Category: Adventure
Not that he was really old when he died, but he had lived a life that had robbed him of his youth at one end and cut off the slow decline on the other. At fifteen he began the career of trader and hunter; before twenty he had been tossed by a buffalo, and broken his leg in a f...
Laura recovered from her prostration filled with an intense longing to get away from the savage surroundings, which had too surely left their mark upon her spirits. The whole en...
13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN.The _Swift_ had been almost deserted, as the larger decks of the _Irene_ offered an irresistible attraction, and when the work was abandoned at dusk the crew took possession of...
10. CHAPTER TEN.The _Swift_ was a formidable fighting ship, though built to tackle the midgets of the sea--the 130 feet torpedo boats. She had no torpedo-tube in the stem, which had been streng...
12. CHAPTER TWELVE.Five days after the stormy scene on the bridge, Frank Hume and Webster were lying forward, upon rugs, on the turtle-shell deck, in the full blaze of a hot sun. The sea was calm,...
28. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT."It won't be long before they attack us, will it?" asked Webster quietly; "the main body may be two miles away, or perhaps three, allowing for the roughness of the ground. They...
29. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE."Oh, thank Heaven! Quick! bring him in here out of the sun;" and, sitting down in the shadow of the opening, she took the wounded head upon her lap, and, with a firm, yet soft t...
23. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.They agreed to keep back from Laura the alarming incident of the night, and when she stepped out in the morning, full of curiosity, they made light of their strange visitor, and...
3. CHAPTER THREE.Hume was immediately shown into a tiny box of a cabin and the door locked upon him, an indignity that roused him to wrath, so that he banged against the frail panels with his fist.
5. CHAPTER FIVE."Well, shipmate," said Webster, coming out of the chart house, "have you been promoted from the saloon to the bridge, passing over the cook on the way, just after the old style...
36. CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.Sirayo's leadership had prevailed. He attacked the main body of the enemy before sunrise, and the young warriors of the Rock, fired by his ferocious courage, had withstood the d...
27. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.The day's long march had tired them, and wanting the sociable aid of a fire, they soon fell asleep, each one on his own bed of reeds, lulled by the continuous ripple and murmur...
24. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.The sod wall rose higher against the outside wheels of the waggon, and the Gaika had already lopped off a large number of branches from the mimosa-trees, together with some stun...
26. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.They had passed their first night in safety, disturbed only at intervals by the snorting of buffalo, and in the morning they were seated round the fire, eating rather unpalatabl...
11. CHAPTER ELEVEN.The stricken sloop lay like a log on the ocean as the _Swift_ stretched along into the Atlantic. In less than half an hour she had been struck down, maimed, and humbled by an en...
35. CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.When Sirayo left, Webster, chafing at the narrow limits of the stifling den, knocked away the loose stone and wriggled through into the inner chamber, where they had passed the...
33. CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.They had entered a narrow chamber, into which the light streamed through numerous cracks, in volume sufficient to bring every object into dim relief. For several minutes the lit...
21. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE."Thank Heaven you are alive!" cried Miss Anstrade, taking his hand in both of hers, and looking with tear-dimmed eyes into his face. "It seemed I was not free here from the curs...
14. CHAPTER FOURTEEN.The terrible swiftness of the tragedy following upon the fierce combat had left the spectators on the _Irene_ stupefied. They gazed at the tossing waters with startled eyes, and...
31. CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.Immediately before them rose a conspicuous mound, which they believed to be the ruins marked on the map, and though, from the fires still smouldering near, they knew the Zulus h...
19. CHAPTER NINETEEN.A moment later Webster heard the gallop of a horse, and rushed forward with his rifle cocked, expecting he knew not what. Rapidly the hoof-beats struck sharper through the air,...
20. CHAPTER TWENTY.For the next fortnight they struggled with the difficulties of the road, and Hume had to call to his aid all his resources in navigating his ship of the desert over boulder-stre...
34. CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.After climbing through the hole, Sirayo found himself in a passage so narrow that his broad shoulders jammed, and he was obliged to edge along sideways, and so dark that he had...
7. CHAPTER SEVEN.Into the welcome security of the fog they plunged, and dashed on impetuously, regardless of danger to themselves or other ships from collision, and heedless of the rules about h...
30. CHAPTER THIRTY."Oh, let us get away from here," she said, almost in a whisper. "The precipice so near seems to draw me to it, and in every breath of wind I hear a stealthy footstep."
4. CHAPTER FOUR.Hume had been to the Cape and back; he had also tossed about off the Bristol Channel in a small yacht; but before morning he learnt that the ocean could play more tricks with a...
8. CHAPTER EIGHT.On the afternoon of the fourth day, with lockers almost exhausted of coal, they sighted the outposts of Madeira--jagged rocks, with the clearest of outlines--and made for Funcha...
22. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.To Webster there was nothing unfamiliar in the lonely watches of the night, and the first long silent stretch recalled to him many a fleeting memory of hours spent upon the brid...
9. CHAPTER NINE.Lieutenant Webster joined the Portuguese officer in the chart-room, where, with his gallant attempts to speak French, and his readiness to join in the laughter at his own most a...
32. CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.Unmistakably the sounds of battle. The small Zulu force of marauders must have come into collision with the people of the valley. It had happened as Hume had said, up to a certa...
2. CHAPTER TWO.Frank Hume had some of that tenacity of purpose which had made his uncle a successful hunter and Kaffir trader. He saw plainly enough the quixotic side of the quest to which he...
1. CHAPTER ONE.Not that he was really old when he died, but he had lived a life that had robbed him of his youth at one end and cut off the slow decline on the other. At fifteen he began the c...
25. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.When the night swiftly settled down, a ring of fires sprang up about the little camp, and the warriors seated round chanted their battle songs with many a burst of merriment. Bu...
17. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.It seemed as though the suspicions about the designs of Groot Piet and Lieutenant Gobo were groundless, as for two weeks they trekked on without an obstacle, though Frank found...
15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN.So it came that they left behind them the arid rock of Ascension, the murmur of the sea, and all that it spoke to them of tragedy and defeated hopes. They had set out in quest o...
6. CHAPTER SIX.Torpedo boats! Two insignificant smudges of black, lifting and bowing like a couple of dingy sea-birds in a waste of waters, wretched little things that could be stowed away on...
38. CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.When Sirayo saw that no harm befell Hume for the act of sacrilege, he helped him bring the scattered fragments of the rock to the hidden valley, and when the mass of now shapele...
16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN.As the two horsemen passed over a ridge one of the blacks rose from the fire, stretched himself, and walked off slowly towards the oxen hidden by a cluster of sugar bushes, whos...
18. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.The two friends stood a moment gazing blankly at the empty waggon; then Webster clambered in to see if by any chance Miss Anstrade had left a message, while Hume, in the fading...