Allan Quatermain
by H. Rider Haggard
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by H. Rider Haggard

INTRODUCTION

December 23

'I have just buried my boy, my poor handsome boy of whom I was so
proud, and my heart is broken. It is very hard having only one
son to lose him thus, but God's will be done. Who am I that I
should complain? The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a
Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late--it
does not matter when, in the end, it crushes us all. We do not
prostrate ourselves before it like the poor Indians; we fly
hither and thither--we cry for mercy; but it is of no use, the
black Fate thunders on and in its season reduces us to powder.

'Poor Harry to go so soon! just when his life was opening to him.
He was doing so well at the hospital, he had passed his last
examination with honours, and I was proud of them, much prouder
than he was, I think. And then he must needs go to that smallpox
hospital. He wrote to me that he was not afraid of smallpox and
wanted to gain the experience; and now the disease has killed
him, and I, old and grey and withered, am left to mourn over him,
without a chick or child to comfort me. I might have saved him,
too--I have money enough for both of us, and much more than
enough--King Solomon's Mines provided me with that; but I said,
"No, let the boy earn his living, let him labour that he may
enjoy rest."  But the rest has come to him before the labour.
Oh, my boy, my boy!

'I am like the man in the Bible who laid up much goods and
builded barns--goods for my boy and barns for him to store them
in; and now his soul has been required of him, and I am left
desolate. I would that it had been my soul and not my boy's!

'We buried him this afternoon under the shadow of the grey and
ancient tower of the church of this village where my house is.
It was a dreary December afternoon, and the sky was heavy with
snow, but not much was falling. The coffin was put down by the
grave, and a few big flakes lit upon it. They looked very white
upon the black cloth! There was a little hitch about getting the
coffin down into the grave--the necessary ropes had been
forgotten: so we drew back from it, and waited in silence
watching the big flakes fall gently one by one like heavenly
benedictions, and melt in tears on Harry's pall. But that was
not all. A robin redbreast came as bold as could be and lit upon
the coffin and began to sing. And then I am afraid that I broke
down, and so did Sir Henry Curtis, strong man though he is; and
as for Captain Good, I saw him turn away too; even in my own
distress I could not help noticing it.'

The above, signed 'Allan Quatermain', is an extract from my diary
written two years and more ago. I copy it down here because it
seems to me that it is the fittest beginning to the history that
I am about to write, if it please God to spare me to finish it.
If not, well it does not matter. That extract was penned seven
thousand miles or so from the spot where I now lie painfully and
slowly writing this, with a pretty girl standing by my side
fanning the flies from my august countenance. Harry is there and
I am here, and yet somehow I cannot help feeling that I am not
far off Harry.

When I was in England I used to live in a very fine house--at
least I call it a fine house, speaking comparatively, and judging
from the standard of the houses I have been accustomed to all my
life in Africa--not five hundred yards from the old church where
Harry is asleep, and thither I went after the funeral and ate
some food; for it is no good starving even if one has just buried
all one's earthly hopes. But I could not eat much, and soon I
took to walking, or rather limping--being permanently lame from
the bite of a lion--up and down, up and down the oak-panelled
vestibule; for there is a vestibule in my house in England. On
all the four walls of this vestibule were placed pairs of
horns--about a hundred pairs altogether, all of which I had shot
myself. They are beautiful specimens, as I never keep any horns
which are not in every way perfect, unless it may be now and
again on account of the associations connected with them. In the
centre of the room, however, over the wide fireplace, there was a
clear space left on which I had fixed up all my rifles. Some of
them I have had for forty years, old muzzle-loaders that nobody
would look at nowadays. One was an elephant gun with strips of
rimpi, or green hide, lashed round the stock and locks, such as
used to be owned by the Dutchmen--a 'roer' they call it. That
gun, the Boer I bought it from many years ago told me, had been
used by his father at the battle of the Blood River, just after
Dingaan swept into Natal and slaughtered six hundred men, women,
and children, so that the Boers named the place where they died
'Weenen', or the 'Place of Weeping'; and so it is called to this
day, and always will be called. And many an elephant have I shot
with that old gun. She always took a handful of black powder and
a three-ounce ball, and kicked like the very deuce.

Well, up and down I walked, staring at the guns and the horns
which the guns had brought low; and as I did so there rose up in
me a great craving: --I would go away from this place where I
lived idly and at ease, back again to the wild land where I had
spent my life, where I met my dear wife and poor Harry was born,
and so many things, good, bad, and indifferent, had happened to
me. The thirst for the wilderness was on me; I could tolerate
this place no more; I would go and die as I had lived, among the
wild game and the savages. Yes, as I walked, I began to long to
see the moonlight gleaming silvery white over the wide veldt and
mysterious sea of bush, and watch the lines of game travelling
down the ridges to the water. The ruling passion is strong in
death, they say, and my heart was dead that night. But,
independently of my trouble, no man who has for forty years lived
the life I have, can with impunity go coop himself in this prim
English country, with its trim hedgerows and cultivated fields,
its stiff formal manners, and its well-dressed crowds. He begins
to long--ah, how he longs!--for the keen breath of the desert
air; he dreams of the sight of Zulu impis breaking on their foes
like surf upon the rocks, and his heart rises up in rebellion
against the strict limits of the civilized life.

Ah! this civilization, what does it all come to? For forty years
and more I lived among savages, and studied them and their ways;
and now for several years I have lived here in England, and have
in my own stupid manner done my best to learn the ways of the
children of light; and what have I found? A great gulf fixed?
No, only a very little one, that a plain man's thought may spring
across. I say that as the savage is, so is the white man, only
the latter is more inventive, and possesses the faculty of
combination; save and except also that the savage, as I have
known him, is to a large extent free from the greed of money,
which eats like a cancer into the heart of the white man. It is
a depressing conclusion, but in all essentials the savage and the
child of civilization are identical. I dare say that the highly
civilized lady reading this will smile at an old fool of a
hunter's simplicity when she thinks of her black bead-bedecked
sister; and so will the superfine cultured idler scientifically
eating a dinner at his club, the cost of which would keep a
starving family for a week. And yet, my dear young lady, what
are those pretty things round your own neck?--they have a strong
family resemblance, especially when you wear that VERY low dress,
to the savage woman's beads. Your habit of turning round and
round to the sound of horns and tom-toms, your fondness for
pigments and powders, the way in which you love to subjugate
yourself to the rich warrior who has captured you in marriage,
and the quickness with which your taste in feathered head-dresses
varies--all these things suggest touches of kinship; and you
remember that in the fundamental principles of your nature you
are quite identical. As for you, sir, who also laugh, let some
man come and strike you in the face whilst you are enjoying that
marvellous-looking dish, and we shall soon see how much of the
savage there is in YOU.

There, I might go on for ever, but what is the good?
Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt. A vainglory is it,
and like a northern light, comes but to fade and leave the sky
more dark. Out of the soil of barbarism it has grown like a
tree, and, as I believe, into the soil like a tree it will once
more, sooner or later, fall again, as the Egyptian civilization
fell, as the Hellenic civilization fell, and as the Roman
civilization and many others of which the world has now lost
count, fell also. Do not let me, however, be understood as
decrying our modern institutions, representing as they do the
gathered experience of humanity applied for the good of all. Of
course they have great advantages--hospitals for instance; but
then, remember, we breed the sickly people who fill them. In a
savage land they do not exist. Besides, the question will arise:
How many of these blessings are due to Christianity as distinct
from civilization? And so the balance sways and the story
runs--here a gain, there a loss, and Nature's great average
struck across the two, whereof the sum total forms one of the
factors in that mighty equation in which the result will equal
the unknown quantity of her purpose.

I make no apology for this digression, especially as this is an
introduction which all young people and those who never like to
think (and it is a bad habit) will naturally skip. It seems to
me very desirable that we should sometimes try to understand the
limitations of our nature, so that we may not be carried away by
the pride of knowledge. Man's cleverness is almost indefinite,
and stretches like an elastic band, but human nature is like an
iron ring. You can go round and round it, you can polish it
highly, you can even flatten it a little on one side, whereby you
will make it bulge out the other, but you will NEVER, while the
world endures and man is man, increase its total circumference.
It is the one fixed unchangeable thing--fixed as the stars, more
enduring than the mountains, as unalterable as the way of the
Eternal. Human nature is God's kaleidoscope, and the little bits
of coloured glass which represent our passions, hopes, fears,
joys, aspirations towards good and evil and what not, are turned
in His mighty hand as surely and as certainly as it turns the
stars, and continually fall into new patterns and combinations.
But the composing elements remain the same, nor will there be one
more bit of coloured glass nor one less for ever and ever.

This being so, supposing for the sake of argument we divide
ourselves into twenty parts, nineteen savage and one civilized,
we must look to the nineteen savage portions of our nature, if we
would really understand ourselves, and not to the twentieth,
which, though so insignificant in reality, is spread all over the
other nineteen, making them appear quite different from what they
really are, as the blacking does a boot, or the veneer a table.
It is on the nineteen rough serviceable savage portions that we
fall back on emergencies, not on the polished but unsubstantial
twentieth. Civilization should wipe away our tears, and yet we
weep and cannot be comforted. Warfare is abhorrent to her, and
yet we strike out for hearth and home, for honour and fair fame,
and can glory in the blow. And so on, through everything.

