ars I have hunted and traded, but I have never made more
than a living. Well, gentlemen, I don't know if you are aware that the
average life of an elephant hunter from the time he takes to the trade
is between four and five years. So you see I have lived through about
seven generations of my class, and I should think that my time cannot
be far off, anyway. Now, if anything were to happen to me in the
ordinary course of business, by the time my debts are paid there would
be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he was getting in the
way of earning a living, whereas now he will be set up for five years.
There is the whole affair in a nutshell."

"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry, who had been giving me his most
serious attention, "your motives for undertaking an enterprise which
you believe can only end in disaster reflect a great deal of credit on
you. Whether or not you are right, of course time and the event alone
can show. But whether you are right or wrong, I may as well tell you at
once that I am going through with it to the end, sweet or bitter. If we
are to be knocked on the head, all I have to say is, that I hope we get
a little shooting first, eh, Good?"

"Yes, yes," put in the captain. "We have all three of us been
accustomed to face danger, and to hold our lives in our hands in
various ways, so it is no good turning back now. And now I vote we go
down to the saloon and take an observation just for luck, you know."
And we did--through the bottom of a tumbler.

Next day we went ashore, and I put up Sir Henry and Captain Good at the
little shanty I have built on the Berea, and which I call my home.
There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is constructed
of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden
with the best loquot trees in it that I know, and some nice young
mangoes, of which I hope great things. The curator of the botanical
gardens gave them to me. It is looked after by an old hunter of mine
named Jack, whose thigh was so badly broken by a buffalo cow in
Sikukunis country that he will never hunt again. But he can potter
about and garden, being a Griqua by birth. You will never persuade a
Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and
peaceful arts are not in his line.

Sir Henry and Good slept in a tent pitched in my little grove of orange
trees at the end of the garden, for there was no room for them in the
house, and what with the smell o