Allan Quatermain Stories quotes

“

It was quiet⁠—quiet as death, and lonely as the grave.

“ ‘Mashune,’ I said at last, ‘where is Hans? my heart is heavy for him.’

I dragged his body to the hole under the tree, and pushed it in, placing his broad assegai by him, according to the custom of his people, that he might not go defenceless on his long journey; and then, ladies—I am not ashamed to confess—

I stood alone there before it, and wept like a woman.

”

It was the fever mist. Out from among the scrub, too, came little spirals of vapour, as though there were hundreds of tiny fires alight in it—reek rising from thousands of tons of rotting vegetation.

It was a beautiful place, but the beauty was the beauty of death

; and all those lines and blots of vapour wrote one great word across the surface of the country, and that word was ‘fever.’

I remember that I hesitated a little before going in, there was such an air of desolation about the spot.

Nature never looks desolate when man has not yet laid his hand upon her breast; she is only lonely. But when man has been, and has passed away, then she looks desolate.

“Well, I passed into the kraal, and went up to the principal hut. In front of the hut was something with an old sheepskin kaross thrown over it.

I remember that he was much astonished at my parting with two blankets for the sake of such a worthless old creature. ‘Why did I not leave her in the bush?’ he asked.

Those people carry the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to its extreme, you see.

“It was the night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my first acquaintance with my friend yonder,” and he nodded towards the skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide mantelshelf.

And then there came down that wonderful hush which sometimes falls over the African bush in the early hours of the night. No beast was moving, and no bird called.

Not a breath of air stirred the quiet trees, and the shadows did not even quiver, they only grew.

It was very oppressive and very lonely, for there was not a sign of the cattle or the boys. I was quite thankful for the society of old Kaptein, who was lying down contentedly against the disselboom, chewing the cud with a good conscience.

then rank upon rank of long-faced blesbuck, marching and wheeling like infantry; and last the shining troops of quagga, and the fierce-eyed shaggy vilderbeeste to take, as it were, the place of the cossack host that hangs upon an army’s flanks.

“Oh, no,” he would say, “the wilderness is not lonely, for, my boy, remember that the further you get from man, the nearer you grow to God,”

and though this is a saying that might well be disputed, it is one I am sure that anybody will easily understand who has watched the sun rise and set on the limitless deserted plains, and seen the thunder chariots of the clouds roll in …

One hears a great many different opinions expressed as to whether or no the lion is remarkable for his courage, but the result of my experience is that very much depends upon the state of his stomach.

A hungry lion will not stick at a trifle, whereas a full one will flee at a very small rebuke.

“Well, we hunted all about, and nothing could we see, not even a duiker or a bush buck;

“

As for Harry, he said nothing, but merely looked scared, as well he might

, for such a marvellous, I may say such an appalling and ghastly fluke it has never been my lot to witness. A man, let alone a boy, might have fired a thousand such shots without ever touching the object;