King Solomon’s Mines quotes

There must be some poison in a lion’s teeth, otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your mauling?

It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco.

It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don’t like that. This is by the way.

I asked a page or two back, what is a gentleman? I’ll answer the question now: A Royal Naval officer is, in a general sort of way, though of course there may be a black sheep among them here and there.

I fancy it is just the wide seas and the breath of God’s winds that wash their hearts and blow the bitterness out of their minds and make them what men ought to be.

Well, to return, I proved right again;

“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.

’

Well, all the time that we were steaming up to Natal I was thinking over Sir Henry Curtis’s offer. We did not speak any more on the subject for a day or two, though I told them many hunting yarns, all true ones.

There is no need to tell lies about hunting, for so many curious things happen within the knowledge of a man whose business it is to hunt; but this is by the way.

At last, one beautiful evening in January, which is our hottest month, we steamed past the coast of Natal, expecting to make Durban Point by sunset.

… however beautiful a view may be, it requires the presence of man to make it complete, but perhaps that is because I have lived so much in the wilderness, and therefore know the value of civilisation, though to be sure it drives away the game.

The Garden of Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it must have been fairer when Eve adorned it.

To return, we had miscalculated a little, and the sun was well down before we dropped anchor off the Point, and heard the gun which told the good folks of Durban that the English mail was in.

From a large brig lying near also came the music of the sailors as they worked at getting the anchor up in order to be ready for the wind.

Altogether it was a perfect night, such a night as you sometimes get in Southern Africa, and it threw a garment of peace over everybody as the moon threw a garment of silver over everything.

Even the great bulldog, belonging to a sporting passenger, seemed to yield to its gentle influences, and forgetting his yearning to come to close quarters with the baboon in a cage on the foc’sle, snored happily at the door of the cabin, dreaming no doubt …

I rose and knocked out my pipe before I answered. I had not made up my mind, and wanted an additional moment to decide. Before the burning tobacco had fallen into the sea I had decided; just that little extra second did the trick.

It is often the way when you have been bothering a long time over a thing.

“Yes, gentlemen,” I said, sitting down again, “I will go, and by your leave I will tell you why, and on what conditions. First for the terms which I ask.

First I am a fatalist, and believe that my time is appointed to come quite without reference to my own movements and will, and that if I am to go to Suliman’s Mountains to be killed, I shall go there and shall be killed.

God Almighty, no doubt, knows His mind about me, so I need not trouble on that point.

Secondly, I am a poor man. For nearly forty years I have hunted and traded, but I have never made more than a living.

Still it does look odd to trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails.

It seems as though Nature made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern ornaments of a lot of prize bulldogs on to the rumps of the oxen.

Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely necessary.

“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 cannot do, there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or lose it as Heaven above may order.

”

But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one’s road and to fight with the air.

Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner.

I will go with thee across the desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall to the ground on the way, my father.”

“Ye cannot answer me; ye know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the dark we came, 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 the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glowworm that shines in the nighttime and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter;

Out of the dark we came, 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 the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glowworm that shines in the nighttime and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter;

“Ye cannot answer me; ye know not. Listen, I will answer.

Out of the dark we came, 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.

Good too is pious, though apt to swear. Anyhow I do not remember, excepting on one single occasion, ever putting up 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 that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.

“And now,” said Sir Henry, “trek!”

Go where you will you find him, and so it must have been always. I have seen him enclosed in amber, which is, I was told, quite half a million years old, looking exactly like his descendant of today, and

I have little doubt but that when the last man lies dying on the earth he will be buzzing round⁠—if this event happens to occur in summer⁠—watching for an opportunity to settle on his nose.

At sunset we halted, waiting for the moon to rise.

We drank a little and flung ourselves down on the sand, thoroughly tired out, and soon were all asleep. There was no need to set a watch, for we had nothing to fear from anybody or anything in that vast untenanted plain.

Our only enemies were heat, thirst, and flies, but far rather would I have faced any danger from man or beast than that awful trinity.

This time we were not so lucky as to find a sheltering rock to guard us from the glare of the sun, with the result that about seven o’clock we woke up experiencing the exact sensations one would attribute to a beefsteak on a gridiron.

This little discovery put new life into us; for it is wonderful, when a man is in a desperate position, how he catches at the slightest hope, and feels almost happy.

On a dark night a single star is better than nothing.

Meanwhile Ventvögel was lifting his snub nose, and sniffing the hot air for all the world like an old Impala ram who scents danger. Presently he spoke again.

“Let each of us take the buck opposite to him. Aim well at the point of the shoulder and high up,” said I; “and Umbopa, do you give the word, so that we may all fire together.”

Then came a pause, each of us aiming his level best, as indeed a man is likely to do when he knows that life itself depends upon the shot.

“Fire,” said Umbopa in Zulu, and at almost the same instant the three rifles rang out loudly; three clouds of smoke hung for a moment before us, and a hundred echoes went flying over the silent snow.

As we went the country grew more and more lovely. The vegetation was luxuriant, without being tropical; the sun was bright and warm, but not burning; and a gracious breeze blew softly along the odorous slopes of the mountains.

Indeed, this new land was little less than an earthly paradise; in beauty, in natural wealth, and in climate I have never seen its like.

