Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1889 — KING SOLOMON’S MINES. [ARTICLE]

KING SOLOMON’S MINES.

BYH. RIDER HAGGARD.

CHAPTER IV.-CoxxstoßD. THK BLBPHAXT HUNT. We had no difficulty in finding the broad elephant trail, which Ventvogel, after examination, pronounced to have been made by between twenty and thirty elephants, most of them full-grown bulls. But the herd had moved on some way during the night, and it was nine o’clock, and already very hot, be fore, from 'the broken trees, bruised leaves and bark, and smoking dung, we knew we could not be far ofi them. Presently we caught sight .of the herd, as Ventvogel had said, between twenty and thirty, standing in a hollow, having finished their moaning meal, and flapping their great ears. It was a ependia sight They were about two hundred yards from us. Taking a handful of dry grass I threw it into the air to see how the wind was; for if once they winded us I knew they would be off before we could get a shot Finding, that if anything, it blew from tne elephants to ÜBp we crept stealthily on and thanks to the cover managed to get within forty yards or so of the great brutes. Just in front of us and broadside on stood three splendid bulls one 01 them with enormous tusks. I whispered to the others that I would take the middle one, Sir Henry covered the one on the left, and Good the bull with the big tusks. “Now,” I whispered. Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down went Sir Henry’s elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart. Mine fell on its knees, and I thought he was going to die, but in another moment he was up and off tearing along straight past me. As he went I gave him the second barrel in the ribs and this brought him down in good earnest Hastily slipping in two fresh cartridges, I ran close up to him, and a ball through the brain put an end to the poor brute’s struggles. Then I turned to see how Good had fared with the big bull, which I. had heard screaming with rage and pain as I gave mine his quietus. On reaching the the captain I found him in a great state of excitement It appeared that on receiving the bullet the bull had turned and come straight for his assailant, who had barely time to get out of the way, and then charged blindly on past him in the direction of the encampment. Meanwhile the herd had crashed off in she other direction.

For awhile we debated whether to go after the wounded bull or follow the herd, and finally decided for rhe latter -alternative, and departed thinking that we had seen the last of those big tusks. I have often wished that we had. It was easy work to follow the elephants, for they had left a trail like a carriage road behind them crushing down the thick brush in their furious flight as though it were bambouki grass. But to come up with them was another matter, and we had struggled on under a boiling sun for over two hours before we found them. They were, with the exception of one bull, standing together, ana I could see, from their unquiet way and manner in which they keptiiftirg their trunks to test the air, that they were on the outlook for mischief. The solitary bull stood fifty yards or so this side of the herd, over which he was evidently keeping sentry, and about sixty yards from us. Thinking that he would see or wind us, and that it would'probably start them all off again if we tried to get nearer, especially as the ground was rather open, we all aimed at this bull and at my whispered word tired. All three shots took effect, and he fell dead. Again the herd started on, but unfortunately for them about a hunderd yards further on was a nullah, or dried water track, with steep banks, a place resembling the one the Prince Imperial was killed in in Zululand. Into this the elephants plunged and when we reached the edge we found them struggling in wild confusion to get up the other bank, and filling the air with their screams, and trumpeting as they pushed one another aside in their selfish panic, just like so many human beings. Now was our opportunity, and firing away as quick as we could load we killed five of the poor beasts and no aoubt could 0 , have bagged the whole herd had they not suddenly given up their attempts to climb the bank and rushed down the nullah. We were too tired to follow them, and perhaps a little sick of slaughter, eight elephants being a pretty good bag for one day. .* • So after we had rested a little, and the Kafirs had cut out the hearts oi two of the dead elephants for supper, we started homeward, very well pleased with ourselves, having made up our minds to send the bearers on the morrow to chop out the tusks. ■ Shortly after we had passed the spot where Good had wounded the patriarchal bull we came across a herd of oland, but did not shoot at them, as we had already plenty of meat They trotted past us, and then stopped behind a little patch of bush about a hundred yards aWay and wheeled round to look at us. /As Good was ankious to see them, never having seen an eland close, he handed his rifle to Umbopa, and, followed by Khiva, strolled up to the patch of bush. We sat down and waited for him, not sorry of the excuse lor a little rest The sun was just going down in its reddest glory,, and Sir Henry and I were admiring the lovely scene, when suddenly we heard an elephaqt scr°am, and saw its huge and charging form with uplifted trank and tail silhoutted against the great red globe of the sun. Next second we saw something else, and that was Good and Khiva tearing back toward us with the wounded bull (tor it was tie) charging after them. For a moment we did not dare to fire—though it would have been little use if we had at

