Chapter I: Front Matter

THE
SORCERER’S
STONE

_I saw Mrs. Daisie’s little hand pause for a moment at the odd lump
under his shirt and feel it with the dexterity of a pickpocket_]

THE
SORCERER’S STONE

BY
BEATRICE GRIMSHAW
Author of “Vaiti of the Island,” “When the
Red Gods Call,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES SARKA

PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1914, by
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.

Copyright, 1913, 1914, by
THE RIDGWAY COMPANY

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. _The Sorcerer’s Stone_ 11

II. _The Jumping Bamboo_ 55

III. _The Empty Diving Dress_ 93

IV. _The Fight at Twelve Fathoms_ 133

V. _The Secret of the Stone Oven Country_ 175

VI. _How they Buried Bobby-the-Clock_ 223

VII. _Concerning a Cassowary and a Hymn Book_ 267

ILLUSTRATIONS

_I saw Mrs. Daisie’s little hand pause for a moment at the odd
lump under his shirt and feel it with the dexterity of a
pickpocket_ _Frontispiece_

PAGE
_I made straight for the sound, and there in the growing
moonlight, behind the white stems of a clump of betel-palm,
was the Marquis――dancing_ 18

_I have never been called a nervous man; but I was down the
ladder and out in the street almost before the Marquis_ 67

_The spectacle of the Marquis, in a dirty singlet and
trousers, and bare feet, doing the war-dance of the priests
in “Athalie” in the main street at two o’clock in the
morning, is one of the things I expect to remember all the
rest of my life_ 120

_It was awful to see them struggling and reeling and gripping
at each other, there at the bottom of the sea, where a
tangled life-line or a nipped air-tube meant certain death_
159

_I cannot describe the extraordinary appearance he made there
on the mountain-top in the scarlet dawn, with the cannibals
looking on while he performed his incantations_ 217

_His gigantic figure, clad in pink and green pajamas, seemed
to fill the store; he had at least a dozen arms and legs
and every one of them smashed everything it touched_ 260

_The bird stretched out its neck with the darting pounce of a
snake, snatched at the gaudy little book, gulped, swallowed
and_―――― 301

I

THE SORCERER’S STONE