King Solomon’s Mines

‘Excuse me, sir, but is your name Allan Quatermain?’

I said that it was.

The big man made no further remark, but I heard him mutter ‘fortunate’ into his beard.

Presently dinner came to an end, and as we were leaving the saloon Sir Henry strolled up and asked me if I would come into his cabin to smoke a pipe. I accepted, and he led the way to the Dunkeld deck cabin, and a very good cabin it is. It had been two cabins, but when Sir Garnet Wolseley or one of those big swells went down the coast in the Dunkeld, they knocked away the partition and have never put it up again. There was a sofa in the cabin, and a little table in front of it. Sir Henry sent the steward for a bottle of whisky, and the three of us sat down and lit our pipes.

‘Mr Quatermain,’ said Sir Henry Curtis, when the man had brought the whisky and lit the lamp, ‘the year before last about this time, you were, I believe, at a place called Bamangwato, to the north of the Transvaal.’

‘I was,’ I answered, rather surprised that this gentleman should be so well acquainted with my movements, which were not, so far as I was aware, considered of general interest.

‘You were trading there, were you not?’ put in Captain Good, in his quick way.

‘I was. I took up a wagon-load of goods, made a camp outside the settlement, and stopped till I had sold them.’

Sir Henry was sitting opposite to me in a Madeira chair, his arms leaning on the table. He now looked up, fixing his large grey eyes full upon my face. There was a curious anxiety in them, I thought.

‘Did you happen to meet a man called Neville there?’

‘Oh, yes; he outspanned alongside of me for a fortnight to rest his oxen before going on to the interior. I had a letter from a lawyer a few months back, asking me if I knew what had become of him, which I answered to the best of my ability at the time.’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Henry, ‘your letter was forwarded to me. You said in it that the gentleman called Neville left Bamangwato at the beginning of May in a wagon with a driver, a voorlooper, and a Kafir hunter called Jim, announcing his intention of trekking if possible as far as Inyati, the extreme trading post in the Matabele country, where he would sell his wagon and proceed on foot. You also said that he did sell his wagon, for six months afterwards you saw the wagon in the possession of a Portuguese trader, who told you that he had bought it at Inyati from a white man whose name he had forgotten, and that he believed the white man with the native servant had started off for the interior on a shooting trip.’

‘Yes.’

Then came a pause.

‘Mr Quatermain,’ said Sir Henry suddenly, ‘I suppose you know or can guess nothing more of the reasons of my – of Mr Neville’s journey to the northward, or as to what point that journey was directed?’

‘I heard something,’ I answered, and stopped. The subject was one which I did not care to discuss.

Sir Henry and Captain Good looked at each other, and Captain Good nodded.

‘Mr Quatermain,’ went on the former, ‘I am going to tell you a story, and ask your advice, and perhaps your assistance. The agent who forwarded me your letter told me that I might rely upon it implicitly, as you were, he said, well known and universally respected in Natal, and especially noted for your discretion.’

I bowed and drank some whisky and water to hide my confusion, for I am a modest man – and Sir Henry went on.

‘Mr Neville was my brother.’

‘Oh,’ I said, starting, for now I knew of whom Sir Henry had reminded me when first I saw him. His brother was a much smaller man and had a dark beard, but now that I thought of it, he possessed eyes of the same shade of grey and with the same keen look in them: the features too were not unlike.

‘He was,’ went on Sir Henry, ‘my only and younger brother, and till five years ago I do not suppose that we were ever a month away from each other. But just about five years ago a misfortune befell us, as sometimes does happen in families. We quarrelled bitterly, and I behaved unjustly to my brother in my anger.’

Here Captain Good nodded his head vigorously to himself. The ship gave a big roll just then, so that the looking-glass, which was fixed opposite us to starboard, was for a moment nearly over our heads, and as I was sitting with my hands in my pockets and staring upwards, I could see him nodding like anything.

‘As I daresay you know,’ went on Sir Henry, ‘if a man dies intestate, and has no property but land, real property it is called in England, it all descends to his eldest son. It so happened that just at the time when we quarrelled our father died intestate. He had put off making his will until it was too late. The result was that my brother, who had not been brought up to any profession, was left without a penny. Of course it would have been my duty to provide for him, but at the time the quarrel between us was so bitter that I did not – to my shame I say it (and he sighed deeply) – offer to do anything. It was not that I grudged him justice, but I waited for him to make advances and he made none. I am sorry to trouble you with all this, Mr Quatermain, but I must make things clear, eh, Good?’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ said the captain. ‘Mr Quatermain will, I am sure, keep this history to himself.’

