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The Secret Dispatch; or, the Adventures of Captain Balgonie
This tale intertwines a narrative of intrigue and adventure set against the backdrop of 18th-century Russia, focusing on Captain Charlie Balgonie, a young Scottish officer maneuvering through the complexities of imperial service under Catherine the Great.
"The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie" by James Grant is a historical novel. This tale intertwines a narrative of intrigue and adventure set against the backdrop of 18th-century Russia, focusing on Captain Charlie Balgonie, a young Scottish officer maneuvering through the complexities of imperial service under Catherine the Great.
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Read a passage
"Heaven aid me! here am I now—which way shall I turn—advance or retire?" exclaimed Balgonie, as his horse came plunging down almost on its knees, amid wild gorse and matted jungle.
A cold day in the middle of April had passed away; a pale and cheerless sun, that had cast no heat on the leafless scenery and the half-frozen marshes that border the Louga in Western Russia, had sunk, and the darkness of a stormy night came on rapidly. The keen blast of the north, that swept the arid scalps of the Dudenhof (the only range of hills that traverses the ancient Ingria), was bellowing through a gorge, where the Louga poured in foam upon its passage to the Gulf of Finland, between steep banks that were covered by gloomy pines, when the speaker, a mounted officer in Russian uniform, who seemed too surely to have lost his way, reined up a weary and mud-covered horse on the margin of the stream, and by the light that yet lingered on the tops of the tall pines, and gilded faintly the metal-covered domes of a distant building on the opposite bank, looked hopelessly about him for the means of crossing the dangerous river.
"Where am I?" he repeated, almost despairingly; for, as Schiller sings in his "Song of the Bell,"—
"Man fears the kingly lion's tread; Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror; And still the dreadliest of the dread Is man himself in error!"
Contents
- 01Chapter I. The Lost Traveller.
- 02Chapter II. The Castle of Louga.
- 03Chapter III. Natalie.
- 04Chapter IV. Corporal Podatchkine.
- 05Chapter V. The Dagger of Bernikoff.
- 06Chapter VI. The Palatine.
- 07Chapter VII. The Soldier of the Czarina.
- 08Chapter VIII. In Love.
- 09Chapter IX. Deluded.
- 10Chapter X. The Corporal in His Own Trap.
- 11Chapter XI. Olga, the Gipsy.
- 12Chapter XII. St. Petersburg.
- 13Chapter XIII. What the Secret Dispatch Contained.
- 14Chapter XIV. Charlie's First Day in Schlusselberg.
- 15Chapter XV. The Imperial Prisoner.
- 16Chapter XVI. The Tratkir.
- 17Chapter XVII. The Wood of the Honey Tree.
- 18Chapter XVIII. Doubt and Dread.
- 19Chapter XIX. The Night of the 15Th September.
- 20Chapter XX. Morning of the 16Th September.
- 21Chapter XXI. Underground.
- 22Chapter XXII. Over Their Wine.
- 23Chapter XXIII. Will He Succeed?
- 24Chapter XXIV. Conclusion.
- 25L'envoi.—Illustrative Note.
About this edition
- Author
- James Grant
- Language
- English
- Era
- Modern (c. 1800–1945)
- Reading level
- Advanced: for close, demanding reading
- Formats
- EPUB, PDF
- Length
- 194 pages
- This edition
- Modern Philosophers
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