 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Nicholson. Alan Quatterman. By H. Ryder Haggard. I inscribe this book of adventure to my son, Arthur John Ryder Haggard, in the hope that in days to come he and many other boys whom I shall never know may in the acts and thoughts of Alan Quatterman and his companions as recorded herein find something to help him and them to reach to what with Sir Henry Curtis I hold to be the highest rank where to we can attain the state and dignity of English gentlemen Introduction December 23rd, I have just buried my boy my poor handsome boy of whom I was so proud and My heart is broken It is very hard having only one son to lose him thus But God's will be done Who am I that I should complain The great wheel of fate Rolls on like a juggernaut and Crushes us all in turn Some soon some late It does not matter when in the end it crushes us all We do not prostrate ourselves before it like the poor Indians We fly hither and thither we cry for mercy But it is of no use the black fate Thunders on and in its season reduces us to powder Poor Harry to go so soon just when his life was opening to him He was doing so well at the hospital He had passed his last examination with honors and I was proud of them much prouder than he was I think and Then he must needs go to that smallpox hospital He wrote to me that he was not afraid of smallpox and wanted to gain the experience and Now the disease has killed him and I old and gray and withered and Left to mourn over him without a chick or child to comfort me. I Might have saved him too. I have money enough for both of us and much more than enough King Solomon's minds provided me with that But I said no let the boy earn his living let him labor that he may enjoy rest But the rest has come to him before the labor oh My boy my boy I am like the man in the Bible who laid up much goods and build it barns Goods for my boy and barns for him to store them in and Now his soul has been required of him And I am left desolate I Would that it had been my soul and not my boys We buried him this afternoon under the shadow of the gray and ancient tower of the church of this village Where my house is? It was a dreary December afternoon and the sky was heavy with snow But not much was falling The coffin was put down by the grave and a few big flakes lit upon it They looked very white upon the black cloth There was a little hitch about getting the coffin down into the grave The necessary ropes had been forgotten So we drew back from it and waited in silence watching the big flakes fall gently one by one like heavenly benedictions and Melt in tears on Harry's paw But that was not all a Robin red breast came as bold as could be and lit upon the coffin and began to sing and Then I am afraid that I broke down And so did Sir Henry Curtis strong man though. He is and As for Captain good I saw him turn away, too Even in my own distress. I could not help noticing it the above Signed Alan Quatermane is an extract from my diary Written two years and more ago. I Copy it down here because it seems to me That it is the fittest beginning to the history that I am about to write if it please God to spare me to finish it If not well, it does not matter That extract was penned seven thousand miles or so from the spot where I now lie painfully and slowly writing this With a pretty girl standing by my side Fanning the flies from my August countenance Harry is there and I am here and yet somehow I cannot help feeling that I am not far off Harry When I was in England, I used to live in a very fine house at least I call it a fine house speaking comparatively and Judging from the standard of the houses I have been accustomed to all my life in Africa Not 500 yards from the old church where Harry is asleep and Then there I went after the funeral and ate some food For it is no good starving even if one has just buried all one's earthly hopes But I could not eat much and soon I took to walking or rather limping Being permanently lame from the bite of a lion Up and down up and down the oak panel vestibule For there is a vestibule in my house in England On all the four walls of this vestibule were placed pairs of horns About a hundred pairs altogether All of which I had shot myself They are beautiful specimens as I never keep any horns, which are not in every way perfect Unless it may be now and again on account of the associations connected with them in the center of the room, however Over the wide fireplace. There was a clear space left on which I had fixed up all my rifles Some of them I have had for 40 years old muzzle loaders that nobody would look at nowadays One was an elephant gun with strips of rimpy or green hide Last round the stock and locks such as used to be owned by the Dutchman a roar. They called it That gun the bore I bought it from many years ago told me had been used by His father at the battle of the Blood River just after din guns swept into Natal and slaughtered 600 men women and children So that the boars named the place where they died we none or the place of weeping and So it is called to this day and always will be called and Many an elephant have I shot with that old gun She always took a handful of black powder and a three ounce ball and kicked like the very deuce Well up and down I walked staring at the guns and the horns which the guns had brought low and As I did so there rose up in me a great craving. I Would go away from this place where I lived idly and at ease Back again to the wild land where I had spent my life Where I met my dear wife and poor Harry was born and so many things good bad and indifferent had happened to me The thirst for the wilderness was on me. I could tolerate this place no more. I Would go and die as I had lived among the wild game in the savages Yes, as I walked I began to long to see the moonlight gleaming silvery white over the wide Velt and mysterious sea a bush and watched the lines of game traveling down the ridges to the water The ruling passion is strong in death they say and my heart was dead that night But independently of my trouble No man who has for 40 years lived the life. I have Can with impunity go coop himself in this prim English country With its trim hedgerows and cultivated fields It's stiff formal matters and it's well-dressed crowds He begins to long how he longs for the keen breath of the desert air He dreams of the sight of Zulu impies breaking on their foes like surf upon the rocks and His heart rises up in rebellion against the strict limits of the civilized life This civilization what does it all come to? for 40 years and more I lived among savages and studied them in their ways and now for several years I have lived here in England and Have in my own stupid manner done my best to learn the ways of the children of light And what have I found a great gulf fixed? No, only a very little one that a plain man's thought may spring across I Say that as the savage is so is the white man Only the latter is more inventive and possesses the faculty of combination Save and accept also that the savage as I have known him is to a large extent free from the greed of money Which eats like a cancer into the heart of the white man? It is a depressing conclusion But in all essentials the savage and the child of civilization are identical I Dare say that the highly civilized lady reading this will smile at an old fool of a hunter's simplicity When she thinks of her black bead bedecked sister and so will the super fine cultured idler Scientifically eating a dinner at his club the cost of which would keep a starving family for a week and Yet my dear young lady. What are those pretty things around your own neck? They have a strong family resemblance Especially when you wear that very low dress to the savage woman's beads Your habit of turning round and round to the sound of horns and tom-toms Your fondness for pigments and powders The way in which you love to subjugate yourself to the rich warrior who has captured you in marriage and The quickness with which your taste in feathered headdresses varies all these things suggest touches of kinship and You remember that in the fundamental principles of your nature you are quite identical As for you sir who also laugh Let some man come and strike you in the face Whilst you're enjoying that marvelous looking dish and we shall soon see how much of the savage there is in you There I might go on forever, but what is the good? Civilization is only savagery silver guilt a Vane glory is it and like a northern light comes, but to fade and leave the sky more dark Out of the soil of barbarism. It has grown like a tree and as I believe Into the soil like a tree it will once more sooner or later fall again as the Egyptian civilization fell as the Hellenic Civilization fell and as the Roman civilization and many others of which the world has now lost count fell also Do not let me however be understood as decrying our modern institutions Representing as they do the gathered experience of humanity applied for the good of all Of course, they have great advantages hospitals for instance But then remember we breed the sickly people who fill them in a savage land. They do not exist Besides the question will arise how many of these blessings are due to Christianity as distinct from civilization And so the balance sways and the story runs Here again, there are loss and nature's great average struck across the two Whereof the sum total forms one of the factors in that mighty equation In which the result will equal the unknown quantity of her purpose I make no apology for this digression Especially as this is an introduction which all young people and those who never like to think and it is a bad habit Will naturally skip It seems to me very desirable that we should sometimes try to understand the