A Tale of Three Lions.docx

1、A Tale of Three LionsA Tale of Three Lions by H. Rider Haggard CHAPTER ITHE INTEREST ON TEN SHILLINGSMost of you will have heard that Allan Quatermain, who was one of the party that discovered King Solomons mines some little time ago, and who afterwards came to live in England near his friend Sir He

2、nry Curtis. He went back to the wilderness again, as these old hunters almost invariably do, on one pretext or another.* They cannot endure civilization for very long, its noise and racket and the omnipresence of broad-clothed humanity proving more trying to their nerves than the dangers of the dese

3、rt. I think that they feel lonely here, for it is a fact that is too little understood, though it has often been stated, that there is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to those who are unaccustomed to them. What is there in the world,old Quatermain would say, so desolate as to

4、 stand in the streets of a great city and listen to the footsteps falling, falling, multitudinous as the rain, and watch the white line of faces as they hurry past, you know not whence, you know not whither? They come and go, their eyes meet yours with a cold stare, for a moment their features are w

5、ritten on your mind, and then they are gone for ever. You will never see them again; they will never see you again; they come up out of the unknown, and presently they once more vanish into the unknown, taking their secrets with them. Yes, that is loneliness pure and undefiled; but to one who knows

6、and loves it, the wilderness is not lonely, because the spirit of nature is ever there to keep the wanderer company. He finds companions in the winds-the sunny streams babble like Natures children at his feet; high above them, in the purple sunset, are domes and minarets and palaces, such as no mort

7、al man has built, in and out of whose flaming doors the angels of the sun seem to move continually.And there, too, is the wild game, following its feeding-grounds in great armies, with the springbuck thrown out before for skirmishers;then rank upon rank of long-faced blesbuck, marching and wheeling

8、like infantry; and last the shining troops of quagga, and the fierce-eyed shaggy vilderbeeste to take, as it were, the place of the cossack host that hangs upon an armys flanks.* This of course was written before Mr. Quatermains account of the adventures in the newly-discovered country of Zu-Vendis

9、of himself, Sir Henry Curtis, and Capt. John Good had been received in England.-Editor.Oh, no, he would say, the wilderness is not lonely, for, my boy, remember that the further you get from man, the nearer you grow to God, and though this is a saying that might well be disputed, it is one I am sure

10、 that anybody will easily understand who has watched the sun rise and set on the limitless deserted plains, and seen the thunder chariots of the clouds roll in majesty across the depths of unfathomable sky.Well, at any rate we went back again, and now for many months I have heard nothing at all of h

11、im, and to be frank, I greatly doubt if anybody will ever hear of him again. I fear that the wilderness, that has for so many years been a mother to him, will now also prove his grave and the grave of those who accompanied him, for the quest upon which he and they have started is a wild one indeed.B

12、ut while he was in England for those three years or so between his return from the successful discovery of the wise kings buried treasures, and the death of his only son, I saw a great deal of old Allan Quatermain. I had known him years before in Africa, and after he came home, whenever I had nothin

13、g better to do, I used to run up to Yorkshire and stay with him, and in this way I at one time and another heard many of the incidents of his past life, and most curious some of them were. No man can pass all those years following the rough existence of an elephant-hunter without meeting with many s

14、trange adventures, and in one way and another old 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 Iforget the exact year in which it happened. at any rate I know that it was the only trip upon

15、 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 talki

16、ng 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 Pilgrims Rest?Well, it is, or was, one of the queerest little places you ever saw.The town itself

17、 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

18、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 g

19、ot 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 hundr

20、ed 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

21、 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 years elephant-hunting beyond the Zambesi, and I sighed deeply and prophetically when I saw my successful friend, w

22、ho 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 Ionly hope that my luck will be as good as yours has been.He smiled; to my

23、 excited nerves it seemed that he smiled ominously, as he answered me in a peculiar Yankee drawl: I guess, stranger, as Iaint the one to make a man quarrel with his food, more especial when there aint no more going of the rounds; and as for that there claim, well, shes been a good nigger to me; but

24、between you and me, stranger, speaking man to man, now that there aint any filthy lucre between us to obscure the features of the truth, I guess shes about worked out!I gasped; the fellows effrontery took the breath out of me. Only five minutes before he had been swearing by all his gods-and they ap

25、peared 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.Dont look so vexed, stranger, went on my tormentor, perhaps there is some shine in the old girl yet; anyway you are a d

26、ownright good fellow, you are, therefore you will, I guess, have a real A1opportunity 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 two thousand doll

27、ars in value of experience.Then he went just in time, for in another moment I should have gone for him, and I saw his face no more.Well, I set to work on the old claim with my boy Harry and half a dozen Kaffirs to help me, which, seeing that I had put nearly all my worldly wealth into it, was the le

28、ast that I could do. And we worked, my word, we did work-early and late we went at it-but never a bit of gold did we see; no, not even a nugget large enough to make a scarf-pin out of. The American gentleman had secured it all and left us the sweepings.For three months this went on, till at last I h

29、ad paid away all, or very near all, that was left of her little capital in wages and food for the Kaffirs and ourselves. When I tell you that Boer meal was sometimes as high as four pounds a bag, you will understand that it did not take long to run through our banking account.At last the crisis came

30、. One Saturday night I had paid the men as usual, and bought a muid of mealie meal at sixty shillings for them to fill themselves with, and then I went with my boy Harry and sat on the edge of the great hole that we had dug in the hill-side, and which we had in bitter mockery named Eldorado. There w

31、e sat in the moonlight with our feet over the edge of the claim, and were melancholy enough for anything. Presently I pulled out my purse and emptied its contents into my hand. There was a half-sovereign, two florins, ninepence in silver, no coppers-for copper practically does not circulate in South

32、 Africa, which is one of the things that make living so dear there-in all exactly fourteen and ninepence.There, Harry, my boy! I said, that is the sum total of our worldly wealth; that hole has swallowed all the rest.By George! said Master Harry; I say, father, you and I shall have to let ourselves out to work with the Kaffirs and live on mealie pap,and he sniggered at his unpleasant little joke.But I was in no mood for joking, for it is not a merry thing to dig like anything for months and be completely ruined in the process, especially if you happen