So, when the heart is stricken, and the head is humbled in the
dust, civilization fails us utterly. Back, back, we creep, and
lay us like little children on the great breast of Nature, she
that perchance may soothe us and make us forget, or at least rid
remembrance of its sting. Who has not in his great grief felt a
longing to look upon the outward features of the universal
Mother; to lie on the mountains and watch the clouds drive across
the sky and hear the rollers break in thunder on the shore, to
let his poor struggling life mingle for a while in her life; to
feel the slow beat of her eternal heart, and to forget his woes,
and let his identity be swallowed in the vast imperceptibly
moving energy of her of whom we are, from whom we came, and with
whom we shall again be mingled, who gave us birth, and will in a
day to come give us our burial also.

And so in my trouble, as I walked up and down the oak-panelled
vestibule of my house there in Yorkshire, I longed once more to
throw myself into the arms of Nature. Not the Nature which you
know, the Nature that waves in well-kept woods and smiles out in
corn-fields, but Nature as she was in the age when creation was
complete, undefiled as yet by any human sinks of sweltering
humanity. I would go again where the wild game was, back to the
land whereof none know the history, back to the savages, whom I
love, although some of them are almost as merciless as Political
Economy. There, perhaps, I should be able to learn to think of
poor Harry lying in the churchyard, without feeling as though my
heart would break in two.

And now there is an end of this egotistical talk, and there shall
be no more of it. But if you whose eyes may perchance one day
fall upon my written thoughts have got so far as this, I ask you
to persevere, since what I have to tell you is not without its
interest, and it has never been told before, nor will again.

CHAPTER I

THE CONSUL'S YARN

A week had passed since the funeral of my poor boy Harry, and one
evening I was in my room walking up and down and thinking, when
there was a ring at the outer door. Going down the steps I
opened it myself, and in came my old friends Sir Henry Curtis and
Captain John Good, RN. They entered the vestibule and sat
themselves down before the wide hearth, where, I remember, a
particularly good fire of logs was burning.

'It is very kind of you to come round,' I said by way of making a
remark; 'it must have been heavy walking in the snow.'

They said nothing, but Sir Henry slowly filled his pipe and lit
it with a burning ember. As he leant forward to do so the fire
got hold of a gassy bit of pine and flared up brightly, throwing
the whole scene into strong relief, and I thought, What a
splendid-looking man he is! Calm, powerful face, clear-cut
features, large grey eyes, yellow beard and hair--altogether a
magnificent specimen of the higher type of humanity. Nor did his
form belie his face. I have never seen wider shoulders or a
deeper chest. Indeed, Sir Henry's girth is so great that, though
he is six feet two high, he does not strike one as a tall man.
As I looked at him I could not help thinking what a curious
contrast my little dried-up self presented to his grand face and
form. Imagine to yourself a small, withered, yellow-faced man of
sixty-three, with thin hands, large brown eyes, a head of
grizzled hair cut short and standing up like a half-worn
scrubbing-brush--total weight in my clothes, nine stone six--and
you will get a very fair idea of Allan Quatermain, commonly
called Hunter Quatermain, or by the natives Macumazahn'--Anglice,
he who keeps a bright look-out at night, or, in vulgar English, a
sharp fellow who is not to be taken in.

Then there was Good, who is not like either of us, being short,
dark, stout--VERY stout--with twinkling black eyes, in one of
which an eyeglass is everlastingly fixed. I say stout, but it is
a mild term; I regret to state that of late years Good has been
running to fat in a most disgraceful way. Sir Henry tells him
that it comes from idleness and over-feeding, and Good does not
like it at all, though he cannot deny it.

We sat for a while, and then I got a match and lit the lamp that
stood ready on the table, for the half-light began to grow
dreary, as it is apt to do when one has a short week ago buried
the hope of one's life. Next, I opened a cupboard in the
wainscoting and got a bottle of whisky and some tumblers and
water. I always like to do these things for myself: it is
irritating to me to have somebody continually at my elbow, as
though I were an eighteen-month-old baby. All this while Curtis
and Good had been silent, feeling, I suppose, that they had
nothing to say that could do me any good, and content to give me
the comfort of their presence and unspoken sympathy; for it was
only their second visit since the funeral. And it is, by the
way, from the PRESENCE of others that we really derive support in
our dark hours of grief, and not from their talk, which often
only serves to irritate us. Before a bad storm the game always
herd together, but they cease their calling.

They sat and smoked and drank whisky and water, and I stood by
the fire also smoking and looking at them.

At last I spoke. 'Old friends,' I said, 'how long is it since we
got back from Kukuanaland?'

'Three years,' said Good. 'Why do you ask?'

'I ask because I think that I have had a long enough spell of
civilization. I am going back to the veldt.'

Sir Henry laid his head back in his arm-chair and laughed one of
his deep laughs. 'How very odd,' he said, 'eh, Good?'

Good beamed at me mysteriously through his eyeglass and murmured,
'Yes, odd--very odd.'

'I don't quite understand,' said I, looking from one to the
other, for I dislike mysteries.

'Don't you, old fellow?' said Sir Henry; 'then I will explain.
As Good and I were walking up here we had a talk.'

'If Good was there you probably did,' I put in sarcastically, for
Good is a great hand at talking. 'And what may it have been
about?'

'What do you think?' asked Sir Henry.

I shook my head. It was not likely that I should know what Good
might be talking about. He talks about so many things.

'Well, it was about a little plan that I have formed--namely,
that if you were willing we should pack up our traps and go off
to Africa on another expedition.'

I fairly jumped at his words. 'You don't say so!' I said.

'Yes I do, though, and so does Good; don't you, Good?'

'Rather,' said that gentleman.

'Listen, old fellow,' went on Sir Henry, with considerable
animation of manner. 'I'm tired of it too, dead-tired of doing
nothing more except play the squire in a country that is sick of
squires. For a year or more I have been getting as restless as
an old elephant who scents danger. I am always dreaming of
Kukuanaland and Gagool and King Solomon's Mines. I can assure
you I have become the victim of an almost unaccountable craving.
I am sick of shooting pheasants and partridges, and want to have
a go at some large game again. There, you know the feeling--when
one has once tasted brandy and water, milk becomes insipid to the
palate. That year we spent together up in Kukuanaland seems to
me worth all the other years of my life put together. I dare say
that I am a fool for my pains, but I can't help it; I long to go,
and, what is more, I mean to go.'  He paused, and then went on
again. 'And, after all, why should I not go? I have no wife or
parent, no chick or child to keep me. If anything happens to me
the baronetcy will go to my brother George and his boy, as it
would ultimately do in any case. I am of no importance to any
one.'

'Ah!' I said, 'I thought you would come to that sooner or later.
And now, Good, what is your reason for wanting to trek; have you
got one?'

'I have,' said Good, solemnly. 'I never do anything without a
reason; and it isn't a lady--at least, if it is, it's several.'

I looked at him again. Good is so overpoweringly frivolous.
'What is it?' I said.

'Well, if you really want to know, though I'd rather not speak of
a delicate and strictly personal matter, I'll tell you: I'm
getting too fat.'

'Shut up, Good!' said Sir Henry. 'And now, Quatermain, tell us,
where do you propose going to?'

I lit my pipe, which had gone out, before answering.

'Have you people ever heard of Mt Kenia?' I asked.

'Don't know the place,' said Good.

'Did you ever hear of the Island of Lamu?' I asked again.

'No. Stop, though--isn't it a place about 300 miles north of
Zanzibar?'

'Yes. Now listen. What I have to propose is this. That we go
to Lamu and thence make our way about 250 miles inland to Mt
Kenia; from Mt Kenia on inland to Mt Lekakisera, another 200
miles, or thereabouts, beyond which no white man has to the best
of my belief ever been; and then, if we get so far, right on into
the unknown interior. What do you say to that, my hearties?'

'It's a big order,' said Sir Henry, reflectively.

'You are right,' I answered, 'it is; but I take it that we are
all three of us in search of a big order. We want a change of
scene, and we are likely to get one--a thorough change. All my
life I have longed to visit those parts, and I mean to do it
before I die. My poor boy's death has broken the last link
between me and civilization, and I'm off to my native wilds. And
now I'll tell you another thing, and that is, that for years and
years I have heard rumours of a great white race which is
supposed to have its home somewhere up in this direction, and I
have a mind to see if there is any truth in them. If you fellows
like to come, well and good; if not, I'll go alone.'

'I'm your man, though I don't believe in your white race,' said
Sir Henry Curtis, rising and placing his arm upon my shoulder.

'Ditto,' remarked Good. 'I'll go into training at once. By all
means let's go to Mt Kenia and the other place with an
unpronounceable name, and look for a white race that does not
exist. It's all one to me.'

'When do you propose to start?' asked Sir Henry.

'This day month,' I answered, 'by the British India steamboat;
and don't you be so certain that things have no existence because
you do not happen to have heard of them. Remember King Solomon's
mines!'

Some fourteen weeks or so had passed since the date of this
conversation, and this history goes on its way in very different
surroundings.

