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 miles round.
It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory. I never saw a better, averaging
as it did between forty and fifty pounds a tusk. The tusks of the great
bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and seventy pounds the
pair, so nearly as we could judge.

As for Khiva himself, we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear
hole, together with an assegai to protect himself with on his journey
to a better world. On the third day we marched again, hoping that we
might live to return to dig up our buried ivory, and in due course,
after a long and wearisome tramp, and many adventures which I have not
space to detail, we reached Sitanda's Kraal, near the Lukanga River,
the real starting-point of our expedition. Very well do I recollect our
arrival at that place. To the right was a scattered native settlement
with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands down by the
water, where these savages grew their scanty supply of grain, and
beyond it stretched great tracts of waving "veld" covered with tall
grass, over which herds of the smaller game were wandering. To the left
lay the vast desert. This spot appears to be the outpost of the fertile
country, and it would be difficult to say to what natural causes such
an abrupt change in the character of the soil is due. But so it is.

Just below our encampment flowed a little stream, on the farther side
of which is a stony slope, the same down which, twenty years before, I
had seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach
Solomon's Mines, and beyond that slope begins the waterless desert,
covered with a species of karoo shrub.

It was evening when we pitched our camp, and the great ball of the sun
was sinking into the desert, sending glorious rays of many-coloured
light flying all over its vast expanse. Leaving Good to superintend the
arrangement of our little camp, I took Sir Henry with me, and walking
to the top of the slope opposite, we gazed across the desert. The air
was very clear, and far, far away I could distinguish the faint blue
outlines, here and there capped with white, of the Suliman Berg.

"There," I said, "there is the wall round Solomon's Mines, but God
knows if we shall ever climb it."

"My brother should be there, and if he is, I shall reach him somehow,"
said Sir Henry, in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man.

"I hope so," I answered, and turned to go back to the camp, when I saw
that we were not alone. Behind us, also gazing earnestly towards the
far-off mountains, stood the great Kafir Umbopa.

The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him, addressing Sir
Henry, to whom he had attached himself.

"Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey, Incubu?" (a native word
meaning, I believe, an elephant, and the name given to Sir Henry by the
Kafirs), he said, pointing towards the mountain with his broad assegai.

I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that
familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among
themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by
their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet
little laugh which angered me.

"How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi whom I
serve?" he said. "He is of a royal house, no doubt; one can see it in
his size and by his mien; so, mayhap, am I. At least, I am as great a
man. Be my mouth, O Macumazahn, and say my words to the Inkoos Incubu,
my master, for I would speak to him and to thee."

I was angry with the man, for I am not accustomed to be talked to in
that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was
curious to know what he had to say. So I translated, expressing my
opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his
swagger was outrageous.

"Yes, Umbopa," answered Sir Henry, "I would journey there."

"The desert is wide and there is no water in it, the mountains are high
and covered with snow, and man cannot say what lies beyond them behind
the place where the sun sets; how shalt thou come thither, Incubu, and
wherefore dost thou go?"

I translated again.

"Tell him," answered Sir Henry, "that I go because I believe that a man
of my blood, my brother, has gone there before me, and I journey to
seek him."

"That is so, Incubu; a Hottentot I met on the road told me that a white
man went out into the desert two years ago towards those mountains with
one servant, a hunter. They never came back."

"How do you know it was my brother?" asked Sir Henry.

"Nay, I know not. But the Hottentot, when I asked what the white man
was like, said that he had thine eyes and a black beard. He said, too,
that the name of the hunter with him was Jim; that he was a Bechuana
hunter and wore clothes."

"There is no doubt about it," said I; "I knew Jim well."

Sir Henry nodded. "I was sure of it," he said. "If George set his mind
upon a thing he generally did it. It was always so from his boyhood. If
he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it, unless some
accident overtook him, and we must look for him on the other side."

Umbopa understood English, though he rarely spoke it.

"It is a far journey, Incubu," he put in, and I translated his remark.

"Yes," answered Sir Henry, "it is far. But there is no journey upon
this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is
nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not
climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a
desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he
holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or
lose it as Heaven above may order."

I translated.

"Great words, my father," answered the Zulu--I always called him a
Zulu, though he was not really one--"great swelling words fit to fill
the mouth of a man. Thou art right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is
life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and
thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes
carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it
may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to
try and journey one's road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At
the worst he can but die a little sooner. I will go with thee across
the desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall to the
ground on the way, my father."

He paused awhile, and then went on with one of those strange bursts of
rhetorical eloquence that Zulus sometimes indulge in, which to my mind,
full though they are of vain repetitions, show that the race is by no
means devoid of poetic instinct and of intellectual power.

"What is life? Tell me, O white men, who are wise, who know the secrets
of the world, and of the world of stars, and the world that lies above
and around the stars; who flash your words from afar without a voice;
tell me, white men, the secret of our life--whither it goes and whence
it comes!

"You cannot answer me; you know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the
dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we
fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of
the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing.
Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the
glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it
is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that
runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset."

"You are a strange man," said Sir Henry, when he had ceased.

Umbopa laughed. "It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu. Perhaps
_I_ seek a brother over the mountains."

I looked at him suspiciously. "What dost thou mean?" I asked; "what
dost thou know of those mountains?"

"A little; a very little. There is a strange land yonder, a land of
witchcraft and beautiful things; a land of brave people, and of trees,
and streams, and snowy peaks, and of a great white road. I have heard
of it. But what is the good of talking? It grows dark. Those who live
to see will see."

Again I looked at him doubtfully. The man knew too much.

"You need not fear me, Macumazahn," he said, interpreting my look. "I
dig no holes for you to fall in. I make no plots. If ever we cross
those mountains behind the sun I will tell what I know. But Death sits
upon them. Be wise and turn back. Go and hunt elephants, my masters. I
have spoken."

And without another word he lifted his spear in salutation, and
returned towards the camp, where shortly afterwards we found him
cleaning a gun like any other Kafir.

