Long Odds | Page 3

the etext, or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by disk, book
or any other medium if you either delete this "Small Print!" and all

other references to Project Gutenberg, or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this requires that
you do not remove, alter or modify the etext or this "small print!"
statement. You may however, if you wish, distribute this etext in
machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- cessing or
hypertext software, but only so long as *EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and does *not*
contain characters other than those intended by the author of the work,
although tilde (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may be used
to convey punctuation intended by the author, and additional characters
may be used to indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at no expense into
plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that displays
the etext (as is the case, for instance, with most word processors); OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional
cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form
(or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small
Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning

machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
We are planning on making some changes in our donation structure in
2000, so you might want to email me, [email protected] beforehand.

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] Dagny,
[email protected] and Emma Dudding, [email protected]

This is our second version of Long Odds, also see Etext #1918.

Long Odds
by H. Rider Haggard

The story which is narrated in the following pages came to me from the
lips of my old friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as we
used to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I
was stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly
after that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he
immediately left England, accompanied by two companions, his old
fellow-voyagers, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and has now
utterly vanished into the dark heart of Africa. He is persuaded that a
white people, of which he has heard rumours all his life, exists
somewhere on the highlands in the vast, still unexplored interior, and
his great ambition is to find them before he dies. This is the wild quest
upon which he and his companions have departed, and from which I
shrewdly suspect they never will return. One letter only have I received
from the old gentleman, dated from a mission station high up the Tana,
a river on the east coast, about three hundred miles north of Zanzibar.
In it he says they have gone through many hardships and adventures,
but are alive and well, and have found traces which go far towards

making him hope that the results of their wild quest may be a
"magnificent and unexampled discovery." I greatly fear, however, that
all he has discovered is death; for this letter came a long while ago, and
nobody has heard a single word of the party since. They have totally
vanished.
It was on the last evening of my stay at his house that he told the
ensuing story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He
had eaten his dinner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just to
help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an unusual
thing for him to do, for he was a most abstemious man, having
conceived, as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing its
effects upon the class of men--hunters, transport riders, and
others--amongst whom he had passed so many years of his life.
Consequently the good