William A. Williams - "The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved"

Isabella Alden - "Ester Ried Yet Speaking"

Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.) - "English Fairy Tales"

Charlotte Mary Yonge - "The Two Guardians"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale

F >> Frank L. Packard >> The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale




The misshapen, shrunken thing was rocking on its feet. There was
no answer.

"There are two minutes left," said Jimmie Dale in a monotone.

The man's eyes, coal black, hunted, the pupils gone, swept the room.
His lips were working; his hands, clenching and unclenching, clawed at
the table.

"_One!_" said Jimmie Dale.

There was a scream of ungovernable fury, the crash of the toppling
table, and, reaching out with both hands for Jimmie Dale's weapon,
Hunchback Joe hurled himself forward--but quick as the other was, Jimmie
Dale was quicker, and with his left hand, palm open, pushed full into
the man's face, he flung the other back.

And then there came a cry--a cry in a woman's voice;

"_Marre!_"

It was the Tocsin's voice from the rear doorway of the office. It was
her voice; Jimmie Dale could never mistake it even in its startled
cry--but he did not look. His eyes were on the man who was standing on
the other side of the overturned table, whose beard where he, Jimmie
Dale, had grasped the other's face had been wrenched away, and whose
shrunken figure seemed to tower up now in height, and whose deformity
was a padded coat, awry now because of the erect and upright posture in
which the man stood. It was Clarke, the master of disguise, who once had
impersonated Travers, the chauffeur; it was Marre--Wizard Marre.

There was a ghastly smile on the man's face.

"Marre," he said. "Yes--Marre. But you never knew it, did you, Miss
LaSalle--until now! Well, now is time enough for you, and far too soon
for me!" He flung out his hand in a queer, impotent gesture, as he threw
back his shoulders. "But I would like to be thought a good loser. I
congratulate you, Miss LaSalle!" Again his hand was raised in
gesture--and with lightning swiftness, before Jimmie Dale could
intervene, swept to his vest pocket and was carried to his mouth. "And
so I drink to your success, and--"

A glass vial rolled away upon the floor--and Jimmie Dale, with a bound,
had caught the swaying figure in his arms. There was a tremor through
the man's form--then inertness. He lowered the other to the ground.
Wizard Marre was dead. It was the colourless liquid of the old Crime
Club, instantaneous in its action that--

Jimmie Dale swept his hand over his masked face, and pulled the mask
away, and looked up. She, the Tocsin; yes, it was the Tocsin; yes, it
was Marie--only the beautiful face was deadly pale--it was the Tocsin
who was standing over him, shaking him frantically by the shoulder.

"Jimmie! Quick! Quick!" she cried. "The Secret Service men! Don't you
hear them? Quick! This way!"

There was a crash, a pound upon the street door. She had caught his
hand, and was pulling him forward now out into the rear of the shed.
There was a light from the office doorway--enough to see. One of the
packing cases was tipped over, and, on hinges, made a trap door. A short
ladder led downward to where, a few feet below, two boats were moored.

"I came this way. I followed him," she said. "Quick--Jimmie!"

It took an instant, no more, to swing her through the opening, but as he
lowered her down and her hair brushed his cheek, there came a quick
half sob to Jimmie Dale's lips.

"Mark!" he whispered. "Marie--at last!"

Came the rip and tear and rend of wood, the thud of a falling door from
the front of the shed, the rush of feet--but Jimmie Dale was in the boat
now, and the packing case above was swung back into place.

"Right ahead, Jimmie!" she breathed. "The planks at the end of the pier
swing aside--yes, there--no, a little to the right--yes!"

The boat shot out into the river--farther out--and the pier and shed
merged into the shadows of the shore line and were lost.

And then Jimmie Dale let the oars swing loose. She was crouched in the
bottom of the boat close beside him. He bent his head until his lips
touched her hair, and lower still until his lips touched hers. And a
long time passed. And the boat drifted on. And he drew her closer into
his arms, and held her there. She was safe now, safe for always--and the
road of fear lay behind. And into the night there seemed to come a great
quiet, and a great joy, and a great thankfulness, and a wondrous peace.

And the boat drifted on.

And neither spoke--for they were going _home_.

THE END

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