The Last of the Legions
Table of Contents
The Last of the Legions and Other Tales of
by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Project BookishMall.com EBook of The Last of the Legions and Other Tales of
Long Ago, by Arthur Conan Doyle 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 BookishMall.com License included with this eBook or online at www.BookishMall.com.net
Title: The Last of the Legions and Other Tales of Long Ago
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: July 31, 2008 [EBook #26153]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT BookishMall.com EBOOK THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS ***
Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS and Other Tales of Long Ago
A. CONAN DOYLE
By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Novels and Stories
DANGER! And Other Stories THE DOINGS OF RAFFLES HAW HIS LAST BOW Some Later Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes THE BLACK DOCTOR And Other Tales of Terror and Mystery THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL And Other Tales of Adventure THE CROXLEY MASTER And Other Tales of the Ring and Camp THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT And Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS And Other Tales of Long Ago THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY And Other Tales of Pirates
On the Life Hereafter
THE NEW REVELATION THE VITAL MESSAGE THE COMING OF THE FAIRIES THE CASE FOR SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY THE WANDERINGS OF A SPIRITUALIST OUR AMERICAN ADVENTURE
A History of the Great War
THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS--Six Vols.
Poems
THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS and Other Tales of Long Ago
BY A. CONAN DOYLE
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1918, 1919, 1922 BY A. CONAN DOYLE
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY ASSOCIATED SUNDAY MAGAZINES, INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY THE MCCLURE COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1900, 1902, BY THE S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY
[Device]
THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS AND OTHER TALES OF LONG AGO
----Q----
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Transcriber's Note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect spellings remain as printed. The oe ligature is represented by [oe].
CONTENTS
PAGE
I THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS 9
II THE LAST GALLEY 22
III THROUGH THE VEIL 37
IV THE COMING OF THE HUNS 47
V THE CONTEST 68
VI THE FIRST CARGO 83
VII AN ICONOCLAST 98
VIII GIANT MAXIMIN 112
IX THE RED STAR 141
X THE SILVER MIRROR 158
XI THE HOME-COMING 177
XII A POINT OF CONTACT 202
XIII THE CENTURION 215
THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS
THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS and Other Tales of Long Ago
I
THE LAST OF THE LEGIONS
Pontus, the Roman viceroy, sat in the atrium of his palatial villa by the Thames, and he looked with perplexity at the scroll of papyrus which he had just unrolled. Before him stood the messenger who had brought it, a swarthy little Italian, whose black eyes were glazed with want of sleep, and his olive features darker still from dust and sweat. The viceroy was looking fixedly at him, yet he saw him not, so full was his mind of this sudden and most unexpected order. To him it seemed as if the solid earth had given way beneath his feet. His life and the work of his life had come to irremediable ruin.
"Very good," he said at last in a hard dry voice, "you can go."
The man saluted and staggered out of the hall. A yellow-haired British major-domo came forward for orders.
"Is the General there?"
"He is waiting, your excellency."
"Then show him in, and leave us together."
A few minutes later Licinius Crassus, the head of the British military establishment, had joined his chief. He was a large, bearded man in a white civilian toga, hemmed with the Patrician purple. His rough, bold features, burned and seamed and lined with the long African wars, were shadowed with anxiety as he looked with questioning eyes at the drawn, haggard face of the viceroy.
"I fear, your excellency, that you have had bad news from Rome."
"The worst, Crassus. It is all over with Britain. It is a question whether even Gaul will be held."
"Saint Albus save us! Are the orders precise?"
"Here they are, with the Emperor's own seal."
"But why? I had heard a rumour, but it had seemed too incredible."
"So had I only last week, and had the fellow scourged for having spread it. But here it is as clear as words can make it: 'Bring every man of the Legions by forced marches to the help of the Empire. Leave not a cohort in Britain.' These are my orders."
"But the cause?"
"They will let the limbs wither so that the heart be stronger. The old German hive is about to swarm once more. There are fresh crowds of Barbarians from Dacia and Scythia. Every sword is needed to hold the Alpine passes. They cannot let three legions lie idle in Britain."
The soldier shrugged his shoulders.
"When the legions go no Roman would feel that his life was safe here. For all that we have done, it is none the less the truth that it is no country of ours, and that we hold it as we won it by the sword."
"Yes, every man, woman, and child of Latin blood must come with us to Gaul. The galleys are already waiting at Portus Dubris. Get the orders out, Crassus, at once. As the Valerian legion falls back from the Wall of Hadrian it can take the northern colonists with it.
1 comment