



Produced by Lionel G. Sear





THE LAST GALLEY

IMPRESSIONS AND TALES

By Arthur Conan Doyle




PREFACE



I have written "Impressions and Tales" upon the title-page of this
volume, because I have included within the same cover two styles of work
which present an essential difference.

The second half of the collection consists of eight stories, which
explain themselves.

The first half is made up of a series of pictures of the past which
maybe regarded as trial flights towards a larger ideal which I have
long had in my mind. It has seemed to me that there is a region
between actual story and actual history which has never been adequately
exploited. I could imagine, for example, a work dealing with some great
historical epoch, and finding its interest not in the happenings to
particular individuals, their adventures and their loves, but in the
fascination of the actual facts of history themselves. These facts might
be  with the glamour which the writer of fiction can give, and
fictitious characters and conversations might illustrate them; but none
the less the actual drama of history and not the drama of invention
should claim the attention of the reader. I have been tempted sometimes
to try the effect upon a larger scale; but meanwhile these short
sketches, portraying various crises in the story of the human race, are
to be judged as experiments in that direction.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

WINDLESHAM, CROWBOROUGH, April, 1911.




CONTENTS


  PART I

     THE LAST GALLEY
     THE CONTEST THROUGH THE VEIL
     AN ICONOCLAST
     GIANT MAXIMIN
     THE COMING OF THE HUNS
     THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS
     THE FIRST CARGO
     THE HOME-COMING
     THE RED STAR



  PART II

     THE SILVER MIRROR
     THE BLIGHTING OF SHARKEY
     THE MARRIAGE OF THE BRIGADIER
     THE LORD OF FALCONBRIDGE
     OUT OF THE RUNNING
     "DE PROFUNDIS"
     THE GREAT BROWN-PERICORD MOTOR
     THE TERROR OF BLUE JOHN GAP





PART I. THE LAST GALLEY


"Mutato nomine, de te, Britannia, fabula narratur."

It was a spring morning, one hundred and forty-six years before the
coming of Christ. The North African Coast, with its broad hem of golden
sand, its green belt of feathery palm trees, and its background of
barren, red-scarped hills, shimmered like a dream country in the opal
light. Save for a narrow edge of snow-white surf, the Mediterranean lay
blue and serene as far as the eye could reach. In all its vast expanse
there was no break but for a single galley, which was slowly making its
way from the