The Isle of Retribution

The manifold powers of circumstance were in conspiracy against Ned Cornet this late August afternoon. No detail was important in itself. It had been drizzling slowly and mournfu...

Ned recoiled at the words, but his father threw him a quick smile. “That cuts a little, doesn’t it? I can’t help it. Ned, your mother and I have always loved you too well. I sup...

The idea of trading obsolete gowns for beautiful furs was particularly attractive to her. “I’ve got some old things I could spare,” she told him eagerly. “Why couldn’t you take...

Mrs. Hardenworth had made it a point to go immediately to her stateroom, but at once she reappeared on deck. She seemed a trifle more erect, her gray eyes singularly wide open.

The nights, her innate sense of artistry told her, were unspeakably beautiful. She had never seen such stars before. They were so large, so white, and yet so unutterably aloof....

The seaman left him, and for a moment Ned stood almost drunk with exultation on the deck. Even now they were nearing the journey’s end. A few hours more, and they could turn bac...

Almost at once the four passengers were on deck, waiting to take their meager chance in the lifeboats. The stress, the raging elements, those angry seas that ever leaped higher...

Knutsen strove to rid himself of the unwonted dismay that took hold of him. A deep-buried subconsciousness had suddenly manifested itself within him, but the messages it conveye...

She stepped toward the weapon. Even in her own heart she did not know what was her plan of action after that gun was in her hands: she had not yet given thought to the stress an...

Doomsdorf had seemingly achieved his purpose, and his prisoners lay crushed in his hands. A fear infinitely worse than that of toil or hardship had evidently killed the fighting...

Doomsdorf had seemed almost incredible to him at first. It was as if he couldn’t possibly be true: a figment of nightmare that would vanish as soon as he wakened. But he was rea...

Four days more the three of them worked at the task of laying in fuel,—Ned doing the lion’s share of the work, of course; Bess toiling to the limit of her fine, young strength;...

This was the land untamed. There was not, at first, a blaze on a tree, the least sign that human beings had ever passed that way before. It was the land-that-used-to-be, unchang...

He crossed the divide to Forks cabin, followed the springs to Thirty-Mile cabin, descended to the sea, and along the shore to the home cabin, just as he had been told to do. He...

Except for the impediment of the trap on the creature’s foot, there would have been but one blow to that battle in the snow. White fangs would have gone home where they were aim...

Sooner or later the crisis would fall upon them,—a fit of savage anger on Doomsdorf’s part, or a wrong that could not be endured, even if death were the penalty for rebellion. M...

At last she stood at the very edge of the yawning seam, staring down into the unutterable blackness below. Not even _light_ could exist in the murky depths of the crevice, much...

He seemed to be aware of the gathering suspense, and it thrilled his diseased nerves with exultation. But there was, from his listeners, but one significant response at first to...

Whether or not she realized what had occurred he did not know, but there was no time to tell her now. Nor were explanations necessary; trusting him to the last she would follow...

Doomsdorf watched him approach in silence. The triumphant gloating that Ned expected did not come to pass; evidently their brute master was in too savage a mood even for this. “...