"That is an odd man," said Sir Henry.

"Yes," answered I, "too odd by half. I don't like his little ways. He
knows something, and will not speak out. But I suppose it is no use
quarrelling with him. We are in for a curious trip, and a mysterious
Zulu won't make much difference one way or another."

Next day we made our arrangements for starting. Of course it was
impossible to drag our heavy elephant rifles and other kit with us
across the desert, so, dismissing our bearers, we made an arrangement
with an old native who had a kraal close by to take care of them till
we returned. It went to my heart to leave such things as those sweet
tools to the tender mercies of an old thief of a savage whose greedy
eyes I could see gloating over them. But I took some precautions.

First of all I loaded all the rifles, placing them at full cock, and
informed him that if he touched them they would go off. He tried the
experiment instantly with my eight-bore, and it did go off, and blew a
hole right through one of his oxen, which were just then being driven
up to the kraal, to say nothing of knocking him head over heels with
the recoil. He got up considerably startled, and not at all pleased at
the loss of the ox, which he had the impudence to ask me to pay for,
and nothing would induce him to touch the guns again.

"Put the live devils out of the way up there in the thatch," he said,
"or they will murder us all."

Then I told him that, when we came back, if one of those things was
missing I would kill him and his people by witchcraft; and if we died
and he tried to steal the rifles I would come and haunt him and turn
his cattle mad and his milk sour till life was a weariness, and would
make the devils in the guns come out and talk to him in a way he did
not like, and generally gave him a good idea of judgment to come. After
that he promised to look after them as though they were his father's
spirit. He was a very superstitious old Kafir and a great villain.

Having thus disposed of our superfluous gear we arranged the kit we
five--Sir Henry, Good, myself, Umbopa, and the Hottentot
Ventvoegel--were to take with us on our journey. It was small enough,
but do what we would we could not get its weight down under about forty
pounds a man. This is what it consisted of:--

The three express rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition.

The two Winchester repeating rifles (for Umbopa and Ventvoegel), with
two hundred rounds of cartridge.

Five Cochrane's water-bottles, each holding four pints.

Five blankets.

Twenty-five pounds' weight of biltong--i.e. sun-dried game flesh.

Ten pounds' weight of best mixed beads for gifts.

A selection of medicine, including an ounce of quinine, and one or two
small surgical instruments.

Our knives, a few sundries, such as a compass, matches, a pocket
filter, tobacco, a trowel, a bottle of brandy, and the clothes we stood
in.

This was our total equipment, a small one indeed for such a venture,
but we dared not attempt to carry more. Indeed, that load was a heavy
one per man with which to travel across the burning desert, for in such
places every additional ounce tells. But we could not see our way to
reducing the weight. There was nothing taken but what was absolutely
necessary.

With great difficulty, and by the promise of a present of a good
hunting-knife each, I succeeded in persuading three wretched natives
from the village to come with us for the first stage, twenty miles, and
to carry a large gourd holding a gallon of water apiece. My object was
to enable us to refill our water-bottles after the first night's march,
for we determined to start in the cool of the evening. I gave out to
these natives that we were going to shoot ostriches, with which the
desert abounded. They jabbered and shrugged their shoulders, saying
that we were mad and should perish of thirst, which I must say seemed
probable; but being desirous of obtaining the knives, which were almost
unknown treasures up there, they consented to come, having probably
reflected that, after all, our subsequent extinction would be no affair
of theirs.

All next day we rested and slept, and at sunset ate a hearty meal of
fresh beef washed down with tea, the last, as Good remarked sadly, we
were likely to drink for many a long day. Then, having made our final
preparations, we lay down and waited for the moon to rise. At last,
about nine o'clock, up she came in all her glory, flooding the wild
country with light, and throwing a silver sheen on the expanse of
rolling desert before us, which looked as solemn and quiet and as alien
to man as the star-studded firmament above. We rose up, and in a few
minutes were ready, and yet we hesitated a little, as human nature is
prone to hesitate on the threshold of an irrevocable step. We three
white men stood by ourselves. Umbopa, assegai in hand and a rifle
across his shoulders, looked out fixedly across the desert a few paces
ahead of us; while the hired natives, with the gourds of water, and
Ventvoegel, were gathered in a little knot behind.

"Gentlemen," said Sir Henry presently, in his deep voice, "we are going
on about as strange a journey as men can make in this world. It is very
doubtful if we can succeed in it. But we are three men who will stand
together for good or for evil to the last. Now before we start let us
for a moment pray to the Power who shapes the destinies of men, and who
ages since has marked out our paths, that it may please Him to direct
our steps in accordance with His will."

Taking off his hat, for the space of a minute or so, he covered his
face with his hands, and Good and I did likewise.

I do not say that I am a first-rate praying man, few hunters are, and
as for Sir Henry, I never heard him speak like that before, and only
once since, though deep down in his heart I believe that he is very
religious. Good too is pious, though apt to swear. Anyhow I do not
remember, excepting on one single occasion, ever putting up a better
prayer in my life than I did during that minute, and somehow I felt the
happier for it. Our future was so completely unknown, and I think that
the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.

"And now," said Sir Henry, "_trek_!"

So we started.

We had nothing to guide ourselves by except the distant mountains and
old Jose da Silvestre's chart, which, considering that it was drawn by
a dying and half-distraught man on a fragment of linen three centuries
ago, was not a very satisfactory sort of thing to work with. Still,
our sole hope of success depended upon it, such as it was. If we failed
in finding that pool of bad water which the old Dom marked as being
situated in the middle of the desert, about sixty miles from our
starting-point, and as far from the mountains, in all probability we
must perish miserably of thirst. But to my mind the chances of our
finding it in that great sea of sand and karoo scrub seemed almost
infinitesimal. Even supposing that da Silvestra had marked the pool
correctly, what was there to prevent its having been dried up by the
sun generations ago, or trampled in by game, or filled with the
drifting sand?

