Lost Sheep

Lost Sheep is basically a longer-than-most pulp fiction story published in book format.  It must be noted that it was also published in the U.S. in an actual pulp magazine –the July 1915 issue of Short Stories (v84 #1 No. 302).  Because of the two column format of most pulps it was easy to squeeze the 312 pages of the book onto 77 pages of 7″ X 10″ pulp paper.  The book has no illustrations but I’m sure Short Stories provided their usual ink drawings for the story.
The plot begins with our English cavalryman, James (Jim) Lingard, barely holding on to his position in the 31st Hussars due to his financial (gambling) problems.  The remains of his small inheritance is literally rolled away on a one-night binge at a casino so he reluctantly resigns his commission.  Sulking around London he gets fed up with the society he is no longer a part of and impulsively flees to Paris.  Lingard is fluent in French (his mother was French) but his money does not last any longer in Paris and he makes the fateful decision to join the French Foreign Legion (about page 35).  This is when the author’s knowledge of the Foreign Legion really kicks in as he describes Lingard’s enlistment, travel to N. Africa, the Legion’s culture and customs and the various and odd legionnaires he meets.  Lingard quickly makes corporal and then is posted to the Mounted Section of the 2nd Company and made a Sergeant.  While stationed at the desert outpost of Ain Sefra he begins to feel a despair and carelessness that he quickly diagnoses as le cafard.