"What was it that you heard about my brother's
journey at Bamangwato?" asked Sir Henry, as I paused to fill my pipe
before replying to Captain Good.
"I heard this," I answered, "and I
have never mentioned it to a soul till to- day. I heard that he was starting
for Solomon's Mines."
"Solomon's Mines?" ejaculated both my hearers
at once. "Where are they?"
"I don't know," I said; "I know
where they are said to be. Once I saw the peaks of the mountains that border
them, but there were a hundred and thirty miles of desert between me and them,
and I am not aware that any white man ever got across it save one. But perhaps
the best thing I can do is to tell you the legend of Solomon's Mines as I know
it, you passing your word not to reveal anything I tell you without my
permission. Do you agree to that? I have my reasons for asking."
Sir Henry nodded, and Captain Good replied, "Certainly,
certainly." "Well," I began, "as you may guess, generally
speaking, elephant hunters are a
rough set of men, who do not trouble themselves with much beyond the facts of
life and the ways of Kafirs. But here and there you meet a man who takes the
trouble to collect traditions from the natives, and tries to make out a little
piece of the history of this dark land. It was such a man as this who first told me the legend of
Solomon's Mines, now a matter of nearly thirty years ago. That was when I was
on my first elephant hunt in the Matalebe country. His name was Evans, and he
was killed the following year, poor fellow, by a wounded buffalo, and lies
buried near the Zambesi Falls. I was telling Evans one night, I remember, of
some wonderful workings I had found whilst hunting koodoo and eland in what is
now the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal. I see they have come across these
workings again lately in prospecting for gold, but I knew of them years ago.
There is a great wide wagon road cut out of the solid rock, and leading to the mouth of the working
or gallery. Inside the mouth of this gallery are stacks of gold quartz piled up
ready for roasting, which shows that the workers, whoever they were, must have
left in a hurry. Also, about twenty paces in, the gallery is built across, and
a beautiful bit of masonry it is."
"'Ay,' said Evans, 'but I will spin you a
queerer yarn than that'; and he went on to tell me how he had found in the far
interior a ruined city, which he believed to be the Ophir of the Bible, and, by
the way, other more learned men have
said the same long since poor Evans's time. I was, I remember, listening
open-eared to all these wonders, for I was young at the time, and this story of
an ancient civilisation and of the treasures which those old Jewish or Phoenician adventurers used to extract from
a country long since lapsed into the darkest barbarism took a great hold upon
my imagination, when suddenly he said to me, 'Lad, did you ever hear of the Suliman Mountains up to the
north-west of the Mushakulumbwe country?' I told him I never had. 'Ah, well,'
he said, 'that is where Solomon really had his mines, his diamond mines, I
mean.'
"'How do you know that?' I asked.
"'Know it! why, what is "Suliman" but
a corruption of Solomon?[1] Besides, an old Isanusi or witch doctoress up in
the Manica country told me all about it. She said that the people who lived
across those mountains were a "branch" of the Zulus, speaking a
dialect of Zulu, but finer and bigger men even; that there lived among them
great wizards, who had learnt their art from white men when "all the world
was dark," and who had the secret of a wonderful mine of "bright
stones."'
"Well, I laughed at this story at the time, though
it interested me, for the Diamond Fields were not discovered then, but poor
Evans went off and was killed, and for twenty years I never thought any more of
the matter. However, just twenty years afterwards—and that is a long time,
gentlemen; an elephant hunter does not often live for twenty years at his
business. I heard something more definite about Suliman's Mountains and the
country which lies beyond them. I was up beyond the Manica
country, at a place called Sitanda's Kraal, and a
miserable place it was, for a man could get nothing to eat, and there was but
little game about. I had an attack of fever, and was in a bad way generally,
when one day a Portugee arrived with a single companion—a half-breed. Now I
know your low-class Delagoa Portugee
well. There is no greater devil unhung in a general way, battening as he does
upon human agony and flesh in the shape of slaves. But this was quite a
different type of man to the mean fellows whom
I had been accustomed to meet; indeed, in appearance he reminded me more of the
polite doms I have read about, for he was tall and thin, with large dark eyes
and curling grey mustachios. We talked together for a while, for he could speak
broken English, and I understood a little
Portugee, and he told me that his name was José Silvestre, and that he had a
place near Delagoa Bay. When he went on next day with his half- breed
companion, he said 'Good-bye,' taking off his hat quite in the old style.
