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Page 5
KING SOLOMON'S MINES
CHAPTER I
I MEET SIR HENRY CURTIS
It is a curious thing that at my age--fifty-five last birthday--I
should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder
what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I
come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my
life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so
young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning
my living as a trader in the old Colony. I have been trading, hunting,
fighting, or mining ever since. And yet it is only eight months ago
that I made my pile. It is a big pile now that I have got it--I don't
yet know how big--but I do not think I would go through the last
fifteen or sixteen months again for it; no, not if I knew that I
should come out safe at the end, pile and all. But then I am a timid
man, and dislike violence; moreover, I am almost sick of adventure. I
wonder why I am going to write this book: it is not in my line. I am
not a literary man, though very devoted to the Old Testament and also
to the "Ingoldsby Legends." Let me try to set down my reasons, just to
see if I have any.
First reason: Because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good asked me.
Second reason: Because I am laid up here at Durban with the pain in my
left leg. Ever since that confounded lion got hold of me I have been
liable to this trouble, and being rather bad just now, it makes me
limp more than ever. There must be some poison in a lion's teeth,
otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out
again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your
mauling? It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or
more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should
chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the
thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and
don't like that. This is by the way.
Third reason: Because I want my boy Harry, who is over there at the
hospital in London studying to become a doctor, to have something to
amuse him and keep him out of mischief for a week or so. Hospital work
must sometimes pall and grow rather dull, for even of cutting up dead
bodies there may come satiety, and as this history will not be dull,
whatever else it may be, it will put a little life into things for a
day or two while Harry is reading of our adventures.
Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story
that I remember. It may seem a queer thing to say, especially
considering that there is no woman in it--except Foulata. Stop,
though! there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But
she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don't
count her. At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a
/petticoat/ in the whole history.
Well, I had better come to the yoke. It is a stiff place, and I feel
as though I were bogged up to the axle. But, "/sutjes, sutjes/," as
the Boers say--I am sure I don't know how they spell it--softly does
it. A strong team will come through at last, that is, if they are not
too poor. You can never do anything with poor oxen. Now to make a
start.
I, Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman, make oath and say--
That's how I headed my deposition before the magistrate about poor
Khiva's and Ventv�gel's sad deaths; but somehow it doesn't seem quite
the right way to begin a book. And, besides, am I a gentleman? What is
a gentleman? I don't quite know, and yet I have had to do with niggers
--no, I will scratch out that word "niggers," for I do not like it.
I've known natives who /are/, and so you will say, Harry, my boy,
before you have done with this tale, and I have known mean whites with
lots of money and fresh out from home, too, who /are not/.
At any rate, I was born a gentleman, though I have been nothing but a
poor travelling trader and hunter all my life. Whether I have remained
so I known not, you must judge of that. Heaven knows I've tried. I
have killed many men in my time, yet I have never slain wantonly or
stained my hand in innocent blood, but only in self-defence. The
Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them,
at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be
brought up against me when my clock strikes. There, there, it is a
cruel and a wicked world, and for a timid man I have been mixed up in
a great deal of fighting. I cannot tell the rights of it, but at any
rate I have never stolen, though once I cheated a Kafir out of a herd
of cattle. But then he had done me a dirty turn, and it has troubled
me ever since into the bargain.
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