A Pretty Picture (The Three Hostages)

     They made a pretty picture – “The Prodigal’s Return” or “The Old Folks Home”,  bySimpkins, R.A., Royal Academy, 1887.  No, byHeaven,there was no suggestion of that.  It was a marvellousand tragic scene I regarded.  The fitfullightof the fire showed figures of an antique beauty and dignity.  The regal profile of the woman, her superb pose, and the soft eerie music of her voice were a world removedfrom vulgarity, and so was the lithe vigour and proud face of theman.  They were more like a king and queen in exile, decreeing the sea of blood which was to wash them back again. I realized for the first time that Medina might be damnable, but was also great.   Yes, the man who had spat on me like a stable-boyhad also something of the prince. I realized another thing.  Thewoman’s touch had flattened down the hair above hisforehead,which he brushed square, and his head, outlined in the firelight against thewhite cushion, was as round as a football.  I hadsuspected this when I first saw him, and now I was certain.  What did a head like that portend?  I had a vagueremembrance that I had heard somewhere that it meant madness – at any rate degeneracy.

Work and Days

     Then I was lifted up and carried to a flat space beside the stream, where the trunk of a youngpinehad been set upright in the ground. A man, waving a knife, and singing a wildsong, danced towards me. He seized me by the hair, and I actually rejoiced, for I knew that the pain of scalping would make me oblivious of all else. But he only drew the sharp point of the knife in acircle round my head, scarce breaking the skin. 


     I had grace given me to keep a stout face, mainly because I was relieved that thiswas to be my fate. He put the knife back in his girdle,and others laid hold on me.
  

    They smeared my lower limbs with somekind of grease which smelt of resin. One savage who had picked up a brand from one of the little fires dropped some of the stuff on it,and it crackled merrily. He grinned at me--a slow, diabolical grin.
  

     They lashed me to thestake with ropes of green vine. Then they piled dry hay a foot deep around me, and laid above it wood andgreen branches. To make the fuel still greener, they poured water on it. Atthe moment I did not see the object of these preparations, but now I canunderstand it. The dry hay would serve to burn my legs, which had already been anointed with the inflammable grease. So I should suffer a gradual torture, for it would be long ere the flames reached a vital part. Ithink they erred, for they assumed that I had the bodyof an Indian, which does not perish till a blow is struck at its heart; whereas I am confident that any white man would be dead of the anguish long ere the fire had passed beyond his knees.


    I think that was the most awful moment of my life. Indeed I could not have endured it had not my mind beendrugged and my body stupid with fatigue. Men have often asked me what were my thoughts in that hour, while the faggots were laid about my feet.I cannot tell, for I have no very clear memory. The Power which does not break the bruised reed tempered the storm to myfrailty. I could not envisage thefuture, and so was mercifully enabled to look only to the moment. I knew that pain was coming; but I was already inpain, and the sick man does not troublehimself about degrees of suffering. Death, too, was coming; but for that I hadbeen longready. The hardest thing that man can dois to endure,but this was to me no passive endurance; it was an active struggle to show afortitude worthy of the gallant dead.




     -- From John Buchan, Salute To Adventurers (1915)

Greeenmantle (Kara Gubek)

 

    Kara Gubek was the point of interest.  It stood on a rib ofland between two peaks, which from the contour lines rose verysteep.   So long as it was held it was clear that no invader couldmove down the Euphrates glen.  Stumm had appended a note to the peaks—“not fortified”; and about two miles tothe north-east there was a red cross and the name “Prjevalsky.”  I assumed that to be thefarthest point yet reached by the right wing of the Russian attack.

     Then I turned to the paper from which Stumm had copied the jottings onto his map.  It was typewritten, and consisted of notes on differentpoints.  One was headed “Kara Gubek” and read: “No time to fortify adjacent peaks.  Difficult for enemy toget batteries there, but not impossible. This is the real point of danger, forif Prjevalsky wins the peaks Kara Gubek and Tafta must fall, and enemy will beon the left rear of Deve Boyun main position.”

 

     I was soldier enough to seethe tremendous importance of this note.  On Kara Gubek depended thedefence of Erzerum, and it was a broken reed if one knew where the weaknesslay.  Yet, searching the map again, I could not believe that any mortal commanderwould see any chance in the adjacent peaks, even if he thought themunfortified.  That was information confined to the Turkish and Germanstaffs.

