Part 1 (1/2)

Allan Quaterard

INTRODUCTION

December 23

'I have just buried my boy, my poor handsome boy of whom I was so proud, andonly one son to lose him thus, but God's will be done Who areat 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 hi so well at the hospital, he had passed his last examination with honours, and I was proud of theo to that smallpox hospital He wrote to ain the experience; and now the disease has killed hirey and withered, am left to ht have saved hih for both of us, andSolomon's Mines provided , let him labour that he may enjoy rest” But the rest has come to him before the labour Oh, my boy, my boy!

'I aoods 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 hirey 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 rave, 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 froently one by one like heavenly benedictions, and melt in tears on Harry's pall But that was not all

A robin redbreast caan to sing And then I am afraid that I broke down, and so did Sir Henry Curtis, strong h he is; and as for Captain Good, I saw him turn away too; even init'

The above, signed 'Allan Quatermain', is an extract froo I copy it down here because it see 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 fro this, with a pretty girl standing by ust countenance

Harry is there and I a that I aland I used to live in a very fine house--at least I call it a fine house, speaking co 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 so even if one has just buried all one's earthly hopes But I could not eatpermanently lame from the bite of a lion--up and down, up and down the oak-panelled vestibule; for there is a vestibule in land 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 ain 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 rireen hide, lashed round the stock and locks, such as used to be owned by the Dutchht it froo 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 alill be called And un She always took a handful of black powder and a three-ounce ball, and kicked like the very deuce

Well, up and doalked, staring at the guns and the horns which the guns had brought low; and as I did so there rose up in o away froain to the wild land where I had spent my life, where I s, good, bad, and indifferent, had happened to me The thirst for the wilderness was on o and die as I had lived, aan to long to see thesilvery white over the wide veldt anddown the ridges to the water The ruling passion is strong in death, they say, and ht But, independently of my trouble, no man who has for forty years lived the life I have, can with ilish country, with its trierows and cultivated fields, its stiff for--ah, how he longs!--for the keen breath of the desert air; he drea 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 coes, and studied them and their ways; and now for several years I have lived here in England, and have in my own stupid ht; and what have I found? A great gulf fixed? No, only a very little one, that a plain e is, so is the white man, only the latter is more inventive, and possesses the faculty of coe, as I have known hireed of money, which eats like a cancer into the heart of the whiteconclusion, 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 fa 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 wo round and round to the sound of horns and toate yourself to the rich warrior who has captured you in e, and the quickness hich your taste in feathered head-dresses varies--all these things suggest touches of kinshi+p; and you remember that in the fundamental principles of your nature you are quite identical As for you, sir, who also laugh, let so thatdish, and we shall soon see how o 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 rown like a tree, and, as I believe, into the soil like a tree it will once yptian 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 letour athered experience of hureat advantages--hospitals for instance; but then, ree land they do not exist

Besides, the question will arise: How s 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 thereof the suhty equation in which the result will equal the unknown quantity of her purpose

I ression, 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 e Man's cleverness is almost indefinite, and stretches like an elastic band, but huo round and round it, you can polish it highly, you can even flatten it a little on one side, whereby you will e out the other, but you will _never_, while the world endures and man is man, increase its total circu--fixed as the stars,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 hty hand as surely and as certainly as it turns the stars, and continually fall into new patterns and co elements relass nor one less for ever and ever

This being so, supposing for the sake of argue and one civilized, we e portions of our nature, if ould really understand ourselves, and not to the twentieth, which, though so insignificant in reality, is spread all over the other nineteen,them appear quite different fro does a boot, or the veneer a table It is on the nineteen rough serviceable savage portions that we fall back on eencies, not on the polished but unsubstantial twentieth Civilization should wipe away our tears, and yet eep and cannot be comforted Warfare is abhorrent to her, and yet we strike out for hearth and holory 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 et, or at least rid rerief 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 le 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 sed in the vast iy of her of e are, froave us birth, and will in a day to coive us our burial also

And so in my trouble, as I walked up and down the oak-panelled vestibule of ed 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 se when creation was co huame was, back to the land whereof none know the history, back to the savages, whoh 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 ot 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 ofup 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 re

'It is very kind of you to co a re in the snow'

They said nothing, but Sir Henry slowly filled his pipe and lit it with a burning eassy bit of pine and flared up brightly, throwing the whole scene into strong relief, and I thought, What a splendid-looking rey eyes, yellow beard and hair--altogether a her type of humanity