Gold Out of Celebes

Captain Jack Barry has run out of luck in Batavia. His ship gone and his prospects thin, he crosses paths with a fast-talking salesman named Tom Little, who dangles an offer: take command of a brigantine and sail for Celebes, where rumors of a gold strike and a suspect trader named Gordon promise both profit and trouble. A. E. Dingle sets the voyage among the reefs and river mouths of the Dutch East Indies, and he writes the sea the way a man who spent twenty-two years on it would. Published in 1920, this is pulp adventure of the sturdier kind, built on ship handling, greed, and nerve rather than easy heroics. Readers who like Conrad’s tropics without Conrad’s gloom will find plenty to enjoy here.