Adventure [Paperback]

Jack London (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 021743830X | ISBN-13: 978-0217438308 | Publication Date: August 14, 2009

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE JESSIE TWO days passed, and Sheldon felt that he could not grow any weaker and live, much less make his four daily rounds of the hospital. The deaths were averaging four a day, and there were more new cases than recoveries. The blacks were in a funk. Each one, when taken sick, seemed to make every effort to die. Once down on their backs they lacked the grit to make a struggle. They believed they were going to die, and they did their best to vindicate that belief. Even those that were well were sure that it was only a matter of days when the sickness would catch them and carry them off. And yet, believing this with absolute conviction, they somehow lacked the nerve to rush the frail wraith of a man with the white skin and, escape from the charnel house by the whale- boats. They chose the lingering death theywere sure awaited them, rather than the immediate death they were very sure would pounce upon them if they went up against the master. That he never slept, they knew. That he could not be conjured to death, they were equally sure — they had tried it. And even the sickness that was sweeping them off could not kill him. With the whipping in the compound, discipline had improved. They cringed under the iron hand of the white man. They gave their scowls or malignant looks with averted faces or when his back was turned. They saved their mutterings for the barracks at night where he could not hear. And there were no more runaways and no more night prowlers on the veranda. Dawn of the third day after the whipping brought the Jessie's white sails in sight. Eight miles away, it was not till two in the afternoon that the light air-fans enabled her to drop anchor a quarter of a mile off the shore. The sight of her gave Sheldon fresh courage, and the tedious hour...

Editorial Reviews

Review

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Adventure

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Publisher

This book is in Electronic Paperback Format. If you view this book on any of the computer systems below, it will look like a book. Simple to run, no program to install. Just put the CD in your CDROM drive and start reading. The simple easy to use interface is child tested at pre-school levels.

Windows 3.11, Windows/95, Windows/98, OS/2 and MacIntosh and Linux with Windows Emulation.

Includes Quiet Vision's Dynamic Index. the abilty to build a index for any set of characters or words. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 178 pages
• Publisher: General Books LLC (August 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 021743830X
• ISBN-13: 978-0217438308
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,241,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some of this book made me cringe, but I couldn't stop reading, February 9, 2011

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Adventure (Kindle Edition)

I almost stopped reading this book after the first few paragraphs. Set in a plantation in the Solomon Islands, it is blatantly racist towards the natives and started off with describing a disgusting disease which had infected many of them. Even the British plantation owner, who was the only white man there, had symptoms of the disease but he still needed to maintain discipline over his black workers who were recruited for five-year stints and paid very low wages. I cringed at the description of the disease and I cringed at the description of the discipline, but frankly, I couldn't stop reading.

Written in 1911, this is a novel about a time and a place. It is also a story of a romance. And a story about a young beautiful liberated American woman named Joan who was raised free and wild in Hawaii, taught to captain a ship, handle a rough crew, and resist marital entanglements. When her ship runs adrift on the plantation owner's property, he naturally falls head over heels in love with her.

What follows is nothing short of high adventure and I can well understand the title of this short 190 page novel. There are worker uprisings, long treks through the jungle, murder, revenge, a duel between two white men and a wild assortment of shady characters. The story moves fast and gives quite a sordid picture of life in the Solomon Islands at time. It is a hard life for everybody and yet, as Jack London describes it, is also a life of high adventure as well as a great example of the work of this author.

4.0 out of 5 stars great!, September 9, 2011

By 

Claus - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Adventure (Kindle Edition)

tHIS BOOK WAS A LITTLE HEAVY IN THE BEGINNING BUT TURN OUT TO BE A FINE BOOK. wRITTEN IN 1911 BUT HOLDS THE STANDARD OF TODAY

1 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Name: Alec Redmann, February 5, 2010

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adventure (Kindle Edition)

I can't wait to read it!!! I'll write one more reveiw when I read it.