Serve yourself, your children with the tools that seed intuitive thinking skills, books that challenge and enrich the imagination. Take them back to the time before the mind-controlling television and electronic games to the origins of the ideas that gave birth to these electronic miracles. - BOOKS that fuel the creative processes of the human imagination. Edgar Rice Burroughs was one such man and author that enriched the minds of many a person.
Excerpt:
About the Author
Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the world's most
popular authors. With no previous experience as an
author, he wrote and sold his first novel--'A Princess
of Mars' in 1912. In the ensuing thirty-eight years until
his death in 1950, Burroughs wrote ninety-one books
and a host of short stories and articles. Although best
known as the creator of the classic Tarzan of the Apes
and John Carter of Mars, his restless imagination knew
few bounds. Burroughs's prolific pen ranged from the
American West to primitive Africa and on to romantic
adventure on the moon, the planets, and even beyond
the farthest star.
No one knows how many copies of ERB books have
been published throughout the world. It is conservative
to say, however, that with the translations into
thirty-two known languages, including Braille, the
number must ran into the hundreds of millions. When
one considers the additional worldwide following of
the Tarzan newspaper feature, radio programs, comic
magazines, motion pictures, and television,
Burroughs must have been known and loved by literally
a thousand million or more.
Edgar Rice Burroughs commenced writing a "contemporary"
tale about adventure in the south seas in
1913. The first part was called THE CAVE GIRL and
originally appeared in THE ALL-STORY magazine for
July, August, and September 1913. Its sequel, THE
CAVE MAN appeared in serial fashion in 1917; both
parts were later collected in hard cover in 1925 by A.
C. McClurg & Co. The text of this complete version is
from the magazine serials.
FLOTSAM
THE dim shadow of the thing was but a blur against
the dim shadows of the wood behind it. The young
man could distinguish no outline that might mark the
presence as either brute or human. He could see no
eyes, yet he knew that somewhere from out of that
noiseless mass stealthy eyes were fixed upon him.
This was the fourth time that the thing had crept from
out the wood as darkness was settling--the fourth time
during those three horrible weeks since he had been
cast upon that lonely shore that he had watched, terror-
stricken, while night engulfed the shadowy form
that lurked at the forest's edge.
It had never attacked him, but to his distorted
imagination it seemed to slink closer and closer as
night fell--waiting, always waiting for the moment that
it might find him unprepared.
Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones was not overly courageous.
He had been reared among surroundings
of culture plus and ultra-intellectuality in the exclusive
Back Bay home of his ancestors. He had been
taught to look with contempt upon all that savored of
muscular superiority--such things were gross, brutal,
primitive. It had been a giant intellect only that he
had craved--he and a fond mother--and their wishes
had been fulfilled. At twenty-one Waldo was an animated
encyclopedia--and about as muscular as a real
one.
Now he slunk shivering with fright at the very
edge of the beach, as far from the grim forest as he
could get. Cold sweat broke from every pore of his
long, lank, six-foot-two body. His skinny arms and
legs trembled as with palsy. Occasionally he
coughed--it had been the cough that had banished
him upon this ill-starred sea voyage. As he crouched
in the sand, staring with wide, horror-dilated eyes into
the black night, great tears rolled down his thin, white
cheeks.
It was with difficulty that he restrained an overpowering
desire to shriek. His mind was filled with
forlorn regrets that he had not remained at home to
meet the wasting death that the doctor had predicted-
-a peaceful death at least--not the brutal end which
faced him now.
The lazy swell of the South Pacific lapped his legs,
stretched upon the sand, for he had retreated before
that menacing shadow as far as the ocean would permit.
As the slow minutes dragged into age-long hours,
the nervous strain told so heavily upon the weak boy
that toward midnight he lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.
The warm sun awoke him the following morning,
but it brought with it but a faint renewal of courage.
Things could not creep to his side unseen now, but
still they could come, for the sun would not protect
him. Even now some savage beast might be lurking just within the forest. The thought unnerved him to
such an extent that he dared not venture to the woods
for the fruit that had formed the major portion of his
sustenance. Along the beach he picked up a few
mouthfuls of sea-food, but that was all.
The day passed, as had the other terrible days
which had preceded it, in scanning alternately the
ocean and the forest's edge--the one for a ship and
the other for the cruel death which he momentarily
expected to see stalk out of the dreary shades to claim
him.
A more practical and a braver man would have
constructed some manner of shelter in which he might
have spent his nights in comparative safety and comfort,
but Waldo Emerson's education had been conducted
along lines of undiluted intellectuality--pursuits
and knowledge which were practical were commonplace,
and commonplaces were vulgar. It was
preposterous that a Smith-Jones should ever have
need of vulgar knowledge.
For the twenty-second time since the great wave
had washed him from the steamer's deck and hurled
him, choking and sputtering, upon this inhospitable
shore, Waldo Emerson saw the sun sinking rapidly
toward the western horizon. As it descended the
young man's terror increased, and he kept his eyes
glued upon the spot from which the shadow had
emerged the previous evening. He felt that he could
not endure another night of the torture he had passed
through four times before. That he should go mad he
was positive, and he commenced to tremble and
whimper even while daylight yet remained.
Softcover, 5¼" x 8¼", 255+ pages
Perfect-Bound