ADVENTURE books online

Reading books adventure Nowadays a big variety of genres are exist. In our electronic library you can choose any book that suits your mood, request and purpose. This website is full of free ebooks. Reading online is very popular and become mainstream. This website can provoke you to be smarter than anyone. You can read between work breaks, in public transport, in cafes over a cup of coffee and cheesecake.
No matter where, but it’s important to read books in our elibrary , without registration.



Today let's analyze the genre adventure. Genre adventure is a reference book for adults and children. But it serve for adults and children in different purposes. If a boy or girl presents himself as a brave and courageous hero, doing noble deeds, then an adult with pleasure can be a little distracted from their daily worries.


A great interest to the reader is the adventure of a historical nature. For example, question: «Who discovered America?»
Today there are quite interesting descriptions of the adventures of Portuguese sailors, who visited this continent 20 years before Columbus.




It should be noted the different quality of literary works created in the genre of adventure. There is an understandable interest of generations of people in the classic adventure. At the same time, new works, which are created by contemporary authors, make classic works in the adventure genre quite worthy competition.
The close attention of readers to the genre of adventure is explained by the very essence of man, which involves constant movement, striving for something new, struggle and achievement of success. Adventure genre is very excited
Heroes of adventure books are always strong and brave. And we, off course, want to be like them. Unfortunately, book life is very different from real life.But that doesn't stop us from loving books even more.

Read books online » Adventure » Lost on the Moon by Roy Rockwood (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📖

Book online «Lost on the Moon by Roy Rockwood (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📖». Author Roy Rockwood



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even the most intrepid

balloonist had never ventured.

 

Mark and Jack sat for a few minutes in the pilothouse, looking out

into the ether. But they soon tired of seeing absolutely nothing.

 

“I wonder what we’ll do when we get to the moon?” asked Jack of his

chum.

 

“Why, I suppose you’ll make a dive for a hatful of diamonds, won’t you?

That is, if you still believe that Martian newspaper account.”

 

“I sure do.”

 

The boys found the two professors busy adjusting some of the delicate

scientific instruments with which they expected to make observations on

the trip, and after they reached the moon.

 

“What is your opinion, Professor Roumann, of the temperature at the

moon’s surface?” asked Mr. Henderson.

 

“I am in two minds about it,” was the reply. “A few years ago, I see by

an astronomy, Lord Rosse inferred from his observations that the

temperature rose at its maximum (or about three days after full moon)

far above that of boiling water.”

 

“Boiling water!” ejaculated Mark. “Wow! That won’t be very nice. I

don’t want to be boiled like a lobster!”

 

“Wait a moment,” cautioned Mr. Roumann, with a smile. “Later, Lord

Rosse’s own investigations, and those of Langley, threw some doubts on

this. There is said to be no air blanket about the moon, as there is

about the earth, so that the moon loses heat as fast as it receives it;

and it now seems more probable that the temperature never rises above

the freezing point of water, just as is the case on our highest

mountains.”

 

“That’s better,” came from Jack. “We can stand a low temperature more

easily than we can to be boiled; eh, Jack?”

 

“Sure. But I don’t want to be frozen or boiled either, if I can help

it. Guess I’ll wear my fur suit that we brought back from the North

Pole with us.”

 

“I agree with you, Professor Roumann, about the temperature,” announced

Mr. Henderson, “so we must make up our minds to shiver, rather than

melt. But we are prepared for that.”

 

“What about there being no air on the moon?” asked Jack.

 

“Oh, we can manufacture our own oxygen,” said Mark. “We can walk around

with an air tank on our shoulders, as we did when we went beneath the

surface of the ocean. Now, I guess–-”

 

“Dinner am served in de dining car!” interrupted Washington White, his

black face grinning cheerfully. He used to be a waiter in a Pullman,

and he was proud of it. “First call fo’ dinner!” he went on. “Part ob

it am boiled, part am roasted, laik I done heah yo’ talkin’ ‘bout jest

now, an’ part am frozed—dat’s de ice cream,” he added hastily, lest

there be a mistake about it.

