Free A Tale Of Three Lions by H. Rider Haggard Page A

Quatermain has certainly
seen his share. Well, the story that I am going to tell you in the following
pages is one of the later of these adventures, though I forget the exact year
in which it happened. at any rate I know that it was the only trip upon which
he took his son Harry (who is since dead) with him, and that Harry was then
about fourteen. And now for the story, which I will repeat, as nearly as I
can, in the words in which Hunter Quatermain told it to me one night in the
old oak- panelled vestibule of his house in Yorkshire. We were talking about
gold-mining -
    “Gold-mining!” he broke in; “ah! yes, I once went gold-mining at Pilgrims’
Rest in the Transvaal, and it was after that that we had the business about
Jim-Jim and the lions. Do you know Pilgrim’s Rest? Well, it is, or was, one
of the queerest little places you ever saw. The town itself was pitched in a
stony valley, with mountains all about it, and in the middle of such scenery
as one does not often get the chance of seeing. Many and many is the time
that I have thrown down my pick and shovel in disgust, clambered out of my
claim, and walked a couple of miles or so to the top of some hill. Then I
would lie down in the grass and look out over the glorious stretch of country
—the smiling valleys, the great mountains touched with gold—
real gold of the sunset, and clothed in sweeping robes of bush, and stare
into the depths of the perfect sky above; yes, and thank Heaven I had got
away from the cursing and the coarse jokes of the miners, and the voices of
those Basutu Kaffirs as they toiled in the sun, the memory of which is with
me yet.
    “Well, for some months I dug away patiently at my claim, till the very
sight of a pick or of a washing-trough became hateful to me. A hundred times
a day I lamented my own folly in having invested eight hundred pounds, which
was about all that I was worth at the time, in this gold-mining. But like
other better people before me, I had been bitten by the gold bug, and now was
forced to take the consequences. I bought a claim out of which a man had made
a fortune—five or six thousand pounds at least—as I thought,
very cheap; that is, I gave him five hundred pounds down for it. It was all
that I had made by a very rough year’s elephant-hunting beyond the Zambesi,
and I sighed deeply and prophetically when I saw my successful friend, who
was a Yankee, sweep up the roll of Standard Bank notes with the lordly air of
the man who has made his fortune, and cram them into his breeches pockets.
‘Well,’ I said to him—the happy vendor—’it is a magnificent
property, and I only hope that my luck will be as good as yours has
been.’
    “He smiled; to my excited nerves it seemed that he smiled ominously, as he
answered me in a peculiar Yankee drawl: ‘I guess, stranger, as I ain’t the
one to make a man quarrel with his food, more especial when there ain’t no
more going of the rounds; and as for that there claim, well, she’s been a
good nigger to me; but between you and me, stranger, speaking man to man, now
that there ain’t any filthy lucre between us to obscure the features of the
truth, I guess she’s about worked out!’
    “I gasped; the fellow’s effrontery took the breath out of me. Only five
minutes before he had been swearing by all his gods—and they appeared
to be numerous and mixed—that there were half a dozen fortunes left
in the claim, and that he was only giving it up because he was downright
weary of shovelling the gold out.
    “‘Don’t look so vexed, stranger,’ went on my tormentor, ‘perhaps there is
some shine in the old girl yet; anyway you are a downright good fellow, you
are, therefore you will, I guess, have a real A1 opportunity of working on
the feelings of Fortune. Anyway it will bring the muscle up upon your arm,
for the stuff is uncommon stiff, and, what is more, you will in the course of
a year earn a sight more than