King Solomon's Mines
Sheba’s Breasts had scarcely vanished into cloud-clad privacy, before
our thirst—literally a burning question—reasserted itself.
It was all very well for Ventvögel to say that he smelt water, but we
could see no signs of it, look which way we would. So far as the eye
might reach there was nothing but arid sweltering sand and karoo scrub.
We walked round the hillock and gazed about anxiously on the other
side, but it was the same story, not a drop of water could be found;
there was no indication of a pan, a pool, or a spring.
“You are a fool,” I said angrily to Ventvögel; “there is no water.”
But still he lifted his ugly snub nose and sniffed.
“I smell it, Baas,” he answered; “it is somewhere in the air.”
“Yes,” I said, “no doubt it is in the clouds, and about two months
hence it will fall and wash our bones.”
Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is on the
top of the hill,” he suggested.
“Rot,” said Good; “whoever heard of water being found at the top of a
hill!”
“Let us go and look,” I put in, and hopelessly enough we scrambled up
the sandy sides of the hillock, Umbopa leading. Presently he stopped as
though he was petrified.
“_Nanzia manzie_!” that is, “Here is water!” he cried with a loud
voice.
We rushed up to him, and there, sure enough, in a deep cut or
indentation on the very top of the sand koppie, was an undoubted pool
of water. How it came to be in such a strange place we did not stop to
inquire, nor did we hesitate at its black and unpleasant appearance. It
was water, or a good imitation of it, and that was enough for us. We
gave a bound and a rush, and in another second we were all down on our
stomachs sucking up the uninviting fluid as though it were nectar fit
for the gods. Heavens, how we did drink! Then when we had done drinking
we tore off our clothes and sat down in the pool, absorbing the
moisture through our parched skins. You, Harry, my boy, who have only
to turn on a couple of taps to summon “hot” and “cold” from an unseen,
vasty cistern, can have little idea of the luxury of that muddy wallow
in brackish tepid water.
After a while we rose from it, refreshed indeed, and fell to on our
“biltong,” of which we had scarcely been able to touch a mouthful for
twenty-four hours, and ate our fill. Then we smoked a pipe, and lay
down by the side of that blessed pool, under the overhanging shadow of
its bank, and slept till noon.
All that day we rested there by the water, thanking our stars that we
had been lucky enough to find it, bad as it was, and not forgetting to
render a due share of gratitude to the shade of the long-departed da
Silvestra, who had set its position down so accurately on the tail of
his shirt. The wonderful thing to us was that the pan should have
lasted so long, and the only way in which I can account for this is on
the supposition that it is fed by some spring deep down in the sand.
Having filled both ourselves and our water-bottles as full as possible,
in far better spirits we started off again with the moon. That night we
covered nearly five-and-twenty miles; but, needless to say, found no
more water, though we were lucky enough the following day to get a
little shade behind some ant-heaps. When the sun rose, and, for awhile,
cleared away the mysterious mists, Suliman’s Berg with the two majestic
Breasts, now only about twenty miles off, seemed to be towering right
above us, and looked grander than ever. At the approach of evening we
marched again, and, to cut a long story short, by daylight next morning
found ourselves upon the lowest slopes of Sheba’s left breast, for
which we had been steadily steering. By this time our water was
exhausted once more, and we were suffering severely from thirst, nor
indeed could we see any chance of relieving it till we reached the snow
line far, far above us. After resting an hour or two, driven to it by
our torturing thirst, we went on, toiling painfully in the burning heat
up the lava slopes, for we found that the huge base of the mountain was
composed entirely of lava beds belched from the bowels of the earth in
some far past age.
By eleven o’clock we were utterly exhausted, and, generally speaking,
in a very bad state indeed. The lava clinker, over which we must drag
ourselves, though smooth compared with some clinker I have heard of,
such as that on the Island of Ascension, for instance, was yet rough
enough to make our feet very sore, and this, together with our other
miseries, had pretty well finished us. A few hundred yards above us
were some large lumps of lava, and towards these we steered with the
intention of lying down beneath their shade. We reached them, and to
our surprise, so far as we had a capacity for surprise left in us, on a
little plateau or ridge close by we saw that the clinker was covered
with a dense green growth. Evidently soil formed of decomposed lava had
rested there, and in due course had become the receptacle of seeds
deposited by birds. But we did not take much further interest in the
green growth, for one cannot live on grass like Nebuchadnezzar. That
requires a special dispensation of Providence and peculiar digestive
organs.
So we sat down under the rocks and groaned, and for one I wished
heartily that we had never started on this fool’s errand. As we were
sitting there I saw Umbopa get up and hobble towards the patch of
green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I
perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting
like a maniac, and waving something green. Off we all scrambled towards
him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that he had
found water.
“What is it, Umbopa, son of a fool?” I shouted in Zulu.
“It is food and water, Macumazahn,” and again he waved the green thing.
Then I saw what he had found. It was a melon. We had hit upon a patch
of wild melons, thousands of them, and dead ripe.
