Here are the best of many thrilling stories written by the late James Oliver Curwood concerning the ships that once plied America's fresh-water oceans - and the dauntless men who sailed them. These tales of the Inland Seas are reliable word-pictures of vessels and sailors now remembered only by the survivors of a generation that will soon have passed entirely away. Mr. Curwood, though better known as a writer of Canadian wilderness novels, was once regarded as an authority in such matters.