Greenmantle

Greenmantle  (1916)  by John Buchan

Greenmantle is the second of five Richard Hannay novels by John Buchan, first published in 1916 by Hodder & Stoughton, London. It is one of two Hannay novels set during the First World War, the other being Mr Standfast (1919); Hannay's first and best-known adventure, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), is set in the period immediately before the war started.— Excerpted from Greenmantle on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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

• Chapter One: A Mission is Proposed
• Chapter Two: The Gathering of the Missionaries
• Chapter Three: Peter Pienaar
• Chapter Four: Adventures of Two Dutchmen on the Loose
• Chapter Five: Further Adventures of the Same
• Chapter Six: The Indiscretions of the Same
• Chapter Seven: Christmastide
• Chapter Eight: The Essen Barges
• Chapter Nine: The Return of the Straggler
• Chapter Ten: The Garden-House of Suliman the Red
• Chapter Eleven: The Companions of the Rosy Hours
• Chapter Twelve: Four Missionaries See Light in their Mission
• Chapter Thirteen: I Move in Good Society
• Chapter Fourteen: The Lady of the Mantilla
• Chapter Fifteen: An Embarrassed Toilet
• Chapter Sixteen: The Battered Caravanserai
• Chapter Seventeen: Trouble by The Waters of Babylon
• Chapter Eighteen: Sparrows on the Housetops
• Chapter Nineteen: Greenmantle
• Chapter Twenty: Pienaar Goes to the Wars
• Chapter Twenty-one: The Little Hill
• Chapter Twenty-two: The Guns of the North

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923. The author died in 1940, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.