3 Review(s)

About The Book : The author have no desire, in this o'er true tale of mine, to paint any of the sad scenes and the incidents that occurred during the terrible Mutiny in language too graphic. I wish but to tell the plain unvarnished truth, and not even the whole of tnat. But it is a tale that all British boys and girls should be told at least once during their lives, if only to prove to them how brave our British men and women can be; nay, but I will go further and say that in some places, such as Lucknow and Cawnpore, there was almost a holiness in their heroism and in their unselfish display of courage and endurance, which, if one attempts to portray, he finds the language at his command is far too feeble and inadequate even to trace. In the last chapter we left the British general at Meerut, although commanding bold and courageous troops, completely paralysed at the great misfortune that had fallen upon the military station, though not a man under him but would, with the greatest alacrity, have gone in pursuit of the flying rebels and meted out to them such a punishment as would have caused Sepoys all over India to think twice ere they deserted their flag, and might have gone far to extinguish the rising flames of mutiny before it could reach the summus mons of our power and sway in India. And we left the rebel Sepoys not yet satiated with blood and slaughter, but flying fearfully onward to Delhi in the silence of night, their rear guard often stopping to listen for the footsteps of pursuing cavalry. About The Author : William Gordon Stables (21 May 1840 – 10 May 1910) was a Scottish-born medical doctor in the Royal Navy and a prolific author of adventure fiction, primarily for boys. William Gordon Stables was born in Aberchirder, in Banffshire (now part of Aberdeenshire). After studying medicine at the University of Aberdeen, he served as a surgeon in the Royal Navy. He came ashore in 1875, and settled in Twyford, Berkshire, in England. He wrote over 130 books. The bulk of his large output is boys' adventure fiction, often with a nautical or historical setting. He also wrote books on health, fitness and medical subjects, and the keeping of cats and dogs For over 20 years Stables was the medical columnist for The Girl's Own Paper, writing under the peusdonym 'Medicus'. He was also a copious contributor of articles and stories to The Boy's Own Paper. Stables has been regarded as one of the most prominent of the English imitators of Jules Verne, especially in his novels of polar adventure, like The Cruise of the Snowbird (1882), Wild Adventures Round the Pole (1883), From Pole to Pole (1886), and "his most ambitious novel," The Cruise of the Crystal Boat (1891). He is also notable as the first person to order a "gentleman’s caravan" from the Bristol Wagon & Carriage Works, in which he travelled the length of Great Britain in 1885 (the subject of his book The Gentleman Gypsy). Stables was a strong opponent of vivisection.