limitations of our nature So that we may not be carried away by the pride of knowledge Man's cleverness is almost indefinite and stretches like an elastic band But human nature is like an iron ring You can go round and round it you can polish it highly You can even flatten it a little on one side Whereby you will make it bulge out the other But you will never while the world endures and man is man Increase its total circumference It is the one fixed unchangeable thing Fixed as the stars More enduring than the mountains As unalterable as the way of the eternal Human nature is God's kaleidoscope And the little bits of colored glass Which represent our passions hopes fears joys aspirations toward good and evil and whatnot Are turned in his mighty hand as surely and as certainly as it turns the stars And continually fall into new patterns and combinations But the composing elements remain the same Nor will there be one more bit of colored glass Nor one less forever and ever This being so Supposing for the sake of argument we divide ourselves into 20 parts 19 savage and one civilized We must look to the 19 savage portions of our nature if we would really understand ourselves And not to the 20th Which though insignificant in reality Is spread all over the other 19 Making them appear quite different from what they really are As the blacking does a boot Or the veneer a table It is on the 19 rough serviceable savage portions that we fall back on emergencies Not on the polished but unsubstantial 20th Civilization should wipe away our tears And yet we weep and cannot be comforted Warfare is abhorrent to her And yet we strike for the hearth and home For honor and fair fame And can glory in the blow And so on through everything So when the heart is stricken And the head is humbled in the dust Civilization fails us utterly Back back we creep And lay us like little children on the great breast of nature She that perchance may soothe us and make us forget Or at least rid remembrance of its sting Who has not in his great grief Felt alonging to look upon the outward features of the universal mother To lie on the mountains and watch the clouds drive across the sky And hear the rollers break in thunder on the shore To let his poor struggling life Mingle for a while in her life To feel the slow beat of her eternal heart And to forget his woes And let his identity be swallowed in the vast Imperceptibly moving energy of her of whom we are From whom we came And with whom we shall again be mingled who gave us birth And will in a day to come give us our burial also And so in my trouble as I walked up and down the oak-paneled vestibule of my house there in Yorkshire I longed once more to throw myself into the arms of nature Not the nature of which you know the nature that Waves in well-kept woods and smiles out in cornfields But nature as she was in the day when creation was complete Undefiled as yet by any human sinks of sweltering humanity I would go again where the wild game was Back to the land where I've none know the history Back to the savages whom I love Although some of them are almost as merciless as political economy There perhaps I should be able to learn to think of my poor harry lying in the churchyard Without feeling as though my heart would break in two And now there is an end of this egotistical talk and there should be no more of it But if you whose eyes may perchance one day fall upon my written thoughts have got so far as this I ask you to persevere Since what I have to tell you is not without its interest and has never been told before Nor will again End of introduction This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Alan Quattermane by H. Ryder Haggard Chapter 1 The Consul's Yarn A week had passed since the funeral of my poor boy harry And one evening I was in my room walking up and down and thinking When there was a ring at the outer door Going down the steps I opened it myself and in came my old friends Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good, Royal Navy They entered the vestibule And sat themselves down before the wide hearth Where I remember a particularly good fire of logs was burning It is very kind of you to come round I said by way of making a remark It must have been heavy walking in the snow They said nothing But Sir Henry slowly filled his pipe and lit it with a burning ember As he lent forward to do so The fire got hold of a gassy bit of pine and flared up brightly Throwing the whole scene into strong relief And I thought what a splendid looking man he is Calm, powerful face Clear cut features Large gray eyes Yellow beard and hair Altogether a magnificent specimen of the higher type of humanity Nor did his form belie his face I have never seen wider shoulders or a deeper chest Indeed Sir Henry's girth is so great that though he is six feet too high He does not strike one as a tall man As I looked at him I could not help thinking what a curious contrast My little dried up self presented to his grand face and form Imagine to yourself a small withered yellow faced man of 63 With thin hands large brown eyes A head of grizzled hair cut short and standing up like a half worn scrubbing brush Total weight in my clothes nine stone six And you will get a very fair idea of Alan Quatermane Commonly called Hunter Quatermane Or by the natives Makumazan Anglic Character E. Grave He who keeps a bright look out at night Or in vulgar English a sharp fellow who is not to be taken in Then there was good who was not like either of us being short dark stout very stout With twinkling black eyes In one of which an eyeglass is everlastingly fixed I say stout But it is a mild term. I regret to state that of late years Good has been running to fat in a most disgraceful way Sir Henry tells him that it comes from idleness and overfeeding And good does not like it at all though. We cannot deny it We sat for a while And then I got a match and lit the lamp that stood ready on the table For the half light began to grow dreary As it is apt to do when one has a short week ago Buried the hope of one's life Next I opened a cupboard in the wainscotting and got a bottle of whiskey and some tumblers and water I always like to do these things for myself It is irritating to me to have somebody continually at my elbow As though I were an 18 month old baby All this while Curtis and good had been silent Feeling I suppose that they had nothing to say that could do me any good And content to give me the comfort of their presence and unspoken sympathy For it was only their second visit since the funeral And it is by the way from the presence of others that we really derive support in our dark hours of grief And not from their talk Which often only serves to irritate us Before a bad storm the game always heard together But they ceased their calling They sat and smoked and drank whiskey and water And I stood by the fire also smoking and looking at them At last I spoke Old friends I said How long is it since we got back from kukohana land? Three years said good. Why do you ask? I ask because I think that I have had a long enough spell of civilization I am going back to the veldt Sir Henry laid his head back in his armchair and laughed one of his deep laughs How very odd he said hey good Good beamed at me mysteriously through his eyeglass and murmured Yes odd very odd I don't quite understand said I looking from one to the other for I dislike mysteries Don't you old fellow said sir Henry Then I will explain As good and I were walking up here. We had a talk If good was there you probably did I put in sarcastically for good is a great hand at talking And what may it have been about Why do you think asks her Henry I shook my head It was not likely that I should know what good might be talking about he talks about so many things Well, it was about a little plan that I have formed Namely that if you were willing we should pack up our traps and go off to Africa on another expedition I fairly jumped at his words You don't say so I said Yes, I do though and so does good don't you good Rather said that gentleman Listen old fellow went on sir Henry with considerable animation of manner I'm tired of it too dead tired of doing nothing more except play the squire in a country that is sick of squires For a year or more. I have been getting as restless as an old elephant who sensed danger I am always dreaming of cuckoo on a land and gaggle and king Solomon's minds I can assure you that I have become the victim of an almost unaccountable craving I'm sick of shooting pheasants and partridges and want to have a go at some large game again There you know the feeling when one has once tasted brandy and water milk becomes insipid to the palette That year we spent together up in cuckoo on a land seems to me worth all the other years of my life put together I dare say that I am a fool for my pains, but I can't help it I long to go And what is more I mean to go He paused and then went on again And after all why should I not go I have no wife or parent no chick or child to keep me If anything happens to me the baron at sea will go to my brother George and his boy as it would ultimately do in any case I am of no importance to anyone Ah, I said I thought you would come to that sooner or later And now good. What is your reason for wanting to trek? Have you got one? I have said good solemnly I never do anything without a reason and it isn't a lady at least if it is it's several I looked at him again Good is so overpoweringly frivolous What is it? I said Well, if you really want to know though, I'd rather not speak of a delicate and strictly personal matter I'll tell you I'm getting too fat Shut up good said Sir Henry And now quarter main tell us where do you propose going to? I let my pipe which had gone out before answering Have you people ever heard