The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1893-07-01
Select Storp.
THE THREE LIONS.
II. Rider Hagsard, in Macmillan's Magazine.

O1AFIEh
The story which is narrated in the fol
lowing pages came to me from the lips OF
my old friend, Allan Quatermain, or Hun
ter Quatermain, as We used to call him in
South Africa. He told it to ME one even
ing when I was stopping with him at the
place he 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 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 white
people, of whom 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 | re-
ceived from the old gentleman, dated from
mission station high up the Tana, river
on the east coast, about three hundred
miles north of Zanzibar. In it he says
they have gone through many hardships
and adventures, but are alive and well, and
have found traces which go far toward max
ing him hope that the results of their wild
quest may he 2 magnificent and unexam-
pied discovery" | greatly fear, however,
that all he has discovered is death, for this
letter came long while ago, and nobody
has heard a 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 Captain Good, who was dining
with him, He had eaten his dinner and
DRINK two OF 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, for he was most abstemi-
GUS man, having conceived, as he used to
say, 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 D 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 vesti-
bnle, with his gray hair sticking up in
scrubbipg brush fashion, his shriveled,
yellow face and his large dark eyes that
were as keen as any hawks and yet soft as
bucks, The whole room was hung with
trophies of his numerous hunting expedi-
tions, 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 be-
meath an unusually large skull Of lion,
which was fixed just over the mantelpiece
beneath long row of guns, its jaws dis
tended to their utmost width. "Ah, you
brute, yeH have given me lot cf trouble
for the last dozen years, aad 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"
'sYou had better not ask me to, he an
swered, 0for it is longish one.
GAN right" | said; "the evening is
young, and there is some more port.
Thus adjured, he filed his pipe from a
jar of coarse cut Roer tobacco that was
always standing on the mantelpieoe, and
still walking up and down the room began ;
at was, l think, in the March Of 1869
that was up in Sikukuni's country. 1t
was Just after old Sequati's time, and Siku-
kuni had got into power-I forget how.
Anyway l was there. I had beard that
the Bapedi people had got down an enor-
nous quantity of ivory from the interior,
and SO / started with wagon load of
goods and came straight away from Mid
dlebprg to try and trade some of it. 1t
was risky thing to go into the country
so carly on account of the fever, but | knew
that there were 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
awhile.
at is a wonderfully beautiful piece of
bush yeldt, with great ranges of mountains
running through it and round granite kop-
pies starting up here and there, looking out
ike sentinels over the rolling waste Of bush.
But it is very hot--hot as stewpan- 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