Mister Tidwell, Gunner

This title is a compilation of three sea stories by Hubbard from the 1930s, narrated by a full cast with sound effects. The title story is about a schoolmaster aboard a ship during the Napoleonic wars. Tidwell, sick of assisting in primitive surgery during battle, takes up the arms of a fallen man and applies his knowledge of mathematics to ballistics. The second story, "Submarine," is short and follows a series of premonitions of doom for a sailor returning to his sub. The final piece, "The Drowned City," is about a race to discover lost gold in an underwater diving adventure. All three tales are exciting and quick. Realism takes a backseat to narrative, but it helps keep the pacing up. The characters are drawn mostly from archetypes, as are the plots, but they combine to create the appropriate action set pieces.