Romance

To yesterday and to to-day I say my polite “vaya usted con Dios.” What are these days to me? But that far-off day of my romance, when from between the blue and white bales in Do...

Between moonrise and sunset I was stumbling through the bracken of the little copse that was like a tuft of hair on the brow of the great white quarry. It was quite dark, in amo...

The spirit of the age has changed; everything has changed so utterly that one can hardly believe in the existence of one’s earlier self. But I can still remember how, at that mo...

It was, I suppose, what I demanded of Fate--to be gently wafted into the position of a hero of romance, without rough hands at my throat. It is what we all ask, I suppose; and w...

There was a lad called Barnes, a steerage passenger of about my own age, a raw, red-headed Northumbrian yokel, going out as a recruit to one of the West Indian regiments. He was...

“Rio Medio?” Señor Ramon said to me nearly two years afterwards. “The _caballero_ is pleased to give me credit for a very great knowledge. What should I know of that town? There...

One night I was riding alone towards Horton Pen. A large moon hung itself up above me like an enormous white plate. Finally the sloping roof of the Ferry Inn, with one dishevell...

The room was very lofty and coldly dim; there were great bars in front of the begrimed windows. It was very bare, containing only a long black table, some packing cases, and hal...

I remained lying there, bound hand and foot, for a long time; for quite long enough to allow me to collect my senses and see that I had been a fool to threaten O’Brien. I had be...

There wasn’t any weirdness about the ship when I woke in the sunlight. She was old and slow and rather small. She carried Lumsden (master), Mercer (mate), a crew that seemed no...

I went on deck again. On the poop about twenty men had surrounded Major Cowper; his white head was being jerked backwards and forwards above their bending backs; they had got hi...

By two of the afternoon we were running into the inlet of Rio Medio. I had come on deck when Tomas Castro had started out of his doze. I wanted to see. We went round violently a...

All this is in my mind now, softened by distance, by the tenderness of things remembered--the wonderful dawn of life, with all the mystery and promise of the young day breaking...

Don Balthasar accepted my presence without a question. Perhaps he fancied he had invited me; of my manner of coming he was ignorant, of course. O’Brien, who had gone on to Havan...

One evening Carlos, after a silence of distress, had said, “There’s nothing else for it. When the crisis comes, you must carry her off from this unhappiness and misery that hang...

Seraphina and I moved towards the door sadly, as if under the oppression of a memory, as people go back from the side of a grave to the cares of life. No exultation possessed me...

I remember walking about the room, and thinking to myself, “This is bad, this is very bad; what shall I do now?” A sort of mad meditation that in this meaningless way became so...

Not even in memory am I willing to live over again those three days when Father Antonio, the old major-domo, and myself would meet each other in the galleries, in the _patio_, i...

The earth, slipping as it were away from under the keel, left us borne upon the waters of the bay, which were as still as the windless night itself. The pushing off of that boat...

Silence, stillness, breathless caution were the absolute conditions of our existence. But I hadn’t the heart to remonstrate with him for the danger he caused Seraphina and mysel...

They did not suspect how close I was to them. And their temper struck me at once as unsafe. They seemed very much on the alert, and, as I imagined, disposed to precipitate actio...

I said, “This is home, at last. It is all over”; and she stood by me on the deck. She pushed the heavy black cloak from over her head, and her white face appeared above the dim...

Manuel’s escape was the last event of that memorable night. Nothing more happened, and nothing more could be done; but there remained much talk and wonderment to get through. I...

How often the activity of our life is the least real part of it! Life, looked upon as a whole, presents itself to my fancy as a pursuit with open arms of a winged and magnificen...

The calm had returned. The sea, changing from the warm glitter of a gem, and attuned to the grays and blacks of space, resembled a monstrous cinder under a sky of ashes.

The first thing I noted, on opening my eyes, was that Castro had gone already; I was annoyed. He might have called me. However, we had arranged everything the evening before. Th...

For it meant that. Imprisoned! Castro’s derisive shriek meant that. And I had known it before. He emerged back out of the black depths, with livid, swollen features, and foam ab...

He had surrendered to his thirst. What weakness! He had not thrown himself over, then. What folly! One splash of water on his face had been enough. He was contemptible; and lyin...

Not a soul stirred in the one long street of the negro village. The yellow crescent of the diminished moon swam low in the pearly light of the dawn; and the bamboo walls of huts...

There were two figures in black, the one beside, the other behind a large black table. I was placed in front of them, between two soldiers, in the centre of a large, gaunt room,...

The entrance to the common prison of Havana was a sort of lofty tunnel, finished by great, iron-rusted, wooden gates. A civil guard was exhibiting the judge’s warrant for my com...

The first decent word I had spoken to me after that for months came from my turnkey at Newgate. It was when he welcomed me back from my examination before the Thames Court magis...

I never saw my father again until I was in the prisoner’s anteroom at the Old Bailey. It was full of lounging men, whose fleshy limbs bulged out against the tight, loud checks o...

I had shot my bolt and I was going to die; I could see it in the way the King’s Advocate tossed his head back, fluttered his bands, looked at the jury-box, and began to play wit...