of Mount Kenya? I asked Don't know the place said good Did you ever hear of the island of Lamu? I ask again No Stop though. Isn't it a place about 300 miles north of Zanzibar? Yes Now listen what I have to propose is this That we go to Lamu And let's make our way about 250 miles inland to Mount Kenya From Mount Kenya on inland to Mount La Coquicera Another 200 miles or thereabouts Beyond which no white man Has to the best of my belief ever been And then if we get so far right on into the unknown interior What do you say to that my hearties? It's a big order said Sir Henry reflectively You are right. I answered it is But I take it that we are all three of us in search of a big order We want a change of scene and we're likely to get one a thorough change All my life I have longed to visit those parts and I mean to do it before I die My poor boy's death has broken the last link between me and civilization And I'm off to my native wilds And now I'll tell you another thing And that is that for years and years I have heard rumors of a great white race Which is supposed to have its home somewhere up in this direction And I have a mind to see if there is any truth in them If you fellows like to come well and good If not, I'll go alone I'm your man though. I don't believe in your white race said Sir Henry Curtis Rising and placing his arm upon my shoulder Ditto remarked good I'll go into training at once By all means let's go to Mount Kenya and the other place with an unpronounceable name and look for a white race That does not exist. It's all one to me When do you propose to start? asked Sir Henry This day month I answered by the British India steamboat And don't you be so certain that things have no existence because you do not happen to have heard of them Remember King Solomon's minds Some 14 weeks or so had passed since the date of this conversation and this history goes on its way In very different surroundings After much deliberation and inquiry we came to the conclusion that our best starting point for Mount Kenya Would be from the neighborhood of the mouth of the Tana River And not from Mombasa a place over a hundred miles nearer Zanzibar This conclusion we arrived at from information given to us by a German trader whom we met upon the steamer at Aden I think that he was the dirtiest German I ever knew But he was a good fellow and gave us a great deal of valuable information Lamu said he you goes to Lamu. Oh, it was a beautiful place And he turned up his fat face and beamed with mild rapture One year and a half. I lived there and never changed my shirt. Never at all And so it came to pass that on arriving at the island We disembarked with all our goods and chattels And not knowing where to go marched boldly up to the house of Her Majesty's consul Where we were most honorably received Lamu is a very curious place But the things which stand out most clearly in my memory in connection with it Are its exceeding dirtiness and its smells These last are simply awful Just below the consulate is the beach Or rather a mud bank that is called a beach It is left quite bare at low tide And serves as a repository for all the filth, awful and refuse of the town Here it is too that the women come to bury coconuts in the mud Leaving them there till the outer husk is quite rotten When they dig them up again and use the fibers to make mats with And for various other purposes As this process has been going on for generations The condition of the shore can be better imagined than described I have smelt many evil odors in the course of my life But the concentrated essence of stench Which arose from that beach at Lamu as we sat in the moonlit night Not under but on our friend the consul's hospitable roof And sniffed it makes the remembrance of them very poor and faint No wonder people get fever at Lamu And yet the place was not without a certain quaintness and charm of its own Though possibly indeed probably it was one which would quickly pawl Well, where are you gentlemen staring for? Ask our friend the hospitable consul As we smoked our pipes after dinner We proposed to go to Mount Kenya And then on to Mount La Cacacera Answered Sir Henry Quatermain has got hold of some yarn about there being a white race Up in the unknown territories beyond The consul looked interested And answered that he had heard something of that too What have you heard? I asked Oh, not much All I know about it is that a year or so ago I got a letter from McKinsey The Scotch missionary who stationed the Highlands Is placed at the highest navigable point of the Tana River In which he said something about it Have you the letter? I asked No, I destroyed it But I remember that he said that a man had arrived at his station Who declared that two months journey beyond Mount La Cacacera Which no white man has yet visited at least so far as I know He found a lake called Laga And that then he went off to the northeast a month's journey Over desert and thorned veldt and great mountains Till he came to a country where the people are white and live in stone houses Here he was hospitably entertained for a while Till at last the priests of the country said it about that he was a devil And the people drove him away And he journeyed for eight months and reached McKinsey's place as I heard dying That's all I know and if you ask me I believe that it is a lie But if you want to find out more about it You had better go up the Tana to McKinsey's place and ask him for information Sir Henry and I looked at each other Here was something tangible I think that we will go to McKinsey's I said Well answered the consul that is your best way But I warn you that you are likely to have a rough journey For I hear that the Messiah are about and as you know they are not pleasant customers Your best plan will be to choose a few picked men for personal servants and hunters And to hire bearers from village to village It will give you an infinity of trouble but perhaps on the whole It will prove a cheaper and more advantageous course than engaging a caravan And you will be less liable to desertion Fortunately there were at Lamu at this time a party of Waqafi Asqari soldiers The Waqafi who are a cross between the Messiah and the Wataveta Are a fine manly race possessing many of the good qualities of the Zulu And a great capacity for civilization They are also great hunters As it happened these particular men had recently been on a long trip with an Englishman named Judson Who had started from Mombasa, a port about 150 miles below Lamu And journeyed right round Kilimanjaro, one of the highest known mountains in Africa Poor fellow, he had died of fever when on his return journey And within a day's march of Mombasa It does seem hard that he should gone off thus When within a few hours of safety And after having survived so many perils But so it was His hunters buried him and then came on to Lamu in a dow Our friend the consul suggested to us that we had better try and hire these men And accordingly on the following morning we started to interview the party Accompanied by an interpreter In due course we found them in a mud hut on the outskirts of the town Three of the men were sitting outside the hut And fine Frank looking fellows they were Having a more or less civilized appearance To them we cautiously opened the object of our visit At first with very scant success They declared that they could not entertain any such idea That they were worn and weary with long traveling And that their hearts were sore at the loss of their master They meant to go back to their homes and rest a while This did not sound very promising So by way of affecting a diversion I asked where the remainder of them were I was told there were six and I saw but three One of the men said they slept in the hut And were yet resting after their labors Sleep weighed down their eyelids and sorrow made their hearts as lead It was best to sleep for with sleep came forgetfulness But the men should be awakened Presently they came out of the hut yawning The first two men being evidently of the same race and style as those already before us But the appearance of the third and last nearly made me jump out of my skin He was a very tall broad man Quite six foot three I should say But gaunt with lean, wiry looking limbs My first glance at him told me he was no wakwafi He was a pure bred zulu He came out with his thin aristocratic looking hand Placed before his face to hide a yawn So I could only see that he was a kishla or ringed man And that he had a great three-cornered hole in his forehead End note Among the zulus a man assumes the ring Which is made of a species of black dumb twisted in with the hair And polished a brilliant black When he has reached a certain dignity and age Or is the husband of a sufficient number of wives Till he is in a position to wear a ring His looked on as a boy Though he may be thirty-five years of age Or even more Alan Quatermain In another second he removed his hand Revealing a powerful looking zulu face With a humorous mouth A short woolly beard tinged with gray And a pair of brown eyes keen as a hawks I knew my man at once Though I had not seen him for twelve years How do you do um slopo gas? I said quietly in zulu The tall man Who among his own people was commonly known as the woodpecker And also as the slaughterer Startled And almost let the long handled battle-axe he held in his hand fall an astonishment Next second he had recognized me And was saluting me in an outburst of sonorous language Which made his companions, though a coffee, dare Kus chief He began Kus i pageti Kus i um kul Chief from a old, mighty chief Kus, baba, father Makumazon Old hunter Slayer of elephants Either up of lions Clever one Watchful one Brave one Quick one Who shot never misses Who strikes straight home Who grasps a hand And holds