 

“Well, that sounds good,” observed Mark. “Come on, everybody,” and he

led the way to the dining cabin.

 

They had not been at the table more than a few minutes, and had begun

on the “boiled” part of the meal, which was the soup, when from the

engine room there came a curious, whining noise, as when an electric

motor slows up.

 

“What’s that?” cried Professor Henderson, jumping up from his seat in

alarm.

 

“Something wrong in the engine room,” cried Mr. Roumann.

 

The two scientists, followed by the boys, hurried to where the various

pieces of apparatus were sending the projectile forward through space.

Already there was an appreciable slackening of speed.

 

“The Cardite motor has stopped!” cried Mr. Roumann. “Something has

happened to it!”

 

“Can it be the result of the damage which that lunatic did?” asked Mr.

Henderson.

 

“Perhaps,” spoke Jack. “If I had him here–-”

 

“We are falling!” shouted Mark, looking at an indicator which marked

their speed and motion.

 

“Can’t we start some other motor?” asked Jack.

 

At that instant from beneath the now silent Cardite machine there came

a prolonged crow.

 

“My Shanghai rooster!” shouted Washington. “He am in dar!”

 

A second later the rooster scrambled out, scratching vigorously. Grains

of corn were scattered about. The motor started up again, and the

projectile resumed its onward way.

 

“The rooster stopped it!” cried Jack. “He went under it to get some

corn, and he must have deranged one of the levers. Oh, you old

Shanghai, you nearly gave us all heart disease!”

 

And the rooster crowed louder than before, while his colored owner

“shooed” him out of the engine room. The trouble was over speedily, and

the Annihilator was once more speeding toward the moon.

CHAPTER XVI

“WILL IT HIT US?”

 

“Well, for a trouble-maker, give me a rooster every time,” spoke Jack,

as, after an examination of the machinery, it was found that nothing

was out of order. “How do you think it happened, Professor Henderson?”

 

“It never could have happened except in just that way,” was the reply

of Mr. Roumann. “Underneath the motor, where they are supposed to be

out of all reach, are several self-adjusting levers. They control the

speed, and also, by being moved in a certain direction, they will shut

down the apparatus. The rooster crawled beneath the machine, an act

that I never figured on, for I knew it was too small for any of us to

reach with our hands or arms, even had we so desired. But the

Shanghai’s feathers must have brushed against the levers, and that

stopped the action of the Cardite motor. However, I’m glad it was no

worse.”

 

“Yes, let’s finish dinner now, if everything is all right,” proposed

Mark.

 

“How did the rooster get in here?” asked Jack.

 

“I ‘spects dat’s my fault,” answered Washington. “I took him out ob his

coop fo’ a little exercise dis mawnin’, an’ he run in heah.”

 

“That explains it, I think,” said Mr. Roumann. “Well, Washington, don’t

let it happen again. We don’t want to be dashed downward through space

all on account of a rooster.”

 

“No, indeedy; I’ll lock him up good an’ tight arter dis,” promised the

colored man.

 

They resumed the interrupted dinner, discussing the possibility of what

might have happened, and congratulating themselves that it did not take

place.

 

“It certainly seems like old times to be eating while travelling along

like a cannon-ball,” remarked Jack. “I declare, it gives me an

appetite!”

 

“You didn’t need any,” retorted his chum. “But say! maybe things don’t

taste good to me, after what I got while that fellow Axtell had me a

prisoner! Jack, I’ll have a little more of that cocoanut pie, if you

don’t mind.”

 

Jack passed over the pastry, and Mark took a liberal piece. Then

Washington brought in the ice cream, which was frozen on board by means

of an ammonia gas apparatus, the invention of Professor Henderson. The

novelty of dining as comfortably as at home, yet being thousands of

miles above the earth, and, at the same time, speeding along like a

cannon-ball, did not impress our friends as much as it had during their

trip to Mars.

 

“Well, we’re making a little better time now,” observed Mark, as he and

the others rose from the table and went to the engine room. “The gauge

shows that we’re making twenty-five miles a second.”

