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1、【儿童英文读物】A Tale of Three LionsCHAPTER I. THE INTEREST ON TEN SHILLINGS Most of you will have heard that Allan Quatermain, who was one of the party that discovered King Solomons mines some little time ago, and who afterwards came to live in England near his friend Sir Henry Curtis. He went back to the
2、 wilderness again, as these old hunters almost invariably do, on one pretext or another. They cannot endure civilization for very long, its noise and racket and the omnipresence of broad-clothed humanity proving more trying to their nerves than the dangers of the desert. I think that they feel lonel
3、y here, for it is a fact that is too little understood, though it has often been stated, that there is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to those who are unaccustomed to them. “What is there in the world,” old Quatermain would say, “so desolate as to stand in the streets of a g
4、reat city and listen to the footsteps falling, falling, multitudinous as the rain, and watch the white line of faces as they hurry past, you know not whence, you know not whither? They come and go, their eyes meet yours with a cold stare, for a moment their features are written on your mind, and the
5、n they are gone for ever. You will never see them again; they will never see you again; they come up out of the unknown, and presently they once more vanish into the unknown, taking their secrets with them. Yes, that is loneliness pure and undefiled; but to one who knows and loves it, the wilderness
6、 is not lonely, because the spirit of nature is ever there to keep the wanderer company. He finds companions in the windsthe sunny streams babble like Natures children at his feet; high above them, in the purple sunset, are domes and minarets and palaces, such as no mortal man has built, in and out
7、of whose flaming doors the angels of the sun seem to move continually. And there, too, is the wild game, following its feeding-grounds in great armies, with the springbuck thrown out before for skirmishers; then rank upon rank of long-faced blesbuck, marching and wheeling like infantry; and last the
8、 shining troops of quagga, and the fierce-eyed shaggy vilderbeeste to take, as it were, the place of the cossack host that hangs upon an armys flanks. * This of course was written before Mr. Quatermains account of the adventures in the newly-discovered country of Zu-Vendis of himself, Sir Henry Curt
9、is, and Capt. John Good had been received in England.Editor.“Oh, no,” he would say, “the wilderness is not lonely, for, my boy, remember that the further you get from man, the nearer you grow to God,” and though this is a saying that might well be disputed, it is one I am sure that anybody will easi
10、ly understand who has watched the sun rise and set on the limitless deserted plains, and seen the thunder chariots of the clouds roll in majesty across the depths of unfathomable sky. Well, at any rate we went back again, and now for many months I have heard nothing at all of him, and to be frank, I
11、 greatly doubt if anybody will ever hear of him again. I fear that the wilderness, that has for so many years been a mother to him, will now also prove his grave and the grave of those who accompanied him, for the quest upon which he and they have started is a wild one indeed. But while he was in En
12、gland for those three years or so between his return from the successful discovery of the wise kings buried treasures, and the death of his only son, I saw a great deal of old Allan Quatermain. I had known him years before in Africa, and after he came home, whenever I had nothing better to do, I use
13、d to run up to Yorkshire and stay with him, and in this way I at one time and another heard many of the incidents of his past life, and most curious some of them were. No man can pass all those years following the rough existence of an elephant-hunter without meeting with many strange adventures, an
14、d in one way and another old Quatermain has certainly seen his share. Well, the story that I am going to tell you in the following pages is one of the later of these adventures, though I forget the exact year in which it happened, at any rate I know that it was the only trip upon which he took his s
15、on Harry (who is since dead) with him, and that Harry was then about fourteen. And now for the story, which I will repeat, as nearly as I can, in the words in which Hunter Quatermain told it to me one night in the old oak-panelled vestibule of his house in Yorkshire. We were talking about gold-minin
16、g “Gold-mining!” he broke in; “ah! yes, I once went gold-mining at Pilgrims Rest in the Transvaal, and it was after that that we had the business about Jim-Jim and the lions. Do you know Pilgrims Rest? Well, it is, or was, one of the queerest little places you ever saw. The town itself was pitched i
