​“Come, Boy!” the captain called from the side of the whaleboat, “Time to cast off, whilst the trough is here!”
 “I can’t let them drown in shackles!”
“Boy! We’ve got no time fer this! To the boat!”
But Adam was already making his way down the ladder and to the captain’s small cabin.
“Fool! Cast off! All together!” and the whaleboat pitched expertly into the ocean on the lee of the Anson, oars biting in almost as the keel hit water.
The next wave caught Adam as he reached the door. It took all his strength to hang onto the latch with both hands and thwart the roiling water once more. Once inside the eerie keening of the wind through the open door matched the surrealness of the calm air inside after ten hours in the gale. The desk where the shackles key was kept was locked but the desk key hung on a peg under the desk and it was nothing for Adam to unlock the desk and retrieve the key.
The next wave caught him unprepared and he somersaulted through the small space to smash into the lee cabinets. Water swirled through the doorway and rushed back out as the ship pitched and rolled. Gasping for breath he righted himself and clawed his way to the opening. Snaring a stay whose deck end was still secure he slid across the deck to the hatch and then scurried down the ladder before the next wave dumped cold buckets on his head.
He held onto the ladder and kept his feet but knew his task was hopeless. The water was already waist deep and he could feel the extra weight making the Anson even more sluggish.
The Africans were each held by two irons, a leg iron attached to a ring in the keel and a wrist iron attached to a ring in a beam that crossed the hold from stem to stern about three feet from the hull. These beams essentially divided the hold into three sections, the outer two with the Africans huddled against the hull and a narrow central section where the crew could pass. Adam plunged under the cold water, grasping the first leg iron ring he could find and thrusting his key into the hole. Then another as the ship heeled in the next wave and he felt the rush of more water through the open hatch.
Three, four then he had to surface to gasp for a lungful of air. Plunging under again as the ship lurched into the next wave.
The Africans, terrified by the rising water and by the violent storm of which they could only hear and feel in the dark hold which, of itself, was totally foreign to all of them before their imprisonment three short days before, at first did not even realize Adam was in the hold. One by one a few began to realize their leg irons were loose and then noticed the oddly behaving figure in the center section.
A single voice lifted in song. It was a full deep baritone and its first tones silenced the entire hold. The whimpering, crying, and frightened susurrations faded as everyone listed to the single voice. It told of hope and asked for patience; it gathered the shredded sanities of each prisoner back and handed them back to their owners with the equivalence of a chance.
Adam, concentrating as he was amidst the pitching and the rising waters took two cycles of gasping and diving back under to realize the human sounds of the hold had changed. He did not understand the words but he instantly grasped the emotion. The song had a calming effect on him and he plunged into his task with less frenzy and more efficiency.
The water had risen to chest high as he reached the end. The last African on the windward side was a woman, probably no more than twenty years old. Wild terror fought desperate hope in her eyes as Adam reached over and slipped the key in the lock for her wrist iron. It fell into the rising water as another great crack announced the splintering of the foremast.
Adam motioned for the woman to pass him and head for the ladder as he slipped the key in the next lock, freeing a teenager whose nose was barely above the black water. Uncomprehending, the first woman did not move but the teenager, seizing Adam’s meaning, snatched the older woman’s hand and pulled her toward the ladder. Anson stuttered into the next wave but appeared to not roll as much and the torrent cascading through the open hatch was much reduced.
As Adam worked the wrist locks the baritone’s song changed and became a sing-song round that Adam sensed was instructions to the hold for what to do when their irons were finally unlocked. He silently prayed they would instinctively know what to do once on deck.
Finally, the water at chin level, Adam came to the man whose singing had been so helpful. He was stocky and short enough that he was struggling to keep his mouth above the sea but his song ended in a huge tooth-filled grin when Adam thrust the key into the lock. His first action was to wrap his rescuer in a joyous hug. The African then surged up the ladder with Adam pulling himself after.

