The Great Quest A romance of 1826, wherein are recorded the experiences of Josiah Woods of Topham, and of those others with whom he sailed for Cuba and the Gulf of Guinea

Unless you have lived in a little town where every man's business is his neighbor's, you cannot imagine the furor in the village of Topham when our fellow citizens learned that...

Why at this particular time the bawling voice of the native should thus have called us to action is not easy to say, for you would think that, having become familiar with it, we...

Matterson, Gleazen and the trader, Arnold, Abe and I, and the white girl and her great black servant, all were crowded into a frail dugout, which must long since have foundered,...

That some extraordinary thing was afoot next day, every soul who worked in our store, or who entered it on business, vaguely felt. To me, who had gained a hint of what was going...

To the dark land on the sky-line, we swiftly drew nearer, and presently saw a low shore where a thread of gleaming white, which came and went, told us unmistakably that great se...

First there was talk of old times, for it seemed that Matterson and Gleazen and Captain Jones were friends of long standing. Then there was talk of strange wars and battles, par...

To sleep at that moment would have required more than human self-control. Forgetting every personal grudge, every cause of enmity, we huddled together, seven men alone in an ali...

When I was a boy in school, I one day ran across a translation of Homer's Iliad and carried it home and read it afternoons for a week. During those days I lived in the great pic...

On the morning when we sighted land, I saw the big Fantee canoeman standing in the waist and looking with eager eyes at the distant shore. I suppose it was because I was still s...

Very slowly Matterson whistled that old tune, "The Nightingale," and very slowly an answer came back to us; then a long silence ensued. The black water of the marsh rose and fel...

For three days I watched with growing amazement the strange behavior of my uncle. Now he would sit hunched up over his desk and search through a great pile of documents from the...

Pulling hard at our oars, we rowed up the river, along the shore and so near it that the shadows of the mangroves almost concealed us. My breath came in quick, hard gasps; the s...

Seeing it now for the first time since he had returned to the brig, Gleazen planted one finger on the picture of the spot where we had found the wrecked ship with the bones of t...

With Captain North back on board again, we felt great confidence for the future; and while we remained in Havana there was no other attempt, so far as I know, to do us harm. But...

Night and morning we got little rest. We ate another meal from our slender store; but it was a fearful thing to see how few meals remained; and though in part we satisfied our h...

Having succeeded in establishing himself in the society and confidence of the more substantial men of the village, and having discomfited completely those few--among whom remain...

You would have expected the captain's departure to make a great stir in a vessel; yet scarcely a person forward knew what was going on, and aft only Seth Upham and Willie MacDou...

The noise of the crew as they catted the anchor and made sail must have waked me more than once, for to this very day I remember hearing distinctly the loud chorus of a chantey,...

As we ran down the footpath, we heard them after us like hounds on the trail, and I tell you, it galled me to run from that cowardly pack. Oh, for one good fight, I thought! For...

My uncle was still pacing back and forth when I came out into the sunset; then, almost at once, the twilight had come and gone, and I saw him as a deeper shadow moving up and do...

Much as I hated and distrusted Cornelius Gleazen,--and in the months since I first saw him sitting on the tavern porch in Topham he had given me reason for both,--I continually...

One morning early in the summer of 1826, I brushed the sweat from my forehead and the flour from my clothes, unrolled my shirt-sleeves to my wrists, donned my coat, and, with ne...

At the time I did not know whether it was two days or ten that I lay in that borderland of consciousness. But as I emerged from it into a clearer, more real world, I saw now the...

Hunger and thirst were stripping away the last vestige of our pretended good-will, and our two parties glared at each other in a sullen rage, which seemed visibly to grow more i...

That Cornelius Gleazen had returned to Topham a reformed and honest man, the less skeptical people in the village now freely asserted. To be sure, some said that no good could c...

Even had I not suspected already that Matterson had brought vessels into the mouth of that river many times before, I could not have doubted it after seeing him bring the Advent...

The brig Adventure, two thousand miles from home, lay now in the strong, silent current of a great tropical river, which seemed to me to have an almost human quality. In its dep...

All day Seth Upham had scarcely said a word. From dawn until dark he had paced the hut, apparently buried deep in thought. Only his gaunt, pitiful face revealed the extent to wh...

We drove for a long time in silence, with the jolting of the chaise and the terrible scenes behind us to occupy our minds; and I assure you it was a grim experience. In all the...

The village of Topham, to which, after an absence of twenty years, Cornelius Gleazen had returned as a stranger, lay near the sea and yet not beside it, near the post road and y...

We breakfasted next morning with Gideon North, and discussed in particular Gleazen and Matterson and in general affairs on board the Adventure. It seemed ages ago that I had fir...

"Neil, Molly, sure and we'd best put out to sea. This is no time for us, surely. A month from now, say, we could slip in by night with a boat--"

Blood was running from a great gash above his ear and across his cheek, which we hastened to bind to the best of our ability, and he lay down on the floor with his head on his h...

It was spring when we came back to Topham. The sun was warm upon the pleasant fields and gardens, and the blossoms on the fruit trees were thick and fragrant. The loveliest days...

Sim Muzzy's tale, when he bethought himself to tell it to us, was a lively one in its own way, although it did not, of course, compare with our African adventures. The press-gan...