King Solomons Mines | Page 7

noticed when the passengers came aboard.
"Indeed, now what makes you think so?" I asked.
"Think so. I don't think at all. Why there"--as she righted herself after a
roll--"if the ship had really rolled to the degree that thing pointed to,
then she would never have rolled again, that's all. But it is just like
these merchant skippers, they are always so confoundedly careless."

Just then the dinner-bell rang, and I was not sorry, for it is a dreadful
thing to have to listen to an officer of the Royal Navy when he gets on
to that subject. I only know one worse thing, and that is to hear a
merchant skipper express his candid opinion of officers of the Royal
Navy.
Captain Good and I went down to dinner together, and there we found
Sir Henry Curtis already seated. He and Captain Good were placed
together, and I sat opposite to them. The captain and I soon fell into
talk about shooting and what not; he asking me many questions, for he
is very inquisitive about all sorts of things, and I answering them as
well as I could. Presently he got on to elephants.
"Ah, sir," called out somebody who was sitting near me, "you've
reached the right man for that; Hunter Quatermain should be able to tell
you about elephants if anybody can."
Sir Henry, who had been sitting quite quiet listening to our talk, started
visibly.
"Excuse me, sir," he said, leaning forward across the table, and
speaking in a low deep voice, a very suitable voice, it seemed to me, to
come out of those great lungs. "Excuse me, sir, but is your name Allan
Quatermain?"
I said that it was.
The big man made no further remark, but I heard him mutter
"fortunate" into his beard.
Presently dinner came to an end, and as we were leaving the saloon Sir
Henry strolled up and asked me if I would come into his cabin to
smoke a pipe. I accepted, and he led the way to the /Dunkeld/ deck
cabin, and a very good cabin it is. It had been two cabins, but when Sir
Garnet Wolseley or one of those big swells went down the coast in the
/Dunkeld/, they knocked away the partition and have never put it up
again. There was a sofa in the cabin, and a little table in front of it. Sir
Henry sent the steward for a bottle of whisky, and the three of us sat

down and lit our pipes.
"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry Curtis, when the man had brought
the whisky and lit the lamp, "the year before last about this time, you
were, I believe, at a place called Bamangwato, to the north of the
Transvaal."
"I was," I answered, rather surprised that this gentleman should be so
well acquainted with my movements, which were not, so far as I was
aware, considered of general interest.
"You were trading there, were you not?" put in Captain Good, in his
quick way.
"I was. I took up a wagon-load of goods, made a camp outside the
settlement, and stopped till I had sold them."
Sir Henry was sitting opposite to me in a Madeira chair, his arms
leaning on the table. He now looked up, fixing his large grey eyes full
upon my face. There was a curious anxiety in them, I thought.
"Did you happen to meet a man called Neville there?"
"Oh, yes; he outspanned alongside of me for a fortnight to rest his oxen
before going on to the interior. I had a letter from a lawyer a few
months back, asking me if I knew what had become of him, which I
answered to the best of my ability at the time."
"Yes," said Sir Henry, "your letter was forwarded to me. You said in it
that the gentleman called Neville left Bamangwato at the beginning of
May in a wagon with a driver, a voorlooper, and a Kafir hunter called
Jim, announcing his intention of trekking if possible as far as Inyati, the
extreme trading post in the Matabele country, where he would sell his
wagon and proceed on foot. You also said that he did sell his wagon,
for six months afterwards you saw the wagon in the possession of a
Portuguese trader, who told you that he had bought it at Inyati from a
white man whose name he had forgotten, and that he believed the white
man with the native servant had started off for the interior on a

shooting trip."
"Yes."
Then came a pause.
"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry suddenly, "I suppose you know or
can guess nothing more of the reasons of my--of Mr. Neville's journey
to the northward, or as to what point that journey