The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-03-27
QUATERMAIN'S SPORT.
How the Brave Old Hunter Killed
Four Lions.

The story which is narrated in the follow
ing pages came to me from the lips of nv old
friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Ouat-
ermain, as we used to call him in South
Africa. He told it to me one evening when
was stopping with him at the place he
bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that.
the death of his only son so unsettled him
that he immediately left England, accom-
panied 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 highlands in the
vast, still unexplored interior, and his great
ambition is to find them before he dies. This
is the wild quest upon which he and his
companions have departed, and from which
l shrewdly suspect they never will return
One letter only have | received from the
old gentleman, dated from mission sta
ton high up the Tana, a river on the east
coast, about three hundred miles north of
Zanzibar; in it he says thew have gone
through many hardships and adventures,
but are alive and well, and have found
traces which go far toward making him
hope that the results of their wild quest
may be magnificent and unexampled
ulocONeTJ.' greatly rear, however, thaU
all he has discovered is death; for this let
ter came long while ago, and nobody has
heard single word of the party since
They have totally vanished.
1t was on the last evening of my stay at
his house that he told the ensuing story to
me and Captin Good, who was dining with
b him. He had eaten his dinner and drunk
two or three glasses of old port, just to help
Good and myself to the end of the second
bottle. 1t was an unusual thing for him to
DO, Tor he was most abStemiouS man,
having conceived, as he used to say great
horror of drink from observing its effects
upon the class of men-huters transport
riders, and others-among whom he had
passed so many years of his life. Conse-
quently the good wine took more effect on
him than it would have done on most men,
sending a little flush into his wrinkled
cheeks, and making him talk more freely
than usual.
Dear old man! ! can see him now, as he
went limping up and down the vestibule,
with his gray hair sticking up in scrubbing-
brush fashion, his shrivelled yellow face,
and his large dark eyes, that were as keen
as any hawks and yet soft as a bucks
The whole room was hung with trophies of
his numerous hunting expeditions, and he
had some story about every one of them, if
only you could get him to tell them. Gen
orally he would not, for he was not very
fond of narrating his own adventures, but
tonight the port wine made him more COM
municative.
''Ah, you brute ~ he said, stopping be-
meath an unusually large skull of a lion,
which was fixed just over the mantelpiece,
tended to their utmost width. ''Ah, you
brute you have given me lot of trouble
for the last dozen years, and will, suppose,
to my dying day"
Tell us the yarn, Quatermain," said
Good. You have often promised to tell
me, and you never have.n
you had better not ask me to-" he
answered, ''for it is a longish one.n
IAN right | said, ''the evening is young,
and there is some more port
Thus adjured, he filed his pipe from jar
of course-cut Boer tobacco that was always
standing on the mantel-piece, and still
walking up and down the room, began:
1T was, think in the March of 80 that l
was up in Sikukunis country. 1t was Just
after old Sequati's time, and Sikukuni had
got into power-I forget how. Anyway,
was there. had heard that the Bapedi
people had got down an enormous quantity
of ivory from the interior, and SO / started
with wagon-load of goods, and came
straight away from Middelburg to try and
trade some of it. 1t was a risky thing to
go into the country so early, on account of
the fever; but knew that there was one or
two Others after that lot of ivory, so !
determined to have a try for it, and take
my chance of fever | had got so tough
from continual knocking about that did
not set it down at much. Well, got on all
right for while. 1t is a wonderfully
beautiful piece of bush veldt, with great
ranges of mountains running through it,
and round granite koppies starting up here
and there, looking out like sentinels over
the rolling waste of bush. But it is very
hot-hot as stew-pan-and when | 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 Oliphant river,
| used to creep out of che wagon at dawn
and look out But there was no river TO be
seen-only long line of pillows of what
looked like the finest cotton wool tossed up
lightly with a pitchfork 1t was the fever
mist. Out from among the scrub, too, came
little spirals of vapor, as though there were
hundreds of tiny fires alight in it-reek
rising from thousands of tons of rottine
vegetation 1t was beautiful place, but
the beauty was the beauty of death and
all those lines and blots of vapor wrote one
great word across the surface of the country
and that word was 'fever."
1T was dreadful year of illness, that
] came, remember, to one little kraal OF
Knobuoses, and went up to see if could