This faithful but unpretending record of a remarkable adventure is hereby respectfully dedicated by the narrator, Allan Quatermain, to all the big and little boys who read it....

The author ventures to take this opportunity to thank his readers for the kind reception they have accorded to the successive editions of this tale during the last twelve years. He hopes that in its p...

Now that this book is printed, and about to be given to the world, a sense of its shortcomings both in style and contents, weighs very heavily upon me. As regards the latter, I can only say that it do...

It is a curious thing that at my age⁠—fifty-five last birthday⁠—I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if e...

“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 menti...

It takes from four to five days, according to the speed of the vessel and the state of the weather, to run up from the Cape to Durban. Sometimes, if the landing is bad at East London, where they have ...

Now I do not propose to narrate at full length all the incidents of our long travel up to Sitanda’s Kraal, near the junction of the Lukanga and Kalukwe Rivers. It was a journey of more than a thousand...

We had killed nine elephants, and it took us two days to cut out the tusks, and having brought them into camp, to bury them carefully in the sand under a large tree, which made a conspicuous mark for ...

Two hours later, that is, about four o’clock, I woke up, for so soon as the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied, the torturing thirst from which I was suffering asserted itself. I ...

Outside the cavern we halted, feeling rather foolish. “I am going back,” said Sir Henry. “Why?” asked Good. “Because it has struck me that⁠—what we saw⁠—may be my brother.” This was a new idea, and we...

All that afternoon we travelled along the magnificent roadway, which trended steadily in a northwesterly direction. Infadoos and Scragga walked with us, but their followers marched about one hundred p...

It will not be necessary for me to detail at length the incidents of our journey to Loo. It took two full days’ travelling along Solomon’s Great Road, which pursued its even course right into the hear...

On reaching our hut I motioned to Infadoos to enter with us. “Now, Infadoos,” I said, “we would speak with thee.” “Let my lords say on.” “It seems to us, Infadoos, that Twala the king is a cruel man.”...

For a long while⁠—two hours, I should think⁠—we sat there in silence, being too overwhelmed by the recollection of the horrors we had seen to talk. At last, just as we were thinking of turning in⁠—for...

Luckily for us, Infadoos and the chiefs knew all the paths of the great town perfectly, so that we passed by sideways unmolested, and notwithstanding the gloom we made fair progress. For an hour or mo...

Slowly, and without the slightest appearance of haste or excitement, the three columns crept on. When within about five hundred yards of us, the main or centre column halted at the root of a tongue of...

In a few more minutes the regiments destined to carry out the flanking movements had tramped off in silence, keeping carefully to the lee of the rising ground in order to conceal their advance from th...

After the fight was ended, Sir Henry and Good were carried into Twala’s hut, where I joined them. They were both utterly exhausted by exertion and loss of blood, and, indeed, my own condition was litt...

It was already dark on the third day after the scene described in the previous chapter when we camped in some huts at the foot of the “Three Witches,” as the triangle of mountains is called to which S...

While we were engaged in recovering from our fright, and in examining the grisly wonders of the Place of Death, Gagool had been differently occupied. Somehow or other⁠—for she was marvellously active ...

I can give no adequate description of the horrors of the night which followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, for even in such a position as ours wearied nature will sometimes...

Ten days from that eventful morning found us once more in our old quarters at Loo; and, strange to say, but little the worse for our terrible experience, except that my stubbly hair came out of the tr...

And now I come to perhaps the strangest adventure that happened to us in all this strange business, and one which shows how wonderfully things are brought about. I was walking along quietly, some way ...

I discovered eight varieties of antelope, with which I was previously totally unacquainted, and many new species of plants, for the most part of the bulbous tribe. —⁠A. Q. ↩ Mr. Quatermain’s ideas abo...