difficulty. Each story is complete in itself, but the characters are
re-shuffled into various combinations and any one of them may, and does,
strike off into a novel of his own, only to reappear at a later date in
some combination with other such characters. It is confusing, to say the
least. To add to the confusion, all or nearly all of Mundy's stories
first appeared in magazines, largely in Adventure, but later in Argosy.
As his popularity grew, his older stories were republished in book form,
as well as each of his new novels, so that the date of publication of
his books means nothing as far as reading chronology is concerned.

Before going any further, it may be interesting to digress a bit, and
consider some of his earlier stories in Adventure Magazine, and more
particularly as they apply to his books. No attempt is being made to
give a complete listing of his magazine stories here. Adventure Magazine
began publication in November 1910, but the earliest issue that I have
for reference is that of August 1911. This contains a short story by
Mundy, "The Phantom Battery." By this time he was publishing five to
eight short stories per year. These early stories were mostly about the
British Army and the most important was his "The Soul of A Regiment,"
(February 1913) a tale of native troops in the ill-fated first
expedition against the Dervishes in Egypt, with a surprise, terrific,
ending. This story was published as a book, "The Soul of A Regiment,"
(Alex Dulfer, San Francisco, 1925) and was anthologized by Arthur
Sullivant Hoffman in "Adventure's Beet Stories--1926" (Doran, New York,
1926). It was reprinted in Adventure Magazine in April 1917 and followed
next month be a sequel, "The Damned Old Nigger." Three of his early
novelettes (1913), "Hookum Hai," "For the Salt He Had Eaten," and
"Machassan Ah," will be found in the book "Told in the East,"
(Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1920). The first two concern the Sepoy
Revolt and the third is a humorous story of the British Navy. All are