The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales

The Great Shadow and Other
Napoleonic Tales

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Shadow and Other
Napoleonic Tales
by Arthur Conan Doyle This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere
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Title: The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: March 22, 2004 [EBook #11656]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
GREAT SHADOW ***

Produced by Lionel G. Sear

THE GREAT SHADOW AND OTHER NAPOLEONIC TALES
A. CONAN DOYLE

CONTENTS
THE GREAT SHADOW

I. THE NIGHT OF THE BEACONS
II. COUSIN EDIE OF EYEMOUTH
III. THE SHADOW ON THE WATERS
IV. THE CHOOSING OF JIM
V. THE MAN FROM THE SEA
VI. A WANDERING EAGLE
VII. THE SHADOW ON THE LAND
VIII. THE COMING OF THE CUTTER
IX. THE DOINGS AT WEST INCH
X. THE RETURN OF THE SHADOW
XI. THE GATHERING OF THE NATIONS
XII. THE SHADOW ON THE LAND
XIII. THE END OF THE STORM
XIV. THE TALLY OF DEATH
XV. THE END OF IT
THE CRIME OF THE BRIGADIER
THE "SLAPPING SAL"

THE GREAT SHADOW.


CHAPTER I.
THE NIGHT OF THE BEACONS.
It is strange to me, Jock Calder of West Inch, to feel that though now,
in the very centre of the nineteenth century, I am but five-and-fifty
years of age, and though it is only once in a week perhaps that my wife
can pluck out a little grey bristle from over my ear, yet I have lived in a
time when the thoughts and the ways of men were as different as
though it were another planet from this. For when I walk in my fields I
can see, down Berwick way, the little fluffs of white smoke which tell
me of this strange new hundred-legged beast, with coals for food and a
thousand men in its belly, for ever crawling over the border. On a shiny
day I can see the glint of the brass work as it takes the curve near
Corriemuir; and then, as I look out to sea, there is the same beast again,

or a dozen of them maybe, leaving a trail of black in the air and of
white in the water, and swimming in the face of the wind as easily as a
salmon up the Tweed. Such a sight as that would have struck my good
old father speechless with wrath as well as surprise; for he was so
stricken with the fear of offending the Creator that he was chary of
contradicting Nature, and always held the new thing to be nearly akin
to the blasphemous. As long as God made the horse, and a man down
Birmingham way the engine, my good old dad would have stuck by the
saddle and the spurs.
But he would have been still more surprised had he seen the peace and
kindliness which reigns now in the hearts of men, and the talk in the
papers and at the meetings that there is to be no more war--save, of
course, with blacks and such like. For when he died we had been
fighting with scarce a break, save only during two short years, for very
nearly a quarter of a century. Think of it, you who live so quietly and
peacefully now! Babies who were born in the war grew to be bearded
men with babies of their own, and still the war continued. Those who
had served and fought in their stalwart prime grew stiff and bent, and
yet the ships and the armies were struggling. It was no wonder that folk
came at last to look upon it as the natural state, and thought how queer
it must seem to be at peace. During that long time we fought the Dutch,
we fought the Danes, we fought the Spanish, we fought the Turks, we
fought the Americans, we fought the Monte-Videans, until it seemed
that in this universal struggle no race was too near of kin, or too far
away, to be drawn into the quarrel. But most of all it was the French
whom we fought, and the man whom of all others we loathed and
feared and admired was the great Captain who ruled them.
It was very well to draw pictures of him, and sing songs about him, and
make as though he were an impostor; but I can tell you that the fear of
that man hung like a black shadow over all Europe, and that there was a
time when the glint of a fire at night