The purr and throb of London was quivering in stuffily through the open windows. The squeals of the “special” newsboys and the hansom-whistles of the early diners-out splashed across the blur and din, standing out against the immeasurable roar as against a silence. The heat of a London summer lay heavily over us; the undying rattle of wheels beat up to us wearily, the mid-season blare and hurry of town echoing irritatingly in their jingle and clatter as they streamed ceaselessly by. The stew and

“The late Viscount Heatherslie,” said Mr. Crum, tapping the desk before him like a schoolmaster demanding silence for a lecture, “was a collector, and at the same time an economist. These you will probably think are walks in life entirely incompatible one with the other. I will explain further. Though he lived far within his income, he had the mania for collection and gratified it. But he did this by making it a rule never to buy what had a merely temporary or sentimental value, but only what wa

The lawyer pushed back the drawers methodically, clanged to the safe door, and turned to me as I laboured toilsomely to decipher the faint scratchy handwriting. He held the two coins in his hand. “I think,” he said slowly, “if you will permit me to read this document out to you, you will find it much easier to interpret if you desire to read it yourself a second time. I may say that I have conned it pretty thoroughly—it took time to master it, I confess—and faint and yellow as it is, I can decip

It was three weeks after my first interview with Crum that I found myself travelling down to Liverpool to meet Baines, my uncle’s man, who was bringing home his body. It was a dull, rainy, depressing day as I stood upon the dock-side above the landing-stage, and watched the tender come sidling up with the crowd of umbrellaed passengers upon her deck, and my errand was not of a kind to elevate the spirits. Beyond the mournful circumstances that had brought me there, I had a sense of foreboding as

It was a hot, damp, oppressive October evening when our little coasting steamer deposited us at Greytown, whither we had come after being landed by the Pacific Mail at Colon. Gerry and I fought our way ashore amid the crowd of niggers and half-castes of varying degree, while the melancholy Baines brought up the rear, eyeing doubtfully the all too easy porterage afforded our baggage by the longshore loafers who had annexed it tumultuously. Baines had accompanied us under strong compulsion, and on

It was the end of October before we were back in London again, and had begun our preparations for the expedition to which I had pledged myself. Crum gave me no financial excuse for departing from my promise. In his management things had looked up during my uncle’s tenure of the title, and I was a deal better off than I had believed possible. Farms were in good condition and well let. Bog and heather in Ireland had found tenants for shooting, if not for grazing. Investments of accumulations had p

I received Gerry’s more explicit congratulations in private. The poor little Professor continued to bemoan our desertion of the quest with such heart-breaking insistence, that the merest suspicion that it was no stern necessity that bade us sail north would, we felt sure, induce paroxysms of fury. We cheered him to the best of our ability, by picturing our early return refreshed for deeds of high emprise in rock climbing, and with perfected means for their accomplishment. But he continued to bew

I stood beneath the bridge holding on to a friendly stanchion, and gazing apathetically before me. I could see Waller’s brawny figure outlined upon the bridge, every movement of his muscles showing up against the moonlit sky. He wrestled strenuously with the bucking wheel as it fought in his grasp, while above him the ragged clouds scudded fiercely, giving him the effect of rushing violently backward into space as they passed swiftly over him. The wind had increased with the rise of the waning m

Another night of tempest succeeded, diversified by stinging showers of hail and sleet. I believe neither captain nor mate left the bridge the whole night long, for the floe and berg began to grow around us, tack as we would. But the deeper we got into the heart of the multitude of island ice, the less grew the force of the wind. I rose the next morning after a few hours’ restless slumber to find us floating gently in a calm, untroubled sea, while around us, as far as eye could reach, the white p

Gwen was unconscious as I lifted her, and a bruise showed red and staring on her white temple. I laid her gently against the bulwark and made a dash for the saloon. Lady Delahay lay in a dead faint at the stair-foot, slipping there, I supposed, after her unceremonious bundling through the door. I snatched the whiskey from the sideboard, laid the good lady on the sofa and raced on deck again. Gerry was on his feet, and the rest gathered themselves out of the tangle one by one. Lessaution was the

