A Modern Mercenary

A Modern Mercenary is an adventure novel by Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard, traveller, adventurer, author, big-game hunter, marksman and cricketer who made a substantial contribution to sniping performance within the British Army during the First World War. Excerpt: «The Duke listened moodily, lying back on his cushions, a thin-legged, paunchy figure, whose features had lost their shapely mould under the touch of dissipation. The nose hung long and fleshy between the pouched skin of his cheekbones, the eyes showed a tell-tale slackness in the under eyelid, where it merged into the loose wrinkles below. The lower part of the face was covered by a long but sparse moustache, through which at times could be discerned that terrible protrusion of the upper lip that seems the herald of senility. Yet Gustave, Grand Duke of Maäsau, was only that day celebrating the completion of his fifty-seventh year.»