"It reared its black, forbidding head like some huge monster rising from the deep." A typhoon rages off the coast of Japan — and off the page, in Jack London's first story, published at age 17. In these vivid stories, London pits nature at its most extreme against men who must struggle violently to survive. Whether describing ore cables strung across a valley in Sacramento gold-mine territory or the straining boards of ships battered by gales, London's eye for realism keeps his dramatic tales vivid and fresh — even now, nearly a century after his death.