The Ancient Allan

CHAPTER I.
AN OLD FRIEND

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

To begin with, I am still alive and in health when by all the rules I shouldhave 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 surewhether 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 therest of us poor mortals.

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

From common sinners like myself such conduct might be expected, but in the caseof those who are obviously poised on the topmost rungs of the Jacobean—Imean, the heavenly—ladder, it is legitimate to inquire why they show suchreluctance 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 savesomebody else whom they were so foolis

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