Harilek

Most of the big things in life hinge on very small beginnings. I wonder if the people who pose as pure materialists ever reflect on that fact when they hold forth on their compl...

I wonder if any one who read these lines would ever believe that I, John Wrexham, am writing naught but the sober truth. When I think over the events of the last month, it seems...

“As I told you, when I got near Hami last year, I pulled out the old diary and read it again, especially the part I’ve just read to you two fellows.

“In the first place, what do we know for certain? That somewhere in the west corner of the Gobi Desert, a large unknown bit of country, a man of apparently white race has been f...

I shall not lengthen out an already long record by describing our journey from Calcutta, where we did much of our fitting out, up to Kashmir, on over the passes to Yarkand, and...

At 4 A.M. Wrexham, who has the faculty of waking at whatever time he wishes, kicked us out of our blankets and said it was time to move. Outside the tent Firoz was busy with bre...

It must have been about four in the morning that I woke, with the same sort of feeling of something being different as you have when a ship stops at night, and the absence of th...

It was getting on for midday, and we had nearly reached the wall of hills, which now towered, grim and threatening, above us, a long line of sheer cliff, incredibly high; and, t...

Payindah took first shift, while I settled myself into a corner of the rock below him with a pocket edition of Browning, which I generally carry when travelling. It is an old fr...

“Still sitting up at the end of the pass. He’s not coming back. We’re to pack up and start off to the east. He and Payindah will stay there till it’s light, and then come away f...

She was guiding the riding camel, with me as a passenger behind. Her first slight apprehension of the ungainly beasts had quickly disappeared, and for the last two days she had...

We emerged into a thick wood of hill oak and birch, all in russet glory of autumn foliage. And oh! the joy, after our months of marching through the dead waste places of the ear...

When we reached the house again, we found Aryenis by the fire in the hall, having clearly removed the desert from her skin and hair, for she was looking even prettier than befor...

We slept late next morning, and I was awakened by the men moving in our room. Dressing hurriedly, we went into the dining-hall to find Kyrlos and Stephnos. Aryenis was evidently...

Next morning we found the whole place astir, horses outside ready saddled, and pack-animals waiting to be loaded. Aryenis was dressed in riding-clothes, a sort of long coat like...

As I entered, Aryenis appeared on the staircase the other side of the hall in her riding-dress, and I realized once more the truth of Payindah’s words. She was extremely good-lo...

Kyrlos asked Forsyth to keep him company during the day. He was going to see some of the chief men of the district, and would ride on to Miletis in the afternoon, probably arriv...

That afternoon I rode out with Milos to look at some of his men, and as we rode he talked to me about his people and about their wonderful cliff-girt land, for Nature, not conte...

I had the luck to find myself by Aryenis, while Ziné was sandwiched between Wrexham and Forsyth. On my other hand was a youngish man named Andros, broad of shoulder and square o...

Fortune sent me to sit next to Aryenis that night, an honour I had not enjoyed for the last two or three days. An Aryenis in dress of flowing silk, with low square-cut neck--the...

The road to Aornos was bright in the November sunshine, and the light breeze rustled the falling leaves which dropped, russet-brown, from the trees bordering the road above the...

The dusty white road slipped away behind us, four steady miles to the hour. Somewhere about the third mile I heard shouting behind me, and my men swung to one side as Stephnos c...

The winter sun shone gaily in through the open windows of my bedroom at Paulos’s, dimming the red flames of the big log fire, and throwing bright shafts of light along the dark...

The ten days following my first walk in the garden had passed all too quickly. My leg was now completely healed, although a trifle stiff, and a considerable hindrance in walking...

Before us towered up the great walls of Shamantown, grey weathered stone, rising up for forty feet and more before jutting out into overhanging galleries, arrow-slitted through...

There was no fighting near by, though sounds of battle still came from the buildings on my right, where some of the enemy were resisting. On the far side of the open space our m...

The Aornos road rolled behind our horses’ feet as Aryenis and I rode to Paulos’s house in the last evening sunshine of late February. A sky of cloudless blue, glint of sunlit wa...