



Produced by Jo Churcher.  HTML version by Al Haines.








GREENMANTLE


by

JOHN BUCHAN




To

Caroline Grosvenor




During the past year, in the intervals of an active life, I have amused
myself with constructing this tale.  It has been scribbled in every
kind of odd place and moment--in England and abroad, during long
journeys, in half-hours between graver tasks; and it bears, I fear, the
mark of its gipsy begetting.  But it has amused me to write, and I
shall be well repaid if it amuses you--and a few others--to read.

Let no man or woman call its events improbable.  The war has driven
that word from our vocabulary, and melodrama has become the prosiest
realism.  Things unimagined before happen daily to our friends by sea
and land.  The one chance in a thousand is habitually taken, and as
often as not succeeds.  Coincidence, like some new Briareus, stretches
a hundred long arms hourly across the earth.  Some day, when the full
history is written--sober history with ample documents--the poor
romancer will give up business and fall to reading Miss Austen in a
hermitage.

The characters of the tale, if you think hard, you will recall. Sandy
you know well.  That great spirit was last heard of at Basra, where he
occupies the post that once was Harry Bullivant's.  Richard Hannay is
where he longed to be, commanding his battalion on the ugliest bit of
front in the West.  Mr John S.  Blenkiron, full of honour and wholly
cured of dyspepsia, has returned to the States, after vainly
endeavouring to take Peter with him.  As for Peter, he has attained the
height of his ambition.  He has shaved his beard and joined the Flying
Corps.



CONTENTS


   1.  A Mission is Proposed
   2.  The Gathering of the Missionaries
   3.  Peter Pienaar
   4.  Adventures of Two Dutchmen on the Loose
   5.  Further Adventures of the Same
   6.  The Indiscretions of the Same
   7.  Christmas Eve
   8.  The Essen Barges
   9.  The Return of the Straggler
  10. The Garden-House of Suliman the Red
  11. The Companions of the Rosy Hours
  12. Four Missionaries See Light in Their Mission
  13. I Move in Good Society
  14. The Lady of the Mantilla
  15. An Embarrassed Toilet
  16. The Battered Caravanserai
  17. Trouble By the Waters of Babylon
  18. Sparrows on the Housetops
  19. Greenmantle
  20. Peter Pienaar Goes to the Wars
  21. The Little Hill
  22. The Guns of the North



CHAPTER ONE

A Mission is Proposed

I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got
Bullivant's telegram.  It was at Furling, the big country house in
Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who was
in the same case, was hunting for the marmalade.  I flung him the
flimsy with the blue strip pasted down on it, and he whistled.

'Hullo, Dick, you've got the battalion.  Or maybe it's a staff billet.
You'll be a blighted brass-hat, coming it heavy over the hard-working
regimental officer.  And to think of the language you've wasted on
brass-hats in your time!'

I sat and thought for a bit, for the name 'Bullivant' carried me back
eighteen months to the hot summer before the war.  I had not seen the
man since, though I had read about him in the papers.  For more than a
year I had been a busy battalion officer, with no other thought than to
hammer a lot of raw stuff into good soldiers.  I had succeeded pretty
well, and there was no prouder man on earth than Richard Hannay when he
took his Lennox Highlanders over the parapets on that glorious and
bloody 25th day of September.  Loos was no picnic, and we had had some
ugly bits of scrapping before that, but the worst bit of the campaign I
had seen was a tea-party to the show I had been in with Bullivant
before the war started.  [Major Hannay's narrative of this affair has
been published under the title of _The Thirty-nine Steps_.]

The sight of his name on a telegram form seemed to change all my
outlook on life.  I had been hoping for the command of the battalion,
and looking forward to being in at the finish with Brother Boche.  But
this message jerked my thoughts on to a new road. There might be other