Action & Adventure Books

The Wreck on the “Gunfleet.” It was emphatically “a dirty night.” The barometer had been slowly but persistently falling during the two previous days; the dawn had been red and threatening, with a strong breeze from S.E.; and as the short dreary November day waxed and waned this strong breeze had steadily increased in strength until by nightfall it had become a regular “November gale,” with... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CONTESSA'S LETTER TO MR. MOLE—ON PLEASURE BENT—THE MENDICANT FRIAR—MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS—HOUSE BREAKING. When Mrs. Harkaway's maid returned to the villa, she got scolded for being so long upon an errand of some importance with which she had been entrusted. Thereupon, she was prepared with twenty excuses, all of which were any thing but the truth. The words of warning which... more...

Over Yonder. It was very, very hot. That is to say, it was as hot as it knows how to be in Johnstown, Guiana, which means a damp, sticky, stifling kind of heat. The sun made the muddy river look oily, and the party of three seated under the great fig-tree which shaded the boarding-house by the wharf seemed as if they were slowly melting away like so much of the sugar of which the wharves and warehouses... more...

Preface. Sir Alexander Mackenzie was one of the most energetic and successful of the discoverers who have traversed the vast wilderness of British America. He did his work single-handed, with slender means, and slight encouragement, at a time when discovery was rare and the country almost terra incognita. The long and difficult route, so recently traversed by the Red River Expedition, was, to Sir... more...

HO, FOR CALIFORNIA. One beautiful misummer night in 18— a large, heavily laden steamer was making her way swiftly up the Pacific coast, in the direction of San Francisco. She was opposite the California shore, only a day's sail distant from the City of the Golden Gate, and many of the passengers had already begun making preparations for landing, even though a whole night and the better part of a... more...

CHAPTER I "Some one to see you, Mr. Tom." It was Koku, or August, as he was sometimes called, the new giant servant of Tom Swift, who made this announcement to the young inventor. "Who is it, Koku?" inquired Tom, looking up from his work-bench in the machine shop, where he was busy over a part of the motor for his new noiseless airship. "Any one I know? Is it the 'Blessing... more...

THE PLAY COMMENCES. Blown to bits; bits so inconceivably, so ineffably, so "microscopically" small that—but let us not anticipate. About the darkest hour of a very dark night, in the year 1883, a large brig lay becalmed on the Indian Ocean, not far from that region of the Eastern world which is associated in some minds with spices, volcanoes, coffee, and piratical junks, namely, the Malay... more...

“Hillo, Roger! glad to find you at last. I have been hunting up and down along the cliffs for the last hour or more, till I began to fear that you must have been carried off by a Barbary corsair, or spirited away on the end of Mother Shipton’s broomstick.” The speaker was a fine-looking lad of sixteen, dressed in the costume worn by Puritans in the time of the second Charles—a long cloth coat... more...

THE NEW PROJECT Tom Swift appeared to be calm, although in reality he was about as excited over his latest invention as he ever had been about anything in his life. "I'm sure it's going to work, Ned!" he said eagerly to his chum as they neared Tom's private laboratory. "With my new device I hope to learn more about the planets. I want to start soon—" "Listen... more...

Chapter One. Wet, worn and weary—with water squeaking in his boots, and a mixture of charcoal and water streaking his face to such an extent that, as a comrade asserted, his own mother would not have known him—a stout young man walked smartly one morning through the streets of London towards his own home. He was tall and good-looking, as well as stout, and, although wet and weary, had a spring in... more...