"'Good-bye, senor,' he said; 'if ever we meet again I
shall be the richest man in the world, and I will remember you.' I laughed a
little—I was too weak to laugh much and watched him strike out for the great
desert to the west, wondering if he was mad, or what he thought he was going to
find there.
"A week passed, and I got the better of my
fever. One evening I was sitting on the ground in front of the little tent I
had with me, chewing the last leg of a miserable fowl I had bought from a
native for a bit of cloth worth twenty fowls, and staring at the hot red sun
sinking down over the desert, when suddenly I saw a figure, apparently that of
a European, for it wore a coat, on the slope of the rising ground opposite to
me, about three hundred yards away. The figure crept along on its hands and
knees, then it got up and staggered forward a few yards on its legs, only to
fall and crawl again. Seeing that it
must be somebody in distress, I sent one of my hunters to help him, and
presently he arrived, and who do you suppose it turned out to be?"
"José Silvestre, of course," said Captain
Good.
"Yes, José Silvestre, or rather his skeleton
and a little skin. His face was a bright yellow with bilious fever, and his
large dark eyes stood nearly out of his head, for all the flesh had gone. There
was nothing but yellow parchment-like skin, white hair, and the gaunt bones
sticking up beneath.
"'Water! for the sake of Christ, water!' he moaned
and I saw that his lips were cracked, and his tongue, which protruded between
them, was swollen and blackish.
"I gave him water with a little milk in it,
and he drank it in great gulps, two quarts or so, without stopping. I would not
let him have any more. Then the fever took him again, and he fell down and
began to rave about Suliman's Mountains, and the diamonds, and the desert. I
carried him into the tent and did what I could for him, which was little
enough; but I saw how it must end. About eleven o'clock he grew quieter, and I
lay down for a little rest and went to sleep. At dawn I woke again, and in the
half light saw Silvestre sitting up, a strange, gaunt form, and gazing out
towards the desert. Presently the first ray of the sun shot right across the
wide plain before us till it reached the faraway crest of one of the tallest of
the Suliman Mountains more than a hundred miles away.
"'There it is!' cried the dying man in
Portuguese, and pointing with his long, thin arm, 'but I shall never reach it,
never. No one will ever reach it!'
"Suddenly, he paused, and seemed to take a
resolution. 'Friend,' he said, turning towards me, 'are you there? My eyes grow
dark.'
"'Yes,' I said; 'yes, lie down now, and rest.'
"'Ay,' he answered, 'I shall rest soon, I have
time to rest—all eternity. Listen, I am dying! You have been good to me. I will
give you the writing. Perhaps you will get there if you can live to pass the
desert, which has killed my poor servant and me.'
"Then he groped in his shirt and brought out
what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens
or sable antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a
rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. 'Untie
it,' he said. I did so, and
extracted a bit of torn yellow linen on which something was written in rusty
letters. Inside this rag was a paper.
"Then he went on feebly, for he was growing
weak: 'The paper has all that is on the linen. It took me years to read.
Listen: my ancestor, a political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first
Portuguese who landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those mountains
which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name was José da
Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His slave, who waited for him
on this side of the mountains, found him dead, and brought the writing home to
Delagoa. It has been in the family ever since, but none have cared to read it,
till at last I did. And I have lost my life over it, but another may succeed, and become the richest man in the
world—the richest man in the world. Only give it to no one, senor; go
yourself!'
"Then he began to wander again, and in an hour
it was all over.
"God rest him! he died very quietly, and I
buried him deep, with big boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the
jackals can have dug him up. And then I came away."
"Ay, but the document?" said Sir Henry,
in a tone of deep interest. "Yes, the document; what was in it?"
added the captain.
