Arthur Conan Doyle diary to be published

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LONDON, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- A diary British mystery writer Arthur Conan Doyle kept when he was 20 and a ship's doctor in 1880 is to be published, The Guardian said.

Doyle is best known for his classic Sherlock Holmes detective stories.

"I fell into the Arctic Ocean three times today, but luckily someone was always near to pull me out," the newspaper said Doyle wrote in his illustrated diary while working aboard an arctic whaler named Hope seven years before his first Holmes mystery was published.

"The danger in falling in is that with a heavy swell on as there is now, you may be cut in two pretty well by two pieces of ice coming together and nipping you," wrote the author, who marked his 21st birthday on the boat. "I got several drags, but was laid up in the evening as all my clothes were in the engine room drying ... after skinning a seal today I walked away with the two hind flippers in my hand, leaving my mittens on the ice."