40 Fun Facts About The Interlopers

In The Interlopers, what do the figures running down the hill toward the trapped men turn out to be?

Wolves is the story's final word, and Saki stops there without showing what happens next. Until that moment both men believe rescue has arrived.

The Interlopers author Saki was reportedly shot by a sniper just after telling a soldier to put out what?

A cigarette is what several accounts say he ordered put out, making the command his last words. He was sheltering in a shell crater at the time.

In The Interlopers, what does the trapped Ulrich offer to share with Georg as a first gesture of kindness?

His wine flask is the turning point. Georg refuses, saying he does not drink with an enemy, yet the offer is what he recalls when he finally accepts friendship.

In The Interlopers, what kind of tree crashes down in the storm and pins both enemies to the ground?

A beech brings the two men down side by side, almost close enough to touch. Ulrich later scoffs that the trees on this land cannot even stand upright in a breath of wind.

In The Interlopers, what first took the disputed forest land away from the Znaeym family?

A lawsuit handed the land to the Gradwitz family, but the losers never accepted the judgment of the courts. Raids and scandals have soured relations ever since.

Saki, author of The Interlopers, enlisted at 43, refused an officer's commission and was killed in which war?

World War I began when he was officially too old to enlist, yet he joined up as an ordinary trooper. The Interlopers reached book form only after his death.

Saki, whose The Interlopers ends on a famous twist, is often compared to which American short-story writer?

O. Henry built stories such as The Gift of the Magi around surprise endings, the same trick Saki plays here. Saki is also often likened to the wit Dorothy Parker.

In The Interlopers, how does Saki describe the land the two families have fought over for generations?

It offers poor sport, being steep and thinly stocked with game, yet it is the most jealously guarded of all Ulrich's possessions. He ends up calling it a stupid strip of forest.

In The Interlopers, what does the German particle von in Ulrich von Gradwitz's name traditionally signal?

Noble descent is what von marks in German surnames, which suits a man with wide forest lands to patrol. The Znaeyms, by contrast, are described as petty landowners.

Which writer signed The Interlopers as Saki but published a history of the Russian Empire under his real name?

H. H. Munro, Hector Hugh in full, first used the name Saki on political sketches that parodied Alice in Wonderland for the Westminster Gazette.

In The Interlopers, the quarrel over the forest began in the days of which relative of Ulrich von Gradwitz?

His grandfather won the land, and the bitterness has now run through three generations. Under Ulrich it has turned from a family quarrel into a personal one.

In The Interlopers, what offence does Ulrich accuse Georg of committing on the Gradwitz forest lands?

Poaching is the charge Ulrich throws at his trapped enemy, along with the name forest-thief. Georg has just jeered that Ulrich is snared in a stolen forest.

In The Interlopers, what is each man holding when Ulrich and Georg come face to face in the forest?

A rifle is in each man's hand and murder in each man's mind, yet neither fires. Saki says a civilised man cannot easily shoot a neighbour down without a word spoken.

In The Interlopers, what feeling toward Georg first stirs in Ulrich as he watches his enemy fight the pain?

Pity, something like a throb of it, comes over Ulrich as Georg holds back groans of pain and weariness. From that moment the old fierce hatred begins to die down.

In The Interlopers, what does Ulrich promise if the Gradwitz men arrive before the Znaeym party?

His enemy is freed first, he says, and treated as though he were a guest. It reverses the threats the two had traded minutes earlier, when each planned to let the other die.

In The Interlopers, how does Ulrich react when he realises what is really running toward the two trapped men?

He laughs, an idiotic chattering sound that Saki calls the noise of a man unstrung with hideous fear. It is the first sign Georg gets that something is wrong.

In The Interlopers, Georg invites Ulrich to keep Sylvester night under his roof; which festive night is that?

New Year's Eve is called Silvester in German-speaking Europe because 31 December is the feast day of Saint Sylvester, a fourth-century pope.

In The Interlopers, what do the two reconciled men raise together to summon help through the trees?

A hunting call, long and drawn out, is what the two send up during a lull in the wind. It does bring company down the hillside, though not the kind they hoped for.

In The Interlopers, whom has Ulrich posted in ambush on the crest of the hill to watch for thieves?

His foresters wait on the hilltop while Ulrich strays off alone, hoping to meet Georg man to man with nobody to witness it. The wish is promptly granted.

Who tells the story of The Interlopers, reporting the private thoughts of both trapped men?

An omniscient narrator stands outside the action and sees into both minds, so readers know Ulrich's hatred is fading before he says a word about it.

