King Solomon's Mines
silver over everything. Even the great bulldog, belonging to a sporting
passenger, seemed to yield to its gentle influences, and forgetting his
yearning to come to close quarters with the baboon in a cage on the
foc’sle, snored happily at the door of the cabin, dreaming no doubt
that he had finished him, and happy in his dream.
We three—that is, Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good, and myself—went and
sat by the wheel, and were quiet for a while.
“Well, Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry presently, “have you been
thinking about my proposals?”
“Ay,” echoed Captain Good, “what do you think of them, Mr. Quatermain?
I hope that you are going to give us the pleasure of your company so
far as Solomon’s Mines, or wherever the gentleman you knew as Neville
may have got to.”
I rose and knocked out my pipe before I answered. I had not made up my
mind, and wanted an additional moment to decide. Before the burning
tobacco had fallen into the sea I had decided; just that little extra
second did the trick. It is often the way when you have been bothering
a long time over a thing.
“Yes, gentlemen,” I said, sitting down again, “I will go, and by your
leave I will tell you why, and on what conditions. First for the terms
which I ask.
“1. You are to pay all expenses, and any ivory or other valuables we
may get is to be divided between Captain Good and myself.
“2. That you give me £500 for my services on the trip before we start,
I undertaking to serve you faithfully till you choose to abandon the
enterprise, or till we succeed, or disaster overtakes us.
“3. That before we trek you execute a deed agreeing, in the event of my
death or disablement, to pay my boy Harry, who is studying medicine
over there in London, at Guy’s Hospital, a sum of £200 a year for five
years, by which time he ought to be able to earn a living for himself
if he is worth his salt. That is all, I think, and I daresay you will
say quite enough too.”
“No,” answered Sir Henry, “I accept them gladly. I am bent upon this
project, and would pay more than that for your help, considering the
peculiar and exclusive knowledge which you possess.”
“Pity I did not ask it, then, but I won’t go back on my word. And now
that I have got my terms I will tell you my reasons for making up my
mind to go. First of all, gentlemen, I have been observing you both for
the last few days, and if you will not think me impertinent I may say
that I like you, and believe that we shall come up well to the yoke
together. That is something, let me tell you, when one has a long
journey like this before one.
“And now as to the journey itself, I tell you flatly, Sir Henry and
Captain Good, that I do not think it probable we can come out of it
alive, that is, if we attempt to cross the Suliman Mountains. What was
the fate of the old Dom da Silvestra three hundred years ago? What was
the fate of his descendant twenty years ago? What has been your
brother’s fate? I tell you frankly, gentlemen, that as their fates were
so I believe ours will be.”
I paused to watch the effect of my words. Captain Good looked a little
uncomfortable, but Sir Henry’s face did not change. “We must take our
chance,” he said.
“You may perhaps wonder,” I went on, “why, if I think this, I, who am,
as I told you, a timid man, should undertake such a journey. It is for
two reasons. First I am a fatalist, and believe that my time is
appointed to come quite without reference to my own movements and will,
and that if I am to go to Suliman’s Mountains to be killed, I shall go
there and shall be killed. God Almighty, no doubt, knows His mind about
me, so I need not trouble on that point. Secondly, I am a poor man. For
nearly forty years I have hunted and traded, but I have never made more
than a living. Well, gentlemen, I don’t know if you are aware that the
average life of an elephant hunter from the time he takes to the trade
is between four and five years. So you see I have lived through about
seven generations of my class, and I should think that my time cannot
be far off, anyway. Now, if anything were to happen to me in the
ordinary course of business, by the time my debts are paid there would
be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he was getting in the
way of earning a living, whereas now he will be set up for five years.
There is the whole affair in a nutshell.”
“Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry, who had been giving me his most
serious attention, “your motives for undertaking an enterprise which
you believe can only end in disaster reflect a great deal of credit on
you. Whether or not you are right, of course time and the event alone
can show. But whether you are right or wrong, I may as well tell you at
once that I am going through with it to the end, sweet or bitter. If we
are to be knocked on the head, all I have to say is, that I hope we get
a little shooting first, eh, Good?”
“Yes, yes,” put in the captain. “We have all three of us been
accustomed to face danger, and to hold our lives in our hands in
various ways, so it is no good turning back now. And now I vote we go
down to the saloon and take an observation just for luck, you know.”
And we did—through the bottom of a tumbler.
