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 ha...