‘Of course,’ said I, for I rather pride myself on my discretion, for which, as Sir Henry had heard, I have some repute.

‘Well,’ went on Sir Henry, ‘my brother had a few hundred pounds to his account at the time. Without saying anything to me he drew out this paltry sum, and, having adopted the name of Neville, started off for South Africa in the wild hope of making a fortune. This I learnt afterwards. Some three years passed, and I heard nothing of my brother, though I wrote several times. Doubtless the letters never reached him. But as time went on I grew more and more troubled about him. I found out, Mr Quatermain, that blood is thicker than water.’

‘That’s true,’ said I, thinking of my boy Harry.

‘I found out, Mr Quatermain, that I would have given half my fortune to know that my brother George, the only relation I possess, was safe and well, and that I should see him again.’

‘But you never did, Curtis,’ jerked out Captain Good, glancing at the big man’s face.

‘Well, Mr Quatermain, as time went on I became more and more anxious to find out if my brother was alive or dead, and if alive to get him home again. I set inquiries on foot, and your letter was one of the results. So far as it went it was satisfactory, for it showed that till lately George was alive, but it did not go far enough. So, to cut a long story short, I made up my mind to come out and look for him myself, and Captain Good was so kind as to come with me.’

‘Yes,’ said the captain; ‘nothing else to do, you see. Turned out by my Lords of the Admiralty to starve on half pay. And now perhaps, sir, you will tell us what you know of the gentleman called Neville.’

CHAPTER 2 The Legend of Solomon’s Mines

‘What was it that you heard about my brother’s journey at Bamangwato?’ asked Sir Henry, as I paused to fill my pipe before replying to Captain Good.

‘I heard this,’ I answered,’ and I have never mentioned it to a soul till today. I heard that he was starting for Solomon’s Mines.’

‘Solomon’s Mines!’ ejaculated both my hearers at once. ‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said; ‘I know where they are said to be. Once I saw the peaks of the mountains that border them, but there were a hundred and thirty miles of desert between me and them, and I am not aware that any white man ever got across it save one. But perhaps the best thing I can do is to tell you the legend of Solomon’s Mines, as I know it, you passing your word not to reveal anything I tell you without my permission. Do you agree to that? I have my reasons for asking.’

Sir Henry nodded, and Captain Good replied, ‘Certainly, certainly.’

‘Well,’ I began, ‘as you may guess, generally speaking, elephant hunters are a rough set of men, who do not trouble themselves with much beyond the facts of life and the ways of Kafirs. But here and there you meet a man who takes the trouble to collect traditions from the natives, and tries to make out a little piece of the history of this dark land. It was such a one as this who first told me the legend of Solomon’s Mines, now a matter of nearly thirty years ago. That was when I was on my first elephant hunt in the Matabele country. His name was Evans, and he was killed the following year, poor fellow, by a wounded buffalo, and lies buried near the Zambesi Falls. I was telling Evans one night, I remember, of some wonderful workings I had found whilst hunting koodoo and eland in what is now the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal. I see they have come across these workings again lately in prospecting for gold, but I knew of them years ago. There is a great wide wagon road cut out of the solid rock, and leading to the mouth of the working or gallery. Inside the mouth of this gallery are stacks of gold quartz piled up ready for roasting, which shows that the workers, whoever they were, must have left in a hurry. Also, about twenty paces in, the gallery is built across, and a beautiful bit of masonry it is.

‘“Ay,” said Evans, “but I will spin you a queerer yarn than that”; and he went on to tell me how he had found in the far in terior a ruined city, which he believed to be the Ophir of the Bible, and, by the way, other more learned men have said the same long since poor Evans’s time. I was, I remember, listening open-eared to all these wonders, for I was young at the time, and this story of an ancient civilisation and of the treasures which those old Jewish or Phoenician adventurers used to extract from a country long since lapsed into the darkest barbarism took a great hold upon my imagination, when suddenly he said to me. “Lad, did you ever hear of the Suliman Mountains up to the north-west of the Mashukulumbwe country?” I told him I never had. “Ah, well,” he said, “that is where Solomon really had his mines, his diamond mines, I mean.”

‘“How do you know that?” I asked.

