The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ Megapack

      The Algernon Blackwood Megapack

      The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack

      The Max Brand Megapack

      The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

      The Fredric Brown Megapack

      The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

      The Wilkie Collins Megapack

      The Ray Cummings Megapack

      The Guy de Maupassant Megapack

      The Philip K. Dick Megapack

      The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack

      The F. Scott Fitzgerald Megapack

      The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack

      The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack*

      The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack*

      The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

      The Randall Garrett Megapack

      The Second Randall Garrett Megapack

      The Anna Katharine Green Megapack

      The Zane Grey Megapack

      The Edmond Hamilton Megapack

      The Dashiell Hammett Megapack

      The C.J. Henderson Megapack

      The M.R. James Megapack

      The Selma Lagerlof Megapack

      The Murray Leinster Megapack***

      The Second Murray Leinster Megapack***

      The Jonas Lie Megapack

      The Arthur Machen Megapack**

      The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack

      The Talbot Mundy Megapack

      The E. Nesbit Megapack

      The Andre Norton Megapack

      The H. Beam Piper Megapack

      The Mack Reynolds Megapack

      The Rafael Sabatini Megapack

      The Saki Megapack

      The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack

      The Robert Sheckley Megapack

      The Bram Stoker Megapack

      The Lon Williams Weird Western Megapack

      The Virginia Woolf Megapack

      The William Hope Hodgson Megapack

      * Not available in the United States

      ** Not available in the European Union

      ***Out of print.

      OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY

      The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany Megapack”)

      The Wildside Book of Fantasy

      The Wildside Book of Science Fiction

      Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

      To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

      Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

      Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

      More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

      X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries

      THE GOLDEN DOLPHIN, by J. Allan Dunn

      I

      Opportunity Knocks

      Jim Lyman, wandering aimlessly down North Street, Foxfield, had it borne in upon him that jobs were hard to catch. The paper mills and the woolen mills and the big electric supplies factory that, taking advantage of cheap water power, had transformed Foxfield the village into Foxfield the city of fifty thousand, were either shut down or running half time with a greatly reduced number of employees. It seemed to Jim that the rest of these unemployed were standing on the curbings and lounging on the Common, parked wherever there were vacant spaces, their savings gone, their faces more or less disconsolate. Yet Jim Lyman had turned down a job no later than that morning.

      It is true that he had regarded it almost as an insult, that he had found difficulty in gracing his refusal. Yet he was beginning to regret his rashness. He had a few dollars in his pocket but they were very few, and the high cost of living had not reduced on the same scale as the lowering average of wages. Most of the chaps standing about would have jumped at Jim’s offer, he reflected, provided they could have qualified.

      The job was out at Winnesota Lake where the summer season for holiday makers from the big cities was in full swing. A man was wanted to help in the hiring and care of boats—a launch, rowboats and canoes—to help people get into them without upsetting or stepping through the bottoms, to shove out and haul in, to swab, to generally stand by and hang around a wharf in a bathing suit—for fifteen dollars a month and found; the findings meaning fair meals and an indifferent bunk at the mock-bungalow of the owner of the boathouse, and boating privileges. A soft snap to almost anyone out of a job, a vacation in itself, a chance for a good time with the city girls who were not averse to flirting with men of the “handsome brave life-saver” variety, but—

      Jim Lyman was a sailor, a man who had served as second and first mate, who was qualified as a master mariner, who loved the sea and regarded a freshwater pond like Winnesota Lake much as a salmon would regard a bathtub. That comparison is not vigorous enough. To Jim the idea of the job on the placid lake, handling toy boats when his heart longed for a stiff breeze, big seas and a heeling vessel working into the wind’s eye, was a good deal like the offering to a lion tamer a position taking care of guinea pigs.

      Beggars may not be choosers, but Jim would never be a beggar, and he had a strong belief in his own star or in the general fairness of Providence. All of which was a testimony to his good nature, his vitality and his good digestion, since he had just come through a severe pummeling at the hands of Fate: wrecked in the South Pacific; hungry, thirsty, blazing days in an open boat; despair; rescue; return to Panama aboard a smelly, inefficient ship inadequately run by Portuguese whose ideas of food were as limited as their larder; a chance to work his way back north and east as a handler on a fruit freighter, a brief visit at the New England home of the wrecked ship’s purser-steward, companion of his misfortunes, and then the long hunt and the ultimate conviction that a sailor man was out-of-date, obsolete, and not much to be desired; a job as a rigger in an emergency contract, two or three jobs painting flagpoles and straightening vanes, wandering inland the СКАЧАТЬ