On we tramped silently as shades through the night and in the heavy
sand. The karoo bushes caught our feet and retarded us, and the sand
worked into our veldtschoons and Good's shooting-boots, so that every
few miles we had to stop and empty them; but still the night kept
fairly cool, though the atmosphere was thick and heavy, giving a sort
of creamy feel to the air, and we made fair progress. It was very
silent and lonely there in the desert, oppressively so indeed. Good
felt this, and once began to whistle "The Girl I left behind me," but
the notes sounded lugubrious in that vast place, and he gave it up.

Shortly afterwards a little incident occurred which, though it startled
us at the time, gave rise to a laugh. Good was leading, as the holder
of the compass, which, being a sailor, of course he understood
thoroughly, and we were toiling along in single file behind him, when
suddenly we heard the sound of an exclamation, and he vanished. Next
second there arose all around us a most extraordinary hubbub, snorts,
groans, and wild sounds of rushing feet. In the faint light, too, we
could descry dim galloping forms half hidden by wreaths of sand. The
natives threw down their loads and prepared to bolt, but remembering
that there was nowhere to run to, they cast themselves upon the ground
and howled out that it was ghosts. As for Sir Henry and myself, we
stood amazed; nor was our amazement lessened when we perceived the form
of Good careering off in the direction of the mountains, apparently
mounted on the back of a horse and halloaing wildly. In another second
he threw up his arms, and we heard him come to the earth with a thud.

Then I saw what had happened; we had stumbled upon a herd of sleeping
quagga, on to the back of one of which Good actually had fallen, and
the brute naturally enough got up and made off with him. Calling out to
the others that it was all right, I ran towards Good, much afraid lest
he should be hurt, but to my great relief I found him sitting in the
sand, his eye-glass still fixed firmly in his eye, rather shaken and
very much frightened, but not in any way injured.

After this we travelled on without any further misadventure till about
one o'clock, when we called a halt, and having drunk a little water,
not much, for water was precious, and rested for half an hour, we
started again.

On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of
a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed
presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the
desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they
vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out
against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man.
Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the
boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the
desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.

Still we did not halt, though by this time we should have been glad
enough to do so, for we knew that when once the sun was fully up it
would be almost impossible for us to travel. At length, about an hour
later, we spied a little pile of boulders rising out of the plain, and
to this we dragged ourselves. As luck would have it, here we found an
overhanging slab of rock carpeted beneath with smooth sand, which
afforded a most grateful shelter from the heat. Underneath this we
crept, and each of us having drunk some water and eaten a bit of
biltong, we lay down and soon were sound asleep.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon before we woke, to find our
bearers preparing to return. They had seen enough of the desert
already, and no number of knives would have tempted them to come a step
farther. So we took a hearty drink, and having emptied our
water-bottles, filled them up again from the gourds that they had
brought with them, and then watched them depart on their twenty miles'
tramp home.

At half-past four we also started. It was lonely and desolate work, for
with the exception of a few ostriches there was not a single living
creature to be seen on all the vast expanse of sandy plain. Evidently
it was too dry for game, and with the exception of a deadly-looking
cobra or two we saw no reptiles. One insect, however, we found
abundant, and that was the common or house fly. There they came, "not
as single spies, but in battalions," as I think the Old Testament[1]
says somewhere. He is an extraordinary insect is the house fly. Go
where you will you find him, and so it must have been always. I have
seen him enclosed in amber, which is, I was told, quite half a million
years old, looking exactly like his descendant of to-day, and I have
little doubt but that when the last man lies dying on the earth he will
be buzzing round--if this event happens to occur in summer--watching
for an opportunity to settle on his nose.

At sunset we halted, waiting for the moon to rise. At last she came up,
beautiful and serene as ever, and, with one halt about two o'clock in
the morning, we trudged on wearily through the night, till at last the
welcome sun put a period to our labours. We drank a little and flung
ourselves down on the sand, thoroughly tired out, and soon were all
asleep. There was no need to set a watch, for we had nothing to fear
from anybody or anything in that vast untenanted plain. Our only
enemies were heat, thirst, and flies, but far rather would I have faced
any danger from man or beast than that awful trinity. This time we were
not so lucky as to find a sheltering rock to guard us from the glare of
the sun, with the result that about seven o'clock we woke up
experiencing the exact sensations one would attribute to a beefsteak on
a gridiron. We were literally being baked through and through. The
burning sun seemed to be sucking our very blood out of us. We sat up
and gasped.

"Phew," said I, grabbing at the halo of flies which buzzed cheerfully
round my head. The heat did not affect _them_.

"My word!" said Sir Henry.

"It is hot!" echoed Good.

It was hot, indeed, and there was not a bit of shelter to be found.
Look where we would there was no rock or tree, nothing but an unending
glare, rendered dazzling by the heated air that danced over the surface
of the desert as it dances over a red-hot stove.

"What is to be done?" asked Sir Henry; "we can't stand this for long."

We looked at each other blankly.

"I have it," said Good, "we must dig a hole, get in it, and cover
ourselves with the karoo bushes."

It did not seem a very promising suggestion, but at least it was better
than nothing, so we set to work, and, with the trowel we had brought
with us and the help of our hands, in about an hour we succeeded in
delving out a patch of ground some ten feet long by twelve wide to the
depth of two feet. Then we cut a quantity of low scrub with our
hunting-knives, and creeping into the hole, pulled it over us all, with
the exception of Ventvoegel, on whom, being a Hottentot, the heat had no
particular effect. This gave us some slight shelter from the burning
rays of the sun, but the atmosphere in that amateur grave can be better
imagined than described. The Black Hole of Calcutta must have been a
fool to it; indeed, to this moment I do not know how we lived through
the day. There we lay panting, and every now and again moistening our
lips from our scanty supply of water. Had we followed our inclinations
we should have finished all we possessed in the first two hours, but we
were forced to exercise the most rigid care, for if our water failed us
we knew that very soon we must perish miserably.

But everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it, and
somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening. About three o'clock
in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no longer. It
would be better to die walking that to be killed slowly by heat and
thirst in this dreadful hole. So taking each of us a little drink from
our fast diminishing supply of water, now warmed to about the same
temperature as a man's blood, we staggered forward.

We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness. If the reader will
refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra's map, he
will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across,
and the "pan bad water" is set down as being about in the middle of it.
Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we
ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if
any should really exist.

Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely
doing more than a mile and a half in an hour. At sunset we rested
again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to get
some sleep.

Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct
hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At the
distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to sleep
I fell to wondering what it could be.

With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and
suffering tortures from thirst and prickly heat. Nobody who has not
felt it can know what we went through. We walked no longer, we
staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion, and being obliged to
call a halt every hour or so. We had scarcely energy left in us to
speak. Up to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry fellow;
but now he had not a joke in him.

At last, about two o'clock, utterly worn out in body and mind, we came
to the foot of the queer hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight
resembled a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and covering
at the base nearly two acres of ground.

Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate thirst, sucked down
our last drops of water. We had but half a pint a head, and each of us
could have drunk a gallon.

Then we lay down. Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard Umbopa
remark to himself in Zulu--

"If we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises
to-morrow."

I shuddered, hot as it was. The near prospect of such an awful death is
not pleasant, but even the thought of it could not keep me from
sleeping.

[1] Readers must beware of accepting Mr. Quatermain's references as
accurate, as, it has been found, some are prone to do. Although his
reading evidently was limited, the impression produced by it upon his
mind was mixed. Thus to him the Old Testament and Shakespeare were
interchangeable authorities.--Editor.

Having killed a total of nine elephants, Quatermain's hunting party sets about cutting out and burying the precious ivory tusks. Quatermain notes that the tusks average about forty to fifty pounds of ivory each, with the vicious bull elephant's tusks weighing in at one hundred and seventy pounds for the pair. The bull elephant's victim, Khiva, is buried with due ceremony, and the expedition continues. In due time the party reaches Sitanda's Kraal near the Lukanga River, the true jumping-off point for their journey to the Suliman Mountains. Quatermain spots the stony slope upon which he had seen Silvestre return twenty years ago. Nearby is the desert they must cross in order to reach their destination. They pitch camp and in the evening light can spy the faint outline of the Suliman Berg. Despite Quatermain's fatalistic pessimism, Sir Henry insists that he will somehow reach his brother to learn his fate. In an unusual interchange, Umbopa addresses Sir Henry familiarly as "Incubu". Quatermain takes issue with Umbopa's lack of respect for his superior, to which Umbopa replies "How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi I serve. Umbopa then insists that Quatermain translate his language into Sir Henry's English. Quatermain does so begrudgingly, still angered at Umbopa's impertinence. Umbopa warns Sir Henry that their upcoming journey is likely to end in death. He hints that he has some knowledge about the route they will take, but only admits to having heard of a white man who resembled Sir Henry, along with a servant named Jim, having attempted the expedition two years ago. Sir Henry recognizes the description of his brother George, while Quatermain confirms the identity of Jim. Umbopa then launches into a semi-poetic speech regarding the nature of life and death. He then assures Quatermain that he has not ill designs on the white men and departs. The next day Quatermain finishes preparations for their journey. He makes a long list of the items they are able to bring with them and expresses frustration at the many items they must leave behind. Among the excess are several guns, which Quatermain loads and warns the erstwhile guardian not to touch. The man, predictably, touches one, which fires and kills one of his oxen. Quatermain then berates him and threatens to destroy his family and livelihood with white man's magic should he dare to take anything left in his care. The man fearfully acknowledges his charge and insists the guns be placed somewhere far out of reach for the safety of everyone involved. After a short journey, the expedition pitches camp in the last shade before the desert. The next morning Sir Henry insists they take a moment to pray for their journey; Quatermain acknowledges that he is not much of a praying man, but that this is one of the most sincere appeals to his Maker he has ever made in his life. The expedition then sets out into the burning heat of the desert. Their only hope is the old Silvestre map's indication of a dirty oases in the middle of the route to the Suliman Mountains. After much travel Quatermain begins to despair that the map is inaccurate or that they are off course. The heat begins to affect the entire party, and they are beset by flies. They can find no shelter, and so awaken each morning to blistering heat. Sir Henry, Captain Good, and Quatermain assess their water supply and come to the conclusion that if they do not reach a source of water the next day, they will all die of dehydration. Despite the ominous conditions, Quatermain is so tired that he is able to drift off to sleep

