“How Brigadier Gerard Lost His Ear”

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Page 9 —

A good soldier in an enemy’s country should everywhere and at all times be on the alert. It has been one of the rules of my life, and if I have lived to wear grey hairs it is because I have observed it. And yet upon that night I was as careless as a foolish young recruit who fears lest he should be thought to be afraid. My pistols I had left behind in my hurry. My sword was at my belt, but it is not always the most convenient of weapons. I lay back in my seat in the gondola, lulled by the gentle swish of the water and the steady creaking of the oar. Our way lay through a network of narrow canals with high houses towering on either side and a thin slit of star-spangled sky above us. Here and there, on the bridges which spanned the canal, there was the dim glimmer of an oil lamp, and sometimes there came a gleam from some niche where a candle burned before the image of a saint.

But save for this it was all black, and one could only see the water by the white fringe which curled round the long black nose of our boat. It was a place and a time for dreaming. I thought of my own past life, of all the great deeds in which I had been concerned, of the horses that I had handled, and of the women that I had loved. Then I thought also of my dear mother, and I fancied her joy when she heard the folk in the village talking about the fame of her son.

“How Brigadier Gerard Lost His Ear” is one of eight stories collected in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Gerard, featuring the eponymous French Hussar in a variety of misadventures set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

You can freely read this story in its entirety here; or it can be found along with 7 other short stories in this excellent FREE collection for the Kindle.

About This Collection:

“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” — Ford Madox Ford

But what short story could pass that test?

This collection applies Ford’s test to the 9th page of a wide range of short stories, old and new. To do so, I take short stories, put them in the format of a standard mass-market paperback, and excerpt page nine.

If you have a suggestion for a story, or if you’ve published one that you’d like considered (4000–8,000 words) please contact me directly: @E_H_Carpenter (Twitter) and let me know.

“9” graphic created by The Australian Graphic Supply Co