 

“We will soon go much faster,” announced Professor Roumann. “I have not

yet had a chance to test my Cardite motor to its fullest speed, and I

think I will do so. I wish to see if it will equal my Etherium machine.

I’ll turn on the power gradually now, and we’ll see what happens.”

 

“How fast do you think it ought to send us along?” asked Jack.

 

“Oh, perhaps one hundred and twenty-five miles a second. You know we

went a hundred miles a second when we headed for Mars. I would not be

surprised if we made even one hundred and thirty miles a second with

the Cardite.”

 

“Whew! If we ever hit anything going like that!” exclaimed old Andy

Sudds.

 

“We’d go right through it,” finished Jack fervently. The professor was

soon ready for the test. Slowly he shoved over the controlling lever.

The Cardite motor hummed more loudly, like some great cat purring.

Louder snapped the electrical waves. The air vibrated with the enormous

speed of the valve wheels, and there was a prickling sensation as the

power flowed into the positive and negative plates, by which the

projectile was moved through space.

 

“Watch the hand of the speed indicator, boys,” directed Professor

Roumann, “while Professor Henderson and I manipulate the motor. Call

out the figures to us, for we must keep our eyes on the valves.” Slowly

the speed indicator hand, which was like that of an automobile

speedometer, swept over the dial.

 

“Fifty miles a second,” read off Mark. The two professors shoved the

levers over still more.

 

“Seventy-five,” called Jack.

 

“Give it a little more of the positive current,” directed Mr. Roumann.

 

“Ninety miles a second,” read Mark a few moments later.

 

“We are creeping up, but we have not yet equalled our former speed,”

spoke Mr. Henderson. The motor was fairly whining now, as if in

protest.

 

“One hundred and five miles,” announced Jack.

 

“Ha! That’s some better!” ejaculated the German. “I think we shall do

it.” Once more he advanced the speed lever a notch.

 

“One hundred and thirty!” fairly shouted Mark. “We are beating all

records!”

 

“And we will go still farther beyond them!” cried Mr. Roumann. “Watch

the gauge, boys!”

 

To the last notch went the speed handle. There was a sharp crackling,

snapping sound, as if the metal of which the motor was composed was

strained to the utmost. Yet it held together.

 

The hand of the dial quivered. It hung on the one hundred and thirty

mark for a second, as if not wanting to leave it, and then the steel

pointer swept slowly on in a circle, past point after point.

 

“One hundred and thirty-five—one hundred and forty,” whispered Jack,

as if afraid to speak aloud. The two professors did not look up from

the motor. They looked at the oil and lubricating cups. Already the

main shaft was smoking with the heat of friction.

 

“Look! look!” whispered Mark hoarsely.

 

“One hundred and fifty-three miles a second!” exclaimed Jack. “You’ve

done it, Professor Roumann!”

 

“Yes, I have,” spoke the German, with a sigh of satisfaction. “That is

faster than mortal man ever travelled before, and I think no one will

ever equal our speed. We have broken all records—even our own. Now I

will slow down, but we must do it gradually, so as not to strain the

machinery.”

 

He slipped back the speed lever, notch by notch. The hand of the dial

began receding, but it still marked one hundred and twenty miles a

second.

 

Suddenly, above the roar and hum of the motor, there sounded the voice

of Andy.

 

“Professor!” he shouted. “We’re heading right toward a big, black

stone! Is that the moon?”

 

“The moon? No, we are not half way there,” said Mr. Henderson. “Are you

sure, Andy?”

 

“Sure? Yes! I saw it from the window in the pilothouse. We are

shooting right toward it.”

 

“Look to the motor, and I’ll see what it is,” directed Mr. Henderson to

his friend. Followed by the boys, he hurried to the steering tower. His

worst fears were confirmed.

 

Speeding along with a swiftness unrivalled even by some stars, the

projectile was lurching toward a great, black heavenly body. “It’s a

meteor! An immense meteor!” cried Professor Henderson, “and it’s coming

right toward us.”

 

“Will it hit us?” gasped Mark

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