The conflict between Quatermain's expectations of Zulu assistants and Umbopa's self-assured nature develops further in this chapter.  When Umbopa addresses Sir Henry familiarly as "Incubu," Quatermain "asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way" .  Umbopa's laugh at Quatermain's rebuke only serves to anger the hunter; this anger is compounded when Umbopa tells Quatermain, "He  is of a royal house...so, mayhap, am I.  At least I am as great a man" .  Nonetheless, Quatermain is impressed by Umbopa's demeanor and continues to translate his words to Sir Henry out of curiousity.  Haggard here distances himself from Quatermain's racism by setting the character up to be wrong about Umbopa--his heritage will be revealed as royal indeed--thus calling into question Quatermain's prejudices.  Nonetheless, even Haggard's expression of equanimity is tempered by the requirement that the African treated as equal to a white man be of noble heritage. The author also indulges in some humor at the expense of his protagonist.  When the desert march has become harsh and wearying, all forms of wildlife are gone save for the occasional cobra and the numerous house flies.  Quatermain says, "They came, 'not as single spies, but in battalsions,' as I think the Old Testament says somewhere" .  Quatermain is clearly quoting Hamlet, but gets the citation wrong; thus Quatermain is revealed to be a man who has read  more than his aforementioned two works, but who is also somewhat ignorant of his own Bible.  The inadvertent placing of Shakespeare's greatest play on a par with Holy Scripture may also be a subtle dig at English attitudes toward their own culture. Haggard also engages in some convincing verisimilitude by listing the weapons and supplies the party gathers for their expedition--a list which spans several paragraphs .  By giving such detail, and by further keeping account of the items which are used up, destroyed, or go missing, Haggard grounds his tale in solid reality. In her article "'As Europe is to Africa, So is Man to Woman': Gendering Landscape in Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily," Lindy Steibel notes, "It appears that unconsciously Haggard projected a good deal of his latent sexual desire and that of his age, which was one of determined public prudery, onto his feminized African landscapes" .  It is difficult to contradict Steibel with Haggard's description of the mountains known as Sheba's Breasts: "Their bases swelled gently up from the plain, looking, at that distance, perfectly round and smooth; and on the top of each was a vast round hillock covered with snow, exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast" .  Unconscious or not, Haggard certainly means to evoke the feminine form in his description of this landscape; Sheba's Breasts become the destination for the immediate leg of the journey, and the gateway into the unknown land of the Kukuanas; this latter bespeaks a connection between the feminine and the mysterious and hidden, here positively in contrast to the negative feminine mystique of Gagool later in the novel. Quatermain's insistent pessimism is brought to the fore in this chapter, as he expects to die of exposure long before their journey nears its goal.  When Ventvogel claims to smell water, Quatermain replies, "No doubt it is in the coulds and about two months hence it will fall and wash our bones" .  Quatermain's pessimism, here as elsewhere, is misplaced--the men do indeed find water and survive to carry on their expedition. Haggard pares the traveling party down further with the death of Ventvogel.  The Hottentot's death by freezing serves to highlight the dangers in the journey--and to signify that not all dangers come from wild animals--and to deprive the group of their best tracker, thus making their situation more dire.  Compounding this sense of dread is their discovery of the other dead body in the cave, the sight of which frightens all the men into a panic.  To see the remnants of another traveler only heightens the party's fear of failing in their quest.


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 could
sleep no more. I had been dreaming that I was bathing in a running
stream, with green banks and trees upon them, and I awoke to find
myself in this arid wilderness, and to remember, as Umbopa had said,
that if we did not find water this day we must perish miserably. No
human creature could live long without water in that heat. I sat up and
rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands, as my lips and
eyelids were stuck together, and it was only after some friction and
with an effort that I was able to open them. It was not far from dawn,
but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was
thick with a hot murkiness that I cannot describe. The others were
still sleeping.

Presently it began to grow light enough to read, so I drew out a little
pocket copy of the "Ingoldsby Legends" which I had brought with me, and
read "The Jackdaw of Rheims." When I got to where

  "A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
  Embossed, and filled with water as pure
  As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,"

literally I smacked my cracking lips, or rather tried to smack them.
The mere thought of that pure water made me mad. If the Cardinal had
been there with his bell, book, and candle, I would have whipped in and
drunk his water up; yes, even if he had filled it already with the suds
of soap "worthy of washing the hands of the Pope," and I knew that the
whole consecrated curse of the Catholic Church should fall upon me for
so doing. I almost think that I must have been a little light-headed
with thirst, weariness and the want of food; for I fell to thinking how
astonished the Cardinal and his nice little boy and the jackdaw would
have looked to see a burnt up, brown-eyed, grizzly-haired little
elephant hunter suddenly bound between them, put his dirty face into
the basin, and swallow every drop of the precious water. The idea
amused me so much that I laughed or rather cackled aloud, which woke
the others, and they began to rub _their_ dirty faces and drag _their_
gummed-up lips and eyelids apart.

As soon as we were all well awake we began to discuss the situation,
which was serious enough. Not a drop of water was left. We turned the
bottles upside down, and licked their tops, but it was a failure; they
were dry as a bone. Good, who had charge of the flask of brandy, got it
out and looked at it longingly; but Sir Henry promptly took it away
from him, for to drink raw spirit would only have been to precipitate
the end.

"If we do not find water we shall die," he said.

"If we can trust to the old Dom's map there should be some about," I
said; but nobody seemed to derive much satisfaction from this remark.
It was so evident that no great faith could be put in the map. Now it
was gradually growing light, and as we sat staring blankly at each
other, I observed the Hottentot Ventvoegel rise and begin to walk about
with his eyes on the ground. Presently he stopped short, and uttering a
guttural exclamation, pointed to the earth.

"What is it?" we exclaimed; and rising simultaneously we went to where
he was standing staring at the sand.

"Well," I said, "it is fresh Springbok spoor; what of it?"

"Springbucks do not go far from water," he answered in Dutch.

"No," I answered, "I forgot; and thank God for it."

This little discovery put new life into us; for it is wonderful, when a
man is in a desperate position, how he catches at the slightest hope,
and feels almost happy. On a dark night a single star is better than
nothing.

Meanwhile Ventvoegel was lifting his snub nose, and sniffing the hot air
for all the world like an old Impala ram who scents danger. Presently
he spoke again.

"I _smell_ water," he said.

Then we felt quite jubilant, for we knew what a wonderful instinct
these wild-bred men possess.

Just at that moment the sun came up gloriously, and revealed so grand a
sight to our astonished eyes that for a moment or two we even forgot
our thirst.

