All the books by A.E.w. Mason adapted to cinema and television, ranked

While staying at an Alpine ski resort, English mountain climber Mark learns that a fellow Englishman, a young climber, has perished on a nearby mountain, his body awaiting retrieval. Mark breaks the news to the dead man’s pretty young widow, Stella, before setting off to recover the corpse. The attempt to fetch the body is botched, the corpse falling from the mountain deep into a crevasse below, making it irrecoverable.

Set in 1885, the story follows a British officer who resigns his post when he learns of his regiment’s plan to ship out to the Sudan for the conflict with the Mahdi. His friends and fiancée send him four white feathers which symbolize cowardice. To redeem his honor he disguises himself as an Arab and secretly saves the lives of those who branded him a coward.

David Gordon is in love and engaged to be married to Kate Nugent. But the sinister figure of Austen Hawke, Gordon’s rival, threatens to eclipse the wedding and wreck Gordon’s one chance of true happiness. Gordon will throw Austen over a cliff in a climbing excursion in the Scafell Pike area, but finally he will find all was a dream.