‘“Know it! why, what is ‘Suliman’ but a corruption of Solomon?”1 Besides, an old Isanusi or witch doctress up in the Manica country told me all about it. She said that the people who lived across those mountains were a ‘branch’ of the Zulus, speaking a dialect of Zulu, but finer and bigger men even; that there lived among them great wizards, who had learnt their art from white men when ‘all the world was dark,’ and who had the secret of a wonderful mine of ‘bright stones.’”

‘Well, I laughed at this story at the time, though it interested me, for the Diamond Fields were not discovered then, but poor Evans went off and was killed, and for twenty years I never thought any more of the matter. However, just twenty years afterwards – and that is a long time, gentlemen; an elephant hunter does not often live for twenty years at his business – I heard something more definite about Suliman’s Mountains and the country which lies behind them. I was up beyond the Manica country, at a place called Sitanda’s Kraal, and a miserable place it was, for a man could get nothing to eat, and there was but little game about. I had an attack of fever, and was in a bad way generally, when one day a Portugee arrived with a single companion – a half-breed. Now I know your low-class Delagoa Portugee well. There is no greater devil unhung in a general way, battening as he does upon human agony and flesh in the shape of slaves. But this was quite a different type of man to the mean fellows whom I had been accustomed to meet; indeed, in appearance he reminded me more of the polite doms I have read about for he was tall and thin, with large dark eyes, and curling grey mustachios. We talked together a little, for he could speak broken English, and I understood a little Portuguese, and he told me that his name was José Silvestre, and that he had a place near Delagoa Bay. When he went on next day with his half-breed companion, he said “Good-bye,” taking off his hat quite in the old style. “Good-bye, señor,” he said; “if ever we meet again I shall be the richest man in the world, and I will remember you.” I laughed a little – I was too weak to laugh much – and watched him strike out for the great desert to the west, wondering if he were mad, or what he thought he was going to find there.

‘A week passed, and I got the better of my fever. One evening I was sitting on the ground in front of the little tent I had with me, chewing the last leg of a miserable fowl I had bought from a native for a bit of cloth worth twenty fowls, and staring at the hot red sun sinking down over the desert, when suddenly I saw a figure, apparently that of a European, for it wore a coat, on the slope of the rising ground opposite to me, about three hundred yards away. The figure crept along on its hands and knees, then it got up and staggered forward a few yards on its legs, only to fall and crawl again. Seeing that it must be somebody in distress, I sent one of my hunters to help him, and presently he arrived, and who do you suppose it turned out to be?’

‘José Silvestre, of course,’ said Captain Good.

‘Yes, José Silvestre, or rather his skeleton and a little skin. His face was bright yellow with bilious fever, and his large dark eyes stood nearly out of his head, for all the flesh had gone. There was nothing but yellow parchment-like skin, white hair, and the gaunt bones sticking up beneath.

‘“Water! for the sake of Christ, water!” he moaned and I saw that his lips were cracked, and his tongue, which protruded between them, was swollen and blackish.

‘I gave him water with a little milk in it, and he drank it in great gulps, two quarts or so, without stopping. I would not let him have any more. Then the fever took him again, and he fell down and began to rave about Suliman’s Mountains, and the diamonds, and the desert. I carried him into the tent and did what I could for him, which was little enough; but I saw how it must end. About eleven o’clock he grew quieter, and I lay down for a little rest and went to sleep. At dawn I woke again, and in the half light saw Silvestre sitting up, a strange, gaunt form, and gazing out towards the desert. Presently the first ray of the sun shot right across the wide plain before us till it reached the far-away crest of one of the tallest of the Suliman Mountains more than a hundred miles away.

‘“There it is!” cried the dying man in Portuguese, and pointing with his long, thin arm, “but I shall never reach it, never. No one will ever reach it!”

‘Suddenly he paused, and seemed to take a resolution. “Friend,” he said, turning towards me, “are you there? My eyes grow dark.”

‘“Yes,” I said; “yes, lie down now, and rest.”

‘“Ay,” he answered, “I shall rest soon, I have time to rest – all eternity. Listen, I am dying! You have been good to me. I will give you the writing. Perhaps you will get there if you can live to pass the desert, which has killed my poor servant and me.”

‘Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. “Untie it,” he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow linen, on which something was written in rusty letters. Inside this rag was a paper.

‘Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: “The paper has all that is on the linen. It took me years to read. Listen: my ancestor, a political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first Portuguese who landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those mountains which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name was José da Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His slave, who waited for him on this side of the mountains, found him dead, and brought the writing home to Delagoa. It has been in the family ever since, but none have cared to read it, till at last I did. And I have lost my life over it, another may succeed, and become the richest man in the world – the richest man in the world. Only give it to no one, señor; go yourself!”

