King Solomon’s Mines. Henry Rider Haggard

First, I am a fatalist, and believe that my time is appointed to come without reference to my own movements and will, and that if I am to go to Suliman’s Mountains to be killed, I shall go there and shall be killed. God Almighty, no doubt, knows His mind about me, so I need not trouble on that point. Secondly, I am a poor man. For nearly forty years I have hunted and traded, but I have never made more than a living. Well, gentlemen; I don’t know if you are aware that the average life of an elephant hunter from the time he takes to the trade is between four and five years. So you see I have lived through about seven generations of my class, and I should think that my time cannot be far off, anyway. Now, if anything were to happen to me in the ordinary course of business, by the time my debts are paid there would be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he was getting in the way of earning his bread, whereas now he will be set up for five years. There is the whole affair in a nutshell.’

      ‘Mr Quatermain,’ said Sir Henry, who had been giving me his most serious attention, ‘your motives for undertaking an enterprise which you believe can only end in disaster reflect a great deal of credit on you. Whether or not you are right, of course time and the event alone can show. But whether you are right or wrong, I may as well tell you at once that I am going through with it to the end, sweet or bitter. If we are to be knocked on the head, all I have to say is, that I hope we get a little shooting first, eh, Good?’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ put in the captain. ‘We have all three of us been accustomed to face danger, and to hold our lives in our hands in various ways, so it is no good turning back now. And so I vote we go down to the saloon and take an observation just for luck, you know.’ And we did – through the bottom of a tumbler.

      Next day we went ashore, and I put up Sir Henry and Captain Good at the little grey shanty I have built on the Berea, which I call my home. There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is constructed of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden with the best loquot trees in it that I know, and some nice young mangoes, of which I hope great things. The curator of the botanical gardens gave them to me. It is looked after by an old hunter of mine named Jack, whose thigh was so badly broken by a buffalo cow in Sikukuni’s country that he will never hunt again. But he can potter about and garden, being a Griqua by birth. You will never persuade a Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and peaceful arts are not in his line.

      Sir Henry and Good slept in a tent pitched in my little grove of orange trees at the end of the garden, for there was no room for them in the house. What with the smell of the bloom, and the sight of the green and golden fruit – in Durban you will see all three on the tree together – I daresay it is a pleasant place enough, for we have few mosquitoes here on the Berea, unless there happens to come an unusually heavy rain.

      Well, to get on – for if I do not, Harry, you will be tired of my story before ever we fetch up at Suliman’s Mountains – having once made up my mind to go I set about making the necessary preparations. First I secured the deed from Sir Henry, providing for you, my boy, in case of accidents. There was some difficulty about its legal execution, as Sir Henry was a stranger here, and the property to be charged is over the water; but is was ultimately got over with the help of a lawyer, who charged £20 for the job – a price that I thought outrageous. Then I pocketed my cheque for £500.

      Having paid this tribute to my bump of caution, I purchased a wagon and a span of oxen on Sir Henry’s behalf, and beauties they were. It was a twenty-two-foot wagon with iron axles, very strong, very light, and built throughout of stink-wood; not quite a new one, having been to the Diamond Fields and back, but, in my opinion, all the better for that, for I could see that the wood was well seasoned. If anything is going to give in a wagon, or if there is green wood in it, it will show out on the first trip. This particular vehicle was what we call a ‘half-tented’ wagon, that is to say, only covered in over and after twelve feet, leaving all the front part free for the necessaries we had to carry with us. In this after part were a hide ‘cartle,’ or bed, on which two people could sleep, also racks for rifles, and many other little conveniences. I gave £125 for it, and think that it was cheap at the price.

      Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept my eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a team, but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle are small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander oxen, which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will live where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can make five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly ‘salted,’ that is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof, comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange ‘veld’ or grass country. As for ‘lung sick,’ which is a dreadful form of pneumonia, very prevalent in this country, they had all been inoculated against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of an ox, and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule about a foot from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks. It seems cruel to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country where there are so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail and keep the ox than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an ox is not much good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It seems as though Nature had made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern ornaments of a lot of prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.

      Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely necessary. Fortunately, it turned out that Good is a bit of a doctor, having at some period in his previous career managed to pass through a course of medical and surgical instruction, which he has more or less kept up. He is not, of course, qualified, but he knows more about it than many a man who can write M.D. after his name, as we found out afterwards, and he had a splendid travelling medicine chest and a set of instruments. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir’s big toe in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him to put on another, saying that a ‘white one’ would do at a pinch.

      There remained, when these questions were satisfactorily settled, two further important points for consideration, namely, that of arms, and that of servants. As to the arms I cannot do better than put down a list of those which we finally decided on from among the ample store that Sir Henry had brought with him from England, and those which I owned. I copy it from my pocket-book, where I made the entry at the time.

      ‘Three heavy breech-loading double-eight elephant guns, weighing about fifteen pounds each, to carry a charge of eleven drachms of black powder.’ Two of these were by a well-known London firm, most excellent makers, but I do not know by whom mine, which is not so highly finished, was made. I have used it on several trips, and shot a good many elephants with it, and it has always proved a most superior weapon, thoroughly to be relied on.

      ‘Three double-500 Expresses, constructed to stand a charge of six drachms,’ sweet weapons, and admirable for medium-sized game, such as eland or sable antelope, or for men, especially in an open country and with the semi-hollow bullet.

      ‘One double No. 12 central-fire Keeper’s shot-gun, full choke both barrels.’ This gun proved of the greatest service to us afterwards in shooting birds for the pot.

      ‘Three Winchester repeating rifles (not carbines), spare guns.

      ‘Three single-action Colt’s revolvers, with the heavier or American pattern of cartridge.’

      This was our total armament, and doubtless the reader will observe that the weapons of each class were of the same make and calibre, so that the cartridges were interchangeable, a very important point. I make no apology for detailing it at length, as every experienced hunter will know how vital a proper supply of guns and ammunition is to the success of an expedition.

      Now as to the men who were to go with us. After much consultation, we decided that their number should be limited