Long Odds
by H. Rider Haggard
The
sto
whi
is
narrated
in
the
following
pages
came
to
me
fr
the
lips
of
my
old
fr
Allan
Quate
or
Hu
Quatermain,
as
we
used
to
call
him
in
South
Africa.
He
told
it
to
me
one
eve
when
I
was
stopping
with
him
at
the
place
he
bought
in
Yorkshire.
Shortly
aft
that,
the
death
of
his
only
son
so
unsettled
him
that
he
immediately
left
England,
accompanied
by
two
companions,
his
old
fellow-voyagers,
Sir
Henry
Curtis
and
Captain
Go
and
has
now
utterly
vanished
into
the
dark
he
of
Afri
He
is
persuaded
th
a
whi
people,
of
which
he
has
he
ru
all
his
lif
exists
somewhe
on
the
hi
in
the
vas
still
unexplored
interior,
and
his
great
ambition
is
to
find
them
before
he
dies.
This
is
the
wild
quest
upon
which
he
and
his
companions
have
departed,
and
from
which
I
shrewdly
suspect
they
nev
will
ret
One
letter
on
have
I
re
fr
the
old
gentleman,
dated
from
a
mission
st
high
up
the
Tana,
a
river
on
the
east
coast,
about
three
hundred
mi
north
of
Zanz
In
it
he
sa
that
they
ha
gone
through
many
hardships
and
adventures,
but
are
alive
and
well,
and
ha
found
traces
which
go
far
towards
mak
him
hope
that
the
results
of
their
wild
qu
may
be
a
"m
and
unexampled
discovery."
I
greatly
fea
however,
that
all
he
has
disco
is
death;
for
this
let
came
a
long
while
ago,
and
nobody
has
heard
a
single
wo
of
the
party
sin
They
have
tota
vanished.
It
was
on
the
last
evening
of
my
stay
at
his
house
that
he
told
the
ensuing
st
to
me
and
Captain
Good,
who
was
dining
with
him.
He
had
eaten
his
dinner
and
drunk
two
or
three
gla
of
old
po
just
to
help
Go
and
myself
to
the
end
of
the
second
bottle.
It
was
an
unus
thing
for
him
to
do,
for
he
was
a
most
abstemious
man,
having
concei
as
he
us
to
say,
a
great
horror
of
drink
from
observing
its
effects
upon
the
class
of
colonists--hunters,
tr
rid
and
others--amongst
whom
he
had
passed
so
many
years
of
his
life.
Consequently
the
good
wine
took
mo
effect
on
him
than
it
would
have
do
on
most
men,
sending
a
little
fl
in
his
wrinkl
ch
and
making
him
talk
more
freely
th
usua
De
old
man!
I
can
see
him
now,
as
he
went
limping
up
and
do
the
ve
with
his
grey
hair
sticking
up
in
scrubbing-brush
fa
his
shrivelled
ye
face,
and
his
la
dark
eyes,
th
we
as
keen
as
any
hawk's,
and
yet
soft
as
a
buck's.
The
whole
room
was
hu
with
tro
of
his
numerous
hunting
expeditions,
and
he
had
so
story
ab
every
one
of
them,
if
only
he
cou
be
got
to
tell
it.
Generally
he
would
not,
for
he
was
not
very
fo
of
narrating
his
own
adventures,
but
to-night
the
po
wine
made
him
mo
communicative.
"Ah,
you
brute
he
said,
stopping
beneath
an
unusually
large
sku
of
a
lio
which
was
fixed
just
over
the
mantel
beneath
a
long
row
of
guns,
its
jaws
distended
to
th
utmost
widt
"Ah,
you
brute!
you
ha
given
me
a
lot
of
trouble
for
the
last
dozen
ye
and
wil
I
su
to
my
dying
day."
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