An hour’s labor saw us well over the moraine, and beginning to worm our way into the deep clefts that gaped in the flanks of the hillside. Heretofore we had kept rigidly to the neighborhood of the shore, but now we had to shift our course inland. The mountain breasted up to the water’s edge sheer and inaccessible. We could see no possible chance of a break in its surface for miles. There was nothing to do but cross the ridge before us, and take up our quest on the far side. If we found the way r

High up the slope of the mountain-side, lurching slowly across the bare, bleak slabs of granite, was a Beast, and he was like unto nothing known outside the frenzy of delirium. Swartly green was his huge lizard-like body, and covered with filthy excrescences of a livid hue. His neck was the lithe neck of a boa-constrictor, but glossy as with a sweat of oil. A coarse, heavy, serrated tail dragged and lolloped along the rocks behind him, leaving in its wake a glutinous, snail-like smear. Four grea

In the morning we had left a pool of clear, shining blue, still as a Thames backwater, and the tall ship resting motionless on its pliant bosom. Every spar and rope had been distinctly outlined and reflected on the gleaming surface, which mirrored the very lines of the cutwater. Now, instead of the soft glitter of the lake laving the foot of the climbing glacier, an empty round of bleak and ice-worn rock confronted us, standing out hard and barren in the red glow of the sunset. With a yell we ra

As we arrived our noses were greeted with a most stupendous and enwrapping stench. It took me just about the twentieth part of a second to realize that the black objects that lay above the tide mark were the half-dismembered bodies of sea-lions, the intestines protruding black and decayed upon the smeared and oily sand. Round about them were tramplings and churnings of the mud, and spreading away across the landward rubble to the entrance of the ravine were great sloppy paddings—the slow trudge

As I shot beamingly out into the wholesome light of day a cheer rang out, waking the cold echoes delightfully. More than half the ship’s company was ringing the crevasse mouth, Mr. Rafferty and half-a-dozen sailors hauling at the rope with a vigor that bespoke their entire satisfaction in the job. It was with a mighty tug that they finally yanked me on to the glacier, and I unwound myself and crawled on to the flat ice most thankfully. Gwen was there with Denvarre, and Vi was standing talking to

Though during the days of hard work, while the boat was being launched, we continued to live in the ship, we did so by compulsion of necessity alone, not having the time to seek another dwelling-place. Now the strain was over, we felt that it behoved us to seek shelter elsewhere, since another shock of earthquake might easily destroy the Racoon and leave us utterly without abode in this land of desolation. Therefore we cast about for a refuge which should be stable enough to withstand earthquake

It was as Gwen began to lift her voice sweetly in the opening notes of “Just a little bit of string,” that with harassing appropriateness the hawser, which had that morning again been tightened between the anchor and the ship, snapped with a ringing crack. The deck quivered villainously, and I, who had just risen to reach for more tobacco, fell upon my chair and smashed it to matchwood. The doors of the companion flapped to and fro, and the rigging quivered and thrummed. We could hear the jar of

At the farthest limit of the cave we leaned upon the rock, and looked at that wicked, weaving head. Twice before had I seen it, but never in such circumstances as this. On both occasions we had been men alone. The peril had been distributed, so to speak, amongst us all. But with a girl, and a beautiful girl moreover, with whom I happened to be desperately in love—to have that outrageous atrocity mouthing upon her and me alone, and to feel that any accident might send her into its bestial maw—Goo

A good man all through is Denvarre, as I said before, and like a good man he took the failure of his hopes. And they had never been anything more. For as he explained to me, when we had changed our dripping clothes and joined the others on the cliff-top, he had no knowledge of Lady Delahay’s very distorted rendering of the situation. And he shook my hand and looked me straight in the eyes, and then, like the gentleman he was, went away to leave my sweetheart and me to say all we had to say to ea