"Well, gentlemen, if you like I will tell you. I
have never showed it to anybody yet except to a drunken old Portuguese trader
who translated it for me, and had forgotten all about it by the next morning.
The original rag is at my home in Durban, together with poor Dom José's
translation, but I have the English
rendering in my pocket-book, and a facsimile of the map, if it can be called a
map. Here it is."
[MAP OMITTED]
"I, José da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little cave
here no snow is on the north side of the nipple
of the southernmost of the two mountains
I have named Sheba's Breasts, write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant
of my raiment, my blood
being the ink. If my slave should find it when he comes, and should bring it to Delagoa,
let my friend (name illegible) bring the matter
to the knowledge of the king, that he
may send an army which,
if they live through the desert and the mountains, and can overcome
the brave Kukuanes and their devilish arts, to which end many priests
should be brought, will make him
the richest king since Solomon. With my own eyes I have seen the countless
diamonds stored in Solomon's treasure
chamber behind the white
Death; but through the treachery of Gagool the witch-
finder I might bring nought away, scarcely my life. Let him who comes
follow the map, and climb the snow of Sheba's left breast till he
reaches the nipple,
on the north side of which is the great road
Solomon made, from whence three days'
journey to the King's Palace. Let him kill Gagool. Pray for my soul. Farewell
José da Silvestra."[2]
When I had finished reading the above, and shown the copy of the
map, drawn by the dying hand of the old Dom with his blood for ink, there
followed a silence of astonishment.
"Well," said Captain Good, "I have been
round the world twice, and put in at most ports, but may I be hung for a
mutineer if ever I heard a yarn like this out of a story book, or in it either,
for the matter of that."
"It's a queer tale, Mr. Quatermain," said
Sir Henry. "I suppose you are not hoaxing us? It is, I know, sometimes
thought allowable to take in a greenhorn."
"If you think that, Sir Henry," I said,
much put out, and pocketing my paper for I do not like to be thought one of
those silly fellows who consider it witty to tell lies, and who are for ever
boasting to newcomers
of extraordinary hunting adventures which never happened—"if
you think that, why, there is an end to the matter," and I rose to go.
Sir Henry laid his large hand upon my shoulder. "Sit down, Mr.
Quatermain," he said, "I beg your pardon; I see very well you do not
wish to deceive us, but the story sounded so strange that I could hardly
believe it."
"You shall see the original map and writing
when we reach Durban," I answered, somewhat mollified, for really when I
came to consider the question it was scarcely wonderful that he should doubt my
good faith.
"But," I went on, "I have not told you
about your brother. I knew the man Jim who was with him. He was a Bechuana by
birth, a good hunter, and for a native a very clever man. That morning on which
Mr. Neville was starting I saw Jim standing by my wagon and cutting up tobacco
on the disselboom.
"'Jim,' said I, 'where are you off to this trip?
It is elephants?'
"'No, Baas,' he answered, 'we are after
something worth much more than ivory.'
"'And what might that be?' I said, for I was
curious. 'Is it gold?' "'No, Baas, something worth more than gold,' and he
grinned.
"I asked no more questions, for I did not
like to lower my dignity by seeming inquisitive, but I was puzzled. Presently
Jim finished cutting his tobacco.
"'Baas,' said he.
"I took no notice. "'Baas,' said he again.
"'Eh, boy, what is it?' I asked.
"'Baas, we are going after diamonds.'
"'Diamonds! why, then, you are steering in the wrong
direction; you should head for the Fields.'
"'Baas, have you ever heard of Suliman's
Berg?'—that is, Solomon's
Mountains, Sir Henry. "'Ay!'
"'Have you ever heard of the diamonds there?'
"'I have heard a foolish story, Jim.'
"'It is no story, Baas. Once I knew a woman
who came from there, and reached Natal with her child, she told me: "she is dead
now."
"'Your master will feed the assvögels'—that is,
vultures—'Jim, if he tries to reach Suliman's country, and so will you if they
can get any pickings off your worthless old carcass,' said I.
"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.'
