Victory, Volume 15

Front Cover
Doubleday, Doran, 1928 - Abused women - 412 pages
Set in the islands of the Malay Archipelago, Victory tells the story of a disillusioned Swede, Axel Heyst, who rescues Lena, a young English musician, from the clutches of a brutish German hotel owner. Seeking refuge at Heyst's remote island retreat on Samburan, the couple is soon besieged by three villains dispatched by the enraged hotelier. The arrival on the island paradise of this trio of fiends sets off a terrifying series of events that ultimately ends in catastrophe.

From inside the book

Selected pages

Contents

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page xv - I went in there only to ask for a bottle of lemonade I have not to this day the slightest idea what in my appearance or actions could have roused his terrible ire. It became manifest to me less than two minutes after I had set eyes on him for the first time, and though immensely surprised of course I didn't stop to think it out. I took the nearest short cut — through the wall. This bestial apparition and a certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti only a couple of months afterwards, have...
Page 329 - Here they are, the envoys of the outer world. Here they are before you — evil intelligence, instinctive savagery, arm in arm. The brute force is at the back. A trio of fitting envoys perhaps — but what about the welcome? Suppose I were armed, could I shoot those two down where they stand? Could I?" Without moving her head, the girl felt for Heyst's hand, pressed it, and thereafter did not let it go. He continued, bitterly playful: "I don't know. I don't think so. There is a strain in me which...
Page 167 - Are we likely to be seen on our way?" "No, unless by native craft," said Schomberg. Ricardo nodded, satisfied. Both these white men looked on native life as a mere play of shadows. A play of shadows the dominant race could walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of its incomprehensible aims and needs.
Page 54 - ... be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but all action is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why this world is evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift a little finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observation of facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to us whether we want it or not; but now I have done with observation, too.
Page 3 - Victory— that we all live in an "age in which we are camped like bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel...
Page 195 - I see!" the girl said slowly. "Do you?" Heyst, who had been speaking as if to himself, looked up curiously. "It wasn'ta new discovery, but he brought his capacity for scorn to bear on...
Page 106 - Latin races; and though his eyes strayed about irresolutely, yet his swollen, angry features awakened in the miserable woman over whom he had been tyrannising for years a fear for his precious carcass, since the poor creature had nothing else but that to hold on to in the world. She knew him well; but she did not know him altogether. The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. And, timid in her corner, she ventured to...
Page 187 - I was not very far from you." "Apparently you were not near enough for me." "You could have called if you wanted me," she said. "And I wasn't so long doing my hair." "Apparently it was too long for me." "Well, you were thinking of me, anyhow. I am glad of it. Do you know, it seems to me, somehow, that if you were to stop thinking of me I shouldn't be in the world at all!" He turned round and looked at her. She often said things which surprised him. A vague smile faded away on her lips before his...
Page xii - ... passage between two places in the Gulf of Mexico whose names don't matter. For the most part he lay on deck aft as it were at my feet, and raising himself from time to time on his elbow would talk about himself and go on talking, not exactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but kept his eyes fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice with his familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance and make the hairs of his stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His...
Page 113 - Schomberg's argument was met by Mr. Jones's statement that one must do something to kill time. Killing time was not forbidden. For the rest, being in a communicative mood, Mr. Jones said languidly and in a voice indifferent, as if issuing from a tomb, that he depended on himself, as if the world were still one great, wild jungle without law. Martin was something like that, too — for reasons of his own. All these statements Ricardo confirmed by short, inhuman grins. Schomberg lowered his eyes, for...