The Project Gutenberg EBook of Maiwa's Revenge, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: Maiwa's Revenge
The War of the Little Hand

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: March 31, 2006 [EBook #2713]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by John Bickers; Dagny; Emma Dudding

MAIWA'S REVENGE

OR THE WAR OF THE LITTLE HAND

by H. Rider Haggard

PREFACE

It may be well to state that the incident of the "Thing that bites"
recorded in this tale is not an effort of the imagination. On the
contrary, it is "plagiarized." Mandara, a well-known chief on the east
coast of Africa, has such an article, _and uses it_. In the same way the
wicked conduct attributed to Wambe is not without a precedent. T'Chaka,
the Zulu Napoleon, never allowed a child of his to live. Indeed he went
further, for on discovering that his mother, Unandi, was bringing up one
of his sons in secret, like Nero he killed her, and with his own hand.

MAIWA'S REVENGE

I--GOBO STRIKES

One day--it was about a week after Allan Quatermain told me his story
of the "Three Lions," and of the moving death of Jim-Jim--he and I were
walking home together on the termination of a day's shooting. He owned
about two thousand acres of shooting round the place he had bought in
Yorkshire, over a hundred of which were wood. It was the second year of
his occupation of the estate, and already he had reared a very fair head
of pheasants, for he was an all-round sportsman, and as fond of shooting
with a shot-gun as with an eight-bore rifle. We were three guns that
day, Sir Henry Curtis, Old Quatermain, and myself; but Sir Henry was
obliged to leave in the middle of the afternoon in order to meet
his agent, and inspect an outlying farm where a new shed was wanted.
However, he was coming back to dinner, and going to bring Captain Good
with him, for Brayley Hall was not more than two miles from the Grange.

We had met with very fair sport, considering that we were only
going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed
twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured
o