Blue Lights: Hot Work in the Soudan — R.M. Ballantyne

Description

A gripping Victorian adventure novel set during the British campaigns in Sudan in the 1880s. Young Miles Milton joins the army and finds himself in the thick of the Egyptian and Sudanese campaigns, experiencing the brutal realities of desert warfare alongside acts of Christian faith and courage. One of Ballantyne's finest adventure stories, rooted in the real events of the Mahdist War.

Excerpt

There is a dividing ridge in the great northern wilderness of America, whereon lies a lakelet of not more than twenty yards in diameter. It is of crystal clearness and profound depth, and on the still evenings of the Indian summer its surface forms a perfect mirror, which might serve as a toilet-glass for a Redskin princess.

Miles Milton, our hero, at the age of nineteen, stood at the dividing ridge of his life. If the oscillating spirit, trembling between right and wrong, had decided to lean to the right, what might have been his fate no one can tell. He paused on the balance a short time, then he leaned over to the left, and what his fate was it is the purpose of this volume to disclose.