Fantasy Paine, Albert Bigelow: The Great White Way (illus). v1. 11 Jul 2016

[GrannyGrump]

The Great White Way By Albert Bigelow Paine (1861–1935)
Illustrations by Bernard J. Rosenmeyer (1869–?) Latest work found: 1928

The Great White Way was first published in 1901.
This book is in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+80” or less, and in the USA.

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Albert Bigelow Paine was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. He wrote in several genres, including fiction, humor, and verse, for children and adults. His most notable work was a three-volume biography of Mark Twain.
This fantasy-adventure novel (with roots in Jules Verne) entertains the reader with much light humor, and no boring “science.”

Nicholas Chase has a theory that a sub-tropical land exists in the center of the continent of Antarctica. Upon hearing Nick expound his dream, wealthy real-estate man Chauncey Gale finances and equips an expedition of exploration. His beautiful daughter Edith joins the merry crew, and they all set out for the South Pole. Such adventure lies ahead!

EXCERPT:

Spoiler:

Mr. Emory was talking to Captain Biffer when I came in.

“They refuse to obey orders,” he was saying, “unless we turn around and put into Montevideo. They claim they need more clothing for the cold weather south. The sky looks rather queer, and I set them to reefing down so’s to be ready for one of those Pampeiros that Mr. Larkins says come up in a minute down here. When they got about half through, Frenchy stopped them. They’re out forward, now.”

“Did you tell them we had plenty of warm clothing aboard?” asked Gale.

“I told them. It isn’t the clothing. They simply want to desert the ship.”

“Is Mr. Larkins on the bridge?” asked Captain Biffer.

“He comes on at eight bells – in about five minutes, now.”

“Very well; go back to the bridge, Mr. Emory. I’ll deal with this situation.” Then to Edith Gale “Don’t be alarmed, ma’am.”

I risked a remark.

“Is this your first strike, Captain?” I ventured.

His eye fixed me grimly.

“We don’t call it that at sea,” he said, “we call it mutiny!”

The word rather startled me, but I followed him out on deck, as did the others. No one could remain in the cabin with a thing like that going on outside. The men were about as we had left them – the bosun, Frenchy, somewhat in front of the others. He was a villain and a traitor, but he was not without bravado.

“We haf not been well treat!” he began, “we haf been deceive. We—”

He paused. The Captain had drawn a bead on him with the eye he most frequently used on me. With the other he took aim at the group behind, and every man of them felt himself singled out, and quailed. I could see them beginning to shrink and wither even before he said a word. He began by gently reminding them of the usual lightness of their employment and the continued excellence of their bill-of-fare; then in good sooth he opened up.

It was like the breaking loose at Manila. I had known that Biffer had a way with his English, but I never realized until that moment what he could do when he tried. They didn’t need any warm clothes, now. Everything he called them was red hot and fitted as if they had grown to it. Why, they fairly shriveled, and whenever anything he said hit the deck it smoked.

A cloud of what appeared to be genuine smoke came drifting across our bows just then, and the air had grown strangely hot, but nobody seemed to notice it. I think we unconsciously attributed these things to the Captain’s artillery. The men were huddled and Frenchy alone was still defiant. His case was desperate and he was a desperate man. He made a step forward – perhaps he thought the men would follow him – a movement that a second later would have been a spring at the Captain’s throat. One hand he held close to his side, and in it something gleamed.

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Text and illustrations were obtained from archive.org. OCR errors corrected; punctuation, italics and diacritics formatted; illustrations manually cleaned and enhanced. Chapter heads are cross-linked to Table of Contents.

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