad. Sure there never was a man, on this side the land of... more...

CHAPTER I. THE DOCTOR’S INVENTORY. It was a bold project of Hatteras to push his way to the North Pole, and gain for his country the honour and glory of its discovery. But he had done all that lay in human power now, and, after having struggled for nine months against currents and tempests, shattering icebergs and breaking through almost insurmountable barriers, amid the cold of an unprecedented... more...

AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THOMAS NASH. It is mainly, no doubt, but I hope not exclusively, an antiquarian interest which attaches to the name of Thomas Nash. It would be absurd to claim for a writer so obscure a very prominent place in the procession of Englishmen of letters. His works proclaim by their extreme rarity the fact that three centuries of readers have existed cheerfully and... more...

CHAPTER I It had rained steadily for three days, the straight, relentless rain of early May on the Missouri frontier. The emigrants, whose hooded wagons had been rolling into Independence for the past month and whose tents gleamed through the spring foliage, lounged about in one another's camps cursing the weather and swapping bits of useful information. The year was 1848 and the great California... more...

A JUNE WATER The train, a special, made up of a private car and a diner, was running on a slow order and crawled between the bluffs at a snail's pace. Ahead, the sun was sinking into the foothills and wherever the eye could reach to the horizon barren wastes lay riotously green under the golden blaze. The river, swollen everywhere out of its banks, spread in a broad and placid flood of yellow over... more...

JACK GETS INTO HOT WATER—A MORAL LESSON, AND HOW HE PROFITED BY IT—ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. The matter was not ended here, however. When they got on board, there was a very serious reception awaiting them. Their project had been discovered and betrayed to the skipper by some officious noodle, and Captain Willis was not a little alarmed. The consequences might be very serious. So the captain... more...