17、n a stony valley, with mountains all about it, and in the middle of such scenery as one does not often get the chance of seeing. Many and many is the time that I have thrown down my pick and shovel in disgust, clambered out of my claim, and walked a couple of miles or so to the top of some hill. The
18、n I would lie down in the grass and look out over the glorious stretch of countrythe smiling valleys, the great mountains touched with goldreal gold of the sunset, and clothed in sweeping robes of bush, and stare into the depths of the perfect sky above; yes, and thank Heaven I had got away from the
19、 cursing and the coarse jokes of the miners, and the voices of those Basutu Kaffirs as they toiled in the sun, the memory of which is with me yet. “Well, for some months I dug away patiently at my claim, till the very sight of a pick or of a washing-trough became hateful to me. A hundred times a day
20、 I lamented my own folly in having invested eight hundred pounds, which was about all that I was worth at the time, in this gold-mining. But like other better people before me, I had been bitten by the gold bug, and now was forced to take the consequences. I bought a claim out of which a man had mad
21、e a fortunefive or six thousand pounds at leastas I thought, very cheap; that is, I gave him five hundred pounds down for it. It was all that I had made by a very rough years elephant-hunting beyond the Zambesi, and I sighed deeply and prophetically when I saw my successful friend, who was a Yankee,
22、 sweep up the roll of Standard Bank notes with the lordly air of the man who has made his fortune, and cram them into his breeches pockets. Well, I said to himthe happy vendorit is a magnificent property, and I only hope that my luck will be as good as yours has been. “He smiled; to my excited nerve
23、s it seemed that he smiled ominously, as he answered me in a peculiar Yankee drawl: I guess, stranger, as I aint the one to make a man quarrel with his food, more especial when there aint no more going of the rounds; and as for that there claim, well, shes been a good nigger to me; but between you a
24、nd me, stranger, speaking man to man, now that there aint any filthy lucre between us to obscure the features of the truth, I guess shes about worked out! “I gasped; the fellows effrontery took the breath out of me. Only five minutes before he had been swearing by all his godsand they appeared to be
25、 numerous and mixedthat there were half a dozen fortunes left in the claim, and that he was only giving it up because he was downright weary of shovelling the gold out. “Dont look so vexed, stranger, went on my tormentor, perhaps there is some shine in the old girl yet; anyway you are a downright go
26、od fellow, you are, therefore you will, I guess, have a real A1 opportunity of working on the feelings of Fortune. Anyway it will bring the muscle up upon your arm, for the stuff is uncommon stiff, and, what is more, you will in the course of a year earn a sight more than two thousand dollars in val
27、ue of experience. “Then he went just in time, for in another moment I should have gone for him, and I saw his face no more. “Well, I set to work on the old claim with my boy Harry and half a dozen Kaffirs to help me, which, seeing that I had put nearly all my worldly wealth into it, was the least th
28、at I could do. And we worked, my word, we did workearly and late we went at itbut never a bit of gold did we see; no, not even a nugget large enough to make a scarf-pin out of. The American gentleman had secured it all and left us the sweepings. “For three months this went on, till at last I had pai
29、d away all, or very near all, that was left of her little capital in wages and food for the Kaffirs and ourselves. When I tell you that Boer meal was sometimes as high as four pounds a bag, you will understand that it did not take long to run through our banking account. “At last the crisis came. On
30、e Saturday night I had paid the men as usual, and bought a muid of mealie meal at sixty shillings for them to fill themselves with, and then I went with my boy Harry and sat on the edge of the great hole that we had dug in the hill-side, and which we had in bitter mockery named Eldorado. There we sa
31、t in the moonlight with our feet over the edge of the claim, and were melancholy enough for anything. Presently I pulled out my purse and emptied its contents into my hand. There was a half-sovereign, two florins, ninepence in silver, no coppersfor copper practically does not circulate in South Afri
32、ca, which is one of the things that make living so dear therein all exactly fourteen and ninepence. “There, Harry, my boy! I said, that is the sum total of our worldly wealth; that hole has swallowed all the rest. “By George! said Master Harry; I say, father, you and I shall have to let ourselves ou
33、t to work with the Kaffirs and live on mealie pap, and he sniggered at his unpleasant little joke. “But I was in no mood for joking, for it is not a merry thing to dig like anything for months and be completely ruined in the process, especially if you happen to dislike digging, and consequently I re
