Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 21 -- Boys Club Singles
Sheridan Frank's "The Young Marooner, or An American
Robinson Crusoe," Brave and Bold, December 26, 1908,
freely lifts from other plots.
Sixteen year-old Tom Scott leaves home and becomes a
sailor on a whaling ship. Hanging on to a cable tied to a
harpoon buried in a whale, Tom ends up riding atop the
whale and being chased by a ravenous giant squid. He
passes out and wakes up on the shore of an island inhabited
by Joco, a Friday-like character. Tom and Joco discover a
mysterious well leading to an underground river which
tunnels to an adjacent island. There, they save princess
Waupango from cannibals, but her people try to kill the
heroes. Tom and Joco escape, and with a powerful
explosive destroy the tunnel.
Emma L. Orcutt's The Divine Seal (1909) involves lycanthropy, the Arctic, a hollow world with
Atlantilian survivors, suspended animation and a baffling cosmology.
We knew the crater was not deep; that some time a winding stairway had been made, and that
landings, built of wood, or hewn out of the rock, had served as resting places. We also were
aware that at the bottom there was a stream of water; its source and mouth had never been
found; at least none of the living inhabitants of Heclades had explored the river and there were
no records referring to it that seemed reliable... I knew that volcanic eruptions and earthquakes
had occurred since then and I believed this stream had an outlet in the known world.
Our electric lantern and "dome light" enabled us to see a long distance ahead; we glided down
that underground current with no anxiety as to our safety, but with a great deal of curiosity as to
the terminus of our trip.
As with many Boys Club books, the literary verdict wasn't positive.
But it fails to grip a responsive imagination in the reader, and all its wonders fall to the ground
with a dull thud -- New York Times Saturday Review of Books, March 12, 1910
In The Great War Syndicate (1882) by Frank R. Stockton, the American War Syndicate fights
the British with a "motor bomb" (a rocket fired from a gun), "crabs" (a submarine that snags the
propeller of enemy ships) and "repellers" (spring-loaded armor that throws incoming artillery back
from where they came). After defeating the Brits, the Syndicate falls into an underground river
and must deal with dwarf Indians.
The Adventures of Captain Horn (1910) by the same author presented its hero a puzzle.
As he and Ralph stood there, stupefied and staring, they saw, by the dim light which came
through the opening on the other side of the cavern, a great empty rocky basin. The bottom of
this, some fifteen or twenty feet below them, wet and shining, with pools of water here and
there, was plainly visible in the space between them and the open cleft, but farther on all was
dark. There was every reason to suppose, however, that all the water had gone from the lake.
Why or how this had happened, they did not even ask themselves. They simply stood and
stared.
In their search for water, game, or fellow-beings, no one had climbed these desolate rocks,
apparently dry and barren. But still the captain was puzzled as to the way the water had gone
out of the lake. He did not believe that it had flowed through the ravine below. There were no
signs that there had been a flood down there. Little vines and plants were growing in chinks of
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