The Project Gutenberg EBook of Driftwood Spars, by Percival Christopher Wren

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Title: Driftwood Spars
The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who
Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

Author: Percival Christopher Wren

Release Date: March 23, 2004 [EBook #11691]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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DRIFTWOOD SPARS

THE STORIES OF A MAN, A BOY, A WOMAN, AND CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE WHO
STRANGELY MET UPON THE SEA OF LIFE

BY

CAPTAIN PERCIVAL CHRISTOPHER WREN, I.A.R.

AUTHOR OF "DEW AND MILDEW", "FATHER GREGORY", "SNAKE AND SWORD", ETC.

"Like driftwood spars which meet and pass
Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
So on the sea of life, alas!
Man nears man, meets, and leaves again"

--MATTHEW ARNOLD

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED WIFE

NOTE.--This book was written in the year 1912

CONTENTS.

I. THE MAN (Mainly concerning the early life of John, Robin
Ross-Ellison.)

II. THE BOY (Mainly concerning the life of Moussa Isa Somali.)

III. THE WOMAN (And Augustus Grabble; General Murger; Sergeant-Major
Lawrence-Smith; Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green; Mr. Horace Faggit;
as well as a reformed JOHN ROBIN ROSS-ELLISON.)

IV. "MEET AND LEAVE AGAIN"

CHAPTER I.

THE MAN.

(Mainly concerning the early life of John Robin Ross-Ellison.)

Truth is stranger than fiction, and many of the coincidences of real
life are truly stranger than the most daring imaginings of the
fictionist.

Now, I, Major Michael Malet-Marsac, happened at the moment to be
thinking of my dear and deeply lamented friend John Ross-Ellison, and to
be pondering, for the thousandth time, his extraordinary life and more
extraordinary death. Nor had I the very faintest notion that the
Subedar-Major had ever heard of such a person, much less that he was
actually his own brother, or, to be exact, his half-brother. You see I
had known Ross-Ellison intimately as one only can know the man with whom
one has worked, soldiered, suffered, and faced death. Not only had