Action & Adventure Books

CHAPTER I THE GRECIANS AND THE TROJANS There were three boys in the same class in the polytechnic school in the mountainous Odenwald country, in Hesse Darmstadt, who were such great friends and inseparable companions that the other pupils named them "the three-leaved clover." They were near of an age—about eleven—and near of a size; and their names were Fritz, Paul and Franz. Fritz was an... 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...

CHAPTER I.A GLANCE AT THE PAST. “Don't worry about it, mother. It is nothing we can help.” “It seems to me that I might have helped it. If I had gone to General Gordon when your father first spoke about that barrel with the eighty thousand dollars in it, and told him the whole story, things might have turned out differently. But in spite of all he said, I did not suppose that he was in... more...

CHAPTER I ON THEIR WAY The four Merriweather Girls were assembled at the railroad station where the long string of Pullman coaches stood ready. The girls were starting on a vacation trip to the southwest. "What's the matter, now, Joy Evans? Why all the tears?" Bet Baxter, her blond hair in disarray, caught the girl by the shoulders and gave her a rough but affectionate shake. "Oh, let... more...

THE MOTHER'S PRAYER "God grant that it may never happen, Paul; God grant that England may never be invaded, that her foes may never land upon our shores." And the lips of Mrs. Percival moved in silent prayer. Paul regarded the loved face of his mother for a minute or two thoughtfully, as though he were longing to put to her many questions, but dared not. At length he said, breaking the... more...

CHAPTER I. BILLABONG Norah's home was on a big station in the north of Victoria—so large that you could almost, in her own phrase, "ride all day and never see any one you didn't want to see"; which was a great advantage in Norah's eyes. Not that Billabong Station ever seemed to the little girl a place that you needed to praise in any way. It occupied so very modest a position... more...

Sleeping in Snow. Cold comfort is naturally suggested by a bed of snow, yet I have enjoyed great comfort and much warmth in such a bed. My friend Lumley was particularly fond of warmth and of physical ease, yet he often expressed the opinion, with much emphasis, that there was nothing he enjoyed so much as a night in a snow-bed. Jack Lumley was my chum—a fine manly fellow with a vigorous will, a... more...

The Gran Chaco. Spread before you a map of South America. Fix your eye on the point of confluence between two of its great rivers—the Salado, which runs south-easterly from the Andes mountains, and the Parana coming from the north; carry your glance up the former to the town of Salta, in the ancient province of Tucuman; do likewise with the latter to the point where it espouses the Paraguay; then up... 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...

The Norsemen in the West; Or America before Columbus. The Curtain Rises and the Play Begins. One fine autumn evening, between eight and nine hundred years ago, two large hairy creatures, bearing some resemblance to polar bears, might have been seen creeping slowly, and with much caution, toward the summit of a ridge that formed a spur to one of the ice-clad mountains of Greenland. The creatures went on... more...