Greenmantle

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 Vermell...

“Billy Arbuthnot’s boy? His father was at Harrow with me. I know the fellow—Harry used to bring him down to fish—tallish, with a lean, high-boned face and a pair of brown eyes l...

He climbed on the roof and shinned down the broken bricks of the outer wall. The outbuilding we were lodged in abutted on a road, and was outside the proper _enceinte_ of the ho...

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 h...

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 dumb-bell exercises with two...

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 woul...

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...

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 th...

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 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 ne...

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...

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 b...

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 countr...

The passports had arrived next morning, as Frau von Einem had promised, and with them a plan of our journey. More, one of the Companions, who spoke a little English, was detaile...

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 go...

“For I reckon,” he went on, “that it wants a good old-fashioned copper-bottomed miracle to get us out of this fix. It’s plumb against all my principles. I’ve spent my life using...

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 light-hearted. We were rushing t...

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...

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 unbeliev...

I spread out the maps on the divan. There was no light in the place but Blenkiron’s electric torch, for Hussin had put out the lantern. Peter got his nose into the things at onc...

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...

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, a...