The Turtles of Tasman

hand-how creditably it is for others to say. And I have been paid for it. I have taken care of others and taken care of myself. The doctors say they have never seen such a constitution in

g done as much work as I have done. Look at that hand. Steady, eh? It will be as st

following the invidious compari

and bonds, and houses and servants-pouf! Heart and arteries and a steady hand-is that all? Have you lived merely to live? Were you afraid to die? I'd rather sing one wild son

ar child-"

o show for it?" she

ian hula. It ended in a throbbing, primitive love-call from the sensuous tropic night that no one could mistake. There wa

women, under his Viking moustache lighting a cigarette from a match held to him by one of the girl

o smoke-it only aggravates," he

gold-diggings of Alaska. More and more of them came, and they pre-empted a large portion of one of the down-town hotels. Captain Tom was fading with the season, and almost lived in the big chair. He d

tural enfeeblement following upon a prolonged bout with Yucatan fever. In the spring he would be right and fit again. Cold wea

ched them. He would see the Yukoners meet, perhaps one just leaving the sick room and one just going in. They would clasp hands, solemnly and silently, outside the door. The newcomer would question with his eyes, and the other would shake his head. And more than once Frederick noted the moisture in their eyes. Then the newcomer would enter and draw his chair up to Tom's, and with jov

die, if there was one man in the county, much less in th

whiffs of strong tobacco and rumbling voices, and he coul

r, as I was sayin', him an' me loaded the little Blatterbat to the guards an' started up the Koyokuk, me firin' an' engineerin' an' him steerin', an' both of us deck-handin'. Once in a while we'd tie to the bank an' cut firewood. It was the fal

ter was fallin' fast, an' dang me if we didn't ground on a bar-up-stream side. The Blatterbat hung up solid. Couldn't budge her. 'It's a shame to waste all that grub,' says I, just as we was pullin' out in a canoe. 'Let's stay an' eat it,' says he. An' dang me if we didn't. We wintered r

n afoul of Husky Travers. It was in the White Caribou. 'I'm a wolf!' yaps Jones. You know his style, a gun in his belt, fringes on his moccasins, and long

er voice querie

' somebody kindly to pass him a butcher knife. What's he do but plumb hack off a

te in the Little Wolverine, drop nine thousand in two hours, borrow some more, win it

e Malay queen with her royal consort, a shipwrecked Chinese Eurasian; of the intrigue for the pearl of Desay; of mad feasts and dances in the barbaric night, and quick dangers and sudden deaths; of the queen's love-making to Desay, of Desay's love-making to the queen's daughter, and of Desay, every joint crushed, still alive, staked out on the reef at low tide to be eaten by the sharks; o

o go; yet he had known only work and duty. Perhaps that was the difference. Perhaps that was the secret of the strange wisdom in his brother's eyes. For the moment, faint and far, vicariously, he glimpsed the lordly vision his brother had seen. He remembered a sharp saying of Polly's. "You have missed romance. You traded it for dividends.

ars was like any other thousand dollars; and one day (of his days) was like any other day. He had never made the pictures in the geography come true. He had not struck his man, nor lighted his cigar at a match held in a woman's hand. A man could sleep in only one bed

dercurrent of complaint at the unfairness

It was a royal thing, and he paid for it royally. You grudged the price, do