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Now, we were dining in an oak-panelled vestibule, and on the wall opposite to me were fixed two gigantic elephant tusks, and under them a pair of buffalo horns, very rough and knotted, showing that they came off an old bull, and having the tip of one horn split and chipped. I noticed that Hunter Quatermain’s eyes kept glancing at these trophies, and took an occasion to ask him if he knew anything about them.

“I ought to,” he answered, with a little laugh; “the elephant to which those tusks belonged tore one of our party right in two about eighteen months ago, and as for the buffalo horns, they were nearly my death, and were the end of a servant of mine to whom I was much attached. I gave them to Sir Henry when he left Natal some months ago;” and Mr. Quatermain sighed and turned to answer a question from the lady whom he had taken down to dinner, and who, needless to say, was also employed in trying to pump him about the diamonds.

Indeed, all round the table there was a simmer of scarcely suppressed excitement, which, when the servants had left the room, could no longer be restrained.

“Now, Mr. Quatermain,” said the lady next him, “we have been kept in an agony of suspense by Sir Henry and Captain Good, who have persistently refused to tell us a word of this story about the hidden treasure till you came, and we simply can bear it no longer; so, please, begin at once.”

“Yes,” said everybody, “go on, please.”

Hunter Quatermain glanced round the table apprehensively; he did not seem to appreciate finding himself the object of so much curiosity.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said at last, with a shake of his grizzled head, “I am very sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot do it. It is this way. At the request of Sir Henry and Captain Good I have written down a true and plain account of King Solomon’s Mines and how we found them, so you will soon be able to learn all about that wonderful adventure for yourselves; but until then I will say nothing about it, not from any wish to disappoint your curiosity, or to make myself important, but simply because the whole story partakes so much of the marvellous, that I am afraid to tell it in a piecemeal, hasty fashion, for fear I should be set down as one of those common fellows of whom there are so many in my profession, who are not ashamed to narrate things they have not seen, and even to tell wonderful stories about wild animals they have never killed. And I think that my companions in adventure, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, will bear me out in what I say.”

“Yes, Quatermain, I think you are quite right,” said Sir Henry. “Precisely the same considerations have forced Good and myself to hold our tongues. We did not wish to be bracketed with–well, with other famous travellers.”

There was a murmur of disappointment at these announcements.

“I believe you are all hoaxing us,” said the young lady next Mr. Quatermain, rather sharply.

“Believe me,” answered the old hunter, with a quaint courtesy and a little bow of his grizzled head; “though I have lived all my life in the wilderness, and amongst savages, I have neither the heart, nor the want of manners, to wish to deceive one so lovely.”

Whereat the young lady, who was pretty, looked appeased.

“This is very dreadful,” I broke in. “We ask for bread and you give us a stone, Mr. Quatermain. The least that you can do is to tell us the story of the tusks opposite and the buffalo horns underneath. We won’t let you off with less.”

“I am but a poor story-teller,” put in the old hunter, “but if you will forgive my want of skill, I shall be happy to tell you, not the story of the tusks, for that is part of the history of our journey to King Solomon’s Mines, but that of the buffalo horns beneath them, which is now ten years old.”