it to the death i.e. is a true friend Kus, baba Wise is the voice of our people that says Mountain never meets with mountain But at daybreak Or at even Man shall meet again with man Behold, a messenger came up from Natal Makumazon is dead, cried he The land knows Makumazon no more That is years ago And now, behold, now in this strange place of stinks I find Makumazon, my friend There is no room for doubt The brush of the old jackal has gone a little gray But is not his eye as keen And are not his teeth as sharp Ha ha, Makumazon Mindless thou, how thou didst plant the ball in the eye of the charging buffalo Mindless thou, I had let him run on thus because I saw that his enthusiasm was producing a marked effect upon the minds of the five Wakwafi who appeared to understand something of his talk But now I thought it time to put a stop to it For there is nothing that I hate so much as this Zulu system of extravagant praising Bungering as they call it Silence, I said Has all thy noisy talk been stopped up Since last I saw thee That it breaks out thus and sweeps us away What do us thou here with these men Thou whom I left a chief in Zulu land How is it that thou art far from thine own place and gathered together with strangers Um Slopagas leaned himself against the head of his long battle axe Which was nothing else but a pole axe with a beautiful handle of rhinoceros horn And his grim face grew sad My father, he answered, I have a word to tell thee But I cannot speak it before these low people Um Fagusana and he glanced at the Wakwafi Ascari It is for thine own ear My father, this will I say And hear his face grew stern again A woman betrayed me to the death and covered my name with shame I am my own wife, a round-faced girl betrayed me But I escaped from death I broke from the very hands of those who came to slay me I struck but three blows with this mine axe in Kosikas Surely my father will remember it One to the right, one to the left, and one in front And yet I left three men dead And then I fled And as my father knows, even now that I am old My feet are as the feet of the Sassabi And note, one of the fleetest of the African antelopes Alan Quatermain And there breathes not the man who, by running, can touch me again When once I have bounded from his side On I sped, and after me came the messengers of death And their voice was as the voice of dogs that hunt From my own crawl I flew And as I passed, she who had betrayed me was drawing water from the spring I pleaded by her like the shadow of death And as I went I smote with my an axe And lo her head fell, it fell into the water pan Then I fled north Day after day I journeyed on For three moons I journeyed Resting not, stopping not, but running on towards forgetfulness Till I met the party of the white hunter who is now dead And him come hither with his servants And not have I brought with me I, who was high-born, I of the blood of Chaka, the great king A chief and the captain of the regiment of the Nkoma Bakosi Am a wanderer in strange places, a man without a corral Not have I brought save this mine axe Of all my belongings, this remains alone They have divided my cattle, they have taken my wives And my children know my face no more Yet with this axe And he swung the formidable weapon round his head Making the air hiss as he clove it Will I cut another path to fortune? I have spoken, I shook my head at him Umslopogas, I said, I know thee from of old Ever ambitious, ever plotting to be great I fear me that thou's has overreached thyself at last Years ago, when thou wouldst have plotted against Setueo, son of Panda I warned thee, and thou didst listen But now, when I was not by thee to stay thy hand Thou hadst dug a pit for thine own feet to fall in Is it not so? But what is done is done Who can make the dead tree green Or gaze again upon last year's light Who can recall the spoken word Or bring back the spirit of the fallen That which time swallows comes not up again Let it be forgotten And now, behold, Umslopogas, I know thee for a great Royer and a brave man faithful to the death Even in Zululan, where all the men are brave They call thee the slaughterer And at night told stories round the fire Of thy strength and deeds Hear me now, Thou seeest this great man, my friend, and I Pointed to Sir Henry He also is a warrior as great as Thou And strong as Thou art, he could throw thee over his Shoulder Inkaboo is his name And Thou seeest this one also Him with the round stomach, the shining eye and the Pleasant face Bu'guan, glass eye, is his name And a good man is he and true Being of a curious tribe who pass their life upon The water and live in floating corrals Now, we three whom Thou seeest would travel inland Pass Dongo-Higary, the great white mountain, Montkina And far into the unknown beyond We know not what we shall find there We go to hunt and seek adventures and new places Being tired of sitting still with the same old things Around us Wilt Thou come with us? To thee shall be given command of all our servants But what shall befall thee that I know not Once before we three journeyed thus In search of adventure And we took with us a man such as Thou One Umbopa And behold, we left him the king of a great country With twenty impes, regiments Each of three thousand plumed warriors Waiting on his word How it shall go with thee I know not May Hap death awaits thee and us Wilt Thou throw thyself to fortune and come? Or fear is Thou, Umbslopa gas The great man smiled Thou art not altogether right Makumazan, he said I applauded in my time But it was not ambition that led me to my fall But shame on me that I should have to say it A fair woman's face Let it pass So we are going to see something like the old times again Makumazan, when we fought and hunted in Zululan I, I will come Come life, come death, what care I So that the blows fall fast and the blood runs red I grew old I grew old and I have not fought enough And yet am I a warrior among warriors See my scars And he pointed to countless cicatruses, stabs and cuts That mark the skin of his chest and legs and arms See the hole in my head, the brains gushed out there from Yet did I slay him who smote and live Notice Thou how many men I have slain In fair hand to hand combat Makumazan See, here is the tale of them And he pointed to long rows of notches cut in the rhinoceros horn handle of his axe Number them, Makumazan One hundred and three And I have never counted but those whom I ripped open And note, according to Zulul custom of opening the stomach of a dead foe They have a superstition that if this is not done As the body of their enemy swells up, so will the bodies of those who killed him swell up Helen Quartermaine Nor have I reckoned those whom another man had struck Be silent, I said, for I saw that he was getting the blood fever on him Be silent Well art thou called the slaughterer We would not hear of thy deeds of blood Remember, if thou comest with us, we fight not save in self-defense Listen, we need servants These men, and I pointed to the Wakwafi Who had retired a little way during our endaba talk Say they will not come Will not come Shouted Umslopagas Where is the dog who says he will not come when my father orders Here thou And with a single bound he sprang upon the Wakwafi With whom I had first spoken And seizing him by the arm dragged him towards us Thou dog, he said, giving the terrifying man a shake Dits thou say that thou wouldst not go with my father Say it once more, and I will choke thee And his long fingers closed round his throat as he said it Thee and those with thee Has thou forgotten how I serve thy brother Nay, we will come with the white man Gasp the man White man Went on Umslopagas in simulated fury Which a very little provocation would have made real enough Of whom speak is thou, insolent dog Nay, we will go with the great chief So said Umslopagas in a quiet voice As he suddenly released his hold so that the man fell backward I thought you would That man Umslopagas seems to have a curious moral ascendancy over his companions Good afterwards remark thoughtfully End of Chapter 1 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to find out how you can volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Alan Quatermain By H. Ryder Haggard Chapter 2 The Black Hand In due course we left Lamu And ten days afterwards we found ourselves at a spot called Charra On the Tanna River Having gone through many adventures which need not be recorded here Amongst other things we visited a ruined city Of which there are many on this coast And which must once to judge from their extent And the numerous remains of mosques and stone houses Have been very populous places These ruined cities are immeasurably ancient Having, I believe, been places of wealth and importance As far back as the Old Testament times When they were centers of trade with India and elsewhere But their glory has departed now The slave trade has finished them And where wealthy merchants from all parts of the then civilized world Stood and bargained in the crowded marketplaces The lion holds his court at night And instead of the chattering of slaves and the eager voices of the bidders His awful note goes echoing down the ruined corridors At this particular place we discovered on a mound Covered up with rank growth and rubbish Two of the most beautiful stone doorways That it is possible to conceive The carving on them was simply exquisite And I only regret that we had no means of getting them away No doubt they had once been the entrances to a palace Of which, however, no traces were now to be seen Though probably its ruins lay under the rising mound Gone, quite gone, the way that everything must go Like the nobles and the ladies who lived within their gates These cities have had their day And now they are as Babylon and Nineveh