In The Interlopers, what leaves Georg nearly blind as he lies trapped beside his lifelong enemy?

Blood in his eyes, first trickling and later caked, means Georg has to rely on Ulrich to say who is coming down the hill. It is also his first excuse for turning down a drink.

In The Interlopers, what does each trapped man privately pray for once the two have made peace?

His men arriving first is each man's silent wish, and it is a neat reversal. Minutes earlier each wanted his own side on the scene first in order to finish the other off.

In The Interlopers, why does Georg decide the approaching figures must be Ulrich's men?

He brought only seven men, and Ulrich has just counted nine or ten figures. The sum reassures both of them for a few more seconds.

In The Interlopers, what does Ulrich suspect when Georg stays silent for so long after the offer of friendship?

He has fainted from the pain of his injuries, Ulrich thinks, but Georg is only weighing the offer. When the answer comes, it is spoken slowly and in jerks.

In The Interlopers, what saves Ulrich's feet from being crushed when the tree lands across his legs?

His heavy boots, made for a day's shooting, keep his feet whole, though both legs stay pinned. One arm is numb beneath him and the other is tangled in branches.

In The Interlopers, a feud between two landowners is cut short by which larger force, the story's real victor?

Nature strikes twice, first with the falling tree and then with the ending, and Saki calls the first blow a deed of its own violence. Neither claim to the land survives it.

In The Interlopers, the enemies make peace just before it becomes useless; which literary device is that?

Irony runs through the whole story: the two reconcile after a lifetime of hatred with nobody there to witness it. Even the title turns back on the two men themselves.

In The Interlopers, Georg vows to fight on with no cursed interlopers between them; what does the word mean?

Intruders, people who push in where they are not wanted, is the meaning. Georg uses the word again later, promising that no outsiders can meddle if the two choose peace.

In The Interlopers, where does Georg picture the whole region staring if he and Ulrich rode in together?

The market square is where Georg imagines people staring and gabbling, because no one living has seen a Znaeym and a von Gradwitz talk as friends.

In The Interlopers, why do the trapped men suffer less from the cold than the season might suggest?

Little snow has fallen because it is what Saki calls an open winter, meaning a mild one. The wind, though, is fierce enough to bring a tree down on them.

The Interlopers opens in a forest on the eastern spurs of which European mountain range?

The Carpathians appear in the story's very first sentence, spelled with a K in the 1919 edition. The same sentence sets the scene on a winter night.

In The Interlopers, which animals running through the storm warn Ulrich that something is wrong in the forest?

Roebuck normally keep to sheltered hollows in a storm wind, so their flight tells Ulrich the forest has been disturbed. He blames Georg's raiding party.

In The Interlopers, what does Georg sneer he will send the Gradwitz family after Ulrich's death?

His condolences, sent for form's sake, are Georg's mocking promise after his men have rolled the trunk onto Ulrich. Ulrich answers that he cannot decently send any in return.

According to Saki's editor Rothay Reynolds, what remembered sight seems to have inspired The Interlopers?

A romantic castle in the heart of Europe, seen on a youthful tour of German and Austrian cities with his father, is Reynolds's guess. He says the same of one other tale in the volume.

Saki, author of The Interlopers, was born in which Asian land, where his father was a senior police officer?

Burma is also where Saki joined the police himself as a young man, until repeated bouts of fever forced him home to England.

After his mother died, who helped raise Saki, author of The Interlopers, in a strict Devon household?

Two maiden aunts, Charlotte and Augusta, ran the puritanical household with his grandmother. They are thought to be the models for the overbearing guardians in several Saki stories.

Before writing The Interlopers, Saki spent years in the Balkans, Russia and Paris doing which job?

Foreign correspondent for the Morning Post was his role from 1902, and in St Petersburg he witnessed the revolution of 1905 at first hand.

The Interlopers author Saki took his pen name from the cupbearer in which Persian poem?

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam addresses a saki, the Persian word for a cupbearer. Both his sister and his friend Rothay Reynolds confirmed it as the source of the name.

The Interlopers was collected in which Saki book, issued after his death with a friend's memoir of him?

The Toys of Peace came out in 1919 and is dedicated to the 22nd Royal Fusiliers, the battalion Saki was serving with when he was killed.

Which story by Saki, the author of The Interlopers, has a teenage niece inventing a tale of drowned hunters?

The Open Window ends with a nervous visitor bolting from the house when the supposedly dead men stroll back across the lawn, alive and well.