Just ahead of our summer Tale for Our Time, let me put in a word for our complementary entertainment at the other end of the day: the audio version of The Mark Steyn Show. Last month we had an experimental mélange of the Steyn Show and our Clubland Q&A and, while reaction was mixed, the majority of respondents seemed to enjoy it. So we're going to try it again tomorrow, Wednesday, live around the planet at 11am North American Eastern - that's 3pm GMT/4pm British Summer Time. We'll have some regular Steyn Show features, but I'll also take your questions on the woes of the world live as they roll in. Hope you'll join me.
Ahead of that, welcome to Episode Ten of our serialization of Jack London's Burning Daylight. Fran Lavery, a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club from New Mexico, is just catching up:
I do a bunch of guy's repair things around my house, so for this reason alone I'm feeling energized (more likely exhausted but too tired to discern the difference) after listening to one episode of Burning Daylight. Either way, if I'm cracking up from too much bad news out there, this is a perfectly swell way to burn midnight.
Exactly, Fran. Hurry on to Part Two.
In tonight's episode, a starved and weakened Daylight comes up with one last long shot to bust out of the trap:
The wall of ice was five feet above the ground on which the boat rested. First prospecting for the best launching-place, he found where a huge cake of ice shelved upward from the river that ran fifteen feet below to the top of the wall. This was a score of feet away, and at the end of an hour he had managed to get the boat that far. He was sick with nausea from his exertions, and at times it seemed that blindness smote him, for he could not see, his eyes vexed with spots and points of light that were as excruciating as diamond-dust, his heart pounding up in his throat and suffocating him. Elijah betrayed no interest, did not move nor open his eyes; and Daylight fought out his battle alone. At last, falling on his knees from the shock of exertion, he got the boat poised on a secure balance on top the wall. Crawling on hands and knees, he placed in the boat his rabbit-skin robe, the rifle, and the pail. He did not bother with the ax. It meant an additional crawl of twenty feet and back, and if the need for it should arise he well knew he would be past all need.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear this latest installment of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in.
You can enjoy Burning Daylight episode by episode, night by night, twenty minutes before you lower your lamp. Or, alternatively, do feel free to binge-listen: you can find all the earlier instalments here.
If you've yet to hear any of our first four-dozen Tales for Our Time, you can do so by joining The Mark Steyn Club. Or, if you need an extra-special present for someone, why not give your loved one a Gift Membership and start him or her off with just shy of fifty cracking yarns? And please join us tomorrow - after our combo Mark Steyn Show/Clubland Q&A - for another episode of Burning Daylight.