"Mr. Rivers?" The Alaskan explorer and geologist looked up from his desk and took in with a quick glance the boy, standing hat in hand beside the door, noting with quiet approval the steady gray eye and firm chin of his visitor. "Yes?" he replied. "I'm Roger Doughty," explained the lad sturdily, "and Mr. Herold told me that I should find you here."

"Ay, lad," said the old miner, the pale flame of his cap-lamp lighting up his wrinkled face and throwing a distorted shadow on the wall of coal behind, "there's goin' to be a plenty of us killed soon." "Likely enough, if they're all as careless as you," Clem retorted. "Carelessness ain't got nothin' to do with it," the old man replied. "The 'knockers' has got to be satisfied There ain't been an accident here for months. It'll come soon The spirits o' the mine is gettin' hungry for blood."

The tom-tom throbbed menacingly through the heavy dark of the Haitian night. Under its monotonous and maddening beat, Stuart Garfield moved restlessly. Why had his father not come back? What mystery lay behind? Often though the boy had visited the island, he had never been able to escape a sensation of fear at that summons of the devotees of Voodoo. Tonight, with the mysterious disappearance of his father weighing heavily on his spirits, the roll of the black goatskin drum seemed to mock him.

"What is it, Rex, old boy? What are you after? Somebody else in trouble, eh?" Ross looked down through the pouring rain at his Airedale, who was pulling at his trouser leg with sharp, determined jerks. The dog looked far more like a seal than a terrier, his hair dripping water at every point, while a cascade streamed from his tail. The boy was every whit as wet. Here and there, through the slanting lines of rain, could be seen the smoky gleams of camp-fires, around which, shivering, gathered the hundreds of people who had been rendered homeless by the flooded Mississippi.

"Hey, Wilbur, where are you headed for?" The boy addressed, who had just come through the swing-doors of an office building in Washington, did not slacken his pace on hearing the question, but called back over his shoulder: "To the forest, of course. Come along, Fred." "But-" The second speaker stopped short, and, breaking into a run, caught up with his friend in a few steps.

"Help Help " The cry rang out despairingly over the almost-deserted beach at Golden Gate Park. Jumping up so suddenly that the checker-board went in one direction, the table in another, while the checkers rolled to every corner of the little volunteer life-saving station house, Eric Swift made a leap for the door. Quick as he was to reach the boat, he was none too soon, for the coxswain and two other men were tumbling over the gunwale at the same time.

"Uncle Eli," said Hamilton suddenly, "since I'm going to be a census-taker, I think I'd like to apply for this district." The old Kentucky mountaineer, who had been steadily working his way through the weekly paper, lowered it so that he could look over the top of the page, and eyed the boy steadfastly. "What for?" he queried. "I think I could do it better than almost anybody else in this section," was the ready, if not modest, reply.

"There she blows " Colin Dare, who was sitting beside the broken whale-gun and who had been promised that he might go in the boat that would be put out from the ship if a whale were sighted, jumped to his feet at the cry from the 'barrel' at the masthead. "Where?" he shouted eagerly, rushing to the rail and staring as hard as he could at the heaving gray waters of the Behring Sea.

Set sail for adventure A magnificent swashbuckling story of a grander more adventurous time. Often though the boy had visited the island, he had never been able to escape a sensation of fear at that summons of the devotees of Voodoo. Tonight, with the mysterious disappearance of his father weighing heavily on his spirits, the roll of the black goatskin drum seemed to mock him.

The Science - History of the Universe By Francis Rolt-Wheeler