There, not more than forty or fifty miles from us, glittering like
silver in the early rays of the morning sun, soared Sheba's Breasts;
and stretching away for hundreds of miles on either side of them ran
the great Suliman Berg. Now that, sitting here, I attempt to describe
the extraordinary grandeur and beauty of that sight, language seems to
fail me. I am impotent even before its memory. Straight before us, rose
two enormous mountains, the like of which are not, I believe, to be
seen in Africa, if indeed there are any other such in the world,
measuring each of them at least fifteen thousand feet in height,
standing not more than a dozen miles apart, linked together by a
precipitous cliff of rock, and towering in awful white solemnity
straight into the sky. These mountains placed thus, like the pillars of
a gigantic gateway, are shaped after the fashion of a woman's breasts,
and at times the mists and shadows beneath them take the form of a
recumbent woman, veiled mysteriously in sleep. Their bases swell gently
from the plain, looking at that distance perfectly round and smooth;
and upon the top of each is a vast hillock covered with snow, exactly
corresponding to the nipple on the female breast. The stretch of cliff
that connects them appears to be some thousands of feet in height, and
perfectly precipitous, and on each flank of them, so far as the eye can
reach, extent similar lines of cliff, broken only here and there by
flat table-topped mountains, something like the world-famed one at Cape
Town; a formation, by the way, that is very common in Africa.

To describe the comprehensive grandeur of that view is beyond my
powers. There was something so inexpressibly solemn and overpowering
about those huge volcanoes--for doubtless they are extinct
volcanoes--that it quite awed us. For a while the morning lights played
upon the snow and the brown and swelling masses beneath, and then, as
though to veil the majestic sight from our curious eyes, strange
vapours and clouds gathered and increased around the mountains, till
presently we could only trace their pure and gigantic outlines, showing
ghostlike through the fleecy envelope. Indeed, as we afterwards
discovered, usually they were wrapped in this gauze-like mist, which
doubtless accounted for our not having seen them more clearly before.

Sheba's Breasts had scarcely vanished into cloud-clad privacy, before
our thirst--literally a burning question--reasserted itself.

It was all very well for Ventvoegel to say that he smelt water, but we
could see no signs of it, look which way we would. So far as the eye
might reach there was nothing but arid sweltering sand and karoo scrub.
We walked round the hillock and gazed about anxiously on the other
side, but it was the same story, not a drop of water could be found;
there was no indication of a pan, a pool, or a spring.

"You are a fool," I said angrily to Ventvoegel; "there is no water."

But still he lifted his ugly snub nose and sniffed.

"I smell it, Baas," he answered; "it is somewhere in the air."

"Yes," I said, "no doubt it is in the clouds, and about two months
hence it will fall and wash our bones."

Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is on the
top of the hill," he suggested.

"Rot," said Good; "whoever heard of water being found at the top of a
hill!"

"Let us go and look," I put in, and hopelessly enough we scrambled up
the sandy sides of the hillock, Umbopa leading. Presently he stopped as
though he was petrified.

"_Nanzia manzie_!" that is, "Here is water!" he cried with a loud voice.

We rushed up to him, and there, sure enough, in a deep cut or
indentation on the very top of the sand koppie, was an undoubted pool
of water. How it came to be in such a strange place we did not stop to
inquire, nor did we hesitate at its black and unpleasant appearance. It
was water, or a good imitation of it, and that was enough for us. We
gave a bound and a rush, and in another second we were all down on our
stomachs sucking up the uninviting fluid as though it were nectar fit
for the gods. Heavens, how we did drink! Then when we had done drinking
we tore off our clothes and sat down in the pool, absorbing the
moisture through our parched skins. You, Harry, my boy, who have only
to turn on a couple of taps to summon "hot" and "cold" from an unseen,
vasty cistern, can have little idea of the luxury of that muddy wallow
in brackish tepid water.

After a while we rose from it, refreshed indeed, and fell to on our
"biltong," of which we had scarcely been able to touch a mouthful for
twenty-four hours, and ate our fill. Then we smoked a pipe, and lay
down by the side of that blessed pool, under the overhanging shadow of
its bank, and slept till noon.

All that day we rested there by the water, thanking our stars that we
had been lucky enough to find it, bad as it was, and not forgetting to
render a due share of gratitude to the shade of the long-departed da
Silvestra, who had set its position down so accurately on the tail of
his shirt. The wonderful thing to us was that the pan should have
lasted so long, and the only way in which I can account for this is on
the supposition that it is fed by some spring deep down in the sand.

Having filled both ourselves and our water-bottles as full as possible,
in far better spirits we started off again with the moon. That night we
covered nearly five-and-twenty miles; but, needless to say, found no
more water, though we were lucky enough the following day to get a
little shade behind some ant-heaps. When the sun rose, and, for awhile,
cleared away the mysterious mists, Suliman's Berg with the two majestic
Breasts, now only about twenty miles off, seemed to be towering right
above us, and looked grander than ever. At the approach of evening we
marched again, and, to cut a long story short, by daylight next morning
found ourselves upon the lowest slopes of Sheba's left breast, for
which we had been steadily steering. By this time our water was
exhausted once more, and we were suffering severely from thirst, nor
indeed could we see any chance of relieving it till we reached the snow
line far, far above us. After resting an hour or two, driven to it by
our torturing thirst, we went on, toiling painfully in the burning heat
up the lava slopes, for we found that the huge base of the mountain was
composed entirely of lava beds belched from the bowels of the earth in
some far past age.

By eleven o'clock we were utterly exhausted, and, generally speaking,
in a very bad state indeed. The lava clinker, over which we must drag
ourselves, though smooth compared with some clinker I have heard of,
such as that on the Island of Ascension, for instance, was yet rough
enough to make our feet very sore, and this, together with our other
miseries, had pretty well finished us. A few hundred yards above us
were some large lumps of lava, and towards these we steered with the
intention of lying down beneath their shade. We reached them, and to
our surprise, so far as we had a capacity for surprise left in us, on a
little plateau or ridge close by we saw that the clinker was covered
with a dense green growth. Evidently soil formed of decomposed lava had
rested there, and in due course had become the receptacle of seeds
deposited by birds. But we did not take much further interest in the
green growth, for one cannot live on grass like Nebuchadnezzar. That
requires a special dispensation of Providence and peculiar digestive
organs.

So we sat down under the rocks and groaned, and for one I wished
heartily that we had never started on this fool's errand. As we were
sitting there I saw Umbopa get up and hobble towards the patch of
green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I
perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting
like a maniac, and waving something green. Off we all scrambled towards
him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that he had
found water.