After much deliberation and inquiry we came to the conclusion
that our best starting-point for Mt Kenia would be from the
neighbourhood of the mouth of the Tana River, and not from
Mombassa, a place over 100 miles nearer Zanzibar. This
conclusion we arrived at from information given to us by a German
trader whom we met upon the steamer at Aden. I think that he was
the dirtiest German I ever knew; but he was a good fellow, and
gave us a great deal of valuable information. 'Lamu,' said he,
'you goes to Lamu--oh ze beautiful place!' and he turned up his
fat face and beamed with mild rapture. 'One year and a half I
live there and never change my shirt--never at all.'

And so it came to pass that on arriving at the island we
disembarked with all our goods and chattels, and, not knowing
where to go, marched boldly up to the house of Her Majesty's
Consul, where we were most hospitably received.

Lamu is a very curious place, but the things which stand out most
clearly in my memory in connection with it are its exceeding
dirtiness and its smells. These last are simply awful. Just
below the Consulate is the beach, or rather a mud bank that is
called a beach. It is left quite bare at low tide, and serves as
a repository for all the filth, offal, and refuse of the town.
Here it is, too, that the women come to bury coconuts in the mud,
leaving them there till the outer husk is quite rotten, when they
dig them up again and use the fibres to make mats with, and for
various other purposes. As this process has been going on for
generations, the condition of the shore can be better imagined
than described. I have smelt many evil odours in the course of
my life, but the concentrated essence of stench which arose from
that beach at Lamu as we sat in the moonlit night--not under, but
ON our friend the Consul's hospitable roof--and sniffed it, makes
the remembrance of them very poor and faint. No wonder people
get fever at Lamu. And yet the place was not without a certain
quaintness and charm of its own, though possibly--indeed
probably--it was one which would quickly pall.

'Well, where are you gentlemen steering for?' asked our friend
the hospitable Consul, as we smoked our pipes after dinner.

'We propose to go to Mt Kenia and then on to Mt Lekakisera,'
answered Sir Henry. 'Quatermain has got hold of some yarn about
there being a white race up in the unknown territories beyond.'

The Consul looked interested, and answered that he had heard
something of that, too.

'What have you heard?' I asked.

'Oh, not much. All I know about it is that a year or so ago I
got a letter from Mackenzie, the Scotch missionary, whose
station, "The Highlands", is placed at the highest navigable
point of the Tana River, in which he said something about it.'

'Have you the letter?' I asked.

'No, I destroyed it; but I remember that he said that a man had
arrived at his station who declared that two months' journey
beyond Mt Lekakisera, which no white man has yet visited--at
least, so far as I know--he found a lake called Laga, and that
then he went off to the north-east, a month's journey, over
desert and thorn veldt and great mountains, till he came to a
country where the people are white and live in stone houses.
Here he was hospitably entertained for a while, till at last the
priests of the country set it about that he was a devil, and the
people drove him away, and he journeyed for eight months and
reached Mackenzie's place, as I heard, dying. That's all I know;
and if you ask me, I believe that it is a lie; but if you want to
find out more about it, you had better go up the Tana to
Mackenzie's place and ask him for information.'

Sir Henry and I looked at each other. Here was something
tangible.

'I think that we will go to Mr Mackenzie's,' I said.

'Well,' answered the Consul, 'that is your best way, but I warn
you that you are likely to have a rough journey, for I hear that
the Masai are about, and, as you know, they are not pleasant
customers. Your best plan will be to choose a few picked men for
personal servants and hunters, and to hire bearers from village
to village. It will give you an infinity of trouble, but perhaps
on the whole it will prove a cheaper and more advantageous course
than engaging a caravan, and you will be less liable to
desertion.'

Fortunately there were at Lamu at this time a part of Wakwafi
Askari (soldiers). The Wakwafi, who are a cross between the
Masai and the Wataveta, are a fine manly race, possessing many of
the good qualities of the Zulu, and a great capacity for
civilization. They are also great hunters. As it happened,
these particular men had recently been on a long trip with an
Englishman named Jutson, who had started from Mombasa, a port
about 150 miles below Lamu, and journeyed right rough
Kilimanjaro, one of the highest known mountains in Africa. Poor
fellow, he had died of fever when on his return journey, and
within a day's march of Mombasa. It does seem hard that he
should have gone off thus when within a few hours of safety, and
after having survived so many perils, but so it was. His hunters
buried him, and then came on to Lamu in a dhow. Our friend the
Consul suggested to us that we had better try and hire these men,
and accordingly on the following morning we started to interview
the party, accompanied by an interpreter.

In due course we found them in a mud hut on the outskirts of the
town. Three of the men were sitting outside the hut, and fine
frank-looking fellows they were, having a more or less civilized
appearance. To them we cautiously opened the object of our
visit, at first with very scant success. They declared that they
could not entertain any such idea, that they were worn and weary
with long travelling, and that their hearts were sore at the loss
of their master. They meant to go back to their homes and rest
awhile. This did not sound very promising, so by way of
effecting a diversion I asked where the remainder of them were.
I was told there were six, and I saw but three. One of the men
said they slept in the hut, and were yet resting after their
labours--'sleep weighed down their eyelids, and sorrow made their
hearts as lead: it was best to sleep, for with sleep came
forgetfulness. But the men should be awakened.'

Presently they came out of the hut, yawning--the first two men
being evidently of the same race and style as those already
before us; but the appearance of the third and last nearly made
me jump out of my skin. He was a very tall, broad man, quite six
foot three, I should say, but gaunt, with lean, wiry-looking
limbs. My first glance at him told me that he was no Wakwafi:
he was a pure bred Zulu. He came out with his thin
aristocratic-looking hand placed before his face to hide a yawn,
so I could only see that he was a 'Keshla' or ringed man, *{Among
the Zulus a man assumes the ring, which is made of a species of
black gum twisted in with the hair, and polished a brilliant
black, when he has reached a certain dignity and age, or is the
husband of a sufficient number of wives. Till he is in a
position to wear a ring he is looked on as a boy, though he may
be thirty-five years of age, or even more. --A. Q.} and that he
had a great three-cornered hole in his forehead. In another
second he removed his hand, revealing a powerful-looking Zulu
face, with a humorous mouth, a short woolly beard, tinged with
grey, and a pair of brown eyes keen as a hawk's. I knew my man
at once, although I had not seen him for twelve years. 'How do
you do, Umslopogaas?' I said quietly in Zulu.

The tall man (who among his own people was commonly known as the
'Woodpecker', and also as the 'Slaughterer') started, and almost
let the long-handled battleaxe he held in his hand fall in his
astonishment. Next second he had recognized me, and was saluting
me in an outburst of sonorous language which made his companions
the Wakwafi stare.

'Koos' (chief), he began, 'Koos-y-Pagete! Koos-y-umcool! (Chief
from of old--mighty chief)  Koos! Baba! (father)  Macumazahn,
old hunter, slayer of elephants, eater up of lions, clever one!
watchful one! brave one! quick one! whose shot never misses, who
strikes straight home, who grasps a hand and holds it to the
death (i.e. is a true friend) Koos! Baba! Wise is the voice of
our people that says, "Mountain never meets with mountain, but at
daybreak or at even man shall meet again with man."  Behold! a
messenger came up from Natal, "Macumazahn is dead!" cried he.
"The land knows Macumazahn no more."  That is years ago. And
now, behold, now in this strange place of stinks I find
Macumazahn, my friend. There is no room for doubt. The brush of
the old jackal has gone a little grey; but is not his eye as
keen, and are not his teeth as sharp? Ha! ha! Macumazahn,
mindest thou how thou didst plant the ball in the eye of the
charging buffalo--mindest thou--'

I had let him run on thus because I saw that his enthusiasm was
producing a marked effect upon the minds of the five Wakwafi, who
appeared to understand something of his talk; but now I thought
it time to put a stop to it, for there is nothing that I hate so
much as this Zulu system of extravagant praising--'bongering' as
they call it. 'Silence!' I said. 'Has all thy noisy talk been
stopped up since last I saw thee that it breaks out thus, and
sweeps us away? What doest thou here with these men--thou whom I
left a chief in Zululand? How is it that thou art far from thine
own place, and gathered together with strangers?'

Umslopogaas leant himself upon the head of his long battleaxe
(which was nothing else but a pole-axe, with a beautiful handle
of rhinoceros horn), and his grim face grew sad.

'My Father,' he answered, 'I have a word to tell thee, but I
cannot speak it before these low people (umfagozana),' and he
glanced at the Wakwafi Askari; 'it is for thine own ear. My
Father, this will I say,' and here his face grew stern again, 'a
woman betrayed me to the death, and covered my name with
shame--ay, my own wife, a round-faced girl, betrayed me; but I
escaped from death; ay, I broke from the very hands of those who
came to slay me. I struck but three blows with this mine axe
Inkosikaas--surely my Father will remember it--one to the right,
one to the left, and one in front, and yet I left three men dead.
And then I fled, and, as my Father knows, even now that I am old
my feet are as the feet of the Sassaby, *{One of the fleetest of
the African antelopes. --A. Q.} and there breathes not the man
who, by running, can touch me again when once I have bounded from
his side. On I sped, and after me came the messengers of death,
and their voice was as the voice of dogs that hunt. From my own
kraal I flew, and, as I passed, she who had betrayed me was
drawing water from the spring. I fleeted by her like the shadow
of Death, and as I went I smote with mine axe, and lo! her head
fell: it fell into the water pan. Then I fled north. Day after
day I journeyed on; for three moons I journeyed, resting not,
stopping not, but running on towards forgetfulness, till I met
the party of the white hunter who is now dead, and am come hither
with his servants. And nought have I brought with me. I who was
high-born, ay, of the blood of Chaka, the great king--a chief,
and a captain of the regiment of the Nkomabakosi--am a wanderer
in strange places, a man without a kraal. Nought have I brought
save this mine axe; of all my belongings this remains alone.
They have divided my cattle; they have taken my wives; and my
children know my face no more. Yet with this axe'--and he swung
the formidable weapon round his head, making the air hiss as he
clove it--'will I cut another path to fortune. I have spoken.'