​Adam Stevens hung on to the futtock shrouds for dear life as the grandly named Lord Anson was staggered by the next wave breaking over her starboard quarter. He was more frightened than he ever had in his seventeen years of hardscrabble life. The Atlantic gale had been battering the Anson for ten hours and now the boatswain reported they were taking on water.
The captain stood at the wheel, leaning into it with all his massive bulk, trying to keep the ship head on to the enormous waves. Adam had seen him relinquish his role only once since the storm began, to down a quick dram of rum and a slab of salt pork. His wide steady stance had been a marvel to the young man, not once knocked from his post despite the most massive of watery onslaughts.
But for all of the captain’s stoicism the ocean would not be denied a victim in its tempest. A twisting gust of wind, stronger than any previous squall ripped through the Anson’s rigging and, with a report louder than any cannon-shot, snapped the mainmast quite in two. As it fell it slewed in a semi-circle snapping stays and halyards, braces and sheets.
The crew abandoned the pumps and slid across the pitching, rain-lashed deck to grab axes to cut away the debris before the other masts joined their sister but the fatal damage was already done. With the sails in disarray the ship lurched into the wind despite the captain’s superhuman effort at the wheel. The bite of the rudder was no match for the gulp of the wind.
The next wave caught them abeam and the ship canted at a 45 degree angle before slowly righting. The onrush of water caught one man without a grip and carried him with a fading anguished wail off the deck and into the dark waters beyond. A grate was torn loose and the angry water poured down into the hold in a triumphant cascade raising cries from the cargo below.
Adam thought the captain was shouting something but his ears and eyes and mouth were full of water and all he could here was the roar of the gale, the ominous approach of the next wave and the terrified cries of the cargo. For Anson was a slaver and her cargo was ninety Africans bound for the plantations of Jamaica.
In horror he watched as the next gust snapped the mizzentop and a yard crashed to the deck between himself and the captain. Where the captain seemed not to notice Adam flinched. The wave then followed with an even more terrible fury. It was all Adam could do to hang on to his perch, the sea hungrily sucking him toward the open ocean. Even the captain was staggered and pulled away from the stalwart wheel.
The boatswain, hanging onto a halyard with one hand and the edge of the hold with the other shouted, “Two feet in th’ ‘old, Zur!”
The captain nodded then cast about, taking in the mounting disaster about him. The foremast was bent, the stress of the splintered main creating a tension that would soon make it succumb in a like manner. The pumps, unmanned, as the crew struggled mightily to clear the debris even as the precariousness of their perches became more evident with the increased fury of the sea beam on. Finally he caught the whaleboat, still intact. He knew it would be much more manageable in the gale than the battered Anson, as long as the crew’s strength held.
“Crew to the boat! Abandon ship!” The bellow cut below the fury of the storm and each crewman heard it as a rumble in his bones. As one they left axe and pump and made their way quickly toward the quarterdeck.
“What of the Africans?” Adam cried to the captain who was working on loosening the lashings of the boat even as the next wave, fortunately smaller than its immediate predecessors, swept over the Anson.
“God bless their heathen souls, Boy! No room for them here even if I wanted to save ‘em!”
Adam closed his eyes. A remembered vision flooded his memory. Flames leaped up the side of the workhouse. Piteous cries from the women and children inside played a soprano tragedy above the tenor of the fire. Adam, ten years old, watched with tears streaming down his eyes screaming “Do something!” to the aged vicar who restrained him. The vicar offered a prayer for their souls.

Wherein a certain blogger (me) reprints some samples of authors whose work deserves More. More readers, More accolades, and, I fervently hope, More excellent works from the authors!

First up, perfectly catching at least one goal of an author, is LiDe Castro (@QueenofCastoria):
"Look at the all," he said, staring straight ahead. "Each and every one of them lured me in, and it was all nothing but make-believe. Manipulative bastards!"
His friend looked at the bookshelf, and turned to him, confused, "Who are you talking about?"
"Writers."

A second flash fiction, more sinister showing the darker potential, from Cheyenne Bramwell (@PoemsbyCheyenne):
She kept her desiccated dreams in the box at the foot of her bed. They would make low moans, calling to her from inside. They smelled like paper flowers made of old notebook pages. They reeked of kerosene ready to light.

​And then two poems who touch the very center of the heart.