that distance—for fear of hitting one of them, and the next a dreadful thing happened—Good fell a victim to his passion for civilized dress. Had he consented to discard his trousers and gaiters as we had. and hunt in a flannel shirt and a pair of veldtechoons, it would have been all right, but as it was his trousers cumbered him in that desperate race, and presently, when he was about sixty yards from us, his boot, polished by the dry grass, slipped, and down he went oh his face right in front of the elephant. We gave a gasp, for we knew he must die, and ran aa hard as we could toward him- In three seconds it had ended.but not as we thought Khiva, the Zulu "t v ’ * . f

boy, had seen his master fall, and brave lad that he was, had turned and flung his assegai straight into the elephant’s face. It stuck in his trunk. With a scream of pain the brute seised the poor Zulu, hurled hith tothe earth, and placing his huge foot on his body about the middle, twined his trunk round his upper part and tore him in two. ’ ' ’■ •, . We rushed up mad with horror, and fired again and again, and presently the elephant fell upon the fragments of the Zulu. i As for Good, he got up and wrung his hands over the brave man who had given his life to save him, and myself, though an old hand, I felt a lump in my throat. As for Umbopa, he stood and contemplated the huge dead elephant and the mangled remains of poor Khiva. “Ah, well," he said, presently, “he is dead, but he died like a man.”

CHAPTER V. OVB MARCH INTO TUB DEBBRT. We had killed nine elephants, and it took us two days to cut out the tusks and get them home and bury them carefully in the sand under a large tree, which made a . conspicuous mark for miles around. It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory. I never saw a better, averaging as it did between forty and fifty pounds to the tusk. The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and Seventy pounds , the pair, as nearly as we could judge. As for Khiva himself, we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear hole, together with an assegai to protect himself with on his way to a better world. On the third day we started on, hoping that we might one day return to dig up our buried ivory, and in due course, after a long and wearisome tramp, and many adventures which I have not space to detail, reached Sitanda’s Kraal, near the Lukanga River, starting point of our expedition. Very well do 1 recollect our arrival at that place. To the right was a scattered native settlement with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands down by the water, where these savages grew-their scanty supply of grain, and beyond it great tracts of waving “veldt” covered with tall grass, over which herds of the smaller game were wandering. To the left was the vast desert. This spot appeared to be the outpost of the fertile country, and it would/be difficult to say to what natural causes such an abrupt change in the character of the soil was due. But so it was. Just below our encampment flowed a little stream, on the further side oi which was a stony slope, the same down which I had twenty years before seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach Solomon’s Mines, and beyond that slope began the waterless desert covered with a species of karoo shrub. It was evening when we pitched our camp, and the great fiery ball of the sun was sinking into the desert, sending glorious rays of many colored light over all the vast expanse. Leaving Good to superintend the arrangement of our , little camp, I took Sir Henry with me, and we walked to the top of the slope opposite and gazed out across the desert. The air was very clear, and far, far away I could distinguish the faint blue outlines, here ana there capped with white, of the great Suliman Berg. “There,” I said, “there is, the wall of Solomon’s Mines, but God knows if we shall ever climb it.”