I shook my head at him. 'Umslopogaas,' I said, 'I know thee from
of old. Ever ambitious, ever plotting to be great, I fear me
that thou hast overreached thyself at last. Years ago, when thou
wouldst have plotted against Cetywayo, son of Panda, I warned
thee, and thou didst listen. But now, when I was not by thee to
stay thy hand, thou hast dug a pit for thine own feet to fall in.
Is it not so? But what is done is done. Who can make the dead
tree green, or gaze again upon last year's light? Who can recall
the spoken word, or bring back the spirit of the fallen? That
which Time swallows comes not up again. Let it be forgotten!

'And now, behold, Umslopogaas, I know thee for a great warrior
and a brave man, faithful to the death. Even in Zululand, where
all the men are brave, they called thee the "Slaughterer", and at
night told stories round the fire of thy strength and deeds.
Hear me now. Thou seest this great man, my friend'--and I
pointed to Sir Henry; 'he also is a warrior as great as thou,
and, strong as thou art, he could throw thee over his shoulder.
Incubu is his name. And thou seest this one also; him with the
round stomach, the shining eye, and the pleasant face. Bougwan
(glass eye) is his name, and a good man is he and a true, being
of a curious tribe who pass their life upon the water, and live
in floating kraals.

'Now, we three whom thou seest would travel inland, past Dongo
Egere, the great white mountain (Mt Kenia), and far into the
unknown beyond. We know not what we shall find there; we go to
hunt and seek adventures, and new places, being tired of sitting
still, with the same old things around us. Wilt thou come with
us? To thee shall be given command of all our servants; but what
shall befall thee, that I know not. Once before we three
journeyed thus, in search of adventure, and we took with us a man
such as thou--one Umbopa; and, behold, we left him the king of a
great country, with twenty Impis (regiments), each of 3,000
plumed warriors, waiting on his word. How it shall go with thee,
I know not; mayhap death awaits thee and us. Wilt thou throw
thyself to Fortune and come, or fearest thou, Umslopogaas?'

The great man smiled. 'Thou art not altogether right,
Macumazahn,' he said; 'I have plotted in my time, but it was not
ambition that led me to my fall; but, shame on me that I should
have to say it, a fair woman's face. Let it pass. So we are
going to see something like the old times again, Macumazahn, when
we fought and hunted in Zululand? Ay, I will come. Come life,
come death, what care I, so that the blows fall fast and the
blood runs red? I grow old, I grow old, and I have not fought
enough! And yet am I a warrior among warriors; see my
scars'--and he pointed to countless cicatrices, stabs and cuts,
that marked the skin of his chest and legs and arms. 'See the
hole in my head; the brains gushed out therefrom, yet did I slay
him who smote, and live. Knowest thou how many men I have slain,
in fair hand-to-hand combat, Macumazahn? See, here is the tale
of them'--and he pointed to long rows of notches cut in the
rhinoceros-horn handle of his axe. 'Number them, Macumazahn--one
hundred and three--and I have never counted but those whom I have
ripped open, *{Alluding to the Zulu custom of opening the stomach
of a dead foe. They have a superstition that, if this is not
done, as the body of their enemy swells up so will the bodies of
those who killed him swell up. --A. Q.} nor have I reckoned those
whom another man had struck.'

'Be silent,' I said, for I saw that he was getting the
blood-fever on him; 'be silent; well art thou called the
"Slaughterer". We would not hear of thy deeds of blood.
Remember, if thou comest with us, we fight not save in
self-defence. Listen, we need servants. These men,' and I
pointed to the Wakwafi, who had retired a little way during our
'indaba' (talk), 'say they will not come.'

'Will not come!' shouted Umslopogaas; 'where is the dog who says
he will not come when my Father orders? Here, thou'--and with a
single bound he sprang upon the Wakwafi with whom I had first
spoken, and, seizing him by the arm, dragged him towards us.
'Thou dog!' he said, giving the terrified man a shake, 'didst
thou say that thou wouldst not go with my Father? Say it once
more and I will choke thee'--and his long fingers closed round
his throat as he said it--'thee, and those with thee. Hast thou
forgotten how I served thy brother?'

'Nay, we will come with the white man,' gasped the man.

'White man!' went on Umslopogaas, in simulated fury, which a very
little provocation would have made real enough; 'of whom speakest
thou, insolent dog?'

'Nay, we will go with the great chief.'

'So!' said Umslopogaas, in a quiet voice, as he suddenly released
his hold, so that the man fell backward. 'I thought you would.'

'That man Umslopogaas seems to have a curious MORAL ascendency
over his companions,' Good afterwards remarked thoughtfully.

CHAPTER II

THE BLACK HAND

In due course we left Lamu, and ten days afterwards we found
ourselves at a spot called Charra, on the Tana River, having gone
through many adventures which need not be recorded here. Amongst
other things we visited a ruined city, of which there are many on
this coast, and which must once, to judge from their extent and
the numerous remains of mosques and stone houses, have been very
populous places. These ruined cities are immeasurably ancient,
having, I believe, been places of wealth and importance as far
back as the Old Testament times, when they were centres of trade
with India and elsewhere. But their glory has departed now--the
slave trade has finished them--and where wealthy merchants from
all parts of the then civilized world stood and bargained in the
crowded market-places, the lion holds his court at night, and
instead of the chattering of slaves and the eager voices of the
bidders, his awful note goes echoing down the ruined corridors.
At this particular place we discovered on a mound, covered up
with rank growth and rubbish, two of the most beautiful stone
doorways that it is possible to conceive. The carving on them
was simply exquisite, and I only regret that we had no means of
getting them away. No doubt they had once been the entrances to
a palace, of which, however, no traces were now to be seen,
though probably its ruins lay under the rising mound.

Gone! quite gone! the way that everything must go. Like the
nobles and the ladies who lived within their gates, these cities
have had their day, and now they are as Babylon and Nineveh, and
as London and Paris will one day be. Nothing may endure. That
is the inexorable law. Men and women, empires and cities,
thrones, principalities, and powers, mountains, rivers, and
unfathomed seas, worlds, spaces, and universes, all have their
day, and all must go. In this ruined and forgotten place the
moralist may behold a symbol of the universal destiny. For this
system of ours allows no room for standing still--nothing can
loiter on the road and check the progress of things upwards
towards Life, or the rush of things downwards towards Death. The
stern policeman Fate moves us and them on, on, uphill and
downhill and across the level; there is no resting-place for the
weary feet, till at last the abyss swallows us, and from the
shores of the Transitory we are hurled into the sea of the
Eternal.

At Charra we had a violent quarrel with the headman of the
bearers we had hired to go as far as this, and who now wished to
extort large extra payment from us. In the result he threatened
to set the Masai--about whom more anon--on to us. That night he,
with all our hired bearers, ran away, stealing most of the goods
which had been entrusted to them to carry. Luckily, however,
they had not happened to steal our rifles, ammunition, and
personal effects; not because of any delicacy of feeling on their
part, but owing to the fact that they chanced to be in the charge
of the five Wakwafis. After that, it was clear to us that we had
had enough of caravans and of bearers. Indeed, we had not much
left for a caravan to carry. And yet, how were we to get on?

It was Good who solved the question. 'Here is water,' he said,
pointing to the Tana River; 'and yesterday I saw a party of
natives hunting hippopotami in canoes. I understand that Mr
Mackenzie's mission station is on the Tana River. Why not get
into canoes and paddle up to it?'

This brilliant suggestion was, needless to say, received with
acclamation; and I instantly set to work to buy suitable canoes
from the surrounding natives. I succeeded after a delay of three
days in obtaining two large ones, each hollowed out of a single
log of some light wood, and capable of holding six people and
baggage. For these two canoes we had to pay nearly all our
remaining cloth, and also many other articles.

On the day following our purchase of the two canoes we effected a
start. In the first canoe were Good, Sir Henry, and three of our
Wakwafi followers; in the second myself, Umslopogaas, and the
other two Wakwafis. As our course lay upstream, we had to keep
four paddles at work in each canoe, which meant that the whole
lot of us, except Good, had to row away like galley-slaves; and
very exhausting work it was. I say, except Good, for, of course,
the moment that Good got into a boat his foot was on his native
heath, and he took command of the party. And certainly he worked
us. On shore Good is a gentle, mild-mannered man, and given to
jocosity; but, as we found to our cost, Good in a boat was a
perfect demon. To begin with, he knew all about it, and we
didn't. On all nautical subjects, from the torpedo fittings of a
man-of-war down to the best way of handling the paddle of an
African canoe, he was a perfect mine of information, which, to
say the least of it, we were not. Also his ideas of discipline
were of the sternest, and, in short, he came the royal naval
officer over us pretty considerably, and paid us out amply for
all the chaff we were wont to treat him to on land; but, on the
other hand, I am bound to say that he managed the boats
admirably.

