Stand By

by Hugh McAlister

A story of a boy's achievement in Chapter 1: There it stood—a great glass wheel, half submerged in the dusty clutter of an old outhouse filled with broken chairs, moth-eaten strips of carpet, and a tangle of ancient harness. Lee Renaud, spider webs draping his black hair and the dust of ages prickling at his nose, persisted in his efforts to clear this strange mechanism of its weight of junk. At last it was freed, a three-foot circular sheet of glass mounted on a framework of brass and wood. Held against the wheel by slips of wood were pads of some kind of fur, now worn to a few stray hairs and bits of hide. The circle of glass turned on an axis of wood which passed through its center, and attached to this was a series of cogwheels and a handle for cranking the whole affair—at considerable speed, it appeared. Lee Renaud backed off a bit as he stared at the thing. Glittering in the dim sunlight that filtered into the storage shed, it looked strange, almost sinister. But then the boy had found everything here at King’s Cove strange and outlandish. King’s Cove! It sounded rather elegant. Instead, it consisted of a handful of shacks that housed a little village of farming and fishing folk, an ignorant people given over to poverty and superstition. King’s Cove had been aristocratic in its past. A fringe of rotting, semi-roofless “big houses” up beyond the cove testified to the long-gone past when a settlement of rich folk had set out great orange orchards and camphor groves in that strip of South Alabama that touches the Gulf of Mexico. All had gone well until the historic freeze of 1868 had ruined the tropic fruits and emptied the purses of the settlers. After that, the population steadily drifted away from King’s Cove. Squatters came in to fish and to scratch the soil for a living.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1930

Reviews

[Squeaky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story very much. The big flood and the artic parts were exciting! Lots of radio stuff, even some amateur radio. Story ended pretty abruptly, though.

[Digger4445 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a treat.

I really enjoyed this vintage adventure book. Written in the 1930s. I was afraid it might be a bit hokey. it actually was really enjoyable.

[Gillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic from my childhood (and also from my mother's childhood).