John Buchan - The Collected Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

John Buchan

Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels, Mystery Novels, Historical Works, Scottish Poems, Essays, & World War I Books

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Books

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musaicumbooks@okpublishing.info

2017 OK Publishing

ISBN 978-80-7583-341-9

Novels NOVELS Table of Contents

The Thirty-Nine Steps THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS Richard Hannay’s First Adventure Table of Contents

Greenmantle GREENMANTLE Richard Hannay’s Second Adventure Table of Contents

Mr Standfast MR STANDFAST Richard Hannay’s Third Adventure Table of Contents

Huntingtower HUNTINGTOWER Table of Contents

The Power-House THE POWER-HOUSE Table of Contents

Sir Quixote of the Moors

John Burnet of Barns

A Lost Lady of Old Years

The Half-Hearted

A Lodge in the Wilderness

Prester John

Salute to Adventurers

The Path of the King

Short Stories

Grey Weather

The Moon Endureth: Tales

The Far Islands

Fountainblue

The King of Ypres

The Keeper of Cademuir

No-Man’s-Land

Basilissa

The Watcher by the Threshold

The Outgoing of the Tide

A Journey of Little Profit

The Grove of Ashtaroth

Space

Fullcircle

The Company of the Marjolaine

At the Rising of the Waters

At the Article of Death

Comedy in the Full Moon

‘Divus’ Johnston

Politics and the Mayfly

Poetry

To the Adventurous Spirit of the North

The Pilgrim Fathers: The Newdigate Prize Poem 1898

The Ballad for Grey Weather I (“Cold blows the drift on the hill”)

The Ballad for Grey Weather II (“The Devil he sang”)

The Moon Endureth: Fancies

Poems, Scots and English

Th’ Immortal Wanderer ("Rests not the wild-deer in the park")

Youth I (“Angel of love and light and truth”)

Spirit of Art I (“I change not. I am old as Time”)

Youth II ("Angel, that heart I seek to know")

Spirit of Art II (“On mountain lawns, in meads of spring”)

"Oh, if my love were sailor-bred"

"A' are gane, the gude, the kindly"

Historical Works and Essays

The Battle of Jutland

The Battle of the Somme, First Phase

The Battle of the Somme, Second Phase

Nelson’s History of the War Volume I - V

The African Colony: Studies in the Reconstruction

Scholar Gipsies

A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys

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DEDICATION

CHAPTER 1. THE MAN WHO DIED

CHAPTER 2. THE MILKMAN SETS OUT ON HIS TRAVELS

CHAPTER 3. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LITERARY INNKEEPER

CHAPTER 4. THE ADVENTURE OF THE RADICAL CANDIDATE

CHAPTER 5. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECTACLED ROADMAN

CHAPTER 6. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

CHAPTER 7. THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

CHAPTER 8. THE COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

CHAPTER 9. THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

CHAPTER 10. VARIOUS PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

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TO THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON

(LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE)

My Dear Tommy,

You and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of tale which Americans call the ‘dime novel’ and which we know as the ‘shocker’—the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts.

J.B.

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I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn’t get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. ‘Richard Hannay,’ I kept telling myself, ‘you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.’ It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days.

But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn’t seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.

That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into my club—rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show; and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.

About six o’clock I went home, dressed, dined at theCafé Royal, and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.