THE ANCIENT ALLAN

CHAPTER I. AN OLD FRIEND

Now I, Allan Quatermain, come to the weirdest (with one or two
exceptions perhaps) of all the experiences which it has amused me to
employ my idle hours in recording here in a strange land, for after all
England is strange to me. I grow elderly. I have, as I suppose, passed
the period of enterprise and adventure and I should be well satisfied
with the lot that Fate has given to my unworthy self.

To begin with, I am still alive and in health when by all the rules I
should have been dead many times over. I suppose I ought to be thankful
for that but, before expressing an opinion on the point, I should have
to be quite sure whether it is better to be alive or dead. The religious
plump for the latter, though I have never observed that the religious
are more eager to die than the rest of us poor mortals.

For instance, if they are told that their holy hearts are wrong, they
spend time and much money in rushing to a place called Nauheim
in Germany, to put them right by means of water-drinking, thereby
shortening their hours of heavenly bliss and depriving their heirs of
a certain amount of cash. The same thing applies to Buxton in my own
neighbourhood and gout, especially when it threatens the stomach or the
throat. Even archbishops will do these things, to say nothing of such
small fry as deans, or stout and prominent lay figures of the Church.

From common sinners like myself such conduct might be expected, but in
the case of those who are obviously poised on the topmost rungs of the
Jacobean--I mean, the heavenly--ladder, it is legitimate to inquire why
they show such reluctance in jumping off. As a matter of fact the only
persons that, individually, I have seen quite willing to die, except now
and again to save somebody else whom they were so foolish as to care for
more than they did for themselves, have been not those "upon whom the
light has shined" to quote an earnest paper I chanced to read this
morning, but, to quote again, "the sinful heathen wandering in their
native blackness," by which I understand the writer to refer to their
moral state and not to their sable skins wherein for the most part they
are also condemned to wander, that is if they happen to have been born
south of a certain degree of latitude.

To come to facts, the staff of Faith which each must shape for himself,
is often hewn from unsuitable kinds of wood, yes, even by the very best
among us. Willow, for instance, is pretty and easy to cut, but try to
support yourself with it on the edge of a precipice and see where you
are. Then of a truth you will long for ironbark, or even homely oak. I
might carry my parable further, some allusions to the proper material
of which to fashion the helmet of Salvation suggest themselves to me for
example, but I won't.

The truth is that we fear to die because all the religions are full of
uncomfortable hints as to what may happen to us afterwards as a reward
for our deviations from their laws and we half believe in something,
whereas often the savage, not being troubled with religion, fears less,
because he half believes in nothing. For very few inhabitants of this
earth can attain either to complete belief or to its absolute opposite.
They can seldom lay their hands upon their hearts, and say they _know_
that they will live for ever, or sleep for ever; there remains in the
case of most honest men an element of doubt in either hypothesis.

That is what makes this story of mine so interesting, at any rate to
me, since it does seem to suggest that whether or no I have a future,
as personally I hold to be the case and not altogether without evidence,
certainly I have had a past, though, so far as I know, in this world
only; a fact, if it be a fact, from which can be deduced all kinds of
arguments according to the taste of the reasoner.

And now for my experience, which it is only fair to add, may after all
have been no more than a long and connected dream. Yet how was I to
dream of lands, events and people where of I have only the vaguest
knowledge, or none at all, unless indeed, as some say, being a part of
this world, we have hidden away somewhere in ourselves an acquaintance
with everything that has ever happened in the world. However, it does
not much matter and it is useless to discuss that which we cannot prove.

Here at any rate is the story.


In a book or a record which I have written down and put away with others
under the title of "The Ivory Child," I have told the tale of a certain
expedition I made in company with Lord Ragnall.