34、sented Harrys light-heartedness. “Be quiet, boy! I said, raising my hand as though to give him a cuff, with the result that the half-sovereign slipped out of it and fell into the gulf below. “Oh, bother, said I, its gone. “There, Dad, said Harry, thats what comes of letting your angry passions rise;
35、 now we are down to four and nine. “I made no answer to these words of wisdom, but scrambled down the steep sides of the claim, followed by Harry, to hunt for my little all. Well, we hunted and we hunted, but the moonlight is an uncertain thing to look for half-sovereigns by, and there was some loos
36、e soil about, for the Kaffirs had knocked off working at this very spot a couple of hours before. I took a pick and raked away the clods of earth with it, in the hope of finding the coin; but all in vain. At last in sheer annoyance I struck the sharp end of the pickaxe down into the soil, which was
37、of a very hard nature. To my astonishment it sunk in right up to the haft. “Why, Harry, I said, this ground must have been disturbed! “I dont think so, father, he answered; but we will soon see, and he began to shovel out the soil with his hands. Oh, he said presently, its only some old stones; the
38、pick has gone down between them, look! and he began to pull at one of the stones. “I say, Dad, he said presently, almost in a whisper, its precious heavy, feel it; and he rose and gave me a round, brownish lump about the size of a very large apple, which he was holding in both his hands. I took it c
39、uriously and held it up to the light. It was very heavy. The moonlight fell upon its rough and filth-encrusted surface, and as I looked, curious little thrills of excitement began to pass through me. But I could not be sure. “Give me your knife, Harry, I said. “He did so, and resting the brown stone
40、 on my knee I scratched at its surface. Great heavens, it was soft! “Another second and the secret was out, we had found a great nugget of pure gold, four pounds of it or more. Its gold, lad, I said, its gold, or Im a Dutchman! “Harry, with his eyes starting out of his head, glared down at the gleam
41、ing yellow scratch that I had made upon the virgin metal, and then burst out into yell upon yell of exultation, which went ringing away across the silent claims like shrieks of somebody being murdered. “Be quiet! I said; do you want every thief on the fields after you? “Scarcely were the words out o
42、f my mouth when I heard a stealthy footstep approaching. I promptly put the big nugget down and sat on it, and uncommonly hard it was. As I did so I saw a lean dark face poked over the edge of the claim and a pair of beady eyes searching us out. I knew the face, it belonged to a man of very bad char
43、acter known as Handspike Tom, who had, I understood, been so named at the Diamond Fields because he had murdered his mate with a handspike. He was now no doubt prowling about like a human hyæna to see what he could steal. “Is that you, unter Quatermain? he said. “Yes, its I, Mr. Tom, I answere
44、d, politely. “And what might all that there yelling be? he asked. I was walking along, a-taking of the evening air and a-thinking on the stars, when I ears owl after owl. “Well, Mr. Tom, I answered, that is not to be wondered at, seeing that like yourself they are nocturnal birds. “Owl after owl! he
45、 repeated sternly, taking no notice of my interpretation, and I stops and says, “Thats murder,” and I listens again and thinks, “No, it aint; that owl is the owl of hexultation; some ones been and got his fingers into a gummy yeller pot, Ill swear, and gone off is ead in the sucking of them.” Now, u
46、nter Quatermain, is I right? is it nuggets? Oh, lor! and he smacked his lips audiblygreat big yellow boysis it them that you have just been and tumbled across? “No, I said boldly, it isntthe cruel gleam in his black eyes altogether overcoming my aversion to untruth, for I knew that if once he found
47、out what it was that I was sitting onand by the way I have heard of rolling in gold being spoken of as a pleasant process, but I certainly do not recommend anybody who values comfort to try sitting on itI should run a very good chance of being handspiked before the night was over. “If you want to kn
48、ow what it was, Mr. Tom, I went on, with my politest air, although in agony from the nugget underneathfor I hold it is always best to be polite to a man who is so ready with a handspikemy boy and I have had a slight difference of opinion, and I was enforcing my view of the matter upon him; thats all. “Yes, Mr. Tom, put in Harry, beginning to weep, for Harry was a smart boy, and saw the difficulty we were in, that was itI halloed because father beat me. “Well, now, did yer, my dear boydid yer? Well, all I can say is that a played-out old claim is a wonderfu