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Prester John

by John BUCHAN (1875 - 1940)

XII - Captain Arcoll Sends a Message

This classic adventure novel by the author of Greenmantle and The Thirty-Nine Steps relates the first-person exploits of young David Crawfurd before the age of twenty. As a boy growing up on the coast of Scotland, minister's son Davie and two friends were pursued with murderous intent along the cliffs one night by John Laputa, a visiting black African preacher, whom they had witnessed performing un-Christian rites round a campfire on the beach. A few years later, when his father's death forces Davie to quit college and join the tribe of wandering Scots, our hero finds himself in South Africa, assistant shopkeeper in a seemingly sleepy back-veldt store. There he re-encounters Laputa, now charismatic leader of an incipient native uprising, secretly preaching the incendiary creed of "Africa for the Africans," and proclaiming himself heir to the mantle of Prester John, a legendary 15th-century Christian king of Ethiopia. Can young Davie possibly penetrate the megalomaniac's mountain stronghold, foil the insurrection, prevent a massacre of white settlers, and make off with the rebels' war-chest of gold and diamonds? It's going to take some doing - and not a little derring-do!

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Listen next episodes of Prester John:
XIII - The Drift of the Letaba , XIV - I Carry the Collar of Prester John , XIX - Arcoll's Shepherding , XV - Morning in the Berg , XVI - Inanda's Kraal , XVII - A Deal and Its Consequences , XVIII - How a Man May Sometimes Put His Trust in a Horse , XX - My Last Sight of the Reverend John Laputa , XXI - I Climb the Crags a Second Time , XXII - A Great Peril and a Great Salvation , XXIII - My Uncle's Gift Is Many Times Multiplied