The Advanced-Guard

After a night’s rest Ferrers prepared to pursue the inquiry on which he had come, but he found that the blank walls of the city were only a type of the passive opposition to be...

About a year after Colonel Keeling’s marriage, there came a time when troubles crowded thick and fast upon the Alibad colony. An earthquake did terrible damage to the great irri...

A description in detail of the journey from Bab-us-Sahel to the frontier would be as wearisome to the reader as the journey itself was to the travellers. Lady Haigh and Penelope...

Captain Ferrers was jogging gloomily across the desert from Fort Shah Nawaz to Alibad, and his face was only the index to his thoughts. At the moment he did not know whether he...

Quite contrary to his expectation, Sir Dugald was able to ride into the town again the very next evening, and was received with unfeigned joy by the two ladies, to whom, through...

Nearly three years after Penelope’s death, Sir Dugald rode into Alibad as a stranger. The long illness which followed on Lady Haigh’s exertions on behalf of her friend so exhaus...

Instead of appearing in the gardens that evening, Major Keeling rode out, accompanied only by an orderly, to Sheikhgarh. He had never met the Sheikh-ul-Jabal face to face since...

Gobind Chand, to whom Lady Haigh had alluded, was the Hindu Vizier of the Mohammedan state of Nalapur, the boundary of which marched with that of Khemistan on the north. It was...

“There’s only one man who would come to pay a call in that style,” said Sir Dugald, following her more slowly. Before he reached the verandah, Major Keeling had thrown himself f...

It was not long before Ferrers’ request for an accession of force reached Major Keeling, but it came at an unfortunate moment, for the Commandant was just setting out in the opp...

Ferrers was very well pleased with himself. He had done his duty, which had turned out, in a most unwonted manner, to be also his pleasure, and he felt justly entitled to enjoy...

“The door is shut,” said Penelope hastily; but Dr Tarleton had followed the servant up the stairs, and now stood on the house-top confronting her. She glanced wildly round for a...

How long Penelope sat in the drawing-room, staring with stony eyes straight before her, after Major Keeling had gone out, she did not know, but she was roused at last by hearing...

In a moment all was confusion. Behind the curtain, Zulika and Hafiza threw themselves upon Wazira Begum, and carried her off by main force, regardless of her struggles, locking...

From this determination Colin could not be moved. He wrote off immediately to Mr Crayne, asking him to obtain leave for him to resign his commission without delay, since Major K...

For some months after Ferrers’ departure for Gamara, Colin was kept a prisoner by the wounds received in the unsuccessful first attack on Shir Hussein’s stronghold. Lady Haigh h...

“Why, Dugald, where are you off to so early?” cried Lady Haigh, coming out of her tent at breakfast-time, and finding her husband and his boy busy selecting guns, filling powder...

At last the ravine broadened a little, and almost at the moment when this became evident, voices were heard ordering a halt. It was difficult to tell where the voices came from,...

“Come! all’s well that ends well,” said Major Keeling to Sir Dugald, as they rode into the town after escorting Mr Crayne back to the fort. “I don’t remember ever feeling so hap...

“They’re coming back!” cried Lady Haigh. She and Penelope had taken up a position upon the western rampart, and were straining their eyes in the direction of Sheikhgarh. To thei...

Sir Henry Lennox had resigned his post, and the military despotism in Khemistan proper was at an end. The Europeans at Alibad journeyed in two detachments to the port on the riv...

There was a little informal gathering at the Haighs’ that evening. People often dropped in after dinner for some music, for Lady Haigh had actually brought her piano (without wh...

His arrival at the Mirza’s house was the beginning of what appeared, in contrast with the days that had gone before it, a period of perfect bliss to Ferrers. The extreme peril o...

When Ferrers rode into Alibad next week, to spend his Christmas there, his excitement had died down. He had not received the additional evidence against Major Keeling which the...

“The curious thing was that we had no fighting,” said Major Keeling. They were seated at the luncheon-table, and Lady Haigh had imperiously demanded an account of the doings of...

“No, there are none. I peeped out to see. They are sleeping all round the tent, so that we could not pass, but they have no one on the watch. There it is again! Listen!”

Fifty years ago the great port of Bab-us-Sahel was in its infancy. The modern ranges of wharfs and breakwaters were represented by a single half-finished pier, and vessels still...