No-man's-land
By John Buchan
()
About this ebook
No-man's-land was written in the year 1899 by John Buchan. This book is one of the most popular novels of John Buchan, and has been translated into several other languages around the world.
This book is published by Booklassic which brings young readers closer to classic literature globally.
John Buchan
John Buchan was a Scottish diplomat, barrister, journalist, historian, poet and novelist, born in Perth in 1875. He published nearly 30 novels and seven collections of short stories. After spells as a war correspondent, Lloyd George’s Director of Information and Conservative MP, Buchan moved to Canada in 1935. He served as Governor General there until his death in 1940.
Read more from John Buchan
The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 4 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Huntingtower Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gap in the Curtain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John Macnab Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Halloween Stories you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWitch Wood: Authorised Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Free Fishers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Books of All Time Vol. 5 (Dream Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSick Heart River: Authorised Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Burnet of Barns Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBox Set - The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volumes 1 to 7 (100+ authors & 200+ stories) (Halloween Stories) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Book of Shadows Vol 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Horror masterpieces you have to read before you die [newly updated] (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blanket of the Dark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTRICK OR TREAT Boxed Set: 200+ Eerie Tales from the Greatest Storytellers: Horror Classics, Mysterious Cases, Gothic Novels, Monster Tales & Supernatural Stories: Sweeney Todd, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Frankenstein, The Vampire, Dracula, Sleepy Hollow, From Beyond… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreenmantle Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Prestor John Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to No-man's-land
Related ebooks
The Watcher by the Threshold Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Watcher by the Threshold: "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Man's Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Grove of Ashtaroth & Other Horror Tales: The Watcher by the Threshold, Space, The Keeper of Cademuir, A Journey of Little Profit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo-Man's-Land (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTime of the Beast Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of David Christie Murray Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Veldt Camp Fires Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWritings of the Prince of Paradoxes - Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLammas Wild, The Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMyths and Legends of Our Own Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Bed of Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPopular Romances of the West of England: Annotated Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecollections Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaptain Paul Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Book of Were-Wolves Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Book of the West I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStoryteller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Veldt Camp Fires Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cambrian Sketch-Book: Tales, Scenes, and Legends of Wild Wales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mound Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt Last - A Christmas in the West Indies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mystery of Cloomber Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngler In Darkness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Short Stories For You
The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and Erotic: Hard, hot and sexy Short-Stories for Adults Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Selected Short Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for No-man's-land
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
No-man's-land - John Buchan
978-963-522-119-6
Chapter 1
The Shieling of Farawa
It was with a light heart and a pleasing consciousness of holiday that I set out from the inn at Allermuir to tramp my fifteen miles into the unknown. I walked slowly, for I carried my equipment on my back—my basket, fly-books and rods, my plaid of Grant tartan (for I boast myself a distant kinsman of that house), and my great staff, which had tried ere then the front of the steeper Alps. A small valise with books and some changes of linen clothing had been sent on ahead in the shepherd's own hands. It was yet early April, and before me lay four weeks of freedom—twenty-eight blessed days in which to take fish and smoke the pipe of idleness. The Lent term had pulled me down, a week of modest enjoyment thereafter in town had finished the work; and I drank in the sharp moorish air like a thirsty man who has been forwandered among deserts.
I am a man of varied tastes and a score of interests. As an undergraduate I had been filled with the old mania for the complete life. I distinguished myself in the Schools, rowed in my college eight, and reached the distinction of practising for three weeks in the Trials. I had dabbled in a score of learned activities, and when the time came that I won the inevitable St. Chad's fellowship on my chaotic acquirements, and I found myself compelled to select if I would pursue a scholar's life, I had some toil in finding my vocation. In the end I resolved that the ancient life of the North, of the Celts and the Northmen and the unknown Pictish tribes, held for me the chief fascination. I had acquired a smattering of Gaelic, having been brought up as a boy in Lochaber, and now I set myself to increase my store of languages. I mastered Erse and Icelandic, and my first book—a monograph on the probable Celtic elements in the Eddie songs—brought me the praise of scholars and the deputy-professor's chair of Northern Antiquities. So much for Oxford. My vacations had been spent mainly in the North—in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isles, in Scandinavia and Iceland, once even in the far limits of Finland. I was a keen sportsman of a sort, an old-experienced fisher, a fair shot with gun and rifle, and in my hillcraft I might well stand comparison with most men. April has ever seemed to me the finest season of the year even in our cold northern altitudes, and the memory of many bright Aprils had brought me up from the South on the night before to Allerfoot, whence a dogcart had taken me up Glen Aller to the inn at Allermuir; and now the same desire had set me on the heather with my face to the cold brown hills.
You are to picture a sort of plateau, benty and rock-strewn, running ridge-wise above a chain of little peaty lochs and a vast tract of inexorable bog. In a mile the ridge ceased in a shoulder of hill, and over this lay the head of another glen, with the same doleful accompaniment of sunless lochs, mosses, and a shining and resolute water. East and west and north, in every direction save the south, rose walls of gashed and serrated hills. It was a grey day with blinks of sun, and when a ray chanced to fall on one of the great dark faces, lines of light and colour sprang into being which told of mica and granite. I was in high spirits, as on the eve of holiday; I had breakfasted excellently on eggs and salmon-steaks; I had no cares to speak of, and my prospects were not uninviting. But in spite of myself the landscape began to take me in thrall and crush me. The silent vanished peoples of the hills seemed to be stirring; dark primeval faces seemed to stare at me from behind boulders and jags of rock. The place was so still, so free from the cheerful clamour of nesting birds, that it seemed a temenos sacred to some old-world god. At my feet the lochs lapped ceaselessly; but the waters were so dark that one could not see bottom a foot from the edge. On my right the links of green told of snakelike mires waiting to crush the unwary wanderer. It seemed to me for the moment a land of death, where the tongues of the dead cried aloud for recognition.
My whole morning's walk was full of such fancies. I lit a pipe to cheer me, but the things would not be got rid of. I thought of the Gaels who had held those fastnesses; I thought of the Britons before them, who yielded to their advent. They were all strong peoples in their day, and now they had gone the way of the earth. They had left their mark on the levels of the glens and on the more habitable uplands, both in names and in actual forts, and graves where men might still dig curios. But the hills—that black stony amphitheatre before me—it seemed strange that the hills bore no traces of them. And then with some uneasiness I reflected on that older and stranger race who were said to have held the hill-tops. The Picts, the Picti—what in the name of goodness were they? They had troubled me in all my studies, a sort of blank wall to put an end to speculation. We knew nothing of them save certain strange names which men called Pictish, the