The Hot Swamp

About three miles beyond the outskirts of King Hudibras' town--the name of which has now, like many other things, been lost in the proverbial mists of antiquity--an old man dwel...

All went well with the party that conducted Branwen to King Hudibras' town until they reached the hut of Beniah the Hebrew, when the lad suggested to the leader of the escort th...

Arkal's attention had been arrested by the figure of a man who suddenly appeared from behind a cliff not four hundred yards distant from the scene of their recent exploit. The s...

"You have acquitted yourself well, young man," said the king, "and it becomes us to invite you to our palace and to ask if we can serve you in any way."

It is beyond the scope of this tale to describe minutely all that befell our adventurers on their long, fatiguing, and dangerous march through ancient Gaul, which land at that t...

Being now provided with material for making shields, they resolved to spend a day in camp. This was all the more necessary, that the shoes or sandals which they had worn at sea...

At the further end of the ground enclosed for the sports, a slightly raised platform had been prepared for the king and his household. The royal party ascended it soon after the...

With this exalted idea of the married state, Prince Bladud looked forward to his wedding. Whether Dromas was imbued with similar ideas we cannot tell; but of this we are sure, t...

We turn now to Beniah the Hebrew. On arriving at the Hot Swamp he was amazed to find the change that had been made in the appearance of the locality in so short a time.

Nearly two thousand seven hundred years ago--or somewhere about eight hundred years BuCu--there dwelt a Phoenician sea-captain in one of the eastern sea-ports of Greece--known a...

the games, or the excitement of the return home, we cannot say, but headache, accompanied by a slight degree of fever, had troubled him. Like most strong men in the circumstance...

Poor Branwen! it was an unfortunate day for her when, in her youthful ignorance and recklessness, she took to the wild woods, resolved to follow Bladud to his destination and se...

Before going off on his mission the Hebrew paid a visit to his own residence, where he found Branwen busy with culinary operations. Sitting down on a stool, he looked at her wit...

Gunrig's wound turned out to be a very severe one--much more so than had been at first supposed--for the arrow had penetrated one of his lungs, and, breaking off, had left the h...

While the prince and the Hebrew were thus conversing, Cormac was speeding towards the camp of Gadarn. He quickly arrived, and was immediately arrested by one of the sentinels. T...

It is a thickly-wooded hollow on the eastern slopes of the high ridge that bounds one side of the valley of the Springs. Sturdy oaks, tall poplars, lordly elms and beeches, cast...

Pondering over the circumstances of the strange being from whom he had just parted, Bladud proceeded to the summit of the hill, or ridge of high land, on the other side of which...

About a week after the events narrated in the last chapter, an incident occurred which, trifling in itself, was nevertheless the cause of momentous issues in the life of our hero.

It was near daybreak on the morning of a night of unclouded splendour when the mate of the _Penelope_ aroused his chief with the information that appearances to windward betoken...

When Bladud walked out to the Hebrew's hut next day and informed him of what had taken place, that long-suffering man heaved a deep sigh and expressed his intense relief that th...

Day was just beginning to break in the east when the prince raised his head from the bundle of leaves that had formed his pillow, and looked sleepily around him.

But it is not our purpose to inflict the entire log of that voyage on our reader, adventurous though the voyage was. Matter of much greater importance claims our regard. Still i...

Bladud's idea of a palace worthy of a prince was not extravagant. He erected it in three days without assistance or tools, except the bronze axe and knife--Brownie acting the pa...

The visitor referred to in the last chapter was a tall, broad-shouldered old man with a snowy head of hair and a flowing white beard, a long, loose black garment, and a stout st...

The first person whom the prince hurried off to visit, after seeing his father, and embracing his mother and sister, was the northern chief Gadarn. That jovial character was enj...

Having laid the foundations of the new town, drawn out his plans and set his men to work, Bladud appointed Captain Arkal superintendent, and set out on his quest after his lost...

An hour later Beniah the Hebrew, who had been obliged to postpone for a time his journey to the North, was startled by hearing footsteps approaching his hut in the dell. It was...

There was something in his manner which puzzled his followers not a little, for he seemed to have changed his character--at least to have added to it a strange, wild hilarity wh...

It was a sunny, frosty, glorious forenoon when King Hudibras awoke to the consciousness of the important day that was before him, and the importunate vacuum that was within him.

It was not long before our hero recovered from his delirium. Leading, as he had been doing, an abstemious and healthy life, ordinary disease could not long maintain its grasp of...

Their first thoughts were those of thankfulness for having escaped with life. Then arose feelings of loneliness and sorrow at the sad fate of the crew of the _Penelope_, for tho...

At the time we write of, we need hardly say, the land was nameless. Even her old Roman name of Gaul had not yet been given to her, for Rome itself had not been founded. The fair...

Weather has always been, and, we suppose, always will be, capricious. Its uncertainty of character--in the Levant, as in the Atlantic, in days of old as now, was always the same...

When Prince Bladud entered upon what he really believed would be his last journey, he naturally encountered very different experiences, being neither so ignorant, so helpless, n...

Gadarn was right. The robber chief was very early astir that morning, and marched with his host so silently through the forest, that the very birds on the boughs gave them, as t...

During the residence of Gadarn at the court of King Hudibras, that wily northern chief had led the king to understand that one of his lieutenants had at last discovered his daug...

It is a wonderful, but at the same time, we think, a universal and important fact, that love permeates the universe. Even a female snail, if we could only put the question, woul...

We need scarcely say that the search for Branwen proved fruitless. Gunrig and the hunters returned to town crestfallen at being unable to discover the trail of a girl, and the c...

It may be imagined that the return home of Prince Bladud was the cause of much rejoicing in the whole district as well as in his father's house. At _first_ the king, being, as w...