Allan Quatermain. H. Rider Haggard
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on into the unknown interior. What do you say to that, my hearties?’
‘It’s a big order,’ said Sir Henry, reflectively.
‘You are right,’ I answered, ‘it is; but I take it that we are all three of us in search of a big order. We want a change of scene, and we are likely to get one—a thorough change. All my life I have longed to visit those parts, and I mean to do it before I die. My poor boy’s death has broken the last link between me and civilization, and I’m off to my native wilds. And now I’ll tell you another thing, and that is, that for years and years I have heard rumours of a great white race which is supposed to have its home somewhere up in this direction, and I have a mind to see if there is any truth in them. If you fellows like to come, well and good; if not, I’ll go alone.’
‘I’m your man, though I don’t believe in your white race,’ said Sir Henry Curtis, rising and placing his arm upon my shoulder.
‘Ditto,’ remarked Good. ‘I’ll go into training at once. By all means let’s go to Mt. Kenia and the other place with an unpronounceable name, and look for a white race that does not exist. It’s all one to me.’
‘When do you propose to start?’ asked Sir Henry.
‘This day month,’ I answered, ‘by the British India steamboat; and don’t you be so certain that things have no existence because you do not happen to have heard of them. Remember King Solomon’s mines!’
Some fourteen weeks or so had passed since the date of this conversation, and this history goes on its way in very different surroundings.
After much deliberation and inquiry we came to the conclusion that our best starting-point for Mt. Kenia would be from the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Tana River, and not from Mombassa, a place over 100 miles nearer Zanzibar. This conclusion we arrived at from information given to us by a German trader whom we met upon the steamer at Aden. I think that he was the dirtiest German I ever knew; but he was a good fellow, and gave us a great deal of valuable information. ‘Lamu,’ said he, ‘you goes to Lamu—oh ze beautiful place!’ and he turned up his fat face and beamed with mild rapture. ‘One year and a half I live there and never change my shirt—never at all.’
And so it came to pass that on arriving at the island we disembarked with all our goods and chattels, and, not knowing where to go, marched boldly up to the house of Her Majesty’s Consul, where we were most hospitably received.
Lamu is a very curious place, but the things which stand out most clearly in my memory in connection with it are its exceeding dirtiness and its smells. These last are simply awful. Just below the Consulate is the beach, or rather a mud bank that is called a beach. It is left quite bare at low tide, and serves as a repository for all the filth, offal, and refuse of the town. Here it is, too, that the women come to bury coconuts in the mud, leaving them there till the outer husk is quite rotten, when they dig them up again and use the fibres to make mats with, and for various other purposes. As this process has been going on for generations, the condition of the shore can be better imagined than described. I have smelt many evil odours in the course of my life, but the concentrated essence of stench which arose from that beach at Lamu as we sat in the moonlit night—not under, but on our friend the Consul’s hospitable roof—and sniffed it, makes the remembrance of them very poor and faint. No wonder people get fever at Lamu. And yet the place was not without a certain quaintness and charm of its own, though possibly—indeed probably—it was one which would quickly pall.
‘Well, where are you gentlemen steering for?’ asked our friend the hospitable Consul, as we smoked our pipes after dinner.
‘We propose to go to Mt. Kenia and then on to Mt. Lekakisera,’ answered Sir Henry. ‘Quatermain has got hold of some yarn about there being a white race up in the unknown territories beyond.’
The Consul looked interested, and answered that he had heard something of that, too.
‘What have you heard?’ I asked.
‘Oh, not much. All I know about it is that a year or so ago I got a letter from Mackenzie, the Scotch missionary, whose station, “The Highlands”, is placed at the highest navigable point of the Tana River, in which he said something about it.’
‘Have you the letter?’ I asked.
‘No, I destroyed it; but I remember that he said that a man had arrived at his station who declared that two months’ journey beyond Mt. Lekakisera, which no white man has yet visited—at least, so far as I know—he found a lake called Laga, and that then he went off to the north-east, a month’s journey, over desert and thorn veldt and great mountains, till he came to a country where the people are white and live in stone houses. Here he was hospitably entertained for a while, till at last the priests of the country set it about that he was a devil, and the people drove him away, and he journeyed for eight months and reached Mackenzie’s place, as I heard, dying. That’s all I know; and if you ask me, I believe that it is a lie; but if you want to find out more about it, you had better go up the Tana to Mackenzie’s place and ask him for information.’
Sir Henry and I looked at each other. Here was something tangible.
‘I think that we will go to Mr. Mackenzie’s,’ I said.
‘Well,’ answered the Consul, ‘that is your best way, but I warn you that you are likely to have a rough journey, for I hear that the Masai are about, and, as you know, they are not pleasant customers. Your best plan will be to choose a few picked men for personal servants and hunters, and to hire bearers from village to village. It will give you an infinity of trouble, but perhaps on the whole it will prove a cheaper and more advantageous course than engaging a caravan, and you will be less liable to desertion.’
Fortunately there were at Lamu at this time a party of Wakwafi Askari (soldiers). The Wakwafi, who are a cross between the Masai and the Wataveta, are a fine manly race, possessing many of the good qualities of the Zulu, and a great capacity for civilization. They are also great hunters. As it happened, these particular men had recently been on a long trip with an Englishman named Jutson, who had started from Mombasa, a port about 150 miles below Lamu, and journeyed right round Kilimanjaro, one of the highest known mountains in Africa. Poor fellow, he had died of fever when on his return journey, and within a day’s march of Mombasa. It does seem hard that he should have gone off thus when within a few hours of safety, and after having survived so many perils, but so it was. His hunters buried him, and then came on to Lamu in a dhow. Our friend the Consul suggested to us that we had better try and hire these men, and accordingly on the following morning we started to interview the party, accompanied by an interpreter.
In due course we found them in a mud hut on the outskirts of the town. Three of the men were sitting outside the hut, and fine frank-looking fellows they were, having a more or less civilized appearance. To them we cautiously opened the object of our visit, at first with very scant success. They declared that they could not entertain any such idea, that they were worn and weary with long travelling, and that their hearts were sore at the loss of their master. They meant to go back to their homes and rest awhile. This did not sound very promising, so by way of effecting a diversion I asked where the remainder of them were. I was told there were six, and I saw but three. One of the men said they slept in the hut, and were yet resting after their labours—‘sleep weighed down their eyelids, and sorrow made their hearts as lead: it was best to sleep, for with sleep came forgetfulness. But the men should be awakened.’
Presently they came out of the hut, yawning—the first two men being evidently of the same race and style as those already before us; but the appearance of the third and last nearly made me jump out of my skin. He was a very tall, broad man, quite six foot three, I should say, but gaunt, with lean, wiry-looking limbs. My first glance at him told me that he was no Wakwafi: he was a pure bred Zulu. He came out with his thin aristocratic-looking hand placed before his face to hide a yawn, so I could only see that he was a ‘Keshla’ or ringed man {Endnote 1}, and that he had a great three-cornered hole in his forehead. In another second he removed his hand, revealing a powerful-looking Zulu face, with a humorous mouth, a short woolly beard, tinged with grey,