NOTE:  


I haven't read Greenmantle in a long time, but I remember first turning its pages under LosCabos, Baja Sur, sun with hawks wheeling overhead and whales breaking the Seaof Cortez surface and spouting very close offshore.


The paragraphs quoted above are atmospheric, but don’t convey thebreadth, sweep, and moral depth and focus of John Buchan's trans-Caucasian WorldWar I espionage-adventure novel.


I'm not the world's biggest Steven Spielberg fan, but I can'tunderstand why he hasn't yet attacked Greenmantle.  It is tailor-made for him. I think hecould make a commanding and moving success of it and The Three Hostages also (since sequel-itis seems to be a disease with no knowncure).  He could transfer Mr Standfast to the care of PeterJackson.

 

 John Buchan(1875-1940)

Purging

That nightI shut myself in my room, barred my windows, drew my curtains, and made a greatdestruction.  All books or pictures whichrecalled to me the moorlands were ruthlessly doomed.  Novels, poems, treatises I flung into an oldbox, for sale to the second-hand bookseller. Some prints and water-colour sketches I tore to pieces with my ownhands.  I ransacked my fishing-book, andcondemned all tackle for moorland waters to the flames. I wrote a letter to mysolicitors, bidding them to go no further in the purchase of a place in Lorne Ihad long been thinking of.  Then, and nottill then, did I feel the bondage of the past a little loosed from myshoulders.  I made myself a night-cap ofrum-punch instead of my usual whisky-toddy, that all associations with thatdismal land might be forgotten, and to complete the renunciation I returned tocigars and flung my pipe into a drawer.

But when Iwoke in the morning I found that it is hard to get rid of memories.  My feet were still sore and wounded, and whenI felt my arms cramped and reflected on the causes, there was that black memoryalways near to vex me.

From No-Man's Land (John Buchan, 1898)

First-Class Brains

“He had first-classbrains.”

       Sandy laughed. “That doesn’t get you very far," he said.  The phrase 'first-class brains'had acquired at the time a flavour of comedy.

FromJohn Buchan: Tendebant Manus (1928)

V For ______ (The Island Of Sheep 2)

   

        “Then I thought I’d better make his acquaintance.  You know CharlesLamancha’s taste for freak parties?  Well, I got him to give a dinner at theclub  -- himself, Christopher Stannix, anUnder-Secretary, a couple of bankers, and Ned Leithen, and Ihad myself placed next to Barralty.  Ofcourse by this time he knew all about me, for the Laverlaw party had begun, andhis friends had discovered the way we have tied up Harraldsen’s fortune, sonaturally I was considered the villain of the piece.  He made no mistakes that night.  He was very polite to me, and talkedintelligently about my Far East Commission and foreign affairsgenerally, and even condescended to be enthusiastic about this Bordercountry in which he said he often motored. He did not attempt to pump me, butbehaved as if I were an ordinary guest of whom he had heard and whom he wasquite glad to meet.  There was somepretty good talk, for Stannix always manages to put life into a dinner table,and Barralty kept his end up.  He had awrangle with one of the bankers over some financial point, and I thought he puthis case uncommonly well.   So did theothers, for he was listened to with respect.  There’s no doubt that he has a pretty solidfooting in the world, and there’s no mistake about his brains.  He’s as quick as lightning on a point, and Ican see him spinning an immense web and keepingan eye on every thread in it.” 

 

  “I told you thatseveral weeks ago,” said Lombard.  “Barralty is as clever as the devil.  But what about therest of him – besides his mind?”

      

          “I’m coming to that.”

The Island Of Sheep (John Buchan)

                 

    There wasanother spell of eerie quiet, and then it seemed the world was changing.   The clouds were drifting apart, and Isuddenly saw a brilliant star-sown patch of sky.  Then the whole horizon turned fromvelvet-black to grey, grey rimmed in the east with a strip of intense yellowlight.  I looked behind me and could seethe outlines of the low coast, with blurs which I knew were woods, and with onechurch-steeple pricking fantastically into the pale brune.

 

        It was thetime for the geese, and in an instance there were on us.  They came in wedge after wedge, shadowy asghosts against the faintly flushing clouds, but cut sharp against the violetlagoon of clear sky.  They were notbabbling, as they do in an evening flight from the fields to the sea, butchuckling and talking low to themselves. From the sound, I knew they were pink-foot, for the white fronts make athroatier noise.  It was a sight thatalways takes my breath away, this multitude of wild living things surging outof the darkness and the deep, as steady in their discipline as a Guardsbattalion.  I never wanted to shoot and Inever shot first; it was only the thunder of Samson’s 12-bore that woke me tomy job.

