During the past year, in the intervals of an active life, I have amused myself with constructing this tale. It has been scribbled in every kind of odd place and moment⁠—in England and abroad, during l...

I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got Bullivant’s telegram. It was at Furling, the big country house in Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who w...

I wrote out a wire to Sandy, asking him to come up by the two-fifteen train and meet me at my flat. “I have chosen my colleague,” I said. “Billy Arbuthnot’s boy? His father was at Harrow with me. I kn...

Our various departures were unassuming, all but the American’s. Sandy spent a busy fortnight in his subterranean fashion, now in the British Museum, now running about the country to see old exploring ...

The Germans, as Peter said, are a careful people. A man met us on the quay at Rotterdam. I was a bit afraid that something might have turned up in Lisbon to discredit us, and that our little friend mi...

Next morning there was a touch of frost and a nip in the air which stirred my blood and put me in buoyant spirits. I forgot my precarious position and the long road I had still to travel. I came down ...

I was standing stark naked next morning in that icy bedroom, trying to bathe in about a quart of water, when Stumm entered. He strode up to me and stared me in the face. I was half a head shorter than...

Everything depended on whether the servant was in the hall. I had put Stumm to sleep for a bit, but I couldn’t flatter myself he would long be quiet, and when he came to he would kick the locked door ...

I lay for four days like a log in that garret bed. The storm died down, the thaw set in, and the snow melted. The children played about the doors and told stories at night round the fire. Stumm’s myrm...

Before I turned in that evening I had done some good hours’ work in the engine-room. The boat was oil-fired, and in very fair order, so my duties did not look as if they would be heavy. There was nobo...

We reached Rustchuk on January 10th, but by no means landed on that day. Something had gone wrong with the unloading arrangements, or more likely with the railway behind them, and we were kept swingin...

We battled to a corner, where a jut of building stood out into the street. It was our only chance to protect our backs, to stand up with the rib of stone between us. It was only the work of seconds. O...

A spasm of incredulity, a vast relief, and that sharp joy which comes of reaction chased each other across my mind. I had come suddenly out of very black waters into an unbelievable calm. I dropped in...

I walked out of that house next morning with Blenkiron’s arm in mine, a different being from the friendless creature who had looked vainly the day before for sanctuary. To begin with, I was splendidly...

Since that first night I had never clapped eyes on Sandy. He had gone clean out of the world, and Blenkiron and I waited anxiously for a word of news. Our own business was in good trim, for we were pr...

I was soaked to the bone, and while Peter set off to look for dinner I went to my room to change. I had a rubdown and then got into pyjamas for some dumbbell exercises with two chairs, for that long w...

Two days later, in the evening, we came to Angora, the first stage in our journey. The passports had arrived next morning, as Frau von Einem had promised, and with them a plan of our journey. More, on...

From that moment I date the beginning of my madness. Suddenly I forgot all cares and difficulties of the present and future and became foolishly lighthearted. We were rushing towards the great battle ...

“I’ve often regretted,” said Blenkiron, “that miracles have left off happening.” He got no answer, for I was feeling the walls for something in the nature of a window. “For I reckon,” he went on, “tha...

Peter scarcely looked up from his breakfast. “I’m willing, Dick,” he said. “But you mustn’t ask me to be friends with Stumm. He makes my stomach cold, that one.” For the first time he had stopped call...

This chapter is the tale that Peter told me⁠—long after, sitting beside a stove in the hotel at Bergen, where we were waiting for our boat. He climbed on the roof and shinned down the broken bricks of...

It was a wise man who said that the biggest kind of courage was to be able to sit still. I used to feel that when we were getting shelled in the reserve trenches outside Vermelles. I felt it before we...

But no more shells fell. The night grew dark and showed a field of glittering stars, for the air was sharpening again towards frost. We waited for an hour, crouching just behind the far parapets, but ...

Peter meant a Polish-Jew fellow. ↩...