“My brother should be there, and if he is.’l shall reach him somehow,” said Sir Henry, in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man. “I hope so,” I answered, and turned to go back? to the -amp, when I saw that we were not alone. Behind us, also gazing earnestly toward the far-off mountains, stood the great Zulu Umbopa. The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him, but addressed himself to Sir Henry, to wham he had attached himself. “Is it to that land that you would journey, Incubu?” (Elephant—Sir Henry’s Zulu name), he said, pointing toward the mountains with his broad assegai. ‘ . I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way. * It is very well for natives to have a name for one among themselves, but it is not decent that they should call one by their heathenish appellations to one’s face. The man laughed a quiet little laugh which riled me. “How do you know that I am not the 'equal of the Inkosi I serve?” he sa d. “rieisof a royal house, no doubt; one can see it in his size and in his eye; so perhaps am I, At least I am as great a man. Be my mouth, oh, Macumazahn, and say my words to the Inkoos Incubu, my master, for I would speak to him and to you.” I was angry with the man, for I am not accustomed to be talked to in that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was curious to know what he had to say,so I translated, expressing my opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his swagger was outrageous. “Yes, Umbopa,” answered Sir Henry, “I would journev there.” “The desert is wide and there is no water, the mountains are high and covered with snow, and man can not say what is beyond them behind the place where the sun sets, how shall you come thither, Incubu, and wherefore de you go?” I translated again. ’ “Tell him,” answered Sir Henry, “that I go because I believe that a man of my blood, my brother, has gone there before me, and I go to seek ’aim.” “That is so, Incubu; a man I met on the road told me that a white man went out into the desert two years ago toward those mountains with one servant, a hunter. They never came back.” “Howdo you know it was my brother?’* asked Sir Henry. “Nay, I know not But the man, when I asked what the white man was like, said that he had your a black beard. He said, too,* that thd name of the hunter with him was Jim, that he was a Bechuana hunter and wofie clothes.”

“There is no doubt about it,” said I, “I knew Jim well.” Sir Hanry nodded. “I was sure of it, ’ he said. “It George sethis mind upon a thing he generally did it It was always so from his boyhood. If he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it, unless some accident has overtaken him, and we must look for him on the other side.” ■■ , ' Um bo pa understood English, though he rarely spoke it y “It is a far journey, Incubu,” he put in, and I translated the remark. “Yes,” answered Sir Henry, “it is far.

But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it There is nothing, Umbopa, that he can not do, there are no mountains he may not clinch, there are no deserts he can not cross, save as mountain and a desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he bolds his life in his hand counting jt as nothing, ready to keep it or lose it as Providence may order,” I translated.

“Great words, my father,” answered the Zulu (I always' called him a Zulu, though he was not really one), “great swelling words, fit to fill the month of a man. You are right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown lather and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if the seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills; It is well to try to journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst ne can but die a little sooner. I will go with you across the desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall, to the ground ofi the way, my father.” He paused awhile, and then went on With one of those strange bursts of rhetorical eloquence which Zulus sfemsr times indulge in,and which to my i lindA full as they are of vain repetitions,show that the race is by no means devoi I, of a sort of intellectual power. . x. A “What is life? fell me, men, who are wise, who know' tne •secrets of the world,and the world of stars, and the world that lies above and around the stars; who flash their words from afar without a voice; tell me.white men, the secret of our life—whither it goes and whence it comes! “Ye can not answer; ye know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the dark we caifie, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is as the glow worm that shines in the night time and is black in the morning; it is as the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset. I have spoken.” “You are a strange man,” said Sir Henry. . Umbopa laughed, “It seems to me that we are much alike; Incubu. Perhaps I seek a brother over the mountains:” /

I looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?” I asked; “what do you know of the mountains?” “A little; a very little. There is a strange land there, a land of witchcraft and beautiful things; a land of brave people, and of trees, and streams, and white mountains, and of a great white road. I have heard of it But what is the good of talking? it grows dark. Those who live to see will see.” Again I looked at him doubtfully. The man knew too much. “Ye needpot fear me, Macumazahn,” he said, interpreting my look. “J dig no holes for ye to fall in. I make no plots. If ever we cross those mountains behind the sun. I will tell what I know. But Death sits upon them. Be wise and turn back. Go and hunt elephant. I have spoken.” And without another word he lifted his spear in salutation, and returned toward tbe camp, where shortly afterward we found him cleaning a gun like any other Kafir. “That is an odd man,” said Sir Henry. “Yes,” answered I, “too odd by half. I don’t like his little ways. He knows something and won’t speak out. But I suppose it is no use quarreling with him. We are in for a curious trip, and a mysterious Zulu won’t make much difference one way br another.”

Next day we made our arrangements for starting. Of course it was impossible to drag our heavy elephant rifles and other kit with us across the desert, so dismissing our bearers we made an arrangement with an old native who had a kraal close by to take care of them till we returned. It went to my heart ro leave such things as those sweet tools to the tender mercies of an’ bld thief of a savage whose greedy eyes I could see gloating over them. But I took some precautions. First of all, I loaded all the rifles, and informed him that if he touched them they would go off. He instantly tried the experiment with my eight-bore, and it did go off, and bleW ?a hole right through one of his oxen, which were just then being driven up to the kraal, to say nothing of knocking him head over heels with the recoil. He got up considerably startled, and not at all pleased at the loss of the ox, which he had the impudence to ask me to pav for, and nothing would induce him to touch them again. 1 , T “Put the live devils up there In tbethatehf” he said, “out of the way,or they will kill us all.”

