Allan Quatermain?"

I said that it was.

The big man made no further remark, but I heard him mutter "fortunate"
into his beard.

Presently dinner came to an end, and as we were leaving the saloon Sir
Henry strolled up and asked me if I would come into his cabin to smoke
a pipe. I accepted, and he led the way to the /Dunkeld/ deck cabin,
and a very good cabin it is. It had been two cabins, but when Sir
Garnet Wolseley or one of those big swells went down the coast in the
/Dunkeld/, they knocked away the partition and have never put it up
again. There was a sofa in the cabin, and a little table in front of
it. Sir Henry sent the steward for a bottle of whisky, and the three
of us sat down and lit our pipes.

"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry Curtis, when the man had brought the
whisky and lit the lamp, "the year before last about this time, you
were, I believe, at a place called Bamangwato, to the north of the
Transvaal."

"I was," I answered, rather surprised that this gentleman should be so
well acquainted with my movements, which were not, so far as I was
aware, considered of general interest.

"You were trading there, were you not?" put in Captain Good, in his
quick way.

"I was. I took up a wagon-load of goods, made a camp outside the