Alexandre Dumas · 1844 · overland

Alexandre Dumas's 1844 swashbuckler. The young Gascon d'Artagnan rides to Paris to join the King's Musketeers and falls in with Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Their greatest adventure is a race against time across the Channel to England and back, to recover the queen's diamond studs from the Duke of Buckingham before the cardinal can expose her, before the saga ends at the siege of La Rochelle.

1. 1
   Gascony

   D'Artagnan leaves home for Paris on a yellow horse with a letter of introduction, and has lost the letter and picked three duels before he has been in the city a day.

2. 2
   Paris

   The duels turn into friendships, and Constance Bonacieux brings him the Queen's problem: twelve diamond studs given to the Duke of Buckingham, and a ball at which the King expects to see them worn.

3. 3
   La Rochelle

   The Huguenot port is in revolt and England is arming it, which is the reason the Cardinal wants the Queen disgraced - the siege is already the political weather over everything that happens in Paris.

4. 4
   Calais

   The four ride for the coast and are cut down one by one on the road, waylaid at inns and ambushed by the Cardinal's men, until only d'Artagnan and Planchet reach the Channel with a pass taken at swordpoint.

5. 5
   Dover

   Across in a hired boat and up the road to London at a gallop, killing horses under him, because the ball is in ten days and the Queen's honour and Constance's life both hang on the same twelve stones.

6. 6
   London

   Buckingham finds two studs cut away by Milady, has a jeweller copy them in a locked room over two days, and closes every English port so that news of the theft cannot outrun d'Artagnan.

7. 7
   Dover

   Back across with the studs, the sea passage arranged and the ports opened behind him - and the whole outbound journey run again in reverse against a clock that has almost stopped.

8. 8
   Paris

   The studs reach the Queen with the ball already begun and the King asking why she is not wearing them - and Milady's revenge begins, which will cost Constance her life and take the friends back south.

9. 9
   La Rochelle

   At the siege the four hold the St Gervais bastion through a wager and a breakfast, overhear the Cardinal commissioning a murder, and finish the business with Milady at a river crossing in Armentieres.