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A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Algernon Blackwood

Narratives of the Anglo-Zulu War

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Quatermain: the Complete Adventures 1

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Quatermain: the Complete Adventures 1
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): H. Rider Haggard
Date Published: 2008/11
Page Count: 440
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-529-1
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-530-7

Lost treasure, the roar of the lion and high adventure!

These are the first two adventures of H. Rider Haggard's famous character-Allan Quatermain. Quatermain is the ultimate white man in Africa—the Great White Hunter, adventurer and guide. These are stories brim full of action, romance, big game hunting, hairsbreadth escapes from dangerous animals and the fierce peoples of the Dark Continent, fantastical landscapes and strange hidden cultures—with lost cities from a time when vast expanses of this mysterious land remained untrodden by the feet of Western man and it seemed that anything was yet possible. In this first volume of the complete Quatermain novels and short stories—available from Leonaur in hard and soft cover—are the ever popular 'King Solomon’s Mines' and 'Allan Quatermain'. These books will be a joy for all collectors who will relish the opportunity to own all the adventures in a coordinated collection.

All that afternoon we travelled along the magnificent roadway, which trended steadily in a north-westerly direction. Infadoos and Scragga walked with us, but their followers marched about one hundred paces ahead.<br>
"Infadoos," I said at length, "who made this road?"<br>
"It was made, my lord, of old time, none know how or when, not even the wise woman Gagool, who has lived for generations. We are not old enough to remember its making. None can fashion such roads now, but the king suffers no grass to grow upon it."<br>
"And whose are the writings on the wall of the caves through which we have passed on the road?" I asked, referring to the Egyptian-like sculptures that we had seen.<br>
"My lord, the hands that made the road wrote the wonderful writings. We know not who wrote them."<br>
"When did the Kukuana people come into this country?"<br>
"My lord, the race came down here like the breath of a storm ten thousand thousand moons ago, from the great lands which lie there beyond," and he pointed to the north. "They could travel no further because of the high mountains which ring in the land, so say the old voices of our fathers that have descended to us the children, and so says Gagool, the wise woman, the smeller out of witches," and again he pointed to the snow-clad peaks. "The country, too, was good, so they settled here and grew strong and powerful, and now our numbers are like the sea sand, and when Twala the king calls up his regiments their plumes cover the plain so far as the eye of man can reach."<br>
"And if the land is walled in with mountains, who is there for the regiments to fight with?"<br>
"Nay, my lord, the country is open there towards the north, and now and again warriors sweep down upon us in clouds from a land we know not, and we slay them. It is the third part of the life of a man since there was a war. Many thousands died in it, but we destroyed those who came to eat us up. So since then there has been no war."<br>
"Your warriors must grow weary of resting on their spears, Infadoos."<br>
"My lord, there was one war, just after we destroyed the people that came down upon us, but it was a civil war; dog ate dog."<br>
"How was that?"<br>
"My lord the king, my half-brother, had a brother born at the same birth, and of the same woman. It is not our custom, my lord, to suffer twins to live; the weaker must always die. But the mother of the king hid away the feebler child, which was born the last, for her heart yearned over it, and that child is Twala the king. I am his younger brother, born of another wife."<br>
"Well?"<br>
"My lord, Kafa, our father, died when we came to manhood, and my brother Imotu was made king in his place, and for a space reigned and had a son by his favourite wife. When the babe was three years old, just after the great war, during which no man could sow or reap, a famine came upon the land, and the people murmured because of the famine, and looked round like a starved lion for something to rend. Then it was that Gagool, the wise and terrible woman, who does not die, made a proclamation to the people, saying, 'The king Imotu is no king.' And at the time Imotu was sick with a wound, and lay in his kraal not able to move.<br>
"Then Gagool went into a hut and led out Twala, my half-brother, and twin brother to the king, whom she had hidden among the caves and rocks since he was born, and stripping the moocha (waist-cloth) off his loins, showed the people of the Kukuanas the mark of the sacred snake coiled round his middle, wherewith the eldest son of the king is marked at birth, and cried out loud, 'Behold your king whom I have saved for you even to this day!'<br>
"Now the people being mad with hunger, and altogether bereft of reason and the knowledge of truth, cried out—'The king! The king!', but I knew that it was not so, for Imotu my brother was the elder of the twins, and our lawful king. Then just as the tumult was at its height Imotu the king, though he was very sick, crawled from his hut holding his wife by the hand, and followed by his little son Ignosi—that is, by interpretation, the Lightning.<br>
"'What is this noise?' he asked. 'Why cry ye The king! The king!'<br>
"Then Twala, his twin brother, born of the same woman, and in the same hour, ran to him, and taking him by the hair, stabbed him through the heart with his knife. And the people being fickle, and ever ready to worship the rising sun, clapped their hands and cried, 'Twala is king! Now we know that Twala is king!'"
"And what became of Imotu's wife and her son Ignosi? Did Twala kill them too?"
"Nay, my lord. When she saw that her lord was dead the queen seized the child with a cry and ran away. Two days afterward she came to a kraal very hungry, and none would give her milk or food, now that her lord the king was dead, for all men hate the unfortunate. But at nightfall a little child, a girl, crept out and brought her corn to eat, and she blessed the child, and went on towards the mountains with her boy before the sun rose again, and there she must have perished, for none have seen her since, nor the child Ignosi."<br>
"Then if this child Ignosi had lived he would be the true king of the Kukuana people?"<br>
"That is so, my lord; the sacred snake is round his middle. If he lives he is king; but, alas! he is long dead." <br>
"See, my lord," and Infadoos pointed to a vast collection of huts surrounded by a fence, which was in its turn encircled by a great ditch, that lay on the plain beneath us. "That is the kraal where the wife of Imotu was last seen with the child Ignosi. It is there that we shall sleep to-night, if, indeed," he added doubtfully, "my lords sleep at all upon this earth."