After the first day Good succeeded, with the help of some cloth
and a couple of poles, in rigging up a sail in each canoe, which
lightened our labours not a little. But the current ran very
strong against us, and at the best we were not able to make more
than twenty miles a day. Our plan was to start at dawn, and
paddle along till about half-past ten, by which time the sun got
too hot to allow of further exertion. Then we moored our canoes
to the bank, and ate our frugal meal; after which we ate or
otherwise amused ourselves till about three o'clock, when we
again started, and rowed till within an hour of sundown, when we
called a halt for the night. On landing in the evening, Good
would at once set to work, with the help of the Askari, to build
a little 'scherm', or small enclosure, fenced with thorn bushes,
and to light a fire. I, with Sir Henry and Umslopogaas, would go
out to shoot something for the pot. Generally this was an easy
task, for all sorts of game abounded on the banks of the Tana.
One night Sir Henry shot a young cow-giraffe, of which the
marrow-bones were excellent; on another I got a couple of
waterbuck right and left; and once, to his own intense
satisfaction, Umslopogaas (who, like most Zulus, was a vile shot
with a rifle) managed to kill a fine fat eland with a Martini I
had lent him. Sometimes we varied our food by shooting some
guinea-fowl, or bush-bustard (paau)--both of which were
numerous--with a shot-gun, or by catching a supply of beautiful
yellow fish, with which the waters of the Tana swarmed, and which
form, I believe, one of the chief food-supplies of the
crocodiles.

Three days after our start an ominous incident occurred. We were
just drawing in to the bank to make our camp as usual for the
night, when we caught sight of a figure standing on a little
knoll not forty yards away, and intensely watching our approach.
One glance was sufficient--although I was personally unacquainted
with the tribe--to tell me that he was a Masai Elmoran, or young
warrior. Indeed, had I had any doubts, they would have quickly
been dispelled by the terrified ejaculation of 'MASAI!' that
burst simultaneously from the lips of our Wakwafi followers, who
are, as I think I have said, themselves bastard Masai.

And what a figure he presented as he stood there in his savage
war-gear! Accustomed as I have been to savages all my life, I do
not think that I have ever before seen anything quite so
ferocious or awe-inspiring. To begin with, the man was
enormously tall, quite as tall as Umslopogaas, I should say, and
beautifully, though somewhat slightly, shaped; but with the face
of a devil. In his right hand he held a spear about five and a
half feet long, the blade being two and a half feet in length, by
nearly three inches in width, and having an iron spike at the end
of the handle that measured more than a foot. On his left arm
was a large and well-made elliptical shield of buffalo hide, on
which were painted strange heraldic-looking devices. On his
shoulders was a huge cape of hawk's feathers, and round his neck
was a 'naibere', or strip of cotton, about seventeen feet long,
by one and a half broad, with a stripe of colour running down the
middle of it. The tanned goatskin robe, which formed his
ordinary attire in times of peace, was tied lightly round his
waist, so as to serve the purposes of a belt, and through it were
stuck, on the right and left sides respectively, his short
pear-shaped sime, or sword, which is made of a single piece of
steel, and carried in a wooden sheath, and an enormous
knobkerrie. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of his
attire consisted of a headdress of ostrich-feathers, which was
fixed on the chin, and passed in front of the ears to the
forehead, and, being shaped like an ellipse, completely framed
the face, so that the diabolical countenance appeared to project
from a sort of feather fire-screen. Round the ankles he wore
black fringes of hair, and, projecting from the upper portion of
the calves, to which they were attached, were long spurs like
spikes, from which flowed down tufts of the beautiful black and
waving hair of the Colobus monkey. Such was the elaborate array
of the Masai Elmoran who stood watching the approach of our two
canoes, but it is one which, to be appreciated, must be seen;
only those who see it do not often live to describe it. Of
course I could not make out all these details of his full dress
on the occasion of this my first introduction, being, indeed,
amply taken up with the consideration of the general effect, but
I had plenty of subsequent opportunities of becoming acquainted
with the items that went to make it up.

Whilst we were hesitating what to do, the Masai warrior drew
himself up in a dignified fashion, shook his huge spear at us,
and, turning, vanished on the further side of the slope.

'Hulloa!' holloaed Sir Henry from the other boat; 'our friend the
caravan leader has been as good as his word, and set the Masai
after us. Do you think it will be safe to go ashore?'

I did not think it would be at all safe; but, on the other hand,
we had no means of cooking in the canoes, and nothing that we
could eat raw, so it was difficult to know what to do. At last
Umslopogaas simplified matters by volunteering to go and
reconnoitre, which he did, creeping off into the bush like a
snake, while we hung off in the stream waiting for him. In half
an hour he returned, and told us that there was not a Masai to be
seen anywhere about, but that he had discovered a spot where they
had recently been encamped, and that from various indications he
judged that they must have moved on an hour or so before; the man
we saw having, no doubt, been left to report upon our movements.

Thereupon we landed; and, having posted a sentry, proceeded to
cook and eat our evening meal. This done, we took the situation
into our serious consideration. Of course, it was possible that
the apparition of the Masai warrior had nothing to do with us,
that he was merely one of a band bent upon some marauding and
murdering expedition against another tribe. But when we recalled
the threat of the caravan leader, and reflected on the ominous
way in which the warrior had shaken his spear at us, this did not
appear very probable. On the contrary, what did seem probable
was that the part was after us and awaiting a favourable
opportunity to attack us. This being so, there were two things
that we could do--one of which was to go on, and the other to go
back. The latter idea was, however, rejected at once, it being
obvious that we should encounter as many dangers in retreat as in
advance; and, besides, we had made up our minds to journey
onwards at any price. Under these circumstances, however, we did
not consider it safe to sleep ashore, so we got into our canoes,
and, paddling out into the middle of the stream, which was not
very wide here, managed to anchor them by means of big stones
fastened to ropes made of coconut-fibre, of which there were
several fathoms in each canoe.

Here the mosquitoes nearly ate us up alive, and this, combined
with anxiety as to our position, effectually prevented me from
sleeping as the others were doing, notwithstanding the attacks of
the aforesaid Tana mosquitoes. And so I lay awake, smoking and
reflecting on many things, but, being of a practical turn of
mind, chiefly on how we were to give those Masai villains the
slip. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and, notwithstanding
the mosquitoes, and the great risk we were running from fever
from sleeping in such a spot, and forgetting that I had the cramp
very badly in my right leg from squatting in a constrained
position in the canoe, and that the Wakwafi who was sleeping
beside me smelt horribly, I really began to enjoy myself. The
moonbeams played upon the surface of the running water that
speeded unceasingly past us towards the sea, like men's lives
towards the grave, till it glittered like a wide sheet of silver,
that is in the open where the trees threw no shadows. Near the
banks, however, it was very dark, and the night wind sighed sadly
in the reeds. To our left, on the further side of the river, was
a little sandy bay which was clear of trees, and here I could
make out the forms of numerous antelopes advancing to the water,
till suddenly there came an ominous roar, whereupon they all made
off hurriedly. Then after a pause I caught sight of the massive
form of His Majesty the Lion, coming down to drink his fill after
meat. Presently he moved on, then came a crashing of the reeds
about fifty yards above us, and a few minutes later a huge black
mass rose out of the water, about twenty yards from me, and
snorted. It was the head of a hippopotamus. Down it went
without a sound, only to rise again within five yards of where I
sat. This was decidedly too near to be comfortable, more
especially as the hippopotamus was evidently animated by intense
curiosity to know what on earth our canoes were. He opened his
great mouth, to yawn, I suppose, and gave me an excellent view of
his ivories; and I could not help reflecting how easily he could
crunch up our frail canoe with a single bite. Indeed, I had half
a mind to give him a ball from my eight-bore, but on reflection
determined to let him alone unless he actually charged the boat.
Presently he sank again as noiselessly as before, and I saw no
more of him. Just then, on looking towards the bank on our
right, I fancied that I caught sight of a dark figure flitting
between the tree trunks. I have very keen sight, and I was
almost sure that I saw something, but whether it was bird, beast,
or man I could not say. At the moment, however, a dark cloud
passed over the moon, and I saw no more of it. Just then, too,
although all the other sounds of the forest had ceased, a species
of horned owl with which I was well acquainted began to hoot with
great persistency. After that, save for the rustling of trees
and reeds when the wind caught them, there was complete silence.

But somehow, in the most unaccountable way, I had suddenly become
nervous. There was no particular reason why I should be, beyond
the ordinary reasons which surround the Central African
traveller, and yet I undoubtedly was. If there is one thing more
than another of which I have the most complete and entire scorn
and disbelief, it is of presentiments, and yet here I was all of
a sudden filled with and possessed by a most undoubted
presentiment of approaching evil. I would not give way to it,
however, although I felt the cold perspiration stand out upon my
forehead. I would not arouse the others. Worse and worse I
grew, my pulse fluttered like a dying man's, my nerves thrilled
with the horrible sense of impotent terror which anybody who is
subject to nightmare will be familiar with, but still my will
triumphed over my fears, and I lay quiet (for I was half sitting,
half lying, in the bow of the canoe), only turning my face so as
to command a view of Umslopogaas and the two Wakwafi who were
sleeping alongside of and beyond me.