And as London and Paris will one day be Nothing may endure That is the inexorable law Men and women, empires and cities, thrones, principalities and powers Mountains, rivers, and unfathomed seas Worlds, spaces, and universes All have their day and all must go In this ruined and forgotten place The moralist may behold a symbol of the universal destiny For this system of ours allows no room for standing still Nothing can loiter on the road And check the progress of things upwards toward life Or the rush of things downwards towards death The stern policeman fate moves us and them On, on, uphill and downhill and across the level There is no resting place for the weary feet Till at last the abyss swallows us And from the shores of the transitory We are hurtled into the sea of the eternal At Chara we had a violent quarrel with the headmen of the bearers We had hired to go as far as this And who now wished to extort large extra payment from us In the result he threatened to set them aside About whom more anon, on to us That night he, with all our hired bearers, ran away Stealing most of the goods which had been entrusted to them to carry Luckily, however, they had not happened to steal our rifles, ammunition, and personal effects Not because of any delicacy of feeling on their part But owing to the fact that they chanced to be in the charge of the five Wakwafis After that it was clear to us that we had had enough of caravans and of bearers Indeed, we had not much left for a caravan to carry And yet how were we to get on? It was good who solved the question Here is Water, he said, pointing to the Tana River And yesterday I saw a party of natives hunting hippopotamia in canoes I understand that Mr. McKenzie's mission station is on the Tana River Why not get into canoes and paddle up to it This brilliant suggestion was, needless to say, received with acclimation And I instantly set to work to buy suitable canoes from the surrounding natives I succeeded after a delay of three days in obtaining two large ones Each hollowed out of a single log of some light wood And capable of holding six people in baggage For these two canoes, we had to pay nearly all our remaining cloth And also many other articles On the day following our purchase of the two canoes, we affected a start In the first canoe were Good, Sir Henry, and three of our Wakwafi followers In the second, myself, Umslopogas, and the other two Wakwafis As our course lay upstream, we had to keep four paddles at work in each canoe Which meant that the whole lot of us, except Good, had to row away like galley slaves And very exhausting work it was I say, except Good, for, of course, the moment that Good got into a boat His foot was on his native heath, and he took command of the party And certainly he worked us Onshore, Good is a gentle, mild-mannered man, and given to jacocity But, as we found to our cost, Good in a boat was a perfect demon To begin with, he knew all about it, and we didn't On all nautical subjects, from the torpedoes, from the ship, from the ship To the torpedo fittings of a man of war, down to the best way of handling the paddle of an African canoe He was a perfect mind of information, which, to say the least of it, we were not Also, his ideas of discipline were of the sternest, and in short He came the Royal Naval Officer over us pretty considerably And paid us out amply for all the chaff we were want to treat him to on land But on the other hand, I am bound to say that he managed the boats admirably After the first day, Good succeeded, with the help of some cloth and a couple of poles In rigging up a sail in each canoe, which lightened our labors not a little But the current ran very strong against us, and at the best we were not able to make more than twenty miles a day Our plan was to start at dawn, and paddle along till about half past ten By which time the sun got too hot to allow a further exertion Then we moored our canoes to the bank, and ate our frugal meal After which we ate, or otherwise amused ourselves, till about three o'clock When we again started, and rode till with an hour of sundown When we called a halt for the night On landing in the evening, Good would set it once to work, with the help of the Iscari To build a little skirm, or small enclosure, fenced with thorn bushes, and to light a fire I, with Sir Henry and Humslopogas, would go out to shoot something for the pot Generally, this was an easy task, for all sorts of game abounded on the banks of the Tana One night Sir Henry shot a young cow giraffe, of which the marrow bones were excellent On another I got a couple of waterbuck, right and left And once, to his own intense satisfaction, Humslopogas, who, like most Zulus, was a vile shot with a rifle Managed to kill a fine fat Iland, with a martini I had lent him Sometimes we varied our food, by shooting some guinea fowl, or bush-bustered, pa'u Both of which were numerous, with a shotgun, or by catching a supply of beautiful yellow fish With which the waters of the Tana swarmed, and which form, I believe, one of the chief food supplies of the crocodiles Three days after our start, an ominous incident occurred We were just drawing into the bank to make our camp as usual for the night When we caught sight of a figure standing on a little knoll, not forty yards away And intensely watching our approach One glance was sufficient, although I was personally unequated with the tribe To tell me that he was a Masai El Moran, or young warrior Indeed, had I any doubts, they would have quickly been dispelled by the terrified ejaculation of Masai That burst simultaneously from the lips of our Wakwafi followers Who are, as I think I have said, themselves bastard Masai And what a figure he presented as he stood there in his savage war gear A custom as I have been to savages all my life I do not think that I have ever before seen anything quite so ferocious or awe-inspiring To begin with, the man was enormously tall, quite as tall as Umslopogos, I should say And beautifully, though somewhat slightly shaped, but with the face of a devil In his right hand he held a spear about five and a half feet long The blade being two and a half feet in length by nearly three inches in width And having an iron spike at the end of the handle that measured more than a foot On his left arm was a large and well-made elliptical shield of buffalo hide On which were painted strange, heraldic-looking devices On his shoulders was a huge cape of hawk's feathers And round his neck was an Iberi, or strip of cotton About seventeen feet long by one and a half broad With a stripe of color running down the middle of it The tanned goatskin robe, which formed his ordinary attire in times of peace Was tied lightly round his waist, so as to serve the purpose of a belt And through it were stuck on the right and left sides respectively His short pear-shaped simae, or sword, which is made of a single piece of steel And carried in a wooden sheath, and an enormous knob-carry But perhaps the most remarkable feature of his attire consisted of a headdress of ostrich feathers Which was fixed on the chin and passed in front of the ears to the forehead And being shaped like an ellipse completely framed the face So that the diabolical countenance appeared to project from a sort of feather fire-screen Round the ankles he wore black fringes of hair And projecting from the upper portions of the calves To which they were attached were long spurs like spikes From which flowed down tufts of the beautiful black and waving hair of the colobus monkey Such was the elaborate array of the Maasai El Moran Who stood watching the approach of our two canoes But it is one which, to be appreciated, must be seen Only those who see it do not often live to describe it Of course I could not make out all these details of his full dress On the occasion of this, my first introduction Being indeed amply taken up with the consideration of the general effect But I had plenty of subsequent opportunities of becoming acquainted with the items that went to make it up Whilst we were hesitating what to do The Maasai warrior drew himself up in a dignified fashion Shook his huge spear at us And turning vanished on the further side of the slope Hello, hallowed Sir Henry from the other boat Our friend the caravan leader has been as good as his word And set them aside after us Do you think it will be safe to go ashore? I did not think it would be at all safe But on the other hand we had no means of cooking in the canoes And nothing that we could eat raw So it was difficult to know what to do At last Umslovaugas simplified matters by volunteering to go and reconnoiter Which he did creeping off into the bush like a snake While we hung off in the stream waiting for him In half an hour he returned and told us that there was not a Maasai to be seen anywhere about But that he had discovered a spot where they had recently been encamped And that from various indications he judged that they must have moved on an hour or so before The man we saw having no doubt been left to report upon our movements Thereupon we landed And having posted a sentry proceeded to cook and eat our evening meal This done we took the situation into our serious consideration Of course it was possible that the apparition of the Maasai warrior had nothing to do with us That he was merely one of a band bent upon some marauding and murdering expedition against another tribe But when we recall the threat of the caravan leader And reflected on the ominous way in which the warrior had shaken his spear at us This did not appear very probable On the contrary what did seem probable was that the party was after us And awaiting a favorable opportunity to attack us This being so there were two things that we could do One of which was to go on and the other to go back The