"'Ah! my boy,' I said, 'you wait till the
"pale old man" gets a grip of your yellow throat, and then we shall
hear what sort of a tune you sing.'
"Half an hour after that I saw Neville's wagon
move off. Presently Jim came back running. 'Good-bye, Baas,' he said. 'I didn't
like to start without bidding you good-bye, for I daresay you are right, and
that we shall never trek south again.'
"'Is your master really going to Suliman's
Berg, Jim, or are you lying?' "'No,' he answered, 'he is going. He told me
he was bound to make his fortune somehow, or try to; so
he might as well have a fling for the diamonds.'
"'Oh!' I said; 'wait a bit, Jim; will you take a
note to your master, Jim, and promise not to give it to him till you reach
Inyati?' which was some hundred miles off.
"'Yes, Baas.'
"So I took a scrap of paper, and wrote on it,
'Let him who comes . . . climb the snow of Sheba's left breast, till he reaches
the nipple, on the north side of which is Solomon's great road.'
"'Now, Jim,' I said, 'when you give this to your
master, tell him he had better follow the advice on it implicitly. You are not
to give it to him now, because I don't want him back asking me questions which
I won't answer. Now be off, you idle fellow, the wagon is nearly out of sight.'
"Jim took the note and went, and that is all I
know about your brother, Sir
Henry; but I am much
afraid"
"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry, "I
am going to look for my brother; I am going to trace him to Suliman's
Mountains, and over them if necessary, till I find him, or until I know that he
is dead. Will you come with me?"
I am, as I think I have said, a cautious man, indeed a timid one,
and this suggestion frightened me. It seemed to me that to undertake such a
journey would be to go to certain death, and putting other considerations
aside, as I had a son to support, I could not afford to die just then.
"No, thank you, Sir Henry, I think I had
rather not," I answered. "I am too old for wild-goose chases of that
sort, and we should only end up like my poor friend Silvestre. I have a son
dependent on me, so I cannot afford to risk my life foolishly."
Both Sir Henry and Captain Good looked very
disappointed.
"Mr. Quatermain," said the former,
"I am well off, and I am bent upon this business. You may put the
remuneration for your services at whatever figure you like in reason, and it
shall be paid over to you before we start. Moreover, I will arrange in the
event of anything untoward happening to us or
to you, that your son shall be suitably provided for. You will see from this
offer how necessary I think your presence. Also if by chance we should reach
this place, and find diamonds, they shall belong to you and Good equally. I do
not want them. But of course that promise is worth nothing at all, though the
same thing would apply to any ivory we might get. You may pretty well make your
own terms with me, Mr.Quatermain; and of course I shall pay all expenses."
"Sir Henry," said I, "this is the
most liberal proposal I ever had, and one not to be sneezed at by a poor hunter
and trader. But the job is the biggest I have come across, and I must take time
to think it over. I will give you my answer before we get to Durban."
"Very good," answered Sir Henry.
Then I said good-night and turned in, and
dreamt about poor long-dead
Silvestre and the
diamonds.
[1]
Suliman is the Arabic form of Solomon.-Editor.
[2]
I Joseph of Silvestra I'm starving ná small pit where there is no snow on the
north side of the southern tip of the two mountains called socio Sheba, write
this in the year 1590, I write this with a piece d'Bone N 'a mess of my clothes
and my blood for ink; if my slave der this when come to take Lorenzo Marquez,
that my friend take the thing to the knowledge d'El Rei, so you can have an
army that if desfiler the desert and the montonhas and even surpass the brave
Kukuanes and their diabolical arts, so if you should bring many priests Far
richer after King Solomon With my own eyes sees the di lovers tale without
stored in the treasury chambers of Solomon brings the white death, but the
betrayal of the witch Gagoal achadora, nothing could take, and only my life.
Who comes follow mappa and clamber through the snow Sheba chest left until you
reach the fountain on the north side of which is the great road Solomon made by him, where there are three days' journey to the Palace of the
King Kill Gagoal. Pray for my soul. Adeos. Jos é da Silvestra.
chapter 3, just be waiting ...
y'll never find it in cyber space, except in my blog ^_^ ...
