King Solomon's Mines (7 page)

“ ‘Jim,’ said I, ‘where are you off to this trip? Is it elephants?’

“ ‘No, Baas,’
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he answered, ‘we are after something worth more than ivory.’

“ ‘And what might that be?’ I said, for I was curious. ‘Is it gold?’

“ ‘No, Baas, something worth more than gold,’ and he grinned.

“I did not ask any more questions, for I did not like to lower my dignity by seeming curious, but I was puzzled. Presently Jim finished cutting his tobacco.

“ ‘Baas,’ said he.

“I took no notice.

“ ‘Baas,’ said he again.

“Eh, boy, what is it?’ said I.

“ ‘Baas, we are going after diamonds.’

“ ‘Diamonds! why, then, you are going in the wrong direction; you should head for the Fields.’

“‘Baas, have you ever heard of Suliman’s Berg?’ (Solomon’s Mountains).

“ ‘Ay!’

“ ‘Have you ever heard of the diamonds there?’

“ ‘I have heard a foolish story, Jim.’

“ ‘It is no story, Baas. I once knew a woman who came from there, and got to Natal with her child, she told me:—she is dead now.’

“ ‘Your master will feed the aasvogels (vultures), Jim, if he tries to reach Suliman’s country, and so will you if they can get any pickings off your worthless old carcass,’ said I.

“He grinned. ‘Mayhap, Baas. Man must die; I’d rather like to try a new country myself; the elephants are getting worked out about here.’

“ ‘Ah! my boy,’ I said, ‘you wait till the ”pale old man” (death) gets a grip of your yellow throat, and then we’ll hear what sort of a tune you sing.’

“Half an hour after that I saw Neville’s waggon move off. Presently Jim came running back. ‘Good-bye, Baas,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like to start without bidding you good-bye, for I daresay you are right, and we shall never come back again.’

“ ‘Is your master really going to Suliman’s Berg, Jim, or are you lying?’

“ ‘No,’ says he; ‘he is going. He told me he was bound to make his fortune somehow, or try to; so he might as well try the diamonds.’

“ ‘Oh!’ said I; ‘wait a bit, Jim; will you take a note to your master, Jim, and promise not to give it to him till you reach Inyati?’ (which was some hundred miles off).

“ ‘Yes,’ said he.

“So I took a scrap of paper, and wrote on it, ‘Let him who comes ... climb the snow of Sheba’s left breast, till he comes to the nipple, on the north side of which is Solomon’s great road.’

“ ‘Now, Jim; I said, ’when you give this to your master, tell him he had better follow the advice implicitly. You are not to give it to him now, because I don’t want him back asking me questions which I won’t answer. Now be off, you idle fellow, the waggon is nearly out of sight.’

“Jim took the note and went, and that is all I know about your brother, Sir Henry; but I am much afraid——”

“Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry, “I am going to look for my brother; I am going to trace him to Suliman’s Mountains, and over them if necessary, till I find him, or till I know that he is dead. Will you come with me?”

I am, as I think I have said, a cautious man, indeed a timid one, and I shrunk from such an idea. It seemed to me that to start on such a journey would be to go to certain death, and putting other things aside, as I had a son to support, I could not afford to die just then.

“No, thank you, Sir Henry, I think I had rather not,” I answered. “I am too old for wild-goose chases of that sort, and we should only end up like my poor friend Silvestre. I have a son dependent on me, so cannot afford to risk my life.”

Both Sir Henry and Captain Good looked very disappointed.

“Mr. Quatermain,” said the former, “I am well off, and I am bent upon this business. You may put the remuneration for your services at whatever figure you like, in reason, and it shall be paid over to you before we start. Moreover, I will, before we start, arrange that in the event of anything happening to us or to you, that your son shall be suitably provided for. You will see from this how necessary I think your presence. Also if by any chance we should reach this place, and find diamonds, they shall belong to you and Good equally. I do not want them. But of course the chance is as good as nothing, though the same thing would apply to any ivory we might get. You may pretty well make your own terms with me, Mr. Quatermain; and of course I shall pay all expenses.”

“Sir Henry,” said I, “this is the most liberal offer I ever had, and one not to be sneezed at by a poor hunter and trader. But the job is the biggest I ever came across, and I must take time to think it over. I will give you my answer before we get to Durban.”

“Very good,” answered Sir Henry, and then I said good-night and turned in, and dreamt about poor long-dead Silvestre and the diamonds.

IT TAKES FROM FOUR to five days, according to the vessel and the state of the weather, to run up from the Cape to Durban. Sometimes, if the landing is bad at East London,
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where they have not yet got that wonderful harbour they talk so much of, and sink such a mint of money in, one is delayed for twenty-four hours before the cargo boats can get out to take the goods off. But on this occasion we had not to wait at all, for there were no breakers on the Bar
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to speak of, and the tugs came out at once with their long strings of ugly flat-bottomed boats, into which the goods were bundled with a crash. It did not matter what they were, over they went slap bang; whether they were china or woollen goods they met with the same treatment. I saw one case containing four dozen of champagne smashed all to bits, and there was the champagne fizzing and boiling about in the bottom of the dirty cargo boat. It was a wicked waste, and so evidently the Kafirs in the boat thought, for they found a couple of unbroken bottles, and knocking the tops off drank the contents. But they had not allowed for the expansion caused by the fizz in the wine, and feeling themselves swelling, rolled about in the bottom of the boat, calling out that the good liquor was “tagati” (bewitched). I spoke to them from the vessel, and told them that it was the white man’s strongest medicine, and that they were as good as dead men. They went on to the shore in a very great fright, and I do not think that they will touch champagne again.

