The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Desert Drama, by A. Conan Doyle

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Title: A Desert Drama
Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko"

Author: A. Conan Doyle

Illustrator: S. Paget

Release Date: June 8, 2007 [EBook #21768]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DESERT DRAMA ***

Produced by David Widger

A DESERT DRAMA

BEING

The Tragedy of the _Korosko_

BY

A. CONAN DOYLE

WITH THIRTY-TWO FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY S. PAGET

PHILADELPHIA

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1898

[Illustration: Frontispiece p78]

[Illustration: Titlepage]

TO MY FRIEND JAMES PAYN IN TOKEN OF MY AFFECTION AND ESTEEM

PREFACE

This book has been materially enlarged and altered since its appearance
in serial form

A. Conan Doyle

October 17, 1897

A DESERT DRAMA

CHAPTER I

The public may possibly wonder why it is that they have never heard in
the papers of the fate of the passengers of the __Korosko__. In these
days of universal press agencies, responsive to the slightest stimulus,
it may well seem incredible that an international incident of such
importance should remain so long unchronicled. Suffice it that there
were very valid reasons, both of a personal and political nature, for
holding it back. The facts were well known to a good number of people at
the time, and some version of them did actually appear in a provincial
paper, but was generally discredited They have now been thrown into
narrative form, the incidents having been collated from the sworn
statements of Colonel Cochrane Cochrane, of the Army and Navy Club,
and from the letters of Miss Adams, of Boston, Mass. These have been
supplemented by the evidence of Captain Archer, of the Egyptian Camel
Corps, as given before the secret Government inquiry at Cairo. Mr. James
Stephens has refused to put his version of the matter into writing,
but as these proofs have been submitted to him, and no correction or
deletion has been made in them, it may be supposed that he has not
succeeded in detecting any grave misstatement of fact, and that any
objection which he may have to their publication depends rather upon
privat