In the distance I heard a hippopotamus splash faintly, then the
owl hooted again in a kind of unnatural screaming note, *{No
doubt this owl was a wingless bird. I afterwards learnt that the
hooting of an owl is a favourite signal among the Masai tribes.
--A. Q.} and the wind began to moan plaintively through the
trees, making a heart-chilling music. Above was the black bosom
of the cloud, and beneath me swept the black flood of the water,
and I felt as though I and Death were utterly alone between them.
It was very desolate.

Suddenly my blood seemed to freeze in my veins, and my heart to
stand still. Was it fancy, or were we moving? I turned my eyes
to look for the other canoe which should be alongside of us. I
could not see it, but instead I saw a lean and clutching black
hand lifting itself above the gunwale of the little boat. Surely
it was a nightmare! At the same instant a dim but
devilish-looking face appeared to rise out of the water, and then
came a lurch of the canoe, the quick flash of a knife, and an
awful yell from the Wakwafi who was sleeping by my side (the same
poor fellow whose odour had been annoying me), and something warm
spurted into my face. In an instant the spell was broken; I knew
that it was no nightmare, but that we were attacked by swimming
Masai. Snatching at the first weapon that came to hand, which
happened to be Umslopogaas' battleaxe, I struck with all my force
in the direction in which I had seen the flash of the knife. The
blow fell upon a man's arm, and, catching it against the thick
wooden gunwale of the canoe, completely severed it from the body
just above the wrist. As for its owner, he uttered no sound or
cry. Like a ghost he came, and like a ghost he went, leaving
behind him a bloody hand still gripping a great knife, or rather
a short sword, that was buried in the heart of our poor servant.

Instantly there arose a hubbub and confusion, and I fancied,
rightly or wrongly, that I made out several dark heads gliding
away towards the right-hand bank, whither we were rapidly
drifting, for the rope by which we were moored had been severed
with a knife. As soon as I had realized this fact, I also
realized that the scheme had been to cut the boat loose so that
it should drift on to the right bank (as it would have done with
the natural swing of the current), where no doubt a party of
Masai were waiting to dig their shovel-headed spears into us.
Seizing one paddle myself, I told Umslopogaas to take another
(for the remaining Askari was too frightened and bewildered to be
of any use), and together we rowed vigorously out towards the
middle of the stream; and not an instant too soon, for in another
minute we should have been aground, and then there would have
been an end of us.

As soon as we were well out, we set to work to paddle the canoe
upstream again to where the other was moored; and very hard and
dangerous work it was in the dark, and with nothing but the notes
of Good's stentorian shouts, which he kept firing off at
intervals like a fog-horn, to guide us. But at last we fetched
up, and were thankful to find that they had not been molested at
all. No doubt the owner of the same hand that severed our rope
should have severed theirs also, but was led away from his
purpose by an irresistible inclination to murder when he got the
chance, which, while it cost us a man and him his hand,
undoubtedly saved all the rest of us from massacre. Had it not
been for that ghastly apparition over the side of the boat--an
apparition that I shall never forget till my dying hour--the
canoe would undoubtedly have drifted ashore before I realized
what had happened, and this history would never have been written
by me.

CHAPTER III

THE MISSION STATION

We made the remains of our rope fast to the other canoe, and sat
waiting for the dawn and congratulating ourselves upon our
merciful escape, which really seemed to result more from the
special favour of Providence than from our own care or prowess.
At last it came, and I have not often been more grateful to see
the light, though so far as my canoe was concerned it revealed a
ghastly sight. There in the bottom of the little boat lay the
unfortunate Askari, the sime, or sword, in his bosom, and the
severed hand gripping the handle. I could not bear the sight, so
hauling up the stone which had served as an anchor to the other
canoe, we made it fast to the murdered man and dropped him
overboard, and down he went to the bottom, leaving nothing but a
train of bubbles behind him. Alas! when our time comes, most of
us like him leave nothing but bubbles behind, to show that we
have been, and the bubbles soon burst. The hand of his murderer
we threw into the stream, where it slowly sank. The sword, of
which the handle was ivory, inlaid with gold (evidently Arab
work), I kept and used as a hunting-knife, and very useful it
proved.

Then, a man having been transferred to my canoe, we once more
started on in very low spirits and not feeling at all comfortable
as to the future, but fondly hoping to arrive at the 'Highlands'
station by night. To make matters worse, within an hour of
sunrise it came on to rain in torrents, wetting us to the skin,
and even necessitating the occasional baling of the canoes, and
as the rain beat down the wind we could not use the sails, and
had to get along as best as we could with our paddles.

At eleven o'clock we halted on an open piece of ground on the
left bank of the river, and, the rain abating a little, managed
to make a fire and catch and broil some fish. We did not dare to
wander about to search for game. At two o'clock we got off
again, taking a supply of broiled fish with us, and shortly
afterwards the rain came on harder than ever. Also the river
began to get exceedingly difficult to navigate on account of the
numerous rocks, reaches of shallow water, and the increased force
of the current; so that it soon became clear to us that we should
not reach the Rev. Mackenzie's hospitable roof that night--a
prospect that did not tend to enliven us. Toil as we would, we
could not make more than an average of a mile an hour, and at
five o'clock in the afternoon (by which time we were all utterly
worn out) we reckoned that we were still quite ten miles below
the station. This being so, we set to work to make the best
arrangements we could for the night. After our recent
experience, we simply did not dare to land, more especially as
the banks of the Tana were clothed with dense bush that would
have given cover to five thousand Masai, and at first I thought
that we were going to have another night of it in the canoes.
Fortunately, however, we espied a little rocky islet, not more
than fifteen miles of so square, situated nearly in the middle of
the river. For this we paddled, and, making fast the canoes,
landed and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would
permit, which was very uncomfortable indeed. As for the weather,
it continued to be simply vile, the rain coming down in sheets
till we were chilled to the marrow, and utterly preventing us
from lighting a fire. There was, however, one consoling
circumstance about this rain; our Askari declared that nothing
would induce the Masai to make an attack in it, as they intensely
disliked moving about in the wet, perhaps, as Good suggested,
because they hate the idea of washing. We ate some insipid and
sodden cold fish--that is, with the exception of Umslopogaas,
who, like most Zulus, cannot bear fish--and took a pull of
brandy, of which we fortunately had a few bottles left, and then
began what, with one exception--when we same three white men
nearly perished of cold on the snow of Sheba's Breast in the
course of our journey to Kukuanaland--was, I think, the most
trying night I ever experienced. It seemed absolutely endless,
and once or twice I feared that two of the Askari would have died
of the wet, cold, and exposure. Indeed, had it not been for
timely doses of brandy I am sure that they would have died, for
no African people can stand much exposure, which first paralyses
and then kills them. I could see that even that iron old warrior
Umslopogaas felt it keenly; though, in strange contrast to the
Wakwafis, who groaned and bemoaned their fate unceasingly, he
never uttered a single complaint. To make matters worse, about
one in the morning we again heard the owl's ominous hooting, and
had at once to prepare ourselves for another attack; though, if
it had been attempted, I do not think that we could have offered
a very effective resistance. But either the owl was a real one
this time, or else the Masai were themselves too miserable to
think of offensive operations, which, indeed, they rarely, if
ever, undertake in bush veldt. At any rate, we saw nothing of
them.

At last the dawn came gliding across the water, wrapped in
wreaths of ghostly mist, and, with the daylight, the rain ceased;
and then, out came the glorious sun, sucking up the mists and
warming the chill air. Benumbed, and utterly exhausted, we
dragged ourselves to our feet, and went and stood in the bright
rays, and were thankful for them. I can quite understand how it
is that primitive people become sun worshippers, especially if
their conditions of life render them liable to exposure.

In half an hour more we were once again making fair progress with
the help of a good wind. Our spirits had returned with the
sunshine, and we were ready to laugh at difficulties and dangers
that had been almost crushing on the previous day.

And so we went on cheerily till about eleven o'clock. Just as we
were thinking of halting as usual, to rest and try to shoot
something to eat, a sudden bend in the river brought us in sight
of a substantial-looking European house with a veranda round it,
splendidly situated upon a hill, and surrounded by a high stone
wall with a ditch on the outer side. Right against and
overshadowing the house was an enormous pine, the tope of which
we had seen through a glass for the last two days, but of course
without knowing that it marked the site of the mission station.
I was the first to see the house, and could not restrain myself
from giving a hearty cheer, in which the others, including the
natives, joined lustily. There was no thought of halting now.
On we laboured, for, unfortunately, though the house seemed quite
near, it was still a long way off by river, until at last, by one
o'clock, we found ourselves at the bottom of the slope on which
the building stood. Running the canoes to the bank, we
disembarked, and were just hauling them up on to the shore, when
we perceived three figures, dressed in ordinary English-looking
clothes, hurrying down through a grove of trees to meet us.

'A gentleman, a lady, and a little girl,' ejaculated Good, after
surveying the trio through his eyeglass, 'walking in a civilized
fashion, through a civilized garden, to meet us in this place.
Hang me, if this isn't the most curious thing we have seen yet!'