The Transvaal is a fine country, but it is nothing to Kukuanaland.

“I don’t know,” said Sir Henry gloomily, “but somehow I think that I shall find him.”

Slowly the sun sank, then suddenly darkness rushed down on the land like a tangible thing.

There was no breathing-space between the day and night, no soft transformation scene, for in these latitudes twilight does not exist. The change from day to night is as quick and as absolute as the change from life to death.

Slowly the sun sank, then suddenly darkness rushed down on the land like a tangible thing. There was no breathing-space between the day and night, no soft transformation scene, for in these latitudes twilight does not exist.

The change from day to night is as quick and as absolute as the change from life to death.

The sun sank and the world was wreathed in shadows.

“Tell him,” answered Sir Henry, “that he mistakes an Englishman.

Wealth is good, and if it comes in our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth.

Still, speaking for myself, I say this. I have always liked Umbopa, and so far as lies in me I will stand by him in this business. It will be very pleasant to me to try to square matters with that cruel devil Twala.

Gladiatorial shows and Spanish bullfights at any rate contributed to the public amusement, which certainly was not the case here.

The most confirmed sensation-monger would fight shy of sensation if he knew that it was well on the cards that he would, in his own proper person, be the subject of the next “event.”

Once we rose and tried to remonstrate, but were sternly repressed by Twala.

“He may well be bold in whose lips are truth.

The truth is a sharp spear which flies home and misses not.

It is a message from ‘the Stars,’ O king.”

Tonight these thousands slept their healthy sleep, tomorrow they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children fatherless, and their place know them no more forever.

Only the old moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did aeons before we were, and will do aeons after we have been forgotten.

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space;

Only the old moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did aeons before we were, and will do aeons after we have been forgotten.

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains.

His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited today;

the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited today; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends—the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again forever.

All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind—for as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me—while I stood and stared at those grim yet fantastic lines of warriors, …

This made me very angry, for, if possible to avoid it, I hate to miss in public.

When a man is master of only one art he likes to keep up his reputation in that art.

Moved quite out of myself at my failure, I did a rash thing. Rapidly covering the general as he ran, I let drive with the second barrel. Instantly the poor man threw up his arms, and fell forward on to his face.

“It is well, O king,” said Infadoos, apparently contemplating the certainty of the complete annihilation of his regiment with perfect calmness. Truly, these Kukuanas are a wonderful people.

Death has no terrors for them when it is incurred in the course of duty.

“And whilst the eyes of the multitude of Twala’s soldiers are thus fixed upon the fight,” went on Ignosi, “behold, one-third of the men who are left alive to us (i.e.

… of the warriors and the groans of the dying, set to the music of clashing spears, came a continuous hissing undertone of S’gee, s’gee, the note of triumph of each victor as he passed his assegai through and through the body of his fallen foe.

But perfect discipline and steady and unchanging valour can do wonders, and one veteran soldier is worth two young ones, as soon became apparent in the present case.

For just when we thought that it was all over with the Greys, and were preparing to take their place so soon as they made room by being destroyed, I heard Sir Henry’s deep voice ringing out through the din, and caught a glimpse of …

I remember my dear wife was just the same. Well, I retired from that little interview sad at heart. I did not like Miss Foulata’s soft glances, for I knew the fatal amorous propensities of sailors in general, and of Good in particular.

There are two things in the world, as I have found out, which cannot be prevented: you cannot keep a Zulu from fighting, or a sailor from falling in love upon the slightest provocation!

It was a few days after this last occurrence that Ignosi held his great indaba, or council, and was formally recognised as king by the indunas or head men, of Kukuanaland.

It is not so, and naught thou knowest of the heart of man to think it. To the young, indeed, death is sometimes welcome, for the young can feel.

They love and suffer, and it wrings them to see their beloved pass to the land of shadows.

But the old feel not, they love not, and, ha! ha! they laugh to see another go out into the dark; ha! ha! they laugh to see the evil that is done under the stars.

and the dead make no noise. Did we not know it who lay by poor Foulata’s side? The crashing of all the artillery of earth and heaven could not have come to our ears in our living tomb.

We were cut off from every echo of the world⁠—we were as men already in the grave.

Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape.

Putting aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom—for the bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us, and I never made any pretensions to be brave—the silence itself was too great to allow of it.

Reader, you may have lain awake at night and thought the quiet oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can have no idea what a vivid, tangible thing is perfect stillness.

On the surface of the earth there is always some sound or motion, and though it may in itself be imperceptible, yet it deadens the sharp edge of absolute silence. But here there was none.

Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings.

Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.

And so the night wore on.

I remember that I laid down the basket full of diamonds, wishing to be rid of its weight, but on second thoughts took it up again.

One might as well die rich as poor, I reflected.

As we went the sound became more and more audible, till at last it seemed quite loud in the quiet. On, yet on; now we could distinctly make out the unmistakable swirl of rushing water.

Behold, the land is yours as far as ye can see. The white man’s houses? Ye shall teach my people how to build them. Cattle for beef and milk? Every married man shall bring you an ox or a cow. Wild game to hunt?

Does not the elephant walk through my forests, and the river-horse sleep in the reeds?

Would ye make war? My Impis wait your word. If there is anything more which I can give, that will I give you.”