Corporal Sam and Other Stories

By this time dawn had begun to grow in the sky behind us. I handed over the prisoners to Wilkins and Carey, and gave Wyld and Masters leave to return with them to Farnham: 'for,...

Doubtless the fall stunned me; but doubtless also not for more than a few seconds. For I awoke to the drum of distant hoofs, and before it died clean away I had recovered sense...

The night was moonless but strewn with stars. A tonic north-east wind hummed over the high moors, and seemed to prick old Dapple, prescient of his own straw and rack, to his ver...

I dare say that, since the world began and men learned to fight, was never an army moderately prosperous and yet fuller of grumblers than was ours during the latter weeks of Nov...

Thus concludes the epitaph of Doctor Unonius, upon a modest stone in the churchyard of Polpeor, in Cornwall, of which parish he was, during his life, the general friend, as his...

To his surprise, within a few seconds a faint light shone through the chink by the door-jamb, and he heard a footstep coming down the passage. A bolt was withdrawn, very softly-...

Sergeant David Wilkes, of the First (Royal) Regiment of Foot--third battalion, B Company--came trudging with a small fatigue party down the sandy slopes of Mount Olia, on the su...

Although the hour was close upon midnight, and no moon showed, Corporal Sam needed no lantern to light him through San Sebastian; for a great part of the upper town still burned...

To begin with, after being ordered for one day (July 23rd) it had been deferred to the next; on reasonable grounds, indeed, for the town immediately behind the great breach was...

The stroke of one in the morning, sounding after us from Farnham clock through the fine frosted air, overtook us well upon the road. I had made speed, and so had the quartermast...

Doctor Unonius had drawn the table close beside an elbow-chair to the right of the fireplace. The excuse he made to himself was that, with a bright fire burning, he could the be...

'Oh, Rendal's all right. That is to say, he will be all right. Just now he's suffering from shock. My advice--supposing, of course, you can spare him--is to pack him straightawa...

A year passed; a year and three months. Old Mrs Puckey was dead and laid in churchyard, and the doctor remained a bachelor. Christmas found him busy upon two papers written almo...

Early next morning Sergeant Wilkes picked his way across the ruins of the great breach and into the town, keeping well to windward of the fatigue parties already kindling fires...

He said this regularly as he dined at Penalune when, after dinner and wine and songs, the hour came for the 'brandy-mixing' before the guests dispersed. Sir John was a widower a...

The two men lay supine on a cushion of coarse grass; the sergeant smoking and staring up at the sky, the corporal, with his sound hand clasping his wounded one behind his head,...

In the back-parlour of a bookseller's shop, between the Strand and the Embankment, three persons sat at tea; the proprietor of the shop, a gray little man with round spectacles...

Neither spoke. Mrs Tresize stood by the table, and so that, glancing sideways across her left shoulder, her eyes studied the doctor's back, which he kept obstinately turned upon...

His voice was weak, yet he managed to get out the words firmly, leaning back in the wooden armchair, with one hand on his left breast, spread and covering the lower ribs.

Dick Rendal, alighting at Waterloo, collected his luggage--or rather, Mr Markham's--methodically; saw it hoisted on a four-wheeler; and, handing the cabby two shillings, told hi...

Corporal Sam Vicary, coming up to the edge of the camp-fire's light, stood there for a moment with a white face. The cause of it--though it would have been a sufficient one--was...

It was a beautifully clean dive; but in the flurry of the plunge the third officer forgot for an instant the right upward slant of the palms, and went a great way deeper than he...

Certainly, just or unjust, the Marquis could make himself infernally unpleasant. Having ridden over from head-quarters and settled the plans for the new assault, he returned to...

Millionaire though he was, Mr Markham (_nee_ Markheim) never let a small opportunity slip. To be sure the enforced idleness of Atlantic crossing bored him and kept him restless;...

The brandy steadying him, Dick went down the steps with a fairly firm tread. But he went down into a world that for him was all darkness-- darkness of chaos--carrying an entity...

But he had grave searchings of conscience on the part he had been made to play. Undoubtedly he had misled Mr Rattenbury, and--all question of public honesty apart--had perhaps i...