"What is it, Umbopa, son of a fool?" I shouted in Zulu.

"It is food and water, Macumazahn," and again he waved the green thing.

Then I saw what he had found. It was a melon. We had hit upon a patch
of wild melons, thousands of them, and dead ripe.

"Melons!" I yelled to Good, who was next me; and in another minute his
false teeth were fixed in one of them.

I think we ate about six each before we had done, and poor fruit as
they were, I doubt if I ever thought anything nicer.

But melons are not very nutritious, and when we had satisfied our
thirst with their pulpy substance, and put a stock to cool by the
simple process of cutting them in two and setting them end on in the
hot sun to grow cold by evaporation, we began to feel exceedingly
hungry. We had still some biltong left, but our stomachs turned from
biltong, and besides, we were obliged to be very sparing of it, for we
could not say when we should find more food. Just at this moment a
lucky thing chanced. Looking across the desert I saw a flock of about
ten large birds flying straight towards us.

"_Skit, Baas, skit!_" "Shoot, master, shoot!" whispered the Hottentot,
throwing himself on his face, an example which we all followed.

Then I saw that the birds were a flock of _pauw_ or bustards, and that
they would pass within fifty yards of my head. Taking one of the
repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and then
jumped to my feet. On seeing me the _pauw_ bunched up together, as I
expected that they would, and I fired two shots straight into the thick
of them, and, as luck would have it, brought one down, a fine fellow,
that weighed about twenty pounds. In half an hour we had a fire made of
dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we made such a feed
as we had not tasted for a week. We ate that _pauw_; nothing was left
of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt not a little the
better afterwards.

That night we went on again with the moon, carrying as many melons as
we could with us. As we ascended we found the air grew cooler and
cooler, which was a great relief to us, and at dawn, so far as we could
judge, we were not more than about a dozen miles from the snow line.
Here we discovered more melons, and so had no longer any anxiety about
water, for we knew that we should soon get plenty of snow. But the
ascent had now become very precipitous, and we made but slow progress,
not more than a mile an hour. Also that night we ate our last morsel of
biltong. As yet, with the exception of the _pauw_, we had seen no
living thing on the mountain, nor had we come across a single spring or
stream of water, which struck us as very odd, considering the expanse
of snow above us, which must, we thought, melt sometimes. But as we
afterwards discovered, owing to a cause which it is quite beyond my
power to explain, all the streams flowed down upon the north side of
the mountains.

Now we began to grow very anxious about food. We had escaped death by
thirst, but it seemed probable that it was only to die of hunger. The
events of the next three miserable days are best described by copying
the entries made at the time in my note-book.

"21st May.--Started 11 a.m., finding the atmosphere quite cold enough
to travel by day, and carrying some water-melons with us. Struggled on
all day, but found no more melons, having evidently passed out of their
district. Saw no game of any sort. Halted for the night at sundown,
having had no food for many hours. Suffered much during the night from
cold.

"22nd.--Started at sunrise again, feeling very faint and weak. Only
made about five miles all day; found some patches of snow, of which we
ate, but nothing else. Camped at night under the edge of a great
plateau. Cold bitter. Drank a little brandy each, and huddled ourselves
together, each wrapped up in his blanket, to keep ourselves alive. Are
now suffering frightfully from starvation and weariness. Thought that
Ventvoegel would have died during the night.

"23rd.--Struggled forward once more as soon as the sun was well up, and
had thawed our limbs a little. We are now in a dreadful plight, and I
fear that unless we get food this will be our last day's journey. But
little brandy left. Good, Sir Henry, and Umbopa bear up wonderfully,
but Ventvoegel is in a very bad way. Like most Hottentots, he cannot
stand cold. Pangs of hunger not so bad, but have a sort of numb feeling
about the stomach. Others say the same. We are now on a level with the
precipitous chain, or wall of lava, linking the two Breasts, and the
view is glorious. Behind us the glowing desert rolls away to the
horizon, and before us lie mile upon mile of smooth hard snow almost
level, but swelling gently upwards, out of the centre of which the
nipple of the mountain, that appears to be some miles in circumference,
rises about four thousand feet into the sky. Not a living thing is to
be seen. God help us; I fear that our time has come."

And now I will drop the journal, partly because it is not very
interesting reading; also what follows requires telling rather more
fully.

All that day--the 23rd May--we struggled slowly up the incline of snow,
lying down from time to time to rest. A strange gaunt crew we must have
looked, while, laden as we were, we dragged our weary feet over the
dazzling plain, glaring round us with hungry eyes. Not that there was
much use in glaring, for we could see nothing to eat. We did not
accomplish more than seven miles that day. Just before sunset we found
ourselves exactly under the nipple of Sheba's left Breast, which
towered thousands of feet into the air, a vast smooth hillock of frozen
snow. Weak as we were, we could not but appreciate the wonderful scene,
made even more splendid by the flying rays of light from the setting
sun, which here and there stained the snow blood-red, and crowned the
great dome above us with a diadem of glory.

"I say," gasped Good, presently, "we ought to be somewhere near that
cave the old gentleman wrote about."

"Yes," said I, "if there is a cave."

"Come, Quatermain," groaned Sir Henry, "don't talk like that; I have
every faith in the Dom; remember the water! We shall find the place
soon."

"If we don't find it before dark we are dead men, that is all about
it," was my consolatory reply.

For the next ten minutes we trudged in silence, when suddenly Umbopa,
who was marching along beside me, wrapped in his blanket, and with a
leather belt strapped so tightly round his stomach, to "make his hunger
small," as he said, that his waist looked like a girl's, caught me by
the arm.

"Look!" he said, pointing towards the springing slope of the nipple.

I followed his glance, and some two hundred yards from us perceived
what appeared to be a hole in the snow.

"It is the cave," said Umbopa.