Good was right: it certainly did seem odd and out of place--more
like a scene out of a dream or an Italian opera than a real
tangible fact; and the sense of unreality was not lessened when
we heard ourselves addressed in good broad Scotch, which,
however, I cannot reproduce.

'How do you do, sirs,' said Mr Mackenzie, a grey-haired, angular
man, with a kindly face and red cheeks; 'I hope I see you very
well. My natives told me an hour ago they spied two canoes with
white men in them coming up the river; so we have just come down
to meet you.'

'And it is very glad that we are to see a white face again, let
me tell you,' put in the lady--a charming and refined-looking
person.

We took off our hats in acknowledgment, and proceeded to
introduce ourselves.

'And now,' said Mr Mackenzie, 'you must all be hungry and weary;
so come on, gentlemen, come on, and right glad we are to see you.
The last white who visited us was Alphonse--you will see Alphonse
presently--and that was a year ago.'

Meanwhile we had been walking up the slope of the hill, the lower
portion of which was fenced off, sometimes with quince fences and
sometimes with rough stone walls, into Kaffir gardens, just now
full of crops of mealies, pumpkins, potatoes, etc. In the
corners of these gardens were groups of neat mushroom-shaped
huts, occupied by Mr Mackenzie's mission natives, whose women and
children came pouring out to meet us as we walked. Through the
centre of the gardens ran the roadway up which we were walking.
It was bordered on each side by a line of orange trees, which,
although they had only been planted ten years, had in the lovely
climate of the uplands below Mt Kenia, the base of which is about
5,000 feet above the coastline level, already grown to imposing
proportions, and were positively laden with golden fruit. After
a stiffish climb of a quarter of a mile or so--for the hillside
was steep--we came to a splendid quince fence, also covered with
fruit, which enclosed, Mr Mackenzie told us, a space of about
four acres of ground that contained his private garden, house,
church, and outbuildings, and, indeed, the whole hilltop. And
what a garden it was! I have always loved a good garden, and I
could have thrown up my hands for joy when I saw Mr Mackenzie's.
First there were rows upon rows of standard European fruit-trees,
all grafted; for on top of this hill the climate was so temperate
that nearly all the English vegetables, trees, and flowers
flourished luxuriantly, even including several varieties of the
apple, which, generally, runs to wood in a warm climate and
obstinately refuses to fruit. Then there were strawberries and
tomatoes (such tomatoes!), and melons and cucumbers, and, indeed,
every sort of vegetable and fruit.

'Well, you have something like a garden!' I said, overpowered
with admiration not untouched by envy.

'Yes,' answered the missionary, 'it is a very good garden, and
has well repaid my labour; but it is the climate that I have to
thank. If you stick a peach-stone into the ground it will bear
fruit the fourth year, and a rose-cutting with bloom in a year.
It is a lovely clime.'

Just then we came to a ditch about ten feet wide, and full of
water, on the other side of which was a loopholed stone wall
eight feet high, and with sharp flints plentifully set in mortar
on the coping.

'There,' said Mr Mackenzie, pointing to the ditch and wall, 'this
is my magnum opus; at least, this and the church, which is the
other side of the house. It took me and twenty natives two years
to dig the ditch and build the wall, but I never felt safe till
it was done; and now I can defy all the savages in Africa, for
the spring that fills the ditch is inside the wall, and bubbles
out at the top of the hill winter and summer alike, and I always
keep a store of four months' provision in the house.'

Crossing over a plank and through a very narrow opening in the
wall, we entered into what Mrs Mackenzie called HER
domain--namely, the flower garden, the beauty of which is really
beyond my power to describe. I do not think I ever saw such
roses, gardenias, or camellias (all reared from seeds or cuttings
sent from England); and there was also a patch given up to a
collection of bulbous roots mostly collected by Miss Flossie, Mr
Mackenzie's little daughter, from the surrounding country, some
of which were surpassingly beautiful. In the middle of this
garden, and exactly opposite the veranda, a beautiful fountain of
clear water bubbled up from the ground, and fell into a
stone-work basin which had been carefully built to receive it,
whence the overflow found its way by means of a drain to the moat
round the outer wall, this moat in its turn serving as a
reservoir, whence an unfailing supply of water was available to
irrigate all the gardens below. The house itself, a massively
built single-storied building, was roofed with slabs of stone,
and had a handsome veranda in front. It was built on three sides
of a square, the fourth side being taken up by the kitchens,
which stood separate from the house--a very good plan in a hot
country. In the centre of this square thus formed was, perhaps,
the most remarkable object that we had yet seen in this charming
place, and that was a single tree of the conifer tribe, varieties
of which grow freely on the highlands of this part of Africa.
This splendid tree, which Mr Mackenzie informed us was a landmark
for fifty miles round, and which we had ourselves seen for the
last forty miles of our journey, must have been nearly three
hundred feet in height, the trunk measuring about sixteen feet in
diameter at a yard from the ground. For some seventy feet it
rose a beautiful tapering brown pillar without a single branch,
but at that height splendid dark green boughs, which, looked at
from below, had the appearance of gigantic fern-leaves, sprang
out horizontally from the trunk, projecting right over the house
and flower-garden, to both of which they furnished a grateful
proportion of shade, without--being so high up--offering any
impediment to the passage of light and air.

'What a beautiful tree!' exclaimed Sir Henry.

'Yes, you are right; it is a beautiful tree. There is not
another like it in all the country round, that I know of,'
answered Mr Mackenzie. 'I call it my watch tower. As you see, I
have a rope ladder fixed to the lowest bough; and if I want to
see anything that is going on within fifteen miles or so, all I
have to do is to run up it with a spyglass. But you must be
hungry, and I am sure the dinner is cooked. Come in, my friends;
it is but a rough place, but well enough for these savage parts;
and I can tell you what, we have got--a French cook.'  And he led
the way on to the veranda.

As I was following him, and wondering what on earth he could mean
by this, there suddenly appeared, through the door that opened on
to the veranda from the house, a dapper little man, dressed in a
neat blue cotton suit, with shoes made of tanned hide, and
remarkable for a bustling air and most enormous black mustachios,
shaped into an upward curve, and coming to a point for all the
world like a pair of buffalo-horns.

'Madame bids me for to say that dinnar is sarved. Messieurs, my
compliments;' then suddenly perceiving Umslopogaas, who was
loitering along after us and playing with his battleaxe, he threw
up his hands in astonishment. 'Ah, mais quel homme!' he
ejaculated in French, 'quel sauvage affreux! Take but note of
his huge choppare and the great pit in his head.'

'Ay,' said Mr Mackenzie; 'what are you talking about, Alphonse?'

'Talking about!' replied the little Frenchman, his eyes still
fixed upon Umslopogaas, whose general appearance seemed to
fascinate him; 'why I talk of him'--and he rudely pointed--'of ce
monsieur noir.'

At this everybody began to laugh, and Umslopogaas, perceiving
that he was the object of remark, frowned ferociously, for he had
a most lordly dislike of anything like a personal liberty.

'Parbleu!' said Alphonse, 'he is angered--he makes the grimace.
I like not his air. I vanish.'  And he did with considerable
rapidity.

Mr Mackenzie joined heartily in the shout of laughter which we
indulged in. 'He is a queer character--Alphonse,' he said. 'By
and by I will tell you his history; in the meanwhile let us try
his cooking.'

'Might I ask,' said Sir Henry, after we had eaten a most
excellent dinner, 'how you came to have a French cook in these
wilds?'

'Oh,' answered Mrs Mackenzie, 'he arrived here of his own accord
about a year ago, and asked to be taken into our service. He had
got into some trouble in France, and fled to Zanzibar, where he
found an application had been made by the French Government for
his extradition. Whereupon he rushed off up-country, and fell
in, when nearly starved, with our caravan of men, who were
bringing us our annual supply of goods, and was brought on here.
You should get him to tell you the story.'

When dinner was over we lit our pipes, and Sir Henry proceeded to
give our host a description of our journey up here, over which he
looked very grave.

'It is evident to me,' he said, 'that those rascally Masai are
following you, and I am very thankful that you have reached this
house in safety. I do not think that they will dare to attack
you here. It is unfortunate, though, that nearly all my men have
gone down to the coast with ivory and goods. There are two
hundred of them in the caravan, and the consequence is that I
have not more than twenty men available for defensive purposes in
case they should attack us. But, still, I will just give a few
orders;' and, calling a black man who was loitering about outside
in the garden, he went to the window, and addressed him in a
Swahili dialect. The man listened, and then saluted and
departed.

'I am sure I devoutly hope that we shall bring no such calamity
upon you,' said I, anxiously, when he had taken his seat again.
'Rather than bring those bloodthirsty villains about your ears,
we will move on and take our chance.'

'You will do nothing of the sort. If the Masai come, they come,
and there is an end on it; and I think we can give them a pretty
warm greeting. I would not show any man the door for all the
Masai in the world.'

'That reminds me,' I said, 'the Consul at Lamu told me that he
had had a letter from you, in which you said that a man had
arrived here who reported that he had come across a white people
in the interior. Do you think that there was any truth in his
story? I ask, because I have once or twice in my life heard
rumours from natives who have come down from the far north of the
existence of such a race.'