Next day we went ashore, and I put up Sir Henry and Captain Good at the
little shanty I have built on the Berea, and which I call my home.
There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is constructed
of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden
with the best loquot trees in it that I know, and some nice young
mangoes, of which I hope great things. The curator of the botanical
gardens gave them to me. It is looked after by an old hunter of mine
named Jack, whose thigh was so badly broken by a buffalo cow in
Sikukunis country that he will never hunt again. But he can potter
about and garden, being a Griqua by birth. You will never persuade a
Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and
peaceful arts are not in his line.
Sir Henry and Good slept in a tent pitched in my little grove of orange
trees at the end of the garden, for there was no room for them in the
house, and what with the smell of the bloom, and the sight of the green
and golden fruit—in Durban you will see all three on the tree
together—I daresay it is a pleasant place enough, for we have few
mosquitos here on the Berea, unless there happens to come an unusually
heavy rain.
Well, to get on—for if I do not, Harry, you will be tired of my story
before ever we fetch up at Suliman’s Mountains—having once made up my
mind to go I set about making the necessary preparations. First I
secured the deed from Sir Henry, providing for you, my boy, in case of
accidents. There was some difficulty about its legal execution, as Sir
Henry was a stranger here, and the property to be charged is over the
water; but it was ultimately got over with the help of a lawyer, who
charged £20 for the job—a price that I thought outrageous. Then I
pocketed my cheque for £500.
Having paid this tribute to my bump of caution, I purchased a wagon and
a span of oxen on Sir Henry’s behalf, and beauties they were. It was a
twenty-two-foot wagon with iron axles, very strong, very light, and
built throughout of stink wood; not quite a new one, having been to the
Diamond Fields and back, but, in my opinion, all the better for that,
for I could see that the wood was well seasoned. If anything is going
to give in a wagon, or if there is green wood in it, it will show out
on the first trip. This particular vehicle was what we call a
“half-tented” wagon, that is to say, only covered in over the after
twelve feet, leaving all the front part free for the necessaries we had
to carry with us. In this after part were a hide “cartle,” or bed, on
which two people could sleep, also racks for rifles, and many other
little conveniences. I gave £125 for it, and think that it was cheap at
the price.
Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept my
eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a team,
but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle are
small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander oxen,
which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will live
where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can make
five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to
become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly “salted,” that
is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof,
comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently destroys
whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange “veldt” or grass
country. As for “lung sick,” which is a dreadful form of pneumonia,
very prevalent in this country, they had all been inoculated against
it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of an ox, and binding in
a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which has died of the
sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the disease in a
mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule about a foot
from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks. It seems cruel
to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country where there are
so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail and keep the ox
than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an ox is not much
good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to trek along behind
twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It seems as though Nature
made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern ornaments of a lot of
prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.
Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which
required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to
avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely
necessary. Fortunately, it turned out that Good is a bit of a doctor,
having at some point in his previous career managed to pass through a
course of medical and surgical instruction, which he has more or less
kept up. He is not, of course, qualified, but he knows more about it
than many a man who can write M.D. after his name, as we found out
afterwards, and he had a splendid travelling medicine chest and a set
of instruments. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir’s big toe
in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed
when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him
to put on another, saying that a “white one” would do at a pinch.
There remained, when these questions were satisfactorily settled, two
further important points for consideration, namely, that of arms and
that of servants. As to the arms I cannot do better than put down a
list of those which we finally decided on from among the ample store
that Sir Henry had brought with him from England, and those which I
owned. I copy it from my pocket-book, where I made the entry at the
time.
“Three heavy breech-loading double-eight elephant guns, weighing about
fifteen pounds each, to carry a charge of eleven drachms of black
powder.” Two of these were by a well-known London firm, most excellent
makers, but I do not know by whom mine, which is not so highly
finished, was made. I have used it on several trips, and shot a good
many elephants with it, and it has always proved a most superior
weapon, thoroughly to be relied on.
“Three double-500 Expresses, constructed to stand a charge of six
drachms,” sweet weapons, and admirable for medium-sized game, such as
eland or sable antelope, or for men, especially in an open country and
with the semi-hollow bullet.
“One double No. 12 central-fire Keeper’s shot-gun, full choke both
barrels.” This gun proved of the greatest service to us afterwards in
shooting game for the pot.