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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 Ventvoegel'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.



Well, it is eighteen months or so ago since first I met Sir Henry
Curtis and Captain Good. It was in this way. I had been up elephant
hunting beyond Bamangwato, and had met with bad luck. Everything went
wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the fever badly. So soon as
I was well enough I trekked down to the Diamond Fields, sold such
ivory as I had, together with my wagon and oxen, discharged my
hunters, and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending a week in
Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having
seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens,
which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and
the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the
sort, I determined to go back to Natal by the /Dunkeld/, then lying at
the docks waiting for the /Edinburgh Castle/ due in from England. I
took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers
from the /Edinburgh Castle/ transhipped, and we weighed and put to
sea.

Among these passengers who came on board were two who excited my
curiosity. One, a gentleman of about thirty, was perhaps the biggest-

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