‘Then he began to wander again, and in an hour it was all over.

‘God rest him! he died very quietly, and I buried him deep, with big boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the jackals can have dug him up. Then I came away.’

‘Ay, but the document?’ said Sir Henry, in a tone of deep interest.

‘Yes, the document; what was in it?’ added the captain.

‘Well, gentlemen, if you like I will tell you. I have never showed it to anybody yet except to a drunken old Portuguese trader who translated it for me, and had forgotten all about it by the next morning. The original rag is at my home in Durban, together with poor Dom José’s translation, but I have the English rendering in my pocket-book, and a facsimile of the map, if it can be called a map. Here it is.’

‘I, José da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little cave where no snow is on the north side of the nipple of the southernmost of the two mountains I have named Sheba’s Breasts, write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant of my raiment, my blood being the ink. If my slave should find it when he comes, and should bring it to Delagoa, let my friend (name illegible) bring the matter to the knowledge of the king, that he may send an army which, if they live through the desert and the mountains, and can overcome the brave Kukuanes and their devilish arts, to which end many priests should be brought, will make him the richest king since Solomon. With my own eyes have I seen the countless diamonds stored in Solomon’s treasure chamber behind the white Death; but through the treachery of Gagool the witch-finder I might bring nought away, scarcely my life. Let him who comes follow the map, and climb the snow of Sheba’s left breast till he reaches the nipple, on the north side of which is the great road Solomon made, from whence three days’ journey to the King’s Palace. Let him kill Gagool. Pray for my soul. Farewell.

José da Silvestra.’2

When I had finished reading the above, and shown the copy of the map, drawn by the dying hand of the old Dom with his blood for ink, there followed a silence of astonishment.

‘Well,’ said Captain Good,’ I have been round the world twice, and put in at most ports, but may I be hung for a mutineer if ever I heard a yarn like this out of a story book, or in it either, for the matter of that.’

‘It is a queer tale, Mr Quatermain,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I suppose you are not hoaxing us? It is, I know, sometimes thought allowable to take in a greenhorn.’

‘If you think that, Sir Henry,’ I said, much put out, and pocketing my paper – for I do not like to be thought one of those silly fellows who consider it witty to tell lies, and who are for ever boasting to newcomers of extraordinary hunting adventures which never happened – ‘if you think that, why, there is an end to the matter,’ and I rose to go.

Sir Henry laid his large hand on my shoulder. ‘Sit down, Mr Quatermain,’ he said, ‘I beg your pardon; I see very well you do not wish to deceive us, but the story sounded so strange that I could hardly believe it.’

‘You shall see the original map and writing when we reach Durban,’ I answered, somewhat mollified, for really when I came to consider the question it was scarcely wonderful that he should doubt my good faith.

‘But,’ I went on, ‘I have not told you about your brother. I knew the man Jim who was with him. He was a Bechuana by birth, a good hunter, and for a native a very clever man. That morning on which Mr Neville was starting I saw Jim standing by my wagon and cutting up tobacco on the disselboom.

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

‘“No, Baas,” he answered, “we are after something worth much 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 asked no more questions, for I did not like to lower my dignity by seeming inquisitive, 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?” I asked.

‘“Baas, we are going after diamonds.”

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

‘“Baas, have you ever heard of Suliman’s Berg?” – that is, Solomon’s Mountains, Sir Henry.

‘“Ay!”

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

‘“I have heard a foolish story, Jim.”

‘“It is no story, Baas. Once I knew a woman who came from there, and reached Natal with her child, she told me: – she is dead now.”

‘“Your master will feed the aasvögels” – that is, 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’ gets a grip of your yellow throat, and then we shall hear what sort of a tune you sing.”

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

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

‘“No,” he answered, “he is going. He told me he was bound to make his fortune somehow, or try to; so he might as well have a fling for the diamonds.”

‘Oh!’ I said; “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, Baas.”

‘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 reaches 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 on it 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 wagon 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 until 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 this suggestion frightened me. It seemed to me that to undertake such a journey would be to go to certain death, and putting other considerations 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 I cannot afford to risk my life foolishly.’

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 arrange in the event of anything untoward happening to us or to you, that your son shall be suitably provided for. You will see from this offer how necessary I think your presence. Also, if by 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 that promise is worth nothing at all, though the same thing would apply to any ivory we may get. You may pretty well make your own terms with me, Mr Quatermain; and of course I shall pay all expenses.’