The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-03-06
LONG ODDS.
BY II. RIDER HAGGARD.

BY II. RIDRR HAGGARD.
 The story which is narrated in the fol- lowing pages came to me from the lips of my d friend Allan Q Quatermain, or Hun ter Quatermain, as we used to call him in Soutn Africa. He told it to me one even- ing when was stopping with him at the place the bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that the death of his only son so un- settled him that he immediately left Eng land, accompanied by two companions, who were old fellow-voyagers of his, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and has now utterly vanished into the dark heart of Africa. He is persuaded that a white people of which he has heard rumors all his life, exists somewhere on the high lands in the vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition Is to find them be- fore he dles. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions have de- parted, and from which l shrewdly sus- pect they never will return. One letter only have received from the old gentle man, dated from a mission-station high up the Tana, river on the east coa ast, about three hundred miles north of ZAn- zibar; in it he says they have gone through many hardships and adventures, but are alive and we'll, and have found traces which go far toward making him hope that the results of their wild quest may be Magnificent and uuexampled discovery" greatly fear, ho wever, that all he has discovered is death for this letter came long while ago, and nobody has heard single word ofthe party since. They have totally vanished.
 It was on the last evening of my stay at his house that he told the ensuing story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He had eaten his din ner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just to help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an uu- usual thing for him to do, for he was a most abstemious man, having conceived, as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing its effects upon the class of men-hunters, transport riders, and others-among whom he had passed so many years of his life. Consequently, the good wine took more effect on him than it would have done on most men sending little flush into his wrinkled cheeks, and making him talk more freely than usual.
 Dear old mani can see him now. as he went limping up and down the vesti- bule, with his gray hair sticking up in scrubbing-brush fashion, his shrivel ed yellow face, and his large dark eyes, tn at were as keen as any hawks, and yet soft as bucks. The whole room was hung with trophies of his numerous hunting ex , petitions, and he had some story about every one of them, If only you could get him to tell them. Generally he would not, for he was not very fond of narrating his own adventures, but tonight the port wine made him more communicative
 "Ah, you brutel" he said stopping beneath an unusually large skull of a lion, which was fixed just over the mantlepiece, beneath long row of guns, its jaws dis tended to their utmost width. "AA, you brute you have given me lot of trouble for the last dozsn years, and will, sup pose, to my dying day"
 "Tell us the yarn, Quatermain," said Good. "You have often promised to tell me, and you never have"
 "You had better not ask me to-" he an- swered, for 1t is longish one."
 All right" l said, "the evening is young, and there is some more port"
 Thus adjured, he filled his pipe from a jar of coarse-cut Boer tobacco that was always standing on the mantlepiece, and still walking up and down the room, be. gan:
 It was, think, in the March of 1880 that was up in Sikukuni's country I, was just after old Sequati's time, and Sikukuni had got into power-l forget how. Any way, 1 was there. had heard that the Bapedi people had go, down an enormous quantity of ivory from the interior, and SO started with a wagon-l load of goods, and came sraigh, away from Middelburg to try and trade some of 1t. It was risky thing to go in to the country so early, on account of the fever, but knew that there were one ol two others after that lot of ivory, SO dc termined to have try for it, and take my chance of fever. had got so tough from continual knocking about that did not set 1t down at much. We'll, got on all right for a while. It is . wonderfully beautiful piece of bush veldt, with grea, ranges of mountains running through it and round granite koppies starting up here and there, looking out like sentineis over the rolling waste of bush. But 1t is vSfy uOt-uOS eS SUoW- -pAu-auu Wucn was there that March, which, of course Is autumn in that part of Africa, the whole place reeked of fever. Every morning as trekked along down by the O,iphan, River, l used to creep out of the wagon at dawn and look out. But there was no river to be seen-o only long line ot bill lows of what looked like the finest cotsos wool tossed up lightly with . pitchfork It was the fever mist. Out from among the scrub too came little spirals of vApor as though there were hundreds of tiny 6rs. alight in it-reek rising from thousand, of tons of rotting vegetation. It was [