Tnen I told him that if, when we came back, one of those things was missing, I would kill him and all his people by witchcraft; and if we died, and he tried to steal the things, 1 wbuld come and haunt him and turn his cattle mad and his milk sour till life was a weariness, and make the devils in the guns come out and talk to him in a way he would not like, and generally gave him a good idea of judgment to come. After that he swore he would look after them ps though they were his father’s spirit. He was a very superstitious old Kafir and a great villain. Having thus disposed of our superfluous gear, we arranged the kit, we five— Sir Henry, Good, myself, Umbopa, and the Hottentot Ventvogei—were to take with us on our journey. It was small enough, but do what we would we could not get it down under about forty pounds to a man. This is what it consisted of:

The three express rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition. The two Winchester repeating rifles (for Umbopa and Ventvogel), with two hundred rounds of cartridge. Three “Colt” revolvers and sixty rounds of cartridge Five Cochrane s water bottles, each holding four pints. Five blankets. Twenty-five pounds’ weight of biltong (sun-dried game flesh). - Ten pounds weight of best mixed beads for gifts. ■ A selection of medicine, including an ounce of quinine, and one or -two small surgical instruments. Our knives, a few sundries, such as a compass, matches,a pocket filter,tobacco, a trowel, a bottle of brandy, and the clothes we stood in. ~ This was our total equipment, a small one indeed for such a venture, but we

dared not attempt to carry more. As it was, that load was a heavy one per man to travel across the burning desert with,' for il such places every additional ounce tells upon one. But try as we would we could not see our way to reducing it. There was noting but what was absolutely necessary. With great difficulty, and by the promise of a present of a good huntingknife each, I succeeded Tn persuading three wretched natives from the village to come with us for the first stage,twenty miles, and to carry each a large gourd holding a gallon of water. My object was to enable us to refill our water bottles after the first night’s march, for we determined to start in the cool of the night. I gave out to the natives that'we were going to shoot ostriches, with which the desert abounded. They jabbered and shrugged their shoulders, and said we were mad and should perish of thirst, which I must , say seemed very probable; but being desirous of obtaining the knives, which were almost unknown treasures up there, they consented to come, having probably reflected that, after ajl, our subsequent extinction would be no affair of tbeirs.

All next day we rested and slept, and at sunset eat a hearty meal of fresh beef Washed down with tea, the last, as Good sadly remarked, we were likely to drill k for many a long day. Then, having made our final preparations, we lay down and waited for the moon to rise. At last about ninb o’clock up she came in all her chastened glory, flooding the wild country with silver light, and throwing a weird sheen on the vast expanse of rolling desert before us, which looked as solemn and quiet and as alien to man as the r,tar-studded firmament abov*. We rose up, and in a few minutes were ready, and yet we hesitated a little on tbe threshold of an irrevocable step. We three white men stood there by ourselves. Umbopa, assegai and the rifle across his shoulders, a few paces ahead of us, looked out fixedly across the desert; the hree hired natives, with the gourds of water, and Ventvogel, were gathered in a little knot behind.

“Gentlemen,” said Sir Henry, presently, in IiJS low, deep voice, “we are goitog on about as strange a journey as men can make in this world. It is very doubtful if we can succeed’in it. But we are three men who wi 1 stand together for gbod or for evil to the last. And now before we start let us for a moment pray to the Power who shapes the destinies of men, and who ages since has marked our paths, that it may please Him to direct our steps in accordance with His will.” Taking off his hat he, for the space of a minute or so, covered his hands, and Good and I did likewise. I do not say that I am a firstrate praying man, few hunters are, and as for Sir Henry I never heard him speak like that before, and only once since, though deep down in his heart I believe he is very religious. Good, too, is pious, though very apt to swear.. Anyhow I do not think I ever, excepting on one single occasion, put in a better prayer in my life than I did during that minute, and somehow I felt the happier for it. Our future was so completely unknown, and I think the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to liis iviaker “And now,” said Sir Henry, “trek.” -- So we started. Continued .next week.