    An old gander,which was the leading bird in one wedge, suddenly trumpeted.  Him Samson got; he fell with a thud fiveyards from my head, and the echo of the shot woke the marshes for miles.  It was all our bag.  The birds flew pretty high, and Peter Johnhad the best chance, but no sign of life came from his trench.  As soon as the geese had past, and a doublewedge of whistling widgeon had followed very high up, I walked over toinvestigate.  I found my son sitting onhis mud rampart with a rapt face.  “Icouldn’t shoot,” he stammered; “they were too beautiful.”

From:  John Buchan, The Island Of Sheep.  London, Hodder & Staughton, 1936.

The Summons Comes For Mr Standfast

       

    

     They took Peter from the wreckagewith scarcely a scar except his twisted leg. Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and had left his face muchas I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills.  In his pocket was his old battered Pilgrim’s Progress.  It lies before me as I write, as beside it,for I was his only legatee – the little case which came to him weeks later,containing the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.

 

  

        It was fromthe Pilgrim’s Progress that I readnext morning, when in the lee of an apple orchard Mary and Blenkiron and Istood in the soft spring rain beside his grave. And what I read was the tale of the end, not of Mr Standfast who he hadsingled out for his counterpart, but of Mr Valiant-for-Truth whom he had nothoped to emulate.  I set down the wordsas a salute and a farewell:

 

         “Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s;and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me ofall the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to himthat shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him thatcan get it.  My marks and scars I carrywith me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now bemy rewarder.’

 

        “So he passed over, and all thetrumpets sounded for him on the other side.” 

John Buchan, Mr Standfast (Chapter 54).  London, Hodder & Stoughton (1919) 

Mr Standfast (John Buchan, 1919)

I took the train three days later from King’s Cross toEdinburgh. I went to the Pentland Hotel in Princes Street and left there asuit-case containing some clean linen and a change of clothes.  I had been thinking the thing out, and hadcome to the conclusion that I must have a base somewhere and a fresh outfit.  Then, in well-worn tweeds and with no moreluggage than a small trench kit-bag, I descended upon the city of Glasgow.

 

        I walked tothe station which Blenkiron had given me. It was a hot summer evening, and the streets were filled with bareheadedwomen and weary-looking artisans.  As Imade my way down the Dumbarton Road I was amazed at the number of able-bodiedfellows about, considering that you couldn’t stir a mile on any British frontwithout bumping up against a Glasgow battalion. Then I realized that there were such things as munitions and ships, andI wondered no more.

John Buchan:  Chapter 36 ("Andrew Amos").  
Excerpt from Mr Standfast.  London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1919

The Return of Harald Blacktooth

Mr Bandicott was an archaeologist, buthe was also a business man, and he was disposed to use the whole apparatus ofcivilisation to announce his discovery to the world.  With a good deal oftrouble he got the two chief Scottish newspapers on the telephone, and dictatedto them a summary of his story.  He asked them to pass the matter on tothe London press, and he gave them ample references to establish his goodfaith.  Also he prepared a sheaf of telegrams and cables – to learnedsocieties in Britain and America, to the great New York of which he was theprincipal owner, to the British Museum, to the Secretary of Scotland, and tofriends in the same line of scholarship.  Having left instructions thatthese messages should be despatched from Inverlarrig at dawn, he went to bed ina state of profound jubilation and utter fatigue.

From John Macnab (1925) by John Buchan

Fullcircle Part 1 (John Buchan)

Between the Windrush and the Colne

I found a house of stone –

A little wicked house of stone.

  

        The October day was brightening toward late afternoon when Leithen and I climbed the hill above the stream and came in sight of the house.  All morning a haze with the sheen of pearl in it had lain on the folds of downland, and the visions of far horizons, which is the glory of Cotswold, had been veiled so that every valley seemed as a place enclosed and set apart.  

        The stone of the Cotswold takes curiously the colour of the weather.  Under thunderclouds it will be as dark as basalt; on a grey day it will be grey like lava but in sunshine it absorbs the sun.  At the moment the little house was pale gold, like honey.

        Leithen swung a long leg across the stile.

        “Pretty good, isn’t it? “ he said.  “It’s pure authentic Sir Christopher Wren.  The name is worthy of it too.  It is called Fullcircle.”