In Direst Peril

In Direst Peril, by David Christie
Murray

The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Direst Peril, by David Christie
Murray This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: In Direst Peril
Author: David Christie Murray
Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22205]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DIREST
PERIL ***

Produced by David Widger

IN DIREST PERIL
By David Christie Murray
AUTHOR OF "TIME'S REVENGES" "A WASTED CRIME" ETC.

1894

PREFACE
It is not often that an honorable man commits a theft and yet leaves no
stain upon his honor. It can happen still less often that a man of honor
robs the lady he loves and honors above all womankind, and wins her
hand in marriage by the act. Yet before we were married I robbed my
wife of forty thousand pounds, breaking into her house to steal it; and
here-now that we are both old-she is still so proud of me for having
done that, that she must needs make me tell the story. A better writer
would have done it better, but my wife has polished my rough phrases;
and, at any rate, the plain truth about the strangest things which have
happened in my knowledge is here set plainly down.
(Signed)
John Fyffe,
(Late acting) General of Division
under General Garibaldi.

IN DIREST PERIL
CHAPTER I
I have told my wife quite plainly that in my opinion I am as little fitted
by nature for the task she has laid upon my shoulders as any man alive.
I have spent a great part of my life in action; and though the later part
of it has been quieter and more peaceful than the earlier, and though I
have enjoyed opportunities of study which I never had before, I am still
anything but a bookish man, and I am not at all confident about such
essential matters as grammar and spelling. The history I am called upon
to tell is one which, if it were put into the hands of a professed man of

letters, might be made unusually interesting. I am sure of that, for in a
life of strange adventure I have encountered nothing so strange. But, for
my own part, the utmost I can do is to tell the thing as it happened as
nearly as I can, and if I cannot command those graces of style which
would come naturally to a practised pen, I can only ask that the reader
will dispense with them.
The natural beginning of the story is that I fell in love with the lady
who has now for eight-and-thirty blessed and happy years been my
wife. It may be that I may not again find opportunity to say one thing
that should be said. That lady is a pearl among women; and I am
prouder of having fallen in love with her at first sight, as I did, than I
should be if I had taken a city or won a pitched battle. I have sought
opportunities of doing these things far and near, but they have been
denied to me. I trust that I have always been on the right side. I know
that, except in one case, I have always been on the weaker side; but
until my marriage I was what is generally called a soldier of fortune. I
am known to this day as Captain Fyffe, though I never held her most
sacred Majesty's commission. That I should be delighted to fight in my
country's cause goes, I hope, without saying; but I never had the
opportunity, and my sword, until the date of my marriage, was always
at the service of oppressed nationalities. This, however, is not my story,
and I must do my best to hold to that. Should I take to blotting and
erasing, there is no knowing when my task would be over. I will be as
little garrulous as I can.
It was in the height of the London season of 1847, and I had just got
back from the Argentine Republic. I had been fighting for General
Rosas, but the man's greed and his reckless ambition had gradually
drawn me away from him, and at last, after an open quarrel, I broke my
sword across my knee before him, threw the fragments at his feet, and
left the camp. I did it at the risk of my life; and if Rosas had cared to
lift a hand, his men would have shot me or hanged me from the nearest