The Constable of St. Nicholas

by Edwin Lester Arnold

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter I. Led on by a crafty Greek of low origin, Isaac Saluzzio, the young Count de Montaigne had at last pledged his name and credit so deeply that the only escape seemed to be temporary retirement and the prompt acceptance of that golden hand which he believed his cousin still held out to him. He was beset on every side by impatient creditors and sinister looks, when, at the very crisis of his fate, a thrill of expectation ran through Ehodes to know that the Moslem was coming--and coming upon her this time in earnest, --with an army which, the frightened watchers said, covered the Syrian hills like locusts in corn time, and a white winged fleet that rode as numerous along the edge of the sea as white waves in a December storm. Oswald at this moment held the post of Constable of the tower of St. Nicholas, at the entrance of the harbour of Ehodes. Up in the extreme summit of that fortress-keep he had furnished himself a sleeping-apartment, and, luxurious as he was no less than inflexible in danger and hardship, he had softened the grim plainness of that great grey vaulted chamber with tapestries and silks and hangings, and put a mighty bed, deep heaped with downy coverlets such as an emperor might have envied, upon one side; and piled silk cushions by the window, and Damascus carpets on the turret balcony outside wherefrom you could see all over Ehodes and half the neighbouring islands. To this room, grim and grey outside, and inside soft and quaint and dainty, he came, dusty and tired with a long day's work on the eve of the great siege, and, tossing off his heavy armour, threw himself wearily upon the couch by the embrasure. But the rest he asked was the last thing the Fates had in store for that strong young soldier. Before he had..

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

Edwin Lester Linden Arnold, (1857 – 1 March 1935) was an English author. Most of his works were issued under his working name of Edwin Lester Arnold.

Son of Sir Edwin Arnold. Most of his childhood was spent in India, but he returned to England to study agriculture and ornithology. He became a journalist in 1883, and published his first books 1877 and 1887 before writing his first novel The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician. Phra was first published in 24 parts in the prestigious Illustrated London News, and later published in book form in the United States and the United Kingdom.