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ADVENTURE VOL⋅I NOVEMBER 1910 YELLOW MEN and GOLD GOUVERNEUR MORRIS AUTHOR OF THE VOICE IN THE RICE

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Among all the stories of adventure ever written there are a few that stand out in every reader's memory—"Robinson Crusoe," "The Three Musketeers," "The Prisoner of Zenda," for instance, in their respective fields. We all think first of "Treasure Island" as the greatest story of plunder and piracy and tropic adventure on land and sea. Then after a time came "Moran of the Lady Letty," Frank Norris's fine tale of the Pacific, named by many as the best adventure story since "Treasure Island." And now, ten years later, we in the office of ADVENTURE take satisfaction in the belief that "Yellow Men and Gold" is the best since "Moran." You will find in it the same "sit-up-at-night-till-you-finish-it" quality that has made its brilliant predecessors famous.

CHAPTER I

HOW SUCCESS RUINED ME

AS A SCHOONER among the South Islands, heeling to the honest Trade, skims unaffectedly from port to port, asking but small room of the sea and intent only upon her narrow destiny and little interests; so, I know well, ought a narrative of adventure, treasure-seeking and violent meetings of men, to start, to proceed and to end. Yet from the very veraciousness of those events about to be related, it seems necessary to begin cumbersomely; as if the vessel to maneuver were a three-decker, the wind baffling and the channel, between harbor and open sea, tortuous and involved. And there will not be any plain sailing until well after the murder in the gully and the examination of the crew-man's wallet. I had determined while still in those gawky teens, from which so far as concerns locomotion I shall never emerge, to be an author. And I wrote from that period

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