From Shell McClendon (@shellandjeff) - I especially love the last line:
I wrote a poem of you today
pulled it from my soul
about the very last day
when I knew I had to go
I remember recalling that look in your eyes
It broke me and bled my heart dry
I walked away as if on shards of glass
Cutting-edge emotions
embedded forever in me of our past

From Alan (@alanlovespoetry) The sadness with an edge of hope:
Hymn

In every instrument
a genius song
in each pen a perfect poem

I stopped trying
to make sense of rivers
though I know they run dry

I notice
we no longer build arches
but find new ways to knock down
children & old factories

why I need our
embrace-
in each, an atom healed.

A very good poet whom I follow on Twitter who goes by the handle @alanlovespoetry posted the below recently:

Resume

Once I am dead
will it matter
if it was a stabbing or a stroke

at 53
does it matter
that only mom saw me graduate

that at 18
I made so many nice people cry

no math in it
it adds up exactly to nothing

no alphabet
not even enough for one good poem.

Before I plunge any further let me say first off that I love this poem. Second I have no idea if my Twitter "followee" is writing any grain of truth either in the events or in his philosophy (Alan, if you want to weigh in, please be my guest, if not we'll leave the mystery!). However, as a point of comparison it is excellent!

My grandmother worried about this as long as I knew her - the adding up after her death. She tried to do everything she could so that the math added to something greater than zero. I think it does, but not in the way she presented her hopes.

The sum is what is left and that is the memories the "survivors" carry with them. It may end up being transient, a generation, two, maybe three, but it does, in my mind, add up to something greater than nothing. And it does matter, each of those pieces, because each affected others to a greater or lesser extent which caused a ripple through time that would not have been there, Alan, Grandma, unless you were there.

​

PBS has compiled a list of the 100 "best" books written in English. The term "best" is loose. Over the course of the summer, in an effort to promote reading, they are allowing people to vote for their favorites to come up with "America's Greatest Read". They are also promoting the books and the great themes of literature with an eight-part television series discussing the books, the authors, themes, and other areas.
The list was complied by a survey and a blue-ribbon panel and, as with any of these "best" lists one can take exception to what is included and excluded. In the end it is probably irrelevant. I, personally, have read 36 of the 100.
The main points are, to me, that we should vote here and that we should contribute and advertise this and other promotional "tours" that encourage reading. I am not one of those who is going to try to read the 64 I have "missed" on the list - many of them hold no interest to me and, though I am sure they are well done, I have other books to read that are more my style. 
If you want, drop a comment as to how many of the 100 you've read. We can even talk about which books we wished were on the list but please, vote and encourage others to read more books!

It is now 48 years since the first collection of stories featuring the heroic pair Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser appeared in book form. Fritz Lieber and his friend Harry Otto Fischer created the characters in 1934 and they first appeared in print in 1939 in the magazine Unknown.
Lieber and Fischer created the characters to try to give a more "real" heroes than Conan the Barbarian and Tarzan. Lieber wrote almost all of the stories and, starting in the mid-1960s, organized the many disparate stories published by that time and filled in the gaps in the storyline.
The first collection includes the most highly acclaimed story of the entire series, "Ill Met in Lankhmar", which won both the Hugo (1971) and Nebula (1970) awards. The stories, individually and in their collected form had a significant influence on the creators of the game Dungeons & Dragons. Some of the characters are actually included in some of the guide books for the game.
Lieber is one of the great writers of the fantasy genre and his characters Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser and many aspects of Lankhmar and the world Nehwon are seen in books and stories and characters scores of years removed. There are seven collections in book form but my favorite, for the aforementioned story which tells of the first meeting of the two heroes, is Swords and Deviltry.

