Vanderdecken

George awoke in the tent and gazed for a moment lazily at the honey-coloured patch on the sail cloth above his head, where the sun was laying a finger. He heard the waves on the...

“Well,” said Bud, sitting down on the sand. “I was asleep when Hank pulled me out by the leg, saying you were gone and the Mexicans had stolen you, then we all started off to ch...

It was a perfect day. Tamalpais, on the port bow, showed clear against a diamond-bright blue sky; astern lay the sea of adventure and romance, blue as when first sighted by Balboa.

Day by day the Kiro Shiwo increased its splendour as the _Wear Jack_, at a steady ten knot clip, left the latitude of Guadeloupe behind, raising Eugenio Point and the heat-hazy...

Candon with his bundle under his arm walked from the stage where George had landed him to the ferry wharf. He did not intend staying at Tiburon, he wanted to lose himself, put h...

Hank had dropped Tommie into the boat and was striving with George to push off, when the crack of the revolver came followed by the bizz of the bullet, yards out.

The week before the sailing of the _Wear Jack_ was a busy time for the Fisher Syndicate and business was not expedited owing to the fact that Candon had to be kept hidden. The r...

George was an orphan with guardians. Twenty-four years and five months of age, his property would not be decontrolled for another seven months when, on his twenty-fifth birthday...

Magdalena Bay, that great expanse of protected water between Punta Entrado and Santa Margarita Island, was once a great haunt of the sulphur bottom whales. Then came the shark f...

George did not go to the club that night. He went straight home and sent Farintosh out to buy all the evening papers and Farintosh returned with a bundle of everything from the...

They had fixed to row ashore after breakfast but fishing held them till afternoon. Candon, not keen on the business of climbing over rocks, remained behind to finish tinkering a...

First of all, reckoning to deal with hard stuff, he had brought spades, not shovels. The bundle had been buried hurriedly; even under the best conditions he would have had to tu...

They had guessed it for the last few minutes of the yarn. To gauge the effect upon them, one must remember that they were out to hunt the narrator, fearing to be guyed if they d...

The Kuro Shiwo current drives northward up the coast of Japan, crosses the Pacific and comes down the Pacific Coast of America, bathing the Channel Islands and giving them their...

They left the building and struck down Market Street. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and a blazing day. Market Street looked the same as ever—with a difference. It seemed...

The Du Cane house on Pacific Avenue was—is, in fact—a monstrous affair, at least viewed as the residence of a single man. Old Harley’s tastes were big and florid and he had ente...

Candon was tinkering at the fire. The mule, on its feet now, was standing, whilst Tommie was feeding it with dried grass taken from the provender bag, the Mexicans, sitting like...

George and Hank went forward to superintend the work of the Chinks on the bowsprit; Candon, at the wheel and well content with the work of the night, felt thirsty. There was no...

The street was blazing with the morning light, and, turning a corner, a puff of wind from the bay hit George in the face. It carried with it a scent of tar, oakum and bilge, and...

“Well, if you want to catch him, get on deck this instant minute and see I’ve not been followed. Go up casual and have a look round. Keep your eyes skinned for a man with a patc...

They followed him to the cabin, where they took their seats, whilst he filled and lit a pipe. Then, with the pipe in his mouth, he sat with his arms resting on the table and his...

The water front of San Francisco is unique. The long wharves, vibrating to the thunder of trade, show ships from all corners of the world; ships from China and the Islands, from...

After supper, on the night before, they had made a plan, based on the fact that there were provisions on board enough for a three months’ cruise for four people. This plan was s...

Hank and Candon were asleep, whilst George stood as officer of the watch. A great blaze of light fanning up beyond the coast hills showed the _Wear Jack_ under all plain sail an...

Candon’s face blazed up for a second. Then he got a clutch on himself and seemed to bottle his pride and his anger. He folded his arms and stared at the deck planking without sp...

Hank cocked his eye at them. Then he rose to his feet. “I was joking,” said Hank, “believe I could make you ginks swallow anything. Well, I’m off, see you to-morrow.”

“I think it’s splendid,” she said again. “You saw everything all wrong, but how could you know. I think it’s just fine. Those hatchet men were a tough crowd and they’d have kill...

The sun was up and away to port lay California, lifting her hills to heaven against the morning splendour, to starboard, a mile or so away, a big freighter, in ballast and showi...

“She’s come to,” said Candon. “I’ve stuck her in the bunk in the after cabin, but she’s so rattled she won’t speak—just lays there. Hurry up with the anchor, you boys. Listen!”

Hank, as before mentioned, was a man of resource; there was nothing much he could not do with his hands backed by his head. In two hours on board the _Wear Jack_ he had found th...

The town lot speculator took his feet down from the desk and George, flinging his cigarette away, got up, took a few paces, and altered his position by straddling his chair, lea...

Down from the southern defile in the cliffs a small procession was coming on to the beach. First came a man in a broad-brimmed hat, then another leading a mule, and another foll...

The extraordinary thing about Miss Coulthurst was the absence and yet the presence of the feminine in her. Possessed of all the electrical properties of a woman and the chummabl...

Candon handed the wheel over to Hank. “Well, we’re out,” said he. “Keep her as she goes, the coast’s a straight line down to Point San Pedro, and I don’t want to clear it by mor...

They had left Cancer far behind, they had rejected Hank’s first idea of steering out towards Honolulu and then making aboard for ’Frisco, they were taking the shortest way possi...

At seven the next morning the digging began. At six, when Hank turned out of the tent, the aspect of the beach had changed. A north wind, rising before midnight, had blown stead...

They had given Tommie the after cabin, but this hot weather the three of them kept the deck at night so that she might have her door open, and to-night, just before dawn when th...

An abject and crawling apology from the _Piker_, published and paid for in next morning’s papers, restarted the publicity campaign, and, though the press never recovered its fir...

It wanted little more than two hours to sunset and the eastern sky had taken that look of distance which only comes when the sun is low in the west.