Sure-dart : A story of strange hunters and stranger game in the days of…
"Sure-dart" by F. H. Costello is a novel written in the early 20th century. It is a prehistoric adventure about a young hunter named Sure-dart, his friend Hop-foot, and their tribe, who struggle to survive amid dinosaurs and hostile neighbors in a primeval Colorado of steaming swamps and a vast inland sea. The story blends survival, tribal warfare, and monster hunting as the Rock-people face both colossal reptiles and a human enemy,
the Fishers. The opening of Sure-dart sets the scene with a prefatory note explaining the liberties taken with science and a roster of the monstrous creatures to come. We meet Sure-dart and Hop-foot as they spy on a poisoned “death-beast,” glimpse a plesiosaur at the lake, and are chased to a “safety-hole,” where Sure-dart coolly uses poisoned darts to drive off a besieging dinosaur. Big-axe’s war party returns, rescues the boys, and the narrative shifts to the Rock-people’s cave life, weapons, and poisons, and their looming conflict with the stronger Fisher tribe. Forced to evacuate toward the hills, they are overtaken at the marsh; Big-axe leads a desperate stand on a narrow ridge, a giant turtle snatches a pursuer, and Sure-dart dashes to shield the fleeing women and children as brutal, close-quarters fighting claims lives, including the chief’s wife. The survivors break through, reach a small tree-island in the bog, and hastily fortify it, gathering for the next move. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Costello, F. H. (Frederick Hankerson), 1851-1921 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Enright, Walter J. (Walter Joseph), 1879-1969 |
| LoC No. | 09025176 |
| Title | Sure-dart : A story of strange hunters and stranger game in the days of monsters |
| Original Publication | Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1909. |
| Credits | Tom Trussel, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Prehistoric peoples -- Fiction |
| Subject | Dinosaurs -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78561 |
| Release Date | Apr 27, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 2411 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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