latter idea was however rejected at once It being obvious that we should encounter as many dangers in retreat as in advance And besides we had made up our minds to journey onwards at any price Under these circumstances however we did not consider it safe to sleep ashore We got into our canoes and paddling out into the middle of the stream Which was not very wide here Managed to anchor them by means of big stones fastened to ropes made of coconut fiber Of which there were several fathoms in each canoe Here the mosquitoes nearly ate us up alive And this combined with anxiety as to our position Effectually prevented me from sleeping as the others were doing Not withstanding the attacks of the aforesaid Tana mosquitoes And so I lay awake smoking and reflecting on many things But being of a practical turn of mind Chiefly on how we were to give those Masai villains the slip It was a beautiful moonlit night And not withstanding the mosquitoes And the great risk we were running from fever From sleeping in such a spot And forgetting that I had the cramp very badly in my right leg From squatting in a constrained position in the canoe And that the Wakwafi who was sleeping beside me smelt horribly I really began to enjoy myself The moonbeams played upon the surface of the running water That speeded unceasingly past us towards the sea Like men's lives towards the grave Till it glittered like a wide sheet of silver That is, in the open where the trees threw no shadows Near the banks, however, it was very dark And the night wind sighed sadly in the reeds To our left on the further side of the river Was a little sandy bay which was clear of trees And here I could make out the forms of numerous antelopes Advancing to the water Till suddenly there came an ominous roar Whereupon they all made off hurriedly Then, after a pause, I caught sight of the massive form Of His Majesty the Lion Coming down to drink his fill after meat Presently he moved on Then came a crashing of the reeds About fifty yards above us And a few minutes later a huge black mass rose out of the water About twenty yards from me and snorted It was the head of a hippopotamus Down it went without a sound Only to rise again within five yards of where I sat This was decidedly too near to be comfortable More especially as the hippopotamus Was evidently animated by intense curiosity To know what on earth our canoes were He opened his great mouth, to yawn, I suppose And gave me an excellent view of his ivories And I could not help reflecting how easily He could crunch up our frail canoe with a single bite Indeed, I had half a mind to give him a ball from my eight-bore But on reflection, I had no idea To let him alone unless he actually charged the boat Presently he sank again as noiselessly as before And I saw no more of him Just then, on looking towards the bank on our right I fancied that I caught sight of a dark figure Flitting between the tree trunks I have very keen sight And I was almost sure that I saw something And I was almost sure that I saw something But whether it was bird, beast, or man, I could not say At the moment, however, a dark cloud passed over the moon And I saw no more of it Just then, too, although all the other sounds of the forest Had ceased, a species of horned owl With which I was well acquainted began to hoot With great persistency After that, I saw no more of it With great persistency After that, save for the rustling of trees And reeds when the wind caught them There was complete silence But somehow, in the most unaccountable way I had suddenly become nervous There was no particular reason why I should be Beyond the ordinary reasons Which surround the Central African traveler And yet I undoubtedly was If there is one thing more than another Of which I have the most complete and entire scorn And disbelief, it is a pre-sentiment And yet, here I was All of a sudden, filled with and possessed by A most undoubted pre-sentiment of approaching evil I would not give way to it, however Although I felt the cold perspiration Stand out upon my forehead I would not arouse the others Worse and worse I grew My pulse fluttered like a dying man's My nerves thrilled with the horrible sense Of impotent terror Which anybody who is subject to nightmare Will be familiar with But still, my will triumphed over my fears And I lay quiet For I was half sitting, half lying In the bow of the canoe Only turning my face So as to command a view of Umslopogas And the two Wakwafi who were sleeping Alongside of and beyond me In the distance I heard a hippopotamus Splash faintly Then the owl hooted again In a kind of unnatural screaming note End note No doubt this owl was a wingless bird I afterwards learned that the hooting of an owl Is a favorite signal among the Maasai tribes Alan Quatermain And the wind began to moan plaintively Through the trees Making a heart-chilling music Above was the black bosom of the cloud And beneath me swept the black flood of the water And I felt as though I and death Were utterly alone between them It was very desolate Suddenly my blood seemed to freeze in my veins And my heart to stand still Was it fancy? Or were we moving? I turned my eyes to look for the other canoe Which should be alongside of us I could not see it But instead I saw a lean and clutching black hand Lifting itself above the gunnel of the little boat Surely it was a nightmare At the same instant a dim but devilish-looking face Appeared to rise out of the water And then came a lurch of the canoe The quick flash of a knife And an awful yell from the wakwafi Who was sleeping by my side The same poor fellow whose odor had been annoying me And something warm spurred it into my face And an instant the spell was broken I knew that it was no nightmare But that we were attacked by swimming-masai Snatching at the first weapon that came to hand Which happened to be Umslopogas' battle axe I struck with all my force in the direction In which I had seen the flash of the knife The blow fell upon a man's arm And catching it against the thick wooden gunnel of the canoe Completely severed it from the canoe And the body just above the wrist As for its owner He uttered no sound or cry Like a ghost he came and like a ghost he went Leaving behind him a bloody hand Still gripping a great knife Or rather a short sword That was buried in the heart of our poor servant Instantly there arose a hubbub and confusion And I fancied rightly or wrongly That I made out several dark heads Gliding away towards the right hand bank Whether we were rapidly drifting For the rope by which we were moored Had been severed with a knife As soon as I had realized this fact I also realized that the scheme Had been to cut the boat loose So that it should drift onto the right bank As it would have done With the natural swing of the current Or no doubt a party of masai Were waiting to dig their shovel-headed spirit Into us Seizing one paddle myself I told Umslopogas to take another For the remaining Ascari Was too frightened and bewildered To be of any use And together we rode vigorously Out towards the middle of the stream And not an instant too soon For in another minute We should have been aground And then there would have been An end of us As soon as we were well out Had to work to paddle the canoe upstream Again to where the other was moored And very hard and dangerous work It was in the dark And with nothing but the notes Of good stentorian shouts Which he kept firing off at intervals Like a foghorn to guide us But at last we fetched up And were thankful to find That they had not been molested at all No doubt the owner of the same hand That severed our rope Should have severed theirs also But was led away from his purpose By an irresistible inclination To murder when he got the chance Which, while it cost us a man And him his hand Undoubtedly saved all the rest Of us from massacre Had it not been for that Gasly apparition over the side Of the boat An apparition that I shall Never forget till my dying hour The canoe would undoubtedly Be there before I realized What had happened And this history would never Have been written by me. End of Chapter 2 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings Are in the public domain For more information And to find out how you can volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Alan Quatterman By H. Ryder Haggard Chapter 3 We made the remains of our rope Fast to the other canoe And sat waiting for the dawn And congratulating ourselves Upon our merciful escape Which really seemed to result More from the special favor Of Providence Than from our own care Or prowess And last it came And I have not often Been more grateful to see the light Though so far as my canoe Was concerned It revealed a ghastly sight There in the bottom of the little boat Lay the unfortunate escary This M.A. or sword in his bosom And the severed hand gripping the handle I could not bear the sight So hauling up the stone Which had served as an anchor To the other canoe We made it fast to the murdered man And dropped him overboard And down he went to the bottom Leaving nothing but a train Of bubbles behind him Alas When our time comes Most of us, like him Leave nothing but bubbles behind To show that we have been And the bubbles soon burst The hand of his murderer We threw into the stream Where it slowly sank The sword of which the handle Was delivered And laid with gold Evidently Arab work I kept and used as a hunting knife And very useful it proved Then a man having been transferred To my canoe We once more started on In very low spirits And not feeling at all comfortable As to the future But fondly hoping to arrive At the Highlands Station by night To make matters worse At sunrise it came on to rain in torrents Wedding us to the skin And even necessitating the occasional Bailing of the canoes