Under the Southern Cross
()
About this ebook
Elizabeth Robins
Elizabeth Robins (1862-1952) was an American actress, playwright, scholar, and suffragette. Born in Kentucky, Robins was raised by her grandmother in Ohio following her father’s abandonment and mother’s subsequent commitment to an insane asylum. Educated and encouraged in her interest in the dramatic arts, she began a successful career as an actress in Boston before moving to London after the tragic suicide of her husband, George Parks. In England, she renewed her acting career, befriending such figures as Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw while playing an influential role in bringing Henrik Ibsen’s plays to the English stage. At the height of her career, she produced Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler for the first time in England, playing the title character and establishing herself as one of the foremost performers and theater scholars of her day. After retiring from the stage in 1902, Robins embarked on a career as a writer of novels, stories, and plays, authoring successful works of fiction and nonfiction alike. As the women’s suffrage movement gathered steam, she joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Women’s Social and Political Union and advocated for women’s rights through both public activism and such literary works as Votes for Women! (1907).
Read more from Elizabeth Robins
My Little Sister Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVotes for Women: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Convert Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/510 Great Books of Feminist Fiction. Illustrated: What Diantha Did, Agnes Grey, Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Messenger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Convert Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Little Sister Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Open Question a tale of two temperaments Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Magnetic North Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Magnetic North Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVotes for Women: and Other Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Convert Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder the Southern Cross Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder the Southern Cross Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Messenger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Magnetic North Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCome and Find Me Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Under the Southern Cross
Related ebooks
Under the Southern Cross Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPortrait of a Man with Red Hair Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Diary of a Man of Fifty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Clouded Land: An engaging saga of family and secrets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnnette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eleanor’s Victory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Europeans: “It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of M. D'Haricot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Europeans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Victus: The Fall of Barcelona, a Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Bull On The Guadalquivir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Professor's Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Long Road to Salamanca Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Daredevil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Passenger from Calais Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExplorers of the Dawn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKiss of the Water Nymph: A Hector Mortlake Adventure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Fluttered Dovecote Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaming Charlotte Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Henry James Sampler #4: 10 books by Henry James Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKate Vernon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReno — a Book of Short Stories and Information Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiterary Love-Letters and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Top 10 Short Stories - The 1900's - The Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPirates 1. The Voyage of Blandine Veyre Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEsmeralda Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEleanor’s Victory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEleanor's Victory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEleanor's Victory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Pair of Blue Eyes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Classics For You
The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Under the Southern Cross
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Under the Southern Cross - Elizabeth Robins
UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS
..................
Elizabeth Robins
YURITA PRESS
Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.
This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2016 by Elizabeth Robins
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: OUR AGREEABLE FELLOW PASSENGER
CHAPTER II: MY INTERPRETER AT MAZATLAN
CHAPTER III: I AM LECTURED
CHAPTER IV: I DRINK COCOANUT MILK AND GO FISHING FOR PEARLS
CHAPTER V: THE BARON IS CRAZED WITH MADNESS
CHAPTER VI: THE BARANCA
CHAPTER VII: THE INCA EYE
Under the Southern Cross
By
Elizabeth Robins
Under the Southern Cross
Published by Yurita Press
New York City, NY
First published circa 1952
Copyright © Yurita Press, 2015
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
About YURITA Press
Yurita Press is a boutique publishing company run by people who are passionate about history’s greatest works. We strive to republish the best books ever written across every conceivable genre and making them easily and cheaply available to readers across the world.
CHAPTER I: OUR AGREEABLE FELLOW PASSENGER
..................
I
N THE SAME SPIRIT IN which a solicitous mamma or benevolent middle-aged friend will sometimes draw forth from the misty past some youthful misdeed, and set the faded picture up before a girl’s eyes, framed in fiery retribution—for an object lesson and a terrible example—so will I, benevolent, if not middle-aged, put before the eyes of my sisters a certain experience of mine. I expect my little act of self-abasement for the instruction of my sex to have this merit: the picture I will show you is not dim with age, and not cut and cramped to fit the frame of a special case. The colours are hardly dry, and both picture and tale are quite unvarnished.
I am a plain American girl of twenty. I am not so plain, as I come to think of it, as one or two others I know—not being distinguished even by unusual or commanding ugliness. I spent last winter in San Francisco with relatives, and intended returning home as I came—overland. But the invalid friend who was asked to chaperon me back to New York, was advised by her physicians to take the trip by sea via Panama, for health’s sake, and I was easily induced to change my arrangements and bear her company.
It was on a sunny April morning that our friends met us at the wharf of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company to bid us God-speed on our month’s voyage from the Golden Gate to the harbour of New York.
Fruits and flowers, boxes of salted almonds and Maskey’s best bonbons, as well as books, from Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico
to the latest novels, were showered upon us, with the understanding that it was to be a long and tedious voyage, and we should need all the comfort obtainable to support existence, with the knowledge that if we survived, we might be the better for the journey. The signal for visitors to leave the ship had been given, and Major Sanford, turning to go, stood face to face with a tall, foreign-looking young man, who smiled with quick recognition, showing small white teeth like a woman’s.
You raimembair me, Major?
Major Sanford did raimembair,
and, turning to me, presented Baron de Bach.
—he knows all our good friends, was here four years ago on his way round the world in his steam yacht—glad to think you’ll have such good company. Good-bye!
And Major Sanford was the last to run down the gangway. How little he knew what entertainment he was providing in coupling my farewell to him with hail
to Baron de Bach!
Slowly we moved away from the dense crowd that covered the wharf. In the cloud of fluttering handkerchiefs, our friends’ faces grew dim and slowly faded; the fair city at our Western portal looked like dreamland in a haze.
You air not sorry dthat you go?
says a voice over my shoulder.
No,
I say, without turning; I’m always glad of a change. You must have had a good time in that yacht of yours, going where you liked, and getting up steam the moment you had seen enough.
Yes,
says the new acquaintance meditatively, coming forward to the side of the vessel where I can see his face, Mais je suis très fatigué. I am glad dthat I now go home.
You are young to be tired.
I look sideways at the boyish face. He is German, I think to myself, making a mental note of his complexion, strangely fair for a yachtsman the eyes—heavily fringed blue eyes—the full-lipped, sensuous mouth, shapely of its kind, shadowed by a curling blond moustache.
You are going home round Robin Hood’s barn, aren’t you?
Robeen Hoohd? Pardon, vill you tell me who is he en français?
No, I’m not proud of my French, and if mistakes must be made I would rather you made them. I meant isn’t this a curious way to go to Germany, if you are tired of travel and in haste to get home?
I lif not in Jhermany, how could you dthink——
Oh, I fancied the name was German, and——
Yes—yes, dthe name, but——
And you look a little German.
Ah, mademoiselle, look at me more, I am in nodthing like Jhermans.
I could see the tall young stranger was a bit distressed that his Teutonic cast betrayed him.
My fadthur was Jherman—my modthur is Castilian, my home is Lima, I am Peruvian, but I am educate in France. I am cosmopolite. And you—air Frainch?
I wonder where Mrs. Steele is?
I say, and turn away to find my friend standing at the stern, with the tears streaming down her handsome, care-worn face, and her great hollow eyes fixed on the fading outlines of the San Franciscan harbour. The Baron has followed, but I turn my back and devote myself to diverting Mrs. Steele.
We must arrange our stateroom before we are ill,
she says presently, in a state of hopeful anticipation, and we retire to No. 49 in the Steamship San Miguel, which all who have taken this journey know to be the best double room on the crack
steamer of the line.