“Melons!” I yelled to Good, who was next me; and in another minute his
false teeth were fixed in one of them.
I think we ate about six each before we had done, and poor fruit as
they were, I doubt if I ever thought anything nicer.
But melons are not very nutritious, and when we had satisfied our
thirst with their pulpy substance, and put a stock to cool by the
simple process of cutting them in two and setting them end on in the
hot sun to grow cold by evaporation, we began to feel exceedingly
hungry. We had still some biltong left, but our stomachs turned from
biltong, and besides, we were obliged to be very sparing of it, for we
could not say when we should find more food. Just at this moment a
lucky thing chanced. Looking across the desert I saw a flock of about
ten large birds flying straight towards us.
“_Skit, Baas, skit!_” “Shoot, master, shoot!” whispered the Hottentot,
throwing himself on his face, an example which we all followed.
Then I saw that the birds were a flock of _pauw_ or bustards, and that
they would pass within fifty yards of my head. Taking one of the
repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and then
jumped to my feet. On seeing me the _pauw_ bunched up together, as I
expected that they would, and I fired two shots straight into the thick
of them, and, as luck would have it, brought one down, a fine fellow,
that weighed about twenty pounds. In half an hour we had a fire made of
dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we made such a feed
as we had not tasted for a week. We ate that _pauw_; nothing was left
of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt not a little the
better afterwards.
That night we went on again with the moon, carrying as many melons as
we could with us. As we ascended we found the air grew cooler and
cooler, which was a great relief to us, and at dawn, so far as we could
judge, we were not more than about a dozen miles from the snow line.
Here we discovered more melons, and so had no longer any anxiety about
water, for we knew that we should soon get plenty of snow. But the
ascent had now become very precipitous, and we made but slow progress,
not more than a mile an hour. Also that night we ate our last morsel of
biltong. As yet, with the exception of the _pauw_, we had seen no
living thing on the mountain, nor had we come across a single spring or
stream of water, which struck us as very odd, considering the expanse
of snow above us, which must, we thought, melt sometimes. But as we
afterwards discovered, owing to a cause which it is quite beyond my
power to explain, all the streams flowed down upon the north side of
the mountains.
Now we began to grow very anxious about food. We had escaped death by
thirst, but it seemed probable that it was only to die of hunger. The
events of the next three miserable days are best described by copying
the entries made at the time in my note-book.
“21st May.—Started 11 a.m., finding the atmosphere quite cold enough to
travel by day, and carrying some water-melons with us. Struggled on all
day, but found no more melons, having evidently passed out of their
district. Saw no game of any sort. Halted for the night at sundown,
having had no food for many hours. Suffered much during the night from
cold.
“22nd.—Started at sunrise again, feeling very faint and weak. Only made
about five miles all day; found some patches of snow, of which we ate,
but nothing else. Camped at night under the edge of a great plateau.
Cold bitter. Drank a little brandy each, and huddled ourselves
together, each wrapped up in his blanket, to keep ourselves alive. Are
now suffering frightfully from starvation and weariness. Thought that
Ventvögel would have died during the night.
“23rd.—Struggled forward once more as soon as the sun was well up, and
had thawed our limbs a little. We are now in a dreadful plight, and I
fear that unless we get food this will be our last day’s journey. But
little brandy left. Good, Sir Henry, and Umbopa bear up wonderfully,
but Ventvögel is in a very bad way. Like most Hottentots, he cannot
stand cold. Pangs of hunger not so bad, but have a sort of numb feeling
about the stomach. Others say the same. We are now on a level with the
precipitous chain, or wall of lava, linking the two Breasts, and the
view is glorious. Behind us the glowing desert rolls away to the
horizon, and before us lie mile upon mile of smooth hard snow almost
level, but swelling gently upwards, out of the centre of which the
nipple of the mountain, that appears to be some miles in circumference,
rises about four thousand feet into the sky. Not a living thing is to
be seen. God help us; I fear that our time has come.”
And now I will drop the journal, partly because it is not very
interesting reading; also what follows requires telling rather more
fully.
All that day—the 23rd May—we struggled slowly up the incline of snow,
lying down from time to time to rest. A strange gaunt crew we must have
looked, while, laden as we were, we dragged our weary feet over the
dazzling plain, glaring round us with hungry eyes. Not that there was
much use in glaring, for we could see nothing to eat. We did not
accomplish more than seven miles that day. Just before sunset we found
ourselves exactly under the nipple of Sheba’s left Breast, which
towered thousands of feet into the air, a vast smooth hillock of frozen
snow. Weak as we were, we could not but appreciate the wonderful scene,
made even more splendid by the flying rays of light from the setting
sun, which here and there stained the snow blood-red, and crowned the
great dome above us with a diadem of glory.
“I say,” gasped Good, presently, “we ought to be somewhere near that
cave the old gentleman wrote about.”
“Yes,” said I, “if there is a cave.”
“Come, Quatermain,” groaned Sir Henry, “don’t talk like that; I have