I am a retired captain of the upper sea. That is to say, when I was a younger man I was a balloonist. Naturally it is a hazardous profession, and naturally I have had many thrilling experiences. The most thrilling, or at least the most nerve-racking, is the one I am about to tell you. Before you can understand what happened, I must first explain a bit about the nature of the hot air balloon that is used for parachute jumping. If you have ever witnessed such a jump, you will remember that as soon as the parachute was cut loose the balloon turned upside down. It emptied itself of its smoke and heated air, flattened out and fell straight down, beating the parachute to the ground. Thus there is no chasing a big deserted bag for miles and miles across the country, saving much time, as well as trouble. This maneuver is accomplished by attaching a weight, at the end of a long rope, to the top of the balloon. The aeronaut, with his parachute and trapeze, hangs from the bottom of the balloon. His weight keeps it right side down. When he jumps, the weight attached to the top immediately drags the top down. The bottom, which is the open mouth, goes up, and the heated air pours out. The weight used for this purpose on the “Little Nassau” was a bag of sand. Imagine my horror, when I discovered a child hanging from the bag at 100 feet above the ground! Find out what happens to the child in this 15-minute adventure! Ages 8 and up. Educational Versions Include exercises designed to meet Common Core Standards. LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from classic stories, to mysteries, to books of knowledge. Many books also work well as hi-lo readers. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.
An Adventure in the Upper Sea is a short story by Jack London. John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 - November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire," "An Odyssey of the North," and "Love of Life." He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen," and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf. London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction expose The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes. On July 12, 1897, London (age 21) and his sister's husband Captain Shepard sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories. London's time in the Klondike, however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy. His gums became swollen, leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face was stricken with marks that always reminded him of the struggles he faced in the Klondike. Father William Judge, "The Saint of Dawson," had a facility in Dawson that provided shelter, food and any available medicine to London and others. His struggles there inspired London's short story, "To Build a Fire" (1902, revised in 1908), which many critics assess as his best. His landlords in Dawson were mining engineers Marshall Latham Bond and Louis Whitford Bond, educated at Yale and Stanford. The brothers' father, Judge Hiram Bond, was a wealthy mining investor. The Bonds, especially Hiram, were active Republicans. Marshall Bond's diary mentions friendly sparring with London on political issues as a camp pastime. London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work "trap" was to get an education and "sell his brains." He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game. On returning to California in 1898, London began working deliberately to get published, a struggle described in his novel, Martin Eden (serialized in 1908, published in 1909). His first published story since high school was "To the Man On Trail," which has frequently been collected in anthologies. When The Overland Monthly offered him only five dollars for it-and was slow paying-London came close to abandoning his writing career. In his words, "literally and literarily I was saved" when The Black Cat accepted his story "A Thousand Deaths," and paid him $40-the "first money I ever received for a story." London began his writing career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public and a strong market for short fiction. In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, about $71,000 in today's currency. Among the works he sold to magazines was a short story known as either "Diable" (1902) or "Batard" (1904), in two editions of the same basic story; London received $141.25 for this story on May 27, 1902. In the text, a cruel French Canadian brutalizes his dog, and the dog retaliates and kills the man. London told some of his critics that man's actions are the main cause of the behavior of their animals, and he would show this in another story, The Call of the Wild.
“You could get addicted to this series. Easily.”---The New York Times Book Review The year 1809 starts out badly for Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, and his ship, HMS Sapphire. They’ve extracted the sick, cold survivors of Sir John Moore’s army from disaster at Corunna, got hit by lightning while escorting the army to England, and suffered a shattered mainmast which may end Lewrie’s active commission if a replacement can’t be found or fashioned soon. Admiralty needs troopships, not slow, old Fourth Rate two-deckers, so Lewrie must beg, borrow, steal, and gild the facts most glibly if he wishes to keep her and her skilled crew together. Just when he imagines he’s succeeded, new orders come appointing him a Commodore over a wee squadron assigned to prey upon French seaborne supply convoys off the treacherous north coast of Spain, better known as the Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death, where the sea may be more dangerous to him and his ships than the French Navy! Basing out of newly won Lisbon, where Lewrie hopes his mistress from Gibraltar, Maddalena Covilhá, might move, he’s sure of one thing: It's going to be a rocky year that, hopefully, doesn’t involve wrecking on the rugged shores of Spain!
This carefully crafted ebook: "THE SEA ADVENTURES – Boxed Set: 20+ Maritime Novels & Tales of Seas and Sailors (Illustrated)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: The Cruise of the Dazzler The Sea-Wolf Adventure A Son of the Sun The Mutiny of the Elsinore The Cruise of the Snark Tales of the Fish Patrol White and Yellow The King of the Greeks A Raid on the Oyster Pirates The Siege of the "Lancashire Queen" Charley's Coup Demetrios Contos Yellow Handkerchief South Sea Tales The House of Mapuhi The Whale Tooth Mauki "Yah! Yah! Yah!" The Heathen The Terrible Solomons The Inevitable White Man The Seed of McCoy Jack London (1876-1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. His amazing life experience also includes being an oyster pirate, railroad hobo, gold prospector, sailor, war correspondent and much more. He wrote adventure novels & sea tales, stories of the Gold Rush, tales of the South Pacific and the San Francisco Bay area - most of which were based on or inspired by his own life experiences.
The book "The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism" is an exciting review of the history of sea travels from the earliest times to the XIX century. It includes the first mentions of sea travel, the history of shipbuilding, mentions the greatest men who pursued geographical discoveries like Columbus and his contemporaries, and the deeds of pirates like Sir Francis Drake. The author revises the history of the most significant shipwrecks and concludes with poetry dedicated to sea and ship travel. The author spent his life traveling on a steamship and collected numerous stories and illustrations of interesting distant places. The book is the culmination of his lifetime interest in sea, travel, history, and art.