And as the rain beat down the wind We could not use the sails And had to get along as best we could With our paddles At eleven o'clock We halted on an open piece of ground On the left bank of the river And the rain abating a little Managed to make a fire And catch and broil some fish We did not dare to wonder about To search for game At two o'clock we got off again Taking a supply of broiled fish with us And shortly afterwards The rain came on harder than ever Also the river began to get Exceedingly difficult to navigate On account of the numerous rocks Reaches of shallow water And the increased force Of current So that it soon became clear to us That we should not reach the Reverend Mackenzie's hospitable roof That night A prospect that did not tend to Enliven us Toil as we would We could not make more than an average Of a mile an hour And at five o'clock in the afternoon By which time we were all Utterly worn out We reckoned that we were still Quite ten miles below the station And so we sat to work To make the best arrangements We could for the night After our recent experience We simply did not dare to land More especially as the banks Of the tana were clothed With dense bush That would have given cover to Five thousand Maasai And at first I thought That we were going to have another Night of it in the canoe Fortunately however No more than fifteen miles or so Square Situated nearly in the middle Of the river For this we paddled And making fast the canoes Landed and made ourselves as comfortable As circumstances would permit Which was very uncomfortable indeed As for the weather It continued to be simply vile The rain coming down in sheets Till we were chill to the marrow And utterly preventing us Of the fire There was however One consoling circumstance About this rain Our Ascari declared That nothing would induce the Maasai To make an attack in it As they intensely disliked Moving about in the wet Perhaps as good suggested Because they hate the idea of washing We ate some insipid And sodden coal fish That is with the exception Of the Pugas Who like most Zulus Cannot bear fish And took a pull of brandy Of which we fortunately Had a few bottles left And then began what With one exception When we same three white men Nearly perished of cold On the snow of Shiba's breast In the course of our journey To Kukuanalan Was I think the most Triang night I ever experienced Was endless And once or twice I feared That two of the Ascari Would have died of the wet, cold, and exposure Indeed, had it not been For timely doses of brandy I am sure that they would have died For no African people Can stand much exposure Which first paralyzes And then kills them I could see that even that Iron old warrior Whom Slopogas felt it keenly In contrast to the Wakwafis Who groaned and bemoaned Their fate unceasingly He never uttered a single complaint To make matters worse About one in the morning We again heard the owl's ominous hooting And had it once to prepare ourselves For another attack Though if it had been attempted I do not think that we could have Offered a very effective resistance But either the owl Or the real one this time Or else the Maasai Were themselves too miserable To think of offensive operations Which indeed they rarely, if ever Undertake in bush-velt At any rate We saw nothing of them At last the dawn Came gliding across the water Wrapped in wreaths of ghostly mist And with the daylight The rain ceased The glorious sun Sucking up the mists And warming the chill air Benumbed And utterly exhausted We dragged ourselves to our feet And went and stood in the bright rays And were thankful for them I can quite understand How it is that primitive people Become sun worshipers Especially if their conditions of life Render them liable to exposure In half an hour more Once again making fair progress With the help of a good wind Our spirits had returned With the sunshine And we were ready to laugh At difficulties and dangers That had been almost crushing On the previous day And so we went on cheerily Till about eleven o'clock Just as we were thinking Of halting as usual To rest and try to shoot Something to eat A sudden bend in the river Of the European house With a veranda round it Splendidly situated upon a hill And surrounded by a high stone wall With a ditch on the outer side Right against and overshadowing The house was an enormous pine The top of which we had seen Through a glass for the last two days But of course without knowing That it marked the site of the Mission station I was the first to see the house And could not restrain myself A hearty cheer In which the others Including the natives Joined lustily There was no thought of halting now On we labored For unfortunately Though the house seemed quite near It was still a long way off by river Until at last By one o'clock We found ourselves at the bottom Of the slope on which the building stood Running the canoes to the bank We disembarked To the shore When we perceived three figures Dressed in ordinary English-looking clothes Hurrying down through a grove of trees To meet us A gentleman, a lady, and a little girl Ejaculated good After surveying the trio Through his eyeglass Walking in a civilized fashion Through a civilized garden To meet us in this place Hang me if this is the most curious Thing we have seen yet Good was right. It certainly did seem odd And out of place More like a scene out of a dream Or an Italian opera Than a real tangible fact And the sense of unreality Was not lessened When we heard ourselves addressed In good broad scotch Which, however, I cannot reproduce How do you do, sirs? Said Mr. McKenzie A grey-haired, angular man With a kindly face and red cheeks I hope I see you very well My natives told me an hour ago They spied two canoes with white men In them coming up the river So we have just come down to meet you And it is very glad that we are To see a white face again Let me tell you, put in the lady A charming and refined-looking person We took off our hats in acknowledgement And proceeded to introduce ourselves And now, said Mr. McKenzie You must all be hungry and weary So come on, gentlemen, come on And right glad we are to see you The last white who visited us was Alphonse You will see Alphonse presently And that was a year ago Meanwhile, we had been walking up The slope of the hill The lower portion of which was fenced off Sometimes with quince fences And sometimes with rough stone walls Into kefir gardens Just now full of crops of mealies Pumpkins, potatoes, etc. In the corners of these gardens Were neat, mushroom-shaped huts Occupied by Mr. McKenzie's mission natives Whose women and children came pouring out To meet us as we walked Through the center of the gardens Ran the roadway up which we were walking It was bordered on each side By a line of orange trees Which, although they had only been planted Ten years, had in the lovely climate Of the uplands below Mount Kenya The base of which is about 5,000 feet Above the coastline level Already grown to imposing proportions And were positively laden with golden fringes After a stiffish climb Of a quarter of a mile or so For the hillside was steep We came to a splendid quince fence Also covered with fruit Which, in close to Mr. McKenzie told us A space of about four acres of ground That contained his private garden, House, church, and outbuildings And, indeed, the whole hilltop And what a garden it was I have always loved a good garden And I could have thrown up my hands For joy when I saw Mr. McKenzie's First there were rows upon rows Of standard European fruit trees All grafted For on top of this hill The climate was so temperate That nearly all the English vegetables, trees, And flowers flourished luxuriously Even including several varieties of the apple Which generally runs to wood in a warm climate And obstinately refuses to fruit Then there were strawberries And tomatoes, such tomatoes And melons, and cucumbers And, indeed, every sort of vegetable And fruit Well, you have some And you have some And you have some And you have some And you have some And something like a garden I said Overpowered with admiration Not untouched by envy Yes, answered the missionary It is a very good garden And has well repaid my labor But it is the climate That I have to thank If you stick a peach stone Into the ground It will bear fruit the fourth year And the rose cutting will bloom in a year It is a lovely climb And I came to a ditch About ten feet wide In full of water On the other side of which was a loop-hold Stone wall eight feet high And with sharp flints Plentifully set in mortar on the coping There said Mackenzie Pointing to the ditch and wall This is my magnum opus At least this and the church Which is the other side of the house It took me and twenty natives Two years to dig the ditch To fill the wall But I never felt safe till it was done And now I can defy All the savages in Africa For the spring that fills the ditch Is inside the wall And bubbles out at the top of the hill Winter and summer alike And I always keep a store Of four months provisions in the house Crossing over a plank And through a very narrow opening In the wall We entered into what Mrs. Mackenzie Called her domain The beauty of which is really beyond My power to describe I do not think I ever saw such roses Gardenias or camellias All reared from seeds or cuttings Sent from England And there was also a patch Given up to a collection of bulbous roots Mostly collected by Miss Flossie Mr. Mackenzie's little daughter From the surrounding country Some of which were surpassingly beautiful In the middle of this garden And exactly opposite the veranda A beautiful fountain of clear water Bubbled up from the ground And fell into a stonework basin Which had been carefully built To receive it Once the overflow Found its way by means