Mr Mackenzie, by way of answer, went out of the room and
returned, bringing with him a most curious sword. It was long,
and all the blade, which was very thick and heavy, was to within
a quarter of an inch of the cutting edge worked into an
ornamental pattern exactly as we work soft wood with a fret-saw,
the steel, however, being invariably pierced in such a way as not
to interfere with the strength of the sword. This in itself was
sufficiently curious, but what was still more so was that all the
edges of the hollow spaces cut through the substance of the blade
were most beautifully inlaid with gold, which was in some way
that I cannot understand welded on to the steel. *{Since I saw
the above I have examined hundreds of these swords, but have
never been able to discover how the gold plates were inlaid in
the fretwork. The armourers who make them in Zu-vendis bind
themselves by oath not to reveal the secret. --A. Q.}

'There,' said Mr Mackenzie, 'did you ever see a sword like that?'

We all examined it and shook our heads.

'Well, I have got it to show you, because this is what the man
who said he had seen the white people brought with him, and
because it does more or less give an air of truth to what I
should otherwise have set down as a lie. Look here; I will tell
you all that I know about the matter, which is not much. One
afternoon, just before sunset, I was sitting on the veranda, when
a poor, miserable, starved-looking man came limping up and
squatted down before me. I asked him where he came from and what
he wanted, and thereon he plunged into a long rambling narrative
about how he belonged to a tribe far in the north, and how his
tribe was destroyed by another tribe, and he with a few other
survivors driven still further north past a lake named Laga.
Thence, it appears, he made his way to another lake that lay up
in the mountains, "a lake without a bottom" he called it, and
here his wife and brother died of an infectious
sickness--probably smallpox--whereon the people drove him out of
their villages into the wilderness, where he wandered miserably
over mountains for ten days, after which he got into dense thorn
forest, and was one day found there by some WHITE MEN who were
hunting, and who took him to a place where all the people were
white and lived in stone houses. Here he remained a week shut up
in a house, till one night a man with a white beard, whom he
understood to be a "medicine-man", came and inspected him, after
which he was led off and taken through the thorn forest to the
confines of the wilderness, and given food and this sword (at
least so he said), and turned loose.'

'Well,' said Sir Henry, who had been listening with breathless
interest, 'and what did he do then?'

'Oh! he seems, according to his account, to have gone through
sufferings and hardships innumerable, and to have lived for weeks
on roots and berries, and such things as he could catch and kill.
But somehow he did live, and at last by slow degrees made his way
south and reached this place. What the details of his journey
were I never learnt, for I told him to return on the morrow,
bidding one of my headmen look after him for the night. The
headman took him away, but the poor man had the itch so badly
that the headman's wife would not have him in the hut for fear of
catching it, so he was given a blanket and told to sleep outside.
As it happened, we had a lion hanging about here just then, and
most unhappily he winded this unfortunate wanderer, and,
springing on him, bit his head almost off without the people in
the hut knowing anything about it, and there was an end of him
and his story about the white people; and whether or no there is
any truth in it is more than I can tell you. What do you think,
Mr Quatermain?'

I shook my head, and answered, 'I don't know. There are so many
queer things hidden away in the heart of this great continent
that I should be sorry to assert that there was no truth in it.
Anyhow, we mean to try and find out. We intend to journey to
Lekakisera, and thence, if we live to get so far, to this Lake
Laga; and, if there are any white people beyond, we will do our
best to find them.'

'You are very venturesome people,' said Mr Mackenzie, with a
smile, and the subject dropped.

CHAPTER IV

ALPHONSE AND HIS ANNETTE

After dinner we thoroughly inspected all the outbuildings and
grounds of the station, which I consider the most successful as
well as the most beautiful place of the sort that I have seen in
Africa. We then returned to the veranda, where we found
Umslopogaas taking advantage of this favourable opportunity to
clean all the rifles thoroughly. This was the only WORK that he
ever did or was asked to do, for as a Zulu chief it was beneath
his dignity to work with his hands; but such as it was he did it
very well. It was a curious sight to see the great Zulu sitting
there upon the floor, his battleaxe resting against the wall
behind him, whilst his long aristocratic-looking hands were
busily employed, delicately and with the utmost care, cleaning
the mechanism of the breech-loaders. He had a name for each gun.
One--a double four-bore belonging to Sir Henry--was the
Thunderer; another, my 500 Express, which had a peculiarly sharp
report, was 'the little one who spoke like a whip'; the
Winchester repeaters were 'the women, who talked so fast that you
could not tell one word from another'; the six Martinis were 'the
common people'; and so on with them all. It was very curious to
hear him addressing each gun as he cleaned it, as though it were
an individual, and in a vein of the quaintest humour. He did the
same with his battle-axe, which he seemed to look upon as an
intimate friend, and to which he would at times talk by the hour,
going over all his old adventures with it--and dreadful enough
some of them were. By a piece of grim humour, he had named this
axe 'Inkosi-kaas', which is the Zulu word for chieftainess. For
a long while I could not make out why he gave it such a name, and
at last I asked him, when he informed me that the axe was very
evidently feminine, because of her womanly habit of prying very
deep into things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because
all men fell down before her, struck dumb at the sight of her
beauty and power. In the same way he would consult 'Inkosi-kaas'
if in any dilemma; and when I asked him why he did so, he
informed me it was because she must needs be wise, having 'looked
into so many people's brains'.

I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon.
It was, as I have said, of the nature of a pole-axe. The haft,
made out of an enormous rhinoceros horn, was three feet three
inches long, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob
at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent
the hand from slipping. This horn haft, though so massive, was
as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make
assurance doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a few
inches with copper wire--all the parts where the hands grip being
thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the head were
scored a number of little nicks, each nick representing a man
killed in battle with the weapon. The axe itself was made of the
most beautiful steel, and apparently of European manufacture,
though Umslopogaas did not know where it came from, having taken
it from the hand of a chief he had killed in battle many years
before. It was not very heavy, the head weighing two and a half
pounds, as nearly as I could judge. The cutting part was
slightly concave in shape--not convex, as it generally the case
with savage battleaxes--and sharp as a razor, measuring five and
three-quarter inches across the widest part. From the back of
the axe sprang a stout spike four inches long, for the last two
of which it was hollow, and shaped like a leather punch, with an
opening for anything forced into the hollow at the punch end to
be pushed out above--in fact, in this respect it exactly
resembled a butcher's pole-axe. It was with this punch end, as
we afterwards discovered, that Umslopogaas usually struck when
fighting, driving a neat round hole in his adversary's skull, and
only using the broad cutting edge for a circular sweep, or
sometimes in a melee. I think he considered the punch a neater
and more sportsmanlike tool, and it was from his habit of pecking
at his enemy with it that he got his name of 'Woodpecker'.
Certainly in his hands it was a terribly efficient one.

Such was Umslopogaas' axe, Inkosi-kaas, the most remarkable and
fatal hand-to-hand weapon that I ever saw, and one which he
cherished as much as his own life. It scarcely ever left his
hand except when he was eating, and then he always sat with it
under his leg.

Just as I returned his axe to Umslopogaas, Miss Flossie came up
and took me off to see her collection of flowers, African
liliums, and blooming shrubs, some of which are very beautiful,
many of the varieties being quite unknown to me and also, I
believe, to botanical science. I asked her if she had ever seen
or heard of the 'Goya' lily, which Central African explorers have
told me they have occasionally met with and whose wonderful
loveliness has filled them with astonishment. This lily, which
the natives say blooms only once in ten years, flourishes in the
most arid soil. Compared to the size of the bloom, the bulb is
small, generally weighing about four pounds. As for the flower
itself (which I afterwards saw under circumstances likely to
impress its appearance fixedly in my mind), I know not how to
describe its beauty and splendour, or the indescribable sweetness
of its perfume. The flower--for it has only one bloom--rises
from the crown of the bulb on a thick fleshy and flat-sided stem,
the specimen that I saw measured fourteen inches in diameter, and
is somewhat trumpet-shaped like the bloom of an ordinary
'longiflorum' set vertically. First there is the green sheath,
which in its early stage is not unlike that of a water-lily, but
which as the bloom opens splits into four portions and curls back
gracefully towards the stem. Then comes the bloom itself, a
single dazzling arch of white enclosing another cup of richest
velvety crimson, from the heart of which rises a golden-coloured
pistil. I have never seen anything to equal this bloom in beauty
or fragrance, and as I believe it is but little known, I take the
liberty to describe it at length. Looking at it for the first
time I well remember that I realized how even in a flower there
dwells something of the majesty of its Maker. To my great
delight Miss Flossie told me that she knew the flower well and
had tried to grow it in her garden, but without success, adding,
however, that as it should be in bloom at this time of the year
she thought that she could procure me a specimen.

After that I fell to asking her if she was not lonely up here
among all these savage people and without any companions of her
own age.

'Lonely?' she said. 'Oh, indeed no! I am as happy as the day is
long, and besides I have my own companions. Why, I should hate
to be buried in a crowd of white girls all just like myself so
that nobody could tell the difference! Here,' she said, giving
her head a little toss, 'I am I; and every native for miles
around knows the "Water-lily",--for that is what they call
me--and is ready to do what I want, but in the books that I have