Packard was the author of the Jimmie Dale series, consisting of five volumes. The book begins: The Waratan, a small cargo steamer of some three thousand tons, lifted sluggishly, apathetically to the swells. The bit of sail rigged upon her gave her scarcely more than steerage-way. She carried no lights. Her engine-room hatch was carefully hooded with tarpaulins. From the depths below, muffled, there came the incessant clamor of hammers, of busy tools. The machinery was still. A mist hung in the light, following breeze, a wet mist that was almost a fine drizzle. There were no stars above. To starboard and port there was land-islands; many of them. They were there in the darkness-unseen. In the Malay Archipelago they are everywhere.