King Solomons Mines | Page 5

has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have
in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a
quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other
considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by
the way.
Third reason: Because I want my boy Harry, who is over there at the
hospital in London studying to become a doctor, to have something to
amuse him and keep him out of mischief for a week or so. Hospital
work must sometimes pall and grow rather dull, for even of cutting up
dead bodies there may come satiety, and as this history will not be dull,
whatever else it may be, it will put a little life into things for a day or
two while Harry is reading of our adventures.
Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story
that I remember. It may seem a queer thing to say, especially
considering that there is no woman in it--except Foulata. Stop, though!
there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But she was a
hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don't count her.
At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a /petticoat/ in the whole
history.
Well, I had better come to the yoke. It is a stiff place, and I feel as
though I were bogged up to the axle. But, "/sutjes, sutjes/," as the Boers
say--I am sure I don't know how they spell it--softly does it. A strong
team will come through at last, that is, if they are not too poor. You can
never do anything with poor oxen. Now to make a start.
I, Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman, make oath and say--
That's how I headed my deposition before the magistrate about poor
Khiva's and Ventvögel's sad deaths; but somehow it doesn't seem quite
the right way to begin a book. And, besides, am I a gentleman? What is
a gentleman? I don't quite know, and yet I have had to do with niggers
--no, I will scratch out that word "niggers," for I do not like it. I've
known natives who /are/, and so you will say, Harry, my boy, before
you have done with this tale, and I have known mean whites with lots

of money and fresh out from home, too, who /are not/.
At any rate, I was born a gentleman, though I have been nothing but a
poor travelling trader and hunter all my life. Whether I have remained
so I known not, you must judge of that. Heaven knows I've tried. I have
killed many men in my time, yet I have never slain wantonly or stained
my hand in innocent blood, but only in self-defence. The Almighty
gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them, at least I
have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be brought up against
me when my clock strikes. There, there, it is a cruel and a wicked world,
and for a timid man I have been mixed up in a great deal of fighting. I
cannot tell the rights of it, but at any rate I have never stolen, though
once I cheated a Kafir out of a herd of cattle. But then he had done me
a dirty turn, and it has troubled me ever since into the bargain.

Well, it is eighteen months or so ago since first I met Sir Henry Curtis
and Captain Good. It was in this way. I had been up elephant hunting
beyond Bamangwato, and had met with bad luck. Everything went
wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the fever badly. So soon as I
was well enough I trekked down to the Diamond Fields, sold such
ivory as I had, together with my wagon and oxen, discharged my
hunters, and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending a week in
Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having
seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens,
which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and
the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the
sort, I determined to go back to Natal by the /Dunkeld/, then lying at
the docks waiting for the /Edinburgh Castle/ due in from England. I
took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers
from the /Edinburgh Castle/ transhipped, and we weighed and put to
sea.
Among these passengers who came on board were two who excited my
curiosity. One, a gentleman of about thirty,