Showing results for "The Sky" in Sea Adventures

They say Mackerel Sky was founded when Captain Burrbank first saw Nimuë the mermaid and forgot the sea. Stricken by love, he moored his tall ship and made camp on the highest cliff, hoping to forever gaze upon her beauty. That camp became a settlement, the settlement a town, the town a community both blessed and cursed by their tempestuous affair.

Edward “Blackbeard” Teach has a good reason for everything he does. Despite what his crewmen might say, he isn’t turning soft. When King George I issues a pardon for all pirates who give up their thieving ways within a year, Blackbeard sees his chance to have it all. He just needs to falsely repent within a year and then his comfortable future will be guaranteed. But Blackbeard has made many enemies over the years—men who are not prepared to forgive him just because of a royal decree.

An adventure story set in the Solomon Islands sees Jack and Toni, childhood schoolmates, set out on a routine boat trip to a neighbouring island, but things go awry when they discover, due to an oversight by Toni, that they do not have enough fuel to make the journey and are stranded at sea. At first they are optimistic that they will be rescued within hours, but as the first days draw to an end they slowly begin to realise that the mistake has left them in serious jeopardy and they can see no end but their own demise in sight.

Nella Braddy (1894-1973), a pioneer among female editors, compiled this seven-story collection and published Masterpieces of Adventure: Tales of the Sea and Sky in 1921. It features seven authors: Frank Norris, W. Clark Russell, Major General E.D. Swinton, Donn Byrne, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Guy de Maupassant, and Edgar Allan Poe. A century since publication, we can perhaps have a new appreciation for tales of the sea (on ships both wrecked and abandoned, in lighthouses and with ferocious currents) and the sky (with warfare in dirigibles and using balloons).