of a drain To the moat Round the outer wall This moat in its turn Serving as a reservoir Once an unfailing supply of water Was available to irrigate all the gardens below The house itself A massively built single storied building Was roofed with slabs of stone And had a handsome veranda in front It was built on three sides of a square The fourth side being taken up By the kitchens Which stood separate from the house A very good plan in a hot country In the center of this square thus formed Was perhaps the most remarkable object That we had yet seen in this charming place And that was a single tree Of the conifer tribe Varieties of which grow freely On the highlands of this part of Africa This splendid tree Which Mr. Mackenzie informed us Was a landmark for fifty miles round And which we had ourselves Seen for the last four years Of our journey Must have been nearly three hundred feet In height The trunk measuring about sixteen feet In diameter at a yard from the ground For some seventy feet It rose a beautiful tapering brown pillar Without a single branch But at that height Splendid dark green boughs Which looked at from below Had the appearance of gigantic fern leaves Sprang out horizontally from the trunk Projecting right over the house And flower garden To both of which They furnished a grateful proportion of shade Without being so high up Offering any impediment to the passage Of light and air What a beautiful tree Exclames Sir Henry Yes, you are right It is a beautiful tree And a beautiful tree Yes, you are right It is a beautiful tree There is not another like it in all the country round That I know of Answered Mr. Mackenzie I call it my watch tower As you see I have a rope ladder fixed to the lowest bow And if I want to see anything that is going on Within fifteen miles or so All I have to do Is run up it with a spyglass But you must be hungry And I am sure the dinner is cooked Come in my friends It is but a rough place But well enough for these savage parts And I can tell you what We have got a French cook And he led the way on to the veranda As I was following him And wondering what on earth he could mean by this There suddenly appeared Through the door that opened on to the veranda From the house A dapper little man Dressed in a neat blue cotton suit With shoes made of tanned hide And remarkable for a bustling air And most enormous black mustachios Shaped into an upward curve And coming to a point for all the world Like a pair of buffalo horns Madame bids for me to say That dinner is served Monsieur my compliments Then suddenly perceiving Umslobogas Who was loitering along after us And playing with his battle-axe He threw up his hands in astonishment Ah, me que l'homme He ejaculated in French Que le sauvage a trou Take but note Of his huge chapelles And the great pit in his head I said Mr. McKenzie What are you talking about, Alphonse? Talking about Replied the little Frenchman His eyes still fixed upon Umslobogas Whose general appearance seemed to fascinate him Why, I talk of him And he rudely pointed Of Sir Monsieur Noir At this everybody began to laugh And Umslobogas perceiving That he was the object of remark Frowned ferociously For he had a most lordly dislike Of anything like a personal liberty Pablo said Alphonse He is angered He makes the grimace I like not his air I vanish And he did With considerable rapidity Mr. McKenzie joined heartily In the shout of laughter Which we indulged in He is a queer character, Alphonse He said By and by I will tell you his history In the meanwhile Let us try his cooking Might I ask Your most excellent dinner How you came to have a French cook In these wilds Oh! answered Mrs. McKenzie He arrived here of his own accord About a year ago And asked to be taken into our service He had got into some trouble In France And fled to Zanzibar Where he found an application Had been made by the French government For his extradition Whereupon He rushed off up country And fell in When nearly starved With our caravan of men Who were bringing us Our annual supply of goods And was brought on here You should get him to tell you the story When dinner was over We lit our pipes And Sir Henry proceeded to give our host A description of our journey up here Over which he looked very grave It is evident to me Those rascally messiah Are following you And I am very thankful That you have reached this house in safety I do not think That they will dare attack you here It is unfortunate though That nearly all my men Have gone down to the coast With ivory and goods There are two hundred of them In the caravan And the consequence Is that I have not more than twenty men Available for defensive purposes But still I will just give a few orders And Calling a black man Who is loitering about outside in the garden He went to the window And addressed him in a Swahili dialect The man listened And then saluted and departed I am sure I devoutly hope That we shall bring no such calamity upon you Said I anxiously When he had taken his seat again Rather than bring those bloodthirsty villains About your ears We will move on and take our chance You will do nothing of the sort If the messiah come They come and there is an end on it And I think we can give them a pretty warm greeting I would not show any man the door For all the messiah in the world That reminds me I said The consul at Lamu Told me that he had had a letter from you Said that a man had arrived here Who reported that he had come across A white people in the interior Do you think that there was any truth in his story? I ask because I have once or twice in my life Heard rumors from natives who have come down From the far north Of the existence of such a race Mr. McKenzie, by way of answer Went out of the room And returned bringing with him A most curious sword That was long And all the blade Which was very thick and heavy Was to within a quarter of an inch Of the cutting edge Worked into an ornamental pattern Exactly as we worked soft wood With a fret saw The steel, however Being invariably pierced in such a way As not to interfere with the strength of the sword This in itself was sufficiently curious But what was still more so Was that all the edges of the hollow spaces Cut through the substance of the blade Were most beautifully inlaid with gold Which was in some way that I cannot understand Welded on to the steel End note Since I saw the above I have examined hundreds of these swords But have never been able to discover How the gold plates were inlaid in the fretwork The armorers who make them And Zuvendis Bind themselves by oath Not to reveal the secret Alan Quatermane There, said Mr. McKenzie Did you ever see a sword like that? We all examined it and shook our heads Well, I have got it to show you Because this is what the man Who said he had seen the white people Brought with him And because it does more or less Give an error of truth To what I should otherwise Have sat down as a lie Look here, I will tell you All that I know about the matter Which is not much One afternoon Just before sunset I was sitting on the veranda When a poor miserable Starved looking man Came limping up And squatted down before me I asked him where he had come from And what he wanted And thereon he plunged into A long, rambling narrative About how he belonged to a tribe Far in the north And how his tribe was destroyed By another tribe And he, with a few other survivors Driven still further north Past a lake named Laga Thence it appears He made his way to another lake That lay up in the mountains A lake without a bottom He called it Life and brother died Of an infectious disease Probably smallpox Whereupon the people Drove him out of their villages Into the wilderness Where he wandered miserably Over mountains for ten days After which he got into Dense, thorn forest And was one day found there By some white man who were hunting And who took him to a place Where all the people were white And lived in stone houses Here he remained a week Shut up in a house Till one night a man With a white beard Whom he understood to be a medicine man Came and inspected him After which he was let off And taken through the thorn forest To the confines of the wilderness And given food And this sword At least so he said And turned loose Well, said Sir Henry Who had been listening with breathless interest And what did he do then? Oh, he seems, according to his account To have gone through sufferings And hardships innumerable And to have lived for weeks On roots and berries And such things as he could catch and kill But somehow he did live And at last, by slow degrees Made his way south And reached this place What the details of his journey were I never learnt For I told him to return on the morrow Bidding one of my headmen Look after him for the night The headman took him away But the poor man had itched so badly That the headman's wife would not have him in the hut For fear of catching it So he was given a blanket And told to sleep outside As it happened We had a lion hanging about here just then And most unhappily He winded this unfortunate wanderer And springing on him Bid his head almost off Without the people in the hut Knowing anything about it And there was an end of him And his story about the white people And whether or no There is any truth in it Is more than I can tell you What do you think, Mr. Quatermain? I shook my head And answered I don't know There are so many questions And weird things hidden away In the heart of this great continent That I should be sorry to assert That there was no truth in it Anyhow, we mean to try and find out We intend to journey to La Coquicera And thence, if we live to get so far To this Lake Laga And if there are any white people beyond We will do our best to find them You are a very venturesome people Said Mr. McKenzie And the subject dropped