West Wind Drift

During the days and weeks that followed, Percival maintained an attitude of rigid but courteous aloofness. Only on occasions when it was necessary to consult with Ruth and her a...

The Doraine was deserted except for Captain Trigger and the half-dozen sailors who remained with him. These sailors were ancient tars whose lives had been spent at sea. They wer...

For three days and nights the Doraine drifted lazily in a calm and rippling sea, always to the southward. The days were bright and warm, the nights black and chill. It was the s...

The death of Betty Cruise occurred the second day after her baby was born. In a way, this lamentable occurrence solved a knotty problem and pacified two warring sexes, so to spe...

Algernon Adonis Percival, civil and mining engineer, Cornell, had gone through certain rather harsh stages of development in the mines of Montana and later in the perilous distr...

Percival's blood was still in a tumult as he ran down the line of cabins. From every doorway men were now stumbling, half-dressed, half-asleep. Behind them, in many cabins, alar...

The Captain of the liner was an old man. He had sailed the seas for two-score years, at least half of them as master. At the outbreak of the Great War he was given command of th...

Sailors, sniffing the gale that night, shook their heads and said there was snow on the tail of it. Morning found the ground mottled with splashes of white and a fine, frost-lik...

The first of the two boats came alongside, and men began to go clumsily, even fearfully down the ladders. Throughout the early stages of activity on shore, the passengers and cr...

Some six weeks after the stranding of the Doraine, staunch log cabins were in course of completion along the base of the hills overlooking the clear, rolling meadow-land to the...

He saw but little of her during the next forty-eight hours. She seemed to avoid him. At any other time and in other circumstances he undoubtedly would have resented her indiffer...

It was Olga Obosky who discovered and exposed the plot. A young Spaniard had fallen hopelessly, madly in love with her. He was a good-looking, hard-eyed boy from the pampas,--a...

Captain Trigger and a dozen men stood on the boat deck with guns and revolvers, facing several hundred sullen, determined men and women from the steerage. Night had not yet fall...

The population of Trigger Island has increased. Following the example of Buck Chizler and the Governor himself, scores of dubious lovers took heart. They succeeded in dispelling...

Early the next morning, Percival turned out long before there were any sounds from the galley or dining-room. The sun had not yet cleared the tree-tops to the east; the decks of...

The first explosion occurred at eleven minutes past six. The chart-house and part of the bridge were blown to pieces. Three dull, splintering crashes ensued in rapid succession,...

As he swung jauntily down the road in the direction of his “office,” all the world might have seen that it was a beautiful place for him. He passed children hurrying to school,...

It was the noon hour. Scores of men were resting in the shade of the huts as she strode briskly past. They all smiled cheerily, but there was good humoured mockery in their smil...

Toward the close of the exercises, the congregation was startled by the sound of an ax smiting wood. The blows were rapid and vigorous. The surprised people looked at each other...

The plight of the hapless steamer could not be disguised. Even the most ignorant passenger knew that the wrecked engines could not be repaired or compounded. They knew that the...

In the cool of a balmy January evening, following what had been the hottest day the castaways had experienced since coming to Trigger Island, a group of men and women sat upon t...

Just before sunset that evening, Sancho Mendez was publicly hanged. Confessing the crime, he was carried to the rude gibbet at the far edge of the wheat field and paid the price...

In the far-off Northland it is winter again,--the winter of 1919-20. Trigger Island is bright and clean with the furbishings of summer. It is January,--January without its coat...

After the second reading of the foregoing report, the first being in English, Percival requested his fellow explorers to verify the statements contained therein. This they did p...

Mr. Block looked uneasily out over the tumbling ocean, focusing his gaze on a section of the horizon that for want of something more definite than mere hope lay in a direct line...

“Soapy” rubbed his chin dubiously as he watched the retreating figure. Pursing his thin lips, he turned his attention to an unoffending stump six or eight feet away and scowled...

She quickly closed the door behind her and sped off down the line of now lightless cabins. A man stepped out of the black shadow beyond the second cabin and stood in her path. S...

The ceremony took place at noon on the Green in front of the Government Building,--(an imposing name added to the already extensive list by which the “meeting-house” was known),...