The Crystal Ball By Roy J. SnellThe Crystal Ball By Roy J. Snell

Gypsy Flight By Roy J. Snell

Out of the depths of jungle and forest comes a story intriguing and full of mystery. The very setting -- the tropics of British Honduras and the Caribbean Sea -- conjures up visions of pirates and buccaneers, of adventure, mystery, and peril lurking at every step in the jungle.This is really a dual story, following the adventures of two boy chums, but the incidents are so interwoven as to constitute a delightful whole. They have a common enemy, a crafty, unscrupulous Spaniard, and the action centers around the efforts of the boys to circumvent his plots to rob those dear to them.Carib Indians, old Spanish Dons, Maya caves, and hidden treasures all lend mystery and enchantment to the tale. Action is fast and furious. The lure of the tropics is strong, and against this background Mr. Snell has woven a story that will satisfy even the most adventure-loving

Roy J. Snell (1878-1959) authored at least 85 Young Adult novels under his own name and as by David O\'Hara, James Craig, and Joseph Marino, most of them specifically directed to boys, though he wrote at least one series of mysteries for girls. His tales for younger children, beginning with Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends (1916), are animal Fantasies.

In a cabin far up the side of Pine Mountain, within ten paces of the murmuring waters of Ages Creek, there stood an old, two roomed log cabin. In one room of that cabin sat a girl. She was a large, strong girl, with the glow of ruddy health on her cheeks. Her dress, though simple, displayed a taste too often missing in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, and one might have guessed that she was from outside the mountains.

An undersea adventure from the Golden Age, this is a wonderful boys mystery story, or else a family story for all ages. Fun and easy to read, it is also filled with wonderful description that is a step above today\'s writing.

As Johnny Thompson bent over the black waters of the river he thought he heard a stealthy movement behind him. Before he could decide whether or not his eyes had deceived him he caught the reflection of a sudden white gleam on the dark surface of the water. At the same time something told him to dive, and dive he did. With the rocket-like speed that was his, he shot straight into the water, then away beneath the surface. He rose some ten yards downstream. After one deep, silent breath, he grasped a red mangrove branch for support, then paused to listen.

Whispers at Dawn

Night was settling down over the mountain side. Already the valleys far below were lost in darkness. The massive fortress which the dwellers on the island of Haiti have always called the Citadel hung like a mountain cliff above a boy who, hot from climbing, had thrown himself on a bed of moss at the foot of a gnarled mahogany tree. "Whew!" he exclaimed softly to himself. "Even three thousand feet above the sea here in Haiti it\'s hot. Hot and dry. Fellow\'d think--" He broke short off to stare. A curious thing was happening. Out from a small dark opening some forty feet up the perpendicular wall of the massive abandoned fortification, something quite indistinct in the twilight had moved and was creeping slowly down the moss-grown wall. "Like a snake," he told himself, "only, here in Haiti, there are no snakes to speak of and certainly not one as long as that. Only look! It\'s down to the window below; a full twenty feet. "That window--" He caught his breath, then began to count. "One, two, three, four,-- "That\'s the window of Curlie\'s \'laburatory\' as he calls it. It--why, it\'s a plot! I should warn him. It--"

"And then I saw it--the Shadow." The speaker\'s eyes appeared to snap. Johnny Thompson leaned forward in his chair. "It glided through the fog without a sound." The voice droned on, "Not a sound, mind you! We had a small boat with powerful motors. I stepped on the gas. Our motors roared. We were after that shadow." "And then?" Johnny Thompson whispered. "For all I know," the black-eyed man murmured, leaning back in his chair, "we might have cut that shadow square in two. Anyway, that\'s the last we saw of it for that day. "But think of it!" he exclaimed after a second\'s pause. "Think of the thing just disappearing in the fog like that!" He was a romantic figure, this man Blackie. The boys of Matanuska Valley in Alaska loved this gathering of an evening about the red-hot stove in the store. And no part of the evening\'s entertainment was ever half so thrilling as Blackie\'s stories. "It was spring then," Blackie added, "late May, when the salmon run was on." "It was a whale after salmon, that shadow," someone suggested. "No, sir!" Blackie fairly shouted. "It was too fast for a whale! Some sort of Oriental craft, I shouldn\'t wonder. Though how they\'d make it go without a sound is beyond me. "Ah well," he sighed, "I\'ll be rid of these by spring." He kicked at the crutches beside his chair. "Then I\'ll be after \'em again, those bloomin\' Orientals and their gliding shadows." "You going back into the Coast Guard Service?" Johnny asked eagerly. "I sure am!" Blackie agreed heartily. "Boy! That\'s the life! A speedy boat with two or three airplane motors in her hull, a good crew, plenty of gas, the wide open sea and enough trouble to keep your eyes open day and night. Man! Oh, man!"..............

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Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage, Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors, groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than she. "A Japanese," she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. "But no, a Jap wouldn\'t look like that." She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity. Together with hundreds of other "home-seekers"--she smiled as she thought of herself as a home-seeker--she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could do about that. So--