Programming note: I'll be in for Tucker again tomorrow, Monday, live across America at 8pm Eastern. Hope you'll swing by.
Thank you for all your kind words on this latest Tale for Our Time. Larry Durham, a South Carolina member of The Mark Steyn Club (and no relation, presumably, to the Durham Report), enthuses:
I am thoroughly enjoying Burning Daylight. I like reading along with Steyn's marvelous oratory. Do any of my fellow clubbers do the same?
Also, I binge listened to The Prisoner of Zenda over the last couple of days (in between releases of Burning Daylight) - Splendid!
It's one thing to drop in for the free content; however, I'm telling everyone I know to ante up for the Club subscription. Tales for Our Time is more than worth the price of admission.
I wouldn't disagree there, Larry. But, if you enjoyed The Prisoner of Zenda, I hope you'll give a try to my contemporary inversion.
And, on that note, welcome to Part Fifteen of Jack London's sweeping novel of life on the Yukon River and the San Francisco bay. In tonight's episode of Burning Daylight, Daylight is beginning to get the feeling he's outgrown the Arctic:
Organization was what was needed, he decided; and his quick imagination sketched Eldorado Creek, from mouth to source, and from mountain top to mountain top, in the hands of one capable management. Even steam-thawing, as yet untried, but bound to come, he saw would be a makeshift. What should be done was to hydraulic the valley sides and benches, and then, on the creek bottom, to use gold-dredges such as he had heard described as operating in California.
There was the very chance for another big killing. He had wondered just what was precisely the reason for the Guggenhammers and the big English concerns sending in their high-salaried experts. That was their scheme. That was why they had approached him for the sale of worked-out claims and tailings. They were content to let the small mine-owners gopher out what they could, for there would be millions in the leavings.
And, gazing down on the smoky inferno of crude effort, Daylight outlined the new game he would play, a game in which the Guggenhammers and the rest would have to reckon with him. Cut along with the delight in the new conception came a weariness. He was tired of the long Arctic years, and he was curious about the Outside—the great world of which he had heard other men talk and of which he was as ignorant as a child. There were games out there to play. It was a larger table, and there was no reason why he with his millions should not sit in and take a hand. So it was, that afternoon on Skookum Hill, that he resolved to play this last best Klondike hand and pull for the Outside...
Ah, but the Outside has different ways, and Daylight's skills may prove less useful in a world of subtler predators...
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Fifteen of Burning Daylight simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you've a friend who's a fan of classic literature and you want to give him or her a present with a difference, we hope you'll consider a one-year gift membership in The Mark Steyn Club. The lucky recipient will enjoy full access to our back catalogue of audio adventures and video poems - Conrad and Conan Doyle, Kipling and Kafka, and all the rest - which should keep you going until the variants peter out, or at least until the Year Zero crowd has had all the books banned. For more details, see here.
Through the hell of 2021, our nightly audio adventure goes on, so do join me immediately, after my Monday hosting stint on Tucker Carlson Tonight, right back here tomorrow for Burning Daylight Part Sixteen.