Introduction Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Covering nearly twelve million square miles, Africa is almost as large as North America and Europe bined. It is nearly twice the size of South America. As we mistake its dimensions, we also mistake its essential nature: the Dark Continent is mostly hot desert and open grassy plains. In fact, Africa is called the Dark Continent for one reason only: the vast equatorial rain forests of its central region. This is the drainage basin of the Congo River, and one-tenth of the continent is given over to it-a million and a half square miles of silent, damp, dark
By P. G. Wodehouse 1 In a day in June, at the hour when London moves abroad in quest of lunch, a young man stood at the entrance of the Bandolero Restaurant looking earnestly up Shaftesbury Avenuea large young man in excellent condition, with a pleasant, good-humoured, brown, clean-cut face. He paid no attention to the stream of humanity that flowed past him. His mouth was set and his eyes wore a serious, almost a wistful expression. He was frowning slightly. One would have said that here was a man with a secret sorrow. William FitzWilliam Delamere Chalmers, Lord Dawlish, had no secret sorrow. All that he was thinking of at that moment was the best method of laying a golf ball dead in fr
A sea of mist drifted through the cloud forest: soft, grey, luminescent. On the high ridges the fog showed brighter as the morning sun began to warm and lift the moisture, although in the ravine a cool, soundless dimness still counterfeited a pre-dawn twilight. mander Cordelia Naismith glanced at her team botanist and adjusted the straps of her biological collecting equipment a bit more fortably before continuing her breathless climb. She pushed a long tendril of fog-dampened copper hair out of her eyes, clawing it impatiently toward the clasp at the nape of her neck. Their next survey area would definitely be at a lower altitude. The gravity of this planet was slightly lower than their ho
work as a tribute to Her Britannic Majesty, Elizabeth II, to the people of Her Crown Colony of Hong Kong - and perdition to their enemies. Of course this is a novel. It is peopled with imaginary persons and panies and no reference to any person or pany that was, or is, part of Hong Kong or Asia is intended. I would also like to apologize at once to all Hong Kong yan - all Hong Kong persons - for rearranging their beautiful city, for taking incidents out of context, for inventing people and places and streets and panies and incidents that, hopefully, may appear to have existed but have never existed, for this, truly, is a story. ... June 8,1960 PROLOGUE...
William Blake "Nature does not premeditate; she does not use mathematics; she does not deliberately produce whole patterns, she lets whole patterns produce themselves. Nature does what nature demands; she is beyond blame and responsibility." Peter S. StevensPatterns in NatureOne Sunday, November 23 Paradise, Pennsylvania 3:00 a.m. The thing Boonie loved most about dumping off Black Bridge was how altogether goddam convenient it was. Take, for example, the traveling time. Even with miniature minefields of ice booby-trapping the backroads of Hellam, he figured ten minutes tops in the old Dodge truck to hump a full load of barrels from there to here....
WIN in the Gulf An hour before dawn, in the Straits of Hormuz: a dark and dangerous time and place. The air was a chill mixture of sea and sweetness, giving no hint of the heat that would be generated once day took over. The massive Japanese-registered oil-tanker Son of Takashuni slowly ploughed its way towards the Gulf of Oman and parative safety. Its vast deck rolled gently; the tall superstructure, rising from the stem, looking like a block of flats, appeared to tip more violently than the deck because of its height. Every officer and rating aboard could feel a tightening of the stomach muscles, the sense of urgency, and the absurd detached feeling which people experience when they kn
LUCY LOOKS INTO A WARDROBE ONCE there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not e into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as we
His mind absorbed the scene before him, so quiet and calm and . . . normal. It was the life he had always wanted, a gathering of family and friends-he knew that they were just that, though the only one he recognized was his dear mother. This was the way it was supposed to be. The warmth and the love, the laughter and the quiet times. This was how he had always dreamed it would be, how he had always prayed it would be. The warm, inviting smiles. The pleasant conversation. The gentle pats on shoulders. But most of all there was the smile of his beloved mother, so happy now, no more a slave. When she looked at him, he saw all of that and more, saw how proud she was of him, how joyful her l
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound Prologue False Angels JERUSALEM The wound was their path. Nathan Lee Swift sat strapped in the belly of the cargo helicopter with a dozen assorted archangels, looking down upon what little remained. The earthquake was visible mostly by what was no longer visible. Cities and villages had simply vanished in puffs of dust. Even his ruins were gone. The map had gone blank. The air was hot. It was summer. There was no horizon. The sands stretched into haze. He felt chained to the giant beside him, his former professor David Ochs. He had not wanted to leave, now he
Neither do they expect trouble with a cargo that is sewn up tight. Only a privileged few knew exactly when the Kruxator Collection would arrive in the country. That it was due to e to Britain was mon knowledge, and you had only to read a newspaper to discover that March 15th was the day on which the fabled group of paintings and jewellery were to go on display - for two weeks - at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Kruxator Collection is called after its founder, the late Niko Kruxator, whose fabulous wealth arose from sources unknown, for he had arrived penniless in the United States at about the time of the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. By the time he died in 1977, most people th
Personal Memoirs of P.H.Sheridan V2 of 2by Philip Henry SheridanVOLUME II.CHAPTER I.ORGANIZING SCOUTSMISS REBECCA WRIGHTIMPORTANT INFORMATIONDECIDETO MOVE ON NEWTOWNMEETING GENERAL GRANTORGANIZATION OF THE UNIONARMYOPENING OF THE BATTLE OF THE OPEQUONDEATH OF GENERAL RUSSELL--A TURNING MOVEMENTA SUCCESSFUL CAVALRY CHARGEVICTORYTHREELOYAL GIRLSAPPOINTED A BRIGADIER-GENERAL IN THE REGULAR ARMYREMARKS ON THE BATTLE.While occupying the ground between Clifton and Berryville, referredto in the last chapter of the preceding volume, I felt the need of anefficient body of scouts to collect information regarding the enemy,...
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSENTHE DRYADby Hans Christian AndersenWE are travelling to Paris to the Exhibition.Now we are there. That was a journey, a flight without magic. Weflew on the wings of steam over the sea and across the land.Yes, our time is the time of fairy tales.We are in the midst of Paris, in a great hotel. Blooming flowersornament the staircases, and soft carpets the floors.Our room is a very cosy one, and through the open balcony doorwe have a view of a great square. Spring lives down there; it has cometo Paris, and arrived at the same time with us. It has come in the...