I have been digging into some family history recently and find it fascinating to look back at what was and compare it to what is. One hundred years ago the world was still engulfed in the War to End All Wars and, even with that "resolved" would plunge into the great influenza pandemic that winter. One could argue in some sense we are no further along.
Anyway, in 1918 there was no Nobel Prize for literature and a novel called His Family by Ernest Poole won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. I don't know anyone who can remember Mr. Poole or his novel. But, in 1918, a book titled My Antonia was published and is still in print today. Willa Cather's classic is still read in schools and is at the top of the Goodreads list of "Most Popular Books Published in 1918" with over 155,000 people having it in their lists on that site.
The next most popular book is the ubiquitous Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Although less well used in the age of the online than it was in my school days, this venerable book has over 114,000 listings. Not bad for being 100 years old!
After that things fall off precipitously. No other book garners even 17,000 listings. I do recognize many of the authors of the next tier of books from a century past - Kahlil Gibran, L. Frank Baum, and Edgar Rice Burroughs - though the one I think most poignant is the 10th ranked book, The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen.
Owen was killed in action one week before the end of the First World War. His poetry reflects the grim reality of war and he is considered the foremost poet of the period. In honesty only a few of his poems were published before his death and the full collection of all his works had to wait until 1963. But Goodreads places over 7,000 listings for the original few.
One final interesting inclusion in Goodreads list of the top 200 is Robert Baden-Powell's Girl Guiding. Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes had founded the scouting movement in 1908 (boys) and 1910 (girls) in England and the Scouting Movement quickly spread to the United States and many other countries. Girl Guiding was the second handbook for girls.

Kismet was a line of serial romance novels published by Meteor Publishing from 1990 to 1993. They had the misfortune of getting into the romance game at the wrong time and, despite many authors who went on to well-acclaimed careers, Kismet and Meteor went bankrupt after less than 4 years.
One Snowy Night is a typical novel of the series and Ellen Moore crafts a good romance story. It has no less than three 5-start ratings on Goodreads. Unfortunately the only bio information I could find on her was what was on the inside of the front matter of the book. This is apparently her first and only novel. Back in 1992 she was married and living in Georgia. Ms. Moore we all hope you are doing well!
One Snowy Night is available on Biblio from $4.75 including postage. 
From the back cover:
It was one of the worst snowstorms Randy Taylor had ever seen in his years as a trucker. The entire North Carolina coast was covered with snow and sleet that made driving conditions treacherous. When his headlights pointed to a lone pedestrian on the deserted stretch of highway, Randy couldn't help but stop. He assumed that he was picking up a runaway boy, but when the passenger's strawberry-blonde hair spilled out from under her cap, he realized she was a young, vulnerable, very pregnant woman.
Scarlett Kincaid had been reluctant to accept a ride from the blue-eyed stranger, but her instincts had told her to get out of the cold if she wanted to protect her unborn child. And in the nightmare of the past few months, Scarlett had grown desperate to save her child. She had vowed to run far and fast, for the child's sake. She just had no idea that the baby would choose to arrive so soon.
Randy wanted nothing to do with Scarlett's labor. He was a confirmed bachelor, the trucker they called "Lone Star"—not a doctor. But the forces of nature left him with no choice. He was trapped in a snowstorm with a beautiful woman about to give birth in his brand-new rig!

Hondo was the second full-length western published by prolific author Louis L'Amour. It had been developed from the short story "The Gift of Cochise" which John Wayne had read the year before and purchased the screen rights from L'Amour.
While James Edward Grant wrote the screenplay, L'Amour expanded it into novel form. While there are significant differences between the short story, the screen play, and the novel the latter two were instant successes, with the novel and the movie released on the same day, the novel featuring the words, "Hondo was the finest Western Wayne had ever read".
L'Amour wrote 89 novels, 2 full-length non-fiction works, and published 14 short story collections in his lifetime. He also wrote poetry and other stories and articles not included in the above. Although primarily remembered as a writer of westerns, he also wrote crime/mystery stories, science fiction, historical fiction, and adventure stories.
While criticized for becoming formulaic and somewhat pedantic, especially in his later westerns, L'Amour produced some of the best-loved work in the past century.
Hondo can be found in many different printings, on Biblio, from only $3.97 including postage.
From the original jacket back:
He was etched by the desert’s howling winds, a big, broad-shouldered man who knew the ways of the Apache and the ways of staying alive. She was a woman alone raising a young son on a remote Arizona ranch. And between Hondo Lane and Angie Lowe was the warrior Vittoro, whose people were preparing to rise against the white men. Now the pioneer woman, the gunman, and the Apache warrior are caught in a drama of love, war, and honor