Well, all the time we were running up to Natal I was thinking over Sir Henry Curtis’ offer. We did not speak any more on the subject for a day or two, though I told them many hunting yarns, all true ones. There is no need to tell lies about hunting, for so many curious things happen within the knowledge of a man whose business it is to hunt; but this is by the way.

At last, one beautiful evening in January, which is our hottest month, we steamed along the coast of Natal, expecting to make Durban Point by sunset. It is a lovely coast all along from East London, with its red sandhills and wide sweeps of vivid green, dotted here and there with Kafir kraals, and bordered by a ribbon of white surf, which spouts up in pillars of foam where it hits the rocks. But just before you get to Durban there is a peculiar richness about it. There are the deep kloofs
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cut in the hills by the rushing rains of centuries, down which the rivers sparkle; there is the deepest green of the bush, growing as God planted it, and the other greens of the mealie
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gardens and the sugar patches, while here and there a white house, smiling out at the placid sea, puts a finish and gives an air of homeliness to the scene. For to my mind, however beautiful a view may be, it requires the presence of man to make it complete, but perhaps that is because I have lived so much in the wilderness, and therefore know the value of civilisation, though to be sure it drives away the game. The Garden of Eden, no doubt, was fair before man was, but I always think it must have been fairer when Eve was walking about it. But we had miscalculated a little, and the sun was well down before we dropped anchor off the Point, and heard the gun which told the good folk that the English Mail
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was in. It was too late to think of getting over the Bar that night, so we went down comfortably to dinner, after seeing the Mails carried off in the lifeboat.

When we came up again the moon was up, and shining so brightly over sea and shore that she almost paled the quick large flashes from the lighthouse. From the shore floated sweet spicy odours that always remind me of hymns and missionaries, and in the windows of the houses on the Berea
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sparkled a hundred lights. From a large brig lying near came the music of the sailors as they worked at getting the anchor up to be ready for the wind. Altogether it was a perfect night, such a night as you only get in Southern Africa, and it threw a garment of peace over everybody as the moon threw a garment of silver over everything. Even the great bulldog, belonging to a sporting passenger, seemed to yield to the gentle influences, and giving up yearning to come to close quarters with the baboon in a cage on the foc’sle, snored happily in the door of the cabin, dreaming no doubt that he had finished him, and happy in his dream.

We all—that, is Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good, and myself—went and sat by the wheel, and were quiet for a while.

“Well, Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry, presently, “have you been thinking about my proposals?”

“Ay,” echoed Captain Good, “what do you think of them, Mr. Quatermain? I hope you are going to give us the pleasure of your company as far as Solomon’s Mines, or wherever the gentleman you knew as Neville may have got to.”

I rose and knocked out my pipe before I answered. I had not made up my mind, and wanted the additional moment to complete it. Before the burning tobacco had fallen into the sea it was completed; just that little extra second did the trick. It is often the way when you have been bothering a long time over a thing.

“Yes, gentlemen,” I said, sitting down again, “I will go, and by your leave I will tell you why and on what terms. First for the terms which I ask.

“1. You are to pay all expenses, and any ivory or other valuables we may get is to be divided between Captain Good and myself.

“2. That you pay me £500 for my services on the trip before we start, I undertaking to serve you faithfully till you choose to abandon the enterprise, or till we succeed, or disaster overtakes us.

“3. That before we start you execute a deed agreeing, in the event of my death or disablement, to pay my boy Harry, who is studying medicine over there in London at Guy’s Hospital, a sum of £200 a year for five years, by which time he ought to be able to earn a living for himself. That is all, I think, and I daresay you will say quite enough too.”

“No,” answered Sir Henry, “I accept them gladly. I am bent upon this project, and would pay more than that for your help, especially considering the peculiar knowledge you possess.”

“Very well. And now that I have made my terms I will tell you my reasons for making up my mind to go. First of all, gentlemen, I have been observing you both for the last few days, and if you will not think me impertinent I will say that I like you, and think that we shall come up well to the yoke together. That is something, let me tell you, when one has a long journey like this before one.

“And now as to the journey itself, I tell you flatly, Sir Henry and Captain Good, that I do not think it probable that we can come out of it alive, that is, if we attempt to cross the Suliman Mountains. What was the fate of the old Dom da Silvestra three hundred years ago? What was the fate of his descendant twenty years ago? What has been your brother’s fate? I tell you frankly, gentlemen, that as their fate was so I believe ours will be.”

I paused to watch the effect of my words. Captain Good looked a little uncomfortable; but Sir Henry’s face did not change. “We must take our chance,” he said.

“You may perhaps wonder,” I went on, “why, if I think this, I, who am, as I told you, a timid man, should undertake such a journey. It is for two reasons. First I am a fatalist, and believe that my time is appointed to come quite independently of my own movements, and that if I am to go to Suliman’s Mountains to be killed, I shall go there and shall be killed there. 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 from four to 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 were paid there would be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he was getting in the way of earning a living, whereas now he would be provided for for five years. There is the whole affair in a nutshell.”

“Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry, who had been giving me the 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, time and the event of course 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 going to be knocked on the head, all I have to say is that I hope we shall 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 hold our lives in our hands in various ways, so it is no good turning back now.”

“And now I vote we go down to the saloon and take an observation, just for luck, you know.” And we did—through the bottom of a tumbler.

Next day we went ashore, and I put Sir Henry and Captain Good up at the little shanty I have on the Berea, and which I call my home. There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is built of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden with the best loquot
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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
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country, that he will never hunt again. But he can potter about and garden, being a Griqua
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by birth. You can never get your Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and peaceful arts are not in his line.