CHAPTER 1
THE INTEREST ON TEN SHILLINGS
Most of you will have heard that Allan Quatermain, who was one of the
party that discovered King Solomon’s mines some little time ago, and who
afterwards came to live in England near his friend Sir Henry Curtis, went
back to the wilderness again, as these old hunters almost invariably do, on
one pretext or another.*
[* This of course was written before Mr. Quatermain’s
account of the adventures in the newly-discovered country of Zu-Vendis of
himself, Sir Henry Curtis, and Capt. John Good had been received in England.
—Editor. ]
They cannot endure civilization for very long, its noise and racket and
the omnipresence of broad-clothed humanity proving more trying to their
nerves than the dangers of the desert. I think that they feel lonely here,
for it is a fact that is too little understood, though it has often been
stated, that there is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially
to those who are unaccustomed to them. “What is there in the world,” old
Quatermain would say, “so desolate as to stand in the streets of a great city
and listen to the footsteps falling, falling, multitudinous as the rain, and
watch the white line of faces as they hurry past, you know not whence, you
know not whither? They come and go, their eyes meet yours with a cold stare,
for a moment their features are written on your mind, and then they are gone
for ever. You will never see them again; they will never see you again; they
come up out of the unknown, and presently they once more vanish into the
unknown, taking their secrets with them. Yes, that is loneliness pure and
undefiled; but to one who knows and loves it, the wilderness is not lonely,
because the spirit of nature is ever there to keep the wanderer company. He
finds companions in the winds—the sunny streams babble like Nature’s
children at his feet; high above them, in the purple sunset, are domes and
minarets and palaces, such as no mortal man has built, in and out of whose
flaming doors the angels of the sun seem to move continually. And there, too,
is the wild game, following its feeding-grounds in great armies, with the
springbuck thrown out before for skirmishers; then rank upon rank of
long-faced blesbuck, marching and wheeling like infantry; and last the
shining troops of quagga, and the fierce-eyed shaggy vilderbeeste to take, as
it were, the place of the cossack host that hangs upon an army’s flanks.
“Oh, no,” he would say, “the wilderness is not lonely, for, my boy,
remember that the further you get from man, the nearer you grow to God,” and
though this is a saying that might well be disputed, it is one I am sure that
anybody will easily understand who has watched the sun rise and set on the
limitless deserted plains, and seen the thunder chariots of the clouds roll
in majesty across the depths of unfathomable sky.
Well, at any rate we went back again, and now for many months I have heard
nothing at all of him, and to be frank, I greatly doubt if anybody will ever
hear of him again. I fear that the wilderness, that has for so many years
been a mother to him, will now also prove his grave and the grave of those
who accompanied him, for the quest upon which he and they have started is a
wild one indeed.
But while he was in England for those three years or so between his return
from the successful discovery of the wise king’s buried treasures, and the
death of his only son, I saw a great deal of old Allan Quatermain. I had
known him years before in Africa, and after he came home, whenever I had
nothing better to do, I used to run up to Yorkshire and stay with him, and in
this way I at one time and another heard many of the incidents of his past
life, and most curious some of them were. No man can pass all those years
following the rough existence of an elephant-hunter without meeting with many
strange adventures, and in one way and another old
THE INTEREST ON TEN SHILLINGS
Most of you will have heard that Allan Quatermain, who was one of the
party that discovered King Solomon’s mines some little time ago, and who
afterwards came to live in England near his friend Sir Henry Curtis, went
back to the wilderness again, as these old hunters almost invariably do, on
one pretext or another.*
[* This of course was written before Mr. Quatermain’s
account of the adventures in the newly-discovered country of Zu-Vendis of
himself, Sir Henry Curtis, and Capt. John Good had been received in England.
—Editor. ]
They cannot endure civilization for very long, its noise and racket and
the omnipresence of broad-clothed humanity proving more trying to their
nerves than the dangers of the desert. I think that they feel lonely here,
for it is a fact that is too little understood, though it has often been
stated, that there is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially
to those who are unaccustomed to them. “What is there in the world,” old
Quatermain would say, “so desolate as to stand in the streets of a great city
and listen to the footsteps falling, falling, multitudinous as the rain, and
watch the white line of faces as they hurry past, you know not whence, you
know not whither? They come and go, their eyes meet yours with a cold stare,
for a moment their features are written on your mind, and then they are gone
for ever. You will never see them again; they will never see you again; they
come up out of the unknown, and presently they once more vanish into the
unknown, taking their secrets with them. Yes, that is loneliness pure and
undefiled; but to one who knows and loves it, the wilderness is not lonely,
because the spirit of nature is ever there to keep the wanderer company. He
finds companions in the winds—the sunny streams babble like Nature’s
children at his feet; high above them, in the purple sunset, are domes and
minarets and palaces, such as no mortal man has built, in and out of whose
flaming doors the angels of the sun seem to move continually. And there, too,
is the wild game, following its feeding-grounds in great armies, with the
springbuck thrown out before for skirmishers; then rank upon rank of
long-faced blesbuck, marching and wheeling like infantry; and last the
shining troops of quagga, and the fierce-eyed shaggy vilderbeeste to take, as
it were, the place of the cossack host that hangs upon an army’s flanks.
“Oh, no,” he would say, “the wilderness is not lonely, for, my boy,
remember that the further you get from man, the nearer you grow to God,” and
though this is a saying that might well be disputed, it is one I am sure that
anybody will easily understand who has watched the sun rise and set on the
limitless deserted plains, and seen the thunder chariots of the clouds roll
in majesty across the depths of unfathomable sky.
Well, at any rate we went back again, and now for many months I have heard
nothing at all of him, and to be frank, I greatly doubt if anybody will ever
hear of him again. I fear that the wilderness, that has for so many years
been a mother to him, will now also prove his grave and the grave of those
who accompanied him, for the quest upon which he and they have started is a
wild one indeed.
But while he was in England for those three years or so between his return
from the successful discovery of the wise king’s buried treasures, and the
death of his only son, I saw a great deal of old Allan Quatermain. I had
known him years before in Africa, and after he came home, whenever I had
nothing better to do, I used to run up to Yorkshire and stay with him, and in
this way I at one time and another heard many of the incidents of his past
life, and most curious some of them were. No man can pass all those years
following the rough existence of an elephant-hunter without meeting with many
strange adventures, and in one way and another old
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