We made the best of our way to the spot, and found sure enough that the
hole was the mouth of a cavern, no doubt the same as that of which da
Silvestra wrote. We were not too soon, for just as we reached shelter
the sun went down with startling rapidity, leaving the world nearly
dark, for in these latitudes there is but little twilight. So we crept
into the cave, which did not appear to be very big, and huddling
ourselves together for warmth, swallowed what remained of our
brandy--barely a mouthful each--and tried to forget our miseries in
sleep. But the cold was too intense to allow us to do so, for I am
convinced that at this great altitude the thermometer cannot have
marked less than fourteen or fifteen degrees below freezing point. What
such a temperature meant to us, enervated as we were by hardship, want
of food, and the great heat of the desert, the reader may imagine
better than I can describe. Suffice it to say that it was something as
near death from exposure as I have ever felt. There we sat hour after
hour through the still and bitter night, feeling the frost wander round
and nip us now in the finger, now in the foot, now in the face. In vain
did we huddle up closer and closer; there was no warmth in our
miserable starved carcases. Sometimes one of us would drop into an
uneasy slumber for a few minutes, but we could not sleep much, and
perhaps this was fortunate, for if we had I doubt if we should have
ever woke again. Indeed, I believe that it was only by force of will
that we kept ourselves alive at all.

Not very long before dawn I heard the Hottentot Ventvoegel, whose teeth
had been chattering all night like castanets, give a deep sigh. Then
his teeth stopped chattering. I did not think anything of it at the
time, concluding that he had gone to sleep. His back was resting
against mine, and it seemed to grow colder and colder, till at last it
felt like ice.

At length the air began to grow grey with light, then golden arrows
sped across the snow, and at last the glorious sun peeped above the
lava wall and looked in upon our half-frozen forms. Also it looked upon
Ventvoegel, sitting there amongst us, _stone dead_. No wonder his back
felt cold, poor fellow. He had died when I heard him sigh, and was now
frozen almost stiff. Shocked beyond measure, we dragged ourselves from
the corpse--how strange is that horror we mortals have of the
companionship of a dead body--and left it sitting there, its arms
clasped about its knees.

By this time the sunlight was pouring its cold rays, for here they were
cold, straight into the mouth of the cave. Suddenly I heard an
exclamation of fear from someone, and turned my head.

And this is what I saw: Sitting at the end of the cavern--it was not
more than twenty feet long--was another form, of which the head rested
on its chest and the long arms hung down. I stared at it, and saw that
this too was a _dead man_, and, what was more, a white man.

The others saw also, and the sight proved too much for our shattered
nerves. One and all we scrambled out of the cave as fast as our
half-frozen limbs would carry us.

Quatermain awakens two hours after falling into his miserable sleep. His body slightly refreshed, his thirst returns to the forefront of his thoughts. He recounts a dream of bathing in a stream surrounded by greenery, only to awaken to his present harsh reality. Already becoming desiccated from the dryness, Quatermain attempts to take his mind off of his suffering by reading, but only manages to frustrate himself further as he reads a passage detailing pure water. The others awaken and as a group assess their situation, as not a drop of water remains among them. In the midst of their collective despair, Ventvogel arises and begins searching the ground with his eyes. He stoops and cries out, pointing at something he sees: "Springbok spoor" he explains. Springboks do not go far from water. Heartened by this evidence of nearby water, the party marches in the direction of the alleged oasis on Silvestra's old map. Ventvogel claims he can smell water, but the others put no stock in his senses. As the sun arises, the travelers are able to see for the first time the reality of the Sulemin Mountains, "Sheba's Breasts" as described by old Silvestre. Though far away, the sight of the two mountains encourages the party as to the accuracy of Silvestre's account; furthermore, they can see snow atop the mountains and, while it is too far away to do them good at present, it promises a fresh supply of water should they make their way to the peaks. Nonetheless, the members of the expedition return to their burning thirst and call Ventvogel a fool for claiming to smell water nearby. Sir Henry suggests they might find water atop a nearby hill; despite the scorn of the others, Quatermain despairingly suggests they follow up on Sir Henry's hunch. Umbopa leads the way and finds a dirty pool of water atop the hill. The men drink their fill and moisten their dried skin in the pool, then refill their canteens for the journey ahead. They eat some of their rations for the first time in twenty-four hours and relax for a while. After resting all day in the shade of the hill, the expedition continues its terrible trek through the desert. They reach "Sheba's left breast" and begin to ascend the mountain. By this time their water supply is again nonexistent, which only adds to their frustration as the walking has become more difficult over the dried lava that covers the base of the dormant volcano. Umbopa discovers a source of temporary relief: a crop of wild melons, ripe and ready to eat. The men feast on the melons, but find them more refreshing to their thirst than to their hungry stomachs. They soon begin to believe they have escaped death by thirst only to die of hunger. Ventvogel spots a flock of birds , and Quatermain expertly shoots one from the sky. The men start a fire with dried melon stems and cook the bird for dinner. The party awaits the rising of the moon to continue their ascent, and does so refreshed but still somewhat hopeless. They see no further game and fewer melons, so food shortage again becomes a concern. They are also unable to determine why, with the snow above them on the volcanic mountain, there are no streams flowing down. Quatermain remarks on his fear of starvation in his journal, dated May 21-23. He resumes his narration of events on the 23rd, when they espy a dark hole in the snow far above them. Heading toward it, they ascertain it is the opening to a cave--the very cave mentioned by Silvestre. The men make for the cave and arrive just as the sun sets and plunges the mountain into darkness. In the cold and dark, the men huddle together in the cave for warmth. During the night Quatermain hears Ventvogel, who is sitting back-to-back with the elephant hunter, give a dismal sigh. He thinks nothing of it until the morning, when he discovers that Ventvogel has died in his sleep. The remaining men are saddened, but wish to leave the company of the dead man. The sun rises, lighting the cave and giving the men a view which terrifies them: at the end of the cave sits another dead man--a dead white man. They flee the cave in fear