A Mediterranean mystery

I hate the sight of those terra-cotta envelopes that telegrams come in. They have often announced ill news to me, and even in the absence of ill news they bear with them an atmo...

Instead of the fo’c’sle kit, or the uniform of a needy officer of the mercantile marine, which had disfigured his previous appearances, he came arrayed in blue serge. He wore a...

Captain Welfare was to return with him some time before dinner. I had the day before me and I awaited their coming with a great curiosity as to the personality of this stranger....

I had the idea that he wanted to dispose of the business side of the matter first. I was determined to become, if possible, a part owner of the _Astarte_, and all the enterprise...

It was clearly impossible for me to make the real acquaintance of the _Astarte_ that night and, as it was certainly raw and cold on deck in the dark, I gladly followed Captain W...

The days that followed each other now on board the _Astarte_ were placid enough, but the habit was broken, and I have only a rather confused memory of the long journey.

By the next morning the coast was more distinct and we were still approaching it. But our progress was now very slow, and we could depend only on the land breeze of early mornin...

As I got used to the apparent insecurity of my position and the rocking motion which the camel’s gait imposes on one, I began to find something soothing in the slow but dignifie...

I have said that Jakoub had compelled my grudging respect as he faced the sand-storm. Now I had to recognise in him again a master of circumstance, as from a fiercely clamouring...

It was somehow a relief to me to find Brogden in a suit of civilian linen. His exotic uniform, and the tarboosh which etiquette compelled him to keep on his head throughout the...

I had finished a late breakfast and sat trying to forget my trouble and take an intelligent interest in _The Egyptian Gazette_ and an eloquent indictment in its columns of the “...

Edmund had gone when I awoke, but he had left a note saying that he would be back early with what he called “the fixings for to-night.” He would remain all day, he said, and I w...

My boat did not sail until the following day, and I now felt a degree of mental and bodily lassitude and exhaustion that prevented my having any pleasure in the prospect of my l...

Snape’s presence in my home, however, effectually prevented this programme. He was a discomfort to me, constant and irritating as a piece of grit in one’s eye, with the added an...

The period of waiting for news of Edmund, of what was really the opening of a campaign against Jakoub, and the persons whom he so largely controlled, was necessarily for me a ve...

Both Edmund’s temper and my own were naturally worn a little thin under the tension of this uncertainty, and the friction of our futile calculations of chances. But neither of u...

We waited but a few moments in silence before Bates ushered in our local constable, an old friend of mine, and one who had a professional veneration for my position as a County...

His head was neatly bandaged, and he was clad in a dressing-gown. He was still evidently weak, although largely restored from the pitiable object that had crawled into the cellar.

I have done what I needed to do for my own satisfaction by putting in the form of a consecutive narrative the peculiar and perhaps sometimes unseemly transactions which have now...