Under Two Flags

The warm, transparent light of an African autumnal noon shone down through the white canvas roof of a great tent in the heart of the encamped divisions at the headquarters of th...

How that night was spent Cecil could never recall in full. Vague memories remained with him of wandering over the shadowy country, of seeking by bodily fatigue to kill the thoug...

The contemptuous sentence was crushed through Cigarette's tight-pressed, bright-red lips, with an irony sadder than tears. She was sitting on the edge of a grabat, hard as wood,...

There he lay, stretched motionless on the flat roof of the veranda. He heard the words as the thronging mob surged, and trampled, and swore, and quarreled, beneath him, in the b...

The swift, sharp voice of a young officer of his regiment wakened Cecil from his musing, as he went on his way down the crowded, tortuous, stifling street. He had scarcely time...

The far-off summits of the Djurjura were tinted with the intense glare of the distant pines and cypresses cut sharply against the rose-warmed radiance of the sky. On the slopes...

“Take the Field bar one.” “Two to one on Forest King.” “Two to one on Bay Regent.” “Fourteen to seven on Wild Geranium.” “Seven to two against Brother to Fairy.” “Three to five...

Amid the mirth, the noise, the festivity, which reigned throughout the camp as the men surrendered themselves to the enjoyment of the largesses of food and of wine allotted to t...

It was the height of the season, and the duties of the Household were proportionately and insupportably heavy. The Brigades were fairly worked to death, and the Indian service,...

It was to reach a distant branch of the Army of Occupation with dispatches for the chief in command there, and to do this he had to pass through a fiercely hostile region, occup...

“Fighting in the Kabaila, life was well enough; but here!” thought Cecil as, earlier awake than those of his Chambree, he stood looking down the lengthy, narrow room where the m...

The Seraph crossed the room, with his hand held out; not for his life in that moment would he have omitted that gesture of friendship. Involuntarily he started and stood still o...

“Hold!” cried Cigarette, interrupting herself in her chant in honor of the attributes of war, as the Tringlo's mules which she was driving, some three weeks after the fray of Za...

When a young Prussian had shot himself the night before for roulette losses, the event had not thrilled, startled, and impressed the gay Baden gathering one tithe so gravely and...

Early that morning, when the snowy cloud of pigeons were circling down to take their daily alms from Cigarette, where her bright brown face looked out from the lattice-hole, Cec...

“Oh! We are a queer lot; a very queer lot. Sweepings of Europe,” said Claude de Chanrellon, dashing some vermouth off his golden mustaches, where he lay full-length on three cha...

Some way distant, parted by a broad strip of unoccupied ground from the camp, were the grand marquees set aside for the Marshal and for his guests. They were twelve in number, g...

The last crown to the chorus of applause, and insult to the circle of applauders, was launched with all the piquance of inimitable canteen-slang and camp-assurance, from a speak...

One of the most brilliant of Algerian autumnal days shone over the great camp in the south. The war was almost at an end for a time; the Arabs were defeated and driven desertwar...

Before the sun had declined from his zenith the French were masters of the field, and pursued the retreat of the Arabs till, for miles along the plain, the line of their flight...

Vanitas vanitatum! The dust of death lies over the fallen altars of Bubastis, where once all Egypt came down the flood of glowing Nile, and Herodotus mused under the shadowy fol...

There was a line of light in the eastern sky. The camp was very still. It was the hour for the mounting of the guard, and, as the light spread higher and higher, whiter and whit...

From the first break of dawn the battle had raged; now, at midday, it was at its height. Far in the interior, almost on the edge of the great desert, in that terrible season whe...

It lay in the Melton country, and was equally well placed for Pytchley, Quorn, and Belvoir, besides possessing its own small but very perfect pack of “little ladies,” or the “de...

“Seraph--I've been thinking,” said Cecil musingly, as they paced homeward together from the Scrubs, with the long line of the First Life stretching before and behind their charg...

“I don't say but what he's difficult to please with his Tops,” said Mr. Rake, factotum to the Hon. Bertie Cecil, of the 1st Life Guards, with that article of hunting toggery sus...

“How long before the French can come up?” asked Wellington, hearing of the pursuit that was thundering close on his rear in the most critical hours of the short, sultry Spanish...

He had encouraged the men to pursue those various industries and ingenuities, which, though they are affectedly considered against “discipline,” formed, as he knew well, the bes...

Cigarette always went fast. She had a bird-like way of skimming her ground that took her over it with wonderful swiftness; all the tassels, and ribbon knots, and sashes with whi...

Thus burdened, he made his way for over two leagues. The hurricane never abated, and the blinding dust rose around him in great waves. The horse fell lame; he had to dismount, a...

Is hardly to be denied by anybody in this land of fast bursts and gallant M. F. H.'s, whether they “ride to hunt,” or “hunt to ride,” in the immortal distinction of Assheton Smi...

Baden was at its brightest. The Victoria, the Badischer Hof, the Stephanie Bauer were crowded. The Kurliste had a dazzling string of names. Imperial grandeur sauntered in slippe...

The barracks of the Chasseurs was bright and clean in the morning light; in common with all Algerian barrack rooms as unlike the barrack rooms of the ordinary army as Cigarette,...

With the reveille and the break of morning Cigarette woke, herself again; she gave a little petulant shake to her fairy form when she thought of what folly she had been guilty....

“You're a lad o' wax, my beauty!” cried Mr. Rake enthusiastically, surveying the hero of the Grand Military with adoring eyes as that celebrity, without a hair turned or a muscl...

The red-hot light of the after-glow still burned on the waters of the bay, and shed its Egyptian-like luster on the city that lies in the circle of the Sahel, with the Mediterra...

Three months later it was guest-night in the messroom of a certain famous light cavalry regiment, who bear the reputation of being the fastest corps in the English service. Of a...