Action & Adventure Books

CHAPTER I Vices and virtuesThe sons of mortals bearIn their breasts mingled;No one is so good That no failing attends him,Nor so bad as to be good for nothing.         Ha'vama'l (High Song of Odin). It was back in the tenth century, when the mighty fair-haired warriors of Norway and Sweden and Denmark, whom the people of Southern Europe called the Northmen, were becoming known and... more...

Chesapeake Bay The stingaree swam slowly through the warm waters of Chesapeake Bay. Geography meant nothing to the ray, whose sole interest in life was food, but his position—had he known it—was in the channel that runs between Poplar Island and the town of Wittman on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The ray was also directly in the path of an odd-looking cruising houseboat, the Spindrift, that had... more...

CHAPTER I The Good Grey Nerve His name was Sanford Hantee, but you will hear that only occasionally, for the boys of the back streets called him Skag, which "got" him somewhere at once. That was in Chicago. He was eleven years old, when he wandered quite alone to Lincoln Park Zoo, and the madness took him. A silent madness. It flooded over him like a river. If any one had noticed, it would have... more...

I. SHANGHAIED This is to be a story of a battle, at least one murder, and several sudden deaths. For that reason it begins with a pink tea and among the mingled odors of many delicate perfumes and the hale, frank smell of Caroline Testout roses. There had been a great number of debutantes "coming out" that season in San Francisco by means of afternoon teas, pink, lavender, and otherwise. This... more...

The White Silence 'Carmen won't last more than a couple of days.' Mason spat out a chunk of ice and surveyed the poor animal ruefully, then put her foot in his mouth and proceeded to bite out the ice which clustered cruelly between the toes. 'I never saw a dog with a highfalutin' name that ever was worth a rap,' he said, as he concluded his task and shoved her aside.... more...

PROLOGUE. The girl came into the room with a darting movement like a swallow, looked round her with the same birdlike quickness, and then ran across the polished floor to where a young man sat on a sofa with one leg laid along it. "I have saved you this dance, Quentin," she said, pronouncing the name with a pretty staccato. "You must be lonely not dancing, so I will sit with you. What shall... more...

The Castle of the Shadows WHERE DREAMLAND BEGAN According to the calendar it was winter; but between Mentone and the frontier town of Ventimiglia, on the white road inlaid like a strip of ivory on dark rocks above the sapphire of the Mediterranean, it was fierce summer in the sunshine. A girl riding between two men, reined in her chestnut mare at a cross-road which led into the jade-green twilight of... more...

An Algerine Story. The Hero is Blown away, Captured, Crushed, Comforted, and Astonished. One beautiful summer night, about the beginning of the present century, a young naval officer entered the public drawing-room of a hotel at Nice, and glanced round as if in search of some one. Many people were assembled there—some in robust, others in delicate, health, many in that condition which rendered it... more...

CHAPTER I A SCRAP OF PAPER It was a dismal, sodden morning, with heavy clouds banked in the western sky. Rain had sloshed down since midnight so that the gutter in front of me was a turbid little river. A chill wind swept across the city and penetrated to the marrow. From the summit of the hill, three blocks above me, my car was sliding down, but I clung to the curb to postpone until the last moment a... more...

CHAPTER XI. "COME in," says the woman, and I did.  She says:  "Take a cheer." I done it.  She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: "What might your name be?" "Sarah Williams." "Where 'bouts do you live?  In this neighborhood?' "No'm.  In Hookerville, seven mile below.  I've walked all the way and I'm all tired... more...