history that I am telling, so I do not propose even to touch on them. I
served in it for a year, meeting with many adventures, one or two
successes, and several failures. Once I was wounded slightly, twice I
but just escaped with my life. Once I was reprimanded for taking a
foolish risk and losing some men. Twice I was commended for what were
called gallant actions, such as bringing a wounded comrade out of danger
under a warm fire, mostly of assegais, and penetrating by night, almost
alone, into the stronghold of a chieftain, and shooting him.

At length that war was patched up with an inconclusive peace and my
corps was disbanded. I returned home, no longer a lad, but a man with
experience of various kinds and a rather unique knowledge of Kaffirs,
their languages, history, and modes of thought and action. Also I had
associated a good deal with British officers, and from them acquired
much that I had found no opportunity of studying before, especially, I
hope, the ideas and standards of English gentlemen.

I had not been back at the Mission Station more than three weeks, quite
long enough for me to begin to be bored with idleness and inactivity,
when that call for which I had been waiting came at last.

One day a "smous", that is a low kind of white man, often a Jew, who
travels about trading with unsophisticated Boers and Kaffirs, and
cheating them if he can, called at the station with his cartful of
goods. I was about to send him away, having no liking for such gentry,
when he asked me if I were named Allan Quatermain. I said "Yes,"
whereon he replied that he had a letter for me, and produced a packet
wrapped up in sail-cloth. I asked him whence he had it, and he answered
from a man whom he had met at Port Elizabeth, an east coast trader, who,
hearing that he was coming into the Cradock district, entrusted him with