He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched dark and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the steamer's lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At first they ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing now; they must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would put out a boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a wild waste of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for dear life all the while, with...

This is a collection of stories by Grant Allen, published in various years. The title story is personal. Allen nearly drowned when he fell through the ice while skating as a boy in Canada, and wrote about the experience anonymously for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1892. The other stories include: HOW IT FEELS TO DIE. BY ONE WHO HAS TRIED IT (1892); MERIEL STANLEY, POACHER (1900); A STUDY FROM THE NUDE (1895); MY ONE GORILLA (1890); THE TRADE OF AUTHOR (1889); A SCRIBBLER'S APOLOGY (1883).

Grant Allen was a Canadian writer known for vociferously championing the theory of evolution, but he was also a celebrated fiction writer who was acquaintances with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. An African Millioniare was a popular crime fiction published in 1897.

From the preface: "This little book is an attempt to give a brief sketch of Britain under the early English conquerors, rather from the social than from the political point of view. For that purpose not much has been said about the doings of kings and statesmen; but attention has been mainly directed towards the less obvious evidence afforded us by existing monuments as to the life and mode of thought of the people themselves. The principal object throughout has been to estimate the importance of those elements in modern British life which are chiefly due to purely English or Low-Dutch...

An African Millionaire. It follows the story of Sir Charles Vandrift, a shrewd millionaire who's made his fortune in the diamond mines of Africa and now spends his time in Europe doing what rich people do. Millionaire is told as a collection of short stories narrated by Charles's brother-in-law and secretary, Seymour, that together form an overarching narrative about Charles's battle with a con artist.

I. Thomas Telford, Stonemason II. George Stephenson, Engine-Man III. John Gibson, Sculptor IV. William Herschel, Bandsman V. Jean Francois Millet, Painter VI. James Garfield, Canal Boy VII. Thomas Edward, Shoemaker